Curious construction, fantasy

[fearn]

It does get hard to distinguish between role-playing and serious religion, to outsiders on any religion. We could probably get this thread locked down quickly by arguing about who is a real representative of a religion vs. who is play-acting (for political purposes, say...)--and I have NO desire to go there.

Nonetheless, there are serious western religions and fraternal groups that use ritual bladed implements, and there are people who collect such "weapons." As such, they are as legitimate a part of this forum as any other "weapon" whose primary use is not cutting people or things. It's easy enough for people who don't want to talk about them to avoid such threads.

Getting back to the druid's sickle/falx... I agree that the druids may well have used a gold-plated bronze sickle to cut the mistletoe on the summer solstice. It's all a symbolism thing: the sickle crescent is a moon symbol, the gold is a sun symbol, the mistletoe is an "unearthly" plant (that rarely grows on European oaks, BTW), and mistletoe has some fairly explicit sexual symbolism, which is why people kiss under it at Christmas... You get the idea. However, a couple of years ago, I read about a guy who got curious, made two sickles out of nine carat gold, and found out that you can, in fact, harvest mistletoe with such an implement, although the golden sickle is destroyed in the process. Mistletoe wood is pretty brittle. So the legend is plausible, but whether the druids actually did things that way is questionable. It's a great story, though.

F