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theblissfulstars · 14 days

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The Hoodoo That You Do

Hoodoo first and foremost is a closed practice.

Within a western audience, the concept of a closed practice can be rather challenging for many, as it runs entirely contrary to the notions we are brought up believing surrounding religion in the West.

Socio-culturally, religion in the West has evolved under the mantle of Christendom. This evangelizing religion characterized by its soteriology(savior ideology) , ease of access, and proselytizing habits is open to all, radically so. All you need is to accept Christ as your personal Lord and Savior, and live righteously according to the Bible to secure eternal salvation. In many respects, Christianity uniquely conquers the mystery religions of old, characterized by their distinctive intimacy with the divine, secrecy and ritual, and subverts it, by making it universally open to all and actively telling you about it.

This line of thinking regarding "closed practices" can also be difficult with many western minds that have had extensive influence from movements such as the “New Age” movement, which seeks to bring together unrelated material spiritual identities under one umbrella.

Many people in the “New Age” movement have been largely influenced by the writings of the Theosophical society, which were some of the first writings on Dharmic religions available to a broad audience in accessible languages in western countries. This means that many of these individuals ideologically do not believe in the idea of culture since they eschew the cover of self, many believe we reincarnate across familial lines, species and even galaxies, fall prey to solipsism and claim that they themselves are the only real thing that exists, therefore everything is open to them, or purport an intrinsic universal connection through the Jungian collective consciousness that makes all things open to them. Having a unique gnosis dependent on your religious affiliation is normal and expected, using it to harm others is not.

Similarly, Christianity undermines the concept of ethnic religions and cultural religions which are predicated upon being born into them, or having immediate access into certain respective belief systems for validity in practicing them. Finding Divinity in the Christian tradition has nothing to do with where you were born, who you are or how you were brought up, but rather, is entirely up to ideology, practice, and a consistent theme of universalism.

However, as stated prior, due to ethnic and cultural religions being experiential, they are much more tied to a way of life, being, and a contextual identity in order to operate within the cosmological framework. This can be ancestral; do you descend from the founders of the tradition, are you connected by blood in some significant way in recent history? Land-based, i.e venerating a particular river, mountain, cave etc. And lastly, communal, do you speak the liturgical language of the religion, do you eat the same foods, do you understand the offerings? Many ADRs fall into the aforementioned pattern above. Many Hougans and Manbos will tell you that there are Lwa(Intercessory divinities in Vodou/Voodoo) that can only be summoned on Ayiti, making it a uniquely land based practice, and while in Santería, Boromú, an Orisha associated with the desert,and dryness, all but disappeared in lush and tropical Cuba. Most, if not all religions do start as ethno-religions, and many of them still have vestiges of these ideas present within them, and despite the open and universal evangelism of Christianity, even its spiritual practices fall into some of the land specific beliefs and functions mentioned previously.

It is in this contextualization of land, self and identity, that we begin to understand Hoodoo as not merely a “folk magic” practice, but a Magico-Religious tradition uniquely conjoined with the cosmological spiritual experience of Soulaani people in the United States. Hoodoo, like many American ADRs, is plantation religion, and as with the mentioned ADRs above, Vodou and Santería respectively,is syncretist in nature and a highly Africanized interpretation of the Christian faith which was violently enforced upon the enslaved.

Hoodoo historically is a belief system that was foundationally built as a form of resistance to European oppression, violence and abuse. With an emphasis on ancestor veneration, figures such as Nat Turner, Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass are heralded as elevated community ancestors, whilst figures such as High John The Conqueror, a mythic African king who could outfox any Slaver or false master, is deigned a powerful, worthy, and venerable Spirit.

The cosmology of Hoodoo, while being deeply Christian, is Animistic in nature and boasts a large host of Land and Place spirits with whole identities and person-hoods. Some of these spirits are “Elevated Ancestors” similar to the saints of Orthodox and Catholic traditions, while some of them are entirely natural in origin such as Simbii or Samunga.

Hoodoo, similarly to the American south from which it originates, exists equally in a Protestant and Catholic context, and also incorporates Native American wisdom and land knowledge into its Theological foundation because of Indigenous admixtures in Black populations, and vice versa, as can be seen by the Florida Seminole tribe with it's high afro-indigenous population to this day and many more.

With its context, it is no wonder that people feel that Hoodoo is an open practice, by its very origin, it is an act of black labor, meaning, it's meant to be exploited. All black labor, be it intellectual, physical, emotional or in this case, spiritual, is an open and free resource that can be cheerfully parasitized from by a broader audience, without acknowledging its history, origins or foundations. This unfortunate reality extends even beyond the Black American experience and universally unites the Black diaspora in imperialist or colonial states worldwide. When researching the origins of certain foods, dances, customs and ideas, it will be difficult to find the genuine full hearted acknowledgement of the enslaved and their contribution to broader knowledge and culture, this is the case in Latin America as well in both material and spiritual culture.

The colonial state chooses what is “Everyones” or rather, “American” and what is “Black” at any given time, and can choose to revoke and review these designations at will. A particularly clear example is Jazz music.

What once started as the herald of reefer madness, debaucherous devil music and depravity, has become the backdrop of urban luxury, sophistication and wealth. This is of course after the domestication of jazz at the hands of predominantly white musicians, who made it more palatable to the broader audience and it's popularization among the rich and famous.

Another example is soul food. What many consider to be “southern cuisine” is uniquely Soulaani in origin, however, due to the overall positive reception, accessibility and good reputation of soul food it became subsumed into the greater American identity not as a black invention, but an American one.

Similarly, Hoodoo received much of the same treatment in the late 80s- 90s. Instead of the lowbrow superstitions of slaves, Hoodoo was rebranded as a distinctly American “hodgepodge” practice, meant to appeal to aesthetics surrounding pastoralism,the rustic rough and ready, and a peculiar edginess, ethnic enough to bite but close enough to home not to leave a scar, after all, Hoodoo was never African according to Ross, and Hoodoo “Authorities” such as Yronwood “The earliest usage of the word “hoodoo” is connected with Irish and Scottish sailors, not African slaves, and may be a phonetic pronunciation of the Gaelic Uath Dubh (pronounced hooh dooh) which means evil entity or spiky ghost. In the mid 19th century, cursed, abandoned “ghost ships'' were called hoodoo ships or were said to have been hoodooed.”(2021,Ross).

The ability for the colonial machine of the U.S to change and claim things from being one thing, and subsume it into a greater American identity without any of its former history, or identity, is one of the things that makes colonial nations so distinctly villainous in the continued exploitation of marginalized identities. Such as Britain's National dish being Chicken Tikka Masala without even acknowledging the incredibly dark history of the East India Company and its dark impact on the whole of the Indian subcontinent. This consumption of identity is the reason why the black American appears to be “without culture”, and why Black Americans themselves can occasionally feel bereft of a unique identity. Often noted by others across the Black diaspora, Black Americans are often the butt end of everyone's jokes from the Caribbean, Latin America and Africa itself. This “stateless” identity sometimes displayed by Black Americans is by design by the colonial state, and a symptom of religious displacement and spiritual abuse at the hands of said colonial powers.

This powerful and calculated form of psychological warfare and its effects can be seen in the likes of Hebrew Israelites who claim to be the original Jewish diaspora, Kemetics who claim to be the original Egyptians and those who claim to be the original Native Americans. This speaks to a desperate longing to belong to something that goes back centuries, that is ancient, and worthy and powerful, none of them wanting to claim the legacy of slavery and its ramifications. With many Black Americans struggling to accept the lived history of chattel slavery, who will proudly embrace this “plantation religion”?

With these contributing factors, Hoodoo can come across as being either a failed attempt at reconnection conceived in the minds of desperate African Americans, a made up ahistoricism (as is often asserted in the case of Voodoo in Louisiana) or a genuinely all American folk practice open to all with no authority, order, or true history.

In fact, referencing a broader global view of African Americans, their customs, practices and identity,a global audience inverts the name into American Africans. A culture and identity that is a product of the eurocentricity and whiteness around it. America appears to be the land of “The Whites” and a “Second Europe” in public perception. However, many of these narratives come from individuals who have either; A. Never set foot in America or B. Decided that they would base all their perceptions off of an experience they had on a trip they took to Greeley Colorado in 2009, and movies. Neither of these are accurate as the American identity is not homogenous.

Hoodoo, while originating in the American South, is a land-based spiritual practice. Subsequently, it has evolved tremendously as it made its way Westward and North among the black diaspora itself. All spiritual practices, particularly land based practices, are beholden to regionalism. Regionalism is the antithesis of homogeneity. It is reflexive to categorize the gamut of all things with “American” origins as one homogenous mass, but this is both intellectually and materially disingenuous. All ADRs are regionalist, and this alone creates a dramatic difference in said practices.

Take for instance the various emanations of Palo, with four major denominations, Monte, Kimbisa, Briyumba and Mayombe. These four distinct Theological traditions evolved separately, largely in part because of geographical differences and different leadership. These seemingly subtle differences evolved overtime into hallmarks of an identity in how each sect handles spirits, the spirits they venerate, language(s) used, and major beliefs pertaining to cosmology and world structure. Notice however that all of these originated on the Island of Cuba. Cuba is roughly 750 miles long and 60 miles wide, driving from Denver Colorado to Billings Montana is 693 miles and takes around 10 hours to drive, while it typically takes only one hour to drive around 60 miles. The variety of spiritual beliefs in one tradition in a stretch of 750 miles is profound, and this isn't even taking into account the other traditions on the island, so why would we expect it to be different in the United States?

Which leads me to the question, what is the Hoodoo you do? Do you know its region, its history, its spirits? Just as there isn't a generic “Palo” tradition, or a Generic Vodou/Vudú/Voodoo, which also boast a robust number of lineages, most notably Tcha Tcha and Asogwé, there is not a “generic” Hoodoo, and the question becomes less about whether or not it's closed(it is), and more about it's cultural relevancy. The Hoodoo of a third generation New Yorker is going to look wildly different from the Hoodoo we see from a third Generation Californian, and let's add a caveat, the Hoodoo you see from a third generation Californian in the Bay area is going to be different from the Hoodoo from a Los Angeles Hoodoo, because of admixture, geography, and exogenous and endemic cultures in the region. In that same vein of inquiry, do you draw your lineage from the Baptist tradition of Churches, AME, Catholic, African American Spiritual tradition? All of these differences make for a different practice, and different structure.

Among the variations and differences in the Hoodoo tradition of the U.S also comes differing and various cultural attitudes to Hoodoo itself. In the broad Americas(the Caribbean and LATAM Included) the practice of banning and criminalizing Black and Indigenous spiritual practices was incredibly common and could be as dire as even leading to an individuals death “After emancipation, many countries in the Western Hemisphere passed new legislation attempting to suppress the religious practices of the formerly enslaved under the guise of “civilizing” their populations. Countries like Brazil, Jamaica, Cuba, and Haiti enacted laws that prohibited persons from engaging in “superstitious” rituals, fortunetelling, vagrancy, and similar practices. In the United States, African American herbalists and sages (whom the media described as “voodoo doctors”) were also arrested for providing medico-religious and divination services. However, once again, the U.S. government deployed generally applicable laws to suppress these practices; they did not craft new legislation to target the “superstitions” of the formerly enslaved. These individuals were charged with contravening laws against obtaining money by false pretenses, mail fraud, practicing medicine without a license, and related offenses.”(Boaz, 2017). Because of this, black America did their best to disassociate with “superstitions” and “barbaric” customs to avoid further discrimination and being targeted. If you went up to a black elder and asked them what “Hoodoo” was, they'd probably slap you in the gums and call down Holy Ghost fire upon you and yours. It wasn't until 1996 that the American Indian religious freedom act was codified into law after years of indigenous communities enduring the same discrimination as Black ones for alternative spiritual customs and traditions could finally safely practice their own religious and spiritual customs without fear, and these attitudes still linger in both communities respectively.

With all that being said, the question remains. Why must it be Hoodoo that you do? Were you adopted into a family that lovingly shared it with you from the time you were young to now? Did you break bread with these people, do you fight for their liberation with every breath? Do you really think being black in a “past life” grants you access to the trauma you most likely care very little about in this present one?

Magico-religious folk customs are a dime a dozen, many, open! Some closed. Hoodoo however, is contingent upon the social memory of slavery, oppression and a fight for justice. When putting the spirits to work, do you do so with a spectral whip in your hand, and the entitlement to Black bodies and Souls of those who came before you? The joy of learning and spiritual specificity is that you can find a practice you resonate with out of the multitudes that litter the masses of the American continent that may be socio-culturally relevant to you. Such as Italian stregheria which is prominent in some parts of upper Appalachia and New York, Ozark and Appalachian granny magic, Cajun Traiteur, Spanish American Brujería of the Southwest (as in SPAIN),Pennsylvania Dutch Braucherei, there are even Cunning folk practices associated with the Mormon church and Utah. Some of these despite being of European American Origin, are also closed because they are experiential.These are all uniquely American in nature, this is excluding places outside of the U.S who also have a multitude of open mystical practices, such as Ancient Egyptian Heka, or Hellenic Göetia, none of them with the baggage of Indigenous and Black trauma as an aesthetic.

Ultimately, everyone will do what they want and that's just a fact of life, I however hope this helps you stop and think of the damage you do to your Black and Brown siblings whose ancestors died for the right to pray to a God that looked like them when you insist on the right to access to BIPOC labor spiritually,mentally and physically.

#hoodoo #spiritualism #african american spirituality #soulaan #espiritismo #atr #african traditional religions #african diasporic religions #vodou #vudu #voodoo #santería

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eelhound · 20 days

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"What makes the concept of society so deceptive is that we assume the world is organized into a series of compact, modular units called 'societies,' and that all people know which one they're in. Historically, this is very rarely the case.

Imagine I am a Christian Armenian merchant living under the reign of Genghis Khan. What is 'society' for me? Is it the city where I grew up, the society of international merchants (with its own elaborate codes of conduct) within which I conduct my daily affairs, other speakers of Armenian, Christendom (or maybe just Orthodox Christendom), or the inhabitants of the Mongol empire itself, which stretched from the Mediterranean to Korea?

Historically, kingdoms and empires have rarely been the most important reference points in peoples' lives. Kingdoms rise and fall; they also strengthen and weaken; governments may make their presence known in people's lives quite sporadically, and many people in history were never entirely clear whose government they were actually in. Even until quite recently, many of the world's inhabitants were never even quite sure what country they were supposed to be in, or why it should matter.

My mother, who was born a Jew in Poland, once told me a joke from her childhood:

There was a small town located along the frontier between Russia and Poland; no one was ever quite sure to which it belonged. One day an official treaty was signed and not long after, surveyors arrived to draw a border. Some villagers approached them where they had set up their equipment on a nearby hill.

'So where are we, Russia or Poland?'

'According to our calculations, your village now begins exactly thirty-seven meters into Poland.'

The villagers immediately began dancing for joy.

'Why?' the surveyors asked. 'What difference does it make?'

'Don't you know what this means?' they replied. 'It means we'll never have to endure another one of those terrible Russian winters!'"

- David Graeber, from Debt: The First 5,000 Years, 2011.

#david graeber #quote #quotations #anthropology #history #philosophy #society #community #social constructs #worldbuilding

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nerdygaymormon · 5 months

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This Tumblr Ask is mostly an excuse to interact with another human. I hope you don’t mind.

Would you say Mormonism has a better history of changing entrenched stances than other religions?

Of the religions which don’t currently perform same sex marriages, which do you think will start in the next 100 years?

Who would you guess is going to be the central orbit in your afterlife: you or your husband?

Over the past 20 years, Salt Lake City Utah has had some of the best numbers regarding changes in racial diversity and home prices in the nation. A generation ago this relationship (then known as “White Flight”) was a major and very sad problem many municipalities faced. Is Mormonism in Florida making lives better for Black people?

These are interesting questions.

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Would you say Mormonism has a better history of changing entrenched stances than other religions?

Mormonism believes in on-going revelation, and its top leader is considered to be a prophet and we also have apostles. In other words, the structure is one which suggests change is an ongoing feature of this church. Compared to where the LDS Church was in 1830 or even 1960, much has changed.

Despite this, it seems to me to be slower than others when it comes to reconsidering "entrenched stances." It didn't allow full participation by Black members until 1978. Every few years it seems to take another small step or two towards equality for women, but the slow pace of change makes it feel like it's falling further behind much of Christendom.

I think the reason for this church being slow to progress forward is that it raises questions about the role of the prophet and apostles. If the past leaders were wrong about race or the inclusion of women, what might the current leaders be wrong about? Undermining the authority & teachings of past leaders calls into question the authority & teachings of the current leaders. Can I disregard what they're saying on LGBTQ+ topics because I believe there'll be further revelation and change, even if the current leaders say that the current teachings won't change, just like the past leaders said there wouldn't be change?

The current workaround is that doctrine doesn't change, but policies do. While I know many consider the LDS Church's teachings on gender and marriage to be doctrine, they have changed many times and therefore I think of them as policies.

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Of the religions which don’t currently perform same sex marriages, which do you think will start in the next 100 years?

One of the ways churches create an identity for themselves is by what they stand for. They also can define themselves by what they are against. Unfortunately, for hundreds of years Christianity has adopted being anti-gay/anti-queer as part of the definition of what it means to be Christian. Changing this identity is difficult.

There are Christian denominations wrestling with accepting same-sex marriages. Changing their stance has roiled their denominations. While many are thrilled, some traditionalists are alarmed & dismayed and whole congregations vote to leave that particular denomination.

I think this study showing the changing acceptance of gay marriage by religions in the United States is fascinating. I think it predicts most religions in the United States will ultimately accept queer people and same-sex marriages.

This chart shows that the Latter-day Saints moved the most in the past 8 years, from 27% to 50%. This is very much related to LGBTQ+ members coming out, especially teenagers and those in their 20's. Also, we have had a wave of adults who came out & left their mixed-orientation marriages. It's been a big, messy process, but now it seems most everyone knows or is related to a Mormon/ex-Mormon who is out as LGBTQ+. Which underlines that when people actually know queer folks and hear our stories, it changes hearts.

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Who would you guess is going to be the central orbit in your afterlife: you or your husband?

Gosh, I don't know how to answer this. I'm not sure what this means to be the "central orbit" of my afterlife.

Considering I'm single and don't have a husband, I will have to say that it won't be my husband. Although, if I'm lucky, maybe one day my marriage status will change

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It's interesting you speak of Salt Lake City as racially diverse. When I visit, I notice the lack of such diversity. I suppose compared to where it was, it is becoming more diverse, but so is the United States.

Utah is the 34th most racially and ethnically diverse state in the nation, putting it in the bottom half of states. Forty percent of the state’s growth since 2010 has come from racial and ethnic minority populations, who are expected to account for one in three Utahns by 2060. In contrast, it is projected by 2040 that the United States is expected to have no race or ethnic demographic which is more than 50% of the population, making us a majority minority nation.

So yes, Salt Lake City and Utah are becoming more diverse, but still lags far behind the United States as a whole.

As for your question whether Mormonism in Florida is making lives better for Black people, I don't think so. I also wouldn't say we're making life worse.

I know we have talked about being more welcoming of Black people and have had some committees in my local area to discuss what changes we can make in our congregations or what contribution we can make to the Black community in the area. I'm not aware of any sustained efforts to make changes or to partner with local organizations.

Our congregations in Florida may look more diverse than the average congregation in Utah, but typically they're not as diverse as the neighborhoods where we are located. We have much room for improvement in making a space where all feel welcome and that this is their spiritual home.

#tumblrstake #queerstake

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scotianostra · 2 months

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On 27th March 1625, King James VI died.

James Charles Stuart has many facts, myths and urban legends surrounding him, this is just one of them.

Rumours have abounded for centuries that James was a homosexual, I'm not saying he wasn't but at very least you might call him bisexual, he did after all father seven children to his wife, only three of whom survived. Known for writing poetry, there is little doubt he loved his wife, Anne, and wrote many poems and love letters to her throughout their marriage. Most of the rumors of James’ sexual orientation came from Sir Anthony Weldon, who was a bitter enemy of the king, whose writings were published long after James was dead.

One of the most amusing quotes from King James regarding marriage and women was when, at the Hampton Court Conference, the Puritan leaders complained of a line in English wedding vows where the groom says to bride “with my body, I thee worship.” James’ response was “If you had a good wife yourself, you would think all worship and honour you could do her, were well bestowed upon her.”

James supposed lover was George Villiers was a courtier who became a favourite of King James I. The King became infatuated with him and made him Viscount in 1616, Earl in 1617, Marquis in 1618 and Duke of Buckingham in 1623. Outmanoeuvring his rivals the Howards, Villiers was appointed Lord High Admiral in 1619. He manipulated the lovestruck King James to gain unprecedented control over royal patronage, rewarding himself and his family generously. He married his relations into the most important families in England. His own marriage was to Lady Catherine Manners, only daughter of the wealthy Earl of Rutland. Was their friendship more than platonic? To coin a Scottish phrase, "

Mibbes aye mibbes naw."

James had a deep and terrible fear of witchcraft and personally oversaw many witch trials while ruling in Scotland. He saw witchcraft as a branch of theology and even wrote a famous treatise titled Daemonologie, in which he dealt with sorcery, magic, and even vampires and werewolves!

James had a relatively peaceful reign, except for the infamous Gunpowder Plot, and kept taxes low. He was known as both the British Solomon and was called “the wisest fool in Christendom” by the King of France. James was both a brute and a gentleman, a sloth and a scholar, a boor and a poet, paranoid and cunning.

Perhaps we should look at his mother's French Emissary Monsieur de Fontenay who had the following to say regarding the young James’ character and traits:

“I have been well received by the king, who has treated me better in reality than in appearance. He give me much credit, but does not show me much kindness. Since the day of my arrival he has ordered me to live in his house along with the earls and lords, and that I shall have access to him in his cabinet just as the others have… .

To tell you truly what I think of him – I consider him the first prince in the world for his age. … . He apprehends and conceives quickly, he judges ripely and with reason, and he retains much and for a long time. In questioning he is quick and piercing, and solid in his answers. … He is learned in many languages, sciences, and affairs of state. more so than probably anyone in his realm. In a word he has a miraculous wit, and moreover is full of noble glory and a good opinion of himself.

Having been brought up in the midst of constant fears, he is timid and will not venture to contradict the great lords; yet he wishes to be thought brave.

He hates dancing and music in general and especially all the mincing affectations of the court … .

From want of proper instruction his manners are boorish and very rough, as well in his way of speaking, eating. dress, amusements and conversation, even in the company of women.

He is never at rest in one place but takes a singular pleasure in walking; but his gait is very ungainly and his step is wandering and unsteady, even in a room. His voice is thick and very deep as he speaks. … He is weak of body … But to sum up, he is an old young man. …

He misunderstands the real extent of his poverty and weakness; he boasts too much of himself and he despises other princes. In the second place, he disregards the wishes of his subjects; and lastly, he is too idle and careless in business and too much addicted to his own pleasures, chiefly hunting. … He told me that he really gave greater attention to business than he seemed to do for he could get through more work in one hour than others could in a day. …"

James ruled Scotland as James VI from 24th July 1567 and, as you might recall from my post a few days ago, ruled in England, Wales and Ireland as James 1st from 24th March, 1603. He died 27th March, 1625 at Theobalds House, and his remains lie in the Henry VII Lady Chapel in Westminster Abbey.

The third pic shows James's body next to Henry VII and his queen in the vault

#scotland #scottish #history #royalty #the stuarts

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svetzzi · 1 year

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knightklok stuff Is it headcanons or an au? I don’t know, but either way I sure as hell wrote about it.

Timeline: 1450’s-1480’s

Main Location: Pre-Sherborne/Sherborne, Sherborne Abbey Cathedral

Content Warnings: Character death, Christendom, religious fundamentalism, mentions of torture, mentions of social and systemic racism, mention of alcoholism.

Note: I subscribe to the implication that Dethklok, or even so the other people foretold in the prophecy, have been subjected to reincarnation for eons. Whether or not reincarnation is a normal aspect for everyone’s life-death cycle in the Metalocalypse universe is unknown to me as of writing this, but here I am making it certain for the pawns of the prophecy. Personally I find that the prophecy cave art in season 4, the “ancient animal forms” from season 2 and onward, and the lyrics of Blazing Star are evidence for this notion. Every force included in the prophecy are doomed to their fates; despite being placed in deadly situations time and time again, they can make it out totally unscathed until their death. Said deaths may seem sudden or untimely on a surface level, but they are always decided by destiny or the universe (or perhaps The Devil if we lean more into the Satanic narrative). Here we see a version of Dethklok from their long line of reincarnations (that also happen to be ancestral to the present-day members), who had failed to fulfill the prophecy and thus had to die and start over.

If there are severe historical inaccuracies, then my apologies, I am not a buff and I made this for fun. If it helps to ease the pain at all, I am certain if this were to actually happen in the show, it would also be incredibly historically inaccurate.

I am also not Catholic, so some things may be wonky in that context as well.

Noah Eruption

Nationality: English / Roma

Weapon: Morningstar

The surname Eruption evolved to Explosion as the English language advanced.

His looks and demeanor forgave his non-chivalrous attitude, however being a man of few words made the public mistake him for chivalrous. Nonetheless his stature and steadfast fighting ability granted him both knighthood and the role of leader for the Sherborne Guard. Born in Canterbury, Noah traveled to Sherborne for personal independence and to no longer deal with those that knew of his mixed Romani bloodline. His morningstar was his closest companion.

Fled and retired to The Western Isles post-exile. In retirement he turned to cattle farming.

Death: Drowning (reason ruled unknown, speculated to be either suicide or accident)

Aengus “Picil (The Ruthless)” Barrel

Nationality: Irish

Weapon: Dual-Wielded Scottish Dirks

The surname Barrel derives from his English grandfather’s favourite pub.

Picil, freeloader son of a shepherd, lived at his village’s pub. Of course, this habit kind of ruined his life and reputation within his hometown, however he did get some decent knife-tossing skills out of it. The pub eventually changed ownership, and consequently he was banned for being a pest. In some spark of clarity, the young man decided to start off on a clean slate. He packed a bottle for the road and headed for England (I reiterate short-lived clarity was mentioned, not intelligence). As a stumbling Irishman his time living there was incredibly difficult, but upon meeting Noah and Bishop Offgyrdd seemingly by coincidence he was “taken in,” so to speak.

And yes, his classic dirks slightly resemble penises, like God intended.

Fled to Wales post-exile.

Death: Went into the wood at night in a typical drunken stupor and was never seen again.

William “The Barbarian” “The Royal Guard’s Boil” “Barnacle Meat” Murdgruff

Nationality: English-Italian/Ethiopian (see Medieval Ethiopian Discovery of Europe)

Weapon: Battle Axe

William Murdgruff fled from Italian slums as a young adult, in fear of further discrimination and possible death. He hid in a cart of hay bales and went wherever it took him. Sherborne did not treat him much better upon his arrival, even less so than expected, but the Bishop of the village saw his potential. Murdgruff then proved himself to be a merciless fighter, and with the strong persuasion of Bishop Offgyrdd, he was knighted by the Lord and assigned to the small guard sanctioned in that very town. An exchange was brought in return for his knighthood– that he would keep his appearance a secret from the public, as it would damage the church’s reputation. They even commissioned a custom helmet in order for him to fulfill such an order. He did as told, however that did not stop him from becoming the town’s punching bag due to how he held himself (and having the most non-chivalrous of attitudes, obviously).

Fled to Germany post-exile.

Death: Tortured and Executed via Wheel at the beginning of The Werewolf Trials after fleeing to Germany.

Sigfrøðr / Sighfridh Swkigelf

Nationality: Geat

Weapon: Knightly Sword, though prefers Falchion

Irregular for the time and place, Sighfridh was born to closeted Heathen parents. Their Geatland patriotism imprinted onto him, but he found himself drawn to the Christian environment surrounding his family. Sighfridh saw himself not only in Odin, but in both the Lutheran and Catholic depictions of the Lord. In interest of visiting an authentic Roman Catholic cathedral, he decided to journey west. His stay in England was supposed to be temporary, especially after Toki began to accompany him on his journey, but finding good work with the Sherborne Guard (along with acclaim from all the English ladies…) Sighfridh stayed until the group’s exile.

Before England, Sighfridh was an ice harvester.

Returned to Scania post-exile.

Death: Disease of Totally Unknown Origin (it was definitely not syphilis).

Toki Wartúþr

Nationality: Norwegian/Norse

Weapon: Knightly Sword

(To my knowledge the name Toki has existed since like ~7th Century AD, so I find it perfectly sensible that the name Toki would be present multiple times throughout his family tree.)

He was a Sami boy adopted by Christian parents as a babe. Blessed with the spirit of death, his parents eventually blamed him for the unorthodox deaths of crops and farm animals, even if he was not tending to or near the area at the time of death. Their negative superstition surrounding their son grew more, soon blaming him for the rot of their food and the harsher winters. Believing him to embody the antichrist, they intended to kill him, but Toki found this out and escaped before they could execute their plan. He was a homeless wanderer for years, getting by on stolen goods and river water. It was when he ran into the traveling Sighfridh that Toki finally found some sort of path in life. To Sighfridh’s dismay, Toki was enamored with him and his journey, and so tagged along.

Exiled.

Death: Murdered.

Bishop Offgyrdd

Nationality: English/Welsh

Weapon: Holy text, witchcraft, sabre

Under the guidance of his most trusted companion, Sherborne’s Archbishop, Offgyrdd was devoted to the underbelly of the church. He typically kept an eye out for any newcomers during the day, and was a transcriber at night. Before the mysterious and gruesome death of Canterbury’s Archbishop, Offgyrdd was– although emotionally distant– an average abbott. Even though transcribing was work for a lower monk, Offgyrdd happily took on the task for The Church of The Black Klok. The loose lips on the group of knights he brought together was ultimately his, their, downfall. From Sherborne Castle, the royal guard was demanded to put an end to this heresy, but they refused. Because they liked Offgyrdd. He was pretty nice to them after all, you know? Their Lord allowed for word— panic— to get out due to this. Reeves and the rest of the general public ended up taking matters into their own hands. The traitorous royal guard’s executions were debated. The enraged mob was still somehow infatuated with them, despite their association with witches. Out of fear of his own life, the Lord mercifully damned the knights to exile. After the beheading of the Archbishop, the last thing Offgyrdd saw was Noah watching his demise from among the crowd.

Thankfully, the actual Black Klok meeting grounds were never found by authorities.

Death: Executed; burned at stake.

#I’m kinda forcing myself to post this #feels justified with how much time I put into it #I understand things aren’t fully fleshed out either so take it as you will #metalocalypse #fan art #svetzstuff #hope y’all like the art at least <3 #also thanks so much if you read all that..

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daincrediblegg · 5 months

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relationship asks: all numbers with a 6 in them, for lady terror of course ^_^

OH HELL YEAH THANK YOU KITTENS FOR THIS MAGNIFICENT OPPORTUNITY (this ended up being a 4 page fucking document but fuck it WE BALL. so I'll show a few and then put the rest under a cut- especially since some of them are a little bit raunchy. ENJOY MY LOVES COME GET YOUR SWEET FRANCIS/LADY TERROR CONTENT)

OC RELATIONSHIP ASKS

6. Who would ask the "would you love me if I were a worm?" question? How would their S/O answer?” Honestly I think Lady Terror would be the one to ask. Francis tells her yes and if she wanted to stay with him as a worm she’d “ be the best kept worm in all of christendom”, in his words (whatever that means, babygirl).

16. Who is the better caretaker? Does their S/O like being taken care of? Honestly they’re both very good caretakers, though Francis is much better at “doing the things that need doing to care for a person” bit while Lady Terror I think is a bit better at like. Keeping people calm and feeling cared for (not to say that either of them are not as good as the other, because they certainly are, but they have their strong suits). And oh my god man yes Francis loves being taken care of by lady terror oh my god she lets him rest his head in her lap and everything.

26. Who gets jealous most often? How does their S/O deal with that? I honestly think it depends. I think Lady Terror has more potential to become jealous (even though it doesn’t happen very often honestly) from 1) her lack of experience being committed to, 2) her own trauma from past relationships and coming out of those feeling horribly betrayed and 3) also the whole divorce scandal with her parents. Did I mention her parent’s divorce scandal? Yeah there was a whole divorce scandal. But even when she is jealous she remains relatively level-headed about it and doesn’t act out from it (usually, unless an offending party provokes her to it), and she is nothing if not articulate and aware of what she’s feeling. And credit to Francis where it’s due he’s never been dismissive of her emotions, and that I think helps them actually work through it rather than let it escalate to lashing out or acting rashly.

Francis doesn’t so much have a jealousy streak when it comes to Lady Terror (though time was he might have, and he definitely knows that), and I think it’s because she has pretty consistently made it clear that she has chosen him to share her life with, and having never been picked in such a way, has a bit more faith that she wouldn’t betray him. (also she’s always been the more sociable one. She’s definitely more of an ambivert than he is and doesn’t take personal offense in those kinds of situations. Besides, she will NOT interact with people she doesn’t want to interact with. He knows this and he loves her for it.)

36. What is something that would break their hearts? For Francis, I think it would genuinely be another romantic rejection- or more precisely to be left behind. I don’t think he could bear being rejected for a third time by anyone, let alone by Sofia but by anyone. He’s too old to have his heart broken like that again and it’s why he takes so long to even admit to himself that he has feelings for Lady Terror because he cannot fathom the kind of pain it would cause him.

Lady Terror however I think it would break her heart the most to be dismissed. To have her thoughts and feelings disregarded. Granted, she’s used to it happening with most men and some women, but to have it happen to her coming from someone she loves and respects and who she thought loves and respects her in turn would devastate her.

46. If they were ever in a life or death situation, who risks their life? Lmao both of them. Because they both have savior/self sacrificing complexes and they’re calculated with it but they WILL take a risk if it means saving more lives. It’s something that I think they admire about each other when hearing of their past exploits before they met.

56. Who tends to be the level-headed one? Who is feral? Oh Lady Terror is absolutely more feral. She is very very smart when she is feral but she is much more willing to act on impulse about it (for more information, ask Mr. Hickey. He knows.) Francis is definitely more level-headed but absolutely has more of a fiery temper in comparison to how cold Lady Terror’s fury is (but no less passionate, mind).

60. Are they willing to show PDA? If not, is there a reason? They ARE willing, but they are very very shy, (and also lmao you know how the victorians are about propriety if a couple isn’t married yet. Big no.) But also it’s a bit of a carry-over from their time on Terror. They did their damndest not to show that kind of affection for one another for fear of discovery (which would doubtless have caused a mutiny- if Francis’ pre-sobriety behavior hadn’t started that line of thought with some long before that). But they are not beyond the occasional hidden gesture of affection from prying eyes. Holding hands behind each others backs, brushing their fingers against one another subtly as to not give them away. They become more open about their affections eventually, but my god does it make them blush like crazy.

61. How would they describe their S/O in one word? Francis (on Lady Terror): Good. Lady Terror (on Francis: Handsome.

62. How would outside characters describe their relationship? By-in-large I think people are a little skeptical at first about them together. Like perhaps they shouldn’t be together for some reason or another, that it’s a bit odd, a bit queer. But when people see how affectionate they are to one another, to see how much they truly care for one another? How Francis truly seems to soften and relax around her and how she brightens to talk about him… to those who know each of them best that’s the sign of true love right there.

63. How would they describe one another in bed? I think Francis would describe Lady Terror as a port in a storm. Welcoming, warm, tender in ways he never thought he’d know for himself. At the same time she rides him like the waves of the storm itself, and he can’t help but admire the sheer power she has over him and how easily he’s taken by her. Lady Terror on the other hand finds him sturdier and steadier than strong oak… and weirdly just as bendable (I mean HAVE YOU SEEN THAT MAN??? HE’S SO LIMBER FOR HIS AGE!!! It’s truly miraculous). Though his cock doesn’t quite always cooperate with this image she has of him (although it should be noted that he’s had a much easier time of it since he embraced sobriety it still happens every now and again), he’s very grounding as a lover and seems to find that her pleasures feed into his, to which she certainly has no complaints.

64. Would they ever answer the above question if it was asked to their face? How would they react? Oh Francis would be too much of a blushing mess. He was never one to kiss and tell much even with his closest friends like Blanky and Ross (even though those two definitely HAVE actually seen him in intimate positions before). But I think the lovestruck look in his eye would probably say all you’d need to know- that yes she fucks him well and yes that is probably where he’d rather be right now. Lady Terror might be a little more inclined to give a more cheeky answer in the company of a good friend, but otherwise much prefers to keep her and Francis’ doings to Francis and herself.

65. Who tends to take the lead in intimate encounters? They both can, and do. Both of those bitches are switches and they live up to it. Literally it all comes down to how either one is feeling on any given day.

66. Have they ever been caught in the act? What would be their reaction if they were? Yes. By Blanky. Everyone else would have the care to knock first at Francis’ cabin door if it were shut but not Thomas (and understandably so). And listen. They’re all three of them good enough friends to laugh it off eventually, but that happens for some sooner more than others (aka. Thomas starts laughing about it immediately and making raunchy jokes while she and Francis scramble to make themselves relatively decent, even though it’s a bit too late for that now. It has Thomas in fucking stitches. He is genuinely happy for them but he can’t believe his luck).

67. Have they ever done it anywhere questionable? Believe it or not, not particularly. At least not on Terror (they’re already paranoid enough about being caught behind closed doors in quiet hours, they’re not going to risk anything more). After that… well… you’ll find out.

68. Who is more vocal? Who is more experienced? I think Lady Terror is probably overall more vocal (but jesus christ when Francis moans it’d make an angel weep I swear to fucking god), and Francis is certainly more experienced overall, but there are times when she does things to him that have never been done to him before and it makes him feel like he’s a virgin all over again all the same (yes she gives him prostate orgasms. That’s what I’m implying here in case that weren’t clear).

69. If they were to go shopping, who holds the bags? Who decides where they go? I think Francis would WANT to hold the bags but Lady Terror wouldn’t let him carry all of them. Lady Terror would probably plan where they go a little bit ahead of time but absolutely will deter said plans if Francis wants to have a look in somewhere. Whatever babygirl wants honestly.

76. Are they soulmates? Do they believe in that? I mean yeah duh what are you talking about I think they both think they have found something really rare and special with each other that I think they would qualify as being soulmates, but truthfully I think Francis might actually believe that more than Lady Terror does (and of course not to say that she doesn’t, but she’s formed many deeply meaningful connections with people and knows that Francis has as well, and she wouldn’t limit the depth of how she feels or has felt about others as lesser… but at the same time Francis is absolutely the love of her life and the only man who has ever truly treated her in a way that made her feel like an equal to him, and has wanted her romantically as such… so yeah. Soulmates without a doubt).

86. Who gives the best gifts? Who gives the more thoughtful? Who goes for expensive? Ok here’s the thing they both are VERY good gift-givers, both of them are VERY thoughtful and give gifts as truly heartfelt gestures. Though Lady Terror does tend to spend a little more money on her gifts sometimes (by virtue of being just a little more financially well-off) whatever she uses that money towards is no less heartfelt and will go out of her way to buy something dear to someone especially if they don’t have the means to get it themselves.

96. Who reads the newspaper? Who wants to see the cartoons? They have two copies of the paper delivered to the house bro BOTH these bitches READ. (but they save the cartoon page to read together. Most likely with Wee Ellie I MEAN HUH WHO SAID THAT???)

#egg's oc's #lady terror #egg's headcanons #ask games #francis crozier x lady terror #francis crozier x oc #this shit has genuinely kept me from going stark-raving mad during finals I cannot thank you enough kittens 💖💖

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 6 months

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By: Brendan O'Neill

Published: Nov 11, 2023

One of the weirdest things about identitarian activists is that they hate being asked where they’re from but they love telling you where they’re from. Politely inquire about their ethnic or cultural origins and they’ll damn you as a racist. ‘How dare you, I’m as British as you!’, they’ll yell, either to your face or in a column in the Guardian in which they’ll document at great, yawn-inducing length the horror of having some dim pleb ask about their family origins.

Then, in the next breath, before you’ve even had a chance to splutter your apology, they’ll tell you their entire ancestral history. You’ll know where their great grandmother was born, the exact quantity of melanin grandad had in his skin, which maternal haplogroup they belong to, as revealed by 23andMe. Just don’t say ‘Oh, that’s where you’re from’, because they’ll call you racist again.

This political schizophrenia of taking offence at the question ‘Where are you from?’ while simultaneously feeling a burning urge to tell the entire world where you are from was best captured in the Ngozi Fulani controversy. You remember Ms Fulani: she’s the black charity worker from Hackney in London whose ‘racist’ run-in with long-serving royal aide Lady Susan Hussey hit the headlines last year. Lady Hussey’s crime? At a Buckingham Palace do, she asked Ms Fulani where she is from. Call the cops! What a bigoted old bat.

Not so fast. Ms Fulani was adorned in African threads at the palace. She frequently decks herself out in the Pan-African colours and Africa-shaped earrings. To constantly suggest to the world that you are from somewhere else and then reach for the smelling salts when someone asks ‘Where, exactly?’ is a bit much, no?

Now, in literary form, Afua Hirsch has done the same thing. Ms Hirsch is an author, broadcaster and writer for the Guardian. Her first book, Brit(ish): On Race, Identity and Belonging, was all about the horror, the sheer indignity, of ‘The Question’. The question, of course, is ‘Where are you from?’. I am asked this ‘every single day, often multiple times’, said Hirsch. Really? Where’s she hanging out? It feels like a ‘daily ritual of unsettling’, she wrote. Oh, please. If I penned a sad book every time someone asked me, on account of my very un-British name, ‘What part of Ireland are you from?’, or ‘Where were your parents born?’, I’d be the most prolific author in Christendom.

Now, we have Ms Hirsch’s second book, Decolonising My Body. And you’ll never believe it: it is an eye-wateringly detailed answer to… The Question! Here’s my question: if Hirsch hates being asked where she is from, why has she written a whole tome on where she is ‘from’?

I now know more about Ms Hirsch’s ethnic and cultural origins than I do about my own. To her credit, she admits that this is because she comes from a staggeringly privileged background. I ‘know quite a lot about my ancestors’ and ‘there’s a privilege attached to this’, she says. Her African ancestors were not the ‘enslaved’, but rather were ‘antecedents about whom written records were kept’. Fancy. As someone who knows next to nothing about his colonised forebears – largely thanks to the Potato Famine of the 1840s and the catastrophic fire at the Public Records Office in Dublin in 1922 – I confess to feeling envy while reading Ms Hirsch’s comprehensive tale of her origins. How the other half live, eh?

When I say her new book is detailed, I mean it is detailed. In her first book, she told us off for being nosey about her family origins; in her new book, she’s telling us about the time she got her butthole lasered. She finds herself in ‘the undignified position of spreading my butt cheeks under the chill of a laser clinician’s hosepipe-like nozzle, as atoms are excised, electrons rise and fall, and light beams are making their way into my crack’. The whole thing cost her £1,000. They must be paying well at the Guardian if contributors can splash out a grand on having their anal fluff zapped.

Surely we need to talk about how easily the identitarian elites can shift from exasperation at being asked ‘Where are you from?’ to absolute blaséness about telling the world what their ringpieces look like. Don’t you dare ask where my family is from but please listen to me describe the hair follicles on my arsehole. Excuse me, what?

As its title suggests, Hirsch’s book is a somewhat narcissistic endeavour. It’s all about her body. More specifically, it’s about how empire and colonialism interrupted the mystical traditions through which Hirsch’s African ancestors marked and celebrated their bodies – with tribal tattoos, menstrual festivals and whatnot – and how Hirsch now wants to rediscover all that stuff.

She says she wants to ‘decolonise’ her body of its ‘Western’ expectations – thinness, hairlessness, white-defined attractiveness – and let it become more African. Imagine how time-rich, and literally rich, you would need to be to spend so much energy obsessing over your own flesh and skin. To publish a book about decolonising the body of a privately educated Guardianista while everyone else is wondering if they have enough cash to keep the lights on speaks to the pathological self-regard of the new elites. In this era of economic, military and moral crises, Hirsch is going to have to work a lot harder to convince me that the fact that her period ‘still often takes me by surprise’ is something we need to know.

Hirsch’s argument is that she has been violently ripped from the ‘magical’ traditions of her African history by colonialism and capitalism. So where her historical forebears held menstruation ceremonies and celebrated women for having hairy legs and insisted upon the tattooing of female flesh, our new era heaps shame on women for bleeding, discourages female hair growth, and idolises ‘pure’ over ‘marked’ flesh. None of this is quite right though, is it? Period chatter is everywhere these days. You can’t so much as click on Instagram without seeing some feted female influencer showing off hair-covered shins that would make Peter Sellers wonder if he should reach for some Veet. As for tats – not having a tattoo is the great shame in the 21st-century West. What, you haven’t had a tribal slogan pasted on your pasty flesh by a needle-wielder in Camden? What’s wrong with you?

And yet our body-decolonising Ms Hirsch perseveres, regardless. To counter the evil West’s disdain for old African tribes’ celebration of menstruation, she takes her poor daughter to a tribal period shindig in south London. They have to traverse the South Circular, ‘one of the most congested roads not just in London, but in the world’, and Hirsch, under instruction from the London-based tribal priestess, must wear all-white clothing, which in this case means a ‘floor-length summer robe, made from soft sheets of cotton’. Still, at least it connects Hirsch to her tribal lineage, even if her daughter, by Hirsch’s own admission, would rather be anywhere else.

Hirsch’s favourite word is ‘conditioning’. She thinks women like her – women of non-British origins – have been ‘conditioned’ to discard the tribal rituals their elders engaged in. Perhaps. Or perhaps black women and all women in London in 2023 would just rather buy some tampons for their pubescent daughters than subject them to an old-world menstrual ritual in a posh garden in south London. Who can tell?

Hirsch says ‘the forces of globalisation’ lead to a situation where ‘people like me’ – people of colour – have been ‘conditioned’ to behave and think in a particular way. That is, in a Western way. There’s a darkly ironic twist here. Hirsch’s obsession with the idea of ‘conditioning’ means she ends up viewing African-origin people in a similar way to how old colonialists viewed them – as vacant-brained entities swayed this way and that by the messaging of their superiors under capitalism. It smells like neo-colonialism disguised as anti-colonialism.

Hirsch thinks that even she – an expensively educated, successful writer – has been ‘conditioned’. She wonders if her submission to laser hair-removal is a craven acceptance of Western culture’s white-supremacist loathing of female hair. ‘Why do I keep on coming back’, she wonders, ‘to uncomfortable and expensive appointments, just to squash the capillaries which nature, in its wisdom, wanted us to have in our nether regions’? Again with the nether regions. She ends up staring at her vagina and reminiscing about her lost hair. She beholds the ‘pathetic little tuft of hair clinging to my bikini area, with a forlorn sense of having banished something that may have loved me’. I cannot imagine ever having a deep thought about my pubes – is that only me?

Who is responsible for the fact that even Hirsch, with all her education, has done things to her body that she later thinks she shouldn’t have done? It’s Charles Darwin. It’s always Charles Darwin. On the thousands of pounds she’s spent on ‘pink-packaged razors’ and ‘painful, expensive waxing’, Hirsch says, ‘The person I do blame… is Charles Darwin’. You might think of Darwin as the most important scientific figure of the period of Enlightenment, the brilliant man who revealed to us the truth of both nature and humanity, but to Ms Hirsch he’s the bloke whose ‘paradigm-shifting work on evolution’ led to the inexorable destruction of ‘attitudes to body hair [that] were as diverse as the cultures [they were] rooted in’.

In short, Darwin’s exploration of the origins of species, of the origins of man, helped to nurture a colonial discomfort with tribal culture. Imagine witnessing the epoch-shaping discoveries of a man like Darwin and thinking: ‘He’s the reason I feel compelled to get my butthole lasered.’ The narcissism of it, the anti-Enlightenment of it.

Anti-Enlightenment is the right phrase for where Hirsch ends up. Throughout the book she dabbles not only with tribal cultures – which, in my view, declined and fell for good reason – but also with astrology and even witchcraft. She quotes authors who bemoan the disdaining by ‘intelligent persons’ of ‘witchcraft, magical healing, divination, ancient prophecies, ghosts and fairies’. It falls to her sensible-sounding parents to keep a check on her descent into pre-modern hysteria. Her father, the esteemed geophysicist Peter Hirsch, responds to her pleas that a planetary ‘conjunction’ in the sky must be a sign that she should change her life by saying: ‘It’s just from our arbitrary viewpoint that the planets appear close together… It doesn’t mean anything deeper.’ Yes, dad!

Her mum is even better. Asked by Afua why women of African origin don’t wear ‘waist beads’ anymore, her mum essentially says: ‘Because we have nice knickers now.’ Hirsch discovers, alongside the wonder of menstrual rituals and tribal tats, that wearing beads across one’s belly is a great African way to demonstrate a) that you are fertile and b) you have a chunky ass. Why don’t you wear them, she asks her Ghanaian-British mum? To which comes the glorious reply: ‘As soon as we heard about Marks & Spencer’s underwear, we stopped wearing beads…’ Exactly. All those desperately poor African ladies who hold up their sanitary / undergarment equipment with beads around their bellies would love a pair of comfy high-street knickers, even if wealthy writers like Afua Hirsch frown upon such basic desires. Give me good underwear over tribal realness any day of the week.

Fundamentally, this is a daft book. It bemoans Western capitalism while singing the praises of billionaires like Oprah Winfrey and Rihanna. (And the people, black and white, whose labour is exploited by Oprah’s media machine and Rihanna’s make-up machine? Shush! Don’t mention them.) It attacks cultural appropriation while telling the tale of this hyper-privileged Londoner who gets ‘adorned’ in the fashions of ancient Africans.

I hate to be the one to ask this, but how is it any different for a privately educated woman of colour from Wimbledon to experiment in the cultures and jewelleries of African nations than it is for a right-on white ‘appropriator’ to do the same? It would be like me donning the animal skins my ancestors wore as they searched high and low for grub in the wilds of pre-modern Ireland. ‘Wanker’ would be the cry of friends and family if I were to put on the rough uniform of my tragic, regressive forebears.

Hirsch’s retreat from modernity into the witchy traditions of old is some rich lady shit. Anyone who can traipse through London to attend menstrual rituals and traverse Africa to examine beads and pants is clearly someone with too much time on their hands. And that’s the rub. Identity politics is a fundamentally privileged pursuit. Indeed, it is the means through which the well-off launder their class privilege and turn it into oppression. There is nothing in Ms Hirsch’s plush, lovely life that can be described as oppression – apart from being asked The Question, of course… – and so she plunders ancient communities for little pieces of victimhood she might claim as her own. And thus is her cultural power in the here and now fortified, with more of that hottest currency of all: ethnic suffering.

Hirsch’s book confirms that the new elites have retreated from reason, fleeing from Enlightenment into the tattooed arms of fashionable tribalism. ‘Educated people, and people like me, [were] brought up to learn about, understand and respect science’, she writes, but now many of us are ‘following our curiosity’ and embracing ‘systems of ancestral knowledge’. Yes you are. From ‘decolonise the curriculum’ to the upper-middle-class fads for everything from African jewellery to Tibetan spiritualism, the right-on and rich are turning their backs on modernity and its gains and knowledge. Knock yourselves out. The rest of us, however, who have no cultural clout to gain from dabbling in magic and other ancient bullshit, prefer science, civilisation and comfortable undergarments.

These people are fucking bonkers. They think they're the most fascinating and enlightened people on the planet, when they're just the most mediocre, narcissistic people, using big, empty, academic, jargony words to hide the fact they're completely fucking insane.

For the record, Hirsch's ancestors are Norwegian, German-Jewish, British and Ghanaian. So her appropriation of African aesthetics isn't actually any more meaningful than espousing her Norwegian viking ancestry.

We have to stop giving these lunatics oxygen.

#Brendan O'Neill #Afua Hirsch #reality disconnected #political schizophrenia #anti enlightenment #enlightenment #the enlightenment #enlightenment values #narcissism #narcissistic personality disorder #actually narcissistic #religion is a mental illness

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stcecelia · 8 months

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Women in Scripture Day One: Eve

(first off, sorry for the delay in post. We have class every Tuesday evening, but this week has been crazy with work and also starting my online college classes. anyway on to my notes ! )

It seems very fitting that for our first lesson on women in scriptures this semester, we discussed the very first woman in the scriptures: Eve

To start the class, our instructor posed us the question: "How does Eve's life and example deepen my conversion to the Savior?"

Then we began reading scripture. We bounced between the book of Moses and the book of Genesis, but I mainly used the book of Moses since it's the JST :)

The first Scripture we read was Moses 3:18, which reads, "And I, the Lord God, said unto mine Only Begotten, that it was not good that the man should be alone; wherefore, I will make an help meet for him."

To be honest, I was never a fan of this verse. I didn't like the implication that God created women only to be a helper to men. That seems to be the most widely held belief in the general christendom; God created women second, and only to be subservient and submissive. Lower in rank and duty and worth.

You could say I've been a feminist my entire life, even well before I knew what the word was or its meaning (my mom tells me that when I was little, I used to constantly ask why when I turned twelve I wouldn't be able to get the priesthood like my twin brother would. It didn't seem fair to me as a young child that had been told my entire life growing up I as a girl could do anything a boy could do, and it still didn't for a good portion of my life. It was only until a couple years ago that I really grasped why, and was ok with it). So this idea that in my God's eyes I was lesser than any man angered me. I believe I wasn't put on this earth to be a lower, side-kick, passive, baby-making, subdued woman that would sit idly by while the more important men in my life made decisions and gained educations and ruled over me.

But here's the thing, that was never Heavenly Father's intention for me, or for Eve.

In the original Hebrew scripture, the word for "help meet" is "Ezer Kenegdo". "Ezer" means "help", but not in the way our modern English language would suggest. Instead of just being a passive helper, being an "Ezer" means to strengthen, protect, and provide sanctuary. "Ezer" was used twenty-one other times in the Old Testament, and was only otherwise used to describe protection against the greatest forces of evil, from armies, and for divine guidance and strength for all of humankind. Here are a few of these verses:

Exodus 18:4 "For the God of my Father, said he, was mine help [ezer] and delivered me from the sword of Pharaoh." Psalm 115:9 "O Israel, thou has destroyed thyself, but in me is thine help [ezer]." Hosea 13:9 "In me [the Lord] is thy help [ezer]."

With this knowledge we can say with absolute certainty that to be an "Ezer" is to be a stand in for God's protection and love.

"Kenegdo" is generally thought by scholar's to mean "opposite or corresponding to". Like a puzzle piece, is what my instructor said.

Combining these two words together, we know that God created Eve to be a different but important and equal counterpart to Adam, with special power to comfort and protect against evil. How wonderful is that!!! Whenever we as women serve or help protect our communities and families, we are fulfilling our God given roles as ezer kenegdos.

And this was just the first half of class!

For the second half, we discussed the story of Eve being tempted by Satan to eat the fruit of the tree of knowledge, which led to her telling Adam to eat of the fruit, which led to their expulsion from the garden.

There are a few students in the institute who converted to the church only recently, and shared their previous religions perspectives on this scripture. That Eve was stupid and foolish, easily tricked by a much smarter man, and cursed all of mankind with the Fall that we should live in evil and misery and sin. But we are blessed to know, through living prophets and modern revelation, that the Fall was a necessary part of Heavenly Father's plan. In order for us to become more like Him, we need to have knowledge.

Lehi taught Jacob, "....wherefore they would have remained in a state of innocence, having no joy, for they knew no misery; doing no good, for they knew no sin". It reminds me of the final season of The Good Place, which is one of my favorite TV shows of all time, where when the protagonists finally make it up to heaven they find that the constant state of happiness has become insurmountably boring, and there's no real joy to be found. We can only appreciate wonderful things if we know what it means to be miserable.

2 Nephi 2:25 (the best scripture verse, IMO) sums it up entirely for us: "Adam fell that men might be, and men are that they might have joy."

Eve knew this, and she made the right decision. She was never remorseful, saying "were it not for our transgressions we ... never should have known good and evil, and the joy of our redemption, and the eternal life which God giveth unto all the obedient" (Moses 5:11).

So, how does Eve's life deepen my conversion to the Savior? Through her, I can be an ezer to the people in my life, and can comfort myself with the knowledge that through her's and Adam's transgression, I can find greater knowledge on both spiritual and worldly matters, and make mistakes that will lead me to grow closer to my Heavenly Parents. Through the "Fall" and the Gospel of our Savior Jesus Christ, I can repent for my sins and imperfections and develop into the woman God knows I can and will become

Amen!

#women in scripture #institue #lds institute class #ldsblr #pro lds #pro mormon #mormon positive #tumblrstake #queerstake #mormonism #Eve #adam and eve #The Fall #the garden of eden #scripture #this was a great class!! im so excited for the next one #I hope this is coherent for anyone who reads it haha I was kinda word vomiting #next week is Sarah who was Abraham's wife!

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eternal-echoes · 3 months

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I don't particularly like arguing that Europe was at its best when it was called Christendom to get people to convert to Christianity because if God decides not to save the Western Civilization, it doesn't really negate the truth of Christianity. And if God calls people to martyrdom, they may not be able to give up their lives to Christ if they were led to Christianity hoping to preserve an earthly kingdom.

But in the coming weeks, I will be posting a lot of quotes and passages from Thomas E. Woods' How the Catholic Church Built the Western Civilization because I think it's important to understand the mindset of people in the middle ages as they built the western civilization so we can imitate them in trying to rebuild this civilization after the damages done by the Enlightenment.

And I see a lot of pagan white nationalists and alt-right Catholics wanting to defend the Western Civilization with the philosophy of non-Christian writers like Julius Evola, Savitri Devi, René Guénon, Alain de Benoist, Yukio Mishima (and others) but those writers weren't there in the beginning to build the foundation of Western Civilization. I'm not saying they're wrong about everything but the seeds of truth found in their false ideologies ultimately find their completeness in the Catholicism. And why only have one food from the select menu of a cafeteria if you can have the whole buffet? From Catholicism that is.

#Catholic #Christianity #western civilization #europe #decline of the west #nationalism #white nationalists #white nationalism #alt-right #thomas e. woods #reactionary #traditionalism

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calisources · 11 months

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PRINCESS MARY TUDOR SENTENCE QUOTES. quotes spoken by princess/lady mary tudor from showstime the tudors or dialogue spoken about her. change pronouns and names as you see fit. some of these are spoken by mary's mother, catherine of aragon in the show.

"I know of no Queen of England but my mother. And I will accept no Queen but my mother."

" if the King's mistress would intercede with him on my behalf, then I would be grateful."

"As long as I live, I shall never forgive myself."

"Is the harlot dead?"

"Am I not my mother's daughter?"

"I am afraid I was not born for happiness."

"Lady, you must know how beloved you are to the people—as was your mother before you, God rest her soul."

"Whiles my father lives i shall only be lady mary, the most unhappy lady in christendom.“

"If I had to choose between extreme happiness and extreme sorrow, I would always choose sorrow.When you are happy, you forget... You forget about spiritual things."

"Are you the dauphin? Then I want to kiss you!"

"He will tire of you, you will see"

" I'm a lot older than I was when I first knew you. And wiser. "

"I do not know If I shall ever be married. Or if I will ever be queen. Probably neither."

“You didn’t step on my foot…how could you? Your feet don’t even touch the ground.”

"Tell him that he may come as he wishes and if the king pleases. But not to expect anything."

"I know we must've formally been introduced but . . .i couldn't wait."

"May I kiss your hand?"

"I had thought of leaving court for the country. . . I may delay my leaving, if it pleases you. for a day or so."

"He doesn't even know me. We have nothing in common."

"I wanted a moment alone with you."

"I cry only because I'm so happy."

"Would you like me to kiss you again?"

"I shall attend upon your majesty, whenever your majesty chooses to invite me."

#rp meme #sentences memes #meme call #roleplay memes #sentence meme #( cali meme. )#rp memes #rp prompt #rp musings #roleplay prompt #roleplay meme #she is my favorite!

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power-chords · 6 months

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The ever-talking double of the Rothian pantheon is a Jew. Jewish talkiness may be an artifact of theology (arguing with God), an effect of history (wheedling with Cossacks), a residue of Talmudic practice, or the product of psychoanalysis (“say everything”). Whatever the source, there is “inside each Jew,” as one character puts it in Operation Shylock, “so many speakers! Shut up one and the other talks.”

The irrepressible talker is mobilized by Roth against any notion of Jewish wholeness or authenticity, of being oneself, at home in the world. The authentic Jew is the fantasy of the Zionist and the anti-Semite alike. Both get a platform in the “Judea” and “Christendom” chapters of The Counterlife, in which they reduce the Jew to a singular, univocal self. Purged of ambiguity and uncertainty, that Jew has only one destiny: to vacate his diasporic premises and go back to where he belongs, the land of his ancestors, where he will stop talking so much, or at least in so many voices.

Roth’s defense of the double against Jewish reductionism and Zionist certainty is also, in a way, the upshot of Arendt’s strictures about the doubling of the self. The fact that “I am inevitably two-in-one,” she writes, “is the reason why the fashionable search for identity is futile and our modern identity crisis could be resolved only by losing consciousness.” The search for a grounding identity—Jewish or otherwise—necessarily finds its terminus in the stasis of a unified self, unable to carry on a conversation even with itself. Down such a path, she suggests, lies death. [...]

Roth and Arendt turn the double into a figure of satire and irony, using its destabilizing comedy to deprive that house of its foundations. Roth’s most fanciful double is Anne Frank. In The Ghost Writer, the young Nathan Zuckerman, like the young Roth, has written a story that earns him the accusation of being a self-hating Jew. His accusers include his parents and Judge Wapter, a family friend and respected leader of Newark’s Jewish community. Desperate for exoneration, Nathan makes a pilgrimage to the home of an esteemed and elderly Jewish writer (modeled on Bernard Malamud) who lives in the Berkshires with his wife. There, Nathan meets the writer’s assistant, Amy Bellette. As the evening goes on, the form of Nathan’s redemption takes shape: Amy is really Anne Frank, and Nathan will marry her. What better guarantor of his Jewish credentials? He imagines returning to New Jersey and the conversation with his parents that will ensue:

“I met a marvelous young woman while I was up in New England. I love her and she loves me. We are going to be married.” “Married? But so fast? Nathan, is she Jewish?” “Yes, she is.” “But who is she?” “Anne Frank.”

According to Bailey, Roth originally wrote the Bellette character as if she were, in fact, Anne Frank. But that simple application of the reality principle prevented him from finishing the book. It was only when he realized that Bellette had to be a fantasy Anne Frank—a fictitious double, conjured from Nathan’s head—that Roth was able to find the comedy in, the meaning of, the story: how an agonistic writer could turn himself into a nice Jewish boy by marrying the nicest Jewish girl that ever lived, how the most sacred figure of the Holocaust—and the Holocaust itself—could be used to resolve the most profane family romance.

Corey Robin, "Arendt and Roth: An Uncanny Convergence"

#philip roth #hannah arendt #commonplace buch

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haggishlyhagging · 10 months

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The absurd story of Eve's birth is an excellent example of a process that is prevalent in men's treatment of women and their accomplishments throughout the history of patriarchy. I shall simply call this phenomenon reversal. In some cases it is blatantly silly, as in this case of insistence that a male was the original mother, and that "God" (a male) revealed this. In other instances it has been pseudo-biological, as in the centuries-long insistence that women are "misbegotten males"—a notion refuted by modern genetic research, which demonstrates that it would be far more accurate to designate the male (produced by a Y chromosome, which is an incomplete X chromosome) as a misbegotten female. Very commonly, it consists simply in stealing women's ideas and assuming credit for them, that is, denial by men that the ideas ever came from their female originators. Many women are aware of this happening in their own lives, and many have consciously allowed it to happen, in the belief that this was the only way of getting acceptance for an idea or a plan, and that the latter was more important than credit for its authorship. I suggest that it is time not only to become conscious of this phenomenon but also to end complicity in its continuance. The idea and actualization of feminism is far more important than any idea that could succeed through such self-abnegating and humiliating tactics.

We should also consider the possibility that the reversal phenomenon has taken place in assertions that Christianity "has raised the status of women" and affirmed our "dignity." Women who have attempted to be feminists and at the same time Christians have generally gone along with this, believing that Christianity did advance the cause of women in the past but that it now (oddly) lags behind. However, the record of barbarous cruelty to women in Christendom hardly gives unequivocal support to this kind of apologetic. Christian theology widely asserted that women were inferior, weak, depraved, and vicious. The logical consequences of this opinion were worked out in a brutal set of social arrangements that shortened and crushed the lives of women.

I propose that another form of reversal has been the idea of redemptive incarnation uniquely in the form of a male savior, for, as already indicated, this is precisely what is impossible. A patriarchal divinity or his son is exactly not in a position to save us from the horrors of a patriarchal world. Does this mean, then, that the women's movement points to, seeks, or in some way constitutes a rival to "the Christ"? On another, but related, level Michelet wrote that the priest has seen in the witch "an enemy, a menacing rival." In its depth, because it contains a dynamic that drives beyond Christolatry, the women's movement does point to, seek, and constitute the primordial, always present, and future Antichrist. It does this by breaking the Great Silence, raising up female pride, recovering female history, healing and bringing into the open female presence.

I suggest that the mechanism of reversal has been at the root of the idea that the "Antichrist" must be something "evil." What if this is not the case at all? What if the idea has arisen out of the male's unconscious dread that women will rise up and assert the power robbed from us? What if it in fact points to a mode of being and presence that is beyond patriarchy's definitions of good and evil? The Antichrist dreaded by the patriarchs may be the surge of consciousness, the spiritual awakening, that can bring us beyond Christolatry into a fuller stage of conscious participation in the living God.

Seen from this perspective the Antichrist and the Second Coming of women are synonymous. This Second Coming is not a return of Christ but a new arrival of female presence, once strong and powerful, but enchained since the dawn of patriarchy. Only this arrival can liberate the memory of Jesus from enchainment to the role of "mankind's most illustrious scapegoat." The arrival of women means the removal of the primordial victim, "the Other," because of whom "the Son of God had to die." When no longer condemned to the role of "savior," perhaps Jesus can be recognizable as a free man. It is only female pride and self-affirmation that can release the memory of Jesus from its destructive uses and can free freedom to be contagious.

The Second Coming, then, means that the prophetic dimension in the symbol of the Great Goddess—later reduced to the "Mother of God"—is the key to salvation from servitude to structures that obstruct human becoming. Symbolically speaking, it is the Virgin who must free and "save" the Son. Anthropologically speaking, it is women who must make the breakthrough that can alter the seemingly doomed course of human evolution. Unlike the so-called "First Coming" of Christian theology, which was an absolutizing of men, the women's revolution is not an absolutizing of women, precisely because it is the overcoming of dichotomous sex stereotyping, which is the source of the absolutizing process itself. To the degree that it is true to its ontological dynamics, feminism means refusal to be captured again in a stereotypic symbol. It means the freeing of women and men from the sexist ethos of dichotomizing and hierarchizing that is destroying us all. Far from being a "return" to the past, it implies a qualitative leap toward psychic androgyny. The new arrival of female presence is the necessary catalyst for this leap.

As marginal beings who have no stake in a sexist world, women—if we have the courage to keep our eyes open—have access to the knowledge that neither the Father, nor the Son, nor the Mother is God, the Verb who transcends anthropomorphic symbolization. Such knowledge will entail a transvaluation of values undreamed of by Nietzsche or any other prophet whose prophecy was dwarfed by secret dread of the Second Coming. This event, still on its way, will mean the end of phallic morality. Should it not occur, we may witness the end of the human species on this planet.

-Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father: Toward a Philosophy of Women’s Liberation

#mary daly #anti christianity #womens liberation #antichrist #second coming #great goddess #patriarchal reversal

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sjmattson · 1 year

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It can be hard to reconcile the “behind-the-scenes” reality of churches and Christian leaders with their “staged” presentations of the gospel.

The professionalism of one’s work in ministry can be great, even while their spiritual health may be lacking. Proficient skills as a preacher, teacher, worship musician, or other ministerial role can hide spiritual failings, abusive behavior, addictions, or other toxic actions.

Contrarily, honest, kind, and good-hearted souls may be horrible public speakers, and not what we deem as “gifted” ministers. They may be ignored or unappreciated because they have no “significant” role.

Performative Christianity magnifies these problems because it over-relies on production instead of authenticity. But real-life, the time we spend outside the institutional walls of Christendom, is where we discover the true hearts of those around us. Through the raw and unrehearsed presence of living is where our faith, for better or for worse, is manifested for all to see.

#christianity #jesus #god #christian #church

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macksting · 3 months

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I'm gonna try to find other places my favorite people here are, that are not X or Tumblr. I'm gonna try to retain my contacts here. But I'm leaving again. I don't feel a need to get myself banned to make some point, and it looks like that's easy to do for now. He wants us off this site? Fine, I'll go. There's better places to be anyway.

But before I go.

I apologize in advance to any Christians who feel unfairly hurt by what I'm about to say, but: I don't hate Christianity, but I hate being unable to escape it anywhere I go. In the same way that a Christian atheist may still have a rabid hatred of Muslims, I find Christian and ex-Christian trans women still want our suffering to be holy, to be martyrs. Mostly they don't go running into the mouth of hell to suffer, if nothing else because that'd hurt and most of them aren't that devoted to this mindset; and some of us fly too close to the sun not out of masochistic death cultism but out of just being at heart a bunch of pains in the ass, so I ain't talking about that either. I'm talking about needing to be seen as suffering, as more suffering than others, as a kind of social oneupsmanship. And it's not better to do so in some kind of communion or solidarity or whatever, it's still ridiculous no matter how you do it.

We should be learning about the means of each other's oppressions, to better understand our own, not turning it into a fucking pissing contest.

And I cannot escape these mindsets. I see these baffling crab-bucket behaviors in these shitty online spaces that I almost never see in real life, with real world groups and people, because... iunno, maybe because I live in the PNW and a lot of folks didn't grow up being told that suffering is the highest form of virtue and therefore that if you are not suffering enough then you are not virtuous enough, and since real suffering sucks, it's best to just make people accept that the level of suffering you're going through, which is bad, is superior and unique and untouchably awful.

My friend Michael says it's also kind of a white thing. By creating a hierarchy of who is most oppressed and placing yourself on top, you can make yourself feel immune to criticism, and apparently this is just something a lot of white folks feel they need. Myself, iunno, I'm white too, I hope I don't do that, but I suspect my particular brand of OCD means my anxieties in that regard can't be alleviated without significant therapy and medication, which is not better but it does seem to make me a little less likely to try to put myself on top of hierarchies out of sheer terror of myself.

I seriously cannot escape this shit. I dunno how much I've got to go dismantling my own bullshit, but at least I wasn't raised Christian. It must be so exhausting. If you see me posting something positive that's happening, believe me, it's not intended as toxic positivity. It's intended as a radical statement that a better world is possible. It's radically asserting that life is not pain, and that our pain has causes that can be dealt with. And I dearly do hope it pisses someone off to see someone living their best life in spite of the horrors. A car outside our homeless shelter says, "Birds sing after the storm, so shall we," along with countless Christian statements scrawled all over it, and I am not waiting for some storm to pass. It won't pass in my lifetime. I'm singing now. And some of those songs are happy, and some of those songs are angry, and some are both.

If all you want is the aesthetics of suffering or the aesthetics of social justice, fuck off. I don't need more Christendom. I'm trapped in this place, and I am so fucking tired of it. I feel like Shrek yelling at Donkey, "can you please stop being yourself for five minutes!"

#rant #christianity #christian atheists #transness #iunno whatever there's a lotta good people here but i'm taking off for now

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