Hi Bryan, Yeah, very true. There is a lot of history, mith, and legend packed into the Harry Potter series that most people frankly are holy unaware of.
For instance, let's take Serious Black. There is some very special history linked to this name. The name Serious is the name of a star commonly known to the ancients as the Dog Star or Death Star. Not surprisingly therefore Serious can turn into a black dog which has an interesting legend in and of itself. According to British mith and legend a black dog, called a Grim, symbolizes death much in the same way some people think of black cats today. So I personally find it interesting that Serious Black's name and dog form is tied to death legends, but if you try and discuss this with your average Harry Potter fan they won't know anything about it. Most of them probably can't even tell you that Serious is a star let alone all the mith and legend attached to it in ancient times. This kind of ignorance of history is what really gets me upset at our school system etc. I think the reason why so many people say history is dull, boring, uninteresting, etc is simply the way it is taught or presented to students. History teachers seem to focus on dry facts, names, dates, etc rather than letting the stories tell themselves. With the total anti-religion movement in our schools today they don't even want to get into mith and ancient religions as that involves religious debates and discussions. So they stick to dry, boring, and largely uninteresting facts instead of all the cool stuff history has to offer. For example, I myself am a big fan of Egyptology. Have studied it in depth since I was a kid. However, memorizing what Pharoe ruled when and what wars he faught in is only the plane ordinary part of the history. To really understand them as a people you have to study their myths, their legends, their religion and you will begin to see them as who they really were and things will get a lot more interesting. Also there are plenty of interesting things left open to debate like was Tutankhamun murdered? There are many people who believe this because of a letter Queen Ankhesenamen wrote to the Hitite king stating that she feared for her life, and she believed Ay had ordered Tutankhamun's murder. What we do know for a fact is Ay had forced Queen Ankhesenamen into marrying him so he could assume the thrown, and then she vanishes from history and her body has never been found. What we have there is a 3,500 year old murder mystery/conspiracy. So there are plenty of interesting things to study in history if people get passed the dry boring stuff taught in public schools. Cheers! On 5/8/11, Bryan Peterson <bpeterson2...@cableone.net> wrote: > That's kind of like what you were talking about when you were saying how > people associated three-headed dogs and other monsters with Harry Potter > alone yet don't realize that they've appeared in legends from all over the > world. Obviously Fluffy was based on Cerberus or Kerberos depending on your > translation. I'm not sure what the real Boggart is (although I'm pretty sure > it doesn't assume the form of a person's greatest fear), but I do seem to > recall it being a real creature of folklore. Kapas are from Japanese legend > I believe. THe point is they get fixated on one idea and forget or don't > hear everything else. > We are the Knights who saaaaay...Ni! --- Gamers mailing list __ Gamers@audyssey.org If you want to leave the list, send E-mail to gamers-unsubscr...@audyssey.org. You can make changes or update your subscription via the web, at http://audyssey.org/mailman/listinfo/gamers_audyssey.org. All messages are archived and can be searched and read at http://www.mail-archive.com/gamers@audyssey.org. If you have any questions or concerns regarding the management of the list, please send E-mail to gamers-ow...@audyssey.org.
