Hotel Villa Cipressi, Varenna, Lake Como

A crescent moon above the Earth. Poczatki geografii. 1896.

Internet Archive

Soaring through Aeronimbus with elegant floral hot air balloons ~ Euphemia Stokefield

It was beautiful to be heartbroken, it was as pleasurable as a thing could be. But pointless.

Sandra Newman, The Heavens

Image: Live Oak Friends meetinghouse, Houston, Texas 

Text: Psalm 19:1-4

The Evermore Grimoire: Heaven

Heaven or the heavens, is a common religious cosmological or transcendent supernatural place where beings such as deities, angels, souls, saints, or venerated ancestors are said to originate, be enthroned, or reside. According to the beliefs of some religions, heavenly beings can descend to Earth or incarnate and earthly beings can ascend to Heaven in the afterlife or, in exceptional cases, enter Heaven alive. It is often described as a "highest place" the holiest place and even as a Paradise. In contrast to Hell or the Underworld or the "low places" and universally or conditionally accessible by earthly beings according to various standards of divinity, goodness, piety, faith, or other virtues or right beliefs or simply divine will. 

artwork by: Zac Kinkaide

We saw our last set of Valentine's Day cards circling around again so we made new ones!! (no spoilers)

Hope you enjoy these! HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY, OUTCASTS!!! 💘

S1 VDay Cards

Milky Way over Australia by Babak Tafreshi

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Thank you Viktor Frankl.

He spoke of “a will to meaning in contrast to the pleasure principle (or as we could also term it, the will to pleasure) on which Freudian psychoanalysis is centered, as well as in contrast to the will to power.” Many were murdered outright, but in the harsh conditions of the camp those who lost their sense of purpose more readily died; those who had something to live for struggled and sometimes survived. Frankl concluded that it is “a dangerous misconception of mental hygiene to assume that what man needs in the first place is equlibrium or, as it is called in biology, ‘homeostasis,’ i.e., a tensionless state. What man actually needs is not a tensionless state but rather the striving and struggling for a worthwhile goal, a freely chosen task. What he needs is not the discharge of tension at any cost but the call of a potential meaning waiting to be fulfilled by him. . . . If architects want to strengthen a decrepit arch, they increase the load which is laid upon it, for thereby the parts are joined more firmly together.”

(Man’s Search For Meaning)

love untold by hyunjin full lyrics translation by hyunholoversclub

Psalm 97:6 (NKJV) - The heavens declare His righteousness, And all the peoples see His glory.

”Be not afraid.”

“He watched out at the stars in a kind of trance. Soon it would be the summer again, when he could sleep on the battlements and watch these stars hovering as close as moths above his face—and, in the Milky Way at least, with something of the mothy pollen. They would be at the same time so distant that unutterable thoughts of space and eternity would baffle themselves in his sighing breast, and he would imagine to himself how he was falling upward higher and higher among them, never reaching, never ending, leaving and losing everything in the tranquil speed of space.”

— The Once and Future King

My Gal said this picture of the Univers (i.e. Space) reminds her of me...

Aeronimbus consists of white and pink clouds, which are held together and supported by a network of roots and branches of the Flying Tree. The smaller and larger cloud platforms are also connected by rose vines and roots. From this dreamy network of clouds, roots, leaves and rose tendrils, the houses of the inhabitants are formed and also some hidden and secret places. ~ Euphemia Stokefield

She couldn't know anyone, but someone still needed her. She couldn't be anyone, but she could still love.

Sandra Newman, The Heavens

The Volume 9 trailer is absolutely gorgeous. Ever After seems to be a combination of Wonderland and Narnia.

However, I don’t really want to talk about those inspirations here. What I do want to unpack is the potential meaning of the tree at the center of Ever After.

World Trees are a relatively prominent symbol in myth, and it’s likely, as a fan of animated stories like RWBY, that you’ve seen a few. Some of my favorite examples are the Spirit Vines from Avatar: The Last Airbender & Legend of Korra, and the World Tree leading to Elysium from Xenoblade Chronicles 2.

World trees in myth typically represent the heavens, a place beyond the mortal plane. In these two examples, the heavens are the Spirit World and Elysium.

What is peculiar about the one in RWBY’s Ever After is that Ever After is a world existing outside of Remnant, the mortal realm. Thus, it is likely that this world tree leads either to Remnant, or a greater spiritual place within the world of RWBY. Let’s dive into that first theory though before I get too ahead of myself.

If the world tree leads to Remnant, then the journey of the season will be our heroes attempting to climb it to reach the heavens. Climbing the tree may not necessarily be a physical action, as we see in the trailer that Ruby will go through a spiritual journey of self-reflection. A voice in the trailer even asks Ruby “what if you could leave Ruby Rose behind?” tempting Ruby to cast aside her destiny to be the simple huntress she wanted to be back in Volume 1. Those that have seen Disney+’s Willow series are already familiar with this story beat as Elora faced the same temptation in the season 1 finale.

The second theory for where this world tree leads is further down the rabbit hole. If the world tree leads to a deeper, more fantastical and otherworldly place, what could it be? We’ve seen the realms surrounding the Relics, clearly meant to be places detached from Remnant. However, those realms were emulations of where the Two Brothers resided before they left Remnant.

What if the World Tree leads to where the Two Brothers reside, waiting for the Relics to be gathered so they can be called back to Remnant? It’s a bit of a leap, but based on the symbolism utilized here, it’s not impossible.