#like i am not religious but the architecture and Art that was found in those buildings?

[lettertoanoldpoet]

hate to say it but the christians knew what they were doing with the baroque churches

[splishsplashyouropinionistrash]

tell me about the catholic saints and flower language you're obsessed with

!!!!! i'm so glad you asked !!!!

okay so my absolute all-time favorite saint is saint dymphna of ireland. she's the patron saint of the mentally ill, survivors of incest, and also (sometimes) survivors of both sexual and domestic abuse. when she was fourteen, her mother died and her father, "in his grief" (not an excuse -_-) decided that he wanted to marry her instead. dymphna fled to modern-day belgium to the town of geel and ended up founding one of the first mental hospitals. her father tracked her down only a year later and killed her. she was canonized only a few years after her death, and people call her "the lily of eire". she was literally younger than I am, but shes credited with helping hundreds of thousands of people. people came from all over Belgium to visit her hospital. it's insane.

saint olga of kiev is another really fascinating one. so before she did any of what got her canonized (trying to spread christianity to kievan rus in modern day russia) she was this super badass vengeful icon. when her husband igor was murdered by drevlians, she hunted down and killed all of those involved (like the queen she is). she was also a big fan of arson. like, a huge fan. me too, girl. when she was baptised, she took on the anglican name helena (or elena, we're unsure). she's the patron saint of widows and converts, but many have also dubbed her "patron saint of vengeance" which is just so badass.

also there's like ten different patron saints of rats which is just.... so wild.

fun facts, there's a catholic chapel just off of broadway, st. malachy's, that's known as the actors chapel. they offer a saturday mass in between the afternoon and matinee performances along with sunday services, so lots of religious actors end up there. they have a shrine to some of the saints related to the performing arts at the back of the chapel. i was in NYC this spring, and i was lucky enough to be able to sit through a saturday mass there before I went to see some like it hot (if you haven't seen it, you should. SO. GOOD). the chapel is absolutely stunning. i also got to go to (and sing in!!!) st. john the divine's cathedral (the largest cathedral in the US, it was INSANE) and st. patricks cathedral. cathedrals are so stunning, the architecture is absolutely insane and i go feral just thinking about it. every day i long to go back, it was that gorgeous (I'm not even religious, but religious architecture just DESTROYS me. huge fan). but i digress.

some pictures of st. john's tho!!!

sorry if they're a little blurry, i was too excited to hold still.

okay but flowers!!! i love flower language, i think it's so fascinating. i actually got into because of this book I read, the grace year by kim liggit (must-read btw, so beautiful)

okay but anyway, my absolute favorite flower is the aster, specifically blue china asters (I liked them so much I named myself after them) they look like this:

they're gorgeous. anyways

so blue asters are a symbol of trustworthiness and wisdom, and china asters symbolize love and faith. asters are a breed of daisies, which symbolize innocence, new beginnings, and joy. daisies are also commonly used in herbal medicine, specifically medicine related to mental wellness. there's layers to the meaning, which is one of the things i love so much about it

i just !!! love things !!!! and nobody irl wants to listen to me rant about this shit !!!! bless you remi !!!

[ultrajustjo]

Week 4: Visio divina

Saint Mary Magdalen Holding a Crucifix/The Flagellation banner

This week, I step away from architecture, but not from function: this 15th-century banner was used for processions, hidden from view, defaced (you'll see what I did there, in just a moment), and resurrected (ooohhhh, bad).

Public domain photo of Spinello's Saint Mary Magdalen Holding a Crucifix/(reverse) The Flagellation housed in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Visio divina

Welcome, welcome. It's a rainy day, again, here in New York, and my SAD is chomping at the bit, but I'm working hard to keep it tamped down. So far, I'm holding it at bay. That lousy rain, however, washed out my nature walk at Art Omi for both Saturday and today (Wednesday). I'm not really an outdoor girl during a rainstorm, so I went to a funeral today, instead.

The sun will surely shine before my summer project here ends, and I will share about the outdoor sculptures at Art Omi later. Today, we are back in NYC with Renaissance art. Here's the shot I took on June 4, 2023:

You see now why I used the public domain shot. The banner was larger than life, but difficult to photograph.

You can read about its provenance here:

The verses

Today's reading is Matthew 7: 15-20. When I first read it today, my thoughts centered on the fruit trees. After examining the banner again, looking solely at the side with Mary Magdalene, my thoughts return to those who are dressed as sheep. I ponder how dressing applied to those in the portrait, and how it applies to us today.

(and Jesus said,)

15 "Take care. There are prophets who are not true. They come to you dressed like sheep, but inside they are like wolves, bad animals that kill sheep.

16 You will know them by the things they do. People do not pick fruit like grapes from thistles. They do not pick fruit like figs from thorn trees.

17 In the same way, every good tree has good fruit. But a bad tree has bad fruit.

18 A good tree cannot have bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot have good fruit.

19 Every tree that does not have good fruit is cut down and thrown into a fire.

20 So you will know them by the things they do, good or bad fruit."

The meditation

My contemplation of this piece was informed by the piece's background description found on the Met's website, linked above. The brothers of the religious fraternity that commissioned the banner are shown kneeling at Mary's feet wearing robes and hoods. Such clothing has negative and harsh social and religious undertones in American society, but the fraternity used the anonymity of hoods to perform charitable acts following the injunction by Christ to do good works without seeking praise. (Matt. 6) Keep these contrasts in mind as you examine the art and scriptures, and pray.

I am not looking at the reverse side of the banner this week, but it is included below. The face of Jesus was cut out and removed more than a century ago, and the damaged side hidden beneath a different tapestry. More on that story is included at the link to the banner's provenance. The hooded brothers on Mary's side of the banner wear robes open to the back to flagellate themselves. The musical angels reflect the fraternity's sung hymns in worship, as well as a folk tale about Mary Magdalene.

With this background in mind, what are you drawn to in this banner? Its colors? It's subjects? What details are you curious about? Did Spinello Aretino do a good job reflecting the story of Mary and the story of the fraternity?

What words in the scripture stood out to you? Where does your eye rest when you view the text? How do you feel about them -- calm, confused, angry, inspired, irritated?

Time now to sit for a moment in silence and let God continue to dwell with you.

[itsjustanne]

Plague Art

TW: This post talks about plague, disease, and death. There is also mention of the current COVID-19 pandemic. There are pictures of "plague art" through the entire post. Please take care of yourself and do what's best for you!

This is all my own opinion, basically this is an outtake from my senior thesis paper, I will link sources at the bottom of the post!

What is “plague art”?

The term “plague art” refers to art created during times of plague and dealing specifically with macabre themes and topics surrounding the plague.There are many ways of finding meaning and themes in plague art. One of the more popular forms of plague art falls into a category called Danse Macabre. Popularized in medieval France the term translates to “dance of death”. Early interactions with this concept involved scenes and dialogues being brought to life by actors; these scenes were usually comprised of conversations between Death and various members of society. The earliest known example of this concept in physical art is found on an architectural mural in the Holy Innocents Church in Paris, dating to about 1424.(** note that this church was demolished in the 1700s as overflowing cemeteries and crypts was resulting in the spread of disease). Danse Macabre works following this mural all tended to follow the same theme and have the same dancing motif. 

These works showed a personification of Death encouraging people to dance with him towards their graves. This contrast of jovial dancing and the concept of death/dying has the potential to take on multiple meanings. Perhaps it is meant to be a reassurance that regardless of who you are in society you will all be the same in the eyes of Death. Or maybe it is a reminder to live life to the fullest while you can, because you never know when Death will greet you. Adding to this secondary idea, another common motif was that of hourglasses, this was a reminder that time is always limited. This is something that can be seen in most panels from Hans Holbein the Younger’s series Dance of Death (** this is what my current senior thesis topic is on so if anyone wants to hear more about that I will be happy to elaborate).

What is plague art for?

There are many different themes that can picked out from plague art, and many different meanings that can be assigned. I am going to briefly discuss a couple different examples of plague art. First, Raphael’s painting Il Morbetto (below, right) illustrates a scene during plague time wherein those suffering illness are being treated with kindness and care. After Marcvantonio Raimondi did an engraving of this work in the early sixteenth century, there was a rise in plague art with the same theme. Raphael showed the public their potential to be kind and compassionate to those suffering. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the Catholic church began to display plague art in religious institutions and likening those who were sick to Christ. The thinking was that by making this comparison clergymen would be more willing to overcome fear of contamination in order to act in accordance with their beliefs. This shift in the imaging of public health also changed ideas about who was likely to survive an illness. For years and years prior, it was more common for higher ranking nobility to survive as they both had the means of escape and were not tied directly to the land like common folk were. This furthers the idea that the playing field was even among men when it came to Death. 

Another potential theme in Plague art is that of healing or protection. A common seventeenth century belief was that imagination had the potential to hurt or heal a person, and art is an expression of that imagination. A later example of this idea is the 1892 work by Tsukio Yoshitoshi, depicting the legendary samurai warrior Minamoto no Tametomo (above, left).  For centuries Japan suffered with outbreaks of smallpox, and so in this scene Yoshitoshi depicts the warrior standing strong and proud against the gods of smallpox. Contrasting the figures, Tametomo is bright and vibrant, dressed in red armor, while the gods are pale and colorless. This signifies the ability of the warrior, and indeed the people of Japan, being able to overcome the plague that the gods cast upon them. 

What does plague art tell us?

In my opinion plague art expresses feelings surrounding human experiences with community. While doing research on this topic I came across a couple different experts who seemed to have similar ideas that plague art acts as a warning about loss. A loss of community and even the end of the world. This is a time period (the 15th century) there was many world changing, earth shattering things that the average person had to deal with. Climate change, crop failure, the hundred years war, common pestilence, and the Black Death were all going on in the same general span of time. It would have been very hard to make it in to adulthood without having seen someone dead or dying, not to mention that the life expectancy was about 25 to 30 (give or take- and if you lived that long it was more likely that you would live into your 50s). To me these depictions of everyone being brought down to the same level speaks volumes. I am viscerally reminded of the Hamilton lyric “Death doesn’t discriminate,” and in works like Holbein the Younger’s this idea is extrapolated in the portrayal of a variety of people from different social classes. (Below, left to right "Death and the Blind Man", "Death and the Child", "Death and the Emperor".)

Plague art speaks to the concern that we have, or should have, for members of our community. Looking to our contemporary world and the recent (and ongoing) COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen a loss of that sense of community in the disregard for disabled people, poor people, front-line workers, etc. But we have also seen an uptick people speaking up about these issues. We have seen people provide resources for these marginalized people, we have seen people reaching out and continuing to form and care for these communities and I think that these feelings can be found and examined in plague art all the way through to today. 

Sources - the first three are the sources that I primarily looked at for this section of my paper; the two books I linked are ones that I got just recently but that deal with the Black Death specifically. I have been looking most specifically at Hans Holbein the Younger’s work specifically and so I have many more sources regarding historical context and if you’d like to any of those sources I will be happy to share them!

Life expectancy

Hans Holbein the Younger - his images

Danse Macabre

The World the Plague Made by James Belich

The Great Mortality by John Kelly

[mishinashen]

Self-Portrait by Alphonse Mucha, 1899

Alfons Maria Mucha (Czech: 24 July 1860 – 14 July 1939), known internationally as Alphonse Mucha, was a Czech painter, illustrator, and graphic artist, living in Paris during the Art Nouveau period, best known for his distinctly stylized and decorative theatrical posters, particularly those of Sarah Bernhardt. He produced illustrations, advertisements, decorative panels, and designs, which became among the best-known images of the period.

In the second part of his career, at the age of 43, he returned to his homeland of Bohemia-Moravia region in Austria and devoted himself to painting a series of twenty monumental canvases known as The Slav Epic, depicting the history of all the Slavic peoples of the world, which he painted between 1912 and 1926. In 1928, on the 10th anniversary of the independence of Czechoslovakia, he presented the series to the Czech nation. He considered it his most important work. It is now on display in Prague.

Alphonse Mucha was born on 24 July 1860 in the small town of Ivančice in southern Moravia, then a province of the Austrian Empire (currently a region of the Czech Republic). His family had a very modest income; his father Ondřej was a court usher, and his mother Amálie was a miller's daughter. Ondřej had six children, all with names starting with A. Alphonse was his first child with Amálie, followed by Anna and Anděla.

Alphonse showed an early talent for drawing; a local merchant impressed by his work provided him with paper for free, though it was considered a luxury. In the preschool period, he drew exclusively with his left hand. He also had a talent for music: he was an alto singer and violin player

After completing volksschule, he wanted to continue with his studies, but his family was not able to fund them, as they were already funding the studies of his three step-siblings] His music teacher sent him to Pavel Křížkovský, choirmaster of St Thomas's Abbey in Brno, to be admitted to the choir and to have his studies funded by the monastery. Křížovský was impressed by his talent, but he was not able to admit and fund him, as he had just admitted another talented young musician, Leoš Janáček.

Křížovský sent him to a choirmaster of the Cathedral of St. Peter and Paul, who admitted him as a chorister and funded his studies at the gymnasium in Brno, where he received his secondary school education. After his voice broke, he gave up his chorister position, but played as a violinist during masses.

He became devoutly religious, and wrote later, "For me, the notions of painting, going to church, and music are so closely knit that often I cannot decide whether I like church for its music, or music for its place in the mystery which it accompanies." He grew up in an environment of intense Czech nationalism in all the arts, from music to literature and painting. He designed flyers and posters for patriotic rallies.

His singing abilities allowed him to continue his musical education at the Gymnázium Brno in the Moravian capital of Brno, but his true ambition was to become an artist. He found some employment designing theatrical scenery and other decorations. In 1878 he applied without success to the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague, but was rejected and advised to "find a different career". In 1880, at the age of 19, he traveled to Vienna, the political and cultural capital of the Empire, and found employment as an apprentice scenery painter for a company which made sets for Vienna theaters. While in Vienna, he discovered the museums, churches, palaces and especially theaters, for which he received free tickets from his employer. He also discovered Hans Makart, a very prominent academic painter, who created murals for many of the palaces and government buildings in Vienna, and was a master of portraits and historical paintings in grand format. His style turned Mucha in that artistic direction and influenced his later work. He also began experimenting with photography, which became an important tool in his later work.

To his misfortune, a terrible fire in 1881 destroyed the Ringtheater, the major client of his firm. Later in 1881, almost without funds, he took a train as far north as his money would take him. He arrived in Mikulov in southern Moravia, and began making portraits, decorative art and lettering for tombstones. His work was appreciated, and he was commissioned by Count Eduard Khuen Belasi, a local landlord and nobleman, to paint a series of murals for his residence at Emmahof Castle, and then at his ancestral home in the Tyrol, Gandegg Castle. The paintings at Emmahof were destroyed by fire in 1948, but his early versions in small format exist (now on display at the museum in Brno). He showed his skill at mythological themes, the female form, and lush vegetal decoration. Belasi, who was also an amateur painter, took Mucha on expeditions to see art in Venice, Florence and Milan, and introduced him to many artists, including the famous Bavarian romantic painter, Wilhelm Kray, who lived in Munich.

Count Belasi decided to bring Mucha to Munich for formal training, and paid his tuition fees and living expenses at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts. He moved there in September 1885. It is not clear how Mucha actually studied at the Munich Academy; there is no record of his being enrolled as a student there. However, he did become friends with a number of notable Slavic artists there, including the Czechs Karel Vítězslav Mašek and Ludek Marold and the Russian Leonid Pasternak, father of the famous poet and novelist Boris Pasternak. He founded a Czech students' club, and contributed political illustrations to nationalist publications in Prague. In 1886 he received a notable commission for a painting of the Czech patron saints Cyril and Methodius, from a group of Czech emigrants, including some of his relatives, who had founded a Roman Catholic church in the town of Pisek, North Dakota. He was very happy with the artistic environment of Munich: he wrote to friends, "Here I am in my new element, painting. I cross all sorts of currents, but without effort, and even with joy. Here, for the first time, I can find the objectives to reach which used to seem inaccessible." However, he found he could not remain forever in Munich; the Bavarian authorities imposed increasing restrictions upon foreign students and residents. Count Belasi suggested that he travel either to Rome or to Paris. With Belasi's financial support, he decided in 1887 to move to Paris.

Mucha moved to Paris in 1888 where he enrolled in the Académie Julian[18] and the following year, 1889, Académie Colarossi. The two schools taught a wide variety of different styles. His first professors at the Academie Julien were Jules Lefebvre who specialized in female nudes and allegorical paintings, and Jean-Paul Laurens, whose specialties were historical and religious paintings in a realistic and dramatic style. At the end of 1889, as he approached the age of thirty, his patron, Count Belasi, decided that Mucha had received enough education and ended his subsidies.

When he arrived in Paris, Mucha found shelter with the help of the large Slavic community. He lived in a boarding house called the Crémerie at 13 rue de la Grande Chaumière, whose owner, Charlotte Caron, was famous for sheltering struggling artists; when needed she accepted paintings or drawings in place of rent. Mucha decided to follow the path of another Czech painter he knew from Munich, Ludek Marold, who had made a successful career as an illustrator for magazines. In 1890 and 1891, he began providing illustrations for the weekly magazine La Vie populaire, which published novels in weekly segments. His illustration for a novel by Guy de Maupassant, called The Useless Beauty, was on the cover of 22 May 1890 edition. He also made illustrations for Le Petit Français Illustré, which published stories for young people in both magazine and book form. For this magazine he provided dramatic scenes of battles and other historic events, including a cover illustration of a scene from the Franco-Prussian War which was on 23 January 1892 edition.

His illustrations began to give him a regular income. He was able to buy a harmonium to continue his musical interests, and his first camera, which used glass-plate negatives. He took pictures of himself and his friends, and also regularly used it to compose his drawings. He became friends with Paul Gauguin, and shared a studio with him for a time when Gauguin returned from Tahiti in the summer of 1893. In late autumn 1894 he also became friends with the playwright August Strindberg, with whom he had a common interest in philosophy and mysticism.

His magazine illustrations led to book illustration; he was commissioned to provide illustrations for Scenes and Episodes of German History by historian Charles Seignobos. Four of his illustrations, including one depicting the death of Frederic Barbarossa, were chosen for display at the 1894 Paris Salon of Artists. He received a medal of honor, his first official recognition.

Mucha added another important client in the early 1890s; the Central Library of Fine Arts, which specialized in the publication of books about art, architecture and the decorative arts. It later launched a new magazine in 1897 called Art et Decoration, which played an early and important role in publicizing the Art Nouveau style. He continued to publish illustrations for his other clients, including illustrating a children's book of poetry by Eugène Manuel, and illustrations for a magazine of the theater arts, called La Costume au théâtre.

[theotherace]

Fic Recs: Taang

I’ve made two or three rec lists over the past few months, but I thought I’d make a proper, comprehensive one that’s easy to add to in the future. Not all of these are exclusively Taang, but they all feature the ship to some degree. I will only recommend one or two stories per author, but some profiles are definitely worth checking out further. So! Here goes.

Multi-Chapter, Complete

Whisper Into the Sky by damagectrl – Toph has two choices: Go home and get married or have the family fortune and her inheritance given to a stranger. Her problem: She wants to keep her ties to her family, but is quite content traveling with Aang. Her solution: Fight her way through suitors for her freedom. Literally. | General 

The Slow Path by Tazmainian Devil – Eight years after the fall of Ozai, Aang returns to the friends he left behind. | T

A Matter of Honor by Adridere – Almost 4 years after the war. Aang is engaged to Katara and is up to Zuko to teach him the facts of life. Yep, the bees and the birds. Crazy kings, bananas and the ultimate contest for the hand of a reluctant maiden. | M

Roommates by breeeliss – An unlikely tale of two unlikely people being forced to live together under unlikely circumstances.| Modern AU | T

Fall of the White Lotus by Boo-82 – Three years after the war Zuko is living a life of duty while Katara reluctantly travels the world with Aang. So, when General Iroh orders them to find Zuko’s mother and save his Order they seize the opportunity with both hands. It’s the beginning of an adventurous journey of discovery, but as time runs out a rising threat puts their bond to the test. | T

Half Asleep by The Crushinator – Five years after the Hundred-Year War, Fire Lord Zuko is hit with an assassin’s dart, and falls into a coma from which he cannot wake. A week passes, and his prognosis is grim. But Katara could swear she hears him in her dreams… | T

Yaaburnee by aviatordame – Avatars aren't meant to belong – that's as much as Aang can fathom. | M

Getting Lucky by roca-dos – Crazy things happen in college every day. | Modern AU | T 

All Fall Down by DJNS  – Aang copes with a tragic loss and finds renewed hope in an unexpected place. | M | Warning for Major Character Death

The Princess & the Badger-Cat by panaili – In a land never torn apart by the Hundred Year War, the sixteen-year-old Avatar Aang is trying his best to keep the balance between the four nations, including the increasingly antagonistic Fire Nation, which, despite his friendship with the Crown Prince Zuko, refuses to acknowledge him. Elsewhere, Sokka and Katara have been separated on their quest to find their missing father, and Sokka, pursued by the same bandits who kidnapped his sister, finds himself on the balcony of some rich girl’s house in Gaoling. Oh, and a sorcerer has turned him into a badger-cat. It’s just one of those days. | Teen and Up

Reborn by Jakia – Life. Death. Rebirth. This is the cycle that all spirits must abide to, even the Avatar. Aang and Toph face death and the reincarnation cycle. | T

New Girl by tiffaniesblews – After coming home early from a business trip, all Katara wanted to do was surprise her boyfriend, Jet. Imagine her surprise when she got home and Jet was in bed with another woman. Not wanting to live with her ex, and unable to live with her best friend, Suki, Katara takes her brother Sokka's offer to move into his loft with his two roommates. Aang is perky and sweet, the owner of a st. Bernard and a cat, who's often confused about his direction in life. Zuko, on the other hand, is a closed-off bartender, who takes some time opening up to others.The four could not be more different, and yet? They work out perfectly. Even if Katara's feelings for Zuko get a bit more complicated as time goes on. | Modern AU | Mature 

The Ties That Bind series by LdyKirin – An exploration of the ties that bind for good and ill. Toph and Zuko are both shaped by the family they were born to and the family they choose. Lots of found family feels. | T

What Happens In Kyoshi by BlackVelvetBand – Prince Zuko, and the GAang take a vacation on Kyoshi Island. Flirting, fighting, and embarrasment ensue as Sokka takes it upon himself to defend Katara's virtue...in a dress? A short,chaptered fic featuring Zutara, Sokki, and Taang. | T

Under the Night Sky by mycomfortblanket – Aang hears the chattering of teeth during a cold night. Was an AU that I found on tumblr that I made fit into this story. Orginal prompt: "We have to go camping together and share a sleeping bag even though we are complete strangers | General

On The Precipice by JoyDragon – They’re just best friends. Or maybe they’re teetering on the edge of being something more. | General

Oneshots, Complete

Air and Stone by Wolvenfire86 – A few Taang stories munched together. My first submissions. I hope everyone likes them. Please review, it makes me feel special. | K+

Taang Week 2020 series by teabagginses | Teen and Up & Mature

Our Little Secret by IrisPlumeria – Toph and Aang, sat next to one another dressed in their finest under paper lanterns and surrounded by copious amounts of food and friends, cringed at the disgusting noises coming out of Sokka’s nostrils as he blew his nose into Suki’s handkerchief. “I can’t believe two of my best friends are finally married!” Sokka sobbed, earning a supportive pat on the back from Suki, who didn’t flinch at the snot coming out of his nose. “I’m so happy for you guys!” Toph and Aang's family are happy for their nuptials, but will they be able to survive their wedding party without letting slip a big secret?Written for Taang Week 2020 - Tradition. | General 

All Roads Lead To Ba Sing Se by irisbleufic – "I was thinking," [Mai] said, tucking her last remaining dagger into her belt as she strode to meet him, "that it's about time I let Fire Lord Zuko know that I quit." When Kuei smiled at her, she could see the sunshine at which she once cringed."Notice that's six years overdue is better than none at all." "Indeed," said the Earth Queen, and grinned at him. | Teen And Up

Lady Fu’s Fortune Telling by Lady Cleo – Katara and Toph visit the local fortuneteller to get their fortunes told. Added a part two with Zuko and Aang. | T

The Perfect Companion by Morna – Aang seeks comfort outside of the arms of his wife, Katara. Taang, slightly lemony. | T

Box by JoeMerl – Written for Taang Week, one-shot. Toph ticks off Bumi, but Aang is willing to fight his old friend tooth and nail to get her out of trouble. Humor, light romance. | K+

2 am by shmulia – Whoever set off the fire alarm at 2 in the morning is on Katara's shit list. Even if he is hot and shirtless. | Modern AU | K

And its sequel, 11:45 – House parties aren't Katara's thing. Sokka's drunk, Suki's on a mission to set her up, and Toph is... well, Toph. But for every cloud there's a silver lining, and for Katara it comes in the form of a second chance with her neighbour... | Modern AU | T 

Treat by PsychEmpress – She felt the corners of her own lips quirk as he sheepishly rubbed the back of his neck. “Consider this my treat,” he said and Toph allowed a smile to break out. OR In which Toph is a stressed architecture student who gets a free cup of coffee from the handsome waiter after she helps his friend. Taang. Mentions of Sukka. | Modern AU | T

Sawaru by metacognitive – This love is simple. Non-Korra compliant. | K+

Newlyweds (and basically everything else) by PandaCookie – Everyone’s a bit hopeless right after they’ve been married. | K+

Rhythms by xcgirl08– For now, though, her child’s heartbeat was hers to contemplate. | K 

Tenderness by Adridere – He wanted to keep her, even though he was not supposed to. He promised her freedom, and she promised him sanity in his own household. She kept her part of the bargain, but he found a way not to keep his. | M

Holy Matrimony by Loopy – After their marriage, Zuko and Katara deal with conflicting religious beliefs, and look to the friends for advice. Between the Zutara and the religious satire, every single person who reads this should feel offended. | General

Blind Maiden’s Grace by Adara_Rose – You can learn a lot of things from a flower… | Not Rated (I’d say General) 

Etched in the Earth by Dance_Elle_Dance – She knows the feel of Aang’s footprints better than her own, and that reality scares her. | Teen and Up

No One Asks About The Scars by voleuse – Write about how you learned to curse in order not to be cursed. | General

When in Rome by dtmars – She wasn’t stupid. She knew what she was doing and what she was getting herself into. They both did. | Modern AU. | Explicit

Like Real People Do by DerAndere – The moon is full and bright when he falls out of bed, awake, asleep, inside a dream, and starts walking, driven by the feeling he does not understand, tugging on him relentlessly, and he is Aang, and he is not, and the world is cold. | General | Full Disclosure: This is my story.

Meet Me Under The Table by avatarfan16 – A story of how Toph and Aang find love, in the most unusual of places. TAANG | K+

Aftermath by Zaram'delar – In any celebration, there's always one or two people with a habit of disappearing. Taang drabbleish series. | T

I Choose Dare by for_darkness_shows_the_stars – An ode to how Aang, under the power of a mighty temptress, was forced to grow a beard. Oh, and the birth of his first child, too, he supposes. | General Audiences

Multi-Chapter, In Progress

Heartbeat by AngelicBee – Avatar Aang's soulmate probably died 100 years before, but he can't help but feel she's closer than he thinks. | Teen and Up

a mighty ocean (or a gentle kiss) by poweradequeen – no, the title doesn’t make sense but i don’t care. i couldn’t think of one so now you’re stuck with a cheesy line from two by sleeping at last.it’s a taang fine arts university au. because i said so. | Teen and Up

Neither is Love a Cage by cali-chan – Love is the freedom of flying accompanied. It is letting be without possessing. PG-13 (possibly M later on), drama/romance/angst, Zuko/Katara + Aang/Toph, post-finale but diverges before LoK canon.

Operation: Zutara (REVAMPED) by dtmars – Everyone could see that those two were in love with each other. Everyone except for them. So Toph takes the initiative and fills in for Cupid to give them a little push, while Aang just tags along for the ride. | Teen and Up

Taang One Shots by stitch1830 – A collection of short stories about Toph and Aang that I've had saved in my notes for a few months. Stories are in the ATLA/LOK universe (not canon compliant), and typically revolve around their relationship and family. | Teen and Up

[bogkeep]

hmmmmmmmmmm maybe i’ll write an Introspective Musing Post about my relationship to religion and their depiction in stories because i’ve pondering about this topic lately

so for those who are reading this and DON’T know what’s been going on...  there’s this webcomic i fell in love with some years ago, about six years actually, that depicts a post-apocalyptic fantasy/horror adventure set in the nordic countries. it had, and has still, some very uncomfortable flaws regarding racial representation, and the creator has historically not dealt very well with criticism towards it. it’s a whole Thing. my relationship with this comic has fluctuated a lot, since there are a lot of elements in it i DO love and i still feel very nostalgic about, and like idk i felt like i trust my skills in critical thinking enough to keep reading. aaand then the creator went a teensy bit off the deep end created a whole minicomic which is like... a lukewarm social media dystopia where christians are oppressed (and also everyone is a cute bunny, including our lord and saviour jesus christ). which is already tonedeaf enough considering there are religious people who DO get prosecuted for their faith, like, that’s an actual reality for a lot of people - but as far as i can tell, usually not christians. and then there’s an afterword that’s like, “anyway i got recently converted and realized i’m a disgusting human being full of sin who doesn’t deserve redemption but jesus loves me so i’ll be fine!! remember to repent for your sins xoxo” and a bunch of other stuff and IT’S KIND OF REALLY CONCERNING i have, uh, been habitually looking at the reactions to and discussions around this, maybe it’s not very self care of me but there’s a lot of overwhelming things rn and it’s fantastically distracting, yknow? like, overall this situation is fairly reminiscent of the whole jkr thing. creator of a series that is Fairly Beloved, does something hurtful, handles backlash in a weird way, a lot of people start taking distance from Beloved Series or find ways to enjoy it on their own terms, creator later reveals to have been fully radicalized and releases a whole manifesto, and any and all criticism gets framed as harassment and proving them right. of course, one of them is a super rich person with a LOT of media power and a topic that is a lot more destructive in our current zeitgeist, and the other is an independent webcomic creator, so it’s  not the same situation. just similar vibez ya feel as a result of this, i have been Thinking. and just this feels like some sort of defeat like god dammit she got me i AM thinking about the topic she wrote about!!! i should dismiss the whole thing!!! but thinking about topics is probably a good thing so hey lets go. me, i’m agnostic. i understand that this is a ‘lazy’ position to take, but it’s what works for me. i simply do not vibe with organized religion, personally. (i had the wikipedia page for ‘chaos magic’ open in a tab for several weeks, if that helps.) i was raised by atheists in a majorly atheist culture. christian atheist, i should specify. norway has been mostly and historically lutheran, and religion has usually been a private and personal thing. it turns out the teacher i had in 7th grade was mormon, but i ONLY found out because he showed up in a tv series discussing religious groups in norway later, and he was honestly one of the best teachers i have ever had - he reignited the whole class’ interest in science, math, and dungeons and dragons. it was a real “wait WHAT” moment for my teenage self. i think i was briefly converted to christianity by my friend when i was like 7, who grew up in a christian family (i visited them a couple times and always forgot they do prayers before dinner. oops!), but like, she ALSO made me believe she was the guardian of a secret magic orb that controls the entire world and if i told anybody the world would burn down in 3 seconds. i only suspected something was off when one day the Orb ran on batteries, and another day the Orb had to be plugged in to charge. in my defense i really wanted to be part of a cool fantasy plot. i had no idea how to be a christian beyond “uuuuh believe in god i guess” so it just faded away on its own. when i met this friend several years later, she was no longer christian. i think every childhood friend of mine who grew up in a christian family, was no longer christian when they grew up. most notably my closest internet friend whose family was catholic - she had several siblings, and each of them took a wildly different path, from hippie treehugger to laveyan satanist or something in that area. (i joined them for a sermon in a church when they visited my town. my phone went off during it because i had forgotten to silence it. oops!) ((i also really liked their mother’s interpretation of purgatory. she explained it as a bath, not fire. i like that.)) i have never had any personal negative experiences with christianity, despite being openly queer/gay/trans. the only time someone has directly told me i’m going to hell was some guy who saw me wearing a hoodie on norway’s constitution day. yeah i still remember that you bastard i’ve sworn to be spiteful about it till the day i die!! i’ve actually had much more insufferable interactions with the obnoxious kind of atheists - like yes yes i agree with you on a lot but that doesn’t diminish your ability to be an absolute hypocrite, it turns out? i remember going to see the movie ‘noah’ with a friend who had recently discovered reddit atheism and it was just really exhausting to discuss it with her. one of these Obnoxious Atheists is my Own Mother. which is a little strange, honestly, because she LOVES visiting churches for the Aesthetic and Architecture. we cannot go anywhere without having to stop by a pretty church to Admire and Explore. I’VE BEEN IN SO MANY CHURCHES FOR AN ATHEIST RAISED NON-CHRISTIAN. i’ve been to the vatican TWICE (i genuinely don’t even know how much of my extended family is christian. up north in the tiny village i come from, i believe my uncle is the churchkeeper, and it’s the only building in the area that did not get burnt down by the the nazis during ww2 - mostly because soldiers needed a place to sleep. still don’t know whether or not said uncle believes or not, because hey, it’s Personal) i think my biggest personal relationship to religion, and christianity specifically, has been academic. yeah, we learned a brief synopsis of world religions at school (and i remember the class used to be called ‘christianity, religion, and ethics’ and got changed to ‘religion, beliefs, and ethics’ which is cool. it was probably a big discourse but i was a teen who didnt care), but also my bachelor degree is in art history, specifically western art history because it’s a vast sprawling topic and they had to distill it as best they could SIGHS. western art history is deeply entangled with the history of the church, and i think the most i’ve ever learnt about christianity is through these classes (one of my professors wrote an article about how jesus can be interpreted as queer which i Deeply Appreciate). i also specifically tried to diversify my academic input by picking classes such as ‘depiction of muslims and jewish people in western medieval art’ and ‘art and religion’ when i was an exchange student in canada, along with 101 classes in anthropology and archaeology. because i think human diversity and culture is very cool and i want to absorb that knowledge as best as i can. i think my exchange semester in canada was the most religiously diverse space have ever been in, to be honest. now as an adult i have more christian friends again, but friends who chose it for themselves, and who practice in ways that sound good and healthy, like a place of solace and community for them. the vast majority of my friends are queer too, yknow?? i’ve known too many people who have seen these identities as fated opposites, but they aren’t, they’re just parts of who people are. it’s like... i genuinely love people having their faiths and beliefs so much. i love people finding that space where they belong and feel safe in. i love people having communities and heritages and connections. i deeply respect and admire opening up that space for faith within any other communities, like... if i’m going to listen to a podcast about scepticism and cults, i am not going to listen to it if it’s just an excuse to bash religion. i think the search for truth needs to be compassionate, always. you can acknowledge that crystals are cool and make people happy AND that multi level marketing schemes are deeply harmful and prey on people in vulnerable situaitons. YOU KNOW???? so now’s when i bring up Apocalypse Comic again. one of the things i really did like about it was, ironically, how it handled religion. in its setting, people have returned to old gods, and their magic drew power from their religion. characters from different regions had different beliefs and sources. in the first arc, they meet the spirit of a lutheran pastor, who ends up helping them with her powers. it was treated as, in the creators own words, ‘just another mythology’. and honestly? i love that. it was one of the nicest depictions i’ve seen of christianity in fiction, and as something that could coexist with other faiths. I Vibe With That. and then, uh, then... bunny dystopia comic. it just... it just straight up tells you christianity is literally the only way to..?? be a good person??? i guess?? i’m still kind of struggling to parse what exactly it wanted to say. the evil social media overlord bird tells you the bible makes you a DANGEROUS FREETHINKER, but the comic also treats rewriting the bible or finding your own way to faith as something,, Bad. The Bible Must Remain Unsullied. Never Criticize The Bible. also, doing good things just for social media clout is bad and selfish. you should do good things so you don’t burn in hell instead. is that the message? it reads a lot like the comic creator already had the idea for the comic, but only got the urge to make it after she was converted and needed to spread the good word. you do you i guess!! i understand that she’s new to this and probably Going Through Something, and this is just a step on her journey. but the absolute self-loathing she described in her afterword... it does not sound good. i’m just some agnostic kid so what do i know, but i do not think that kind of self-flagellating is a kind faith to have for yourself. i might not ever have been properly religious, but you know what i AM familiar with? a brain wired for ocd and intrusive thoughts. for a lot of my life i’ve struggled with my own kind of purity complex. i’ve had this really strange sensitivity for things that felt ‘tainted’. i’ve experienced having to remove more and more words from my vocabulary because they were Bad and i did not want to sully my sentences. it stacked, too - if a word turned out to be an euphemism for something, i could never feel comfortable saying it again. i still struggle a bit with these things, but i have confronted these things within myself. i’ve had to make myself comfortable with imperfection and ‘tainted’ things and accept that these are just, arbitrary categories my mind made up. maybe that’s the reason i can’t do organized religion even if i found one that fit for me - just like diets can trigger disordered eating, i think it would carve some bad brainpaths for me. so yeah i’m worried i guess! i’m worried when people think it’s so good that she finally found the correct faith even if it’s causing all this self-hate. is there really not a better way? or are they just trusting she’ll find it? and yeah it’s none of my concern, it’s like, i worry for jkr too but i do not want her within miles of my trans self thANKS. so like, i DO enjoy media that explores faith and what it means for you. my favourite band is the oh hellos, which DOES draw on faith and the songwriter’s experience with it. because of my religious iliteracy most of it has flown over my head for years and i’m like “oh hey this is gay” and then only later realize it was about god all along Probably. i like what they’ve done with the place. also, stormlight archive - i had NO idea sanderson was mormon, the way he writes his characters, many of whom actively discuss religion and their relationship to it. i love that about the books, honestly. Media That Explores Religion In A Complex And Compassionate Way... we like that i’ve been thinking about my own stories too, and how i might want to explore faith in them. most of my settings are based on magic and it’s like, what role does religion have in a world where gods are real and makes u magic. in sparrow spellcaster’s story, xe creates? summons? an old god - brings them to life out of the idea of them. it’s a story about hubris, mostly. then there’s iphimery, the story where i am actively fleshing out a pantheon. there’s no doubt the gods are real in the fantasy version of iphimery, they are the source of magic and sustain themselves on slivers of humanity in exchange. but in the modern version, where they are mostly forgotten? that’s some room for me to explore, i think. especially the character of timian, who comes from a smaller town and moves to a large and diverse city. in the fantasy story, the guardian deity chooses his sister as a vessel. in the modern setting, that does not happen, and i don’t yet know what does, but i really want timian to be someone who struggles with his identity - his faith, his sexuality, the expectations cast upon him by his hometown... i’m sure it’s a cliché story retold through a million gay characters but i want to do it too okay. i want to see him carve out his own way of existing within the world because i care him and want to see him thrive!!! alrighty i THINK that’s all i wanted to write. thanks if you read all of this, and if you didn’t that’s super cool have a nice day !

[dialoguelostloop]

remember when my hand slipped and i accidentally a bunch of hollow knight gijinkas? the hand... did not stop from keep slipping, suffice to say lol. i think i’m done now though.

part one (ghost, hornet, the dreamers, and quirrel) can be found here. notes on these folks will be under a readmore!

please read my faq page! (tl;dr version: dont use my art for icons/graphics/whatever without getting my permission beforehand, please use neutral pronouns for hollow and any other vessels in any tags/commentary, dont tag as kin/me/whatever pls)

HOLLOW - as i mentioned under ghost’s gijinka description, i think proximity to void & pale being energy is what causes vessel growth. when tpk figured this out he, like, supercharged hollow with both so that they’d be fully grown as quickly as possible. this is how they wound up 6′7″ at all of 12, which just gave them fragile joints and height dysphoria as severe as ghost’s. they went into the black egg with the same bob haircut and it grew out badly while they were in there. they’re not totally blind in their right eye, but their vision in it’s pretty bad and they’ve lost some red/green definition too. their prosthetic arm works through soul so they can take it off whenever they want, which is good, because it’s not very comfortable.

GRIMM (and grimmchild) - from what i’ve seen most grimm gijinkas lean into the circus master/dracula side, so i went for the clown/catboy angle instead lol. yes that’s greasepaint. i was going for “almost sexy, but unfortunately still a weird clown” but am informed by friends that i overshot and he wound up hot anyway. as for grimmchild, i really just wanted them to be a kid in a kigurumi for each in-game charm level lol. they start out looking 3 but grow a year with each ritual stage completed, so lv4 grimmchild is 6. whether grimm is cis or trans/perisex or intersex depends on what the previous grimmchild was, so he’s used to his anatomy changing with each reincarnation. he never dresses any differently either.

WHITE LADY - your weird alien mom who’s the face of Horny On Main... this is her precanon outfit, her midcanon one is gray and more covering lol. aside from the crown there’s just a lot of white palace foliage in her hair in general. her hair should always be drawn trailing off the edges of the canvas, like ultimate madoka.

RADIANCE - before anyone asks, tpk is obviously what happened to her legs. her prostheses are even more Cool But Uncomfortable than hollow’s (she literally has to float, you cannot walk on those toothpick feet) so her chair is very necessary for when she gets tired. yes the dreamshields on the big wheels actually function magically; its cushions are the same sort of cushion in seer’s room. her clothing patterns come from dream realm spirographs, from the normal and absolute versions of her canon halo, and the architecture found at the crater’s crown. also her hair just Does That naturally. her tears being the same color as her eyes/the infection is a little on the nose but it bears emphasis, so lmao

LACE - i wasn’t gonna do any silksong characters but... She... i poured as much Adorable Bastard Energy into her design as i could!!! i was really torn whether to adapt her canon design’s hat into a pink diamond hair type white afro or just a hat over cornrows or s/t. i went with Fluffy, but if we ever see lace without her hat in canon i guess i’ll retroactively make her fro into a wig so i can have both worlds

SEER - everyone knows i cannot turn down the option to give a character sky-patterned clothing, so seer’s cloak is the sky of the moths’ dream. the gold spirographs on her arms and face are religious body paint that only dream masters/dream nail teachers are allowed to wear; the wisteria pattern on her face (obv taken from the charms in her room/in the dream realm) is scarification.

MARMU - did you know that on real puss moth caterpillars the brown thing in the middle of their faces is their actual face, and what looks like a face and mouth around it is just camouflage to scare predators away? so obviously i had to put marmu in a big cloak that looks like her canon design as a recursive joke. she’s a lighter brown than the other moth characters because i have way more marmu sadstuck headcanons than anyone ever wanted, including me.

UNN - just wants to go back to sleep. she’s the tallest of the higher beings, probably pushing 8 feet. aside from her size her canon design is pretty unassuming so i just gave her Clothes Comfortable To Sleep In. the clasp on her cardigan is the shape of unn charm ofc.

BRETTA - i have found the new home of 90s antenna ahoge. it is a design choice made for bug gijinkas.

CLOTH - i could only picture her as a more subdued, brown-eyed/slightly lighter-skinned gideon nav. my apologies to taz.

MYLA - lost that front tooth in her line of work. mining is very dangerous. her hairstyle and freckles are just because i think both are cute lol

[rayshippouuchiha]

The tale of how I finally learned The Lemon Poker Face ™

The whole thing started with a field trip. You see, my high school (or polish equivalent of one, I guess), and a lot of schools in the region, organise a field trip for people in their graduate year. But! This is not simply a field trip, oh no! This shit is a pilgrimage. They sent about 200 to 300 eighteen year-olds in a bunch of buses to, arguably, the most famous and holiest churches in Poland, to Częstochowa, so teens pray and beg God to pass their Matura exams (like, SATs in USA, I guess), the exams we are all threatened with through our whole education. 

Sounds a bit weird to some people, I guess, but it’s a tradition at this point. Everybody goes. It’s a cheap trip and a day off school, and most people don’t even go and pray. So, despite being at that point officially a Raging Atheist ™  aka declining to go to the catholic classes with everybody else (those are semi mandatory in Poland, if you don’t know? one doesn’t have to go to a catholic class per se, but those are the default in most of the country, and if you don’t go, you have to either prove you get the education in your religious community or attend ethic classes instead, but in small towns they never get enough students to actually organise does, so you end up doing nothing), I went to the “pilgrimage”. 

I, thankfully, managed to sleep through the ride, because motion sickness is a bitch and I hate busses, until we finally arrived in Jasna Góra, Częstochowa, a very important monastery dedicated to Virgin Mary and a place that played its role in history of Poland a few times and all of our teachers are like 

‘You lot are of age now, you can roam around for, like 6 hours on your own. Remember to eat and hydrate and have fun praying!’ 

and promptly left 200-300 teen unsupervised to go pray (the catechists) and do gossip in some nearby cafe (all the other teachers). So, most my classmates ended up going to the nearby mall, to watch some movie, after looking around the church for a minute or two. 

But not me. Oh no, I am a Museums!!!!!!! Bitch through and through, everybody, and my six sense was going haywire, all excited by the historical sites around. And it so just happened, that I freshly downloaded some nice new podfics on my phone, so I skipped the church itself for a bit, put my headphones on, and went on a museum hunt. I found 4 museums around, all happy with myself. I watched a nice art exhibition, learned about mining in the region and I freaking saw Maria Curie-Skłodowska’s rosary! I was high on History! and Architecture! and good italian I found nearby, when I decided to finally go and check out the church itself and maybe get the glimpse of Our Lady of Częstochowa /Black Madonna of Częstochowa, Poland’s holiest painting. So I put on “SHIELD Has paperwork for Everything” by scifigrl47, absolutely not knowing what’s in there beyond Phil/Clint pairing. 

It was a mistake

I spent around an hour milling around listening happily to high grade Clint!Angst and admiring gorgeous architecture of the monastery. And when I finally managed to get to the famous painting’s room, it began. 

The smut scene. 

And here I have to say, at that point I had tried reading smut for years in public. And yet, I still went all red and weird on the face and giggling when I did so. But this, this was not a normal public space, no. This was one of the holiest places in my country. And with that come The Religious Grannies ™. And I’m pretty sure you know those are vicious. They’ll eat you alive if you won’t give them your sit in public transport and make you feel small and unworthy for wearing a crop top. 

If I were to giggle and go all red right in front of Our Lady of Częstochowa, surrounded by The Religious Grannies ™ they would smother me with their mohair berets to death for my unforgivable crime. 

My whole life flashed in front of my eyes. It was too short to die yet. 

So I took a long breath. 

And for the first time in my life, from sheer self preservation, I kept a poker face, while in the fic, Clint and Phil went at it like rabbits. 

So I stood there, frozen with a perfect poker face, in front of the holiest painting in my country, in the middle of a catholic church, listening to parakas smooth voice gently narrating a gay porn scene right into my ear. 

And, on some very petty level of my soul, it was glorious.

[solarsmith49]

First Entry

So I figured I should have a preface/background post before I jump into sharing my writing lol, be warned this is kinda sappy but necessary haha.  I’m going to focus on writing for Creatus Annus; I got back into watching Mark’s channel during the initial March lockdowns after being away for a couple years, and from there into Ethan’s channel and Unus Annus.  I relate so much to Ethan in the brutally honest video talking about how he’s felt aimless and drifting the last few years, because that’s exactly how I felt for a long time- I started 2020 unemployed, no money, no direction, with seemingly no passion or drive to really get out and /live/ instead of just existing.  In April I had a breakdown, and I realized I had to get myself and my life together while I still could because it really did seem like the world was burning down (thanks covid!) and if I didn’t do it now then there wouldn’t be another chance.  I was able to mentally get myself together, and I did find another job in May (which has been a godsend).  And at about the same time as I got hired, I found Mark’s vlog talking about his surgeries and the post-op pain medicine screwup that almost killed him.   I closed my laptop and cried after that, because it was exactly what I needed to hear, when I needed to hear it, by the right person I needed to hear it from.  Because I realized it described me perfectly, not acting on my potential and (even worse) not feeling the /need/ to do so.  So I took a long look at myself, and this essay below is the first thing I wrote after watching the video, exploring my complete love of space and /why/ it drives me in the way it does.  I think it fits the whole message of Unus Annus, and what we’re trying to do here with Creatus Annus, trying to give our own answers to why our lives and our art matters.  Space colors all of my poems (as you’ll see later haha), as well as the creative tension I have from my religious and spiritual background (I was raised Catholic, and still am to a degree, but my personal beliefs range all over the place and the relationship and dialogue I have with God/the Divine and what it means to Create Things is a major theme with space).  So, here’s my first entry for the project; I’m going to write my general ideas for specifically what I want to do in the ideas thread later, but enjoy the essay - I think you guys will like it.

Even until just a few days ago, I didn’t think I had any life passions, or at least, any passions that mattered.  I have hobbies, sure - gaming, crafting, reading, general learning - but I never thought much of them because I didn’t see how I could use them or even if I should bother trying to make anything of them.  Certainly I didn’t think I had any interest that moved me enough to devote a life’s pursuit ot it - but that was another self life, perhaps the greatest, one born from a mix of complacency, lack of faith in myself, and a fear of really facing what truly honestly drives me and the action that that would demand.  The change that that would demand.  Because I do have a passion, and I love it in a general sense, learning about it and following it casually.  But it's also something I turn to in dark hours, something that resparks me when I’m tired, that keeps me going and holds my faith and sustains me when everything else fails - family, friends, my job prospects, failing health, chaos in the larger world, evil in the larger world, even when my belief in the Church burns down and God as seen through the “Catholic” lens seems distant and irrelevant.  Something that I adore with every fiber of my being and in the core of my very soul.  That something is space: the stars and galaxies and their natural functions and processes, but also in particular the space program and what it says about human nature and our relation to the wider universe and ultimately to God himself.

I believe the human endeavour to get to space and the various space programs throughout the world showcase the pinnacle of what our species can do, the best of humanity in terms of technology and cooperation and curiosity, and one of the most fundamental drives we have as humans - the drive to be remembered.  Every single human being, from the greatest to the worst of us, is the end product of 13.6 billion years of cosmic cycles, stars being formed, exploding, sending out dust that forms new stars.  Every single atom and primal element in our bodies, our carbon, iron, calcium, magnesium, everything was forged in the nuclear fusion reactor in the core of a star, untold eons ago and untold millions of lightyears away.  Probably more than once as the dust clouds combine, are forged, and then scattered by the shockwaves of supernovas across time and space.  Over and over and over again, until 4.6 billion years ago when our Sun grew from dust and the planets grew from the leftovers.  And the Earth - the Earth! - undergoing the same process in microcosm, plates shifting and rock melting and gas expanding and water sifting until the Earth was made solid, and then!  In the process, as a by-product, a side effect!  The right combination of star forged elements and electricity and chemical reactions was struck and gave the collections of dust atoms Life and Breath!  Living, self sustaining action on its own accord, independent of outside forces, movement greater than the stars because it happens on its own!  And THEN - a more focused microcosm of the star forge, as 4.5 billion years of evolution refine Life, uncounted species live and die and refine their genes and physical makeup and brain processes and living interactions with the inert world around them; the decay of their bodies feeding plants which feed animals which lets them reproduce and keep the cycle going, echoing the ancient and unaware supernovas, until at last! 100,000 years ago the human species was fully evolved, and, miraculously, became self aware.

Think about that for a minute.  As wonderful as Life is, we could have been just another species of animal, but for the greatest innovation and combination of stardust the universe has ever seen.  We were cavemen, we knew next to nothing about the stars or the wide earth or about our potential, but for the first time Life had gained the capacity to know.  For the first time in 13.6 billion years, dust atoms had gained the capability to learn their origins and how they were made and ultimately to define why they were made.  So, what is almost the very first thing we do with this capacity of thought as an infant species, newly self aware?  We make art.  We make, preserved by some quirk of fate in a French cave, handprints on a rock wall.  We - living stardust - take inert ochre and pigment and stamp an outline on the wall, and those outlines survive intact for 50,000 years.  In this scribbling of an infant species we can already recognize the drive still present in ourselves - the need to say “we were here once, and our existence mattered”.  Humanity for the first time, living relics of ancient stars, giving voice for the first time to those stars, saying in art and words what stars declared in the mute atoms and elements and light they left behind: “we existed once, and that existence mattered.”

Humanity is the universe made self aware.  And just as galaxies are made of millions of individual stars, so too do we as individuals make up Humanity as a collective.  Every single one of us is the universe learning about and defining itself.  And the impulse behind our earliest achievements of cave art is present in everything throughout our history, our collective achievements, our art, our architecture, literature, science, theology, our empires, our struggles, our failures, our compassion for each other.  It's present in all of us as individuals, for which of us doesn’t want our life, our memory to be remembered when we are gone?  We as a species are capable of such great things, great destruction and great good.  And throughout our entire history as a species, we’ve never stopped looking up at the moon and the stars, admiring them, fascinated by them, studying them, unaware at times of our origin among them but always drawn to their light, their unspoken promise.  Until finally in the 20th century, the culmination of thousands of years of research and science and engineering, the best efforts of the best we humans have to offer - we unlock the sky we’ve dreamed of for so long and we build machines to take us to the Moon.  We build the Saturn V, the Apollo capsules, we push ourselves from the cradle and beyond our ancient limits and we - fragile, living mortals - walk upon the Moon itself.  We leave our handprints, after all this time, in the purest form of star dust we will likely ever physically encounter, the living imprinting its shape into the inert, like a brother finally coming home.

But we don’t stop there.  We build satellites and the Hubble Telescope, the International Space Station and satellites and rovers and probes to pave the way for us, our reunion with the stars.  We take more stardust and primal elements and fashion them in our image, to go to other worlds and scout the cosmos for us.  We name them after the best of ourselves: Pioneer, Perseverance, Curiosity, Sojourner, Spirit, that they may represent us well to the cosmos and whatever it may contain.  We build Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, currently the furthest of our creations from the Earth in the cold vastness of interstellar space, and in Voyager 2 we place the Golden Record.  A disk of pure gold upon which we recorded the sounds and voice of Earth - water running, leaves falling in the wind, ocean waves, volcanoes bursting, birds singing, and us - human voices, human laughter, human crying, greetings in every language, our music, a baby crying, a heart beating.  We took inert stardust and imprinted ourselves, living dust, upon it, and sent it out into interstellar space to be our witness and our message.  That we, the universe living and self ware, see the stars we came from and that we understand; we say through the pinnacle of our innovation and with the same depth of expression as those first handprints, “We, the living dust, give this record back to you and for ourselves, that we existed once, and that it mattered.”  We sent it as a testimony, as an offering, as a prayer, and as a vow: that we aren’t done yet, that as long as Humanity lives we will never be done, and if we do eventually end that there will have been a time, if only briefly, that the stars knew and understood themselves, and that despite or even because of its brevity, it will have mattered.

[books-and-glitter]

You literally asked for this directly

🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻🌻

Should be 69 of those 😚

I hate you so much. You monster. I only expressed that I was surprised and you did this to me. I didn't ask for this.

Nonetheless....

🌻 - there is a bug in the kitchen and I am now too scared to go in there.

🌻 - Harper is trying to protect me but she is frankly useless.

🌻 - it's not like a big bug but it is definitely not small.

🌻 - I saw moth put a flower before each of these and thought it was neat. So I am now doing it.

🌻 - the person who sent me this sends a "Daily dose of disappointment" in a group chat we are in. Except it is not daily. It's whenever she has one.

🌻 - Kool Aid originated in Nebraska.

🌻 - The Omaha zoo has both the largest indoor desert as well as the largest indoor rainforest. The rainforest is my favorite.

🌻 - there is a rope bridge in there though that used to scare me a lot.

🌻 - nebraska also apparently originated the reuben sandwich which is gross.

🌻 - the Ogalala aquifer is the largest underground water supply in the US.

🌻 - the 911 system originated in Lincoln so that's kinda cool.

🌻 - the largest Woolly Mammath fossil is from Nebraska. If I remember correctly it's the one in Morrill Hall. His name is Archie and I will die for him.

🌻 - speaking of Archie, he was found on a farm by chickens. The farmer got confused at why the chickens were pecking at something, went to look, found big bones and called an archeologist.

🌻 - okay the bug is still a problem but I now have you to save me when it shows it's little fucking face again.

🌻 - the word Nebraska comes from the Oto word meaning flat water.

🌻 - hell yeah we going back to nebraska facts. Next is that the goldrod is the state flower. Flower is kinda pretty but the paper color by the same name is stupid.

🌻 - blue agate is the state gem and I vibe with that. Agate is cool as fuck.

🌻 - UNL's weight room is supposedly the largest in the country at 3/4ths of an acre (32.6k sqft)

🌻 - the Nebraska capitol had a 9.8 million budget, came in under budget, was paid for by the time it finished construction.

🌻 - I think the capitol looks weird but I am also desensitized to it but objectively it is really cool.

🌻 - cliff notes was founded in Nebraska.

🌻 - unfortunately when the UNL stadium is seated to capacity it technically becomes the 3rd most populated place in the state..... It's also really loud.... And I hate it.

🌻 - Arbor day comes from Nebraska. Which is cool because trees.

🌻 - the Scotts Bluff National Museum has a section of the oregon trail wagon roadbed that you can hike. The museum itself is also kinda cool so I suggest it if you ever are in the area.

🌻 - I wish to kill you, kathryn.

🌻 - more Nebraska facts I hear you cry! No problem! Nebraska has Car Henge! So if you ever want to get the vibe of Stonehenge except stupid and made of antique cars in a field in the middle of fucking nowhere you're in luck.

🌻 - Runzas are the official state food and I hate it. Runza makes decent chicken strips but Runzas are gross. Yes handover that cabbage meat bread 🤢

🌻 - Nebraska has a navy apparently. I know this but I cant tell you what the fuck they do since we are like the most landlocked state in the country.

🌻 - That one president, Gerald Ford, born in Nebraska. That's kinda neat. (I know nothing else about this man or his presidency except he is the only one not nationally elected.)

🌻 - Fred Astaire, Marlon Brando, and Johnny Carson (I think, or he just went to UNL, the media arts building is named after him) are all from Nebraska.

🌻 - getting sick of nebraska facts? Suffer. Nebraska has more miles of river than any other state, which is weird because we were called the great American desert.

🌻 - apparently the Nebraska state insect is the honeybee!!! 🐝

🌻 - the Niobrara river is apparently really good for canoeing and has like 90 waterfalls.

🌻 - I am running low on nebraska facts.

🌻 - there is a park/reserve just outside Lincoln that has some bison in it. Do not fuck with bison. They will wreck your shit.

🌻 - I don't know if he is still alive but there used to be a bald eagle in the same park that only had one wing. (Actually I think he was missing half of one but still)

🌻 - the cottonwood tree is awful and on a bad year can look like a light snow if too many trees are nearby.

🌻 - the ashfall fossil beds are where you can go to see an active archeology site with the fossils of tons of animals killed by a volcano 12 million years ago.

🌻 - Nebraska has a unicameral. Which is basically instead of a state house and state senate we have one legislative body that is elected on a non-partisan ticket.

🌻 - it is illegal to fish whales in Nebraska. Once again we are completely land locked and there are no whales but.. its still illegal.

🌻 - I am dying here. Kathryn I will punch you.

🌻 - Morrill Hall also has elephant hall which is the main hall right when you pass the entry desk. It has like 15 (?) fossils in it and apparently it's the largest collection of elephant fossils on display.

🌻 - speaking of Morrill Hall, it only displays about 1% of it's collection. The rest is stored at Nebraska Hall nearby.

🌻 - I think the cranes in North Platte are lame.

🌻 - nebraska furniture mart in Omaha is apparently the largest in the country. Which I can believe. I went to the discount part and it was a giant warehouse. I don't know what the actual sale floor is like.

🌻 - cherry county is bigger than Connecticut.

🌻 - O street (highway 6) is the longest straight main street

🌻 - Nebraska has a testicle festival. It's probably exactly what you think it is. Too many fried cow balls is what it is.

🌻 - there is a really cool church between Lincoln and omaha called the Holy Family Shrine. Its got massive arches and is mostly glass. Im not catholic so it's not really a religious thing but a bitch can appreciate some cool architecture.

🌻 - the Hall brothers who made Hallmark (card company) are from Nebraska.

🌻 - UNL's Love library has a Shakespeare Folio. Its in the Special Collections and Archives' vault. I want to see it so bad and one of the archivists told me she would show me it next time they opened the vault but then corona... :(

🌻 - UNL's library also has like 5 million+ physical items in it's collections.

🌻 - the serial killer Charles Starkweather is buried in Wyuka in Lincoln.

🌻 - Kearney, NE is dead center geographically between Boston and San Francisco.

🌻 - 92% of the state is farmland/ranches.

🌻 - if you have made it this far I am sorry.

🌻 - Nearly every fun facts about nebraska page has mentioned that the food stuffs Spam is manufactured in Fremont. So I'll mention out of peer pressure.

🌻 - the bug is still in the kitchen. Kathryn has foresaken me. I may perish in the night.

🌻 - 10 more. There is a roller skating museum in Lincoln. It's at 48th and South streets. Has largest collection of historical roller skates.

🌻 - Larry the Cable Guy I'd from Nebraska and he has recorded narrations for some exhibits in the Lincoln children's zoo. Or he used to it's been awhile.

🌻 - going back to UNL stuffs. Morrill Hall is a pretty cool museum and you should definitely go there. If only to say hi to Archie.

🌻 - the bronze Archie that is outside the museum is currently sporting a fashionable face mask set both over his trunk and his actual mouth.

🌻 - there are a couple dino fossils in that museum and if you step over the barrier and onto the decorative rocks an alarm will go off. And staff will be pissed because now they have to tell at you.

🌻 - said museum also has a lot of cool rocks on the third floor.

🌻 - and the bottom floor has like a hall of nebraska animals where you can hit buttons to listen to animal sounds.

🌻 - aaand a room with a plesiosaur embedded in the floor which is really cool.

🌻 - there is also a cool museum in Nebraska called the SAC. Which is the museum for Strategic Air Command. It has a lot of planes and some stuff from moon missions and air force stuff. When I was little some oil from the big plane in the entrance leaked onto a pillow I had when I was sleeping under it on a trip.

🌻 - nebraska is better than iowa but nebraska kinda sucks too so it's not like it matters truthfully.

🌻 - Nebraska has a lot of weather like giant hailstones and tornadoes but Lincoln doesn't get much because it is in a geographic dent so weather tends to weaken over the city. Which is lame. I want lots of snow.

And there we are folks. 69 fucking facts. 58 of which are about Nebraska purely out of spite. I counted.

I am now off to murder my roommate.

(jk but you should expect to be quizzed)

[grandhotelabyss]

So fascist. I’m joking, sort of. When I was trying to make the ‘gram work, I hashtagged a picture of a bookcase I’d fished out of the trash with #cottagecore—and then actual #cottagecore people liked the post. This proves that a hashtag cannot be used ironically. As for #darkacademia, I gave my thoughts a few months ago in my essay on Donna Tartt’s The Secret History:

I am too old, and I have seen too much, to fall in love with the novel that helped to inspire the #darkacademia trend. Granted, as a student who spent four years reading Shakespeare, Dickens, and Joyce under the high, dim vault of the Cathedral of Learning’s commons room, I had the most #darkacademic experience possible at an urban public research university. But then I spent seven years in graduate school, and seven years after that as an adjunct professor; I have seen the true darkness of academia, and it has very little to do with the Gothic trappings of Donna Tartt’s classic 1992 thriller.

What is #darkacademia, really, but a response to this genuine darkness? Such Poe-like airs as Tartt and her contemporary devotees put on are an attempt to reenchant the life of the mind after its exsanguination and despiritualization by the increasingly rationalized bureaucracies of the contemporary university. Despite attempts to bring the trend in line with social justice, #darkacademia represents a conservative backlash against both academic leftism and corporatist neoliberalism in our time, with these two tendencies’ routinized subversions and mandatory inculcations and profit-seeking administrations. In reaching back a generation to canonize The Secret History as the inspiration of their aesthetic, today’s gloomy ephebes chose wisely, since Tartt’s novel belongs to the last backlash, coming as it did between The Closing of the American Mind (1987) and The Western Canon (1994)—a black blossom between the Blooms—and deriving some of its emotional impetus, however disavowed, from the same sources as those jeremiads against the leveling of humanities education.

I enjoy issuing such vast historico-aesthetic declarations—it comes from the Marxist side of my education, and anyway, what else can you do with popular fiction?—but I take them very lightly. 

What is the Cathedral of Learning? It would be a place of pilgrimage for the darkly academic, the academic darklings, if only they knew about it. You could always look up pictures online, but I’ve always thought “a picture is worth a thousand words” counted as dispraise of images: pictures don’t tell you anything at all—you literally need one thousand words to understand even one! So I give you a couple hundred words from my unpublished manuscript The Class of 2000, both the great Pittsburgh novel and the great turn-of-the-millennium novel, as the world will someday learn. I include, for the #darkacademic fans, the description of the Cathedral of Learning (sorry for the repetition between the Tartt review and the novel of “high, dim vault”—in my defense, it’s a high, dim vault) and a subsequent short dialogue on architecture that reflects a trending controversy of today. All you need to know is that this section is about my narrator and his religious friend, both high-school students, on a field trip. Please enjoy!

from The Class of 2000

Lauren and I were on a lunch break from an art-class field trip to the Carnegie Museum of Art. In a rain-presaging fall wind, we wandered around Oakland.

She had brought a pack of strawberry-flavored clove cigarettes—I don’t know where she got them—and we smoked to try to blend in with the students from Pitt and Carnegie Mellon. Despite the massing clouds, some of them still lounged on the lawn of the Cathedral of Learning, asleep with Plato or Marx propped open on their faces. We circled the Cathedral and stared up at its sooty limestone mass rearing into the clouds—the tallest building for miles.

We put out our cigarettes and walked through the high, dim vault of its first floor. Students at weighty wooden study tables, strangely unaffected by the anachronistic grandeur that rose around them, sighed in frustration over chemistry or French textbooks; their sweatshirts and jeans affronted the solemn Gothic atmosphere.

Between classes, we ducked in and out of the nationality rooms. To promote cultural understanding and civic investment in the university while this vast structure was under construction in the 1920s—I quote from memory the brochure we read that day—the Chancellor had invited the participation of the many immigrant communities who’d raised this city, and the University continued its outreach since then, from the 18th-century English who’d fought off their brethren at Fort Pitt to those who came from Eastern and Southern Europe at the turn of the century seeking work in the factories that made the world’s steel to the recent arrivals from Africa and Asia who wished to compete in the global economy. Representatives of said communities were tasked with proposing, planning, and funding the construction of classrooms to commemorate the nations they’d left and the cultures they carried. We saw samovars, stained glass, calligraphic screens, menorahs, nationalist liberators, bodhisattvas, and Yoruba gods. We discussed the glory of studying human achievement in vast tower consecrated to the genius of all the world’s cultures.

We left the Cathedral and its grounds, lit two more cloves, and walked deeper into the neighborhood, where campus buildings mingled with banks and bookstores and restaurants.

On Fifth Avenue, we found ourselves in front of an odd sight: the bell tower of an old church, a sepia stone spire, stood alone, though the rest of the church had long been demolished. In its place gloated a modern university building, all glass and steel, curved at the edge where it would have abutted the bell tower, as if to avoid a contaminating touch.

“I like the church tower better,” Lauren mused.

We regarded our reflections in the glass of the new building.

“So do I.”

“You know, since you don’t believe in God, you really aren’t entitled to like the tower better. Its purpose is to lift your vision, to point the way to heaven. The modern, godless building just shows you”—she pointed forward, in the flesh and in the glass—“your own small self.”

I pointed to the space over my shoulder in the glass where the Cathedral of Learning hovered behind us in the distance.

“That’s a secular structure,” I said.

“Please,” she said as she turned away in dismissal. “If what I said wasn’t true, would they have to call it a cathedral?”

[wickedandthedamned]

Ch.2 Goodbye Morioh

"My name is Yoshikage Kira. I don't remember when or how I died but I know one thing for certain. I am not going to heaven."

That phrase. It had become a mantra to him. It was a chance for him to ground himself and have at least something that makes sense, a way for him to accept the faith he was currently living.

He had been dead for almost four years now (or at least that is how long he thought it had been time gets hazy when one is dead). For the majority of the first year, he roamed around trying to figure out the new world he found himself in. He very quickly realized that this new world was heavily bound by a set of rules. For the most part, they involved staying out of the way of the living which was simple enough. The hard part came with missing what he had when he was alive (at least what he remembered). He could neither taste nor feel any physical object. He never felt hungry but thought it was a shame that he could not enjoy food any longer. He particularly resented this while passing a sandwich stand at the airport.

He figured walking in the airport was going to be a hassle but thankfully Momoko had Scheduled a very late flight meaning there would be fewer people to bump against separating him from his limbs.

He decided that for once he was not going to crumble up the ticket. The little paper read Business class, well he was technically going on a business trip. It was obvious the monk was trying to make amends, not that Kira minded the extra legroom and separation from other passengers. Kira looked around the empty terminal. What exactly was this mission? Momoko had been very vague. He began having second thoughts about coming. She had betrayed him last time after all.

No matter, he had to push his hesitance aside as it was time to board. There only seemed to be a handful of people on the flight and most of them were very old. No children, thank god. If he had to spend the next 13+ hours next to a screaming pile of snot he would crash the plane. Yet again that would probably mean getting stuck with the passengers for a while so maybe that was not the best idea.

He made his way to his seat. Kira looked around and for a second thought, one of the stewardesses looked right at him. He was very relieved to find that was not the case. That was one of the few silver linings of being a ghost, being literally invisible to most people. He never had to deal with uncomfortable small talk or answer questions from annoying tourists. His class was mostly empty so he was able to enjoy using his complimentary headphones to listen to classical music for the entire trip. If only he could enjoy a little bit of champagne…

The plane took off quietly. He saw the small town he had known all his life grow smaller and smaller until it fully disappeared under the clouds. He felt odd. Something inside him shifted but he was not quite able to tell what it was. Kira was not very good at putting a name to his own emotions a lot of times. It definitely did not help that sudden burst of emotions such as these seemed to be tied with flashbacks of his previous life. Most of the time it was simply a small snapshot, a memory of an insignificant moment being triggered by an equally insignificant event such as the smell of someone's perfume reminding him of a store he used to frequent. Other times, he was not so lucky. Other times the memories rushed in and overwhelmed him, knocking him to the ground and making his spectral body ache. He didn't like thinking about those memories and stirred clear of anything he thought might make him remember them.

Kira watched the sunrise as Smetana's Moldau played. He drew a content sigh at the sight of the pinks and oranges of the sky kissing the horizon as the sound of violins swirled in his ear. Despite not wanting to admit it, he was looking forward to the job now or rather the prospect of it being legit.

"How odd" he chuckled to himself as he carelessly flipped through the travel magazines "a ghost on a plane traveling practically across the globe."

…

The Italian airport was much more crowded. He carefully wove through the crowd avoiding any accidental touching. Unfortunately, he found himself almost falling in front of a drug detection dog. The large black German Shepherd snarled its teeth and lunged at him pulling its distracted handler so close to Kira he almost went right through him. Kira managed to scurry away and hid behind a wall.

"That was a close call. I ought to be more careful if I want to arrive in one piece"

He closed his eyes and composed himself. There was a rather pleasant smell in the air. Freshly baked bread. His heart sank slightly but he quickly shook his self-pity aside.

"Focus, there is a job to do…hopefully"

He walked down the streets of the Italian town admiring the way old architecture blended in seamlessly with the new one. He didn't care much for travel when he was alive but now he thought that maybe he should have volunteered for more business trips.

… A couple of streets away a man sat at a table impatiently tapping his foot against the floor. His heel making an angry click against the pavement. Leaning against the adjacent wall, was a priest with a Bluetooth in one ear. The priest gave the other man an anxious look.

"Will you cut that out already? All that tapping is giving me the heebie-jeebies" "He's late" "Maybe the flight got delayed. Patience is a virtue you know? He probably has a good reason for being late"

The man rolled his eyes and the priest shrugged. …

Kira had wandered on to the flea market. He saw beautifully handcrafted leatherwear, the most exquisite works of art from local artists, and a couple of teenagers playing a delightful tune on the violin. As far as Yoshikage Kira was concerned, this place was everything he had ever dreamed of. He hid behind a market tent and whispered to the man running it.

"Excuse me, could I get the time?" "Oh, of course, it is 13:30" "Thank you" "Anyti-" the old merchant turned as if to see where the voice came from just to find no one there. He looked around in search of the source but quickly gave up when a young woman asked him the price of a handbag.

Kira continued walking down the street, searching for the rendezvous point. He found what he was looking for and approached the shop.

"Finally, the café. Now I just have to find a priest" Before Kira had the opportunity to look around he heard a man in front of him speak.

"Excuse me"

Kira looked over his shoulder to look for the person the man was addressing but found no one behind him. He turned to face the speaker once more. Was the man talking to him?

"Yes, you. I believe you have a message for me" The man pointed directly at Kira and shot him a wink. There was no longer any doubt in his mind this was the person he was supposed to meet. Kira circled him like a shark while looking him up and down.

"You are Momoko's friend, right?" The priest raised an eyebrow seemingly unbothered by having his personal space invaded.

"That's me. I expected you to be a lot... Older" Kira stopped and faced the priest taking a very good look at his face. The priest's white hair was swept to the side boyishly and instead of religious attire, he wore an off the shoulder tunic with a golden cross belt. He looked like he was in his mid 20's.

"Oh, believe me, I am old enough, I just moisturize. Now the code word, if you please"

"Right. Poveglia".

The priest gave Kira a large smile and clapped his hands excitedly.

"Welcome …?"

"Yoshikage"

"Yoshikage! I am Father Pomodoro Fastidio"

Fastidio extended a hand towards Kira who did not shake and instead chose to continue to stare him down.

"Quick question are you-"

"Dead? No."

"I don't really care about that. What I was going to say was "are you the one who I will be working for""

As he had finished that last sentence, a man on the nearest table started coughing loudly. He wore what looked like an extremely expensive suit and had long pink hair neatly held back with a loose ponytail. The priest continued speaking completely disregarding the choking.

"Oh goodness no, I'm simply a helper. I must say you arrived at the perfect time"

The coughing grew louder as the man began thrashing around gathering attention from other patrons. Kira could hardly hear the priest over all the noise.

"You see my friend has a bit of a predicament and he could really use someone in your line of work to.. Er.. help him sort it out"

"So I'm going to be working for a friend of a friend of a friend?" Asked Kira, growing increasingly more irritated with the background noise and everyone’s use of the word ‘friend’.

Other patrons started yelling to call the paramedics. The choking man clawed desperately at his throat in a last attempt to breathe. His lips had turned completely blue and his face was contorted in panic. His mouth foamed and his eyes began rolling to the back of his head.

"And just who is this friend ?" Kira was practically yelling in order to be heard at this point.

Fastidio's face lit up with excitement.

"Him" the priest look pointed at the choking man just as his head slammed against the table and dropped dead.

[dieverdediger]

The Worship of Depression

Hot take: We as a Western society like depression. We like darkness. We like the “broken” guy. Take a look at shows like Rick and Morty, BBC’s Sherlock (to some extent), House M.D., Bojack Horseman, Doc Martin, and many others. We always like to see how this “weird” but “smart” guy struggles with his relationship and struggles to be a better person. 

That’s all well and good... IF we keep in mind that he is the abnormality. Not us. The problem lies in him, not me. Where he represents some universal condition, it is not necessarily an inevitable one. 

The lead characters of all these shows tend to have a pessimistic view of life. Take Dr. House especially. “Life is pain”, he says. And so he drives almost everyone away. They think the universe is meaningless and godless (literally and figuratively). We would be stupid to take their advice. Clearly there is something wrong with them. House has an addiction and tries to solve his loneliness through work and prostitutes, Morty is alcoholic and also lonely, Bojack is depressed, Martin has anxiety. Healthy people have none of these. So what they say should be taken with a grain of salt. 

Two shows point to a better world. Sherlock starts out like the guys above: cold, analytical, unappreciative of relationships. But we quickly realise - and Sherlock himself quickly realises - that he is the one missing out. There is some healthy view of the world that he, in all his genius, never realised. In Season 3 there is this one scene where Sherlock and his brother Mycroft have a little game. They try to one-up each other by analysing a stranger’s hat:

(See the vid below)

Sherlock: A quick sniff of the offending bobble tells us all we need to know about the state of his breath.

Mycroft: Brilliant! Elementary.

Sherlock: But you've missed his isolation.

Mycroft: I don't see it.

Sherlock: Plain as day.

Mycroft: Where? 

Sherlock: There for all to see.

Mycroft: Tell me.

Sherlock: Plain as the nose on your -

Mycroft: Tell me! 

Sherlock: Well, anybody who wears a hat as stupid as this isn't in the habit of hanging around other people, is he? 

By the third season Sherlock has grown, and this has helped him even in his intellectual pursuits. He could have stuck to his isolation and obsessiveness, but he didn’t. He opened up and really started to care for John and the others. It was through his empathy that he recognised the stranger’s isolation. That’s good. That’s growth. 

The other show, which is even better, is Lucifer. On the surface Lucifer is everything that’s bad about our obsession with the anti-hero: violent, destructive, has orgies, ignores important problems, hides his feelings... But the creators of the show always keeps it very clear to the audience that Lucifer is the one with the issue. Lucifer has the “daddy issues”. Lucifer himself often admits this. In fact his entire therapy thing is an attempt to deal with a recognition that he has the problem. Not Cloe, he. We should not emulate him. We can study him, and laugh at him, and cry for him. But not copy him. 

The point of everything is this: depressed does NOT equal depth or intelligence. What is sad is not necessarily true. What is pessimistic is not necessarily realistic. Quite the opposite usually. We have a tendency for taking the sad guy to be the one with the right view of life, and the happy guy to be the one with the naive and stupid view of life. Why? What is the rational reason for this? We do so because we think in our heart of hearts that life really is meaningless. But if it is NOT meaningless, then of course the happy man would be the right one. We shouldn’t mock him.

Now, of course if the universe is meaningless then we should agree with Dr. House. And if it has meaning, we should agree with Dr. Wilson. But suppose we don’t know whether it is meaningless or not. If we don’t know the facts, then shouldn’t we chose the healthier option? The view that is conducive to happiness, relationships, and love? Isn’t it the more “fitting”? 

I think linked to the “depression equals depth” assumption is the idea that happy people are naive. That they do not know pain. The idea that everyone who really knows pain would be cynical and depressed. But surely the facts don’t show that? All the great people in history have known suffering. Most of the happy people you know might even have suffered more than the rest. In fact, it is usually those with the most pain in life who somehow manage to be the happiest in spite of it all. And we envy them for that. 

It is easy to be sad. You simply let your sadness overwhelm you. It doesn’t take effort. You just allow it. But to be happy is difficult. To be grateful is an exercise. To overcome and see past your own pain is a skill. It takes effort. And we don’t like that. 

One fictional character that encompasses an awareness of suffering, and yet stays happy, is Father Brown. You might have heard about him. He is a creation of G. K. Chesterton. He appears has a kind of detective priest who solves crime by looking at the characters of people.

In Chesterton’s autobiography he explained how the glory of Father Brown lies not in him being some naive priest, but rather in a priest that is more aware of evil than others, but doesn’t let it overwhelm him. He transcends it. He based Brown on a person he knew in real life: Father John o’Connor:

I mentioned to the priest in conversation that I proposed to support in print a certain proposal, it matters not what, in connection with some rather sordid social questions of vice and crime. On this particular point he thought I was in error, or rather in ignorance; as indeed I was. And, merely as a necessary duty and to prevent me from falling into a mare's nest, he told me certain facts he knew about perverted practices which I certainly shall not set down or discuss here. 

I have confessed on an earlier page that in my own youth I had imagined for myself any amount of iniquity; and it was a curious experience to find that this quiet and pleasant celibate had plumbed those abysses far deeper than I. I had not imagined that the world could hold such horrors. If he had been a professional novelist throwing such filth broadcast on all the bookstalls for boys and babies to pick up, of course he would have been a great creative artist and a herald of the Dawn. As he was only stating them reluctantly, in strict privacy, as a practical necessity, he was, of course, a typical Jesuit whispering poisonous secrets in my ear. 

When we returned to the house, we found it was full of visitors, and fell into special conversation with two hearty and healthy young Cambridge undergraduates, who had been walking or cycling across the moors in the spirit of the stern and vigorous English holiday. They were no narrow athletes, however, but interested in various sports and in a breezy way in various arts; and they began to discuss music and landscape with my friend Father O'Connor. I never knew a man who could turn with more ease than he from one topic to another, or who had more unexpected stores of information, often purely technical information, upon all. 

The talk soon deepened into a discussion on matters more philosophical and moral; and when the priest had left the room, the two young men broke out into generous expressions of admiration, saying truly that he was a remarkable man, and seemed to know a great deal about Palestrina or Baroque architecture, or whatever was the point at the moment. Then there fell a curious reflective silence, at the end of which one of the undergraduates suddenly burst out. "All the same, I don't believe his sort of life is the right one. It's all very well to like religious music and so on, when you're all shut up in a sort of cloister and don't know anything about the real evil in the world. But I don't believe that's the right ideal. I believe in a fellow coming out into the world, and facing the evil that's in it, and knowing something about the dangers and all that. It's a very beautiful thing to be innocent and ignorant; but I think it's a much finer thing not to be afraid of knowledge."

To me, still almost shivering with the appallingly practical facts of which the priest had warned me, this comment came with such a colossal and crushing irony, that I nearly burst into a loud harsh laugh in the drawing-room. For I knew perfectly well that, as regards all the solid Satanism which the priest knew and warred against with all his life, these two Cambridge gentlemen (luckily for them) knew about as much of real evil as two babies in the same perambulator.

And so, to end my much too long post, I will make my point clear: there is nothing necessarily deep in being sad. And there’s nothing necessarily superficial in being happy. Don’t be depressed because you think it is deep. Don’t envy those who are clearly unhappy. Don’t mistake joy for foolishness.

P. S. I am not making any comment on depression as an actual psychological disease. I understand that this is not always a choice. But this just reinforces my point: clearly depression isn’t healthy. So we shouldn’t emulate it. We should pity and help those who have it, but we are idiots if we think people who suffer from it are somehow “deeper” and “more profound” than our happy Christian neighbour. There’s something this neighbour - who has the same problems us we - realise that we don’t. 

[catholicartistsnyc]

Meet Indiana-based Artist Daniel Mitsui

DANIEL PAUL MITSUI is a Hobart, Indiana-based artist specializing in ink drawing on calfskin and paper.  His work is mostly religious in subject, inspired by medieval illuminated manuscripts, panel paintings and tapestries. www.danielmitsui.com

CATHOLIC ARTIST CONNECTION: Where are you from originally, and what brought you to Hobart, IN?

DANIEL MITSUI: I was born at Fort Benning, Georgia, where my father was an infantry officer. I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago, and lived in Chicago for most of my adult life. About two and a half years ago, I moved with my wife and four kids to Hobart, Indiana, which is sort of the easternmost edge of Chicagoland.

How do understand your vocation as a Catholic artist? "Catholic Art" can mean a number of different things: art that happens to be made by a Catholic, whatever it is; art that communicates Catholic ideas and values; art that explicitly treats the Catholic religion as its subject; or art that is considered "sacred" art, meaning that it is intended to communicate religious truth and to assist prayer.

Most of my artwork is of this last kind, so I understand my task as twofold. First, I do my best to follow an established tradition as far as composition and arrangement are concerned. Sacred art should corroborate sacred scripture and liturgy, and the exegesis of the Church Fathers - because it too is a means by which the memory of Jesus Christ's revelation is carried forward through the centuries.

Second, I do my best to make the art as beautiful as possible, because the experience of beauty is a way for men and women in a fallen world to remember dimly the prelapsarian world, and to grow in their desire for reunion with God. As I wrote in one of my lectures:

It is important "not to consider sacred art a completed task, not to consider any historical artifact to be a supreme model to be imitated without improvement. To make art ever more beautiful is not to take it away from its source in history, but to take it back to its source in Heaven. Sacred art does not have a geographic or chronological center; it has, rather, two foci, like a planetary orbit. These correspond to tradition and beauty. One is the foot of the Cross; the other is the Garden of Eden."

I am Catholic, and an artist, so I have no objection to being called a "Catholic artist.” However, I do not want to make an advertisement of my personal faith or piety, to suggest to other Catholics that they ought to buy or commission artwork from me because of the sort of person I am, rather than because of the artwork's own merits. An artist who would make an advertisement of his personal faith or piety has received his reward.

At this time, my personal mission is to complete a large cycle of 235 drawings, together making an iconographic summary of the Old and New Testaments and illustrating the events that are most prominent in sacred liturgy and patristic exegesis. I call this the Summula Pictoria, and I plan to spend the next twelve years of so working to complete it, alongside other commissions. I already have spent more than two years on it, mostly on preliminary research and design work.

Where have you found support in the Church for your vocation as an artist? The Catholic Church is of course much more than its institutional structures; it is all the faithful. Most of my patronage comes from private individuals rather than parishes and dioceses. I do receive some commissions  from ecclesiastical institutions - in 2011 I even completed a large project for the Vatican - but I do not go out of my way to secure them. In ecclesiastical institutions, there tend to be committees involved, and a whole lot of politics; the usual result is that an artist spends time preparing proposals, reserving his most interesting ideas, and just fighting for permission to make the best artwork possible. I feel sorry for artists like architects and sacred musicians who, by the nature of their medium, have to do this. I avoid it whenever possible.

I choose to make artwork that is small enough and inexpensive enough that private individuals can commission and buy it. I think this may be the future of Catholic art patronage; there is not much reason to think that ecclesiastical institutions will be able to provide it much longer. You can look at the demographic changes, at the money lost both through diminishing donations and lawsuits because of clerical scandals, at the amount of artwork already available as salvage from closed parishes - none of this suggests that ecclesiastical institutions will become great patrons of new sacred art any time soon.

How can the Church be more welcoming to artists? I think that sacred art should have four qualities: it should be traditional and beautiful, as I said already; and it should be real and interesting.

What the clergy and theologians of the Church could do to help artists is to advance an argument for art that has these qualities. They have not advanced this argument much lately, and a good number of them probably don't even believe it.

By "real" I mean that sacred art ought, at least as an ideal, to be made by real human hands or voices. Music sung or played in person is a different thing, and a better thing, than an electronic recording. A picture drawn by hand is qualitatively superior to picture printed by a computer. There is at least a rule on the books that liturgical music needs to be sung or played live, not off of a CD, but even there a lot of fake things are broadly tolerated: bell sound effects played from speakers in a tower, or synthesizers dressed up in casings to look like pipe organs. Visual artists don't even have this sort of rule in place for them. Printing technology - both 2D and 3D - is now so sophisticated that I worry about it displacing human artists, without the clergy or theologians objecting.

I fear that some time soon, one of the great artistic or architectural treasures of Christianity will be ruined - more completely and irreparably than Notre Dame de Paris -  and that in response to demands that it be rebuilt exactly as it was before, living artists will dismissed from the task as untrustworthy. Instead, a computer model will be constructed from the photographic record, and everything will be 3D printed in concrete or faux wood. Once that happens, a precedent is set, and living artists and architects thenceforth will compete, most likely at an economic disadvantage, against computers imitating the old masters.

I don’t oppose reproductions themselves; I have digital prints on display in my own home, and I sell digital prints of my own artwork. I listen to recordings of music. I do oppose the idea that these can, in themselves, provide a sufficient experience of art and music. I oppose the idea that sacred art and music can be fostered through attitudes that would have made their existence impossible in the first place.

By "interesting," I mean that art and music should command attention. So many Catholics have gotten it into their minds that the very definition of prayer or worship is "thinking pious thoughts to oneself.” They close their eyes and obsess about whether they can think those pious thoughts through to a conclusion without noticing anything else. With this mindset, art and music are praised as"prayerful" simply for being easy to ignore. Art or music that are particularly excellent are condemned as "distracting.”

This, really, is wrongheaded. Distractions from prayer are foremost interior, the result of our own loud and busy and selfish thoughts. Sacred art or music that draw us out of our own thoughts, that make us notice their beauty, are fulfilling their purpose; they are bringing us closer to the source of all beauty, God.

I can't remember the last time I heard a living priest of theologian say as much.

How can the artistic world be more welcoming to artists of faith? I don't really think that it makes sense to speak of an artistic world as opposed to any other world, at least when it comes to sacred art.

This art is meant to be in churches, or in homes, or in any places where people pray - that is to say, anywhere. It belongs to everyone. I have no objection to seeing my artwork in galleries or museums, but I don't seek out those spaces; I try to make my artwork available to anyone, as directly as possible.

How do you afford housing as an artist? The medium in which I chose to work - small scale ink drawing - does not require a very large working space, and uses no toxic materials or dangerous equipment. So really, all I need is a room in which to work. It doesn't need to be a space outside the home, or away from my kids.

So affording housing as an artist is, for me, the same as affording housing in general. I moved to my current home after my wife and I decided that our family was too large to stay in apartments any more; we have four children, and wanted a yard of our own for them. We wanted to be near Chicago, but everything on the Illinois side of the border was too expensive. It took about six months of house hunting, and one temporary move, before we found what we wanted, and we had to borrow most of the money to buy it. So I don't know that I should be giving out advice, except perhaps to urban artists who are "apartment poor" like I used to be, not to let that situation go on too long.

I advise any artists who are still early enough in their careers not to be wedded to a particular medium to consider how their choice of medium will affect what sort of living space they will need eventually, especially if they hope to have a family. If you want to paint pictures or make prints that require pigments or chemicals too toxic to have around young children or pregnant women, that is something you should be prepared to deal with in advance.

How do you financially support yourself as an artist? My artwork is my livelihood. About half of my income is from commissioned drawing, and about half from print sales, licensing and book royalties. I do teach, write and lecture on occasion, but this is not a significant part of my income. I've never had a residency or a grant, and I do not seek them out.

I've had my own website, www.danielmitsui.com, since maybe 2005, and use this as the primary means of displaying, selling and promoting my work.

What are your top 3 pieces of advice for Catholic artists? In one of my lectures, Heavenly Outlook, I gave three pieces of advice to anyone who want to appreciate or make sacred art, and I will repeat them here:

First, never treat art like data. Second, be guided by holy writ and by tradition itself: liturgical prayer, the writings of the church fathers and the art of the past. Third, do not consider sacred art a completed task. Do not consider any historical artifact to be a supreme model to be imitated without improvement. Please pray for me, and for my family.

[didanawisgi]

Written by Tony Kail

“The practices of African traditional religion manifested as a number of diverse spiritual cultures throughout the Caribbean. As Africans were taken as slaves from their homeland the indigenous healing and spiritual traditions of African religion stepped into the soil of the island of Hispaniola. The surviving spiritual practices of Africa could become seen in Haiti and the Dominican Republic in various forms. In Haiti the religion formed what we know as ‘Vodou’, a term from the Fon people of the region of Dahomey in West Africa that means ‘spirit’. The religion of Vodou focuses on the worship of spirits known as ‘Loa’ that rule over nature and humanity. Worship involves various magico-religious rituals, the creation of sacred shrines and interaction with deities.

As one looks at the religion of Haitian based Vodou they may see some familiar Masonic aesthetics. The square and compass, the use of the letter ‘G’ and various Masonic tools can be spotted among a number of the rituals and shrines of Vodu. As we look deeper into the culture, we can also see a number of practices and symbols found in Freemasonry.

History French rule of the island of Hispaniola established the colony of Saint Domingue from 1659 to 1804 in the area of what we now know as Haiti. Freemasonry was officially established in the colony as two lodges were established in 1749. In 1778 a Provincial Grand Lodge was also established under the direction of the Grand Orient of France.

Slaves were initially prohibited from lodges as they were required to be ‘free born’ however some free people of color were admitted into lodges where many obtained Masonic wisdom. Some traveled to France and became members of lodges. Freed slaves from Saint Domingue were recorded as members of the lodge in Bordeaux France. Upon their return to the island some members would establish lodges based on their familiarity and membership with the Craft.

Historian Sally McKee noted that “Scottish-Rite Freemasonry linked the colony of Saint Domingue and Bordeaux. The masonic lodges established in the French Caribbean were part of a transatlantic network, whose mother lodge was located in Bordeaux.” Stephen Morin, considered by some as the founder of the Scottish Rite established several Scottish Lodges in Saint Domingue as did Martinés de Pasqually, the founder of the esoteric order known as ‘Elus de Cohën’. Pasqually’s order combined angelic operations, ceremonial magic and Scottish Rite Freemasonry as a path to return man to his state before the Adamic fall. Morin was a member of the Bordeaux lodge and in Saint Domingue started a ‘Ecossais’ or ‘Scots Masters’ Lodge in the city of Le Cap Francais.

The impact of Freemasonry on the Vodou culture could be seen in the life of one of Haiti and Vodou’s most recognizable historical figures. Francois-Dominique Toussaint Louverture the leader of the Haitian Revolution was a former slave and believed by some historians to be a Freemason. However, many base his affiliation with the Craft based upon his use of a possible Masonic based signature he used when signing documents. One of the other leaders in the Haitian revolution Jean-Jacques Dessalines who later became Haiti’s ruler under the 1805 constitution was a well-known Freemason and had great influence on local Haitian culture. Masonic knowledge would also become disseminated in the practices of some of Africa’s secret societies that operated in secret on the island as well.

Reflections of the Craft Some of the subtle reflections from Freemasonry in Vodou are reflected in the use of cultural terms like ‘Grand Master’ a term used to describe God or ‘Grand Met Bondye’ the ‘good God’. Masonic practices including the use of passwords, gestures and handshakes can be seen in rituals and various initiations in the Vodou religion. One example of this can be seen as the priest known as the ‘Houngan’ greets fellow priests with a sacred handshake. This is elaborated on when competing priests meet together. Donald J. Cosentino, professor of English and World Arts and Cultures at UCLA observed that ‘When competing oungans meet at the beginning of ceremonies, they greet each other with elaborate Masonic handshakes”.

The pantheon of gods and goddesses in the Vodou religion is composed of a number of diverse spirits known as ‘Loa’. Teachings surrounding the Loa speak of many of the spirits as being Freemasons. The warrior Loa of iron known as Ogou and the Loa of the crossroads known as Legba are frequently referred to as Masons. Ogou is depicted and symbolized by the sword, a military symbol and a tool found in Masonic culture as well. Masonic symbolism abounds in the imagery of Masonic Loa Baron Samedi. Baron Samedi, Baron Kriminel and Baron La Kwa are spirts associated with the graveyard. The Baron wears a familiar top hat much like found in lodge regalia and is often depicted with familiar Masonic symbols of coffins, skeletons and various Masonic tools. Some images of the Barons are depicted wearing Masonic aprons. The Loa Agassu, Linglenso and Agau are also viewed as Masonic Loa.

Vévé are symbols traditionally used to call forth the Loa. Priests (Houngans) and priestesses (Mambos) create sacred diagrams from cornmeal and various powders to invoke the energies of specific deities. The square and compass is reflected in the Vévé of the Loa Ayizan and Véve of the spirits of the dead known as ‘Ghede’. In Vodou the square and compass also take on the meaning of symbolizing the male and feminine united together. One writer has pointed out that the Vévé for the Loa Ayizan Velekete not only appears very similar to the square and compass with its overlay of the letter ‘a’ and v’ but has a philosophical component that speaks to Masonic concepts as well. Ayizan Velekete is the protector of the temple and ritual purity and acts as the defender of morality. In the Craft the square and compass speaks to ideals of squaring our actions as we reach for purity and morality (Robinson 2013). The Masonic patron saint of John the Baptist also takes an important role in Haitian Vodou. Legendary Vodou priest and scholar Max Beavior claimed that John the Baptist taught Jesus the secrets of Vodou. His importance is also reflected in a traditional Vodou song. As St. John’s Day is a celebrated holiday in Masonic culture it is also celebrated in Haitian Vodou.

Legrace Benson in the work Nou La, We Here: Remembrance and Power in the Arts of Haitian Vodou speaks of how the Masonic ‘All Seeing Eye’ can be seen in some of the elaborate sequined flags (Drapos) used in Haitian Vodou. Benson claims the image came from Jesuits and Freemasons that came to Haiti. (One particular Vodou priestess I spoke to claims that Freemasonry introduced the Kabballah and the use of sigils to Vodou.) There are some historical accounts that speak of examples of esoteric imagery such as the tetragrammaton and all seeing eye found in the ritual décor of Vodou temples in Haiti.

Masonic tradition is believed to have affected the manner in which some Vodou ceremonies are conducted. Milo Rigaud in his book Secrets of Voodoo states “The older houngan requests the assistance of two other houngans — the oldest he can find-by virtue of the esoteric prescription that holds three masons together form a regular lodge”.

Secret Societies There are secret societies that exist in Haitian Vodou culture such as the Bizango and Sanpwèl societies. Masonic references abound in these cultures with the membership in both societies observing 33 ranks as in Scottish Rite Freemasonry.

Members of these societies utilize a number of forms of coded recognition. Anthropologist Wade Davis notes that many of the societies such as the Bizango society utilize a number of signs and signals upon entering and exiting ritual spaces and in greeting each other. There is an interesting use of symbolic ‘reversal’ in giving and receiving such signs. Ethnologist Andrew Aptar concludes that “Many reversals play in Masonic symbols and even handshakes, suggesting an appropriation of European or Creole signs of power and value through secondary coding.”

Temples The traditional Vodou temple is known as the Houmfort. The main ritual area where most ceremonies occur is known as the Peristyle and much like Masonic lodges has specific pieces of architecture that symbolize various spiritual principles.

Legrace Benson speaks of a Bizango ceremony where the All Seeing Eye of Providence is painted on the central pole (Poto Mitan) in the temple . She also documented the leader of a Sanpwèl society adorning his temple with photographs of himself in Masonic regalia as well as various lodge symbols. She also observed the leader wearing a white Masonic apron while creating a spiritual bath. Benson also observed wooden coffins used by many of the secret societies that are placed by sacred altars. The coffin is a symbol in Freemasonry used to represent death and resurrection.

As a Freemason and a student of African studies I am fascinated by the meeting of these two worlds. I am reminded that both traditions contain elements that are kept as secrets in order to preserve their wisdom. I am reminded that both traditions have survived years of persecution and demonization from those who live in fear and ignorance. Lastly, I am reminded that both traditions have maintained a sacred lineage that has provided community, guidance and fulfillment for thousands of initiates.”

Sources Avengers of the New World, Laurent Dubois, Belknap Press, 2004

Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti, Maya Deren, McPherson, 1983

Face of the Gods: Art and Altars of Africa and the African Americas, Robert F. Thompson, Museum for African Art, 1993

Freemasonry and Vodou, Journal of the Vodou, 2013

Hegel, Haiti and Universal History, Susan Buck Morss, University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009

Institut de la Maison Impériale ď Haïti, http://www.imperialhaiti.fr/the-haitian-empire/freemasonry/

Morin’s Book Plate, Josef Wäges, The Plumbline: The Quarterly Bulletin of the Scottish Rite Research Society, Spring 2017, Volume 24, №1

On African Origin: Creolization and Connaissance in Haitian Vodou, Andrew Aptar, American Ethnologist, Vol. 29, №2 (May, 2002), pp. 233–260

Sacred Arts of Haitian Vodu, Donald J. Cosentino, University of California Museum, 1995

Secrets of Voodoo, Milo Rigaud, City Lights Publishers, 2001

The Exile’s Song: Edmond Dédé and the Unfinished Revolutions of the Atlantic World, Sally McKee, Yale University Press, 2017

The Plantation Machine: Atlantic Capitalism in French Saint Domingue and British Jamaica (The Early Modern Americas), Trevor Burnard, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018

Voodoo in Haiti, Alfred Métraux, Pantheon, 1989