The Grave Robber's Burial

If you kill someone, they execute you. Simple. If you desecrate a grave, they banish you. I never understood that. Should it not be a greater crime to jeopardize someone's immortal soul than to end their life on earth? It should be if you truly believe in the afterlife.

I found myself under several feet of stone. The blizzard outside was silent except when the wind blew at exactly the right angle to shoot a jet of ice and snow through a crack in the ceiling. The inside of the black pyramid was completely hollow except for the casket at the center. At least, that's what we thought based on the echo. We only had one lantern left.

Under the occasional wailing wind was the clank clank clank of my partner's pickax. Where the casket had been out in the open the last time I was here, it was now buried under a dome of clear ice. The pyramid had flooded at some point since then. That was probably my fault too.

The cold kills you by stripping away your will to live. It makes you forget all the reasons you have to keep going. It makes living hard and dying as easy as falling asleep. My partner, Bobby wasn't going to die easy, and he wasn't going to forget what it was he had to live for. He wouldn't let me forget. He was a good kid. Ambitious, angry, loyal to a fault. He stayed loyal no matter what.

Me, I hadn't had anything to live for in a long time. After I was banished, I came to this wild country where everything is different. The people here worship the evil sun and burn their dead. According to my people, none of them will ever see Paradise. Still, there are enough older graves to make my living. These lands were not always ruled by the sun god. I wandered, and plundered, and drank, and went through companions over the years. As an old man, I became tired and yearned for the homeland I could never return to.

I think that's what brought me to the Oracle. I climbed the steep steps of the cave, torchlight animating the shadows on the walls. She told me one thing: you will die on the twentieth day of April. The priestesses told me the message likely meant more than I knew, but they were wrong. I understood perfectly. I was going to die, and there would be no one to bury me. After that, I traveled from village to village, begging anyone who would listen to bury me according to the customs of my people. The answer was always the same.

You are a stranger. We will not waste the labor of ten men for your foreigner's superstition.

My people believe in the journey that souls undertake upon their death. We bury our dead with their belongings and we pray for their safe passage into Paradise. When you die, you are no longer protected from the wrath of the evil sun. That's why we put our dead under a foot of stone. So he cannot see them.

It was in Sunset, a town that was half in the sun's country, and half in my native land. On the sun's side is where I met Bobby. I noticed him at a laundromat. He had the dark curly hair of my countrymen and it was cut short - a sign of disgrace. I'd cut my hair when they banished me. Bobby hadn't broken the law though, he'd just broken a promise.

On cold nights by the campfire, it was difficult to avoid getting to know each other. I knew I only had a few weeks to live, so even if I was betraying him, I wanted to save him as much grief as I could. He would play his harmonica and tell me stories of our homeland. His ex-wife was also a musician, and it was obvious that he was deeply in love with her.

The day we caught sight of the pyramid is the day I told him the truth. I reassured him that the tomb was so old that we weren't really doing anything wrong. The soul inside was long gone by now - although this I knew for a fact because I'd plundered it myself a decade ago. I worried that night, but when I woke to find him tending the horses in the morning light, I knew he would come. We drank our coffee and hiked up through the wind and the cold.

This time, the black pyramid was covered in ice. The first few days were clear with the evil sun's light glinting off the white snow and falling into the black stone. On the 19th, a blizzard covered the sky, and that night is when we finally broke in. The sun would have risen on my death-day, but I'd never see it again.

Clank clank clank PLUNK.

Bobby's pickax made contact with the obsidian cover on the casket. I'd gone to sit down with the pretense of taking a quick break, but I knew what was in store for me on this day and what would happen if I stopped moving. My feet and legs ached, but slowly the sensation faded. A warm numbness overtook my whole body little by little. I felt like I was being tucked into bed, with sleep just a blink away.

"Hey boss get over here!" Bobby looked over at me and his face dropped. "Hey boss?" The young man carefully walked over the ice to my side. He took his blanket out of his pack and wrapped it around me. He tried getting me up. I'm a small old man and he is young and strong, but my legs were already far gone. "Hey man you don't want me to get all the treasure for myself do you?"

His concerned words faded into the blackness of the tomb. My tomb. My consciousness slipped away. I no longer felt cold. I felt nothing at all. Even on death's door I couldn't bring myself to believe in the afterlife. I just wanted someone to bury me.

have you done the sulawesi moon moth? thanks for posting so many moths they bring me serotonin i love moths so much

Moth Of The Day #240

Sulawesi Moon Moth

Actias isis

From the saturniidae family. They have a wingspan of 120-150 mm. They can only be found in the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. In the picture, you can see a female (right) and a male (left).

Image sources: [1] [2] [3]

If your protest includes chants like “long live intifada” or “intifada revolution” - just stop. You are proving our point.

You might as well just come out and say “we’re okay with violence and death as long as it only affects Jews”.

Today, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we remember the 6 million Jews, and millions more, who lost their lives at the hands of the Nazis.

As antisemitism rears its ugly head once again, and especially as we grapple with the atrocities of the October 7th Hamas massacre, we must speak out and send a clear message against hatred and terror to ensure that Never Again means something.

In the face of darkness, be the light.

End of Days - Isis Sangaré

Kemetic Influences on Fire Emblem Three Houses (Part 1)

I know I have made a more unstructured post regarding this before; however, I am certain in my assessments that the influence of Ancient Egyptian mythology had on 3H is vast and more varied then I, personally, have seen people discuss. Yes, we know of the etymology behind Sothis and Seiros' names, but I believe these connections go much deeper than the surface level. This will be structured with me discussing what I am most sure in to what is more interpolation on my part. This part about Sothis is so long that it needs to be it's own post entirely. Sothis is based on Hellenistic/Roman period worship of Lady Isis

As we know, Sothis' name can be traced to one of the names of Sirius, specifically the Hellenized name of Sopdet the goddess of said star. However, this is surface level. Sopdet was often syncretized with Isis during the Hellenistic period and in Lady Isis, I believe, there are more clear allusions to Sothis and how she acts as a deity within 3H's world. Lady Isis is an Egyptian deity who was worshiped across the Mediterranean during the Hellenistic and Roman period. Sothis in her mythology, actions, and how she is depicted in-game shares remarkable similarities to Isis. The images and sources I will be using as a reference come from Dr. Andrew M. Henry's (ReligionForBreakfast) video on the topic and FEDatamine for everything regarding 3H.

Sothis and Isis are both "great mother" deities who act as supreme goddesses to their followers.

Even before coming to supreme status in the Mediterranean, Isis was an incredibly important goddess within Egypt. She was the bringer of magic, a guardian of women, a compassionate goddess who wished to relieve all human suffering, and much much more. All of these traits are extremely close if not direct parallels to Sothis. We know that magic within Fodlan is directly connected to Sothis through the visual of all the magic circles (save for Agarthan dark magic) and it can be postulated that, like Isis, Sothis magic was beyond the capabilities of other humans or other deities. Faith magic in particular is directly correlated with the ability to heal and protect, which is one of the main domains of Lady Isis in antiquity and modern day. She was the healer of the sick and injured, so much so that she often traveled in human form so that she could aid those who called out to her. I don't believe it is a coincidence that healing magic was reskinned as faith in this game given that context. And the connections continue beyond that. Consider this text from a temple to Isis in Cyrene:

During the Hellenistic period, Isis' power and prominence grew to wear she became a supreme goddess within these polytheistic societies. She was believed to be the ruler of time and fate itself, and, as stated here, one of the creators of the cosmos who first set time to course. She was often depicted holding a steering rudder or with the planet beneath her very feet as the goddess through which all fate flows.

Next, take this quote from Lucius Apuleius: The Golden Ass a text from a satirist, but nonetheless believed to hold elements of truth to Isis' worship during the Roman period.

Once again, we see the language that would describe a supreme, cosmic deity. Compare to similar wording in The Book of Seiros Part 1: "The goddess is all things. She is heaven above and the land below. She is eternity incarnate. She is the present, the past, and the future. Her eyes see all. Her ears hear all. Her hands receive all."

Due to this language, it is believed by some religious scholars, and presented within the video, that within the mysteries of Isis there was an element of henotheism at play. A philosophy within religious practices where one god is worshiped a supreme deity whilst not denying the existence of other gods, and such a system of worship is what I believe to be happening within Fodlan's religious context. Other gods are known to exist, they are spoken of in the Book of Seiros; however, Sothis is supreme goddess of Fodlan.

Now, I ask, what is Sothis' primary characteristics within the Church of Seiros and as depicted in game? She is the supreme Goddess of Fodlan, who's depicted with having control over time and fate itself (literally divine pulse), spoken of as a savior not only in the past but also through the actions of her vessel Byleth, who created all life (or at least the Nabateans) as "The Beginning", and the arbiter of souls as an explicitly afterlife related deity.

All of these traits are direct parallels to Lady Isis, and I am not even finished listing all the similarities. First take this quote from The Book of Seiros Part 2: "In the beginning, amid the great cloudless ocean, Fódlan came to be. At the end of a long journey, the goddess glimpsed that land and there alighted. Upon that sacred ground, she breathed life into the world and created all of the creatures upon it.

By the goddess's hand, plants took root, birds took to the sky, and animals roamed the land. Last of all, she created humanity." Within multiple Egyptian creation myths one of the prevalent and constant features is the primordial ocean of Nun. It was place of nothingness and chaos all at once, a "cloudless ocean" if you will. And from that ocean came the first land, the benben, and from there any number of gods created all life. This includes Isis, who within the inscriptions at Philae, is described to have created all life and the cosmos itself (Žabkar 1988, pp. 134.): "Indeed, she is the Lady of Heaven, Earth, and the Nether World, having brought them into existence through what her heart conceived and her hands created..." Both of them are related to the afterlife and are explicitly called out as deities of fate. Once again from the story of Apuleius:

Lady Isis' connection to the afterlife as she who guides the soul to it's fate goes back even further in Egyptian texts and she has been a funerary deity all the way back in Old Kingdom Pyramid Texts. Take that in context with Rhea's line of Sothis being the "arbiter of souls" and much of her cosmology in-universe revolving around the afterlife you have another link between them. Isis was said to be able to prolong a person's life if they were to follow her mysteries as she knew the lifespan of all people and could manipulate it with her magics. She also typically interacted with her followers via dreams. This is something Sothis is shown to do constantly with her appearing in Byleth's near death moments, within their dreams (at the beginning of the game and later during her speech regarding Fodlan's plight. And can I say, Sothis being aware of the blood being split and awakening Byleth to explicitly put it to an end is a very much like a savior goddess). Then, in Rhea's backstory, she said that she heard Sothis' voice within the Holy Tomb (or within Enbarr) and that is what lead her to take up the name of Seiros and begin to fight against Nemesis. Sothis inspiring the creation of the Adrestian Empire through Seiros, and Byleth's place to chose the fate of Fodlan, directly correlates to Lady Isis' role as a goddess of kingship. Her protection was explicitly called upon both during the defense of Egypt and during campaigns of military conquest, and that she alone was comparable of armies of soldiers. Isis and Sothis both are also transparently related to nature. They are callers of the rains (cited in the Philae Hymns for elsewhere and in-game for Sothis) and related to bounties of the harvest. In this way, Sothis may also cross into the sphere of Osiris who was more explicitly a fertility god and the ruler of the dead/judge of souls. An interesting similarity can be called to the myth of Osiris' death and dismemberment at the betrayal of his brother Set, Isis' incomplete resurrection of her husband, and Horus' becoming king of Egypt after contending with his uncle where he avenged his father; with how Sothis herself was killed and dismembered for her power, then Seiros' creation of Adrestia (where he also chose the first king) to avenge her mother, and her inability to resurrect her due to Sothis' body being scattered and incomplete (at least, until her ib/Creststone was placed within the intact khet of Byleth). But that is an aside for now. I want to finish this off with a look of the physical similarities between depictions of Isis and Sothis. Once again from Apuleius:

"Firstly her long thick hair in tapering ringlets was loosely spread over her divine neck and shoulders, and her head was crowned with a complex garland of interwoven flowers of every kind. At the centre, over her brow, a flat disc like a mirror or rather a moon-symbol shone with brilliant light. Coiled vipers reared from the right and left of her coronet which was bristling with erect ears of corn. Her multi-coloured robe was of finest linen, gleaming here pure white, here a saffron yellow, there flaming rose-red, with a woven border flowing with flowers and fruit, and what dazzled me most of all was her jet-black cloak with its full sheen, wrapped gleaming about her, slung from the left shoulder, knotted at the breast, and sweeping over her right hip. It hung in sweetly undulating complex folds down to a tasselled fringe, and along its borders and over its surface fell a scatter of glittering stars, round a full moon at the centre breathing fiery rays. And she bore a host of emblems." To me, there are some similarities between this and the depiction of Sothis plus how Rhea dressed and Byleth's Immaculate One outfit. The floral motifs of lotus flowers, the crisp white of Sothis' mural appearance and those of Rhea and Byleth, the crowns of flowers and star motfis, the way Isis bears many emblems around her, much of it bears some similarities to Sothis. But this is not the only depiction of Isis, let me show you some visual representations. Let us compare this mural of Sothis to some depictions of Isis:

Here are two of Isis from Pompeii with one being a mural and another a famous reconstruction of a statue:

Again, while not 1:1 there are some visual similarities in design. The white linen of her dress and the cut of it are fair similar, as are the wings that are associated with nearly every depiction of Isis. To show and example from Egypt:

The fact that Sothis is shown with feathered wings in particular feels important given her other similarities with Lady Isis. Plus the throne hieroglyph that represents Isis and often often seen above her head looks exactly like the throne of Sothis as seen in the Holy Tomb. Lady Isis is also known as the "Lady of the Throne" just like how Sothis is called the "Girl on the Throne." The amount of connections between them does not feel like coincidence to me. If you want to take the Romance into account as well, both Sothis and Isis are associated with floods in that case, especially with floods that are said to be caused by their sorrow. Sothis is a savoir deity who protected and saved from Fodlan from the destruction of the Agarthans; she is said to have caused a flood in the one, possible, Agarthan account we have. Her name is Sothis, transcribed from Sopdet, lady of the blue star, who was syncretized with Isis who also became manifest within Sirius. I think I will make one more note: the Rite of the Goddess' Rebirth is transparently related to Wep Ronpet, the cosmological new year in Kemetic religious practice. Both take palace in late July (or into early August for some dates of Wep Ronpet), both are related to the rising of a particular star (the Blue Sea Star is based on Sirius, this fact), both are related to the rebirth of the world and the gods, and both are a day of celebration with family and friends. As one final aside: in Kemetic practice, worship of the gods has always been an intimate and close affair, both in antiquity and in modern practice. Gods are active and immediate presences within the world, and they are presently felt within physical parts of the world. Ra, Aten, and other solar deities are all the sun, Nut the sky, Shu the air and wind. Various "truths" about natural phenomenon could all be true at once and created a multi-facted view of existence. So Sothis having the Blue Sea Star as her "home" are acting as her spiritual double entirely makes sense within this framework. Sothis' laws are also fairly similar to the Laws and philosophical underpinnings of Ma'at; however, delving into that is outside the scope of this post. So I will need to leave things off here.

who the Fuck still supports Hamas?!

yesterday they taunted everyone with showing three of the hostages and letting the world know that today they would tell everyone about their fate. Today they informed that two of those three are dead, they killed them.

Can you even imagine what kind of torture that had been not only for those three, but for their families and friends? To show you someone you love, someone you pray to return to you, only to tell you that in 24 hours you will know if they killed them or not? How it is to find out that they are gone forever? How could you believe that any good person could do that to another person? How could it be okay for a "freedom fighter" to do that?

Or are you going with the "it's not true, it is israeli propaganda" shit again like you did with the hostages? Only to not say anything when it is proven - trough exchanging the hostages for actual criminals - that they in fact did have the hostages the whole time?! How can you believe every shit lie they tell, but when the same people over the same channels inform you over their sensless hate and horrific brutal actions you suddenly claim it to be a lie?!

How can you still defend Hamas after all these things? After you were proven again and again that they care about no ones freedom, that they are not just and over all not good?! How can you still claim to be for human rights? Against discrimination and hate and violence?! How dare you still claim that you are anything but a raging antisemite?!

You yell "shame on you" at family members of the hostages and random jews you see on the street. But they are not the ones that should be ashamed. You are.

Moshe Ridler 💔💔💔

Can you imagine surviving the Holocaust and coming to Israel your ( ancestral homeland) just to be murdered by the" new Nazis " Hamas !!

It disgusts me .

Hamas are nothing but cowards who preyed on children, the elderly ,women and innocent men .

May Moshe's memory be a blessing 🕯️

Please pray for his family 🙏

Oct 7th will NEVER be forgotten!

Happy international women’s day!

This is your daily reminder that 19 women are still held hostage by Hamas, where they are raped and tortured.

Bring them home 💛

H.-M. De Campigny - L'Occultisme pour tous - Garnier - 1938 (cover art by André Stefan)

229 days has gone past and still no word on these 5 Israeli women being held hostage and tortured 🤬. Where is the international outrage? What if She was your daughter or sister? And what of all the other hostages as well?

DRAGONSONG: draft 2 update: 06/01

previous word count: 0

current word count: 8,383

notes: the draft is officially begun and i made a lot of progress! i expect this will get weirder as i divert more and more from draft 1, but hey, we like an easy start. (and there were definitely things that changed!)

[edit: if you thought this word count said 6598 earlier... i got inspired and did more writing hehe]

snippet:

Every movement of her armour echoed off the stone. Isi hoped the dragon would not be alerted to her presence too soon… but then again, it had likely already been disturbed by the quake. And taking her armour off would be an even worse idea. That thought was only further validated when the tunnel opened out into a larger cave, and they caught their first glimpse of the dragon. A small crack in the stone high above them offered just enough light to see the creature. Pale pink, significantly larger than any creature Isi had ever seen… and asleep, it seemed, curled up in a nest of sorts against the far wall. Its scaly sides rose and fell, slowly but rhythmically. Isi paused; the dragon seemed to be no threat right at that moment, so she could take her time. A sweet smell lingered in the cave. The dragon’s nest seemed to be the source: plants and flowers of all colours and sorts stuck out of it, flattened under the dragon’s weight. “It’s beautiful,” breathed Robin behind her. Isi took a deep, slow breath. “It is.” Truly, she had never seen anything like it. And she had orders to kill it.

TAGLIST

@isherwoodj @metanoiamorii @lilmissravingwriter @weekofwednesdays @the-unwrittenwriter @talesofsorrowandofruin @little-boats-on-a-lake @teriwrites @magicalwriting @magic-is-something-we-create @writingbyjillian @waysofink @perditism @thehellinsideyourhead @calicowrites @vellichor-virgo @google-plexed @therecouldbecolorsandlove @the-orangeauthor @ellatholmes @happyorogeny @ladywithalamp @ashen-crest @authortango @strangerays @moononherwings @nikkywrites @ambersky0319 @ambsthom @talesfromgringolandia @wickerring @wizardfromthesea @diphthongsfordays @e-lisard @enchanted-lightning-aes @emscribblings @teardropsandtherain @lowslore @fablewritten @copper-dragon-in-disguise @dirtybarkshark

'Goddess Of 10,000 Names' by Jimmy Manton.

Card art from the 'Isis Oracle' card set by Alana Fairchild, published in 2013 by Blue Angel Publishing.

Dua Aset, Great of Magic,

She who raised kings on the throne of Egypt.

I sing praises to you this day, oh Jewel of the Nile,

And give offerings to you in honor of all you do.

Blessed Aset, Mother of my Ka,

My arms are raised to you in gratitude

As I glorify your name forever.

Dua Aset!

Dua Aset!

Dua Aset!

somebody with less social anxiety than me needs to start singing Our Doors Are Open (black friday) when the doors open at its starkid innit. please. ill love you forever

2 years ago today I had one of my biggest hyperfixation phases ever