TimT wrote:
No, the author of "Lord of the Dance" had been fascinated by Natarajah at one time and deliberately translated the idea over to Christianity. Harmless. I read about that in a magazine about ten years ago.
There's a lot of music that has been brought over by converts. I recall whistling an old hymn in my car when a witch who was commuting with me broke into song in Gaelic. It had originally been a witch hymn! I countered that it had been brought over by a Christian convert from witchcraft.
Or the Wiccans may have borrowed it from the Celts; neopaganism has a particular interest in the Celts. It could have been the tune to a Gaelic rendering of a psalm, given fresh words by a different Christian. Or it could have been sung since Druidic times for all I know. Interesting though. I suppose a good tune is not disdained on sectarian grounds, thank goodness.
Has anyone heard about the Cele De or Culdees, Celtic Christian monks in Ireland and Scotland? Both the Christian author of historical/fantasy novels, Stephen Lawhead, and the nonChristian and quite possibly neopagan, (but sympathetic to "heretical" Christians) author of the same genre Caiseal Mór seem fond of them. One reference book considered them lax; another noted their spirituality. Once when I looked them up on the internet, the first three entries were by an evangelical Protestant (Church history in the light of the book of Revelation, mmm, delicious) a Catholic (a revived Culdee movement also known as the Order of the Celtic Cross) and a Wiccan (I did not get around to reading this last). Sorry for going off on a tangent. I hope someone found that interesting. Sometimes the diversion is half the journey. I wish you all well, and apologise to Corvus for anything that may have offended.
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You are like children playing in the market-place saying, "We piped for you and you would not dance, we wailed a dirge for you and you would not weep."