#religious grounds

[rightnewshindi]

पुलिसकर्मी ने लेडी डॉक्टर के साथ किया धार्मिक भेदभाव, देवर के पिलाया जूठा कोल्ड ड्रिंक; पोस्ट हुआ वायरल

Tamilnadu News: तमिलनाडु की एक लेडी डॉक्टर ने दावा किया है कि पासपोर्ट वेरिफिकेशन के घर आए पुलिसकर्मी ने उनके धर्म के कारण भेदभाव किया। उन्होंने एक्स पर किए गए पोस्ट में बताया कि पुलिसकर्मी ने उनके घर के बर्तन में चाय-कॉफी पीने से इनकार कर दिया, क्योंकि उसके परिवार के लोग अलग धर्म से थे। डॉक्टर ने आरोप लगाया कि पुलिसकर्मी ने उनके देवर को जूठा कोल्ड ड्रिंक पीने को मजबूर किया। लेडी डॉक्टर के देवर…

[mahgck]

vatican aint shit

[yandere-daydreams]

Nanami just straight up using his name for his user on a porn website is crazy accurate man does NOT care for internet privacy

say what you want about that man but i just know that he does not give a FUCK about his digital footprint. he has geared his entire mentality around hating office job culture, not wanting to spend time with his coworkers, and recovering from his emo high school years with increasingly bold fashion choices. in canon he may be [redacted] but in my heart i know he's using his full legal name on every shady porn site he can find and posting his dick on twitter three times a week. internet privacy is dead babygirl that man is self-employed.

[gxlden-angels]

Do not let the Protestant Work Ethic Beast in your head win!

You are not alone! You are not the sole difference between death and life! You are a person who will at some point need to take a break!

That is why there is community! That is why there is organizing! Do not despair because you, alone, are not currently boots on the ground fixing things! Do something, but do not let that something be collapsing!

[gingerswagfreckles]

Did you guys know that the KKK also hates Israel. Did you know that just because a group hates Israel does not mean that they are anti-Zionist Pro-Palestinian freedom fighters. Did you know that antisemitism is real. Did you guys know about this.

[pinkmoondoll9shihtzu]

A drawing and poem from 2004

"When young angels learn to fly Their wings may give way in the sky They fall down to the depths of Hell Where for their lifetime they shall dwell With scratched up clothes and broken wings Devils shall bring it to their king Someone special, who the king would choose, To help the injured angels wounds They would take care of them for the rest of their lifes From the second they take their painful dives It just goes to show, when angels fall, devils have hearts after all."

[serpentface]

Do psychotropic drugs and/or ritual play a role in any of the blightseed cultures? A pretty broad question, lol

Yeah that’s a very broad question, the answer is about as much as it tends to play roles in real history. Alcohol is pretty ubiquitous (outside of cultures that abstain from intoxicants) and used for a variety of purposes, opioids are commonly used in some parts for pain relief or recreational purposes, stimulants (usually in mild, natural forms) are used to provide extra energy, and hallucinogens are most commonly used as part of a larger religious framework (rather than for recreational purposes). Any more elaborate answer kinda has to be case by case in a certain culture or part of the setting.

I'll just take this as an opportunity to talk about the one established sect that pretty much REVOLVES around psychoactive use. This is the Scholarly Order of the Root, which is a sort of mystery religion + elite community of scholars who currently occupy the Ur-Tree and its forest in the far southern Lowlands (southeast of Imperial Wardin, on the same land mass).

The Ur-Tree is the obligatory Huge Fucking Fantasy Tree (and its surrounding forest). It’s a mass of vegetation about a mile tall and almost as old as Plant Life Itself, its upper branches are primeval plants, which become more modern the nearer they get to the ground (and each 'level' holds tiny ecosystems, some containing descendants of LONG-extinct arthropods/other small animals). Its lowest branches and the surrounding forest are contemporary plant life, and all is connected and protected by an incomparably MASSIVE fungal mycelium network (which is itself a living god).

A lot of the Scholars' more secretive practices revolve around experimentation with substance use with the goal of expanding the Mind and transcending the body to fully connect to the Dreamlands, and they have a supply chain of traders and mercenaries called Rootrunners who traffic substances into the Lowlands. Most of their psychoactive use is in a very intentional capacity and not just like, for fun, but a LOT of them are just straight up addicted to cocaine (in the form of alchemically refined bruljenum, which is used for practical purposes of its stimulant effect during long hours of work).

All known psychoactives are desirable for experimentation (particularly hallucinogens), with each having properties that either allow expansion of the Mind, transcendence of the body, or outright divine communion. Their effects are logged in great detail and interpreted to form the basis of the Scholars' understanding of the natural world and reality itself.

The most important substance is Ur-Root, which is root matter from subterranean levels of the Ur-Tree that have both their own intrinsic psychoactive substances and a very, very high concentration of living god mycelium. The tree root contains DMT and the mycelium has its own wholly unique effects (being an actual living god). They alchemically refine it into a purer, more potent form, and use it to expand beyond the body and directly commune with the Giants, a group of entities they have identified as the only true gods.

An Ur-Root trip starts off with minor visual distortion, which turns into shifting fractals that slowly obscure the vision. Eventually the senses are entirely taken over by a 'tunnel' of rapidly shifting fractals and geometries. In a complete trip, the experiencer gets a sense that they have been pushed through a membrane and entered another realm, finding themselves in a distinct experiential Space.

At this point they may encounter entities which communicate to them in a language impossible to describe but wholly understood. These beings are understood to be the Giants, or at least aspects of the Giants that mortals are capable of comprehending (they often take familiar tutelary forms of the Mantis or the Snake, or appear resembling the same type of sophont that the experiencer is, all composed of ever-shifting geometries). The experiencer often feels a sense of unconditional and endless love from these beings, though the Giants may be more hostile and may appear in the form of the Trickster (usually a cultural figure regarded as malicious, be it an animal or otherwise) in a bad trip.

(^Up until this point, this has mostly just been a DMT 'breakthrough' experience ft. 'machine elves' and the like).

They are then removed from this space and returned to something that feels like the real world, but is nearly unrecognizable. They have a sense of rapidly moving through time, and will usually see 'the spires' towards the beginning, which just so happen to look like this:

(source + some context via Implication- the spires are exactly what this art is depicting)

The experiencer continues to move across an unfathomable amount of time, occasionally 'seeing' other such flashes of unfamiliar landscapes and creatures, and yet also being devoid of all their senses, the 'seeing' is pure, unfiltered experience. There is a sense of interconnectedness with all life, and that one has become the forest (or even Life) itself. The sense of time is wildly distorted, the trip lasts only about 5 minutes but feels like an eternity and is understood as literal hundreds of millions of years.

The experiencer has usually lost any remaining sense of Self and individual consciousness during this phase (in which case this time distortion is usually a neutral or even peaceful experience), but some retain a fraction of their identity, and find themselves trapped and conscious while experiencing what feels like eternity (which can be LIFE-CHANGINGLY distressing, even after the fact).

(^This latter part of the trip is the effects of the Ur-Tree fungus).

The trip ends with a sense of rushing through the ground and back up into one's body, at which point they will abruptly return to their senses and consciousness. The details are then immediately retrieved via interview and recorded in immense detail. The whole experience is understood as having been full comprehension of the Dreamlands, communion with the Giants, and then a tour through the act of creation.

This is done as part of the initiatory practice into the inner mystery-religion of the scholars, and as needed for study by high scholar-priests. It is not taken lightly, both as it is absolute communion with the gods and reality, and in that it can be a very, very difficult experience. People who have gone through this often walk away with a permanently shifted perspective, often in a positive and/or comforting way- a sense of interconnectedness with all life, a peace with the concept of death, seeing less of a point in individual ego and the concept of Self, and comfort in the sense of divine love they (may have) experienced. This heavily influences the philosophy of the Scholars and has had effects by proxy in the religious worldviews of the region.

Details of this experience are closely guarded, and initiates are given absolutely no prior knowledge and expectations for their trip. This is seen as a necessity- their naivety will allow for a true, unfiltered experience, and can be used to gauge whether they should or should not be accepted. Those that have a distinctly bad trip upon initiation may be assumed to have been 'rejected' by the giants and thus denied full priesthood, though this largely depends on How they interpret their distressing trip- those who identify this as a test and harsh lesson in a journey to enlightenment may be accepted (as this is how fully initiated scholar-priests interpret and handle their bad trips).

This inner priesthood is only a small fraction of the Scholarly Order, and its greater function is as a hub of education and repository of knowledge, and Scholar-trained doctors can provide some of the best medical care available in the setting ('best medical care in this setting' only means so much but it's pretty solid, relatively speaking). Only a chosen few Scholars ever get to commune with the Ur-Root, and most of the divine secrets revealed in the process are kept hidden (though they indirectly influence the politics and worldview of the entire order).

[rontra]

they literally are so real though. God of light is like “hey your wife killed a whole load of people and if you go hang out with her you will Not have a good time” and the first thing she says to him is “what if we took over the world by violent force and installed ourselves as the gods of the world” and he goes “ok :)”. and hes right.

[INCORRECT BUZZER]

->HE SAYS<- "hi i'm back. anyway apropos nothing i want to unite the world under one banner. for. um. undisclosed reasons". and SHE says "ok :)" <- their actual conflict has very little to do with this*

the thing he has a problem with (and which ultimately tears the rift between them) is her religious stance, because she is an unyielding apostate and he is on a mission from the joker of gods. and he spends his life guiltily withholding that information from her, because if she knew this was a mission from the joker of gods, she wouldn't be helping him do it

anyway ozma's sudden wish inherently carries violence with it and salem is smart enough to understand that and articulate it back to him. religiosity aside, they are on the same page about that; there is no world where "making the entire world bow to the same worldview/ruler/ideology/(sotto voce: and religion)" does not imply violent conquest of existing nations and cultures. she makes clear to him what needs to happen for him to get what he wants, and that she is willing to do it with him, and he's like "epic, i love my cool wife. let's not discuss religion at the dinner table 😬"

violent conquest was not even remotely on salem's itinerary but it is what he's suddenly talking about post-reincarnation, and she's willing to do it with him. SHE said "ok :)". We're All In This Together ❤️

but yea they're so real. i wish them a very merry "soulmates being twisted and used against each other so severely that they can no longer recognize each other's hearts". and a happy new year

[blujayonthewing]

[the-tenth-arcanum]

I can't believe trump is winning the elections...

[folk-punk-baby]

Me when my parents make me go to church but all I feel is my goddess and her warmth and love for me

[non4ry]

you believe me like a god (i’ll betray you like a man)

[unhinged-summer-fun]

I spent hella long making this playlist cover, probably more than the playlist itself

I find it kinda funny that when ppl share character playlists w the world I feel like there’s always this desperate attempt to not include as many (or any!) songs by their favorite artist(s) so they seem worldly and like they have diverse music taste—and yeah I’m victim of this too lmao. If I were truly free of the urge to get people to like me these playlists would have like all my chemical romance and taylor swift and lord huron and honestly that’s not even what I listen to regularly anyways! My Spotify wrapped for the last like four years has been assassins creed soundtracks and Hans Zimmer scores bc they make up a majority of my 18hr writing playlist

Anyway I put U2 on here and if your only opinion about U2 is bitching and moaning about “wah they put it on my iPod” and you haven’t like actually tried listening to them in good faith then stfu

It’s a playlist about a deeply traumatized man who loves his iPod, there’s gonna be U2 on it

ANYWAY ENJOY (this is also linked in the common grounds series masterlist along with the unknown planet dance nite mix & the act i playlist - check those out!!!

[1eos]

this viral tweet going around of this lady talking abt how her 24 year old son randomly just became an incel and that's another reason why i don't want kids bc imagine being dead broke for 20+ years pouring everything into your child just for them to become a fucking loser...... what do you even do with that? like i would just try to kill them like no way my pelvic floor is permanently ruined and you became some stupid ass red pill bitch

[gxlden-angels]

FUCK IT WE BALL

[fexalted]

i love aziraphale but god he's such a cop it makes me insane

he puts so much faith in the system and the concept of "people who do Right are Good and people who do Wrong are Bad", to the point of causing harm to people by doing what he sees as the objectively Right thing to do

and he Needs someone to tell him what he's doing is right and good, it's one of the reasons he'll call crowley now that he doesn't report his good deeds to heaven. aziraphale craves that external validation, and it's what makes the metatron able to flatter and manipulate him back up to heaven so easily

crowley learned early that the problem with heaven went all the way to the top. he asked questions and was punished for it, either knew from the jump or figured out quickly that hell wasn't going to be any better, and knew then he was on his own side from there. but aziraphale still trusts god, still trusts and defends the overall system of heaven, still optimistically, idealistically, foolishly thinks that if he could just fix his issues with it from the inside everything would be perfect, maybe just put some notes to god into that suggestion box that heaven doesn't have, surely if he's the supreme archangel god will listen to what he has to say, right?