Skip to main content

Pointing questions. Part 3 - The point points back.

Hello, and welcome back. Or just welcome, who knows, it may be the first post you read here.

Today we continue towards of search of answers. Yesterday I pointed out the importance of such a symbol that is the Lance of Longinus. I say I pointed out, but really I just made a small emphasis on its history.

While researching details of everything - e.g searching Wikipedia like crazy - I thought back to my childhood and how I first heard about the Lance of Longinus, because guess what, the name of Longinus does not appear on the canon books. That's right, such a known name did not originate from the usual books, rather it came from the apocryphal Gospel of Nicodemus.

So I started to remember, and I realized I was not able to remember the first time I heard the name. For some topics - most of them - I don't pay attention to these types of details. I already have trouble remembering the important facts, Why would I torment myself on not important details? The problem here is that I can remember perfectly my first contact with each myth or legend I know. These are the topics that serve as the basis of all my current likes in entertainment so even if I don't pay extra attention, the details are recorded easily in my head.

So why was I unable to pinpoint the origin of the name in my memory? Is the Lance of Longinus so integrated with pop culture that I may as well heard it a dozen times before I was 5 years old? Perhaps, but that itself is not a satisfactory answer. 

Seeing this, I started to trace mentions of Longinus in popular media in the last decades. I started with the usual Wikipedia, but extended the search with some Google magic over some other specialized hubs like IMDB. Really, a bit overkill but I also wanted an excuse to use Google magic.

The end result is that I'm about 70% sure I picked up on the name of Longinus from throwaway comment the first Hellboy movie. Great movie really.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Some more pointing. Part 2

 One new week, one new post. Hello everyone. How have you been? Here is a super small one. Today I'll talk a bit about the, probably, most famous spear in fiction. Gungnir. Gungnir is the famous spear wielded by Odin, God of thunder, wisdom, war and a myriad of other things. He is known for disguising himself and posing as an old traveler. The spear is said to had been made by Dwarves, and it's mentioned that Odin carved the knowledge of runes that he obtained from the Yggdrasil through the spear.  In popular culture, I think the whole norse pantheon is very well known. Even way before the explosion of popularity of Marvel, Norse was on of those mythologies that everybody knew a bit about. I remember even at school we touched on the subject with the Volsung saga and the Ring of the Nibelung. I'd wager the time we spent in these topics in class was only second to the overabundance of the Greek mythology. If you are a fan of RPGs, you have probably gotten across references to...

Some more pointing. Part 3

 Hello, and welcome again to a new episode of pointy things, where I ramble on and on about things in a superficial manner, to fulfill a self-imposed challenge I'm too stubborn to drop. Snarky today, you say? Well, better than repeating same introductions for thirty days straight won't you say? Anyway, pleasantries aside, today I bring another short mention of a pointy thing. And speaking of which, I'm really grateful with past me for using a non-specific name for this series, as this one may be stretching the rules we've played with for the previous week. A long time ago, in this same galaxy, I was once a high school student - cue gasps at the revelation. One of the many subjects we touched upon was of course literature. I have fond memories of most of my teachers at that time, and the literature ones are no exception. It was with one of them that I learned for the first time about things outside the classical Greek lit and glanced at the massive world of ancient India...

Some thoughts

August is almost done and things seem to stay the same. 2020 has been a rough year, and I have no trouble believing things will only get worse. It doesn't need to be this year; I have no hope for the next decade. Awfully pessimist some of you will say, but I prefer to be pleasantly surprised than keeping my expectations up. Doom predictions aside, today I just wanted to ramble for a bit. That's another benefit I gained through these posts, it forces me to organize my ideas and structure my opinions so I can commit them to (digital) paper. Anyway, these days I've relived many memories I have. While I introspect frequently, rare is the case when I actually go down the memory lane. I tend to focus on the present, on the person I am at that instant and who I want to be in the future. I chalk it up to a combination of not so fond childhood - nothing worthy of a drama series, just some bad highlights - and my own memory problems. I kid you not, my head resembles a non-stick pan t...