Sometimes there's a problem with a religion where you make it up as you go along, feelings are treated with respect, wishful thinking counts as much as dogma or logic and you daren't give offence.
And that is that, no matter what someone comes up with, you can't come up with a knock-down reason why what they're saying is tripe.
Take this evening. One of the more bookish of the Moon Gibbon folk noticed that today is Severus Snape's birthday. For those of my gentle readers, whose evangelical sympathy would mean they have never opened the deeply-suspect covers of the Harry Potter series, I should explain that Snape is a deep and complex character, a man of many sides and - at the last - a great hero. But he has a sinister and austere side to him, as befits a member of Slytherin. Combining this with the evident fact that it's full moon, a whole new and scary mythological conjunction has arisen.
The Moon Gibbon people have decided that, when it's Severus Snape's birthday of a full moon, Snape redivius haunts the land, savaging those muggles that have not held fast to the old true Gibbon Moon faith. But the Moon Gibbon people are a fundamentalist and basically pessimistic people, constantly convinced that they have failed the Gibbon himself - not least because they have no idea what his requirements actually are. They should be out joining with us howling at the moon - instead they've broken for cover early this evening and are lurking in the spinney calling for the mountains to fall on them before they receive the lash of Snape's satirical tongue. It's gonna be a long night.
(For the calendrical liturgists among you, I'm sure you'll be interested to know that, given Snape's birthday only rarely coincides with the full moon, on other years the Gibbon Folk plan to move it to the first Saturday between Snape's Day and the nearest Full Moon. That means they can have the whole of Sunday to get over being terrified to death by an angry wizard in league with a giant lunar primate. If any of this makes any sense, you may like to consider starting your own religion).
I don't suppose it would do anything to explain Snape is a literary character?
ReplyDeleteI suppose that's classed as heresy!
You need to read Alice C. Linsley to properly understand this sort of thing, Bill.
ReplyDeleteArchdruid, ma'am, does the feast have an Octave or should those of us who spent yesterday in bed recovering from Christmas on Saturday just celebrate it on the Old Calendar albeit without the full moon? Babushka Sian worries about that kind of thing. It wouldn't be the first time we've held her at umbrella point in the sacristy to prevent her grabbing her Ukrainian cookbook with 42 recipes for borscht and joining the Moon Gibbon People.
Bill, there's no telling them. I mean, they believe in the Moon Gibbon and he's not even in books.
ReplyDeleteMargaret, your problem is that Snape was born 9 Jan New Calendar, and therefore you've missed it both ways. Perhaps you should just celebrate Old Calendar New Year and be done with it?