#and I have to get two internships

[sweet-as-kiwis]

Oh I am so fucked next semester

[stemacademics]

10-06-2024 | productive days perking up!

when your brain finally says, “ok maybe enough staring at walls” after a real bad shutdown for a frustratingly long time - and then you're buried in books for hours at a stretch, forgetting dinner. and you're quietly cursing at your brain for wasting so much of your time, keeping you away from all that fun.

currently studying real analysis and she's a real beauty. though her seduction is not quite helping with my majors-decision-anxiety. nonetheless, i'm having fun!

[god-blog]

Ok, idea that I'm really excited about

Everyone is always talking abt an in-person temple for pagans but what if instead of a temple-temple, there was a museum-temple?

Hear me out bc I think this would be really cool.

Things the temple-museum would have:

Permanent exhibits including:

Outside land art similar to Sun Tunnels by Nancy Holt that line up with the solstices/constellations

Inside sky art for meditating similar to Skyspace by James Turrell (PLS look this one up, it's so pretty. The picture in the article doesn't do it justice)

A wall of prayers/manifestations/affirmations. Visitors write them on a post it or note card and pin it to the wall to make a collaborative exhibition like Post Secret at the Museum of Us

A small gallery with general overviews of popular pagan pantheons: Hellenic, Celtic, etc. This will include artifacts from those time periods either depicting the deities or how people worshiped them

A small gallery with historical witchcraft artifacts. This will include medieval European poppets, Copic love spell manuscripts, Chinese oracle bones, etc.

Rotating temporary exhibits including:

Witch trials from around the world (1400-present, bc they do still happen)

Paleolithic cultures: Venus of Wellendorf, Stonehenge, Cave paintings/music, the Lion-man ivory, etc

Did Christianity Steal From Paganism: yes… no… it’s complicated (basically the overlap between early Christianity and Roman paganism) This will include villa mosaics, sarcophaguses, layouts of early churches, etc

The Rise of Modern Occultism: Hilma af Klint, Carl Jung, surrealism, spiritualism, Wicca, etc

A series of exhibits celebrating closed practices: different indigenous religions, Voodoo, Hoodoo, etc (Very important: these will not be teaching those crafts, just giving them the same public platform/attention as open practices. Key word here is "celebrating." People who practice in those closed communities will be consulted)

How paganism is incorporated into Abrahamic religions: Judaism and paganism, Catholicism and paganism, etc (People who practice in those communities will be consulted)

Modern witchcraft, good or bad? So that would be New Age, the rise of consumerism, witchtok, etc

More in-depth focuses on different pantheons: Celtic, Slavic, Mesopotamian, Hellenic, etc

Historical witchcraft accusations and race: Mary Lewis, the New York City Panic of 1741, Ann Glover, etc

Regular people's (like you!) devotional art. The public will be encouraged to donate/create devotional art pieces. Be that visual media, performance art, video art, music, sculpture, photography, writing, etc. It'll really highlight all the different ways people are worshiping, the diversity in deities being worshiped, and how big our community is

An auditorium. This would be for concerts, festivals/ceremonies that are done inside, and guest speakers. Guest speakers would include academics like Malcolm Gaskill (English historian and author), Katherine Howe (American author), etc. as well as big name practicing witches/pagans.

A garden. I haven’t decided yet what kind but I’m debating between a rooftop garden like the MET, one behind the building but open to visitors, or an atrium like medieval European cloisters/monasteries (bc I love those). The garden would be for meditating, connecting to nature/the gods, feeding pollinators, protecting "creepy" insects like spiders or burrowing bugs (bug hotel?), and potentially -depending on what type of garden it is- housing wild birds in bird houses or bats in bat boxes. Also, it could be a good place for festivals/ceremonies that are done outside, concerts, or general get-togethers like altar piece swaps!

And an altar/worship space. Obviously. It wouldn't be a temple without it. I'm thinking it would be mostly a big empty room with chairs and rugs scattered about and an alcove in one wall for the altar. Inside the alcove will mostly be nonspecific religious objects like candles, nice fabrics, flowers, incense, etc . Visitors will be encouraged to bring their own small personal devotional tools (except candles/incense for fire safety reasons). That way they can pray to, appreciate, and connect to their own gods and the main altar doesn't leave anybody out; the main altar is more for ambience than specific worship.

Giftshop? I'm not sure about this one yet bc it feels wrong to have a gift shop in a temple, but most museums, even small ones, have gift shops. It could have fresh herbs from the garden, candles, and local artists' art like prints, stickers, jewelry, etc. All at a reasonable price ofc (I hate overpriced museum giftshops more than anything else in the world... except overpriced museum tickets)

In terms of funding, museums get more government funding than churches, but they do have to pay taxes churches don't. I was thinking of generally modeling it after the Museum of Us in San Deigo; they let their employees pick the holidays they take off so they can each adhere to their personal religious practice, start paying them at $22 an hour with built in raises each year, and good insurance. They have done an amazing job, way better than any big museum, at collaborating with communities from all over the world to either give back artifacts in their collections or closely work with them to reframe how the artifact is presented/stored. They also don't charge for tickets, memberships, school trips, or basically anything except the giftshop. But that means they rely heavily on donations which may not work as well for a museum that's just starting out. Idk, this is all hypothetical rn.

The pillars the museum-temple would stand on are worship, education, and community.

I feel like teaching people about the history of these practices is super important and isn't smth that everybody bothers to learn or has correct information about. (And I'm a huge history/museum nerd if you can't tell lol)

I'm actually really excited about this lol

[anthropoetics]

what's stressing you if you don't mind sharing? :/

it's the end of semester so uni is terrible, but the main thing is my housemate. she's really controlling and finds flaws in everything i do (i lived with multiple people before her and it has always been fine), so it's really stressing me out because every damn week she has something to say.

[katnissdoesnotfollowback]

No witchy Wednesday this week. Life decided NO.

[megumi-fm]

.

[miodiodavinci]

collapses to the ground like a deflated balloon

[gigantomachylesbian]

Everybody PLEASE send me good vibes I am trying to get financial aid to let me go back to college this semester -___-

[futchmemes]

when the disability is actually disabling and not just funny jokes

[vyeoh]

I'm genuinely suffering from success

[vampiricsheep]

so since I may be free this summer after all, would anyone be interested in an RP event that's a potluck? I've been wanting to do it for ages but there's never any interest compared to other themes

for a discord rp, I would make a separate server explicitly for this purpose so you don't have to be in any guilds or anything! I would also delete the server (or at least channel, if people would like an event-planning server long-term) after a week - enough time for people to read over their stuff but not preserved forever and ever.

[anothermansjeans]

okay besties, these next few days i'm going to be focusing on writing and queuing the blurbs up rather than posting !!

[iliveinprocrasti-nationn]

one thing abt being disabled/chronically ill that some people don’t get is that sometimes body maintenance that ensures you have the absolute minimum amount of function can also be something that takes away a lot of control and autonomy. you can argue till the cows come home that making those decisions to try and help yourself (or realistically to try to make sure things aren’t worse than they already are) is something that exhibits control and autonomy and stuff, but they can be so limiting in practice because they’re things that take up so much time but have to be done to do anything else

[omanu]

.

[iron-niffler]

me desperately trying to get into the humanities classes i need to graduate as an engineering major (most of them are full and those that aren't still have major restrictions)

[e77y]

Glad I’m starting therapy so soon after moving out ☝️ I am already feeling the helplessness and loneliness