Happy Happy Happy!!

Well I sat down to write today, encouraged by the feedback I had gotten from a recent post I'd left at the Aeclectic Tarot Forum (if you'd like to participate over there it's in the Tarot Deck Creation board, although, granted, my deck isn't a Tarot one but an Oracle, as they call them), and having gotten overwhelmed by just how much information there is out there on Diana (and me without a copy of Roman Religion and the Cult of Diana at Aricia--can you tell I am lusting, lusting, after this book?), so much information, actually, as to be almost useless (kinda like trying to define just what Isis is the 'Goddess of' in a single sentence) I instead decided that maybe I'd be best off getting back into the groove of things by starting a little smaller. So I chose Laverna, the Goddess of Thieves, as a good place to start.

And so I went through the books I've got on Roman religion (most of which just say She had an altar in Rome by the gate named after Her the porta Lavernalis, and a grove somewhere near by); and after going through those I turned to the internet.

Where I found that someone had lifted, word for word and including my titles and picture, and not of course crediting me, my entry for Laverna on a random forum. I couldn't decide at first if it was simply Divine irony (being that She is Goddess of thieves) or if it was in fact worth getting my panties in a bunch about; in the end I concluded, that, since I'd have to sign up to the damned place to comment that it wasn't worth my time.

And so I went through my usual routine of research for the Roman Goddesses, looking up the Latin, &c. When I came to an old bookmark, an old sad bookmark.

It was for the Ancient Library site, one that used to have the entirety of William Smith's 3700-page Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, which, though written in 1867, is still an indispensable resource, and surprisingly less outdated than you'd think. After all, in the 19th century they had pretty much all the texts we have now; and though some of the interpretations may have changed, the basic references are the same.

But Ancient Library had disappeared a while back, I don't know why (funding, maybe?) and that had made me very, very, sad. Now, Smith's stuff has also been entered into Perseus over at Tufts, but I've never been able to get that site to work in anything approaching a timely fashion, and, so, well, rather than tear my hair out I just kind of gave up on the damned thing.

But lo and behold today when I nostalgically clicked on the Ancient Library link there it was, back to its former glory! I suppose only a Goddess-geek like me finds this that wonderful, but let me tell you it has made my day.

Because it will make writing the Goddess Oracle Deck book a Hel of a lot easier. I'm taking it as a sign.