Swabian Pride

by Sean Jobst 27 April 2020 It is a misty night whose magical qualities inspired many a poet and writer who dared allow themselves to step outside time and space. This night is when a disguised Mephistopheles sought to distract a Faust who had already bargained away his soul, from knowing the fate of his beloved Gretchen. The great poet who transmitted this story, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, on one winter's night in 1777 ascended the snowy heights of the Brocken to both recover from the sorrow of his sister's death and to step outside the mundane constraints of his Weimar society - but descended down newly inspired to create one of the best poetic masterpieces in the German language. This legendary night was immortalized by the great Irish novelist Bram Stoker as one "When the graves were opened and the dead came forth and walked. When all evil things of earth and air and water held revel." American science-fiction writer H.P. Lovecraft described this night's ...

by Sean Jobst 11 April 2020 Easter. For Christians this day is a sacred day, when their lord and savior Jesus resurrected three days following his crucifixion. The latter day follows the solemn forty-day Lenten season which recently ended to the commemoration of Christian faithful the world over. Lurking underneath though is the question of where do the symbolisms and traditions come from? "How are we to explain these strange Easter customs, which, taken all together, seem to bear the stamp of immemorial antiquity?" (Billson, 446). Behind the Easter traditions are living remnants of our own ancient traditions that have survived many centuries after our ancestors' conversion to Christianity. We approach it as an affirmation of the sacredness invested to the seasons, the Spring personified in the form of Goddesses associated with dawn, fertility, light, return of the sun from its winter slumber. From these Easter traditions, we can easily discern and deconstruct what ...