Main typesetting of Manual of the Degrees of the Antient & Primitive Rite is almost done -- just the last couple of rituals to do, then set up page headers, design a cover & possibly give the text a second pass to ensure a suitable admixture of pedantic / sarcastic footnotes, tho' I might just get lazy & copy-paste a few more from Lectures of the Antient & Primitive Rite.
Like, why the hell is Charon showing up in the judgement scene from the Book of the Dead, and why, instead of taking two small coins from the Can. as traditional, does he instead give him a small coin and a dog-biscuit? Why is Hermes there, not identified with either Anubis as psychopomp or Thoth as scribe of the gods and the intellectualised Divine Wisdom, but distinct from both? Why does a Rite that repeatedly bangs on in high-sounding language about religious tolerance take sides in a sectarian squabble between two rival groups of Yahveh-worshippers? How can someone who has even read Herodotus and the books of Kings and Chronicles claim in all seriousness that from the construction of Solomon's Temple to the Persian conquest of Egypt there was a general state of peace in the ancient Near East? Why did I stay up all night working on this stuff?
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