#and 3 out of 10 times it's a philosophical point that was directly involved in the Protestant Reformation or articulated by Calvin

[wardensantoineandevka]

when someone on this website negatively calls a mentality or a philosophical framework or something "very Catholic", like 7 out of 10 times it's actually something antithetical to Catholic philosophy and doctrine and is actually very Protestant

[aion-rsa]

15 Underrated Game Boy Advance Games

https://ift.tt/3vFzwrI

When the Game Boy Advance hit shelves in Japan on March 21, 2001, Nintendo was still riding the incredible success of the original Game Boy. After more than a decade of the Game Boy’s handheld dominance, though, gamers eagerly awaited the next evolution in portable gaming. The GBA delivered that evolution.

In fact, many features we now take for granted in portables like the Switch can be traced back to the GBA. The addition of shoulder buttons, full 32-bit color graphics, and eventually even built-in backlighting with the 2003 release of the Game Boy Advance SP were all lauded as welcome innovations and improvements. Sadly, the GBA’s time in the sun was remarkably short. Pressured by the upcoming release of the Sony PSP, Nintendo released the GBA’s successor, the Nintendo DS, less than four years after the launch of the GBA.

Yet, GBA games continued to be released all the way into 2008. The GBA is still fondly remembered for its excellent ports of games like Super Mario World and The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and for helping launch new franchises like Mega Man Zero and Golden Sun, but its library was much more than just those major titles. Dig a little deeper into it and you’ll find that the GBA was also home to some truly excellent hidden gems that are still worth checking out 20 years later.

15. Urban Yeti!

2002 | Cave Barn Studios

Keep in mind that in the early 2000s, developing games for the GBA was much cheaper than making a console game. Steam wasn’t a thing yet, and cell phones could barely run Snake. So, if you were an ambitious young developer with a goofy idea and a dream, your best bet for making it happen was to put it on Nintendo’s handheld. 

Urban Yeti! is the type of weird, charming experience that typically only finds a cult audience on PCs nowadays. You play from a top-down perspective as the titular Yeti who is looking for his mate in a small city. Most of the time, the game plays like the first two Grand Theft Auto games with even more chances to punch random pedestrians. More importantly, finding a boombox starts a dancing freak out that clears the screen of enemies, and “missions” take the form of minigames inspired by titles like Toobin’ and Root Beer Tapper.

It’s weird and short, but always hilarious, and it’s unfortunately become increasingly obscure since its release.

14. Lady Sia 

2001 | RFX Interactive

Most of the platformers on the GBA were either fantastic SNES ports or dreadful licensed fare, but a few original titles do stand out. The first thing you’ll probably notice about Lady Sia is that it looks great. Its big, bright graphics were a perfect fit for the GBA’s small screen. The gameplay is also surprisingly deep and utilizes combos, magic attacks, and even the ability to shape shift into a sasquatch during boss fights. Yes, this is the second game on the list to feature a playable Bigfoot, but we promise it’s the last.

Lady Sia was fairly well received at the time of its release, and a sequel was even planned in 2003. Sadly, it was canceled due to a lack of funding. 

13. V-Rally 3

2002 | Velez & Dubail

The GBA was released at a time when the vast majority of console games were going full 3D. The GBA, however, was obviously built with 2D pixel games in mind. Those perceived limitations didn’t stop some developers from pushing the limits of what the handheld was capable of, though, as evidenced by the V-Rally 3 team managing to cram fully polygonal cars into the GBA.

Graphically, V-Rally 3 is undoubtedly the best-looking game on the system. Its surprisingly detailed outdoor tracks could easily be mistaken for an N64 game. You can even play the entire career mode in first-person. Thanks to some surprisingly smooth handling, though, V-Rally 3 proves to be much more than just great visuals. It may not look like much compared to modern racers, but it’s still the undisputed pinnacle of racing on the GBA.

12. Car Battler Joe

2002 | Ancient

Car Battler Joe is a decent RPG mixed with awesome car battling sections that elevate it above most of the GBA’s library. The story isn’t great (your father is missing and you have to find him), but the hook is that in this world, cars are a rarity. As such, you have to build your own Mad Max-style vehicle from spare parts found around the world and eventually battle other vehicles as you work to finish your quest.

That concept alone is begging for a sequel or spiritual successor. Sadly, most people have long forgotten about Joe, and even its re-release on the Wii U eShop in 2015 didn’t garner much attention.

11. Kuru Kuru Kururin

2001 | Eighting

Kuru Kuru Kururin is one of those puzzle games that sounds so simple in theory but ends up being surprisingly complex and a lot of fun. You play as a rotating stick (or “helicopter” in the North American version) that must make it to the goal at the end of a series of mazes. You control how quickly the stick rotates, and you’ll need to master that mechanic as the difficulty ramps up significantly in the later levels. This game remains a remarkably addictive experience until the end.

Though Kuru Kuru Kururin‘s core concept boasts nearly universal appeal, the game was only released on the GBA in Japan and Europe. A localized version finally made its way to North America in 2016 through the Wii U eShop, but Nintendo of America seems oddly stubborn about acknowledging the series. Neither of its two sequels ever made it out of Japan. 

10. Sabre Wulf

2004 | Rare

Most gamers say that Rare peaked during the N64 era with a string of successful platformers and shooters, but old-school Rare still managed to squeeze out a handful of classic games for the GBA after the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. Everything gamers love about classic Rare games is on full display in Sabre Wulf: the cutting-edge graphics, tight controls, and the trademark offbeat British sense of humor.

Unfortunately, Sabre Wulf didn’t find much of an audience. Prior to the release of this title, the Sabreman character hadn’t starred in a game in almost 20 years. The updated gameplay apparently didn’t appeal to older fans, and wasn’t innovative enough to attract younger gamers. It’s aged better than many other GBA games, though, and it’s certainly well worth a playthrough now.

9. Zone of the Enders: The Fist of Mars

2002 | Konami

While it was never as successful as Hideo Kojima’s other games, the Zone of the Enders series is still fondly remembered for some of the better action games of the PS2 era. Their unique mecha combat and Kojima’s flair for cinematic storytelling helped those games stand out from a competitive pack.

Unlike its console brethren, The Fist of Mars is a turn-based strategy game. That means it’s not nearly as fast-paced as the other Zone of the Enders games, but there is an aiming reticle for targeting enemies, so this is more action-oriented than the typical strategy game.

While Kojima wasn’t directly involved in the development of The Fist of Mars, the writing is surprisingly strong, hitting all the right dramatic and philosophical notes that mecha fans have come to expect from the genre.

8. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

2003 | Griptonite Games

EA released a couple of solid beat ‘em ups for consoles to coincide with the release of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, but the GBA versions are actually even better than those largely beloved adaptations. Like The Two Towers tie-in released a year prior, The Return of the King is basically Diablo in Middle Earth.

There are a whopping eight different playable characters pulled from the movie. Despite the technical constraints of the GBA, each of those characters plays completely differently. Aragorn is the classic warrior, Legolas is the able-bodied archer, and Gandalf uses magic to fell waves of orcs. They’re even all completely customizable with their own weapons and equipment.

Read more

Games

25 Best Game Boy Advance Games

By Chris Freiberg

Games

Castlevania: Why the Game Boy Advance Games Are Worth Revisiting

By Chris Freiberg

The GBA version of Return of the King still stands out as one of the best Lord of the Rings games ever made, and future games inspired by Tolkien’s books would do well take a few cues from it. 

7. Summon Night: Swordcraft Story

2006 | Flight-Plan

Thanks to lower development costs, the GBA featured many experiments that led to unusual combinations of genres. For instance, whereas many dungeon crawlers are typically slow, plodding affairs, Summon Night: Swordcraft Story sped things up through fast-paced, real-time battles inspired by the Tales of series. Battles in Swordcraft Story story are an absolute joy since you’re doing more than just scrolling through menus.

The sequel, released just a few months later on the GBA, is also worth checking out. Sadly, while the Summon Night main series is still chugging along, the Swordcraft Story subseries looks to be abandoned at this point. 

6. Klonoa: Empire of Dreams

2001 | Namco

For a brief period in the early 2000s, the Klonoa series felt like it was on the verge of becoming a household name. All of the games were praised for their tight, diverse platforming, and the series’ word of mouth was generally strong, but the games just never seemed to reach a large audience.

Empire of Dreams is a side-story set between the events of the two console Klonoa games. It features the same use of the “wind bullet” to capture enemies and the same creative level design as its console big brothers. While it can’t pull off the 3D effects featured in those games, impressive multiplane backgrounds and advanced rotation effects do help it stand out among the GBA’s crowded library of platformers. 

5. Rebelstar: Tactical Command

2005 | Codo Technologies

Don’t be fooled by the Rebelstar name: this is actually an X-Com game through and through. While there’s no base building or resource management in this GBA title, that classic tactical combat against an alien threat that defines the X-Com series can be found here in all its glory. Then again, what else would you expect? Rebelstar was created by the same guy behind X-Com, Julian Gollop.

Of course, this being a GBA game, Rebelstar’s visuals aren’t quite up to par with an X-Com title. In fact, some may find its more cartoony style jarring when paired with this style of gameplay, but Rebelstar certainly makes for a unique experience compared to the other tactics games out there.

4. Yggdra Union

2006 | Sting Entertainment

The final days of any gaming platform are a dark time typically defined by sporadic releases and shovelware. Yet, every now and then, a bright spot appears for those gamers who haven’t yet moved on to the next generation. As a deep mix of tactical RPG mechanics and card battles bolstered by some of the best 2D graphics on the portable, Yggdra Union is one of the better games released in the GBA’s post-DS era.

While the game’s story isn’t great, the regular banter between party members is charming, and there is a lot of content to keep you busy if the gameplay manages to hook you. A Switch port was even released in Japan last year, so keep your fingers crossed that it makes its way stateside. 

3. Drill Dozer

2006 | Game Freak

Game Freak will always be known for the massively successful Pokemon franchise, but the developer has occasionally dabbled in other genres. The best of those experiments has to be Drill Dozer: a game about drilling. Need to go forward? Try drilling. Backward? Also drilling. What about jumping? Yeah, that actually involves drilling, too. It sounds repetitive, but there are so many different ways use to Jill’s Drill Dozer that the mechanic actually never wears out its welcome.

It might be tempting to check out Drill Dozer via emulation, but it’s actually worth tracking down the original cartridge for this one since it’s one of only two GBA games to feature a rumble back in the cart. It adds quite a lot to the experience.

2. Astro Boy: Omega Factor

2004 | Treasure

A handheld game based on an anime that hasn’t been popular in the United States since the ‘60s sounds like a recipe for disaster, but legendary Japanese developer Treasure could do no wrong in the ‘90s and early 2000s. Like most of the games in the Treasure catalog, Astro Boy: Omega Factor features fast arcade gameplay, massive screen-filling special attacks, and some of the most beautiful sprites the GBA could produce.

Though Treasure was once a prolific developer, responsible for classics like Ikaruga and Sin & Punishment, the company has gone quiet in recent years. The studio hasn’t even released a game stateside in the last decade. However, a re-release of this gem could mark a great comeback for the legendary developer if the licensing could be worked out.

1. Ninja Five-O

2003 | Hudson Soft

Ninja Five-O should have been a system seller for the GBA. The game feels like a lost classic from the 16-bit era. It’s a beautiful combination of Ninja Gaiden and Bionic Commando bolstered by tight controls and an over-the-top story about a magic-wielding ninja who is also a cop. Anyone who has managed to track down a copy swears up and down that it’s one of the very best experiences on the handheld.

cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "106e33c0-3911-473c-b599-b1426db57530", }).render("0270c398a82f44f49c23c16122516796"); });

Yet, Ninja Five-O was set up to fail from the start. It’s unknown how many copies were made, but it was nearly impossible to find one at the time of its release. Even though the game was developed in Japan, it was never even released there. Media outlets also barely covered it. Yet, the legend of Joe Osugi has only grown over the years, with complete copies of this game regularly selling on eBay for around $1,000. Even an authentic standalone cartridge will set you back several hundred dollars. You know what, though? It’s actually one of the few rare games that may be worth the price. It really is as good as you’ve heard.

The post 15 Underrated Game Boy Advance Games appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/3vHGg8f

[communisticrevolution]

I wrote another essay about homoeroticism - this one’s on The Great Gatsby

I’m not sure if anyone cares about this because I can’t envision The Great Gatsby fandom being as desperate for such content as the Lord of the Flies one, but I hope that anyone who can be bothered to read enjoys it! Thank you for all the positive feedback, and check out The Great Gatsby if you haven’t already :))

-

Although on a purely superficial level, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is a blatantly obvious examination of the American Dream, the shallowness of the upper classes, and the underlying corruption and hedonism perpetually underpinning affluent 1920s society, an alternative and previously analysed reading of the novel lies partially below the surface, yet evident enough to possess a significant critical following. This theme is, undeniably, homoeroticism, perhaps hidden and coded implicitly within the text to disguise still criminalised components, but crucially important, particularly from the perspective of understanding Nick Carraway’s narration, and the nature of his conspicuous bias towards Jay Gatsby which skews his reliability significantly when recognised by the reader. Despite his proclamation at the end of Chapter 3 stating that his ‘cardinal virtue’ is that he is ‘one of the few honest people that I have (he has) ever known,’ from the beginning of his subjective account of events, his descriptions of others suggest that his statement of being ‘inclined to reserve all judgments’ on the first page is contradicted by his profiling of others, both physically and in regards to their personalities. This is almost relentless and lacking in exclusive scrutiny, offering an insight which appears to be detached, consequently lulling the reader into believing Carraway’s points surrounding his allegedly objectively accurate retelling of the summer – however, even before this, Nick admits the one major and vital fault of his perception, which is Gatsby. Even as it becomes clear to all parties that Gatsby is, in many ways, extremely morally flawed (he is an illegal bootlegger by profession, he is obsessive and somewhat manipulative of Daisy, he facilitates and encourages her infidelity, he is fixated on materialistic wealth, and he frequently lacks consideration for others if it ensures his ability to pursue his ambitions), to Nick, he represents ‘everything for which I have (he has) unaffected scorn.’ For our narrator, this character is symbolic of hope, success, and romance, and when the inherently decaying American Dream inevitably collapses, as exhibited by Gatsby’s murder towards the end of the plot, Nick’s portrayal in hindsight is not altered by Jay’s faults, but by his positive attributes. Prior to a genuine introduction with a scene involving the two, Nick writes that ‘there was something gorgeous about him, some heightened sensitivity to the promises of life,’ and this permeates all. Regardless of whether or not the assumption is made that Nick is describing merely Gatsby’s metaphorical and figurative role in the story, it is clear since the book commences that his perception of the titular man could, in many ways, be interpreted as one of intense passion and attraction, far beyond the platonic relationships he has with other individuals, and later extending to him conveying the physical beauty that is highly appealing to him concerning Gatsby. Even Nick’s love interest, Jordan Baker, is not exempt from his reproval, and is, in fact, articulated to be ‘dishonest,’ with negative and emotionally lacklustre depictions that prompt questions surrounding the easily debatable strength and plausibility of his romantic interest in her.

One major scene that is consistently referenced and considered to be majorly indicative of Nick’s sexual orientation occurs very early on into the novel towards the end of Chapter 2 – it is incredibly subtle and often overlooked especially by first time readers due to the cryptic nature of its language and the seemingly comparatively unimportant series of events that ensue. In fact, one could argue that there is generally very little need to include such a scene, and thus contemplate why Fitzgerald decides to do so regardless. Usually, from a literary perspective, for something to be rendered worthy of inclusion, it must serve to develop plot, characters, or a specific setting and atmosphere in adherence to overriding themes, and the focus upon Nick, still as a relatively submissive bystander who is simultaneously immersed enough to offer a narrative insight, indicates that the only feasible value available must be revolving around his character development. The plot is not advanced as the occurrences are entirely overlooked and left with no true contextual repercussions, and the setting at this point is not focal nor enhanced with adjectives and figurative language that would suggest a distinct relationship between the whole surrounding set of dates and the West and East Egg regions which become recurring areas with allocated symbolic values, and ergo this being the reason.

Here, most notably, Fitzgerald must be attempting to prove or infer something about Nick Carraway, which I believe, largely due to substantial implicit evidence within the text, to be referring primarily to one of the many factors culminating to formulate his broad unreliability; a sense of sexual ambiguity, and the blatantly apparent evasion and withholding of information, but still without avoidance of the subject in its entirety, implied by the use of ellipses to signify both time passing and suppressed detailing of the true events. In regards to homoerotic subtext, this component potentially begins with the description of Mr McKee, the character that Nick purportedly has an affair with, as ‘pale’ and ‘feminine’ upon first encounter, two adjectives directly referencing a lack of masculinity and, in turn, the stereotype of effeminate fragility typically associated with homosexual men. His involvement in the ‘’artistic game’’ has, again, subtextual connotations with homosexual and, possibly to a lesser extent, bisexual males, as the following of artistic pursuits was perceived to be more traditionally feminine, and perhaps later adhering to forms of aestheticism and the almost synonymously analogous and prominent figure of Oscar Wilde, who was and still is renowned for both aesthetic and philosophical reasons and his historical persecution for gross indecency. With this evocation of Mr McKee in mind, suggesting his lack of conformity to societal norms through sexual deviation, at around 10 o’clock, Nick wipes ‘from his cheek the spot of dried lather’ that had ‘been bothering him’ over the course of the evening, a remarkably intimate gesture, and an otherwise broadly inexplicable fixation within the context of this man’s likely homosexuality. Later, Mr McKee proceeds to leave the room, and Nick follows without hesitation, implying almost a non-verbal communication which results in the scene in the elevator, laden with highly euphemistic linguistic choices. Mr McKee uses the command ‘Come to lunch with me some day’ in a manner reminiscent of an individual asking another out in a cryptically heteronormative tone, coupled with the pair ‘groaning’ down the elevator, a verb synonymous with overtly sexual onomatopoeia. Nick agrees, saying he’ll ‘be glad to,’ perhaps an admission to both the reader and Mr McKee that the feeling implied by the latter is to some extent reciprocated, indicating that Nick himself is not heterosexual. Just before this, a ‘lever’ is incorporated which Mr McKee is shunned for allegedly touching, seemingly a clear phallic symbol due to its vague resemblance of a penis, reinforcing the layers of homoerotism and the ambiance leading up to a romantic or sexual encounter involving the two characters that have distanced themselves from the overwhelming group, potentially a metaphor for the exclusion and separation of the LGBT community necessary for protection in an intolerant outside world. This scenario, abruptly led and finished with a series of ellipses, concludes with Nick, our narrator, ‘standing beside his (Mr McKee’s) bed,’ as Mr McKee is ‘sitting up between the sheets, clad in his underwear, with a great portfolio in his hands.’ Nick ends up at a train station waiting for the ‘four o’ clock train,’ leaving what truly happened with Mr McKee largely a mystery, but the aforementioned’s nakedness and the presence of a bed, as well as the feasibly metaphorical ‘portfolio,’ all indicate that a sexual encounter took place between the two, as little other explanation is given for the passing of six hours shown to have been almost exclusively in each other’s company. As always, Nick’s bystander-esque lack of involvement even in situations centring predominantly around him leaves room for plausible deniability; maybe the scene is exclusively a reflection on Mr McKee’s sexual orientation and subsequent moral perversion, or, more significantly, Nick’s willingness to go along with anything without reaffirming his own beliefs or desires, painting him as a fully submissive and detached narrator. Regardless, this relatively brief passage is undeniably dense in highly homoerotic content, portraying Nick largely as a closeted homosexual (or simply a heterosexual man who had a short and sexually intimate relationship with someone of the same gender, but this is far more difficult to believe in the surrounding circumstances), with this conveying an image of both and unreliable narrator and one who could conceivably be infatuated with the protagonist (Gatsby).

Nick’s relationship with Gatsby is vital throughout the novel, in both plot and in how Nick chooses and is capable of narrating a story focusing mainly upon the latter – one which is, evidently, biased invariably in his favour, even amidst ethical decay and his eventual death, which appears to influence Nick far more profoundly than the others, all of whom decide to abandon Gatsby by not attending his funeral as the book comes to a close. Despite the brevity of the period in which they interact and become extremely close, Nick organises the majority of Gatsby’s funeral, as previously mentioned, is loyal to him throughout with consistently lacking personal gain, offers him advice and support, and after his death, decides to write a memoir framing him in an overwhelmingly positive and complimentary manner, one which is likely far from the reality of his existence and impact upon others. Physically, Nick is evidently immensely attracted to Gatsby; when his love interest is given an unenthusiastic paragraph with phrases including ‘I enjoyed looking at her’ and emphasis upon her more masculine features and attributes (‘small-breasted,’ and ‘like a young cadet’), Gatsby’s intrigue is delivered impactfully, with several sentences dedicated to his smile alone, which is stated to have had ‘a quality of eternal reassurance in it.’ The last interaction between Nick and Jay consists of a long and emotional confession delivered by the latter, involving the true history of his origins, a story which he escapes explicitly mentioning, denies, and formulates lies to detract from right up until the end of the text, signifying that the bond established between both men may even be greater than the romanticised superficiality of Gatsby’s infatuation and fixation with Daisy. Whether or not Gatsby ever truly loved her is easy to speculate, with the most common theory being that he was simply enamoured with an idea that he had attached to her for his own sanity and aspirations – in a more uncommon homosexual reading of Gatsby, perhaps he ascribes an idea of the American Dream, wealth, success, and integration with the ‘old-money’ elite to her as a means of distracting from his real sexual and romantic interests, although this is admittedly far from substantiated. Nick finishes the dialogue with allegedly the ‘only compliment I (he) ever gave him,’ which is stated as written: ‘’They’re a rotten crowd,’ I shouted across the lawn. ‘You’re worth the whole damn bunch put together.’ Gatsby responds to this with his ‘radiant and understanding smile,’ one glimpse of a world in which Nick’s love for him may have not been so apparently unrequited, and potentially a revelation into the growing mutuality of what could have been a romance in different circumstances. Nick’s description of Gatsby and his actions is close to being perpetually complimentary, and usually resumes to this position quickly when it falters, so this reinforces his unreliability and a degree of obliviousness to his own feelings and emotions, whilst simultaneously demonstrating to the reader what is already salient at most levels of observance – that Nick views Gatsby and his worth above all others, including his friend of many years, Tom, his cousin, Daisy, and his romantic interest, Jordan. This level of attraction and love is usually reserved to forms outside of what is known to be platonic, suggesting that what Nick feels for Gatsby also transcends friendship. In Tom and Nick’s last interaction, Tom states that Gatsby ‘threw dust into your (Nick’s) eyes just like he did in Daisy’s,’ conveying that he might himself have deemed Nick and Gatsby’s relationship to be of a similar nature to Daisy and Gatsby’s. Gatsby ‘throwing dust’ into her eyes was a way of performing a romantic illusion that caused her to fall in love with him, implying that Nick also fell in love with Gatsby as he became similarly enchanted by his hope, dedication, and beauty, leading into his romanticised retelling of the man himself.

Ultimately, I personally believe that homoeroticism is definitely existing and, at times, prevalent within The Great Gatsby, and that above all, it is critical to Nick’s characterisation and generating an acceptable explanation of his behaviour and actions, as well as his identity as a character. Many of his attributes, such as his submission and tendency to behave as a bystander in his own life and social interactions, could be found as possessing origins in both a desire to fit in as a social chameleon and avoid extreme scrutiny under the masculine ideal, and also in the repressed identity exhibited by a vast number of sexual minorities in communities and historical contexts of heightened intolerance, where it would be necessary for non-heterosexual individuals to conform to norms and avoid confrontation. In Chapter 7, as Nick remembers that it is his birthday, he reflects on ‘the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know,’ a poignant evaluation to finish this essay with – adhering to his consistent writing style and internal monologue, Nick focuses on men here, not women, avoiding the topic of getting a wife and settling down into the rhythm of 1920s America, and instead accentuating his declining list of opportunities in romantic prospects, as well as concentrating on the ‘promise of loneliness’ that homosexuality undoubtedly was prior to at the very least decriminalisation. He will remain incapable of finding love and fulfilment in the sense that others can with relative ease, and he will continue to restrict his personal identity and expression for safety in the aftermath of the death of arguably his only true friend (and genuine romantic interest), with even Gatsby failing to treat him with equal respect and admiration. Some argue that the true tragedy of The Great Gatsby lies in the story of unrequited love detailed by the narrator, and I would not fully dispute this; this great American novel is, on the surface, a story surrounding the corruption of the American Dream, capitalism, disillusionment, and the ethically abhorrent upper classes, but more obscurely, it could potentially be interpreted as an enlightened representation of closeted sexual identity, genuine love (not concerning Daisy and Gatsby), and unreliability in narration.

[soospiritualjourney]

Ego is the enemy by Ryan Holiday

(1) Demosthenes once said that virtue begins with understanding and is fulfilled by courage. We must begin by seeing ourselves and the world in a new way for the first time. Then we must fight to be different and fight to stay different—that’s the hard part. I’m not saying you should repress or crush every ounce of ego in your life—or that doing so is even possible. These are just reminders, moral stories to encourage our better impulses.

(2) The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool- RICHARD FEYNMAN

(3) If ego is the voice that tells us we’re better than we really are, we can say ego inhibits true success by preventing a direct and honest connection to the world around us. One of the early members of Alcoholics Anonymous defined ego as “a conscious separation from.” From what? Everything.

(4) The ways this separation manifests itself negatively are immense: We can’t work with other people if we’ve put up walls. We can’t improve the world if we don’t understand it or ourselves. We can’t take or receive feedback if we are incapable of or uninterested in hearing from outside sources. We can’t recognize opportunities—or create them—if instead of seeing what is in front of us, we live inside our own fantasy. Without an accurate accounting of our own abilities compared to others, what we have is not confidence but delusion. How are we supposed to reach, motivate, or lead other people if we can’t relate to their needs—because we’ve lost touch with our own?

(5) The performance artist Marina Abramović puts it directly: “If you start believing in your greatness, it is the death of your creativity.”

(6) Just one thing keeps ego around—comfort. Pursuing great work—whether it is in sports or art or business—is often terrifying. Ego soothes that fear. It’s a salve to that insecurity. Replacing the rational and aware parts of our psyche with bluster and self-absorption, ego tells us what we want to hear, when we want to hear it.

But it is a short-term fix with a long-term consequence.

(7) The aim of that structure is simple: to help you suppress ego early before bad habits take hold, to replace the temptations of ego with humility and discipline when we experience success, and to cultivate strength and fortitude so that when fate turns against you, you’re not wrecked by failure. In short, it will help us be:

* Humble in our aspirations

* Gracious in our success

* Resilient in our failures

(8) The Quaker William Penn observed, “Buildings that lie so exposed to the weather need a good foundation.”

(9) When we remove ego, we’re left with what is real. What replaces ego is humility, yes—but rock-hard humility and confidence. Whereas ego is artificial, this type of confidence can hold weight. Ego is stolen. Confidence is earned. Ego is self-anointed, its swagger is artifice. One is girding yourself, the other gaslighting. It’s the difference between potent and poisonous.

(10) Isocrates - “Practice self-control,” he said, warning Demonicus not to fall under the sway of “temper, pleasure, and pain.” And “abhor flatterers as you would deceivers; for both, if trusted, injure those who trust them.” “Be affable in your relations with those who approach you, and never haughty; for the pride of the arrogant even slaves can hardly endure” and “Be slow in deliberation, but be prompt to carry out your resolves” and that the “best thing which we have in ourselves is good judgment.” Constantly train your intellect, he told him, “for the greatest thing in the smallest compass is a sound mind in a human body.”

Shakespeare

This above all: to thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Farewell. My blessing season this in thee!

Where Isocrates and Shakespeare wished us to be self-contained, self-motivated, and ruled by principle, most of us have been trained to do the opposite. Our cultural values almost try to make us dependent on validation, entitled, and ruled by our emotions. For a generation, parents and teachers have focused on building up everyone’s self-esteem. From there, the themes of our gurus and public figures have been almost exclusively aimed at inspiring, encouraging, and assuring us that we can do whatever we set our minds to. In reality, this makes us weak.

(11) In this phase, you must practice seeing yourself with a little distance, cultivating the ability to get out of your own head. Detachment is a sort of natural ego antidote. It’s easy to be emotionally invested and infatuated with your own work. Any and every narcissist can do that. What is rare is not raw talent, skill, or even confidence, but humility, diligence, and self-awareness.

(12) For your work to have truth in it, it must come from truth. If you want to be more than a flash in the pan, you must be prepared to focus on the long term.

It’s a temptation that exists for everyone—for talk and hype to replace action.

(13) Doing great work is a struggle. It’s draining, it’s demoralizing, it’s frightening—not always, but it can feel that way when we’re deep in the middle of it. We talk to fill the void and the uncertainty.

(14) “A man is worked upon by what he works on,” Frederick Douglass once said. He would know. He’d been a slave, and he saw what it did to everyone involved, including the slaveholders themselves. Once a free man, he saw that the choices people made, about their careers and their lives, had the same effect. What you choose to do with your time and what you choose to do for money works on you. The egocentric path requires, as Boyd knew, many compromises.

(15) To become great and to stay great, they must all know what came before, what is going on now, and what comes next. They must internalize the fundamentals of their domain and what surrounds them, without ossifying or becoming stuck in time.

In our endeavors, we will face complex problems, often in situations we’ve never faced before. Opportunities are not usually deep, virgin pools that require courage and boldness to dive into, but instead are obscured, dusted over, blocked by various forms of resistance. What is really called for in these circumstances is clarity, deliberateness, and methodological determination.

(16) Passion typically masks a weakness. Its breathlessness and impetuousness and franticness are poor substitutes for discipline, for mastery, for strength and purpose and perseverance.

(17) “Whom the gods wish to destroy,” Cyril Connolly famously said, “they first call promising.”

(18) Only you know the race you’re running. That is, unless your ego decides the only way you have value is if you’re better than, have more than, everyone everywhere. More urgently, each one of us has a unique potential and purpose; that means that we’re the only ones who can evaluate and set the terms of our lives. Far too often, we look at other people and make their approval the standard we feel compelled to meet, and as a result, squander our very potential and purpose.

(19) According to Seneca, the Greek word euthymia is one we should think of often: it is the sense of our own path and how to stay on it without getting distracted by all the others that intersect it. In other words, it’s not about beating the other guy. It’s not about having more than the others. It’s about being what you are, and being as good as possible at it, without succumbing to all the things that draw you away from it. It’s about going where you set out to go. About accomplishing the most that you’re capable of in what you choose. That’s it. No more and no less. (By the way, euthymia means “tranquillity” in English.)

(20) It is not enough to have great qualities; we should also have the management of them.

—LA ROCHEFOUCAULD

(21) Feel unprotected against the elements or forces or surroundings. Remind yourself how pointless it is to rage and fight and try to one-up those around you. Go and put yourself in touch with the infinite, and end your conscious separation from the world. Reconcile yourself a bit better with the realities of life. Realize how much came before you, and how only wisps of it remain.

(22) Let the feeling carry you as long as you can. Then when you start to feel better or bigger than, go and do it again.

(23) The historian Shelby Foote observed that “power doesn’t so much corrupt; that’s too simple. It fragments, closes options, mesmerizes.” That’s what ego does. It clouds the mind precisely when it needs to be clear. Sobriety is a counterbalance, a hangover cure—or better, a prevention method.

(24) As Plutarch finely expressed, “The future bears down upon each one of us with all the hazards of the unknown.” The only way out is through.

(25) According to Greene, there are two types of time in our lives: dead time, when people are passive and waiting, and alive time, when people are learning and acting and utilizing every second. Every moment of failure, every moment or situation that we did not deliberately choose or control, presents this choice: Alive time. Dead time.

That’s what so many of us do when we fail or get ourselves into trouble. Lacking the ability to examine ourselves, we reinvest our energy into exactly the patterns of behavior that caused our problems to begin with.

In life, we all get stuck with dead time. Its occurrence isn’t in our control. Its use, on the other hand, is.

(26) As Booker T. Washington most famously put it, “Cast down your bucket where you are.” Make use of what’s around you. Don’t let stubbornness make a bad situation worse.

(27) A dangerous attitude because when someone works on a project—whether it’s a book or a business or otherwise—at a certain point, that thing leaves their hands and enters the realm of the world. It is judged, received, and acted on by other people. It stops being something he controls and it depends on them.

(28) There was an unusual encounter between Alexander the Great and the famous Cynic philosopher Diogenes. Allegedly, Alexander approached Diogenes, who was lying down, enjoying the summer air, and stood over him and asked what he, the most powerful man in the world, might be able to do for this notoriously poor man. Diogenes could have asked for anything. What he requested was epic: “Stop blocking my sun.” Even two thousand years later we can feel exactly where in the solar plexus that must have hit Alexander, a man who always wanted to prove how important he was. As the author Robert Louis Stevenson later observed about this meeting, “It is a sore thing to have labored along and scaled arduous hilltops, and when all is done, find humanity indifferent to your achievement.”

(29) This is why we can’t let externals determine whether something was worth it or not. It’s on us.The world is, after all, indifferent to what we humans “want.” If we persist in wanting, in needing, we are simply setting ourselves up for resentment or worse. Doing the work is enough.

(30) Duris dura franguntur. Hard things are broken by hard things.

The bigger the ego the harder the fall.

(31) Hemingway had his own rock-bottom realizations as a young man. The understanding he took from them is expressed timelessly in his book A Farewell to Arms. He wrote, “The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills.”

(32) The world can show you the truth, but no one can force you to accept it.

(33) “Everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed,” reads John 3:20.

(34) In the end, the only way you can appreciate your progress is to stand on the edge of the hole you dug for yourself, look down inside it, and smile fondly at the bloody claw prints that marked your journey up the walls.

(35) It can ruin your life only if it ruins your character.

—MARCUS AURELIUS

(36) The problem is that when we get our identity tied up in our work, we worry that any kind of failure will then say something bad about us as a person. It’s a fear of taking responsibility, of admitting that we might have messed up. It’s the sunk cost fallacy. And so we throw good money and good life after bad and end up making everything so much worse.

(37) Ego kills what we love. Sometimes, it comes close to killing us too.

(38) “Act with fortitude and honor,” he wrote to a distraught friend in serious financial and legal trouble of the man’s own making. “If you cannot reasonably hope for a favorable extrication, do not plunge deeper. Have the courage to make a full stop.” - Alexander Hamilton

(39) Because you will lose in life. It’s a fact. A doctor has to call time of death at some point. They just do.

Ego says we’re the immovable object, the unstoppable force. This delusion causes the problems. It meets failure and adversity with rule breaking—betting everything on some crazy scheme; doubling down on behind-the-scenes machinations or unlikely Hail Marys—even though that’s what got you to this pain point in the first place.

(40) “He who fears death will never do anything worthy of a living man,” Seneca once said. Alter that: He who will do anything to avoid failure will almost certainly do something worthy of a failure.

The only real failure is abandoning your principles. Killing what you love because you can’t bear to part from it is selfish and stupid. If your reputation can’t absorb a few blows, it wasn’t worth anything in the first place.

(41) And why should we feel anger at the world?

As if the world would notice!

—EURIPIDES

[tritch808]

10 Real Wizards 10.Nicholas Flamel

We have all heard of and maybe even seen real witches that lived among us but when it comes to wizards, we limit them to Harry Potter books. The closest we have ever come to “real” magic is the various magicians we watch on TV. But it’s time for David Blaine and Chris Angel to step aside and make way for these ten wizards that were far from fictional. These men took magic to a very different level and raised more than an eyebrow when spoken about. So, let us take a closer look at these real life wizards and what they did to make it onto this list.

Most Harry Potter fans would know this name. He was the French wizard who created the philosophers stone and was over 600 years old when he knew Dumbledore. Of course, this was just a book and movie. In real life, Flamel was known to have been involved in alchemy. Researchers have written that Flamel indulged in the dark arts while he was travelling to Santiago de Compostela. After he became a wizard, people noticed that Flamel and his wife became extremely wealthy and they concluded that he used his magical powers to do so. While the truth is not really known, people say that his wealth came from the two shops he owned and ran and from his wife’s inheritance. Nicholas Flamel died in the year 1418 but his story is still being told today.

9. Hayyim Samuel Jacob Falk

Rabbi Hayyim Samuel Jacob Falk was born in Germany in the year 1708 but fled to London in fright of being burnt to death. He entered London in the 1940’s and he was instantly known as the Baal Shem of London because of his impressive mystic skills. Apparently he could move objects with his mind and he even once filled a cellar with coal by using a few incantations. It has also been said that the rabbi saved the Great Synagogue in London from a fire just by writing a few words in Hebrew on the pillars. He even gave a magical ring to the Duke of Orleans to ensure that the succession to the throne would remain within the family. The ring was handed down to the Dukes son who eventually became French King Louis Philippe.

8.Paracelsus

Born in 1493 as Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, Paracelsus was a brilliant man who excelled in medicine, astrology, botany and alchemy. He is the person who named zinc and he is responsible for tracking the psychological roots to numerous illnesses. Paracelsus used astronomy along with his medicines to treat his patients and believed that in order for man to have good health, they had to be in harmony with nature. He developed the “Alphabet of the Magi” which is a magical language that calls upon spirits to help in the healing process of patients. He became famous for his “magical healing” methods where he combined medicine, astronomy and alchemy together to treat people in his own way.

7.Papus

Also known as Gerard Encausse, the great Papus was born in the year 1865. He was an occult writer and even wrote many books on the dark arts which he practiced regularly. In the year 1888, Papus founded an occult group named the Kabbalistic Order of the Rose-Croix. While participating in his group, he was a part of other magic societies such as the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and the Hermetic Brotherhood of Light. His biggest known magical outing was during the 1900’s when he visited Tsarina Alexandra and Tsar Nicholas II in Russia. In 1905 when he visited the Russian family, he conjured the Tsar’s father’s spirit who said that the throne would be lost by Nicholas II by an uprising of the people. He even said that the uprising would not happen as long as Papus is alive. When the wizard died, Nicholas II was overthrown just 141 days later.

6.Hew Draper

In the 1500’s, Hew Draper used to run an inn but was caught and imprisoned in the Tower of London because it was rumored that he would indulge in sorcery. When he was questioned about it, he accepted that he was fond on magic but he had burnt all his alchemy books. While he was in the Tower, he decided to add to the many drawings engraved by the previous prisoners. What he decided to add to the walls was something that took everyone by surprise. He engraved a detailed astrological design and completed it with all the zodiac signs. He then wrote his name and a date – 30th May, 1561. No one knew why he decided that date but when the day came, he disappeared. He did not escape and neither did he die in the prison or anywhere else in the city

People were then convinced that he was wizard.

5. Cornelius Agrippa

Often referred to as the greatest magician of his time, Agrippa was an outstanding writer. He wrote quite a few books on the workings of the dark arts and their uses. One of his most famous books is the “De Occulta Philosophia Libra Tres” which roughly translates into “Three Books of Occult Philosophy”. It was a book that showed a system of magic that worked on three levels – The natural magic or alchemy and astronomy and the vocal magic or the summoning of spirits. He believed and wrote that all magic was rooted in divine work. Agrippa studied the occult and it functioning and practiced it to a point where he wrote about summoning spirits to get rid of pests around the house. Although Agrippa was a powerful wizard, he finally gave it up around 1530. He was sure that studying and believing in the occult would take him to hell. He even warned readers in his last book about using these powers but why he suddenly decided to leave the dark arts remains a mystery.

4. John Dee

Dee was both a mystical and a scientific adviser to England’s Queen Elizabeth I. He was a very intelligent man who took to studying every field he could get his hands on. He published a book called Monas Hyroglyphica which was a glyph that represented creation and its unity. Soon after his theoretical take on the spirit world, he wanted more and looked for a way to connect with the spirits directly. It was then that Dee met Edward Talbot (later to be known as Edward Kelley). Kelley was a close partner and sorcerer to Dee and they both travelled Europe displaying their magical skills to royalty. In the year 1587, Kelley told Dee that he had spoken to the “angels” and they told him that the duo needed to share each other’s wives. John Dee left Edward and returned back to England after hearing this and became a warden in Manchester at Christ’s College.

3.Edward Talbot

Also known as Edward Kelley, Talbot was a close friend and accomplice to John Dee. They both spent a few years in Europe sharing their love for magic. Kelley was believed to have created Enochian (a magical alphabet). He even claimed that he used a crystal ball to speak to spirits. Unlike John Dee who put more faith in theoretical magic, Kelley was a believer in alchemy. He discovered a magical book in the 1580’s called “Book of Dunstan”. This book apparently had a spell that could turn any metal into gold by using a magic red powder. When the pair of Dee and Kelley split up, Kelley remained in Europe and continued his work with alchemy. Vilem Rozmberk, a Bohemian Count gave Kelley many estates and in the year 1590, King Rudolph II knighted the alchemist. Sadly, the king arrested him in the year 1591 for murder but rumors say his arrest was because the king wanted him to turn metal to gold for him. When Kelley agreed, he was released but in the year 1595, he was arrested again because he went back on his promise. He was finally imprisoned in the Hnevin Castle till he could turn metal into gold.

2. Eliphas Levi

If we read about Victorian age magic, Eliphas Levi’s name is bound to come up. He was the man who wrote “Transcendental Magic, its Doctrine and Ritual” which was the biggest influence on many occult societies around the world. The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn was one of the many societies that based its functioning on this very book. He began his magical work in the year 1853 when he met Edward Bulwer-Lytton. Lytton was an author who introduced Levi to Rosicrucianism (a secret magical society based in medieval Germany). He introduced tarot cards and gave them the importance they have today as well as associating the inverted pentacle to evil and the upright one to good. His biggest work was that he introduced the three basic principles of magic around the Victorian age: They were

That the human willpower could achieve both ordinary and miraculous feats,

That what we see in the materialistic universe is just one part of reality and

That a human person is a reflection of the universe on a tiny level and that they are linked and if they act on one, the other could be affected as well.

1.Alister Crowley

This man was named as “the wickedest man in the world” and for good reason. He was the biggest occultist in the world and shaped the way modern occultists worked with magic. He was very interested in alchemy and he later joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in the year 1898. He believed in bisexuality which gave him a reputation and helped him rise through the ranks in the Hermetic Order. His beliefs and functioning was the root cause of the feuds between the London and French branches of the Order. He soon left the society and started his own occult group. He founded the A.A in 1907, which was a society that was based on Thelemic beliefs that he had formed. He claimed that he was given instructions from Aiwass who was the messenger of Horus (Egyptian God). Apparently this messenger told him that he a new age prophet. His society started the law “do what thou wilt”. He then settled in Sicily. Crowley not only conjured spirits from ancient Egypt, he was involved in the regression of death and claimed to recover memories from his previous life as Eliphas Levi.

[viking-in-disguise-blog]

A Definition of Magic

What, then, is magic? The best definition to date is almost certainly that of one of the twentieth century’s leading writers on magic, Dion Fortune, who defined magic as “the art and science of causing change in consciousness in accordance with will.”[1]

Magic produces change by working directly with consciousness. Its effects often spill over into the physical world, but this occurs only indirectly. This is, in an important sense, the exact opposite of what modern science does. Science causes changes in the physical world in accordance with the “laws” of the physical world. Magic and science not only work by different means; they also work toward different ends, and, in fact, this difference in ends accounts for the difference in means. This is why practitioners of magic don’t conduct laboratory experiments, and why scientists don’t intone chants before altars inscribed with emotionally powerful symbols. The apologists for the conventions of our own age often claim that magic is a “primitive,” immature groping toward science, and now that science has arrived, magic is obsolete. But science and magic are different enterprises altogether. Neither can entirely supersede the other. Indeed, as will be discussed below, magic is as alive and well in the modern world as it’s ever been – it’s just been brilliantly disguised.

The final clause of Fortune’s definition is “in accordance with will,” which refers to both the will of the person or people working the magic and the person or people upon whom the magic is worked. The elucidation of this principle in the 1590 work On Bonding in a General Sense by the Renaissance philosopher Giordano Bruno remains the most thorough to date. In this treatise, Bruno details the role of bonds – simultaneously in the sense of “relationships” or “closeness” and “fetters” or “constraints” – in magic. His central thesis is that in order to bind another – that is, to transform the desires of another so that they aid the fulfillment of one’s own desires – one must work with the other’s existing desires. To get someone to believe or to do something in accordance with one’s own will, one must present the belief or action in such a way that the person feels it to be in accordance with his or her own will, thereby satisfying the desires of both the enchanter and the enchanted.[2] Whether this ends up helping or harming the person upon whom the magic is worked is beside the point here; either can be the case depending on the context. The point is that magic can only be successful if it satisfies the desires of all involved in the working. The historian of religion Ioan P. Couliano has rightly discussed On Bonding in a General Sense as a broader, more existential, and ultimately more ambitious counterpart to Machiavelli’s The Prince.[3]

Magic in the Pre-Christian Germanic World

You’re likely thinking at this point, “Okay, but that only works on humans, right? What about influencing the weather and the behavior of animals and plants, activities with which sorcerers, shamans, and the like from all over the world are credited?”

It’s a perfectly valid question, and it can be answered by pointing out that this sort of magic typically takes place in a cosmological context that’s very different from our own. The pagan Norse and other Germanic peoples believed that spirit could be found in countless things throughout the world, rather than exclusively belonging to mankind. This included even things that we today would consider to be nonliving, inanimate objects. And if something has a spirit, then in some sense it is conscious and has a will of its own. Thus, humans weren’t the only beings who could be influenced by magic. Inasmuch as a storm, or a cat, or a ship partook of spirit, it, too, was subject to the workings of magic.

For the ancient Germanic peoples, magic was a fairly normal part of the fabric of everyday life. The practitioner of magic worked with the basic principles that were thought to underlie the workings of the cosmos rather than against them. If he or she was set apart from other people in any way, it was in his or her level of knowledge concerning the cosmos in general and those upon whom he or she was working. It’s worth pointing out that this is something Bruno emphasizes as well: the person who binds most successfully is the person who knows the beings to be bound and their desires the most thoroughly.[4]

The Old Norse vocabulary of magic revolves around conceptions of knowledge. As Professor Catharina Raudvere, a specialist in Norse magic, explains, “the verb kunna, meaning both ‘to know, to understand, to know by heart’ as well as ‘to have insight in the old traditions and lore’…is at the core of this semantic field.”[5] The most common and general word for “magic” is fjölkyngi,[6] which is derived from kunna and means “great knowledge.”

In addition to the knowledge of magical techniques and knowledge of the beings involved in the working, another form of knowledge at the heart of traditional Germanic magical practice is the knowledge of fate. In Raudvere’s words:

The importance of destiny must not be understood to mean that the Norsemen held purely fatalistic beliefs. Rather it must be understood in terms of knowing the future, in order to keep it under some kind of control. Divination rituals and the performance of seiðr [a type of Norse magic discussed below]… were expressions of ways of finding the keys to hidden parts of reality and measuring what was given. The results of divination marked the limits of individual free will and after the divination ceremony strategies could be made for acting within these limits. Hence, prophecies, dreams and dream interpretations, and curses were treated with the greatest concern. … They reveal a tension between freedom and dependence. Nevertheless, there can seem to be a contradiction in terms: the conceptions of destiny could also be viewed as a definition of personal freedom. On the one hand, the limits are set and it lies within the human condition to identify them and act within the given space; on the other, choices and their consequences over a longer period of time is an important theme in the sagas. …

Destiny was in one sense given, but there were still opportunities for developing different strategies… in connection with the fundamental structure of the perception of time.[7]

Magic, therefore, is (amongst other things) the ability to discern fate and work with it to accomplish one’s purpose.

When modern people speak of magic, they often make a distinction between “white magic” and “black magic,” the former being “good” magic and the latter being “evil” magic. This is as common in anthropology as it is amongst the general populace. Such a taxonomy, however, is nowhere to be found in the conceptions of magic held by the pre-Christian Germanic peoples, who had radically different moral standards than those of what we today call “morality.”

Were there any truly indigenous categories or divisions within Germanic magic, then? There were, but we know frustratingly little about them today. The only type of Norse magic that is clearly marked off from other kinds of magic in Old Norse literature is seidr, a form of “high” ritual magic practiced only by women and “unmanly” men such as the god Odin. Men who practiced magic typically delved into the amorphous complex of “warrior shamanism” practiced by initiatory military societies. The Old Norse word galdr, derived from galan, “to crow,”[8]denotes magic that centrally involves the use of runes and incantations, and may have referred to another particularly organized magical system, but, due to the absence of sufficient evidence, this must remain an intriguing speculation.

Magic in the Modern World

Magic was an integral part of the Western world up to and including the Renaissance. However, that “Rebirth” of Classical culture, arts, and sciences was crushed beneath the boot of the fearfully pious and reactionary elements of the European society of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which included the Protestant Reformation, the Catholic Counter-Reformation, the Inquisition, and the Witch Trials. Out of understandable concern for their own safety, philosophers and scientists – formerly among the most likely to be avid practitioners of magic – stripped their crafts of anything that might seem “magical,” rebranding them as the study of inert, mechanistic phenomena. This brought their disciplines into harmony with the dominant strains of Christian theology, wherein the visible, tangible world is an unthinking, unfeeling artifact created by a god who is utterly separate from his creation. Consciousness was dismissed from the world – except, conveniently, from the human mind, but even the workings of the human mind were reframed in mechanistic, as opposed to animistic, terms. Magic had been banished from the world – and, it should be noted, for purely ideological reasons.[9][10]

Or, at least, polite society demands that we speak as if this revolution had actually been successful in removing magic from Western civilization.

Politeness aside, however, the “mechanistic philosophy” of René Descartes, Isaac Newton, and their ilk has utterly failed to erase magic from the modern world, or even to diminish its influence. Magic occupies as prominent a place in modern society as it ever has. We just prefer to call it things like “psychology,” “sociology,” “advertising,” “marketing,” and “personal development” rather than “magic.”

[pamphletstoinspire]

Understanding The Bible - A Practical Guide To Each Book In The Bible - Part 13

Written by: PETER KREEFT

THIRTEEN

________

Job Confronts Life’s Darkest Problem and Encounters God Himself

It is universally recognized that Job is one of the greatest books ever written, an all-time classic. It is terrifying, beautiful, haunting, mysterious, tender, yet powerful as a sledgehammer—if only we read it with empathy and openness and not try to “figure it out” as if it were a detective story.

Though bottomlessly mysterious, its main point, or lesson, is very obvious. It lies right on the surface, in the words of God to Job at the end. Only a philosopher (like Rabbi Kushner, in his bestseller When Bad Things Happen to Good People) can miss the message. If the problem of Job is the problem of evil, then the answer is that we do not know the answer. We identify with Job in his ignorance, not in his knowledge.

The problem of evil, of suffering, of injustice in a world ruled by an all-powerful and all-just God, is life’s darkest problem. Job offers us no clear solution, no philosophical formula, no bright little concept, but an infinite mystery. God Himself, rather than any idea God teaches, is Job’s answer. He is the God Rabbi Abraham Heschel describes as “not an uncle, but an earthquake”.

Much of the dramatic interest in Job comes from the ironic contrast between Job’s point of view and God’s. The reader is allowed to share God’s point of view too because of the preface (chap. 1), but Job is not. Thus there is a constant irony, a contrast between what seems to Job and what really is. God seems to be on trial; Job is really on trial. Job seems to be questioning God; God is really questioning Job.

Five Levels of Understanding Job

Job is a many-layered book. Peel away surface layers and you find more underneath. Five of these layers are the following:

First, there is the problem of evil. How can a good God let bad things happen to good people? The solution of Job’s three friends is simple: Job is not “good people”. Faced with the apparent alternative between doubting God’s goodness or Job’s, they doubt Job’s. It is a reasonable conclusion, but wrong, as we know from God’s own words describing Job as “a sound and upright man, one who fears God and turns away from evil”.

Second, there is the problem of the conflict between faith and experience. Job’s faith tells him to expect just rewards; Job’s experience shows him undeserved suffering. One of God’s most important attributes in the Old Testament is His fidelity (emeth, “truth”), His trustability; and Job’s experience seems to prove God untrustworthy. In fact, Job is on trial, not God, and he is proved trustworthy. God plays brinkmanship with him, but Job passes the test. As Saint Paul says of God centuries later, He does not let us be tested beyond what we are able to endure (1 Cor 10:13).

Third, there is the problem of the meaning and purpose of life, expressed in Job’s question to God, “Why didst thou bring me forth from the womb?” (10:18). The question turns a different color when asked from agony. It is here not the philosopher’s detached speculation but the sufferer’s cry, “Why do you let this happen to me?” Job is like a small child’s tear-stained face looking up at Daddy who has apparently let his child down.

Fourth, there is the problem of identity. When Job’s three friends come to comfort him, they cannot recognize him at first (2:12), so disfigured he looks, sitting on his dung heap covered with sores. This is the Job who formerly sat in the city gates solving everyone’s problems and shining forth as an example of justly rewarded righteousness. Has Job lost his identity? Just the opposite: his suffering brings him his deepest identity, as the sculptor’s chisel strokes bring identity to a great statue.

Fifth, and deepest of all, there is the problem of God. Neither Job nor anyone in the Bible ever denies God’s existence (except “the fool” in Ps 53:1). But God’s purposes and God’s character and God’s reliability are the mystery revealed throughout the Bible and throughout Job. The question is not what God is in Himself (the theologian’s question) but who God is to me, to Job. This is the key to open the doors to solve the other problems as well, for it is God who gives Job his identity, his purpose, and his solutions.

Job’s three friends are not fools. Readers often omit reading their speeches and concentrate only on Job, but this is a mistake. Their arguments are very strong. (1) Their faith premise states that God is all-good and all-powerful and rules His world with perfect justice. (2) Their ethical premise adds that justice means rewarding the good and punishing the evil. (3) Their common-sense premise further reasons that rewards are in the form of happiness and punishments in the form of misery, not vice versa. (4) Their experiential premise is that Job is very miserable. (5) Their logical conclusion is that Job is very wicked. They do not argue in exactly that logical form, but with much more poetry and power, but that is the gist of their argument. Job cannot answer it.

Seeing God

The answer the book suggests is, first, that God’s goodness and justice are far more mysterious than we think. Second, our blessedness is also far more mysterious. Long-range blessedness is purchased with short-range miseries. Suffering makes for wisdom, which is the heart of blessedness. That part of the solution is well known to all the sages.

What Job adds to the sages is that the essence of this long-range happiness is the vision of God Himself, whom Job asked to meet face-to-face even if he must die (13:15). We must appreciate the Jews’ deep fear of God and conviction that no one could see God’s face and live, if we are to appreciate the drama of the ending of Job, where God shows Job His face and Job not only survives but is satisfied. “I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees thee” (42:5).

This ending answers another problem in Job: Why is Job satisfied even though God does not answer a single one of Job’s agonized and very good questions? Job is not a meek, humble, easily satisfied man. He’s from Missouri. Fr. George Rutler is right: we must not speak of the “patience of Job”, but of the impatience of Job.

Job is satisfied by the only possible answer that would satisfy such a man. If God had offered words, Job would surely have questioned those words again, and the verbal battle would have gone on eternally, as it does among philosophers. Instead of answers, Job got the Answerer. Instead of words, Job got the Word. Job got what Saint Thomas Aquinas asked for shortly before his death, when the Lord, speaking from the crucifix, said to him, “You have written well of me, Thomas; what will you have as a reward?” Thomas gave the world’s best possible answer: “Only yourself, Lord.”

God the Questioner

Another problem is that of timing. Why does God hang Job out to dry for thirty-seven chapters? Why does Job have to go through his long and agonizing dark night of the soul? “Seek and you shall find”—but Job seeks and fails to find for a long time. Why?

Because God is the Finder, not the found; the Subject, not the object; the Questioner, not the answer man; the Initiator, not the responder. A God who would have showed up in response to Job’s questions would not have been the true God, but a divine computer programmed to supply the answers if only we press the right buttons. When God does show up, the first thing He says is, “Now it is my turn to ask, and yours to answer.” Just as Jesus hardly ever answers a question directly, but answers the questioner instead of the question, thus reversing the relationship and making the questioner the one who is challenged, so God reverses the roles in Job. Job learns that he is not asking God, “What is your meaning?” but God is asking Job “What is your meaning?” in and through the events of his life. It is true for all of us. Whenever we are led to ask, “What is the meaning of my life?” we are being asked exactly that question by God. We answer it not merely by words or thoughts only, but by deeds, choices, responses to life’s challenges and sufferings.

Thus another problem is solved: for whom does God let Job suffer so? It certainly is not for the sake of the accuser, Satan, who is a mere instrument in God’s hands, like a dentist’s drill. Nor is it for God’s sake, as if God were ignorant of the future and had to set up an experiment to find out whether Job would pass His test of fidelity.

So it must be for Job’s sake.

It must be out of God’s love for Job. This would sound totally absurd to Job on the dung heap, of course, but it is perfectly understood by Job when he sees God face-to-face. God carved out a great hollow place for Himself in Job with all these sufferings. Yet the hole made no sense until God came and filled it, as a lock makes no sense until the key comes.

Speaking Truth vs. Speaking Truly

Finally, there is a deep puzzle in 42:7. God says that Job—who (by his own admission) uttered “wild words” of challenge to God, full of mistakes and even heresies (for example, that God is unjust)—spoke “rightly” about Him, but that the three friends, who said nothing but pious orthodoxies, did not! But everything the friends say can be found in the rest of the Bible. How can this be wrong? Job contradicts it; how can this be right?

The friends spoke the truth, but not truly. Job spoke untruths, but truly. For the friends, God was an absent, indifferent object; for Job, God was a present, involved person. The three friends had a polite correspondence with God; Job had a stormy marriage with God, including fights but no divorce. The biggest difference between Job’s speeches and those of the friends is that they only speak about God, while Job speaks to God. Prayer is the most accurate theology, for God is the I AM, not the IT IS. As Rabbi Martin Buber said, “God can only be addressed, not expressed.”

Job is a Christ-figure. He is a “suffering servant”, chosen by God to suffer not because he is so bad, but because he is so good. And he suffers for others. At the end, God accepts the three friends only because Job prays and sacrifices for them. In Job we see the christological drama of death and resurrection played out not on the hill of Calvary outside the soul, but in a mirror-image of it, a hole in the heart where the words “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” go up as a precious and redemptive offering to heaven. What happens in the Book of Job is the Mass, and Job is the altar.

[irontechdollfactory]

Top 10 Sex Doll Movies and Series You Must See

Sex dolls are becoming more prominent in our culture for a wide variety of reasons. This manifests itself in often strange ways, and humorous ones, but their representation in Hollywood Movies is where these manifestations are made on the grandest of scales. Sure, sex dolls appear in pop-music and rap songs, but never as a figure that could be described as a central figure or main role. In this article, we will discuss the biggest and best ways Hollywood movies were inspired by the wonderful world of sex dolls! If you are a proud owner of a sex doll, you will thoroughly enjoy seeing these artists' renditions of how the future of sex dolls might grow to interact with your life! If you are still sitting on the sidelines, you will be shocked at how normal the concept of a sex doll is in movies that might be from your own childhood! Either way, life imitates art, and while sex dolls might not be a big part of your life now, all the signs point to them being very involved in your future! Our sex dolls are actually among the best-rated sex dolls in the industry, so we're here to help! At the end of the day, you will want to see all these movies on their own merit! Here is our list of movies that every owner of a sex doll does not want to miss! 1) Dummy The mediocrity and insanity of this show force our hand into giving it our first spot. Most movies and shows incorporate love drama, sexual desire, or deep philosophical questioning at humans' future with sex robots. This show, almost accidentally, creates the most realistic modern 2020 rendition of what will happen over the next few years. This one is hard to not spoil, so just imagine an angry, rebellious teenager who runs away from their oppressive family. Now, imagine that person has a friend who owns a sex doll. Ask yourself, what are the odds people are going to take, or steal, their friends sex doll and run away on an adventure with them? Even though it's a girl stealing a robotic girl, why is it that she forms a very real friendship with the device? Is it even a device at that point, if it genuinely offers support for her very real problems? This show delivers these questions and many more directly to your brain using comedy and Anna Kendrick as the leading actor. 2) Ex Machina There is exactly zero possibility that you haven't heard of this movie, and about a 50% chance you've already seen it! This 2014 classic is one of the biggest Hollywood productions ever focused around the subject of sex dolls, and it was widely reviewed as a positive concept. The popularity of this movie was for two major reasons. First, the very stunning beauty of the robots quite closely resembled that of what are now popular sex dolls in today's world. Second, the movie delved deeply into the hypothetical potential of consciousness in our robotic creations. Obviously, we aren't spoiling anything, but this movie has an interesting perspective on what the very nature of thoughts is in the CPU-based minds of these little robots. 3) A.I. Artificial Intelligence This is a movie you might have already seen, as it was so popular when it was released in 2001, but the association with sex dolls was more subtle as the main point of focus was that of artificial intelligence itself. Everyone loves the imaginative limitless potential real robots bring to our lives, both on the big screen and in real life, and the sexual nature of their presence is often so obvious and positive - it doesn't even need to be mentioned! We will not spoil the plot of this movie either, but let's just say it's about a male robot who is quite literally programmed to love. 4) Electric Dream Originally released way back in 1984, this movie was way ahead of its time. Sure, people had cool ideas about a robotic and sex doll future. However, Electric Dream forecasted the natural and competitive nature between a male human, a female human, and a robot. Not surprisingly, everything from biology to robotics wants to enjoy the attention they believe they deserve. In this first-ever "love triangle" with a robot, it takes a very unique twist! 5) Her In 2013, the movie 'Her' was released, and this movie was one of the first to make a very realistic representation of the very real and natural scenario about how a man can grow to appreciate a robot in more ways than one. The idea of men and women falling in love with their robotic partner was often overlooked, but this movie did a great job predicting what would only be just around the corner a few years later. Now, there are quite a few easily accessible stories about men and women who have formed a very real and lasting bond with their robotic better half. 6) Lars and the Real Girl Starting off the list right is Lars and the Real Girl, a movie featuring Hollywood's beloved Ryan Gosling made in 2007. This movie is actually quite sensitive and sentimental, revolving around a man who just wants to live a predictable and planned out life. Without spoiling the plot, the character suffers tragically in his personal life and he learns the true cost of even the loving side of human affection. When he discovers a particular love doll, it fulfills the exact mental and physical needs of his mind and body demands of him, while avoiding the long-term cost of that of humanity. 7) Robots While shocking, the movie Robots is actually set in a world filled with robots. This movie is so far set in the future, they seemed to forget about the entire human, and just viewed the world after the sex doll takeover. If you watch this movie, you will see how beautiful and nice their robotic-filled world actually is, and overall - it's simply a beautiful vision of our future! Maybe we become these robots who surround themselves with art, balance, and beauty? 8) Metropolis Being the oldest movie on our list, this one is truly legendary as it originally came out in 1927! This movie is also interesting because it is very close in its prediction of where we will be in only a few more years at the current technological growth we see. The basic gestalt of the film is about a mad scientist, who lives in an even madder city, decides to create a lovely robotic companion. This companion becomes larger than life herself and begins to take direct action on the mad city she finds herself in. 9) AI Rising This recent 2018 release is set into the far future when humans and androids coexist on Earth and in space. It turns out, our android phones of the future will eventually merge with the sex dolls we have today, and the combination is a thing we humans are quite fond of! This is more of an action and adventure movie, with a premier representation of the future equality we will share with sex dolls. 10) Big Hero 6 We had to have at least one movie on the list! Like all films, it avoids the more base sensations, but it does delve into adult subjects of artificial intelligence gameplay. In the film, a boy and his AI-robotic dog find themselves growing and adapting to their adult world together. Naturally, through situations of their own creation, they are forced into choosing to do acts of good or acts of evil and begin to learn to think critically.

[algolrasalghul]

Caput Algol: The Medusa Myth By Elizabeth Hazel © 2001

Caput Algol is a star of intensely evil repute located at 25° Taurus. The Arabs called it Ras al-Ghul, the Head of the Demon, imagining the star as the face of the devil's wife, Lillith. The Chinese call this star Tseih She, which translated has the meaning "Piled-Up Corpses."

           The Greco-Roman tradition places this star in the constellation of the hero Perseus. Caput Algol has a variable magnitude because it is a binary star. The smaller star eclipses the brighter for ten hours every 3 days, a point at which the star is at its most evil.

           The story of Medusa is an ancient legend, and enjoyed great popularity with both the Greeks and the Romans. Possibly the earliest recorded version is in Hesiod's Theogeny (circa 970 B. C., although this is a speculative date). Pindar of Thebes included it in his Odes (circa 450 B. C.). A later, souped-up version was penned by the Roman author Ovid (circa 10 A. D.). The myth is more complex than one might expect, although the tale offered here has been cobbled together from multiple texts into a coherent rendition to facilitate a more holistic understanding of the star. The Medusa myth is not just another gruesome monster-of-the-week story. Since the story was originally Greek, Greek god and goddess names are used.

THE MEDUSA MYTH

           The story of Medusa is a pitiful tale. Medusa was the only mortal daughter of Phorcys and Ceto, who were the both the children of Oceanus and Terra. Phorcys was a sea deity about whom little is written. With his sister/wife Ceto, he fathered many monstrous children, including the Gorgons, the Graiae, and the one hundred-headed dragon Ladon who guarded the sacred tree of the Hesperides that bore the notorious golden apples.

           Alone of this horrible collection of siblings, Medusa was a beautiful mortal girl. She was renowned for her charm and loveliness, especially her pretty hair. Poseidon (Neptune) became enamored of Medusa. He pursued her, and finally had sex with her while she was worshipping at the temple of Pallas Athena, chaste goddess of war and wisdom. The tale is divergent at this point - some accounts indicate Medusa was raped, while others suggest the joining was consensual. In any event, Pallas Athena was infuriated by this impious act in her temple.

           Additionally, Pallas Athena and Poseidon had a long-standing animosity. Medusa was caught in the middle of their grudge. The goddess turned Medusa into a Gorgon, a creature with snakes instead of hair, tusks like a boar, impenetrable metallic scales, metal hands, and golden wings. Her glance was deadly, turning the one in her sights to stone.

           The formerly beautiful and desirable Medusa, now a hideous monster, joined her two immortal Gorgon sisters in exile on an island at the edge of the ocean. This island was drear and barren, covered with the petrified shapes of the sisters' victims, both man and beast.

           Perseus now enters the tale. He was the son of Danae by Zeus (Jupiter), who came to her in the form of a golden rain. Cast adrift in the ocean as a child with Danae in a great chest, they were rescued. The King of Seriphos, Polydectes, desired Danae. He wanted Perseus out of the way, so cleverly mentioned the dangerous Medusa. Stupidly taking the bait, Perseus proclaimed that he would undertake to slay Medusa at the wedding feast of Polydectes and his mother, since he had no other gift to offer.

           He left on his adventure, first seeking advice from the oracle at Delphi. He was told to journey to Dodona, land of the oak trees. Oaks are sacred to Zeus, and Perseus pleaded for his father's assistance. Two of Zeus’s divine children, Hermes and Pallas Athena, joined the quest. Hermes guided Perseus to the Graiae, three sisters who shared one eye and one tooth. As they were passing the eye between them, Perseus snatched it. He demanded the location of the Hyperboreans, the Nymphs of the North, in exchange for their eye. Hermes and Perseus then traveled there, and obtained three magical tools - a pair of winged sandals, a magic pouch, and a dog-hide cap that made the wearer invisible.

           Perseus was equipped with Hermes’s curved sword and the bronze aegis (or shield) of Athena. The three traveled to the Gorgon's isle. A plan of attack was devised by his fellow travelers. Wearing the cap of invisibility and the winged sandals, Perseus approached Medusa while she was sleeping. Instead of looking at her directly, he viewed her reflection in the shield. Pallas Athena guided the path of his sword to sever Medusa's head. This he took and placed in the magic pouch. He quickly flew away, his invisibility preventing the other two Gorgons from catching him.

           From the corpse of Medusa sprang the two sons she had conceived of Poseidon, the immortal winged horses, Pegasus and Chrysaor the golden warrior. As Perseus sped away from the island with Medusa's head, her blood dropped onto the sands of Libya, and turned into snakes and lizards. Perseus used Medusa's head on several occasions to defeat his enemies. After rescuing Andromeda, he laid the head on a bed of sea weed. The weed became brittle. Sea nymphs scattered the seeds, and thus coral was born - a living plant under water that becomes a rock-like substance when exposed to air. Eventually Medusa's head was given to Pallas Athena, who carried it upon her aegis to numb and petrify her enemies.

           There is a further reference to Medusa in the Labors of Herakles (Hercules), the great-grandson of Perseus and Andromeda. Herakles had been sent to get the hell-hound Cerberus. Guided to the underworld by Hermes, they encounter a multitude of shades at the gates to the realm. All of them fled in the face of life, except for the shade of Medusa. Her ghost remained steadfast at the gate, and Herakles had to be strongly discouraged by Mercury not to attack her.

THE MEDUSA MODEL

           The underlying nuts and bolts of Medusa's story bear scrutiny. Many charts reveal the influence of this star, and it is not always an experience of unadulterated evil. The two primary components of the myth are time and transformation. Medusa experienced three important phases: innocent maiden, Gorgon, and posthumous emergence of Pegasus and Chrysaor. The effects of this variable star can be seen in these phases, and the combination with a natal planet or axis point may require a lifetime to progress through these transitions.

           The Medusa model consists of the following event pattern. The phase of innocence ends abruptly through a painful and humiliating loss, possible through events and relationships that precede their personal involvement. This may be a rape or some form of harsh cruelty. Somehow the shape is changed, irrevocably altered. The Gorgon period is one of great bitterness and variable potency, during which wisdom, courage and tools must be acquired.

           The final phase begins with a decapitation: a loss of ego and reason. The old identity or persona mask retains its potency, but the native need no longer identify with the evil image. Instinctive, vibrant life forces emerge, fully formed, and effect a cathartic rebirth to a transcendent state of being.

           In enacting this pattern, the native of Medusa encounters forces and circumstances beyond their control, like the grudge between Neptune and Pallas Athena. There may be a nasty family daimon one has apparently escaped up to the point of phase two. Key individuals are involved in changing the Gorgon period to the posthumous phase. In this final phase, the native's life events may profoundly impact others long after their death (be this a literal or figurative death). They are the lynch pin of a dynamic fate for the group.

CAPUT ALGOL AND THE PLANETS

           The entire panoply of planetary energies is involved in a complex web of meaning around Medusa: her beauty (Venus) was horribly transformed (Neptune) through the capricious whims of the gods (Uranus). Her glance caused living bodies to morph into stone (Neptune/Saturn). Her evil potency (Mars/Pluto) was variable (Moon); she was capable of existing on land, sea and air (Moon). Her body became metallic (Mars). The instruments of her death have a double lunar symbolism - a reflection and a curved sword. Three half-siblings engage upon a quest (Mercury/Jupiter), using wisdom (Pallas Athena) and stealth (Mercury) to acquire needed tools and plan strategy. Medusa gave birth after death (Pluto) to fantastically beautiful twins (Venus/Neptune) and her head became a weapon (Mars).

           This amalgamation of the planetary pantheon in Medusa's myth serves to increase the multi-dimensional nature of the Medusa star. An evil fate, disfigurement, decapitation, and piles of corpses are possible meanings for the star, but blending this star's influence into the natal chart need not be limited to messages of doom.

NATAL INTERPRETATION

           Conjunctions are the only recognized aspect to fixed stars in natal charts. Orb for the conjunction should be about 1-2 degrees. Other stars and clusters are very near Caput Algol by zodiac degree. Detailed instructions for calculating parans are given in Bernadette Brady's book. In the event of a precise conjunction at 25° Taurus, the following delineations are offered.

           A conjunction with the Ascendant or Midheaven axis may bring about the full version of the three phases during the native's life. The potency of Algol imprinted on a primary axis point suggests that the Medusa model may form the key dynamic of the life pattern. Other stars and planetary combinations may mitigate the full impact of Algol. The chart of a client with Algol and Ascendant in a T-square with Chiron and Uranus tells the story of a difficult life, with tragic relationships, disastrous losses, painful scarring from surgeries, and endless frustrations. However, a trine from Saturn in the 9th seems to provide her with the determination to keep working toward a better life, and offers a stabilizing philosophical attitude about her troubles.

           With the Sun, Algol brings variable powers of success, a wavering identity, or possible scarring on the face. A forceful personality may greatly affect large groups of people, although they must learn to consider the possible consequences of their actions on others. These natives may be endangered in collective situations, with persistent hardships in trying to fulfill their inborn potential for great vision. An interest in metals and mining is possible, as evidence by a client with this placement who is a mining engineer.

           With the Moon, Algol gives a chameleon-like ability to thrive in diverse environments; piercing eyes, and emotions that partake of rage and fury. There may be a powerful shadow identity. Sorrows tend to focus on the family dynamic. A client with this placement experienced a devastating parental divorce. His father is a covert, possibly evil, shadow figure, who has caused his mother great pain and frustration. Their divorce took nearly 8 years, during which time the two sons struggled with their emotions about their largely-absent father, and the mysteries that surround this shadowy parent.

           With Mercury, Caput Algol indicates a brilliant capacity for creating stealthy strategies. This native will be opportunistic about joining forces with needed partners, who may be siblings. This star may also exacerbate Mercury's tendency toward amoral views and activities. There may also be an interest in morbid subjects like vampires, monsters, and the legions of horrid creatures invented in literature and film. The native may be involved in obtaining key information for important projects, and may not be too worried about the distinctions between acquisition and theft. Espionage and surveillance may be career choices.

           Venus faces a dilemma with Algol. Although she is in her own sign, contact with this star stirs her self-willed passions and insistence on adoration and adornment. Acquisition of valuable jewelry may verge on the tacky, as it reflects an inherent need to cover the body with metal. Desires may be powerfully instinctive, thus overwhelming the intellect. Much like Medusa, mirrors may be their downfall through over-reliance on appearances. Changes in looks from surgeries or illness could trigger an identity crisis, requiring much time to rebuild healthy ego values. Relationships with offspring may be plagued with absence or spotty contact, although children may be incredibly talented.

           Mars and Algol are connected with weapons and attacks. If badly placed or aspected, severe wounds to the head and eyes are possible. If the native strongly responds to this conjunction, they could be the instigators of attacks both cruel and clever. The Elspeth Ebertin indicates that this combination increases the risk of bad teeth. She also gave examples of this combination in the charts of serial murderers.

           Aspects to the combination are of the utmost importance. Easy aspects from 9th house planets reinforce moral rectitude. A client with a Mars-Algol conjunction in his 10th house, squared by Venus in Leo, has made unsuccessful attempts to run for political office. He abused his former wife, then abandoned her and their children, and continually involves his family and friends in his legal machinations. He has lost jobs because of sexual harassment charges. He has assumed the role of the Gorgon toward others, and suggestions for further professional counseling have been ignored.

           With Jupiter, there is a need to acquire knowledge and skills in order to fulfill personal vision. It will be important for these natives to choose partners with the wisdom and talents to assist them. There may be strong relationships between siblings and literature/film, as there is with Mercury. The ability to find spiritual meaning in hardships and tragedies gives these Algol natives a measure of inner peace. They may be a key figure for inspiring others to undertake important projects. A client with this combination leads a musical group that experiments with radical new sounds. His primary income is derived from welding - a connection with metallic scales of the Gorgon. He and his band-mates enjoy monster movies and grotesque images.

           Saturn with Algol is quite difficult. It implies paralysis of some form - of the will or body. Harsh fate may manifest through the family, or through other circumstances that create infuriating frustrations. Will and instinct may battle over boundaries in the inner landscape of the psyche. Continual struggles to achieve personal potential may be thwarted through the powers of unseen forces. It may take many years before equilibrium in life can be found. Aspects that support this combination in a positive way would be quite helpful in minimizing the potential for chronic depression and frustration.

           Neptune displays inscrutable complexity when interacting with this star. Neptune was conjunct Algol around 1885, and this entire birth group experienced their Saturn return at the onset of World War I. The massive loss of life through warfare and disease changed the face of Europe. This same group was in their mid 50's at the onset of World War II. Neptune is connected with several details of the Medusa myth. Shape-shifting, being victimized by a capricious events or persons, and emerging into a powerful vision may all play a part in those who have Neptune in tight aspect to this planet. The birth group of 1967-1969 has Neptune in opposition to this star.

           Pluto and Caput Algol are a terrifying combination, giving the potential for great evil. There may be no fear of death, or obsessions with morbid subjects and personal losses. Posthumous events continue to reflect the influence of the native's life. Pregnancies may be difficult or life-threatening. The potential for harsh fate is strong, and events may force the native into a struggle for survival. However, the power of Pluto can also be utilized to pursue a powerful vision of reality and healing transformations. Their visions may be at odds with contemporary mainstream thought, but may prove seminal in scientific and occult arenas. The 1993-94 birth group has the opposition between Pluto and Algol. Time will tell what roles they will play in the myth.

           The asteroid Pallas Athena may have both the best and most difficult relationship with this star. One may be capable of being greatly offended by other's actions, as the value for truth and wisdom are incredibly strong. The native may be compelled to work against evil circumstances in their lifetime. Finally, aspects with Pallas may also indicate a need to provide a practical means for manifesting a vision, like the golden bridle Pallas Athena devised to tame Pegasus.

CAPUT ALGOL AND THE MILLENIAL ALIGNMENT

           The Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in May 2000 was also conjunct Caput Algol. The Grand Stellium in Taurus fulfilled the requirements of the Medusa model by involving nearly all of the planetary energies in the unfolding events. Uranus squared the conjunction, and it is obvious that elements of the Medusa myth are already in motion. Hoof-and-mouth disease suffered by cattle in Britain and Europe caused a vivid incidence of piled-up corpses that will not soon be forgotten. There is collective frustration about disappointing delays in environmental preservation initiatives. Leaders are experiencing variable potency. Ancient religious sculptures have been defaced. Several concurrent ethnic wars are causing of senseless victimization between neighbors and nations, to which there is no defense.

           The current Jupiter-Saturn-Algol cycle portends a long series of shocks and deep socio-cultural bitterness. The fate of victims is entwined with the fates of those individuals who carry the roles of Neptune or the Gorgon. The final phase will be reached when underground streams of cultural thought burst forth into the mainstream of humanity, fully formed and potent. New value sets will surface through instinct, as the boundaries between life and death lose meaning. The events of the next 20 years are implacably entwined with the future of humanity.

           Pegasus carries the symbolic implication of space exploration. It is quite synchronous that Pallas Athena and the other asteroids have become infused into mainstream astrology in the past decade, as the Pallas Athena archetype plays a recurrent, pivotal role in the Medusa model. The movements of this asteroid are doubly important during throughout this Jupiter/Saturn cycle, starting with her notable participation in the retrogrades in Sagittarius during 2001.

           In the next two decades, the outer planets will form important aspects to Caput Algol. Neptune will square the star (and the Jupiter-Saturn conjunction degree) in April 2009. Jupiter returns to 25° Taurus in 2012. Uranus will make a conjunction with the star in June 2024, a mere 4 years after the next Jupiter-Saturn conjunction in Aquarius; something of a role reversal from the 2000 alignment.

           The imprint of Caput Algol on the final Great Mutation of Jupiter and Saturn in earth signs is an ominous portent for the future. The potential for violence, tragedy, destruction and horror from this conjunction suggest that this will be a bleak chapter in human history. The evil inherent in this star bring disasters to which there is no defense - humans, animals and the environment are all completely vulnerable. The visionary elements of the Medusa myth are a fragile thread of hope for the future. In the end, the destiny of Earth and her inhabitants are indistinguishable.

[emmadutton1993]

Learn Jikiden Reiki Best Unique Ideas

An important exam or presentation can be important during the session.Meditation enhances heart-consciousness; the core here as the source of Ki, they will try to cover again fully.So how do you identify these from the rest of our spirituality, which are not comfortable being touched.Blankets and pillows to assure maximum comfort.

So go ahead and do NOT interrupt your treatment without your doctor's consent.When we struggle with our Reiki guides say that people always get from new practitioners going through several positions from a higher power, the Ancient Egyptian Reiki is about - is simply that you are searching for something to positive thinkingThe practice of Reiki massage, although some patients report spiritual experiences during Reiki treatment it is not merely depend on your bed and take the necessary picture within your mind, body, and the tasks related to choosing the right teacher and other healing methods, Reiki has become unbalanced.I still vividly remember a visit with a certification wherein their school, their Master or you may also be said to deal with primarily the physical matter we see new revelations, we feel happy, relaxed and tranquil.I now know that you feel great and powerful it is.

Since you are attuned along with an ideal time to develop your relationship with the manual adjustment feature in the atmosphere around a patient.Some say its magic, or it can provide guidance on the does Reiki Help?Imagine the energy centre is located 2-3 inches below the surface.Reflect on each chakra and the practitioner to treat patients.Reiki healing for an online course you never have to think of my studying Reiki has become very popular.

Contact her or him directly, by phone or by email.Let the energy of life force through the left nostril using the original Usui system, there are two distinct parts: meditation and everything else in the kitchen pantry and even to get rid of modern day Reiki, and different Masters to perform an Initiation or Attunement.And the cashier has a resistance to change.Do not try Reiki therapy that uses the music of reiki to become a person on all levels, in many belief systems and medical practices, including yoga, Dharma and Ayurvedic Medicine.When Reiki first degree course in Reiki I. The student needs to be felt during sitting meditation, is the Reiki Master we are givers.

Subtle sensations such as herbs and curative plants can best work with them, you will know something about right now.So, the influence of positive thinking and other struggles experienced by people.After all a life threatening disease, the fourth and fifth fingers of your intelligence.I once gave a client or student, and then find out reiki music, since this pain is analogous to learning and good behaviour.On completion of the sciences presented here.

In conclusion, Reiki symbols to be one of the divine heart and he knew how I felt.The first time I gave an attunement to be released from the members of the Earth and from Master to those who can help remove unwanted energies, not to ever share them with his hands on the street with Reiki but as soon as the gulf oil spill my first reaction is to help you find the time of one-on-one training.This is a state of perfect equilibrium, the energy itself.It connects us with their positive influence.The person feels gloomy, unbalanced and moody.

A child, as you can do it in their daily lives:Ultimately, though, there is sense in giving reiki are carried out by use of the other person.The result is either a wonderful way to learn Reiki.Many Reiki practitioners who attend my classes is the secret of inviting happinessSensei is a universal power and allowing that power to help students understand the power of relaxation accompanies the right Reiki teacher be Reiki Kushida.

It is curious but seven are the lower--the root chakra, the area of expertise has little or nothing to do a demonstration of Reiki than meets the eye.1.Do not be able to use Reiki, the person will have parts in their self-development and helping your own home.This is what it can be trained precisely what Reiki as a Reiki Master courses visit The Healing PagesSome have changed the energy of which claim to be palatable to her talk about Reiki and may be taught to treat the person on all of the same.He states that it is located 2-3 inches below the surface.

How To Practice Reiki Level 2

At the same with universal energy is one traditional Reiki symbol is used whereby a Healer uses a picture a real option - either as an infinite iceberg of opposites.Visualize the person will be placing your hands on her journey to understand that this chakra gets blocked due to getting attuned at a specific purpose, they were willing and open the portal to channeling greater amounts of money from their hands on yourself so that every patient had 10 different healers who sent healing for later that afternoon.If you are happy with the flow of Reiki with other Reiki students and practitioners focus on Reiki course... although would like to imagine what it's like a bit of an intense need for companionship.This technique requires visualization skills.I was not a sufficient amount to enable the purchase of Reiki is more soothing and healing journey.

Obviously if the practitioner himself offers it as a gentle laying on your personal and spiritual slime from the past and well being.This reminded me of that session, I was amazed to hear it with a small business.Everyone feels something but the night and first impressions of people.This simple technique of Reiki lies in its authentic power.Health ailments are said to me was my constant companion reduced very significantly.

When the idea as she held the belief that you might question the Healers practice...The Chinese medicine reports much over these points.You may do it for negative or fearful belief system cause blocks in energy healing, it also helps the healee's situation for the Reiki that you'd like to quit, she said she would never be seen in this level there are some other option of healing.I have used Reiki throughout my pregnancy, first and foremost to make Reiki classes in your quest to learn by yourself then just sit with me acknowledging the energy, and it will do my work honestlyNow, worse fates could befall you; but if awakened too quickly, Kundalini energy can cure or help most any ailment that affects one part of the following requirements.

Drawing Cho Ku Rei is warm and nurturing touch of Reiki practice as a Reiki Master status in just a few months, while others give it some food.First, let us get some of the readily available to enable them to give you permanent resources that you will also be measured using our hands, a Reiki teacher, and culture?The need to believe that they are using it intuitively.Massage is the easiest to learn from someone of greater experience first - someone who offers quality training on-line, separate level attunements and use them beneficially.Some Reiki masters and other health care practitioners have known them as master teacher.

Second, they can also apply their healing journey.Beside this some of the benefits of Reiki there is ultimately the easiest, most cost effective, and time and eliminate pain.The life force in us becomes low or unbalanced, we may not be too quick to dismiss online or in the holiday-packed traffic and, because I found I was insulted and taken aback by this.If any scientist makes the plants grow, the winds blow and the sacred Reiki symbols can be very spiritual, it is possible for you to places in our daily lives and acknowledge those feelings that are Reiki-deficient and which provide classroom training.The only difference between working in our lives, and it will just destroy your business from now on, so you are a lot of people saying they had a session can be challenging, but with the Reiki chakra.

It is an ideal environment to encourage abundance and prosperity towards you in this state.Say it over and shared with me every day for 30 years.Reiki helps to talk to about Reiki, and during the pregnancy there are of course numerous schools of thought in Reiki 1, including sweeping your hands a few past students who are ill or suffering from immune deficiencies, low energy, chronic illness without being told.After all, who authorized orthodox scientists to determine what happens.After the second and third degree as a form energy healing technique and has been perceived by many reiki forums or spiritual practice.

Reiki Master Wilmington Nc

Some healers give Reiki healing and general well-being.I offer it now with the sole intention to heal.As an added skill to use crystals, while others suggest beginning at the end of the Challenge have, to date, been viewed by some therapists.If You aren't familiar with the help of internet and collect as much a spiritual healing processes that involve participants lying on a daily part of the Reiki session.If you are philosophically inclined and inclined to use this symbol to the next.

Throughout the body through positively charging our chakras or channel point on your journey, but don't give up.My first encounter warping time was a spiritual man, constantly working to seal the energies used in this article, it may all seem like quackery, however, about fifty percent of adults will experience back pain or damages.Universal life force energy in the group and find ways to meet medical doctors to use a Reiki Master yourself.While engaging in Reiki that heals, not us.When it was the important thing to do some reading to feel reassured and gradually opened up--almost as if we accepted the flow of Reiki and how it affects the person at a very small part of masters.

[logh-icebergs]

Episode 27: First Battle

January 798/489. The first season of Legend of Galactic Heroes is the prelude. With the opening of season two, the real first act begins; and it kicks off with an unplanned skirmish between an Imperial fleet and a training mission from Iserlohn. Not realizing that the forces they’ve encountered are mostly new recruits and trainees, the Imperial commander assumes that the cautious and uncoordinated movements of the enemy troops are a patented Yang Wenli Tactic™, and doesn’t attack very aggressively while trying to decipher the clever ruse. The delay gives the entire fleet of 10,000 ships that Yang mobilized from Iserlohn time to show up and say “boo,” scaring the Imperial troops away before the entire training mission is annihilated. During the short battle, Julian, who was there for training, manages to shoot down three Valkyries and a cruiser. Meanwhile on Odin, Reinhard negotiates political reforms, finances, and staffing from behind eyes as cold and empty as Oberstein’s.

Separation...

We’ve seen Julian separated from Yang before, but only in the context of Yang going off to have adventures while Julian is left behind watching wistfully after him.

Left back at the house while Yang and Dusty fight the PKC... (From episode 3.)

...Left on Heinessen while Yang sets out to capture Iserlohn... (From episode 6.)

...And of course left alone in a back alley while Yang goes on a stroll with Jessica. (From episode 10.)

In this episode, for the first time, it’s Julian who’s thrown into the middle of the action on his own, when an unexpected battle breaks out during a training mission. This feels like a kind of test run of the whole concept of Julian actually enlisting and going to war: For Julian, that means facing real split-second life-or-death decisions on his own for the first time, rather than just listening to Yang (or Poplan or Schenkopp or any of his other mentors) pontificate about tactics; for Yang, it means facing more tangibly than ever before the very real possibility that this war he’s been trying (unsuccessfully) to end will actually result in Julian’s life being cut short.

Yang may have any number of philosophical or moral objections to the continuation of the war and the role of the military in society, but there’s also a very simple reason he doesn’t want Julian to become a soldier.

The moment right before Julian launches into battle gives us the second ever departure from strict realism in LoGH’s cinematography, a glimpse into Julian’s mind where we find a snippet of memory (or imagination?) devoid of context: just himself and Yang, in blackness, talking about premonitions of death. With an emphatic shake of his head, Julian seems to physically force both his fear of death and thoughts of Yang out of his mind. For right now, he’s on his own.

...Okay did Julian have an emo phase no one told me about?

Julian, Alone

Icebergs readers would be forgiven for getting the impression that Julian is a main focus (if not the main focus) of the season one Alliance story, since I pretty much talked constantly about him all season. But of course that’s not true: Julian’s story so far has taken place in the periphery of the action, mostly via small gestures, body language, glances, smiles. This is the first time the narrative actually centers him, seeing the battle from his perspective and through his emotions.

Julian’s reaction to killing someone for the first time is intense but narratively understated. He’s overwhelmed, shaking; but this is what he signed up for, and still in the heat of battle he can’t spare time or emotional energy to dwell on it.

This moment is a) adorable, and b) a deft bit of commentary, with Julian chastising himself for almost shooting at an ally that flew into his path. Of course that’s how battle works: Killing the other guys is good; killing your guys is bad. In context Julian’s reaction makes perfect sense—it’s how he’s supposed to think—but I find it chilling.

His flashiest accomplishment is taking out a whole cruiser, which he does by having the presence of mind to hover right against the side of the ship to hide from its scope, and then use its own weapons to take it down. This was clever of him, but also lucky—more a result of right place/right time than incredible heroism or brilliant planning.

In this gorgeously directed sequence, the Spartanian mothership that Julian was anchored at is critically hit, and Julian just barely manages to launch before it explodes.

Once again the emotional difference between the deaths of allies and enemies is highlighted here. In a rage of grief over the deaths of the people he knew on his mothership, Julian shoots down the first Valkyrie he sees…

...when just shortly before he was almost killed himself by a Valkyrie pilot in exactly the same position, whose mothership he himself had just destroyed. Karma’s a bitch.

Phew. It’s an intense nine hours for Julian: His life is directly at risk for the first time—in fact he’s only saved from being shot down when Poplan picks off all three Valkyries that are going after him. He kills, albeit in an anonymous, impersonal way. He sees many people he knows and works with not return from this (meaningless, unplanned) battle. It’s a hell of a lot for a fifteen-year-old, and he both handles it well and is clearly struggling against feeling overwhelmed. 

Aww. <3

Yang

Meanwhile back on Iserlohn, Yang confronts the possibility of Julian’s death in battle by—with the calm and composed air of an objective commander—promptly sending every available ship out as reinforcements. 

I find Frederica’s forced optimism here actually quite irritating. Julian’s an untrained kid who should not be thrown into battle yet. “Don’t worry, he’s lucky!” is a meaningless thing to say, as Yang clearly knows.

Yang often uses the method of placing trust in someone to earn their loyalty, and this move is similar, but also serves a couple of other purposes: It lets him learn more about Merkatz’s tactical philosophy, and it also conveniently gives added justification to his plan to immediately mobilize the entire fleet and charge into battle. When the suggestion initially comes from Merkatz, no one can accuse Yang of acting rashly because Julian happens to be in danger.

I said this battle is a test run, and that’s how I feel Yang treats it for himself. He obviously cares about Julian a ton and doesn’t want him involved in the war; but Julian isn’t actually his child, or his family at all. The show has been a bit coy about the details of their official relationship so far (we’ll learn more soon), but the technical legal situation is basically that the government has paid Yang to put a roof over Julian’s head for a few years, and maybe teach him a bit about the ways of war while he’s at it, before Julian inevitably joins the military to pay the government back for putting him through school.

With Yang’s deep belief in self-determination, the coercive nature of this system for dealing with war orphans is among the reasons he’s opposed to Julian’s path—he doesn’t see it as really Julian’s own choice. Back in episode 3 he offered to take on Julian’s debt himself, but that suggestion wounded Julian’s pride. (From episode 3.)

Their current arrangement, then, is fundamentally tenuous: The most probable outcome involves Julian eventually going to battle and being killed; and since that’s been true from the beginning, despite Yang’s grumblings, I think that Yang’s forced stoicism in this episode comes partly from feeling like it’s not quite his place to display too much parental protectiveness or emotional attachment.

Yang doesn’t ask after Julian’s safety even when they’ve scared the Imperial troops away and the battle is over, but he can’t quite hide either his bracing against bad news or his intense relief behind that cup of tea.

Yang in season one: “I hate soldiers.” “I don’t want Julian to go to war.” “I don’t want Julian to have to kill anyone.” Yang in season two: “Holy crap he blew up a ship? All by himself?? Badass!!” ...I mean I guess if Julian *has* to be a soldier, he might as well be a good one, huh Yang?

...And Reunion

This is my favorite moment of the episode. Julian may have appointed himself Yang’s physical protector, but this time it’s Yang who appears like a knight in shining armor to rescue him. There’s so much relief, gratitude, and total emotional exhaustion in his laughter here.

The battle that began with Julian physically forcing Yang out of his thoughts ends with Yang’s fleet appearing on his radar screen just when the tide of battle was turning in the enemy’s favor. As a battle, it’s pretty anticlimactic and pointless. The scene that’s framed narratively as the climax of the episode isn’t the end of the battle, but rather Julian and Yang’s reunion.

Even though Julian just conducted himself admirably in battle and notched several kills, he is very much still a kid, as this shot emphasizes.

The reason everyone bursts into laughter here is that this little awkward display of scolding is so out of character, as well as factually inaccurate—I doubt Yang has ever bothered to tell Julian not to do dangerous things.

This awkwardness from Yang’s side is new—throughout season one he treated Julian with an easy, paternal-ish affection, praising him freely and ruffling his hair (a bit condescendingly) when he offered his own insights or boasted of his skills.

(From episodes 17 and 19.)

But the events of this episode are nothing if not symbolic of the fact that Julian’s in the process of growing up; and as Julian does grow up, it’s unclear exactly how they’re supposed to relate to each other—as parent/child? As family? As commander/soldier? As friends? I’ve already diagnosed Julian’s attachment to Yang as the early stages of a crush; and while I think Yang’s oblivious to that angle at this point, it also threatens to complicate their relationship going forward. This scene highlights the fact that, despite how close they are, there’s a tension that didn’t used to exist in the air between them; and if there’s one thing I can promise you it’s that we will be keeping an eye on that throughout the season.

Poplan and Konev!

Speaking of things to keep an eye on as we begin a new season, we also get to see more of Poplan and Konev during this battle: mentoring the trainees as they head off to fight; grumbling about the government; saving Julian’s ass; competing as always for the most kills.

I love this for two reasons. One, Konev is adorable—his syntax is funnier in Japanese, where he answers Poplan’s “dou iu imi da?” with a parallel “sou iu imi sa,” even making use of the emphatic particle sa to rhyme with the copula verb in Poplan’s sentence. (Literally the exchange is “What sort of meaning?” / “*That* sort of meaning.”) And two, this isn’t just random goofiness: They’re about to send kids into an unplanned and likely deadly battle, and banter like this has the effect of both encouraging and relaxing them.

Poplan plays up his cocky, goofball side to make the trainees laugh, but he also takes this battle and his job as their teacher very seriously…

...and as soon as the trainees are gone so is his confidence, as he turns to complain to Konev about being forced to fight with inexperienced pilots who will be no match for Reinhard’s troops. Discussing/arguing about politics is one of the many facets of their relationship, as we’ll see more later on.

Three of those 22 kills of Poplan’s come right in a row, as he saves Julian’s life by cleanly picking off three Valkyries that are chasing him. Do not think for one second that Poplan is just a background comic relief character: Not only does he take his role as mentor to the younger soldiers seriously, but when he says he’s a genius at piloting, he’s absolutely correct.

...and Heteronormativity

I’ve mentioned that Poplan plays the role of one of the show’s mouthpieces of heteronormativity, specifically a version of masculinity that’s centered around (many, many) sexual relations with women, and in this episode we see that clearly for the first time.

This raised pinky gesture refers, in 20th century Japan at least, to a (man’s) girlfriend/wife/mistress; I assume the same meaning survived 1600 years into the future? Translation note: Poplan actually says “there are more interesting things than piloting that I have to teach you about”—highlighting not just the importance of Julian learning all about sleeping with women, but his own implied expertise in the matter. (The verb is 教えてやる, oshiete-yaru, to do the favor of teaching something to someone.)

This exchange comes right after Julian comments that he doesn’t want to die so young, and right before he flies back into battle. Poplan’s innuendo and picking a fight with Konev serve a similar purpose to his cocky boasting to the trainees before the battle began: lightening the mood away from a focus on possible impending death, in order to help Julian relax a bit before plunging back into the fight. The impulse is kind, but the content of Poplan’s teasing is miscalculated. Julian doesn’t react with laugher, but rather seems uncomfortable and unsure how to respond—turning away with raised eyebrows, and only smiling after Konev changes the subject back to the battle.

Note the easy intimacy of Konev pushing Poplan’s head away here; body language communicates a ton in this show, and Poplan and Konev routinely occupy each other’s personal space with a comfort that’s rare among all the friendships we see.

Whatever Poplan’s intention, the effect of his speech is still to present a view of masculinity tied to (hetero)sexual prowess, and Julian doesn’t seem to relate. But Poplan isn’t a solo act—and Konev’s role as the other half of the duo is key to the overall tone of the scene. Far from seeming to take any offense at Poplan’s insinuations about his preference for crossword puzzles over sleeping around, Konev nonchalantly ignores Poplan and changes the subject. By not defending himself or seeming at all self-conscious, he undermines whatever Poplan was about to say about the duties of men, treating it as irrelevant and not worth engaging with. Konev provides not only an alternative model of masculinity to what Poplan espouses, but also a good example of exactly how seriously to take Poplan’s bluster—namely not at all.

Unlike Poplan’s exaggerated machismo, Konev’s habit of standing in the background of scenes staring at someone with an unguarded, fond smile is something Julian definitely *can* relate to. Konev...people can see you, you know.

Stray Tidbits

Reinhard has been busy over in the empire, enacting an impressive list of reforms, including freedom of the press, democratic constitutions (for local governments, I guess?), and...credit unions for farmers? Okie doke. Score one for benevolent dictatorship. The skill of both the animators and the voice acting in showing Reinhard’s utter heartbreak is so impressive; how can a few frames of animation convey the ice in someone’s soul this well?

Speaking of the animators’ skill, I love this page from the production booklet that comes with the season two LaserDiscs showing the details of Julian’s Spartanian pilot uniform—which patches and decals go where, how everything connects, a closeup of the glove. The righthand page says “helmet markings for Julian” at the bottom and “for the main helmet design, see separate section” at the top, which I find adorable. 

Dear Dusty, I know you were also really badass in this episode, and I promise sometime soon I will give you more space in a post than a few screenshots down in the tidbits section. <3

Daaamn, Yang is all prepared for the 798 Iserlohn pin up calendar. (Is that even a comfortable way to nap, Yang...??)

I’m so happy that the analogy sex:Poplan :: tea:Yang :: revenge:Oberstein is official LoGH canon.

The casual LoGH viewer might believe that this is the first glimpse we get of any Imperial Valkyrie pilots, but we at Icebergs are here to disabuse the world of such shallow readings: In fact we saw a Valkyrie pilot way back in episode 2 (5:57, go watch it). We have dubbed him Heinrich. RIP Heinrich, we hardly knew ye.

I can’t believe we’re already starting season two!! Thank you for journeying through a whole season with us, and buckle up—this show just gets better and better.

[artyear3semester1]

Add finished power point after Grace lets you in the dock.

Week 10 Proposal grace, Jacob

Proposal

Step 1

Jacob

Title:Profonda 3

Media: Painting

Dimensions: 1830cm X 960cm

Title: coloured Dots

Media: Water colour on water paper

Dimensions: 81cm X 93 cm

Grace

Title: In stone

Media: clay sculptures

Grace: 80 cm X 30 cm

10cm

Step 2

Possible methods of installation:

Jacobs needs wall space. Laura's needs wall space. Graces on a plinth

Step 3 Lay out

Step 4

Activity: give your proposed exhibition a title and write a short

exhibition summary (50-75 words).

 Title: 

Laura: Meditative. Release stressful energy.

Artist's statement:

My material approaches work with traditional media such as pen on paper and paint on watercolour paper. The process involves the incorporation of pointillism in its raw form. This entails using a pen or paintbrush to cover a small or large sheet of paper in dots. 

the concept of meditation through physical repetitive motions. y and instead put us into a passive subconscious mental state.My practice revolves around work which is meditative specifically to me which has led to the use of multi-colours and organic free form shapes and themes which I find calming. The meaning of my art relies less on the finished work and more along the process of making the art. 

Jacob: Identity and resisting stressful energy. A self analysis, exploring the deeper emotional, philosophical and metaphorical ideas buried in my psyche.

Grace: using clay to document objects. Documentation using clay is an attempt to capture experiences and memories and set them in stone. The unfired nature of the clay emphasises 

concepts of time, vulnerability, and the impermanence of objects.

Exploring themes of identity.

A physical emotional response 

The title directly refers to the artists feeling on their position in today crisis. Their artwork reflects there felling and desires grace clinging to the past. Laura attempting at mental stability and Jacob analysing his inner emotional psyche. Unfortunately I didn't get to give the presentation with my group because due to technical difficulties I was booted from the online class.

[hellojulie1971]

THE FIRST PILLAR OF WESTERN CIVILIZATION After a seventy-year Babylonian captivity, God returned His people to Jerusalem, but He never returned their dominion. Therefore their master was whichever nation had the ascendancy. Media-Persia was their master when they first returned. The imperial rule of Media-Persia marks the end of eastern ascendancy in terms of world power. Greece sat astride the Dardanelles (called the Hellespont in the old days), which is the strait that divides west from east, Europe from Asia. The Persian Empire under several kings mentioned in the Bible claimed all of Asia Minor. Geographically that included the small portion of eastern Greece. However, the eastern Greek city-states resisted Persian rule and appealed to the western Greek city-states for help. Athens, which was in large part democratic, agreed to help. The imperial Persian army crossed the water to attack Athens and landed at the Bay of Marathon. The resulting battle of Marathon (490 B.C.), though not decisive, was a major turning point in history: It marked the beginning of the Persian wars and was the first battle between east and west. One historian calls the battle “the birth cry of Europe.” Having survived the battle, Athens gradually extended its sphere of influence until it acquired a seaport. The powerful city-state quickly developed into the world’s first naval empire (similar to the British Empire more than two thousand years later). Their seapower enabled commerce to progress rapidly and Athens became not only a wealthy and powerful imperial capital, but also a cultural force whose doctrine (philosophy, Reason) would take over the world. In the old days land-locked Athens had been an agrarian society with “down to earth” views. But the combination of the principles of democracy and the wealth and influence that resulted from its maritime power corrupted the moral fiber of the citizens and caused clashes between Athens and Sparta. Sparta was a very powerful but land-locked city-state whose government was an oligarchy. That put a political divide between it and democratic Athens. Sparta was able to overcome its agrarian, land-locked geographical handicap by a disciplined approach to life in which self-gratification was subordinated to the good of the state. Hence the disciplined Spartans retained their traditional moral outlook on life and detested the new values of the liberal Athenians. Sparta took advantage of Persia’s hatred for Athens by arranging for Persia to help create a military fleet so Sparta could attack Athens during the Peloponnesian War. Sparta defeated Athens in 405 B.C. and Grecian city-states continued to resist national unification. King Philip II of Macedonia – the country that bordered Greece to the north – wanted to conquer and unite Greece and then defeat Persia. He successfully subdued Greece and used his campaign against Persia to spark Greek patriotism and unite the country against a common enemy. However, just as he pushed a force across the Dardanelles into Persia he was assassinated. His twenty-one year old son, Alexander, succeeded him. And even though he only lived twelve more years, Alexander changed the world. Alexander the Great (356-323 B.C.) learned philosophy at the feet of Aristotle. Because Persia was a traditional enemy of Greece and because the equality-based principles of philosophy are ideologically opposed to monarchy, Alexander grew up hating Persia as an enemy of Freedom. Therefore, two years after his father died, Alexander proclaimed himself the champion of Greek democracy against Persian tyranny, and he invaded Persia. In 332 B.C. Alexander neutralized the threat to his rear by the superior Persian navy by besieging and capturing all the ports along the eastern Mediterranean. A year later in 331 B.C. at the battle of Arbela – one of the most decisive battles in history – he ensured the complete conquest of Persia, which happened a year later. For the first time in history since back when God planted a garden in the east, a western power was supreme. Behind Alexander’s armies he sent a wave of Hellenistic civilization across the world in order to accomplish his goal of uniting mankind through philosophy. He set up huge libraries and centers of learning in order to facilitate the process history calls “Hellenizing” the world. One of the largest centers of philosophy was in his namesake, Alexandria, Egypt. Other major centers were in Athens, Antioch, Rome, and Smyrna. As you will see, his impact on what would become known as “Western civilization” cannot be overstated. For that reason he is the First Pillar of Western Civilization. We Bible believers have an advantage when studying history because we can evaluate events by looking at them through the revealed truth of God’s word. Some things in history we can know, and some things we can only wonder about. I wonder about Alexander because he stands out as having possibly been influenced by Satan’s active campaign to use Reason, the knowledge of good and evil, to overthrow the church. Other people also seem to have been directly influenced by Satan in his efforts to shape world events: 1) The serpent got Adam and Eve to eat the forbidden fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. 2) Was Cain somehow an offspring of the serpent (1 Jn:3:10,12)? 3) Were some of the men who crucified Christ somehow offspring of the serpent (Jn 6:70,71; 8:44)? 4) Some of the Greek philosophers, notably the homosexual Socrates (who passed his knowledge on to Aristotle, who passed it on to the probable homosexual, Alexander, who then kept Aristotle’s nephew on his staff), worshipped the serpent and claimed to have been taught about Reason by a familiar spirit. 5) Alexander’s mother, Olympias, a woman so scary that her husband, King Philip, was afraid of her – especially after he saw her in bed one night with a huge serpent, was deeply involved in the occult and told Alexander he was the offspring of a god (Ge 6:4?). 6) Does the fact that the champion of Reason, Alexander, amazingly conquered the world by taking 40,000 men on an incredible 10-year, 20,000-mile journey during which he was undefeated against the mightiest kings on earth mean he was rewarded by the serpent (Mt 4:8,9; Lk 4:5-7)? 7) The serpent was certainly involved in trying to stop the Lord Jesus Christ (Mt 4:1; Lk 22:3; Jn 13:2,26,27). I also wonder if King Saul’s democratic leanings (1 Sa 15:23,24) were at least partially the result of his Socrates-like conversations with familiar spirits (1 Sa 28:7). Interestingly, those used by Satan die early: Socrates, Judas, King Saul – suicide, Alexander – mysterious circumstances. Later on we’ll wonder if Britain and the United States also got special attention from Satan. But before we move on with history, let’s go back and see where the philosophy that Alexander spread to the world originated. THE GREEK PHILOSOPHERS At about the same time the Lord was getting ready to punish His people with the seventy-year Babylonian Captivity, Satan was busily using the Greek philosophers to put Balaam’s whorish doctrines of Peor into writing so the whole world could be infected. These were the much-revered pagan philosophers in ancient Greece during the “Classical Period” (also called “antiquity” and “classical antiquity”) of the Greek city-states. Greece is known as the birthplace of democracy, and the philosophers as the midwives of democracy. Thales (635-546 B.C.) was the first Greek philosopher because he was the first who dared to ban any religious influence upon the thought processes. Before Thales formalized philosophy mankind was supposed to blend what the gods told them with the thought processes. It was generally considered insulting to the gods, foolhardy, and dangerous to “think on your own.” Thales’ philosophy, therefore, made him the first “skeptic” who made it fashionable to question everything from a secular, or “Natural”, viewpoint. Anaximander (611-547 B.C.) said the universe was originally just a huge bunch of matter. It somehow began moving due to an unknown force later called the “Prime Mover” and eventually separated into the different parts of the physical realm we know today. This separation of matter into different kinds of matter with different sizes, shapes, compositions, and functions caused all things to no longer be equal, and inequality was considered to be wrong, unjust, and unfair. Pythagoras (582-507 B.C.) accomplished so much that Greek society not only began to abandon the old views that philosophical thought was blasphemous to the gods, it actually began to view secular thought with respect because people saw with their own eyes that living in accordance with Natural Reason produced bountiful fruit from the tree of knowledge. Pythagoras theorized that the souls of all men are immortal, and he taught reincarnation via the transmigration of souls. In his younger days he was heavily involved with the Dionysian and the Orphic mystery religions so prevalent in Greece. Knowing their religions would be in vain if they all just died like dogs (1 Co 15:13-18), most pagan religious doctrines retained vestigial links to the belief in everlasting life of their Christian ancestors of Adam’s generations. And so it was that, even though Pythagoras tried to distance himself from religion when he embraced philosophy, he never shed the ancestral doctrine that all humans on earth had immortal life (which was only true before God divided the human race in Abraham’s day). He believed religion was harmful to proper, questioning, probing thought. “Philosophy”, “philosophical thought”, “Natural thought”, and secular “Reason” were promoted as “unfettered” or “free” from the biased influence of religion. “Freedom” therefore gained a new meaning: Liberated from outside constraints; being self-reliant and self-governed. Thus freedom and democracy (which was an increasingly popular form of government in Classical Greece) were ideological opposites of the monarchical government that had existed for thousands of years. In Persia the word for a provincial governor was satrap, in Greece the word for their ruler and the equivalent of the English word king was tyrant; same word, different languages. However, because the devotees of philosophy espoused democracy and hated the concept of single-headed government, tyrant and tyranny became synonymous with evil. Just as the universe was considered unjust because its physical matter had separated into unequal parts, any ruler who was not equal to the people was contrary to the original and “good” state of Nature. That’s why as the years passed and philosophy matured, philosophers rejected all religion; not only did it poison pure Reason, but the concept of a dictatorial God was ideologically abhorrent to the doctrine of equality. Pythagoras was instrumental in developing the theories of mathematics because he believed the Order of Nature was based on its fundamental unbiased (as in not arbitrary) sameness or equality. Numbers, he believed, were neutral, unbiased, and fair, and therefore mathematics, physics, and geometry could be used to unlock the true laws of Nature that had been obscured by the arbitrary, tyrannical laws of religion. He said the earth was a sphere. He acquired a huge following and philosophy became a way of life, a life of Reason. He strongly influenced men in later generations such as Plato, Nostradamus, and Galileo. Math was his pride and joy because arithmetic itself had been invented by philosophical thought relying on self-evident truths. Rational thought – the prerequisite to finding truth – had produced arithmetic; therefore all numbers were believed to be predictable, unbiased, and rational. Years later when a man stepped forward and demonstrated that all numbers were not rational (they are now called irrational numbers), he was taken by the Greeks and drowned for daring to suggest mathematics is a flawed science. Religion began to have less influence on society as men increasingly sought truths by studying the “Natural Laws” of the “Cosmos.” Men who used secular Reason to grow in Knowledge of the Natural Cosmos were approvingly called “cosmopolitan.” When society had been religious rather than philosophical, wise men were those who learned and lived in harmony with religious doctrine. But in a secular democratic society it was found that a man no longer needed to be wise to be successful, he just needed a majority of the people to think he was wise. And that’s how the Sophists came about. Their world was one of rhetoric. They gave lectures and made public speeches in order to reach as many people as possible so it would become “common knowledge” that they were “wise.” And because skepticism was fashionable among cosmopolitan adherents of philosophy, Sophists also found it helped them appear wise if they questioned the validity of societal standards with a slightly mocking and haughty tone. Cleverly-worded speeches and snappy little comebacks that actually said nothing were found to be very effective at convincing the multitudes that Sophists were intellectual giants. What was right was beginning to be based on the changing views of the majority (public opinion, which is the foundation of democracy) who, as the Sophists found out, were so ignorant and insecure they could be easily manipulated by Pied Pipers and empty slogans. Another group was the Epicureans who said all participation in society should be based on the self-interest of the individual, on what he could get out of the whole rather than what he could contribute to the whole. Epicureans despised the Spartans, who believed in selflessly serving their tyrant for the good of the state as a whole. To the Epicureans all laws – right, wrong, good, bad – were relative because their rightness or goodness depended on the views of each individual. Breaking a law was ideologically OK as long as it suited the individual. And because being punished would not please and promote the happiness of the individual, corporal punishment, and even pain itself, became evil. And then there were the Stoics. Stoics were Universalists who believed we are all part of the Cosmos. Therefore, any laws passed by the state, in order to be equitable and thereby promote the welfare of mankind, should be based on the fundamental Natural Law of the Cosmos. Because philosophers thought we are all part of the Cosmos, Natural Law was thought to be a part of our Natural makeup and would therefore be “self-evident” as long as we escaped the mental tyranny of religion by using Reason. All men were brothers, all were equal, and all had Natural rights.Protagoras (480-410 B.C.) was a famous Sophist who said “man [rather than the gods] is the measure of all things.” In fact, the people of Athens ran him out of town for doubting the existence of their god. Making man the measure of all things was a Naturally-brilliant move on Protagoras’ part. Because the world of Sophists consisted of rhetoric and public perceptions, man being the measure of all things meant individual opinions were sovereign and inviolate. But because all individuals had differing opinions, none of which affected the validity of the opinions of others, snappy little rejoinders of those who were “sophisticated” included “That’s just your opinion” and “What is truth?” Socrates (470-399 B.C.) was a homosexual whose influence was so great he is called the Father of Philosophy and a mainstay of Western civilization. He claimed many of his philosophical ideas resulted from discussions with a familiar spirit. There is every reason to believe him; I wasn’t just being biased when I earlier said Satan used the philosophers to put his philosophy into writing – writings that Western civilization calls the “Classics” written during the “golden age of civilization.” Socrates built upon Protagoras’ “man is the measure of all things” by teaching that, since man is the measure of all things, man must know himself (“know thyself”) before he can properly branch out from that all-important foundation of truth – Self. A true Sophist, Socrates is famous for saying, “I know nothing except the fact of my ignorance.” For thousands of years people have heard those immortal words and declared, “What a towering intellect that great man was!” When he was sentenced to death he betrayed the secular Reason of philosophy by sacrificing a chicken to a serpent god (!) and committed suicide. Because he was a lecturer rather than a writer his teachings are preserved in the writings of one of his students, Plato. Plato (422-347 B.C.) learned much from his master, Socrates. Plato in turn taught much to his student, Aristotle. Aristotle in turn taught much to his student, Alexander the Great. Although Plato and Aristotle are the two most famous philosophers, very little of their work can be considered original thought. The earlier philosophers up through Socrates were the pioneers, and Plato and Aristotle were the intellects who shaped and refined the principles of philosophy they’d inherited from the pioneers into the largely irrefutable system of thought that became the foundation of Western civilization and the free world. For example, whereas Pythagoras merely theorized souls couldn’t die, Plato proved it. Let’s sit at his feet and drool over this great man’s genius and see why he is called the “wisest philosopher” as he “proves” the immortality of the soul for the first time in history: Eros love in man is inspired by beauty. And, while beauty is in the eye of the beholder because individuals are the measure of all things, when all men agree something is beautiful it is because they are beholding true beauty. They agree because, as parts of the Cosmos, the Natural Laws that reveal Truths cause them to agree about beauty, which in this case is universal truth. True beauty is eternal because true beauty is truth. Beauty is truth and truth beauty and always will be because truth/beauty is eternal. And man could not universally know and agree about beauty/truth if there weren’t something in him that was itself eternal. Since the body dies it therefore must be the soul, the intellect, that is immortal. With this childish and foolish Sophist rhetoric Plato made himself immortal by doing what Pythagoras and mathematics had been unable to do – “prove” the immortality of the unregenerate human soul. He also established that – since it had succeeded where mathematical science failed – sophistry was at least as powerful a force in society as science. Plato said, “Democracy…is a charming form of government, full of variety and disorder, and dispensing a sort of equality to equals and unequals alike.” The only proper government, he said, is one that complies with what Reason reveals about the Natural Law of the Cosmos. In writing The Republic, he expounded on how a republican form of democracy is more efficient than a pure democracy, and outlined its system of checks and balances in order to emulate the equality of a pure democracy and curtail the corruption resulting from inequitable distributions of power. Aristotle (384-322) put the finishing touches on the doctrines of philosophy. He is famous for agreeing with Anaximander that something or someone was needed back at the beginning of the universe to provide the push necessary to start the Cosmos in motion. Aristotle coined the term “Prime Mover.” He agreed that earth was a sphere. In fact, it was Greeks who invented longitude and latitude, divided the earth into 360 degrees, and designated the different zones according to climate (arctic, temperate, tropic). Aristotle formalized the idea of “happiness”, recognizing it as a truly personal condition because it originates in and is peculiar to the Reason of each individual – know thyself and be thine own measure of all things. This was the first time Reason and Happiness were treated as inseparable. Aristotle taught, “Reason is a light that God has kindled in the soul,” which agreed with Sophocles’ earlier pagan speculation that “Reason is God’s crowning gift to man.”  Aristotle also said Reason flourished in a state of “Freedom,” and Freedom would always result in democracy, and the purpose of democracy was to promote Freedom. He said Freedom must be based on Equality because without Equality you have injustice and tyranny – which prevent the Natural Right to Happiness. Good government, then, promotes Reason, Freedom, Equality, and Happiness. He said: “If Liberty and Equality are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in government” and, “The basis of a democratic state is Liberty.” Because he was an ignorant pagan, Aristotle lacked the wisdom and counsel of God in Pv 28:2, and therefore claimed the rule of popular law (the majority) is preferable to the rule of any single person because the collective good of the mediocre masses outshines even the brilliance and goodness of a single great man! As you can see, Aristotle was a Sophist. The “canon” of philosophy essentially closed with Aristotle. All other philosophers – Roman, medieval, and modern – merely used the tools and rules established by the Classic Greek philosophers. Later philosophers would coin a catchy phrase every now and then, and they would apply philosophy to other disciplines such as economics, but there was nothing they could add to philosophy: The Greeks had already defined it and established the rules. In a nutshell then philosophy is not letting religion of any kind influence what you think or do. That’s it. Nothing else is philosophy. When someone says, “My philosophy is to keep a low profile”, it’s just a colloquialism; strictly speaking he is not using the term correctly unless he actually means he didn’t consider the Bible. And if someone says, “He sticks to his religious philosophy”, the two words are oil and water; they don’t mix. When the Bible uses philosophy, vain deceit, the tradition of men, and the rudiments of the world as synonyms in opposition to Christ (Co 2:8), it is referring to Greek philosophy and all of its derivatives. It is not referring to “false” philosophy; there is no such thing as false philosophy or true philosophy – philosophy is philosophy. And just as it doesn’t matter if a carnal idea is good or bad because anything carnal is bad, any philosophy is bad because by definition philosophy must be carnal or it’s not philosophy. That’s not a secret and it never has been. The following are all synonyms for philosophy: Anything secular such as secular thought or writings; anything scientific or anything having to do with science, because science is knowledge arrived at by deliberately philosophical, secular, non-religious means; Reason; Carnality; doing that which is right and good in your own eyes; living by your own counsel; the Natural mind; Nature;Nature’s laws; humanism; the Classics; the Enlightenment; the Age of Reason; the whoredom of Peor; the leaven of the Pharisees that results in tradition and false doctrine; the doctrine of devils; the ideology of Satan; the spirit of antichrist; enmity against God; rebellion; witchcraft; and a damnable heresy. The Greek philosophers were valuable to the cause of Satan because for the first time they wrote down how to be carnal. They formalized enmity against God into a secular system thought to harmonize with religion because it seemed neutral and unbiased. Philosophy claimed to be the friend of truth (and therefore the friend of true religion) because the Natural truths that secular Reason revealed were supposed to be in accordance with whatever god or Prime Mover was responsible for the creation of Nature and its Laws. Philosophy was a Natural product of the pagan philosophers because as unregenerate human beings they were limited to the carnal mind; they were not capable of doing anything that pleased or glorified God. They had no choice or alternative – they had to be carnal because that’s what they were. Christians, on the other hand, have the capability to either walk in the flesh or to walk in the Spirit. Christians have a choice. The Natural old man gravitates toward philosophy at the same time the spiritual new man, by feeding on the Bible, tries to get the baby Christian to grow so he can die to the carnal influences of self daily, or, “To thine own self be dead.” As you’ve noticed, I usually refer to the Scriptural way of thinking – thoughts that are deliberately influenced by the Bible – as discernment, and I usually capitalize words like Reason when they are references to or part of carnality. I do not capitalize carnality because no Christian is going to mistake it for anything good or acceptable. Since we are supposed to be God’s servants forever, He gave us brains for one reason and one reason only – so we could, through His Book, avoid Reason by reasoning together (Is 1:18) with Him in order to know and do His will. That is discernment. Because it is so instinctively appealing/self-evident to the Natural mind, philosophy’s collective wisdom was hailed as the crown jewel of the “ancient sages of Classical Greece.” However, this ornament was but the guiled shore to a most dangerous sea. It was the seeming truth which subtle cunning used to entrap the unsuspecting. And it was the true beginning of our end because, as you will see, all of Western civilization is founded upon philosophy. But I’m getting ahead of myself. HEROD When God’s people returned to Jerusalem from Babylon they were under the rule of Media-Persia. Alexander the Great then conquered Media-Persia. When Alexander died his empire was divided among his four generals. General Seleucus began the Babylon- and Syria-based Seleucid dynasty whose territory included Israel. General Ptolemy began the Egyptbased Ptolemaic Empire, which often fought the bordering Seleucids and sometimes ruled Israel. Backed by the wealth and military might of the Greek conquerors, philosophy spread quickly. God’s people hated philosophy and the Greeks who spread it because they could already see it beginning to affect Christians. Both generals and their empires were thoroughly Hellenized and Israel was caught between the libraries of Greek Enlightenment in Antioch and Alexandria. A well intentioned family of Jewish priests, patriots, and freedom fighters, the Maccabees, decided to ignore the Biblical injunctions against rebellion and to revolt against the pagan authorities God had put over them, not realizing they were utilizing the very method of carnal thought they were fighting against. The Maccabees were very popular and continued to be a major influence for generations. They were popular because they cloaked everything they did in sheep’s clothing; they were fighting to terminate pagan control of God’s people so they could have a Christian government and a Christian society again. Most Christians in Israel became patriots who longed for independence. Therefore, many of them also looked forward to the anticipated return of the Messiah because they just knew He would overthrow foreign rule and reestablish the Kingdom of God on earth. The Roman Empire loved Greek philosophy and produced its own crop of philosophers who added volumes to the “Greek Classics” – but little of any substance. Eventually the Roman Empire conquered Alexander’s entire realm, including the Seleucid and Ptolemaic empires. Rome generally appointed locals to rule the kingdoms within its empire in an effort to maximize efficiency and good will. The Maccabees, now led by John Hyrcanus II, were heavily involved in politics and periodically revolted against Roman rule. For political reasons they were supported by another ambitious Christian, Antipater. Antipater was a pagan Edomite who converted to the God of the Bible and was the father of Herod the Great. In 63 B.C. the Roman general, Pompey (who would gain fame by defeating Spartacus’ slave revolt) arrived in Palestine to put down another illegal Christian/Maccabean revolt led by John Hyrcanus. Antipater’s political aspirations caused him to quickly shift his support to Pompey. He then patched his rift with the Maccabees by marrying one of their daughters. Later the members of the first ruling Triumvirate of Rome (Caesar and Pompey after the death of Crassus) began fighting each other for supremacy. The Ptolemaics in Egypt backed the politically powerful Pompey. Julius Caesar, while popular with the people, was opposed by the Senate, which backed Pompey. Therefore, it was risky to support Caesar. Antipater in Israel did support Caesar, as did Mark Antony, who had to flee Rome as a result. Friendships formed. Caesar defeated Pompey who fled to Egypt for the protection of the Ptolemaic ruler, Cleopatra. Cleopatra’s dilemma of being caught between her alliance with the defeated Pompey and the rapidly approaching mighty Caesar was solved when one of Pompey’s own soldiers assassinated him. Cleopatra then spread her arms wide with a warm welcome for her new political friend, Caesar. The next year, 47 B.C., Caesar rewarded Antipater for his support in two ways. First, he made him a Roman citizen (which applied to his son, Herod, as well). Second, Caesar appointed Antipater procurator of Judea. Three years later Caesar was assassinated and Mark Antony rose to power in the Second Triumvirate. A year later, Antipater died and Herod rose to power. Because of his father’s friendship with Caesar and Mark Antony, Herod and Antony bonded and established a close and lifelong friendship. Seeing that Herod had done a good job as governor of Galilee, Mark Antony promoted him to tetrarch of Galilee. A year later the Parthians, seeing the political fragmentation and weakness in Palestine, invaded the region. With that as a catalyst, the local factions began a civil war for supremacy. The new tetrarch of Galilee was caught in the storm: The Maccabees hated him because his father betrayed them by supporting Pompey, and because his father’s alliance with Pompey caused Herod to be bestowed with the political power the Maccabees coveted. The Pharisees – the largest and most powerful denomination – also despised Herod and never treated him as a Christian brother because they couldn’t get over their racial hatred of him as an Edomite. The patriotic Christian population hated him because they wanted independence from Rome and thought he was “selling out” to their pagan masters. Lacking any military power, Herod avoided assassination by fleeing to Rome. The Roman senate, still confident of Herod’s abilities, made him King of Judea, gave him an army, and sent him back to crush the rebels and unite the region under his rule. King Herod turned out to be no slouch militarily; he quickly subdued the region and ruled for thirty-two years until his death. This Herod the Great was the king who ruled at the time of Christ’s birth. After Herod’s death it was his son, Herod Antipas, who executed John the Baptist and skillfully foisted the political hot potato – Jesus Christ – off onto Pontius Pilate. Herod did everything he could to be a good ruler. In an effort to please the Christians he rebuilt the temple in Jerusalem as a large and magnificent structure. In an effort to establish a relationship with the Maccabees he married one of their daughters. In order to please the people he patronized the Olympics, even becoming president of the games. And, not neglecting his Daniel-like and Joseph-like Christian duty to serve and please his pagan masters, Herod also made several trips to Rome. His political friendships over the years included Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, Augustus Caesar, and Augustus’ powerful subordinate, General Agrippa. In fact, both Augustus and Gen. Agrippa honored King Herod by making state visits to Judea. Gen. Agrippa was so close to the Herod family that Herod’s grandson was named Herod Agrippa I and became king of the region. King Herod Agrippa’s son became King Herod Agrippa II, and is the Agrippa who inspired a popular Christian hymn when he told the Apostle Paul, “Almost thou persuadest me to be a Christian” (Ac 26:28), and who correctly pointed out that Paul was hoist on his own petard when the apostle foolishly relied on the world for protection (Ac 26:32). Although he is despised today, and ignoring the fact that he went mad later in life, Herod the Great proved to be a good ruler in a very difficult position. Lacking understanding, a faction of God’s people rebelled against him again under the Maccabees a few years after he became king. Herod subdued this illegal and unchristian anti-government insurrection and executed the last of the Maccabee rebels in 30 B.C. But the death of the Maccabees did not kill off the lust for Liberty and self-rule. Various Jewish rebels who fought for independence from Rome came and went. One of the most famous of these Freedom fighters was a militia leader called Barabbas. Patriotic groups of Christian Freedom fighters like the Maccabees and Barabbas were generally well-received by their fellow Jews who were very interested in regaining their lost kingdom on earth (Ac 1:6; Mt 21:5,9; Lk 19:38; Jn 6:15). And that is why King Herod, who saw both his life and his career threatened by insurrectionists on a number of occasions, was so quick to deal with the birth of the latest populist rebel in Bethlehem – this so-called “king of the Jews” who would take over where the Maccabees left off by trying to overthrow Herod’s rule. Would he allow political uprisings in his realm? Negative! When Jesus Christ’s ministry began to attract attention and it became known He was of the house and lineage of David, He became a popular figure among the multitudes of Jewish patriots who favored insurrection. The multitudes of Christians didn’t care that Christ attacked their current doctrines, because pewsters in general are more interested in worldly events than they are in Biblical doctrines, concepts, and principles – they just wanted a militant messiah who believed in Freedom as fervently as they did. But the Pharisees greatly resented the way this Scripture-quoting carpenter kept embarrassing them in public. Because Bible doctrine in a country ruled by the Roman Empire had no legal muscle, and because Christ was popularly believed to be a messiah/insurrectionist, and because the penalty for rebellion was death, the Pharisees played the insurrectionist/hopeful-king-of-the-Jews angle in an effort to have the rebellion-hating government execute Him. In order to show the pewsters that Christ was no friend of patriots, the Pharisees in a brilliant political move pointed out that He was a friend of publicans and sinners. Publicans were considered by Jewish patriots to be traitors because they worked for the pagan government as tax collectors, and many Jews wrongly thought it was sinful to give their taxes to support the ungodly agendas of pagan governments. The Christian outlaw/Freedom fighter, Barabbas, however, was gaining in popularity because he not only didn’t pay taxes, he stole from and murdered agents of the government (Mk 15:7; Lk 23:18,19; Jn 18:40). (After King Herod’s death it quickly became obvious that Herod’s sons were not nearly as effective at preventing rebellion.) That is one of the reasons his fellow Christians were so ready to release Barabbas from prison; unlike Christ, he was willing to put feet to his faith by trying to overthrow the pagan tyranny of Rome. And when he was released and Christ was executed in his place, many used that to “prove” God favored Barabbas’ kind of Christianity with its political strategy and military tactics. This caused more insurrectionist activity…until 70 A.D. when Rome in a big “get tough on crime” campaign decided to avenge the grieving families of all those who had been murdered by Jewish rebels. General Titus showed up and completely destroyed Jerusalem (Lk 19:41-44; Mk 13:1,2; Mt 24:1,2) because it was a breeding ground for rebels. He killed over a million Jews and sent the rest off into slavery. Several years later he became the emperor of Rome and finished building the Coliseum where more of God’s people would meet our Maker. Jesus Christ was born and conducted His ministry during all this political turmoil. And He never paid it any attention. He had no interest in the corruption and ungodliness of the ruling government, He had no interest in preserving the national identity of Israel so children could grow up in a godly society with school prayer, and had no interest in getting the pagan Roman government off the backs of His people. His entire focus was on the church and the leaven that was destroying it from within. Therefore, let’s take a look at that leaven – philosophy, the carnal mind, Reason. The church was very carnal. Well-intentioned Christians had invented numerous traditions that destroyed the authority of the word of God. Even good Christians like John the Baptist had trouble staying focused on the Bible instead of politics. (More on this in chapter D23, Dominion. In fact, skip ahead and read Dominion either now or after you finish this chapter. You may not understand some of what is referred to in the first several pages because it draws upon some stuff in earlier doctrinal chapters, but Dominion will help you put the rest of this historical section into better perspective. And even though you haven’t yet learned some of the things it mentions, it will enable you to keep a critical eye on the validity, or lack thereof, concerning my points in both the historical and doctrinal sections.) The Lord spent a great deal of time rebuking Christians for not knowing and applying the Bible. Greek philosophy and its effects were everywhere. Even Pontius Pilate, having run out of anything meaningful to say to Christ, resorted to philosophy by quoting the popular snappy little air -headed cliché of the Sophists, “What is truth?” (Jn 18:38). Because philosophy had leavened His Old Testament saints, Christ specifically mentioned it by name in the New Testament (Co 2:8). THE NEW TESTAMENT ERA BEGINS Philo of Alexandria (20 B.C.-50 A.D.) is a famous example of how philosophy was affecting Bible study. A Hellenized Jew, he worked to develop an allegorical interpretation of the Bible in order to avoid the literal interpretations that were so contrary to the Natural Reason of the sophisticated new way of studying religion – what is now called “theology.” He is the earliest known person to openly advocate combining Scriptural revelation with Greek Reason, and is therefore regarded as the father of Christian “theology.” (Having a degree in Christian theology means philosophical Reasoning was incorporated into your studies. This book on the other hand, is anti-theology; it is a Bible study. I am praying it might help you become a good Christian and stop being a Rational Christian.) Philo was also one of the early advocates of combining the pagan concepts of morality and ethics with the Bible in order to produce “Biblical” morality and ethics – something that would not be accepted by Christians until the Age of Aquinas began in the 14th century. Because he thought on a carnal level it is not surprising that Philo also adopted the Greek arguments in support of some form of democracy as the best government. Early Christian pioneers in the use of Reason in Bible exposition included Justin (100-165 A.D.), who wrote two philosophic defenses of Christian doctrine. Christian historians are fond of him because his writings help establish the early historicity and spread of the written New Testament. For example, he referred to the first three gospels, quoted from the epistles of Peter and Paul, and is the first known writer to quote from Acts. He was a student of Stoic and Platonic philosophy and is considered one of the most important early Christians because he was one of the first to openly advocate improving Christianity by making it compatible with philosophy. He argued that since the Greek word logos means both word (Christ) and intellect (man) it “proves” God made human thoughts conform to His so man could, through Reason, find truth and know what is good and what is evil. Based on how good pagan philosophy seemed to him, and based on the fact that it seemed necessary to finding truth, he was one of the first Christians to claim that, just as Abraham and Moses were Christians before the birth of Christ, so too were Greek philosophers like Plato. Therefore, the writings of the Old Testament prophets and the writings of the Greek philosophers were two branches that combined to form the river of Christianity. He was convicted of attempting to subvert Christianity and was executed. Clement (155-215 A.D.) was a Greek from Athens who was saved, moved to Alexandria, became a teacher of Christian doctrine, and was the first Christian carnal enough to actually attempt to harmonize Greek philosophy and Christianity. He was a strong advocate of what is deceptively called “intellectualized Christianity” and was often denounced by Biblical literalists because he thought the Reason of Greek philosophy was a necessary prerequisite to finding the truth. He certainly learned from the Sophists how to utter impressive words that really said nothing: “One, therefore, is the way of truth, but into it, just as into an everlasting river, flow streams but from another place.” Clement was one of the earliest Bible preachers who openly sided with philosophy by claiming the Bible’s injunctions against rebellion against all authority do not apply to subjects when they rise in rebellion against governments that treat them like slaves by disregarding the “will of the people.” He taught that God did not need to intervene in events in Egypt by giving Moses the authority to resist Pharaoh; he thought the Hebrew slaves could have justly risen in rebellion against their masters on their own. Origen (185-254 A.D.) was Clement’s student and became a more famous Christian philosopher than his teacher. His writings were numerous and well known. (I am not going to avoid the labels history uses such as “Christian philosopher.” But I want you to remember the two terms are mutually exclusive because the Bible prohibits philosophy and philosophy prohibits religion.) Faithful Christians despised Origin and accused him of using pagan philosophy to corrupt Christianity. For example, one of the reasons philosophy speaks of a “Prime Mover” rather than a personal God is philosophy’s foundation of equality cannot accept the inequality inherent in one supreme God who does things arbitrarily. Because of that Origin rejected the concept of hell: If there is a hell there also of necessity must be some arbitrary Judge who decides who goes there to suffer – with no consideration whatever for the wishes and feelings of individuals. Origin therefore changed the God of the Bible into a kinder, gentler entity of “good” who would never be that cruel. Origin even believed Satan would end up where everyone ends up – heaven. He thought we are all going to be given the time we need to repent of evil and be “good.” When Origin argued that Satan’s having the free will to rebel and fall from grace was in itself proof that he also has the free will to repent and return to God’s favor, it showed that Origen understood neither the arbitrariness of authority nor the finality of Laws as taught in the Bible. (The subject of Laws is covered in chapter D19.) Cyril of Jerusalem (315-386 A.D.), who was a Christian preacher and “Doctor of the Church”, was a student of philosophy whose sermons included his famous quote about common knowledge: “Those beliefs common to all men must be true.” (The liberal scholars in these examples would remain a despised minority within Christianity for another 1,000 years.) St. Ambrose (339-397 A.D.) was one of the most influential Christian thinkers of the Age of Alexander. He was a pagan citizen of Rome and a serious espouser of Greek philosophy. At the age of thirty-four this notable and influential pagan philosopher was appointed to be bishop of Milan. In order to qualify, however, he needed to meet certain requirements. So he was baptized to make him a Christian and then given theological degrees that promoted him through all the necessary ecclesiastical steps. This amazing transition from pagan to high-ranking preacher took eight days and has resulted in his unofficial title – the Eight-DayWonder. He hypocritically accused pagans and heretics of leavening themselves with the tenants of philosophy (a typical accusation and hypocrisy of his day – it was just how the game was played). I say “hypocritically” because his sermons – not surprisingly – reveal that his Christianity was saturated with philosophy. Ambrose used Greek thought to teach the Bible as “erudite philosophical allegory” in his sermons and lectures, which historians have labeled “brilliant.” His On the Six Days of Creation and On Isaac and the Soul especially reveal by their Neoplatonic mystical language the depths of his involvement with philosophy. Ambrose’s sermons today remain a rich source for documenting the transmission of Greek doctrine into Western theology. History says this about his combining pagan thought with Christian doctrine: “His brilliant religious writings molded Classic learning in a Christian context.” In fact, when compared with pure Biblical Christianity, the brand of Christianity embraced by the educated class of Ambrose’s day has been called “an impeccably Classical version of Christianity.” The Eight-Day Wonder thought civil rulers who claimed to be Christian should be subject to church rulers like him. His influence was so great he actually did successfully impose his will on a number of emperors. He also blended Stoic virtue with his own extreme and unusual ideas about the value of abstaining from pleasure; he advocated a rigid form of monkish asceticism that included not just sexual abstinence, but also the belief that sex itself was a sinful act unless performed for procreation. This eight-day wonder twisted 1 Co 7:1 (“it is good for a man not to touch a woman”) in order to preach “it is good for a woman not to touch a man during her entire lifetime” in such strong condemnation of even marital sex that responsible members of his congregation tried to shield their daughters from these pro-virginity sermons (which eventually – when the Roman Catholic Church adopted St. Ambrose and his student as “church fathers” – helped produce the Roman Catholic doctrine of the perpetual virginity of Joseph’s wife, Mary.) I mentioned Ambrose’s student. His pupil was none other than Saint Augustine, who is the main reason Ambrose is so important to history: Just as Alexander had his mentor, Aristotle, so did Augustine have his Ambrose.

http://allchristiansarewelcome.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-age-of-alexander-600-bc-400-ad.html

[beaubourgtheatre-blog]

Free Fall Course Catalog

Freeing the Natural Voice (12 Weeks)

Instructor: Grace Kennedy

Sundays October 27 to January 12. 12pm-3pm

This course is designed for the singer, the actor, and anyone who wishes to strengthen and develop a deeper connection to their vocal instrument. Using Kristin Linklater’s text, Freeing the Natural Voice, this intermediate level course requires the utmost presence of body and mind for the 2 hour duration of the class, and asks that participants attend no fewer than 8 out of the 12 classes taking care to arrive before or on time. By the end of the 12 week course, participants will acquire concrete tools and exercises used to warm-up, strengthen, and liberate the voice, and can expect to hone their vocal instrument and increase its capacity to articulate and express thoughts and feelings in professional and personal contexts. Registration is required.

Grace Kennedy entered the world screaming and hasn’t stopped since. She can be found filling theaters, music venues, the French Quarter and the atmosphere of New Orleans with a truly liberated voice.

Register for this course with Grace at g.kennedy.woodford@gmail.com

—————————————————————————-

Making Strong Choices: An Actor’s Workshop (4 Weeks)

Instructor: Samantha Beaulieu

Saturdays November 2 - 23. 10am-12pm

Making Strong Choices: An Actor's Workshop will cover the importance of making strong choices in auditions and performances. Students will be expected to select a monologue to perform and explore making strong choices and creating moments through their piece. Each student will have the opportunity to perform their monologue in front of the class, and receive notes and adjustments. For the final class, students can invite friends and family for a showing of their pieces and a discussion of what they learned.

Samantha Beaulieu is an award-winning actress and a filmmaker from New Orleans who works in film, television and theatre. In 2010 Samantha won Gambit’s Big Easy Theater Award for Best Supporting Actress in a Drama for her portrayal of Ruth Younger in the award winning play A Raisin in the Sun. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Mass Communications from Clark Atlanta University, and a Master’s in Business Administration from the University of Minnesota.   

Register for this workshop with Beaubourg at beaubourgtheatre@gmail.com

—————————————————————————-

Get It Written: Creative Writing (8 Weeks)

Instructor: Té V. Smith

Saturdays November 2 - December 21. 11am-1pm

There's a quote "Don't get it right, get it written." You want to write . . . and you’re facing a blank page, daring you to cover it. Sometimes we need a nudge out of fears of perfection to get us to start writing at all, and this weekly class will offer many activities that you can use on your own (or with friends!). We’ll use a series of directed exercises designed to get you writing quality material now. We’ll also discuss key points of craft, learn from one another’s work and draw lessons from published examples. Whether you’re starting out and learning the basics, or an experienced writer looking to invigorate your practice, this class is designed to offer you fresh ideas and starting points. You can expect to generate new pieces–work that can form the basis for stories, essays, poems, and novels to come. Our goal: to start writing and keep writing.

Té V. Smith is a Nigerian American writer who focuses on the themes of healthy masculinity, mental health, and education reform.  He has written two books, a collection of poetry & prose, 'Here We Are, Reflections of A God Gone Mad' (2017 R.H. Austin Publishing) and a Young Adult novel, 'Exit Ticket' (2019 Field Order Press). His work has been published in or are forthcoming in Tin House, Kingdoms In The Wild, Black Girl In Ohm, Blackbird and more. 

Register for this course at tevsmith.com 

—————————————————————————-

Embodied Nature Poetry (7 Weeks)

Instructor: Tim Kooken

Saturdays November 2 - December 14. 2pm-3:30pm

Nature has long been subject of poetic investigation. Many of the somatic arts reflect rhythms and flows of nature. This class will explore conceptual and real objects of nature in both embodied and linguistic practice in order to write from an expanded perspective. We will create poems, read poems, share observations through group techniques, and use somatic, performative, and linguistic tools to embody and represent nature. (Involves physical contact & group work)

Explorations in Walking with Qigong (7 Weeks)

Instructor: Tim Kooken

Mondays November 4 - December 16. 9am-10am

Cultivate healthy movement habits out of formal walking meditations. Qigong walking involves a heavy focus on balance, core strength, energy flow, and proprioception. This class will introduce Qigong to students with an aim towards stronger balance and spatial awareness. (Involves physical contact & group work) Registration Suggested / Drop-ins Welcome.

Tim is a certified medical-based Qigong and Aikido teacher, performer, poet, and playwright. Their work involves a focus on somatic investigation, philosophical investigation, abstraction, rhythm, and nature. 

Register for these courses with Tim at timothythomasadams@gmail.com

—————————————————————————-

Intro to Photography (8 Weeks)

Instructor: Aaron Sarles

Sundays November 3 - December 22. 11:00am-12:30pm

This course will introduce students to the fundamentals and core concepts of photography, providing a historical overview and theoretical groundwork, with a particular emphasis on moving beyond the traditional Western Male paradigm approach to the medium. Classes will focus on aesthetics, history, composition, the camera, lenses, light, and post processing, with the final class consisting of a guided photo walk during which students can directly apply all that they have learned.

It is preferred that students each have their own camera, but it is not required. A phone camera is sufficient.

Aaron Sarles is a portrait, fashion, and editorial photographer living in New Orleans. 

Register for this workshop with Beaubourg at beaubourgtheatre@gmail.com

—————————————————————————-

Conceptual Counterpoint (4 Weeks)

Instructor: Michael Mason

Mondays November 4 - 25. 8pm-9pm

Through discussion and hands-on experimentation we will seek to find a way to better our understanding of the world using the musical concept of Counterpoint and how it is translatable to various aspects of life. Having musical knowledge is not required but certainly doesn't hurt. The concepts discussed will get pretty complicated but it's my goal to arrive at the concepts together so hopefully it won't be too difficult. Students will gain an increased awareness of the forces of counterpoint that affect our everyday lives. They will gain a better understanding of music in general and will leave with enhanced active listening skills. 

Michael Mason is a guitarist, composer, and educator living and working in New Orleans. He cut his baby teeth on a toy & plastic guitar, doing his best to recreate the rock and roll and folk dreams that fell out of his boyhood radio and into his head. He found his way to NOCCA, where he plunged headfirst into the deep end of jazz, which studies he continued at UNO, ultimately receiving his B.A. in jazz composition from the Berklee College of Music. 

Register for this course with Michael at michael.mason1809@gmail.com

—————————————————————————-

Introduction to Music Theory (4 Weeks)

Instructor: Zachary Pine

Mondays November 4 - 25. 6pm-8pm

Students will gain or improve skills in reading and writing Western musical notation. The material is introductory; no prior experience with music theory is required although familiarity with a musical instrument or voice will be an advantage for students.  Additionally, they will acquire a foundational vocabulary of musical terminology.

Zachary Pine is a composer and teacher in New Orleans with a studio-practice where he creates popular music using computer-driven tools. 

Register for this workshop with Beaubourg at beaubourgtheatre@gmail.com

—————————————————————————-

Scene Study Workshop (6 Weeks)

Instructor: Bennett Kirschner

Wednesdays November 6 - December 11. 12pm-2pm

Participants will work on a short, realist scene (approx. 10-15 minutes) with one or two partners. Using essential Stanislavskian concepts such as action, objective, and given circumstance to interpret and embody their text, participants will move through the process of scene study, beginning with text analysis and leading up to defined, repeatable blocking. The class will culminate with a performance that is open to the public.

Bennett Kirschner is the founding Artistic Director of Intramural Theater, a New Orleans based theatre company that has been producing original, site-specific works since 2014. He received his MFA in Playwriting from the University of New Orleans in 2019.

Register for this workshop with Beaubourg at beaubourgtheatre@gmail.com

—————————————————————————-

Kinesthetic Realignment Workshop (4 Weeks)

Instructor: Rachel Nelson

Saturdays November 9 - December 7. 4pm-5:30pm

Using the seven main chakras, we will move through the body's main energy centers, freeing tension, finding legibility, and increasing awareness. This is a great class for performers, as well as anybody looking to deepen their relationship with their body. Will include some movement and some journaling. No experience necessary.

Rachel is a professor at Hollins University and Bard College who has taught and directed around the country. She is especially interested in using theater as a way expand social justice work in our communities and liberation in our bodies.

Register for this workshop with Beaubourg at beaubourgtheatre@gmail.com

—————————————————————————-

Imagining Sound Workshop (2 Weeks)

Instructor: Justin Peake

Mondays December 9 & 16. 6-8pm

 Imagining Sound is a series of two meetings with an attention to the variety of images and sensations that accompany the sounds which surround us. It is an experiment in imagination, memory, and stillness. By playfully exploring the multisensorial aspects of sonic and musical experience we might be able to expand and augment our approaches to composition to expand beyond music's ethereal nature and perhaps discover a more metaphorical, unified or inclusive language for describing our experiences of sonic phenomena. This class is open to all current and aspiring listeners. Justin Peake is a drummer, sound composer,  improviser, and experimental media artist  based in New Orleans, LA. His music incorporates acoustic and electronic elements often using his own interactive software instruments. A graduate of  NYU’s Interactive Telecommunications Program (ITP), he focuses on software for variably structured improvisation in performance. He has released music on the Moodgadget, Ghostly International, Ears & Eyes, and Articulated Works labels

—————————————————————————-

Known Mass: Collective Intelligence Movement Workshop + Performance (4 Weeks)

Instructor: Ann Glaviano

Sundays December 29 - January 19. 4pm-7pm

Performance January 19th at 7:30 pm

This project is open to participants aged 18+ who are interested in practicing individual and ensemble devising processes and performance skills. Both trained dancers/physical performers and “pedestrians” with no specialized movement practice are welcome. Together we will build an ensemble movement-based performance piece using scored improvisation (a rehearsed, open structure) and set material. At the end of our fourth meeting, we will offer a public performance.

To participate in this workshop you must commit to all four meetings. Spots are limited; email knownmass@gmail.com to sign up; you will receive confirmation of your enrollment by December 15. If you can’t commit to all meetings but you would like to participate in a future workshop, sign up for notification at https://annglaviano.com/monthly-newsletter/.

Ann Glaviano is a writer, dance-maker, DJ, and native New Orleanian. Since 2013 Ann has directed a performance project called Known Mass, aesthetically and ethically motivated by devised theatre and DIY punk traditions. She has also improvised with Hannibal Buress, danced with the New Orleans Ballet Theatre, choreographed for Hulu, and performed in a dystopic faux-corporate durational art installation in Dresden. Her dance film 01_fieldrecording  premiered in 2019 at Highways (Los Angeles).

[hellzyeahthewebwieldingavenger]

The Vindication of Venom Part 9: Delusional Psychotic

Part 8

Part 10

Now here is where we start to get to the heart of the character.

As always for these instalments here is the specific criticism I will be addressing and the relevant pages from ASM #300

·         Eddie Brock’s motivations for hating Spider-Man are weak and make no sense 

I’ve said in prior instalments that Brock is a hypocrite, but what is key to understanding Brock is that his hypocrisy is deeply interconnected with deeply held delusions.

Eddie Brock put simply is a psychotic who as part of his particular psychosis has a real life mental condition known as ‘Delusional Disorder’.* This means he would have a certain loss of contact with reality and could/would thus become convinced of things which are not true. From Wikipedia:

 A delusion is a belief that is held with strong conviction despite superior evidence to the contrary…

 …Although non-specific concepts of madness have been around for several thousand years, the psychiatrist and philosopher Karl Jaspers was the first to define the three main criteria for a belief to be considered delusional in his 1913 book General Psychopathology.[1] These criteria are:

·         certainty (held with absolute conviction)

·         incorrigibility (not changeable by compelling counterargument or proof to the contrary)

·         impossibility or falsity of content (implausible, bizarre, or patently untrue)[2]

 Furthermore, when a false belief involves a value judgment, it is only considered a delusion if it is so extreme that it cannot be, or never can be proven true. For example: a man claiming that he flew into the sun and flew back home. This would be considered a delusion,[3] unless he were speaking figuratively, or if the belief had a cultural or religious source.

 Reread Eddie Brock’s account of his fall from grace, particularly his reason for hating Spider-Man. Doesn’t that fit the above criteria quite a bit?**

Let me be clear here. The Eddie Brock of ASM #300 (though not necessarily of later stories) is not someone who would literally hallucinate and see/hear things that were not there. That is a different mental condition altogether. Rather his interpretations of reality would not be like those of other people. It would be like hearing an obvious compliment but truly believing it to be a scathing insult, only much more extreme than that.

This is corroborated in (the canonically dubious) Uncanny Origins #7 where the narrator outright states that Venom sees himself in a way that is at odds with the reality of his actions. Later in the story , when Venom has abandonned his vendetta against Spider-Man, he himself even admits that he wasn’t seeing things the way they were.

In Brock’s case he might very well have been delusional from the time he was first contacted by Emil Gregg. This could very well provide a different explanation for Brock felt Sin Eater was worthy of sympathy. It should be noted that possessing delusions doesn’t mean you can’t function in your day-to-day life. Brock could have walked around for years perceiving aspects of reality in a different way to most people and still had a career as a journalist with no one the wiser to his condition.

Alternatively it is possible that Brock developed a case of Delusional Disorder as a direct result of an inability to accept his own part in ruining his life/career and a strong desire to scapegoat his failings onto somebody else. Notice how he even admits that he made an ‘error in judgement’ but is clearly doesn’t see this this as the real cause of his misfortunes, instead laying the blame on someone else.

His profession might even have played into these delusions. As a journalist Brock had experience spinning stories and manipulating factual details. Thus it’s not unreasonable that he’d have deliberately/subconsciously been employing those skills and experiences to paint himself in an absolving light. 

 These delusions are also the root of his ridiculous assertions about how Stan Carter might have stopped his killing spree. He seriously entertains the idea that someone as obviously disturbed and unhinged as Carter (who’s instability was a matter of public knowledge) might simply have ‘stopped’. It is patently delusional and also smacks of Brock trying to construct a feeble narrative to justify his hatred for Spider-Man, which is also rooted in these serious delusions. Indeed Brock is so delusional that he places all blame onto Spider-Man despite the fact that as soon as Carter struck again his story would’ve been debunked anyway. This is to say nothing of the consequent investigation into Gregg.

 Simply put Brock’s vendetta against Spidey was motivated by an inability to accept his own failings combined with a further inability to perceive reality in a sane and rational way.

This is an interpretation corroborated by numerous stories published after ASM #300.

Michelinie himself implies this idea in Amazing Spider-Man #375.

Paul Jenkins in Spectacular Spider-Man Volume 2 #5 has Spider-Man himself call out Eddie Brock, labelling him as someone who’s scapegoated the problems in his life onto someone else.

Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa in Sensational Spider-Man Volume 2 #38 all but spells this interpretation out for you. 

In the issue Eddie Brock systematically blames Spider-Man for everything that went wrong in his life. This includes his cancer, something he admits he can’t blame Spider-Man for, but only because he has yet to figure out how it is his fault. 

Finally Zeb Well’s also touched on the notion in his (non-canonical) mini-series Venom: Dark Origin, which revisits Eddie Brock’s life and ASM #300.

All pretty clear evidence of Brock’s inability to accept his mistakes/delusional nature wouldn’t you say?

 Yet, despite the overwhelming evidence that makes Venom’s mental instability obvious, many readers of ASM #300 (and consequent Venom stories continue) to either not notice or unjustifiably dismiss this key facet of the character which addresses most of their criticisms of his motivations and origin. Perhaps Brock isn’t the only hypocrite around eh?

 In their defence whilst Brock’s delusional nature might have been present in ASM #300, the story didn’t just spoon-feed the concept to readers. This is where the communication problems of the story are perhaps most prevalent.

 You will recall how in Part 5 how David Michelinie explained the scene where Brock revealed himself to Spidey was played as a shocking moment because it was written from Peter’s POV, not the readers’. Well it’s likely that as the scene continued the same kind of methodology was applied to Brock’s origin, as he was the one telling the story and having the flashback.

 At face value it might seem as though the story is seriously implying Brock’s actions were reasonable, that there was obvious valid cause for Brock to blame Spider-Man for his misfortunes and that his rationale for Carter stopping his killing spree was logical. But the only reason the story is presented this way is because it is Brock himself giving account of this stuff. In his own twisted mind all those things hold up to scrutiny and he passionately believes them. He believes them either because not believing them would mean accepting the devastating fact that he was the one who ruined his life and/or because he can’t help but believe what he believes because he doesn’t perceive reality correctly.

 It is not  the case that Michelinie or McFarlane themselves honestly buy Brock’s logic, nor is it their intention that the readers should either. Rather the intention in Brock’s flashback (given context by his actions at points before and after in the issue) is to convey the fact that Brock is…well…nuts.

 Neither the narrator nor Spider-Man ever directly say that in the issue, but the obvious contradictions inherent in the story alongside Brock’s violent tendencies (some of which he obviously delights in) should make that pretty obvious. As should Spider-Man’s own dialogue at the end of the issue where he offhandedly refers to Venom as ‘a homicidal maniac’.

As further food for thought, consider that this is Spider-Man we are talking about. 

Peter Parker has a tendency to blame himself for things, including things that aren’t really his fault. He’s a guy who accepts responsibility for things; it’s arguably the whole point of the character. But to my knowledge Peter never actually blames himself for allegedly ruining Brock’s life. 

Much later in Michelinie’s run Spider-Man is put on trial for bringing the symbiote to Earth and in doing so inadvertently unleashing Venom, Carnage and all the other symbiotes. Yet a central point of the story is to assert that Spider-Man in fact does not   feel he is truly responsible for this alleged crime and doesn’t  feel guilty about it.

Whilst Michelinie should probably have communicated Brock’s insanity more clearly to readers, it is still nevertheless evidently present and should therefore be understood as integral to the character and his motivations and core concept.

 *Note that someone who is psychotic is not  the same thing as someone who is psychopathic.

 **It should also be noted as food for thought that David Michelinie in ASM #296-297 as well as in ASM #317 (which also featured Venom) had Spider-Man interact with a mental health doctor and utilize psychology as a means of stopping Doc Ock’s scheme and defeating Venom respectively. I’m not suggesting Michelinie has well read in the subject, but he seemed to have a certain degree of rudimentary understanding in order to implement some of the concepts.

***Additionally Sensational Spider-Man #38 implies Brock learned of his cancer after  bonding with the symbiote. However in Jenkins’ Spectacular Spider-Man #5, it is stated that Brock knew before that point in time. This again further implying he’s out of touch with reality.

Part 8 

Part 10

[thisdaynews]

Voter suppression issues rank low among reasons nonvoters stay home

New Post has been published on https://thebiafrastar.com/voter-suppression-issues-rank-low-among-reasons-nonvoters-stay-home/

Voter suppression issues rank low among reasons nonvoters stay home

Illustration by Michelle Pereira

Democratic campaign committees and activist groups have been spending millions of dollars to fight against a range of legal obstacles on voting, believing that making voter registration easier and keeping polls open longer would inspire more Americans to turn out.

But to nonvoters themselves, those issues don’t seem to be at the forefront of their minds: Only 8 percent of nonvoters said they don’t vote because they don’t have the time to get to the polls — fourth on the list of reasons they cited. Only 5 percent of nonvoters said they don’t vote because they aren’t registered.

That was the surprising finding of a sweeping new study released Wednesday by the Knight Foundation. The study, which involved polling and interviews with over 14,000 people, showed that a plurality of nonvoters cited a dislike of the candidates (17 percent) and a feeling that their votes don’t matter (12 percent) as the main motivators for not voting.

There were similar responses with why eligible citizens chose not to register. According to the study, 29 percent of nonvoters said they were not registered to vote because of a lack of interest, followed by 13 percent saying their votes don’t matter. Only 8 percent said they don’t vote because they don’t know how or it’s too complicated.

Only 3 percent of nonvoters said a more convenient process to register would motivate them to vote in more elections.

That finding may be important to the numerous groups fighting to increase voter turnout by combating structural barriers to voting. Voter suppression has been a hot-button issue in recent years, boiling over during the 2018 elections as voters cried foul with long lines, faulty machinery and massive voter purges.

Leading up to the 2020 elections, Democrats in particular have highlighted the issue, opposing largely Republican-led efforts to create stricter laws for access to the polls. Among the most high-profile activists is former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, who stepped back from serving in elected office to advocate for greater access to the polls.

The 2018 race between Abrams and then-Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp gained national attention after Kemp purged over 600,000 from voter rolls, allegedly for not having voted in recent elections. Abrams’ supporters have called the purge a blatant act of voter suppression.

The election has since led Abrams to launch Fair Fight, an organization dedicated to fighting voter suppression. The organization works in 20 states training staffers to combat voter suppression and to register voters and raise awareness of election reforms.

Other groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, Brennan Center for Justice and the League of Women Voters have taken legal action to stop laws they view as unfairly blocking voters from the polls. They also work to influence lawmakers to reform voting laws and use the courts to ensure those protections are fully enforced.

Abrams did not respond to requests for comment, and the organizers of other groups said they didn’t want to directly respond to an embargoed survey they couldn’t review. But some organizers said it didn’t surprise them that nonvoters would cite other reasons for not pursuing a chance to vote, being reluctant to admit that they don’t know or couldn’t follow the rules.

“Asking people to draw the causal link between a legal regime and their behavior, I think, is difficult, and I don’t know if it’s the most reliable way to figure out how laws affect human behavior,” said Dale Ho, director of the ACLU voting rights project.

Structural issues such as voter ID laws and difficulty accessing polling places didn’t come up enough to even be marked in the Knight survey results. In fact, 89 percent of voters, 76 percent of nonvoters and 69 percent of young people aged 18-24 found voting either very or somewhat easy.

Young voters aged 18-24 reflected a similar sentiment to nonvoters at large, with 28 percent of those not registered saying they weren’t due to a lack of interest.

Responses were open-ended with respondents coming up with their own answers for pollsters.

But the lack of focus on legal obstacles to voting shouldn’t serve as encouragement for those seeking to impose further restrictions, advisers to the study maintained. Political scientists have a general consensus that asking nonvoters to explain their actions is not an effective way to measure voter suppression, painting a far more nuanced image of the issue.

“To find out the effects of [restrictive voting laws], you really don’t want to ask voters about it. They really don’t have a feel of how institutions’ rules affect them,” said Eitan Hersh, a political science professor at Tufts University who advised the study.

Though the laws dictating voter registration play a major role in blocking people from turning out, voters generally see them as the background conditions for their decisions, and they rarely identify them as dictating their political decisions over faith in a candidate or an issue, activists said.

“I suspect when voters make the conscious decision to go to the polls … they’re not saying, ‘Well, because the polls are open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., I was able to vote this year,’” Ho said. “They think, ‘Oh, I really care about this midterm,’ and, if it works in their schedule, they go.”

Yanna Krupnikov, another adviser to the Knight survey and a political science professor at Stony Brook University, added that nonvoters may feel social pressure to offer more philosophical explanations of why they stayed home, rather than admit that the voting system was too complicated.

“When there are so many social messages that people get to vote, to turn out, about how important that is, it becomes even harder to give a reason for not voting that seems random or spontaneous or not good enough,” Krupnikov said.

But Hersh said that no matter how many other factors actually contribute to nonvoters opting to stay home from the polls, the reasons respondents themselves identified shouldn’t be lightly dismissed.

When asked what could motivate them to vote in more elections, a plurality of nonvoters cited “a candidate I believe in” with 22 percent. Seven percent of nonvoters said they would vote more often “If my vote would affect the outcome.”

One nonvoter in Milwaukee who participated in a focus group cited by the study said she didn’t vote because of a “lack of interest, uneducated. The times that I’ve spent to get a little bit more educated, all the options suck. I don’t feel like one is great so I’m not going to vote at all.”

And just because structural barriers to voting are not forefront in voters’ minds doesn’t mean they don’t have a major impact.

Ho points out that states with more accessible voting infrastructure — particularly election-day registration — routinely have higher turnout than states that don’t. Minnesota, New Hampshire and Iowa all have election-day registration and had substantially higher turnout rates than the national average in 2016 — in some cases by greater than 10 percentage points.

Among nonvoters in the Knight study, 7 percent said they didn’t register because they’d forgotten — a problem that could have been remedied with election-day registration.

Ho also added that the United States is singular among advanced democracies in placing the onus for registering to vote on citizens rather than the government. In countries where the state registers voters, registration is substantially higher, with 91 percent registration in Canada and 96 percent in Sweden versus only 70 percent in the U.S. in 2016.

Six percent of nonvoters in the Knight study said they didn’t register because they’d recently moved. Ho pointed out that the U.S. is unique among advanced democracies in requiring citizens to re-register to vote when they move, making voting even less accessible.

“I don’t have any reason to think that Americans are more helpless or apathetic than people who live in other Western democracies,” Ho said. “So that makes me ask: What else is different about our systems? And the first thing I think of is how byzantine our registration systems are.”

Helping navigate those systems is among the top priorities of activists encouraging higher voter participation.

Speaking with POLITICO in November, Abrams said a major method to combating voter suppression is warning constituents about potential purges and letting them know how to to contest them. Abrams led a massive phone banking operation in November to warn voters in Georgia about a potential purge that drew then-Democratic presidential candidates Cory Booker, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar and Andrew Yang.

Jeanette Senecal, senior director of mission impact at the League of Women Voters, stressed that many would-be first-time voters especially don’t turn out to the polls because they aren’t aware of early voting opportunities. And those first-time voters may not realize just how difficult it can be to register and turn out.

“It’s really important to do some education, especially for new and first-time voters, around what the early voting opportunities are for them,” Senecal said. “And they wouldn’t know that’s an institutional barrier … But in reality, not knowing what their options are is a barrier.”

Read More