Mythgard Academy

Week 1: Lofty Goals, and worthy news, and an auspicious date (mark it well, Saturday, October 16, 2021, Signum Webathon!) precede our inaugural dive into this new book. In the late 1950s, JRRT reworked the structure of Arda. He removed his flat earth and introduced Valian Years. What was the point? Not just math, surely. At last, we have the introductory 'Concerning Elves' material that will shape the Silmarillion. And we have a new word for the incarnate beings in Arda: hröambari.

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Welcome to Luna, here is your narrator, Mannie, a free born, old cobber with one arm who’s not on Authority’s payroll. Look him up and down. He comes from complicated Loonie heritage, belongs to a line marriage, has a clear attitude against Authority and Warden, and a subtle attitude against Terra and Earthworms. He switches arms and jobs with resilience, faces extreme hardships on Luna or Terra, and machines really like him. That is dinkum. ‘Cause Luna is a hostile place. Life is not default. Survival is gift. Bad actors don’t live long in Luna. And everything about what enables survival here is the approval and active protection of the community. That and being a not-stupid. For more information about the Mythgard Academy series on The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, visit https://mythgard.org/academy/the-moon-is-a-harsh-mistress/

Week 24: And so we finish our tour of Hell and arrive at the crux of the world where we find Dante has been affected deeply by his travels at all three levels of his allegorical structure, and where Dante again faints, and where we also strengthen our understanding of the Medieval knowledge of World Geography. In Virgil’s capable hands the inversion principle moves us through Satan’s nether parts to the next realm, and we are free from the Inferno and the stars come out. For more information about the Mythgard Academy series on Dante's Inferno, visit https://mythgard.org/academy/inferno/

Week 23: Where Dante succumbs to the lure of base arguments and wishes he was merely in a dream. And where a bugle blast messes with Dante’s vision, and towers become giants, and not nice ones either. And Dante’s absolute terror returns and his wish to be anywhere else but the road to Hell. But Virgil trades Dante’s fame card for a ride in Antaeus fist into the dark, frozen well. There Dante’s hubris returns in time to help him harass and abuse the sinners; so much for pity and so much for brotherhood. Dante should take care not to betray his guide; we will return with ours next week as Dr. Olsen promises an end to this tour of Hell. For more information about the Mythgard Academy series on Dante's Inferno, visit https://mythgard.org/academy/inferno/

In which we complete our tour of the Malebolge with a rather crowded tenth pouch

In which we meet people with various kinds of bodily integrity issues.

Week 20: Where we call bologna on Dante’s talent curbing and clearly see the simple summer simile. Where with Ulysses we pass the columns, and the poles, and founder on the shores of Mount Purgatory having found the earth round. Where we hear that one cannot logically be absolved before, or during, the commission of an evil deed or counsel. Sorry, not sorry, or something like that, Minos judges. And Dante litters his own path with cautionary examples; there but for the ‘rock’ goes he. For more information about the Mythgard Academy series on Dante's Inferno, visit https://mythgard.org/academy/inferno/

\Week 19: A Place Among the Classics In the seventh pocket of the eighth circle, the fraudulent thieves are beset with snakes. Dante calls them all serpents, but some have six legs, and some none; some are caliente, peppercorn serpents, and some are winged, fiery dragons; some are smoking, and some are boring. Later, while describing the transformations from snake to thief and thief to snake, Dante disses Ovid and Lucan, two poets he wished to be named with back in Limbo. For more information about the Mythgard Academy series on Dante's Inferno, visit https://mythgard.org/academy/inferno/​

Guess what sin is punished by snakes. And cyclical incineration.