Sunday, April 22, 2007


Which God/ Goddess/ Mythic Character Are You?

Last February 26, I took at okcupid.com the Mythological God Test and then the Mythological Profile one. Here from ComeBackHorslips Guestbook are my posts to the CBHers about my results. Many of us took this and shared our results with the class.
God: http://www.okcupid.com/tests/take?testid=8519992224112523293

Goddess: http://www.okcupid.com/tests/describescore?testid=3992216679008205011

Mythological Profile (i.e., character): http://www.okcupid.com/tests/take?testid=2433319677885706722

Profile: Literally, or literarily, I am yclept Ormus Cama, pretty dismal. But I do "have a musical talent to die for." When do I get torn apart by Harpies on a Syrian river and dismembered? Orphic derivations admittedly suit me here on CBH.

What's with these testing cohorts? I scored higher for OC than 99% of "other people my age and gender" in all 4 categories: tragedy, brilliance, soul, and, dumbfoundedly, eroticism. Contrast that to my numbers mere moments before: 4% cohort for sensuality as Odin and my 54% score as the werewolf, apparently for us a popular Horslips-related category. Lee and KK, I wish I was hooked up with Maeve [note: image on blog is J. Leyendecker's 1916 romantic icon] too, but I would want to be first in line and not, say, number sixteen not to mention thirty-two! (There was a gangbang option for response on that Literary Character test that I did not pick; I did not understand that choice in its context, I recall. Back to pillow talk by myself in the chilly dun in my non-ancestral West, ochone.)

Call me Mythological God Odin...eagerly erudite (79%, which is a relief vs. 39% cohort, many of whom are lying). 54% somewhat sensual. (Higher granted my honestly provided "sexual experience" on the initial questionnaire than I'd've ever imagined, thus that anemic 4% cohort. Blame it on Irish Catholicism when that term guaranteed sexual repression at my Jesuit college days long after Vatican II.) 66% majorly martial (if only in my vengeance-soaked meditations, apparently more than 80% of my cohort), and 45% sulking saturnine, where I should've batted 1000% (and again befuddled at the 31% cohort-- and I thought only I needed anti-depressants.... )

I too am a profiled werewolf. 80% Esoteric, but all CBHers would fit here. (83% cohort-- is this good or bad?) 34% Power, (31 % cohort as we "mature"?) as I tend to skulk and observe on the fringe of the hubbub. 54% Malevolence, given my gallows humor and misanthropy rather limp. Still, I'm sweeter than my average middle-aged cohort, plotting craftily at 79%!

On my God List, some Celtic matchups: Cernunnos, Lug, Dagda.

My son asked me two days ago in fact if there was an Irish word for zombie or werewolf. All I could say is there's no Z in Irish; I'd look up lyncanthropicii Celticae. He definitely inherited my interest in the darker side. So many girls and guys at his school into punk-goth couture that it's standard issue for teens today. Hot Topic: at your local mall. Emily's Strange lunchbox-purse and Misfits t-shirts on sale. Wish there were that many goth babes in my college days; back then truly all but an invisible cultish subbaculture-- albeit in sunny Los Angeles.

Well, thanks for the tips to test. Maybe we CBHers should all form a coven at the cupid site and flirt. Redundant, perhaps. Occam's razor (the questions did include philosophy, ok?) proven. What an embarassingly fun site to rise up on screen when I am supposed to be working. Felt like I was 12. I fled to an anonymous public computer once I figured out it was a dating site, as I skulk, rapparee- like, from administrative retribution &/ legal surveillance! It'd be fun to hang out at cupid.com if I was single. Or, would that mean me and my avatar would be all the lonelier? Sigh.

P.S. Lee responds to my reaction to all the self-aggrandizing mythologizing by me and CBHers:

And Fionnchu! This is all YOUR fault. You were the one who brought the okcupid.com link into the four-directioned circle. If it makes you feel better, Wikipedia tells us that, in addition to the usual booty-call activities, the singles site "also offers social networking features including user-generated content. OkCupid has spawned numerous relationships, marriages, and children."

This makes it a venerable cousin of the Web 2.0 phenom. Or go for the Lisdoonvarna matchmaker vibe if you need to.

And I cannot let your son feel that there are no indigenous Goth roots for him to tap into. While werewolves seem French to me and Zombies are somewhat New World, the Isle of Saints and Scholars is also the unquestionable home of that most Goth creature of all. As I explored some time ago in an essay entitled Lesbian Vampires in 19th Century Literature.

And, thanks to Charles O'Connor, there's even a Horslips connection!

Back to me. KK from CBH was looking for a "weekly" Celtic Tree calendar. I did research but none seems to have existed. She shared with us another site: For your Celtic sign and profile, go to http://www.novareinna.com/constellation/celtic.html

My CBH reply 2/27:

It's me, Oak. Like any fortune-teller, throw enough general genialities at the innocent quester and he'll take the bait. Astrology's always frightened me a bit. That site's full of portent. Half of what Oak represents is utterly incompatible with me; but I do like this blurb: Amergin Verse: "I am a God who sets the Head afire with Smoke"-- shades of Celtic Cheech & Coyote Trickster Chong.

KK on 2/28 (February's almost over), posted in reply to my calendrical quest:
Thanks for trying, Fionnchu, but the weekly tree calendar is the same kind of thing as the monthly tree calendar. Donnacha has the right of it when he refers to all this stuff as faux Celtic shite. It’s more New Age than old, and being an old hippie/history major myself it used to get on my last possible nerve when people started spouting this crap to me. Then I figured out if I removed the beam from mine eye and the cob from mine arse, there was some fun to be had with it, and have tried to keep that perspective ever since. In that spirit I passed it on to you all, as you were having such a ball with the personality quizzes.

Sadly our knowledge of real Druidic culture will always be somewhat limited, since theirs was a mostly oral tradition and their story was written by hostiles: the Roman military conquerors and priests of the new religion, Christianity. Now scholars try to reconstruct their world with minimal clues. Newgrange seems to offer proof that they made use of astronomy and possibly its parent pseudo science astrology, and I spotted an intriguing looking book on this subject at Lee’s Kenny’s Irish Bookstore link. The only thing I put up yesterday that’s even remotely relevant to ancient Irish culture is the 13 moons thing, as most ancient societies, including American Indians, used that system to mark a year rather than the artificial 12-month calendar we use today.

The astrology site is also sound, and rather different from the pop astrology most people encounter. I have textbooks by both Robert Hand and Liz Greene, who designed the personality and relationship analyses on offer there. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to study astrology and Tarot with two other professionals, Robert and Emma Belle Donath, in Yellow Springs, Ohio, during the late 1970’s and early 80’s. Yellow Springs is home to that hotbed of 60’s radicalism and rebellion, Antioch University, and a strong and vital occult community dating back to the days of the Golden Dawn. I’m sure you all know many of the Irish writers, particularly William Butler Yeats, were up to their eyeballs in that movement. I got interested in it when I found out they were. Alas the Donaths were never able to turn me into a competent professional reader, and I couldn’t make myself like the idea of charging people who come to me for help. But for their first step into the world of real astrology, I send them to this site to do the personality profile. If they’re having relationship troubles, and they are about 90% of the time, I have them do the compatibility profile as well. It strips away all the ‘I want, I love, I need’ and general subjectivity, and so provides an objective look at emotional issues. Very useful, it is…

[P.S from your host on this blog: my image of Maeve is from one J.Leyendecker, 1916. From a fine mythological reference site via http://www.timelessmyths.com/celtic]

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