#BODHISATTVA CATHEDRAL

[talonabraxas]

“The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart.” — Buddha

Buddha Lotus

"When considered archeologically, the cross, for some reason also not strictly obvious, was early associated with the swastika. The word swastika is from the sanskrit svastika, a word which suggests well-being, wholeness, and, by extension, health. This shape is also called the fylfot, and while largely associated with Oriental peoples, definitely had its place in Western symbolism, where it is called the crux gammata. It received this name because each of the arms resembled the Greek letter gamma, and the swastika was said to have been fashioned from four gamma united at their bases. In the Orient, the arms of the swastika turn counter-clockwise, by which it is distinguished from the official emblem of the Third Reich, called the hakenkreuz, in which the arms turn clockwise. Though found on both Hindu and Buddhist images in India, it is more frequently seen on representations of the buddhas and bodhisattvas. On figures of Buddha, it is usually inscribed upon the breast.

Thomas Wilson, in his work The Swastika, describes the migrations of this symbol in both hemispheres. It was common to both cultured and uncultured peoples, adorning aboriginal art, and found among the builders' marks on the stones of the great cathedrals of Europe. One theory is that the swastika, in its conventionalized representation, was an instrument used by the primitive Aryans in the making of fire. This might well cause it to be especially venerated as the symbol of the Divine Power and the creative processes of nature. As the bending of the arms of the cross to form the swastika results in a device suggestive of motion, or the turning of the cross on its axis, it was associated with the movement of the cosmos, and again by extension, with the motion of air, breath, or of the life-principle in space." ~Manly P. Hall, PRS Journal (Spring 1961)

[argalia]

tagged by @ryuasou :^) 10 songs i've been listening to lately:

Tag am Toten Meer - Megavier

From a Place of Love - Mili

Rodent - Skinny Puppy

La Promesse - Cranky

Bodhisattva Cathedral - Yasushi Ishii

Exiles - King Crimson

Stare At The Sun - MDMFK

Sea Legs - The Shins

Pass On (I think that's what limbus company's credits theme is called? anyway, specifically gregor's version)

Herzeleid - Rammstein

i have no idea who to tag bc i haven't been too active here lately DFIDFKFG so if you wanna do this go for it

[kalach-cha]

for anyone who’d like it

(made in flat.io)

[tirtairngir]

BODHISSATVA CATHEDRAL - YASUSHI ISHI

Searching within me You who only hates You lead me in heaven, Going about pleading Your lack of love it's clouding my heart and freely

Searching within me You who only hates You lead me in heaven, Going about pleading Your lack of love is It's clouding my heart and Freely Gives me something that flows in my mind If this love will stay Please only use this love Please Ohhh...

Never know glaver gley in a glisten -Tell me like a day in the rising Heavy going and I like getting peace that's clean

Like a child, in the light where the light's been -Hear the cry of the leave in the heathen Ever know where the blamed and the leathered get lashin?

Oh I'll never want a heaven only sewn with gold It's been kinda lousy when it's gone It's been never kinda clean being if you would want to climb -It's really God who loves the soul Undo to Undo to Undo to...

[creaturefeaturecommando]

I'd pay someone to just add Hellsing 2001's soundtrack to Hellsing Ultimate. Because don't get me wrong, I liked Hellsing Ultimate. The soundtrack was just lacking. Hellsing 2001 was mostly carried by it's soundtrack but it gave it a sort of flair. Rewatching it, and Alucard stepping in to Survival on The Street of Insincerity and killing Luke Valentine to Bodhisattva Cathedral were moments that can't be beat.

[crazycatsiren]

The chaotic spiritual journey of the messiest spiritual person in the world

I have @jasper-pagan-witch and @secret-solitary to thank for this. I have to admit, I up to this point, I really haven't given this topic that much thought. This is something good for me to reflect upon, and I think it's good for me to write it all out.

I did grow up with religions. You can say that I was raised with Buddhism and Chinese folk religion. They are living traditions in my native land. They are the everyday lives of my people. My childhood was immersed in these traditions, and I had given little thought to them actually being "religious" or "spiritual", because, well, these are just things that people do, you know? As a child, none of these things felt like a big deal to me,

So diving beings like Buddhas, bodhisattvas, the Shen, the spirits, the faeries... well, they've always been around. They were in my life from day one. And at least for my family, there were no elaborate rituals like the Catholic Mass or anything like that. Prayers, offerings, incense lighting, the occasional visits to temples, special meals on sacred days, truly nothing out of the ordinary.

And then I immigrated to the United States. Pressured to fit in, to Westernize, to become "American", all my native culture, traditions, practices, and spirituality got put on the back burner of my life. Throughout my adolescent and young adult years, my native identity was all but erased. I changed my name. I became Catholic. I even stopped speaking my mother tongue.

I think the big turnaround happened soon after I got married, when my husband, newly enlisted in the army, got Okinawa, Japan for his first duty station. Despite having returned to my motherland to visit my family there numerous times, for the first time in more than a decade, I was living so close to my roots. The devout local Shintos struck a cord within me, that something that had laid buried for so long. This happened to coincide with me turning my back on the Catholic Church. And it was around this time, when Artemis first entered my life. The rest is history.

Fast forward another decade now. I'm going to admit, there is still a lot of reclaiming and re-embracing going on. This includes my native language, my ancestry, and my religions (including Catholicism). But I know, from my heart and soul, that none of them have ever left. They have always been here, always with me. Whether I've been aware or not, I have always had them in my life.

So I have been doing more and more digging and researching, learning and relearning.

My spirituality is now one of the major sources of comfort in my life. Along with my personal Hellenic witch calendar and my personal Buddhist and Catholic calendar, I'm working to put together a calendar of traditional Chinese holidays that my family in China has always celebrated. I have resumed honoring Amitābha Buddha, Guanyin, and many other divine beings of my native land. I light incenses on a regular basis for my ancestors. I don't really have a set routine for everything, and I rather like the flexibility and spontaneity of things. Other than my religious sacred days that I observe monthly and annually, the rest of the time is prayers, meditations with my mala, offerings, candles and incense, whenever feelings/inspirations strike. Sometimes it's as simple as sparing a thought (asking Guanyin to check on my grandparents after a phone call with them, thanking Amitābha Buddha for a good yoga session, a toast in Dionysus's honor at a party, a prayer to Hermes before a flight, keeping Euterpe in my mind while learning a new piece of music, for example). Having kept Catholicism in my life, I still observe many Catholic holidays and feast days as well, and every time I visit a cathedral I will spend some time kneeling in prayer. Saying the rosary and praying to the Virgin Mary remains a comforting activity.

You might be thinking now, "wow, that sounds like a lot! And you have a witchcraft practice, too! How do you keep up with it all?" Well, the truth is, I don't. It's not an obligation. None of this is a chore. This is just my life. These are just things that I do. Things that I enjoy, things that are a part of everyday living.

My spirituality is just like me: a glorious mess. But I would not want to have it any other way!

[1000-rat-corpses]

music from older anime that had completely uncalled for atmospherically clashing but still banging OSTs like the original hellsing are treasures

[animebackgroundmusic]

“Daiseidou no Bosatsu ~Featuring Tatsuo Tabei~” (Cathedral Bodhisattva ~Featuring Tatsuo Tabei~) by: Yasushi Ishii from: Hellsing

[vyctoyr]

Under the buzzing ventilator I kneel, In front of A tawny, bodhisattva gisant: riveting fusion Overlooking hearses three hundred and thirteen Carrying only one catafalque, procuring And luring, into the swiveling snare, for which The perfidious Saṃsāra would tumble and fall A den of lanky ḍākinīs, perching haughty, adorned, sans aperçu With obsidian, cornelian, and lapis lazuli

Such radiance extends from the loka of vandalizing pretas To that abetting parallel cosmos inhabited, or at least claimed, by a shoal of stupendous, irredentist octopodes parasites Each lodges, with aplomb as well as with eight hulking arms, onto the severed half of one excommunicated skull Galvanized by blood infused Byzantine wine While feasting, nibbling gingerly, on what remains Of the bone-relic of Gautama Buddha’s carpal ensemble, mammoth vigor cut into, bespeaks a surgical precision Let not their octodexterity be forgotten, the most marvelously veiled, beatifying mudrā Perfect fait accompli

Suddenly I realize the door behind me was left ajar Agape and frighted I saunter to my feeble feet:  To defend, or try to defend, like a blood-soaked wrathful Asura My soul’s final stronghold against its end: it puts up the last fight That is destined to fail, trampled in stampedes Of assault launched by the transfiguring garudas and shapeshifting makaras Along side so many iridescent major and minor deities, and their equally florescent vahanas, who incessantly intimidate and browbeat The skull starts to squeak, I hear the sound akin to a grossly out-of-tune viola da gamba emanating the most grotesquely heart-etching harmonics “Even the most enduring calcium succumbs to this form of superior pressure and its multiplicity!” Exclaims, in tears, blooming, scolding, bulging plops, the senile teuthologist

Suddenly, again, I see that death is immanent, vanquished Not just a tacky, inimical trompe-l’œil It is only for the weak Bardo Thödol must be preached tediously As with each repeat, we come one inch closer to the final at-one-ment But why does it pain so much? Maybe I’m just not the chosen one to obtain the precious Saṃbhogakāya Or else how would you explain the innate human proclivity to slip through the crack into the hot larva of all kinds of colorful karmic misery I could feel the suckling, slimy snakes constricting harder, quite smoothly, pulverizing my every vertebra, clavicle, tibia and fibula, while jets of pulped flesh, squishing, come bursting out of my skin, pretty much a game of giggling undines Followed only by the putrid gravy of organs and neurons, oozing, in a poised manner, from the deflated, disfigured mannequin, against the gurgling dirge of seeping body fluids: the aroma of which tastes like a mélange of pancreas, thyroid and kidney, probably also spleen The contour and rhythm of which remind me of that misanthropic leper, from time immemorial, and His Saint Francis of Assisi

“Bury me with my friend, the Hellenic harpy,” I cry through the eternal cathedral He who flaps his wings, mighty, muscular wings like a Zeret bird, a plundering gargoyle Humming a little ditty, oh Amalía, He takes me to the vaulting sky For I shall forever reside in the palatial Gesamtkunstwerk of Akhnaten and Nefertiti Where, stirring up two-hundred-and-twenty-two years of ashes, I unearth A lackey box full of turquoise, sissonning ushabtis

“Eu atendendo o meu amigo Eu atendendo o meu amigo” Be not afraid my friend, be not afraid; instead Be gentle Be gentle, discover, intern and exhume Be gentle yet still stalwart and devoted: “Ni shagu nazad!” Be gentle till samādhi Be gentle for you

Jan 22, 2021 Chicago

[grandhotelabyss]

So fascist. I’m joking, sort of. When I was trying to make the ‘gram work, I hashtagged a picture of a bookcase I’d fished out of the trash with #cottagecore—and then actual #cottagecore people liked the post. This proves that a hashtag cannot be used ironically. As for #darkacademia, I gave my thoughts a few months ago in my essay on Donna Tartt’s The Secret History:

I am too old, and I have seen too much, to fall in love with the novel that helped to inspire the #darkacademia trend. Granted, as a student who spent four years reading Shakespeare, Dickens, and Joyce under the high, dim vault of the Cathedral of Learning’s commons room, I had the most #darkacademic experience possible at an urban public research university. But then I spent seven years in graduate school, and seven years after that as an adjunct professor; I have seen the true darkness of academia, and it has very little to do with the Gothic trappings of Donna Tartt’s classic 1992 thriller.

What is #darkacademia, really, but a response to this genuine darkness? Such Poe-like airs as Tartt and her contemporary devotees put on are an attempt to reenchant the life of the mind after its exsanguination and despiritualization by the increasingly rationalized bureaucracies of the contemporary university. Despite attempts to bring the trend in line with social justice, #darkacademia represents a conservative backlash against both academic leftism and corporatist neoliberalism in our time, with these two tendencies’ routinized subversions and mandatory inculcations and profit-seeking administrations. In reaching back a generation to canonize The Secret History as the inspiration of their aesthetic, today’s gloomy ephebes chose wisely, since Tartt’s novel belongs to the last backlash, coming as it did between The Closing of the American Mind (1987) and The Western Canon (1994)—a black blossom between the Blooms—and deriving some of its emotional impetus, however disavowed, from the same sources as those jeremiads against the leveling of humanities education.

I enjoy issuing such vast historico-aesthetic declarations—it comes from the Marxist side of my education, and anyway, what else can you do with popular fiction?—but I take them very lightly. 

What is the Cathedral of Learning? It would be a place of pilgrimage for the darkly academic, the academic darklings, if only they knew about it. You could always look up pictures online, but I’ve always thought “a picture is worth a thousand words” counted as dispraise of images: pictures don’t tell you anything at all—you literally need one thousand words to understand even one! So I give you a couple hundred words from my unpublished manuscript The Class of 2000, both the great Pittsburgh novel and the great turn-of-the-millennium novel, as the world will someday learn. I include, for the #darkacademic fans, the description of the Cathedral of Learning (sorry for the repetition between the Tartt review and the novel of “high, dim vault”—in my defense, it’s a high, dim vault) and a subsequent short dialogue on architecture that reflects a trending controversy of today. All you need to know is that this section is about my narrator and his religious friend, both high-school students, on a field trip. Please enjoy!

from The Class of 2000

Lauren and I were on a lunch break from an art-class field trip to the Carnegie Museum of Art. In a rain-presaging fall wind, we wandered around Oakland.

She had brought a pack of strawberry-flavored clove cigarettes—I don’t know where she got them—and we smoked to try to blend in with the students from Pitt and Carnegie Mellon. Despite the massing clouds, some of them still lounged on the lawn of the Cathedral of Learning, asleep with Plato or Marx propped open on their faces. We circled the Cathedral and stared up at its sooty limestone mass rearing into the clouds—the tallest building for miles.

We put out our cigarettes and walked through the high, dim vault of its first floor. Students at weighty wooden study tables, strangely unaffected by the anachronistic grandeur that rose around them, sighed in frustration over chemistry or French textbooks; their sweatshirts and jeans affronted the solemn Gothic atmosphere.

Between classes, we ducked in and out of the nationality rooms. To promote cultural understanding and civic investment in the university while this vast structure was under construction in the 1920s—I quote from memory the brochure we read that day—the Chancellor had invited the participation of the many immigrant communities who’d raised this city, and the University continued its outreach since then, from the 18th-century English who’d fought off their brethren at Fort Pitt to those who came from Eastern and Southern Europe at the turn of the century seeking work in the factories that made the world’s steel to the recent arrivals from Africa and Asia who wished to compete in the global economy. Representatives of said communities were tasked with proposing, planning, and funding the construction of classrooms to commemorate the nations they’d left and the cultures they carried. We saw samovars, stained glass, calligraphic screens, menorahs, nationalist liberators, bodhisattvas, and Yoruba gods. We discussed the glory of studying human achievement in vast tower consecrated to the genius of all the world’s cultures.

We left the Cathedral and its grounds, lit two more cloves, and walked deeper into the neighborhood, where campus buildings mingled with banks and bookstores and restaurants.

On Fifth Avenue, we found ourselves in front of an odd sight: the bell tower of an old church, a sepia stone spire, stood alone, though the rest of the church had long been demolished. In its place gloated a modern university building, all glass and steel, curved at the edge where it would have abutted the bell tower, as if to avoid a contaminating touch.

“I like the church tower better,” Lauren mused.

We regarded our reflections in the glass of the new building.

“So do I.”

“You know, since you don’t believe in God, you really aren’t entitled to like the tower better. Its purpose is to lift your vision, to point the way to heaven. The modern, godless building just shows you”—she pointed forward, in the flesh and in the glass—“your own small self.”

I pointed to the space over my shoulder in the glass where the Cathedral of Learning hovered behind us in the distance.

“That’s a secular structure,” I said.

“Please,” she said as she turned away in dismissal. “If what I said wasn’t true, would they have to call it a cathedral?”

[torendheavenandearth]

2.5

“Hearken and heed, the Great Guro who is a Greater Studyante once asked: ‘Enlighten me, great BATALA, though Thou be dead: why must I follow beliefs, if all beliefs are broken?

The great BATALA stands in Their Paradise Garden, with nothing but flower and bamboo and forever-living rivers rushing through canals. With every step, a new universe is born. With tranquility like the sigh of moss-covered rocks at the base of a mountain, They responded: ‘hangal, thou be a fool if thou dost not think all things broken.’

‘Then must we accept our brokenness, and rely on broken truths?’

‘Hangal, thou be a fool if thou dost think there is such a thing as truths.’

‘Then must we all follow the Red Secret of Science? Is there an ending to all things?’

‘Some Lies are greater than others, but in the end they are all lies. Hangal, hearken unto my words, and let them escape thy grasp so that it may becomest thy nature: believe upon what thou must if you believe it to be true, but let not the shard of they faith cut others, and let it be a stepping stone to harmonial enlightenment. One with others, others now one, kapwa.” 

- From Ang Mga Turo ni Patay na BATALA (Teachings of Dead BATALA).

▼

Ang Nilapastangan doesn’t know what overcame her, but she knows that if she passed this opportunity up, she would regret it. 

And so she runs. 

She doesn’t even get on her horse--she used a bit of her Gahum, just enough to make the soles of her feet sizzle against the land. Specifically to the center of the Barangay, where she thinks whatever being that has brought the plague upon the barangay has taken refuge.

In just a matter of minutes she is outside of the barricade. She sees a few pieces of splintered wood lying on the ground. New. The barricade’s been tampered with.

She climbs up the barricade and sees just as a shadow carrying the body of Jaime enters into the broken doors of the church. The shadow does not look behind it, nor does it close the door.

The plaza is swarmed by amalanhig. The pile of corpses that were there just this afternoon are gone.

Ang Nilapastangan swallows her Gahum, and then proceeds to become one with all once again. Indiscernible, infinitely unattainable. She climbs down the other side. Past the threshold, she controls her breathing. Around the plaza there seem to be bahay na bato with their doors open, uninhabited.

She enters the bahay na bato. No creatures here. No amalanhig. No corpses unblessed. She walks up to the second floor. She makes no sound. Sound is for those that disturb the peace of silence. Ang Nilapastangan, at present, is silence.

She makes her way to one of the capiz shell windows, slides it open, and then leaps onto the roof of another bahay na bato. Thankfully these are made of sturdy wood and stone, easy for her to run across on. Using this vantage point, she flies across the night, a wraith in the midst of corpses. As she gets nearer, she scales down the side of one bahay na bato and falls onto the stone floor. She runs to the corner and peeks.

She’s now in a position where the cathedral is close, just a quick sprint away. However, three amalanhig shambles in between. One of them holds no weapon. One other wields a pitchfork, and another swings a bolo around haphazardly. The bolo bites into the one that has no weapon, but it feels no pain.

Ang Nilapastangan knows that all these creatures feed on life. They’ve become disturbed in death, and all they could ever want is to feed upon life once again to return the favor: disturb life. If they get so much as a scent or a flicker of that flame of life within their vicinity, they will go feral. Their revenge knows no bounds.

Well, it’s either revenge or orders. Ang Nilapastangan is slowly coming to terms with the realization that they might be ordered.

“Poor ones,” says Ang Nilapastangan. She brings a hand up to her mouth, and then breathes just the tiniest spark of Gahum. Within Gahum, there is life. It is, in a single breath, spiritual power and the jovial dance of living flames.

Ang Nilapastangan flings the spark of Gahum to one of the bahay na bato, and then snaps her fingers. She knows the umalagad--the ancestor spirits--will be pleased with her show.

The Gahum bursts. A firework of white flame. All of the amalanhig present there turn, and then immediately run. They run quick, the unimpeded approach of death.

Ang Nilapatangan launches off into a sprint the second most of the amalanhig are banging against the doors and the walls of the bahay na bato, literally climbing on top of each other to get to the spark of Gahum within. Ang Nilapastangan, on the other hand, goes through the broken gates of the church and immediately into that place of worship.

As soon as she’s in, she pulls the doors closed.

There’s silence.

Dust. She hears dust fall softly upon the ground. An arhythmic catharsis.

And then--

“Well hello, Karanduun.”

Ang Nilapastangan turns around. There, upon the altar where the triangufixed body of YEHOSHOAH, the mortal name of YEZU, is supposed to be, is instead the body of Jaime. He’s been removed of his garments. Naked, he hangs from fleshy tendrils that bind his wrists and ankles to the wall.

He is framed by a grotesque sculpture of flesh.

“Greetings.”

From behind the altar appears a shadow. The shadow melts away, revealing a tall man with unruly silver hair. His eyes are pure black, as if dipped into ink. His smile betrays canines too long to be human. He wears a priest’s frock.

And then Ang Nilapastangan can feel it. The Crimson Gahum. The Itim-na-Sisiw. “Asuwang.”

It emenates like the stench of rot from the corpse of dead animals. At least, that’s what it feels like. It certainly has no smell. It’s overpowering, almost overbearing. Ang Nilapastangan can feel her skin prickling, and can feel her hair standing on end.

Why am I getting scared? she asks. A first for her. She’s never scared. No dread has ever crept up on her in fifty years. Nothing scares her anymore.

And then that’s when she realizes: she’s hiding her Gahum. Suppressing it through Hiyang breathing techniques. Perhaps that’s why she feels the intense pressure and dread exuded by this particular Asuwang.

“How do you know what I am?” asks Ang Nilapastangan.

“No ordinary mortal can get through that horde.”

“No?”

“Either that, or you’re some kind of wizard, or have some kind of potent agimat. And you don’t look like you have either of those.”

He doesn’t know about Hiyang.

“What are you doing here? Are you the priest?”

“Was.”

Ang Nilapastangan takes a step closer.  “Why have you done this to the barangay? Were you their priest?” Somehow, Ang Nilapastangan finds the threads and ties them together. If he was their priest then that would mean…

“No questions, Karanduun,” says the asuwang, and the amalanhig are grabbing her by her arms and pulling her out of the church. “Bring her to the town hall.”

Ang Nilapastangan struggles, but these amalanhig have slammed their flesh against each other until they have become a veritable golem of walking flesh, a carcass, the ultimate abomination against god.

They’re quick, like the speed of death, sometimes unflinchingly instant. Death has no constant speed, after all. It is swiftness. It is haste. It is slowness. It is the inevitable glacier.

They catch her off guard, while she is focusing upon Hiyang to suppress her Gahum. They’re too many. They haul her out of the church and to the plaza, a grotesque blob of flesh encapsulating her, eclipsing her, swallowing her whole. She can’t breathe. What is the power of that asuwang, that it could outsmart her all the while?

“You were never that smart.”

When Ang Nilapastangan hears those words, she is on her knees, and the mass of flesh has vomited her onto the lobby of a town hall. She opens her eyes and looks up; before her is a hallway, unilluminated.

“No.”

She rises to her feet, turns around, and slams against the door. It won’t budge.

She releases her oneness with Hiyang. Her Gahum flares, like a sudden bonfire in the middle of winter night. Her fist is wrapped in demon conflagration. “Let me out!”

This was a mistake. She never should have come here. She should’ve waited instead of thinking she could’ve stopped the entire menace by herself.

No, what are you thinking, Ang Nilapastangan? You are one of the most powerful beings on the Multiverse. The winner of the Hagdanan. Don’t fuck around. Break out. Break out.

“Come, Qayin. It’s time to rest. Join me in Maka. Please. Eternal glory is nothing without you.”

Qayin? Who’s Qayin? I’ve sealed that name out. That name exists no longer. Who is Qayin? A shadow of a shadow of a hollow shell. A porcelain manikin that dances to no-rhythm melodies.

“Shut up.” Ang Nilapastangan says, and her voice cracks. Her Gahum flares. Her crimson becomes blinding white. “Shut up!”

“Qayin. Listen to me.”

It’s Lulu. It’s Lulu. It’s Lulu.

“Silence!” she screams to no one but herself. “Sibatsinag!” She screams the words into existence, baybayin burns itself into the air, and she throws her fist against the door. A shaft of light rams through the door, shattering it and erasing it straight from reality.

Without looking behind her, she runs through the door…

...only to loop back into a hallway. Dimly lit. There is a window to her left, and then doors to her right. There is a figure. Blue. Hanging suspended in the air on the other side of the room. It doesn’t move.

In her periphery, Ang Nilapastangan can see the parade. Like humans, the invisible spirit societies that live within everything have their own fiestas. This time they are celebrating their own: one with parade floats wherein powerful bathala wave at their diwata consorts and subjects. Gigantic dragon-saint faces, busts of revered ancestor bodhisattvas, gods that have been turned into saints. They’re all made from natural materials: from stone, from ironwood, from broken glass, from sand, from dreams, from wishes unfilfilled, from prayers.

To her left they dance in an arrhythmically cold beat, in the middle of giant tropical trees, set upon the backdrop of an immense volcano. They light up the night with their devil-saint parade. Ang Pistang Gatusan nga Gabii. The Festival of a Hundred Nights.

The blue figure doesn’t move. It tells her: choose a door.

The blue figure doesn’t move. It tells her: you have until the Festival ends.

Ang Nilapastangan’s tears are blood. She enters into one door.

▼

Qayin stepped out of the door and onto her rooftop home. Six weeks she had stayed here. And for that six weeks, she’d gotten used to the fresh cold wind yet hot sun, and the terrible smell, and the corpses thrown onto canals, and the demons that fly about the sky.

Qayin herself was a simple girl. Dark hair that fell to the top of her back. Messy bangs. Large bags under her eyes. Brown eyes. Brown skin. A black cloth shirt that had a hood that had floral designs that extended past the shirt’s hem, which she stole from the corpse of a dying tawong lipod. A simple skirt. Rubber slippers.

It was a cold night. There was a single roof over two beds. Not even beds, there were only simple banig with a pillow. A coffee table stood pressed against the bamboo railings of the rooftop. If one were not careful, you could easily just topple over and onto the stone streets below.

The night was illuminated not by stars above but by lights below. These lights, which are powered by the still-fulminating corpse of the dead lightning BATALA, have a red tinge to them. Of course they do. What is the color of blood?

Sitting upon a bamboo bench, inscribing upon a bamboo scroll with a stele, was Demonyong Bakulaw. He wore balloon pants and wooden tsinelas, but nothing above that. His form was that of a large, green-furred gorilla, with horns and spikes growing from his forehead and down the length of his back, like broken glass inserted onto his back.

He looked up from his writing. “Ah, you’ve returned.”

Qayin nodded, walking over to the coffee table and placing the abaca bag onto it. She pulled out the stuff that she bought: preserved already cooked chicken, cheap coffee in bamboo canisters, a bag of dried mangoes, and a large canteen of water.

“I really don’t mean to make you into a personal food-buyer but you’ll understand that I am quite busy,” said Bakulaw, picking up the preserved, already cooked chicken by a single hand. He exhaled, and his hand began to blaze a green flame, heating the chicken to perfect eating temperatures.

Qayin was already grabbing the porcelain plates by the dish rack as he did that, and she put it down onto the coffee table. The wind blew harder, which Bakulaw liked a lot.

He placed the chicken down onto the porcelain plates, cutting it in half with just his hands.

“It’s okay,” replied Qayin, shrugging. She sat down on her pillow and began eating with Bakulaw. She’d been doing this for a lot of nights now, and she knew how comfortable Bakulaw was with silence during meals. And so, they were silent, looking out to the other, taller buildings that flanked theirs. Great once-gods now killed, angels buried into the earth with their wings jutting out to the skies like one final plea to the god that had abandoned them once they had been created, great crystal towers erected by now lost engkanto sorcery, great trees that have grown gray due to the death of the diwata that lived within them.

A graveyard. They lived in a graveyard.

Biringan, the City of Cities, they said. What an utter joke.

Eventually they finished eating. Bones left. Qayin enjoyed a good seasoned chicken. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d eaten a real meal before. Living with Bakulaw, she hadn’t had a home cooked meal in forever. She didn’t blame Bakulaw though, of course. Bakulaw was the only one that took her up when she arrived in this world, bloody, bleeding, and bruised, like a sacrifice in front of a balete tree.

“Bakulaw,” asked Qayin, removing a stray strand of hair from her face. “Why do you think I was chosen?” She had been wondering this question ever since the beginning of her arrival. Why her? She was no fighter. She was a nobody. She was nothing. She was just a simple farm girl who lived on a tidally locked planet.

“The Hagdanan is both indiscriminate and all-discriminatory. Dead BATALA exists everywhere, child.”

“I know but…” Qayin sighed. She was vulnerable again. She hid her knees underneath her soft cloth hoodie. “Why?”

“You want to go home, child?” asked Bakulaw, folding the bamboo scroll and setting his stele down. He pushed himself from his bench and stretched. “You wish to escape the Hagdanan?”

It was small and faint, because she didn’t want Bakulaw to see, but Qayin nodded.

Bakulaw walked over to the bamboo railings and put both of his hands on top. “Easier wished than done. The Hagdanan doesn’t care for the people it picks. It doesn’t choose anyone. It rolls the dice and plucks you. You were simply unlucky.”

“And I have to deal with it?”

Bakulaw bowed his head low. “Unfortunately.”

Qayin rose to her feet and pulled out a coffee can. She walked up next to Bakulaw and handed it to him. “Thank you.”

“Is there no way to simply… forfeit?” She stared up at the gigantic inverted triangle-shaped obelisk, impossible standing upon its narrow tip.

“Die,” stated Bakulaw. “It’s either you win or you die. If you forfeit… you will be hounded by the other 150. They need you dead for them to win.”

“So technically speaking, I can just do nothing, try to live a good life here, until I inevitably die?” She shrugged and sipped on her coffee can. “How different is that from simply just living?”

“It will very often be a violent death,” said Bakulaw. “And your life will be in vain.”

“You don’t get to tell me that,” replied Qayin.

“Aye, so try telling it to yourself.”

Qayin scowled.

“Now go and throw these down the trash shoot,” said Bakulaw. “Then we continue your training. You’re a great fighter, Qayin, and powerful. You have a shot at winning the Hagdanan. And if you do, we can rid this multiverse and create a better one.”

Qayin ruminated upon those words as she threw the coffee cans into their trash bag and approached the door.

She entered the door.

▼

And then Qayin stepped out. This time she was on a different rooftop. She stepped out onto the rooftop head of a huge Maria statue, sculpted into a perpetual prayer, 300 feet into the air. There are no lights on the head. This Maria statue was said to have been a powerful weapon that has since been decommissioned and frozen into uselessness.

This Maria statue watched as the rest of Biringan went about their day. Unlike most of the other statues, this Maria statue was erected before the war, as a supplication and offering to the Flower of Heaven. But that was a long time ago, a time now mostly unforgotten. Indeed, time has marched on so far that even the season before the War was seen as ancient history.

However, the Maria statue did get damaged during the war. One of its seven arms was missing, making it look incomplete and blasphemous. A replacement arm was in construction at the time Qayin and Lulu were atop the Maria statue. Her crown of flowers had also been drenched red with BATALA’s blood, but they couldn’t really do anything about that could they?

When you kill the creator you must live with your sins.

Now upon that marble white statue, stained red by the blood of the slain Blasphemed Creator, Qayin found herself staring at Lulu, who was staring up at the night. The moon, glowing silver-blue. Her hair was immaculately blonde, her skin paler than day. Qayin walked up to her, carrying a leaf bag that had two coffee cans once again.

Ang Nilapastangan can’t help but smile at her and her friends’ love for coffee.

What? That was weird. Qayin shook the stray thought from her mind and it dissipated like cotton-candy silk. “Hey,” Qayin said, and she was smiling widely.

Lulu turned to her. She had no philtrum, and her eyes were purely black, no sclera. Her ears, which poked through her blonde hair, were knife-sharp as well, and her teeth sharp, like a shark’s. “Ooh! Coffee? For me?”

“Shut up, you ordered me to buy this for you.”

The both of them laughed. Qayin’s smile never left her lips. She popped open the bamboo can and began drinking. They leaned against the railings, which actually were the thorns of the flowers that crowned the Maria.

Qayin stole a glance from Lulu. She introduced herself to her before as “Luluwa”. She was a tamawo, she explained. They used to be the nobles of the engkanto people, those that lived in the towers, and she had pointed at the great crystal spires that dotted most of the center of the city. Lulu found her beauty to be ethereal, almost inhuman. Well, she wasn’t human, but even so. Here beauty was strange, truly exotic, not the exociticism of the Empire. The true otherworldliness. Conventional attractiveness doesn’t--cannot--apply to her. She is a nonhuman being who knew her power.

Below them was a festival of incandescence. Blues blending with reds to produce disgusting purples. Yellows slicing through greens. No natural colors, these come from the kuryente-powered generators. Those god-corpse-suckers.

“You ever wanted to go back to a quiet life?” asked Lulu.

Qayin nodded almost immediately. “More than anything. That’s all I want. I just want to go home, forget all this madness, this craziness.” She breathed in, looking up at the blue moon. It’s better for the eyes. They don’t assault her irises with unethical burning luminescence. “But I have a feeling this won’t end up good for me.”

Lulu turned to her, smiling a sad smile. Her pale lips almost made it hard to see, save for the line. She sidled up next to Qayin and placed a hand around her. “Hey, Yinnie,” Lulu said. “It’s going to be all right, okay? I’m with you. Remember our promise, okay?”

Qayin managed a smile. The smile carried with it relief, and her heart felt less heavy. She’d been here for almost two years now. She grew up out of her teenhood here. She’d become a true adult here, and more. She was forced to become a survivor. Her entire life was stolen from her, just because of some uncaring, unfeeling god.

“God is dead, Qayin,” Bakulaw had said to her in the beginning. “Now God rules over us.” She somewhat understood the meaning of that now.

“Thanks, Lulu,” she said. “So much has been taken from me.”

“Hey. That’s why we’re taking a breather here, right?” Lulu smiled. “Let’s get some of that lost time back through the silences between our blades.”

Qayin turned and looked at Lulu, whose face was terribly close to hers. “Thank you, Lulu.”

Lulu shook her head. “The strength is in you, remember that.”

Lulu was another member of the 150 that must climb the Hagdanan. She wondered if that meant she had to kill her in the end.

Bakulaw had disagreed. “I’ve read the rules,” he’d said, and Qayin had gone off on a tangent as to how he read the rules, as if this was some kind of board game. “The Hagdanan requires the strength of all the 150 to kill God. Usually, killing each other is the best way to obtain the others’ Gahum. Thus, in this bloodlust ridden world, this is often interpreted to mean that we must kill each other to gain the power of the chosen 150, and then use the Gahum gathered as strength to defeat God.”

Qayin held on to the conclusion they came upon afterwards: “What if you don’t need to kill the chosen 150, but rather, get their help?”

In the past year, Lulu and Qayin had already killed two other of the contestants, and and thus they each have a Gahum of another contestant within them. They promised to split the contestants equally amongst them, and then together they would kill God.

“If that’s truly the goal of the Hagdanan, then let’s achieve it,” Qayin had said, with only a little resolve and conviction behind it. But Lulu had cheered so loudly that Qayin couldn’t help but smile and gain just a bit more motivation.

Lulu was taller than Qayin, so she hugs her from behind, with her head atop Qayin’s. They stood silently like that, a conjoined shadow upon the multicolored bonfire. They promised each other promises they would forget. They laughed in jokes that lost humor within context. They lived as paradoxes, darkness against light, swords against evil. Who were they, this angel-devil pair? Who were they to purpose in their heart to kill God, Thrice-Tyrant?

As if an answer to the questions of the All-Seeing Eye, the rhythm of heavy boots resounded from past the door behind them. Lulu pushed herself off of Qayin and asked: “Did you tip off the fucking Guwardya Sibil again?”

Qayin swallowed. “I didn’t think they noticed.”

“Stop!” A leather boot blast through the door that had been fitted into a makeshift hole into the sculpted marble hair bun of the Maria.  “Guwardya Sibil, get on the ground!”

“You know the Guwardya Sibil, Qayin,” Lulu said as she turned around and raised her fists. Behind her, the Guwardya Sibil had already gotten into position, attempting to flank them on all sides. Bolos raised, those with bows and arrows readied. Some that have rifles have knelt and aimed at them. They all wore the same rayadillo and leather pantalones getup, with the leather boots. Their squad leader wore a tricorn hat. “They always notice if you’re not rich.”

Lulu turned around with her, and when she did, a kampilan was in her hands. It was large, and the image of a relatively small girl wielding a large blade was iconic enough to be imprinted upon the minds of many.

“Do not resist!”

“To live is to resist!” yelled out Lulu as she flashed forward, fists already burning with pastel force. In the next instant she was in the fray, fist slamming against the cheek of the one kneeling and with a rifle trained upon them. The pastel power caged within her fist flurried out, extending into pastel white tendrils of power. Her Gahum.

The bullets and arrows flew toward Qayin as Lulu fended off the bolomen that jumped on her. Qayin breathed a silent prayer to the Umalagad, the ancestor spirits, asking for their favor. Then, she moved with grace, and with a quick practiced kata movement deflected the arrows and bullets, rerouting them to the ground or the sky.

Then, Qayin leapt forward as well, cutting and slashing heads off of the Guwardya Sibil, until she and Lulu had painted a throne of blood.

Return to Table of Contents.

[theamazingdearheart-inactive]

Hellsing fandom- anyone found any sheet music for Bodhisattva Cathedral?

[maria51044]

[ihaveneverbeengivenflowers]

Hellsing’s first anime might suck, but

Ok, as a true fan of Hellsing’s canon storyline, I know I’m supposed to despise Gonzoverse (?) and in many ways I really do. I could write a fucking huge text (maybe I'll) about all the things in this version that get on my nerves because there’s a lot of crap.

BUT it turns out that the whole soundtrack is so fucking good I just can’t help myself. Yasushi Ishii, the composer, is a fucking genious. I feel like I must tell the world what they’re missing, so I decided to list the songs I especially like and highly recommend. All of the songs below can be found in the albums Raid and Ruins.

From Raid:

Cool, the world without logos

Double Crossed Fool

Musical Entertainment

Certain Victory Lotus Tune

Falling into a trap with a sexy lure

Original Sin

Bodhisattva Cathedral

Pure Death

Survival on the Street of Insincerity

Shine

From Ruins:

When going to war, fight with arrows, spears and swords

Hatred Guy of Sinfulness

Soul Rescuer

Soul Police Chapter’s Reverse Side Circumstance

Secret Karma Serenade

The Japanese alphabet road with Chinese bellflower's sweet smell

[asiajanuary2020]

January 18, 2020

Another bike tour today, but this time we biked the city of Saigon! This was an amazing experience!!!!! We have never been in this kind of traffic, but everyone knows what to do and everyone yields. It was so much fun!

Our first stop was Turtle Lake. The location of Turtle Lake used to be the city gate during the Nguyen Dynasty - the last dynasty of Vietnam. After that, when the French came, they demolished the city and rebuilt the gate into a water tower to supply water for the local in this area. However, this tower was also knocked down for roads to connect. The French kept a small lake right at this location and built three copper statues of French soldiers to mark their dominance in Indochina. These statues were then pulled down during the Vietnam War, only the lake remained. It was soon renovated to become Turtle Lake as we know today. There is a story about why the government of South Vietnam chose to build the lake based on the image of a turtle. It is said that when Nguyen Van Thieu became the second president of South Vietnam, he invited a Feng Shui master to look into the location of the Independence Palace. The master then gave a lot of compliments and said it was built on the land with a dragon’s spirit, which is the golden location in Vietnamese belief. The Independence Palace was right on the head of the dragon which meant the president's career had great chances for prosperous improvement. However, the tail of the dragon, where the Turtle Lake located, was not controlled. It tended to move intensively and made the president position not a peaceful place to sit. The master suggested casting a spell by putting a massive turtle at this place to keep the dragon unmoved. The president followed this advice and put a copper turtle in the middle of the lake; he even asked to have the lake designed in an octagonal shape like a Bagua, the floor of the lake also has a yin yang circle. From a top view, the lake also reminds of a turtle’s shell.

Next stop was Independence Palace. Independence Palace (Dinh Độc Lập), also known as Reunification Palace (Vietnamese: Dinh Thống Nhất), built on the site of the former Norodom Palace, is a landmark in Saigon, Vietnam. It was designed by architect Ngô Viết Thụ and was the home and workplace of the President of South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. It was the site of the end of the Vietnam War during the Fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975, when a North Vietnamese army tank crashed through its gates.

We then made a quick stop at the flower market, which is just a pop-up market because of Tết ([tet˧˥] or [təːt˧˥]), Vietnamese New Year, Vietnamese Lunar New Year or Tet Holiday. It is the most important celebration in Vietnamese culture. The word is a shortened form of Tết Nguyên Đán (節元旦), which is Sino-Vietnamese for "Feast of the First Morning of the First Day". Tết celebrates the arrival of spring based on the Vietnamese calendar, which usually has the date falling in January or February in the Gregorian calendar. At Tết, every house is usually decorated by Yellow Apricot blossoms (hoa mai) in the central and southern parts of Vietnam; or peach blossoms (hoa đào) in the northern part of Vietnam; or St. John's wort (hoa ban) in the mountain areas. In the north, some people (especially the elite in the past[citation needed]) also decorate their house with a plum blossoms (also called hoa mơ in Vietnamese, but referring to a totally different species from mickey-mouse blossoms[citation needed]). In the north or central, the kumquat tree is a popular decoration for the living room during Tết. Its many fruits symbolize the fertility and fruitfulness for which the family hopes in the coming year.

Vietnamese people also decorate their homes with bonsai and flowers such as chrysanthemums (hoa cúc), marigolds (vạn thọ) symbolizing longevity, cockscombs (mào gà) in southern Vietnam and paperwhites (thủy tiên) and pansies (hoa lan) in northern Vietnam. In the past was a tradition where people tried to make their paperwhites bloom on the day of the observance.

Next was Thien Hau Temple. The Thien Hau Temple (Vietnamese: Miếu Bà Thiên Hậu), officially the Ba Thien Hau Pagoda[1] (Chùa Bà Thiên Hậu, "Pagoda of the Lady Thien Hau"), is a Chinese-style temple of the Chinese sea goddess Mazu on Nguyễn Trãi Street in the Cho Lon ("Chinatown") of District 5 in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Thiên Hậu is the Vietnamese transcription of the Chinese name Tianhou ("Empress of Heaven"), an epithet of the Chinese sea goddess Mazu, the deified form of Lin Moniang, a medieval Fujianese girl credited with saving one or some of her family members from harm during a typhoon through her spiritual power. Although officially unrecognized by both the governments of Mainland China and Taiwan, the faith is popular in the maritime southern provinces of China and, especially, on Taiwan and among the Chinese diaspora. In Vietnam, she is also sometimes known as the "Lady of the Sea" (Tuc Goi La Ba).[1] Mazuism is frequently syncretized with Taoism and Buddhism. For example, at the Quan Am Pagoda nearby, the two main altars are dedicated to Thien Hau and Quan Am, the Vietnamese form of Guanyin, the Chinese form of the bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara.

The temple was first erected c. 1760 by the Cantonese community in the city.[1] It saw major repairs or expansions in 1800, 1842 (and possibly also 1847), 1882, 1890, and 1916.

Our next stop was Binh Tay Market. Binh Tay Market (Vietnamese: Chợ Bình Tây or Chợ Lớn or Chợ Lớn Mới) is the Central Market of Cho Lon in District 6, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Local Vietnamese refer to it as Chợ Lớn, while local Vietnamese-Chinese refer it as 堤岸 - 新街市 "The New Market of Chợ Lớn", and the Chinese other than those living in Vietnam known it only as 堤岸 (Dī'àn, or literally, "embankment").

"The Old Market" (Chinese: 舊街市) did exist in Cho Lon; it used to be on Nguyen Trai Street in District 5. It was destroyed in a raging fire (exact time unknown) and soon after, "The New Market" was built. Although it was used extensively before the fire, local people rarely mention about this lost market except the elderly, or ones who has lived nearby long enough to know the history of this old market. Binh Tay Market is sitting on Thap Muoi Street (Vietnamese: Đường Tháp Mười), a four street-block span connecting Confucius Street (Vietnamese: Đường Khổng Tử - old French: Quai de Gaudot) to the North, and Hau Giang Street (Vietnamese: Đường Hậu Giang) to the South, on the edge of District 6. It is the largest marketplace before the road leading West to Mien Tay of Vietnam, via a very important ground transportation hub named Xa Cảng Miền Tây. Despite many wars over the years, Binh Tay Market has always been a major business hub not only for the local Vietnamese and Chinese, but also for the Vietnamese farmers trading daily goods coming from all directions of South Vietnam.

Next it was lunch time and our guide took us to a delicious little vegetarian restaurant. Another successful meal!

Our next stop was the War Remnants Museum. The War Remnants Museum (Vietnamese: Bảo tàng chứng tích chiến tranh) is a war museum at 28 Vo Van Tan, in District 3, Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam. It contains exhibits relating to the Vietnam War and the First Indochina War. Operated by the Vietnamese government, an earlier version of this museum opened on September 4, 1975, as the Exhibition House for US and Puppet Crimes[1] (Vietnamese: Nhà trưng bày tội ác Mỹ-ngụy). It was located in the former United States Information Agency building. The exhibition was not the first of its kind for the North Vietnamese side, but rather followed a tradition of such exhibitions exposing war crimes, first those of the French and then those of the Americans, who had operated in the country as early as 1954.

In 1990, the name was changed to Exhibition House for Crimes of War and Aggression (Nhà trưng bày tội ác chiến tranh xâm lược), dropping both "U.S." and "Puppet."[2] In 1995, following the normalization of diplomatic relations with the United States and end of the US embargo a year before, the references to "war crimes" and "aggression" were dropped from the museum's title as well; it became the War Remnants Museum. The museum comprises a series of themed rooms in several buildings, with period military equipment placed within a walled yard. The military equipment includes a UH-1 "Huey" helicopter, an F-5A fighter, a BLU-82 "Daisy Cutter" bomb, M48 Patton tank, an A-1 Skyraider attack bomber, and an A-37 Dragonfly attack bomber. There are a number of pieces of unexploded ordnance stored in the corner of the yard, with their charges and/or fuses removed.

One building reproduces the "tiger cages" in which the South Vietnamese government kept political prisoners. Other exhibits include graphic photography,[3] accompanied by a short text in English, Vietnamese and Japanese, covering the effects of Agent Orange and other chemical defoliant sprays, the use of napalm and phosphorus bombs, and war atrocities such as the My Lai massacre. The photographic display includes work by Vietnam War photojournalist Bunyo Ishikawa that he donated to the museum in 1998. Curiosities include a guillotine used by the French and South Vietnamese to execute prisoners,[3] the last time being in 1960, and three jars of preserved human fetuses deformed by exposure to dioxins and dioxin-like compounds, contained in the defoliant Agent Orange.

This was a very somber place. The exhibits were very hard to look at. It was very similar to visiting Hiroshima. Very sad.

We then visited Notre-Dame Cathedral Basilica of Saigon (Vietnamese: Vương cung thánh đường Chính tòa Đức Bà Sài Gòn or Nhà thờ Đức Bà Sài Gòn; French: Basilique-Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Saigon), officially Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of The Immaculate Conception (Vietnamese: Vương cung thánh đường Chính tòa Đức Mẹ Vô nhiễm Nguyên tội; French: Basilique-Cathédrale Notre-Dame de l'Immaculée Conception). It is a cathedral located in the downtown of Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Established by French colonists who initially named it L'eglise de Saïgon, the cathedral was constructed between 1863 and 1880. The name Notre-Dame Cathedral has been used since 1959. It has two bell towers, reaching a height of 58 meters (190 feet).

And then across the street we visited The Ho Chi Minh City Post Office, or the Saigon Central Post Office (Vietnamese: Bưu điện Trung tâm Sài Gòn, French: Poste centrale de Saïgon). It is a post office in the downtown Ho Chi Minh City, near Saigon Notre-Dame Basilica, the city's cathedral. The building was constructed when Vietnam was part of French Indochina in the late 19th century. It counts with Gothic, Renaissance and French influences. It was constructed between 1886-1891 and is now a tourist attraction.

We then hopped back on our bikes and rode back to the bike tour shop. We had to say goodbye to our tour guide, Sarane. He was our guide for two days and he was so knowledgeable and just a very good person who we thoroughly enjoyed. Tomorrow we are off to Phnom Penh in Cambodia.

[creaturefeaturecommando]

Now that I'm thinking of it, seeing Alucard torment Luke Valentine, blowing off his legs, while Bodhisattva Cathedral played in the background might've been the first thing to ever turn me on as Alucard goaded him into fighting him.

I should not have been watching Hellsing when I was like 12.