#clearly wants to fuck poor Kell _right _there and he has no _idea. On top of the just exquisite world-building and villain characterization

[ravencromwell]

Yesssss, your point re Threads is _excellent! Because even what appears to be a "new" ritual is almost never truly—one need only look at how Christianity borrowed dates of older mythological calendars for their holidays, and even artistic motifs like "The Good Shepherd"—as example.

And OHHHHHHHH, Green and Pleasant is the _perfect coda to this post. _Any! insightful thought I may have about Maktahn religion—and in many ways about Makt itself, the Danes, Holland, what have you,—stands gratefully on the shoulders of that fic. The idea of Makt's "prayer" being entirely active, a raw, desperate act in whatever form or fashion, to summon the magic, would never have occurred to me without the juxtaposition of these lines. "How would you say this word? Galdra."

Kell's brow furrows as he thinks it over. The word is complex, layered in meaning. Galdra means to work, to struggle, to pray, and to bleed all at once. There is no one word in any of Red's languages to encompass it. The closest thing, in terms of both meaning and cultural significance, might be the word spell itself." / "You don't pray so that you can have food, or fire for the winter, or steel to ward your bed?" The way in which Pink articulates the almost fairy dust quality of magic in Arnes set against the grueling effort and pain required to call it in Makt is at the cornerstone of everything I do fannishly, to the point I frequently say to Pink, , only in a quarter in jest, that I should just acknowledge "Green and Pleasant" in the notes on everything I write, because there will be influence even if I can't see it.

Mid-way through art history last semester, I discovered the "Mayan Lintels 24-26". Prior to that moment, my familiarity with blood sacrifice had been a fatal event, meant as act of last resort or immense devotion. But these made me familiar with the idea of less drastic, if equally poignant ritual practices of minor bloodletting.

Which inevitably drew me back to Holland's moment at the stream in ACOL. It's easy to identify this as an idiosyncratic ritual of his own invention, particularly because he says he didn't pray and wouldn't know who to pray to. But as my historian brain thinks more and more of Holland as deeply shaped by culture, because there is always culture even in the apocalypse, rather than creating a revitalized society entirely from whole cloth, I become increasingly fascinated by this as Holland practicing alone what was meant to be congregational. In many an organized religion, action itself is the prayer rather than liturgy. And Vortalis has a fascinating line about "fools waiting for the Someday King to return" as though it's far from uncommon, though not shall we graciously say, not a mainstream view to put a great deal of weight behind the tales.

As we see when Holland describes Alox's runes, to "bind escaping magic" is the paramount way of survival in Makt—Vortalis says they have become a society fearful of any magic they cannot control.

Yet, there is immense power in willingly spilt blood—not just for Antari, but magicians more generally. Look, after all, at Maxim's spell to craft a golem army—one of its requirements was protracted blood loss by the caster.

What a powerful message it would send, in a benighted world, to willingly spill the most precious of your own resources. What better manifested prayer to call the Someday King to incarnate, to prove there were still those willing to buck societal trends, and thus a society worth saving? [To some believers, it might be less about calling to a yet-born magician than calling to magic itself, trying to pour enough back into the land this numinous force might feel safe enough to cease endlessly retreating.) A circle, spilling blood onto barren ground, not for food or shelter, but just to give magic back to the land.

A fairly commonplace ritual, performed on two days of historical significance or the Solstices/equinoxes etc., just after the Cataclysm that has faded into rarity but not quite extinction in an increasing desperate world. Which Holland practices alone on different days (and mayhap in a different place, though it would _also make sense for the site of any larger rituals to be the Silver Wood, given Holland's irritated: 'This is a sacred place' when Vor flicks ash everywhere to goad him.) After all, the greatest source of magic coming into bleed all over your ritual might prove too powerful a temptation for even the best-intentioned folk to have a slice of the bounty.