#maybe even some hymn examples

[hellenismrules]

Genuine question, would anyone want to buy any supplies for altars or buying full altars? I’ve been thinking of setting up a small business for a while now and I’m curious on who would even be interested in buying anything.

One of my goals is, in the future, to make Cartomancy (normal card decks) and Tarot decks for each individual divinity- or at the very least the main Hellenic gods.

I want to save up enough to buy and renovate a building and make it a safe place to practice Hellenic polytheism- I guess in a pseudo church of sorts? I know Christian’s have hundreds of places to go to pray and practice their religion and I want to give that same opportunity to us.

It’s a far reaching goal- and with the economy in America it’s definitely less likely to happen, but it’s worth a shot, I suppose

[aliciavance4228]

Unpopular Opinion: Demeter Did Nothing Wrong

Alright, maybe the title isn't 100% accurate since she almost wiped the entire human race from earth, but you got the idea.

The thing with Demeter is that nowdays she is demonized/villainized all the time. And the most ironic part is that she is demonized by feminists, which leaves me quite confused, considering the fact that she would technically be a great example of female strength, especially when raporting to "Homeric Hymns to Demeter". But before discussing the myth of seasons, let's talk about her background story:

One thing that is certain about Demeter is that she had horrible experiences with almost all men from her life. Her father ate her. Poseidon raped her disguised as a horse. Zeus raped her as well (which led to the birth of Persephone). Iasion was one of the few men from her life who loved and respected her, and whom she lived with for a while before Zeus became jealous and killed him; yes, he is THAT much of a d-

The only one of her brothers who didn’t hurt her in any way at that time was Hades. And if you take into account the versions of the myths in which Hades was born before her that means that he was the one who took care of her as well during the time when they were trapped in their father's stomach. So it is pretty much implied that he was the only one of The Big Three whom she trusted the most, which makes the discovery that he was the one who kidnapped her daughter even more tragic.

Now, about "Homeric Hymns to Demeter": first of all I want to point out the fact that this myth isn't about Hades and Persephone. They are mostly mentioned in this story rather than actually playing an active role in it, because they have more of a symbolic value above it all. Wheter Persephone came to love Hades in time or despised him for the rest of her eternity is irrelevant, because this myth is not about her but Demeter.

Demeter had already faced some disturbing experiences even before Persephone was kidnapped. And considering the fact that her own daughter was a result of SA, it makes perfect sense why she would be protective towards her and raise her outside of Mount Olympus; every woman that was raped would fear that her daughter would face the same cruel fate.

About the abduction part: it is revealed to us at the beginning that Hades asked Zeus if he can marry his daughter, and he agreed. Hades only needed the approval of the father in order to wed her. Back in the Ancient Greece, especially in the Athens, people had a very patriarchal view on marriage. On short: the marriage would be usually planned between the groom and the father of the bride, her mother not knowing anything about what was going on until her daughter was already taken away from her. This myth is a representation of how the Patriarchy was a dominant system even among deities, with Zeus as its supreme figure.

At this point, the myth of seasons can be already considered a comfort story for mothers who had to endure the loss of their daughters either through death or marriage. This myth, however, has a lighter note as well, and that because Demeter, instead of accepting the fate of her daughter, left her anger free and did anything she could so that she would ultimately convince Zeus to give her daughter back, the last solution being leaving hundreds of humans dying of cold and hunger. This part basically shows how even a patriarchal figure like Zeus can be defeated by a mother's rage (or pure female rage, take it as you wish). Even though this myth is supposed to tell us just how seasons appeared, it can also be used as a moral lesson for men: it is better to consult with your wife and daughter before making a decision, or else there will be GREAT CONSEQUENCES.

And finally, one moment that is indeed very touching yet most people are ignoring for some reason is when her mother Rhea appears in front of her and starts to comfort her after she found out that Persephone ate the promeganate seeds, showing how a mother's mouring over her daughter was a common feeling among most female deities from Greek Mythology.

Now, is Demeter perfect? Absolutely not. And that is okay, because instead of that she is supposed to show in this myth a lot of humane and realistic nuances about what being a woman is like. She is a complex character, and completely demonizing her just because you ship Hades and Persephone is quite disturbing in my honest opinion. Wheter or not you like this couple (I won't condemn you because they are still one of the most stable relationships from Greek Mythology, but that basically shows just how f*cked up myths are in general lmao but anyway....), you have to understand the fact that the "Beauty and Beast" and "A mother's love will always conquer" are two tropes that can co-exist, and that things aren’t just black-and-white.

[deathlessathanasia]

With which of their siblings would you say each child of Rhea has the strongest connection?

Hmm…

Hestia - I'd say Zeus and Demeter. It's hard to make any confident claims about this since Hestia is less personified than other gods, but in Homeric Hymn 5 to Aphrodite Zeus is the one she appeals to when she makes her oath of celibacy and he is the one who grants her great honours instead of marriage. Hestia appears with Demeter on some vase paintings which isn't much, granted, but it is evidence that they stick together during public events like the wedding of Thetis and the reception of Herakles on Olympos.

Demeter - Really unsure about this one. Maybe Hades and Hestia? The Hades one may seem counterintuitive, but they are the two most important people in Persephone's life so they might be able to bond over their love for her. They have some connections in cult as well and Demeter, Persephone and Hades can appear as a group: "A little beyond the Rams—this is the name they give to the tomb of Thyestes—there is on the left a place called Mysia and a sanctuary of Mysian Demeter, … Now this sanctuary has no roof, but in it is another temple, built of burnt brick, and wooden images of the Maid (Persephone), Pluto and Demeter." (Pausanias, Description of Greece 2.18.3); "On the altar are also Demeter, the Maid, Pluto, next to them Fates and Seasons, …" (Paus. 3.19.4).

Plus, just as Hades can have agrarian functions under the identity of Plouton, so does Demeter have associations with the dead and Underworld: through the Eleusynian Mysteries she helps the initiates achieve a better afterlife in the Underworld and apparently the dead were sometimes named as belonging to Demeter. By a somewhat similar logic one could however also make a point for Poseidon because Demeter has some notable connections with him as well and their names might even be etymologically linked, but I guess it is about which dynamic makes you less uncomfortable in myth.

Hera - Zeus and Poseidon. Not much to add here since they are the only siblings of hers with whom she ever interacts in Greek literature and has some connections with both in cult as well: "At the starting-point for the chariot-race, just about opposite the middle of it, there are in the open altars of Poseidon Horse-god and Hera Horse-goddess," (Pausanias, 5.15.5).

Hades - Zeus, Demeter. I don't think this needs any explanation either; Zeus is the one Hades always runs to whenever he has a problem or wants something.

Poseidon - Zeus, Hera, maybe Demeter? Poseidon and Zeus aren't always on the friendliest of terms, but they do interact quite often (as in the Homeric epics for example), do things together (as in one version of the story where they visit Hyrieus and produce a child for him) and can be worshipped together as at Olympia: "They sacrifice to Hestia first, secondly to Olympic Zeus, going to the altar within the temple, thirdly to Zeus Laoetas and to Poseidon Laoetas. This sacrifice too it is usual to offer on one altar." Pausanias, Description of Greece 5.14.5; "When he [Heracles] came to Elis, he founded the shrine at Olympia of Zeus Olympios and named the place Olympia after the god. He sacrificed to him there and to the other gods, setting up altars, six in number, shared by the twelve gods: first the altar of Zeus Olympios, whom he had share with Poseidon;" (Herodoros of Heracleia, FGrH 31 F34a). ();

Zeus - Hera (his principal consort, duh)and Poseidon I guess, but he has notable connections to all the others.

[zsofiarosebud]

Okay folks, want to explore Galizan music? Then

Start here.

Nowadays there's galizan music in every fashion and style! Thank tradition and community spaces for the good health of our musical industry, ever growing! Here you have some examples:

Mondra

Electronic folk

Lately, a lot of galizan artists inspired their works on Galizan traditional music. They're usually put under the tag 'tradi'. They're mostly queer friendly or openly queer artists who knows how to dance, sing and play traditional instruments. But this guy? What this guy does is sickk!! Unique style and a great live performance!

Check out also this recent single... are you thirsty now?

Caamaño & Ameixeiras

Folk

More stuff on the folkie side. Give this two a violin and an accordion and wait for the magic to happen!

De Ninghures

Folk

This is my most recent discovery on the galizian folk scene. They originated in a foliada, that is, a kind of traditional party and jam session in which everybody bring their instruments and voices and improvise.

These three bands, Mondra, Caamaño & Ameixeiras and De Ninghures, are my absolute top three of nowadays galizian folk music. Enjoy!

Tanxugueiras

Folk pop

Everybody knows the Tanxugueiras here, even little kids sing their songs in school. They were a musical phenomenon, one of the bands that started the most recent folk fever a few years ago. They almost got to Eurovision! But Spanish tv didn't want an indigenous nation to represent the whole state and opposed this. SHAME

I like their first album more than the second, but the second has MIDAS.

(Footnote here: the gorgeous man in the bathtub is Xisco Feijóo, he's a great dancer singer and tambourine player, check him too!)

Baiuca

Techno folk

This man plays with old recordings like dolls. I really like the vocals of Lilaina, frequent collaborators of his. BUT for me the fucking best song he made is not technically in galizan, but in asturian language, it's a collab with asturian artist Rodrigo Cuevas. Check this!

That was tradi. Now for some punk!

Grande Amore

Techno punk (sorta???)

This guy's lyrics are so FUCKING relatable when you're a late millenial living in Galiza. The ANGST, the DESPAIR. Always with an eye on partiying. And so fuckin funny! Check out this song and also his best known single as well: Esta pena que a veces teño. And also maybe his last album. Go in peace now!

Os Vacalouras

Punk with funny lyrics and strong local identity

I've already talk about them in Galizan. They were my best 2024 summer discovery!

Familia Caamagno

Punk

This people took a righ-wing pop hymn and made a cover, with a music video full of communist parafernalia. RESPECT!

Expect more parts to this post! There's still classical music, jazz, rap, pop... and that's only the beggining, because I also want to go back in time and discuss the Galizan Folk Renaissance and such. Stay tuned!!

[hoeratius]

okay, asking this question is maybe the dumbest i've ever felt bc it feels like there should be a straightforward, obvious answer here, but every time i've tried to look it up, i've found nothing but pages upon pages of what feels like people talking in circles and only serving to make me more confused in the end. since you're the most knowledgable person i follow when it comes to the Classics, i figured this might be a good place to ask and maybe get an actual answer? (that being said, it's fine if you don't want to/don't have the time to answer this! obviously!!)

where can i read about the older greek myths? as in pre-trojan war. mostly, i'm interested in theseus but also just pre-trojan war stories in general. i know not everything got the iliad/odyssey treatment and there's probably not any surviving text to point at in a lot of cases, but there must've been something. every time i try to look up where to read about the history of theseus, i'm being directed to a bunch of modern retellings, but google has gotten so bad as a search engine, i literally cannot find anything about the origins of this thing everybody's retelling

from what i understand, theseus was sort of everywhere sticking his nose in everything at all times, so i'm not asking for a comprehensive timeline of his whackass life and everything he ever appeared in or anything, but if you could point me in the direction of anything about him--actual plays or academic texts, anything like that--that's more credible than, like, a self-published, self-described "bold new reimagining" with a stock image of a dude in party city roman cosplay as the cover, it would be MUCH appreciated 😭

(again, sorry about how... basic this question is i guess lol? i'm very new to classics in general and still pretty ignorant about everything, so it's EXTREMELY likely that this is a very dumb question with a very obvious answer, but thank you regardless!)

Hello! What an exciting ask (and apologies for my excited and maybe incoherent answer)!

Since you seem to be most interested in Theseus, I’ll use him as an example but much of this can be applied to other Greek heroes/myths/stories more generally.

As you noted, few get the Iliad/Odyssey treatment. In fact, even Achilles and Odysseus don’t, considering the Iliad spans only 7 weeks or so, and the Odyssey misses out on Odysseus’s actions before and during the Trojan War, and after he came home – and he did a lot after he came home. So where to go to find all the other stories that happened?

Some things to keep in mind:

Writers assumed their audience was familiar with the hero’s greatest deeds already

The big boys – Achilles, Odysseus, Theseus, Perseus, Heracles, Oedipus – had their stories shared in many formats. Think of the Parthenon metopes, which show Theseus’s key deeds in sculpture, or vases, hymns, public performances, bedtime stories, etc. People would encounter these often enough that the outlines of these heroes’ stories were known to them from a young age.

One of the Metopes of the Parthenon, showing (probably) Athena and Theseus.

As a result, ancient texts never show the entire story; they select the moment they want to tell and focus in on that. Hence the Iliad focuses on Achilles’s wrath, the Odyssey emphasises his homecoming, and the Argonautica tells the story of the Golden Fleece. Similarly, tragedies will choose a meaningful moment: not all of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra’s struggles, but his return home in the Agamemnon, or the events that lead directly to Pentheus’s dismemberment in the Bakchai.

So finding one text that will give you a useful overview will be hard!

These heroes are often also connected to so many other famous characters, that sometimes they show up as a side character in their stories, so it depends on which stories capture your interest most.

Pre-Homeric texts are few and far between

But this is not to say there aren’t pre-Trojan-War myths!

There are loads! Anything with Heracles or Theseus is pre-Iliadic, and others, like the house of Pelops, link more to the Trojan War but are also separate from it. Plus, there is Hesiod’s Theogony (roughly contemporary with Homer), which tells of the births of the gods and goes all the way back to the start of the universe.

The Ovid situation

Many Greek texts are lost, and we’ve only got allusions to this or that part of the myth in the existing fragments, etc. etc. So how do we still know so much about so many of these stories?

Enter my fave: Ovid.

Far later than Homer (1st century versus 8th century BC), but with access to all the Greek texts and them some, he wrote a lot of fairly comprehensive stories. These include the Heroides, letters written from the perspective of female characters trying to connect to their male lovers, with letter 10 coming from Ariadne to Theseus, and Metamorphoses 8 with parts of Theseus’s story.

If you’re looking for a high-level overview of what was what in ancient myth, starting with the Metamorphoses will give you all the big boys and many of the smaller ones.

Theseus specifically:

I must admit that Theseus is not my strong suit, but sources I’m familiar with that I would recommend:

Hippolytus, by Euripides and Phaedra by Seneca: these both tell of Theseus’s second wife Phaedra falling for his son Hippolytus and causing his death

Catullus 64: A lament from Ariadne after Theseus has abandoned her on Naxos

Metamorphoses 8, 12, by Ovid: Snippets of Theseus’s life, incl the Minotaur

Ones I’m not as familiar with but might be up your street:

Life of Theseus, Plutarch: a historian/scholar’s biography. He had them in pairs, where he compared the two; Theseus is linked to Romulus

The Argonautica, Apollonius Rhodus: Follows Jason in his quest for the Golden Fleece; Theseus is one of his heroes

Oedipus at Colonnus, Sophocles: apparently Theseus is a major side character here but I don’t remember!

There is also The King must Die by Mary Renault, a modern retelling from the ‘80s that blew me away. The only book set in ancient Greece I’ve ever read that doesn’t shy away from how alien their culture and values are to us today and doesn’t try to sugarcoat things.

And if you’re looking for more heroes: Wikipedia is your friend!

The Classics-related pages are pretty reliable, and they often mention the main sources per character.  

I hope this gets you started but please do hit me up with more questions, I always love diving into these things!

[idontwanttospoiltheparty]

Where does "It’s a declaration of love, yes, but not always to someone specific. Unless it’s to a person out there who’s listening to the song. And they have to be ready for it. It’s almost definitely not going to be a person who’s said, ‘There he goes again, writing another of those silly love songs," fall on your personal list of evidence for a song actually being about someone in particular? I was honestly sitting there like hm he could easily be being peevish about the general public perception of his work which would ofc be emotionally tied up in all the shit John talked about him buuuut then I found out about the broader context and Paul feeling unable to write with Yoko in the room and took a turn for "please serious for a moment mr. mccartney. I'm still not sure I think it's particularly literal but it seems very heavily inspired by a specific moment in time and associated feelings of abandonment & heartbreak. or it's about jane and he doesnt want to admit it bcs she dumped him on tv.

Hi anon, thank you for this ask and sorry for taking a while to get back to you.

I'm gonna break up my thoughts regarding this into points, cause it's kind of scattered.

A) Paul sometimes gets cagey about the possible private inspiration of some of his songs – but he also genuinely wants listeners to make what they will of his songs instead of endlessly questioning his intentions. He has been consistent about this, even outside songs people on tumblr like attributing to John. This is why, IMO, he starts his Own Voices tirade in the Maybe I'm Amazed lyrics entry:

"Starting with myself, the characters who appear in my songs are imagined. I can't state that often enough. I know that in some quarters it's felt you can't write about gay people unless you're gay, or about Asian Americans unless you're an Asian American."

Step back for a second and consider what he's actually saying. It's a very run-of-the-mill Death of the Author argument, complemented by the idea that writing about an experience doesn't require the author to have experienced it (whether you agree with him or not on this point is neither here nor there in this context). People were questioning why he would say this about a song that everyone and their dog knows is about Linda. And it's in my opinion to emphasize this idea, strengthen it. "Yes it's inspired by Linda, but I will never depict reality quite as it is and you, listener, do not have to think about or even know about Linda to understand the end product."

Other example: Paul famously refers to his own actual mother in the song Let It Be and he very often likes telling the story of the dream that inspired the song. He also does NOT care if people want to read it as being a biblical reference.

"Because she was my mother and her name was Mary, I said 'Mother Mary comes to me', realizing also that there would be a lot of people who would naturally just change that to their own uses and use it as the Virgin Mary. Doesn't matter for me, y'know, great, y'know. In my case it actually was my own mother. But a lot of people now kind of will use it almost as a hymn, and I know there's some people who are very religious and they love that song and I'm sure they're taking it as the Virgin Mary. But I say good luck to 'em! Where's the harm in that, eh?"

B) WITH ALL THAT IN MIND, let's get to I Will and look at the beginning of that Lyrics entry, which doesn't often get quoted along (emphasis mine):

“ALAN-A-DALE. THE MINSTREL WANDERING AROUND SHERWOOD Forest in the Robin Hood legend. That’s me. This song finds me in my troubadour mode. There’s a theory that the most interesting love songs are ones about love gone wrong. I don’t subscribe to it. This is a song about the joy of love. Those are sometimes thought of as being soppy or sweet or saccharine. Yes, I understand that. But love can be the mightiest, strongest force on the planet. Right now in Vietnam, or in Brazil, there are people falling in love. They often want to have children. It’s a strong, universal force. It’s not soppy at all.”

Paul calling himself a troubadour – a medieval poet composing and singing, especially about courtly love – is deliberately placing himself on the periphery of the specific relationship he's depicting. He evokes other people all over the world who are falling in love as a reason a song like this is worthwhile, rather than saying he felt he had to express himself.

Also, hold that thought where he says some people think conflict-free love songs are soppy and saccharine.

C) Now approaching the passage you quoted:

Firstly, he mentions Jane already a paragraph earlier when situating the period he wrote it in (I didn't quote that bit cause it's not that interesting lol), which explains why he may be referring back to her "unprompted".

Secondly, I feel like it bears repeating that The Lyrics was not Paul typing away essays about his own songs at a laptop. It was Paul and Paul Muldoon in a conversation and Paul's musings were edited together into one piece of text. Many of the perceived weirdnesses of the book aren't that weird if you imagine that he's actually speaking to someone and answering questions. Presumably, Muldoon asked him if I Will was about Jane, possibly because Paul first mentioned being with her when he wrote it. It's also probably not as defensive as people think, because, outside tumblr spaces, assuming Paul is writing romantic love songs for John is out there; however, assuming Paul is writing them for the women he was involved with is "tame" – we're not the only community that tinhats, but most non-tumblr tinhattery is distinctly hetero (see: Alma Cogan/John theories, "all of John's love songs are actually about Julia" type theories, etc.)

And lastly, tying your quoted bit together with Paul's general support of letting the listener decide on the meaning of songs, him specifically placing himself outside of the lyrical content of I Will, his comment about people disliking over-saccharine love songs, the fact that when remembering the actual context of the quote, he doesn't come across nearly as defensive……………… I think he's saying it wasn't directed at anyone in particular and this is all perfectly consistent.

(Also, him saying I Will is decidedly not about a "love gone wrong" would go against assuming it was about Jane or John in spring 1968, no? And, respectfully, I completely disagree that this song sounds like it's about anything all that specific. Same goes for stuff like I've Just Seen A Face. He even makes a comment in the entry (the paragraph I didn't quote) that the lyrics are pretty basic.)

Also: I can't right now find a good source on the factoid that Paul definitely wrote Silly Love Songs as a rebuttal specifically @ John, but I don't find the notion in of itself implausible so I'll take it as a given for a second: as you say, a lot of the criticism Paul received for being too sentimental in music were somewhat inextricably tied to things John publicly said about him. So, perhaps that comment about who I Will is not for is in some sense @ John (and I think the least tinhatty reading of the "I find my love awake and waiting to be" line in Too Many People is something along the lines of "You and your wife don't understand True Love™") but that more just seems like a snipe, not related to the song's muse.

[katerinaaqu]

Sorry for the rambling but I have a quite long question : how much should one "add" stuff in a mythology retelling to expand the original myth ?

And how can I deduce stuff correctly from sources (character motivations, details, etc.) instead of having a surface level interpretation ?

For example, I'm working on something about Asclepius (we talked about it a while ago) and want to add some details.

So stuff that aren't extensively told like his arrival in the Underworld, Epione's backstory or even new character interactions (with Phlegyas, with Hermes, with Artemis or a dialogue with Hades.)

I'll use as much of the source material as I can but sometimes I have new ideas that just fit the puzzle if I pull them off correctly.

Plus sometimes, the sources just aren't as detailed, don't mention some things or contradict each other.

I'd at least need one additional detail to make them fit. There's not one extensive storyline about it, like an epic or a play, even though the existing hymns and inscriptions already provide a beautiful original story. A novelization just needs to add stuff and I really want to pull it off correctly (I don't expect perfection prose-wise because I'm a beginner, but something decent plot-wise).

I'd just like to know when to set the brakes on adding stuff. Obviously when it contradicts the initial themes or randomly demonizes a figure. But I'm maybe missing something.

You're really good at reading between the lines and make extensive analysis so yeah, if you have any advice to give me, it'd be great :3.

Again, sorry for the long ask. Have a very nice day

Hmmm to be fair I am not entirely sure if there is a proper answer to that. It all melts down to the story, the writer and the results they offer. Now from my own perspective the liberties should not get in the way of the story aka completely changing the whole thing as if one wants to create an original story but does not wanna take the risk of original characters for it.

One can of course combine sources as well from different writers or analysts or from modern day perspective such as archeological or philological surveys and talks Of course when not even that seems to work then one can use their imagination to fill in the gaps. Actually that is also properly expected. You can read your sources and interpret them the way it fits to you and it feels right to you. Interpreting the sources at your own way is also part of the process of writing.

For example if I am talking on my own experience upon synthesizing the story of Odysseus in parts for example remember my old analysis here on how I used some parts of the Odyssey to synthesize my story "Survivor's Guilt and Survivor's Duty" . Obviously none of the dialogs or in-between themes were there in the first place but I thought of the experiences I describe being fitting to the feeling the poem gave me. Or to the infamous phrase of ἐπεὶ οὐκέτι ἥνδανε νύμφη (because he liked the nymph no more) sounded to me more like someone appreciating or liking someone as a person or feeling grateful to that person and eventually that liking had stopped existing because of everything.

Does this make my interpretation better than anyone else who wrote something like that? Absolutely not. It is though what made my story "Survivor's Guilt and Survivor's Duty" my own and my own interpretation. Liberties do not need to be seen as irrefutable proof of the text but rather the impression that the text left to you, if that makes any sense. Your liberties are essentially your interpretation of the texts in this essence. You see a hymn to Asclepius for example and you see which virtues of his is praising. What impression does that leave to you? What kind of person do you think Asclepius was to the Greeks or rather that one that synthesized the hymn? What has that to do with your own plot and story? And consequently what kind of flaws can you imagine for that character? How does that compare to his virtues?

For example me reading Odysseus by Homer is my core character. I read Homer and usually depict my Odysseus close to what Homer imagined which is why I do not make him the dude that could sell anything and anyone to get what he wants like Euripides or Virgil often depict him. However at the same time I am reading these sources too. And think that what if that is how Odysseus looks on the outside for people like Aeneas who have the reason to hate him. What if these flaws depicted are actually paired with his virtues? What kind of character do we have? A prudent man who thinks of his and his men's safety first before any other glory at war perhaps? A "let's do this" type of person? Someone who is not afraid to get their hands dirty if that means the best for the situation? That kind of person would definitely be hated by others that appear to his field of action etc.

So to sum up I would encourage you to follow your instincts. If you feel like adding a dialog and give your character a certain aura of something do it. Then read it and think "is this the Asclepius I would see if I read the sources? Does this person I am writing here, correspond to the virtues or flaws to the hints of the sources?" If the answer is yes then you are perfectly good to go. You do not need to imagine only one or two small liberties. You might as well go bolder with them but at the same time if indeed your objective is not to write a totally random story but the story as you would imagine it in a modern book setting as I said just interpret the feelings the pieces of literature and their analysis by experts give you. Write your dialogs in your style. Then read your text and think; is this the same feeling I got from the sources? Then as far as I am concerned you do a very good job already

Hope this helps.

[ladycinism]

Whenever I smile too much thinking of a man I immediately go to youtube and search for men's reactions to Paris Paloma's songs and the rage immediately comes back.

None of them fucking gets it, if I weren't busy clenching my teeth it would actually be funny. I mean, I understand not getting all the references if you're not cultured but the meaning is there, her lyrics are constructed in a way that's both evocative and explicative so how can you fucking miss the point of the song?

Like, the obvious example would be "Labour" altough I've watched reactions of other songs too. I watched men saying stuff like

"Oh, I get it, it must be her personal experience"

And, of course it could be, but it's not just that, is it? it's our experience. I feel like every woman, directly or indirectly, can feel the song. (I watched a woman react to it and she was immediately like "oh, yeah, it's an hymn" and I remember screaming back "YES, YES IT IS")

Another said "I get why people could act like that" or "yeah, in relationships there's always one that does more than the other" and while these statements are both true, it is still not the point.

She's not just talking about toxic relationships or people, she's talking about men, about the universal experiences of women all across the globe and to see this men acting deliberately obtuse, having all these experiences laid out in front of them every day not just through media but in their daily lives as well and still refusing to see it just makes me furious. So please, please, please educate yourself, talk to the women in your life, ask them about their experiences and try not to feel like they're talking about you unless they say so. Try not to get angry and to really understand how they feel. And then try to start thinking about it more. It doesn't have to change your life (what a wonderful world it would be though if it did) but at least allow the thought to linger and grow.

(of course I don't claim I've watched every man-made reaction video of songs and of course I don't think it is all men, I feel stupid even just having to explain this. If you indentify as a man and feel offended by this post I would kindly ask you to examine why and maybe go get in touch with reality a little bit like, don't know, go talk to your friend, touch some grass)

[39addict101]

Okay I don’t even know if this will reach anyone but someday I want to write a novel about religious trauma and religious abuse and how religious people who claim to be holy really just… intentionally (or maybe unintentionally in some cases) abuse the shit out of children and women and minority groups.

Also how churches just shelter sexual abusers, and how sexual abusers use holy texts to justify their actions and threaten their victims into silence.

I am compiling a data base of cruel and unusual religious punishments (mostly to make sure I’m not crazy) but also to have a better understanding of exactly how religious abuse is manifested in different situations.

Some examples: a mother physically SITTING on a “disobedient” child while singing the famous hymn “Trust and Obey”

A young woman whose creepy traveling Christian musician uncle would travel to various churches and tell children’s story, during children’s story he would LICK his nieces face, from eyeball to chin, and the entire church would laugh. Her father looked on, and didn’t care how visibly uncomfortable his daughter was.

Finally, and this is just one of my own experiences. I suffer from horrible menstruation symptoms, and my mother refused to allow me to take any pain medicine, because it would not allow for me to have a “clear mind” to hear the Holy Spirit.

Anyway, I know that this can be quite traumatizing to share… but I’m just putting feelers out there… is there anyone willing to step forward and share their traumatic religious experiences?

It’s for research and understand and deconstructing purposes only.

[bougainvillea-and-saltwater]

So I have a Google Doc filled with The Elder Scrolls Headcanons(mostly my own headcanons but also other people's HCs that I like) and I was wondering if you had any HCs for any of the Elder Scrolls games? Feel free to ignore this ask, but I am curious! *can be about anything and everything lol. Or I guess anything specific like if you had any Miraak/Dragon Priest/Dragons HCs or something.*

Hello!!! I’m definitely not ignoring this, thank you so much for the ask!!! 💖

I’ve only played Skyrim out of the Elder Scrolls games (though I’d love to play more!), so my headcanons are mainly around Skyrim. I have many ideas concerning the Dragonborn and their power. I think that the Dragonborn has a limit on how much they can use the Voice (which makes sense game-wise, where we have a cooldown in between Shouts). If they surpass this threshold, for example, by Shouting repeatedly, the ‘simplest’ side effect they can get is to scrap or tear their vocal cords. The most serious is to have a stroke or a heart attack and die. It’s a divine power, loads of power, residing in a mortal body, after all, even if that body is the body of a Dragonborn. 

Another headcanon I’ve got is that the Dragonborn displays draconic features when they absorb dragon souls or experience intense emotions. Their eyes are blazing, their pupils turn into slits, serpent-like, their teeth may sharpen and elongate, their strength becomes inhuman (I can imagine them lifting a person twice their size in one hand), their senses become acute, their shade looks dragon-like under the sun with horns and wings and tail… They look Dangerous in a few words. 

And speaking of the sun! 

This is entirely a personal take, I don’t know if that’ll make sense, but I headcanon Akatosh to be quite connected with the sun (mostly because Auriel is, and Auriel and Akatosh are essentially the same thing). In my eyes, Akatosh is an Apollo type of God, very bright and very powerful and rather associated with divination since ‘nothing rests hidden under the sun’, as the saying goes. So, the Dragonborn, as a fragment of Akatosh, is also associated with sun/sunfire and/or divination powers. My LDB and Miraak are both seers of some sort! 

And speaking of Miraak! 

I headcanon that the Dragon Priests were hymning. Dragons are not only fond of tinvaak; they are also very fond of words that come out of the mouth with a lyrical tempo. It’s something strange to them, a completely unfamiliar thing to their ears, and it definitely fascinates them. Miraak, of course, wasn’t an exception, quite the contrary! Thanks to Peter Jessop and his magnificent voice, I headcanon Miraak to have the most gorgeous voice, so his psalms were the most frequently heard around the Dragon Cult. Many of Miraak’s songs were reflective and mournful, often referencing Atmora and his life prior to Dragon Cult. Maybe Pippin’s song from LotR ‘Edge of Night’ is close to the songs I have in mind for him!    

What else? Oh, another headcanon I’m quite proud of, and it was also very liked by my fellow TES fans when I posted it on Tumblr, is that the Dragonborn puts out the stars when they go to Sovngarde to kill Alduin. After Alduin’s successful death, the stars and all the celestial bodies went through a massive supernova, and the night was converted into a day as Kyne’s Lights burned brighter than they had ever been! (here’s the link to that post: https://www.tumblr.com/bougainvillea-and-saltwater/731190179534143488/headcanon-when-the-last-dragonborn-goes-to?source=share)

[hoursofreading]

After reading her books, you have to ask, is Simone Weil a saint or is she crazy? After all, when she was ill with pneumonia, she allowed herself to eat just the amount she thought would be available to residents of German occupied France in the early 1940s – and starved herself at age 34.

Why should we read Weil? Susan Sontag tells us we often measure truth in terms of the suffering of the author. Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Dostoevsky, Kafka, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Genet—and Simone Weil have their authority with us partly because of their conviction, their self-martyrdom.

Modern readers could not embrace the life choices or ideas of Kierkegaard and Nietzsche, but ‘we read them for their scathing originality, for their personal authority, for the example of their seriousness, and for their willingness to sacrifice themselves for their truths.’ Simone Weil belongs in this category, ‘one of the most uncompromising and troubling witnesses to the modern travail of the spirit.’

Simone Weil was born into a family of wealthy, intellectual, secular Parisian Jews. In her early twenties she had a spiritual birth when in a Portuguese village she heard the wives of fishermen singing religious hymns. She felt Christianity was the true religion of the oppressed. Later she was moved by a chapel where St. Frances served, and by poem from Herbert.

Although she accepted Jesus as truth and beauty, she would never be baptized because she believed the same truth and beauty existed in the Greek philosophers, in Taoism, in Buddhism, in the Bhagavad-Gita and in ancient Egypt.

She also believed ‘The Church has borne too many evil fruits for there not to have been some mistake at the beginning. Europe has been spiritually uprooted, cut off from that antiquity in which all the elements of our civilization have their origin. . . It would be strange, indeed, that the word of Christ should have produced such results if it had been properly understood.’

She was also appalled by what organized religion could do when it became powerful, citing the Catholic Church’s record of the crusades, banning, and inquisition. She was similarly suspicious of Protestantism, which she felt to be too closely linked with individual nations. Plus, she felt too many parishioners assign importance to the rituals instead of striving to attain a personal understanding with God.

Weil saw Jesus as the perfect model of suffering. Weil believed that God's love becomes born or personified in us when we pay attention to others. This requires emptying ourselves of our own our interests and projections in order to be truly present to another person – similar to the kenosis of the early Gnostics.

She left her position as a philosophy professor where she was constantly in trouble with school administrators because of her involvement with the unemployed, her participation in labor protests and her difficulty dealing with authority. She worked in an auto factory, then in the fields working a farm.

Simone Weil tells us that the first principle of helping another is not action. It is to see and respect the other. She repeatedly notes that the greater the suffering of the other person, the harder it is truly to see and hear that person.

Weil reminds us how glibly we can talk about compassion, as if it were an easy thing, sometimes making it sound like little more than pity. However, true compassion requires us to allow suffering to disturb us and even sometimes to take us over.

Weil wrote ‘There should not be the slightest discrepancy between one's thoughts and one's way of life.’ Sontag responds that sanity requires some compromising, some evasions and even lies. Maybe that why Weil’s relentless searching makes us uncomfortable.

T.S. Eliot wrote ‘A potential saint can be a very difficult person. One is struck, here and there, by contrast between (Weil’s) almost superhuman humility and what appears to be an almost outrageous arrogance.’

Kenneth Rexroth wrote ‘Simone Weil was one of the most remarkable women of the twentieth, or indeed of any other century. She could interject all the ill of the world into her own heart. . . Her letters read like the more distraught signals of John of the Cross in the dark night.’

Pope Paul VI (who corresponded with Weil and tried to get her baptized) said that Weil was one of his three greatest influences, and Albert Camus said ‘Weil was the only great spirit of our time.’ I believe Sontag, Eliot and Rexroth are right. We may disagree with parts of what Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky and Weil said, but we can’t help but be struck by their searing insights.

Waiting for God is a collection of Weil’s letters and essays that were compiled after her death, and it is a full array of Weil’s thinking from baptism to friendship and from school studies to the nature of love. It doesn’t flow well because she never wrote a book in her lifetime; her books are all compilations of her letters.

I like one of Weil’s spiritual insights: 'An atheist may be simply one whose faith and love are concentrated on the impersonal aspects of God.'

I initially rated this book lower due to the lack of cohesiveness among the essays, but after time and reflecting on today’s reactions against immigrants, and with Brexit and Trump, I felt perhaps the world needs to hear more from someone who truly understood compassion and actually lived with genuine empathy for those less fortunate.

[mask131]

The myth of Dionysos (1)

What’s better to complete this Christmas season, alongside some Arthuriana and some ghost stories, than some Greek mythology?

There is a great book in France that serves as a key research reference, and that is called the Dictionary of Literary Myths, composed under the direction of Pierre Brunel. Within this bookthere are several articles covering the complexity and evolution of the Greek gods, both within their own mythology and within European literature as a whole (with a strong focus on French literature, of course, being a French book). Given I do not know if the book was ever translated or not, I thought I’d share some of the text within it. And to begin, I will focus on one of the several articles dedicated to Dionysos – the god you English speakers known as “Dionysus” (even though the whole -us thing stays completely weird for me who grew up with all the Greek names ending in -os). This first article, written by Alain Moreau, is titled “The Antique Dionysos: The Elusive One”, and as the title says, it is a study of the figure of Dionysos within Antiquity.

I will offer here a vaguely-faithful translation of the text – and given it is a longarticle, I will break it down over several parts.

THE ANTIQUE DIONYSOS: THE ELUSIVE ONE

Of all the gods of Olympus, Dionysos is the one whose character is the hardest to define. Despite his many historical uses and the numerous interpretations of mythologists, we cannot fully understand the god. His origins, his childhood, his physical appearance, his behavior, his role in the city, his symbolism… It is all rich, all complex, all fleeting. Dionysos is the god of metamorphosis: the elusive one.

I) The origins: Old god, new god

The impossibility to confine Dionysos within a specific setting already manifests in the beginning of this investigation: the research of the god’s origins is puzzling. There is no doubt that Dionysos is a very ancient god. He was called “Dendrites”, “god of the tree” – and he was even depicted with branches growing out of his chest – which links him to the oldest deities of vegetation and fecundity, the ancient mother-goddesses. For example, the Greek Demeter: Callimachus’ Hymn to Demeter says “Everything that huts Demeter also hurts Dionysos”, and Pindar names him “the consort of Demeter” in his Isthmics. Dionysos is also linked to Cybele, and though her to the Syrian goddess Kubaba – the Dionysos-Cybele link is made clear in Euripides’ Bacchants. There is also the Phrygian mother-goddess Zemelo, whose name sounds strangely like Dionysos’ mother’s, Semele. And all these deities were worshiped in Asia Minor, in Thrace, in Crete, and in the Aegean world. In Athens, very ancient festivals partially celebrate him; Anthesteria, Apaturia, Oschophoria… It explains why Tiresias, in the Bacchants, speaks of “traditions that come from our fathers, and whose age is as old as time itself”. All points out to the Dionysian cult having pre-Hellenic roots. During the Mycenaean era in the middle of the second millennium BCE, his presence was attested by two tablets found at Pylos written in linear B. The name of Dionysos is found in its genitive form: “diwonusoyo”. Bacchants gives us another clue about the ancient nature of the god: beyond the tragedy-of-impiety that is the death-punishment of Pentheus, one can sense a second level of comprehension, maybe hidden to the play’s creator, but that mythologists and ethnologists all perceived. That is to say, a ritual of human sacrifice – the tragedy takes its root in a primitive rite.

And yet, the historian Herodotus claims in his Histories that the name of Dionysos is the last one that the inhabitants of Greece learned when discovering their gods, while Pentheus and Tiresias in Bacchants both call Dionysos a “new god”. A new god, because he is foreign, supposedly coming from Thrace or Asia Minor. Ancient Greeks analyzed his name as coming from a fabulous land, whose exact location kept changing from person to person, but that was always outside of the Greek world: Caucasus, Ethiopia, India, Arabia, Egypt, Libya… Numerous myths tell of the strong difficulties that the cult of Dionysos had to face when implanting itself in Greece – especially in Boeotia, the land of Dionysos’ mother, Semele (who herself was the daughter of Cadmos, the founder of Thebes). Mythologists themselves were fooled and, up until a recent date, most of them believed that Dionysos was a latecomer to the pantheon, an imported god.

Where does this contradiction comes from? It is probably because of how unique the worship of Dionysos was: religious possession, orgiastic rituals, running races throughout the mountains… It always made him an eccentric, isolated god, a god of the people rather than a god of the aristocracy (he plays almost no role within the works of Homer), and as such a much less prestigious deity than the other Olympians. But Dionysos had his revenge: starting from the 8th century BCE onward, it seems that the god “woke up” and was brought back under the spotlight, thanks to women, who spread his cult. Various religious movements coming from Phrygia, Lydia, Thrace and the Greek islands also helped this renewal by revitalizing the old forms of the cult and accentuating its orgiastic aspect. The rise of Oriental cults in Athens at the end of the 5th century made everything go even faster. All these outside additions explain why the Greeks themselves felt that Dionysos was a foreigner and a “new” god. All in all, this look at the god’s origins accentuates one of his most fundamental characteristics: the impossibility to clearly define his personality.

II) A very complicated childhood: births and rebirths

The childhoods of Dionysos all bear the same strangeness. He is a god that is constantly born and that constantly dies, before escaping those that hunt him down, and finally imposing himself definitively. Let’s take a look.

1) Semele, beloved by Zeus, follows the wicked advice of the jealous Hera, and asks the king of the gods to appear before her in his full, shining glory. Zeus, who had made the solemn promise to grant any wish Semele would make, has no other choice but to obey. He appears to her wrapped and surrounded by thunder and lightning, and the poor Semele dies because of it. She was in her sixth month of pregnancy – and Zeus saved Dionysos from death, by ripping the fetus away from his mother’s belly, and placing it in his own thigh. There, Dionysos finished his growth during three more months, before finally being “born” out of Zeus’ leg. This is why one of the etymologies of “Dionysos” means “the god born twice”. In France, it also led to the common expression “se croire sorti de la cuisse du Jupiter” ; “to believe one’s got out of Jupiter’s thigh”.

2) The god Hermes, by order of Zeus, gives the child to king Athamas and queen Ino, rulers of Orchomenos. They raise the little Dionysos by forcing him to wear feminine clothes, in hope that Hera will not recognize him disguised as a girl. Unfortunately Zeus’ wife is not fooled, and she turns Dionysos’ foster parents insane. Zeus then transports his child towards Nysa, and entrusts him to the nymphs of the region. This time, it is said that he was turned into a kid (as in a baby goat). In the Homeric version of the story (found in Iliad, VI), Nysa is replaced by “the divine Nyseion”, a Thracian mountain where rules king Lycurgus. Lycurgus ended up hunting down the nurses of the child and wounding them – the terrified Dionysos jumped into the sea to flee the attack, and ended up protected by the goddess Thetis. [Note: Jeanmaire offered an alternative reading of the Homeric tale, proposing that maybe the Nyseion was actually the name of the "country of the Nysai", aka the land of the Nymphs, which would make it an Ancient Greece version of Elfland or Fairyland]

3) Finally, there is the Cretan legend of Dionysos-Zagreus. While the legend was only recorded by very late text, in truth it seems to be a very ancient story: the name Zagreus first appears in the 6th century BCE in the Alcmeonis, and then came back in the first half of the 5th century within Aeschylus’ Sisyphus the Runaway. In the Zagreus story, Dionysos is given a new group of nursing parents: the Kouretes. As they dance with their weapons around the child and do not pay attention, the Titans discreetly reach Dionysos-Zageus and lure him away using toys (a ball, a spinning top, a mirror, a fleece, jackstones, apples, a bullroarer…). Once they had him, the Titans killed him, dismembered him and cooked the pieces of his body within a cauldron before roasting them and eating them. Zeus struck the Titans with his lightning, but hopefully could resurrect the young god, using his still-beating heart that had been saved by Athena from the Titans’ gruesome feast.

Next time: The Shapeshifting God, and A Complex Personality

[valeriefauxnom]

Yo, since you brought it up, what's the interpretation of Abyss's ending you like the most?

Going for blood, huh, anon? I'll bite!

I'm on the side of 'technically I think it should be Asch in Luke's body' side even if I acknowledge it's ultimately ambiguous.

The Contamination sidequest, of course, is the principle foundation for this argument, as it spells out pretty clearly: Asch will die, but Asch will assume Luke's body as a backup. Luke will remain in body but not spirit, further twisting the knife to Jade, who no longer would want his dream of 'replicas as a replacement body' to come true as he wished for Nebilim.

We also see an example of the effect with Star in Ortion cavern. The group comes back to see that the original cheagle has died, and the replica remains. But when Jade interviews the cheagle via Mieu, he finds out that it is the original in the replica's body, who felt weak, passed out, and woke up in another body.

More arguably, but I also might look to Jade's immediate response after he learns of Asch's death. He starts asking Luke about how it feels and all that, likely trying to get a gauge on what's happening, if there's any chance Luke is escaping the Big Bang, etc. He wants Luke to escape this with his life, no matter how dismal the odds even without Asch's death.

...And he doesn't seem pleased with the response he gets.

There's also his response at Tataroo itself, which, okay, very arguable, but to me is not a pleased look from Jade. I'm not claiming to be any kind of expert on reading emotions, but Jade's to me looks like one more of grief and/or disappointment than of happiness, especially in the anime, which could have more expressiveness than the original PS2 graphics in a game that had some notably poorly cutscenes.

And while yes, the mysterious figure does have more visual hints to Luke than Asch, and does reference a 'promise', I will say that to the latter both of the redheads were chucking around promises to everyone and is ambiguous. Luke's promise to Guy, to Tear, Asch's to Luke, etc.

Also, I just think it could be a unique and sad ending if Asch, who has utterly loathed replicas and the concept of one, from Van's grooming and his own trauma regarding Luke's replacement, finds himself a 'replica' in the new world, in his counterpart's body, and has to start trying to figure out what to do and who to be in the new world while puppeting around what's effectively the corpse of another person. It's just uniquely horrifying a concept that I would have loved to see explored. Heck, maybe even a postgame or game about the Jade Gang dealing with the impending fonon crisis while maybe trying to find a way to get Luke back and all the drama that could result would have been fun.

...But, as always, this is a very cursory summary of some of the most common arguments for Asch. We could dissect the Contamination Effect and Big Bang and all that all day, but to me, I personally don't see any evidence that it is not working as prescribed on Eldrant, or 'reversed' as some people argue. The one example we see is it working as intended, and Jade doesn't seem all that pleased when it seems like it's starting to kick up with Luke.

However, I'd like to throw a much rarer argument into the works as a thing to consider, just for fun.

What if it's not Asch in Luke's body or the reverse, or a merging of the two into one mind/body...But Lorelei?

To this, I'd like to point out that Lorelei has a sworn duty to answer the Grand Fonic Hymn of Yulia. And what was Tear signing right before this mysterious person popped up randomly in a field when Luke nor Asch show a particular skill in stealth? Well I mean Luke says he's good at hide and seek but still

Uh-huh, Grand Fonic Hymn. This could also explain the 'promised' quote. Lorelei is fulfilling its covenant with Yulia in heeding her descendant's call.

The mysterious person's speech and behavior, for however short we see it, is...ethereal? For lack of a better word? Detached? Both Luke and Asch are very emotional people and don't tend to speak in such a even, neutral tone. Lorelei, however, is a fonic sentience (well, so is Luke, but Luke is a mini chunk of Lorelei) and is not human at the end of the day. What few lines we do get from it in game are 'indirect' and otherwise formatted in a manner humans don't usually use when speaking. To me, the more detached 'This place has a nice view of Hod' compared to anything Luke or Asch might have said normally, even a greeting, is more aligned with Lorelei's potential behavior.

So yeah. Perhaps it's Lorelei, come to Auldrant after heeding Tear's call, perhaps in its' scions' visages, attempting to honor them both by assuming elements of both now that they (or at least Luke) have re-assimilated into the greater whole of Lorelei. Lorelei certainly seems to like its scions.

In the end I can just summarize: scientifically, I think it's Asch, canonically, it's ambiguous. No matter what side of the debate one is on, I dislike people trying to insist that it is absolute fact that x happened. I think part of the ambiguity is intended to reflect the fact that the Score is gone, the future is no longer set. Notice also how all the text boxes are gone after the Score is repealed. What they're saying- what's happening is no longer has a single canonical answer. So even if I do think more of the rules of the Abyss world point to Asch, it's ultimately up in the air.

[youremyheaven]

English not my first language, Bharani Moon here.

A propos of Venus naks, (Bharani in particular). 5 months ago (I'm a widower and 65 yo) I experienced a need to return to spirituality. So I found a sort of monastery of Capuchin friars, where I confessed and found divine grace. I attended some spiritual meetings, we all held hands and sang religious hymns in a kind of karaoke with the words projected on the screen. At the beginning it was pleasant, but then it seemed to me more and more like an "americanata", as we define in Italy all the external things that tend to strike (in short, a braggadocio). The friar who held the meetings was enthusiastic and always the center of attention (we were arranged in a circle). He asked us first grade catechism questions and we had to answer them. After the second time I no longer went, thinking that if I had conducted those sessions they would undoubtedly have been much deeper and more engaging, especially regarding the real life of adult people and the sins we most fall into (we were all over 50 years old) . Back home, I spent hours writing my reflections on the Catholic religion, that is, everything that for me, based on my life experience, resonated very truthfully and sincerely. I simply realized that I was rewriting religion in my image and likeness, I was creating a particular sect where the only guru and disciple was me. As you explain well, it's a Bharani thing. As for the pleasure/pain dichotomy, this is also a very Venusian thing. In addition to the fact that others consider you attractive when you don't think so at all (I haven't liked looking in the mirror or taking selfies of myself for years). The fact is that we Venusians can know the maximum pleasure and the maximum pain, in separate phases of course, we are not masochists. Indeed, perhaps we are, so that we have a threshold of tolerance that is very high for both of them, tantric love comes to mind, to give an example, that is, prolonging pleasure indefinitely, let's say ecstasy, without letting it end in death of an orgasm, the little death). I have a natural propensity to indulge in the pleasures of the flesh (read sex), but my married life was not ideal, due to a wife who had many problems with chronic depression etc. Many times I had to fend for myself, to use an elegant euphemism. The flip side of the coin is the pain that comes from who knows where, unexpected but providential, to repair faults that you know you have committed deep within yourself and the sacredness of your body. Cluster headache. Five episodes from 2007 to 2021, for a total of almost 800 hours of excruciating and unbearable pain. Laughing at myself, now my name is Mister 800, almost as if it were a trophy I can brag about. Actually it is, I think it is, because I know what it cost me. In the USA they call it suicide migraine. Well, I'm still alive, although I basically feel like a survivor, a veteran, a refugee at home. To conclude, I also call myself uncle 120, for managing to keep myself chaste for 4 months after my return to the Grace of Lord. Difficult to understand, even I can't, but life is good... maybe the next one! :)

thank you so much for sharing your experiences as a Bharani Moon native <33 its so interesting how the internal corrosiveness of this nakshatra manifests in so many different ways including with actual physical discomfort/pain,, Venus is a planet of many contradictions and Venusian devotion and spirituality is so powerful. whenever I read about Sufism and how the Sufis think of God as love and the spiritual experience as one where you become "one with god", its always reminded me of Bharani natives<3

[alephskoteinos]

A view to a solar non-dualism

During my study of the Greek Magical Papyri, a while back I encountered a phrase at the end of PGM IV. 1596-1715, which is a spell for Helios. The last line of the papyrus says that, when the consecration is complete, the magician must say the following: "the one Zeus is Sarapis".

I thought about that phrase again recently, maybe while going through The Concepts of the Divine in the Greek Magical Papyri, and it strikes me as a solar image of non-duality.

"The one Zeus is Sarapis", "heis Zeus Sarapis", but Sarapis (Serapis) is also an image of Hades or Plouton, being a god of the underworld and lord of the dead (not to mention a fusion of the god Osiris and the bull Apis). That's actually quite explicit when you get to Sarapis' iconography. In fact that were instances where Serapis and Hades or Plouton were explicitly identified with each other. In fact, that link is even more explicit in Porphyry's Philosophia ex oraculis, where he described Serapis as one of the gods who rule the infernal daimons, the others being Hekate and the demon dog Kerberos.

From this standpoint, I interpret the formula "heis Zeus Sarapis" as meaning that Zeus and Hades are one. In some ways that could be seen not only as a form of syncretism but also as an expression of theological monism, or certainly of the kind that was being developed around the time of Hellenistic Egypt.

But there's more to it, because this is also a solar image. Zeus-Sarapis was also Zeus-Helios-Sarapis, or Zeus Helios Great Sarapis. In the eastern desert of Egypt, under Roman occupation, one could except to find many images of the god Zeus Helios Megas Sarapis. especially in a place called Dios (now called Abu Qurayyah). There was also a temple dedicate to that god at Mons Claudianus, consecrated by a slave named Epaphroditos. Some scholars, of course, interpret this as a Greek interpretation of the Egyptian god Amun Ra. Furthermore, the phrase "heis Zeus Sarapis" has been found inscribed on a depiction of Harpocrates, Horus the Child, a deity who was frequently syncretised with Helios and thus seen as a solar god. Zeus, Helios, and Serapis were also sometimes seen as one godhead. This perhaps derives from an Orphic saying, purportedly attributed to an oracle of Apollo, which says "Zeus, Hades, Helios-Dionysus, three gods in one godhead!". In Flavius Claudius Julianus Hymn to Helios, this is rendered as "Zeus, Hades, Helios Serapis, three gods in one godhead!", which perhaps suggests that Serapis was being identified with Dionysus. Either way, it establishes a theology in which the three gods are mutually identified and unified as a solar godhead.

Since Helios was the sun god par excellence in this context, Zeus-Helios-Sarapis was seen as a solar deity, and thus it is a solar image. More importantly, it is an image of the non-duality of the sun. This incidentally is not out of step with certain monistic trends insofar as they also reflected a kind of solar theology. For example, Macrobius interpreted the myth of Saturn or Kronos as an expression of the generative power of the sun, thus identifying Saturn/Kronos with the sun, which Macrobius thought was the highest divine principle and even the ultimate basis of all the other gods.

The non-duality that I'm getting into, by this point, should be understood as something that involves and transcends a certain measure of "evil", or at least contains the infernal in itself. This lends itself to a dual-natured solar divinity that is by no means unfamiliar within ancient polytheism. Sun gods, perhaps like many other gods, were very double-sided. For example, the Iranian sun god Mithra was seen both as a benevolent deity concerned with friendship and contract, and as a mysteries, uncanny, and even "sinister" or "warlike" deity (though, these aspects are often attributed to his syncretic form as Mitra-Varuna). Kris Kershaw suggested in The One-Eyed God: Odin and the (Indo-)Germanic Männerbünde that the daeva Aeshma actually represented an aspect of Mithra's being. In Egypt, the wrathful goddess Sekhmet was also understood as an aspect of the power of Ra. The Mesopotamian sun god, Utu, or Shamash, was also a judge in the underworld. Another Mesopotamian god, Nergal, was a warlike god of disease and death who also represented a harsh aspect of the sun. Apollo, an oracular deity who was eventually associated with the sun, was also seen as a destroyer and shared Nergal's association with disease in addition to healing. Helios himself was also sometimes referred to as a destroyer, as indicated by one of his epithets, Apollon. In fact, even Helios may have been connected or in some cases even identified with Hades. At Smyrna, Plouton was worshipped as Plouton-Helios. This may even have reflected the notion of a nocturnal Sun that shone in the realm of the dead, perhaps inherited from Egypt. In some parts of Greece, Helios was also invoked alongside a chthonic form of Zeus in oath-swearing ceremonies.

The real fun I'd like to get into with this concept comes from hongaku-inspired forms of medieval Buddhist theology and their influence on the Shinto pantheon. And in that sense our focus turns to none other than Amaterasu, the Japanese sun goddess who was also the divine patron of sovereignty. The medieval Amaterasu was to some extent equated with all deities at all levels - naturally, this meant even the demonic and chthonic deities. Thus Amaterasu was both a saving deity and a wrathful deity in the Buddhist context. Late medieval Shinto theology had even crowned her a "deity of the Dharma nature", a unique kind of deity with no original ground, and thus a transcendent power akin to that of Dainichi Nyorai (Vairocana Buddha). The Tenshō daijin kuketsu identified Amaterasu with Bonten (Brahma), Taishakuten (Indra), and Shoten, and then with Yama in the underworld because she records the dharmas of good and evil, and from there it asserts that we are dealing with the same deity in all cases. The same text also says that Kukai interpreted Amaterasu as the great deity of the five paths in the underworld, and therefore the primordial deity controlling birth and death. In some respects she was even seen as an araburu-no-kami just like Susano-o, both sharing a double ambivalence that is projected onto their opposition. In other cases, Amaterasu was identified with the Buddhist god Sanbo Kojin, the wild or demonic god of the three poisons who was interpreted as the honji or "original ground" of Amaterasu, and then by extension Amaterasu was identified with Mara, the demon king himself, in the same way.

All of this, of course, is an expression of the non-dualism of hongaku thought, in which the darkness of unenlightened passion and ignorance (thus the realm of the demons) is at once enlightenment and Buddha nature, and not only this it is both simultaneously the ground of enlightenment and Buddha nature and also, ultimately, indistinguishable from enlightenment and Buddha nature.

[themuseumofwitchcraftandpaganism]

She Who Hunts by Dr. Carla Ionescu

I have mixed feelings about this book, but I know a lot of people like it. I'll start with the good and then the bad.

It's one of the only books completely centered around Artemis that I've found. Dr. Ionescu proposes the fascinating idea that Artemis developed out of Egyptian and Minoan roots and backs it up with many different aspects of her worship: visual art, myths, temples/ceremonies, and texts. This, as far as I know, has never been proposed before nor has all of Artemis' historical worship been compiled in the same place. I learned a lot and am grateful for the research she put in. At the beginning of each chapter is a devotional hymn or poem from a different time period which I thought was a lovely touch. It's also a quick read at only 108 pages of content.

It's at an intermediate to advanced level; Dr. Ionescu references a lot of other authors with the assumption that her reader is already familiar with their writings as well as art that I wasn't aware of. She doesn't provide pictures either, like other academic books I've read, so it was hard to follow what specific visual elements she was referencing. I agree with her argument that Artemis has Minoan roots, but the Egyptian argument was a bit of a reach in my opinion; maybe if she provided pictures, I would have followed it better.

Then there comes the issue of gender. Dr. Ionescu has a lovely section about Artemis and masculinity, which I thought was enthralling, but then goes on to contradict it a bit herself. She says that men in the late ancient Mediterranean neglected Artemis and she was purely a female goddess even though earlier in the book she talks about Artemis' role in male coming of age ceremonies and having male priests. She also makes the generalization of "all women want to live in the woods to escape the patriarchy." And while I'm sure this is true for some people, it just rubbed me the wrong way as a nonbinary person. Artemis is a goddess who's incredibly connected to gender and the patriarchy, and while I agree with some of the points about gender in the book, I feel like Dr. Ionescu's general handling of gender and the patriarchy was very black and white; it could've been much more complex and added another level to her analysis.

Summary:

"Filled with examples of ritual, symbolism and an extensive collection of Artemis myths and folklore, this work is a comprehensive compilation of all things Artemis, and her fundamental role in the communal, political and ritual development of the Greco-Roman world. The goddess of the hunt is more than just a virgin in the woods. Her worship can be traced to a time before the Minoans, and her rituals include all facets of the human experience, starting from birth rituals to rites of passage, to death and beyond. Her protection for those who honour her is all encompassing, her vengeance for those who cross her is swift and fatal.

While classic scholars focused mostly on Olympian deities such as Apollo, Athena, Zeus and Dionysius, this book provides vivid and detailed evidence that the goddess Artemis has been underrated for much too long. Dr. Ionescu's work is a labor of love and research, born out of her long-standing certainty that Artemis was the most prevalent and influential goddess of the Mediterranean."

Where to read it:

Your local library!

Amazon $20.19

Thriftbooks $25

Artemis Research Center (signed copy) $35