Thursday, September 26, 2024

Today's Learnings

It was a busy and productive day. Lots of work got done, even with a trip back to the apartment to cook myself an omelette for lunch (and do some packing before tonight's flight.)

And lots of work got done. 

But there were also the rabbit holes which we dear neurodiverse peoples find ourselves falling down at regular intervals. 

Today's little learning was the definition of cephalophore. 

Cephalore? 

Yes, it is the term for the Catholic Saints that are promoted to the public carrying their own heads. Most of them have been decapitated causing them to my martyrs, which is why they became saints when it all comes down it. 

Some of the more famous cephalophores are St Alban, who not only has a suburb named after him in Melbourne and Sydney but has a large and gorgeous cathedral named after him just out of London. I was there last year about this time. It's amazing. 


Which lead me to ponding why the Catholics liked to display their saints with their heads chopped off. 

I then remembered a book I read a few years ago called Damascus by Christos Tsiolkas, which was a hard and horrid book to read in many ways, and this book, set in the time just after Christ, they were forever referring to Christianity as a death cult - which when you think about it, it is - I mean, you're venerating some bloke (who albeit had some good things to say) who ended up on a cross. 

The other ironic cephalophore is Saint Denis, who has a big church in Paris named after him. Ironically, St Denis is one of the patron saints of Paris - and of headaches. Louis XV and Marie Antoinette, two other decapitated people of note, are buried in his big basilica in the North of Paris. 


St Denis

Who knew?

There's also St Winifred, who has this amazing looking church in North Wales that I'd love to visit. Centred in the town of Holywell, there are these sacred springs, which look amazing. It's called the Lourdes of Britain. 

And this is five minutes of procrastination time in the brain of somebody who's just a little neurodiverse, wandering down the rabbit holes that the internet provides between bigger tasks while David Bowie croons along in my head. 

Today's song: 

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