Manse Everard and his Tyrian guide, Pummairam/Pum:
"...threaded their way through jostling, shouting, odorous throngs." (p. 265)
Pum:
"...had become an acolyte at a dockside temple of the comparatively unimportant god Baal Hammon. (Everard harked back to tumbledown churches in the slums of twentieth-century America.)" (p. 266)
And I read about Everard in twenty-first-century Lancaster where, in Market Square today, there were:
Evangelical preachers accompanied by black musicians;
Jehovah's Witnesses displaying pamphlets in English and Polish;
left newspaper sellers;
curries, samosas and bhajis sold by an Asian man and his two sons - the older son informs me that he is conservative in religion but not in politics.
I observe all this, read Poul Anderson, remember Baal Hammon and feel kinship with humanity throughout the ages.
3 comments:
Note, though, that most of the traditional paganisms had a 'transactional' attitude to religion, at least for most people. You sacrificed to the Gods, then they came through for you.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: I might have used a blunter word than "odorous," such as "stinking."
Mr. Stirling: Judaism/Christianity is different, "we" have to change, to do our part.
Ad astra! Sean
In Buddhist practice, we do it all ourselves.
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