#Apparently I'm Gnostic?
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Today on "yeah I'm definitely a heretic" :
#Apparently I'm Gnostic?#Who knew#Like I've literally said that the creator of life cannot be wholly good/loving AND all-powerful AND all-knowing. Any 2 but not all 3.#And felt crazy and alone for saying it#Which drove me away from most any organized religion/faith except my very limited understanding of Buddhism#But viewing the Creator god and the like ultimate Divine as seperate entities makes it possible to trust the ultimate one#Which is a conclusion I had sort of come to on my own using different language#But seeing it actually articulated is...interesting#Like I wouldn't call the creator evil. More like misguided maybe? I hold that no being is truly evil though they may do terrible things#That whole “he's doing his best” part definitely fits. Although I often resent that he hasn't called off the whole thing by now.#Anyway#Yay heresy#Wikipedia rabbithole#Gnosticism
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I'd be fascinated to hear more about gnosticism in tlt if you ever feel like writing about it.
I honestly don't know what's already been written r.e. gnosticism and TLT, so might be reinventing the wheel here, but I'll do a brief description of the overarching themes present throughout the books?
The uh, first layer of the gnosticism onion, as it were.
So to start this off I'm going to give a broad and at least partially incorrect overview of gnosticism:
Gnosticism is a tenth century mess that's loosely based off of Christianity, but then gets Weird. Thanks to some fun political situations in the Gulf, the Christians in the South were isolated from other Christians for decades thus spun off wildly from "mainstream" Christianity. We mostly have fragments left, and a lot of them contradict each other, so working out exactly what they believed/meant is Very Fun and also Somewhat Impossible. (Like the fragments of documents left in Canaan House, you could say...)
That being said, parts of their beliefs we do know better than others. They have the bible, of course, but on top of that they also have this pre-Bible creation myth regarding how God came to be in the first place.
It goes something like: In The Beginning there was a sort of primordial god-soup. This god-soup occasionally emits binary pairs of entities, also known as aeons and (later) twin flames. These binary pairs are two souls made for one another and with one another, and together they are balanced, and perfect, and full of Holy Light(tm). Each binary pair had one grammatically-masculine name, and one grammatically-feminine name. These names do not necessarily relate to perceived gender, and in fact the binary pairs are often referred to as if they are Beyond Gender Altogether. (*stares pointedly at the Lyctors*, *stares even more pointedly at Gideon's name*) [I could probably write a whole thing on this alone, honestly, they're sometimes referred to as like, the fingers on God's hand which, yeah.]
Anyway, in this pure and godly space, there is no matter, only Holy Light. But one of the entities, known as Sophia, goes off on her own and interacts with the shadowy chaos that exists outside of the godly soup. She's half of a whole, unbalanced. And through her meddling she (unintentionally) creates another half that's not pure and holy and full of godly light, but instead a dark reflection of what he Should Be. This is generally referred to as the Demiurge.
Unlike all these other beings, the Demiurge is made of matter. He is the first thing of matter to exist and he looks around the void that he's birthed into, bare aside from him, and concludes that he and he alone is God. (Hi Jod)
Then he makes earth, and heaven, and a bunch of other things besides, the things we know as the universe today. In the immortal words of Douglass Adams — this has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
The problem is — all of these things that the Demiurge has created are made of matter. And being made of matter, they're cut off from the light of Godness (which is incorporeal and made of Pure Energy), thus inherently flawed. What's more, they're never meant to have existed in the first place. The Demiurge is tormented by his failure, but unable to create anything that is not inherently Wrong. (oh look it's the Nine Houses, I'd bet money that there's a link between being cut off from Godly Light and the Nine Houses being the only stable thanergenic planets here)
Sophia, who has watched these unintended consequences unfold and the suffering they've caused, cannot undo what's been done, but she can descend into the material world to share the light of wisdom and try to alleviate what suffering she can. So she does.
The story culminates with Christ being born and teaching all of humanity Gnosis — a special, mystical knowledge that can only come from the Divine, we are not really given specifics here — before he's sacrificed in order to make humanity's ascent beyond their material prison possible.
So that's the broad strokes of gnosticism as a religion, and also first layer of the TLT gnosticism onion. Just the really broad spectrum thematic *waves hands around* Stuff. I've refrained from speculating on the end because until Alecto comes out we really don't know.
If you want anything more specific anon, let me know?? I've been in the gnosticism soup for so long I can't always tell what's common knowledge and what isn't.
#tlt#the locked tomb#tlt meta#good evening I love these books also I am suffering#gnosticism in tlt#I'm not sure where the gnosticism onion came from but apparently I'm running with that metaphor so apologies for that
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Since you asked so nicely: WHAT THE HECK ?!?!? REMAINS OF THE THIRD DESCENDER??? WHOMST ??? Do you think the Heavenly Principles are gonna do something about Focalor's masterful trick ?
I haven't done the last world quest and I'm not ready™
THERE IS SO MUCH I WANT TO DISCUSS ABOUT THE THIRD DESCENDER THING. I am going to be 0% coherent about any of this but I'll do my best
So we know of four Descenders at this point:
The Primordial One (who Neuvillette calls the "First Usurper," which I find very spicy of him);
The Second Who Came - who, according to Before Sun and Moon, fought and lost to the Primordial one, BUT who, according to Neuvillette, then proceeded to help The Primordial One make the Gnoses from the remains of the
THIRD Descender, who we know nothing about besides that their remains are the seven Gnoses!?; and
The Traveler [Abyss sibling ISN'T considered a Descender but this might be because they don't REMEMBER it (see: Battle Pass quote from Venti and the gnostic Hymn of the Pearl).]
We still don't know WHERE they came from, WHY they came to Teyvat, WHY they insisted on having beef with the Dragon Sovereigns or why THEY are the only ones allowed to create human beings while anyone else who tries to do so gets the hurt put on them. However we DO know that apparently they can be split into pieces Horcrux-style. (Which probably shouldn't surprise us at this point considering how many times various Water GoddessesTM have done so)
"Functions ruined" !? Cool so what IS the Primordial One if they have "functions" ???
"Resentments and loathing of the world" is, I'm assuming, a reference to Forbidden Knowledge (which, as I've discussed previously, has shown itself to be VERY emotionally-based).
If the PO and the "one who came after" created the Gnoses together - what happened to the Third Descender? Did they die? Was this a punishment? Did they willingly sacrifice themselves? Who WERE they in relation to the first two descenders!?
"Thus did humans come to ONLY possess these seven remembrances" - so THIS and what comes after it is, i am almost CERTAIN, a reference to the Archon War. We know that there could theoretically have been more than seven Elemental Vision types, based on the Elemental Specialist namecard. This would, however, imply that ALL OF THE ARCHONS, living or dead, are pieces of the Primordial One ("fragments of the primordial") that proceeded to fight amongst themselves for the chance to have one of the Gnoses.
WE HAVE CONFIRMATION THAT even though the "heavens" are the ones that pick whether someone has a strong enough "wish" to get a Vision, THE ARCHONS THEMSELVES ARE THE ONES THAT GIVE THEM OUT. That's not that important for lore I don't think but DAMN IT, it's important to me and my love of forming character dynamics where there are none!!!
As far as the last thing is concerned I will be genuinely shocked if Focalors' little switcharoo on the Heavenly Principles doesn't come back around later in the game. Like, she hacked the system. Someone's going to notice eventually.
#genshin lore#genshin spoilers#genshin#archon quest spoilers#fontaine spoilers#anon asks#I CAN'T SYNTHESIZE ANY POINTS RIGHT NOW IT IT JUST YELLING
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On Hermeticism and the Right Hand Path
There are times when I often try to find out about what is taken to be Hermeticism and specifically its essential philosophy. This is very often after looking into pre-Christian polytheism in antiquity, including survivals in "post-pagan" societies (under the aegis of the various monotheistic religions). Sometimes I wind up thinking that Hermeticism really is part of the formation of the Right Hand Path as we understand it. And then there are moments where it feels...different.
I read Sam Block's recent article about Hermeticism and from the title I was immediately struck with the whole idea of reterritorialising the Christian notion of sin ("the Sin of Imposing Body-Based Identities on Soulful Selves"), as if the problem of "sin" was only ever the Christian definition of it. There's also the core of the argument, where the central reason why gender essentialism is wrong is because it supposedly identifies human beings with their bodies, which is wrong because Hermetic teaching states that human beings are basically spiritual selves whose being is identical with God or the Hermetic Godhead, and basically everything else, the whole world of becoming, is an illusion that covers over the universal identiy of God/Godhead. What baffled me when I read it is that I know Sam Block likes my writings about the fundamental basis of fascism in regression towards , but I'm looking at a presentation that lines up with exactly what I criticised: the idea that corporeal becoming is just an illusion layered over the metaphysical order of pure being or God, which the esoteric fascists have almost always taken up and adapted as a rationale for their political actions.
The notion of the identity of Man with God, realised through attaining certain degrees of spiritual purity and ascending up to the Godhead or to Nous, so as to realise the mutual identity of Man with Nous or Godhead, does seem to line up with a rather basic theme of the Right Hand Path: the identity of Man and God.
On the other hand, there are threads within Hermeticism that seem...somewhat different. Most notably the concept of "god creation" proposed by Lodovico Lazzarelli, one of the first Hermeticists known in Europe. Justin Sledge talked about Lazarelli's idea, derived apparently from both Hermetic literature and the Sefer Yetzirah (not to mention his own creative interpretation of the Book of Genesis), that the fully realised human being would be capable of actually emulating the divine, by creating spiritual beings and drawing being out of nothingness, just as God or a god does. On the one hand it's easy to take this as simply the final proof of the human being's identity with God. But if it's a process of emulation and imitation (hang on, I hear the Gnostic Sophia from here!), then why would the human being need to emulate God if human being is already identical with God - unless perhaps really they're not, and must become like God in order to create more gods, and thus set be part of Henri Burgson's machine. I can see how this might just as easily be taken up in terms of the modern Left Hand Path. Unfortunately we don't really know how Lazarelli's god-creation works.
I would also hope that what I'm being told about the idea of "as above, so below" as meaning a descent into ultimate interiority thus leading to ultimate exteriority (descent leading to ascent), as connecting to the traditions of going into the underworld, would allow me to see something in the Hermetic tradition not quite in line with what I expect, maybe even relevant to broader ideas of "Pagan" esoteric tradition, or at least that of pre-Christian Greek and Egyptian magic and religion. In general I'm just wanting to see Hermetic literature that might establish just such a connection. It might even be possible to warp something like that back to other, perhaps more archaic, forms of pre-Christian magic and religion, and to some of the much later and more modern that I play with.
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Esoterica question! I'm doing a "retranslation" of Sefer Yetzirah, primarily for my own Jewish education and in preparation for one day trying to read the Zohar. My goals for my rewrite are a) replacing some of the old-timey language in the sources I'm working from, b) expanding the text to include explanations of ideas in the original that would have been apparent to the intended audience but might be lost on "casual" readers (permutations, factorials, emanations from a single source, refutations against gnostic ideas, etc).
My question is this: am I de-occulting the text by making its meaning more clear? Or is the "occluded" meaning of the text something deeper than the surface meaning of the words? I intend to proceed with the project either way, but I'd be interested in your thoughts on the matter.
Oh man that sounds like a fascinating project!
Unfortunately I'm not gonna be too much help here. There is a thread of Jewish mysticism that focuses heavily on the relationship between Jewish theology and the Hebrew language, and it's my understanding that The Sefer Yetzirah is in that philosophical thread. I've actually heard a few Jewish esotericists argue that texts like the Sefer Yetzirah are almost impossible to translate effectively!
Because of this, I'm not sure the text even falls into the definition of "occult" in the same way that, say, The Chymical Wedding does. Like, to give you a proper answer here I'd have to hit up a rabbi.
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the adventures of kid jesus, holy terror
(reposted from Twitter)
So I tend to think that the reason the four gospels that made it into the Christian Bible did so was because they were the ones that conflicted least with most of the major schools of early Christianity. Like, they don't preclude gnosticism, they don't really put Jesus in a particular political movement, etc. They're open to mystical interpretation, but they're among the least mystical of the candidates, etc.
They also involve relatively little Asshole Jesus.
But allow me to introduce you to the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.
No, not the Gospel of Thomas, the most famous of the noncanonical gospels.
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas.
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas was written before 185 CE, when Irenaeus was ranting about it, and after 80 CE, since it borrows from Luke and that's probably when Luke was written point being: as these things go, it's pretty old--this isn't medieval fanfic or whatevs. It was also very, very popular.
So.
The first thing baby Jesus does is make some clay sparrows on Shabbat which freaks everyone out in the way that only Jews written by Christians freak out, because he's 5 years old and 5-year-olds playing with mud on Shabbat is not, like, a big deal.
So anyway, Kid Jesus is there with another kid, who takes a stick and stirs a mud pool Kid Jesus made.
so Kid Jesus turns him into a mummy
The now-mummy kid's parents are understandably upset that their toddler got mummified for stirring some water with a stick and they go to complain to Joseph that his little holy terror of a son is desiccating people.
meanwhile, Kid Jesus is running around town
Another kid is running around town and bumps Kid Jesus's shoulder.
so Kid Jesus kills him
Joseph now has TWO sets of angry parents being like "my dude, your son is killing little kids which is profoundly Not Cool" so he goes to have a talk with Kid Jesus about how we don't just straight-up murder toddlers who bump into us.
Joseph sits Kid Jesus down and is like "look, son, we're being persecuted (translation: asked to stop) now because you're murdering children so maybe stop it?" and Kid Jesus says "aw, Dad, I know you don't mean it" and...
...Kid Jesus strikes the parents complaining that he's murdered their kids blind
Joseph twists his ear and Kid Jesus tells him to quit it and leave him alone to do his murdering in peace.
There's this teacher named Zacchaeus who for some reason is IMPRESSED by all this and is like, "your kid is so wise, my dude, let me teach him" and apparently he was okay at teaching the alphabet:
And he told him all the letters from Alpha even to Omega clearly.
Kid Jesus, on the other hand, is the worst student ever and is all:
thou hypocrite, first, if thou knowest it, teach the Alpha, and then will we believe thee concerning the Beta.
It's unclear whether he actually understands the definition of the term "hypocrite."
Zacchaeus, who's clearly a hardcore masochist, is all like:
Woe is me, wretch that I am, I am confounded: I have brought shame to myself by drawing to me this young child
And he's like "this 5-year-old who yelled at me about the order of the letters is CLEARLY an angel or a god."
No, I mean literally:
he is somewhat great, whether god or angel or what I should call him, I know not.
And Kid Jesus is like yup, I'm here to make you all miserable.
No, I mean literally:
I am come from above that I may curse them, and call them to the things that are above, even as he commanded which hath sent me for your sakes.
But Kid Jesus goes ahead and heals everyone he cursed, and after that, everyone's afraid to contradict him, because they are *literally terrified he will maim them.*
No, I mean literally:
And no man after that durst provoke him, lest he should curse him, and he should be maimed.
Then Kid Jesus and some other kids (I'm hesitant to characterize them as his friends) are playing in the upper story of a house and a kid falls out a window and dies so the dead kid's parents are like, "clearly this kid that's already straight-up murdered 2 other kids did it."
So Kid Jesus raises the other kid from the dead not because, you know, he's a little kid who fell out a window and died and that's tragic, or because his parents are grieving or whatever.
no, he raises him from the dead so the dead kid can back him up that he didn't murder him
Then Kid Jesus turns six and for a little while it seems like he's going to be less of a serial killer. He carries some water to his mom after the pitcher breaks, and uses his superpowers to help his dad with carpentry.
But then his dad decides that he's six so it's really time he learned his ABCs and now that he's a little older maybe he won't be so much of an asshole to his teachers so he gets a new teacher, and this one isn't as submissive as the last one.
Kid Jesus is an asshole to this teacher too, but this one smacks him upside the head for mouthing off.
so Kid Jesus kills him (or maybe just puts him in a coma)
Joseph is like maybe we just homeschool him.
But there's a teacher who's like PUT ME IN, COACH. And Joseph is like look my dude my murder-child has a 100% teacher-killing rate, are you sure? And the teacher's like I CAN DO IT.
Oh wait, Teacher #1 lived because he groveled, I forgot. Anyway, Teacher #3 also grovels, which pleases Kid Jesus so much that he heals/resurrects Teacher #2.
So then Kid Jesus's brother James gets bitten by a snake and Jesus heals him which is nice I guess but James best thank him thoroughly or he might get murdered like every other kid in the village.
And then a baby gets sick and dies and Kid Jesus resurrects him and the villagers are like: "Of a truth this young child is either a god or an angel of God; for every word of his is a perfect work."
because they have the world's shortest memories
So a guy dies and Kid Jesus resurrects him and they're all:
This young child is from heaven: for he hath saved many souls from death, and hath power to save them all his life long.
which IGNORES THAT MOST OF THE PEOPLE HE RESURRECTED WERE DEAD IN THE FIRST PLACE BECAUSE HE KILLED THEM
And then there's a paragraph about him teaching in the Temple when he was 12 that's very similar to the one in Luke and that's a wrap.
Behold: the Infancy Gospel of Thomas
and this shit was apparently VERY POPULAR
So yeah, one of the more popular early Christian bestsellers was, just to sum up: Jesus murders a bunch of people, maims anyone who objects, brings them back to life, and everyone who witnesses it thinks that everything he does is perfect after he terrifies them into submission.
#early christianity#infancy gospel of thomas#noncanonical gospels#jesus the serial killer#yes everyone I'm aware this is also the plot of a Twilight Zone episode
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right, it's reflection tma time!! like the level in celeste! uh gosh i can't think of anything silly and goofy
@a-mag-a-day
y'all know the drill, rambling, maybe good words, enjoy
wow, i said a lot less than i was expecting to
Before we start: fear soup.
I guess I technically have the power to make it not quiet, to, to talk to people, but like- you know, I, I also have the power to clean out the fridge, and it’s still a mess. It’s not that I don’t want to clean the fridge, it’s just-
Some things are just hard.
Analogy for depression!! It really is, like. I dunno, it's a lot easier to self isolate, especially when you haven't been talking to people for a while. Not talking to your friends for months and then having none because it's easier to just... not talk to anyone! Can relate.
It's hard, you know, because people are tiring and there's the anxiety from not talking to them in months and it's just... yeah. Some things are just hard. I want to give him a hug. I want him to have nice things.
How much do I actually care, and how much is just feeling that I should care?
HE'S JUST LIKE ME FR!!
I just think that Martin's transition from person who does care, to person who doesn't care like he's supposed to and wants to - really wants to - but it all feels like a lie. People are hard.
Gertrude. I wanted your opinion on an encounter I’ve had described to me, and given your recent dealing with Viscera, I would very much value your input.
Good job on that, by the way. I’m sure the gnostic temple was a great loss culturally speaking, but I can’t help but admire your directness when it comes to this sort of thing.
Interesting. Adelard Dekkar calls it (The Flesh) Viscera. I really like the alternate names for them, and you know what, I'm going to go out on a limb and say maybe the different names can mean slightly different aspects.
It Knows You feels more like something watching, something knowing, rather than you watching and knowing, it feels more sentient. There is an it, rather than just the Ceaseless Watcher, watching without seeing, without comprehension. The Mother of Puppets feels like it has more agency than just The Web, like characterising it as a someone, made it so it could be a someone.
It's like that thing in Discworld, where a god's power depends on people believing in them - and in this case fearing them. The form of the fears is what people believe to be the form of the fears.
It’s a little too out-of-the-way to be a common destination for teenage delinquency, but has become, I’m told, quite popular with what can be described as ’rural urban exploration groups.’
You should absolutely under no circumstance become an urban explorer if you live in the TMA universe. You will die or have a supernatural encounter. That's literally- that's going to happen.
He was very interested in the Hall of Mirrors. According to him, if it was still in good shape, it would have been an amazing place to put on a light show, and have his guests dance their way through the maze.
Sounds like a good way to get injured to me, but apparently I used the word ’rave’ wrong, so what do I know?
Aszjdfxsahfhja I love Adelard Dekkar
As she knocked one from its perch, her face contorted into a grimace of joy, and the wizened carnie hobbled over to one of the buckets and handed her a tiny bone.
Without hesitation, she snapped it cleanly in half and started desperately gnawing at the broken end, trying to reach whatever scant marrow might have remained inside.
Our lost young friend felt his stomach turn. He told me he was a good fifteen feet away, but could still hear the sounds of her desperate hunger over the rides all around.
Oh, right, The Extinction is also... this. Every one of the people starving to death.
I don't think The Extinction is that new, but every time I try to explain it, I worry I'm going to say something wrong, but yeah.
My first assumption would have been the Flesh, based on the cannibalism and strangeness of the bodies involved, but- something about this idea of some sort of famine world, its location within a man-made ruin, the whole… societal aspect of it- I’d be inclined to chalk this up as a genuine Extinction manifestation.
I feel like it's got to be the Extinction. I mean, soup, but it doesn't... feel like Flesh. Flesh feels more... I don't know. It feels different. There isn't enough body horror for it to be flesh /hj
No but it just... what is the fear here? Of being eaten? Of the hunger in their eyes? Of that place? Of the thing following him? I feel like it's just... case by case basis, what is this, you know?
A lot of these really don't fit in neatly to little categorisations, you know. They're intrinsically linked. What is the fear of being trapped under infinite amounts of dirt, with that fear of the infinite amount of dirt? You can't have a colour wheel with only red. They spread out in all directions, overlap so you can never get something pure and distilled. They are only separate because people believe it's separate, and then they're not... what is the fear of someone or something manipulating you without the fear that they know you, they know exactly how to push your buttons.
PETER
How does that make you feel?
[The static in the background adopts a bit more bass than usual, and the high-pitched scream-like tones increase in volume as well.]
MARTIN
Nothing. (Short laugh) Nothing at all.
PETER
Excellent. I’m so proud of you, Martin.
MARTIN
I really don’t care.
Oh, Martin...
I just... :( sad
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Themes of Cloti: Kabbalah/Gnosticism and the promised land. The search for the true self.
This is the first in (hopefully) a series of articles that discuss recurring themes and concepts in FFVII. Together these principles weave together to create the framework that makes up FFVII's identity.
This article will look at how Jewish gnosticism and the kabbalah are weaved into the story of FFVII and what it tells us about the themes that serve as guidelines for the characters internal arcs. As an outside example of how these concepts are used in japanese media I will be drawing comparisons with the anime "fullmetal alchemist: Brotherhood" and as such it will contain mayor spoilers for that show. Hopefully that distance that will help create an understanding of the concepts involved that will be unblemished by potential emotional biases we hold concerning FFVII.
By doing this I hope to shed some insight into the role each character plays and what the point and focus of their internal arcs is likely to be. This in turn serves as a lens that can help us when trying to place scenes into a bigger interpretation of the story.
The main takeaway from this analysis will be that the general leading thematic thread of FFVII in terms of Clouds internal development throughout FFVII and subsequent entries is the concept that:
- Cloud has to reach a state of supreme happiness by discarding his fake self, and embracing his own humanity.
The following conclusions will also become apparent as a result, and will be discussed.
- At the end of the story Cloud will be happy. If an interpretation of the story comes with the idea that Cloud is NOT happy by the end, that is evidence that the interpretation misses the mark.
- For thematic concruency it is unlikely that the LTD is meant to continue after the lifestream sequence.
- Aeriths thematic role as a Cetra is to guide Cloud to where he needs to be, the guide to the promised land. Rather than be the final destination.
- Clouds promised land is with Tifa.
__________________________________________________________
What is Gnosticism and the Kabbalah??
Before we begin its important that I explain a bit about what we're actually talking about. However, since this article is not supposed to be an indepth look into Gnosticism, but rather an analysis of how these concepts are used in FFVII and japanese media in general I will try not to go into too much unnecessary detail and instead limit myself to the parts that matter.
From https://www.worldhistory.org/Gnosticism/ :
Gnosticism is the belief that human beings contain a piece of God (the highest good or a divine spark) within themselves, which has fallen from the immaterial world into the bodies of humans.
Gnostic concepts mirror a modern school of philosophy known as existentialism ("how and why do we exist?") Gnostics asked and answered such questions as: "Who am I?" "Where did I come from?" "What is the meaning of life?" "Why am I here?" and "What is my true self?"
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabbalah
Kabbalah (Hebrew: קַבָּלָה Qabbālā, literally "reception, tradition"[1] or "correspondence"[2]: 3 ) is an esoteric method, discipline and school of thought in Jewish mysticism.[3
While the exact relationship between Gnosticism and Kabbalah are debated, as well as how to correctly interpret these concepts, it's important to note that for our purposes this doesn't really matter. I am not here to have a discussion about which version of these belief systems is the "canonical one", as far as I'm concerned they're all just as made up. The point is it doesn't matter how these concepts were interpreted hundreds of years ago, what matters more is how they are used today in japanese culture to inspire storytelling. Which is also why it's likely not that productive to go too deep into this rabbit hole, I am not a theistic scholar...but neither are the people who made FFVII.
The Sefirot and the path to enlightenment
One of the concept of the Kabbalah pertains to a concept known as "the Sefirot". The Sefirot is a series of nodes named "Sefira" that represent the 10 aspects of god. Rather than these Sefira being parts of god itself they represent the ways in which god supposedly manifests itself in our world.
From: https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/sefirot/
The medieval kabbalists believed that God’s self could not be understood, but God has revealed attributes that interact with each other and the world. These are known as sefirot. Just as human beings are made up of various internal traits or tendencies of personality, all of which interact with one another, so too God is made up of various internal traits or “drives.” The imagery used to describe the sefirot and their relationships is often visual and physical, even sexual.
As such, when someone exhibits these traits they are exhibiting aspects of the divine. According to some you can therefore reach a form of divinity by traversing the paths between the Sefira and embodying all the aspects of god. This set of nodes and paths is often called the tree of life.
From:
https://joyvernon.com/introduction-to-tarot-and-qabalah-the-path-of-enlightenment-and-the-path-of-redemption/
The Tree of Life is often compared to a ladder and represents spiritual ascent. But as we can climb the Tree towards the Divine, so the Divine can reach down toward us. These two directions are called the Path of Redemption and the Path of Enlightenment.
From:
https://thesevenworlds.wordpress.com/2014/03/28/four-worlds/
The Book of Job states that “from my flesh I see God”. In Kabbalah and Hasidism this is understood to refer to the correspondence between the “Divine psychology” of the Four Worlds and the Sephirot, with human psychology and the Sephirot in the soul of man. From understanding the Kabbalistic description of the human soul, we can grasp the meaning of the Divine scheme.
the Sephirot and Four Worlds allow man to understand Divinity through Divine manifestation, by understanding himself
Why do we know Gnosticism is important in FFVII, and why does it matter that we know?
Luckily here SE wasn't that subtle, since they named the villain of the game "Sephiroth", a direct etymological tie to the concepts of the Sefirot. Which is why we can be confident that these concepts are relevant to FFVII in least SOME degree. Other more direct and telling links include:
- Tifa being named after the Sefira of "Tifaret".
- Jenova being named after Jehova, the Jewish name for god, potentially combined with "nova", meaning "new". Making Jenova the "new god".
As soon as we accept that this link is not imagined we can look for more circumstantial instances of these concepts being inspired by these ideas:
- The concept that each human retains within it some slight aspect of god and that godhood is attained is mirrored in Sephiroths clones and the reunion theory that states that all Jenova cells will return to reform Jenova.
- This concept is also mirrored in the concept of the lifestream, that every human carries a piece of the lifestream within themselves and that they must inevitably return to it.
- Safer Sephiroth, or in the correct translation: "Seraph" Sefirot and his 6 wings resembling a Seraphim, which Isaiah 6 describes as "six-winged beings that circle the throne of God".
There are a bunch more parallels that can be found by squinting and comparing the details of FFVII to Kabbalistic principles, like Aerith being 22 years old and there being 22 paths in the sefirot. But doing so runs the risk of finding patterns where there are none, and it does little to add to the argument except for cluttering it up. I doubt that Nojima and the others intended for FFVII to be a perfect 1-to-1 adaptation of Gnostic principles, or that they analyzed them 10 layers deep, at some point we have to distinguish the intended parallels from the meaningless references.
What is important to understand is that concepts like "what it means to be human" speak to the human imagination and fit the type of storytelling that humans like. "What is the meaning of life?", "why do we die?", and most importantly:
"what does it mean to reach enlightenment? And how do we reach it?".
We instinctively know that a story where the main character beats the big bad by having love, humility, and human nature win from straight power is more inspiring than watching someone give up their humanity in order to beat the opponent into submission using overwhelming strength, even in stories where this happens, such as with One punch man, it's often the implications and cost of losing said humanity that lies at the heart of the story. This is what gives the story its weight, its ability to move hearts.
It's this storytelling potential that exists within these types of myths that potentially inspired the people who wrote those myths, and now inspire those that use these myths as the foundations for new stories. For our intents and purposes what matters are the more concrete ways in which these concepts are explored in FFVII, and for that we will first take a look at Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.
FMA:B, Humanity, and becoming as gods.
Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is an anime about two brothers who try to use alchemy (essentially magic), to try and bring back their dead mother. However, alchemy requires a price. To receive something something of equal value must be given. The attempt to get back their mother fails, because "what equals the value of a human soul?" However, their "transmutation" does grant them knowledge and power, the brothers go through a doorway behind which they see revealed all the knowledge and information in the universe. However, in return one brother, Edward Elrich, loses a leg, and the other brother, Alphonse Elrich, loses his entire body. Ed then subsequently sacrifices his arm to bind Als soul to a piece of armor.
At times the protagonist, Edward, has his consciousness seemingly transported to an all-white room. There he speaks with an all-white creature that claims to be " Truth", "the universe", and "God". Behind him is a door that shows a very peculiar image.
If we were to zoom in we would see that the different branches of this image are labeled "Sefirot", and point towards the different Sefira of the Sefirot. The image itself is an adaptation of the Gnostic Sephirot, and gives us insight into the themes explored in the show.
Following their failed transmutation the brothers seek to reacquire their bodies by seeking out the philosophers stone, which you might recognize from, among other things, Harry Potter. Alchemy, both in history and in FMA, is the art of combining different substances in order to create something new. The ultimate goal is to create the Philosophers stone, a perfect substance which can turn metal into gold and holds the secret to eternal life.
The idea of turning lead, or some other metal, into gold is narratively linked with the idea of attaining godhood. To go from the human (lead), to the divine (Gold). This concept runs parallel with the ideas represented by the Sefirot, where the different paths between the aspects constitute a roadmap to godhood.
The Villain of FMA:B is called "Father", in classic villain style his goal is to become god. To do so he sheds himself of his humanity, he removes his human desires from his being, which manifests in 7 beings named after the 7 sins. He then attempts to sacrifice millions in order to acquire ultimate knowledge and power in return.
After being defeated Father enters the same white room as Edward, and comes face to face with "god", whose appearance in this case seemingly resembles "Fathers" true form. "Father" asks god what he did wrong, what is wrong with seeking knowledge and power? But god does not answer. After "Father" returns to the nothingness from which he originally came god finally answers "you must have seen the answer for yourself".
The end of "Fathers" story arc contrasts with that of Edward and Al. Edward ultimately regains Als body by going back to "God" and offering him his doorway in exchange for Als body. The doorway served as the pathway to "God" or "the truth", which gave access to all the knowledge in the universe and the ability to perform alchemy. As he does so God cheers him on and proclaims that Edward has found "the right answer". Al regains his body, and Edward is never able to perform alchemy again.
So what can we learn from this? What did Father do wrong? What is thematically happening?
By trying to revive their mother Edward and Al tried to overstep the boundaries of humanity. Instead of accepting the full gravity of what it means to be human, struggles, failures, and all, they tried to use power as a shortcut to eliminate problems, essentially trespassing on gods lawn.
They try to undo the consequences of these actions by essentially doing more of the same, they try to get their bodies back by acquiring more knowledge and power.
These original actions mirrored Fathers, he interpreted enlightenment, "Becoming a perfect being", as becoming god. Which he attempted to do by shedding himself of his humanity. He threw away human emotions and human bonds in a vain attempt to become perfect. He threw it all away for knowledge and power and even in death he was demanding answers. But god refused to answer.
The show ends with Edward doing the exact opposite, in the end, rather than sacrificing human beings to obtain power and knowledge he sacrifices power and knowledge in order to save others. Rather than fixing everything with magic he now has to use hammers and nails and work together with others.
It is our struggles as humans, and our bonds with other people, that really matter. It's that acceptance, living in balance with nature and oneself, rather than trying to dominate nature and others that really define what it means to reach enlightenment. True perfection, divinity, and happiness, does not come from external things such as power and wealth, but by internal things. By being at peace with oneself and through our bonds with others. True divinity is reached by embracing who we are, faults and all, rather than attempting to discard them. You cannot have meaning without imperfection.
This guiding principle constitutes the core message being told by the story, and can be used as an anchor to gauge the likelihood that a pattern or theme we think we see is actually intended by developers, or imposed by us. We will later use this same approach to assess whether certain interpretations of FFVII hold water.
Gnosticism and the "Demiurge"
One of the more interesting concepts in Kabbalah is the concept of a fake god, known as the "demiurge".
From:
http://www.newkabbalah.com/gnos.html
Gnosticism refers to a group of second century self-defined Christian sects that were regarded as heretical by the early church. Scholars have differed regarding the identity and defining characteristics of Gnosticism. Some point, for example, to its dualism of good and evil, others to its theories regarding the aeons, and the demiurge, etc
From:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demiurge
the demiurge is the fashioner of the real, perceptible world after the model of the Ideas, but (in most Neoplatonic systems) is still not itself "the One". In the arch-dualist ideology of the various Gnostic systems, the material universe is evil, while the non-material world is good. According to some strains of Gnosticism, the demiurge is malevolent, as it is linked to the material world. In others, including the teaching of Valentinus, the demiurge is simply ignorant or misguided.
Gnosticism presents a distinction between the highest, unknowable God or Supreme Being and the demiurgic "creator" of the material. Several systems of Gnostic thought present the Demiurge as antagonistic to the will of the Supreme Being: his act of creation occurs in an unconscious semblance of the divine model, and thus is fundamentally flawed, or else is formed with the malevolent intention of entrapping aspects of the divine in materiality. Thus, in such systems, the Demiurge acts as a solution to (or, at least possibly, the problem or cause that gives rise to) the problem of evil.[14]
While there are many different interpretations of the demiurge, generally in fiction the demiurge archetype refers to the concept of a fake god figure connected to the material world, while true divinity is connected to the spiritual. In fullmetal alchemist the figure of "Father" physically resembles Edward and Als actual father, as he was made from his blood. He takes up the position as a fake god, and represents the concept of a fake father figure through his appearance. The concept of god as a "holy father" is probably not new to any of us. "Father" symbolizes the corrupted ideal of perfection, the materialistic ideal that misconstrues perfection as a material gain, in this case power.
Based on all this, what should we expect to see if Final Fantasy VII follows similar philosophies?
If the story of FFVII were to largely follow the framework established by the essentials of these philosophies, then there would be certain things we'd expect to see, and conclusions that we can pull from it.
villains and godhood: We would expect to see a villain who attempts to achieve godhood by rejecting their humanity either literally, or symbolically.
The demiurge: We would expect to see a fake god figure which leads humanity astray.
Heroes and humanity: We'd expect to find a main character who reaches enlightenment through spiritual means and by embracing humanity.
What we see in FFVII
I'm assuming that as I mentioned those bulletpoints the answers to where they fit into FFVII already spring to mind.
The main villain of FFVII is Sephiroth, a man who rejects his human side and attempts to become a god, led astray by the fake god figure of Jenova. While in the lifestream Sephiroth even literally sheds himself of the human parts of himself. Conversely, Cloud, the hero of the story, has a storyarc revolving around him accepting his flawed and human self and discarding the fake soldier persona he has put in himself, the persona obsessed with power.
FFVII's world fits into the category of a fallen world, mankind in general has left spiritualism behind and is using up the very life blood of the planet, the seed of divinity that is inside all men. In Crisis Core and advent children we see this degradation more tangibly and explicitly through the degenerating genesis clones and through Geostigma. Geostigma is a physical condition that is triggered by weak emotional states. In the case of Cloud it's his negative feelings and his regrets towards the past that allowed geostigma to take hold. This is the way in which the story ties tangible external consequences to the underlying themes and spiritual character arcs.
Geostigma is Jenovas memetic legacy, Sephiroth and Jenova here are put into diametric opposition to Aerith and the Cetra. The overall "sin" of mankind in FFVII is best exemplified through Shinra, who best illustrate the fundamental problem with how mankind is living. While the Cetra lived in harmony with nature, mankind is consuming it, putting them on an inevitable collision course with the planet.
However the search for divinity remains in the form of "the promised land". The land of supreme happiness to which the Cetra will one day return. In gnosticism the material world is the imperfect creation of the demiurge, the spiritual is divine and through the Sefirot one can experience said divinity. In FFVII the divine spark is represented by the lifestream, from which everyone comes and to which everyone will eventually return. We can therefore state that in FFVII, Jenova, soldier, Technology, Shinra, are all connected to concept of fake, or corrupted notions of enlightenment.
Sephiroth, being led astray by the false god, sees the promised land as something material, in his case, power, and becoming a god.
Shinra, and to a lesser extent mankind, being led astray by the false god, believes Jenova to be an ancient and sees the promised land as something material, in their case, boundless wealth and mako. Allowing a simple life of luxury. Meanwhile, true enlightenment is represented by the Cetra, it isn't material but spiritual. It is connected to accepting the past, accepting flaws and humanity, seeking bonds rather than power for powers sake. Cloud, and to an extent humanity, starts the story on the path of the Demiurge, the path of Jenova, however, in order to get to his "promised land", he needs to walk the path of enlightenment.
Tifa and "The promised land"
Ethmologicaly speaking "the promised land" is a reference the promise Cloud makes to Tifa, "Yakuzo no chi" literally translating to "the land of promise".
Tifas seventh heaven bar is a direct reference to the highest heaven in jewish mysticism, the 7th heaven, which is the state closest to god, spiritually speaking, the state closest to enlightenment. Her final limit break "final heaven" refers to the same thing.
As it pertains to Cloud the concept of the promised land, or finding ultimate happiness, can narratively be seen to be a juxtaposition of two things. One is a state of ultimate happiness, and the other is the state in which Cloud can fulfill his promise to Tifa. For Cloud these two are one and the same, his ultimate happiness is to be the kind of person who is able to protect Tifa.
Aerith role as the guide to the promised land
Cloud tried to become the kind of person who could protect Tifa by obtaining material strength, this path follows Sephiroth and the false god Jenova. However, in order to reach true divinity he needs to return to his true self.
This is where Aerith comes in, Aeriths narrative role in FFVII is to service as a guide to the promised land. This serves as a sort of narrative prophecy. A narrative prophecy is not an actual prophecy, but more like a chekovs gun that eventually has to fire. A good example would be Obi-wan kenobi telling Anakin "one day you'll be the death of me", while Obi-wan is a jedi capable of making actually foretellings of the future that wasn't one. But it is a sentence that is intended to, perhaps ironically, point out something about the future of the story. The prophecy of the cetra guiding us to the promised land is similar, it is an actual prophecy, and will come true in some way, but it also points to Aeriths role within to overall narrative. In some way she will guide the hero, the main subject of the narrative, to the promised land. Afterwards, she will fulfill the cetras narrative prophecy by "returning to the planet".
Through his journey with Aerith Cloud is able to return to his true self. Aerith and Cloud both help each other work through their issues surrounding their pasts, Cloud helps Aerith work through the loss of Zack, and Aerith in turn helps Cloud with his issues, eventually leading him to Tifa. Aerith here takes up the role of metaphorical mother, the lightside counterpart to Jenovas darkness. While Jenova is connected to the material and the Demiurge, Aerith is representative of the divine Sefira of Chesed, the Sefira of compassionate love. This concept will be more explored in a later article discussing Aeriths role as a symbolic mother, and the themes of legacy, found family, and the death of parental figures in FFVII.
According to Maiden it's Aerith that brings Tifa and Cloud together in the lifestream sequence, maiden is not canon but in this aspect I think this might be a case of a broken clock being right twice a day as Aerith protecting Tifa while in the lifestream is the kind of thing she would do and would explain why Tifa didn't succumb to mako poisoning. The lifesteam serves as the most tangible visualization of "the promised land", but the real fulfillment of the prophecy happens when Cloud regains his memories of the past. In doing to so he learns that he fulfilled his promise to come save Tifa, aka, he fulfills his goal, he "returns to the state wherein he was able to fulfill the promise", which is done by returning to his true self, his human self.
It's not the fake path of Jenova, the path of Soldier and power that leads Cloud to happiness, it was his human self.
During the events of Advent children Aerith reprises this role. The two main driving forces in the story are Clouds pain at not being able to protect Tifa and the children, and his desire to be forgiven by Aerith. Cloud is no longer able to protect Tifa and the children, he has lost his strength, and has fallen into a state of depression. Once again Cloud needs to achieve spiritual balance. By helping Cloud forgive himself Aerith also directly causes Cloud to return to a state wherein he can protect Tifa and the children, as portrayed by the final battle.
The story then ends with the following quote:
The place where he awakens — That is Cloud’s Promised Land As he sleeps, Cloud hears two voices. The voices of two people very dear to him, who are no longer with him. Playfully and kindly, they give him a message: he doesn’t belong here yet. When he awakes, there was his friends. There were the children, freed from their fatal illness. Tifa and Marlene, and Denzel asking for Cloud to heal his Geostigma — his family were waiting. Engulfed in celebration, he realises where he is meant to live. He realises that he was able to forgive himself.
Conclusions
FFVII is a story about humanity. The main narrative arc Cloud has to go through is to achieve happiness by embracing his humanity, weaknesses and all. Doing so will lead him to a state of supreme happiness. Tifas is routinely set up as representative of that final destination, while Aerith is explicitly presented as a guide. Any interpretation of the story that ends without Cloud achieving supreme happiness makes no narrative sense as it would would essentially make the focus of the story purposeless. Therefore, any interpretation of the story that ends with Cloud pining over some other woman can be safely dismissed.
Every interpretation of the story (or prediction about the future of remake) needs to account for the fact that the promised land has been explicitly tied to:
1: Cloud reaching a state where he can protect Tifa.
2: Cloud embracing his true self and the feelings for Tifa associated with it, and rejecting the fake self that is associated with Aeriths ex.
3: Tifa herself.
The conclusion that Tifa is the ultimate love interest of the story in regards to Cloud follows logically and inescapably from the thematic foundations of the story. Aerith also perfectly fits and fulfills her expected role within the story with this telling of events. Conversely, Aerith as a love interest is in-congruent with these same foundations as it fails to properly tie the promised land and the promise together. Instead being intricately tied to the main external plot and mystery being told (nibleheim) it's instead a side story about how Cloud is crushing on some other girl while going through some unrelated story concerning Nibleheim. Despite the developers stating that Cloud reaches the promised land, in this telling he actually doesn't, as he never truly accepts the past and Aeriths death, and therefore can not reach true enlightenment as he continues to pine over her. Rather than Aerith guiding Cloud to the promised land the Clerith telling of events makes Aerith the reason Cloud will never be able to actually find it. Clouds past and failures, mainly Aeriths death, are no longer something that needs to be accepted to obtain true enlightenment, but something that needs to be changed through power and force, essentially painting Cloud in the guise of the villain seeking to overthrow the natural order.
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Summary of 1st half of The Paradigm of Catharism; of, the Historians Illusion by Mark Gregory Pegg
So not counting the introduction this is the first essay in Cathars in Question, a collection of essays between scholars debating the existence of Cathars. If you've been following me for a while or know me irl you've probably heard me reference this as 'cathargate.' I'm making it a little project to write out summaries to the essays and post them both for the sake of my own comprehension on the topic and also because a few ppl I've talked to about it have expressed interest in it. If anything in this post interests you I highly recommend reading the essays themselves, both because I'm not an expert and because Pegg's zingers are kind of funny ngl.
Pegg’s opening postulates that Catharism was exclusively an invention of “late 19th century scholars of religion and history.” It’s important to note that he isn’t claiming that Cathars were invented by medieval inquisition. He specifies that it is not “a construct of the persecuting society” (shouting out bestie R.I Moore) but rather a distinctly modern invention. Because, as Pegg understands it, Catharism is a modern invention, it makes sense that he would therefore first go into where he believes this invention originated. Pegg repeatedly calls back to this idea of a paradigm of Catharism, that is supported by two methodologies he identifies as both distinct and incompatible. In this first post we will discuss the first he identifies, that being the Intellectualist approach.
What is the Intellectualist approach, as Pegg defines it?
“It views the study of religion and heresy as an exercise in intellectual history…presumes that heresies have coherent theologies and doctrines combined and disseminated in canonical texts by heretical leaders”
Pegg says this approach was codified after 1870 via who else but the Germans doing “Religionsgeschichte”, a religious historical school that approaches the study of religion by comparing seemingly similar systems of belief. They have this idea called “world religions” or “universal religions”
WHAT ARE THE FEATURES OF A WORLD RELIGION?
elaborate clerical hierarchy
evangelical missionaries
fixed rituals
foundational sacred texts
clear distinction between secular and religious
World religions are intended to resemble Christianity, Pegg says. World religions include Hinduism, Confucianism, Buddhism, antique paganism, Gnosticism and Manichaeism.
The most important exponent of the ‘religious-historical school’ for medieval heresy was Herbert Grundmann, who wrote Religiose Bewegungen im Mittelalter (1935)
He compares the beliefs of individual heretics, wandering preachers, early mendicants and specific religious women in the 12th and 13th centuries. He argues that the religious motivations (such as adopting an apostolic life) were similar, and that there was one general religious movement before 1200 that then fractured into heterodox and orthodox movements during the papacy of Innocent III (Papacy 1198-1216) Apparently this was barely noticed until after 1960. But here in the late 19th century, we have a different problem, and it's called Objektivität.
WHAT IS OBJEKTIVITAT? (according to Pegg)
Approaching history as a science
Approaches religion as a natural process rather than a historical one, meaning you can make scientific generalizations like in taxonomy (lumper problems are forever!)
Desire to study religion objectively without POV from particular religion of historian
This method is seen as distinct from the previous attempt at objectivity, namely, ‘pure historicism’, associated with Leopold von Ranke. Pegg says another characteristic tactic of the religious historical school was to figure out the origin of a particular belief was “finding the first person to think a thought or the first text to expound a belief.’
This is my own input but. You may be thinking “yeah, to find an origin of a belief you go to the first guy who said it” HOWEVER this is under the assumption that the origin of a given belief has a textual tradition, as opposed to an oral tradition. I get the sense Pegg is worried about lumpers again. It seems ‘logical’ to go back to the beginning of a belief in order to figure out the origin, but that is under the assumption that you have indeed found the beginning to a particular tradition, as opposed to a disparate belief/tradition that just so happens to resemble what you’re researching. It also means you’re assuming the religion/belief you’re studying is part of an intellectual history.
What’s next relevant; You’ve got this idea that Cathars are an eastern import. Grundmann argues that the Cathars shared some similarities with western apostolic groups when they initially entered Europe, but ultimately remained outsiders, even if their philosophy sometimes supported the ideas of 12th century heretics, even if it was sometimes shaped by Latin Christianity. According to Pegg this desire to find eastern influences within western religious trends is symptomatic of a particularly German form of Orientalism (Orientalistik) that is a hallmark of Religionsgeschichte, and he claims this Orientalism has been both ignored and carried over by “adherents of the paradigm” (meaning scholars who believe in Cathars as Christian dualists with eastern influences, the conventional narrative.)
Grundmann also says that Waldensianism was a lay Catholic reaction to Catharism, and that Waldensians were provoked more by Cathar heresiarchs than they were by concerns about the Catholic hierarchy. Pegg includes Peter Biller as an example of a contemporary scholar who shares this notion; “Peter Biller, for example, follows Grundmann in arguing that Catharism as an established eastern philosophy…must have existed before Waldensianism, otherwise the latter could not have dome into existence as a coherent western religious movement.” Pegg concludes this section, stating that for both Grundmann and any scholars who believe in the existence of the Cathar heresy, Catharism functions as a ‘world religion.’ Incidentally we’re going to be hearing from Peter Biller himself later in this book. I wonder if he will have any response to the religionsgeschichte allegations.
#next up is Pegg's thoughts on social history as applied to Cathars#and then we leave historiography and get into his analysis on the sources themselves which is exciting#and then John Arnold is on deck#cathargate
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More thoughts on anomaly Dagon and Ultras
Ultras are capable of bringign people back to life-it's kind of a Thing. Also, in at least one continuity, they have a non-interference clause unless absolutely necessary due to how strong they are-which could explain a lack of appearance in Abelraxasverse. (They're also probably trying to make sure certain villains don't get as far as they do, or are operating very far in the background.)
(I like to think this guy was actually just studying Earth and the Hollow Earth when they found Dagon dying from the MUTO parasire babied and panicked, trying to help him.
Perhaps Spacium (the element that Ultras use) mixes really oddly with the Hollow Earth's innate energy and Titan Biology, resulting in weird Soul Shenanigans. (It might be more interesting for Dagon's soul being brought back wholly to be a genuine accident resulting from the mixing of two similar-yet-very-different energies. The Spacium energy lingered in his bones long after he died-and when Kiryu was activated, it Resonated.)
(Regardless of how he came back, however, Dagon still deeply appreciates that someone was there with him in his final moments. And even though their initial attempts to help didn't work the way they probably expected, it measn that Dagon is able to know his son and his grandchildren.)
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I said I had thoughts earlier, and here they are.
Reminder that reincarnation is a part of the AbraxasVerse; Mothra constantly dies and is reborn, and Serizawa is reincarnated as Manda, only the difference is that Mothra retains her past life's memories while Manda (and everyone else) does not. When you die, your soul is brought in by an entity called the Mother Dark, who helps ease the soul into their current situation since they probably still cling to the memory of their material body, comforts them, and eventually these souls are "breathed" into a new material body to live a new life, having at some point forgotten the memories their past life (though some might linger as dreams). Let's say that the Mother Dark is the AbraxasVerse equivalent of Sophia in Gnosticism, who is responsible for why humans (and in this case Titans) have souls. (Bagan might be the Demiurge equivalent, like Deus in Xenogears.)
What the Ultra does for Dagon might be similar to what San did for Vivienne, albeit for different reasons, which is to say yank them out of the natural cycle before the Mother Dark can have them – which now gives me the funny mental image of the Mother Dark getting ready to greet Dagon only to see the Ultra futzing with his soul and She's like "yo, what the fuck?" She's not exactly pleased at this interruption in the process but might be willing to hear out the Ultra if only because he was there for Dagon. (She can't really do anything when Vivienne is being revived and transformed because, well, the Mother Dark doesn't exist in our physical space and Vivienne wasn't dead long enough for her soul to leave her body.)
So what I'm thinking, since the Ultras are apparently so powerful and can bring people back to life outside the reincarnation cycle (with an OK by the Mother Dark), is that maybe the Ultras are "emanations" like the Mother Dark; just as Sophia and her fellow Aeons are emanations of the Monad, also known as the Absolute, and source of the Pleroma and its divine light (Pleroma being sort of like Nirvana). This might, to me at least, explain why an AbraxasVerse Ultra would be able to do stuff like this.
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So I'm on my way to the finale of original Persona 5, and I have to ask:
Apparently Yaldabaoth and Satanael are figures in Gnosticism? Which seems to be an early offshoot of Christianity?
I'm looking at the Wikipedia page and I'm not understanding much. Anyone willing to give me a basic rundown?
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if you would be so kind, I'm doing a strange little survey. can you give me roughly one sentence opinions on each of the following things:
the holy trinity
ijtihad
the market
nightcore
swimming (as in, the sport)
singapore
the indie game dev scene
the orang pendek
the tv show "the x files"
gnosticism
fortran
4chan
recreational contraband
if you don't have strong opinions on any of them, feel free to hazard a guess but please don't skip any.
uhhh sure.
the result of an effort to impose univocality on disparate texts, and to understand how Jesus could invoke the authority and power of God in those texts, although one that was unnecessary--first century judaism already had a framework for that, the idea of a name-bearing agent, which was itself the result of a renegotiation of texts that had been amended to flatten the polytheistic divine hierarchy of ancient northwest semitic peoples into one that was more monotheistic in structure. the christian version seems strictly inferior: while you can construct a statement like "jesus is not the holy spirit, who is not god the father, but all three are god" in natural language, that doesn't mean it's not a contradiction. you can construct lots of nonsense statements as well-formed structures in natural language, without them being meaningful. the trinity is also not supported by any biblical texts. but christianity itself has a problem with trying to cast as the jewish messiah someone who clearly doesn't fit the bill; all in all i would say this particular philosophical incoherence is only one of many philosophical incoherences in traditional chalcedonian doctrine.
seems strictly better than taqlid if you have to pick one or the other, but based on my very, very limited knowledge of Islamic jurisprudence, as a standalone principle it does not seem very useful. if the assumptions you start from when performing any kind of reasoning are unsound, you will struggle to reach sound conclusions; this is as true of the law as anything else. it certainly isn't going to save you from the problem of being overly deferential to high-status authorities, and from skimming the Wikipedia article it looks like this is what the whole "closure of the gates" controversy is about--just like the principle of deference to earlier scholars of the law in Judaism, religious traditions that emphasize continuity with the past will tend to be bogged down by the fact that a lot of crappy conclusions made their way into the canon for political reasons, and also sometimes people in the past were actually just terrible.
contra the lassez-faire viewpoint, states create markets. they don't arise naturally. the state of nature for human systems of value exchange seem to be various kinds of gift economy with extremely limited scalability. proabably there will never be a coherent theory of value in market economies that doesn't account for the role states have in creating value by levying taxes in some form, whether in kind or as money or as corvee labor. markets are a useful tool to accomplish certain tasks, but they're certainly not optimal for all things, or intrinsically good or holy or w/e as some libertarians seem to think. a properly redistributive market economy, while not Real Socialism™, would be close enough that the handful of marxists fuming about it would be unable to get anyone to care.
never listened to it, but i support weird extremely online niche creative genres.
humans be liking water
a friend of mine worked in singapore for six months. apparently the equatorial belt is surprisingly overcast a lot of the time, which makes sense given how much it rains there, though in my head it's very sunny. also the sun sets super quickly. i hate hot, humid weather, so i suspect i wouldn't like living near the equator very much. also, i think it's funny how historically culturally and economically contiguous regions have these deep rifts created in them by colonialism. like, indonesia and malaysia could conceivably have become one country after independence from the dutch and british respectively, but the postcolonial elites of those countries certainly didn't want to compromise and share power with another group of postcolonial elites, so they ended up on very different trajectories; and i wonder if in 200 years we'll have a situation like austria and germany where actual distinct cultural and national identities have started to develop, or if eventually the cultural similarities will overwhelm the differences and promote closer cooperation. given the expansionist and authoritarian bent of indonesia's government in much of the post-independence period, it's hard to imagine, but indonesia + malaysia + singapore + philippines is a huge chunk of the world's population--indonesia alone has a population about that of the United States!--and i can't help but think strong regional collaboration, in such a historically important part of the world, could really create a ton of prosperity and give those countries outsized influence on the global stage.
has produced some real gems. like most fields of human creative endeavor, you get a lot of dross, but all the mechanical and narrative innovation in games these days seems to come from this quarter. hard to make a living in, though--the returns on independent creative enterprises are pretty low these days, regardless of sector.
had to google this. seems like it could pretty easily be an unknown or misidentified primate? also seems pretty mundane by cryptozoological standards. like if you told me there was an unknown primate living in the jungles of sumatra and borneo, i would go "yeah, sure, seems plausible."
absolute classic of 90s culture. i think there's some explication to be done of the different ways conspiracy culture and ideas were received in the 90s vs now, drawing on the X-Files, the original Deus Ex, transitional fossils like John Titor, and modern conspiracy theories like Q Anon and resurgent Flat Earthers. They were always right-wing and allied with christian nationalism, but i think that was only partly understood in the 90s; 9/11 was a major inflection point in that it gave the Bush years their most salient features and laid the groundwork for the politics of the 2010s onward. in some ways pre-9/11 conspiracy media anticipated those shifts; in others, it fundamentally misunderstood its source material. i think it's all very interesting.
it's hard to disentangle historical heresies from the bullshit opponents of those heresies made up about them, but what we call gnosticism is plainly a Christian movement and a strongly anti-Jewish one, reflecting one early version of a current of anti-Jewishness that is perennial within various forms of Christianity across the last two millennia. but it also has interesting resonances with mystical religious movements from far-flung parts of the world, because Humans Be Enjoying Mystery Cults, and which i think are an attempt to spackle over some of the holes in early christian soteriology.
i wish i knew fortran and cobol so i could say i knew some fortran and cobol, but let's be realistic, i will never seriously study either fortran or cobol. you can't make good RTS games with them.
a major cultural hinge of the 2000s internet, and anthropologically, socially, culturally, and politically compelling, despite or because of its anthropological, social, cultural, and political pathologies.
i don't know what this means. drugs? pirated dvds? tap shoes in that town from footloose where dancing is illegal? strongly "pro" in all cases, though.
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Another unsolicited esoterica reccomendation- don’t skimp on Hermetism and alchemy, the self-divinizing refinement and mystic ascents of both I think provide a much better model for self-help culture and indeed the self modification one finds in transgender ideology both left and (somewhat more contentiously) the bodybuilding “traditionalist” right than the (in many respects) much more conventionally religious sentiment one finds in antique Gnostic texts.
Thank you! An important distinction. And I don't find your comparison contentious. In circumstances of universal "online," trans becomes a universal condition, though this development also abolishes "trans" as particular, rooted circumstance and destiny. Witness the latest dustup about the apparently cis femboy fetish model, possibly AI enhanced. "She's not authentically trans," authentically trans models complain. They are startled to find the same digital disarticulation of essential or biological femininity they used to denaturalize "female," such that it became relativized into "cis female," redounding upon themselves and disarticulating "trans female" along just the same lines. Whether we're trad, TERF, or trans activist, the logic of the digital comes for us all; on the internet, no one knows you're a dog; and all that is solid melts into air.
Anyway, I have Jung's two books on alchemy (Psychology and Alchemy and Psychology of the Transference) and am likely to start there if that's not too basic, or even if it is. I have no real intention of becoming an expert; I'm just in search of aesthetic coloration for my narratives and a few tricks to hack the universe on my own behalf. (Insert warning about Faust, etc., here. I know, I know!)
(Shop talk: I changed my Tumblr theme because the old one wasn't working with the new Tumblr editor. The old one also didn't differentiate between the text of questions and the text of answers, hence my prior practice of screenshotting questions instead of replying directly. I don't like the new Tumblr editor, by the way; with the success of Substack, who told the people in charge that we wanted the basically unusable new Wordpress interface instead?)
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That's acceptable. For reference, a lot of nasty, vaguely leftoid people have basically Gnostic ideas- they believe the world is fundamentally bad and and flawed that there is an evil force controlling everything. In their case it is White Supremacy or the patriarchy or whatever. That's why I'm fascinated by ideas that clearly categorize as Gnostic appearing organically in the fiction produced by woke left authors like Landy- Darquesse as an evil world-maker/demiurge is a clear example of this.
The way I understand the far-left is that they have Rousseauian views and not Gnostic ones. As in, all people are good but society corrupted them and forced them to do bad stuff to survive. Apparently, that's where their soft stance and crime comes from.
Needless to say, I disagree with this. People fucking suck and it's getting worse every day.
Also, for as much as I hate Landy, I don't think he is woke, he is just playing along bc he is completely spineless. Wait until there is too much backlash against woke stuff and watch how he shifts with the wind. The only things that's actually woke about him are his pedo vibes.
And by the way you describe Gnostic ideas that wouldn't apply to Darquesse bc she doesn't influence. She either destroys or she recreates. Everything she does is very physical and it does not affect the minds of people. To me to influence someone is to move someone's mind and heart.
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Me: I'm done protecting Shealyn from herself
Also me, watching her summon Michael to destroy the serpent we've been telling her to eject from her life: [sigh, dons admin colored cap, and fucking disappears with best wishes]
I apparently have some work to go fucking do with a god and archangel. thanks shea, so much for a chill night.
Something about disturbing the peace, look into my eyes while I negotiate with him why I shouldn't kill you for your pagan altar without gnostic integration. Because you have fucked literally everyone around you over.
no seriously shea, what isn't clicking, eternal hell/deletion are the stakes you are playing in with people while you "explore" your path, yet charge for it, yet pretend to lead.
Shealyn Rachel fucking Bonds. I've walked this path for 25 years and only recently started charging for services under a mirror or my weed grower consultation fee. You hopped off for a few years and started charging while mutually admitting you had no actual earthly idea how to ride the bike to begin with.
Yougot about 20 years before you start charging, but you can start walking. Like not even in a fuck you start walking bitch manner (but also that). But. You have so much you don't even know you don't know yet. When I say "Theurgy" your brain doesn't even register the meaning of the ping. This is a problem for any supposed guide of paths. You have to know the paths to guide on them. It truly is that simple. If one will not ready, they will not learn, unless they're in convenient hermes upload mode--rare even to his greater high degree magi, and very clearly not what has been happening here.
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I’m curious about your thoughts on Gnosticism: would you say it’s inherently antisemitic — insofar as it depicts the Old Testament God / YHWH as a false God or a trickster God and lauds Jesus as the son of the true deity / the Monad?
And are you aware of any school of Gnosticism that also consider Jesus to be a false God / the son of the false God?
The problem with Gnosticism is that it is a blanket term for many very different things, with many texts that are not actually that similar at all being labeled as Gnostic, to the point of some scholars today rejecting the category (created by orthodox Christian outsiders) altogether. Also, the concept of gnosis is far from limited to Gnosticism.
I certainly do think the trope you describe is antisemitic, although I am not the competent person to ask for a more detailed analysis. And no, I am not aware of any school in which Jesus is an imposter. Maybe some form of Gnostic Luciferianism would fit the criteria (though some apparently syncretize Lucifer with him which I'm not a fan of), but it's terribly hard to find any sources about that branch of Gnosticism so I have no idea.
I'm a bit tired of questions about Gnosticism for now. I'm neither a Gnostic nor someone that well-versed in the subject. I just like to research it and take some inspiration, though I have some serious issues with it as well. It's okay that you've asked, but everyone, please don't ask me more about it. I'm open for asks in general, but don't feel confident in that area and thus have no spoons.
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