#gaulic wars

[voluptuarian]

One thing I'm enjoying about Barbarians that has nothing to do with the quality is just that I know nothing about the Germanian campaigns, so it's all a surprise for me-- I didn't even know Arminius was a real person, I'd never heard of him. Meanwhile if it had been about the Gaulic Wars or something I would have already known most the twists and who won and who died-- much as I like knowing All The Things sometimes not knowing is more fun.

[liberty1776]

The surrender of Vercengetorix

The Surrender painting is beautiful but the depiction of Caesar's soldiers is very inaccurate, Soldiers of Late Roman Republic would have looked more like this.

[liberty1776]

Caesar in Gaul: Makin' Waves (56 B.C.E.)

[fernthewhimsical]

Baduhenna Deep Dive: pt. 2

Aspects:

Battle What we know of Baduhenna is that the first part of her name means "battle", and that in her forest a mighty battle for freedom took place. I see her as a protector who battles for her people and for the land. The Frisians and Romans lived in peace with each other until the Romans asked too much, and took the Frisians' lively-hood and family. After that, the retaliation was quick and ruthless. To me, Baduhenna is tied to fighting for freedom from oppression, and standing your ground when it comes to your rights and morals.

If we see the paranoia of the Romans as battle-madness or -frenzy, Baduhenna might also be associated with these aspects, much like the Irish Badb. Badb flies over the battlefield as a crow, where her cawing incites madness. Crows flying through the dark forest spreading panic and paranoia so the Frisians can claim victory is quite an enticing image, and one that I associate with her as well.

Valkyrie/War-goddess Donahue, in his article “the Valkyries and the Irish War-Goddesses” exposes perhaps a deeper link to Badb. He states that it is likely that the Scandinavian and Germanic Valkyrie and the Irish Wargoddesses evolved together. That is to say that because of the close relations between the Celts, the Gauls and the Germanic people it is likely that these cultures intermingled, and through that their mythology and beliefs were influenced. The Valkyrie for example, went from demons, “those who bring fear”, to beautiful, almost Goddess-like, women who chose the slain and poured mead in the Halls of Valhalla.

De Vries, in his article “studiën over Germaanse mythologie” also speaks of the links between Valkyrie, the matronae (triads of Goddesses commonly worshipped by the Germanic tribes), the Norns, the dísir, and the Goddess triad that is the Morrígan.

Next to Badb and the Valkyries, there is another Goddess to consider. The Gaulic Goddess Cathubodua, whose name means “battle-crow”, which is also a name Badb wears as "Badb Catha". All we have of Cathubodua is the inscription of the name upon a shield, unfortunately, not a lot to go on.

Where does Baduhenna fit in? The Annals tell us that there was a battle, that the Frisians against all odds attempted to overthrow the tyrannical Roman leader, that they won that battle and killed 900 Romans, and that the retreating Romans were so paranoid, that they slayed 400 of their own men.

If we look at this recount in another way, a different story can perhaps be told: a small group of people won a battle against a far greater and better trained army. This battle was fought in a sacred forest, dedicated to their Goddess; a Goddess of war. Divine intervention perhaps, the Goddess choosing which side of the conflict will be the victor, and which will be slain. Much like both the Valkyrie and the Morrígan. The remaining soldiers fleeing, but being so overcome with confusion and madness that they turn on their own battle-brothers. Just like the madness that Badb spreads when she flies over the battlefields in her form as a crow. Which is why Braakman is his article “Baduhenna. Godin van het Slagveld.” states that Baduhenna and Badb are one and the same, and says: “Baduhenna had struck again.”

Forest It is known that the Germanic and Frisian tribes honoured their Gods in groves and forests instead of temples. So perhaps there is no reason for Baduhenna to be a Goddess of woodlands. I, however, definitely see her as a Forest-goddess. She is a goddess of the deep forests, the dark woods, with the floor covered in mists. A dense forest in which you can easily get lost, or perhaps doubt if you have travelled into the Otherworld between one tree and the next.

There is also a Dutch saga that tells of another Roman emperor. He became shipwrecked and came ashore in what is now the province of Gelderland. Even with his diminished numbers, and with the local people fighting like beasts, he managed to conquer the local village. He lived there for a while, but he and his men became restless. They decided to venture into the nearby forest to see if there were more villages to conquer. Instead, they found a dense forest, filled with ferocious animals such as lions, wolves, boar, and bears. For the first time in their lives, they retreated, and ran all the way back to the village. They asked the local villagers what the forest was. They said it was wild and dark, and filled with animals that were too ferocious to think about fighting. And when you do manage to come out to the other side, you will find something even more deadly and terrifying: Frisians. "Does it have a name?" the Roman asked. When told that they didn't name it, out of fear, the Roman named it "the Forest without Mercy."

Now, there is absolutely zero link between this forest and Baduhenna's forest folklore/history/myth-wise. And yet I link them anyway. A terrifyingly dark forest with strangely behaving animals and Frisians on the other side sounds right up Baduhenna's alley. It also reminds me of Járnviðr, the Iron Woods of Norse mythology. A dark forest filled with monstrous wolves, magic, and giants.

Wetlands Tacitus describes in the Annals how bridges had to be built over the wet ground to get to Baduhenna's forest, so her woods would probably have been wetlands. There is much speculation about where her forest might have actually been located, but no traces of her woods have ever been found. Thinking of the battle in her forest, it would also make sense for it to have been wetlands. Her grove itself where perhaps rituals and sacrifices were held would have to be accessible, of course. However, if the woods were wetlands, then only those who knew it well could traverse it safely and with ease. While the Romans would have been constantly finding their footing and bearings, especially if there was fog. I associate Baduhenna with wetlands and marshes, and there is a path through wetlands close to my home that is a favourite spot to connect to her

Magic Though there is nothing in the Annals and subsequent research that suggests a link between Baduhenna and magic, through my years of connecting with her, she has made herself known to me as a Goddess of Magic. Perhaps through her close connection with the Morrígan I perceive her this way, but Baduhenna and magic are connected. Like the Morrígan, I see Baduhenna as a shape-shifter. I see her as the wild witch in the woods. Practising the folk magic of the land and the forest. Using what you have at hand, or finding what you need out in the wilderness. One who rides the hedge and easily walks between the Realms.

I connect her with the swirls of mist that curl between the trees, and through that connection with the Dutch "Witte Wieven". White Women or Mist Witches who are seen in folklore as Faerie women, witches, seers, and spirits. In Dutch folklore we also have Alvinnen, the female equivalent of Alf or Elf. These were also seen as seers, witches, Fae, ghosts, and often even Goddesses. To me, Baduhenna is one of them, and as such, hold great powers of witchcraft and magic.

Mist Through her connection with the wetlands and Witte Wieven I also connect mist of fog with Baduhenna. In the Netherlands, low-hanging fog, especially in the early morning light, are called Witte Wieven, which is based in the folklore about them. In the tales of Hans Christiaan Anderson, as well as some local folk tales, we also have the character of the *Moerasvrouw*, or swamp-woman. She brews the mists and fogs in her swamp where she lives. She is seen as benevolent and kind in most stories, at least to other members of the Fair Folk. Seeing as how Baduhenna's Woods were also wetlands, I think this is an interesting connection to Baduhenna and the Witte Wieven.

Death Through her connection to both the Irish War-goddesses and the Valkyrie, death is part of Baduhenna's portfolio. Primarily death through battle, but like the Morrígan, perhaps also prophesizing the deaths still to come. I see her as the crow who calls out when your time is up. Who gathers your soul at the moment of death, and hands it over to the one who will carry it to where it needs to be.

Activism Again, this is a personal connection I make with her, but through her story of fighting against oppression and standing up against a system that is harmful I connect with Baduhenna through activism. For me, standing your ground, voicing your opinions loudly, and trying to dismantle a bigoted, oppressive system is very much in line with this goddess. Any act of defiance or activism can be devoted to her, and fighting for those who have had their rights stolen is sacred to her.

[Deep Dive Masterpost]

[katsuko1978]

Ancient Rome: We didn’t start this fight but we’re damned sure gonna finish it!

Gauls: Um… but none of us have attacked you…

Rome, gearing up for war: Nope, definitely taking defensive actions against this unprompted attack on Roman citizens.

Gaulic generals: Oh for fuck’s sake, guess we’re fighting now.

(aka wifey and me are watching documentaries on YouTube and we’re on Rome and Caesar, and I was reminded that Rome always claimed that they only fought defensively despite building a goddamn empire)

[oldgoddetective]

What happened to the Old Gods?

For thousands of years, humans of various cultures, nations, and peoples across the world worshiped an equally amount of varied gods. And then suddenly, at least in Western Europe and the Americas, the influence of these gods waned. In this post and over the next few posts I will propose that a plurality of gods coexisted and worked with nature and humanity to maintain balance and that the community of the Western gods suffered a period of collapse in which the Western God achieved his current hegemony. In a future post I plan to talk about how there is a current movement of rebellion or upheaval in the heavens, as well as about the relationship between the gods, nature, spirits, and humans.

I am approaching this with a careful but honest belief that the divine is real and that God, Jesus, the Western God, and the so called "pagan" gods are (or at least were) real. I will also be focusing on God, Western Europe, and the Americas (here and throughout the blog), as these are the areas I am most familiar with. Lastly, I stand by the truism that history is written by the victors, so while I may use the Bible as a source, I will approach it with academic skepticism. With all that out of the way, let's begin.

Before the rise of Christianity, once could find a diversity of gods across the world. These were seen as tribal or local gods. That is, their worshipers largely recognized the existence of other gods that ruled over the same aspects of nature, but that were distinct from their own gods and belonged to other regions and people. Examples of this are Hades and Hel, from Greek and Norse religion respectively. These two gods ruled over similar realms (the realm of the dead), but were limited in their jurisdiction by geography and by who their followers were. We also see examples of gods spreading across regions, sometimes adopting different aspects as they do. One way in which this happened was when people colonized an area and brought their gods with them, as was the case with Ancient Carthage being ruled by Phoenician gods. If a god and their people had enough influence, they could also expand to new regions, although this usually caused them to undergo changes as they were adapted to and by the new environments they encountered. Such was the case when Ares took over the aspect of war in Rome and became Mars, and similarly when Gaulic people adopted Mars under the name of Albiorix. These were likely all the same entity, but rather than be worshiped as one god, it chose to, or was forced to, adopt different aspects that better suited the cultures it encountered. Thus we see a world where various gods existed within a changing landscape of realms and personalities.

There is one more way in which gods expand and replace others: warfare. A famous example of this is found in the books of Exodus and Joshua, where the followers of God conquered the people of Canaan and slowly tore down their gods. The relationship between humans and the gods is not the focus here, but it is well known to be symbiotic to some degree. With believers gone or dwindled, the gods are weakened and easier to depose by another god.

The various gods were, according to the Bible, organized into an assembly of gods or a divine council (Psalm 82 NSRV). It is unknown what God's position in this council was or how many gods belonged to it. But it does reveal that the gods were in some sort of community with each other and that some sort of order existed. This same psalm claims that God has the authority to hold judgement, but as this is an account written by God - even if indirectly - we can not take for granted that this claim of a position of leadership is accurate and that it wasn’t made to legitimize his rule. I will take a detour into the realm of speculation and say that this council likely did not include all the gods on earth or in existence, but may have been limited to those over which God already had authority. That is, the gods God had defeated through conquest and the lesser gods many call angels. If this is the case, this divine council was a prototype for how the Western God would achieve his current hegemony.

Now we turn to how the old gods “went away.” I’m not talking about how their cults were persecuted or their beliefs syncretized into Christianity, although this did play an important role in the Old God’s demise. Instead I am talking about the deities themselves. Here we can only make informed guesses, so here is what I believe happened. A new god, Jesus, arrived on the scene deriving his legitimacy from his claim to be the son of God. Whether this claim is true or not does not matter for our purposes, although it has interesting implications. What matters is that it allowed him to have a head start in the follower gaining game. Whoever Jesus was before the incarnation, he was already a relatively powerful god. He was likely a member of the aforementioned divine council. Following his death and resurrection, his following grew, which in turn gave him more power. Through some clever maneuvering he came to gain influence over the Roman Empire and become its dominant god. Eventually the gods of the Roman pantheon would be weakened, exiled, or incorporated into Jesus’s divine council. The behavior of Christianity from this point forwards indicates a change to the previously egalitarian and regional workings of the divine council into one that was increasingly centralized. With the power of the divine council and a great number of followers, he was able to create the infrastructure that would give rise to the various organized Christian churches.

Then something went wrong. We can’t pinpoint when, how, or why, but at some point Jesus lost control of the divine council, and the Western God took over. This explains the rapid changes to Christianity, including a practical abandonment of its peaceful and loving ethos that remains unpunished to this day. Human activity was likely both a symptom and a cause to this change in heavenly leadership. Ultimately, the chaos in heaven caused or worsened the fall of the Roman empire. It was during this period of upheaval that the gods of the germanic tribes tried to stop the growing power of Jesus or fill the power vacuum the Western God’s rise to power was causing. In the end, it was the Western God who prevailed over Jesus and the other “pagan” gods. Unlike Jesus, the Western God learned from his predecessors and did not rule as one, but rather adopted various identities among the various Christian sects and allowed other gods to wield authority as angels or saints of the divine council.

Most of Christian history has been led by this Western God who usurped Jesus’s place and derives his legitimacy by using the identity of Jesus and of the son of God. I will talk in a future post about how this hegemony has been changing for centuries now and what the new cosmic order could shake up to be.

[rosemaryonthehearth]

What are some deities that you've struggled to find information on, whether historical sources or modern practices?

There's two for me, for different reasons.

Belisama, the Gaulic-Celtic goddess of fire, lakes, rivers, and crafts. There is not a lot of historical references to her worship as not much of the Gaulic traditions survived, similar to the other Celtic deities. The Roman sources equate her to Minerva, and she rules over the River Ribble in the UK.

The other is Wepwawet. He is often mistaken for Anubis and sometimes is portrayed to be gray/silver and a wolf or jackal. He is known as the Opener of the Ways, controlling the Opening of the Mouth in mummification rituals. He is sometimes depicted at the head of Ra's sun-boat or as a scout, leading the way in war. The main problem is Ancient Egypt lasted so long that there were many, many different deities, and the historical sites were looted often for the valuables and building materials.

[maggotfaceklink666]

Some self indulgent fantasy I painted out, oh how I wish I could’ve been like Caligula, the height of decadence and gluttony, or in the gaulic wars with Caesar, my atrocities only garnering me a spot among the foundations of western society.

[william2669]

I have many thoughts on this poll and because I love history and I don’t give a fuck if nobody ends up reading this, here they are:

- Why Franz Ferdinand? Like legit. You think this would have prevented world war 1? Because if you don’t I’m sorry but need to freshen up your history. First off Franz Ferdinand was an advocate for serb rights inside the Austria-Hungary empire. Which makes the fact that a serb nationalist killed him even sadder. If the aim to prevent WW1 is this vote, you should have picked the German Kaiser Wilhelm II though it’s arguable if that would even do the trick. There was a whole process behind the lead up to war. They didn’t just kill Franz and boom there was war. There was a whole month where some would push for war and try to avoid it. WW1 will still happen even if Franz Ferdinand wasn’t born because the great powers of the time were itching for it regardless and the balkans were a mess still. I’d actually vote the guy who killed him cause I wonder if world war 2 would still happen if Franz got to take power and give Serbs more liberties or if the Germans would find another way to kickstart world war 1.

- Like, I get why you want to kill Stalin. Fuck him. Dude killed more of his own people then the Germans ever did. But let’s face it people, if not him then some other communist dictator would be running the USSR. For all we know, a worse dude. (And yes there were def other big communist leaders who were just as bad if not worse then Stalin. Looking at you Beria, you absolute psychopath)

- Why on gods green earth Martin Luther?? I’m not American so I assume this is MLK? The civil rights guy? Why want him dead? Y’all are fbi and want the honor of doing it yourself?

- Romulus I actually like cause what would Ancient Rome look like if his brother was the one who founded Rome and stuff. Would Rome still be a Mediterranean super power? Would they still have taken over Gaul? Or would the first Punic war have cost them dearly? Lots of interesting potential there.

- NIXON?! You picked this clown and not REAGAN?! You picked the guy who got caught doing bad shit and resigned before he could be impeached over FUCKING REAGAN!?!

- So I also get why people want to vote Caesar but this is one I don’t like cause the reason Caesar rose to power was because of the political situation at the time in Ancient Rome. If it wasn’t Caesar, it would have been someone else. He was the symptom, not the disease. Roman senators are to blame for that. The one reason I’d vote for him is so the Gaulic uprise might have had a better chance at succes though that’s debatable but can’t help but wanna root for my ancestors.

- Mao might have my vote cause honestly his policies killed so many Chinese people it’s disgusting. I don’t care he was a communist. But I don’t know enough of Chinese history to say it this would be a good vote. For all I know this another Stalin situation. Maybe someone better, maybe someone worse takes over instead.

In general my issue with the poll is that lots of these people rose to power because of the social and political climate at the time. Preventing them from being born or having them killed would NOT change things drastically. Some other asshole would have taken their place instead. Hitler shouldn’t be on this list not only because he’d get voted most anyway but also because even without Hitler there would have been nazis and world war 2. Maybe they won’t be called nazis, maybe no holocaust, maybe the war wouldn’t start the same year but it would have happened no matter what. From a purely military aspect we got lucky with Hitler because he was a military idiot. He got lucky early on and believed himself some genius while his generals were idiots when most of the time it was the other way around. I do not want to consider a world war 2 with a Nazi Germany led by someone more competent.

I genuinely like the suggestion of William the conqueror or Romulus because it allows us to actually delve into some alternate history stuff. Like how England or even the English language would be like today if William the conqueror never existed. But most of those others options are just boring/bad because they do not take into account the reasons why they got to power and how someone else would simply take charge instead and do the same bad stuff. (Also why the fuck is Reagan not there)

You are granted a time machine and the ability to prevent one birth (or commit a murder up to you), don't worry about the butterfly effect, we want the butterfly effect that's part of the point. Your actions will prevent them from ever rising to prominence. No he's not here, because it'd be too much of a sweep, pick your second choice if you're wondering where he is

[rosheendubh]

ai-ya…shameless lady-crush fangRRling…

-

Mostly, character-inspires for the SpaceRockOpera AU (of Star Wars combining TTT/HoT/Dark Empire events, with the Keltiad fused with Firefly-Serenity…)—

-Rhyanon ferch Garowen (Daenerys, combined with equal doses of Yelena Belova/Dr Temperance Brennan/and Dr Janet Frasier…), a biokinetically gifted, skilled medic/biologist and her Dathomiri witch-lover, Kalinda (based off Kalinda from ‘The Good Wife’, even in terms of her role as an info-slicker-cybersecurity specialist…private contract—works with the Terran Core Parliament as much as the ImperialRemnant/Empire of the Hand, or The RepublicAlliance…as her profit and proclivities lie…combo’d with Yennefer of Venderberg…)…

—Rhyanon does, of course become involved with both Luke and Thrawn in a complicated game of illicit love-affairs-illicit bio hacking-cloning-super soldier chimaerasizing-awakening Dark Matter entities and nefarious uses of archeogenomes-space-vampires (the Telchines-Coroniad of the Keltiad, inspired by the Coroniad race of the Mabonigion…)-space vampire fathers and aunts (a little Circe and Medea dynamic…it’s s messed up family dynamic for Rhyanon-)-space vampires exploiting other alien species into bio harvesting servitude (my Ka’ali as a the Terran quadrant origins of the Noghri)-Thrawn is a colonialist authoritarian ass-as are the ChissAscendency-Thrawn-who’s basically my version of Rommel meets Napoleon meets Thomas Jefferson-meets Theoderic the Great-meets Julius Caesar—and Tywin Lannister with Spock-aded to swirl of Bronte-esque Heathcliff and Rochester tragic hero complex-breaks the Galaxy in half by collapsing the Wormhole-sacrifices Csilla-and is willing to bring Artor Imperator’s dead ship back from the Maw/The Dead Zone/Sterike Regions of space to recover the 2nd Starflash weapon lost 1000 years before with the Great Cataclysm-develops a complicated BroMance with Luke-(who’s my version of Luke combined with Peter Quill in Luke Skywalker’s original concept as Starkiller…check it out—his original concept Art before A New Hope even looks like Quill’s StarLord…)-snd a threesome with Rhyanon—who really just wants to go home to Caledonia Secunda-and open a clinic for new world emigres and fly her space-capable pegasuses with her Lady love…lol-yes, that Karaoke scene at the renamed Mos Vespa cantina (princess Vespa as a resurrected Arhinda Pryce combined with Space Balls Princess Vespa) set in a revised ‘Tatooine Ghost’ meets ‘SideTrip’ events as Thrawn-disguised as a Mandalorian/JodoKast-gets inveigled into singing ‘Piano Man with Rhyanon’-in order to defuse a potential tavern brawl-whilst Rhyanon-who’s done up treating idiot criminal under lords inhabiting Fett’s most violent parish where no outreach medical staff with any training dare serve…except Rhyanon-who Luke is after-and Thrawn is after-for their own purposes of saving the Galaxy-with tracking Killick Twilight-on a night Rhyanon just wants to chill with a drink amid the newly imported Terran pastime of Karaoke-at the seedy dive bar-in a scene that turns into Pirates of the Caribbean2-tavern brawl-Thrawn/of course-enacting the role of Jack Sparrow navigating his elegant exit (disguised as a Mandalorian still)-while all chaos spews around him-and WAIT-Firefly’s Operative-named Judah-I believe arrives at some point as well-having traced Rhyanon across the Wormhole sent by River Tam and Mal Reynolds-into a street chase scene through MosVespa (formerly MosEisley)-that culminates with Kalinda on Fett’s pet-rancor (she is Dathomiri by origin)-reprimanding all the misbehaving children-and saving her lady-love who-in a Mexican draw-involving the Operative/Judah-suddenly hears the Operative speak in her native tongue-Pretanic(neo-Brythonic-a combo of Welsh and Gaelic rewound to its Celtic-Gaulic lsnguage roots…but evolved into a future linguistic smash-burger)—later revelations that Thrawn discovers of the Operative/Judah having slain JorgCardas-who crossed the Wormhole as Shepherd Book-and gets a little irritated-as Thrawn wields the Dark Saber in this get-up-here we have the Operative facing off with Thrawn—Katana vs DarkSaber…it’s a honorable death for someone-and the inspiration for River Tam’s “2 by 2, hands of Blue…”

[scottish-gaelic]

Greater Appalachia

(Aka: Scots-Irish, Ulster Scots, and borderlanders)

Finally getting around to talking about this. I’m gonna give y’all the short version of our history.

The story starts off in mainland Europe. Julius Caesar decided to fight the “Gaullic savages”. He did not expect them to fight back, but they did. Caesar ended up killing about a third of all of the Celts, as the Gauls were later called, and enslaving another third. Dan Carlin has a fantastic podcast about this. It’s not something you listen to in one sitting though.

After the Gaullic Wars, the Celts moved north. They kind of split between Sweden/Norway and Ireland/Scotland. We’re following the Scots-Irish. They mostly hung out in Ireland, becoming the Irish Tribes, but one tribe, the ‘Scotti’, moved to Scotland. They mingled with the Picts, a people group that was already there, and eventually became what we know as the Scottish.

Rome then tries to conquer Britain. They subdue the Anglo-Saxons but cannot defeat the Scots. They build Hadrian’s Wall and just leave them alone. The Roman Empire disappears and the Anglo-Saxons adopt the Roman attitude towards the Scots.

Fast forward about several hundred years to the mid to late 1200s. King Edward Longshanks massacres Berwick and kills 20,000 Scots in one day! Berwick was the largest city in Scotland at the time, rivaling London, and he burned it to the ground. The movie ‘Braveheart’ picks up a few years later and we all know how that goes. If you don’t know how it goes, watch Braveheart, it’s absolutely worth it.

After all that happens, we’ve got another five hundred years of war in which the people on the border between Scotland and England are hurt the most. The borderlanders get their houses burned down every few years so they learn to be mobile. They don’t put much stock in physical belongings but are more fiercely protective of their families. They also invent cabins. Easy to build and rebuild after burning.

During the colonial period, England had a lot of trouble keeping Ireland under control. That’s actually why they were one of the last ones to reach America. After Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth had “pacified” the Irish, they moved them all out of North Ireland and imported a bunch of borderlanders. Then they started demanding insane taxes from them. Most people couldn’t afford to pay them and were quite literally starved out of Ireland. Nearly all of those people moved to the North American Colonies.

After almost two millennia of fighting and burning and starving, the borderlanders were not what you’d call civilized company. The European people groups that were already in America, New Englanders, New Netherlanders, Tidewater Gentry, Midlanders, and Deep Southerners, were inclined to agree. We were mostly shunned and ignored so we moved out to the westernmost reaches of the colonies.

If you’ll think back to your elementary school history class, you’ll remember that one of the main causes of the American Revolution was taxes. The borderlanders, having been starved out of Ireland because of taxes, were naturally outraged. We flocked to the revolution and fought valiantly, making up a majority of the army even though we had no representation in congress. None. And we only had one representative at the Constitutional Convention.

After the war was won, we went back to our lives in the Appalachian Mountains. We hunted and fished and acted as a buffer between the “civilized” new Americans (who, not long before, were tarring, feathering, and riding people out on rails) and the “savage” Native Americans who were just trying to protect themselves and their lands. A frighteningly familiar situation to any Scots-Irish person just a few generations past. A tribal people being attacked by an empire that is trying to kick them out of their lands and destroy their culture. Am I talking about the Scots-Irish or the Native Americans?

During the Civil War, we were split but most fought for the South. We did not fight to support slavery, we fought against the New Englanders who were trying to force us to adopt their culture and forget our own (they’re still doing that, just not as violently). We lost (obviously) and the New Englanders came in to try and “fix” our society. They did some good things like increase literacy and free all of the slaves, but they did a lot of horrible things too. They wrecked our economy (most of Greater Appalachia is poor to this day), they instituted public education that is controlled by the federal government undermining our family values and later, our religious beliefs, and then they left us to fall flat on our faces.

Currently we are called rednecks, hillbillies, and white trash. I didn’t understand the white trash one until recently. My dad explained that it’s not because we’re cheap and poor as a culture, it’s because we’re the white people that white people didn’t want.

Our people have been persecuted, ignored, and stamped on for far too long just because we don’t mix well with other cultures. Other cultures (cough New England cough) are still trying to “convert” us to their ways. If you are Scots-Irish, or even if you’re not, learn about this culture. We’ve been fighting for millennia and we’re kinda dying out. If you live in any of the bright red counties below, you probably share our culture even if you don’t share our racial background. For instance, my youth pastor is half Puerto Rican and is very much a Greater Appalachian.

Some things you can do to learn about us: listen to Dan Carlin’s podcast “the Celtic Hallocaust” (I didn’t name it, that’s just what it’s called), read American Nations by Colin Woodard, and read Born Fighting by Jim Webb. These are great resources and a good doorway to understanding our culture. This post is basically just summarizing what I learned from them.

[tlaquetzqui]

When people repeat the “playing telephone as children” analogy about oral tradition—because those cultures don’t have elaborate methods to ensure faithful transmission, or anything—I ask them if they’ve heard of the Rgveda. They never have.

The Rgveda is the oldest text of the religion now known as Hinduism. It was written down in I believe the first few centuries BC, but records a society millennia older. And we know that it faithfully repeats what its original sources composed, because much of it has odd grammatical forms and pronunciations. Because they didn’t just accurately repeat what their ancestors said: they scrupulously mimicked how their ancestors said it. (If you’re familiar with the significance of sound in Indic cosmology this is less surprising, but not less impressive.)

Similarly in the Book of Exodus there is at least one part, a speech by Moses, where the grammar is very weird…for Hebrew. Not for Proto-Canaanite though, which is the language Moses would actually have spoken—they meticulously recorded his exact words, or at least the exact words attributed to him by people much closer to the time in question than the writing-down of the book was. (Since Hebrew did not originally write vowels, we do have those sound-shifts happening as language developed, and sometimes they introduce ambiguities: the Proto-Canaanite root of the word eventually recorded as nefilim was either the passive nafilim or the causative nifilim, i.e. the word means either “the fallen, those who were cast down” or “the topplers, those who cast others down”.)

On the other hand, you do have the issue where oral transmission of news is eventually converted to mythic archetypes—there’s a famous account of a Navajo raid on the Hopi that got turned archetypical in I believe three generations—but that happens with written transmission too, it just takes longer. What you probably think you know about Galileo, for example, is almost certainly a tissue of legends (actually what you think you know about the Cold War and even the War on Terror is probably mostly legend too, but that’s because of propaganda, not merely time).

[raointean]

Thanks for the tag! (I know it's been a week, but it's almost finals season. Sue me) In no particular order:

Elrond's family tree and its incest ornaments (I've given that presentation in a college setting three times already and it was awesome every single time)

The movements of the Gaulic->Scottish Borderlander->Ulster Scots->American Redneck people over time

Tectonic plates/general geology (it is the ONLY thing that makes me mad about Tolkien's work. He was a linguist and it SHOWS!)

Probably Star Wars. I don't know EVERYTHING about it, but definitely enough to talk for an hour

And finally, and most importantly (at the moment) the motherfucking puritans. I know that's strong language for a dead religious group, but the more I learn about them, the more I hate them. Long story short, they are responsible for purity culture and the thought police and I want to stab them.

Tagging: @kirbys-lover @tintreach-cleite @indigosabyss @bananaphanta @themarysuep

List 5 topics you can talk on for an hour without preparing any material

tagged by @eldritchteletubbie! thank you babe!!

uhhhh let's see.

Elrond, obviously. Like all the Elrond lore -- and also my opinions about what I like and what I don't like about the choices Tolkien made with his story.

Feminism and the role of women in the Christian church (hint hint: the actual biblical stance is that women are called to leadership just as much as men and the gender gatekeeping was a later addition -- mostly stemming from Augustine. Ugh.)

Queerness and God and the Christian church (hint hint hint: the Bible actually has nothing to say about people who are in a committed same sex relationship that is fully consensual. Like, nowhere. And God himself has no gender. He just tends to choose he/him pronouns. Or actually he's multigendered. Omnigendered, if you will. And there's biblical evidence for this. Anyway uhhhhh yeah I could easily talk about that for an hour I'll stop).

Soteriology and Christology in general? Do you see where I am going with this?

Pretty much any history topic pre 20th century. Like I'm working on getting more familiar with the 20th+ centuries they're just not as interesting to me.

Taggingggg (no pressure ofc just do if you feel like it): @greyjedijaneite @jaz-the-bard @raointean @crumbling-toast @metatomatoes and anyone else who wants to do this! just say I tagged you. :)

[ofunknownkadath]

Persona 1 - Emperor Arcana

1. Seimen-Kongou

Boy with Earring’s initial Persona, a Rakhasa who used to spread disease before converting to good. In both its mythology and Kaneko’s official art, is accompanied by the Three Wise Monkeys representing ‘do no evil, speak no evil, hear no evil’.

Uses Garu/Magaru and has the Delyte, Makajam and Pulinpa ailment attacks. I think its design (and Personas in general) were inspired from JoJo’s Stands. At any rate, I like ‘near-naked former evil demon’ being the representation of the first Persona protag’s inner self. 

2. Airgetlam

Nuada was king of the Tuatha Dé Danann and thought to be related to Nodens, the British/Gaulic god of fishing and hunting. Airgetlám is actually his title, referencing the silver arm he lost in a battle with the Fir Bolg’s king, Sreng. 

Fusable at Lvl 12, you’ll replace Seimen-Kongou with Airgetlam early on. He has Paralama and Dormina to inflict Paralyze and Sleep, and uses Magna and Mamagnara. Unfortunately, he has four weaknesses but he can carry you for a while. 

3. Brahma

In Hinduism, Brahma is part of the Trimurti and is called ‘The Creator’, along with Vishnu the Preserver and Shiva the Destroyer. He can be fused using any card combination that results in an Emperor and with the totem Masamune’s Eyepatch. Absorbs all Phys/Gun skills and is weak to all magic attacks. 

4. Marduk

An ancient Mesopotamian god who became the chief of gods after a civil war. He slew Tiamat, the dragon of the primordial seas and leader of the Annunaki gods, as well Kingu, her son. Marduk used Tiamat’s body to create the heavens and earth, then mixed Kingu’s blood with earth to make clay to mold the first human beings to work for the gods.

There’s an interesting lecture series on Youtube that notes how the early Bible directly references the Babylonian creation myth, and how worshipping the Christian supreme god was argubaly more appealing for people of the time. Better it be someone directly invested in the fate of His creation and humans, instead of an amoral warrior king who created humans to labour for the gods. 

Back to Marduk, his resistances are decent and he has Balzac to increase an ally’s attack and replace any other status ailments. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have any good AOE moves so slap an item on him when you fuse him.  

5. Odin

You don’t need me to explain the Allfather of the Norse pantheon. 

The opposite of Brahma, in that Odin’s weak to all physical and gun attacks and resists all magic attacks. His Dragon Whirl and Magnadyne are pretty hard-hitting attacks. 

6. Baal

“Ba’al” is an epithet meaning ‘Master/Lord’. and has been used to refer to many gods throughout the Middle East in ancient times. In mainline SMT, he is referred to as the “chief Semitic god who governs over fertility. He is the god of Canaan and brother and consort to the goddess Anat, who saved him from Mot”, which would make this Baal the Canaanite god Hadad, god of storms and rains. 

Baal resists and absorbs some magic attacks while being weak to Elec, Blast, Nuke and Gry. Uses Ice and Bless attacks. Statwise, he’s better than Odin, but I didn’t see any reason to take the time to rank him up for Bufudyne.

7. Amen Ra

Boy with Earring’s Ultimate Persona, a merger between the bigwig gods Amun and Ra. He held the position of transcendental, self-created creator deity and he was the champion of the poor or troubled, being central to personal piety.

You need this bad boy (and some grinding for max rank) if you want to have a good time against the final boss. I’m surprised how there seems to be no official art of him, if you never played the game and only read the manga, you’d be forgiven for mistaking Vishnu to be Boy with Earring’s Ultimate. 

8. Vishnu

F you and your fusion requirements. 

I like how his Marin Karin (Charm) animation is to give a big grin at the enemy. It’s the upper right sprite in this sheet. His other attacks have him whack opponents with a gada, an Indian blunt mace.

[warsofasoiaf]

So the seat of House Glover, Deepwood Motte was the royal seat of the Glovers when they were kings in the Age of Heroes. So it has been around for thousands of years. My questions Is this, why haven’t they upgraded the castle in all that time? Replacing the wood with stone and so forth? It is one seat of one of the primary banner men of house Stark and close to the stony shore, which is often a target of iron men, one would think they would try to make their castle as strong as possible.

I don't think that Deepwood Motte itself has been exactly as it was in the Age of Petty Kings before Stark consolidation. In an earlier era, Deepwood Motte may have been a mead hall with wooden palisades, a hill fort, or something like the Gaulic structures Caesar encountered during the Gallic Wars, and the euphemism "it's the royal seat of the Glovers when they were kings" is more figurative than literal - they have always had a structure there to enforce their laws on that site and it's that idea that has been the seat of the Glovers. Chances are good that Deepwood Motte has been rebuilt, expanded, etc. over the years, strictly out of a need for maintenance if nothing else.

As to why it hasn't been built out of stone, that's a good question. Probably it's a combination of environmental factors (lots of available wood versus scarce stone that would be incredibly expensive to move and ship) and lack of need (the ironborn don't exactly typically use siege engines so no need for a stone castle if a wooden keep will do).

Thanks for the question, Anon.

SomethingLikeALawyer, Hand of the King

[woodsteingirl]

also whats the podcasts and books u rec this might become a shared interest

okay i’ll answer this one first cause the next one might be pretty long so <3 for podcasts obvs history of rome by mike duncan!!!! that was the thing that really got me into it. if you don’t want ti start from episode one, id say the punic wars are an okay intro point as well. i haven’t listened to a lot of other ones since that one is so long and covers like. everything, but i think the partial historians is pretty good? you have to search a little bit to find what you’re looking for but whatever!

for books im going to divide it into secondary and primary sources. for secondary i will always recommend mike duncan’s the storm before the storm. it’s so fun and it retains his silly sense of humor and is written in language you don’t have to be a classicist to understand. then id say rubicon by tom holland, also about the same time period but like. whatever. it goes a little bit more into the later late republic, and the language is a bit harder to understand. i haven’t started reading it but i think Cicero, the life and times, also could be interesting <3

for primary sources i say start small work your way up. chances are you’ll find a niche to fall into era wise, so find some sources from that time and read them in chunks. id also say suetonius is a good place to start, the lives make a good way to section it off and avoid reading about things you don’t care about. then maybe try plutarch or a different author. for poetry um! catullus is your best bet for an introduction. some of them are. eh. but it’s an intro i guess!! i think a lot of this depends on like specifics of what time in the empire or what specific part of the culture you’re into as well. im not going to rec you caesar’s gaulic wars if you’re into philosophy or cicero’s phillipics if all you really care about is the late empire. <33333