#popular christian websites

[anushaarticles]

In this Article we see about Fearless women in the Bible, the way they faced every challenge prayerfully with faith. Here are the few inspiring women…

[anarchotolkienist]

you’re attacking that neopagan kind of birthstone post about druid plants, but could you please elaborate or at least clarify the explicit trope that is being used that has been historically weaponized?

I used to spend about a good third of my time on this godforsaken website attacking that idea, but sure, I'll do it again. This will be a bit of an effortpost, so I'll stick it under the readmore

There is a notion of 'celts' or Gaels as being magicial and somehow deeply in touch with nature and connected to pre-Christian worldviews that the people who decided to make up the "Celtic tree astrology" used. This is also why Buffy used Irish Gaelic as the language of the demons, why Warhammer uses Gaelic as Elvish, why garbled Scottish Gaelic is used by Wiccans as the basis for their new religious construct, why people call themselves Druids to go an say chants in bad Welsh in Stonehenge, or Tursachan Chalanais, or wherever, etc etc. This stuff is everywhere in popular culture today, by far the dominant view of Celtic language speaking peoples. Made up neopagan nonsense is the only thing you find if you go looking for Gaelic folklore, unless you know where to look, and so on and so on. I could multiply examples Endless, and in fact have throughout the lifespan of this blog, and probably will continue to.

To make a long history extremely brief (you can ask me for sources on specifics, or ask me to expand if you're interested), this is directly rooted in a mediaeval legalistic discussion in Catholic justifications for the expansionist policies of the Normans, especially in Ireland, who against the vigourous protestation of the Church in Ireland claimed that the Gaelic Irish were practically Pagan in practice and that conquest against fellow Christians was justified to bring them in like with the Church. That this was nonsense I hope I don't need to state. Similar discourses about the Gaels in Scotland exist at the same time, as is clear from the earliest sources we have postdating the Gaelic kingdom of Alba becoming Scotland discussing the 'coastal Scots' - who speak Ynglis (early Scots) and are civilised - and the 'forest Scots' (who speak 'Scottis' (Middle Gaelic) and have all the hallmarks of barbarity. This discourse of Gaelic savagery remains in place fairly unchanged as the Scottish and then British crowns try various methods for integrating Gaeldom under the developing early state, provoking constant conflict and unrest, support certain clans and chiefs against others and generally massively upset and destabilise life among the Gaels both in Scotland and Ireland. This campaign, which is material in root but has a superstructure of Gaelic savagery and threat justifying it develops through attempts at assimilation, more or less failed colonial schemes in Leòdhas and Ìle, the splitting of the Gaelic Irish from the Gaelic Scots through legal means and the genocide of the Irish Gaels in Ulster, eventually culminates in the total ban on Gaelic culture, ethnic cleansing and permanent military occupation of large swathes of Northern Scotland, and the destruction of the clan system and therefore of Gaelic independence from the Scottish and British state, following the last rising in 1745-6.

What's relevant here is that the attitude of Gaelic barbarity, standing lower on the civilisational ladder than the Anglo Saxons of the Lowlands and of England, was continuously present as a justification for all these things. This package included associations with the natural world, with paganisms, with emotion, and etc. This set of things then become picked up on by the developing antiquarian movement and early national romantics of the 18th century, when the Gaels stop being a serious military threat to the comfortable lives of the Anglo nobility and developing bourgeoise who ran the state following the ethnic cleansing after Culloden and permanent occupation of the Highlands (again, ongoing to this day). They could then, as happened with other colonised peoples, be picked up on and romanticised instead, made into a noble savage, these perceived traits which before had made them undesirable now making them a sad but romantic relic of an inexorably disappearing past. It is no surprise that Sir Walter Scott (a curse upon him and all his kin) could make Gaels the romantic leads of his pseudohistorical epics at the exact same time that Gaels were being driven from their traditional lands in their millions and lost all traditional land rights. These moves are related. This tradition is what's picked up on by Gardner when he decides to use mangled versions of Gaelic Catholic practice (primarily) as collected by the Gaelic folklorist Alasdair MacIlleMhìcheil as the coating for Wicca, the most influential neo-pagan "religion" to claim a 'Celtic' root and the base of a lot of oncoming nonsense like that Celtic Tree Astrology horseshit that started this whole thing, and give it a pagan coat of paint while also adding some half-understood Dharmic concepts (three-fold law anyone?) and a spice of deeply racist Western Esotericism to the mix. That's why shit like that is directly harmful, not just historically but in the present total blotting out of actually existing culture of Celtic language speakers and their extremely precarious communities today.

If you want to read more, I especially recommend Dr. Silke Stroh's work Gaelic Scotland in the Colonial Imaginary, Dr. Aonghas MacCoinnich's book Plantation and Civility in the North-Atlantic World, the edited collection Mio-rún Mór nan Gall on Lowland-Highland divide, the Gaelic writer known in English as Ian Crichton Smith's essay A real people in a real place on these impacts on Gaelic speaking communities in the 20th century, Dr. Donnchadh Sneddons essay on Gaelic racial ideas present in Howard and Lovecrafts writings, and Dr. James Hunter's The Making of the Crofting Community for a focus on the clearings of Gaels after the land thefts of the late 18th and early 19th century.

@grimdr an do chaill mi dad cudromach, an canadh tu?

[genderkoolaid]

insane takes from transphobes #72636363: trans jewish converts only convert because trannies are sooooo insecure and narcissistic and desperate for identity, not because of any positive qualities in judaism that might attract trans people looking for affirming spirituality. clearly this has nothing to do with tumblr being a website popular amongst both trans people and jews. also apparently trans people never convert to islam or bahai or buddhism or christianity, because that's definitely an unbiased observation and not just because this transphobe does not talk to trans people enough to experience spiritual diversity amongst trans people

(also, Islam has the Shahadah, & it's entire purpose is a (generally public) affirmation of identity, but uhhhh ignore that I guess)

[queer-scots-geordie-dyke]

I think my first encounter with how deeply Not Normal people are about Israel was in 2014 during that Israel/Hamas conflict during the summer. I was following a *gymnastics* blog and all of a sudden they were screaming 'annihilate Israel!!' and calling it 'Israhell' and I was like 'wtf???' And later when I tried looking at a popular website shared for Palestinian activism (because I honestly didn't know anything about Palestinians), something really felt off to me in the history section on the website. Being raised Christian, I was vaguely familiar with some history of the land - how there was a kingdom of Israel and Judah. Jews existed there for a long time. It's where they came from. But did that website mention them at all? No. It was incredibly one-sided. Eleven years later, not much has changed at all. :P

Honestly, the amount of people who make violently hating one tiny country in the Middle East the cornerstone of their personality is deeply bizarre. Like, without any warning at all, they will go off into ugly, raging rants. Before Oct. 7, I was quite naive as to just how extreme people could be. Not being Jewish or Israeli myself, I didn't really think about it much, it was just a random country that I didn't have anymore of an opinion on than any other though I did know some people were weird about it. And then I saw people and organisations and spaces I respected go completely off the deep end and actually celebrate and praise the rape and murder and torture of human beings just because they were Israeli and I've never been able to forget it or let it go. It was one of those times where you reach a turning point where you can no longer be silent or pretend you don't see what's happening. And a lot of people really hate what I say but I will not stop saying it.

[telomeke]

MY 2024 TUMBLR TOP 10

Yes I'm really late with this (totally on-brand for me 🤣) but that is the downside of waiting for 2024 to end before posting about it – and then taking too long to complete the task. Still, better late than never!

I was tagged to do this by @he-is-lightning-in-a-bottle at this post here. Thanks dearie! 🥰 (And if you'd like to play along too, there's no need to trawl through your posts manually, thank heaven. Just go to this website – Jet Black Code – and it'll list your Top 10 Tumblr posts in seconds. 👍😊)

So my activity on Tumblr (particularly writing about Thai BL) took a serious dip in 2024 (especially the latter half) for a number of reasons:

Work has ramped up in the post-COVID era, with work projects now coming onstream fast and furious. This has left me with a lot less time outside of work, which translates to less time for QL-watching, and (obviously) also less time to post about it.

My favorite queer auteur Aof Noppharnach Chaiyahwimhon has decided to step back from writing and directing (see these posts here and here), and in his absence I'm finding that non-Aof QL offerings are (perhaps unsurprisingly) disappointingly patchy in quality, which has turned QL-watching into a bit of a crapshoot (and less of a draw). With my short attention span I frankly need a show to be arresting in some way to stay committed – although I must add here that I don't need it to be highbrow art, just entertaining enough without being unduly insulting to the gray matter. So even a trashy series is fine as long as it's made clear to us we have to leave our loftier expectations at the door (memories of KinnPorsche flashing in my mind here – which also tells me my gray matter can handle quite a barrage of insulting if a show is entertaining enough 🤣). I was momentarily heartened by the promise of Khun Aof helming the GeminiFourth vehicle Ticket to Heaven in 2025 (such a beautiful trailer, a lush mini-movie almost), but I've come around to thinking this is more of an activist statement by him (commenting on the mainstream Christian/Catholic position vis-à-vis LGBTQ+ issues, remembering also that Khun Aof has a Catholic background). With this as the context, there's a high chance this show will never get made due to various sensitivities (but I live in hope nonetheless!):

With Khun Aof taking more of a backseat, my main feed for BL – GMMTV – seems to have pressed the pause button on more thought-provoking fare in favor of shows that are more formulaic and mass-market (read: vehicles for their branded couples, squarely aimed at the less discriminating and freer-spending sectors of the squealing teen audience). I've written more about it at these links here and here. And it's tough to keep watching GMMTV series when the plots don't deviate much from a well-worn template, rehashing narrative tropes because the formula is a proven money-spinner. A case in point: Kidnap the Series – never thought I'd give up on a show brimming with episode upon episode of a macho, shirtless, simping Ohm Pawat, but all that radiant manflesh still wasn't enough to keep me interested, which simply goes to show how dire the situation is. 😬🤷‍♂️ And with GMMTV enticing me less and less, I've been posting even less about BL as a result too.

Anyway, this explains why I have more original posts in the first half of 2024, while the latter half was mostly reblogs of other people's posts (and in keeping with the dictates of the game I'm only listing my own posts here, for what it's worth).

So after all that, on to my Top 10 for 2024:

✨NUMBER 1✨

My most popular post of the year was about a mysterious monk who inexplicably kept popping up in various Thai BLs: 👀

Appearing in Bad Buddy, KinnPorsche and The Sign, he was also sighted in non-BLs Pee Nak (still LGBTQ+ friendly), The Cave, Hemimeta, The Believers and The Murderer, resolutely a monk in all but the last one.

So working collectively, the BL fandom somehow managed to track down and identify the actor who plays everyone's favorite BL-friendly monk – he's Werawat Jumroensarn, not actually a monk in real life but nonetheless still a highly-religious Thai Buddhist who adroitly brings a sagely, monastic vibe to all his roles. The Thai BL fandom salutes you, Khun Werawat! 🙏💖

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✨NUMBER 2✨

This post was an explainer for the sudden flood of videos and GIFs on Tumblr showing Babe Tanatat all dressed up in traditional costume finery and performing a ceremonial dance somewhere outside Bangkok, while Billy Patchanon flapped about him gaily and garudaesquely in decidedly more normcore and less flashy garb.

The event turned out to be a worship ceremony put on by Idol Factory in faraway Nakhon Phanom, to honor the Great Naga of the Mekong even as The Sign deployed naga and garuda mythology in its storytelling, making waves here on Tumblr for fusing Thai supernatural beliefs with BL.

It was a highly respectful gesture from Idol Factory, thanking the nagas for allowing a representation of their story to be told as part of The Sign. Also respectful was the decision to have Billy abstain from the performance, probably because he was playing one of the garudas (who are mortal enemies of the nagas). All of which goes to show just how much belief in the spiritual and supernatural is woven throughout everyday life in Thailand. 👍

Babe, Heng and Songjet's little dance video at the link above is also breathtakingly beautiful. If I were the Naga being worshipped I'd certainly feel very honored indeed. 😍

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✨NUMBER 3✨

Ooh. 😵 This was one sex-drenched post, all about the visual rhetoric surrounding Tharn and Phaya's first time consummating their forbidden love and lust for each other (at least in their current reincarnations) as portrayed in The Sign:

So hot was the subject matter that despite my clinical descriptions and focus on the art direction, Tumblr's wonky algorithms (or possibly just some overworked backroom staff? 😂) decided that it was all too... too... (swoons into a deathly faint here) unseemly for the delicate constitution of the average Tumblrina in the BL fandom. (Yeah, right. Did no one survive KinnPorsche, Pit Babe or Playboyy??? 🤣)

And so they BLOCKED IT. Not once, but TWICE, which sent me scurrying to Admin with a flurry of appeals and explanations (that finally succeeded in getting the post reinstated, thank goodness). 😬

But really, all I was doing was noting how the lighting, colors, props and cinematography were working together to echo the breathless sensuality throbbing onscreen, when our two protagonists gave in to primordial desires much greater than themselves and attempted to unite their bodies as much as they could to counterbalance the heavily pre-ordained intertwining of their souls.

I think Idol Factory did a great job all around with this scene (both the players in front of the lens as well as those behind it). But was my post really all that raunchy though? I'll have to let you decide. 🤔

(above) The Sign Ep.7 [5/5] 19.47 – Phaya hungrily tops a gasping Tharn, even while a hard-working lamp from the Austin Powers range of home furnishings tries its best to do double duty: casting a sexy magenta light on everything while clumsily censoring any possible glimpse of Nagaruda penis and buttcrack 🤣

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✨NUMBER 4✨

Ah. Hmmm. 👀 Oops! Well, well...

I assure you, gentle reader and fellow BL fan, that I am not wholly possessed of a one-track mind – and yet somehow the next post here has also managed to turn all sexy and magenta while winking slyly at unspoken meanings hidden between the lines. Again. 🤣

Taking my Number 4 spot is a light-hearted post about Wandee Goodday nodding tongue-in-cheek at some legendary Thai porn, and this sideways jokery also shone as an example of WDGD's early charm, wit and intelligence. There was so much to look at and write about in the series, and I was especially taken with the lighting and art direction (all that yellow and magenta, standing in for Yoryak and Wandee) that I wrote reams about it.

But then… I decided not to post any of that, when the latter half of the show began to wander woozily about, punch drunk and semi-directionless, leading to an ending that turned out to be quite a letdown.

They squandered the obvious chemistry between the two leads and allowed a promising sexbuds-to-soulmates love story to meander to an unsatisfying conclusion. So many clever elements, but all set free to run wildly in a plethora of uncoordinated directions. This one disappointed me in the end, and it makes me sad to think of what might have been. But its fun moments were fun indeed, so I guess it's not a total loss. Inn Sarin really needs to start dialling back on the plastic surgery though. 😂

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✨NUMBER 5✨

Oh thank goodness there was 4 Minutes for us to lose our minds over collectively in 2024. Sleek, shiny, sexy – and that was just Great's car collection (the show itself, even more so 🥰).

Ah the mystery of it all! So convoluted was the Sammon plot that I found myself churning out post after post (work deadlines be damned) trying to guess at the underlying logic coursing beneath the spooky narrative onscreen, adding to the roiling cauldron of fan theories on Tumblr aiming to explain it all.

In the end Be On Cloud chose a more middle-of-the-road resolution, but there's no denying 4 Minutes captured the imaginations of so many. I remained impressed through to the end, and I will say it again: Director Ning Bhanbhassa Dhubthien is one to watch, especially if her sure hand is allowed to rein in the excesses of Khun Pond and Dr. Sammon's wilder imaginings.

But my most popular post about 4 Minutes wasn't anything to do with the screenwriting, cinematography or directing though. 🤔

As usual, a pithy take (only nine words!) is easier to like and reblog on Tumblr, and all I did was point out a cute detail about the merchandise – when you place the black and white cat plushies (standing in for Great and Tyme) side-by-side, the random color blocks on the side of each, marring the individual symmetry, form a perfect and symmetrical heart when it's cats à deux:

And of course this is signaling how each completes the other in GreatTyme's unconventional, multi-pronged love story. Big AWWWW here 💖, but then again let's not forget how DARK it all is so let's go in with a black-and-white color scheme to remind us we ain't in Hello Kitty World, but also let's not get too dark so it's soft soft kitties all the way, but oh dear that's too cute so let's give them grumpy, frowny faces and make them look as malevolent as can be. Oh! But how then did we end up with MALEVOLENT cat plushies, spawn of brooding kittenish evil, pets and pride of Chucky? Then again, why not malevolent cat plushies for the win? 🤣

I can't help thinking the constant push and pull between commercial considerations versus artistic vision in Thai BL will always follow a similar trackway, though Be On Cloud seems to have done a better job with 4 Minutes than GMMTV on most of their offerings, is my take on the subject. 😍

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✨NUMBER 6✨

OK, so I'm not watching The Heart Killers, nor have I ever seen The Taming of the Shrew (that one episode of Moonlighting and 10 Things I Hate About You don't count), but nonetheless it tickled me no end to see Shakespeare credited as a co-creator on My Drama List for this series, and my Number 6 post was a signal boost for that:

This wasn't just some editor at MDL having a lark, though I do approve. Willie Shakes is also credited on other Asian productions there (As We Like It and The Banquet) and he now has his own MDL page too. 😂👍

Anyway, credit where credit is due! 😍 (Move over Mr. Kaewpanpong, a new William has joined the BL fold. 🤣)

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✨NUMBER 7✨

If you've ever been mystified by the vagaries of romanized Thai spelling and pronunciation, my favorite Thai (and Canadian) chef Pailin Chongchitnant has a nifty little vid that goes some way to explain its complexity, linked in this post:

Prior to this, I had so many questions: 🤣

Why does Pat in Bad Buddy spell his name with an 'h'? Why does Google Translate spell his name with an 'r', and why does the Google lady pronounce it Pat-tara?

Still in BBS, why does Pran's mom call him (to my ears) Bprrraan when Pa calls him Bpaan? (Like, where did the 'r' go?🤷‍♂️)

What's up with the 'l' in Tul Pakorn's name sounding more like an 'n'? WHAT DO YOU MEAN Suvarnabhumi is pronounced more like Suwannapoom!? 👀😂

I now have a better understanding of the linguistic (and socio-political/cultural) contortions going on behind the scenes here after watching Pai's video, and I hold her encouraging words to heart (as dear @recentadultburnout reminded me in a comment on the post 🥰): "Whatever you do, it's just all various degrees of wrong." 🤣 Not a put-down, simply Pai letting us know that the language is far more complex than can be summarized with the puny 26 letters of the English alphabet. 👍🤩

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✨NUMBER 8✨

A little out of character for me, but this post has no images. And then it starts out with "There are no words..." when the post is all words. 🤣

It's really a short post about the whiplash we all went through when the arguably milk-and-water Last Twilight aired its episodes on the same day as the sex-forward Omegaverse-inhabiting Pit Babe. Really, there are no words that can do the experience justice. 🤣

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✨NUMBER 9✨

Are we descending into a pattern here? 🤣 Post Number 9 consists of a single image and no text (except for the subtitles):

Well I did caption it in the ALT Text though: 🤣

Wandee Goodday Ep.6 [4/4] 8.06 – Yoryak references the night it all began, when he rescued a trashy pile of a doctor outside a convenience store

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✨NUMBER 10✨

And rounding up my Top 10 was a signal boost bit of BL reportage, linking to the GoyNattyDream in-car interview on YouTube with Mew Suppasit and Tul Pakorn, BL royalty and officially a couple in real life:

Mew and Tul had soft-launched confirmation of their romance in the months preceding with tons of social media posts showing them hanging out and holidaying together, but from what I can gather this was the first time (or if not the first, at least one of the earliest times) they out-and-out confirmed their relationship, and candidly spoke about it, on the record. 💖

A big step for Thai BL, that paradoxically has to operate in an industry where people in positions of influence can sometimes be homophobic to actors who are (or even suspected of being) queer in real life. 👀

Congratulations to the happy couple, and congratulations to you too, dear reader, if you've read this post all the way down to here!

Not much else to do but tag others – although this is so late I figure everyone's already done it. But since I've not been on Tumblr much I've missed who's done it and who's not, so I'm just going to tag people at random, and if you've already done this please link me to your post so I can read it. 🥰 And even if I've not tagged you but you'd like to play please do so (and tag me too, so I can read your post)!

Onward tagging:

@bengiyo

@neuroticbookworm

@dribs-and-drabbles

@solitaryandwandering

@airenyah

@grapejuicegay

@waitmyturtles

@twig-tea

@rythyme

@respectthepetty

@relativelydimensional

@wen-kexing-apologist

@colourme-feral

@ranchthoughts

@chickenstrangers

@callipigio

@kattahj

@non-binarypal7

@starryalpacasstuff

@shortpplfedup

@hughungrybear

@pandasmagorica

@visualtaehyun

@inventedfangirling

@recentadultburnout

@dimplesandfierceeyes

@dudeyuri

@lovelyghostv

@dc-alves

@fiddlepickdouglas

@hapiestupid

@yinwaryuri

@writerwithoutsound

@randompens

@nihilisticcondensedmilk

@syrinth

@naniskys

@delesaria-blog

@narcissusneverknewme

@pokomumee

@suni-san

@belladonna-and-the-sweetpeas

@aroceu

@italianpersonwithashippersheart

Tagging @lurkingshan too – I already read and reblogged your post (linked here), but if you think there are others I should check out please do let me know! 💖

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[actual-changeling]

I have written many meta posts and s3-theories, and read even more, but I got hit by an idea I have not seen before. (If there is another post, please link it!)

After vibrating for an hour and losing my mind in my dms, I have no scraped together enough brain cells to present what is probably my first actual 'main-plot meta'.

Welcome to another edition of Alex's unhinged meta corner, today with a title to honour Crowley's James Bond obsession and the possibility of another heaven heist.

I give you:

From Jesus with Love - You Will Live Twice

Now, let's get right into it.

I think Neil might have told us more about the main s3 plotline in the announcement article than we previously thought. We all got stuck on 'they're not talking'—for good reason—but it is the part before that which has been bugging me ever since then.

The plans are going wrong—and this time that is a problem for earth and humanity. Turning that around, it means that whatever that plan consists of would be the way to go and beneficial for everyone, the opposite of the main plot of s1.

"They need to prevent the Second Coming (SC)" is pretty much the only and most popular idea I have seen, hundreds of fics and metas and whatnot have been written about it, but I think there's a good chance we're wrong. If we're not, well, I will honestly just be happy to be watching season 3.

Whatever the Metatron is planning will have negative consequences for everyone, or as Michael puts it: "And so… it ends. Everything ends. Time and the world is over, and we begin Eternity… forever and ever."

It sounds very much like Apocalypse #1 - Same Old Plan, same expected result, yet if we look at different interpretations of scripture we find that the SC is not entirely about complete destruction and death for all of humanity—it is about creating a new world/migrating to the kingdom of God.

This is taken from the Wikipedia article about the SC

Resurrection and life in a world to come are a direct contradiction to the result Michael is explaining—total annihilation of humanity.

Now, I am neither religious in any way nor have I ever received any sort of biblical education. Luckily, Christians seem to love talking about the bible because there are dozens of bible website to wade through. If I get anything wrong, please point it out, I have never touched a bible in my life.

So, after reading many, many quotes by a bunch of different guys, I tried to create a somewhat coherent picture of what the SC might look like based on the assumption that the end result is positive. I will talk about how they can be interpreted more in-depth later, otherwise this would turn into a string-net very fast.

Additionally, we can also see where these points overlap with the statement Jimbriel gave in the bookshop in episode three.

What is Jesus' job description?

only God knows when and how exactly it will begin/happen, no one else does, including Jesus and the Metatron

a lot of different catastrophes are mentioned or quoted as something Jesus said, like earthquakes and storms -> Jimbriel mentioned a tempest and great storms

there is also the line "All these are the beginning of birth pains." Birth pains dictate that there will be a birth—birth of the world to come perhaps?

dead people will be resurrected/leave their graves so that they too can be judged (I'd say participate in it but that sounds like the Second Coming is a summer camp activity)

there are also mentions of stars and the heavens in general falling from the sky and the sun going dark -> Jimbriel also mentions darkness as one of the signs

great lamentations, as Jimbriel says, are also a part of many different passages, with humans mourning the world as it was

the Lord will descent with the voice of an Archangel and the sound of a trumpet/the trumpet of God; the grammatical structure of that sentence seems to be interpreted differently depending on who you ask, but the voices of angels/an Archangel and some sort of trumpet are common terms

once everyone is in heaven/wherever the 'main even' will take place, a judgement call will be made for every single person in relation to the book of life, which decides whether they will be punished forever or not (one passage talks about a lake of fire and mentions it several times in a row)

And this is where it gets tricky. To figure out what the SC looks like, we first need to understand a) what the Metatron's capabilities are, b) what he has to lose, and c) what exactly would be a threat to him.

If you ask me, all of this comes down to the Metatron wanting to stay and be in power for eternity with full control over angels so he can do as he please, aka keeping the system running as it is.

We know the book of life (bol) is a thing in the Good Omens universe, whether it does what Michael said is an entirely different question. So far, we have also only got confirmation that hell collects and tortures souls—in such large amounts that they are understaffed—while heaven looks completely empty.

The Metatron runs heaven as an institution, he seems to be the highest power any of the angels have access to and the one they defer to. He refers to himself as the voice of God and combines judge, jury and executioner, making him one great celestial dictator.

From what we know of hell, they do things a lot more democratically, having different councils, dukes, and ranks that are responsible for different levels of command.

We also know that that the Metatron wants the world to end, his goals can probably be summarized as the statement Michael makes, which would leave him in charge without any opposing forces.

We also also know that he sees Crowley and Aziraphale as a threat—why exactly remains a mystery for now—and that the success of his plan hinges on having a Supreme Archangel (SA) he can control. Gabriel decided to become princess of hell and Beez' sugar baby, so he was out of the equation, and after the Armageddon disaster, I don't think he wants to risk failing because of an unfamiliarity with earth (plus, y'know, getting our two idiots away from the plan).

It's interesting to me that right at the end, he says to Aziraphale "We call it the Second Coming"—call, not it is or it will be, CALL. We know that nothing Neil writes is a coincidence, definitely not with such an important line.

Just because you CALL something a specific name doesn't mean it IS what you call it, e.g. Aziraphale calls Crowley a foul fiend when we know he very much isn't.

The Metatron is selling his plan as part of the "Great/Ineffable Plan", so any questions can be blocked by saying it's God's will, it's ineffable. Whatever his plan is, he hides it behind the concept of the Second Coming, which angels know just enough about to understand the basics without having in-depth knowledge of what exactly it entails.

It is a good fucking strategy, I'll give him that, and it WORKS because angels—even if they have doubts—do not question. They simply don't; fear of punishment and millennia of conditioning have left them in a horrible place. When they encounter something unknown, their response is "I already knew that" as to not ask questions.

Crowley questions, we know that, and Aziraphale, ohhhhh, Aziraphale ALSO questions, but he does it in a less dangerous and obvious way. The Metatron is vastly underprepared for that.

(Side note: That alone would be its own meta post, but the gist is that he questions heaven's plans and then adjusts his assumptions of what God might want to what he WANTS God to want, e.g. Job, the Arch)

To summarize everything I just said, the Metatron wants to do what Armageddon failed to do—destroy earth and the universe—so he can be supreme dictator of all remaining celestial beings and gorge himself on power.

But instead of calling it his Big Evil Plan, he calls it the Second Coming, making everyone play along without resistance.

We cycle aaaaall the way back to the sentence I quoted—the ACTUAL plans are going wrong since the Metatron's would mean total destruction.

But what is the SC supposed to be if not the Apocalypse 2.0?

When I look at all the different aspects of the SC and assume a positive outcome, then the end result to me would be a new world that is pretty much like the old world, or maybe even literally the old world but with any destruction reversed. Heaven and hell get dissolved since now that everyone has been "judged", they as institutions are no longer needed, they have fulfilled their purpose.

No more judgement means there is no reason to keep track anymore, so why do you need to run celestial corporations whose only job is doing exactly that? You don't—and THAT is what I believe is the biggest perceived threat to the Metatron, losing full control over everyone and everything, losing his position, his title, and whatever else he has.

On top of that, Good Omens has told us again and again that God doesn't seem to give a fuck about good and evil anymore, and that without heaven and hell being all wrapped up in it, humanity would have 100% free will without any consequences.

Maybe the BoL is empty, maybe it isn't real, maybe Jesus stole it to straighten a wobbly table, who knows. There is a chance it is what Michael says, but I would admittedly find that a bit. too obvious and boring since it would boil the plot down to "they save their own asses again" and not "they save humanity at all cost".

Regarding Crowley and Aziraphale's role in this—I have Thoughts TM but those definitely need their own post. In short, they have to get the SC back on track, the real one.

-

If you have made it this far, thank you for working through what I hope are more or less coherent rambles. Any spelling or grammar mistakes are my own.

Questions? Thoughts? Corrections? Expansions and additions?

Feel free to add to this post however you like (and I can't believe I have to mentions this but if you clown on my post or behave like an asshole you will be blocked).

[loving-family-poll]

jesus christ superstar is the jesus/judas fic that got mclennon booted. and ok yes there is maybe 25% chance the beatles broke up because paul mccartney didn't let john lennon hit it but they were both kind of ugly and john lennon is one of history's greatest douchebags so i'm actually really glad he didn't get his dick sucked. my otp is john lennon/sexual frustration. i hope paul mccartney has sucked off men who are not john lennon and he found out about it somehow and ran to the ocean like montoya. i hope yoko ono cheated on him and he ran into the ocean again. to keep this at least a little on theme i hope cynthia kicked off the whole thing by fucking george and they role played big sister/little brother the entire time. to be honest if i had a time machine going back and convincing people john lennon was in love with to do incest roleplay with other men would make my list. not high, but it would be on there.

Do NOT 🚫🚫🚫 talk to me about Jesus christ superstar ok i don't CARE if that's what made Jesusxjudas popular for one i don't believe that's true 🙅‍♀️ bc i don't think there are that many Jesus christ superstar fans i think tumblr users just like voting for Bible ships (lapsed christian ass website ✝️🤢) and even if it WAS that's a work of FICTION and a Bible ship will NEVER BE RPF 😒 might as well call cain and abel rpf 🤬!!!!!! Secondly you could not BE more wrong about the beatles 🪲!!!!!! This is the senseless beatle hating I always see here and I will always respect hating but at least do it ACCURATELY 🙄 NEVER in a billion years would paul have denied john the chance to hit it are you kidding me 💦🫃!!!!!! Sir James Paul McCartney of "maybe if I was a girl" and "here there and everywhere is my favorite beatles song bc john said he liked it" "'if you had one more day with john, how would you spend it?' 'In bed'" and generally being a huge faggot fame 🤨🏳️‍🌈????? Be so fr right now 😤 plus anyone who says they aren't cute is LYING i KNOW their asses are just lying cause they're haters i know they know jp were hot it's undeniable 🔥 I have good news for you 🎉 paul DEFINITELY sucked off guys who weren't john and you are CORRECT about cyn and george tho unfortunately for you john and yoko are the definitive incest roleplayers of the beatles 🫡 i would also recommend you look into John's time with PRIMAL SCREAM THERAPY bc i feel that was a very dark period in his life that you would ENJOY HEARING ABOUT ❤️

[portraitsofsaints]

Saint Margaret of Antioch  3rd C. Feast day: July 20 Patronage: childbirth, pregnancy, backache, kidney disease, sterility, dying people, against the devil, exiles, falsely accused martyrs, nurses,

Saint Margaret (also known as Marina) of Antioch's life is shrouded in legend. When her father, a pagan priest, found out that Margaret converted to Christianity, he cast her out of the home. She became a shepherdess and attracted the attention of a Roman Prefect whom she rejected. He then had her tortured and she was eventually martyred. It is said that while she was in prison the devil appeared as a serpent and swallowed her but spit her out because of the cross she held. She is one of the popular Middle Ages 14 Holy Helpers and was one of the voices St. Joan of Arc heard.

Prints, plaques & holy cards available for purchase here: (website)

[anushaarticles]

This is the very rare topic we find in the Holy Bible. God wanted us to be Salt of the earth always. Like salt which is presesrvative and endures.

[phoenixwrites]

I grew up conservative and Republican. I'm talking, serious conservative values, as in, my father considered Fox News "too liberal" a news source. My dad could forgive me leaving Christianity, but me registering Democrat? That was a bridge too far.

I saw a post essentially claiming that Trump is the only conservative choice for the election, the only one who truly cares for the American people. And it riled up my Old Guard Republican feelings (however latent) because no. However Republican and conservative you are (a minority on this website, I know), Trump is not and never has been Republican and conservative. You are deluding yourself.

Why do I say that?

Let's go down the list. (Please be aware, I am not defending conservatism--that ain't my political ideology anymore for the whole "they're trying to take away my loved ones' rights" issue. But for the sake of rhetorical strategy, bear with me.)

The claim that Trump isn't a part of the liberal elite is absurd. Trump has never felt dirt underneath his fingernails. Trump has never struggled to pay bills. Trump has paid for multiple abortions of his many affairs and mistresses. He is a draft dodger who mocked war heroes. He is a failed Hollywood celebrity that is grasping at fame. There is a reason Never Trump was popular among conservatives during the 2016 Republican primary.

My Vietnam veteran father warned me in 2008 that Putin wanted to reclaim the Soviet Union, that he was a dangerous dictator that put out hits on foreign journalists. Now he's posting videos of Putin doing judo on Facebook. It is insane that to me that the Republican party is so obviously doing a 180 after warning us for thirty years about Russia.

Trump only started caring about the pro-life movement when he realized he could manipulate them. His voting record is pro-choice. He has paid for abortions, had multiple affairs, and yes, is a serial rapist. None of this is pro-life.

Trump has insulted veterans, dishonored Arlington, and didn't have the balls to fight in Vietnam himself, ran away from the draft like a scared little boy. Now, sixty years later, he has the gall to attack Vietnam veterans and make claims on who is and isn't a war hero? He expects me to believe he gives two shits about veterans? Nah.

Trump does not care about Christianity or protecting Christian freedom. This is a big one. You are falling for a con. Trump is not and never has been a Christian; he just saw a malleable voting block. He has never asked for forgiveness from Christ the Savior and considers doing so weak. He has no relationship with Jesus. He does not pray. He had to have multiple "lessons" on Christianity with top Evangelical pastors to make him more palatable to Evangelicals.

Evangelical conservative Russell Moore penned multiple op-eds where he expressed bewilderment and betrayal that his community was blindly supporting a serial rapist that was antithetical to traditional Christian values. He isn't the only one. A large chunk of Evangelicals are sick and tired of defending a lying, cheating, coward and deluding themselves that he loved Jesus.

A significant portion of Trump's former cabinet has refused to endorse him. I cannot stress to you how wild that is to me. One thing about Republicans? They always vote for their candidate. No matter how much they dislike the candidate--that was the whole thing in 2016. A huge chunk of conservatives disliked Trump and thought him vile, but voted for him anyway because that's what you do when you're a Republican. The fact that so many are breaking away and calling him a danger to the republic? That's a big screaming deal.

Women are not safe around Trump. That used to be important to conservatives, protecting women from rapists--that was my dad's main reason for teaching me to shoot competitively.

If you support Trump, whatever. That's your insane delusional business.

But don't pretend that man is any kind of conservative or gives two shits about what true conservatives care about.

And if I may quote my Evangelical mama, "That man is going to Hell and I look forward to it."

[rozarens]

I'm thinking about the names of our protags.

Rafał/Rafal - "God will heal". An archangel, a patron of people associated with healing, sailors, runaways, wanderers. But also, a person with this name was chosen a patron saint of soldiers and the people kidnapped to Sibir. Polish Wikipedia article points to this name raising in popularity thanks to a book, "Znachor" by Dołęga-Mostowicz. And what's more, a Jolanta (the modern and more common name than Jolenta) also appears there and that naem rose in popularity as well. The name appears also in another book, "Popioły" by Żeromski. Both authours are associated with Young Poland/the interwar period, both were interested in social issues, criticism of the social stratosphere and wrote about selfless, desperate doctors working in an unjust, cruel system. The usage of pen names was also popular among authours in this period for various reasons. I also learnt about a novel for teens and young adults written by Domańska, where this name was given to an antagonist. Judging from the synopsis: the protagonist is a boy who wants to be a carver, but gets into err, situations, and has to leave his surroundings in the process. Firstly, it's his home village and later, a travelling circus. He ends up moving to study in Kraków (the previous capital of Poland). A clergyman and a scholar help him find shelter and give the means to explore his interest in art... The setting also happens to be the XV ce. Anyway, this literary period is something we like to come back to and reference in our post-modern media. Oczy's book reminded me of those short stories which were published to teach others about other people and/or to make them ponder, but I digress.

Oczy - "eyes". This name doesn't feel like a real name and I'm one of the people thinking it might be a way to conceal the real identity of a killer for hire. But then again, he lives in "country P" and not Poland or Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Or his carers wanted him to be unique, so who's to pass verdicts? This name probably sums up his whole character and ties the themes of Orb if you think about it.

Draka - this one's a bit tricky, but I choose to interprete it as "a quarrel" ("a drama" would be more of a modern slang, meaning-wise). While noun-derived names are not common among Poles, the articles about Polish Roma point to more variety in their naming traditions (czujczuj[.]pl, romowie[.]com, rodzice[.]pl; the first two are "own voices" websites, but the latter is a simple archive of names which I don't feel too comfortable to trust). Christian names and those derived from Latin or Greek seem to still prevail. Perhaps it is her name, but maybe it's a nickname given to her by her tribe thanks to her willingness to change or take up risks. Or perhaps the mangaka got inspiration from some other languages, where this name sounds similarly to "dragon."

[santmat]

Tips for the Gnostic Spiritual Seeker

@ YouTube: Spiritual Awakening Radio Podcast:

https://youtu.be/K4n24UirOIQ

@ Apple Podcasts: 

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/tips-for-the-gnostic-spiritual-seeker/id1477577384?i=1000702975093

@ Spotify: 

https://open.spotify.com/episode/1T60bXczQT4rvKfe4ii1sZ

@ Spiritual Awakening Radio Podcast - Play or Direct Download MP3: 

https://traffic.libsyn.com/spiritualawakeningradio/Tips_for_the_Gnostic_Spiritual_Seeker.mp3

@ the Podcast Website - Permalink URL - With Buttons That Take You To the Popular Podcast APPS - Wherever You Follow Podcasts: 

https://SpiritualAwakeningRadio.libsyn.com/tips-for-the-gnostic-spiritual-seeker

@ LinkTree -- Wherever You Follow Podcasts - At Your Favorite Podcast APP Just Do a Search for "Spiritual Awakening Radio" (Youtube, Youtube Music, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, I Heart Radio, Audible/Amazon Music and Podcasts, Pocketcasts, Overcast, PodBean, Jio Saavan, etc...): 

https://linktr.ee/SpiritualAwakeningRadio

"Gnostic" is such an abused word, hijacked and repurposed by content creators. It's important to know what Gnosticism IS as well as what it IS NOT. On the web is much, what I call, 'gnostic nonsense' (gnonsense). People call all sorts of subjects "gnostic". Apparently everything's gnostic except actual Gnosticism. THAT, most don't have time for. THAT, remains the forbidden topic, the mystery always concealed as souls prefer the shiny things of distraction. Time to rebel against the archon occupation! In this online world of clickbait sensationalism and exploitation can the teachings of gnostic spirituality along with their ancient texts be appreciated instead of distorted by influencers? 

My take is simply to let the gnostics be gnostic, treating them equally like any other world religion and understand just what exactly the original spiritual movements labeled "gnostic" actually taught based on what they themselves have to say about that, and not what other esoteric groups coming into being many centuries or millennia later assume they taught cooking in their own particular theological and cultic cultural cauldron of biases in Europe or the US. As I view the saga of the gnostics -- the treatment of the true classic Nag Hammadi gnostics of antiquity -- the only solution is to let the gnostics be gnostic, truly hear their voices embedded in the surviving texts that come directly from them, and allow them to speak for themselves, define their own beliefs, diet, and spiritual practices. 

Then others may truly benefit from their wisdom, and in that sense Gnosticism as a spiritual path can potentially reincarnate into the world again, or far more likely and best of all, help spiritual seekers of authenticity recognize those who already may be following a Living Gnosis Now in the modern age. (Spirit: πνεῦμα)

Today we explore: The Gnostic Gospels: A History of the Destruction of Wisdom; 

The Dry Canals Where Gnostic Waters Never Flow; 

Recommended Reading - Free Books Online; 

The Three Kinds of People There Are in the World According to the Valentinian Gnostics; 

Hedonists and Gnostic Cave-dwellers Somewhere in Time; 

Weird Christianities From Other Places and Timelines With Their Own Gospels and Unique Spiritualities -- I say "weird" Christianities. I mean in this a good way, as in fascinating, valuable sources of wisdom, mostly hidden, ignored and forgotten. The scriptures of the East and West I enjoy the most are books hardly anyone has ever heard of. (Lord of the Soul: राधास्वामी) 

Yes, Yes, Yes, Nag Hammadi is where they found the Gnostic Gospels but within you is where you will find the gnosis. What Spiritual Practice is About -- The Altered State of Meditation According to Gnostics, Masters, Saints and Mystics; 

In Divine Love (Bhakti), Light, and Sound, At the Feet of the Masters, 

James Bean

A Satsang Without Walls

Light and Sound on The Path

Spiritual Awakening Radio Podcasts

Santmat Satsang Podcasts

Sant Mat Radhasoami

Spiritual Awakening Radio Website: 

https://www.SpiritualAwakeningRadio.com

[mariacallous]

On a recent afternoon, a dressmaker named Sergio Guadarrama rummaged through a pile of fabric. He and his partner had converted the living room of their home, in Hudson, New York, into a bridal atelier. Rolls of satin were stacked under a worktable; a mannequin in a strapless gown made of Chantilly lace stood near an armoire. Scattered around were five sewing machines and hundreds of yards of organic linen, greige hemp canvas, ombré silk brocade, and all manner of other textiles. Guadarrama had the look of a man at ease—leather slippers, a loose denim shirt, and a big, bright smile—though his eyes betrayed a hint of exhaustion. After a few minutes, he found what he was searching for and held it up: a swatch of vintage flower-printed silk voile from Christian Dior. “This one is to die for!” he said.

The Dior fabric would be sewn into a custom wedding dress for a twenty-five-year-old bride-to-be, Keelie Verbeek, who had just driven down from New Hampshire. Verbeek arrived at Guadarrama’s house with her sister, her mother, two pairs of high heels, and her mother’s wedding gown (bespoke, purchased at a bridal shop in Cicero, New York, in the eighties), which she wanted to incorporate into her own dress, somehow. Guadarrama suggested that he could remove tiny pearls from the old gown’s surface and sew them onto the new one. “I can kind of sprinkle them in,” he said. Verbeek nervously glanced at her mother, who shrugged. Then she disappeared into Guadarrama’s bathroom for her first fitting, with a prototype made from cotton muslin. Kade Johnson, Guadarrama’s business partner and fiancé, cautioned, “We had to leave the toilet seat up, because the cat pees in the toilet here.”

A few minutes later, the bride emerged. Guadarrama eyed her up and down, took some measurements, made a few quick alterations, and then began to pepper her with questions about her bra. The dress, which cost nearly thirteen thousand dollars—typical for a couture bridal gown—would require six fittings in all.

As Verbeek changed back into her street clothes, the conversation turned to other elements of the wedding, which was going to be held, in eleven months, at the former estate of the sculptor Daniel Chester French, in the Berkshires. The reception would feature biodegradable confetti, small-batch Albanian olive oil, and, as Verbeek put it, “emotional-support chocolate.�� Although she had already picked most of her wedding venders, including a celebrity makeup artist—recommended by Guadarrama—and a hairdresser from Maryland, she still needed a florist and a photographer, she said, and had been browsing the Knot, a popular wedding-planning platform. In addition to hosting gift registries and wedding websites, and offering reception ideas and relationship advice (“What to Know About Walmart Wedding Cakes,” “How to Prepare for Sex on Your Wedding Night,” “Dislike Your Spouse’s Last Name? Here’s What to Do”), the Knot is used by millions of couples to find their wedding venders, who pay to advertise on it. When Verbeek mentioned the Knot, Guadarrama shook his head and frowned.

“Should I not do that?” Verbeek asked.

“They’re doing some baaaad, shady stuff behind the scenes,” Guadarrama said. He started to explain, but the bride told him that she was running late for her next appointment, at the venue. She needed to decide whether to order custom floating lily pads for the fish pond, and to review where the turreted sailcloth tent and dance floor would be constructed.

After the bridal party left, Guadarrama and Johnson sat down at their dining table and told me that before coming to Hudson they had run an atelier in Manhattan. “We were having success after success after success,” Guadarrama said. They had dressed Kesha, JoJo, Tiffany Haddish. For the 2019 Tony Awards, they made Billy Porter a velvet Elizabethan gown from actual Broadway stage curtains. After a financial setback, the couple decided to move upstate and begin again—right as the pandemic all but shut down the bridal industry. Business tanked. On a chilly winter day in 2022, a saleswoman from the Knot called Guadarrama, in response to a form he’d filled out online. If he signed up for a premium advertising package, the saleswoman said, he could expect between eighty and two hundred and forty brides to contact him each month. Johnson thought this sounded implausible, but, despite his misgivings, the couple signed a yearlong advertising contract with the Knot, for five thousand eight hundred dollars. “We were looking at the Knot as a beacon of hope,” Johnson told me. “And it was the complete opposite.”

Guadarrama said, “The Knot was, like, the final nail in the coffin.”

Couples who are getting married tend to hear the same advice over and over: “Get good at forgiveness.” “Learn the wisdom of compromise.” “Don’t forget to chill the champagne.” When it comes to the wedding itself, the National Association of Wedding Professionals insists that every reception is better with balloons. The Association of Bridal Consultants recommends stocking extra toilet paper, just in case. If you want a quick cure for a rehearsal-dinner hangover, you can hire registered nurses to arrive with the hair and makeup professionals, carrying I.V. bags infused with vitamins or anti-nausea medicine. Cold feet? A man from Spain might be available to crash your wedding. (Going rate: five hundred euros.) “I’ll show up at the ceremony, claim to be the love of your life, and we’ll leave hand in hand,” he told a Spanish TV station. Marcy Blum, a wedding planner who has orchestrated celebrations for LeBron James, members of the Rockefeller family, Bill Gates’s oldest daughter, and, once, a woman who demanded that no other brides be present in the same Italian town on the day of her ceremony, told me, “I will spend whatever it takes of my client’s money to make sure there’s enough bartenders before I’ll put a flower on the table.”

Each year, Americans drop roughly seventy billion dollars hosting weddings. Most people think that this is too much—that couples are overspending, that venders are overcharging, and that the wedding-industrial complex verges on unethical. After all, many weddings are excessive and wasteful. (In New York City, the average cost is eighty-eight thousand dollars.) The wedding planner Colin Cowie, whose clients range from Tiësto (“Happily married,” Cowie boasted) to Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck (“I get them down the aisle fabulously, but they’re on their own thereafter”), told me that he hires hundreds of venders for every event: invitation managers, shoe-check attendants, babysitters, ice carvers, drone operators, and caviar servers. “Once, we built a church,” he said.

Even more modest affairs can involve a phalanx of venders; the average number brought on per wedding is fourteen. These small-business owners often begin as amateurs pursuing a side gig: students moonlighting as wedding photographers, cashiers doing calligraphy after work. Typically, surges of new venders follow layoffs in corporate America. “People cash in their 401(k)s, and they start a business,” Marc McIntosh, a wedding guru who regularly speaks at conferences like WeddingMBA, told me. “A lot of people go into this industry because they’re good at something—they bake good cakes, and their family says, ‘You should go into the wedding-cake business!’ ” But being good at something doesn’t mean you’re good at running a business. And running a wedding business is especially tough: there are hundreds of thousands of competitors; costs are rising, owing in part to inflation; and, for many venders, bookings and budgets have decreased by about twenty-five per cent. According to a recent industry survey, a third of all wedding venders said that they are doing poorer financially than they were a year ago. “Florists are the worst,” McIntosh said. “There are so many broke florists.”

A reliable way for a florist to avoid going broke used to be by advertising in glossy magazines like Brides or Martha Stewart Weddings. By the early two-thousands, wedding marketing, like everything else, was increasingly shifting online. When Blum started her planning business, in Manhattan, in 1987, she took out a small ad in New York. Ten years later, she had become the city’s unofficial wedding czar, and four friends who’d met at N.Y.U.’s film school approached her for advice. “They were, like, ‘We’re going to start this website about weddings,’ ” Blum recalled. “And I said, ‘That’s the cutest thing that I’ve ever heard. Let me introduce you to everybody.’ ” The website was the Knot, and the four friends created it with about one and a half million dollars in seed funding from AOL. “In those days, it was a joke,” Blum said.

Within a few years, the Knot was a juggernaut—the Yellow Pages of the wedding industry. By 1999, when it went public, two of the company’s co-founders, Carley Roney and David Liu, who are married, had become veritable wedding moguls. The couple started a reality show about wedding planning, launched a magazine, and purchased weddingchannel.com, an online bridal registry. Roney appeared regularly on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” and “The View.” In an episode during Season 2 of “The Apprentice,” contestants raced to open a bridal shop and sell wedding dresses. One team spent its entire marketing budget with the Knot—and won. “Our phone went off the hook after that,” Liu told me. “I’m almost ashamed, but, like, some of our success has to be attributed to idiot Trump and that show.”

In 2018, XO Group, the Knot’s corporate parent, was acquired by its biggest competitor, a company called WeddingWire, in a private-equity-backed deal worth almost a billion dollars. By then, Roney and Liu were out. The Knot Worldwide became a privately held company.

Last year, the Knot facilitated four billion dollars in consumer spending via advertising on its platforms. Most of the company’s revenue comes not from brides and grooms but from wedding venders. Nine hundred thousand venders in more than ten countries use the Knot, and many pay to be advertised to couples—“leads,” in industry parlance—seeking their services. Ronnie Rothstein, who, at eighty-two years old, is the C.E.O. of Kleinfeld Bridal, one of the largest wedding-dress retailers in America and a mainstay on the reality show “Say Yes to the Dress,” told me, “Every wedding vender needs a qualified lead.” He went on, “Most of these businesses are family businesses, and they need help to get as many people into the door as possible.”

After Guadarrama signed his advertising contract with the Knot, he started receiving a flood of inquiries from couples. Many of the messages seemed bland or formulaic. “Hello—we are getting married,” one groom wrote. A bride asked, “Could you send over some more info about the products and services you offer?” Guadarrama always responded immediately, and repeatedly followed up. At first, he was optimistic. But, week after week, he never heard anything in return.

Curious to learn more about the vender experience, and being a weekend cake baker myself, I decided to fill out a vender contact form on the Knot’s website to get some basic information about the contract terms. A Knot representative soon called me. She was encouraging about the brides and grooms who would be spending money on my fictitious wedding operation. “People do go over budget sixty-two per cent in your particular area,” she said. After a long discussion about pricing and placement, she said that, if I wanted to take my business to the next level, a twelve-hundred-dollar-per-month advertising package might be appropriate. (Later, the Knot characterized this call as an attempt to “entrap and bait our salesperson” and accused me of being “ethically challenged.”) I also spoke at length with dozens of wedding venders across the United States. David Sachs, a wedding photographer in Northern California, started advertising with the Knot in 2016, after giving up on becoming an actor. “The Knot was the biggest directory at the time, so I figured I would just do what everyone else was doing,” Sachs told me. Initially, he got some clients from the site. “Sales were higher than expenses, and that was good enough for me,” he said. But after a few years brides stopped reaching out, and he called his sales rep to complain. A new, pushier rep talked him out of closing his account and persuaded him to upgrade to the most expensive advertising tier. “I started spending a thousand dollars a month,” he told me. Then a torrent of leads arrived, via the Knot’s online vender portal. Often, he’d talk to the potential customers by phone. “It felt like all the brides were reading from a script,” he said. “I could hear other calls in the background, and they all had the same lilting tone. That’s when I realized, they have a literal phone bank of people who are faking leads.”

When I asked the Knot about this, a spokeswoman said, “We do not tolerate fraudulent practices.” She went on, “The Knot Worldwide does not employ any individuals or teams who act as fake couples to send fake leads to venders. We have no financial incentive to engage in such conduct, and it is antithetical to our business.” But more than twenty wedding venders who advertise with the Knot told me that they’ve received inquiries from what they believe are fake brides. Matt Pierce, a wedding photographer in Texas, said that he’d exchanged e-mails with someone who was getting married in a few days. Pierce called the wedding venue, he told me, and the woman who ran it said, “You, too, huh? You’re about the twelfth photographer that’s called here today about a wedding this weekend.” There was no wedding.

Documents I obtained from the Federal Trade Commission reflect that, since 2018, more than two hundred formal complaints have been made about allegedly fraudulent activity on the Knot and WeddingWire. One vender wrote, “I paid around $12,000 and got absolutely nothing to show for it.” Another said, “My business is on the verge of going bankrupt. I would happily pay for the service [if] it was providing me what was promised, but it has not.”

Venders have also shared their grievances on several private Facebook groups, one of which features a stock photo of an enraged bride wielding a pistol. (Sample posts: “Hi! New victim here!”; “I’m in a war with the Knot”; “Can we get together for a class-action lawsuit?”; and “You know what would be more powerful than a lawsuit? A Netflix documentary . . .”) Venders in the group suspected infiltration by Knot employees. A post read, “We found two spies here who worked for The Knot. They know about us. And, they should be scared.” A couple of years ago, an online petition was launched in an effort to spur regulatory action. “This petition is going to congressional leaders,” the organizer wrote. Comments from signatories include:

Mike Cassara, a wedding photographer, influencer, and podcast host, told me that he and his co-host, Lauren O’Brien, regularly receive D.M.s on Instagram from wedding venders who complain about “fake brides” and “bad leads” from the Knot. He told me, “Their stories are endless! If this was five people, I’d question it. If it was ten people, twenty people, even a hundred people, I’d question it. But we’ve had thousands of people saying the same thing: ‘They’re ripping me off.’ ”

As I was reporting this story, the Knot had multiple outside communication firms correspond with me. One of them got in touch through a representative who had a résumé that included “successful presidential pardons” and “hostage and kidnapping recovery.” In the past six months, I contacted more than seventy current and former employees of the Knot, because I wanted to better understand the wedding venders’ claims. Almost all who agreed to speak with me requested anonymity, citing N.D.A.s or fear of retaliation. One former saleswoman said that, after her venders had complained to her about lead troubles, she recognized that many of the leads seemed like they might be fake. But she was working on commission, and it wasn’t in her interest to let clients out of their annual contracts; if she lost too many, she might lose her own job. Bretta Thompson, an Indianapolis-based wedding planner and officiant who advertised on the site, told me, “It was like pulling teeth to get anyone at the Knot to contact me. It would take weeks to get a response back, via e-mail, and then it was always my fault.” Another former saleswoman put it more plainly: “We fucked over venders.” (“We strongly dispute these claims,” the spokeswoman for the Knot said.)

Many venders I spoke with told me variations of the “fake brides” story, and took it upon themselves to conduct investigations, which produced results that were sometimes difficult to verify. Nicole Hobbs, who worked as a wedding photographer in Nashville, said that she had been contacted by people who, upon further inquiry, had already exchanged vows. “I was even able to confirm that one of the ‘grooms’ was actually a married minister in a different state,” she claimed. Darryl Cameron II, a part-time d.j. in Cleveland, Ohio, said that he’d received dozens of fake leads from the Knot. “These folks are real,” he told me. “But I’ve looked several up in the county database, and they’re married already!” Jeffrey Caddell, who owns a wedding venue in Alabama, told me, “All I can say is, it’s very fishy when you have hundreds and hundreds of leads and only a handful of responses.”

In David Mamet’s play “Glengarry Glen Ross,” a beleaguered real-estate salesman explains that he isn’t closing deals because his boss has been giving him bad leads. “I’m getting garbage,” he says. “You’re giving it to me, and what I’m saying is, it’s fucked.” Most leads for most venders in most industries don’t ever amount to anything—it’s hard work chasing down a lead, as any salesperson will attest—and the wedding industry is particularly challenging. Brides are regarded by wedding professionals as fickle and elusive. Marc McIntosh, the wedding guru, told me, “A couple planning a wedding has a to-do list, and everything on that list is something they’ve never bought before, from a company they’ve never heard of before. And they don’t have a lot of time.” Ronnie Rothstein, of Kleinfeld Bridal, said, “When a girl gets engaged, she’s gonna talk to everyone.”

Not every wedding vender hates the Knot. Allison Shapiro Winterton, a wedding-cake baker, considers it a “very honest business.” Steven Burchard, a d.j. and magician who runs a nationwide entertainment company, said that during engagement season—between Thanksgiving and Valentine’s Day—he usually receives about a dozen leads a week from the Knot. He follows up with each of them numerous times, and many do end up booking him. “You’ve gotta remember, there are tire kickers,” he told me. “Is that a fake lead? Or is it just someone who isn’t interested?”

Jeff MacGurn, who owns a wedding venue in the San Jacinto Mountains, told me, “The Knot’s great! And I’m uniquely positioned to comment on that.” In addition to operating the venue, MacGurn works for a digital-marketing firm. “When I’m judging the Knot, it’s not me saying, ‘I think it’s working.’ I know it’s working,” he said. “There’s a return on investment, for sure.” By his estimate, each lead from the Knot costs between twenty-two and thirty dollars. Most couples reach out once, then never again; booking a single wedding might require as much as nine hundred dollars in ad spend. “I can sit here and blame the Knot for bad leads,” MacGurn said. “But oftentimes I would look at my process, and I’d be, like, this is why we’re not closing”—not following up enough, not following up quickly enough, asking a prospective bride too many questions. Other venders, he noted, could stand to improve their tactics.

But, for many venders, so few leads have worked out that their tactics seem beside the point. They believe that the Knot inflates its lead numbers by allowing couples to simultaneously send form-letter inquiries to multiple venders. “People are getting leads that aren’t really for them,” McIntosh told me. “But, when it comes time to renew, the Knot can say, ‘We sent you five hundred leads this year,’ even though only five were really for you.” The company’s spokeswoman explained, “We have a tool that makes it easier for couples to reach out and start a conversation with venders using templatized language.” For instance, if a couple browsing the site decides to ask for a quote from their dream d.j., they will afterward be presented with a pop-up that invites them to send auto-populated messages to several other venders. The spokeswoman cautioned that venders “may misinterpret” such messages as spam, but that “spam is not a widespread problem” and “less than one per cent of leads delivered to venders in the U.S. were reported by venders as spam.”

Rothstein, who has advertised with the Knot for more than two decades, told me he was confident that the company wasn’t intentionally sending bad leads. “We don’t find them to be dishonest whatsoever,” he said. Rather, in recent years, the Knot simply stopped working well for them as a lead-generation platform. “They’ve become less effective,” he said. Jennifer Shipe, Rothstein’s chief marketing officer, said that she could spend Kleinfeld’s advertising dollars better elsewhere. Recently, she had her team manually compare every e-mail that originated from the Knot with the e-mail addresses of brides who booked appointments at their stores. “I don’t think we got anything out of it,” she told me.

Several days after I spoke with Shipe, Rothstein called me back—“I spoke to the Knot today!” he said—and clarified that a few of the leads might have led to appointments, about one tenth of one per cent of them, not zero. “We have a fucking phenomenal relationship with the Knot,” he said. “Neither one of us wants to fuck up that relationship.” He went on, “The leads don’t work, but I get great editorial from them. There aren’t that many magazines anymore. They’re it—numero uno! There’s no place else to go.” Many unhappy venders were reluctant to have me publish their names—or even their stories—in this article, for fear of retaliation by the Knot. Laura Cannon, who runs the International Association of Professional Wedding Officiants, told me, “They dominate the market.” Dozens of Cannon’s members have received suspicious leads from the Knot, but were too scared to say anything publicly. She continued, “You feel like you’re in an abusive relationship. I’ve thought about leaving the wedding industry, because what else can I do? It’s their industry now.”

Recently, I asked Tamas Kadar, the C.E.O. of a fraud-prevention firm, to review a few hundred e-mail addresses associated with suspicious leads from the Knot. He told me, “It seems like ten per cent of them are not real. We look at their digital footprint—their social-media profiles, how old is the e-mail account, does it appear elsewhere on the internet. And for ten per cent of them it’s, like, someone just opened an e-mail account.” Kadar also identified what he described as a significant vulnerability: unlike many other online services, the Knot doesn’t require users to verify their e-mail addresses when they sign up. “You don’t even have to have access to the e-mail account,” he said. “This could be why venders are facing so many nonexistent leads. The Knot doesn’t conduct the right kind of verification to make sure they don’t give fake leads to their customers. This is a basic step.” He went on, “I could just ask ChatGPT Operator to go to this website, type in a fully random e-mail address, and open an account and send a hundred inquiries to random wedding venues.”

Rich Kahn, another ad-fraud expert, told me, “It’s possible they know they have a problem and they’re doing nothing about it. And it’s also possible they don’t know.” Kahn explained that more than twenty per cent of the six hundred and forty billion dollars spent globally on digital marketing each year was effectively stolen via bots and “human fraud farms”—people at computer terminals, often overseas, who generate web traffic and inflate marketing metrics by making fake Facebook profiles, clicking on Google ads, or even sending fake leads. “In digital marketing, a portion of what you’re buying is not a real audience,” he said. “But that’s not a defense. It’s on you to do something about it. If you’re a big brand, you’re supposed to be protecting your clients.”

One night last fall, after a rooftop business mixer at a hotel in Manhattan, a woman in a long, flowery dress looked down at her heels and grimaced. “These puppies are barking!” she said. A few colleagues laughed knowingly. The women, who all worked at a Mississippi dress boutique, had been on their feet for days, at previews and runway shows connected with Bridal Fashion Week. Outside the hotel, as the group waited for their Ubers, one of them turned to a woman standing nearby and, making small talk, asked, “What store do you own?” The woman, Jennifer Davidson, was dressed in a chic black dress and gold-studded heels and carrying a Chanel purse that she had borrowed from a friend for the evening. She replied that she had spent about two decades working at the Knot. The woman from Mississippi laughed, then said that she had closed her Knot account after receiving dozens of dubious leads. “We were, like, ‘There’s no way these are legitimate,’ ” she told Davidson. The woman’s daughter, who co-owns the shop, chimed in: “We still get fake leads! It’d be, like, ‘Can you tell me more about your services?’ And I’d be, like, ‘Well, we’re a bridal store—what do you think we do?’ ”

Davidson, who was for many years one of the Knot’s top salespeople, was not about to defend the company. In 2015, she came to believe that it had been defrauding its biggest advertisers. By her account, the digital ads that she and her colleagues were selling were not reliably showing up on the Knot’s website. Macy’s, David’s Bridal, Kleinfeld Bridal, Justin Alexander, and even the N.F.L., she felt, had together been duped out of millions of dollars. When she alerted a vice-president at the company, John Reggio, who now works at TikTok, he told her that the Knot’s technology was flawed. “The website is duct-taped together,” Davidson recalled him saying. (I repeatedly reached out to Reggio for an interview; he declined, then said, “Please stop emailing me.”)

Davidson’s colleague Rachel LaFera reported the same issue to an executive, who exploded, LaFera recalled. “She grabbed me by both of my arms, and she started shaking the shit out of me, red-faced, spitting, saying, ‘You have to stop, just stop! You’ve got to stop bringing all this up. Stop it!’ ” LaFera said. “I was so in shock.” (When I reached out to the executive for comment, she replied, “😩,” and then said that she had mistook me for someone else. Later, she said that LaFera’s recollection was “untrue.”)

In 2017, Proskauer Rose, a prominent white-shoe law firm, was brought on to investigate the alleged advertising fraud. Executives and employees, including Davidson and LaFera, were interviewed, and the firm found no evidence of “widespread misconduct.” The Knot told me that, in the course of investigating Davidson’s allegations, a “material weakness” was identified in the “internal controls for the national advertising business” which affected approximately a hundred and sixty thousand dollars in ad purchases, and that advertisers were made whole. The Securities and Exchange Commission also conducted an investigation, according to the Knot, “and did not pursue any action.” But Davidson believes that employees lied to government officials and mucked up the S.E.C. investigation. (The Knot said, “There is no evidence to support an assertion that any employees were untruthful.”)

Davidson, LaFera, and Cindy Elley, who is Davidson’s sister and also worked at the Knot—the trio call themselves “the Knot Whistleblowers”—have an end-to-end encrypted e-mail account to field tips. In the past eight years, they say that they have contacted more than a hundred and fifteen current and former employees and secretly recorded many of the conversations with the aim of persuading the S.E.C., and possibly other government agencies, to mount a new inquiry into the company. (If the S.E.C. collects damages from the Knot, the trio stands to make up to thirty per cent of any potential recovery, thanks to a program that rewards whistle-blowers for coming forward.)

I went to visit Davidson at her home, near Charleston, South Carolina. She and I sat on her patio, and she played me several of the recordings, all of which she insists were obtained legally. (“We put our Nancy Drew hats on,” she said.) In one tape, LaFera can be heard chatting with a former Knot executive at a restaurant in New York. The two had met up to share war stories from their time with the company, and LaFera had worn hidden mikes that were taped to her shoulders. “Getting out was the best thing,” the former executive said. Another recording featured a former employee, Dave Harkensee, who oversaw a team of sales reps at the Knot. Harkensee said to Davidson, “We actually send out messages on behalf of these couples that don’t even realize we’re doing it.” He went on, “It’s almost, honestly, gaslighting these venders, saying, ‘Hey, we’re sending you leads. You’re just not able to convert them.’ But it’s actually, like, these are not viable leads. These aren’t legit at all.” (Harkensee denied that this conversation took place. The spokeswoman for the Knot said, “We do not send leads on behalf of couples without their consent.”)

In 2023, the New York Post published an article about Davidson’s initial allegations. “The Knot has been accused of systematically swindling clients for years,” the piece read. Weeks later, Forbes followed up: “How Wedding Giant the Knot Pulled the Veil Over Advertisers’ Eyes.” That year, the trio reached out to the office of Charles Grassley, a U.S. senator from Iowa who is an advocate for whistle-blowers. (Grassley is also known around Capitol Hill as something of a matchmaker. Per the Washington Post: “Forget dating apps. Sen. Grassley’s office has produced 20 marriages.”) Last week, Grassley, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, sent a letter to the acting chairman of the S.E.C. and the chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, asking them about wrongdoing at the Knot. “I have recently been alerted of alleged deceptive business practices by the Knot from several Iowa small businesses that suspect they have been defrauded,” he wrote. “What steps have you taken to investigate the allegations? I would like to know, and I’m sure all these small businesses would as well.”

In the living-room bridal atelier in Hudson, Sergio Guadarrama elaborated on the setback that had led him to the Knot. In 2019, he was cast on the reality show “Project Runway.” The appearance backfired; he came across as a villain, and the dress orders for his business, Celestino Couture, plummeted. “People came up to me randomly in the street and said, ‘Oh, you’re that fucking guy,’ ” Guadarrama recalled. Moving upstate had seemed like the best way to get a fresh start. Then came the pandemic, and then came the Knot.

After signing up, Guadarrama and Johnson sent their first payment to the Knot—about five hundred dollars, money that should have gone toward their rent. “That was a lot of fucking money at the time, especially when we had no money coming in,” Johnson said. They got fifteen leads, but a month went by with no responses. One spring afternoon, Guadarrama called the phone number listed on a lead. He said that the woman who picked up told him, “I never signed up for the Knot! I’m not even getting married. Who are you?”

I contacted all the suspicious leads that Guadarrama had received from the Knot, and only a few people replied. Of those who did, one woman told me that she would not have sent a message to him because she had already bought her dress—and her ex-fiancé lived in Hudson. “It makes zero sense that I would want to go to Hudson,” she said. Then she logged into her account and found that a message had been sent to Guadarrama, likely via the pop-up template outreach feature, which she had forgotten all about. Another woman told me, “I never heard of Celestino Couture.” She wouldn’t have contacted the business, she said, because when Guadarrama received her supposed inquiry she had already made plans to buy a wedding dress in Europe.

Guadarrama tried to cancel his contract with the Knot, but the company refused to let him out of his yearlong commitment. So, like many venders I spoke with, he closed his bank account to prevent the Knot from continuing to withdraw payments. When I asked the Knot about this, the spokeswoman said that “contract terms are clearly disclosed by our sales representatives,” who are “trained to specifically mention that no number of leads are guaranteed.” Other venders told me that they’d cancelled their credit cards; some uploaded banners to their Knot profiles that read “DON’T USE THE KNOT” and filed complaints with the Better Business Bureau.

Carley Roney and David Liu, the company’s co-founders, trace the increasing number of lead complaints to the private-equity acquisition. Liu stepped down from the Knot’s board a few months before the deal. (Roney left the company in 2014.) “We felt like twenty years of our lives had been flushed down the drain,” Liu said.

“It’s a tragedy to us what’s become of our life’s work,” Roney added.

Before the acquisition, the Knot was generating about twenty million dollars in cash flow each year; as part of the deal’s financing, the Knot Worldwide took on hundreds of millions in debt. “To pay the interest on that much debt would essentially cripple a business,” Liu said. Any company in that position would need to cut costs and generate a lot of revenue. Liu wouldn’t comment directly on the allegations of fake leads or fraud, but that kind of financial obligation, he said, would mean that “the experience of the consumers is gonna suffer.” He added, “Who ultimately loses? The brides—and the local venders.”

In March, a Knot employee named Thomas Chelednik addressed a ballroom full of wedding venders at a Hyatt Regency in Huntington Beach, California. He said that the company was not sending fake leads to people, and that he would quit his job if it were. The next day, Raina Moskowitz, the Knot’s new C.E.O., held a virtual town hall. “We’re in a moment where I think celebration and communication and community matter more than ever,” Moskowitz said. She then answered pre-submitted questions, which were read aloud by a colleague: “A planner named Dolly asked, ‘What are you doing to stop the fake leads created by the company and giving false hope to venders?’ ” Moskowitz suggested that the venders were mistaken. “You get a lead, but you don’t hear back—and that can be incredibly frustrating,” she said. “It might be perceived as fake, but I just want to name it as ‘ghosting.’ ” She went on, “It doesn’t feel great, ” and announced that the company is testing a new tool that she hopes will address the problem. (The Knot’s spokeswoman said, “We are continually improving our spam-filter capabilities.”)

Before Guadarrama and Johnson extricated themselves from their contract with the Knot, they were selling their possessions to get by—“our clothes, our shoes, anything that we could,” Johnson told me. But their circumstances have since changed. In 2023, the couple, along with a business partner, opened two slow-fashion boutiques, which have been successful. Their wedding-dress business is, for now, a side hustle. They still chase every lead.

Keelie Verbeek, the twenty-five-year-old bride-to-be, had been window-shopping for chocolates and antique glassware in Hudson when she wandered into one of Guadarrama and Johnson’s boutiques. She tried on a vintage Ulla Johnson dress, as Henry, her fiancé, lingered nearby. The dress wasn’t for her, but before she left Johnson commented on her engagement ring. “Did you know we also make wedding dresses?” he asked.

Verbeek laughed. She had spent six months trawling Instagram, TikTok, Facebook Marketplace, and even the Knot, searching for the perfect dress. As Henry drove them home, Verbeek scrolled through Guadarrama and Johnson’s Instagram page. That afternoon, Guadarrama and Johnson received an e-mail from Verbeek: “I was hoping to be able to book a bridal consultation.” Excited, they followed up immediately, and, to their surprise, someone actually replied. 

[thearwenschild]

I could list a lot of weird stuff Catholics do since I grew up as one, but it turns out that there are some things that I thought were normal on a catholic scale but turned out were a local phenomenon.

CW: skeletons, bones, mummified body-parts

May I present to you: Catacomb Saints

Von Richard Mayer - Eigenes Werk, CC BY-SA 3.0, Links

This is the first one I saw as a child on a school trip to a local abbey, and it made a lasting impression. The memory came back up recently, and I went on a deep dive.

One thing catholics love are their saints. If you are from a family who take them really seriously, you even got a gift on the saint day of the one you were named after, and my grandparents still tell me that it was more important than a person's birthday (I always got something small). Churches are pretty serious about their relicts and keep them in richly decorated Reliquaries.

You could guess what would happen when a church got hold of a whole saint skeleton: They decorate it. And turns out, the ones I knew are pretty "basic".

While a lot of them also wear clothing, they are usually covered in gemstones and gold.

Von © Jörgens.mi, CC BY-SA 3.0, Link Von DALIBRI - Eigenes Werk, CC BY-SA 4.0, Link

Some of them even have reconstructed body parts:

Von Mrilabs - Eigenes Werk, Gemeinfrei, Link Von Andrew Bossi - Eigenes Werk, CC BY-SA 2.5, Link

And of course: Skeletons wearing armor:

Von Dbu - Eigenes Werk, CC BY 2.5, Link

You may ask yourself: why?

Relicts are incredibly important. Even more if they connected to an early Christian martyr. The Catholic Church differentiates between three types:

First-class relicts: The best relicts. These are items directly connected to the life of Jesus. Most popular would be the Shroud of Turin, one of the several Veils of Veronica (Wikipedia lists 4), the Holy Grail or his foreskin (lost but in history claimed to have it often multiple at the same time). The physical remains of a saint, especially martyrs, are also First-Class with. These are often small pieces. Often single bones, hairs. If you are lucky, you get a full limb.

By Andrzej Otrębski - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=54797117

Second-Class relicts are items owned or used by a saint, think clothing (scraps) or crosses

Third-Class relicts are items that came in contact with a first- or second-class relict

And now imagine that your church could house a whole skeleton.

Starting in the 7th century, some churches got the permission to exhume the graves of martyrs. You had to get the permission of a bishop in Rome, and the skeleton came with a certificate of authenticity. Additionally, you had to contact a convent and have them prepare the Relict.

Important: These were (probably) real martyr skeletons.

Then the reformation happened. In the 16th and 17th century, a lot of catholic churches had their relicts (and paintings) stolen and destroyed. After the so-called Iconoclasm died down, the churches needed new relicts and the pope ordered to exhume thousands of remains from the catacombs in Rome. Some of these might belong to martyrs, but if they didn't know the identity of the buried person, they chose a saint and backstory. Most of them ended up in Switzerland, Austria and south Germany. Sale of them was (of course) illegal, but that didn't stop them to charge fees for the transport and decoration.

The trade with relicts was finally banned in 1860 and around this time people started questioning these relicts. Due to this, a lot of them were destroyed or hidden.

But they still exist. They are a bit hard to track down. The ones I saw as a child aren't mentioned on the churches Wikipedia nor on the churches' website. I found a church near me that houses two, but apart from a few articles they are mentioned nowhere. The German Wikipedia page has a list of churches, but after clicking through most of them, only a fraction mention their skeletons. My university library has a book on them that apparently contains a more complete list, and I need to check it out. Another great source is Paul Koudounaris´ Heavenly Bodies: Cult Treasures and Spectacular Saints from the Catacombs, that I need to get since it has a lot of photographs. And I need to visit some churches.

Additional Reading:

[the-devils-library]

At Satan's Altar: A Collection of Prayers, Chants, Affirmations, Hymns, and Rituals by Marie RavenSoul

EDIT: Since the time of writing this post, the author of this book has taken down her website, her Youtube channel, and the listings for both of her books. This is due to her conversion to Christianity, verifiable by her new social media accounts, which I will not be linking here, but are not particularly difficult to find. Since her books are now out of print and were never sold as ebooks, the only way to obtain them at the current time is to find and purchase a used copy.

Title: At Satan's Altar: A Collection of Prayers, Chants, Affirmations, Hymns, and Rituals

Author: Marie RavenSoul

Publisher: ‎ In Satan's Honour Press

Publishing Date: February 28, 2018

ISBN-10‏: ‎ 1775262405

ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1775262404

Last post was a popular atheist text, so I suppose it's appropriate that now we move on to a popular theist text.

Marie RavenSoul is a modern Satanic author and youtuber, her channel can be found here. Her website, In Satan's Honour, can be found here. To my knowledge she is not affiliated with any group but her dedication in this book gives thanks to a "Brother Nero," who I believe may be the same Brother Nero who authored Satanism: A Beginner's Guide to the Religious Worship of Satan and Demons.

At Satan's Altar's subtitle is an apt summary of its content. RavenSoul is not here to provide moral counsel or wax poetic about philosophy, but to provide the tools of a theistic Satanic practice, including hymns, prayers, and rituals. The cover and interior also feature several illustrations, by artists Amanda MacNeil and Letitia Pfinder.

The book is divided into two sections, the first half being dedicated to devotional writings such as chants and prayers, and the second half being more instructional, revolving around rituals and practices the theistic Satanist might partake in. The instructional portion may prove useful to newcomers who have basic questions, such as how to pray, or how to structure a ritual. The Nine Days of Solitude Devotional may be difficult for anyone who is young or in a controlling environment, but could prove beneficial for more experienced Satanists who wish to do something more intensive than daily prayer or a one-off rite.

It is worth noting that RavenSoul calls Satan by other names, such as Lucifer and Baphomet, which some theistic Satanists may consider to be separate demons, rather than other names for Satan himself. She also refers to Satan as "father," a dynamic which may or may not ring true for other Satanists. At Satan's Altar is available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble. [DISCLAIMER: The Devil's Library is not affiliated with any of the previously mentioned groups or authors. It is an independent project by a single Satanist. Do not mistake my mentioning of an author or group as endorsement for their beliefs and practices.]

Click below for my personal thoughts on the book.

RavenSoul is a talented writer and her dedication to Satan is admirable. While her rather fatherly interpretation of Satan isn't for me personally, I'm sure those Satanists who do see our lord as a father figure would take great comfort in certain pieces of her writing.

However there is an aspect of the book which rubs me the wrong way personally, and that is the matter of cultural misappropriation. RavenSoul conflates Satan with religious figures from a couple of other faiths, namely Iblis and Tawûsî Melek (spelled Melek Ta'us in the book). While I can see why someone would compare these figures to Satan at first glance, my research tells me it is inaccurate and perhaps unwise to do so. Iblis comes from Islam, and while he is a fallen angel and the leader of devils, equating him with the Christian Satan is ignorant and potentially appropriation. More seriously, equating Tawûsî Melek, the peacock angel of the Yazidi religion, to Satan is directly racist and harmful. Yazidis have a history of persecution, and being wrongfully accused of being devil-worshipers is part of that history. Furthermore, Yazidism is very much closed to outsiders (one cannot even marry into the religion, but must be born into it), so making use of their religious figure for Satanic writings is rude and inconsiderate, at the very least. RavenSoul doesn't just make use of Tawûsî Melek's name and image, but references the Al Jilwah, a book which claims to hold authentic Yazidi scripture, but is of dubious origins.

In addition to these comparisons, RavenSoul also conflates Satan with gods like Pan and Set, and while those gods come from open religions, some may not enjoy such comparisons.

I know RavenSoul's work is popular amongst my fellow theists, and I never aim to tell my readers what to do in these review sections. These are my thoughts and only my thoughts, not instructions on where you should draw the line on which books you will or won't make use of.

[saintmelangell]

how can one reconcile personal/religious pacifism with support for palestinian (and similar) resistance? is there any writing about this (maybe from palestinian quakers, i know there is a quaker presence in palestine)

here's a few resources on the quaker presence in palestine i've found, before i get into my personal thoughts on this issue:

quakers in the holy land

quakerspeak video on the palestinian quaker school in ramallah

video on a quaker call to action for israel/palestine

the official website for the ramallah friends meeting

the article deconstructing the dogma of domesticity: quaker education and nationalism in british mandate palestine by enaya hammad othman

the book negotiating palestinian womanhood: encounters between palestinian women and american missionaries, 1880s-1940s by by enaya hammad othman

peace has never been a popular option. peace is hard. peaceful resistance is hard. i also think that one thing to remember is that peaceful resistance is something that comes from a place of privilege, of education, and a basic level of dignity that many people who participate in forms of violent resistance simply are not allowed by their oppressors. palestine is a good example of this. when all other methods of resistance have been refused you, when you are stripped of your statehood, your citizenship, your humanity, and your personhood, what is left besides force? oppressors intentionally force those whom they are oppressing into a place where there is nowhere to go: your choice is to die or go forward, and fight your way through what is enclosing you. liberation is often violent, and i think it is a poor pacifist who doesn't acknowledge that. and perhaps the popular image of pacifism is that one- a condescending pacifism, because when i've questioned why more people don't choose pacifism the response has been "oppressors don't listen to the oppressed," and that's true.

pacifists are also treated as if their pacifism, which is an objection against violence (especially state violence) is itself a form of violence, especially when that objection is against the state. the united states, for instance, has always portrayed pacifism as "violent terrorism." for instance, the plowshares movement, a christian pacifism movement against nuclear armament and later the iraq war, among other things, damaged plans and equipment for missiles in massachusetts and punctured radomes used by the echelon program. numerous charges were laid against activists, including charges to interfere with the national defence of the united states and damage of national security: many of these activists were religious brothers and sisters (iirc all over the age of fifty at the time), and barred from using religion in their defence. or consider tal mitnick, a conscientious objector who has been imprisoned indefinitely for refusing his mandatory service in the idf following october 7. in a military imperialist state his refusal to serve is not seen as freedom of choice but as an act of violence against the state, a rejection of his own identity, because his identity has been bound inextricably and beyond his choice to that of a state that cannot exist without violence.

but mitnick is privileged in that he can refuse to serve. and i think that most soldiers who find themselves fighting for a state- i was 5 when 9/11 happened, i remember what it was like growing up during the so-called war on terror- are locked into a very different kind of prison, the prison of ideology, where they believe that their statehood is their identity, and that an attack on the state is an attack on themselves. and that is absolutely- or should be obviously- different from the type of violence perpetrated by groups like hamas: because that is a violence of self-preservation, of fighting one's way out of the corner where you have been forced to stand by your oppressor. all violence is terrible. all violence corrupts inevitably, and part of pacifism is to feel grief at this reality.

pacifism is rendered by violent authorities as terrorism because pacifism is in diametric disagreement with authority. all authority sustains itself through violence. it is not possible to have authority without violence. this may not be for you, but for me pacifism is tied up invariably in my rejection of authority: in recent years i've moved from considering myself an anarchocommunist to calling myself an anarchopacifist, because i do not believe that any authority can be just or do what is morally right.

but i want to make it very clear here: pacifism does not mean holding all oppressed people up the standard of non-violence. a world without violence is a utopia. pacifism that believes any form of violence is wrong, including acting against an oppressor, is not violence: it's merely another authority seeking to maintain a sense of its own supremacy. nonetheless there may be a moral imperative for people who do have the privileges of dignity, personhood, and statehood, and so forth, to participate in peaceful resistance and liberation on behalf of those forced into positions of inhumanity by their oppressors.

the problem is that non-violence is also rendered as violence by authority, because the only language violence authority can comprehend is further violence. the oppressor thinks any movement against them is violence. in the case of palestine, the very existence of palestinians is resistance whether they take up arms against israel or not: that resistance is rendered as terrorism whether an individual palestinian person's existence leads them to violent acts against the state or- in the case of the vast, vast majority of palestinians- to simply live. but being alive is an act of resistance towards the state. all resistance against the state is seen as terrorism. so what is palestinian resistance? is it taking up arms? is it joining hamas? or is it just being palestinian? is it just being indigenous? or kurdish? or a black person in america? or a jew in the third reich?

to understand the relationship between pacifism and resistance, we also have to reframe how and what we understand resistance to be. as long as we understand all resistance the way the state wants us to- as inherently violent- then there is no way to reconcile these things. a criticism i have of a lot of activism among those i consider my peers- among white, educated, middle class north americans- is that their support of resistance is centralized around hero narratives and us vs them thinking. but pacifism cannot really have sides and black and white thinking. pacifism is not something we do for ourselves. peace for one has to mean peace for all. peace of mind does not necessarily mean you've made a morally correct choice. my support of palestinian resistance extends to israeli disarmament, which extends to the disarmament of hamas, which extends to no state having a standing army to aid its nationalistic and imperialistic goals.

so then you might ask: are you are prepared for your existence to also be treated as terror for participating in resistance? and are you prepared to stand back? and are you prepared to not be the hero of this story? are you prepared to be even less than a hero?