#biblical map of the garden of eden

[o-uncle-newt]

On the Job minisode and Good Omens as a work on religion

(Note: This was originally a reblog of someone who then expressed that they were unhappy that I reblogged their post. As a courtesy I have reposted it as its own thing- for context, the person was upset that Neil Gaiman's take on religion was stale and said that of course if you have only a surface view of the Torah and the book of Job you'd come away with these kinds of negative impressions.)

I went to Orthodox Jewish day school for thirteen years. I thought the Job minisode was fine, as an adaptation of the story. Not breaking any ground theologically or whatever, but fine. (Though they did definitely get the number of Job's kids wrong, presumably for narrative simplicity, and the shoemaker joke doesn't work because he's really Bildad the ShuCHite.)

And, I mean, I don't think it should be MEANT to be anything but fine...? Good Omens is a fantasy novel in which heaven and hell are both the bad guys- Good Omens the show has basically kept in that model. The whole thing is about a simplistic look at the Christian Bible and a kind of cynical but light hearted agnosticism that doesn't really lend itself particularly to sophisticated religious analysis or whatever. It's not meant for that.*

The Job minisode was written by John Finnemore rather than Gaiman, a writer of whom I am a massive fan and, however, to whom I don't really look for sophisticated religious takes. He's done a Bible/religion sketch or two on his sketch show- I don't particularly love them, they're pretty surfacey- and he's self aware enough to make it very clear that he approaches everything from an "I don't believe in God but I grew up in a Christian country" perspective. (He's a lot more honest about that than a lot of other atheist/agnostic writers I've seen who do takes on religion, incidentally... so many people think they're being "objective" or whatever.)

The thing is, I actually really love the Job minisode as a Good Omens story, working within this complete fantasy world. I was disappointed in a lot of S2 but this felt like the characters, this felt like an interesting meditation on their roles and their choices... I don't know, it just really worked for me.

And I feel like part of the point is to pick one of those "well obviously on the surface this looks a bit fucked up" stories (rather than for there to be an implication that they're the only ones who noticed)- because they're working in a fictional universe in which it's been established since the nineties that heaven/God is at least a bit fucked up (no matter what I as a Jew may personally believe) and so they can just take it and run with it without having to explain! Gaiman did the same thing in S1 with the Garden of Eden and the Ark. It's just a canvas to put an Aziraphale/Crowley plot on. The original book is a Book of Revelations satire!

Honestly, I'm happier to have a pretty basic retelling of a story that's obviously fucked up on the surface, rather than them picking some midrash or something that's more subtle and nuanced and super Jewish-y and then turning it into something about how God or the angels or the demons are bad- partly because Jewish angel/demon stuff doesn't map well onto Good Omens's approach, and also because the whole point of the book from the start has been critical of organized Judeo-Christian (yes I know) religion writ large, and that's not going to change. That was weird for me to get used to as an Orthodox Jewish teen in a Bais Yaakov school when I first read it, but getting past it made me realize that all that meant was that they'd created a Biblical fantasy universe with certain tropes in it.

I think the Job minisode works perfectly well within that particular Biblical fantasy universe, and while I think that you can potentially criticize S1 (and in a slightly different way, the book) for that Biblical satire/fantasy not being particularly sophisticated about religion if that's something important to you, I don't think that it being sophisticated about religion would have improved it as a story.

*I did kinda sorta write a fic that tries to cast Aziraphale and Crowley in a more traditionally Jewish lens and... it was actually really hard. As I said above, the way the Good Omens world is set up doesn't really work for the Jewish thing. I had to make it really clear that angels don't have free will and that Heaven and Hell aren't two different sides.

[lunarharp]

btw my syllabus if i got hired to teach baddy studies at takarazuka university

Introduction: How rows of obasan on shonichi in 2018 had the lenses of their opera glasses blown clean off

Compulsive Heteronormativity on Earth: You can’t really be heterosexual if you think there’s no other choice (takes a whole semester)

And God Deemed It Good; Biblical themes of Baddy - the Peaceful Planet and the Garden of Eden

Bad at Being Good: Pocky Has Moral Scrupulosity OCD

- So does everyone

- This earth is ocd; The Prince and letting go: How finally exposing yourself to the terrifying thoughts and concepts you have deemed 'bad' and have shut out can be seductive, addicting, dangerous, and ultimately transformative - and is the only way for you to work out what you really believe in

When You’re Forced to Enforce - how the royalty & investigators are captive to a system they are replicating but in a way that cannot be mapped onto real life so it’s ok to be glad for the queen too during the rockette she was dying inside as well ok

How keeping worldbuilding vague can be better: But also, has everyone on Earth been frozen in time for 103 years because of how removing the concepts of ‘bad’ and ‘evil’ has made everyone emotionally regress? Alternative readings

- How not thinking too deeply about background details is more fun: But also Is the proof that minor crimes are committed such as the king secretly smoking & the queen paying sex workers, proof that crime obviously has been happening on the peaceful planet and is either covered up or monitored/engaged in by the royalty themselves given that the queen is fully aware that they can make use of crime for personal and structural gain; or is it far funnier if Goody literally does stop pretty much every crime from happening every day because she’s just that powerful

Don't Quarrel! :) - How the show demonstrates that conflict is a useful and necessary part of healthy relationships

Assigned Otokoyaku At Birth - a world where ‘musumeyaku’ and ‘otokoyaku’ are The Two Genders, and where every “female-bodied” otokoyaku character gets to be completely and 100% read and understood to be male by everyone around them (seminars in conjunction with the Gender Studies department)

- The inherent, complex and fascinating transmasculine energy of otokoyaku characters (Takarazuka 3D Gender Chess World - how Pocky is soooo not a cis man but also wearing a dress has transgressive energy because as an otokoyaku you’re not supposed to and also he is supposed to be read as a cis man like every other otokoyaku, but they’re inherently NOT cis men but they are yes they’re not <3)

- How onnayaku drag complicates, enriches and illuminates a gender-ambiguous, non-binary character like Sweetheart

Frozen As Permanent Baby-Adults - how keeping key human psychological concepts like ‘good’, ‘evil’, ‘conflict’ from the prince and princess has kept them from becoming fully functional human beings whose age can even be determined

How Baddy and the others would probably be smoking weed if weed was actually legal in Japan cause that’d be cooler: The ways in which ‘sin’ and ‘crime’ are completely relative and therefore even theatrical representations of transgressing those concepts are reflective of the society in which those transgressions were conceived

You Can’t Just Exile Everyone You Don’t Approve Of From Society Or Nobody Is Free

Angel Wings, The Ultimate Takarazuka-rashisa of Baddy, and Living in the Post-Baddy World: Use of the theatrical structures of Takarazuka stage traditions as part of the narrative itself: How Uekumi was the cleverest and funniest person ever and how everyone else has been a coward since

The Consent of Queerness - How Sweetheart not kissing Pocky as they died together even though that might happen in another more orthodox takarazuka show, and Pocky being the one to excitedly initiate The Sacred Tokyo Senshuuraku Kiss, reflects the satisfying ultimate conclusion of their arcs

Structural & personal abuse and how it makes everyone but especially women, shut off their emotions, forget what it feels like to be alive, and how recovering even unpleasant emotions like hatred, rage and grief is absolutely crucial to your freedom

- Dare ga Omoidasaseta no; Who Was It That Made Me Remember? How the rockette is everything, and how a person simply showing you the truth of your shackles can cause them to become the object of your wild fury more so than the system that put you there - but ultimately, you understand that too, and you are the one who can free yourself now by god you will see this through to the end

Her no longer being satisfied without anger, him no longer satisfied without love - how constructing femininity and masculinity within a binary renders them concepts in need of their own restoration, and how being acted out by two women invokes an inherently butch/femme reconstructive atmosphere

Umareta Onaji Basho/Back to the Place I Was Born - through the lens of the shadow solo lyrics over the duet dance, analysis on how Baddy and Goody represent one figure - the human being - two halves of a whole - the moon orbiting the earth - the earth coming home - how “bad” and “good” are not concepts that can be separated nor can anyone be pure or evil, and how the spirit must return to itself when the human experience has been fractured

Recovering Your Own Blood-Coloured Life

[gwenbrightly]

Nowhere’sville

There’s something off about Nowhere’sville. No one can quite remember how it first came to be. The oldest in the town aren’t that old, and those who came before them each leave their own account of what truly happened. One claims it dates back to biblical times, that Nowhere’sville was founded in what used to be the Garden of Eden. Another claims it was created by faeries during the dark ages, meant to be an escape from the horrors of plagues and bloodshed.

With tales of aliens, witchcraft, and government conspiracies, it is impossible to separate fact from fiction. All anyone knows with some level of certainty is that Nowhere’sville exists outside of space itself. You won’t find it on any map, for the town doesn’t stay in any one location for more than a day at a time, and no one can predict where it will pop into existence next.

Most outsiders believe their sightings of Nowhere’sville are simply the result of hallucinatory drugs, faulty childhood memories, or perhaps an odd dream brought on by eating one too many bags of candy before falling asleep on a road trip. After all, they can never find it when they go looking for answers regarding their bizarre experiences. And no one really likes to talk about something that will probably make them sound crazy.

But those who live in Nowhere’sville know the truth – it exists and nothing is as it seems. Those who try to uncover its secrets are never the same. Every answer comes at a price. Somewhere, a clock tower strikes midnight. It is time for Nowhere’sville to move on once again.

[harrelltut]

iMeditatively Animate this Clandestine [iMAC] Mental Eye [ME] Computer of KODAK Visuals w/A New [ANU] Celestial Human Brain Chip [B.C.] REALITY of BYZANTIUM’s Crystalized GOLD Inductor [CGI] DNA of HEAVY OLMEC MENTAL ENERGY [HOME] VISUALS from Istanbul's Maritime [I’M] Port [I/P] Underneath the Black SUN Sea [ABYSS] Floor of Heavenly Archangel [HA = HARRELL] SATAN… Geographically Assigned to Strategically Enclosed Structures [GASES] HIDDEN Underneath [HU = HURRIAN] the Subterranean Earth of Ægyptian [SEE] SESHAT's Tropical SUNSTAR Ecosystems of TIAMAT's [SET’s] ANTARCTICA BLACK SEA GOLD from EVE’s Black [GEB] Seed Oil Gardens of EDEN’s 9 Ether Right Knowledge Trees… Dynastically Inherited & Generationally Maintained in ENLIL NUNAMNIR’s Biblically Ancient [BABYLONIAN] Subterranean Earth Kingdom [SEK = SEKHMET] Garden City of ENQI NUDIMMUD’s Most Darkest [Occulted] Subterranean Ecosystem of ABUNDANT [SEA] HEALING MINERALS from MAYA’s Lost Antediluvian [LA] MOTHERLAND [MU] CONTINENT of LEMURIAN [MU] PEOPLES Inhabiting Our Interplanetary LAHMU [MARS] Subterranean Ethereal Earth [SEE] Ecosystems Beneath [SEB] the Atlantic ORICHALCUM Ocean Floor of MESOAMÉRICA’s Antediluvian [MA] 9 Ether AZTECA SUN_KING [Sunken] DOME Continent [D.C.] Prince of ATLANTIS [PA] & LEMURIA [MU]… Geographically ISOLATED Six to 8,000 Feet Underneath PALAEOZOIC Continent [PC] Queen CALAFIA’s Antediluvian [CA] Pacific [CAP = CAPRICORN] Coast Island Continent MONARCHY of Distant [MD] 9 Ether MISSISSIPPI MOTHERLAND [MU] RACES [MUURS] of ATLANTEAN & LEMURIAN [MAL = MALDEKIAN] GENEALOGIES… who Immaculately MANIFESTED [I’M] from SIRIUS 6G Quantum Interplay [QI] Communication Signals of SIRIUS Electromagnetic Airwave [SEA] Light Mechanics [ELECTRICITY] ILLUMINATING Planet [I/P] RIZQ’s… Interplanetary 7G SUN Beam Energy Computer of TIAMAT's Highly Complex [ADVANCED] Ancient MOTHERBOARD of UNSEEN Nano [AMÚN] Biotechnological SUN Light Amplifying Simulated Emissions of Radiation [LASER] Waves Forming A New [ANU] SOLAR SUN [SUL] SYSTEM… Naturally Revealing PANGÆA's Intergalactic QUANTUM HARRELL TECH [iQHT] SKY Earth Altitude [iSEA] HEAVENS of Interstellar [HI = HITTITE] 8G Holographic MOON Crystal Images [MCI] Projected from Our Interactive QUANTUM HARRELL TECH [iQHT] SKY KINGDOM DOME City [D.C.] of Parallel Constellation [PC] ORION’s 9G Intergalactic STAR MAPS of Ancient Hieroglyphical Mechatronic INTEL [ISHMAEL]… Interactively Operating [I/O] Our Highly Complex [ADVANCED] Cosmic Algorithmic [CA] Computational [Compton] STAR MEMORY Logistics from AL HISAABAT’s Interplanetary [HI = HITTITE] Quantum Intel [QI] Memory Computer of Clandestine Intel Agile [CIA] Imprint Architecture [CIA] Electrophysiologically [Spiritually] Engineering Empyrean [SEE] SCENERY UPLOADED 2 My Historically Ancient [HA = HARRELL] Intuitive Brain of MACINTOSH [iBM] CODEX Computer Patents of SIRIUS Intellectual Property [I/P] Rights & Agreements [RA] Geocoded & Genetically Imprinted w/QHT’s [IQ’s] Highly Complex [ADVANCED] Ancient FUTURISTIC 9 Ether HUMIM [FEMALE] & HUMIN [MALE] Bioinformatics of ALPHA CENTAURI's Triple Star Systems of Intracellular DNA [I.D.] MEMORY [I’M] MECHANICS Animating this Highly Complex [ADVANCED] Ancient Intercellular [A.I.] MENTAL Khemistry Compu_TAH [PTAH] SUN GOD [RA] MAN [RAM = RAMESES] in 2022 [VI]… who Electrophysiologically [Spiritually] TELEVISE 1st Online Eye [i] Dream [iD] Sequences Illustrating the MANIFESTATION [I’M] of Interdimensional Human MIND Travels Beneath the Earth [Qi] Plane of Quantum Interplay [QI] Mechanics Mathematically Measuring & Assigning RIGEL STAR [MARS] COORDINATES of Biblically Ancient [BABYLONIAN] Interplanetary DNA [I.D.] Nanoparticle Intel of MASTER [I’M] Data [I.D.] Management [I’M] Software that Image & Scan Earth Terrain [iSET] in Our Occulted [HIDDEN] Solar Eclipse Energy [SEE] Atmosphere of ANTARCTICA's Oceanic Continent Captured by Our Interplanetary MOON [I’M] Compu_TAH [PTAH] SHAMS of SIRIUS Interstellar Cloud Emissions Fueled from Inner Earth’s [HADES'] Most Darkest [Occulted] Black SUN Sea [ABYSS] Floor Base of 144,000 Subatomic Copper Thiolate Anions of Highly Complex [ADVANCED] Ancient Stoichiometric Chemical Equations Quantified [EQ] by the Intra Multiplication of Associative & Commutative [iMAC] PROPERTIES... Genetically Sequencing Unified Nanoscopic [SUN] Particles into 24 BILLION Strands of Bioluminescence & Chemiluminescence Elements [BCE] Pressurized by Our Supernova Nucleosynthesis during the Sequential Hydrostatic Burning Processes of Thermonuclear Proton Energies Forming NANOSCOPIC Covalent Bonds of Highly Complex [ADVANCED] Cycloalkynes Isolated by the Organic Electron Field of Subatomic Earth SUN & MOON Energies [ME = U.S. Michael Harrell = TUT = JAH]… SUPERNATURALLY Engineering & AWAKENING [SEA] Our Triple 999 [GRANDIOSE]  Black SUN Sea [ABYSS] Floor Deities of 9 Ether ETHERIAN CHARYBDIS MANIFESTATIONS… from Our 9th Etheric RNA STAR Cloud Dimension of Interdimensional RIZQIYIAN Constellation MINERAL MINES of SIRIUS A PLATINUM & SIRIUS B GOLD Alloys & Elements Assigned [GAEA] w/Our Highly Complex [ADVANCED] Ancient Biochemical [PRIMORDIAL] Fossil Earth SUN & MOON DNA Codes [D.C.] Identifying Interstellar GASES from the Interplanetary GODS of Iridescent [IGIGI] METALS [I’M] Crystalizing into SIRIUS UNSEEN NANO [SUN] BIOTECHNOLOGICAL Light Particles from Atomic [PA] Earth Elements Naturally Synthesizing Subatomic Compounds of Oxidized Radiation from the Bioluminescent SKY [ORBS] KINGDOM [SOBEK] of Ægyptian Empyrean [SEE] GOLD @ QUANTUM HARRELL TECH [QHT] LLC

[triste-le-roy]

The Location of Paradise—The Garden of Eden, depicting a map of the Garden of Eden, surrounded by commentary from Johannes Schottus’ 1535 Strassburg printing of The Bible (Guillaume Postel, 1578).

(via Griffon’s Medieval Manuscripts)

[amandlas]

right at the borderline is where i'm gonna wait

tfota | jude x cardan, post-reconciliation, nsfw, the idiots get biblical. seriously. (ao3)

[give or take three years after qon. title from “meet me halfway” by black eyed peas]

The apple had been shiny. Decadent in gold, everything about it inhuman.

Jude inspected it with a slithering memory of it stuffing her nose, trickling down her cheeks. Back when Valerian was alive and planned to make a fool of her. How could something so beautifully venomous appear so harmless?

She was uncomfortably reminded of her twin sister. To shake away the thought she spoke.

“An apple doomed humanity.”

Cardan lifted a brow. His tail swept at his back, causing a small hissing noise. They were done with food, lounging at the table close and carefree, political matters long dealt with.

Jude scrunched her brows, trying to remember. “In some religions of mortals, the first man and woman were kicked out of heaven for eating an apple. Her, specifically.”

“Really?” he asked, intrigued.

She nodded. “Adam and Eve. They were meant to live in the garden of Eden but a devilish snake charmed Eve into eating the forbidden fruit.” She grabbed the faerie apple, lifted it for closer inspection. She could smell its sickly sweetness. “Then she convinced Adam to do the same.”

His face was full of amusement. “A snake.”

“A snake.” Jude placed the apple back on the platter. There was more, she knew there was, but her time in the mortal world was long past. “The devil in disguise, actually.”

He nodded as if in understanding. “Is that your creation?”

Jude felt stunned by the use of ‘your’. She shifted in her seat, moving her right leg so it was no longer in contact with his. This subject was bringing back memories forgotten or repressed for more than a decade. Crosses. Stars. Going to school, seeing churches on the way there through the car window. Thick books hidden in a drawer in every hotel room. Like anything mortal, religion had been ruined by Elfhame even if the Duartes had never been particularly devout. She found herself unable to move forward from this yet wanting to run away.

“Religion was never a strong verse of mine. Especially considering the age I came here.” The thought drifted off into silence. It was all she could say. Cardan had the decency to hold her gaze, to allow her this vulnerability without pity.

Her eyebrows scrunched again. “It must all sounds so…absurd to you.” She had to look away.

Cardan remained silent, his tail quiet at his back. He grabbed the apple and gave it a hard bite. Through juicy chunks he bid her, “What happened to them?”

For a handful of days, she told him here and there. Not much but the mere basics. Jude herself didn’t recall too well. She remembered the tale through Cardan. He asked, more intrigued than was to be expected, either for her favor or a genuine curiosity over human beliefs. She even managed to stop by a human library during a visit to Vivi’s, where she found and printed out a picture from the internet to show her husband. He saw a drawing of two naked people ambling by bushes of green and red. They had leaves between their legs and expressions of wonder. Of children. Jude still couldn’t pinpoint how to feel. It settled weird in her stomach, as she held up the tiny print out and Cardan squinted with an unreadable expression. To think that this was her beginnings. How faeries must’ve seen them. Standing in the shoes of an outsider, it made her feel more human than she felt in a long time.

She thought the subject to be blessedly forgotten, until a few days later.

Cardan was guiding her with hands over her eyes. The guards were called away, instructed not to interrupt them. Jude felt the pounding of her own heart up to her ears. She could sense and hear grass under her feet, smell leaves and moss. The place they were going to was warm.

“Why is it growing quieter?”

Cardan didn’t falter. “We’re moving deeper into the forest is why.”

“Will we run into wild animals? I remember studying the mountain lions-”

His chuckle cut her off. “No lions, Lady Devout Student. I found this place not too long ago, in the years prior to my ascension to the throne. It is quiet and secluded.” There was a pause. He stopped both in their tracks. “I’ll admit it was lonely. I was often lonely. At least here, the view was better than my chambers at Hollow Hall.”

Cardan removed his hands.

Jude huffed in a breath. She couldn’t appreciate being led blindly through the woods, but the sight before her took the words away.

It was a small bit of everything a human would expect of a fairytale. A nook in the woods, some place forgotten by the maps. There was an ample space surrounded by greenery. She could only describe it as a concealed meadow. The trees formed in a natural alcove, hugging the space into intimacy. Even the thin slices of sunlight creeping through leaves looked magical. And flowers. Those were everywhere. Their smell filled her nose, enticing like honey.

“There,” Cardan pointed.

It was an apple tree. Small and with only a few golden apples dangling from its branches. She did not know what to make of the metaphor.

“It’s…bewitching,” she told him.

He walked over to the tree. Pried a fruit off it. “I never showed this place to anyone.”

That simple sentence reached her heart. He walked over back to her.

“I was reminded of this place,” he began, “when you first told me the mortal creation story.”

Ah. Everything was clicking. Jude took a deep breath, inhaling with it the scent of the apple. “The garden of Eden was meant to be heavenly.” She smirked at him, lifting a brow. “This is presumptuous of you.”

His hand found her chin. “Presumptuous it may be. Conceited, even. Poetic, hopefully?”

It was endearing to see him this way. To allow him to care. She stepped closer, his loose linen white shirt brushing hers. She didn’t have a dramatic black coat over hers but that was attributed to his taste and her lack thereof. The black tint around his eyes was perfect.

“Am I supposed to fall hopeless to your faerie charms?” She stepped even closer, so close she pretended to clean lint off his coat.

His free hand fell to her hip. “Are they successful?”

She scoffed. “You fell for my foolish mortal wiles. Anything should be possible.”

With the hand holding the apple, he brushed some strands of hair out of her face. “Here I am, attempting to be elegiac.” He leaned down and planted a soft, deep kiss on her lips.

Jude allowed her eyes to close. She let herself be vulnerable, allowed him to lead. He kissed her again, still slow as if afraid she would turn and leave. When they pulled apart he was breathing heavy. Then he licked the skin of the apple, not quite biting it, while maintaining eye contact.

Her breathing hitched.

“Never have I been the doted student so correct me if I'm wrong.” His lips met her cheek, then the other. “I recall that Adam and Eve had but two rules.”

“Rules?”

He pulled back and rolled his eyes. “Expectations.”

Jude let out a laugh. “You’ve become a better student.” He’d become a better lots of things. “What rules?”

His one hand still gripped her waist. “The first was not to eat the apple. Which,” he threw his golden apple in the air and caught it again, “they failed.” He said it with a certain finality that fell ill on her belly.

Her eyes fell directly on the faerie fruit in his hand. It all suddenly swirled around in her head. Her humanity. The memory of being helplessly under its spell that school afternoon, and the memory of desiring more. How at that moment, at the raw experience of eating the single fruit she lost semblance of herself, her basest instinct of survival. It pushed her to act against her own self-interest, to destroy herself. Succulent and blissful it had been, but the cost of it was the fall. A beautiful fall, but a fall nonetheless.

She felt too close to Eve at that moment. A shudder ran down her body. Eve, the first mother, who many pointed to as the broken woman who cursed humankind. The single bite that ruined the world.

Cardan could tell she got lost in her head. He lowered his hand and brought her eyes to his. He demanded all her attention.

“I don't believe you are foolish.” He whispered it like a caress. “I never have.” He paused, gathering his thoughts and granting her the same courtesy. “My own prejudice blinded me, as yours did me equally.”

“You thought me an insect for so long.”

“And you thought me a monster.”

Some days it was hard to convince herself that either of them was wrong.

He let the fruit fall from his hand so he could cup her face fully.

“Adam and Eve are a whimsical tale but I would not call anyone naive for believing in it. Not you, if you did, or any other mortal. From a certain light it’s...innocent. Sweet.”

Jude scoffed, her heart lightened. “Sweet? The doom of humanity is sweet?”

He smiled at her laugh. “No. The intention of you. Residing in heaven, living in ignorant bliss with your love and your equal is what makes it sweet.”

At this she lifted a brow. He might be bringing some of his own interpretation to the tale. But gender relations and faith had always been different in Elfhame, so he knew no better. “Like I mentioned, I am not well-versed in the text. Some mortals would even call you wrong. But I suppose a story is to be made whatever the reader wishes to make it.”

“Here's what I make of this one.” And he pulled her into another hungrier kiss.

Jude could’ve almost laughed, as he tugged at her clothes and her fingers shed him of his trousers. Piece by piece, they rid the other of clothing. When air bit her bare skin, she jumped back without thinking. They were in public. They could be found.

Cardan studied her expression quickly, worried. He understood immediately. “The guards. I sent them off to a perimeter, remember? We are alone.”

Right. Tension left her muscles as her spine straightened again. She brought his body back to hers, only his shirt and socks left. She helped him with the first as he stepped out of the second.

“I cannot believe your biblical seduction worked.”

His fanciful smile flashed. Sparkling white teeth. “It is not finished yet.”

Part of her couldn’t believe it. “Frankly, it’s hard to fathom you could care so much.”

He ignored her, as they were now fully uncovered. Silently, he leaned forward and shook out her hair, fluffing it out in wild tangles. It was unlike her, aside from moments in training when her pleats came loose. His long fingers touching her scalp sent shivers everywhere in her body, and her eyes drooped. Jude’s brown hair was so long and fluffy it fell down streams past her shoulders, brushing the tops of her breasts and tickling her back. When Cardan appeared satisfied with the results, he stepped back to rake her all over. From crown to heel.

As naked as they had come into this world. Mortal and fae alike. There was a metaphor there.

“You forgot the second.” Cardan whispered this into her neck as he guided her down onto the floor.

“What?” It was hard to think.

“The second rule. You forgot to ask about it.” They settled on the pasture.

Part of her was so confused. Also annoyed. “Oh, you’re teaching now?”

He made a show of pinching the side of her ass. Jude yelped. He soothed her by nuzzling her nose with his.

“The first rule was not to eat the apple. Correct?”

This was so out of bounds but it had to be going somewhere. She nodded.

Her husband took a deep breath. Inhaling her in. Perhaps afraid of what he would say next. Of what Jude would think. “The second was to go forth and be fruitful.” His pale hand trailed her sides, skimming her hips. “To continue humanity.” His lips marked kisses on her clavicles, descending to her chest. “To have many,” a kiss to her sternum, “many,” another right above her belly button, “many children.” The last kiss was at her abdomen, his hands on either side of her stomach.

The air was knocked right out her lungs. Cold shocked her entire body, then in a flash she was hot all over.

She looked into his eyes. Cardan was calm, serene. He was upright now, leaning on one hand on the ground. His thumb drew circles on her hip. A part of him seemed resigned, as if ready for a blow. In that moment she felt his spirit as open as she had privilege to see very few times prior.

Jude trained her voice not to shake. “You wish to be fruitful, my husband?”

A long pause. They only stared at each other until Cardan leaned down to kiss her stomach again. “To try, certainly.”

She couldn’t find any words. Therefore she used her body instead. One hand cupped his face, gently, then the other. As if holding a delicate bird. His black crow eyes could tear her soul apart.

Half of her didn’t know what she was doing when her hands pulled him up, meeting his lips with hers. It was neither an answer nor a rejection. A response, the best she could give him for now.

Nevertheless he answered threefold. The High King refused to break apart until they were both gasping for air. A small smile adorned his face when he seductively muttered into her lips.

“Let us play like Adam and Eve. I’ll have you with leaves in your hair and grass beneath our backs.” He planted a kiss on her ear, nibbling. “The blue sky can be our witness.”

Her hand kept him where he was as she groaned. “You would play at a mortal amongst the dirt?”

Instead of celebrating her banter, he bit her harder. This time she hissed, and he moved lower.

“We,” Cardan mumbled on her skin, “are the only two beings in here.” Unable to lie, he couldn’t play along with their roles and say ‘in the world’. It had to be ‘in here’, in the alcove, yet she appreciated his way around it all the same. The sentiment remained. That sinful mouth floated over the skin of her belly. It traced a line falling low. Jude gasped when he teased the area above her center. Between her legs is where she wanted him, where he refused to go. A whimper escaped.

It made him look up. “There is no one else.” With that, his red tongue licked the bundle of nerves amidst her thighs.

Jude could only grip his hair, shut her eyes and moan. He drew circles, adding pressure that drew louder noises. When he took all of her into his mouth and sucked she started to scare the birds off the trees.

His hand, snake-like, slithered up her hip and to her breast, where he caressed and squeezed her. The other…it went to her center, aiding his lips, teasing. One finger, then two, and the tongue circling harder.

Jude couldn’t make sense of up from down to the point where her peak came in a waterfall without notice. It felt nothing short of natural. Her chest heaved, eyes closed and back arched. When Cardan withdrew his fingers they were soaked.

Pleased beyond sense, she only felt him work his way back up, align his chest to hers. Smother her neck with kisses while pushing her thighs apart with his knee.

“No one else,” he murmured against her throat.

Her eyes fluttered. “No one…”

He kneeled upward suddenly. Cardan reached for a flower, two, pink and bright from a bush next to her head. He threw off the stems, leaving only the petals and crushing those between his long hands. She was still busy riding her high to ask what the hell he was doing. Then he took what remained of the flowers and smeared it over her body. Across her chest, down to her stomach. She was glazed in petals. Everywhere he touched, she shuddered. Her body was a canvas in pink. Clinging to her skin, staining and perfuming her. Grass glued to her back and flower petals to her front, hair fanned out. It was the farthest from dirty she’d ever felt. His expression was hungry, reverential, and some other unreadable thing.

“Jude.”

She met his gaze. “Cardan.”

His hand went between their legs, and she felt the nudge at her entrance. Her breathing stopped.

He leaned down to touch noses, foreheads, to share breath. “We are primordial.”

He could not lie. He believed it, some part of him, some twisted explanation. She didn’t give herself time to ponder.

“Cardan.” Sliding into her was the easiest thing.

All thoughts died with a sigh.

Everything stilled. His eyelids fell shut, breath tickling her face. “There is only you and me.”

 Time went by oddly. Jude couldn't separate one coupling from the next. Something out of a fever dream or the drowsiness that follows a strong poison. She was overwhelmed with the primal nature of the story, by the pleasure in her body.

Cardan was thrusting into her from behind, both laying on the grass on their sides. Wet leaves stuck to his legs, to her hip. She was moaning, a fist of grass in her hand and a fist of her hair in his. He pulled, brought her closer. “My love,” he whispered in her ear.

Then she was straddling him. Moving up and down painfully slowly, torturous drags. She had his chin in her hands, powerful, forcing his eyes to hers. She was whispering, unrecalled heinous things she wouldn’t remember later. Only the feel of him inside and his hands on her hips.

That might have been the first hour. Or the second.

He was slamming into her. Jude was dizzy with the pace, strong and rhythmic. Her back was to an old tree, steadying her. Cardan kissed her breast. He was not going fast, focusing on going deeper. There were petals stuck to his chest now too, and some grass blades. The paint around his eyes was smudged. She yelped once. An evil smile formed on him, a smile that reminded her of taunts and tricks. His hands fell to her sides, one on her and one on the tree. His hips charged harder, making their pelvises meet and slightly pushing her up the tree. She squealed louder.

Jude was riding him again. She was on her front this time, facing away from him, each hand on his knees for support. Her hair was a mess; tiny stems and petals caught on the ends, the odd twig here and there. It was far from her priorities, though, or his. She even thought the ferality heightened his desire. At her back, Cardan hissed, grip on her waist as she impaled herself on him over and over. Slick sounds filled the meadow.

His tail whispered up her left side. The tuft coil slid around her throat, cutting off a groan, settling as a choker. “Oh,” was what she could manage. A particularly strong moan escaped Cardan. She rode him harder. Faster. Leveling her body so only her waist moved, keeping them close. Back and forth, back and forth, blinding her senses. She came again, as swiftly as an autumn breeze.

That was when he decided to push her forward. His tail stayed at her throat, tightening. She was on all fours, limbs trembling.

Cardan shifted into position behind. “On your knees, Your Majesty.”

It took a few gasps to gather a response. “Majesty? I thought I was Eve from the garden-” but the rest was gone to his thrusts. The grass under her hands was ripped off.

Where had their base necessities gone? For hours they wouldn’t stop to eat, to drink, only to rest for some heartbeats in between positions. A mere catching of the breath. Blue sky turned to pink, purple, to a reddish tint marking sundown. Jude thought the garden had truly driven them mad.

He was on top, eyes locked on hers. Jude sprawled on the ground with one leg horizontal and the other on his shoulder, his hand holding it close. She had one foot in the air and her thighs open wide. Anything but them, but the glistening sight of their joining ceased to exist.

She kept one hand at his hip, beckoning him forward, controlling the pace even with him moving above. It was a fantastic dynamic. Below him, she whispered praise and any unintelligible phrase that came to mind. “Just like that,” she’d say. “Right there. Harder. That’s better.” There was even a shaky “That feels perfect.” It only made him more dutiful. Then she noticed him looking at her breasts. How they bounced by the efforts of their movements.

“Touch them,” she commanded.

His hand went to one, fingers splayed wide, clutching.

“Harder than that.”

With a moan, he squeezed harder, sparking pain and pleasure through her nerves. Her limbs were aflame.

Skin met skin. The slaps were like a song, lulling her and encouraging him. Cardan took a glance at the place where he disappeared in her, again and again.

“You’re drenched.”

She had coated them both until their groins were wet.

Jude grasped his shoulders, snatching him to her, chests meeting. As close as they could be. In that liminal state, in that indescribable eternal in-between, she planted kisses on every inch of him.

“Love me.” She whispered in his ear, his hair, any reachable place. “Love me. Love me. Love me.”

 Their last thoughts blurred into oblivion.

There is only you.

There is only me.

 For now.

[homedevises]

One Checklist That You Should Keep In Mind Before Attending Map Of The Garden Of Eden | map of the garden of eden

Atlantis may be the best acclaimed of allegorical destinations, but the history of cartography is broadcast with non-existent places. California appeared as an island on abundant 17th-century maps, and a 16th-century “Map of the Arctic” by Gerardus Mercator included a colossal alluring mountain at the North Pole. The Phantom Atlas: The Greatest Myths, Lies and Blunders on Maps by Edward Brooke-Hitching, out now from Simon & Schuster UK, examines the aberrant ability of allegorical places on our maps.

“This is an album of the apple — not as it anytime existed, but as it was anticipation to be,” Brooke-Hitching writes in an introduction. “The countries, islands, cities, mountains, rivers, continents, and contest calm in this book are all absolutely fictitious; and yet anniversary was for a time — sometimes for centuries — real. How? Because they existed on maps.”

Mythical islands were generally affected by mapmakers, who, for instance, could not easily boating out to the Southern Hemisphere to see if it did absolutely accept the behemothic Terra Australis continent. The Phantom Album includes Hy Brasil, afresh the accountable of a Boston Public Library exhibition, which backward on maps for bristles centuries, and had tales of a archimage who lived with huge atramentous rabbits and, later, UFOs. Although Brooke-Hitching appearance extremes of credulity, like a 40-foot “sea worm” that roamed the shores of Norway on a 16th-century map by Olaus Magnus, he additionally cites added contempo mistakes. Sandy Island was recorded in the eastern Coral Sea by a behemothic address in 1876, and it wasn’t until November 2012 that it was accounted fictional. And in the 19th century, there were still those who believed in a collapsed Earth, such as Professor Orlando Ferguson of Hot Springs, South Dakota, who in 1893 illustrated a map arguing for this collapsed appearance of the planet, which he based on biblical texts.

What makes Brooke-Hitching’s book added than aloof a accumulating of oddities is the accent on why these errors happen, and how relying on religion at the exclusion of science, or account alien letters advanced of aboriginal knowledge, detrimentally impacted centuries of exploring. Some abstracts in The Phantom Atlas, though, were aloof liars. In the 19th century, the Scottish conman Gregor MacGregor swindled hundreds of British and French investors with his letters of the imaginary “Cazique.” Some bodies alike journeyed out to this Central American locale, alone to acquisition a agrarian boscage instead of a town, and afterlife instead of a new life.

Below are a few selections from The Phantom Atlas, from erroneous civil seas of Australia, to the Garden of Eden advised on an 18th-century map.

The Phantom Atlas: The Greatest Myths, Lies and Blunders on Maps by Edward Brooke-Hitching is out now from Simon & Schuster UK. 

One Checklist That You Should Keep In Mind Before Attending Map Of The Garden Of Eden | map of the garden of eden – map of the garden of eden | Pleasant to our website, in this time I’m going to teach you in relation to keyword. And today, this is the initial impression:

Map Of Garden Of Eden Stockfotos & Map Of Garden Of Eden Bilder – Alamy – map of the garden of eden | map of the garden of eden

Think about graphic previously mentioned? is actually in which incredible???. if you think maybe therefore, I’l l explain to you some impression again underneath:

So, if you desire to receive all these outstanding graphics related to (One Checklist That You Should Keep In Mind Before Attending Map Of The Garden Of Eden | map of the garden of eden), click save button to store these pictures to your personal computer. They are available for download, if you love and wish to obtain it, simply click save badge on the post, and it’ll be instantly saved to your notebook computer.} Lastly if you want to gain unique and latest image related to (One Checklist That You Should Keep In Mind Before Attending Map Of The Garden Of Eden | map of the garden of eden), please follow us on google plus or book mark the site, we try our best to present you regular up-date with all new and fresh images. Hope you love staying here. For most up-dates and latest information about (One Checklist That You Should Keep In Mind Before Attending Map Of The Garden Of Eden | map of the garden of eden) shots, please kindly follow us on tweets, path, Instagram and google plus, or you mark this page on book mark section, We try to offer you up grade periodically with fresh and new graphics, love your searching, and find the best for you.

Thanks for visiting our site, articleabove (One Checklist That You Should Keep In Mind Before Attending Map Of The Garden Of Eden | map of the garden of eden) published .  Today we are pleased to declare that we have discovered an extremelyinteresting topicto be reviewed, namely (One Checklist That You Should Keep In Mind Before Attending Map Of The Garden Of Eden | map of the garden of eden) Some people trying to find specifics of(One Checklist That You Should Keep In Mind Before Attending Map Of The Garden Of Eden | map of the garden of eden) and certainly one of them is you, is not it?

Searching for Eden in the Middle East | United Church of God – map of the garden of eden | map of the garden of eden

Ancient Garden of Eden and its rivers is in Africa Bantu land – YouTube – map of the garden of eden | map of the garden of eden

Jonathan Potter: Map : Paradise Or The Garden Of Eden – map of the garden of eden | map of the garden of eden

The Four Rivers of Eden | The Ancient Near East – map of the garden of eden | map of the garden of eden

The Biblical Garden of Eden – map of the garden of eden | map of the garden of eden

The Rivers of the Garden of Eden – map of the garden of eden | map of the garden of eden

awesome Map of Eden | Maps | Map, Garden of eden, Garden – map of the garden of eden | map of the garden of eden

Genesis 2:8 BDC: Was the Garden of Eden a real historical … – map of the garden of eden | map of the garden of eden

Garden of Eden – sharin' His love – map of the garden of eden | map of the garden of eden

Middle East Conflict Prophesied? – map of the garden of eden | map of the garden of eden

Map of Garden of Eden – Michelin Garden of Eden map – ViaMichelin – map of the garden of eden | map of the garden of eden

The Garden of Eden – in China? – Big Think – map of the garden of eden | map of the garden of eden

Image result for location of the garden of eden map … – map of the garden of eden | map of the garden of eden

HOLY MOUNT ZION. THE GARDEN OF EDEN. AND THE LANDS OF SHEM … – map of the garden of eden | map of the garden of eden

Ox Road Trail to Garden of Eden – California | AllTrails – map of the garden of eden | map of the garden of eden

Where is the Garden of Eden in the World | Where is Map – map of the garden of eden | map of the garden of eden

The Garden of Eden – in China? – Big Think – map of the garden of eden | map of the garden of eden

Kreuzfahrt In the garden of Eden – Seychellen – map of the garden of eden | map of the garden of eden

Very Rare 26 Map of Iraq Garden of Eden Babylon Bible | #26 – map of the garden of eden | map of the garden of eden

Where Was the Garden of Eden Located? | Answers in Genesis – map of the garden of eden | map of the garden of eden

The Genesis Sanctuary – Ritmeyer Archaeological Design – map of the garden of eden | map of the garden of eden

Park Map | Garden Of Eden Caravan Park -Eden Accommodation – map of the garden of eden | map of the garden of eden

Garden Of Eden And Its Four Rivers – Possible Locations Of Biblical … – map of the garden of eden | map of the garden of eden

The Biblical Garden of Eden – map of the garden of eden | map of the garden of eden

Maps | Paradise Lust by Brook Wilensky-Lanford – map of the garden of eden | map of the garden of eden

Overflow Park Map – Garden Of Eden Caravan Park -Eden Accommodation – map of the garden of eden | map of the garden of eden

from WordPress https://gardeneden.club/one-checklist-that-you-should-keep-in-mind-before-attending-map-of-the-garden-of-eden-map-of-the-garden-of-eden/

[mmmmalo]

the king/father creates/births things while the queen serves only to impregnate (him with the idea for what he will create, like a muse, if you will)? idk i hate women being reduced to their reproductive function but this also seems misogynistic somehow. also does this make roxy's ability to create objects from nothing another "she's trans" joke?

I think the discomfort you’re apprehending is discussed somewhat when Crockertier!Jane tells Jake he will only exist to sire her children? Sexual objectification is probably a more familiar experience for women, but the unease in being subsumed by some sexual function isn’t necessarily gender exclusive… (the existence of domination play attests to that probably)

This subject is probably out of my depth, but I’m going to meander a bit and hopefully say a couple useful things.

First, some clarification: “birth” is the principle of separation and “pregnancy” is the principle of union. Thus birth-as-we-know-it is rendered equivalent to ejaculation, Breathing out, pooping – all of which involve separation from that which was once part of you. Likewise the image of a gestating fetus is equivalent to taut testicles, lungs full of air, a constipated colon – states in which the union is maintained. On this level, it’s apparent that any given body can participate in both halves of the dichotomy.

But as elaborated back in the Roxy-and-Dirk post, Sburb’s queens and kings are aligned with birth and pregnancy, respectively. As per Caliborn’s enchantment, this is treated a hat-switch, a reversal of expectations on who ejaculates and who gestates. “Birth” (which Caliborn likes) is coded as masculine, so that assigning this function to the queen is met as a reversal. While “pregnancy” (for which Caliborn fetishes his disgust) is coded as feminine, so that assigning this function to the king is met as a reversal.

The problem I’m facing is evaluating whether the birth/pregnancy dichotomy (aka separation/union, aka Breath/Blood) contains an intrinsic (ie inescapable?) gendered hierarchy, or if the gendered hierarchy is imported by characters (or us) onto what is actually a gender-neutral distinction. Though there could also be a broader point that binary systems are easily co-opted as mapping to the gender binary…? So that even if a distinction “ought to be” neutral, the matter remains that it has been /rendered/ gendered?

To avoid speaking too much in terms of generalities, I’m going to reorient this discussion around John Egbert via an ask concerning the ARG:

you gotta talk about it man come on

I read the ARG as a conspiracy theory that falls in line with the kids’ paranoid fantasies. In the same way that the very real trolls function as manifestations from the psyches of those around them, the world of Homestuck is, in general, shaped by the psychological profiles of its inhabitants.

I gather this partly from the nods to an irl conspiracy (eg declaring Obama to be a cross-dimensional immigrant), but mainly because the overwhelming paranoia that defines the narrative, the conviction that the world has degenerated and that every known authority is but a feeble puppet of a nebulous overlord. Comedians Laurel and Hardy are slowly corrupted and eventually infused with Evil, resulting in the birth of the Insane Clown Posse, which is to say ICP’s low-class status translates into degenerate art within the confines of the conspiracy. Albert Einstein is renounced as a fake, whose “insights” are mere scraps cast off from a feast of truth available to some unseen master. It’s all insurmountably stupid, but there is a unifying thread:

The idea is that the world is “fallen”, in two of the senses explored via John Egbert’s fear of heights (or rather, his fear of descent). 

1. John is literally afraid of heights, having fallen from the slime pogo. But John’s entry item is an apple because he experiences a pervasive sense that there is a perfect world of ideals from which he has been thrown down – a sort of intersection between the Fall of Man from the Garden of Eden and the heavenly Platonic Forms. This manifests partly in an obsession with authenticity, a subject that pervades Act 1 (x)(x). The Obama birth-certificate conspiracy attempts to frame Obama as “inauthentic”, and framing Einstein as a feeble peddler of inherited slivers of truth relies on the idea that there is a Godly figure with access to ALL the truth, a master presiding over the Pleroma. John is susceptible to this kind of thinking; after all, the paranoid idea of Betty Crocker as an Illuminati-tier omnipotent antagonist began as one of John’s funny delusions.

2. The biblical Fall is at times phrased as the corruption of humanity, and that sense carries into Homestuck. The other Heir, Equius, is revolted and titillated by that which he regards as base. His fetishization being lower class and other modes of degradation receives a visual complement in images of a falling ideal: the death-by-fall of man-horse Arthour, and Equius’s own descent through the caves of LOCAS (the circumstances of a lusus’s death and the features of a planet both bear relation to a player’s fantasies). John complicates the picture a little bit: he specifically has a fascination with “bad movies” (low status art), but also he regards the other side of the silver screen as a Pleroma of sorts, which simultaneously elevates the art.

But my goal is to demonstrate that all of this intersects with the original topic: the division of high/low is also projected onto masculine/feminine.

John wishes to undo his traumatic fall from the slime pogo, an event that has come to represent John’s fantasy of his own birth. As hinted at the start, the birth he imagines for himself is ejaculatory: Ghostbusters is “manbro bukkake theatre”, and John fancies himself a ghost busted directly from the loins of his heavenly Father. John seeks to re-merge with his image of God, a goal implicit in John’s attempts to reunite with Dad in a more familiar sense.

But implicit in John’s quest to give up the ghost and ascend to the Father is a rejection of the implicitly feminized earth and flesh, to which the self/soul is umbilically bound. This gendering is often shown via robots: 

Jake jokingly says that Dirk is “more machine than man” – this is a jab at Dirk’s terse demeanor, but placing machines in opposition to manhood potentially feminizes the machines, compromising Dirk’s desiring to be a paragon of dudeliness. The simultaneous masculinization of reason and dehuminizing jabs like Jake’s confuse and frustrate Dirk for a variety of reasons

The ghost of Aradia enters robotic husk to be reborn, imitating the insertion of the spirit into the body. She then finds that Equius has inserted something into her body against her will, and violently removes it and destroys it. “It” was a chip that controlled her feelings, but the intimate violation has tones of assault, and Aradia’s heart is effectively aborted.

There’s more examples, but this is just an aside to push the notion that the Fall (from high to low) entails the entry of spirit into body, which via the analogous entry of sperm into womb would seem to gender hierarchy itself. Masculine/feminine is entrenched as high/low by the metaphysics.

(Here’s a nice post that notes a gendering of the hemocaste system in Zebruh’s Friendsim route)

This leads me into thinking that John’s desire to merge with the image of the Father is connected to his love of pranking people, insofar as it becomes a assertion of domination/power (which is presumed to be the masculine position). The prankster’s gambit, at its purest, is a measure of Who’s On Top.

At the end of the Chaos Dunk scene (in which John symbolically enacts Rose’s rape fantasies), John pranks Rose by dumping a bucket full of gushers on her head. Buckets are receptacles, and thus occupy the balls/womb half of the divide. Evacuating the bucket all over Rose is a repetition of earlier symbolic assault, and the moment is embellished with a prankster’s gambit to emphasize the notion that there is an element of domination to the encounter.

The bucket prank is echoed in a  later conversation between John and Rose, beginning at page 2922. John asks repeatedly whether Rose “knows everything” now, says the beta kids “were in this adventure together” but with Rose’s occult knowledge, she is now “getting away from us”. John is not anxious that Rose is separating in a neutral way – his anxiety stems from the idea that she is rising above them. “Knowing everything” is a property of mastery, and John is confused by Rose being above him. At the end of 2922, John attempts to mock Rose’s words, but she tells him he’s being mean and he apologizes.

Rose herself expresses some anxieties about her position, saying elements of her wizard shtick have made her feel “ridiculous” or “embarrassed”. Her choice of words invokes the manifestation of Eridan, who mocks Rose’s “ludicrous poppycock” – she has an ongoing worry that her phallus (masculinized symbol of power) is fake.

This is why the scene culminates in an play scenario, in which John promises to sweep in like a noble knight and banish Rose’s encroaching grimdarkness, and Rose in turn pretends to swoon. The joke is an ironic acquiescence to the (gendered) hierarchy that is implicitly being challenged by Rose’s rise to power (or rather, that the kids perceive to have challenged). Past this, the conversation goes on to the subject of the Tumor, in a way that I have difficult tying into some sort of conclusion for the gendered aspects of the conversation.

This probably bears some relation to Rose’s insistence that John is the group’s leader…? But again, I’m at a loss. Let’s wrap this up.

On your last point: Roxy creating items from nothing actually throws a small wrench into things: in another essay on Gnosticism I was reading (Schuyler Brown’s “Begotten, Not Created”), “emanation” suggested that the creation was originally part of something (God, the One, etc), and emanation was thus framed as being in opposition to creation-from-nothing.

This brings me back to the problem of not knowing which portions of Homestuck’s metaphysics are particular to a given character’s psyche, which portions are universal, and which portions are loaded with both personal and universal meaning, or personal meaning that are /rendered/ universal. The motif of Roxy throwing a dead cat out of bucket seems to carry multiple meanings at once… in the sense we’ve noted, it would relate to the terror of stillbirth and miscarriage that follows Mom and Condy around. But reading “birth” as ejaculation, the cat could also be read as a disappointed acknowledgement that she cannot create life on her own…?

[jimintomystery]

Edward Quin, B.C. 2348. The Deluge. (1830)

Quin’s An Historical Atlas attempts to summarize human history through a series of maps, each illustrating the “known world” at different periods up to 1828 CE.  To keep the maps to scale for easy comparison, Quin would use dark clouds to conceal areas “unknown to the great mass of civilised human beings.”  (You can probably guess how cultural bias affects this premise; for example, Japan is “revealed” when Europeans discover it, even though the Chinese had known it was there for centuries.)

The book starts by asserting the Bible as our only source for information about the origins of the world and humanity.  So the first map attempts to locate key sites from Genesis 1-9, dated 4004-2348 BCE.  The entire project is intriguing (especially when the maps are assembled into a GIF), but I particularly like this first one.

The enormity of the negative space surrounding this cradle of humanity is hauntingly beautiful.  The “known world” is this France-sized clearing in an endless expanse shrouded in mystery.  The labels offer tantalizing insight into places known only from brief references in ancient texts--the Garden of Eden, the Land of Nod, the rivers Pishon and Gihon.  It’s a forgotten realm, described by a forgotten blend of modern historiography, Eurocentrism, and biblical inerrancy.

[newcatwords]

notes on "islands of the mind" by john gillis (ch. 4)

Ch. 4: "Searching the seas for Island Edens and Utopias"

65: "Paradise islands stood for what Europeans most feared losing in the new age of conquest and colonization; utopian islands represented what they most hoped to gain in the brave new early modern world. As Henri Baudet put it so felicitously, images of paradise symbolized the "no longer," while utopia presented a dream of the "not yet." As islands of the mind, not to be confused with real places, paradise and utopian islands represented the purest expressions of European longings for the next four hundred years." (quotes from "Paradise on Earth: Some Thoughts on European Images of Non-European Man" by Henri Baudet)

[my question at this point in the book: why do europeans seem to have such a hard time dealing with islands as they really are, apart from what they project onto them?]

"As long as Europeans lacked the scientific instruments to chart the seas with precision, their [legendary islands] existence could be doubted, but never disproven."

67: "However, earthly paradise is almost always found in an "elsewhere," either in some very remote place or in some remote time, an "elsewhen."" Here there's a footnote for "Mapping Eden: Cartographies of Earthly Paradise" by Alexandro Scafi in Mappings 1999 and History of Paradise: The Garden of Eden in Myth and Tradition by Jean Delumeau "Paradise has been located in all kinds of times and places, but all have one thing in common: inaccessibility."

[this part is just asserted, but it's an interesting idea:] "The idea of paradise had not existed before the neolithic agricultural revolution and the urban civilizations it produced. Hunter-gatherer societies do not produce visions of paradise because the do not exhaust the bounty of nature itself. It was only when settled agrarian peoples used up the forests and lands that the idea of paradise emerged to represent what had been lost."

"The vision of paradise migrated to ever more remote places, first to mountains and later to islands, where it was possible to imagine an abundance of flora and fauna beyond the destructive grasp of mankind."

68: "The Greeks did not begin to project paradisical visions onto islands until they had denuded their own mainland landscapes." Here there's a footnote to Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens, and the Origins of Environmentalism by Richard Grove

69: "The Portuguese were so certain they had rediscovered Eden in the Azores that they named the first children born there Adam and Eve."

70: "No longer located in some distant time or place, the search for Eden became "the partner of the other more obviously economic projects of early colonialism," Richard Grove writes. But paradise found quickly turned into paradise lost when the isles that seemed so deisrable on first contact were found to harbor deadly diseases, environmental disasters (including extinctions), and hostile local populations that Europeans were not prepared for. However, because this experience so closely paralleled the story of the Fall in biblical Eden, it only reinforced the sense of loss and the longing that was at the root of European Expansion in the first place. Each lost Eden reinvigorated the quest for paradise elsewhere. In seas filled with an endless supply of unknown islands, it seemed that the search would never run out of new possibilities. It was only when the Atlantic had been thoroughly explored that the quest turned to the Pacific, where it finally exhausted itself in the nineteenth century. Yet the search for island paradise never really expired; it has taken on new life for the benefit of the modern tourist trade." [the Richard Grove quote is from Green Imperialism: Colonial Expansion, Tropical Island Edens, and the Origins of Environmentalism]

"Each tropical island encountered seemed at first to fit the description of paradise. Glipsed at a distance from ships, they all seemed to match the visions that Europeans had brought with them across the Atlantic. At first sight the islands seemed so fecund as to free men forever from toil. They were also the object of the sexual fantasies of the males who first spotted them."

"Since Homer's time, islands had been colonized by patriarchal fantasies, imagined to be populated by beautiful females intent on seducing male wayfarers."

71: "By the seventeenth century, islands that earlier explorers had identified as paradisical had taken on a different aspect. They had become integrated into the rapidly expanding circuits of commercial capitalism, their space and time coordinated with that of the continents. They were all too accessible and vulnerable to the corruptions of the world. Paradise found turned out to be paradise lost; and ever since then, the Atlantic islands have been haunted by experiences of exploitation, bloodshed, and extinction."

72: "Europeans were quick to exploit and then abandon islands, but slaves, indentured servants, and prisoners, who constituted the vast majority of the Caribbean's inhabitants, had no choice but to endure the increasingly difficult conditions there. Images of hell, already associated with islands in ancient and Christian imagery, were readily available to those seeking to describe their experiences with ecological devastation. The same isles that had been locations for paradise were now stand-ins for hell."

"Ambivalence best expresses the early modern atittude toward islands. The same islands were often described in wholly opposite terms. William Strachey described Bermuda as "the Devils Islands...feared and avoyded of all sea travellers live, above any place in the world," but in the next sentence he talked of them as God's "meanes of our deliverance."" [reference here to The Machine in the Garden: Technology and the Pastoral Ideal in America by Leo Marx] [this reminds me a lot of euro attitudes towards the native people encountered in the "new world" - seen as both innocent and savage. also reminds me of the way that patriarchy paints women - both innocent and wicked. the theme is that for the one doing the defining of the other, you can project anything and everything onto them. whatever the image projected, the other always loses and is always deserving of whatever harm is heaped on them.]

"By the eighteenth century, paradise was less likely to be something found than created. The old idea of paradise as manmade garden, as hortus conclusus, was revived. As the rapacious plantation economy turned Caribbean isles into moral and ecological wastelands, the paradisical element still present there was preserved by fencing or walling off the land and enclosing nature's bounty. Plantation owners who could afford to return home took the flora and fauna with them, creating botanical gardens and hothouse paradises in Europe itself. Zooes were similarly designed to bring paradise to Europe. "Europe brought home to Europe the stock of the world's diversity. The new things arrived in waves, with increasing speed, from the middle of the sixteenth century," notes Richard Drayton. "In a hundred years, there was no way back to Eden, no means of reinaugurating a Golden Age."" [reference here to Nature's Government: Science, Imperial Britain, and the 'Improvement' of the World by Richard Drayton]

next part of the chapter is about utopias:

73: "The renaissance and Reformation unintentionally broke the spell of tradition and opened up a small space within which to consider alternative ways of organizing society. Utopian thinking existed in the ancient world, but was overshadowed by Christian milleniarianism and peasant arcadianism in the Middle Ages. When it reemerged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it took a distinctly new form."

"From the beginning, this new utopian mode of thought fastened on islands."

75: "In both pagan and Christian thinking, utopia differed from paradise insofar as it was imagined as a city rather than a garden. While it contained certain paradisical elements, the early modern utopia was not the product of nostalgia for something that had once been, but a longing for something yet to be. Furthermore, it was not God-ordained or natural, but manmade. Paradise was associated with origins, with the simplicity of a life free of laws and rules. Its order was inherent, the result of innocence uncorrupted by the advances of civilization, including knowledge itself. Utopia, on the other hand, was the product of civilization, of the application of knowledge and effort. it is invariably imagined as a city rather than a garden, the product of man rather than nature."

76: "[Sir Thomas] More's utopian island exists in its own unique distant present that sets it apart from both ancient and medieval dream worlds. His vision is contemporaneous, existing somewhere in terra incognita of the yet-to-be explored oceans. It is this location on an unknown island that gives it credibility and accounts for its appeal to early modern readers, who found the nowheres as believable as somewheres. Neither before nor after were utopias to be so highly spatialized, a condition that can be explained by the fact that at this historical moment terra incognita offered so much latitude for utopian thinking."

"In the early modern period, each time the horizons of Western culture moved, utopias proliferated, but always just beyond those frontiers. Perhaps this was because in the process of exploration, between the opening up of new territories and their actual mapping, a kind of third space was created that was somewhere but nowhere, accessible to the imagination before it was colonized by real time (history) and real space (geography). As we have already seen, islands had long been perceived as thresholds. Their status as liminal space, somewhere between land and water, made them particularly attractive to both religious and utopian thinkers."

77: "It was much easier for Christian Europeans to imagine utopia at a distance than closer to home. There it is not surprising that when modern utopian thought emerged in the sixteenth century, it expressed itself in the form of travel tales. Thomas More renewed an ancient narrative form that, as Louis Marin summarizes it, begins with "a departure and a journey, most of the time by sea, most of the time interrupted by a storm, a catastrophy which is the sublime way to open a neutral space, one which is absolutely different." Until the nineteenth century, virtually every utopia took the form of the voyage tale, relying on an unmapped place, usually an unknown island that existed in some unchronicled time, to present a vision of society startling, yet conceivable." [the quote is from Louis Marin's "The Frontiers of Utopia" from Utopias and Millenium, ed. Krishan Kumar and Stephen Bann, 1993)

78: "The classical utopias of the early modern period all rely on the fiction of the odyssey, building on a tradition going back to the Greeks, but also enriched by the medieval legends and fictions of spiritual journeys undertaken not so much to discover or to colonize, but to recover and bring back deeper truths, personal or collective. These pilgrimages invariably involved danger and difficulty, often across waters to islands or other inaccessible places. All spiritual journeys are, writes Eric leed, "roundtrips, rather than exiles or migrations." According to Victor Turner, they are rites of passage "going to a far place to understand a familiar place better." The purpose of religious pilgrimage had been to behold more clearly sacred truths that will never reveal themselves closer to home. The purpose of the secular utopian voyage was similar, namely to grasp social truths obscured in the here and now." [quotes from Eric Leed's The Mind of the Traveler: From Gilgamesh to Global Tourism. Turner quote is from Simon Coleman and Jake Elsner's Pilgrimage Past and Present: Sacred Travel and Sacred Space in World Religions]

"The narrative of the journey to utopia removes the reader from his or her milieu to a strange but vaguely recognizable place. Not only the time but the space of the ordinary world has been left behind. The island provides the perfect setting because it is detached from all historical as well as geographical connections, allowing the reader, as in a dream, to enter fully into its imagined reality."

79: "More's Utopia was itself an artificial island, created when King Utopos opened up a channel in a peninsula. And not just any island would serve this purpose. Utopian isles are shaped to fit the predetermined dimensions. All were imagined to have a symmetry rarely encountered in nature.

The islands' natural boundaries were never sufficient in and of themselves. The island of More's utopia is fortified, and there is but one access point."

"Early modern utopias appealed to a strife-torn society yearning for harmony and stability. Utopian islands offered what Frank Manuel aptly describes as "calm felicity," the dream of a world where neither the encroachments of time nor space are visible." [there is no reference here, but the bibliography includes "Toward a Psychological History of Utopia" by Frank E. Manuel in Utopias and Utopian Thought, ed. F. Manual, 1965, and Utopian Thought in the Modern World by Frank E. Manuel and Fritzie F. Manuel.]

[johnchiarello]

Reformation

REFORMATION

  I’ll post this today [Thursday- 6-14-18] and Hopefully post the Sunday sermon in a few days- I added links to the videos I uploaded the last few nights- and I have started a few new ‘share’ sites and am not sure how they work. So I think some of them ‘re-share’ to my other sites- which is fine. But you might be seeing stuff more than once- and my intent is not to ‘spam’ you guys.

 Maybe I’ll add a part of the Sunday post below- It’s basically finished already- but I have a few more verses to copy and paste.

I have seen my homeless friends the last few days and there are always interesting stories to share- but for now I’ll just focus a bit more on teaching- and encourage you to read thru the studies- engage in the text- check the references and all- read the bible passages I teach and see what the Lord shows you.

 All of us just have a little glimpse of the wisdom of God- when everyone has a voice- a collective ‘say so’ it benefits us all..

Ok- here's a part of the next Sunday post-

 [part]

This Sunday I made the video right before going into Church Unlimited https://churchunlimited.com/  - I also linked about a minute video of part of the worship service.

I taught on the verses from the mass and will link my past teaching below on Kings 18- which Pastor Bil spoke on.

 The Mass verses [added below in the Verses section] were from Genesis 3 and Mark 3.

I spent a little more time teaching Genesis 2 and 3- and will also add my commentary on Mark 3 below.

 In Genesis 2-3 we read the account of the creation of man- and his fall into sin.

In Genesis 2:8 we read

And the LORD God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.

God forms man- he prepares him- and then places him into a ‘garden’-

In the New testament we read about the church- the people of God- as a garden.

There are ministry gifts- offices if you will- Apostles- Pastors- teachers- and these leaders are placed into God’s garden- after God ‘forms’ them- he brings them thru Cross experiences and then they are ‘able’ to work in the vineyard of God.

 See?

 I also spoke about Adam and Jesus- and how the bible teaches us that Jesus is the ‘Last Adam’-

In Timothy 2 we read-

1Timothy 2:13 For Adam was first formed, then Eve.

1Timothy 2:14 And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.

How does this relate to Christ?

You will have to watch the video [Sunday sermon- 6-10-18] to get it.

But I’ll give you a hint-

 [I’ll post it all on Sunday- God willing]

  Here are the videos I uploaded the last few nights- the teaching for today is below-

 6-11-18 Troy’s [my dog] 1st swim- short teaching [windy] https://youtu.be/Xb6j0rn6ANQ

https://www.facebook.com/john.chiarello.5/videos/10204452715076131/

Teaching- Real time https://youtu.be/V3_WxPWXh-0

https://www.facebook.com/john.chiarello.5/videos/10204453870225009/

[I talked about 1st cor. 9-10 on the above video- here’s a link to my study] https://ccoutreach87.com/1st-2nd-corinthians/

  Kingdom come https://youtu.be/WUezNtwPeug

The flood https://drive.google.com/file/d/13idFBgZPAPlG0LBDEYH9Hh-7XtNaIKo1/view?usp=sharing

Jesus and Tolstoy [filmed this while walking out of Our Lady of Fatima church in my hometown of North Bergen- New Jersey https://1drv.ms/v/s!Aocp2PkNEAGMgVBAAWWPyAQ7KCX9

The roof https://drive.google.com/file/d/1M-m4c7kKS9zFjBeD4kHDoG5RbhR0GfVq/view?usp=sharing

Jersey city [Teaching on the road in New Jersey] https://1drv.ms/v/s!Aocp2PkNEAGMgVF0io0XFSNIzRdo

Your wrong https://youtu.be/AZtJ4lDh09o

The boys https://drive.google.com/file/d/1J4Qp1_M0Lt6KuRRsafMZB3eNOHrq4Bb_/view?usp=sharing

Hackensack New Jersey- https://1drv.ms/v/s!Aocp2PkNEAGMgVJEgrLGwdYY9fgs

  My teaching on the Protestant Reformation-

Okay- let’s start a brief overview of some church history. Over the next few weeks I want to hit on the 16th century Protestant reformation and try and cover some of the key figures of the movement.

 Martin Luther- the German reformer who had the most influence in the movement was born and raised in Germany.

 As a boy his parents were peasant farmers and eventually his dad became a miner and became a very successful businessman- he would go on and eventually own 6 foundries.

 He sent his son to law school- and young Luther excelled. At the age of 21 he accomplished more than many of his peers. One day on his way home from the university a thunderstorm broke out and Luther was almost struck by a bolt of lightning.

 In fear he cried out to Saint Ann [the mother of Mary] and said ‘Saint Ann- if you save me I will become a monk’ [Ann was the patron Saint for miners- thus Luther was familiar with her].

 He was spared and off to the monastery he went. Luther eventually became an ordained priest and even though his dad initially was upset that his son became a priest- yet he was proud of his boy later on.

 Luther would eventually make a Pilgrimage to Rome- on foot [a few month walk from Germany to Rome!] and what he saw devastated him. Rome- and the Vatican- were in bad shape. Many of the priests lived in open sin- and the city that he saw as his headquarters for the faith- well it was a mess.

 Luther made the famous penitent walk/crawl up the stairs of the Lateran church [this church was the most famous church before the construction of St. Peters. The actual stairs of the church are the same stairs that Christ walked up during his trial under Pontius Pilate. Yes- you hear many ‘stories’ while studying church history- things like the relics or left over pieces of the Cross- well these stories are usually fake. But the stairs of the Lateran church are indeed the same stairs that Christ walked on- the early ‘church’ builders dismantled the stairs at Pilate’s court in Jerusalem and installed them at this church building in Rome].

 When Luther got to the top of the stairs- it is reported that he questioned the faith- he had a crisis of faith and thought that maybe the whole thing was a sham.

 Okay- as we do a few more posts over the coming weeks- I want you guys to see that the main players of the Reformation were sincere Catholic men who had many questions about what they saw as corrupt in their own church. These men did not want to start a breakaway church- they simply wanted to reform the church they loved.

 Keep in mind that Luther excelled during his legal studies- he had a keen legal mind- this will be important later on when we see the debates he has with Rome over the doctrine of Justification by faith- the letters of the apostle Paul [Romans- Galatians] use lots of legal language- and his early education will help him in these debates.

 Okay- that’s it for today. Maybe do a Google search on Luther and familiarize yourself a little with the history.

 The ‘readings’ for this week are 2nd Samuel 6-7 and Psalms 89. See what they have in common.

   [1768] LUTHER- THE TOWER EXPERIENCE

  Let’s start with some church history. In the last post I covered the early years of Martin Luther- probably the most significant figure of the Protestant Reformation.

 Luther studied for the priesthood in Erfurt, Germany. He would eventually wind up in Wittenberg- one of the major university cities of the Reformation. Wittenberg was actually a small insignificant town- but the political leader over the region- Frederick the Wise- sought to put it on the map.

 He wanted to turn Wittenberg into a German ‘Rome’. He wanted it to become a major Pilgrimage city where Christians would see Wittenberg as a destination- just like they saw Rome.

 So Frederick embarked on this plan and he searched thru all the Catholic learning centers of the time and finally recruited 3 top scholars to teach out of the university at Wittenberg- Luther was one of the 3.

 Just as a side note- Frederick would succeed at making Wittenberg a major catholic center. He would eventually obtain over 19,000 Relics for the Cathedral church there [Relics were used in the ancient system of buying indulgences and making special pilgrimage trips to important Churches. If the church/city that your making the Pilgrimage to has a lot of Relics- bones or other famous material objects from church history- then the value of the Pilgrimage was high. In theory Frederick collected so many that if you added up all the ‘time off’ from Purgatory- you would get 1 million, 900 thousand years off! Some of the famous relics at Wittenberg were a hair from the beard of Jesus- straw from the manger Jesus was born in- and even a branch from the famous burning bush of Moses! As you can see- there was a lot of commercializing going on- even back then].

 When Luther arrived in Wittenberg- he made a name for himself as a top scholar. Many protestants- who revere Luther- usually are not aware that he was a master Linguist [sort of like Rick Perry!]

 Yes Luther mastered language- and he showed it in his teaching on the book of Psalms.

 In 1515 he began his famous study on the book of Romans and as he went thru the very first chapter- something shook him. He came across the passage that says the Just shall live by faith. This verse first appears in the O.T. book of Habakkuk- and is quoted 3 more times in the N.T.

 Luther was very aware of the concept of the righteousness of God- he struggled for many years trying to reconcile his own sinful nature with Gods holiness- but he never really ‘saw’ the biblical concept of righteousness as a free gift that God ‘imputes’ to the sinner.

 Yes- for the 1st time in Luther’s life- after his years training for the priesthood- the pilgrimage he made to Rome- the thousands of hours he spent confessing his sins while a monk in Erfurt- he never really understood that the righteousness of God was a free gift given to those who have faith.

 It was a giant weight lifted from his shoulders- Luther did not need to try any more to live up to the standards of God- in  a way that would earn for him forgiveness- but he would simply believe- and the righteousness of God would be counted to him as a gift.

 Luther would go on to call this an Alien Righteousness- that is it is not found within the person who tries to do all the church works he can- or buying all the indulgences- or any other of the many religious actions he was practicing- but this free gift of being right with God- it came to those who had faith- the Just shall live by Faith- this was indeed good news for the scholar.

 As time went on- Germany would get embroiled in the political machinations of the day- Luther’s top political cover was Frederick the Wise- hardly a Protestant Reformer! He spent lots of time trying to make Wittenberg the major Catholic center in Germany.

 But at the time there was a political fight raging between Rome and some of the other nation/states. There was a figure head office called the Holy Roman Emperor. This office was really in name only- but it rose up during the first Millennium of Christian history and sought to replace the influence that Rome was losing.

 So you had France, Spain and England all vying for the title. Eventually it would go to King Charles of Spain- but the Pope- who played a major role in nominating the person- he did not want any of these top 3 to get the position. Henry the Eighth was the king of England at the time- and these ‘3 kings’ were sort of in competition with Rome- so the Pope tried to get Fredrick the Wise to throw his hat into the ring.

 Frederick just happened to be one of the Electors of this position.

 His actual title was The Elector of Saxony.

 So Fredrick had lots of influence- and as Rome would eventually but heads with the stubborn bull of Wittenberg [Luther] Frederick would become the major protector of Luther.

 Okay- I think we’ll stop here for today. The experience that Luther had- the enlightenment that came to him while teaching the book of Romans- this is often called The Tower experience of Luther- it took place in the year 1515.

  [1770] TREASURY OF MERIT

 Let’s pick up where we left off 2 posts back. We were talking about Martin Luther and the events that led up to the Protestant Reformation.

 In order to understand the key act that caused the protest- we will have to teach some Catholic history/doctrine.

 In the 16th century Pope Julius began the effort to build St. Peters basilica in Rome. He got as far as laying the foundation and died. Pope Leo the 10th would pick up after him.

 The church needed to raise money for the project- and the German prince- Albert- would play a major role.

 It should be noted that both Catholic and Protestant scholars agree that the Popes of the day were pretty corrupt. They came from what we call the Medici line of Popes.

 If you remember last month I wrote a post on the Renaissance- I talked about the Medici family and how they played a major role in supporting the Renaissance that took place in the 13th century in Florence Italy that would spread to the region.

 Well this very influential family also played a big role in who would get top positions in the church.

 At the time of Luther and prince Albert- if you had the right connections and the money- you could literally buy a position in the church.

 Albert already held 2 Bishop seats- and there was an opening for an Archbishops seat in Mainz [Germany] and he wanted that one too.

 It should be noted that official Canon law [church law] said you could only hold one seat at a time- Albert was bidding on his 3rd one! And he was too young for all of them.

 So even the Pope and the officials held little respect for what the church actually taught at the time.

 So Albert opens up negotiations with Leo- and the bidding starts AT 12,000 Duckets [money] Albert counters with 7,000- and they agree on 10,000. How did they justify the numbers? 12- The number of Apostles. 7- The 7 deadly sins. 10- The 10 commandments.

 Yes- the church was pretty corrupt at the time.

 So Albert works out a plan with Leo- he will borrow the money from the German banks- and pay the banks off by the Pope giving Albert the right to sell Indulgences.

 What’s an Indulgence?

 Okay- this is where it gets tricky.

 The ancient church taught a system called The Treasury of Merit. This was a sort of spiritual bank account that ‘stored up’ the good deeds of others over the years.

 You had the good deeds of Jesus at the top- but you also had Mary and Joseph- the 12 Apostles- and other various saints thru out time.

 The way the ‘bank’ worked was you could tap into the account by getting a Papal indulgence- a sort of I.O.U. that had the Popes guarantee that it would get so much time out of Purgatory for a loved one.

 The actual sacrament that accesses the account is called Penance [confession].

 When a penitent does penance- he confesses his sin to the priest- and he is absolved by the authority of the church that the priest has. The priest usually tells the person ‘say so many Hail Mary’s- Our Father’s’ and that’s a form of penance.

 One of the other things the church practiced was called Alms Deeds. This term is found in the bible and it means giving your money to the poor- it is a noble act that Jesus himself taught.

 In theory- part of the sacrament of penance was tied into Alms Deeds- you can access the account thru the practice of giving to the poor- which also meant giving to the church that helps the poor- and in the hands of the Medici line of Popes- meant outright giving money to the Pope.

 So now you see how the abuse worked its way into the pockets of the faithful.

 Albert now had the permission from Leo to sell these indulgences in Germany- and he would pick a certain corrupt priest to sell them in a place called Saxony- the region where Luther operated out of.

 It should be noted that the Catholic Church never taught the crass act of ‘buying your way out of Purgatory’. The practice of including giving money as a part of the sacrament of penance was tied into the biblical principle of giving to the poor- a good thing.

 But Tetzel and others abused the official meaning of the indulgence- and did make it sound like you could by your way out of Purgatory [in theory- a loved one might be in Purgatory for so many years- and through the indulgence you are actually getting time off for them- because the good deeds of others are now applied to the account].

 The money Albert would raise- half would go to Rome for the building of St. peters- and half would go to pay off the banks in Germany- it was a sad system- and a sad time for the church as a whole.

 It would be wrong to judge the entire church at the time as being corrupt- you did have many sincere Priests and Catholic men and women who saw the abuses and did not take part in them.

 But there was corruption at the top- and this would eventually lead to the breakup of the church- and the launching of what we now call the Protestant Movement.

 As a side note- it should be said that many Catholics and Protestants are not aware of the whole treasury of merit system- and the church never officially changed her position on the doctrine.

 There were 3 Church councils since the time [Trent- 1500’s, Vatican 1- 1800’s and Vatican 2- 1962-65]. The Treasury of Merit never came up for change.

 Obviously Protestants don’t believe in Purgatory- and it’s not my purpose in these posts to change Catholics into Protestants or vice versa- but to give all sides a clear view of the issues that divided us- and to try and be honest- and respectful during the process.

 Does the bible teach anything like a Treasury of Merit? Well actually it does. The bible teaches that the righteousness of Christ is the treasury that people can access- by faith- and become righteous in the sight if God.

 The idea- applied to Christ- is good.

 But in the hands of the Medici Popes- and the ambitious prince of Germany- it would lead to disaster.

     www.corpuschristioutreachministries.blogspot.com

Note- Do me a favor, those who read/like the posts- re-post them on other sites as well as the site you read them on. Thanks- John

 [1773] LUTHER CLASHES WITH ROME

   Let’s do another post on the Protestant Reformation. I’ll probably only do a few more before I transition into another study.

 By the way- all the studies I do thru out the year are posted in the February posts of the following year.

 Okay- last we left off Luther was just beginning to butt heads with the church [Tetzel] over the abuse of the sale of indulgences that was going on in Germany.

 In a previous post I mentioned how the priest- Tetzel- was selling these ‘get out of Purgatory’ type coupons in the area where Luther operated out- Saxony.

 Actually- Tetzel never entered Saxony itself- but was selling these out of a bordering city- and many of Luther’s students/parishioners were being hoodwinked into spending their money to rescue a loved one out of Purgatory.

 Tetzel is known for a jingle he started in connection with the sale of the indulgence- it goes ‘as soon as a coin in the coffer rings- a soul in Purgatory springs’- ouch!

 Like I said before- the church never taught this- they did teach the Treasury of Merit [previous post] but the way Tetzel used it was a real abuse of the teaching of the church at the time.

 Now- Luther responds to the abuse by writing the famous 95 thesis. This is the act that is often associated with the launching of the Reformation- the act that got the ball rolling.

 The 95 thesis were simply 95 questions challenging the whole practice of the sale of indulgences- there was no mention of the doctrine of Justification by Faith- which will become the trumpet sound that springs out of the Protestant Reformation.

 Luther takes these questions- written in Latin- and nails them to the university church door at Wittenberg. Sometimes while reading church history this ‘nailing to the door’ is seen as a sort of vandalism – you know- ‘he nailed them to the door!’

 In actuality Luther was simply using the system of the day that one scholar would use in order to bring up an official point of contention with the church- Luther wrote the Thesis in Latin- which was the scholars language- not the language of the common man.

 But Luther’s students quickly translated the Thesis into the vernacular [German] and it was said that in 2 weeks the paper made it into every village of Germany.

 The challenge was a spark in the lives of many Christians who also believed the church was off track and that someone needed to rebuke her- and they picked Luther as the man for the job.

 Now- the Catholic church wanted Luther to go to Rome and discuss the situation there- Luther’s friends warned him not to go- so they agreed to meet- a few times- in Germany.

 The first meeting was in 1518 at Heidelberg- Luther actually gave a great defense of his argument and convinced some other top Catholic scholars that he was right [as a side note- the church had already scheduled this meeting because of a controversy that rose up between the Augustinian order of monks and the Dominicans. They were debating over which philosophy was more consistent with church teaching- Nominalism or Realism- for those of you who have read the posts this past year- I taught this when doing our posts on philosophy].

 One man- Martin Bucer- wrote a stirring account of Luther- Bucer would later influence another young Swiss priest with  Reformation teachings- his name is John Calvin.

 As a side not Calvin will become one of the 3 big heavy hitters of the 16th century Reformation [Ulrich Zwingli is the 3rd].

 Luther will meet again in Augsburg- and debate the leading Catholic scholar of the day- Cardinal Cajetan.

 Then he goes to the city of Leipzig- and debates the leading German scholar- Johann Eck.

 And his last meeting with the church will be at the famous Diet of Worms [pronounced- Vurmtz] and it will be here that Luther makes his last stand and officially will break with the church and launch the Protestant Reformation.

 It should be noted that Luther held what we call a High Church position for most of this time- he still saw the church at Rome- and the Pope- as a legitimate expression of true Christianity- his beef was what he saw as an abuse of the system- by the priest Tetzel.

 As time progressed- the other beliefs of Luther- founded upon the bible- did come into contention with Rome.

 The main disagreement eventually became the teaching in the bible called Justification by faith. I have written a study on the topic on the blog- I have also written a bible study on the book of Romans and Galatians.

 For those of you who can- try and read Romans chapters 2-4 and Galatians 2-3- these are the key chapters that cover the teaching.

 Down the road I will cover the official teaching of both the Protestants and the Catholics on the doctrine of justification- the Catholic Council of Trent- referred to as the Counter Reformation- spells out the official teaching of Rome- and there are a few papers put out by the Reformers that explain their belief.

 Since the 16th century Reformation there have been efforts made by Protestants and Catholics to bridge the gap as much as possible- to try to come to some common language since the historic split.

 I like some of the efforts that have been made- and recently both groups put out a statement that jointly said we all believe that we are saved by Gods grace thru Christ- that’s good.

 But as we get into some of the actual discussion- you will see the points at which the 2 sides disagreed- and the main one was on the act- the actual thing that happens- when a person is declared just- the Reformers said it takes place when a person has faith- believes- the Catholic church said it takes place at baptism- water baptism.

 This- as well as a few other things- will be a defining distinction between the 2.

     www.corpuschristioutreachministries.blogspot.com

Note- Do me a favor, those who read/like the posts- re-post them on other sites as well as the site you read them on. Thanks- John

  1775- WHAT DID HE SAY?

  Let’s do a little review today. I know the history posts go a little long sometimes- and many Christians do not see the value in studying church history.

 But I have found over the years that a lot of independent type churches- good men- good people- but cut off from the broader church- well these churches have a tendency to get off in a rut- a particular doctrine or style of teaching- and after a while it becomes impossible to get these good church folk back on the balanced course.

 A few examples. Many years ago- as a young Pastor- I had lots of good Pastor friends who too were doing their best to do what they felt God wanted.

 At the time- I began having difficulty with many of the most popular interpretations of the bible that these good men were using.

 After a while I realized that some of the stuff was so off course- that if they didn’t make some major course corrections at the time- that they were going  to end up spending their entire Pastorate teaching stuff that is out right false.

 I have talked a lot about this over the years- and the examples are too numerous to cover them all- but a good example is the ‘Camel going thru the eye of a Needle’ verse.

 One time Jesus and his men were going thru town and a young  rich guy asks Jesus what he must do to be saved.

 A pretty straight forward question- right to the point.

 Jesus tells the guy to keep the law- the guy asks which ones.

 Ah- now you’re digging yourself in brother.

 So Jesus says to love God and his neighbor- these are the top ones.

 He asks ‘and who is my neighbor’?

 Jesus goes on and gives an explanation- and he also tells the guy to go and sell all he has and give it to the poor- and follow him.

 The guy goes away sad  because he was rich.

 Then Jesus says ‘it’s harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than for a Camel to go thru the Eye of a Needle’.

 What?

 The disciples [I think Peter?] say ‘then who can be saved’?

 Jesus says with men it is impossible- but not with God- with God all things are possible.

 [just a quick side note- I haven’t read all these stories in a while- trust me- they are all in the bible- but I might have mixed a few together- but the main point stays the same]

 Okay- in context- what could Jesus be saying about the camel and the needle?

 It sure seems like he’s using a figure of speech  that would mean ‘look- the guy is too attached to his money to fully give himself over to being a follower of me- maybe down the road he will change- but he’s not ready yet’.

 Seems reasonable to me- don’t you think?

 But wait- in the group of pastors/teachers that were popular at the time- one of the main teachings was how to get rich- and they saw financial increase as the main thing- I mean that’s what they focused on  all the time.

 So what do you do with verses like these?

 You simply change them- you make them say what you want.

 So the ‘true’ explanation for the Camel and the Needle became ‘the Eye of the Needle is the name of a low passage way thru the wall into the city- and the merchants- if they have lots of stuff- well the Camel has to stoop low to get thru’.

 Aha- so what seems to mean ‘rich folk will have a hard time making the kingdom’ really means something else- as a matter of fact- it means the opposite- because the Camels that have to ‘scooch’ belong to the owners who have a lot of goods- thus the Camel has to get low.

 Okay- maybe as rank amateurs this stuff was not the unpardonable sin- but many of these men are still teaching this type of stuff- and this one example is the tip of the iceberg- I could go on for a long time quoting all them but that’s not the point for now.

 The main point is- if Christians separate themselves from the broader church- not just talking about ‘going to church’ but talking about the broad understanding that the people of God have- the books and teachings of those who have gone before us- not just one small group- but the whole community- then we will avoid these kinds of pitfalls.

 As we do a few more posts in the coming weeks on church history- we will see this was one of the things restored by the Protestants Reformers during the 16th century.

 Luther restored what’s referred to as the Literal Sense- that when you read the bible- you should be able to take it at face value- as much as possible.

 Sure- you also want to ‘hear God’ speak in a personal way- but if what your hearing is the exact opposite of what the text is saying- well then we do have a problem.

     www.corpuschristioutreachministries.blogspot.com

Note- Do me a favor, those who read/like the posts- re-post them on other sites as well as the site you read them on. Thanks- John

  1782- PROTESTANT REFORMATION CONCLUSION

  Today let’s finish up the study on the Protestant Reformation. We left off on Luther disputing with the church over the doctrine of how a person becomes just in the sight of God- is it by works or faith?

 Now- to the surprise of many Protestants [and Catholics!] both sides agreed that a person cannot be justified by works.

 Yes- the Catholic Church rejected what was known as Pelagianism. In the early centuries of the church there was a Catholic priest- named Pelagius- who taught that people had the ability within themselves to obey Gods law and become saved that way.

 He rejected the doctrine of original sin and another famous bishop- Saint Augustine- would refute Pelagius and teach salvation comes by the Grace of God.  The official Catholic position was to reject Pelagius and accept Augustine.

 Okay- then where’s the difference?

 The church council that spells it out is the Council of Trent [named after the Italian city where the council took place in the 1500’s- Trento].

 This council is often referred to as the Counter Reformation. The church rejected the Protestant line- but also acknowledged the need for reform and made some changes.

 This is the council where the church rejects Pelagianism- and also says the position of Luther [Justification by Faith ALONE] was flawed.

 The church appealed to the New Testament letter of Saint James- where James uses an example from the life of Abraham [found in Genesis 22] where Abraham obeys God and is willing to sacrifice his son Isaac on an altar.

 Of course this never happens- God was simply testing Abraham- but James says this act of obedience justified him in Gods sight.

 James says ‘see how a man is justified by works- and not by faith ALONE’.

 The argument from Rome was Faith played THE major role in justification- but was not sufficient by itself- there had to be righteous works eventually associated with it in order for God to say ‘you are just’ [saved].

 Luther disagreed and said God justified Abraham before he had good works- we find this in Genesis 15. God says to Abraham ‘look- count all the stars- so shall your offspring be’ and Walla- the bible also says Abraham was justified in God’s eyes the moment he believed the promise.

 Who’s right?

 Actually they both are.

 I have taught this a few times over the years- and it would take too much time to re-do right now.

 But I believe James and Paul [the 2 who debate this in the bible] are simply looking at different aspects of salvation/justification.

 Paul emphasized faith- and James showed us how true faith always has works with it.

 When you read the statements that came out from the council of Trent- some of them do seem to indicate that both sides might have been talking past each other at some points.

 In the heat of the day they were too quick to condemn the other side- without really trying hard to achieve unity [like politics!].

 The 6th session of Trent was the one where the church dealt with justification [how we become saved in Gods sight].

 Rome made a distinction between mortal and Venial sin in the council- the church said that Baptism is the INSTRUMENTAL CAUSE of justification. Yet faith is the Root- Foundation and Initial act that justifies.

 Rome also taught that Mortal sin kills the grace in the soul that brings justification- and when a person commits a mortal sin- they need the ‘2nd plank of justification’ in order to be brought back into a state of Grace.

 This 2nd Plank is the Sacrament of Penance [confession]. Catholic Moral Theologians use an example to show the difference between Mortal and Venial sin.

 Drinking- if you take a drink [alcohol] not a sin.  If you get tipsy- Venial- and if you get flat drunk- mortal.

 This is a true teaching by the way- not making this up.

 Catholic scholars are not in total agreement on all the Mortal/Venial sins.

 Some teach that missing Mass on Sunday is a Mortal sin.

 I just threw this in to show you the debates that take place.

 The teachings from Trent are referred to as Tridentine.

 The Protestants [early on] rejected the belief that a person can lose Gods grace once he has it- later on the Protestants would divide- severely- over this teaching- Predestination and the Perseverance of the Saints.

 But early on all the major Reformers did indeed teach this.

 Luther believed in the doctrine of Predestination just as much- if not more- than John Calvin.

 But sometimes in these history shows they get this wrong and say Luther and Calvin disagreed on it- that’s a common mistake that you hear every so often.

  Luther actually wrote a book dedicated to the subject [The Bondage of the Will] Calvin never wrote a book solely on the subject.

 Okay- as we end this brief study of the Protestant Reformation- you could also call it a primer on Catholic doctrine [short one].

 Why is it important that we study this?

 In John chapter 17 Jesus said that he desired unity for all of Gods people- and many of these divisions- which date back 500 years- are commonly misunderstood on both sides.

 It is common in our day to run across an ex Catholic who might say ‘you know- I left the church because I don’t believe I need to confess to a priest’ or ‘the Catholic church teaches you are saved by works’.

 The original Reformers did not have a problem with confession- the Lutherans carried the practice over into their communion.

 And like I just showed you- the Catholic church rejected the doctrine of being saved ‘by works’ [Pelagianism] and simply emphasized the teaching found in the bible- the book of James- and focused more on James than Paul [who the protestants focus on].

 So yes- there are still differences- but if we are not informed- then it makes it harder to strive for unity- and at the end of the day God does desire unity for all his people.

 The other day I quoted the great Civil rights leader- MLK. In one of his famous speeches that’s played when we celebrate his life- you hear Martin say that not only was he seeking unity among the races- but also in the church.

 He said he wanted to see Catholics and Protestants- as well as Blacks and Whites- sit down together- he referred to us all as Gods kids.

 I think we should strive to achieve the desire of Martin- and Jesus.

 Amen.

 MY SITES

Active sites-

www.corpuschristioutreachministries.blogspot.com  [Main site]

https://www.facebook.com/john.chiarello.5?ref=bookmarks

https://ccoutreach87.com/

https://twitter.com/ccoutreach87

https://plus.google.com/108013627259688810902/posts

https://www.pinterest.com/ccoutreach87/

https://www.linkedin.com/home?trk=hb_logo

http://johnchiarello.tumblr.com/

http://ccoutreach.over-blog.com/

https://www.reddit.com/user/ccoutreach87

https://ccoutreach87.jimdo.com/

http://ccoutreach87.webstarts.com/__blog.html?r=20171009095200

http://ccoutreach87-1.mozello.com/

https://ccoutreach87.site123.me/

http://ccoutreach87.wixsite.com/mysite

https://corpusoutreach.weebly.com/

http://ccoutreach87.strikingly.com/

https://medium.com/@johnchiarello

Link sharing sites-

https://buffer.com/app/profile/5b1be0280852690407c54007/analytics/posts

https://trello.com/b/swhF9Vr8/ccoutreach87com

 http://corpuschristioutreachministries.blogspot.com/p/one-link_18.html [Link to past teaching]

 Inactive- work in progress

https://ccoutreach87.joomla.com/

http://ccoutreach87.webs.com/

https://sites.google.com/yahoo.com/ccoutreach87/home

 Video sites [Can download my videos free of charge]

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCZ4GsqTEVWRm0HxQTLsifvg

https://drive.google.com/drive/my-drive

https://onedrive.live.com/?id=root&cid=8C01100DF9D82987

Youtube- Beta https://www.youtube.com/my_videos?o=U

I no longer upload videos to this site- but there are many links to download here as well-

https://ccoutreach87.com/

 Note- Please do me a favor, those who read/like the posts- re-post them on other sites as well as the site you read them on-  Copy text- download video links- make complete copies of my books/studies and posts- everything is copyrighted by me- I give permission for all to copy and share as much as you like- I just ask that nothing be sold. We live in an online world- yet- there is only one internet- meaning if it ever goes down- the only access to the teachings are what others have copied or downloaded- so feel free to copy and download as much as you want- it’s all free-

 Note- I have many web sites- at times some question whether I’m a ‘bot’ because I do post a lot.

I am not a ‘bot’- I’m John- so please- if you are on the verge of deleting something- my contact email is ccoutreach87@gmail.com - contact me first- thank you- John

[harrelltut]

QUANTUM HARRELL TECH [QHT] LLC… PRIVATELY PURCHASED Our Interior [Subterranean] Southern State of LOUISIANA… Geographically Isolated DEEP [I.D.] IN:side Inner Earth’s [HADES] Occulted [HIDDEN] Subterranean Mississippi River Delta Flowing through Eve's Pristine Bayou Gardens of Idyllic Eden [ATLANTIS] from MILLIONS of AZTECAN Years Ago [MAYA]… since My TELEPATHICALLY Intuitive Ancestors Memorized Ancient Tunnel [TIAMAT] Maps ILLUSTRATED [MI = MICHAEL] by Us [MU] Biblically Ancient [BABYLONIAN] 9 Ether Beings [ANUNNAGI] from Ægyptian RAMESES’ Lost American [L.A. = NEW Atlantean] SUN_KING [Sunken] DOME Congress [D.C.] of MAYA’s Ancient [MA] MESOAMÉRICAN AZTEC [MA] PRINCE [MAP] of Highly Official… U.S. Ancient [USA = PREHISTORIC] FUTURISTIC Astronomically Intelligent ANUNNAKI [AIA = AMÚN] SUN GOD [RA] MARITIME [RAMESES] LAWS… Recorded in the Native New Being [NUBIAN] Indian [NIBIRUAN] Tongue of Archangel MICHAEL [TAMA-RA]… who AUTONOMOUSLY [RA = RAMESES] Reside in MAYA’s New [NU] North American OLMEC & ZAPOTEC [OZ] SUN STATE of HATSHEPSUT's Exotic Lush Landscapes [HELL] Organically Produced by the IAPETUS [HOPI] MOON Satellite of SIRIUS 9 Ether Interstellar GASES from the Intergalactic GODS of Interplanetary [IGIGI] Minerals & Alloys of Clandestine [iMAC] Chemicals Alkhemically [CA] Formulating New [NU] SUBATOMIC Alloys from the Tachyon Universe of Radioactive Neutrino [SATURN] Atoms of Highly Complex [ADVANCED] Dematerialized [A.D.] REPTILIAN [URAEUS] Human METALLURGICAL Fossil Records of Ancient [RA] Crystallographic SUN DNA/MOON RNA of 72 - 84 Octave Levels @ the 9th Dimensional SPIRIT GOD ALTITUDE of the LUNAR AZTEC XOLOTL & YAOTZIN [GALAXY] MASTERS of Subatomic ETHERS of Earth’s Radioactive Substances [SEERS] of 24 BILLION Strands of SIRIUS Black & Gold Ionospheric METALS [I’M] ABOVE MARDUK’s [I AM] Triple 999 [GRANDIOSE] ANUNNAGI HEAVENS of Archangel [HA = HARRELL] MICHAEL ABUBAKARI II… Republican California's [CALAFIA's] Biblically Ancient [BABYLONIAN] SOVEREIGN AMERICAN TITAN of the Underground Republic of NILE [SATURN] VRIL VALLEY WEALTH ESTATES [WE] from 1803 [XII] 💰☠️💰 (at San Diego, California) https://www.instagram.com/p/CWozcXElsih/?utm_medium=tumblr

[thephantomofthelibrary]

Hereford Mappa Mundi

he Hereford Mappa Mundi is a Medieval map of the world produced in England. It dates from about the 14th century. This is what is looks like.

Looks strange right? Well, that’s because it kinda is. I mean look at how the British Isles have been drawn.

I suppose it’s somewhat recognisable, and pretty good considering the cartography techniques they had. But there is some sense that can be made from it. As you can see below, this is how the map is divided. Asia takes the top semi circle, with the lower one split between Europe and Africa. This is the whole northern hemisphere as they believed it to be. Yes, that’s right hemisphere. They knew the world was a sphere, they just thought the southern hemisphere was inhospitable. 

Within this map there is a mixture of the known and the unknown. It depicts towns, cities, plants and animals. But it also depicts things like biblical events, classical mythology and strange creatures. For instance, the image below is the garden of Eden. This can be found at the very top of the map. 

Despite their knowledge that the world was spherical, it is clear that there is geographical information missing. For instance, western Europe is fairly normal, sure the landmass is a little misshapen but it’s normal. When you leave western Europe strange creatures start appearing on the map.  

‘The map’s southern edge is populated by strange human creatures: hermaphrodites, people with four eyes, men with their faces in their stomachs. Africa teems with monsters and beasts, among them the cyclops, the fawn and the unicorn. In the Mediterranean, too, there is a heavy emphasis on ancient legend: the Golden Fleece, the Labyrinth and the Scylla and Charybdis all jostle for space.’ [Marc Morris, A Great and Terrible King: Edward I and the Forging of Britain.]

This map depicts classical mythology i.e.  The Cretan labyrinth that was built by Daedalus to contain the Minotaur, seen below. 

But there are also weird and wonderful mythical creatures,

The lynx, doesn’t sound weird right? Except these ones urinate out precious stones

Blemmyes, people with no heads with their faces on their chests

Cynocephali, dog headed men

So medieval people knew a lot more about the world than some people today give them credit for. However, they certainly had a lot more to learn.

[schoolcalidity]

Asherah: God’s Forgotten Wife

Those raised in the Judeo-Christian tradition may be surprised to learn that the god we were told was singularly sacred once had a wife. How do we know? Asherah figures prominently as the wife of El—the supreme god—in a treasure trove of cuneiform texts found in the second millennium port city of Ugarit (in today’s Northern Syria). For perhaps hundreds of years before Abraham migrated to what would become known as Israel, Asherah was revered as Athirat, Earth Mother and Fertility Goddess. Upon entering the region, the ancient Israelites soon adopted her and gave her the Hebrew equivalent name of Asherah. The Ugarit excavation of 1928 put Asherah, the goddess, on the map again, after having lost her place for thousands of years.

Asherah, Partner of Yahweh

But who was Asherah to the ancient Israelites? And why is she often found paired with Yahweh, the Hebrew god? Historians and archaeologists have pieced together Asherah’s narrative and found large chunks of it interwoven in the artifacts from the region and in the scriptures of the Hebrew Bible itself. Evidence suggests that Asherah was observed in ancient Israel and Judah as early as the 12th century BC, to a few decades before the fall of the southern kingdom of Judah (587-588 BC), a time known as the pre-exilic period.

Were the pre-exilic Israelites and Judeans polytheistic ? In fact, the very notion of polytheism is inherent in the quest for Asherah. After all, Asherah’s place in the pantheon is alongside Yahweh’s, the supreme deity. Furthermore, the many artifacts representing Asherah and her cult from the region belies the biblical prohibition against the creation of idols. How then did they worship?

Tracing the origins of the Serpent Cult

Evidence that Noah’s Ark Landed on a Mountain 17 Miles South of Ararat

American Gods: Rituals & Sacrifices to the All-Powerful Solar Gods

Asherah figurines. ( ninapaley)

Differences Between Book and Folk Religion

At this point it is important to make a distinction between the book religion of the ruling classes in the metropolis and folk or popular religion as it was practiced in rural communities for which most Israelites were a part. Literacy was close to non-existent in the rural communities, thus the book religion as practiced in the cities would have little meaning in the lives of those inhabiting the outlying areas. Instead, rural communities had their own religious beliefs using statuary and other artifacts.

By way of contrast, the intellectual community in the metropolis produced a text, which was written entirely from the perspective of the upper or ruling classes. Perhaps surprisingly, Asherah is mentioned in the early Hebrew Bible some forty separate times, although most often as an object of derision. By and large, the biblical writers were unhappy that Asherah shared the same platform with their male deity, Yahweh, and repeatedly tried to dissuade their pairing.

Yahweh and his Asherah

As much as the ruling elite tried to inhibit Asherah and Yahweh’s “marriage,” their union appears solidified in an ancient blessing seen with some regularity at a number of excavation sites in the region. The inscription reads: “I have blessed you by Yahweh....and his Asherah.” Not only was this engraving found in the 9th-8th century BC Israelite caravanserai, Kuntillet Ajrud, the same text was found in a number of sites thought to be Yahweh sanctuaries, such as in Samaria, Jerusalem, Teman, and in the Biblical kingdom of Judah, at the ancient burial site of Khirbet el-Qom, dating to 750 BC.

Burial inscription from Khirbet el-Quom, 8th cent. BC., Museum of Israel. Inscription: Uriyahu the prince wrote it: Blessed be Uriyahu by Yahweh and his Asherah, for from his enemies he has saved him." (Nick Thompson/ CC BY NC SA 2.0 )

In fact, this phrase “Yahweh and his Asherah” was so quotidian that it actually appears in the Hebrew Bible itself. The cryptic blessing is in an early rendition of Deuteronomy 33.2-3, when Asherah’s influence had not yet been fully subordinated. The full hymn reads: “YHWH came from Sinai and shone forth.... at his right hand his own Asherah.”

Asherim Poles

However, as the book religion solidified, Asherah became increasingly marginalized in the scriptures to the point of being reduced to her cult object—the stylized tree or wooden pole which became known as asherah or asherim. Trees were revered as symbols of life and nourishment in arid regions and so became associated with Asherah and her cult. Many scholars believe that Asherah’s tree functioned in the Garden of Eden parable. The ruling elite propagandized against goddess worship by integrating the story of the fall of mankind to the tree which was clearly  associated with Asherah. Whereas Asherah’s influence was restrained in the official religion, her presence loomed large in the rural communities, most often in the form of figurines which are prolific in the region. Even while idolatry is reviled in the Hebrew Bible, ample archaeological evidence suggests that those living outside the metropolis idolized statuary and cult objects as part of their religion, leading one scholar to opine: “Folk religion can be defined as everything that those who wrote the Bible condemned.”

Asherah Pillar Figures

Asherah is represented many times in various forms scattered throughout the region. But the most abundant of these are her pillar figurines which were popular from the 10th through the 7th centuries BC. The term “images of Asherah” is often used in the Hebrew Bible and it is thought that these pillar figurines are what the writers of the bible had in mind.

Israelite ceramic figure of a nude woman, identified as an Asherah pillar. ( The Met )

Because the breasts are exaggerated with the hands supporting them, they are thought to symbolize the nurturing aspect of the mother goddess. Predominantly, the pillar figurines were found in private homes, suggesting their domesticity. In a world beset by hardship and drought, likely a concern for fecundity was what attracted the rural Israelites and Judeans to the goddess Asherah, whom they associated with abundance.

Goddess Ninkharsag—Ancient Powerful Mother who Faded into The Holy Ghost

The Hidden Identity of the Woman Glorified as Athena: Her Link to the Pre-Flood World

Lost in Translation? Understandings and Misunderstandings about the Ancient Practice of “Sacred Prostitution”

A small votive statue of the Mother Goddess of Asherah. ( Queen of Heaven )

Missing Pieces of the Puzzle

While there are voluminous artifacts identified as Asherah in the region, there are still pieces missing from the puzzle. Was Asherah Yahweh’s wife, as many scholars now contend? Was her worship confined to folk religion only, or was her influence felt in the book religion of the Hebrew Bible as well?

Indeed, unearthing a goddess who has been buried for close to two millennia has its distinct disadvantages. Yet increasingly, Asherah’s influence in the region is becoming recognized by archaeologists and historians alike, with the expectation of further scrutiny and scholarship to come in this area.

Plaque depicting Asherah. ( Looklex Encyclopaedia )

Top Image: ‘Veiled Mother of the World’ (Deriv.) (1930) by Russian esoteric Christian Nicholas Roerich. Source: northernway.org

By Mary Naples, Contributing Writer, Classical Wisdom Weekly

[archive-fmp-year-2]

Mappa Mundi

mappa mundi is not a normal map, if you followed it you wouldn't get anywhere as this map has nothing to do with distance nore betraying the real world, its a map of the spiratral as many biblical places are represented on this map e.g. the garden of Eden at there top aka the west as if you flow it loosely it would lead you to heaven on earth and for that would be sent to heaven as a gift.

Mappa Mundi. (2019). Hereford: Hereford Cathedral.

[livingcorner]

Where Is the Garden of Eden Located Today?

What happened to this heavenly land from ancient history?

Adam and Even in the Garden of Eden (Source: History Encyclopedia)

The Bible says that God created man and woman and that he placed them in an ideal location for them: the Garden of Eden. After sinning, Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden forever. So are we to assume that this garden actually exists? That it has an exact location? If so … then where is its location?

You're reading: Where Is the Garden of Eden Located Today?

It is clear from the Bible that the Garden of Eden has an exact location, and it is not just a mythical location. The location is associated with four rivers that are mentioned in the biblical text. These are Euphrates, Tigris (Hiddekel), Pison, and Gihon. The Tigris and Euphrates are two well-known rivers that still flow through Iraq today. In the bible, they are said to have flowed through Assyria, namely today’s Iraq.

Read more: How To Control Snails Naturally In The Garden

A map representing River Tigris and Euphrates (Source: Britannica encyclopedia)

The exact location for Gihon and Pison is unknown. Gihon is associated with the land of Cus, which is located in the northeast of the Persian Gulf. So, having some boundaries, it means that the Garden of Eden is somewhere in Mesopotamia.

If the Garden of Eden is a real place, then should it be found in good condition today, right? Not! This perfect place is presented to us in the bible before sin enters the universe, that is before Adam and Eve fall into sin. The influence of sin was felt in the Garden of Eden, as in any other place on Earth. Since the Gihon and Pison rivers have an unknown location, it means that major geographical changes took place between Adam and Moses.

Due to the fall of man into sin and after the Great Flood, it seems that major changes have taken place. So you can’t really look for the Garden of Eden because the geographical changes that have altered the entire Earth, have also altered the area in question.

Noah’s Ark after the Great Flood (Source: National Geographic)

We should not expect to find archeological evidence related to the Garden of Eden because Scripture did not indicate that Adam built any structure or created any tools while in the garden.

Read more: Hedgehog Fact Sheet | Tiggywinkles

It is interesting, however, that the writer of Genesis described the rivers as having a clear location. It clearly indicates that these rivers are known to him. As a result, at least part of Genesis was written before the Great Flood.

We could say that the Garden of Eden existed at one time, but it cannot be located today due to the fall of humanity into sin, as well as the Great Flood that altered the Earth. Also, as I mentioned, it does not appear from anywhere in the Bible that there are structures in the Garden. But at the same time, it seems that the fencing of the Garden of Eden by the four rivers was known. Of course, in order for the existence of the Garden to make sense, and implicitly for this article, we must consider that what is said in the Bible is true and not just a legend.

Source: https://livingcorner.com.au Category: Garden

source https://livingcorner.com.au/where-is-the-garden-of-eden-located-today/