#Bible History patterns

[yhebrew]

FORTY DAYS left TO REPENT IN 2024

SEPTEMBER 30 TO OCTOBER 12, 2024 (30 AV to 10 Tishrei = 40 Days) September 2, 2024 LABOR DAY – 29 AV, Monday We are to rest from our labors. I did rest by starting this article. I did not attend any of the Labor Weekend events except my Sabbath Torah Study covering the Parshah R’eh meaning, See / OBSERVE / BEHOLD. Observing ‘The Hand of God’ is what I will be focusing on in my articles over…

[alltingfinns]

The Norse: We have a comprehensive writing system.

Their descendants: Please write down your mythology and history and overall traditions!!

The Norse: Fuck you! *uses the writing system almost exclusively for fancy gravestones*

Imagine how much historical knowledge wasn’t written down because our ancestors thought: “What idiot isn’t going to know this?”

[radfemsiren]

Dunno how controversial an opinion this is but I really don’t give a fuck about the misogyny in the Christian bible. The state of women’s rights in Christian countries vs Muslim countries says it all 🤷🏻‍♀️

I think if Christian nations became war zones with blood stained power vacuums, well funded terrorists, natural resources imperialists fight to lay claim to… they would be identical to Islamic regimes. Look at the many Christian majority nations in unstable African countries for example. FGM is extremely popular in several Christian majority nations.

This way of thinking is ignorant. Study history and you will find during the Islamic golden age, Europe was filled with ignorance and violence and oppression, while Islamic nations were leading the way with invention, science, female literacy rates, wealth, stability…

There is no culture, skin tone, or religion that is more prone to violence than others. If the condition is right, men will take advantage and use their power to exploit and hurt women and children.

They must all be kept in check, we must be wary and on guard of all male institutions. I don’t say this to sympathize or “cope” with any ideas of inferiority. I say this out of a well informed and researched understanding that all men will show their true nature if the ecosystem allows them to.

If you don’t study history, and notice the patterns, you will be doomed to repeat the mistakes of our ancestors.

[teawitch]

Classical Correspondences

"Correspondences are just things people made up." various tumblr blogs

Working with a local witch community, one thing I've noticed is that a lot of witches coming from very (sometimes very very) Christian background haven't really been exposed to "Classical" education in the sense of Greek, Roman and Medieval history and thought, except for a sort of biblical overview.

This is the Bible belt and often the question isn't - "Well, you've read Greek mythology, right?" but "were you permitted to read Greek mythology?" Which has left a big gap in the foundational understanding of where some of our witchcraft and broader magical work comes from, including those correspondence lists you see everywhere.

In broad terms, the Egyptians influenced the Greeks who influenced the Romans who influenced the early Christian church and most of medieval Europe. This gives a sort of historical and geographical foundation for our Classical Correspondences. And a lot of other things but right now, let's just look at correspondences.

The periods above give us a long history of men (and sometimes women, but honestly, this was mostly an old boys club) looking at the universe and saying "how does all this fit together?"

In an attempt to answer that question, they started looking at connections between things to try to understand them. Why does valerian smell that way? Why does camomile also make you feel relaxed? Are these two related somehow? Can we find a way to organize them?

Isn't that what botany does? At least for plants?

Yes. And we can see that because both these plants fall under the influence of Jupiter they are kingly, helpful, and aromatic, imparting a feeling of relaxation and expansion.

Umm, Tea, it doesn't say that in my botany textbook.

You have the wrong textbook. You need Culpepers Complete Herbal which is the culmination of all the plant knowledge you'll every need. Says so in the title - Complete. And it was published during the reign of Queen Elizabeth, so you know it's up to date. Queen Elizabeth the First. A time of great scientific progress. (its free on Project Gutenberg)  Though of course Culpeper worked from reliable sources like Aristotle. And  Pliny the Elder, who wanted to categorize everything. (Pliny is probably best known on Tumblr for that elephant religion post that makes it's way around now and then. Pliny is not a reliable source for elephant religion or, well, other topics. But I digress.)

Let's break things down a bit. By Jupiter we mean the planet Jupiter, not the god. (Though Jupiter does fall under Jupiter). The Romans categorized according to the seven ruling planets - Sun, Moon, Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn - with additional influence from the four Greek elements - earth, air , fire, water as well as the astrological signs. They assigned properties to each of these that fit with their view of that planet/element/sign. Jupiter is kingly, along with other properties.

You take everything - plants, metals, gem stones, colors, parts of the body, emotions - and you figure out which ruling planet they fall under and you have a system of correspondences based on the planetary properties. (Venus for love, Mars for courage and strength, Mercury for speed and communication, etc.)

Tea - you're missing a couple of planets and the sun and moon aren't planets.

These are the 7 classical planets or the 7 wandering stars. These were the seven things that could be seen with the naked eye and didn't follow the fixed pattern of the stars. From the Greek word meaning "to wander". We are standing on earth so obviously it's not wandering around the sky. (We have correspondences for Uranus, Neptune and Pluto that were added later)

Got it. So they developed a system of correspondences using the classical planets and used it for witchcraft?

Of course not. From the Romans onward, witchcraft was generally illegal. (Greece disapproved but the laws were a bit different.) So no one would have developed an expansive system of correspondences for witchcraft and made it public.

These were scientific. And for medicine. And, well, for occult practices that were definitely not witchcraft! (Look up high magic vs low magic but basically, it was an economic difference and being poor was bad.)

The important part was - this was science. It had rules. It had structure. They didn't just randomly assign meanings to plants. They developed an entire system of classification and examined each plant to decide where it fit under that system.  Sometimes plants could fall under multiple planets. Sometimes different parts of a plant fell under a different influence. And when used in medicine, what ruling influences the patient fell under could affect the treatment.

I don't want to use them.

It's hard to avoid them. They come into witchcraft through Western Ceremonial Magic but also through pure practicality. See, some of them work remarkably well, possibly because of the medical aspect of things. In medicine there had to a be a probability of success because if everyone died, no one would use them.

And from a witchcraft perspective - a lot of them make sense to the way we work. Plants with hallucinatory properties are often classified as Lunar and fall under the Moon. Spicy and hot plants fall under Mars. Pretty, sweet smelling flowers fall under Venus. These are already connections most of us have. It's also culturally an open system. Remember, it was considered science and medicine in its day. Anyone can reference and use planetary correspondences in their work.

I think personal correspondences would be stronger.

Possibly, over time and for the person involved. Personal and cultural correspondences  build up a resonance in the cultural or with the person, but that resonance  may not transfer well to others. Planetary correspondences have had a long time to develop that resonance and are broadly used, so that resonance is considered to transfer well to the working of others. They are simply a good base for publicly shared work.  

[kaurwreck]

My actual presumption re: Akutagawa's knightliness and amnesia is that Bram and Akutagawa are sharing a skinsuit, consequently weaving their consciousnesses into the most gothic twink the modern mind is capable of conceiving. (You might assume adding Poe or Percy Shelley would make for a more gothic twink, but the addition of either would destabilize the whole twink, and it would either become immediately beset with late stage rabies or it would drown itself within moments of its wretched birth).

Akutagawa is not entirely Akutagawa. The armor looks decidedly more draconic in the teaser we received at the end of S5, wherein Akutagawa seems to have wholly returned to Atsushi's side— fulfilling Shibusawa's climactic fight comment in Dead Apple that the dragon and tiger deserve each other— in time for the overarching climax.

(That's why I think Fyodor set Shibusawa on Atsushi— he mistook Shibusawa for the dragon that would engage with the tiger, creating a singularity that is the "book" insofar as the book exists. Really, it's a white hole that connects realities, either metaphorically or literally. Or, so I think.)

So, Akutagawa has not yet actualized into the dragon that his rivalry with Atsushi has allowed him to cultivate into over the course of the story, but he's very close. He's also too much of a knight right now, which is Bram's role— Akutagawa was always a rook. Even where Akutagawa is protective, he is not chivalrous or knightly, and his protectiveness does not arise from ordainment or ritual oaths of public service but from the individual promises he's made to others and his city. He also doesn't remember Atsushi. Bram, meanwhile, is nobility with vassals to protect, empowered by the princess to whom he swore fealty with the weight of his ordained station. He also has never met Atsushi.

However, this knightly Akutagawa is not all Bram either. His precise, clipped, and cutting speaking pattern slips between Bram's romantic, archaic denouncements. Akutagawa recalls his own words from his first appearance. He appeared where he was needed most, and he's remaining true to his promises. Rashomon responds to him. Akutagawa is very much there, but insofar as he's backseat driving, Bram has the firmer grip on the wheel.

Notably, knight!Akutagawa seemingly quotes the Kolbrin Bible, after which the chapter is named, which is something of a conspiracy theorist's secular bible that mashes together Celtic and Druid mysticism, Judaism and Egyptology. Allegedly, it's a manuscript written 3,600 years ago that was translated between WW1 and WW2. There is no evidence that any of this is true— it was most likely produced in the 90s, based on its very anachronistic language.

I fucking hate contemporary occultism, I tried to dismiss the Kolbrin Bible as the relevant reference, but I haven't yet found anything more likely (although the day is young). There's some foundation for referencing an esoteric occult publication: the somewhat notorious founder of theosophy, Helena Pavlovna Blavatsky, published a theosophical interpretation of Dostoevsky months after his death; spiritualism absolutely influenced fiction and sci-fi; WB Yeats and George William Russell (luminaries of modern Irish literature) were involved with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and their works were shaped by their interests in mysticism and the occult. More saliently, Bram Stoker corresponded with prominent occultists and harbored a tempered "writer's interest" in the occult. I am not getting into Houdini's former friend's interest in spiritualism because I hate him, and thinking about him makes me spit bile, but he's another prominent example.

So, there's cause for the reference, and, maybe this sort of text feels right for bsd, which is also an anachronistic alternative history that's mashing together a whole lot of eastern and western influences with little regard for propriety. I'm still not pleased with it, and I hope my shallow look into the imagery from this most recent chapter led me into the enshittified part of the surface web. But, there are some apparent threads worth exploring.

Prior to Akutagawa name dropping the Harbor of Sorrow, Fyodor seemingly also references the Kolbrin Bible (which is, to mirror Fyodor's language below, an imitation religious text):

"The Harbour of Sorrow we leave behind and with four ships sail towards the sunsetting."

At first, I thought the setting sun imagery in Fyodor's exposition was an uncharacteristically blunt reference to Dazai Osamu's novel, but the setting sun in the Kolbrin Bible seems more likely, since in the latter there is an intentional journey towards the setting sun, while the setting sun in Dazai Osamu's novel reflects an aristocratic family's necrotizing decline.

The Harbour of Sorrow in the Kolbrin Bible is described thusly:

They came to the Harbour of Sorrow, which lies by the Hazy Sea, away from the Land of Mists. There great trees grew and smaller trees upon them, and moss hung from them like door curtains. It lay near the great shallow waters South of the Isle of Hawhige and North of the Sea Pass. Green pearls are found there. Many died in the Harbour of Sorrow, for it was a place with a curse upon it, which caused an evil sickness. The Sons of Fire came with Hoskiah and saved them, and they came to this place and built a city.

(I can't help but acknowledge that the character for "Asagiri" in Kafka Asagiri refers to morning mist.)

In modern Western mysticism, "sons of fire" could mean a few different things, but in this context, I'm inclined towards the epithet for Western spiritualists' bastardization of sage kings— "divine" teachers. It may also reference Aaron's sons in the Bible, who were killed by Moses after they committed a profane act before God. As a reminder, shortly before stabilizing Yokohama in collaboration with Mori, Taneda, and Natsume, Fukuzawa either participated in or permitted acts that appear to have been assassinations to facilitate Japan's withdrawal from the Great War, which engendered in him self loathing and shame and shattered his relationship with four others.

(As an aside, I don't actually think Fukuzawa assassinated anyone, or was an assassin by trade— the five swords of Japan are a specific reference to five swords and their mythologies, and I think he must have been the ceremonial purification sword that was never meant to be sharp. It was meant to cut only evil. I think he allowed something to happen that violated oaths he made, so he exiled himself like a ronin who killed his master. The only reason we think he killed anyone, despite Ranpo acknowledging Fukuzawa wasn't an assassin in Untold Origins, is because the Decay of Angel fed "evidence" to the government officials who Nikolai later killed to incite them into pursuing the Agency— there is nothing suggesting that evidence has any merit, and much suggesting it's falsified. This is why I always say not to rely on the bsd wiki— it tends to take these things at face value and doesn't qualify unreliable information.)

Anyway! There are other threads to connect the text above to bsd, including the foreigners present in Yokohama and the Kolbrin Bible's British Isles settings and US + UK modern mysticism. But, to move on to other passages connected to the Harbor of Sorrow.

“When some of us came from the Harbour of Sorrow, we were full of praise at our deliverance from death, but amid the forests of fruitfulness, much of our gratitude and will was lost. Why must men always be better men in the face of disaster and in the midst of privation, than in the green fields of peace and plenty? Does this not answer the questions of many who ask why there is sorrow and suffering on Earth? Why is it the lot of men to struggle and suffer, if not to make better men?

...

"Many who are with us in the light will join us, and then we shall be stronger in arms and strengthened in belief. (Annotation: How few came!) Yet our destiny lies among the barbarians. They are fine, upright men endowed with courage, do not belittle their ways, but bring them into the light.

"Our city was not founded as a marketplace, a place for exchanging only the things of Earth. Neither did we come here as conquerors, but as men seeking refuge.

“My trusted ones, remember that the road of life is not smooth, neither is the way of survival a path of grass. The most needful thing for any people who wish to survive is self-discipline. Think less of gold and more of the iron which protects the gold. Remember, too, these words from the Book of Mithram, The keenest sword is useless unless it be held in the hand of a resolute man. Also, the man who has gold keeps it in peace if he tends his bowstring."

I have not read the Kolbrin Bible, I have immense distaste for modern occultism/spiritualism/mysticism outside of limited and carefully curated, contextualized slices of the same. I also don't make a habit of overly familiarizing myself with the British Isles. I don't have much frame of reference for interpreting the above.

But on a surface reading, the passages in the Kolbrin Bible that refer to the Harbor of Sorrow touch on similar-to-bsd themes of intentional community and finding purpose in protecting and cultivating the light in both the wake and the eve of immense darkness, and finding companionship in those who share your purpose and resolve no matter how differently they may approach the same.

Further, they both embrace that it's not about being golden, but protecting what is gold, which is Kyouka's core arc in Dead Apple as she transitions from trying to protect Atsushi as someone she considers untouched by the darkness within her, to realizing that Atsushi, too, has killed, and that her desire to use Demon Snow to protect those she loves isn't shameful or a betrayal of her mother's memory. This is something that I think the fandom often misunderstands about bsd— the light and dark do not exist in opposition, but in duality. The characters immersed in the dark do not need to be saved; the characters in the twilight have their reasons for finding purpose elsewhere, but that doesn't strip the love they had while in the dark. If anything, it makes it easier for them to realize that love was and still is there.

That interplay of light and dark (which is also the title of a Natsume Soseki novel) is where Akutagawa and Bram begin to melt most into one another. They have both been dehumanized, hated, and killed; rejected and stripped of dignity, robbed of those they loved by petty violence. Neither seeks to save anyone other than those to whom they've sworn to try, and they've both been reckless with who they've killed. Nevertheless, they love fiercely, and where their fear is defensive, their anger is avenging (Akutagawa's furious pursuit of the reckless murderers in 55 Minutes, the implication that Bram was fighting to protect his vassals when he was subdued as a calamity previously).

But they aren't evil. Evilness isn't a person, it's cowardice and weakness and fear. They've both grappled with the desire to succumb to their grief and their anger and their terror. But they struggle against those urges in themselves with fierce resolve.

It's the sort of resolve that Fyodor lacks. Fyodor, codependent on his dehumanization, claims that there's death in salvation only because he can't bear to keep living under the weight of humanity's rejection but is too weak and afraid of being alone to die without taking everyone else with him. Fyodor's disgusted by Atsushi's humanity and love because he sees in it what he's convinced himself he can never be afforded. But Bram and Akutagawa both have always had the certainty of love in their families, and then in Aya and in Higuchi.

There is no salvation in death or goodness; there is no sure path towards resolution or closure. There isn't any inherent meaning to our pain, and even those of us who live in relative peace are walking on a knife's edge over uncertainty and chaos. But, we can choose to accept love, and we can choose to love others. Isn't that a little bit wonderful?

[theblissfulstars]

The Hoodoo That You Do

Hoodoo first and foremost is a closed practice.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[psychicwavementality]

ENDO ENJOYERS PLEASE HELP A LAD OUT!!!

Any Endo enjoyers out there good at pattern recognition or study symbols, I NEED YOUR HELP!!

If you're free enough to scourge through his 3729479229 tattoos, you'll notice he has a lot of flames, triangles, and vaguely alchemical/Christian/norse symbols tattooed on him

SAVE ME FROM CRYING FOR THE nth TIME coz If you can check if any of his nonsense-looking tattoos connect to existing norse runes and/or alchemical symbols I'll be forever grateful!!!

Also: if anyone is hyperfixated or deeply familiar with CHRISTIANITY (history/lore/Bible/symbols), JUDAISM (symbols/tree of Kaballah), ANCIENT MESOPOTAMIA (gods/symbols) AND ALCHEMY I require your knowledge. Is there any correlation between the first step of creating the Philosopher's Stone "nigredo" and Endo—because I've been looking into this via. black sun imagery and alchemy and serpents relating to the base of nigredo itself

And if you have a lot of knowledge on christianity/judaism and/or symbolic nuances behind SNAKES AND EAGLES and/or the details of Enki and Enlil OR if you're also into over-analyzing this man's tattoos pleaseeee PM me I'm going insane writing part 2 of my SuoEndopost 😭😭

There's so many thoughts in my head and i cant structure it into words wuwuwuwuwu

[uwmspeccoll]

Welcome to Manuscript Monday!

In this series we will periodically focus on selections from our manuscript facsimile collection. Today we present selections from the Morgan Beatus Manuscript, reproduced as A Spanish Apocalypse, The Morgan Beatus Manuscript in New York by George Braziller, Inc. in association with the Pierpont Morgan Library in 1991. The original manuscript, made around 10th century CE at the scriptorium of San Miguel de Escalada in Spain by a monk named Maius, is the earliest surviving illuminated version of the monk Beatus of Liébana's commentary on the biblical Book of Apocalypse (also known as the Book of Revelation).  The text of the Book of Revelation makes up the first part of the manuscript, and Beatus’s commentary comprises the second part. The Book of Revelation tells of the end-times in Christianity, during the final judgement of humanity by God. The story within this Biblical book was also seen by those living during the Latin medieval era as representative of the beginning of something new: God’s celestial kingdom. Due to this view of the book, many artists incorporated imagery from this part of the Bible in their work.

Produced in Al-Andalus, or Muslim-ruled Spain, the artistic style of this work combines both Muslim and Christian visual traditions to create a beautifully illuminated manuscript that supplements the commentary by the monk. This artistic style is known as the Mozarabic, which comes from the Arabic mustaʿrib, meaning ‘Arabicized’. Interestingly, this style of art can only be seen in Christian religious art and architecture from Spain at the time, as non-religious artistic objects made by Christians look so similar to Islamic versions of the same works that they cannot be identified as intentionally Christian. Some key Islamic artistic elements within the manuscript include buildings with horseshoe arches, intricate geometric and vegetal patterns as borders for larger images, and the large, bulging eyes of the illustrated animals.

Another interesting aspect of this specific manuscript is the colophon at the end of the manuscript. It tells readers about the circumstances surrounding the creation of this book, including the maker, the patron, the year it was made, and an explanation about why Maius created the manuscript ("I write this . . . at the command of Abbot Victor, out of love for the book of the vision of John the beloved disciple. As part of its adornment I have painted a series of pictures . . . so that the wise may fear the coming of the future judgement of the world's end."). Colophons in medieval manuscripts are not usually as detailed, so the inclusion of all this information contributes greatly to the knowledge and history surrounding the Morgan Beatus Manuscript.

View more Manuscript Monday posts.

– Sarah S., Special Collections Graduate Intern

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

by Elchanan Poupko

For centuries, rabbis around the world get up on Shabbat Zachor and speak about memory, never about violence. Not once in the past 2000 years of Jewish history – and that is a vast record to draw on – was the Biblical account of Amalek used to evoke revenge. It was always used to evoke memory. The imperative to remember the unprovoked atrocities committed against our own innocent communities.

The name of Amalek was invoked to remind us of the ubiquitous nature of antisemitism, the only hate in the world directed against people who are unknown to those seething with hate for us. People like the Houthis in Yemen who never saw a Jew in their life, yet are determined to destroy the Jewish state; Nazis in Germany who traveled hundreds of miles away from home to kill Jews in Belarus, Lithuania, Hungary, and Morocco even though they had never seen or known much about those Jews, that is the kind of evil we speak about when invoking the memory of Amalek.

In our generation, when speaking about that kind of senseless hate, we speak about the Hamas terrorists who woke up on the morning of October 7th and were willing to gable away their lives and futures to murder and burn alive people like Canadian peace activist Vivian Silver, someone who spent her life driving Palestinians from Gaza to medical appointments in Israel’s best hospitals. We invoke the memory of Amalek when we encounter something so evil it defies any logical explanation.

It is appalling to see how many people rushed to the Bible to judge Israel’s use of the memory of Amalek before looking at its use for the past 2000 years, most notably during the Holocaust.

While Germany starved to death and killed hundreds of thousands of Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto, Jews secretly published a newsletter called Kol Hamidbar in which the emaciated Jews wrote: “Many nations waged war against the Jews and did bad unto them, but Amalek, that is something absolutely different. Amalek put the destruction of Jews as a goal, a program, a method; premeditated, in cold blood, sadistically, according to a plan, organized, and with laws… Amalek and their grandson Haman are not satisfied with the killing of individual Jews…they would like to destroy the entire nation and eliminate Judaism.”

These words ring powerfully to any Jew who has seen what Hamas terrorists did on October 7th. The senseless hate that defies any logic or pattern of human conflict is simply unexplainable. The kidnapping of grandmothers from their homes and burning of babies and little girls alive with no reason whatsoever has no other language.

Jews invoke this language of Amalek when we encounter the world’s oldest hate, acted on with cruelty no human can explain. Jews have done so countless times while remembering the Holocaust and also did so while seeing the evils of Hamas on October 7th.

Like Jews after the Holocaust, the memory of Amalek’s unforgivable horrors reminds us of the need to take action. How does that action look? Years ago, speaking to congregants in synagogue, here is what I said as I spoke of the story of Amalek, and I was not the only one:

“The greatest heed to the call ‘Yidden, Nekama – Jews, Revenge’ inscribed in blood in Slabodka, Lithuania, is not going back to that town and place or to those perpetrators; it is that there are today thousands of students in Israel learning in Yeshivas named Slabodka. It is that we are undeterred in leading proud Jewish lives, laser-focused on the future while refusing to forget the past.”

Jewish revenge never looks like the acts of our enemies. We never follow in the inhumane footsteps of those who committed the unthinkable against us. This is true also concerning the horrors of October 7th.

[slotumn]

Post I wanted to make a while, about East Asian history influences in 3H.

On the surface, Fódlan has a somewhat anachronistic medieval-ish Europe aesthetic going on, and many parts of its in-universe history/development is clearly drawn from actual European history.

But quite a bit of it is drawn from (East) Asian history/culture too, and I wanted to highlight some that people in anglosphere might have missed.

1. Commandments in Book of Seiros

The Book of Seiros has five commandments— as opposed to ten, as in the Bible. And it's like, fairly standard religious sounding stuff, but what particularly stands out to me is the part about respecting your parents.

Of course many cultures consider it a virtue to respect your parents/elders, but having it specified like that, and in Japanese, with the kanji 敬, strikes me as very Confucian. Coincidentally, Confucianism also has the Five Virtues— 仁義禮智信. Again it's not a perfect 1 to 1, but you can definitely see the influences.

The conditions under which the Seiros faith emerged has parallels with the emergence of Confucianism, too. Fucked up world with chaos and constant conflict where might makes right? Trying to make it a better place with an ideology telling people to be decent to one another and the rulers to rule justly? Yeah.

2. Chinese history and Romance of Three Kingdoms

I'm sure there are more qualified Romance of Three Kingdom nerds to talk about the details of this particular subject, but tl;dr Chinese history has pattern of uniting and splitting and uniting and repeat. One of the most famous eras with a lot of media adaptions is the Three Kingdoms era, where the Three Kingdoms of Cao Wei, Shu Han, and Sun Wu competed for dominance. Koei Tecmo also has their Three Kingdoms series so all this definitely influenced 3H too.

My very rough approximation is Adrestia ≈ Wei, Faerghus ≈ Han, Leicester ≈ Wu. In media, Wei usually gets the "final boss" position a la Adrestia; Han gets the "tragic heroes" thing plus they have very famous general associated with using a lance/spear (Guan Yu); Wu sorta gets treated as a side character, maintaining relative neutrality while the other two duke it out, but also their leader and country survived the longest.

Also, the final "victor" of the Three Kingdoms era, Sima Yi, was originally an official of Wei before raising the Jin dynasty. And Silver Snow, which the devs said all the other routes/worldbuilding was based off of, splits from the Black Eagles route. Maybe this is related to that?

Aside from that, clashes with nomadic people were frequent in Chinese history, and as you all know that's why the Great Wall of China was built. It's obviously not the only example of defensive walls/fortresses in history, but I think it still has parallels with Fódlan's Necklace. Plus among the nomadic people China fought were Turks, who are also one of the influences for Almyra.

(Speaking of, Almyra is also based on Persia, and Persian empires fought a lot with Turks and other related nomadic people too. That being said the those cultures influenced each other and mixed as they hung around in the same regions so Almyra having motifs from both is also reflective of reality.)

3. Isolationism and refusal to interact with the larger world or change, and how it will ultimately blow up in your face

Okay, this is a big one and, in my opinion, the most important. It also hit the hardest for me personally.

From about 17th century to 19 century, China, Korea, and Japan all had some level of isolationist policies. Trade was limited, as was access to/learning about western knowledge— sciences, etc. In the end all of these were ended by force; Opium War, Perry Expedition, Ganghwa Island incident.

The blowback from being isolated for so long before being exposed like that wasn't pretty. China had the century of humiliation; Japan overdosed on imperialism in an attempt to catch up with the west and went around colonizing and committing atrocities on other Asian countries before getting an atomic bomb; Korea got colonized by Japan and nearly had our language and national identities wiped out, and right after independence we had a brutal war over ideology then got divided up mostly at the whims of stronger nations.

I think most East Asians would agree if you said that the isolationist policies and the refusal by the establishment to change/adapt were bad ideas, and the reason why we ended up falling behind the west. A lot of the issues that still plague East Asian societies are downstream from the above, as are many of our diplomatic issues with one another.

So, point is, it's not hard to see that Fódlan's insistence on isolating and stagnating itself will ultimately fuck them over if continued. For now they can fend themselves off with the Relics and Crests, but what happens when the rest of the world technologically progresses to have weapons that can compete with the Relics? What happens when they're suddenly forced to deal not only with each other or a few other bordering places, but the entire world? What is their global standing going to be like?

Probably not good.

I'm probably somewhat biased on the subject, because VW is my first and (despite all the complaints I have about how GD get treated by canon) favorite. Still, knowing real history, it's probably not an exaggeration to say that in the long term ending Fódlan's isolationism is very much necessary for its own survival and good.

Tentative next topic: Buddhism references in 3H, coming whenever I feel like writing it

[himehikoshrine]

Biblical Naming Puns in Quartz Plays

Both Levi and Isaac are biblical names whose meaning is explained in the text of Genesis. Shown here in the JPS translation, which includes in line explanations, in Genesis 29:34 we get Levi being given for its meaning as "to attach," or "to join." It shares a route with the word for wreath, so it could be said to have 'to join in a circle' connotation, which works very well with the etymology of kielce and circus, as well as the gear metaphor. He is the ringleader after all, another word that includes the connection to circles and rings.

Isaac comes from the word "to laugh". Shown is Genesis 17:19, though the incident it's referencing happens earlier. A fitting name for a clown, and even more fitting given some lines on Isaac's route, too. But again, this is a name picked based on the pun given in Genesis for it.

These are similar to Jacob in Mary Jane, which, according to Genesis 25:26 is a pun on the word for "heel". Mary names him that after getting the idea to make a doll out of corpse parts after picking up a heel off the beach.

Mary is almost certainly a biblical reference of a name, as well, but it isn't on the origin of the name and explanation for the word play involved.

These are all pretty specific references, but the pattern makes me fairly certain that all three are intentional.

Fun fact - Isaac is the father of Jacob who is the father of Levi, so this also represents three major generations of Genesis.

Whatever else he's got going on or shoved in that weird genius head of his, the Bible is clearly something in Neji's reference pool. Pretty deep-cut references too. With the "Raham" in Jire's poem, these represent some pretty close original textual readings. Some of the phrasing in the Jire poem also suggests at least a passing knowledge with Japanese Catholic liturgical phrasing or at least imitations there of.

But Neji's references don't stop here. The Oh Rama Havenna names seem to be based of Latin instead. He's dabbling in Greco-Roman mythology references elsewhere, Japanese mytho-history in I Am Death, linguistics, latin, possibly middle english, world literature, historical references and beyond. A fascinating place, Neji's mind.

So while I can totally see a reading that there's some religious background Neji is not telling us, I can also see him reading the bible from cover to cover with translation posts just for his reference pool "to make the greatest performance ever!"

[lillyhasaspoon]

♥ June 15- Westminster Abbey & Parliament; The King’s Birthday!

Happy Birthday King Charles III! 🎉 What a more perfect way to celebrate than visiting the famous Westminster Abbey and Parliament.

After a quick breakfast, we made our way to Westminster for a walking tour of the area. We walked our way through the Westminster Abbey High School. I was surprised to see students in uniforms on a Saturday, especially when the area was so busy with tourists. Our tour guide was an older gentlemen and he led us through the school and past brick homes until we stood in front of Westminster Abbey, the church of the royals.

We actually walked in on a wedding, funny enough. The place was teeming with tourists but there was a giant family celebrating a wedding, which I learned are most likely MP’s or lords (or their family.) Thought that was so neat.The entire area surrounding the church, aside from the bits under construction, was made up of these beautifully designed “neo-gothic” buildings with statues and flags everywhere. The inside was even more breathtaking. The area was full of memorial sites lined with dark velvets and gold, and lit by the various stained glass windows. I was enamored by those stained glass windows, the intricacy of their designs genuinely mind-blowing. It was a church, a gravesite, and a memoriam in one.

After exploring the church, we had lunch. The little group I was with ate at a cafe that serves panini’s and soups, it was delicious.

Then was Parliament. One thing I enjoy about the architecture of the area was the storytelling of the statues littered around. There is a lot of attention to detail put into their poses, where they are, and even who they face. For example the statue of Charles I (who was the first and only monarch to be executed. Or beheaded, rather.) faced by Oliver Cromwell, who was heavily against him and ultimately killed him. The two enemies were forced to face each other for eternity, Cromwell posed with a sword and a bible, and Charles as nothing but a head.

Inside parliament we were given audio guides to carry with us as we explored the lobby area, House of Commons, and the House of Lords. In the lobby area, there was this incredible mosaic that expanded from roses and golden patterns to figures like Saint George. That tour was self-guided, but the audio commentary painted a wonderful story of the history of Parliament and its use.

After parliament, my little “Nerds and Dorks gone pro” group went and explored the surrounding area. We went to St. James Park, enjoying the garden and chatting with the local wildlife (squirrels and swans). We stopped at a local cafe and shared a lemon raspberry cake and a salmon sandwich among us all before heading back to the hotel.

The rest of the day went: Hotel, lay on bed, hear about our comrades ailments and aid to them (feeling sick so we were sent on a saltines and ginger-ale retrieval mission), and then dinner in the hotel cafe with N.A.D.G.P (coffee and pizza. Yup.).

All and all, a super productive and educational day!

@danielcronrath @grcetylr @ivory000 @livingingloworld @comafloods

[hiswordsarekisses]

“In the beginning, after God created the world, God rested on the seventh day. God doesn’t get tired or worn out, so why did he rest? In part to set a pattern for us as his creatures. However, there’s something more important going on here than God just providing a pattern for us to follow.

As Bible scholar John Walton points out, when Genesis tells us that God rested on the seventh day, it means God sat down on his throne as the sovereign King of all creation.

In the ancient world, when a person in authority “rests,” it means they assume their rightful rule and govern their kingdom with power and glory.

This reality — that God is resting on his throne and rules over all of creation and history — sets our hearts free to truly rest in him.

We can have confidence, no matter how chaotic our world seems and whatever uncertainty we face, that our God reigns.

And his reign endures forever!

So God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because on it God rested from all the work that he had done in creation. Genesis‬ ‭2‬:‭3‬‬”

(Time of Grace)

[haggishlyhagging]

Sumerian gender-thinking finds expression through the image of Inanna, but it is hard to know what her image tells us about the nature of women and men. Is Inanna "alone of all her sex" (a phrase originally coined of the Virgin Mary to indicate the lack of similarity between her and mortal women)? Or does Inanna betray a deep suspicion that without the social constraints placed on women, they would indeed be very like men? This question is interesting from the point of view of cultural history. But it is almost irrelevant to the gender role of Inanna within Sumerian culture. Inanna stands at the boundary of differences between man and woman. The image of Inanna as a woman in a man's life-style reinforces social patterns of how men and women were actually expected to behave.

As Mesopotamian culture developed, the distinctive characteristics of Inanna were understood to constitute a difference between Inanna and other women. The Agushaya Hymn, an Old Babylonian mythical hymn about Inanna (by her Semitic name, Ishtar), labels her ferocity and love of warfare her zikrutu, literally, her "manliness." Another literary creation of the Old Babylonian period, the Gilgamesh Epic, also indicates that in this period the sexes were considered intrinsically different from each other.

In the Gilgamesh story, the superiority of Gilgamesh leads him to oppress his people. When their outcry reaches the gods, they realize that Gilgamesh acts this way because he has no peer. They decide upon the special creation of a new being who will be as an equal to Gilgamesh. In a similar situation, the god of the Bible creates a woman. But in the Gilgamesh Epic, the mother-goddess takes clay and creates Enkidu—another male. The true companion for Gilgamesh is not a woman to occupy his attention, but a male to be his close companion. The gods' solution to Gilgamesh's arrogance indicates a cultural sense that the truest bonding possible is between two members of the same gender. The true equality that leads to great bonding is between male and male. The closeness of same-sex bonding holds true also for females. In the Agushaya Hymn, Ishtar is undomesticated, fierce, and wild, quite unlike the other goddesses, and her ferocity had begun to frighten and dismay the other gods. Their solution is to create a companion who will occupy her, and so the god Enki creates a new goddess, another fierce female, Saltu, and sends her to Ishtar. Once again, the motivation behind the creation of same-sex companions for Gilgamesh and Ishtar is that there is a difference and distinctiveness between the genders. To the Babylonians of this period, a man and woman could never be as like each other as a man could be to a man, or a woman to a woman.

-Tikva Frymer-Kensky, In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture, and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth

[valleyfthdolls]

My Sonic fandub theory is that Shadow and Tails are related.

See, Eggman is Shadow’s dad according to the 06 dub, which as they say “makes the last dub horrifying.” However, it’s never explicitly specified whether the wife Shadow- and everyone- takes from Eggman is his mother. First of all this is some Oedipus shit. Second of all that lack of a distinction I believe is important because the timeline of these dubs appears to be in chronological order. The stories happen in order of release. We know this because of things like the 1907 references, Shadow calling out the previous dub, etc.

However, before his divorce to his Dark Story wife, Martha, Eggman says something interesting, in the Hero Story:

“I miss my wife, Tails, I miss her a lot.”

At this point, Eggman hasn’t had any drama with Martha, and has no reason to “miss” her. However, he discloses to Tails that he misses his wife before leaving.

This along with his preexisting alcoholism before the Dark Story implies he’s experienced a previous divorce or loss of a wife, and we may be able to assume this wife is Shadow’s mother. Shadow clearly didn’t think Martha was his mother, didn’t recognize her, and she didn’t recognize him either. Weird for Eggman to know Shadow is his son, but not Martha, who would have given birth to him- unless the first wife, who Eggman laments about missing long before anything goes down with Martha, was Shadow’s actual mother.

While Shadow was a prank on the devil according to the SHtH dub, Eggman explicitly says he’s Shadow’s father. It’s possible then that Shadow didn’t have a mother, or that he was genetically modified neonatally to fucking prank the devil. I don’t know.

However, if we believe Shadow is Eggman’s son genetically modified neonatally to prank the literal devil from the bible, it would stand to reason his mother is a mobian- thus, Martha’s species is up in the air but ultimately irrelevant, the first wife being Shadow’s mother is a mobian.

But more interestingly, later on in the hero story fandub, Eggman tells Tails “I know who your mother is.” Before Tails him “don’t fucking lie to me.”

One time Tails takes him down, he mentions his wife, and the next time, he mentions Tails’s mother. An odd pattern here, but they’re both attempts to get Tails to sympathize with him in the same way relating to two similar female characters. Eggman’s absent wife and Tails’s absent mother. Furthermore, while the connection in context is notable, it’s also interesting that Eggman seems to know Tails’s mother is gone, and claims to know who she is.

If Eggman’s first wife who is now gone just like Tails’s mother, who Eggman allegedly knows, is a mobian, it would stand to reason then that Eggman’s first wife is both the mother of Shadow and Tails.

Notice how Eggman always singles out Tails. “I miss my wife Tails,” “I know who your mother is,” “I’m tired of being calm all the goddamn time! I wanna live my life! And YOU. YOU. YOU. YOU. IM SO SICK OF YOU.” All directed at Tails. He has a very strange relationship to and fixation on his other son, Shadow, and it seems to be mirroring with Tails. While neither of the boys know Eggman as their father, he knows their families and histories, and he appears heavily focused on them out of everyone, even above Sonic, who clearly stands as his rival in this series. The connection between them isn’t really directly to each other, but in parallels between their relationship to Eggman and their parentage.