#Anti-Rational Mysticism

[whereishermes]

Scholasticism in Medieval Paris

Scholasticism: The Gothic school of philosophy in which scholars applied Aristotle’s system of rational inquiry to interpret religious belief.  The University of Paris was the center of scholarship and teaching in the Gothic age. The professors developed Scholasticism, a philosophy that sought to prove the Christian faith using Aristotle’s reasoning. Thomas Aquinas was the greatest advocate and…

[bethanythebogwitch]

My favorite magic system from a game I haven't actually played is from Mage: the Ascension. It kind of fits as both a hard magic system and a soft magic system at the same time because there are some hard rules, but its mostly very open. To become a mage you have to realize that reality is not what it seems. In MtA, reality is whatever the majority of people believe it is, known as the consensus. The consensus in modern days is pretty uniform everywhere, with small variations based on where you are, but it used to be wildly different based on the cultural beliefs of the local people. A mage is a person who realizes that the consensus isn't true reality and gains to power to act outside of its rules. Any given mage's abilities come from their own personal view of reality, known as their paradigm. A mage's magic can do basically anything, as long as it is accounted for in their paradigm. So a mage who's paradigm includes the classic Aristotelian elements can perform magic based on that, but if their paradigm doesn't include animistic spirits then they can't commune with those spirits even though other mages could based on their own paradigm. The problem with this is that the consensus doesn't like it when you go around breaking its rules and will punish mages by slapping them with an effect called paradox. Paradox can be anything from a spell failing to getting shunted into your own personal pocket universe. Nothing generates paradox like being seen doing magic by sleepers (people who are not mages and still live fully within the consensus). Most mages either only use magic around other mages or, if they need to cast around sleepers, will disguise their magic as a mundane effect. Someone throwing a fireball from their hands will generate major paradox because the consensus is that people can't do that. However if a mage holds a lighter up to a spraycan before casting their fireball, the sleepers can rationalize it as something that exists within the consensus and not as much paradox will be generated.

In the dark ages, magic was part of the consensus and mages could openly rule over the sleepers because everyone believed in magic and therefore magic was part of the consensus. In response to the tyranny of the mages, a group was formed called the League of Reason, who wanted to introduce a new form of magic to the consensus that everyone could use. This form of magic was based on logic and reason and was called science. This led to the ascension war, where the League of reason sought to remove magic and superstition from the consensus and a very loose coalition of mages called the Council of Nine Mystic Traditions want to keep magic in the consensus. And the League of Reason won. A mostly rationalistic, scientific worldview has become the consensus worldwide, forcing the Council into operating underground. The League of Reason has become the Technocracy, a worldwide secret organization ruling the world from the shadows and trying to stamp out magic and any other form of "reality deviants" to keep humanity safe, even if they have to suppress basic human imagination to do so. Notably, the earliest books for the game very much said "Traditions good, Technocracy bad", but later books went for a much more grey approach to the conflict between them, making it clear that both sides really are doing what they think is in humanity's best interest even if their ideas for how to do so are fundamentally incompatible.

What's really interesting is that science and technology really are a form of magic and technocrats are mages, even if the Technocracy would vehemently deny this. Technology is a form of magic that everyone can use because its part of the consensus and science doesn't discover new facts about the world, It creates those facts and applies them to the world. The Technocracy's super-advanced technology creates paradox just as much as magic does because personal anti-gravity suits and mass-produced clones violate the consensus just like throwing around fireballs and conjuring demons does.

Mage: the Ascension is a super fun setting because just about any fantasy or sci-fi trope can exist here. Classic pointy hat and wand wizards can battle cyborgs armed with self-replicating nanotechnology. Anti-authoritarian punks can hack your wallpaper to spy on you because they believe all reality is part of a unified mathematical whole that the internet gives us access to. A group of spacefarers can ride the luminiferous aether to mars only to encounter Aztec shamans who asked the spirits to carry them there thousands of years ago. A powerful mage can create a time loop by convincing their younger self to obtain enlightenment through the power of sex, drugs, and rock and roll. Two people can have an argument over whether the guy they just met was an alien from Alpha Centauri or an elf from the Norse nine realms and both of them can be right. Animistic spirit-callers can upload themselves to the internet to combat spirits of malware. And an angry mage might just teleport you into the sun because they believe distance is just an illusion and therefore have the power to make anything go anywhere with a thought. It's a wild ride.

[kutputli]

It's been two days since I finished watching Interview with the Vampire, and the show has been consuming all my brain space. I didn't have the energy to live blog each episode of season 2, but I want to get my reactions down, before I go in search of reading other people's. This will be a haphazard collection of thoughts, so I think what I will do is start talking character by character and see if that helps me organise things any.

Louis

This one is the beating heart of the show, and I don't see how it would have worked if they had not made him a Black man. Everything stems from what he learned during his life of how to survive and thrive and yet remain kind and compassionate, and watching him be fragile and loving and grieving is soul stirring. Perhaps other people might still have found the show engaging with the role played by a white character (given fandom's embrace of the slave owning pirates in Our Flag Means Death, I am sure a slave owning Louis would not have been an insurmountable problem).

But this story belongs to the Black Louis, and to what Jacob Anderson made of him. Just impeccable acting choices, all down the line. I am mesmerised by him.

Praise for the character aside, he is the moral heart of the show. (I know there is a case to be made for Claudia, but I will get to her after this.) I don't actually much enjoy villains presented as anti-heroes, and Louis engenders so much empathy in a show filled with rather awful people.

Of course, he loves Claudia. And I do see him putting her first to the best of his ability. Claudia may be entitled to her resentment, but that doesn't make it rational fact. Louis encouraging her to leave the first time, knowing that Lestat would follow him if he left, that's a valid choice. And then choosing not to burn Lestat... I am reminded of how few victims of domestic abuse actually murder their abusers. The main desire is always to get away. I don't condemn Louis for choosing to not kill his lover.

Claudia had no roots laid down in New Orleans, but Louis did, and he gave all of that up to support her really rather nonsensical search for mystical vampires who were not as awful as Lestat. He helped her join the coven even if he could see it was a cult. And when she introduced him to Madeline, he listened to her. He turned her for Claudia. I don't ever see a moment where he stopped actively caring for her and doing the labour to prove it. I took the line about her being a burden as fully just transparent bait for Armand.

And when Lestat shows up at the trial, its Claudia that Louis is focussed on. He Always. Puts. Her. First.

The way that Louis finds his way into a relationship with Armand is so heartbreakingly soft. We never see them in their intimate moments as dom and sub, but I get the sense that he would be a tender lover -what he wants is to be respected, to have control.

And then we come to the post-trial choices.

I can somewhat buy him sparing Armand's life during his vengeance murder spree, because it wasn't just that Armand said he had saved him during the trial - if you remember, Armand was only encouraging him to leave Paris. Louis was the one who asked. But also, Armand was the one who let him out of the coffin. He did save Louis, and Louis would have tasted the blood of the person who saved him and known it was him.

I think maybe Louis was able to get over Armand facilitating Claudia's murder, because he saw him as a victim paralysed in the same way that he himself had been. Louis knows about having to keep his head down and be complicit with an oppressive system, and I think he offered the benefit of the doubt to Armand because of that. Perhaps also - Louis forgave Claudia for attempting to murder Lestat because he could see her desparation and why she needed to do it. Maybe Louis created a story for himself where Armand was similarly trapped. I don't know. To me, his choice of staying with Armand is the one I am the most questioning of.

(All of this is presupposing that what we saw was what actually happened. There are indications that there is yet another layer to the trial that we don't know about, and because Louis wasn't there as primary witness for the end, maybe some new facts will emerge to make Armand either more sympathetic, or more manipulative.)

Louis's relationship with Daniel is endearing and charming and all things adorable. I hope they whatsapp each other often and have some uncomplicated relaxing stress-relieving sex.

As for Louis and Lestat... see, I was ok with what I saw on the screen. I saw an abuse survivor leave his second marriage the instant he found out he had been lied to, and I saw him visit the parent of his child for closure. Taking on the burden of Claudia's death is nonsense, of course, but it was believeable nonsense. In that I accept that Louis, after having learned that Lestat did lift a finger to partially save his life, spilled out from all his generosity and love, what he thought might help the wretched ex he saw eating on rats and playing on a plank.

But what I am not ok with, what repulses me to the core, is the apparent conviction of the show producers that Louis and Lestat are destined to return to each other, as the great love of each other's lives. It is true that some domestic abuse survivors never manage to completely free themselves from their abuser, and some spouses continue to stay with the abuser of their child (Alice Munro, looking at you). But that storyline is a horror story. Nothing in the framing of the show indicates that horror. And I do not wish for a season 3 that walks down that road.

[aeskanera]

Originally for my own reference, but posting in case it helps anyone with character building for ocs, I went through all the original story companion bios and made a list of all of the likes/dislikes organised into categories

Peace/Kindness/“Light Side”

protecting the weak

punishing bad guys

being nice to ladies

kindness

charity

selflessness

standing up for the weak

mercy

protecting those close to you

sincerity

fighting bullies

morally correct actions

helping the weak

humility

honesty

helping those in need

acts of mercy

friendship

compromise

peace

helping people

encouraging others to defend themselves

sparing enemies

Violence/“Dark Side”

hurting for profit

hurting women

cruelty

bullying

slavery

killing innocents

casual violence

pain

prejudice

unnecessary violence

corruption

murder

refusing to help

chaos

anti alien sentiment

extreme violence

scary things

violence as a solution

mean people

revenge

random cruelty

rudeness

spite

using power against the weak

betrayal

hurting innocents

ruthlessness

violence

anger

causing suffering

destruction

killing powerful enemies

killing the weak

betrayal of allies

Specific Groups/Organisations

the republic

the empire

the sith

dark jedi

the jedi

bounty hunters

republic military

mandalorians

Stuff Related to the Above Groups

working with sith or imperials

republic authorities

mocking force users

imperial memorabilia

killing force users

mystical jedi nonsense

cooperating with sith

serving the empire

force persuade

destroying the republic’s enemies

mercenary work

mocking the empire

following the sith code

hurting the republic

protecting the republic

acting like a mercenary

defeating the empire

republic memorabilia

patriotism to the empire

pro republic messages

testing force powers

pro empire sentiment

killing imperials

hurting imperials

secrets of the force

mercenary behavior

fighting jedi

mercy to the empire

Authority

disrespecting authority figures

respecting authority blindly

insulting authority

mocking authority

laughing at authority

pointless infighting

authority

anarchy

kissing up

patriotism

breaking the law

anti authority behavior

leadership

duty

political backstabbing

taking orders

professionalism

propriety

mocking people

obedience

unprofessional or emotional behavior

freedom

rules

diplomacy

rewarding hard work

ideology

self sacrifice for the greater good

respect

Fights

fair fights

a good fight against worthy foes

personal honor

callous sacrifices

combat challenges

dishonorable acts

aggressive pursuit of victory

challenges

power

backing down from a fight

testing yourself

keeping secrets from allies

second chances

displays of strength

honor

keeping promises

excuses

action

blowing things up

adventure

avoiding fights

exploring unknown territory

courage

efficiently eliminating enemies

fighting overwhelming odds

selling out

inaction

legendary conquests

cowardice

heroism that involves danger

danger

looking like a hero

weakness

Ego and Greed

self interest

profit

making money

greed

selfish actions without clear aim

scams

selfishness

wastefulness

indulgence

getting something for nothing

getting paid

attention

looking bad

praise

getting involved

bragging

personal gain

Material Interests

treasure

secrets

luxury

new tech

technology

respect for unusual people or beliefs

exploring alien cultures

clever word play

snobs

discovery

underworld goods

romance

droid maintenance

flirtation

secrecy

trophies

military gear

history

weapons

mysteries

gadgets

courting

aiding scientists

destroying science

cultural items

delicacies

beautiful women

artifacts

learning

Intelligence

the stupid or uneducated

risking your neck for nothing

being taken advantage of

clever solutions

failure

long term thinking

failure to take initiative

recklessness

efficiency

pragmatism

thinking through a problem

irrational behavior

cleverness

logical thinking

brevity

self restraint

seeking peaceful solutions

being funny

patience

stubbornness

resolve

complications

talking

rational choices

talking things out

[picnokinesis]

if you would be interested in sharing your thoughts about the star beast, i would love to hear them!!

Ooh okay, so - well, first, just to start off: I think The Star Beast is a really important episode, and was very much a needed episode. The current climate in the UK regarding the trans community and their rights is getting extremely rancid, to put it lightly. Having an episode of Doctor Who with an explicitly trans character, having the other characters around her be affirming and supportive - that was awesome. Extremely awesome. And I'm really glad that RTD is loudly putting himself on this side of the whole 'debate' (which isn't really a debate, because it's just straight up bigotry from the anti-trans side, and we need people like RTD outwardly speaking out against that bigotry).

When I talk to cis people offline about this episode, that is pretty much what I say and also where I stop.

I'll put the rest under the cut hahah - there's a bit of negativity here, just as a warning for all the hardcore RTD stans, but I think it's well-founded and not vitriolic at all, just like, miffed hahaha. Also, I know there were a few trans folks who found this episode really affirming, so just to be clear: this is just my opinion, personal thoughts, and also influenced by the conversations I had with other trans people that I know and care about about the episode.

When I talk to trans people - offline or online - about this episode, I go in a lot deeper, because whilst it was a very important episode, it was somewhat flawed. It also came off the back of several things RTD had said and done that really ticked me off, and so I wasn't really in the interest of being entirely uncritical about what, to me and a lot of trans dw fans that I spoke to, thought was a very "cis" trans story. And when I watched it, I thought 'oh geez, is this how poc feel when white people try and write poc stories with good intentions but don't really get it right??" because like. Ho boy.

The thing about this episode was that RTD wanted to write an affirming trans story, and mostly did that, but also, imo...doesn't actually understand what gender and transness actually is. I think my main gripes were definitely with the climax scene - the whole 'we can let go bc we're women' thing literally made me go 'what' out loud at the screen because...well, it's just gender essentialism. Trans inclusive, sure! But trans inclusive gender essentialism is still gender essentialism. Women aren't better than men. There's actually an exceptionally good essay written by a trans woman who was still in the closet about her experiences in queer spaces that had a very prevalent anti-men attitude, and I've seen it myself irl too. It's not helpful - it's harmful, in fact - and it leans on this strange mysticism about women that is fundamentally anti-feminist, in my opinion. Women aren't "innately better at emotional and intangible, instinctive things" (and it's unspoken counterpart - "thus men are better at logical, rational things" - is also untrue). Women aren't magically better at 'letting things go' than men are - I reckon you could make an argument about men being socialised to not be emotional, and that would be an interesting conversation to have, but that was not what was being said - especially with the Doctor being raised in a society that didn't even perceive gender in the same was as humanity.

Also, the thing that REALLY got me was 'if you were a woman, you'd get it' - first of all, no. Thirteen never let anything go in her life and repressed to the max, if anything she was WORSE than tenteen at that lmao. Second - and this is the more salient point - I think it's a strange thing to suggest that tenteen is fully a man, at this point? Like, regardless of what he looks like, regardless of how he identifies or how thirteen identified, he just lived a lifetime in a body that looked like a woman, and thus was treated as such by the rest of the universe. He wasn't going to forget all of that. I actually really liked how the Chibnall era approached thirteen's gender - or, rather, her complete ambivalence to it, where it seemed like gender was more of an annoying thing that kept happening to the doctor that she kept having to remember, rather than something she felt - however I really REALLY wish they'd actually dug explicitly into the transness of it all, and so when they didn't, I'd hoped that RTD would do that instead. Especially since we KNEW Yasmin Finney was in it and we knew we were going to get a trans character!! I was like, this is the PERFECT opportunity to get the Doctor to actually talk about their gender and how it, fundamentally, doesn't really change between bodies, just how people REACT to it changes. But instead, the episode seems to present the doctor as having flicked a binary switch - once woman, now man - and thus made sure to remind us that every time thirteen was mentioned, it was framed around the fact that she was The Woman Regeneration, but also that tenteen was Now a Man Again. And even if that WAS THE CASE, it still wouldn't mean that tenteen came out of that experience completely mindwiped of everything about 'womanhood', right?? Like he lived as a woman! He was a woman 45 minutes ago, but now you're telling him that he couldn't possibly understand anything about this because he's a man now? Like first of all, his physical body's characteristics have nowt to do with his ability to let things go, second, it's just....okay, it reminds me of the dichotomy between all these detransition horror stories the anti-trans folks like to spew out, versus when you talk to actual detransitioners, who are quite often gnc and extremely positive about the trans community, and whose experience within that community and transitioning impacted how they view the world.

And I think it fundamentally comes down to RTD not really understanding either womanhood or transness. He actively speaks out on both of these things, which is great, but I don't think he understands them fully. I think the fact that he didn't think that David Tennant could wear a t-shirt, braces, trousers and coat because they were "women's clothes", and that when he cast David Tennant that was one of the first things he immediately decided is kind of telling.

There's also the whole 'male-presenting timelord' thing, which, again, I just don't think RTD really understood what that meant, like I'm not sure what his point was there, genuinely. Like, on a technical level it's acknowledging that the Doctor isn't necessarily male, just looks like a man (correct) buuuuuuuuuut the full line was saying 'you'd never understand this because you're a man' SO LIKE...okay? So he's not actually a man, but actually because of his male-adjacency, he's incapable of coming to the same conclusion that a woman did? So he's still...defined by his maleness? Hm. Strange sentence to write coming out of a trans woman's mouth.

What would have been better? I wish they'd just had Donna and Rose say 'because we're human', or maybe 'because we're the Nobles'. I also know a lot of people really didn't like the misgendering scene with the kids on the bikes - I think my personal feelings on that are a little more complicated, as a trans person who is not out irl and functionally uses my birthname almost everywhere, but also isn't triggered by it. It's not a deadname, more like a paperwork name rather than my preferred name, right? But I know for a lot of trans people, deadnaming is like psychological warfare and it's really awful, especially when done with malicious intent (like shown in the scene with the boys on the bikes). However...I do understand why RTD included this scene, and actually kind of agree with him. Because the boys on the bikes are the sort of people who are also watching the show. And so then seeing that kind of thing being condemned by the narrative by a key, beloved character, is probably something that's actually helpful. On the other hand though...in the Doctor Who Unleashed (or whatever the behind the scenes thing is called now), you've got this interview with Yasmin Finney saying that it was actually a pretty triggering scene to film for her and genuinely affected her, and I'm like....okaaaaaay then I REALLY hope they had someone she could talk to on set. Like, fundamentally, I think telling these stories are important, but, yknow, not at the expense of the actual actress' mental wellbeing, right? So that concerned me a bit.

I also think that the scene between Sylvia and Donna in the kitchen talking about Rose was brilliant. And this is because it was about cis people trying to understand and support trans people whilst not completely getting it and making mistakes, but also trying their best!! Which RTD does understand, very well!! And it felt so real. It was fantastic. There's also the part with the whole 'did you assume the meep's pronouns' whiiiiiiiich I have mixed feelings about? I think here, RTD was trying to poke fun at the people who do say that sort of thing to make fun of trans people, and having the Doctor be like 'actually this is a good point we should be checking this sort of thing'......however. I don't think I've ever heard 'did you assume my pronouns' come out of a trans person's mouth. It's always been a cis person mocking our community. So it felt a bit...incongruent. And all that needed to be changed was having Rose say 'how do you know the meep is a he?' - like that was all it needed!!! Also, it was a shame that after the delightful moment of the doctor being like 'SAME HAT' regarding the meep's pronouns, that.....we then had NO OTHER DISCUSSION about the doctor's gender!! Like, Russel, dude, you're really gonna have Rose hear the 'male-presenting' guy say 'oh yeah I do that with pronouns too!! :D' - have her NOT REACT TO THAT AT ALL - and then you're gonna have her say by the end 'oh you don't understand bc you're a man :)' after her non-binary power move moment? Sighs. Yeah.

I think another important thing to remember here is that there were no trans folks in the writer's room on this. Now, this is a tricky one because I think people who aren't part of a certain community should be writing stories outside their own knowledge and experience, and should be encouraged to do so!! I don't think that you need to have everything rubberstamped, and even something written by someone in a certain community isn't going to resonate with everyone in that community. Actually, I think it's unhelpful to start getting into the politics of 'who is allowed to write what' - I think anything written with care and good intention is valuable, especially if the writer is willing to listen to constructive criticism and learn from any mistakes that are made. But I think, as a writer myself, if you are going to write a story about that community, it might be worth 1) talking to them a bit more than I think RTD did - but, to be fair, I don't actually know how much research he did, but, well, see above on the fact I don't think he really got what he was writing about - but also 2) not dismissing writers from that community (and others!), which RTD did in an interview not thaaaaaaat long before the episode aired. Again, to be fair to him, he has since then been like 'oh, we need to mentor and encourage the new generation of trans writers and writers of colour', which, great! But also, sir, then why were you saying that all the scripts you got from minority writers were all awful, angry, and lacked any love for tv like skksks SIR. SIR. The thing that gets me about that comment in particular is that, as someone currently starting out in script writing, I know exactly how hard it is to get at all noticed. It takes a lot of effort, a lot of passion, a lot of hard work and a lot of skill - and a lot of luck too, granted, but not luck along. So, RTD, if these writers got their scripts to your literal desk, as showrunner of Doctor Who...I think they have some love and passion. They HAVE to, to get to the point where he is reading those scripts. Also maybe RTD should unpack the fact that he thought the scripts were bad because they were too angry - I mean, I haven't read them, so I don't know, but maybe, sir, feeling uncomfortable about the anger in a script isn't a bad thing. Not every story is meant to be an easy pill to swallow. There are aromantic stories I want to write about romance as horror, romance as a virus, romance as a destructive force, that I think a lot of alloromantic people will find uncomfortable. Does that mean they're bad? Maybe, lol. Mostly they're bad because they're not written yet lmao, but I don't think the anger and discomfort in them makes them inherently weak. In fact, I think often anger can make a story stronger.

So then, I think The Star Beast left a sour taste in the back of my mouth, despite all the positive aspects of it, because of that. I think that comment also kinda left me frustrated about Dot and Bubble, even though I think that was a fantastic episode and genuinely really well done, and very effective - and I'm genuinely loathe to criticise it at all because I think it was so important - but. Having RTD talking in an interview about wondering how long the audience will take to notice that the cast is all white (and, thus, the depicted society is racist) whilst sitting in a writers room that's all white iiiiiiiiiiis uh. I don't think he thought about that SKKS. I think a lot about Sacha Dhawan talking about how you can be as inclusive on screen as you like, but if it's all 'white behind the lights' then how much does that inclusivity actually mean?

RTD definitely had good intentions and wrote a mostly good story. But he definitely fell down in some regards, aaaaaand well. I don't know. My personal opinion is that he's kind of arrogant and thinks he's infallible as a writer (and I may feel this way bc of the way parts of the fandom seem to put him on a pedestal, if I'm honest) - but I think that he's just human. He doesn't get things perfectly right all the time, and that's absolutely fine, but I think it's interesting and important to discuss those pitfalls, and I just wish he'd stop making it feel like he thinks he can write trans stories better than, yknow, actual trans people, and then write the most cis trans story I've ever seen SKSKSKSK

(AND ACTUALLY - sorry, this is getting long, but it's kind of indicative of the whole industry at the moment? The industry is calling for more diverse voices, more diverse stories - but they also want stories that can appeal to the widest possible audience, the common denominator, and thus "trans stories by trans people for trans people" doesn't actually tick that box. This didn't hit me until I wrote a trans horror script that got shortlisted for a script call, but when I spoke to the (cis) producer and director (who were LOVELY, the producer had a gorgeous dog called Biscuit HAHA) I very quickly realised that they did not get it. They didn't understand. "Why do we have to kill the mirror demon that's the girl part of this trans man?" they asked. "She should get to live too!" But: "She was never a part of him," I had to say. "She was the idea of him that everyone around him thought he was, and thought it so strongly that she became real. It was her or him." They didn't really understand, but on the plus side it did highlight to me what was unclear in my script that none of my (trans) proof readers had picked up on (although my transfemme friend made the HILARIOUS comment that maybe the mirror demon could go and find a nice trans girl to possess? WHICH SKSKSKSKKSKSK I MEAN -))

Anyway. -gestures nebulously- I feel like my thoughts were a lot more concise and well constructed in the week after this episode actually aired hahaha, but I didn't want to throw my hat into the ring back then. I did find it amused how the majority of my cis trans-affirming friends were like 'GREAT EPISODE, RIGHT?!!' and the majority of my trans friends were sending me the grimace emoji in the week after the episode aired LMAO

[cellarspider]

Thanks to my rambling this weekend, I am overflowing with love for an MMO that hasn’t been in development since 2012, because goddamn the worldbuilding for the setting of City of Heroes and City of Villains was just superb.

Do you want an MMO that begins as a pastiche of superhero comics that lovingly, cheekily engages with its source material, building up a cohesive world where the fantastical stuff feels unexpectedly real and grounded in the society, more so than most of the comics it's inspired by? Do you want that, and then to watch it slowly, gently tip its backstory into existential, cosmic horror via genre critique?

I'm in no way kidding! More below the cut.

Well, part one of more, because there's a lot to unpack here.

A lot of new superhero continuities these days treats its central premise as an anomaly. For the most popular example, the MCU treats public knowledge of superheroes as something that started with Captain America in WWII. Before his exploits, the fantastical aspects of the setting were forgotten about and hidden from the world. The DCEU begins similarly with Wonder Woman in WWI, a member of a mythic society forgotten by time.

At first, Earth in City of Heroes seemed to go with a very similar premise, though it predates any of those movies: Superpowers were unknown to the general public until the early 1930s, when some people suddenly began gaining incredible new abilities, and mythical critters not seen since ancient times made themselves known.

But that’s just the basic sales pitch. As you dug into the setting and City of Villains expanded the lore, perspective shifted into something entertainingly stranger.

Everyone knew about Nemesis, the clockwork robot-making mastermind who'd terrorized Paragon City from the early 1930s, just when superheroes were first appearing on the scene. Turns out he was an immortal Prussian nobleman born who first went on an automaton-backed crime spree in 1820s, seemingly died when the British Navy bombarded his headquarters in Malta, then reappeared in the 1860s to supply the Confederate Army with mechanical cavalry until General Sherman shelled his mountaintop base on his march to North Carolina. Nobody was ever able to replicate what the did, and with his (apparent) death, he was no longer relevant after 1865. As of the 1930s, anyone who wasn’t a history buff had forgotten about him.

And sure, everyone knew there was an underground city of evil wizards, dead for long eons until they rose again to take human sacrifices from the surface world of Rhode Island (I’m still not over that). But actually, they were active in London during the Victorian mysticism craze, then moved their operations back to their homeland of subeterranean Rhode Island with the outbreak of World War I. They made the news across the continent. They got outlawed in multiple countries. They were a big deal, until the war took the attention off of them.

Hell, one of the people who fought all these weirdos was a random teenager who'd just... always been able to teleport and turn invisible, even prior to the '30s. He wasn't even a main character or anything! His parents knew, and tried to convince him to go get training. Teleportation training. Like y'do, with your socially awkward, teleporting kid.

This setting never actually had a mundane world that was unaware of the fantastical. The fantastical was normal. The arrival of superpowers in 1930 wasn’t a hard fork between history as we know it and theirs, or a reveal of some secret world that rational minds had long denied. It was just a dramatic escalation of what had already been happening, that everyone knew about. Armies of the 1800s had to develop anti-robot tactics. Alastair Crowley publicly dissed an actual wizard cult because they were dangerous competition. Parents worried over the mental health of their superpowered teens. That was normal.

The sheer numbers of fantastical events that started happening after 1930 were not normal. Or at least, not at first. People slowly adjusted over decades, as more and more young people grew up in a world that had always been that way.  

What nobody realized at that point was how the new normal bordered on a state of cosmic horror.

And that’s where the setting really starts interrogating its inspirations.

[libbee]

Dangers of the Abyss

Intro = Does this image stir something in you? Some emotion, thought, memory? Perhaps fear. What we cannot express in words, we express in symbols and images. Images are not mere pixels but they are emotionally charged and they exist in our minds too. After all, our eyes are like cameras, mind is like camera film, memory is like storage space. The unconscious world can be accessed via your mental images, fantasies, visions, dreams, thoughts, emotions, memory. Some of the tools we use to explore the unconscious are writing, art, active imagination, tarot cards and alchemy. Some of the ways we know unconscious exists is synchronicities, projection and spiritual awakenings.

World of the unconscious = Few things are as tempting as exploring the 4th, 8th and 12th houses in astrology. Especially when you find yourself at the outskirts of healing, you are sucked into these areas of life and may lose touch with the material world. When the native is so engrossed in spiritual work or shadow work that they are obsessed with it and do it compulsively everyday, that is when you know that they have crossed the limits of what is healthy for them. Astrology, spirituality, occult, esoteric and mysticism (for eastern audience), new age tools (for western audience) can be very tempting in times of turbulence. This is why when life is out of control (eg, divorce or break up, disease or accident, money or career problems) we run to astrologers/psychics/healers, even if we were atheist or anti-theist otherwise. What is unseen, intangible and unknown resides in the unconscious and these 3 houses in astrology are the mining holes for the unconscious. They represent the collective unconscious, personal unconscious (or the subconcious mind) and bringing them to the light of the day is called awareness/enlightenment.

3. Curious case of Friedrich Nietzsche = Though history does not report why Nietzsche went insane, many report (including Carl Jung) that Nietzsche went so far into self exploration that he could not come back to the material life. That he went so deep into the unconscious that he could not pull himself out of it and completely submerged with the unconscious. Do you see how dangerous it is to do shadow work? Though whether Nietzsche could be reborn or not is not something we can decide, for it was his life path and his destiny. Though he lost himself in the darkness, at least he wrote some great books, at least he excavated some pearls from the ocean for the rest of us. It is to be noted that Nietzsche had ketu/south node in the 7th house which can signify his unsuccessful love life, solitude/loneliness and also had sun in the 12th house.

"...Nietzsche would be just about as grateful to his rescuers as somebody who has jumped into the water to drown himself and has been pulled out by some fool of a coastguard. I have seen Nietzsche in states in which he seemed – horrible to say – as though he were only pretending to be mad, as though he were glad to have ended this way!” Peter Gast, The Madness of Nietzsche by Erich Podach

4. We the regulars = But we the regular, the common, the laymen people who cannot afford to be lost in the unconscious world, who have school/college/job, family/relations/marriage, money/food/shelter to take care - we need a foundation to navigate the material life alongside the spiritual life. Unless you are an ascetic sitting in a cave, browsing tumblr in your lunch break before the 10 hour meditation session, we know that you have a full life with many dimensions to take care of. And it is for those of us to learn to balance the material and spiritual life

5. Doing it alone = Whether a therapist or a family member or a friend or a loved one, anyone who can keep you grounded in the real world, bring you back to the daily life, keep you rational when you are losing touch with reality and guide you when you are losing track can be helpful. Though shadow work is a solitary process, we still need somebody else to give us objective judgment, tell whether we are biased in our judgment and guide us with their own wisdom and experience. This is why 4th/8th houses also deal with generations, ancestors, inheritance, history because it is only by standing upon the shoulder of the giants that you can make progress in your life. We may think we know it all intuitively/alone, but the more we learn the more we discover how little we know. "Learn from the mistakes of others, you can't live long enough to make them all yourself." - Chanakya, Indian polymath

6. Psychic content is reality = I am very fond of this interview of Carl Jung. What Jung meant to say here is that the events of psyche are as real as the material life. For instance, if you celebrate your birthday on a certain date with your friends, you call it reality. But if you think about celebrating your birthday with your friends, you call it daydream and not reality. This is where Jung says that even the world in your mind is as real and valid as the world outside. So whether you celebrate your birthday in physical world or mental world, both are equally valid and real. So, when the mental world is as encompassing, satisfying and real as the physical world, it is very easy and tempting to spend your whole life in the mind. In the modern world, the addiction to social media, internet, video games and T.V. is similar to living in your mind (unless you are using technology to do your job and make money).

7. Being clueless and inexperienced = The baby witches often ask minute questions on spells, tools and energy. Do you work in coven or are you a solitary witch? Are you a family astrologer or the first in your family? Do you visit a psychologist or do your own therapy in your journal? If the answer to all these questions is the latter of the two, then you may have begun from a place where you were clueless, inexperienced and confused. Perhaps you learned from trial and error, perhaps you did hours of research, perhaps you felt like you were not meant for it, but what we do know is that being clueless and inexperienced in the world of the unconscious can have serious drawbacks and dangers. The most dangerous is the mental and emotional impact of practices that do not make your life better rather pull you in a rut.

8. Solutions = Solutions are very simple, so simple that we may dismiss it, but learning to keep a balance between material life (school/college/self care/job/ family/responsibilities) and the spiritual life (shadow work/alchemy/exploring the unconscious/self actualization) is crucial. Next solution is to be able to identify the psychic contents with mindfulness and living in the present moment - this comes with practice, perhaps months or years of practice before one can calm down the restlessness to stay mindful. Next solution is to really understand your mental process. Mind is a beautiful thing, do not deal with it lightly. Just like you would arrange, clean, organize, beautify your physical space, you also have to arrange, organize and keep your mental space neat and clean. Next solution is to what I mentioned earlier in a post to keep marking mistakes and correct decisions for yourself, to use reasoning, logic, common sense, decision making, routine (rather than be emotional thinker, magical thinker, impulsive and reckless). In short, think BEFORE you act and not the vice versa. The exploration of the unconscious is systematic and organized, it is not careless and impulsive.

9. Conclusion = So, if you are a first generation astrologer or witch or healer or trauma cycle breaker, be very vigilant of your limits and structure. I have written about psychosis before which can induce when the native is not mentally prepared for the psychological adventure of healing and actualization. Psychoanalysis, spiritual practices and occult practices are parallels to each other and if you feel like you are called into any of these interests, please make sure you have your physical life in order, lest you want to reach rock bottom again and again. I am speaking from experience that being first time clueless healer, psychoanalysis made my life even more complicated instead of magically improving it. I thought I had hit rock bottom in physical life but I did not know yet that even rock bottom has a basement that I hit with clueless psychoanalysis and spiritual practices. It was like this diagram for me:

It felt like I was making great progress with shadow work and psychoanalysis, it felt like I hit the jackpot and all my problems would be explained/solved but it took me a lot of time to realize that it takes immense responsibility to tackle the world of the unconscious and it is not mere for fun and games, rather it can really disturb your life and make you dysfunctional in the material world.

[reddest-flower]

In 1950, Aimé Césaire, the communist from Martinique, one of the clearest voices of the 20th century, looked back at the long history of colonialism that was coming to an end. He wanted to judge colonialism from the ashes of Nazism, an ideology that surprised the innocent in Europe but which had been fostered slowly in Europe’s colonial experience. After all, the instruments of Nazism – racial superiority as well as brutal, genocidal violence – had been cultivated in the colonial worlds of Africa, Asia and Latin America. Césaire, the effervescent poet and communist, had no problem with the encounter between cultures. The entanglements of Europe’s culture with that of Africa and Asia had forged the best of human history across the Mediterranean Sea. But colonialism was not cultural contact. It was brutality.

«Between colonization and civilization there is an infinite distance; that out of all the colonial expeditions that have been undertaken, out of all the colonial statutes that have been drawn up, out of all the memoranda that have been dispatched by all the ministries, there could not come a single human value.»

Césaire was adamant: colonialism had produced nothing that would earn it respect in the scales of history. This was in 1950, when a few nations had just emerged out of the scar of colonialism and when many societies fought pitched battles to extricate themselves from colonial power. What had come to define fascism inside Europe through the experience of the Nazis – the jackboots and the gas chambers – were familiar already in the colonies. This colonial fascism, Césaire argued in Discourse on Colonialism, needed to be emphasized. Colonialism was asserting itself in this period, pushing to revive its empires from Vietnam to Algeria, from Kenya to Malaya. It pretended to distinguish itself from fascism, then considered essentially evil, and to resurrect itself in a paternalist and benign form. Césaire would have nothing to do with that. Colonialism and fascism shared too much at the level of effects – in terms of how they appeared to their victims. It was clear to Césaire, as a Marxist, that fascism was a political form of bourgeois rule in times when democracy threatened capitalism; colonialism, on the other hand, was naked power justified by racism to seize resources from people who were not willing to hand them over. Their form was different but their manners were identical.

From the anti-colonial struggles of the Communist International and the League Against Imperialism to the anti-fascist struggle in Spain and then against the Nazi war machine, the Soviet Union acquitted itself well. The Soviets, like Césaire, saw the links between colonialism and fascism – both tied to each other inextricably by racism. It was not possible to fight fascism and collaborate with colonialism. The two emerged from the same origin, which the communist leader R.P. Dutt called capitalist decay. In his Fascism and Social Decay (1934), Dutt pointed out that the ‘revolt against science’ prepares the ground for ‘all the quackeries and charlatanries, of chauvinism, racial theories, antisemitism, Aryan grandmothers, mystic swastikas, divine missions, strong-man saviours, and all the rest of the nonsense through which alone capitalism today can try to maintain its hold a little longer’. Racism, the root of both colonialism and fascism, was not ‘insane’, Dutt wrote, but ‘completely rational and calculated’. Capitalism cannot offer a ‘rational defence’ of itself, of the manner in which it creates and sustains social inequality. It, therefore, takes refuge on ‘a wave of obscurantism, holding out fantastic symbols and painted substitutes for ideals’.

[...]

Fascism, to those in the colonized world, shared too much in its behaviour with colonialism: the racism surely but also the brutality and depravity, the oscillation between genocide and incarceration. Aimé Césaire did not see ‘fascism’ and ‘colonialism’ as separate endeavours. They were kin. But in Europe after 1945, there was a great push to see fascism as merely its European expression, an aberration of the Germans and the Italians. To suggest that fascism was merely Nazism with no linkage to colonialism allowed the Europeans and the North Americans to revive – without embarrassment – their colonial histories. The British used the full might of their armies to subdue national aspirations from Kenya to Malaya, while the French attempted to retake their old colonies from Indo-China to Algeria. The Dutch sent in their armies into Indonesia, while the Americans conducted coups and marine landings from Guatemala to the Dominican Republic and outwards to Iran.

In 1954, the US National Security Council’s staff prepared an important memorandum on US policy towards Africa. The two main interests of the United States were its ‘actual and potential US military bases in the area’ and its ‘access to, and utilization of, the strategic raw materials of the area’. To secure bases and raw materials the United States would need to ‘support’ the colonial powers’ ‘presence in the area’ – namely to support the continuation of colonialism. US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles worried that decolonization would mean the delivery of the new states to the communists and so the loss to the US of bases and raw materials. ‘Zeal’ toward decolonization, he said, ‘needs to be balanced by patience’. Here ‘patience’ simply meant the delay of decolonization. This was a return to the language and logic of imperialism from before World War II. There was no sense here that the anti-fascist struggle had any unity with the anti-colonial struggle, both part of the broader human struggle for freedom against tyranny. Fascism had been defeated, but colonialism was going to be welcomed into the post-war age.

In 1960, the US voted in the UN Political Committee against a resolution that called for Algerian independence. Later that year, the US voted – effectively – to allow no oversight into the Portuguese colonies in Africa. Finally, that year, the US abstained on a vote in the UN General Assembly for a ‘Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples’. This declaration was a significant feint by the USSR on behalf of the colonized world. During the 15th Session of the General Assembly on September 23, 1960, Nikita Khrushchev of the USSR said it was now time for ‘the complete and final liberation of peoples languishing in colonial bondage’. In keeping with the UN Charter, the 100 million people still living under colonialism must be freed. Five days later, during the discussion over the Declaration, which was sponsored by the USSR, its representative to the UN Valerian Zorin called for independence for all colonial territories within a year. ‘The process of liberation is irresistible and irreversible’, noted the Declaration, which passed by 89 votes to 0, with nine abstentions (including colonial powers such as Belgium, France, Portugal, Spain, the United Kingdom and the apartheid state of South Africa). It was clear that the old colonial powers and the United States had little sympathy for the anti-colonial struggle, itself intertwined with the legacy of the October Revolution.

Red Star Over the Third World, Vijay Prashad, 2019

[mightyostanes]

If at first you don't succeed Scry Scry Again.

(Note this post neither condones or prohibits the practice of magic, nor does it have a say in whether Magic is efficacious. This is solely a post about ideas in the history of Judaism.)

         Judaism and Magic go together like alcohol and social gatherings, some see them as inseparable, some find that they dilute each other, others try to separate them entirely and heavily polemicize against one or the other. Either way there’s plenty of very religious gentiles that see them as identical and absolutely evil. In modern times Judaism is often seen as the first anti magical and anti mythical (not anti mystical) religion. A religion that is explicitly based on the denial of intermediate and non rational theism. This is of course, complete and utter nonsense made up to make Judaism seem western, modern, and respectable to pre WWI Germans and Europeans. 

   It is true that Judaism has absolutely prohibited some forms of magic such as the use of sympathetic magic effigies or most forms of necromancy, there is quite a bit of discussion on exactly what kind of magic is outlawed. Healing amulets are almost universally agreed upon to be Kosher so long as they don’t call on other deities, and the only stipulation given is that the person they’re procured from knows what they’re doing (Talmud Tractate Shabbat 60-61.). A discussion that got so technical that there was fierce argument about which amulets were specifically not allowed (Tractate Avodah Zarah 43).. Natal astrology was also somewhat forbidden except when it was used to link people’s traits to the planetary hour they were born in (Tractate Shabbat 156). The old favorite of demon and angel summoning was also never officially banned and indeed there are stories in the Talmud of Rabbis using Shedim to do things beyond leaving the bodies/houses of people they were tormenting (2). 

       The trickiest form of magic to get away with was divination which is ironically around 65% of all magic is about. In opposition to the usually more liberal stance allowed by biblical vagueness the Torah especially Deuteronomy is quite clear that most forms of divination are absolutely banned. The few exceptions were the use of the Urim and Thummim (2), dream divination (3),  casting lots (4), and whatever other forms of divination happened to escape the Torah’s condemnation. Perhaps the most prolific form of semi allowed divination historically practiced by Jews was scrying. For those of you without an unhealthy obsession with the occult, scrying is the process of gleaning information by staring into semi opaque objects or liquids. It’s also the same method that wife swapper and original James Bond Jon Dee used to communicate with angels. In tractate Sanhedrin 101 certain methods of scrying involving the ‘princes of oil’ and ‘the princes of eggs’ are permitted though the sages doubt their efficacy. Said doubt doesn’t arrive from disbelief in these forces but doubts about whether these vaguely defined supernatural beings were trustworthy. Indeed whether these ‘princes’ were angelic or demonic varied from text to text with the latter winning out by a slight margin.       Scrying with a liquid medium has been widely attested in the mediterranean and the ancient near east. The earliest written records of its use date back to the old babylonian period ( approximately 1894 BCE - 1595 BCE) as methods used for divination (5). Interestingly scrying seemed to be used exclusively for private divination as opposed to divinatory arts used by the state and temples such as Astrology or divining from the intestines of sacrificed animals (5). Compounding this idea of scrying as something private was the fact that a child was often used as a medium outside of Mesopotamia (5). Perhaps this lack of association with Mesopotamian and Egyptian state religion made the practice of scrying slightly less pagan and somewhat more acceptable to the Talmudic sages.

Scrying in liquid was a Talmud approved way to divine future, but this was not the main aspect that drew Jews to scrying. The real attraction came from the fact that they could supposedly use it to talk to spiritual entities or even catch glimpses of the heavenly realms. To the point where several midrashim such as Re’iyyot Yezekiel even theorize that Ezekiel actually witnessed his vision by gazing into the river he was standing in (6). Considering the fact that achieving something similar to Ezekiel vision was perhaps the starting point for much of Jewish mysticism it wouldn’t be surprising if many attempted to achieve this by metaphorically scrying through heaven’s keyhole. Indeed there are even descriptions among the Hasidei Askhenaz of Europe where they openly state they achieved visions of the celestial glory by gazing into a bowl of oil and water exposed to sunlight. Keep in mind achieving a vision of the celestial glory was the highest form of gnosis to the Hasidei Askhenaz and they achieved it by scrying. Even such luminaries as Chaim Vital visited fortune tellers and wise women who used oil divination tg get in touch with the celestial realm.

      Is there a reason why scrying was mostly used as a means of contact instead of divination? Not really. The fact is that at least until the 1800s many Jews especially in more elite and intellectual circles were desperate to achieve a vision of G-d or at least one of the ministering angels. Abulafia used vocalizing Hebrew letters and rapid head movements, Luria used fasting and isolation, and some other people used scrying. A few Jewish communities were so desperate that they’d interrogate Dybbuks about the nature of G-d and the universe (8). The idea of Messianic redemption was constantly at hand among most Jews before the creation of a Jewish state in Eretz Israel so the future was already laid out where it mattered assuming G-d still cared. The part they wanted to confirm was that G-d still cared, that the Ruach Hakodesh had not departed from them forever. They wanted second opinions on their teachings, supernatural guidance in the era when there were no more true prophets in Israel, or even that their theurgic practices worked. In their minds, the Jews didn’t need to know the future because things would turn out all right as long as G-d remembered us. The real question then became whether G-d in fact remembered us.

Secondary source citations

Ronis, Sara. “A Demonic Servant in Rav Papa's Household: Demons as Subjects in the Mesopotamian Talmud.” The Aggada of the Babylonian Talmud and Its Cultural World, Edited by Geoffrey Herman and Jeffrey Rubenstein, 2018, 3–21.

Hatch, Trevan G. "Magic, Biblical Law, and the Israelite Urim and Thummim." Studia Antiqua 5, no. 2 (2007). https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/studiaantiqua/vol5/iss2/10

Gnuse, Robert. “The Temple Experience of Jaddus in the Antiquities of Josephus: A Report of Jewish Dream Incubation.” The Jewish Quarterly Review 83, no. 3/4 (1993): 349–68. https://doi.org/10.2307/1455158.

Curwin, David. “Goral – Can We Let God Roll the Dice?” Tradition: A Journal of Orthodox Jewish Thought 53, no. 2 (2021): 51–67. https://www.jstor.org/stable/27303737.

Reiner, Erica. “Fortune-Telling in Mesopotamia.” Journal of Near Eastern Studies 19, no. 1 (1960): 23–35. http://www.jstor.org/stable/543689.

Polliack, Meira. “EZEKIEL 1 AND ITS ROLE IN SUBSEQUENT JEWISH MYSTICAL THOUGHT AND TRADITION.” European Judaism: A Journal for the New Europe 32, no. 1 (1999): 70–78. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41443447.

Wolfson, Elliot R. Through a speculum that shines: Vision and imagination in medieval Jewish mysticism. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2021. Page 266

Goldish, Matt, Joseph Dan, and Erika Bourguignon. Spirit possession in Judaism: Cases and contexts from the Middle Ages to the present. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2005. 

[emptyanddark]

weekly reading list

(some of these are not very recent, but i have a lot of other things to read. this is a short list of interesting or things i found relevant to understand current events)

America Doesn’t Wage War. Government Institutions Do - very USA-centric but provides insights re: the prolific paramilitary organizations aided by US government, and the de-democratization that's been happening in the US.

Trapped by Empire - Guam is one of the colonies still under US-empire rule. the island is put in difficult position with no easy solution on all fronts - security, environmentally, economically etc.

“A Closed, Burnt Huwara”: How Israeli Settlers Launched A Pogrom - the harrowing happenings in last month's pogrom by Israelis against a Palestinian village.

The PA’s Revenue Structure and Israel’s Containment Strategy - how Israel restricts the PA's economic independence, worsening conditions to Palestinians who are entirely at the (non)mercy of their occupiers.

You Are Not a Parrot - the prolific linguist Emily M. Bender dispels the mystical brainrot around "AI" and Large Language Models (ChatGPT etc). Interesting and insightful. she is also one of the writers of the important article, "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots"

World Development under Monopoly Capitalism - reviews the question 'did globalization actually make things better'?, today's global capitalism and monopoly capitalism

The Rot Economy & Mass tech worker layoffs and the soft landing - both discuss the similar topics, about the bizarre realities of the tech sector, as put in the latter by Doctorow: "The equation is simple: the more companies invest in maintenance, research, development, moderation, anti-fraud, customer service and all the other essential functions of the business, the less money there is to remit to people who do nothing and own everything."

Silicon Valley elites are afraid. History says they should be - people around the world were exposed by the media to the recent stupidity of US tech executives & investors, resulting in collapsing their bank. here's a rational take about it, with history about the more militant opposition against Silicon Valley.

The New Irrationalism - explores contemporary irrationalist trends, the history of irrationalism and its philosophy. i found it thought-provoking.

[a-ramblinrose]

“What is fantasy? On one level, of course, it is a game: a pure pretense with no ulterior motive whatever. It is one child saying to another child, “Let’s be dragons,” and then they’re dragons for an hour or two. It is escapism of the most admirable kind—the game played for the game’s sake.

On another level, it is still a game, but a game played for very high stakes. Seen thus, as art, not spontaneous play, its affinity is not with daydream, but with dream. It is a different approach to reality, an alternative technique for apprehending and coping with existence. It is not anti-rational, but para-rational; not realistic, but surrealistic, superrealistic, a heightening of reality. In Freud’s terminology, it employs primary, not secondary process thinking. It employs archetypes, which, as Jung warned us, are dangerous things. Dragons are more dangerous, and a good deal commoner, than bears. Fantasy is nearer to poetry, to mysticism, and to insanity than naturalistic fiction is. It is a real wilderness, and those who go there should not feel too safe. And their guides, the writers of fantasy, should take their responsibilities seriously.”

― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction

[aevarswall]

"Truths turn into dogmas the instant that they are disputed. Thus every man who utters a doubt defines a religion. And the scepticism of our time does not really destroy the beliefs, rather it creates them; gives them their limits and their plain and defiant shape. We who are Liberals once held Liberalism lightly as a truism. Now it has been disputed, and we hold it fiercely as a faith. We who believe in patriotism once thought patriotism to be reasonable, and thought little more about it. Now we know it to be unreasonable, and know it to be right. We who are Christians never knew the great philosophic common sense which inheres in that mystery until the anti-Christian writers pointed it out to us. The great march of mental destruction will go on. Everything will be denied. Everything will become a creed. It is a reasonable position to deny the stones in the street; it will be a religious dogma to assert them. It is a rational thesis that we are all in a dream; it will be a mystical sanity to say that we are all awake. Fires will be kindled to testify that two and two make four. Swords will be drawn to prove that leaves are green in summer. We shall be left defending, not only the incredible virtues and sanities of human life, but something more incredible still, this huge impossible universe which stares us in the face. We shall fight for visible prodigies as if they were invisible. We shall look on the impossible grass and the skies with a strange courage. We shall be of those who have seen and yet have believed."

-G.K. Chesterton, Heretics

[hydralisk98]

GruvboxHypathy

Lets build a future to be proud of and grateful to live into. And I think that one way I can do so is to produce insightful explainers and creative tutorials...

Nth BRAINDUMP

Medium Light + Soft Dark Gruvbox, very dark night with dim yet soft & warm lights, Shoshona the black Angora housecat, solarpunk, 16^12, witchy coven commune, walking her way to her own home library, forested library location, night, hoof shoes, black gloves (giving the blackhand surname), relaxing 45rpm 7" vinyls’ music, bell thousers, jackets / blouse, black lipstick, white hoof shoes, daybreak / dusk, black sun, stargazing, retro warm grunge look with black white and amber tones, large backpack, amber polka dot patterned identity card, libre cyberware & libre bio-modding wares, GLOSS (gratis, libre, open source software / culture), olive & black net socks texture, soft woolen rug texture, notepad at her hand, soundscape of a forested park library with some river nearby, cozy vibe of curiosity and knowledge-seeking…

Some majestic Lisp poetry & code booklets on the shelves, puffy layered turtleneck shirt and bell cap trousers, Olive Synod Mixnet library card, autistic fem symbol talisman, keychain charms, analog medium, retro computers, axis victory?, anti-Wilsonism, Strasserism, Shoshoni language, conlangs, alternate technologies, mysticism, communion, community building, honest humble living, witch coven, STEM ladies, Chronokinesis, True Polymorphs, Toymaker, open culture, public domain, copyleft, desktop environmental storytelling, REPL feedback loops, Lisp symbolic computation machines, addventure, neo-brutalism, systemic change, historical retrospective, from grim dark to bright solarpunk, Konrad Zuse, factions, far far away future foresight, van hexcrawl, encyclopedic knowledge, life-long learning, Zettelkasten, Markdown, Argdown, DolDoc, Parade FS, DocBook, HTML, XML, SVG toons, Common Lisp, Worker Cooperatives, KDE_Plasma’s ecosystem;

Neue-Geo-Syndicalist constructivist empowerment worldview, Lisp program forms as Lisp-y poetry, shortwave radio, geofiction realms & speculative paracosms, constructed languages’ jargon / dialects and technological ecosystems…

Harmony, Progress, Liberty, Knowledge, Mysticism & Rationality syncretized, Data Transparency, Copyleft / Open Culture Movement as in GLOSS, Geosyndicalism (Georgism* mixed with Belle Epoque Syndicalism), Respect & Courtesy, Linguistic Diversity... ;

[troybeecham]

Today, the Church remembers St. Bonaventure.

Ora pro nobis.

He was born at Bagnorea in Umbria, not far from Viterbo, then part of the Papal States. Almost nothing is known of his childhood, other than the names of his parents, Giovanni di Fidanza and Maria di Ritella.

He entered the Franciscan Order in 1243 and studied at the University of Paris. In 1253 he held the Franciscan chair at Paris. A dispute between seculars and mendicants delayed his reception as Master until 1257, where his degree was taken in company with Thomas Aquinas. Three years earlier his fame had earned him the position of lecturer on The Four Books of Sentences—a book of theology written by Peter Lombard in the twelfth century—and in 1255 he received the degree of master, the medieval equivalent of doctor. After having successfully defended his order against the reproaches of the anti-mendicant party, he was elected Minister General of the Franciscan Order. On 24 November 1265, he was selected for the post of Archbishop of York; however, he was never consecrated and resigned the appointment in October 1266.

Bonaventure was instrumental in procuring the election of Pope Gregory X, who rewarded him with the title of Cardinal Bishop of Albano, and insisted on his presence at the great Second Council of Lyon in 1274. There, after his significant contributions led to a union of the Greek and Latin churches, Bonaventure died suddenly and in suspicious circumstances.

He steered the Franciscans on a moderate and intellectual course that made them the most prominent order in the Catholic Church until the coming of the Jesuits. His theology was marked by an attempt completely to integrate faith and reason. He thought of Christ as the "one true master" who offers humans knowledge that begins in faith, is developed through rational understanding, and is perfected by mystical union with God.

Bonaventure was formally canonised in 1484 by the Franciscan Pope Sixtus IV, and ranked along with Thomas Aquinas as the greatest of the Doctors of the Church by another Franciscan, Pope Sixtus V, in 1587. Bonaventure was regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of the Middle Ages.

Bonaventure wrote on almost every subject treated by the Schoolmen, and his writings are very numerous. The greater number of them deal with philosophy and theology. No work of Bonaventure's is exclusively philosophical, a striking illustration of the mutual interpenetration of philosophy and theology that is a distinguishing mark of the Scholastic period.

Much of St. Bonaventure’s philosophical thought shows a considerable influence by St. Augustine. So much so that De Wulf considers him the best medieval representative of Augustinianism. St. Bonaventure adds Aristotelian principles to the Augustinian doctrine, especially in connection with the illumination of the intellect and the composition of human beings and other living creatures in terms of matter and form. Augustine, who had introduced into the west many of the doctrines that would define scholastic philosophy, was an incredibly important source of Bonaventure's Platonism. The mystic Dionysius the Areopagite was another notable influence.

In philosophy Bonaventure presents a marked contrast to his contemporaries, Roger Bacon, Albert the Great, and Thomas Aquinas. While these may be taken as representing, respectively, physical science yet in its infancy, and Aristotelian scholasticism in its most perfect form, he presents the mystical and Platonizing mode of speculation that had already, to some extent, found expression in Hugo and Richard of St. Victor, Alexander of Hales, and in Bernard of Clairvaux. To him, the purely intellectual element, though never absent, is of inferior interest when compared with the living power of the affections or the heart.

Like Thomas Aquinas, with whom he shared numerous profound agreements in matters theological and philosophical, he combated the Aristotelian notion of the eternity of the world vigorously (though he disagreed with Aquinas about the abstract possibility of an eternal universe). Bonaventure accepts the neo-Platonic doctrine that "forms" do not exist as subsistent entities, but as ideals or archetypes in the mind of God, according to which actual things were formed; and this conception has no slight influence upon his philosophy.

Like all the great scholastic doctors, Bonaventura starts with the discussion of the relations between reason and faith. All the sciences are but the handmaids of theology; reason can discover some of the moral truths that form the groundwork of the Christian system, but others it can only receive and apprehend through divine illumination. To obtain this illumination, the soul must employ the proper means, which are prayer, the exercise of the virtues, whereby it is rendered fit to accept the divine light, and meditation that may rise even to ecstatic union with God. The supreme end of life is such union, union in contemplation or intellect and in intense absorbing love; but it cannot be entirely reached in this life, and remains as a hope for the future.

Like Aquinas and other notable thirteenth-century philosophers and theologians, Bonaventure believed that it is possible to prove the existence of God and the immortality of the soul. He offers several arguments for the existence of God, including versions of St. Anselm's ontological argument and Augustine's argument from eternal truths. His main argument for the immortality of the soul appeals to humans' natural desire for perfect happiness, and is reminiscent of C. S. Lewis's argument from desire. Contrary to Aquinas, Bonaventure did not believe that philosophy was an autonomous disciple that could be pursued successfully independently of theology. Any philosopher is bound to fall into serious error, he believed, who lacks the light of faith.

A master of the memorable phrase, Bonaventure held that philosophy opens the mind to at least three different routes humans can take on their journey to God. Non-intellectual material creatures he conceived as shadows and vestiges (literally, footprints) of God, understood as the ultimate cause of a world philosophical reason can prove was created at a first moment in time. Intellectual creatures he conceived of as images and likenesses of God, the workings of the human mind and will leading us to God understood as illuminator of knowledge and donor of grace and virtue. The final route to God is the route of being, in which Bonaventure brought Anselm's argument together with Aristotelian and Neoplatonic metaphysics to view God as the absolutely perfect being whose essence entails its existence, an absolutely simple being that causes all other, composite beings to exist.

Bonaventure, however, is not only a meditative thinker, whose works may form good manuals of devotion; he is a dogmatic theologian of high rank, and on all the disputed questions of scholastic thought, such as universals, matter, seminal reasons, the principle of individuation, or the intellectus agens, he gives weighty and well-reasoned decisions. He agrees with Saint Albert the Great in regarding theology as a practical science; its truths, according to his view, are peculiarly adapted to influence the affections. He discusses very carefully the nature and meaning of the divine attributes; considers universals to be the ideal forms pre-existing in the divine mind according to which things were shaped; holds matter to be pure potentiality that receives individual being and determinateness from the formative power of God, acting according to the ideas; and finally maintains that the agent intellect has no separate existence. On these and on many other points of scholastic philosophy the "Seraphic Doctor" exhibits a combination of subtlety and moderation, which makes his works particularly valuable.

In form and intent the work of St. Bonaventure is always the work of a theologian; he writes as one for whom the only angle of vision and the proximate criterion of truth is the Christian faith. This fact influences his importance for the history of philosophy; when coupled with his style, it makes Bonaventure perhaps the least accessible of the major figures of the thirteenth century. This is true, not because he is a theologian, but because philosophy interests him largely as a praeparatio evangelica, a preparation for evangelism, as something to be interpreted as a foreshadow of or deviation from what God has revealed.

In a way that is not true of Aquinas or Albert or Scotus, Bonaventure does not survive well the transition from his time to ours. It is difficult to imagine a contemporary philosopher, Christian or not, citing a passage from Bonaventure to make a specifically philosophical point. One must know philosophers to read Bonaventure, but the study of Bonaventure is seldom helpful for understanding philosophers and their characteristic problems. Bonaventure as a theologian is something different again, as is Bonaventure the edifying author. It is in those areas, rather than in philosophy proper, that his continuing importance must be sought.

Almighty God, you gave to your servant Bonaventure special gifts of grace to understand and teach the truth as it is in Christ Jesus: Grant that by this teaching we may know you, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.

Amen.

[amorphousea]

everything is holy, everything is real. nothing is real. everything is spiritual, everything is clinical. all brains have the potential to unravel, all brains have the potential to reignite. all bodies have the capacity to crumble, all bodies have the potential to be built from the ashes. i was delusional, i was correct. all of time is happening, I think sometimes the wires between dream state consciousness and waking consciousness get muddled. there is prophecy and there is subconscious nonsense, you hear what you look at. dreams likely have prophetic / psychic merit because all of time is happening at once, and when you are asleep your brain sorts through memory without your frontal cortex / other rational parts of your brain attempting to contextualize it, so you lose sense of linear time (have access to timelines / time that is occurring “elsewhere”). sometimes wires get crossed and “perceptual abnormalities” in waking life occur. there is no reality and nothing about life makes enough sense to classify anything as pure nonsense or brush anything off. what i experienced in high school was a self induced existential sort of madness, most of what i experience now is me moving through the much different timeline i now exist in, with a lot more ~mystical~ qualities. i do not care how my brain would be pathologized. i do not give a fuck how some psychiatrist would categorize me, because when i thought i needed to understand that to survive & when i was barely able to keep myself alive, i quickly found that those definitions / psychiatric institutions, did nothing for me once more. just like every medical institution i have come into contact with. i pulled myself out of the “symptoms” that almost got me killed, even recently when a couple months ago i almost went 48hrs without water, i eventually forced myself to get myself together. i’m too stubborn to succumb to myself. i chose a framework of reality that lends itself to me reaching my fullest potential, i am choosing a framework of reality that lends itself to survival. that framework involves the dissolution of pathology. even in a physical sense, when i had chronic sore throats, or when i could not stay awake for extended periods of time, etc. symptoms that technically extend beyond my rheumatoid arthritis, these symptoms were never “explained” but i solved it, i did what i needed to do and i am finally coming to life, coming to consciousness, coming home to my body. i am not anti science i am just not going to bother with looking for explanations beyond (arthritis the very obvious major problems.) (did i just cure my hypochondriac tendencies in one go???). anyways i am taking thought away from myself, i am only “crazy” when i think, there is no need to think myself out of myself and out of the world and wherever i go when i think. if people cannot comprehend me when i speak it does not matter because i am alive, and to be alive and be something allegedly “different” is to be freer than most

someone with adhd was like look into adhd u might have it someone with schizophrenia was like do you experience this (the answer was yes) said oh that only happens in schizophrenia someone dmed me on tumblr in hs like you have bipolar disorder (the psychiatrists also thought I was very manic… which not real #wrong) in the psych ward some girl with ocd was like I think you have ocd (which real #true, diagnosed and valid approved by me… working on it) autistic dude was like “you seem autistic” (+ many other people are like yeah you seem autistic) so ultimately, i am unpathologizable. i have transcended the dsmv. my Brain is the worlds greatest mystery (i am actually the only person with a neurotypical brain, everyone else has funky brains, you may wonder how is it typical if I am the only one? well it is the one true brain form. hope u understand 🙏)

[dontmean2bepoliticalbut]