#on the soul

[saltair-and-webweaves]

One single thread of gold tied me to you

past lives, børns/you had me at hello, mhairi mcfarlane/elektra, sophocles/the wedding date (2005)/invisible string, taylor swift/walking home, marie howe/robert james waller/ @billypotts /@hermoonlit-world /call me maybe, carly rae jepsen/invisible string, taylor swift

requested here

[vashhanamichi]

Etymologically the term “soul” evolved from the Old English sawol, the Gothic saiwola and the Proto-Germanic saiwalo, meaning “coming from the sea,” or “belonging to the sea.” The etymology gives expression to the belief that the sea was a stopping place of the soul before its birth and after its death. Botticelli’s painting of Aphrodite’s birth from the foam of the sea is a representational depiction of this myth. The water from which souls emerge and to which they return is a metaphor for the source, or origin of life. Numerous creation myths refer to water as the original “matter.” Freud literalized the notion as the amniotic fluid; his literal idea can be extended by evolutionary theory which hypothesizes that life first emerged from the seas. Jung, however, felt that mythology expresses and elaborates upon internal psychic events; he, therefore, interpreted the references to water from which the soul emerged as analogous to the unconscious.

The Chinese version of the soul’s watery origins is the belief that at death the soul sinks to the earth and lives in the ground water near the Yellow Springs. These springs are the Land of the Dead, yet, paradoxically, the reservoir of life as well, and from there, having become rejuvenated, the soul comes back to life. In Homer, the afterworld is not underground but at the far end of the ocean, beyond where the sun sets. In both Nordic and Egyptian mythology, ships transport the soul to the land of the beyond.

In alchemy, Luna, the moon, governs the process of coagulatio. Traditional folklore of many cultures calls the moon the place where souls gather after death before they journey to higher spiritual realms; and it is also the place where spirits and souls take on material substance before their return to earth.

The moon is the alchemical source of moisture: “Luna secretes the dew or sap of life,” which ties in with the idea of the soul’s origins in the waters. (…)

In fantasy, myth and literature, the soul is usually personified as a woman. A phenomenological purview of her characteristics reveals that she likes diversity, the unique, the personal and the atypical. She is polyvalent, polygamous, polytheistic. In contrast, spirit prefers uniformity, similarity and abstraction; it is monotheistic, monogamous, and one. In addition, Soul is elemental, animistic, warlike, adventurous, romantic. She loves life, the adventure of it, and seeks experience and immersion in the hustle and bustle of daily existence.

Consequently, Jung defines Soul as “the archetype of life itself.” For Soul ties one to instinctive, material reality, to the earth, to country, church, community, family and personal relationships. She is responsible for our likes and dislikes, our loves and hatreds, our vocation and avocations. Soul is the source of artistic and intellectual pursuits, making one loyal to these endeavors. In the Slavic countries, hobbies, such as playing a musical instrument or painting, are said to be done “for the soul.” The Soul is also the font of religious devotion and of the mystic’s passionate desire for a relationship with God. And finally, Soul is the wise old woman of folklore and the Biblical Sophia, a personification of wisdom.

In her negative guise, Soul turns into a death demon, as depicted by the Sirens and the Lorelei. She can seduce human beings away from life, into the world of unreality, sterile fantasy, pedantic thought, insanity, depression and psychological or physical suicide. Here she reveals her ghostly side, the dark side of the moon, and becomes “the archetype of death.”

[vamprisms]

me: you literally have a disorder. this is symptoms

me: no perhaps my soul is rotten

[megaman-exe-execute]

Just a few more hours

[violetreminder]

I hope the "What if Disco Elysium was about a witch finding her cat in the mountains" post never leaves the gaming discourse vernacular. It will never not be funny to me bc it's got all the Gamer Entitlement™ levels of CoD bros throwing hissy fits about "woke" shit but instead of being couched in far right reactionism it's the exact kind of "Kingdom of Conscience" style liberal outrage at anything with conviction and beliefs that DE waxed on about. Like even chuds who get mad that the game calls you out for being racist interact with the themes of DE better and understand them more than Cat Lady did.

[hansoeii]

only you.

[my-darling-boy]

I was at a bookstore looking through the art section and I saw a spine that said The Camden Town Nudes which was interesting because this didn’t seem like the bookstore where I would ever find something like that and I wanted to have a casual look but like. This also wasn’t exactly the bookstore where you felt like you could look at naked pictures let alone just suggestive paintings of them, it’s a really small shop as well, so I was like right I’ll just take a quick peek, I’m an art student, I love history, maybe I’ll buy it. I looked both ways and saw the shopkeep had left momentarily and no one was about, so I opened it and found it was an entire book featuring nude Edwardian women all painted by Walter Sickert between 1905-1912 and it was actually quite a revolutionary set of paintings for its time given that it featured very raw depictions of working class nude women in dark London instead of the elegant, white bedsheet clad, Demure middle and upper class women usually depicted.

And of course RIGHT as I flip to this lady’s boobs practically taking up an entire double page spread, every customer in a 5 mile radius appeared from around the corners of the shelf including the shopkeep and immediately regressing to a wet, pathetic Edwardian man from 1908, startled, I dropped the large book which caused a giant SLAP on the floor in this already silent store thus causing all patrons to look down at me scrambling on my knees to close a giant book of Edwardian boobs and let me tell you it would not have been nearly as funny had I not immediately felt like some Edwardian local pervert who just tried to sneak a cheeky peek at the erotic book in the bookstore only to drop it dramatically causing a scene, red up to his ears trying to shove it back on the shelf. Like such a casual and normal thing in modern day but looking at Edwardian women suddenly turned it into this egregious act as I apparently became possessed by the spirit of a moustached man in a bowler hat and morning coat going Good Heavens I mustn’t gaze upon these images in public lest the constable haul me away!

[evidently-endless]

i think we should remind musicians they can absolutely make up little stories for their songs btw. it doesn’t have to be about them at all. you can invent a guy and put him in situations to music. time honoured tradition in fact.

[almondpiglet]

ppl were drawing mikus from all over so heres habesha miku and her lil twin sibs rin and len!!

[lorddoom01]

Saw someone mention the new Boston Dynamics' robot was introduced like a Souls boss. Was not expecting it to come out so creepy.

[fosliie]

College roommates, lab partners, to basically married pipeline

[a-hollow-forest]

"people show their true colours in life threatening situations" no, they show you what they act like when they're mortally terrified, an emotion notorious for literally turning your entire brain off to the point where people who go into those situations as a profession need to be literally trained on how to not have that happen

[couldnt-think-of-a-funny-name]

[quixoticprince]

Guys I don't think this kindly stranger is all that nice But yeah, if Medic confessed about stealing their souls in the next pages I don't think anyone would really care

Based on this post thread

[prokopetz]

My controversial game design opinion is that "environmental storytelling" should be actually, tangibly present within the game's environments. Hitting the player with a paragraph of lore every time they click on a random item in their inventory is not environmental storytelling – it's just hiding an epistolary novel in your game's UI.