Notes from the Black Diary: The Noyade
I recently underwent a pilgrimage to sacrifice at the lonely shrine to Minerva overlooking the old Roman crossing of the Dee1; and there I found myself shaking, and on my knees once more, as I thought on just how many of us, good friends and colleagues, good people – the best of people – were destroyed by academia.
How many were lost to madness, plagiarism, false witness, and crimes, horrible crimes, that, only on the insistence of the victims, I do not lay bare; how many were cast unsupported to the flames by universities with no sense of decency or sense of obligation to those they already owed so much; the coverups beyond shame; the lying self-preservation; the care for nothing but the psychopaths and sociopaths who kept them "world leading" simply by offloading work and telling anyone who had any control that world leading was what they were. Ninety percent of academics and administrators are lovely, but, sweet goddess, the other ten percent are terrible terrible people, and those are they with current sway.
And so I say, O, my goddess of light and truth and justice and battle, hear me now; hear me now and rain down on their heads knowledge, not of the world, but of how they are in the world; rain it down and rain it down like blood.
I left what I had not already left, and could ill afford.
25 Oct 2024
Notes:
1 They say this is the last remaining outdoor shrine to a Roman deity in Western Europe. Presumably it received offerings for protection before crossing the river, prior to the Roman bridge, and/or through Roman syncretism with a local river goddess; we know from Bath that Minerva had an aquatic aspect in syncretism within Britain. In truth, I find myself, in the words of the song, with "Many rivers to cross // But I can't seem to find my way over. // Wandering, I am lost". My goddess, your compassion and guidance I need now, more than ever...
2 I have always felt that there is no finer example of a edict that might turn blessing or curse depending on how one's personality wrenched it, than that on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi: "Know thyself". In addition, as curses go, it leaves one as morally clean as one can be issuing a curse.