marblesandmuffins - Tumblr blog

[marblesandmuffins]

"we need to bring back x" it starts with YOU

[marblesandmuffins]

contrary to popular belief not everyone has an innate sense of internal gender or care to have one or seek a name for it, some people go their whole lives without questioning their occupation in one of two gender roles, but for some people, if pressed, they don’t feel that internal sense of ‘i am a woman’ or ‘i am a man’, and in that case i feel the switch over to transgender vs cisgender relies on active identification of a gender other than the one they were assigned. if someone’s like ‘idk dude I just work here’ then that’s valid

[marblesandmuffins]

What if the reason Hestia is so often overlooked, even though she is a daughter of Kronos, a sister of Zeus and Hera and all the rest, is because she is associated with a part of the home that people of status benefit from, but never maintain? Everyone wants heat and light, cooked food and warm nights, but no one wants the boring, repetitive labour of collecting wood and cleaning ashes and soot.

—Natalie Haynes, Divine Might

[marblesandmuffins]

a concerning amount of witchblr will be like "um actually new years was stolen by europeans from the ancient god scroobus mcdoobus" and then you actually try to research scroobus mcdoobus and it turns out he was invented in the 1940s by a conspiracy theorist who powdered every meal with ketamine and thinks that queer people are reincarnated fish

[marblesandmuffins]

And the wisest monk said "young one, you reject the unenlightened ways of Hazbin Hotel, but not three years ago, I recall you posting twink Wheatley in great enthusiasm. You must not hate what you discard on the path to enlightenment. All of our old selves are within us, and we must imagine them lezzing out."

[marblesandmuffins]

“if you’re working a full time job you should be able to afford to live on your own and have access to food and transportation” gonna be real with you brother. everyone deserves this. Not just people working 40 hrs a week

[marblesandmuffins]

And the wisest monk said "young one, you reject the unenlightened ways of Hazbin Hotel, but not three years ago, I recall you posting twink Wheatley in great enthusiasm. You must not hate what you discard on the path to enlightenment. All of our old selves are within us, and we must imagine them lezzing out."

[marblesandmuffins]

commuting makes me realize how other people have no idea about all having their own lives. some are there to visit family, some are there to get to school, some are there to see there to get to work, some are going home.

[marblesandmuffins]

god the roman empire is so funny. imagine if the secret service had killed 13 presidents and the current president just had to be like, okay with that fact

[marblesandmuffins]

some loser: humans are innately selfish creatures

my psych book:

[marblesandmuffins]

Fascism sells a synthetic nostalgia.

[marblesandmuffins]

it's okay to question what you believe in, it's GOOD to question what you believe in.

YOU SHOULD QUESTION WHAT YOU BELIEVE IN

are the religious fanatics coming at your door telling you you'll burn in hell, disrespect your gods, disrespect blah blah blah?

are the fear mongering idiots attacking you by saying there's going to be a day without wifi and we're all doomed if we don't search up ways to live off the grid?

Well come no further and you've found the right place! Please QUESTION everything you believe in because that's how you grow as a person and how we can grow as a society.

[marblesandmuffins]

u ever see someone with extremely fucked up views (or actions) and think wowww if a couple of things in my life went the tiniest bit differently that would have been me

[marblesandmuffins]

I believe in freedom of belief and religion and practicing it in a way that suits you, your style, and your needs, but people need to understand not everyone has the same beliefs or has the same structure as you.

If you're a person that takes the myth of your religion seriously in your craft then that's perfectly fine, but other people do not. If person worships Zeus or Poseidon don't give them the stink eye for "worshipping a bad deity". Those deities are more than just their myths, it can even be argued that the myths have no basis at all when it comes to worship. (moral context)

It is understandable that certain individuals will be uncomfortable or downright disgusted by these myths and it will affect how they see the deity, but remember that no one has the same beliefs. Do not hunt someone down for their differences in beliefs.

[marblesandmuffins]

hot take but if you're going to be participating in any religion (INCLUDING PAGAN RELIGIONS) you have to research about the culture itself first.

[marblesandmuffins]

as someone who's also neurodivergent I also agree! You don't have to research everything that encompasses a certain religion. What's important is that you research what you'll be doing and the culture surrounding the deities you'll be worshipping. You don't NEED a phd to get into paganism.

There's a reason why there's two different titles that we call recon and revivalist.

As someone that's Italian and Filipino it makes me happy to see people getting into Greco-Roman paganism or Filipino paganism, whether that be they're looking for Greek specific deities or Roman specific deities or Filipino specific deities.

I didn't elaborate since 'hot take' format posts are supposed to be brief.

hot take but if you're going to be participating in any religion (INCLUDING PAGAN RELIGIONS) you have to research about the culture itself first.

[marblesandmuffins]

Hi, I saw your post about prominent magic peoples data mining and presenting themselves falsely and even hurting others with misinformation. I realize you probably can't share specific names but could you give examples of things to look out for or experiences you've had in this regard - i'm newer to this stuff and I want to avoid bad/dangerous/misleading information. Thank you!

Gods, there are so many red flags to watch for that it’s pretty disheartening.

Citations and sources aren’t always the best measure of whether something is good or accurate, because a lot of people reference themselves under another name, or are citing people who also don’t know what they’re talking about. Sadly, if it’s written by a modern Heathen practitioner, it’s probably a bad source and may even be really super awful bad, as a number of Heathens are basically harvesting stuff from WWII and Romantic-era Germanic esotericism and such. If there are no citations whatsoever, it’s best to assume that whatever is posted is that author’s personal opinion, which may be completely inaccurate or historically inauthentic or any number of things. You can ask people for references. If they are a good source, they will cough up some citations for you if they were just writing off-the-cuff, and then you can scrutinize those sources to help determine the quality of what’s being claimed.

Be 1000% wary of people who give themselves grandiose titles. Particularly if it’s something that is meant to give them a lot of authority and isn’t anything that’s provable, like That God’s One TRUE Oracle, or So-And-So’s Mortal Avatar, or so on. People will pretend to be authorities, and they will leverage your religious beliefs, your emotions, and whatever ignorance you have on particular topics to bullshit their way into a position of power over you, and then they will utilize it.

Be 1000% wary of people who claim to be able to “godphone” or “do spirit possession” on demand over the internet, or who “suddenly have a message to give you from That One God. Be skeptical, ask them to answer questions only that God would know (and this is why you don’t talk about a lot of things, because people will datamine what you write to try to cold-read you or offer up enough snippets of data they mined to try to fool you that they’re legit). Ask them difficult questions that they could only accurately answer if that God was on the other end of the line. If the messages are “wow, suddenly so confusing”, or “oh, the connection was just lost”, or you offer some hints and suddenly the person wildly changes the message and tone to match the hints you tossed out, they’re full of bullshit and just trying to manipulate you.

Do they insist that in order to Properly Worship And Give Correct Offerings to your gods of choice, that you should have divination done every so often, and the only acceptable diviners are them and their buddies and they’ll do it for a Low, Low Price of [something ridiculous here]? (Paid divination is good, people should be paid, the clincher here is frequency, and price, and limiting you to a circle of people who are in on it and will tell you only the things to keep you controlled.) How about, the bestest offerings are ones you can only buy from them? Or that they’ll use their Special Authority Status and Closeness With That God to make your prayers and requests heard better and be more effective? Do they have a not-insignificant monetary motivation to encourage you to do certain things, where they make a personal profit? 

Be wary of people who present themselves as the only source of information worth listening to, or who hide the existence of the fact that there are others who talk about the same topics who don’t share their opinions and interpretations.

Be wary of people who make a habit of isolating you from others. Watch what people say and how they behave. Separating you from friends and peers and making you overly reliant on them is a habit of manipulators and abusers.

Exerting group pressure to ensure your compliance is another abusive tool .Does the person in question seem to have a cult of personality? Are you afraid of ever disagreeing because that person’s followers will rip you to shreds and slander you, with the encouragement of that person? Is alienation used as a threat? (”You better do XYZ, or you’re not a True Polytheist™ and we’ll all know it, and the gods will forsake you for your impiety” etc etc)

Does the person in question “neg” you? (They’re often saying negative things and very backhanded compliments that are actually insults designed to undermine your self-esteem and confidence in order to make you easier to manipulate.) Alternatively, they may try to figure out what your deepest insecurities are and flatter those to try to create emotional dependence.

Do they get very angry at you if you talk to the “wrong” people? (I’m not talking about people who get upset if they catch you hanging out with overt racists, mind, but people who get jealous and controlling if they’re not your only go-to for religious things.)

Person in question never takes responsibility. Ever. Everything is always someone else’s fault. If you bring up a concrete example of a time when they did wrong, rather than accept responsibility, the person in question will try to justify what happened or push the blame off onto someone else or start attacking and manipulating you for daring to bring that example up.

Wildly inappropriate behavior. Crude and triggering jokes and comments when you’re talking about trauma or processing grief. Flirting and trying to manipulate you into sex or romance when you’re struggling in a relationship and they’re acting as a councilor. Encouraging you to do rash and/or self-destructive actions when you’re emotionally unbalanced.

The person’s claims and back-story keep changing. Rapidly. The facts don’t check out, and a bit of questioning and detective work shows that their claims are lies or huge exaggerations. When you talk to people who have known that person in the past, they have really alarming stories about that person’s attitudes and behaviors and actions in the past, and all the stories you hear match up to the same pattern.

The person in question might avoid talking somewhere where it will leave a record behind. If they know they’re going to tell a different story in the future, they won’t want you coming forward with pesky screencaps, or outside observers that they don’t control seeing what’s going on. Interactions happen in passworded chatrooms or other places hidden from view, where the chat logs are regularly cleared to try to avoid members saving copies. Or via voice chat, banking on the assumption that people won’t be recording.

Gaslighting. This goes hand-in-hand with trying to avoid talking to you in ways where you can record what happened, because it limits how much they can make you doubt your own memories.

The person in question is often really thirsty for attention and pursues platforms, microphones, and spotlights even when they really don’t have anything to say. They don’t care if what they have to say is complete misinformation or damaging to others, either. Other people’s well-being doesn’t matter in comparison with their desire to be seen as very important and commanding power and attention.

Does everyone in the group completely match one another in their spiritual experiences and associations? Does one person have a bit of UPG, post about it, and suddenly everyone starts having matching UPG (or, at least they claim as much. People lie. People especially lie to fit in.) Do you have to match particular UPG or else you’re not a REAL Devotee™? Do you get forced into accepting interpretations and experiences that are toxic? (for example, claims that you absolutely need to self-harm or put yourself in danger in order to please a particular god, or someone asserting that they had a bad dream or UPG with what they think was God XYZ and demanding that everyone immediately abandon that God and do exactly what they say, and if you don’t comply then you are dangerous trash that needs to die in a fire, etc.)

These are just a sampling. This is such a broad and complex topic that it would take awhile to cover the various things that you could spot, or how people mistake neurodivergent traits with abuse and manipulation red flags (they can be utilized for abuse and manipulation, but are not inherently abusive, which is a lecture for another day). Generally, a good rule of thumb is to look at what’s being said and done and keep in mind that everyone operates from selfish motivation… and then try to figure out if that motivation is personal monetary profit, or a desire for power and control, or pleasure from toying with you and inflicting pain, or whether the selfish motivation is personal pleasure derived from helping others. When you figure out what is motivating and driving people’s actions and what features at the core of their personality, they become a lot easier to assess and predict. Protect yourself first. Pay attention to your feelings. See also my older post on Divine Communication, Ethics, and Manipulation Techniques.