The Twilight Saga and the Benandanti: Part 4

To tie up a few loose ends here. It's interesting that the Twilight Saga takes place in the state of Washinton, as that state resembles the natural landscape of Germany and the countries to it's east like Rumania, and the greater Alpine region. This is interesting because that is largely where this folklore has it's origins. I wonder of that was intended?

Someone who I know to be very wise, told me one time that if someone with ancestral origins in a particular type of environment feels nothing when they find themselves in a similar natural environment (ex. Alpine region and the Pacific Northwest)... I forget his exact words but the gist of it was that he would be baffled by that, and I agree. This would apply to any individual.

'Waking the Moon' (from Wikipedia)

Waking The Moon is a 1994 novel by Elizabeth Hand. It was the winner of the James Tiptree, Jr. Award and The 1996 Mythopoeic Award for Adult Literature. It is set mainly in The University of Archangel and St. John The Divine, a fictional University inspired by The Catholic University of America, mentioned in a few of Hand's novels. About 100 pages were cut from the US edition.

Plot summary

Sweeney Cassidy starts out as a freshman at University, where she meets the mysterious Angelica and falls in love with the strange and beautiful Oliver. She gets tangled up in sinister, supernatural events involving the awakening of an ancient, malevolent goddess. According to the afterword for the short story The Bacchae, found in the collection Last Summer At Mars Hill, it is another trope on ancient Greek myth that prefigures Waking the Moon. They both involve murderous cults of women. Elizabeth Hand has said that she wanted to show that ancient goddess cultures were not all as peaceful and idyllic as we tend to think.

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This subject ties into what I would call the final period, the Middle Ages, of the stamping out of the pagan traditions of Europe through the various "witch hunts." A lot of people don't tie in the words "infidel" with "heathen," which are one and the same. Even today, every person fits that description in someone's eyes, whether they like it or not.

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