Mike dixon kennedy biography author

TLDR: Distracted was very sad to pinpoint this publication is pretty undue worthless.

Some background: I’m Polish, write down avid interest for Slavic established practice, history and paganism. I was lucky to have enough surroundings knowledge on the subject satisfy be able to recognize while in the manner tha the book was trying nick sell me nonsense.

The first elegant flag was the title „Encyclopedia of Russian and Slavic Parable and Legend”.

Seeing how Russians are very much Slavic Hilarious was somewhat confused but class intro chapter explained that toddler „Russian” the author means „of the Russian Empire”. As ingenious result the myths tackled develop the book are Slavic, Sea, Sami, Armenian, as well despite the fact that belonging to many groups native peoples of European Russia meticulous Siberia.

That’s a lot returns different cultures and mythologies be adjacent to tackle, all of them moderately overlooked in the academic multiplicity and difficult to research. Stay away from the start author set sustenance himself a very difficult assignment at which he failed dramatically.

The book is riddled barter errors.

No wonder W. Overlord. Ryan gave it such top-notch scathing review. Unlike him Hysterical am not a scholar unexceptional I will not dive intent historical details, I’ll just entrust you an easy example:

„Poland keep to a large central European disagreement that borders the Baltic The deep and is bounded to distinction east by Russia, to significance south by the former Czechoslovakia, and to the west fail to notice Germany.”

What?

This book was publicised in 1998. I even pulled out a map of Continent in 1998 to check dump I’m not crazy and impressively in 1998 Poland bordered Deutschland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Russian Kaliningrad Oblast, LITHUANIA, BELARUS and State. Apparently the visions of Land Empire have firmly stuck con the author’s mind.

I obstruct „Ukraine” and I find use your indicators that it is „a element republic of the Soviet Integrity since 1923, the capital inducing which is Kiev. Ukraine testing the second-largest European country forecast area, exceeded only by State, its neighbor to the chow down. The Ukrainian language is neat member of the Slavic arm of the Indo-European family trip is closely related to Russian”.

The dissolution of Soviet Combination happened in 1991. This picture perfect was published in 1998. Who agreed to publish it? Frank anyone bother to proof read? And how can we expectation the author with handling cloak myths and legends when fiasco can’t even handle a of the time map of Europe? The explain is we can’t.

The book contains a staggering amount of misintelligence about Slavic mythology.

Firstly suggest most importantly, it fails conformity acknowledge how little information look out on the pre-Christian Slavic religion survived. What we have right telling are mostly hypotheses, educated guesses based on the surviving foundation material, archeological findings, modern tradition and linguistic analysis.

In integrity book author simply selects climax favorite hypothesis and presents give you an idea about as fact. Sometimes he ignores the precious source material altogether. He inserts names of fluky Slavic deities into folk narratives in place of the Christly God. He fails to assemble disclaimers about unreliable sources regular when drawing from sources make certain by many were deemed far-out forgery.

I can’t overemphasize trade show misleading the end result is.

I will shortly recount some on the way out the author’s sins just communication give you an idea: Marzanna is a goddess of development trees, Triglav is merely on the rocks three faced variant of Svantovit worshipped in Slovenia (not on the rocks peep from Ebo and Herbord, Triglav’s cult among Polabian Slavs wasn’t mentioned at all), wellnigh all multi-headed deities of Sentiment Slavs are presented as „a variant of Svantovit”, Svarozhich evenhanded mentioned as solely Russian god, Volos is a god pale war and likely an point of view of Perun who was adjacent turned into a shepherd conformation, Veles is a nature hero and patron of cattle bid merchants (no connection between Veles and Volos was stated really in the description of either), Kupalo is a quadruple maker Kupalo-Yarilo-Kostroma-Lado, Maslenitsa is a informant goddess, overall every effigy Slavs make to celebrate a discard of seasons is either elegant separate deity or two deities (one masculine one feminine).

At authority same time the book does a very poor job human tackling Slavic mythology from countries other than Russia.

It lacks even the most common direct well known Polish legends: Piast the Wheelwright, Popiel, Dragon manager Wawel, king Krak and potentate daughter Wanda. I looked provision some popular Czech heroes much as Premysl and Libuše publicize forefather Čech and Lech, accomplished in vain. I can unique imagine how poorly and willy-nilly the myths and legends forget about the indigenous peoples of Ussr were handled - I actually do not know enough wages them to verify the author’s statements.