Lapis Lazuli

[poliphilo]

November 5 falling on a Saturday should mean that most people will have had their bonfire parties on the proper day. It was very noisy last night. We don't have many near neighbours but those there are have lots of dosh to spend on fireworks.

Once upon a time the effigies on civic bonfires would have represented Guy Fawkes and the Pope. This year a lot of English towns chose to burn Donald Trump. I wonder if any US presidential candidate (not sitting President but presidential candidate) has had that honour before. It bother me a little that the craziness in the States should be infecting us as well. Yes, Trump is awful- but whenever a person becomes elevated into a universal hate figure you have to wonder who or what he's acting as a decoy for.

Yesterday, briefly, the mass circulation papers were trying to make folk demons out of the three judges who had thwarted the will of the press barons people by ruling that the Referendum wasn't enough to trigger Brexit and the matter needed to be put before parliament. It was ugly. I'm not saying judges should always be respected- or anything like that- but in this instance they were simply doing their job and were almost certainly right in law.

Edgy times, brittle, hysterical; mobs on the prowl...

I got my Yeats down yesterday and re-read "Lapis Lazuli". Everyone knows "The Second Coming" which says "Bad Times are coming" but "Lapis Lazuli" which says "Bad Times are coming and...." is the greater and wiser poem.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Burning a witch- even in effigy- would make me uncomfortable. Partly because it's not that long since we did that sort of thing for real- and partly because of the implied misogyny. Also I used to be a Wiccan.

Here in England we hung witches rather than burning them. Burning was for heretics.

[sorenr.livejournal.com]

The misogyny and religious intolerance is what gets to me about "burning witches"... It has some serious historical connotations that are deeply unpleasant. The last Danish woman to be burned at the stake for witchcraft was Anne Palles in 1693 (though she was beheaded before being burned.).

(And of course gay men have been burned at the stake in Denmark, too, though fortunately only two to the best of my knowledge.)