#could have lent to a far more uncanny or serious experience. but i prefer to believe people just liked the little guys

[bilbobagginsomebabez]

i was stoned but what i meant to convey was the "bizarre" comments are mostly about the mushrooms and cultural associations of the time. massachussetts in the 1700s had cooled to a point on puritan fanatacism but was still very much home to one of the most obsessively stringent and conformist groups of people on the planet. gerhsom here was almost 100% being very weird on purpose. mushroom ears are mildly interesting for us; they carried wildly different meanings at the time. he was pushing cultural boundaries with his gravestone imagery lmao

most "christian empires" of the time and the puritans in particular associated physical cleanliness with spiritual purity, and europeans (definitely including england) are mycophobic, associating fungi with danger/rot/poison. european mores of cleanliness feared bad smells as both a sign of physical--they did not understand lung illnesses and it scared them very much--and moral danger, notably filling in entire wetlands during colonization because they assumed the "foul air" had some connection to the "savagery" of the indigenous people living there because uncleanliness alone would lead to a rot of the soul that would destroy european society by encouraging sexually licentious women (racists dont make sense; i can explain it but the racist drivel still will not make sense.) in another example, catholics believe the holiest bodies do not even decompose and use it as a sign of sainthood.

in a puritan context, mushroom ears are strange. whether intended to be a likeness of the soul or body, the mushrooms as ears would easily (even likely) be interpreted as a reminder of human fragility and the ease with which the human body succumbs to rot(sin). this is not generally desired on a gravestone by calvinists hoping God knew they were going to heaven from the second they were born.[1] that's why the other ones have bug eyes and wigs. a recognizable puritan authority figure. conveys strength through tradition, moral and otherwise.

i am very sure that gershom was fully aware the "normal" ones are visually less pleasing and while his mushroom ears evoked fearful spiritual imagery, they're just little guys. i'd argue that his gravestones being purchased so frequently indicates a not insignificant shift in the popularity of active calvinist theology in the area. like it's still there right now but this is a marker of the shift to 'ingrained in the cultural habit way' from 'churches literally still believe and teach that's how the afterlife works.'

[1] calvinism (badly) explained: basically The Good Place but like. humans figured out how it works and decided to act like that one character from the show who led a near perfect life only to step on a bug or whatever right before death and end up in the bad place anyway. but also you kinda liked it because it made you god's specialest boy and provided a lot of justification for genocide. you're fucked but through a perfectly executed lifelong moral gymnastics performance, you could unfuck yourself and guiltlessly fuck everybody who wasn't performing the moral gymnastics like a moral exclusion zone. calvinism.

[1a] calvinism (slightly less badly) explained: okay. so. humans have free will. god knows everything, plans everything, and orchestrates life according to his will. except when SATAN is around to tempt you, which always because he pre-poisoned your soul with original sin with the apple. so the new base nature of all humanity is to give in to satan's temptation. and god still knows everything and knew both that it was gonna go like this for all humans and how it's going to end up for you personally. which is why pretty much everyone goes to hell. it's not like you're on a track to heaven and have to fuck up majorly to land in the bad place. you are born a ball of nasty secretions and sin and you have to work work work work work to cleanse yourself and earn your spot up top with the big guy. i guess god's like maybe kind of sad for you but jesus didn't give you forgiveness for original sin, he gave you the opportunity to earn forgiveness for original sin for yourself personally. good parents will control their children and force them on the heaven track so they're not as deep in the hole and it's "easier" to earn god's forgiveness. sin debt paid off through work study.

a lot of the people who came up with this were rich people (landed gentry) with abusive fathers and i think it shows. transparently.

honestly monumental masonry is interesting. I should look into that.