In celebration of my novel The Unicorn, The Mystery being featured on Sapphic Book Bingo, I’m posting this excerpt from the book. The book was inspired by “The Unicorn Tapestries” currently housed at The Cloisters division of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in Manhattan. A unicorn from the Middle Ages is speaking and has come across two lesbian nuns who also live in The Cloisters.
Chapter Thirty
I was captured because I was entranced by a patch of English daisies. The petals were tinged with pink and there was a yellow center. There was a patch of the flowers near the place in the abbey where the silent women lived.
I was just about to approach the path, when I heard voices.
“Oh, look — a patch of Mary flowers,” said a woman.
“Shhhh. We’re not allowed to speak,” said a lower female voice.
“What does it matter, the Mother Superior is not here,” said the first woman.
I quickly hid behind a medlar bush. I suspected that these women were the ones I had left behind a short while ago. They must have finished their loving and were wandering around like me, looking at flowers.
“But we have been gone so long, that she might come looking for us and hear us,” replied the one with the lower voice.
“Maybe, the Mother Superior will think that she is delusional and hearing voices. Maybe she will think that she hears the voice of God and that She is female…” The woman with the higher voice paused. “Maybe I shouldn’t say that to you. Surely you think me blasphemous.”
She was met by silence. Finally, the woman with the lower voice spoke:
“Actually, I think you may be on to something. Maybe God is a woman. How are we to know?”
Now, it was the other woman’s turn to be silent.
Then she spoke:
“Yes, you are right, my beloved. How are we to know? Certainly, the church fathers would cover it up if God was a woman. I bet the Mother Superior would cover it up too. If she had the time, I bet she’d wander the abbey too because it is so beautiful and when she found the Mary flower, she would pick its petals slowly, saying ‘He loves me, He loves me not.’ Or maybe she’d be saying, ‘She loves me, She loves me not.’” Then the woman with the higher voice had been speaking. She broke into a titter.
The other one giggled so gruffly that she sounded like she was giggling reluctantly. Then she said, “I never got that impression from her. She’s probably so miserable that she never has any kind of attraction. Seriously, though, we should go back before someone comes looking for us.”
“Ok,” said the first one. “I’ll follow you but then wait a while after I enter the convent. We don’t want anyone to think we’ve been together.”
I waited a long time behind the medlar bush. Then when the coast was clear, I retraced my steps to the English daisy, lowered my head and inhaled the spicy sweet fragrance of the succulent flower. I discovered that there was a trail of English daisies. Intoxicated by the vapors, I followed the flowers.
When a friend gave me a book called Unikorn with the image of a white puffy cloud unicorn on the cover, I read it immediately.
Unikorn, published in 2021 by Scout Comics and Entertainment Inc., created and written by Don Handfield and Joshua Malkin is a graphic novel written for young adults.
As such, it is definitely not in a genre that I usually read. But I kept reading and was pulled into the story. My friend, who I know through the Unitarian Universalist and vegan communities, knows that I am interested in all things unicorn.
Unicorns are magical creatures that disappear in times of strife which we are in now. It’s no surprise that unicorns are so popular because people are searching for the good. In the Middle Ages, most people routinely believed in the existence of unicorns.
In Unikorn, I was moved by a passage on the feelings of animals.
When the teenage girl narrator goes into the creature’s stall, the author writes in conversational bubbles:
“He felt your compassion.
“Animals don’t speak in words
“But understand emotion perfectly.”
When the narrator asks, “What’s that thing on his head?”
The caretaker of the farm responds:
“Just one of the many things that makes him special.”
In the end, the unicorn leads people to be more kind to each other. And when the last page was turned, the Unikorn did not disappoint. I thoroughly recommend Unikorn, published by Scout Comics and Entertainment Inc., and created and written by Don Handfield and Joshua Malkin. It is a force for good in the world.
This is Janet Mason with reviews for Book Tube.
To learn more about my latest published novel — The Unicorn, The Mystery, click here:
A young monk spirals into inner moral turmoil after he tells his superiors about the lone unicorn he saw, which launches a city-wide hunt for the magical creature in Janet Mason’s historical fantasy novel THE UNICORN, THE MYSTERY.
Janet Mason’s THE UNICORN, THE MYSTERY is a historical speculative novel of magic and morality. In a medieval setting, young monk Apolo sees a lone unicorn in a forest one day and becomes obsessed with her, believing her to be the perfect symbol of Jesus, purity, and beauty. He is overcome with innocent love for the creature, and his teacher, the abbey’s priest, worries that he is worshipping a false idol. When Apolo tells the bishop about the unicorn, hunters begin to seek out the unicorn in hope of a reward. Apolo and the unicorn navigate the few days detailed in the novel while contemplating the meaning of their existence and examining the lives of those around them. Both Apolo and the unicorn are observers. They contemplate the goings-on of their peers and their surroundings without taking much decisive action themselves. As characters and as narrators, they are sweet and likeable. Apolo strives to be a good, moral monk, but when he sees others taking an untraditional approach, he forms a new understanding of himself and the world. The unicorn’s vanity and curiosity about humans are endearing. Oddly, the unicorn can smell whether or not a girl is a virgin, a creepy ability she uses often to decide whether or not she would like to “lay her head in their lap.”
Among the people that Apolo and the unicorn observe from a distance are two nuns in love who hope to run away together, a young nun who successfully runs away with a local carpenter, and a warrior maiden who the unicorn wonders if she can trust. While it is sometimes implausible that Apolo and the unicorn could overhear these characters’ conversations without being seen, the inclusion of these individuals brings significant intrigue to the story and makes the characters think. The lesbian nuns, for instance, worry about Mother Superior discovering them, but they come to believe their love is a special, pure kind of love; the arc of their discussions over the course of the book mirrors Apolo’s inner monologue as he inquires as to whether his love for the unicorn is appropriate and worries what his superiors think of his obsession with the magical creature.
….
THE UNICORN, THE MYSTERY is a wise historical fantasy novel that will find a captive audience in those interested in sexuality, gender, and magic through a Christian lens.
~Aimee Jodoin for IndieReader
To learn more about my recently published novel — The Unicorn, The Mystery, click here:
I wanted to share some feedback that I just received on The Unicorn, The Mystery from a long-time friend and colleague:
A fun & intense read, at once earnest & ironic. Full of horny priests, pompous bishops, cavorting nuns, sexes of every kind and description & of course a unicorn who quickly gathers the reader’s sympathy and attention. So impressed by the depth & breadth of your research on the Middle Ages, where we find out people were every bit as crazy as they are now but daily life is far more perilous. What would same-sexers (Gore Vidal’s term) have had to deal with then? So you have given us a clear idea. I also admired the crisp & clear prose, and the narrative balancing act of the book’s organization.
— Jim Cory, author of (most recently) Birds & Buildings (Moonstone Press)
To learn more about my recently published novel — The Unicorn, The Mystery, click here:
This morning, I helped with a Unitarian Universalist service based on theme of “The Gospel According To Gandalf.” The service was about magic and being the hero of your own story.
The YouTube video of my talk is below. The complete text of my talk is below that. The service took place at the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration on Stenton Ave. in Philadelphia.
When I first learned that the service for today was on the Gospel According to Gandalf, I drew a blank. I have long prided myself on the fact that fantasy writing has nothing to do with me. But I remembered that I really enjoyed the talk on this topic last year. I also remembered that I identified with the character Frodo in that he was defiant and had no interest in power but is the hero of his own story.
Then I remembered that I absolutely loved the Lord of the Rings trilogy when I read it as a teen. It allowed me to enter the mystery. I loved it so much that I wrote “Everybody should read The Lord of the Rings” in large letters with a black sharpie on the white bathroom wall in a dive bar in Trenton that I hung out in when I was a teenager. My then best friend, who died young, looked at me in utter delight and exclaimed, “I knew you wrote that. I knew it!”
What can I say? It was the seventies. I was a teen and, like all my friends, then, I had a substance abuse problem. It is something that I tried to leave behind me. I wrote one novel based on this experience and closed the book. I thought I was done. But the fact is that I have had an off again, on again relationship with substances over the years. My own story of abusing substances when I was a teen – in a certain time and place – is something I felt bad about for a long time.
Of course, I regretted how this behavior may have affected others – especially my parents. But the question that I always came back to was, “Why did I do that to myself?” After many years, I concluded that I had to do something to break out of the confines of my life, and that is what I did. So, I forgave myself. After all, the past is the past.
And while I would never want to encourage anyone to use substances, my experiences weren’t all bad. There were a few moments of breaking through to something brilliant and elusive that may have laid the seeds for the talking unicorn in my head whose words I wrote down in a novel titled The Unicorn, The Mystery which will be published later this year by Adelaide Books. The novel is based on the unicorn tapestries in The Cloisters that is part of The Metropolitan Museum in Manhattan.
So, fantasy writing probably does have something to do with me – even if the talking unicorn in my head is a realist. And I may have unconsciously modeled myself on Frodo. Who knows? I do know that I have come here for a number of years – to this Unitarian Universalist church — and listened to the opening statement that included some variation of you are welcome to bring all that you are. It must have sunk in because here I am talking about something that I thought I was done with.
Interestingly, it wasn’t until last fall in the year that I turned sixty and embarked on a balanced plant-based diet for health reasons, that I experienced an absence of any craving – including alcohol and other products that contain sugar. In addition to being addictive, sugar compromises the immune system – important to know during these trying times. It wasn’t just me who found that a plant-based diet eliminated cravings. At a party, I met a young woman with blue hair who had been formerly addicted to heroin but who had since gone to a plant-based diet.
We all have a past. So, I encourage you to bring all that you are here – including histories that you may not be proud of but that we can all learn from.
Remember, you are the hero of your own story.
Namaste
To learn more about my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders (published by Adelaide Books New York/Lisbon), click here.
I received an online comment this morning that to my inquisitive mind might have well had said: why encourage people to think for themselves?
“Can we just not encourage people to read gospels written hundreds of years after Jesus’ life? They are all interpretations of him and not actually his words?” [sic]
The comment brought to mind an incident that occurred some years ago. At a meeting of the worship associates (I am one of the lay ministers at a Unitarian Universalist church) the then intern minister mentioned that the professors at the seminary she was attending “hated” Elaine Pagels (a champion of the Gnostic Gospels). Despite my Buddhist inclination not to engage with negative comments, I had a knee jerk reaction (in religious terms one might say I had an Ejaculation) and responded that the professors probably “hated” Elaine Pagels because they were jealous that she had published so many books. Another lay minister agreed with me. Even though I hadn’t meant to, I had started a religious war. Apparently, it’s easy.
The Gnostic Gospels were discovered in Nag Hammadi, Egypt in 1945. There are some conflicting theories about when they were first written but some historians say that they were written before the New Testament was written.
The Gnostic Gospels are very different from Genesis in telling the story of how the human race was created. Readers can experience the Garden of Eden from the serpent’s eyes and ears!
The Gnostic Gospels were known throughout history – particularly in the Middle Ages – but were always banned by the Church.
Those who were known followers of the Gnostic Gospels were deemed as heretics and burned. Granted, in those days you could be burned at the stake for many things. But the last time I searched Twitter for the Gnostic Gospels – people were still saying to be careful of the Gnostic Gospels – because you could still be branded as a heretic.
Given the scant evidence that Jesus actually existed, you’d think the Gnostic Gospels would be welcomed as further evidence that Jesus did exist since many of them refer to him. (There also is no evidence that Jesus wrote any of the New Testament or left any writings behind.)
The Gnostic Gospels are living documents.
I and many others have been inspired by the Gnostic Gospels.
In particular, my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders (Adelaide Books – New York; Lisbon) was influenced by the Gnostic Gospels.
Also my novel The Unicorn, The Mystery (forthcoming from Adelaide Books in 2020) was inspired by the Gnostic Gospels (in particle by Thunder Perfect Mind).
Perhaps the reason the Gnostic Gospels are scorned is in the name: Gnostic (“knowing”). Apparently, it is heretical to know your own truth.
To read more about the Gnostic Gospels, click here:
I still wonder – why would anyone want to capture me? Why didn’t they just leave me alone? Was I that important?
I have been revising my novel TheUnicorn, The Mystery — so I thought I would do this new blog post about it.
In The Unicorn, The Mystery, we meet a unicorn who tells us the story of the seven tapestries, called “The Hunt of the Unicorn” from the 1500s on display in “the unicorn room” in the Cloisters (at the westernmost tip of Manhattan), now part of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The tapestries tell the story of what is still called an “unsolved mystery.” The story is set in an abbey in France not far from the barn in the countryside where the tapestries were discovered. Pursued by a band of hunters, the unicorn is led along by observing birds (some of them chirp in a language that the unicorn understands), smelling and eating the abbey flowers and fruits (including imbibing in fermented pomegranates), pursuing chaste maidens (there is one in the tapestry) and at times speaks to other animals such as the majestic stag.
In The Unicorn, The Mystery, we also meet a young monk named Apolo who tells us his story. Once pure of heart, so much so that he saw the unicorn several times (most notably as a lad and then as a young monk), but when he comes to live in the abbey, he gets swept up in the politics going on around him. His betrayal starts when he tells the Priest he meets with regularly that he saw the unicorn. The priest scoffs and says that the unicorn is both a mythical and pagan animal. But then he suggests that if Apolo can prove the unicorn does indeed exists, that it would be worth his while. Apolo subsequently plots with the sundial wrist-band wearing Bishop who is eager to trap the unicorn to please the King. Realizing his error in betraying the unicorn, Apolo leads us through a labyrinth of the Middle Ages, including story, myth, philosophy, numerology and alchemy. Can he regain his purity and at the same time get ahead?
Three short fiction excerpts of the The Unicorn, The Mystery were shortlisted for the Adelaide Literary Award 2018 (short stories, Vol. One). To read the flip version of the 2018 anthology, click here.
I also included two excerpts of The Unicorn, The Mystery in my talks at the Unitarian Universalist Church of the Restoration in Philadelphia. You can watch the YouTube videos of these talks below, or read the text below that.
By the way. unicorns did exist according to the bestiaries passed down from ancient Greece and unicorns are mentioned by name in The Hebrew Bible. They can be seen depicted in images of collections from the Middle Ages when people commonly believed in the existence of unicorns. As my monk narrator says to a skeptical priest, also his Latin teacher, “God believed in the unicorn.”
From the talk in the first YouTube video:
For me, forgiveness is a thorny issue. I suspect I’m not alone. I may forgive – but I do it on my own terms and this means taking the time that I need to understand the deeper reasons of why I was offended by someone’s actions. So, for me, learning to be more forgiving is wrapped up with protecting myself and having good boundaries.
As a practicing Buddhist, I understand that forgiving others is a way of forgiving yourself. But as I did research on forgiveness, there were so many conflicting theories, that really the only thing that ultimately made coherent sense to me was this quote from Oscar Wilde:
“Always forgive your enemies; nothing annoys them so much.”
A few years ago, I was leafing through a slim book on Christianity and was surprised to read that forgiveness is expected in the Christian tradition. As a tenet, this one is not so bad. But it did occur to me that a reason why traditional religion has never appealed to me is that, on principal, I would never believe what someone tells me I should believe.
So when it comes to forgiveness, I process things the way that I usually do – in my writing. The novel I am currently writing The Unicorn, The Mystery, is set in the late Middle Ages and addresses some religious themes. I am going to read you a short excerpt of a monk talking with his Latin teacher, also a Priest:
“One of the things that Augustine is known for is his ‘doctrine of love.’ He wrote about forgiveness – which of course is related to love. In addition to forgiving others, it’s important to forgive ourselves. In fact, some argue that you cannot forgive another without first forgiving yourself,” said my teacher.
I smiled and nodded. This all made sense. No words were necessary from me.
“He also was the first to write about loving your neighbor as yourself. In saying this, he infers that it is first necessary to love yourself. When you truly love yourself, then you can love your neighbor and you can love God unconditionally,” he stated.
The Priest was silent – and so was I for a moment.
My curiosity got the best of me and I asked, “What if you are ashamed of yourself – how can you find it in your heart to forgive yourself? And if you can’t, how can you ever love your neighbor and how can you love God?”
The Priest looked at me oddly.
“That’s a good question,” he replied finally. “I do not know the answer. Perhaps I am not the best person to talk about love. I take the Christian writings seriously. I try to follow them. I follow my heart and each time it is a disaster. I love teaching and I love my students. But each term, things go too far, and I have my heart broken again,” he cried.
I looked at him with sadness. He had his reasons for hating himself. Perhaps that’s why he was snippy at times. How could he forgive himself, when the church told him he should be ashamed of himself?
This time I cleared my throat. I looked at him with tears in my eyes, and said, “Father – it is true that you know how to love and it is true that you are worthy of love – from others, from God. I came to your office that night after vespers a few months ago. I saw you bent over the desk with Gregory – I saw the love that surrounded you.”
The Priest looked at me as if he had seen a ghost.
I attended the Episcopal Church until I was about five — when my mother became a card-carrying atheist. It’s a long story. I remember reciting the Lord’s Prayer. When I think about forgiveness, I think about the lines:
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive them that trespass against us;
As I did my research, I was fascinated to learn that in the “Book of Matthew,” chapter 6, of the New Testament, the line after the Lord’s Prayer says:
“For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.”
Of course, in my Unitarian Universalist interpretation, God the Father could be the Universe, the Great Spirit, or the Mother/ Father God or God the Father. It depends on what day it is.
If I’ve offended anyone, please forgive me.
From the talk in the second YouTube video:
There are many types of love. I explore the many types of love in the novel that I just completed The Unicorn, The Mystery which I am going to read from briefly:
“The point I was going to make is that romantic love is far from the most important type of love,” said the Priest with his usual authority. “Christians believe that pure love—the kind of love that is selfless and creates goodness—is the way that God loves us. This is why the saying, ‘love you neighbor’ is so important. There are numerous references to this in the Bible. But the most important is from the Gospel According to Mark in which he says ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than this.
“This kind of love is called ‘agape,’” continued the priest. “Agape is the highest form of pure, selfless love. It is the kind of love that God has for us—and the kind of love that we strive to have for our fellow man.”
“I recognize the word,” I replied. “It’s Ancient Greek, from the time of Homer.”
The Priest narrowed his eyes.
Of course, many of the great poets have been inspired by romantic love, especially the Greeks. But some may argue–and I do–that love (regardless of the kind of love) is the inspiration for all poetry.
One of the poets from antiquity who greatly inspired me was Sappho, who lived around 600 B.C.E. Of course, she lived before labels but many of Sappho’s love poems were written to women. And she was technically a Lesbian since she lived on the Isle of Lesbos, now called Lesvos. Most of what is left from Sappho is in fragments. One of the complete poems that survived is her “Hymn to Aphrodite” which I’ll read now:
On your dazzling throne. Aphrodite, Sly eternal daughter of Zeus, I beg you: do not crush me With grief
But come to me now – as once You heard my far cry, and yielded, slipping from your father’s house
to yoke the birds to your gold chariot, and came. Handsome sparrows brought you swiftly to the dark earth,
their wings whipping the middle sky Happy, with deathless lips, you smiled: “What is wrong, Sappho, why have You called me?
What does your mad heart desire? Whom shall I make love you, Who is turning her back on you?
Let her run away, soon she’ll chase you; Refuse your gifts, soon she’ll give them. She will love you, though unwillingly.”
Then come to me now and free me From fearful agony. Labor for my mad heart, and be my ally.
Almost twenty years ago, when I took a pilgrimage to Greece, including a stay in Sappho’s birthplace of Skala Eressos, a beach town on the Isle of Lesvos, I wrote the following response to Sappho’s hymn to the goddess of love. The title is “Sapphics for Aphrodite” —
Aphrodite, in your blazing chariot, I do not ask to be loved by anyone against her will, to be fled from or to be pursued.
I do not ask for anything that will sever my breath with anguish; I do not wish to destroy or to be destroyed. I do not wish for
anything other than for the stars to blaze in my pulse until breaking, shattered, and incandescent, I am consumed: the moon’s rays intent upon me.
Aphrodite this is all I ask of you, you who hold the Fates in my hands, and you, of the golden winged chariot, in whose temple I burn.
The Priest in my novel has a point. Romantic love can have its limitations. But love is love – regardless of what it is called. And love can lead to goodness.
Namaste
From the talk in the third YouTube video:
This morning, I took part in a Unitarian Universalist summer service. In my talk, I reflected on The Egyptian Cat Goddess the Goddess Bastet (a part of my novel The Unicorn, The Mystery) and on the spiritual practice of gardening.
In the summer, I garden. This is a common hobby for many, especially writers. It teaches patience, attention, and relentless hope. Not everything that we plant comes back – especially after a long icy winter. Not every seed sprouts and not every sprout makes it. In this way it makes me focus on the positive – on what does come back and on what does sprout.
Being a Unitarian Universalist gives me a spiritual context in which to think about gardening. Many of our flowers attract bees – such as bee balm, lavender and the butterfly bush. And bees, of course, are good for the planet.
Every now and then, a plant from my writing appears in my garden – seemingly out of nowhere but probably from a seed dropped by a bird. Last year it was a tall flowering weed known as a “sow’s ear” which was also in the manuscript I just finished writing, titled The Unicorn, The Mystery which is set in the 1500s in France. I was amazed, of course, at the sow’s ear in my backyard.
Recently, I planted catnip. Cats love our backyard and often we see one sleeping there – most often in the shade of the young hazel nut tree that my partner’s sister sent us. Inside, my office looks out to the backyard where the garden is. Our old cat Felix has taken to sleeping on the inside back windowsill – no doubt protecting his territory.
I have long been fascinated by the Egyptian Cat Goddess Bastet. In my novel, The Unicorn, The Mystery, my monk character (who in many ways is a Unitarian Universalist at heart) prays to the Goddess Bastet.
I stepped slowly and softly as if the soles of my feet had ears. I took another step. A branch snapped under my foot. I winced. That would never do. If my beloved unicorn heard that she would assume there was a human nearby – big enough to snap a branch under foot – and hide. It seemed like I would never find her. I decided to pray. But I had prayed to the One God before and it hadn’t worked. Who would I pray to? Who would help me?
Immediately, the Goddess Bastet leapt to mind. Bastet was an Egyptian Goddess who was half woman and half cat. I knew about her because when I was a boy, my mother would tell me the stories that her father had told her. He had loved Greek mythology and found out that the Goddess Artemis, the goddess of the hunt, was related to the earlier Goddess Bastet from Egypt who came from the even earlier fierce lioness Goddess Bast, the warrior goddess of the sun.
The followers of Bastet ruled ancient Egypt for a time in the land where cats were sacred. I remember that my mother’s emerald green eyes gleamed as if she were a cat herself when she told me about the Goddess Bastet who kept away disease and was the protector of pregnant women. The stories she told me about the fierce, soft, cat Goddess Bastet were so vivid that she made me want a cat for my very own pet.
My mother cautioned me, however, not to mention cats to anyone but her. People with cats were looked on with suspicion, she warned me. For some reason cats were looked down on by the Church as wily creatures associated with Satan. Again, my mother told me that it was very important never to anger the Church.
Surely, the Goddess Bastet would help me find my beloved unicorn. She of all the gods and goddesses would understand why I had to find my beloved unicorn to save her.
I closed my eyes tightly until I saw a slim woman, standing tall. She had very good posture, with the head of a cat. I knew it was Goddess Bastet, just as my mother had described her.
And so, the Goddess Bastet and other worlds – real, imagined and both – is something for me to mull over as I tend the soil and do the spiritual work of gardening.
Namaste
To learn more about my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders (published by Adelaide Books New York/Lisbon), click here.
I still wonder — why would anyone want to capture me? Why didn’t they just leave me alone. Was I that important?
Three short fiction excerpts of my novel The Unicorn, The Mystery were shortlisted for the Adelaide Literary Award 2018 (short stories, Vol. One). To read the flip version of the 2018 anthology, click here.
The Adelaide Anthology is also available for purchase as a print copy. To learn more about the print copies of the Adelaide Literary Awards, click here.
You also can view excerpts of me reading from The Unicorn, The Mystery on short YouTube videos by clicking here
To learn more about my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders (published by Adelaide Books New York/Lisbon), click here.
The Gnostic Gospels were known throughout history – particularly in the Middle Ages – but were always banned by the Church.
One of the poets from antiquity who greatly inspired me was Sappho, who lived around 600 B.C.E. Of course, she lived before labels but many of Sappho’s love poems were written to women. And she was technically a Lesbian since she lived on the Isle of Lesbos, now called Lesvos. Most of what is left from Sappho is in fragments. One of the complete poems that survived is her “Hymn to Aphrodite” which I’ll read now: 
Janet Mason, author 