#about rejection of christianity/in relation to christianity

[wowgrim]

I forgot to ask about this:

The ISM was not just some loose collection of Quaker-style peace advocates. It styled itself as nonviolent, but it took a deliberately confrontational approach.

I'm confused where you were going with the reference to Quakers. The religious aspect of Quakerism related to peace is religious pacifism (not engaging in violence), not necessarily peace advocacy.

To me ISM's actions are very much Quaker style:

Bayard Rustin, who organized the March on Washington and work closely with Martin Luther King Jr on developing nonviolent resistance tactics, was a Quaker and had worked for the American Friends Service Committee.

Nonviolent resistance is inherently confrontational. To me that's obvious, but I'm happy to explain if it's not obvious to others.

The American Friends Service Committee itself is extremely confrontational, and on the issue of Israel and the Palestinian Territories tends to blame Israel for everything and constantly uses inflammatory and inaccurate language to characterize Israel is the big baddie, which doesn't do a lot to engender peace.

It aligns with (and to my understanding was directly inspired in part by) the work of Christian Peacemaker Teams (now called Community Peacemaker Teams), which was started by Mennonites and Brethren but has had substantial Quaker support and involvement. (Mennonites and Brethren, like quakers, are considered "historical peace churches" because of their commitment to pacifism.)

Characterizing Quaker pacifism as "peace advocacy" can be misleading to individuals who do not understand religious pacifism. The emphasis in Quaker thought* and practice around pacifism is on means (actions), not ends (results). Practicing pacifism means not personally engaging in violent acts**. It does not mean doing whatever it takes to create peace between nations or cause the least harm to the fewest amount of people, since those may in some cases require violence. (I am not Quaker, and a Quaker would likely take exception to the italicized text.) Many Quakers (and of course the American Friends Service Committee) are actively involved in anti-war activism, but that is different from what non-pacifists understand as "peace advocacy."

*I've never been Quaker but I've associated with a lot of people from the unprogrammed friends tradition: attending Quaker meetings in the Philadelphia area, visiting friends at the Quaker seminary at Earlham, reading handbooks of yearly meetings for fun (yes I am weird), attending events in reading books, etc. Also, a good friend for years was a Quaker who also studied Quaker history and belief academically.

**A lot of Quakers extend this to avoiding participating in structural violence, which obviously is much more difficult to define than violent acts.

Maybe the confusion here comes from the tenant of non-resistance?

Non-resistance is more encompassing than pacifism, because in addition to not engaging in violent acts, you also aren't supposed to resist them. This has been part of the anabaptist tradition (mennonites, brethren, amish, etc), although it is rejected by many modern anabaptists in favor of nonviolent resistance. I know less about Quakers, so can't comment to whether non-resistance has ever been a central part of that religion.

hi! I'm deeply thankful I found your blog because it's such a breath of fresh air to find someone with articulate, sensible thinking on this hellsite. i was formerly very pro free palestine but blogs such as yours helped me open my eyes. with that being said, I ask this in good faith, because you've been really respectful and sensible in your other asks: what about activists killed by the IDF, such as Rachel Corrie? Again, I ask this in good faith, I'm very interested to hear your thoughts on it

Thanks for the kind words, Anon.

I'll get lots of Anon Hate for this, but I so appreciate your open mind and your good faith question, so I'd feel like an asshole if I didn't try to answer it in the same good faith.

All I can offer are my own (unquestionably biased) thoughts from what I've read. I have no more access to objective truth than anyone else ~6,000 miles and ~22 years removed from the events we're discussing.

I think this is one of those awful cases where a tragic death was turned into a political football...which is still being kicked around decades later.

The Basic Facts (upon which most seem to agree)

Rachel Corrie was a 23 year old college student from Washington State who joined the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) and went to Gaza in 2003 and was killed while standing in front of an IDF bulldozer in Rafah.

It's a media-ready story. A young, idealistic woman trying to stand up for people she believed were being oppressed, and then dying violently. That should disturb people. It should make us ask questions.

When we ask those questions, we must also be willing to look at all the answers, not just the ones which flatter our instincts or fit our preferred existing narrative.

What actually happened?

In March 2003, Rachel Corrie was trying to stop IDF bulldozers from demolishing homes in southern Gaza, near the border with Egypt.

Why was the IDF demolishing homes?

The area, Rafah, was at the time a hotbed of militant activity. It was riddled with tunnels used to smuggle weapons and explosives into Gaza. These tunnels were often dug directly under civilian homes, and the IDF was using armored bulldozers to demolish structures suspected of being part of that infrastructure.

Corrie, with other ISM activists, placed herself in front of one of these bulldozers to block it. She was struck and fatally injured.

I believe that everyone agrees on that much.

Accounts diverge from there.

Some witnesses from ISM claimed she was clearly visible to the operator of the bulldozer and that she was deliberately run over. Other ISM witnesses disagree and have said the operator could not see her.

The IDF said the driver couldn't see her.

An internal IDF investigation concluded it was an accident, not a deliberate killing.

Corrie's parents filed a wrongful death lawsuit in Israeli court, and in 2012, a judge ruled that the military was not liable because Corrie had voluntarily entered a closed military zone and her death occurred during an active military operation.

It's entirely legitimate to disagree with the ruling, but the legal process did not seem to reveal a cover-up by the IDF and does not appear to have been a sham legal process.

The Bulldozer Issue: Framing in Western Media

One reason this case still circulates with so much distortion is because of the images attached to it. If you Google Rachel Corrie today, you'll probably find photos of her standing in front of a yellow bulldozer, holding a megaphone.

Western news outlets used this pair of photos from the ISM to portray Corrie as standing very visibly in front of the bulldozer which fatally injured her.

You see what pairing these photos implies, right? One moment Corrie is standing in front of the bulldozer with a megaphone, the next she's injured on the ground.

Our brains fill in the blanks like these are two panels of a comic and conclude the bulldozer operator saw her standing there and deliberately plowed into her.

Look carefully at the bulldozer in each photo.

They're not the same machine. Look at the background. It's not the same place. It's not the same time.

The bulldozer in the top photo is a civilian Caterpillar bulldozer.

The bulldozer involved in Corrie's death (in the second photo) was an IDF armored D9, modified for combat conditions. It's massive, encased in steel armor, and built to operate in environments where there's a real threat of gunfire, explosives, or ambushes. Consequently, visibility from inside the cab is extremely limited. Drivers rely on spotters and cameras...but human error is very possible, especially when the scene is chaotic and high-risk...like in the combat settings where it is deployed.

Not the same machine, not the same location, not the same time.

Presenting these photos together is at least misinformation if not disinformation. It serves a narrative, not the truth, by suggesting that the second photo took place immediately after the first and that Corrie was fully visible to the operator of the bulldozer.

The IDF's position (and that of the Israeli courts and the US State Department) is that Rachel Corrie didn't die in a peaceful standoff with a malicious construction vehicle. She died in a war zone, in front of a combat bulldozer, during an active military operation, in an area where armed groups were explicitly attempting to kill Israeli soldiers...because she was put in harm's way by ISM for the explicit purpose of risking her life.

In my view, Corrie never should have been in this active combat zone.

None of this makes her death any less tragic.

What is the International Solidarity Movement and what exactly was Corrie doing there?

The ISM was not just some loose collection of Quaker-style peace advocates. It styled itself as nonviolent, but it took a deliberately confrontational approach. It inserted young, usually Western activists into active conflict zones, telling them to stand between the IDF and Palestinian militants or infrastructure.

Their theory of change was that Israel wouldn't risk bad PR from killing an American or European. It was a gamble. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Either way, ISM was using Corrie as a human shield. The whole point of ISM's tactics is to put people in harm's way.

ISM activists were injured or killed in multiple cases. Others were detained for coordinating with militants or knowingly entering combat areas. Even left-leaning Western journalists have criticized the group for being reckless and manipulative in using under-informed idealists as cannon fodder for political theater.

It's also worth asking why ISM wasn't doing this sort of thing in areas where Palestinian militants were putting civilians at risk. If they were non-partisan peace activists, why weren't they forming human chains to prevent rocket launches from schoolyards, hospitals, or mosques? Why weren’t they protesting the use of children as shields?

You can't claim to be a non-partisan, anti-war organization while assisting one of two sides in its war efforts.

Was Rachel Corrie murdered? Was she deliberately killed?

As far as I can tell, no.

I haven't been able to find any evidence that the IDF targeted Corrie deliberately. The legal case didn't find such evidence. The US State Department didn’t find such evidence. Even some ISM members admitted Corrie may not have been visible to the driver.

I also struggle to imagine what plausible motive the IDF would have to deliberately kill an American. That would obviously bring all kinds of international trouble from the US...and that was the ISM's whole reason for putting Corrie in harm's way. Killing Corrie deliberately would be giving them exactly what they wanted. Why would the IDF do that on purpose?

What happened to Corrie was preventable (and that was the basis of the negligence claim her family made in court), but preventable is not the same as criminal or liable.

In the long term, the tragedy lies not just in Corrie's tragic death, but in how eager people were to risk it and exploit it.

Corrie's face has been painted on walls and printed on protest signs for more than 20 years. This isn't because anyone seriously studied the facts of her death, but because she became a useful symbol. A martyr. A weapon.

Her story has been flattened, turned into a cartoon of noble activist vs evil bulldozer, figuratively and literally:

What would accountability for Corrie's death look like?

If people really want accountability for Rachel Corrie's death, they might consider starting with the ISM. They put untrained American college students in front of armored military vehicles in war zones.

They took advantage of people who wanted to make a difference, and they fed them a script designed for media consumption, not for survival.

Or maybe ask why Hamas and Islamic Jihad were building weapons tunnels under civilian homes in the first place. That's why bulldozers were there. That's what made the area a war zone. That's what put civilians and foreign activists in danger.

Decades later, what do we now know about Hamas' tunnels?

Most people don't want real accountability. They want a nice clean story which serves their preferred narrative. Wherever context and nuance gets in the way of the narrative, they cut it out.

Rachel Corrie's death should make us ask serious questions about:

How propaganda works

How war zones get whitewashed for the comfort of Western audiences

What happens when idealism is used as a propaganda tool instead of as a principle

As always, I welcome anyone to take issue with my reading of these events. If you do, please bring support for your assertions.

Here's where I'll annoy some of Israel's defenders:

While we likely agree on much about the Western "Free Palestine" movement, Anon, I hope we also agree that Palestinians in Gaza and (particularly in Area C of) the West Bank need real help and Israel must do more.

The "good guy vs bad guy" framing by anyone on either side is bullshit. There's plenty of failure to go around, even if it is unevenly distributed.

The settler violence in the West Bank is committed by a tiny minority, but it's still terrorism...and Itamar Ben-Gvir fails to make a good faith effort to end it. I hope the universe brings Ben-Gvir the justice he richly deserves.

Set aside the international law question of whether the West Bank is occupied for a minute. Palestinians in Area C have little to no say in their own governance.That's obviously wrong and needs to change.

I hope the rumors that Egypt and the UAE will get deeply involved in the rebuilding of Gaza are true. When/if that happens, I urge you to support those efforts any way you can.

A prosperous Gaza at peace with its neighbors becomes possible with both regional and international support after Hamas is gone.

Thanks for the Ask, Anon. I'd welcome any others you may care to submit.

[psychotrenny]

The thing about religions is that it's rarely useful to think of them as having innate political characters. At most there are certain tendencies derived from it's tenets and value systems, but these tendencies can manifest themselves in a broad variety of ways depending on the broader context. To take two examples (one broad and one narrow); Christianity's emphasis on Evangelism lent itself well to structuring and justifying European colonial atrocities right from the very start, while Buddhist ideas of Karma were used to justify the brutal exploitation of serfs in Feudal Tibet. Conversely Christian ideas of universal fraternity and kindness to the poor were employed to condemn Colonial cruelty and propose a better society by a variety of anti-Imperialist movements, while Mahāyāna ideas around non-violence to living things were often invoked by progressive Lamas as they worked with the Communists to tear down Feudalism and establish Socialism in Tibet

Now as a materialist I view idealist worldviews like religion to be inherently limited in their capacity to analyse and reform the world, but that doesn't make them worthless. Examples like Tibet or Nicaragua show how the progressive manifestations of religious thought can be harnessed to achieve beneficial ends regardless of what other broad tendencies those religions contain. Broadly speaking religion might have some inherent issues, but when problem with Reactionary Religious thought is largely that is is reactionary (often with much stronger ideological links to secular and other religious forms of reaction than with the thoughts of their progressive co-coreligionists) rather than simply being religious. And using a single isolated example of religious reaction to condemn an entire system of faith is the height of foolishness.

Now Atheism is not a religion as such; it's more an alternative framework to religion altogether. Still, it tends to occupy a similar place in people's worldview and when discussing broads school of thought much that can be said about religion can be applied to Atheism as well. Whatever tendencies you can attribute to Atheism's rejection of religious thought, they can manifest in a wide variety of ways. Atheism might not be inherently progressive but it isn't inherently reactionary either, and when it is reactionary it's closely related to broader movements of reaction. You can't treat movements like "New Atheism" as products of Atheism in a vacuum, using it to condemn Atheist thought as a whole. The problem with Reactionary Atheists is that they're Reactionary, not that they're Atheist

[what-even-is-thiss]

I’m about to combine my religion posting with my socialist posting for a second.

I’ve never tried to hide on this blog that I’m fairly religious. My faith is a big part of my life. I’m not here to convert anybody but I’m not interested in hiding that aspect of myself either.

Anyways I’ve been thinking about what I want from my life and wealth and how that relates to Christianity and the kind of economic system I live in.

Because in many ways pure capitalism and Christianity are kind of opposed if you really think about it. Any form of hoarding wealth and Christianity are opposed to each other if you really think about it. Yet it’s also been used as a reason to hoard wealth.

Jesus often spoke against hoarding wealth. He encouraged tax collectors to only collect what was due and not skim extra off the top. He said a poor person who gives a little money has given more than a rich person who gives a lot. He said it’s easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than enter the kingdom of heaven. And I’ve heard interpretations that that “eye of the needle” thing was actually in reference to a kind of very small door in city walls or something but point is, it’s difficult.

Then you get the invention of something like prosperity gospel. The idea that if you’re doing well it’s because you’re blessed. You get politicians working for the rich or who themselves are rich making a show of being pious while also harming the poor.

So I’ve been rattling this around in my brain. The culturally dominant religion in the western world teaches against the hoarding of wealth. Yet that same culture also puts the wealthy up on a pedestal and protects them.

I watched this video once about this guy who personally decided to donate half of his earthly wealth to charity because of his Christian faith. He wasn’t trying to tell other people they should do this. Just talking about his own spiritual journey and why he decided to do that. He sold half of his possessions, sold his house and downsized, really went through the wringer figuring out what’s really actually important to him and this guy wasn’t even particularly wealthy. He was maybe middle class. This was a huge sacrifice he made.

I’ve been tossing around in my brain how the same belief system could could create both that guy and prosperity gospel.

We get stories all the time about how the real treasure was the friends we made along the way, right? About letting go, about being happy with less, about sharing, about the dangers of greed. Sometimes we even get those stories from the organizations and people looking to hoard more and more. Disney comes to mind. The real treasure is family. And also all this money we made off of toy sales.

I feel like society is trying to push us towards a very specific definition of “success” while also wrestling with the reality that even if you aren’t Christian you live in a society with Christian ideals and one of those big Christian ideals is supposed to be charity. Not hoarding wealth at the expense of others.

Like this idea of being happy with just enough is supposed to be a message for the rich, right? Yet it seems to have been twisted around the other way. If you’re sick it’s your fault, you didn’t try hard enough, you didn’t rise and grind hard enough. Even though Jesus helped those who were suffering whether their suffering was their own fault or not, and often he rejected the notion that a person’s suffering was their own fault.

I know the answer to this disconnect is that the rich can afford to twist the narrative in their favor. That religion is a tool that can be used for both great good and great harm.

It’s still frustrating though. That I feel like I’m socialist partially because of my faith but those same messages that inspire people who aren’t even that well off to give away half of their earthly possessions are used as an excuse by others to justify bleeding the poor dry.

It’s something I’ve been sitting with when it comes to what I want with my life. It’s a cliche I guess in some Christian circles that you shouldn’t want what society wants but I’m starting to think that’s true. At least to some extent. I think I don’t want success by society’s definition of it. God asks you to not hoard your wealth. God instructs you to make time for rest. Yet society has told you to climb that ladder of success and never rest, never sleep until you get there.

Yeah, I think I’m going to rest. I think I reject the idea that success needs to involve money. I think that hoarding wealth is bad. And you don’t need to be Christian to think those things obviously but my faith leads me at least to these conclusions. However it hasn’t lead everyone to them, clearly. It’s a contradiction of values we all have to live with for now, unfortunately. Hopefully one day we can all live out the things we preach but for now that day seems very far away.

[tanadrin]

Revised version of "polytheism vs elaborateness" religion chart. I started with a list of around 150 religions, sects, denominations, philosophies, and spiritual tendencies, whittled down to 100 based on what I could find information on and what meaningful differences would actually show up in a chart like this. Dark blue is Christianity and Christian-derived tendencies; light blue is Judaism and Jewish-derived tendencies; green is Islam and Islam-influenced tendencies; purple is ancient Mediterranean polytheism and related schools of thought; red is Dharmic/Hindu-influenced schools of thought; tan is Chinese religion and philosophy; orange is new religious movements; black is other, unaffiliated religions and movements.

Obviously, "what is a religion" is a complicated topic. Some of the things on this chart might strike you more as philosophical schools (Carvaka, Stoicism), epistemological approaches (Unitarian Universalism), or different ways of slicing the same tradition. The scholarly definition of "religion" is sort of fundamentally circular, and that's not something I'm interested in trying to untangle for this entirely non-scientific exercise.

Religions etc. are scored on two axis: polytheism vs elaborateness of practice. Polytheism is a rank from zero to 11, thus:

0. Strict atheist and materialist, denying the possibility of both gods and the supernatural, e.g., Carvaka.

1. Atheist. Denies the existence of significant supernatural agents worthy of worship, but may not deny all supernatural (or psychic, paranormal, etc.) beings and phenomena (e.g., Mimamsa).

2. Agnostic. This religion makes no dogmatic claims about the existence of supernatural beings worthy of worship, and it may not matter for this religion if such beings exist (e.g., Unitarian Universalists). It does not preclude--and may actually incorporate--other supernatural, psychic, or paranormal phenomena (e.g., Scientology).

3. Deist. This religion acknowledges at least one god or Supreme Being, but rejects this being's active intervention in the world after its creation (e.g., Christian Deism). Deism is marked with a gray line on the chart, in case you want to distinguish religions that specifically care about all this God business from ones that don't.

4. Tawhid monotheist. This religion acknowledges only a single transcendent god above all other natural or supernatural beings, who is usually the creator of the universe and the ground of being, and is without parts, division, or internal distinction (e.g., Islam).

5. Formal monotheism. This religion acknowledges a single god, usually transcendent above all other natural or supernatural beings, but who may have aspects, hypostases, or distinct parts (e.g., Trinitarian Christianity). Pantheism may be considered a special case of formal monotheism that identifies the universe and its many discrete phenomena with a single god or divine force.

6. Dualism. This religion acknowledges a single god worthy of worship, alongside a second inferior, often malevolent being that nevertheless wields great power in or over the world (e.g., Zoroastrianism or Gnosticism).

7. Monolatrist. This religion or practice acknowledges the existence of many gods or divine beings worthy of worship, but focuses on, or happens to be devoted to only one of them (e.g., ancient mystery cults; pre-exilic Judaism).

8. Oligotheist. This religion worships a small group of divine beings, who may function for devotional or rhetorical purposes as a single entity (e.g., Mormonism, Smartism).

9. Monogenic polytheism/Henotheism. This religion worships many gods, which it sees as proceeding from or owing their existence to, a single underlying or overarching force or supreme god (e.g., many forms of Hinduism).

10. Heterogenic polytheism. This religion worships many gods, who have diverse origins and/or natures. Though the number of gods is in practical terms probably unlimited, gods are discrete entities or personalities, i.e., they are "countably infinite" (e.g., many polytheistic traditions).

11. Animism. This religion worships many gods which may or may not be discrete entities, and which may or may not be innumerable even in principle, i.e., they are "uncountably infinite" (e.g., many animist traditions).

What counts as a god is naturally a bit of a judgement call, as is exactly where a religion falls on this scale.

Elaborateness of practice is based on assigning one point per feature from the following list of features:

Uses vs forbids accompanied music in worship

Saints or intermediary beings accept prayers/devotion

Liturgical calendar with specific rituals or festivals

Practices monasticism

Venerates relics or holy objects

Clerics have special, elaborate clothing

Clerics have special qualificiations, e.g., must be celibate or must go through elaborate initiation/training

Elaborate sacred art or architecture used in places of worship

Sites of pilgrimage, or other form of cult centralization

Sophisticated religious hierarchy beyond the congregational level

Mandatory periods of fasting and/or complex dietary rules

Specific clothing requirements for laypeople

Specific body modifications either required or forbidden for laypeople

Liturgical language

Complex ritual purity rules

Performs sacrifice

Performs human sacrifice (or cannibalism)

Uses entheogens

Uses meditation or engages in mystical practice

Additionally, a point is taken away for austerity for each of the following features:

Forbids secular music outside worship

Claims sola scriptura tradition

Practices pacifism or ahimsa

Requires vegetarianism of all adherents

These scores are probably pretty inexact, since I am not a scholar of world religion.

This chart is not scientific, it's just a goof based on that @apricops post.

Other fun dimensions along which to chart religions might be:

Orthodoxy vs orthopraxy

Authoritarianism/control of members. This would add some much needed distinctions to Christian sects in particular, and to the new religious movements.

Elaborateness of cosmological claims. Some religions (looking at you, Buddhism) really go hog-wild here.

Social egalitarianism. Even within the same framework/tradition/philosophy, some practices differ radically on how egalitarian they are.

[flammeinfernale]

𝕾𝖆𝖓𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖚𝖊𝖗𝖙𝖊: 𝔖𝔞𝔦𝔫𝔱 𝔬𝔣 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔇𝔢𝔞𝔱𝔥 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔊𝔬𝔡𝔡𝔢𝔰𝔰 𝔬𝔣 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔇𝔢𝔞𝔡 

When it comes to death, there are many variations of gods that come to our mind from different cultures, since this process is an inevitable and crucial part of all our lives notwithstanding our ethnicity, race, social status, religious beliefs, etc.  

Most of us heard about one such deity: Santa Muerte, who is commonly known as a folk saint and is closely associated with Mexican el Día de Muertos or Day of the Dead. Usually she is depicted as a skeleton with traditional feminine features, long hair, flower wreath and in a bright dress. 

Despite her status among Spanish Catholics, the catholic church doesn’t accept her as an official saint since some other figures play this role in catholicism, as well as Santa Muerte’s eerie connections with witchcraft and narco cartels don’t quite fit Christian morals. 

But what do we know about the origin of the Mother of Death? 

Origin

Although Santa Muerte is an unofficial catholic saint, her roots are more complex than they seem and aren’t limited by her status among Spanish Catholics. 

There are a few main theories of where Santa Muerte comes from:

Aztec death deity Mictecacihuatl

Figure of Grim Reaper during Black Death

African death goddesses

And more others.

But there is no general agreement on which one is true. It can be confusing, but at the same time, it allows us to analyze and define the truth for ourselves.

Still there is one most popular theory which is related to Aztec beliefs.

Aztec death goddess

As we know, Santa Muerte has the most popularity in Mexico. From the history overview, the Valley of Mexico was earlier the Aztec home before the conquest of this land by the Spanish in the early 16th century.

Before Mexican el Día de Muertos, the Aztecs had their own celebration connected to several death gods: Mictecacihuatl and Mictlantecuhtli. Few principal gods were represented as female (Mictecacihuatl) and male (Mictlantecuhtli) embodiments of death and rulers of Mictlan (underworld).

!For the remark: they are not the only ones, there was goddess Tonantzin as well, but she is related to the other catholic figure. 

One of the theories is that Mictecacihuatl and Santa Muerte are the same deity because the Spanish had to accept some Aztec customs due to their cooperation. Also, Mictecacihuatl was a dominant death deity in the Aztec pantheon, so it was important to save her figure even under a different name.

Many faces of Mother of Death

Apart from Santa Muerte’s grim image and direct relation to death, she is patient with the newbies and her devotees and has a pleasant presence and nurturing nature. 

Like all deities, Lady of Death is versatile and can be both gentle and destructive. Don’t be surprised to learn that she has a strong connection with drug traffickers and many of them honour this goddess so she gives them protection and prosperity. 

Another feature is that Mother of Death accepts all people since death doesn’t care about your social status, sexual orientation, colour of skin, gender, and any other things. She is a protector of those who are rejected by society and helps them to stay safe and find their way in life. 

But you need to keep in mind that she should be respected as any other deity and she won’t forgive your ignorance or rudeness towards her. 

How to start working with Santa Muerte

As many of us know, it is important to understand which aspects have certain deities when we start working with them. It helps us to figure out for what purposes we can contact them. 

Santa Muerte is an universal goddess who has keys to the many doors on our paths. It is no wonder, because death is ever-present and has power over all. 

When you decide that you would like to ask Santa Muerte for something, you should define your request and reach out to one of her seven colours or aspects. 

!However, if you aren’t sure which colour is right, it is fine to reach out to Santa Muerte without referring to a certain aspect of her. 

The Seven Colors of Santa Muerte 

I will give a short guide of her seven colours, so it will be easier to define which aspect is most suitable for your problem or situation. 

Niña Blanca, White Santa Muerte

Protection, cleansing, renewal, starting new projects, healing, opening new paths, punishing enemies.

Niña Violeta, Purple Santa Muerte

Magic, secret knowledge, wisdom, spiritual growth, clairvoyance, divination.

Niña Azul, Blue Santa Muerte

Partnerships, social life, human interactions (she can both harmonize and destroy relationships).

Niña Dorada, Golden Santa Muerte

Money, wealth, prosperity, fate, luck (as well as lack of money, poverty and bad luck for enemies).

Niña Roja, Red or Pink Santa Muerte

Romantic relationships, love, lust, attracting a partner (it is possible to punish unfaithful partners with Red Santa Muerte’s help).

Niña Verde, Green Santa Muerte

Winning legal cases, justice, defining truth, protection from criminals, imprisoning someone, making someone commit illegal acts, endanger someone to be robbed or assaulted. 

Niña Negra, Black Santa Muerte

Neutralizing curses, malevolent spirits, ending bad luck or all kinds of problems, protection, spiritual transformations, harming enemies.

Associations

Planetary aspects: 

Moon and Saturn (but it can vary depending on the aspect)

Plants:

Rose, rosemary, syrian rye, tobacco, marigolds, aloe

Animals: 

Owl, raven, butterfly, snake, worm

Incense: 

Rose, vanilla, sage, copal, myrrh, rosemary, aloe, palo santo

Symbols:

Scythe, skull, flower wreath, golden jewelry, scale, cloak

Tarot:

Death, Queen of Swords, Judgement, the Empress, the High Priestess, the Hierophant (but it depends on your perception as well)

Offerings

Tequila, red wine, chocolate (or any other sweets), red apples, pomegranates, fruits (especially exotic ones such as pineapples, mangoes, dragon fruits), coffee and cacao, salt, bread, flowers (mostly red or white roses), red meat, chicken hearts, candles (the colour depends on the aspect or you can choose the black one as universal), incenses. 

𖤐

Let me know if you would like new posts about Santa Muerte. Mother and I will be happy to tell you a lot more.

[germiyahu]

There's such an intricate interplay between antisemitism and islamophobia from the slacktivist left. For every reason they can think of to delegitimize the Jewish People's connection to Eretz Yisrael, it's propped up by some Noble Savage presumptions about Palestinians/Arabs/Muslims.

Since Jews in America are seen as a model minority, seen as having accessed whiteness and privilege, and "antisemitism" is at worst having to explain what Hanukah is to clueless Christians, the Left is confused as to exactly why Jews care about Jerusalem and the Land of Israel so much. Shouldn't they be above such petty and barbaric and outdated concerns such as a dusty old book from 2,000 years ago?

They should be more enlightened than that. They're all rich suburban secular Democrats. They're the leftist religion, according to bloggers on this very platform. There is no room for Judaism to be a religion, there's no acknowledgment of ancient customs, rituals, and the deep mysticism that's still alive and well in the Jewish community. There's no attempt to understand Jewish history and culture and why a group of people you think shares your vaguely atheistic vaguely liberal (and not in the Tankie sense) vaguely smug detached Western worldview... is more complex and unique than that.

Jews should be happy living in Diaspora because clearly the problem of antisemitism is fixed now, and never really was a problem in America. There must be something sinister behind a desire to reestablish a country by and for Jews. There must be something colonial, oppressive, European and White about it. Because why else would they do it? They have it good here. And no we won't acknowledge where Israelis primarily descend from because that requires us to do research and have a shred of nuance and integrity when it comes to Jews. No thanks!

A lot of the modern left is nonconsensually dragging Jews kicking and screaming from their own unique demographic toward the banal Norm. To themselves. But not totally. See they think they relate to Jews and vice versa, but not enough that when they think Jews should "know better," or haven't "learned their lesson," from the Holocaust, it engenders a deep seeded disgust and mistrust and rage that's not felt for actually privileged mainstream dominant society.

Conversely, the slacktivist Left sees Arabs as savages. Silly desert people who eat sand and worship a big black cube and cover every inch of their bodies for some reason. How quaint! When the Palestinian/Arab/Muslim cause explains that Jerusalem is important to them, the White Western Leftist nods sagely and says "Your culture is so valid queen," because they don't care. They just accept that Muslim society would be willing to fight over an ancient city proscribed as holy in dusty old tomes. Because that fits the narrative already surrounding Muslims.

They're seen as backwards, but the Left, reacting to their conservative parents and the Bush era, see "Muslims are backwards," and says not "No actually they're modern groups of people with practical geopolitical goals," but instead "Yeah and that makes them better than us!" Especially with this new crop of baby Leftists who think Islamo-Fascist "Feudalism" or whatever the best term would be, is aspirational or at least harmless... because it's not capitalism :)

So Muslims are infantilized and condescended to because the Western Leftist is still just as racist as their parents, but they feel guilty about their parents without considering their contribution to White Supremacy and the Post Bush surveillance state. And all the while Jews are reprimanded and held to an impossible standard because the Western Leftist, again, rejects their conservative parents' philosemitism, and decides that Jews Must be Punished when they step off the pedestal that Suffering the Shoah placed them on.

Jews should be above nationalism, Jews should know that demurely suffering pogroms and ethnic cleansing and genocide and general inequity and humiliation will earn them their divine reward in the end. Muslims should not be above nationalism, because they're not capable of being above it, and can't we throw them a bone, after all Obama was the worst president in history because of the Drone War and let's not mention George W Bush at all :0

Hot take, but I believe this is an essential underpinning of where the average disaffected White millennial/zoomer Leftist's head is at with regard to Israel and Palestine. They won't acknowledge it of course, but I can generally see through things like this.

[aldmeric]

Species Anarchy: What It Isn’t

I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. The ideology of species anarchy does overlap significantly with otherkin, alterhumanity and nonhuman experiences, but it is not inherently related to these concepts.

Take holotheres for example. They are known as physical nonhumans. The term “physical nonhuman” denotes something very specific, as it is an identity defining term under the nonhuman umbrella (and for some, the otherkin and alterhuman umbrellas). Holotheres are physically nonhuman, but not all of them claim to be biologically nonhuman, as per their self identification. Some do, and those are the instances in which species anarchy may overlap.

A key point that often comes up in holothere spaces is psychosis and schizophrenia (clinical zoanthropy etc). Some individuals have these labels unwillingly placed upon them for expressing themselves, and while they may be considered delusional or psychotic by modern psychological standards, these individuals would likely be highly revered and treated with extreme care and sensitivity in pre-colonial environments due to being seen as spiritual guides — nonhuman creatures come in the form of a human vessel to teach crucial environmental lessons to their clan or village. They also would not have many of the symptoms that come with psychosis if the effects of colonialism hadn’t leeched into everything we know, but that’s a conversation for another day (as is the criteria for delusions, psychosis and schizophrenia being rooted in Christianization and generational trauma of Indigenous people).

Some holotheres take pride in their psychosis, which I would argue is the healthiest possible avenue of existence (if that is constructive and healing for you personally, but it isn’t for everyone). Every brain is different. It would be boring if everybody lived in the same reality. However, some individuals rebel against the label entirely, as I mentioned earlier, but in a different context — they reject the labels that the system of modern Western psychology they believe has imposed upon them, and they choose to redefine what existence is for themselves, and in general, because they know that the system labelled them as such due to the constructed societal view of being a failure if you are unable to conform — of the three, this is the most similar ideology to species anarchy.

While I have always known I’m bosmer in my heart, gut and soul, it was not something that came in words to me until later on in life. I knew I was different, but I didn’t know how. As a child, I had an intense phobia of getting “found out” to be biologically different from humans, and to be hauled off to a facility to be dissected or tortured or brainwashed. While I did suffer from childhood trauma, none of it was ever related to this fear. It’s been completely unexplainable for me (until now). I’ve dealt with a lot of medical mishaps as a result - doctors did not know how to treat me because my body was not responding the way a human’s would. They were confused, and I nearly died as a result.

I realized that, through evolution, I am biologically not human whatsoever. My mother has experienced similar experiences as I have, but not to the extent that I deal with them.

Carl Linnaeus never defined the term Homo sapiens. He just… left it blank. It was the only species he did not define. Just think about that for a moment.

For thousands of years, we have questioned what it means to exist, but only for a couple hundred have we questioned what it means to be human. How do we answer our questions to something with no definition, and the author of the term is long gone? In a time where the only way to become an expert was to observe the unknown, Carl Linnaeus made observations, he crafted definitions — are we not allowed to call out when we have done the observing now? What makes this century different from the last two?

Where do we draw the line when something new has been created?

Species anarchy is that line. It is also the act of drawing it. It is the act of crossing out human and replacing it with what you know to be the truth.

That is why it overlaps with alterhuman, otherkin and nonhuman experiences. It is not inherently of them, but you know who and what you are. Who am I to define you? Who is anyone to do so? You have the pen and the paper. You have the stick in the sand.

Remember that your brain telling you things is a message. Your brain is a very real organ. If you know something about yourself to be true, that is your brain physically being aware of an observable truth, and translating it into thought. Yes, this goes for spiritualism as well.

Species anarchy is a very broad philosophical ideology, and it can be applied to and overlap with many other core identity values. It does not discriminate against anyone, I want that to be very clear (I take holotheres very seriously). As I find myself learning more and more about different types of nonhumanity, I can see a lot of overlap between all these amazingly different experiences and species anarchy. I wanted to make a detailed post explaining the differences between them.

[calystarose]

Māori atheism is on the rise, but it's more than just disbelief—it’s tied to colonial resistance. A new study shows how Māori atheists frame rejecting Christianity as a political act. Atheism isn’t just Western—it’s global.

Register for our online lecture with Dr. Sara Rahmani: https://www.religiondepartment.com/offers/zsbQ2xsX/checkout

Thursday March 27, 2025 3-4:15pm Eastern

Atheism is on the rise among the Māori in New Zealand, but we know little about Māori nonreligion and the processes contributing to Māori deconversion from Christianity. In this lecture, Dr. Rahmani will describe the contours of Māori atheism and its intersections with colonisation, cultural revitalisation, and protest movements. She will discuss her upcoming co-authored book, which draws on in-depth interviews and explores how activist resistance to colonialism plays a decisive role in Māori atheists’ accounts of their identity and non-belief.

About lecturer: Dr. Masoumeh Sara Rahmani is a senior lecturer in the Study of Religion at Te Herenga Waka – Victoria University of Wellington. Her research focuses on atheism, nonreligion, and (de)conversion, explored in relation to Buddhist meditation movements and, more recently, within the Māori cultural context. Sara’s recent monograph, Drifting Through Samsara, examined patterns of conversion and deconversion from Goenka’s Vipassana movement in Aotearoa. She is currently co-authoring her second book, Māori Atheism as a Decolonising Project, with Prof. Peter Adds and Dr. Geoff Troughton. 

[blackstarlineage]

30 Ways Modern-Day Africans Still Exhibit a Colonial Mindset: A Garveyite Analysis

Marcus Garvey’s Pan-Africanist philosophy emphasized self-reliance, cultural pride, and the rejection of colonial influence. However, many Africans today still exhibit behaviours and attitudes rooted in a colonial mindset. Below are 30 examples, explained and analyzed in depth, from a Garveyite perspective:

1-10: Cultural Influence and Identity

1. Preference for European Standards of Beauty

Example: Many Africans prioritize lighter skin, straight hair, and European features over natural Black aesthetics.

Analysis: Skin-lightening creams and the global embrace of Eurocentric beauty ideals reflect internalized inferiority and rejection of African identity.

2. Disdain for African Languages

Example: African children are often discouraged from speaking native languages in favour of English, French, or Portuguese.

Analysis: Linguistic erasure ensures dependency on colonial languages for governance, education, and international relations.

3. Glorification of Western Education

Example: Degrees from European or North American universities are valued more than African ones.

Analysis: This reinforces the notion that African intellectual systems are inferior, perpetuating brain drain and dependency.

4. Adoption of Western Names

Example: Africans often give their children Western names instead of traditional African ones.

Analysis: This signifies a rejection of African heritage in favour of aligning with Western norms.

5. Colonial Religious Practices

Example: Christianity and Islam dominate African spiritual practices, while indigenous beliefs are demonized.

Analysis: Religion was used as a colonial tool to pacify and control, and its dominance reflects ongoing psychological colonization.

6. Rejection of African Fashion

Example: Western suits and dresses are deemed more "professional" than African attire in workplaces.

Analysis: Clothing reflects identity, and the preference for Western styles reinforces the idea that African traditions are primitive.

7. Accent Bias

Example: Africans with European or American accents are viewed as more intelligent or credible.

Analysis: This bias reflects internalized colonial superiority.

8. Neglect of African History

Example: African curricula prioritize European history over African empires like Mali, Songhai, or Great Zimbabwe.

Analysis: This erasure perpetuates ignorance about Africa’s rich heritage and contributions to civilization.

9. Worship of Western Entertainment

Example: Hollywood and European music dominate African media, sidelining local industries.

Analysis: This promotes cultural dependency and undervalues African creativity.

10. Desire to Migrate to the West

Example: Many Africans dream of emigrating to Europe or the U.S. for a "better life."

Analysis: This mindset undermines the potential of building strong nations on the continent.

11-20: Political and Economic Dependence

11. Reliance on Foreign Aid

Example: African governments often depend on Western aid for development projects.

Analysis: This fosters dependency and allows Western nations to control African policies.

12. Colonial Borders

Example: African nations still adhere to arbitrary colonial borders that divide ethnic groups.

Analysis: The refusal to renegotiate these borders reflects a lack of sovereignty and Pan-African unity.

13. Imitation of Western Governance

Example: African governments replicate Western political systems, often failing to adapt them to local contexts.

Analysis: Blind imitation undermines the development of systems rooted in African traditions and needs.

14. Dependence on Western Currencies

Example: The CFA franc, used by West and Central African nations, is controlled by France.

Analysis: This reflects continued economic colonization and inhibits financial independence.

15. Exploitation of Resources by Foreign Corporations

Example: Multinational companies exploit Africa's oil, minerals, and agriculture with little reinvestment.

Analysis: Africans prioritize Western partnerships over local ownership and control.

16. Outsourcing Security to Foreign Powers

Example: French troops stationed in Africa under the guise of fighting terrorism.

Analysis: This reinforces the narrative that Africans can not secure their own nations.

17. Preference for Imported Goods

Example: Imported clothing, food, and technology are seen as superior to local products.

Analysis: This devalues African production and stifles economic growth.

18. Neocolonial Debt Traps

Example: African nations take loans from institutions like the IMF, leading to perpetual debt.

Analysis: These loans come with conditions that undermine sovereignty.

19. Overdependence on Western Technologies

Example: Africa imports most of its technology rather than building local industries.

Analysis: This dependency stifles innovation and economic independence.

20. Election Interference by Western Powers

Example: Western nations influence African elections through funding or propaganda.

Analysis: This undermines democratic processes and reinforces external control.

21-30: Social and Psychological Patterns

21. Black Elitism

Example: Africans educated in the West often look down on those educated locally.

Analysis: This creates divisions within African societies and perpetuates classism.

22. Hostility Toward Pan-Africanism

Example: Resistance to efforts to unify Africa economically or politically.

Analysis: Colonial powers instilled fear of unity to prevent collective strength.

23. Undervaluing African Labour

Example: African workers are underpaid while foreign workers are overpaid for similar roles.

Analysis: This reflects an internalized belief in the superiority of non-African expertise.

24. Neglect of Local Agriculture

Example: African nations import staple foods like rice despite fertile lands.

Analysis: This prioritizes foreign economies over local food sovereignty.

25. Demonization of Traditional Medicine

Example: Preference for Western pharmaceuticals over indigenous remedies.

Analysis: This reflects distrust in African innovation and healing systems.

26. Preference for Colonial Languages in Art and Literature

Example: Writers and artists creating works in English or French to gain Western recognition.

Analysis: This marginalizes African languages and creativity.

27. Inferiority Complex Toward Western Nations

Example: Africans praise Western infrastructure while criticizing their own.

Analysis: This self-perception hinders the belief in African potential.

28. Overlooking the African Diaspora

Example: Africans often ignore the struggles and contributions of African Americans, Caribbeans, etc.

Analysis: Colonial divisions still separate the global African community.

29. Dependence on Colonial Education Systems

Example: African nations still use colonial curricula with minimal African content.

Analysis: Education is a tool of control, and this reflects ongoing intellectual colonization.

30. Hostility Toward Repatriation

Example: Africans discouraging descendants of the enslaved from returning to Africa.

Analysis: This reflects colonial teachings that Africa is undesirable or unworthy.

Garveyite Call to Action:

Marcus Garvey warned against mental colonization and called for:

Reclaiming African identity: Embrace African languages, cultures, and traditions.

Economic independence: Build industries, control resources, and support local economies.

Pan-African unity: Foster solidarity among Africans worldwide.

Rejection of Western validation: Recognize that Africa’s greatness does not depend on foreign approval.

“Liberate the minds of men, and ultimately, you will liberate the bodies of men.” – Marcus Garvey

[maybe-boys-do-love]

Spare Me Your Mercy from the outset has tied the acceptance of death with the acceptance of queerness. Many of the critiques of the show have missed this connection or its significance, which goes a long way to explain their complaints about the series. Dr. Kan, the character most accepting of death is also the most overtly gay and unashamed to act on it. The director prioritized life even if the patient was suffering, and in line with that, he, himself in the closet, experiences life as constant suffering.

The rural setting heightens these stakes and commentary. We can see it most in Detective Thiu, who returns to his small hometown with trepidation after escaping to the city. He followed the typical gay narrative from the supposedly backwards country to the ‘enlightened’ city, what Jack Halberstam coined as "metronormativity," where he could realize the true expression of himself. Now, forced to return to the rural space, we see Thiu in all his interactions internally contending with the true extent of his city-born self-acceptance. Some reviewers on here fail to appreciate the weight of his struggle. One reviewer in particular, whose work in the fandom I greatly appreciate, nevertheless has a history of reviewing actors' performances and "chemistry" poorly when the characters are wrestling against their internalized homophobia. I, however, find Thiu's immensely compelling and relatable as a queer person with strong rural ties.

With Thiu, SMYM seems to lead us toward a similiar perspective to Halberstam and others (Imma provide a reading list below), who criticize the dangerous individualism of the metronormative narrative. In the third episode, the show depicts an indigenous perspective toward death, practices with roots preceding commercially-bred urbanization. These roots, more so in Thailand than perhaps any other nation in the world but also in a multitude of indigenous cultures across the globe, draw forth indigenous traditions of queerness and gender variation.

An exchange evoking the parallels of accepting death and queerness occurs between Kan and Thiu in response to the rituals. "Their belief up here is that death is like moving from an old home to a new home." The detective replies, "That's a nice way to think about it. When you die, you don't have to end up in hell like the rest of us." This line, whether in the context of a Thai Buddhist hell or the Christian one (inviting any Thai language folks or people more familiar with the culture to add their expertise here!), reveals Thiu's pervasive sense of shame, inflecting his view of himself and distrust of others, contrasting with Kan and the beliefs indigenous to the place where he grew up.

While the indigenous rituals suggest how Thiu might have avoided shame if he had remained more connected to his rural upbringing, SMYM depicts myriad reasons the town's culture, specifically the practices of those men in authority positions, condemned that possibility. The director of the hospital and the police enforce de jure expectations for heterosexuality alongside their de facto enforcement of regulations against euthanasia. As this post about the show's theme from @respectthepetty points out, "life should not be a punishment for the living," but life as a punishment was the set condition Thiu must've been raised within.

While the plot might be asking about who's the murderer and how will they be caught and punished, for me, the question beating under it all like a heart that can't let go is where Thiu's mother sat on this scale regarding acceptance. She's the key that could open the door for Thiu to find queer peace in his hometown. His ability to process how she felt about him and how he felt about her will determine his ability to be himself in relation to where he came from rather than as a rejection of it.

For me, this show's music, cinematography, editing tempo, plotting, and performances all lend it a familiarity with the western crime-thriller genre that make it a great recommendation for BL first-timers in the Anglo sphere . It's easily comparable to Mare of Easttown, Broadchurch, True Detective, or Silence of the Lambs, (Asian thrillers, too, I assume, but others could write better about that than I) while delivering queer love and acceptance in rural spaces at the forefront of its story and philosophical musings. I personally recommend ignoring the misrepresentative criticism. SMYM constantly reiterates the ways relenting to someone else's authority might keep one from the types of agency and connection that make the experiences of life and death, no matter where you are, gay and fulfilling.

Queer Rural Reading List for those interested

Short Digital Reads:

Metronormativity by Maxwell Cloe

Metronormativity Is Dangerous for LGBTQIA+ People's Health and Well-Being by Alexander Martin

Rural Queer History: Hidden in Plain Sight by Anya Petrone Slepyan for The Daily Yonder (a great resource for progressive rural news in the US)

LGBTI Families in Rural Thailand by Bruce Bonta

Thailand LGBT Outside of Bangkok reddit thread (grain of salt and all, but still interesting)

Books:

In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives by Jack Halberstam

Reclaiming Two-Spirits: Sexuality, Spiritual Renewal & Sovereignty in Native America by Gregory D. Smithers

Visibility Interrupted: Rural Queer Life and the Politics of Unbecoming by Carly Thompsen

Another Country: Queer Anti-Urbanism by Scott Herring

Farm Boys: Lives of Gay Men from the Rural Midwest by Will Fellows

Men Like That: A Southern Queer History by John Howard

Lonely Hunters: An Oral History of Lesbian and Gay Southern Life, 1948-1968 by Jamie T. Sears

Queering the Countryside: New Frontiers in Rural Queer Studies, ed. Gray, Johnson, Gilley

Out in the Countryside: Youth, Media, and Queer Visibility in Rural America by Mary L. Gray

Real Queer America: LGBT Stories from Red States by Samantha Allen

Gay Faulkner: Uncovering a Homosexual Presence in Yoknapatawpha and Beyond by Phillip Gordon

[kaibasupremacy]

Btw this is probably super obvious and has been said before and examined more deeply, but I’m once again thinking about how Seto reads Nietzsche, and how that scene To Me is hopeful. Nietzsche is the philosopher who encourages building meaning in the face of the death of God (i.e., the death of all inherent meaning). He says that while some people sink into passive nihilism after realizing life has no built-in purpose, the Übermensch (Overman) is someone who sees this as an opportunity to create their own values. He’s the philosopher of saying “yes” to life in its full tragic sense, affirming it even when it’s cruel and painful, even willing to relive it again and again.

Nietzsche read Schopenhauer, who believed that life was only suffering and that the only way to overcome pain was to deny the Will and strive for asceticism. I can imagine Seto, at some point, viscerally agreeing with that cosmic pessimism… but still wanting to believe that life was worth living in its fullness…

That tension actually reflects in canon: his suicidal impulse is contrasted with his desire to create, to fight, to resist being consumed by his own annihilative tendencies. There’s no way Seto didn’t go through the philosophers that came before Nietzsche if he read him in the original German, he probably read Schopenhauer too.

Also, Nietzsche talks about the death of God especially in relation to morality. In The Genealogy of Morals, he argues that Christian morality should be replaced with a self-created morality, something “beyond good and evil.” Gozaburo instilled in Seto a very specific moral framework (“To lose is to die”), and that same framework was reinforced by the world around him. Now that morality has shown itself to be destructive, Seto needs to build his own if he wants to survive the devastation of that loss. God is often used as a metaphor for fatherly authority, and at the beginning, Seto tried to put Atem in that divine role as a father substitute. Seto didn't know if he wanted to overthrow or possess him (Takahashi said he had a father complex and meeting him shifted his objective) because he couldn't cope with the loss of meaning in his life. I'm thinking of the Cards with Teeth and Death T era.

It’s also interesting to think about how Seto came to Nietzsche in the first place. Like, maybe all of this was taught to him by Gozaburo, though it could just as easily be self-taught, or intended as a language exercise. There are many possible interpretations.

What gets me is how Nietzsche is so often reduced to a philosopher of “might makes right,” someone who glorifies domination and cruelty. Meanwhile, Schopenhauer is often seen as the philosopher of resignation, compassion, and ethical pessimism, someone Nietzsche criticized for rejecting God but leaving “laede-neminem” (harm no one) morality intact.

So my interpretation is: Gozaburo might have weaponized Nietzsche to convince Seto that the weak must be crushed by the strong. And Seto trying to survive a life that felt hopeless, grabbed onto those ideas and tried to make them his own. To find something worth hoping for in them to the extent which he could.

[hagoftheholler]

Been thinking about closed practices today, and why many (white) people reject the concept. Aside from general entitlement and never being told "no" before, it's evident to me that many white people (especially white Americans, but still white people in general) never really grew up in an environment where they were taught there are rules and standards to religion/spirituality/magic. Or, they grew up in an Evangelical upbringing and were taught to reject everything that wasn't "Christian"... so they want something else (that they can't/shouldn't have).

The idea of there being rules, a social or spiritual hierarchy in anything related to magic/religion/spirituality is foreign. It scares people. So they attempt to find loopholes. Why go find a genuine priest(ess), rabbi, elder, granny or any other person in the position to give them answers and teach them when there are books written by white "shamans" "gurus" "voodoo priests" etc? It's not like those books are ever going to tell them lies, right? /sarcasm

Committing to a closed practice requires too much... well... commitment, for these people. The idea of reaching out to a person that can actually teach them, initiate them (if required), etc... The process of it all... Too much for them, somehow. And even if it's something that requires a little more than teaching and initiations, they still don't wanna hear it.

[moonsceptre]

Alchemy & Dreams in Beetlejuice Part 2

As mentioned in the last post, red represents Lydia: the material realm & sulphur. The item which falls next to Astrid's cracked photograph is a molecular structure with a red atom and a green atom. It's already common knowledge that Betelgeuse is green-coded, but I have further proof to support the atom theory.

Alchemists viewed the human body (microcosm) as a reflection of the universe (macrocosm). This suggested that atoms could give insights about human nature. Within this context, consider Rosenkreutz illustration of the Chymical Wedding, where the married couple are holding onto the structure. They're supposed to represent two atoms of the same trigonal planar molecule, because they are of the same element, thus sharing a chemical bond.

Alchemy consists of a mix of chemistry, philosophy, semiotics, and metaphysics, with much of the symbolism used to convey alchemical themes in Beetlejuice.

Before I come back to this, let's talk about...

Otho

Throughout the first movie, Otho is typically associated with black and red. He's often wearing black with either a red tie, red buttons, or red shoes (which mysteriously disappear in a couple scenes only to be replaced by different colour shoes).

Red shoes have long been used in media to represent a metaphorical journey (The Red Shoes (1948), Kiki's Delivery Service (1989), and Hans Christian Andersen's The Red Shoes are a few examples). Need I remind you of one of Tim Burton's favourite movies, The Wizard of Oz?

Otho is the only character other than Lydia who piques interest in the dead. Despite his willingness to exploit them, he is ready to believe in their existence and study the handbook. These visual cues are conveying the character's motives.

Part of the alchemical process are the stages "Rubedo" and "Nigredo". Rubedo is Latin for "redness", the stage of understanding where two opposites have joined and created harmony. Nigredo is Latin for "blackness", the stage of putrefaction or decomposition, thus symbolising the dead. In layman's terms, red and black represent the character's willingness to connect with the dead. The only other character really associated with black and red is Lydia, and that speaks for itself.

Otho is a character who inspired the creation of Rory in the second movie. Within Lydia's psyche, Rory has been manifested from guilt. In the first film, Lydia is almost complicit in helping Otho to exorcise the Maitlands after he makes it clear that he wants to capitalise on the dead. In the second film, Lydia is under Rory's management to capitalise on the dead, and she is trying to make peace with that guilt by trying to help people through exorcisms.

Guilt in dreams is often seen as a manifestation of the unconscious mind's attempt to communicate unresolved internal conflicts. This is where the shadow becomes a central concept in Jungian psychology, referring to the parts of the Self that the conscious mind rejects or ignores. Lydia rejects the traits that Otho and Rory embody, and that is why her reconciliation with Astrid is a manifestation of her own forgiveness.

More on The Chemical Wedding

We talked about the purpose of the Chemical Wedding before, but why is it so relevant to the plot of Beetlejuice? Other than the fact Betelgeuse has fallen in love with Lydia, there is an allegorical reason for why the wedding must take place between these two, and no one else but these two.

A Chemical Wedding is the marriage between the sun and the moon. In alchemical texts they are often depicted as the white queen and the red king, though this has nothing to do with literal gender roles, for we see Lydia herself portrayed as the red king in her parallel with Astrid. It is related to the Anima (the female self) and the Animus (the male self). This is also the marriage between mercury and sulfur, spirit and matter, the dead and the living.

One of the most famous works on the subject of a Chemical Wedding is a Rosicrucian allegory published in 1616 by Christian Rosenkreutz. It describes a mystical journey where the main character must attend a wedding at a mysterious castle. The journey is a symbol of the alchemical process, while the wedding itself represents the final transformative stage.

The story is filled with strange and dreamlike imagery, with many claiming it as a source of German dark romanticism.

Rosenkreuz's allegory actually represents inner transformation of the individual, with marriage being used as a metaphor, insofar as the masculine and feminine halves must be merged together in matrimony to achieve completion within oneself.

"Death and the Maiden" trope is a motif that depicts a woman being taken by Death, as he desires to marry her. It is dire for death to marry his living bride, for he wishes to venture the living world and the underworld with her.

Betelgeuse is the perfect complementary opposite to Lydia, each crafted to embody the other's symbolic missing half. Betelgeuse is the animus; he's loud, provocative, and dead; Lydia is the anima; she's quiet, thoughtful, and alive. The contrast is straightforward and uncomplicated. You could easily spend hours analysing their differences, and you'd still be right—because they are deliberately written as foils to one another.

Looking back at how Otho/Rory represents the shadow of Lydia, we should take into account who guided her through this dream sequence. Our psyche creates these thought-images in our unconscious minds as a means to roleplay scenarios where we have internal conflict. It gives us a chance to psychoanalyse ourselves and try to understand the core of our trauma.

Betelgeuse, within Lydia's dream, is acting as a guide (remember his guide outfit in the first film?). He's constantly appearing to her, influencing her and urging her to face her fears. While he's causing chaos in the way he knows best, he's also showing Lydia the bare truth, and this is especially apparent when it comes to Rory: he tells Lydia she's an enabling codependent and forces Rory to tell the truth about his intentions. Betelgeuse is what Jung would refer to as the Trickster archetype. The Trickster is often seen as a figure that disrupts the status quo and challenges the Ego through chaotic and karmic actions, serving as a profound guide in the process of one's personal development. Think of "Jester's privilege", or The Fool in tarot.

In mythological symbolism, there comes the legend of a scorpion that stung Orion to death (the giant red star "Betelgeuse" sits on Orion's belt). The scorpion was delivered as to snub Orion's pride and teach him a lesson by way of death, because the scorpion is a symbol of death and rebirth. This is the Trickster archetype again, teaching a lesson in a very karmic way. Betelgeuse does the same throughout both movies. Otho, the Deetz, and the Deans are all punished by him in the first film for acting as antagonists against the ghosts of Winter River. Despite this, he also acts as an antagonist himself by punishing the Maitlands, two loving parental figures for Lydia, for getting in the way of his plan to marry her.

"They therefore represent a supreme pair of opposites, not hopelessly divided by logical contradiction but, because of the mutual attraction between them, giving promise of union and actually making it possible. The coniunctio oppositorum engaged the speculations of the alchemists in the form of the ‘Chymical Wedding," — Carl Jung, Psychology & Alchemy

In alchemical tradition, Saturn is associated with the metal lead, which symbolises the starting point of the alchemical work—the Nigredo phase. Alchemy is mostly known as the quest to turn lead into gold, but the allegorical meaning is to refine the Self. Saturn is equated with Cronos in mythology, the father of time, who was portrayed as an old man with a scythe/sickle, similar to the grim reaper, who is associated with the end of one's time. Betelgeuse has time-warping powers and wears time-keeping devices on his wrist, all a microcosm for how we measure eternity.

The whole Alchemical Opus works through THREE stages:

Nigredo (Black Stage): Betelgeuse represents lead and Saturn. Putrefaction.

Albedo (White Stage): Before Lydia summons Betelgeuse and agrees to the marriage, he is wearing a black and white suit. White is added to the mix. Purification.

Rubedo (Red Stage): Lydia is manifested a red wedding dress to finish the ceremony. They completed the alchemical process. Lead is turned into Gold.

In the movie's original wedding scene, found here, at 9:11 on the clock the afterlife creature who marries Lydia and Betelgeuse dissipates into fire, and then the scene ends. 911 in numerology is the number of completion, and is used in occultism to symbolise new beginnings and rebirth.

For this reason, it has been theorised that the wedding vows went through, and the Chemical Wedding was completed.

[dragoneyes613]

"Islam was the second religion to emanate from Judaism, but as its founder was not a Jew and as it was not originally a Jewish sect, Islam's encounter with Judaism was significantly less bitter than Christianity's. As Salo Baron notes: "It was, therefore, from the beginning, a struggle between strangers, rather than an internecine strife among brethren." Largely because of this factor, Jews in the Islamic world were rarely persecuted as violently as their brethren in the Christian world. S. D. Goitein, perhaps the twentieth century's leading historian of Jewish life in the Arab world, concludes: "when the known facts are weighed, I believe it correct to say that as a whole the position of the non-Muslims [Christians and Jews under medieval Islamic rule] was far better than that of the Jews in medieval Christian Europe."

Goitein's assessment is valid, but it tells us much more about the Jews' condition under Christians than about their treatment by Muslims. For while the Jews of the Muslim world may have rarely experienced the tortures, pogroms, and expulsions that typified Jewish life under medieval Christian rule, their life under Islam was usually a life of degradation and insecurity. At the whim of a Muslim leader, a synagogue would be destroyed, Jewish orphans would be forcibly converted to Islam, or Jews would be forced to pay even more excessive taxes than usual.

Like Christianity's, Islam's anti-Judaism is deeply rooted. Islam too was born from the womb of Judaism; it too was rejected by the Jews whose validation was sought; and it too suffered an identity crisis vis-a-vis Judaism.

When Islam was born in the seventh century, there was a substantial Jewish population in Medina, where the first Muslim community arose. The Jews of pre-Islamic Arabia were active advocates of their religion, to such an extent that several kings of Himyar, now Yemen, converted to Judaism. Contemporary inscriptions described Dhu Nuwas As'ar, the last Jewish king of Himyar, as a believer in one deity whom the king called Rahman, the Merciful One, as called in Judaism and later in Islam.

During his early years, Muhammad related well to the Jews of Arabia, and their religious practices and ideas deeply influenced him. As Goitein noted: "The intrinsic values of the belief in one God, the creator of the world, the God of Justice and mercy, before whom everyone high and low bears responsibility came to Muhammad, as he never ceased to emphasized, from Israel."

The profound influence of the Jews, their Bible, and their laws on Muhammad is clearly expressed in the Koran, the Muslim bible, and in Muhammad's early religious legislation. Indeed, Muhammad saw himself as another Moses. In the Koran, he writes of his message (Sura 46, verse 12), "Before it the book of Moses was revealed....This Book confirms it. It is revealed in the Arabic tongue." Moses is a dominant figure on the Koran, in which he is mentioned over one hundred times.The Jewish doctrine that most deeply influenced Muhammad was monotheism: "There is no God but God." Muhammad's monotheism was so attuned to the uncompromising nature of Judaism's monotheism that though he had also been influenced by Christian teachers, he rejected the Christian trinity and the divinity of Jesus as not monotheistic: "Unbelievers are those that say, 'Allah is one of three.' There is but one God. If they do not desist from so saying, those of them that disbelieve shall be sternly punished" (5:71-73).

Jewish law also deeply influenced Muhammad. In the early days of Islam, Muslims prayed in the direction of the Jews' holy city, Jerusalem, and observed the most solemn Jewish holiday, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Only later, when Muhammad reluctantly concluded that the Jews would not embrace him as their prophet and convert to Islam, did he substitute Mecca for Jerusalem, and the fast of Ramadan for Yom Kippur. Similarly, Muhammad based Muslim dietary laws upon Judaism's laws of Kashrut: "You are forbidden carrion, blood, and the flesh of swine; also any flesh...of animals sacrificed to idols." The five daily prayers of Islam are likewise modeled on the three daily services of the Jews.

Second in importance only to his adoption of the Jews' God was Muhammad's adoption of the Jews' founding father, Abraham, as Islam's founder. In Sura 2, verse 125, Muhammad writes how Abraham and his son Ishmael converted the Kaaba, the holy rock of Arabian paganism, into the holy shrine of Islam.

Believing himself to be the final and greatest prophet of Mosaic monotheism, and having adopted so much of Jewish thought and practice, Muhammad appealed to the Jews of Arabia to recognize his role and to adopt Islam as the culmination of Judaism. "Even Luther," the late renowned philosopher Walter Kaufmann wrote, "expected the Jews to be converted by his version of Christianity, although he placed faith in Christ at the center of his teaching and firmly believed in the trinity. If even Luther...could expect that, how much more Muhammad, whose early revelations were so much closer to Judaism?" Muhammad's deep desire for Jewish recognition reflected the similar needs of Jesus and his followers. No group could validate Muhammad's religious claims as could the Jews, nor could any so seriously threaten to undermine them.

The Jews rejected Muhammad's claims as they had Jesus', holding in both cases that what was true in their messages was not new, and that what was new was not true. Islam may have served as a religious advance for Arabian pagans, but for the Jews it was merely another offshoot of Judaism.

One major factor that rendered Muhammad's prophetic claims untenable to Jews was his ignorance of the Bible. In large part because Muhammad never read the Bible, but only heard Bible stories, his references to the Jews' holy text were often erroneous. In Sura 28:38, for instance, he had Pharaoh (from Exodus) ask Haman (of the Book of Esther) to erect the Tower of Babel (which appears at the beginning of Genesis).

Another obstacle to Jewish acceptance of Muhammad was the moral quality of some of his teachings. They did not strike the Jews, or the Arabian Christians, as equaling, let alone superceding, the prophetic teachings of Judaism or Christianity. In 33:50, for example, Muhammad exempts himself from his own law limiting a man to four wives, and in 4:34 he instructs men to beat disobedient wives. Walter Kaufmann notes that "there is much more like this, especially in the 33rd Sura," and that "it must have struck the Jews as being a far cry from Amos and Jeremiah, and the Christians as rendering absurd the prophet's claim that he was superseding Jesus."

Finally, Muhammad's suspension of many Torah Laws invalidated him in the Jews' eyes.

For these and other reasons, the Jews rejected Muhammad's prophetic claims and refused to become Muslims. This alone infuriated Muhammad. But it was even more infuriating that the Jews publicly noted the errors in Muhammad's biblical teachings and may have even ridiculed his claims to prophecy. Goitein concludes, "it is only natural that Muhammad could not tolerate as a neighbor a large monotheistic community which categorically denied his claim as a prophet, and probably also ridiculed his inevitable blunders."

As a result Muhammad turned against the Jews and their religion, and never forgave them for not becoming his followers. And just as early Christian hostility to the Jews was canonized in the New Testament, so Muhammad's angry reactions to the Jews were recorded in the Koran. these writings gave Muslims throughout history a seemingly divinely-sanctioned antipathy to the Jews.

In the Koran, Muhammad attacked the Jews and attempted to invalidate Judaism in several ways. First, and most significantly, he changed Abraham from a Jew to a Muslim: "Abraham was neither Jew nor Christian. [He] surrendered himself to Allah....Surely the men who are nearest to Abraham are those who follow him, this Prophet" (3:67-68).

Second, he condemned the Jews and delegitimized their law by advancing a thesis similar to Paul's, that the many Torah laws had been given to the Jews as punishment for their sins: "Because of their iniquity we forbade the Jews good things which were formerly allowed them" (4:160).

Third, Muhammad charged the Jews with falsifying their Bible by deliberately omitting prophecies of his coming. For example, in the Koran (2:129), Muhammad has Abraham mouth a prophecy of his (Muhammad's) coming. Muhammad charged that the Jews "extinguish the light of Allah" (9:32) by having removed such prophecies from their Bible.

Fourth, Muhammad asserted that Jews, like Christians, were not true monotheists, a charge he substantiated by claiming that the Jews believed the prophet Ezra to be the Son of God. "And the Jews say: Ezra is the son of Allah...Allah fights against them. How perverse are they." (9:30).

These anti-Jewish fabrications, articulated by Muhammad as reactions to the Jews' rejection of him, have ever since been regarded by Muslims as God's word. Though originally directed against specific Jews of a specific time, these statements often have been understood by succeeding generations as referring to all Jews at all times, and thus form the basis of Islamic antisemitism.

One common example is 2:61: "And humiliation and wretchedness were stamped upon them and they were visited with wrath from Allah. That was because they disbelieved in Allah's revelations and slew the prophets wrongfully.j That was for their disobedience and transgression." This Koranic description of the Jews of seventh-century Arabia has often been cited by Muslims to describe Jews to this day. *

(* In a speech before his army officers on April 25, 1972, the late Egyptian President Anwar as-Sadat cited this Koranic verse, and then added: "The most splendid thing our prophet Muhammad, God's peace and blessing on him, did was to evict them [the Jews] from the entire Arabian peninsula...I pledge to you that we will celebrate on the next anniversary, God willing and on this place with God's help, not only the liberation of our land but also the defeat of the Israeli conceit and arrogance so that they must once again return to the condition decreed in our holy book: 'humiliation and wretchedness were stamped upon them'...We will not renounce this.")

Muhammad and the Koran thus laid the basis for subsequent antisemitism just as the early Christians had - and for basically the same reason: Jews remaining Jewish constituted a living refutation of Islamic beliefs. Thus, under Islam, just as under Christianity, Jew-hatred was ultimately Judaism-hatred. Any Jew who converted to Islam was accepted as an equal.

Christians under Muslim rule fared little better. Muslims and their laws generally dealt harshly with both Christians and Jews.

As long as Christian communities survived in the Muslim world, discriminatory legislation also applied to them as well. However, whereas Jewish communities often flourished as vibrant Jewish communities, Christian communities for the most part did not survive the intense Muslim hostility. Under the yoke of MUslim laws against Jews and Christians, hundreds of thousands of people in some of the oldest and strongest Christian communities in the world converted to Islam.

No fact better underscores the intensity of Muslim persecution of dhimmis (non-Muslim monotheists) than this disappearance of so many Christian communities under Islam. The fact that under similar conditions many Jewish communities flourished bears witness to the Jews' tenacious commitment to Judaism, not to Muslim benevolence toward them. This is often lost sight of when favorably comparing Muslim antisemitism with Christian antisemitism. Yet the conversion to Islam of nearly every pre-Islamic Christian community in the Muslim world (the Copts of Egypt constituting the most notable exception) eloquently testifies to what Jews had to endure in their long sojourn through the Muslim world.

The two guiding principles of Islam's treatment of Jews and Christians are that Islam dominates and is not dominated, and that Jews and Christians are to be subservient and degraded. Nonmonotheists were usually given the choice of conversion to Islam or death.

The Muslim legal code that prescribed the treatment of Jews and Christians, or dhimmis as they are both referred to in Islam, was the Pact of Umar, attributed to Muhammad's second successor, but assumed to date from about 720. Its key characteristic was the requirement that dhimmis always acknowledge their subservient position to Muslims. Jews and Christians had to pledge, for example, "We shall not manifest our religion publicly nor convert anyone to it. We shall not prevent any of our kin from entering Islam if they wish it." The subservience that dhimmis were required to show publicly to Muslims is analogous to the behavior once expected of Blacks in the Jim Crow American South: "We shall show respect...and we shall rise from our seats when they [Muslims] wish to sit." They also had to pledge "not to mount saddles," since riding a horse, or, according to some Muslims, any animal, was considered incompatible with the low status of a dhimmi. The dhimmis also had to vow "We shall not display our crosses or our books in the roads or markets of the Muslims nor shall we raise our voices when following our dead."

Anti-dhimmi legislation did not end with the Pact of Umar. In the Koran, Muhammad had urged Muslims, "Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture...and follow not the religion of truth, until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low" (9:29). Accordingly, Muslim officials often insisted that when paying tribute, dhimmis must be "brought low," that is, humiliated.

An early Muslim regulation precisely prescribed how to humiliate Jews and Christians when they pay tribute: "The dhimmi, Christian or Jew, goes on a fixed day in person to the emir, appointed to receive the poll tax, who occupies a high throne-like seat. The dhimmi stands before him, offering the poll tax on his open palm. The emir takes it so that his hand is on top and the dhimmi's underneath. Then the emir gives him a blow on the neck, and a guard, standing upright before the emir, drives him roughly away The same procedure is followed with the second, third, and the following taxpayers. The public is admitted to enjoy this show." The public was not merely "admitted" to this humiliating spectacle, but as Baron observes, "Public participation was, indeed, essential for the purpose of demonstrating, according to the Shafi'ite school, the political superiority of Islam."

In the course of time Muslim rulers developed additional ways to humiliate dhimmis. Baron describes one of them: "Equally vexatious was the tax receipt, which in accordance with an old Babylonian custom, was sometimes stamped upon the neck of the 'unbelieving' taxpayer. This ancient mark of slavery...expressly prohibited in the Talmud under the sanction of the slave's forcible emancipation, occasionally reappeared here as a degrading stamp of 'infidelity.'"

These humiliating and painful procedures had a terrible effect on the Jews: "An Arab poet rightly spoke of entering the door with bent heads 'as if we were Jews.'"

Another law designed to humiliate dhimmis required them to wear different clothing. The purposes of this law were to enable Muslims to recognize Jews and Christians at all times, and to make them appear foolish. In 807, the Abbasid Caliph Haroun al-Raschid, legislated that Jews must wear a yellow belt and a tall conical cap. This Muslim decree provided the model for the yellow badge associated with the degradation of Jews in Christian Europe and most recently imposed by the Nazis.

A Jew living in Baghdad in the days of Al-Muqtadir (1075-96) described additional measures passed by the vizier, Abu Shuja, to humiliate Jews: "each Jew had to have a stamp of lead...hang from his neck, on which the word dhimmi was inscribed. On women he likewise imposed two distinguishing marks: the shoes worn by each woman had to be one red and one black. She also had to carry on her neck or attached to her shoe a small brass bell...And the Gentiles used to ridicule Jews, the mob and children often assaulting Jews in all the streets of Baghdad.

During the same century in Egypt, the Fatimid Caliph Hakim ordered Christians to wear a cross with arms two feet long, while Jews were ordered to wear around their necks balls weighing five pounds, to commemorate the calf's head that their ancestors had once worshiped.

These clothing regulations were not only enforced in the Middle Ages. Until their departure from Yemen in 1948, all Jews, men and women alike, were compelled to dress like beggars.

 In fact, Yemen offers us a unique opportunity to understand Muslim attitudes toward the Jews. For it was the one Muslim country with a non-Muslim minority (Jews) that was never ruled by a European power. It was therefore able to treat its Jews in the "purest" Muslim manner, uninfluenced by non-Muslim domination.

In 1679, Jews in most of Yemen were expelled from their cities and villages. When allowed to come back a year later, they were not allowed to return to their homes, but were forced to settle in Jewish settlements outside of the cities. During their expulsion the synagogue of San'a, the capital, was converted into a mosque, which still exists under the name Masjid al-Jala (the Mosque of the Expulsion).

Among the many indignities to which the Jews of Yemen were constantly subjected was the throwing of stones at them by Muslim children, a practice that was religiously sanctioned. When Turkish officials (the Turks occupied Yemen in 1872) asked an assembly of Muslim leaders to see that this practice be stopped, an elderly Muslim scholar responded that throwing rocks at Jews was an Ada, an old religious custom, and thus it was unlawful to forbid it.

The greatest recurrent suffering that Yemenite Jews experienced was th e forced conversion to Islam of Jewish children whose fathers had died. This was practiced until the Jews fled Yemen in 1948, and was also based upon Islamic doctrine. Muhammad was believed to have said, "Everyone is born in a state of natural religion [Islam]. It is only his parents who make a Jew or Christian out of him." Accordingly, a person should grow up in the "natural religion" of Islam.

When a Jewish father died, there was often a "race" between Jewish communal leaders who sought to place the man's children with Jewish parents and the Muslim authorities who wanted to convert the children to Islam and place them in Muslim homes (in the Yemenite Islamic culture it would appear that the surviving mother was regarded as irrelevant). The Jews often lost. Goitein reports that "many families arrived in Israel with one or more of their children lost to them, and I have heard of some widows who have been bereaved in this way of all their offspring."

Yet as persecuted as the Yemenite Jews were, they were also denied the right to leave the country.

By the nineteenth century, the Jews' situation under Islam went from degradation to being recurrent victims of violence - as these examples from Jewish life in Egypt, Syria, and Palestine illustrate.

Egypt

In his authoritative book, An Account of the Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyyptisns, Edward Lane wrote that, at the time of his study (1833-35), the Jews were living "under a less oppressive government in Egypt than in any other country of the Turkish Empire." He added, however, that the Jews "are held in the utmost contempt and abhorrence by the Muslims in general." Lane explained: "Not long ago, they used often to be jostled in the streets of Cairo, and sometimes beaten merely for passing on the right hand of a Muslim. At present, they are less oppressed; but still they scarcely ever dare to utter a word of abuse when reviled or beaten unjustly by the meanest Arab or Turk; for many a Jew has been put to death upon a false and malicious accusation of uttering idsrespectful words against the Kuran (sic] or the Prophet. It is common to hear an Arab abuse his jaded ass, and after applying to him various opprobrious epithets, end by calling the beast a Jew.

That this was the Jewish situation in Egypt, "a less oppressive government" than elsewhere in the Muslim Arab world, tells us a great deal about Muslim antisemitism in the nineteenth century - prior to the Zionist movement.

Syria

In 1840, some French Catholics introduced the blood libel into the Arab world. After a Capuchin monk in Damascus vanished, Ratti-Mention, the local French consul, told police authorities that the Jews probably had murdered him to procure his blood for a religious ritual. Several Damascus Jews were then arrested, and under torture, oneo f them "confessed" that leaders of the Jewish community had planned the monk's murder. Many other Jews were then arrested, and under torture more such confessions were obtained. French officials pressured Syria'sruler, Muhammad Ali, to try the arrested men, and it was only after an international protest organized by Jewish communities throughout the world that the Jews who survived their tortures were released.

The blood libel immediately became popular among Muslims, who attacked Jews as drinkers of Muslim blood in Aleppo, Syria, in 1853, Damascus again, in 1848 and 1890, Cairo in 1844 and 1901-2, and Alexandria in 1870 and 1881.

The blood libel played a decisive role in unsettling the lives of nineteenth-century Syrian Jews, and since then it has been repeatedly utilized in Arab anti-Jewish writings.

Palestine

Jews have lived continuously as a community in Palestine since approximately 1200 BCE. The only independent states ever to exist in Palestine have been Jewish. After the destruction of the second Jewish state in 70 CE and the suppression of the Bar Kochba revolt in 135 CE, Jews always maintained a presence in Palestine, awaiting the reestablishment of the Jewish state. But these Jews often had to live under degrading conditions.

In nineteenth-century Palestine, which was under Ottoman Muslim rule, Jews had to walk past Muslims on their left, as the left is identified with Satan, and they always had to yield the right of way to a Muslim, by "stepping into the street and letting him pass." Failure to abide by these degrading customs often provoked a violent response.

In Palestine as elsewhere, Jews had to avoid anything that could remind Arabs of Judaism; therefore, synagogues could be located only in hidden, remote areas, and Jews could pray only in muted voices. In addition, despite the widespread poverty among Palestinian Jews, they had to pay a host of special protection taxes (in actuality, a form of extortion). For example, Jews paid one hundred pounds a year to the Muslim villagers of Siloam (just outside Jerusalem) not to disturb the graves at the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, and fifty pounds a year to the Ta'amra Arabs not to deface the Tomb of Rachel on the road to Bethlehem. They also had to pay ten pounds annually to Sheik Abu Gosh to to molest Jewish travelers on the road to Jerusalem, even though the Turkish authorities were already paying him to maintain order on that road.

These anti-Jewish laws, taxes, and practices had a rather intimidating effect on the Jews. The British consul James Finn, who lived in Jerusalem in the 1850s, described in his book Stirring Times how "Arab merchants would dump their unsold wares on their Jewish neighbors and bill them, safe in the knowledge that the Jews so feared them that they would not dare return the items or deny their purchase."

Muslim antisemitism continued to be brutally expressed through the twentieth century. Albert Memmi, the noted French-Jewish novelist, who grew up in North Africa, cites a few examples:

"In Morocco in 1907, a huge massacre of Jews took place in Casablanca, along with the usual embellishments - rape, women carried away into the mountains, hundreds of homes and shops burned, etc....In 1912 a big massacre in Fez...In Algeria in 1934, massacre in Constantine, twenty-four people killed, dozens and dozens of others seriously wounded....In Aden in 1946...over one hundred people dead and seventy-six wounded, and two-thirds of the stores sacked and burned....In June, 1941, in Iraq, six hundred people killed, one thousand seriously wounded, looting, rapes, arson, one thousand houses destroyed, six hundred stores looted....[In Libya]: November 4th and 5th, 1945, massacre in Tripoli; November 6th and 7th in Zanzour, Zaouia, Foussaber, Ziltain, etc: girls and women raped in front of their families, the stomachs of pregnant women slashed open, the infants ripped out of them, children smashed with crowbars....All this can be found in the newspapers of the time, including the local Arab papers."

Memmi summarizes the Jewish status under Islam in the twentieth century: "Roughly speaking and in the best of cases, the Jew is protected like a dog which is part of man's property, but if he raises his head or acts like a man, then he must be beaten so that he will always remember his status."

It is the Jews' refusal to accept an unequal, inferior status that lies at the heart of the Arab-Muslim hatred for Israel. (It is this, not the Palestinian refugee issue, that has been the basis of Muslim antisemitism. Without minimizing the personal difficulties of the Palestinians, as Memmi notes [on page 35 of his book Jews and Arabs]: "The Palestinian Arabs' misfortune is having been moved about thirty miles within one vast Arab nation.") As Yehoshafat Harkabi, a leading scholar of the Arab world's attitude toward Israel, put it: "The existence of the Jews was not a provocation to Islam...as long as Jews were subordinate or degraded. But a Jewish state is incompatible with the view of Jews as humiliated or wretched." The call for a Palestinian Arab state in place of Israel is for a state in which once again 'Islam dominates and is not dominated."

This hatred of Jewish nationalism was so intense that during World War II, most Arab leaders were pro-Nazi. Among them was the head of the Muslims in Palestine, the mufti Haj Amin el-Husseini (who in 1929 had helped organize the large-scale murders of the ultra-Orthodox, non-Zionist Jews of Hebron).

An ardent supporter of Hitler, the mufti spent much of the war in Nazi Germany; on November 2, 1943, at a time when the Nazis were murdering thousands of Jews daily, the mufti declared in a speech: "The overwhelming egoism which lies in the character of Jews, their unworthy belief that they are God's chosen nation and their assertion that all was created for them and that other peoples are animals...[makes them] in capable of being trusted. They cannot mix with any other nation but live as parasites among the nations, suck out their blood, embezzle their property, corrupt their morals....The divine anger and curse that the Holy Koran mentions with reference to the Jews is because of this unique character of the Jews."

Though many Arab nations formally declared war against Germany in 1945, when German defeat was imminent, in order to be eligible for entry into the United Nations, extensive Arab sympathy with the Nazis continued even after Germany's surrender. The Egyptians and Syrians long welcomed Nazis to their countries, offering them the opportunity to further implement the "Final Solution," by assisting in their efforts to destroy Israel and wipe out the Jewish community living there.

Among many Arabs the Holocaust has come to be regarded with nostalgia. On August 17, 1956, the French newspaper Le Mongde quoted the government-controlled Damascus daily Al-Manar as observing, "One should not forget that, in contrast to Europe, Hitler occupied an honored place in the Arab world....[Journalists} are mistaken if they think that by calling Nasser Hitler, they are hurting us. On the contrary, his name makes us proud. Long live Hitler, the Nazi who struck at the heart of our enemies. Long live the Hitler [i.e., Nasser] of the Arab world."

On June 9, 1960, after Israeli agents captured Adolf Eichmann, the Nazi official who had supervised the murder of six million Jews, the Beirut daily Al-Anwar carried a cartoon depicting Eichmann speaking with Israeli Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. Said Ben-Gurion: "You deserve the death penalty because you killed six million Jews." Responded Eichmann: "There are many who say I deserve the death penalty because I didn't manage to kill the rest."

On April 24, 1961, the Jordanian English-language daily Jerusalem Times published an "Open Letter to Eichmann," which concluded, "But be brave, Eichmann, find solace in the fact that this trial will one day culminate in the liquidation of the remaining six million to avenge your blood." At the UN sponsored "Conference Against Racism" in September 2001, an Arab pamphlet displayed at the Durban Exhibition Center featured a picture of Adolf Hitler with the caption, "If I had won the war there would be no...Palestinian blood lost."

Arab Jew-hatred also has brought about the resurrection of the blood libel. In 1962, the Egyptian Ministry of Education reissued Talmudic Sacrifices by Habib Faris, a book originally published in Cairo in 1890. The editor notes in his introduction that the book constitutes "an explicit documentation of indictment, based upon clear-cut evidence that the Jewish people permitted the shedding of blood as a religious duty enjoined in the Talmud."

On April 24, 1970, Fatah radio, under the leadership of Yasir Arafat, broadcast, "Reports from the captured homeland tell that the Zionist enemy has begun to kidnap small children from the streets. Afterwards the occupying forces take the blood of the children and throw away their empty bodies. The inhabitants of Gaza have seen this with their own eyes."

Even more disturbing, the blood libel accusations have been made by the most prominent figures within the Arab world. In November 1973, the late King Faisal of Saudi Arabia said that it was necessary to understand the Jewish religious obligation to obtain non-Jewish blood in order to comprehend the crimes of Zionism. A decade later, in 1984, the Saudi Arabian delegate to the UN Human Rights Commission Conference on religious tolerance, Marouf al-Dawalibi, told the commission, "The Talmud says that if a Jew does not drink every year the blood of a non-Jewish man, he will be damned for eternity." In The Matzah of Zion, a book that has remained in print since its publication in 1983, Mustafa Tlas, the Syrian Defense Minister since 1972, wrote, "The Jew can kill you and take your blood in order to make his Zionist bread." A 2000 article about Tlas's book in Al-Ahram, Egypt's largest, and government-controlled, newspaper, reported, "The Bestial drive to knead Passover matzahs with the blood of non-Jews is [confirmed] in the records of the Palestinian police where there are many recorded cases of the bodies of Arab children who had disappeared without being found, torn to pieces, without a single drop of blood. The most reasonable explanation is that the blood was taken to be used in matzahs to be devoured during Passover." As one American journalist commented: "If this is 'the most reasonable explanation," can you imagine an unreasonable one?" The Al-Ahram article went on to report that an Egyptian movie company is planning to shoot a multimillion dollar film version of The Matzah of Zion, which will retell, as truth, the story of the Damascus blood libel.

And still the blood libel goes on. A 2001 cartoon in the Jordanian newspaper Al-Dustour depicts an Israeli soldier presenting his mother with a Mother's Day gift of a bottle containing the blood of a Palestinian child. At about the same time (November 2001), Abu Dhabi Television depicted a caricature of Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon preparing to drink a cup of blood taken from a Palestinian. A March 10, 2002, article in Saudi Arabia's Al-Riyadh, the government-controlled newspaper, by Dr. Umayma Ahmad Al-Jalahma of King Faisal University, creates a new twist to this ancient libel, claiming that Jews use blood for Purim pastry and not just for Passover matzo: "Let us now examine how the victims' blood is spilled. For this, a needle-studded barrel is used; this is a kind of barrel, about the size of the human body, with extremely sharp needles set in it on all sides. [These needles] pierce the victim's body, from the moment he is placed in the barrel. These needles do the job, and the victim's blood drips from him very slowly. Thus, the victim suffers dreadful torment - torment that affords the Jewish vampires great delight as they carefully monitor every detail of the blood-shedding with pleasure and love that are difficult to comprehend."

Arab Muslims have also reached back to classical themes of Islamic antisemitism to attack the Jews and Israel. Many Arab speakers and publications echo Muhammad's charge in the Koran (5:82) that the Jews are the greatest enemies of humankind. For example, an Egyptian textbook, published in 1966 for use in teachers' seminars, taught that Jews (not only Israelis) are the "monsters of mankind [and] a nation of beasts."

Perhaps the favorite antisemitic publication in the Arab world for over fifty years has been The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.. In an interview with the editor of the Indian magazine Blitz, on October 4, 1958, President Gamal Abdel Nasser of Egypt praised the Protocols: "I wonder if you have read a book called 'Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.' It is very important that you should read it. I will give you an English copy. It proves clearly, to quote from the Protocols, that 'three hundred Zionists, each of whom knows all the others, govern the fate of the European continents and they elect their successors from their entourage."

The late King Faisal of Saudi Arabia gave copies of the Protocols to the guests of his regime. When he presented the Protocols, along with an anthology of antisemitic writings, to French journalists who accompanied French Foreign Minister Michel Jobert on his visit to Saudi Arabia in January 1974, "Saudi officials noted that these were the king's favorite books."

Article 32 of the 1988 Palestinian Hamas (the Islamic Resistance Movement) Covenant claims that the Zionist "scheme" foe takeover of the Arab world "has been laid out in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, and their present [conduct] is the best proof of what is said there." Hamas literature repeatedly accuses Jews of controlling the world's wealth and its most important media, and using them to promote Jewish and Zionist interests, even of having established the League of Nations in the 1920s "in order to rule the world."

Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, the official newspaper of the Palestinian Authority (and therefore supposedly less extreme than Hamas), regularly contains references to the Protocols. Thus, even during the height of the Oslo peace process the paper published the following: "It is important to conduct the conflict according to the foundations which both are leaning on...particularly the Jews...such as the Torah, the Talmud, and the Protocols...This conflict resembles the conflict between men and Satan." At about the same time in Egypt, Al-Ahram, the country's largest newspaper, reported, "A compilation of the investigative' work of four reporters on Jewish control of the world states that Jews have become the political decision-makers and control the media in most capitals of the world (Washington, Paris, London, Berlin, Athens, Ankara)." As the journalist Andrew Sullivan comments, "It is worth noting that every word Al Ahram prints is vetted and approved by the Egyptian government, a regime to which the United States - i.e., you and I - contributed $2 billion a year."

It is perhaps no surprise that, as of 2002, over sixty editions of the Protocols are being sold throughout the Arab world, and this libelous "warrant for genocide" is probably more widely distributed today than at any other time in its history. In 2002, the New York Times, in a front-page story, reported that a major Egyptian television station was about  to launch a forty-one-episode TV series based on the Protocols (complete with Jewish villains dressed in black hats, side curls, and beards) to run before and during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

The Islamic world today has combined antisemitic motifs from Nazism and medieval Christendom, as well as from its own tradition. This potent combination has made the Arabs the major source of antisemitic publications in the world today. And as in other forms of antisemitism, in the words of Yehoshafat Harkabi, "the evil in the Jews is ascribed not to race or blood, but to their spiritual character and religion." Thus, when Pakistani Islamic terrorists kidnapped Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in January 2002, they forced Pearl to say, "I am a Jew," (and videotaped him doing so) before slitting his throat.

Only through an understanding of the deep theological roots of Muslim antisemitism and an awareness of its continuous history can present-day Muslim hatred of Israel be understood. Only then does one recognize how false are the claims of Israel's enemies that prior to Zionism, Jews and Muslims lived in harmony and that neither Islam nor Muslims have ever harbored Jew-hatred. The creation of the Jewish state in no way created Muslim Jew-hatred; it merely intensified it and gave it a new focus.

So long as the Jews acknowledged their inferior status among Muslims, they were humiliated but allowed to exist. But once the Jews decided to reject their inferior status, to become sovereign after centuries of servitude, and worst of all, to now govern some Muslims in a land where the Jews had so long been governed, their existence was no longer tolerable. Hence the passionate Arab Muslim hatred of Israel and Zionism, a hatred that entirely transcends political antagonisms. Hence the widespread Muslim call not merely for a military defeat of Israel, but for its annihilation.

As so often in Jewish history, it is the Jewish nation's existence that arouses hatred and needs to be ended. Despite peace treaties between Israel and Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994), for most Muslims the source of their hatred remains the Jewish sate's existence, not its policies, nor even its borders.

The Muslim and Arab claim that the issue is anti-Zionism rather than antisemitism really means that so long as the Jews adhere to their dhimmi status in Arab Muslim nations, their existence as individuals is acceptable. But for a Jew to aspire to equality among Muslims, for a Jew to aspire to a status higher than "humiliation and wretchedness," is to aspire too high."

- Why the Jews? The Reason for Antisemitism, Dennis Prager and Joseph Telushkin, chapter nine

[thealexchen]

From each of the LIS games - did you have a least fav episode from each of the games?

LiS1: "Polarized." It was obvious how thin the budget was stretched for DN to reuse so many assets and environments. I wasn't a fan of the surrealist horror imagery of the nightmare and I don't think it conveyed Max's moral dilemma as well as it could've.

BtS: "Hell is Empty" for similar reasons. The entire Sera plot felt very soap opera-y and moments like Rachel getting stabbed and Chloe being kicked in the head just felt like gratuitous violence to make the plot more exciting. LiS1 could be violent, but it never lingered on blood or characters' pain for shock value.

LiS2: "Faith" was SO FRUSTRATING!!! Idk what bone DN has to pick with Christianity but a fanatical religious cult was NOT it. I know they were trying to explore the narrative possibilities of a villain taking advantage of Daniel's power for their own gain since telekinesis is much more visible than time travel, but this subplot veers so far away from the grounded, relatable topics that LiS1 was known for that I close to not really caring about anything anymore. I was also severely disappointed how much DN leaned into gratuitous racial violence when they were more tasteful about it in LiS1: it is painful to watch Sean either be humiliated by singing in Spanish or have his ribs kicked in until he's reduced to screaming alone in the car, and it doesn't impart any message other than "racism is bad." It's painful to watch a sunburnt Sean hitchhike across the desert, Daniel reject him after all his sacrifices, and Sean get fucking pistol-whipped by a grown-ass man until he's bleeding while the church is burning down. It's honestly ridiculous how much he has to suffer in this episode for literally no reason. I get that Daniel's brainwashed but making him so uncooperative and so ungrateful is not going to make more attached to him, DN!!! There were so many other ways to reunite the brothers with Karen than... whatever this was.

LiSTC: "Lanterns" (Chapter 2) was so disappointingly short and it felt like nothing happened. At least in "Flicker" (Chapter 4) you had the fun Spring Fest, the funny scene where Alex is pushed onstage to perform, and the thrill of romancing either Steph or Ryan. But in "Lanterns," it was just a lot of Alex comforting others when she should be allowing herself to grieve, talking to Eleanor and Charlotte, dealing with Mac, talking to Ryan, and then the episode just... ends.

DE: Having to choose whether Chloe died or they broke up just sucks.

[pissmoon]

3 types of tumblr christians:

- picrew icon with 20 ships listed in their bio talking about how jesus was a relatable queer bean in some youth pastor manner

- qanon traddie/libertarian instagram reels comment section reject from bumfucksville ohio who converted to orthodox christianity/catholicism because wojacks told him to

- dasha wannabe lana stan pro ana girlies whose entire identity is 'problematic tumblrna' and are like 'christianity is so countercultural' (possibly pickmes for type no 2 but wont admit it)