#and there were some people from church????

[porterdavis]

I'm going to post the entire dispatch in hopes more people will read it. It's a stylized version of how US media would cover events in America if they were happening in a foreign country. Chilling.

(Written by Garrett Graff)

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Musk Junta Seizes Key Governmental Offices February 1, 2025 By William Boot

WASHINGTON, D.C. — What started Thursday as a political purge of the internal security services accelerated Friday into a full-blown coup, as elite technical units aligned with media oligarch Elon Musk moved to seize key systems at the national treasury, block outside access to federal personnel records, and take offline governmental communication networks.

With rapidity that has stunned even longtime political observers, forces loyal to Musk’s junta have established him as the all-but undisputed unelected head of government in just a matter of days, unwinding the longtime democracy’s constitutional system and its proud nearly 250-year-old tradition of the rule of law. Having secured themselves in key ministries and in a building adjacent to the presidential office complex, Musk’s forces have begun issuing directives to civil service workers and forcing the resignation of officials deemed insufficiently loyal, like the head of the country’s aviation authority.

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The G-7 country’s newly installed president, a mid-level oligarch named Donald Trump, appeared amid Musk’s moves to be increasingly merely a figurehead head of state. Trump is a convicted felon with a long record of family corruption and returned in power in late January after a four-year interlude promising retribution and retaliation against foreign opponents and a domestic “Deep State.” He had been charged with attempting to overthrow the peaceful transition of power that had previously removed him from office in 2021, but loyalist elements in the judiciary successfully blocked his prosecution and incarceration, easing his return to power.

Over the last two weeks, loyalist presidential factions and Musk-backed teams have launched sweeping, illegal Stalin-esque purges of the national police forces and prosecutors, as well as offices known as inspectors-general, who are typically responsible for investigating government corruption. While official numbers of the unprecedented ousters were kept secret, rumors swirled in the capital that the scores of career officials affected by the initial purges could rise into the thousands as political commissars continued to assess the backgrounds of members of the police forces. 

The mentally declining and aging head of state, who has long embraced conspiracist thinking, spent much of the week railing in bizarre public remarks against the country’s oppressed racial and ethnic minorities, whom he blamed without evidence for causing a deadly plane crash across the river from the presidential mansion. Unfounded racist attacks on those minorities have been a key foundation of Trump’s unpredicted rise to political power from a career as a real estate magnate and reality TV host and date back to his first announcement that he would seek the presidency in 2015, when he railed against “rapists” being sent into the country from its southern neighbor.

In one of his first moves upon returning to the presidency, he mobilized far-right paramilitary security forces to begin raids at churches, schools, and workplaces to identify and remove racial minorities, including those who had long lived in harmony with the country’s white Christian majority. He also immediately moved to release from prison some 1,500 supporters who had participated in his unsuccessful 2021 insurrection, including members of violent far-right militias who promptly upon release swore fealty to him in any future civil unrest. Elsewhere, even as he released violent criminals onto the streets, Trump by fiat pulled longstanding government security protection from former military and health officials he felt had betrayed him.

Underscoring his apparent disconnection from reality, reports surfaced that the president had ordered military forces to unleash an environmental catastrophe and flood regions of a separatist province known as California that is led by a high-profile political opponent. The order underscored how the military, which had resisted Trump’s unconstitutional power grabs in his first administration, was now led by a subservient defense minister, a favored TV personality with no experience in management who faced an embarrassing series of allegations about his drunken behavior in the workplace.

Foreign allies who had long aligned themselves with the United States on the international stage were unsettled by increasingly destabilizing nationalistic and imperialist rhetoric coming from the president’s social media accounts—largely posted to a network owned and run by Trump himself—and worried in private conversations in capital embassies that he would mobilize the compliant military to fulfill heretofore unimaginable territorial ambitions that included seizing the country’s northern neighbor, which shares the world’s longest undefended border, and potentially colonizing Panama and Greenland.

Both the country’s defense minister, who has previously said he does not believe women should be allowed to serve in combat roles, and Trump’s new interior minister, who appeared on national TV wearing the paramilitary uniform of the border security force central to Trump’s political rise, spent much of their first days echoing and amplifying the president’s hysteria about racial and ethnic minorities. They and other government officials also immediately canceled all official observances of religious and ethnic minority holidays and launched efforts to scrub official websites and prohibit educating workers or schoolchildren about those minorities’ long, proud history in the country. Overnight Friday, hours after journalists had gone home, the defense minister’s office announced it would bar establishment independent media outlets from working out of the country’s military headquarters and replace them with friendly right-wing media organs.

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The administration’s propaganda minister also announced Friday, apparently with little preparation, that it would initiate an immediate, unexpected, and seemingly ill-considered trade war with the country’s two primary economic partners, a move that if implemented would upend the national economy, disrupt supply chains, and accelerate the return of an inflationary crisis that has roiled domestic politics over the last five years and had just seemed to be returning to normal. Ironically, it was that very inflationary crisis and Trump’s promises on the campaign trail to lower the price of eggs that paved the way for his unforeseen election victory in November.

The country’s other business oligarchs have watched Musk’s unexpected and rapid rise to power with trepidation, and leading media and technology companies who compete with Musk’s extensive business empire—like Meta, Amazon, Disney, Paramount, Apple, and OpenAI—have quickly lined up to negotiate and pay bribes to the president that would allow their companies to operate unimpeded; initial payment terms ranged from million-dollar gifts to the presidential inauguration to $15 million and $25 million payments, made by Disney and Meta, to fund the construction of a presidential shrine. The highest known payment was $40 million from Amazon, which was structured as a gift to the president’s wife in exchange for the media company having the opportunity to film a hagiographic biopic.

It was unclear, exactly, what deal terms any of those bribes and payments unlocked and when subsequent tribute payments would be expected, although on Saturday Trump moved to fire and neuter government watchdogs that had long bedeviled the country’s financial elite.

Throughout the week’s fast-moving seizure of power—one that seems increasingly irreversible by the hour—neither loyalist nor opposition parliamentary leaders raised meaningful objection to the new regime or the unraveling of the country’s constitutional system of checks and balances. A few members of the geriatric legislature body offered scattered social media posts condemning the move, but parliament — where both houses are controlled by so-called “MAGA” members handpicked for their loyalty to the president — went home early for the weekend even as Musk’s forces spread through the capital streets.

It was unclear what role, if any, Musk’s forces would allow parliament to have in the new governmental structure by the time it next returned to the national assembly known as Capitol Hill.

[reborn-readings]

Messages of hope for spring 2025

Tip Jar | Masterlist | Personal Readings

Hello hello! Quite the past month we've had. With everything going on in the world, I thought I'd ask the spirits to relay some specific messages to inspire hope as the cold yields and life starts to return to begin the cycle anew. These messages will be pertinent to the months of March, April, and May of 2025. Pick whichever pile calls out to you!

This is a group reading, so take what resonates and leave the rest. Don't force anything if it does not fit. Remember that the future is not set in stone and that other potential paths exist depending on your movement through the course of time.

Pile 1 (Top Left)

Five of Spring | Ten of Cups | Epona | Break Free 

Maybe in your past you’ve experienced a battleground. Something very serious, somewhere where you couldn’t be yourself and had to live up to an extreme expectation or be punished for it. I see authority as a running theme in your life, too, maybe a string of relationships or jobs in which you felt there were a definite leader or boss and (whether yourself or others) and you were comfortable that way. Spring is bringing a different kind of dynamic to you; a fight where no one gets hurt, a relationship where no one is more responsible than the other, an opportunity to climb up to an ideal that you’ve had your whole life. Watch for the moments when you find people teasing and joking in a way that could seem hurtful from the outside but you know it’s just their humor. When this moment comes, you will know that you’ve broken free of what hurt you in the past. 

Pile 2 (Top Middle)

Six of Spring | Rx Death | Persephone | Friendship 

Celebration. That’s the first word that comes to mind. And if you read it (or said it out loud) and instantly saw a flash of a specific celebration, then the spirits want you to know that that result is almost certain. I get the feeling that you will be publicly recognized and lauded for something that you did not expect, some part of your hidden or shadow self that you hid for fear of shame. It is something that lacks grace. Something like…having spoken up even if your words could have been interpreted wrongly or rudely, but people saw past the words to your idea and they loved it. Even if the idea itself is dark, you have been sharing that, and you will see the results of that soon enough in a glorious event that may welcome unexpected friends. I get the feeling that this will happen earlier for you than the other piles, late February or early March. 

Pile 3 (Top Right)

Strength | Rx The Emperor | Hina | Mother Healing 

Right off the bat, I can tell that this message will be one that is harder to grasp for you, and you may need to look hard and close for it. I see a few specific images that all interplay in your life: you father, your church, your mother. You have a very unique way of approaching gender, something that the mainstream culture around frowns upon. Your femininity and spirituality cross in ways that seem unseemly. Maybe you don’t know how to reconcile the two? This is something that you should be thinking about more. I just got the image of a crown of thorns in my head; know that you are the master of this beast.  I can’t articulate everything that you’re going to come to learn and realize for yourself; I suppose the only message I have for you is to know that you have the inner strength to guide you through this. 

Pile 4 (Bottom Left)

Seven of Summer | Rx King of Cups | Rhiannon | Simplify Your Life 

Winter brings clutter with it. We shut ourselves up in our homes with what we have and wait, letting go of nothing since we know on an instinctual level that we cannot simply go out and replace what we lose. However, this clutter, whether it takes the form of actual, physical clutter, mental baggage, or just too many decisions to make, results in us feeling overwhelmed. Your emotions may feel difficult to track down, but addressing their causes will help. Spring is going to see you cleaning up those aspects of your life. I see the word ‘king’ a lot, so don’t be afraid to lean into your masculine power. The world is beautiful; try to remember to once in a while look beyond the clutter in your path to see what you’re working toward. Once you see your goal, each individual step will feel both simple and momentous! 

Pile 5 (Bottom Middle)

Nine of Summer | Nine of Wands | Demeter | You’re Being Helped 

Go around the back way. That’s the first message that I got. Are you being blocked from your wishes being fulfilled? There’s always another way, you know. Demeter didn’t bow down when Hades took her daughter; she went on strike, withholding her gifts from the world until they addressed her plight. You, too, are going to find an unorthodox method of bypassing what stands in your way. The spirits are not the ones putting up the barrier, they are the ones helping to guide you to your prize. Your Cinderella story is waiting; not just rags to riches, but also finding out that you have a Fairy Godmother on your side who’s willing to bend the rules for you. After all, some rules are unjust and meant to be broken. Don’t go doing anything crazy or rush so much you trip yourself, but keep your eyes open for your opportunity. 

Pile 6 (Bottom Right)

King of Spring | King of Swords | White Shell Woman | Self-Employment 

Where do I begin, Pile 6?! This spring, you are going to see the perfect union between your passion and your mind. You are someone with a lot of gifts to give, and to make sure that you play your role this upcoming spring, the spirits are going to fill your baskets to the point of overflow to show you how generous you can be. Though I can sense that you just want some alone time, and trust me, you’ll get it. You will find that people flock to you, seeing you as a skilled leader and wanting to support what you support. Relish being alive! Look around you at all the things growing! You have so much to look forward to.

If this was helpful to you, please consider donating or expanding on your message in one of my readings! 🩷

Dividers by @/saradika-graphics

[perfectwitchcrown]

Make the Exorcist Fall in Love - Witches part 2

Welcome to part two of the witches meta! Here's a link to part 1 of the meta: Part One.

Content warnings for discussion of sexual violence, execution, images of cartoon nudity and violence (all Ekuoto panels), also major spoilers for Ekuoto and minor spoilers for Berserk, the movie Perfect Blue, and the movie The Craft

Witchcraft and Gender: From Old Hags to Magical Girls

Back to overall discussions of witchcraft, I’d like to cover the issue of gender. Usually, when people are talking about witches, they are imagined as women. It is important to ask why that is.

In Early Modern Germany, people of any gender could be accused of witchcraft, however “Menopausal women and post-menopausal women were disproportionately represented amongst the victims of the witch craze,” which Roper associates with the link between reproduction and social status among women (Roper Witch Craze 160-161). Lara Apps and Andrew Gow in “Conceptual Webs: The Gendering of Witchcraft,” argue that while witches were conceptualized as being of any gender, they became associated with women due to the elaborated concept of witchcraft’s idea of a demonic pact—women were misogynistically stereotyped as being easier to trick, so then the Devil is easier able to trick them into becoming witches (Apps and Gows 118-119). Of course, this is not true of all regions at all times—in Iceland, Russia, Finland, and Estonia, for example, more men were accused of witchcraft than women (Ryan 49, 73, 83). However, I think it’s relevant to talk about as the idea of witches as women has carried over into the modern era, and I think its explored in Ekuoto.

In Make the Exorcist Fall in Love, gendered stereotypes and the way they can be baked into language has been explored in chapter 10 of the Leviathan arc. In that chapter, Leviathan notes that envy (嫉妬) has the radical meaning woman in it twice (女). We can understand then that this is commentary on the way that “envy” is societally coded as a feminine trait. I’m not able to check all of the Japanese chapters as they’re paywalled, but I checked the Japanese description of volume nine, and the word for witch it uses is 魔女, which also contains “woman” in it. This is the standard way of writing the Japanese word for witch, but because of the earlier scene, I think it is important to take note of.

We should understand the idea of misogyny as essential to our understanding of the witches —not that they’re all women, but that in opposition to the church, which is formulated as patriarchal, they are those oppressed by the patriarchy. Bécu, for example, is a new witch and formerly worked as a sex worker. Her reasons for joining the witch’s Sabbath are repeatedly shown to deal with gender oppression and seeking freedom from it—in chapter 17 she is shown reading from the First Epistle to the Corinthians—specifically, the section on women being silent—before tossing it into a bonfire and joining the Sabbath. Later, we see her state that she thought the Sabbath “was a gathering for those tired of societal virtues and bindings.”  

Charlotte, too makes a really interesting statement in the above image in regards to gender. I couldn’t double check the Japanese chapter (paywalled…) but based on the comments it does seem she uses 魔法少女, so she’s fully talking about Magical Girls as in the genre.

In Kumiko Saito’s article “‘Shōjo’, and Metamorphosis: Magical Girl Anime and the Challenges of Changing Gender Identities in Japanese Society,” she discusses the ways in which the Magical Girl genre has evolved. Some of the key points for our discussion is that the genre’s origins were partially influenced out of the success of the American show Bewitched (so Western constructions of witchcraft bear a relationship) while Toei was trying to expand its children’s animated television programming (Saito 147) She breaks down three key time frames of the genre, arguing that “The dual context of magical girl anime, as children’s programs that convey messages about gender roles reflecting standardized social norms and as a stand-alone vortex of representations operated by visual fetishism of young female bodies, may respectively belong to the two different eras of the 1960s to the 1980s, but today the genre has grown to easily incorporate both contexts and beyond” (Saito 147). The 1960s era of magical girl stories is conceptualized as one focused largely on the freedom of youth before marriage, fighting enemies who are coded through “heavy makeup and obsessed with careerism” as “women who failed to be a wife or a mother” while targeting a young girl audience, then losing this focus in the 1980s as otaku culture was born and adult male audiences began to be targeted as well (Saito 145-146, 148, 156-157). Gender and how gender is performed then have really heavy histories in this genre.

I personally thought the connection with the idol industry was an interesting way of thinking about it, because there’s a similar fetishization of purity and youth. In the movie Perfect Blue, for example, where an idol’s attempt to move from idealized, consumable, virginial purity to an acting career in which she is presented as sexual (but in a way that is associated with lack of agency), is met with extreme violence by a former fan. Betrayal is felt over this change—neither of which have any real relationship to the woman’s identity but are rather marketing aspects. Highly recommend this movie, although I also recommend checking out the content warnings before you watch as there’s some very heavy scenes.

Charlotte is making a statement on that sort of fetishization of purity, and I think its interesting that as nasty as the bestiality element of it is, its also locating the power of her sexuality as completely outside of heterosexual bonds. She’s simultaneously sexual, and unavailable to men (although her relationship with Vergilius complicates this I think). She is neither fetishizable through ideas of purity or sexual objectification.

The commentary on familiars is also interesting—witch’s familiars are both a historical aspect of witchcraft beliefs and of contemporary magical girls. Historically, familiars were most prominent in English witchcraft beliefs, where they appeared as “demons in corporeal form” (Parish 1-2). The animals that came up the most were “mice, cats, dogs, and even toads” (Parish 5). Within the English context, they also represent an inversion of motherly duty, as the witches would suckle them their blood (Parish 7). In terms of Ekuoto’s familiars, I think they bear similarity to the ones reported in Basque witchcraft beliefs, where “Basque toad familiars are decorated and dressed in little colourful outfits,” the outfits being something unique to the region’s beliefs.

Magical girls in anime also of course also often have mascots (familiars). I’m not entirely sure how this developed. Sally the Witch’s manga, which started in 1966, had a magical crow/younger brother named Cub. I haven’t watched or read the series, but it sounds like he stays in younger brother form most of the time? Akko Chan (1962) has a cat, but to my understanding the cat is not really a familiar? Regardless, magical mascots are a pretty standard aspect to the genre.

As to why the Ekuoto’s familiars look like axolotls with chameleon tongues: I don’t know. If anyone has any ideas, I’d love to hear them!

The Punishment of Witches

Another thing that’s important to keep in mind about witchcraft is jurisdiction—when we talk about the trials and punishment of witches, who was doing the punishing? The answer is—that depends on the time and place.

Witchcraft was prosecuted both in secular and religious courts in various parts of Europe for a long time. In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII’s bull Summis desiderantes tried to strengthen and clarify authority over witchcraft prosecution in Germany over two inquisitors, as their authority had been overlapping both with secular courts and clerics of individual dioceses (Levack 137).

However, non-Catholic nations also had witch trials. Scotland in the 1590s, for example, had witch trials conducted through secular systems—“most witchcraft trials were in special local courts held by virtue of commissions of justiciary,” this power emerging from the crown (Goodare 240-241). There is, of course, the famous Salem witch trials in Puritan Massachusetts. In medieval Russia, where the Orthodox Church was the major religious power, there weren’t a ton of witches prosecuted, but there still were some: “From the published records, it would appear that in the seventeenth century there were a hundred or so court cases in which accusations of magic features” (Ryan 66-68). Court cases in Russia were handled by the church up until the implementation of the Voinskii artikul by Peter the Great, when it first entered secular military law (Ryan 62-67,70).

That is to say, even when there was some level of continuity to witchcraft beliefs, the authorities involved in prosecuting these cases could be wildly different based on region and time—and sometimes, multilayered within their own area.

This extended to the way in which witches were punished when found guilty. Cornell University’s exhibit “The World Bewitched: Visions of Witchcraft from the Cornell Collections” places the number of executed witches in Europe from between 1400 to 1750 at 50,000-100,000 (Crime and Punishment). Legal proceedings did not follow assumptions of innocence—it was the job of the accused to prove their innocence (Crime and Punishment). Execution methods depended on region as well. Burning was largely popular, although in England you would be hanged (Crime and Punishment). Burning’s popularity was due to witchcraft’s associations with heresy, as burning was also the execution method for heretics (Gaskill 66).

Now, not all accussed of being witches were found guilty—and not all found guilty of witchcraft were executed either. This depended on region. Overall, across Europe, around half of those who went to trial were executed (Gaskill 66). Elsewhere, however, the numbers could really range—“in the Pays de Vaud, the execution rate was 90%,” while “Spain’s largest witch-hunt involved a staggering 1,900 suspects, of whom just eleven were condemned” (Gaskill 66-67).

Extra: Names of the Witches

Fun little thing on where the names of the different witch’s may have come from (all of these r like. Majorly a stretch lmfao). Also none of these will be cited bc I’m lazy and also most of these are easy to find information on in comparison to the rest of the information in this meta. I’m also excluding Vergilius because we already know.:

Charlotte

A French/Italian name, feminine form of Charles. Honestly, it’s such a common name that I have no clue if there’s any reason it was chosen. Goethe is referenced early in Ekuoto (Priest is reading poems by him in the first chapter) and Charlotte is the name of the woman Werther is in love with in Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, so it could be that, but that’s a complete guess. Charlotte Perkins Gilman (of “The Yellow Wallpaper “fame) also wrote a short story called “When I Was a Witch.” This could also potentially be a source of the name. Unsure, but for thematic reasons I could see it being possible. Gilman was a feminist, but also a eugenicist, and both of these ideas are reflected in the short story. Her brand of feminism is also very late 19th century early 20th century white feminism, so like just as a warning to anyone looking to read her fiction keep that in mind.

 Here’s a link to this short story: https://psychopomp.com/fantasy/miscellaneous/when-i-was-a-witch/

The TLDR ; Narrator becomes a witch. She makes a series of cruel wishes that come true because she’s a witch. She then decides to wish for her idea of a feminist utopia on earth (this image is shaped by an emphasis on ideas of motherhood and eugenics -> that women will shape the world through reproductive capabilities by breeding out “bad” men) and it doesn’t happen because “this magic which had fallen on me was black magic-and I had wished white” and then all her witchcraft gets undone. With the witch’s being framed as trying to overturn patriarchal society, I could potentially see this as an influence, but it’s kind of a niche short story. Also I don’t see the witch’s getting framed as eugenicists, unless the connection we’re supposed to draw is with the deliberate killing of bad men as sacrifices ?? Idk

Who knows tho. Charlotte is such a common name. If anyone has any other suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

Erskine & Cyril

Ok I searched so hard for potential origins for their names but was struggling to find anything. I was centering on the Paisley witches, where stuff happened near Erskine in Scotland, and Cyril of Alexandria, but both of these felt like massive massive massive stretches. Then, recently, I saw this tweet by user @ mizuno_awa: https://x.com/mizuno_awa/status/1879681767172698205

They source the names Erskine and Cyril to the Oscar Wilde short story “The Portrait of Mr. W.H.,” which I had not previously read (sorry Oscar Wilde), but it’s completely spot on. This short story is available through Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/773), so I highly recommend checking it out, but here’s my short explanation of why it’s an interesting thing for their names to reference for those who don’t want to read the short story

William Shakespeare wrote a series of sonnets. A section of them are referred to as the ‘Fair Youth’ sonnets (whether they should be considered a sequence is one of many things Shakespeareans argue about) This sequence focuses on a young man that the poet has a romantically (and erotically, depending on how you read some of the poems) charged relationship with. The collection of sonnets (including both the Fair Youth poems and the Dark Lady poems) is dedicated to someone known as “Mr. W.H..” Some scholars believe Mr. W.H. to be the fair youth the fair youth sonnets are about (Shakespeareans argue over this also). There are several different major camps as to who Mr. W.H. is -> one major group argues it’s the Earl of Southampton, and the other camp argues that it may be the Earl of Pembroke. There is an additional camp that argues, due to wordplay in some of the sonnets, it’s a boy named Willie Hughes, but there’s no Willie Hughes that Shakespeare on record knew so like who knows.

Oscar Wilde wrote his short story in conversation with this theory. In the short story, a man named Erskine tells the unnamed narrator about a friend of his, Cyril, who was apparently incredibly pretty (there’s a whole paragraph about his family background that just devolves into describing how good looking he was) and became consumed with trying to prove the Willie Hughes theory, including by having a portrait of the supposed boy actor forged, before taking his own life. The narrator becomes obsessed with the theory, tries to prove it, convinces Erskine but then becomes himself unconvinced. Erskine then dies too, and the forged portrait passes from Erskine’s possession to the narrator’s. It’s basically a creepy haunted painting/Shakespeare theory story, like if the Ring was about a twink’s cursed Shakespeare theory instead of a haunted video tape.

So the interesting part then is that this is a short story focused on queer readings of Shakespeare being examined by queer coded characters, written by a queer man. It’s not as on the nose as Dorian Gray, but I think I laughed out loud when Erskine starts talking about how Cyril once played Rosalind in Shakespeare’s As You Like It (the main character of a play who spends a significant portion of it crossdressing and hitting on the guy she likes, while going by the name Ganymede. Good ol Elizabethan queercoding, that Wilde definitely knew about, since he engages with it as well in Dorian Gray). Anyways, naming these two after this short story is amazing queer coding of these characters Arima Aruma you’re so funny to me ur mind is so big

Bécu

A French surname, famously held by Madame du Barry (a courtesan who became Louis XV’s mistress). Seeing as how Becu is a former sex worker from France, this seems likely. The account I list in the Erskine and Cyril section drew the same conclusion as me.

Manon

A real name, but also in the 1996 movie The Craft a bunch of teenage witches worship a deity named Manon. I went and watched the movie for this meta LMFAO but basically they view Manon as a being outside of the dichotomy of god and the devil. Each of the girls has picked up witchcraft for a variety of reasons that all have to do with their outsider status in their private Catholic school. The main character gets invited to join their coven, and they start taking magical revenge on those who hurt them, but it starts to spiral out of control. Manon is also a common enough name though that I could see there being another origin to her name.  

Works Cited:

Apps, Lara, and Andrew Gow. “Conceptual Webs: The Gendering of Witchcraft” In Male Witches in Early Modern Europe, 118–50. Manchester University Press, 2003. www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt155j84b.10.

“Crime and Punishment.” The World Bewitched: Visions of Witchcraft from the Cornell Collections. Cornell University, 2017. rmc.library.cornell.edu/witchcraft/exhibition/punishment/index.html#modalClosed. Accessed 4 February 2025.

Forrester, Sibelan. Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch of the East in Russian Fairy Tales. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2013.

Garrett, Julia M. “Witchcraft and Sexual Knowledge in Early Modern England.” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies, vol. 13, no. 1, 2013, pp. 32–72. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/43857912.

Gaskill, Malcolm. Witchcraft: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2010. ProQuest Ebook Central.

Goodare, Julian. “The Framework for Scottish Witch-Hunting in the 1590s.” The Scottish Historical Review, vol. 81, no. 212, 2002, pp. 240–50. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/25529649. Accessed 1 Feb. 2025.

Levack, Brian P. The Witchcraft Sourcebook. 2nd ed., Routledge, 2025. doi.org/10.4324/9781315715292. Accessed 4 February 2025.

Mackay, Christopher S.. The Hammer of Witches: A Complete Translation of the Malleus Maleficarum. Cambridge University Press, 2009.

Newman, William. “Technology and Alchemical Debate in the Late Middle Ages.” Isis, vol. 80, no. 3, 1989, pp. 423–45. http://www.jstor.org/stable/234934.

Parish, Helen. “‘Paltrie Vermin, Cats, Mise, Toads, and Weasils’: Witches, Familiars, and Human-Animal Interactions in the English Witch Trials.” Religions vol. 10, no. 2 (2019): doi:10.3390/rel10020134.

Ryan, W. F. “The Witchcraft Hysteria in Early Modern Europe: Was Russia an Exception?” The Slavonic and East European Review 76, no. 1 (1998): 49–84. www.jstor.org/stable/4212558.

Roper, Lyndal. “Witchcraft and the Western Imagination.” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 16 (2006): 117–41. www.jstor.org/stable/25593863.

Roper, Lyndal. Witch Craze. New Haven, Yale University Press. 2004.

Saito, Kumiko. “Magic, ‘Shōjo’, and Metamorphosis: Magical Girl Anime and the Challenges of Changing Gender Identities in Japanese Society.” The Journal of Asian Studies 73, no. 1 (2014): 143–64. www.jstor.org/stable/43553398.

Saunders, Corinne. “The Middle Ages: Prohibitions, Folk Practices and Learned Magic.” In Magic and the Supernatural in Medieval English Romance, NED-New edition., 59–116. Boydell & Brewer, 2010. www.jstor.org/stable/10.7722/j.ctt14brqtb.6.

Sneddon, Andrew. “Witchcraft Belief and Trials in Early Modern Ireland.” Irish Economic and Social History 39 (2012): 1–25. www.jstor.org/stable/24338815.

Ugresic, Dubravka. Baba Yaga Laid an Egg. New York: Canongate U.S., 2011. Accessed January 5, 2025. ProQuest Ebook Central.

Watt, Jeffrey R. “Superstitions, Magic, and Witchcraft.” In The Consistory and Social Discipline in Calvin’s Geneva, NED-New edition., 138–61. Boydell & Brewer, 2020. www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv10vm05k.10.

Weishaupt, Marina. “Mythos Walpurgisnacht: Was steckt hinter den Hexen-Sagan?.” National Geographic, 27 Apr. 2023. www.nationalgeographic.de/geschichte-und-kultur/2023/04/mythos-walpurgisnacht-was-steckt-hinter-den-hexen-sagen-tanz-in-mai. Accessed 3 February 2025.

Wilby, Emma. “Familiar Demons.” Invoking the Akelarre: Voices of the Accused in the Basque Witch-Craze, 1609-1614, Liverpool University Press, 2019, pp. 124–44. JSTOR, doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv3029v1q.13. Accessed 1 Feb. 2025.

“Witch Trials in Early Modern Europe and New England.” UC Berkeley Law. www.law.berkeley.edu/research/the-robbins-collection/exhibitions/witch-trials-in-early-modern-europe-and-new-england/. Accessed 4 February 2025.

Zipes, Jack. “Foreward.” Baba Yaga: The Wild Witch of the East in Russian Fairy Tales. Edited by Sibelan Forrester, Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2013.

[therewillbenoromance]

i just had the weirdest fucking dream

that was fucking spooky

[asingularcanadian]

I'm gonna tell y'all a story. This story doesn't necessarily have any heroes or losers. As per usual, you should never go looking for heroes in history because you will never find one.

I'm sure I don't have to tell you all that during the Holocaust much of the violence could have been avoided or straight out thwarted by radical acts of public outcry and civil disobedience. Unfortunately for victims of the Holocaust, even many people who disagreed with what was going on didn't do much. I'm sure some of you at this point in history will know why. They were afraid of getting in trouble/getting killed, losing their livelihoods, felt helpless that they couldn't do any big action so they didn't do anything at all, ect ect. And so many many people were killed with very little resistance, especially in the beginning.

Now I'm sure you all know about some of the various efforts made by single people to try and smuggle Jews to north america or to asia or various other parts of the world, Schindler, Miguchi, Ho Feng Shan, but you likely don't know what happened in Bulgaria.

On the 4th of February 1943 a missive was sent to the Bulgarian Council of Ministers advising that the entire destruction of the rest of the Jews of Bulgaria should be eliminated by the end of the year. On the 8th of March 1993 the government decided that in May of that year around 50 thousand Bulgarian Jews would be deported to concentration camps. A member of the Jewish community and soon to be deportee, Jakob Baruch, was luckily friends with the Vice President of the National Assembly, Dimitar Peshev. Though Peshev initially did not believe his friend it was not uncommon, especially on the edges of the war, for many people, even government officials, to not be fully informed of what was going on including the deportations themselves and also the fate of those being deported, he was eventually convinced and he was angry.

Though Peshev had long been a collaborator in assisting in the implementation of Nazi requests for deportations throughout the Bulgarian occupied areas, he felt this was a step too far. The Next day he had made up his mind that he had to stop these deportations.

From Wikipedia:

"Peshev tried several times to see Bogdan Filov, but the prime minister refused. Next, he and his close friend and colleague, Petar Mihalev, went to see Interior Minister Petar Gabrovski, insisting that he cancel the deportations. After much persuasion, Gabrovski finally called the governor of Kyustendil (the area from which the Jews were to be deported) and instructed him to stop preparations for the Jewish deportations. By 5:30 p.m. on 9 March the order had been canceled. However, the order did not reach all the Bulgarian cities on time, and, on the morning of 10 March, Bulgarian police began to round up Jews in Thrace and Macedonia. Almost all of the Jews in Bulgarian-occupied Thrace (some 4,000) were arrested and surrendered to the Germans, who then deported them to their deaths at Treblinka. Another group of about 1,200 Thrace Jews was moved to Salonika and then sent to Auschwitz. At the same time, all of the Jews of Macedonia were rounded up by the Bulgarian authorities; all but 165 were deported to Treblinka."

After seeing the cruelty of what had happened in Thrace and Macedonia Peshev was kicked into high gear. and was able to round up a group of other various members of Parliment who would work to petition the Tsar to cancel the deportations. Once word got out about this there was massive public outcry at the deportations as well. Jewish citizens as well as non-Jewish Bulgarians, various trade groups in the country including the Writer's Guild, Doctor's Guild, and Lawyer's Guild, prominent figures in Bulgarian society, even the Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox church, wrote or marched in protest of these measures. These protests absolutely shook the Tsar and the national assembly to their core. The timeline is slightly contested but it was either the Tsar who cancelled the deportations or the national assembly upon the death of the Tsar but either way the action was successful.

By 1945 Bulgaria's Jewish population remained pretty consistent with it's pre-war numbers. Peshev and the public had succeeded in keeping the population out of Nazi concentration camps. This applied similarly to the Roma of Bulgaria, where the entire population was originally meant to be sent to concentration camps it is estimated at this point that of the original population of 80k, 75k survived. This is one of the lowest kill rates of Roma in all of Europe.

On June 7th 1943 when questioned about the Bulgarian refusal of deportations, the Nazi ambassador to Bulgaria said it was due to the "fact that Bulgarian's had grown up with Armenian's, Greek's, and Gypsies, they had no innate prejudice towards the Jews as did the people of Northern Europe."

Did everything turn out sunshine and roses for the Jews of Bulgaria? No, they were forced into work camps inside Bulgaria and many of the Roma were exiled from the capital to more rural areas as well for work purposes. They often lived in ethnically separate housing or took shelter in public buildings, but they were alive, and many Jews were able to leave Bulgaria. They were able to do this because people came out in support of them, loudly and proudly stood up for them, and refused to let it happen.

We need to do the same.

Anti-ICE protesters are blocking both sides of the 101 Freeway in Los Angeles (02 February 2025)

The protests are still going on.

[crow-of-paradise]

Búðakirkja, Búðir, Iceland on 35mm

[canisalbus]

For how much Machete is described by others as off-putting, he really is a beautiful dog. Does Vasco ever tell him so? That his eyes make him look earnest, his fur the most comforting shade of white like cream, the way his ears catch light like stained glass? If someone doesn't tell him so, he'd forever think he was ugliest duckling

I think Vasco definitely tries, sincerely and often, but Machete is very reluctant to accept compliments and positive feedback. Especially if it's about something as personal and innate as his looks.

[smhalltheurlsaretaken]

not me typing a whole rant about some catholics being insufferably smug about their "better looking churches" while ignoring the history behind the barebone austerity of protestant churches and then deleting it all because my seething anger isn't christ-like either

*gnaws on wood* God help me love your children even when they are absolute prigs

[lettersiarrange]

Has time always moved this fast? I'm genuinely asking. In 200 years we went from Bridgerton to AI. The everyday lives of people in each of these eras feel like universes apart. I'm no historian, but it seems like the everyday lives of people between 1500 and 1700 weren't that different.

Have humans throughout time immemorial reflected on life 30 years ago, 100 years ago and commented on how vastly different it was? It feels like we're running at a breakneck pace in the modern era. The It Gets Better project was founded in 2010 because gay people were so universally ostracized that lgbt teen suicide rates were off the charts. And while we're still pretty far from full LGBT equality, openly having a problem with gay people existing is a pretty fringe opinion now that's fairly universally frowned upon, even in the southern US.

I'm pretty sure the first time a woman wore pants in congress was in the 90s.

Culturally, technologically, resource-wise, it feels like every 5 years we leap 5 decades forward. Is it just our own preoccupation with the era we live in that makes this moment feel so significant? Or are we actually moving as quickly as it feels?

I know people have always laughed at the grandpa's who complain "when I was your age...", but has the gap ever been this wide? Or is there truly something special about now.

[icy-book]

Happy Easter, the other day I saw a video of someone passionately ranting that people are water down the message of Jesus and making Him into their own version, then literally said, and I kid you not, that "Jesus is not all-loving and all forgiving". Genuinely

Like, I could quote parts of the Bible to refute that, but it would be basically the entire New Testament. Bro's never heard of "Love thy neighbour"

[kanguin]

While I appreciate that your comments were not directly pointed at me, and I respect your self-honesty with regard to your religious beliefs and their labeling, I feel you misunderstood what I was saying in the tags just as much as I misunderstood what the intent of your tags were.

When I stated that your faith is young, I was not stating that analytical works could not have been written about it. I was truncating for the sake of saving space in tags, and trying to communicate that Mormonism, or the Church of the Latter Day Saints, is young in the sense that it was founded in VERY recent, VERY recorded history in the past two centuries. When I said engaging with critical thinking, I don't just mean analyzing how to adjust Mormonism to fit to being queer, I meant actually acknowledging that all of the works and all of the associations derived from the writings of Joseph Smith are entirely fraudulent.

Joseph Smith was a known con-man, not just with his tablets stunts but was accused and charged multiple times for fraud, perjury, inciting riots and violence, and at least one case of conspiracy to assassinate, just from what I can remember off the top of my head. His writings, the Book of Mormon, the Pearl of Great Price, The Doctrine and Covenants, etc, make numerous historical accusations that are patently untrue according to all known genetic and archaeological evidence. Many religious scholars who read those books with critical eyes note how the grammar is clunky and broken, as it's clearly a common 19th century New England man's best attempt at imitating the particular grammar of the King James Bible, written hundreds of years prior. This wasn't entirely original either, because numerous other failed-start books and documents produced around this time feature this style. Further, some of these writings claimed to be translated from "Egyptian papyri" uncovered on expeditions, another popular claim at the time, as the lost written language of Egypt was actively being deciphered in the 1820s, 30s, and so on... but the full language wouldn't be completely deciphered until 1850, years after Joseph and Hyrum died. His claims are based on even shakier foundations largely centered around the "Lost Tribes" of unified ancient Israel. However, many scholars today doubt the literal nature of the story of the 12 tribes of Israel and an ancient unified Kingdom of Israel presented in the Christian Bible and the Torah before it, because of the amount of contradicting archaeological evidence, and that story is crucial to the narrative of a migration out of the Levant to the Americas; instead the story is largely seen now as either fabricated at worst, or more likely allegorical to the shared history of the peoples of the Levant. The idea that any people from the eastern end of the Mediterranean made it to the Americas before the invention of large sailing ships is hard for most scholars to believe as it stands, but if you genetically sequence Native Americans, you'll find they bear closer ancestry with eastern and northern Asian peoples, which is backed up by the trail of human migration across the western coast of North America, indicating a propagation out of Alaska and southward. Add onto this the stories of the darkening of Native skin for turning away from god and the origin of black skin coming from descendants of Cain, and you have a very clear picture of a man who knew nothing about the history of the world and instead wrote a story based on his own feelings on Natives and black people, which for much of his life were not remotely good (yes I'm aware he came around to slave emancipation later in life, no that doesn't excuse what he previously wrote about black people nor how he nor his people killed so many Native peoples on their journey westward).

The Latter Day Saints church is relatively unique among major religions today in that the history of the faith and its founders are so well documented. Joseph Smith routinely got himself into trouble by scamming people out of money by using seeing stones, dousing rods, and magically uncovered and translated documents to gain favor and money from others. And the movement he started went on to cause public unrest in location after location until he and his complicit brother Hyrum were murdered while being held in jail for trial, by a mob of nearly 200 people, who all had enough of his behavior.

And yet, he became a martyr. The LDS church has now gone on to become one of the largest cults of the modern era in how it controls its members, and one of the biggest forces of white supremacy and colonialism outside of an organized government or the KKK. The entire model of going on missions and going door to door to convert and spread the faith is directly antithetical to providing actual help because of the ulterior motive of conversion. Every time a new LDS temple pops up in a non-white community, a foothold of control over people is established.

Everyone the world over who stands for acceptance, racial equality, and LGBT+ rights and knows anything in depth about the LDS church hates it, it's not just picked on for no reason. With other religions, thousands of years of tradition exist to muddy the waters of what is original doctrine and what is harmful conservatism. Mormonism however is among the very lucky and small group of Scientology, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Christian Scientists of being relatively clear cut on what's what due to the fact that all of the events that led up to its emergence have occurred in the very heavily documented.

I know you're probably not going to read all of this and/or block me for daring to go after your religious beliefs, but I really needed to get this out of my system. You can't just reframe Mormonism, it's rotten to its core, down to the very stories that its founded on and the men who started the movement. No matter how much you self-analyze, no matter how much literature you read, other queer people and other racial and religious minorities are going to see you as a threat for still holding onto its doctrines. As a post note, I did read up on the professor you mentioned. Sadly though, I'm not really sure if I can really take someone, even with a PhD, entirely seriously, if they treat religions like music (her words!) and pick and choose parts of various faiths they personally like like it's a buffet. It's self serving at worst and out of touch at best to behave that way, and for this piecemeal approach to come from a multiple published Doctor of Communications is disheartening.

My partner and I got into a heated debate (for fun) the other day, and I need to know what other people think. We're both from different non-Catholic Christian families, but have left the faith.

For reference Catholics can pray to Mary or specific Saints, who all have domains that they pertain to, and believe these prayers can be answered.

(The Trinity is a whole other question and I'm not touching that)

[butterflies-and-bumble-bees]

.

[overcaffeinated-aro]

I got an email from my grandpa today and all the draft responses I’ve been working on in my head sound like an 18th century letter that’s going to have to travel for months to reach him.

pandemic year 5 really has me feeling like me and a very small handful of people I know are living on an entirely different plane of existence than everyone else

[unoisveimved-un-proffesional]

Scheduling fail today. Was going to meet up with my sibling on one of their days off from work, Tuesday through Thursday, things kept coming up for me Tuesday and Wednesday, and I slept in until noon today and forgot to message them last night that I should be totally free today, and forgot I forgot to message them so I only realized at 3 PM upon checking my messages why they haven't responded, because I never messaged them. I feel like a jerk now for wasting their time.

[4th-d-slipped]

ive made bead bracelets in the past but none that were proper 'kandi' per se, but im very pleased to announce i have made my first pieces of kandi ever :3!!!

the barbie heart comes from a cheap necklace that was a pack in with a princess charm school book, and the seal one says "ex•seal•ent"

[Image ID: A picture of 2 kandi bead bracelets on a flat surface. It was taken with flash on, which makes the colors brighter and pop more. The left kandi is made up of light pink and neon hot pink pony beads in a repeating pattern, with fake pearl beads between every 3 pony beads. The back of the kandi ends in a transparent pink bead to match the centerpiece of the kandi, which is a slightly oversized glittery pink heart faceted like a gem, with the Barbie head logo inside. The right kandi is made up of yellow and neon green pony beads in a repeating pattern for half the length. The back half has black cube beads with neon letters that read "EXSEALENT", with 'SEAL' being in neon green letters and the rest of the letters being neon yellow. There are tiny metal beads between 'EX', 'SEAL', and 'ENT', and the letter beads are separated from the pony beads by green star-shaped clay beads with yellow happy faces on them. The centerpiece of the kandi is a large green seal-shaped bead. End ID]

[prolifeproliberty]

Yeah it was definitely a thing in the 90s and 2000s. At the Lutheran church/school I went to back then, there were parents asking the school to ban Harry Potter from the library because witchcraft. My parents understood that was dumb and let me read it when I was old enough, but we definitely knew people who were worried about it.

My husband went to a different Lutheran church/school and his school made a big deal about telling the kids that Pokémon was bad.

In fact, he loves telling the story of the time they were addressing all the kids and telling them that Pokémon taught evolution. They showed a picture of a Tangela.

Now, this was back before Generation 4, which meant they just happened to pick for their example one of the relatively few Pokémon that didn’t actually evolve.

Today it’s basically a non-issue in most churches. The D&D group I play with actually started at my church (some of us have since moved/switched churches, so we don’t meet at church anymore, but that’s how we all got started)

stg people are just lying about dnd and metal and pokemon satanic panic stuff because ive spent my whole life deeply involved in real bible-believing churches in the deep south and never encountered these people once