(1) The symbolism survives to this very day : I am sure that when the reader is told by his mentor "I will be on you like a hawk", he knows exactly what is meant. This is a serious matter being spoken of, so nothing less than one's very best performance will be acceptable.

One might say that the careless student is likened to the careless prey, whose lack of caution leaves him in the claws of the hawk, which represents the critical judgement of the mentor. Click here to return to the main body of the review.

(2) No, that wouldn't be Rhadamanthys, for Hellenes, despite what you may have heard to the contrary over at Yahoogroups. He isn't the son of Hades, either. (He's a son of Zeus and Europa, as is the mythical figure of Minos, not to be mistaken with the pre-Hellenic Cretan monarch). Hades, as the being to whom defixones (engraved lead strips, intended to bind the unjust) are addressed, is the deity to whom justice is entrusted, in this life. Minos, Rhadamanthys and Aecus serve Hades on the tribunal which judges the dead.

The error, here, lies in confusing "judgment" with "justice". The former is a last ditch effort to provide some semblance of the latter, when deterrence has failed. Hades, in Hellenic belief, becomes a truer god of justice, because rather than providing for the desire for retribution, he acts to prevent an outrage from occuring in the first place. Justice delayed (as, until death) is justice denied.

A simple enough matter to understand, but the anti-philosophical and anti-scholarly stance of much of Neo-Paganism often makes the straighforward into the unknowable, and the gods into strangers. Something to keep in mind when one wonders why people like Stephanie Cass should be judged so harshly as they seem to be, here.

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