"your nonhuman identity is real because you say it is"

and

"your nonhuman identity is still with you even when you're having doubts or even downright disbelieving it"

are statements that can and should coexist.

✩˚ ༘ ♡ 𝐎𝐮𝐫 𝐁𝐞𝐥𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐝 𝐌𝐨𝐨𝐧 𝐢𝐧 𝐏𝐚𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠𝐬 ☾ ˑ༄ؘ

Tempio di Esculapio, Villa Borghese, Rome, Italy | barbarawebsky2

pagan (roman polytheist) culture is performing adoratio whenever you pass by your deity’s altar

.

Aphrodite struck me first when I was young, with sea salt in my hair and the crashing of waves in my ears.

Nicole Callihan - “The End of the Pier” / Hollow Coves - Home / Adolf Hirémy-Hirschl - The Birth of Venus (1888) / Jeanette Winterson - Lighthousekeeping / Ivan Aivazovsky - The Shipwreck on Northern Sea (1865) / Emily Dickinson - “By the Sea” / Gustave Doré - The Oceanids ‘The Naiads of the Sea’ (1860) / Flatsound - My Heart Goes Bum Bum Bum / @matrose / Ivan Aivazovsky - The Birth of Aphrodite (1887)

Léon Bonnat - Aigle et lapin (1897)

Ready to leave the shelter

abyssus abyssum invocat

Always love how much folklore especially creature folklore emphasizes that there is a way for you to win. These are the steps to ensure the dead don't rise: take them out through a hole in the wall and give them iron shoes. Vampires cannot abide sunlight. If you hear a dog howl on a churchyard path turn around and get home as fast as you can. Iron and salt and the colour red. None of this doomed idea, the world is incomprehensible but if you're a bit clever you'll survive it just fine, there's always ways out.

Holy places are dark places […] Holy wisdom is not clear and thin like water, but thick and dark like blood.

C. S. Lewis, from ‘Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold’

weird state of self

It's all "be gay do crimes" "cringe culture is dead uwu" until y'all lay your eyes upon someone genuinely weird/transgressive like nonhuman-identifying people, or kinky people, or even neurodivergent people who can't mask to your satisfaction and suddenly y'all are chomping at the bit to become attack dogs for an oppressive social order/"normalcy"

{Words by Anaïs Nin, from The Diary Of Anais Nin, Vol. 4 (1944-1947) / Cynthia Cruz from diagnosis,The glimmering room}

Happy Saturnalia! Drink and live many years!

Saturnalia is an ancient Roman religious festival honoring Saturn, who was pardoned after his expulsion from Olympus by Jupiter and subsequently regarded as a benevolent god of agricultural abundance.

The first documented Saturnalia was held in 497 BCE for the dedication of the Temple of Saturn in Rome. An annual festival commemorating the dies natalis (anniversary) of this event was held thereafter on December 17. The celebration proved so popular that it was extended to three days, then to an entire week - from December 17 to 23. There was a 24 hour break to take care of home and business - and then everyone went back to celebrating with the dies natalis (anniversary) of the dedication of the temple of Sol Invictus on December 25!

The religious observation of Saturnalia occurred on the first day of the festival. The cult statue of Saturn was acrolithic, a composite of carved ivory over a wooden scaffold and saturated with olive oil to help prevent the ivory from cracking, and likely covered with fabric clothing. The legs of the statue were bound with woolen bands for most of the year - again, it is speculated, to help prevent the ivory from cracking, but perhaps there was also a deeper, religious meaning - were unbound for the Saturnalia. After a religious procession to the Temple of Saturn, followed by a ritual sacrifice, a lectisternium was held, in which a smaller statue of Saturn was placed upon a dining couch before which a banquet was held, attended by Roman elites. The general Saturnalia festival followed these solemnities.

The Saturnalia recalled the mythical Age of Saturn, when crops grew without human toil and humanity lived in harmony with nature and each other. Elements of the festival included days off from work, gatherings of family and friends, wearing brightly-colored garments, preparing and indulging in copious amounts of food and drink, playing games, attending theatrical and musical performances, giving gifts, decorating homes and businesses with garlands and wreaths of evergreens gleaming with sparkly ornaments, light from candles, lamps, torches, and bonfires - all of which probably sound at least a little familiar! 

The reversal of normal societal roles was emblematic of Saturnalia: the emperor bestowed largess upon soldiers and the populace, employers gave bonuses to workers, families with the means to do so gave food and clothing the poor, owners served their slaves and the wealthy waited on their servants, children were allowed to attend theatrical performances and to gamble.

If you’re able to do so, I hope you will continue the Saturnalia tradition of gifts and role-reversals by supporting your local food bank, shelter, or the charity of your choice.

⊱•✹¸.•´*¨°`*• ༻*°🏛°*༺•*`°¨*`•.¸✹•⊰

Featured image info:

Description: A photograph of a very damaged and weathered fresco from Pompeii depicting a group of at least six people gathered in what is presumably a triclinium (Roman dining room). The diners sit and recline on three couches which are too faded for description around a small, gold-colored round table. A person in the center of the group leans forward to reach for something - presumably a cup or portion of food. To their right, a man with a bare torso and wearing a reddish colored lower garment has both hands raised to chest level with their hands together, perhaps applauding or holding a small object. To that person's left is a smaller figure, perhaps a woman, facing to their right, possibly in conversation with another person (that area is person-shaped but heavily damaged) , and holding a cup in their left hand. To the central figure's left is a figure too faded to describe.. To that figure's left is a woman wearing a white sleeveless garment, likely a stola, with what seems to be a pale blue palla (shawl) which has dropped down to her lower back and wraps around her waist. To her left is another heavily faded area which may be another banqueter. To the left of that spot is a woman gazing to her right; the shoulders and upper body may be wrapped in a palla but the image too damaged to be sure.

The caption I added above the banquet scene reads "Io Saturnalia" (Io is pronounced ”ee-o” or “yo”); this is the traditional greeting during this festival. The caption below the banquet scene reads "Bibe vivas multis annis" ("Drink and live many years"); it was a popular toast, especially in late antiquity.

Info on the toast:

Bond, Sarah. Roman Gold Glass and the Epigraphy of Toasting in Antiquity:

https://sarahemilybond.com/2014/07/08/roman-gold-glass-and-the-epigraphy-of-toasting-in-antiquity/

Base image: Wall painting (fresco) of a banquet scene.

Photo: ArchaiOptix

Image source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wall_painting_-banquet_scene-Pompeii(V_2_4)_-_Napoli_MAN_120030.jpg

Image license: Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International

Remix: I removed some partially visible images from the lower half of the painting, applied additional color to the blue border on the right side of the painting, and added the Saturnalia messages.

The three variations of pearled up chickens that will be in this week’s Etsy update!

Filling a hole