#ritual specialist

[angstemperor]

I promise you the most accurate readings and divined messages you'll ever get come from the people who truly don't care about formalities.

Like I'm sitting here shirtless eating applesauce from the jar I bought like 10 minutes ago with kohl eyeliner, my hair half like a bedhead, and if you were to ask me for a reading right now I probably wouldn't even grab my cards (one deck of which is right next to me) I'd just blink, say a sentence that nothing could've prepared you to face, and then go back to eating applesauce

[lucemaria]

Guarda "Se qualcosa tra voi si è spezzato, contattami❤️" su YouTube

[lovelaceisntdead]

.

[writers-potion]

Writing Weapons (7): Unarmed Combat (Hand-to-Hand Fighting)

In a fight situation with no weapons, characters will stick with the kind of fighting they're familiar with: grappling or striking.

Grappling

Martial arts: judo, wrestling aikido, jiu jitsu, sambo, lucha libre, glima

Suitable for: entertaining fight scenes

Aim in lethal fight: chock or strangle

Words to use: grapple, wrestle, twist, pull, pin, roll, throw, toss, squeeze, press, chock, strangle

Holding the opponents down to the floor is called a "pin"

Striking

Martial arts: boxing, kick-boxing, karate, muay thai, capoeira, taekwondo

Suitable for: entertaining or gritty fights

Aim in lethal fight: blow to head

Words to use: strike, hit, box, kick, punch, chop, slap, kick, chop, hammer, pound

Mixing Martial Arts

Some martial arts combine grappling and striking techniques.

A skilled martial artist is probably an expert in eiher striking or grappling, but also has basic skills in the other.

Easier to stick with one group for one character - the hero's friends can complement each other if they have different martial art backgronds!

Investing a Fantasy Martial Art

Spiritual Elements connected to the general magic/religious system of your story world.

Mental Focus that allows the martial artist to amplify the effectiveness of attacks.

Small rituals, like bowing to the guru before and after every fight to obtain some kind of "blessing"

Restricted admission to pretigious martial arts academies

Specialist techniques that require combining physical action with spells, or a symbolic act that activates magic.

Exams: students must prove themselves through a series of tough (life threatening) tests to obtain access to the most important lessens of the practice.

Special garmetns

Secret codes between members

Winning Factors

Skill - the most important. A skilled fighter can take on someone who is much larger than them, but unskilled.

Size

Ruthlessness

If you like my blog, buy me a coffee☕ and find me on instagram! 📸

[creature-wizard]

Hey folks, if you're looking for a generalized term to use in place of "shaman," a number of academic folks have been using the term "ritual specialist."

(If anyone needs an explanation why you ought to use a different term, one is over here.)

[fae-papercuts]

Originally inspired as a response to some posts by @banrionceallach and @marlynnofmany. Polished it up and decided it would make a good start to my lil story blog. Enjoy!

Not Our Usual Passengers

“What do you mean, there’s something wrong with the engines?” Captain El'ek'tak said incredulously. “You’re not an engineer, none of you humans are. You’re not even crew, you’re passengers! How dare you claim there’s something wrong with my vessel!?”

The outraged captain puffed up her air sacks, the feathery amphibian inflating as she stared down the trio of humans who had been travelling with them for the past week. They were not what she had come to expect when transporting humans, not one bit.

They were quiet, for a start. One of them didn’t even speak at all, just made an occasional tuneless humming sound when they were concentrating particularly hard on something. That was usually accompanied by a rocking back and forth that seemed remarkably similar to the Ke'tek autonomic stimulation ritual of focus.

Humans weren’t supposed to do that, were they?

The second of the human party cleared their throat softly - something they always did before speaking, which was quite a rare occurrence. The captain appreciated this, actually. So many humans she had transported interrupted her, or spoke over each other. The disrespect was really quite remarkable - but these humans waited patiently for others to finish, and this particular human’s throat-clearing was used similarly to the way El'ek'tak’s own species rustled their dorsal feathers to indicate their intent to communicate.

“Captain, apologies if we caused any offence,” at this the non-speaking human’s eyes widened in surprise, and they shook their head, clearly agreeing in a profoundly apologetic manner, without words. Their apologetic companion went on, “We can’t be certain there’s something wrong with the ship, we just thought you should know that it sounds wrong.”

The first human spoke again, nodding as they added to their companion’s statement.

“Yes, I am sorry, I didn’t mean to assert certainty when I should have stated a suspicion,” they gave a short smile, then their face quickly fell back into a neutral expression. The captain was a little taken aback by this, as that particular human seemed to very rarely express facially - quite the opposite to what she was used to with humans. It was a little disconcerting, but mostly because she had put a lot of effort into learning about human non-verbal communication.

She blinked, and stared at the three for a long moment. “It sounds wrong?” she repeated back, surprised. She had heard of some particularly sensitive species being able to diagnose certain engine issues from the vibrational frequencies, but usually this required extremely highly trained specialists.

The silent human nodded, and raised a handheld device, tapping something onto its screen for a few moments. The other two humans turned and waited patiently as their friend worked, and the Captain watched with a raised eyebrow (this wasn’t a natural Girurian expression. She had learnt it from her human studies, enjoyed how it felt, and how it could communicate so many things at once).

The human held up the device, and it emitted a gentle, slightly robotic tone, “Engine pitch changed one point five hours ago. Rising quarter octave every seven minutes. Hurt very bad fifty five minutes ago.”

Captain El'ek'tak stared for a moment at the human, her feathers rustling vaguely, as she tried to figure out a response. She looked between all three of them. “You can hear the engines, from your quarters half way across the ship?” she asked incredulously.

The most vocal of the humans spoke, while the throat-clearer nodded and the non-verbal one tapped on their device. “Oh yes,” they said, “we’re all sensitive to sensory input, at least for humans. Not a patch on Alirians sound sensitivity, or Hynoids electromagnetic spectral range, or the scent capabilities of the Teraxids - did you know they can smell a single smoke particulate in a standard atmospheric volume of 500 cubic metres?”

The human with the device gently put a hand on the speaker’s shoulder and smiled softly at their friend - who turned bright red and looked at the floor. “Sorry, xenobiological sensory discrepancies is my special interest right now,” they said, before taking a slight step back. It was at this point that the captain noticed that they were fiddling with a strange cube in their left hand, suddenly speeding up how they manipulated the piece of plastic, changing its configuration rapidly. It was a fascinating display of manual dexterity, and considered asking about it for a moment.

“Engine makes the whole ship vibrate. Can hear it any place,” spoke the little device, for it’s human, interrupting the captain's curiosity. The human’s head rose, making eye contact with El'ek'tak. The human’s gaze was intense - more so than even the other humans the captain had encountered. Eye contact was so rarely a positive thing, across a wide variety of species, but with humans she had met so far it had always been considered important. So the captain had learned to look them in the eyes. It had been a surprise when this group avoided it so much, rarely meeting her gaze for more than a split second. Early in the voyage, they had politely explained that all of them found it hard, and that they hoped she wouldn’t take offence. Frankly, El'ek'tak had been a little relieved, as all the eye contact with others of the odd little species had been quite exhausting.

But right now, the diminutive human who never spoke and could apparently tell when engines changed pitch, was looking into her eyes, and the Captain could practically feel this little traveller’s distress. It made her ankle feathers itch, and she was surprised to find herself understanding quite so much from just a look.

The captain nodded, and broke eye contact. The human looked down again, reverting back to their usual slightly-bowed stance.

“Let me check with engineering,” she said, and turned to the panel by her side, tapping a screen to raise the engine-room. Slipping comfortably into her own language, she greeted the pair of engineering crew on duty, and asked them about the state of the engines, particularly frequency or oscillation-related issues. She gave them the time to check on it, waiting silently, still as a statue, while the humans figeted, or rocked gently side to side. Their motion made her a little uncomfortable, but she had learnt that with these three, continuous movement wasn’t a sign of impatience, as it has been for many previous human passengers.

After a few minutes, the engineers returned to the screen, and exchanged a few explanatory sentences with the Captain, before tapping fingers to their foreheads respectfully. The Captain returned the gesture, and ended the call.

El'ek'tak turned back to the humans, to see that the non-verbal one was already tapping on their device. She couldn’t help but rustle her feathers, wanting to reassure the humans, but not wanting to interrupt this overt preparation for communication. The throat-clearing human raised a finger briefly, a clear request for a moment of time, and the Captain found herself surprised again at how wide a variety of perception these humans could contain within a single species.

“Pitch dropping rapidly. Expect normal range in four minutes. Thank you, captain,” said the device, as the human beamed a broad smile at her for just a brief moment.

El'ek'tak’s feathers rustled briskly, and then she replied. “Yes, that’s alright, thank you for bringing it to our attention,” she said, pausing to gather her wits. “The interphasic array had become slightly misaligned. It wouldn’t have been detected by our sensors for another hour, and then we would have had to pause the engines to manually readjust it. Catching it this early, we could simply vary the input parameters to re-compensate, and bring it back into synchronisation,” she explained, relaying the gratitude of her engineering crew.

The most vocal human flapped their hands back and forth vigorously, grinning with delight. “Oh, thank goodness, I’m so glad we could help, and that the engine noise will at least be consistent. We were worried it would be horrible for the whole trip, and we’d have to reconfigure our ear protection all the time! Genuinely helping out the engineers is so great!”

The captain’s eyes bulged with happiness, quite unable to resist the infectious joy of the gleeful human. “I am glad your trip will be more comfortable, and I will pass on how helpful you were to Central, once we reach our destination.”

The throat-clearing human, who had so consistently noticed the captain’s non-verbal communication, smiled too. They actually chuckled a little as they said, “More neurodiversity stuff to go in The Guide To Interstellar Travel With Humans,” seeming pleasantly amused.

El'ek'tak winced in embarrassment. She had already sent in three amendments to the guide regarding natural variations in human cognitive capabilities and behavioural norms since they had left Alpha Centauri, the two weeks of travel offering surprise after surprise from these passengers. But as far as she knew, the guide wasn’t acknowledged by humans - she didn’t even know the species was aware of the now rather sizeable volume of collected knowledge. It certainly wasn’t available in any human languages that she knew of - after all, what would be the point?

The human’s chuckle became gentler, and the other vocal one of the group raised a hand in an extremely close mimic of the Girurian comforting gesture - as close as could be with the wrong number of digits, anyway. The Captain couldn’t help but relax, the effort the human put into the gesture only adding to the positive impact. They flashed another brief smile as their companion explained, “Don’t worry captain. Most of us don’t bother with it, but I find it fascinating. It has been wonderful seeing the updates since our trip began. Please, the more human neurodivergency is documented, the easier space travel can be for people like us.”

There were a few more polite exchanges, during which the captain learned  that the strange device she had notice was an 'infinity cube,' which was apparently a kind of 'fidget toy.' Then the humans left her ready room; a quiet, somewhat surreal collection of beings who had rather put a lie to the notion that humans were uniformly capable of being brash and difficult to deal with.

But they certainly didn’t do anything to diminish the captain’s view of humanity as a species eternally full of surprises.

[peoplecallmelucifer]

"THIS IS BULLSHIT!" Clair screamed at her captain

"Crewmen you have not just assulted an injured coworker, you apreare to have threatened others into defending you. This matrer is over and done!" The captain responded coldly

" Assu- I WAS PREFIRMING CPR!"

" I do not care what kind of ritual that is, injured crewmembers are to be handled by the hospital staff alone and are most definetly not to be punched in the chest!"

"I DID NOT PUNCH HIM"

"Whitnesses say otherwise"

Clair took a big breath and sighed before co tinuing more calmly "Have you talked to Max yet? Or a human medical specialist for that matter?"

" Well you put our chief medical officer out of comission but don't worry, we will take the victims statement when they wake up, untill further notice you will be confined to-"

At that moment the doors burst open with several humans piling up on alien guards while a tall skinny man, who appeared to barely be standing hurried in the best he could.

"MAX!" Clair shouted in surprise "What are you doing here you should be resting!"

"And let you get fired for this, no way"

"ORDER" the captain roared! "What in the blazes is going on here? Crewman, I'll have you know that even if you were a victim of this attack I will not allow vigilante justice on my-"

"Oh can it you cretin!" Max said a she sat down

"Excuse me?" Was all the captain managed to say in response before Max continued

" You're excused. Now if you had half a brain you would have looked up what CPR was before aresting the person eho saved my fucking life! Some cretin left live wires uncovered and as I leaned agais the wrong wall I got Enough electricity to light up half of New York for a day running trough my body! What Clair did were chest compressions! She restarted my heart!"

"B-but she is not a trianed medical servicemen! And you had bruizes all over your body, not just electrical burns!" The captain stammered

" Yeah muscles spasm when they get shocked. I got flunged into the wall because of it, hence the bruises. And all human crewmates know basic CPR. It is required from any spacer to know first aid for at least 4 species." Max said

"I- I see. I ... apologize for my rash judgement crewmen."

" Am I not being arrested? " Clair asked

"No, you are not" the captin said with a look of shame

"Then I accept the apology ... now please help me drag this diva back to thw med bay before I actually knock him out" Clair said looking at Max

" Hey carefull Clair, maybe captain never heard of hyperbole"

[angstemperor]

biggest pet peeve when talking about death

What they say: I'm okay with death. I've made my peace with it.

When they actually mean: I've accepted the fact that I'm going to die someday but I refuse to accept that anything I cherish will be gone before me.

[nobrashfestivity]

Jill Pflugheber, Microscopy Specialist, and Dr. Steven White, Lewis Professor of Hispanic Studies (retired) Trichocereus Trichocereus pachanoi Feldman’s research on the ritual use of “Wachuma,” the San Pedro cactus, establishes that Trichocereus pachanoi is one of the plants of power that is best represented in pre-Incan iconography, appearing in the art of a variety of indigenous cultures such as that of Chavín, Nazca, Moche, Paracas, and Chimú. The traditional use of this cactus, which contains significant amounts of mescaline, extends to northern Chile, northwestern Argentina, Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador. Even so, he says, the pre-Hispanic uses of the cactus (as a sacrament that facilitated communing with the divine spirits of nature) are still particularly well-conserved in northern Peru in the mountains of Piura (Huancabamba and Ayabaca), where the Complex of Las Huaringas Lagoons (a UNESCO World Heritage Centre) with its “paramo” ecosystem is located. Feldman analyzes the social function of San Pedro as a means of diagnosing illness and healing as well as conflict resolution or achieving prosperity in diverse forms. It is also employed in rituals for predicting the weather, doing astronomical observation, and extracting the mamayacu, (the mother of the sacred waters of the lakes). Feldman believes that the traditional use of San Pedro “represents a factor of social cohesion and regional cultural identity, while at the same time preserving a centuries-old religious system.”

Henri Michaux, Mescaline Paintings. 1950s

“I first took mescaline,” Michaux has said, “to see if I was capable of having luminous and colorful visions. I considered myself a kind of cripple: all my dreams and inner mental images are in dull grey.” But after a few minutes under the drug he decided that the search for luminous images was secondary to the possibilities of the drug for exploring the mind itself. “What immediately interested me,” he says, “was the rapport between the image and the idea, between the wish to see something and what one sees. In mescaline one finds an independent consciousness with its own world of images. One learns what it is both to have and not have a will.’’

[expertvashikaranspecialist]

Connect with Online Vashikaran Specialist Astrologer Guru Amit Ji | Call +91-9780999036 for Assured Solutions

Unlock the mysteries of Vashikaran online with the expertise of Astrologer Guru Amit Ji! Dial +91-9780999036 to access guaranteed solutions for your life's challenges. As a trusted online Vashikaran specialist, Guru Amit Ji provides personalized and effective remedies for love, success, and prosperity. Take control of your destiny with the convenience of online consultations. Your path to fulfillment begins with a simple call – experience the power of Vashikaran today!

[writers-potion]

Writing Magicians

If you are drafting or deepening a magician character, consider these personality traits and common characteristics of magicians. Your magician doesn't have to be set in stone or have all of these traits.

Intelligent

Magic requires a critical, quick, analytical mind to practice and implement. Must be capable of making difficult decisions.

Good Memory

For memorizing spells, potions ingredient lists, rituals and anatomy of magical creatures.

Creative

Magicians need to adapt existing spells and rituals to the situation

Self-disciplined and focused

Casting a spell or conducting a ritual requires the magicians to have unwavering focus and self-control.

Patient

Magic takes time to practice, especially if it's not a talent that you're born with. You also need patience to calm your human sacrifices down and make those stupider than you understand what's going on.

Highly trained

Mere talent is not enough. Practice - and pain - makes perfect.

Specialist

Magicians will have a spell/an element/a potion they are exceptionally good at

Musical

Many forms of magic involve drumming or chanting, or even singing.

Spiritual

Many forms of magic are linked with religious practices or concepts. Your magician might be heralded as a spiritual saint, or hunted for being a heathen.

Prayers are often a part of magic rituals.

Studious

Magicians are always keen to learn more, expanding their skills range, acquiring news spells, understanding different forms of magic and exploring scientific subjects.

Many magicians will amass books, or sign up for every available online class.

Well-orgnized and Methodical

The best magicians always have information and ingredients at hand and know where to find them.

They prepare thoroughly before rituals and have Plan B,C,D ready

Introvert

Many magicians like quietude and solitude in which they can recharge to practice a new spell in peace.

However, some magicians love social gatherings, maybe even showing off their power.

Ethical

Magic gives a person power, and requires moral judgements to apply this power wisely. You magician protagonist will be ethically challenged, but pull through difficult decisions guided by his good heart.

You magician villains, of course, will fall due to their unethical practice of power.

Sharp Sense

Your magician is likely to have a goos sense of smell/sight/sound, so that they can tell poisons part and catch the exact note of the chant.

Descended from Magicians

Magic is often portrayed as a talent that is passed down generations. It can be of blood (you must have "magical blood", so to speak), or it can be a guarded family secret.

On the flip side, your hero can be the only one with magical talent in a family with no such powers.

Psychic

Although magical and psychic gifts are separate matters, the power of foresight is often considered a branch of magic.

If your hero is a psychic, make sure it has limitations and consequences!

Day Job

Few magicians practice openly. Even if the magician earns money from her practice, she'd want to disguise her identity and pretend to work a more everyday job.

Many modern magicians work in the medical sector; other are employed in scientific, engineering or the arts field.

Pet

Magicians are known for thei close relationships with animals.

This can be a typical pet, or a mythical animal, or perhaps an incarnation of the devil, who knows?

If you like my blog, buy me a coffee☕ and find me on instagram! 📸

[talonabraxas]

Circe Talon Abraxas

Patron of Witches and Enchantress of Greek Mythology: The Magic of Circe

Since the beginning of humanity, people have searched for solutions through magical practices and witchcraft. Therefore, Circe (or Kirke) became one of the most magnetic women in ancient Greece. A patron for witches, the personality and attributes of Circe in Greek mythology encompass all of the key ideas related to witchcraft.

The goddess Circe has been remembered for her vast knowledge of magic potions. As a specialist in herbs and knowledge of how to use them for magic and healing, Greek mythology had it that she created many recipes for ancient potions to use in magic rituals. To that end, Circe is often depicted with a wand or a staff in artworks.

[animeomegas]

i think that uchiha omegas are vain without realizing it. for the clan it is not about fitting into the omega stereotypes that are fashionable at the time, but beauty is a type of power, certain physical features are highly valued because they are representations of the purity of the lineage. many of their beauty and makeup rituals are even excessive for other traditional clans and i find the mental image so funny. just imagine massacre au itachi looking at his little brother, his beautiful little brother omega, a pure uchiha, with slightly damaged hair and clean, short nails but not with the usual intricate patterns. he is disturbed both because it is his fault that sasuke knows almost nothing about those traditions and because he fights against the maternal instinct to clean him up and make him worthy of standards that he was raised.

This is such a beautiful ask omg, and I adore it with all my being! 🥰

I love the idea that Uchiha teach all their omegas (and probably the other dynamics too honestly) about make up, fashion, haircare etc. but with the idea that beauty is power. Their clan is beautiful, and that's part of their power and allure.

It's all practical stuff too. Here's my ideas for Uchiha clan beauty standards:

Nails should be short, but beautifully painted.

Hair should be well conditioned with expensive, but crucially scentless, hair products.

Skincare is important. (Uchiha dermatologist specialists, ahh! Non-shinobi members would for sure have the option to specialise in wellness chemistry.)

Clothing is expensive, and stunning. Traditional, but with just the right amount of cutting edge, because they aren't boring like the Hyuuga.

Grace is taught through dance, which Uchiha perform at their traditional festivals.

And Itachi being raised with all this, is intimately familiar with the rituals. He has to paint his nails for the Akatsuki, but they're done so much better than everyone else's. He still knows all the dances, although he doesn't perform them.

And you're so right, Itachi would be unnerved seeing Sasuke without any of that grooming that he would have been expected to do. He was too young for make up when the clan was slaughtered, and he'd only had his nails done by other people so he doesn't know how to do it himself.

He's probably also forgotten all the dances, and outgrown all his formal wear. He definitely doesn't bother with expensive shampoo or skincare.

He doesn't look like an Uchiha should. And Itachi realises in that moment, that even if Sasuke had countless children and revived the clan, the traditions are probably already lost forever. They will quite literally die with Itachi.

I'm imagining Itachi daydreaming about getting to paint Sasuke's nails for him, and performing the special heir dance with him at festivals. When he's face to face with Sasuke, because his mind is struggling to cope with the situation, he finds himself fixating on wanting to wash and brush Sasuke's hair properly. Because it doesn't look right.

This headcanon is perfect. Just the right amount of world building, Uchiha arrogance, and angst.

Here are my questions if anyone wants to jump in:

What sort of nail designs are popular and why?

How does this impact wedding ceremonies?

What kind of special dance rituals or dress up rituals would the heirs have to go through? Did Itachi and Sasuke do it?

How would Itachi and Sasuke feel about this in a non-massacre AU?

[yamayuandadu]

Sorry If i am bothering you but i want to know what role did the wilderness and its animals play in Mesopotamian mythology?

I like answering questions about Mesopotamia which indicate genuine interest, so no need to worry.

The most straightforward answer would be that the wilderness was generally perceived negatively (see ex. Wiggermann’s Scenes From the Shadow Side). The steppe in particular was usually portrayed as a place where one can get robbed at best and as the dwelling of ghosts, demons and the like - or just straight up the underworld -  at worst. The mountains were frequently viewed as a site of confrontations between gods and their opponents but more neutral or even positive portrayals pop up in literature too. It’s also important to note that the marshlands were viewed pretty firmly positively. As for wild animals: by far the best overview of Mesopotamian zoology is offered by Jeremiah Peterson in his dissertation A Study of Sumerian Faunal Conception with a Focus on the Terms Pertaining to the Order Testudines. Niek Veldhuis’ Religion, Literature, and Scholarship: the Sumerian Composition Nanše and the Birds, with a Catalogue of Sumerian Bird Names is really good too. There’s also quite recent Entomological Knowledge in Ancient Mesopotamia by Vazrick Nazari but you should bear in mind the author is an entomologist, not an assyriologist, so some sections are… less than reliable and sources as old as from the 19th century, and as questionable as Paropola’s phantasmagoric visions,  are employed once the focus shifts away from identification of insects.

More under the cut.

Animals were generally seen as an essential part of the world outside human dwellings. Positive comparisons to certain taxa - wild and domestic cattle and lions - are very common in myths, royal hymns, and other genres. The bovine analogies are so popular in Mesopotamian texts that even scorpions could be metaphorically described as a sort of bull.

Demonic traits could be attributed to some animals viewed as dangerous: snakes, scorpions and dogs in particular. Additionally, omen texts indicate that ants were seen as messengers of Ereshkigal, presumably because their burrowing lifestyle made the Mesopotamians assume they could move all the way down to the underground land of the dead. Finding ants while digging foundations for a new building was therefore an ill omen; seeing flying red ants above a house, meanwhile, was a sign the owner is at the risk of being killed. Due to such risks, behavior of ants was sometimes observed by religious specialists, and some of the namburbi protective rituals specifically deal with them. Locusts were a bad omen too, but that’s a given. On the other hand, moths were viewed as bringers of good omens.

Some deities were associated with the wilderness, and broadly with animals dwelling there. Most notable examples are Ninkilim (addressed as “lord of the creatures”; his name was at times confused with ninka, “mongoose”, leading to the development of the idea that he was a deified mongoose himself), Sumugan (though he was associated with domestic animals too) and to a smaller degree Numushda, arguably. Ennugi, a minor courtier of Enlil, could be addressed as the creator of grubs, though a similar role is also attested for the mythical king Alulim; attestations are limited to incantations against field pests, though. For more context see here.

A special case is Nanshe. Two of the major literary texts focused on her focus on interactions between her and animals - Nanshe and the Birds and Home of the Fish. These belong to the subgenre called “enumeration literature”: while there is an actual plot, and deities are involved, the goal is mostly to fit as many terms from a single category into a single composition. As a result, Nanshe sounds… unusually passionate (fixated, even) on the core topics. I think it makes for really unique characterization but alas, as a major Mesopotamian deity who fits neither into questionable Bible takes nor into the madonna-whore complex she’s not getting anywhere in popculture. Something that’s generally missing from the Mesopotamian repertoire are myths involving anyone turning into an animal. There are two notable exceptions, Enlil and Namzitarra, which involves Enlil turning into a raven to test a devotee, and Dumuzi’s Dream, in which Dumuzi asks Utu to turn him into a gazelle to escape underworld gendarmes pursuing him.

Major gods were not theriomorphic, and with some small exceptions (Tishpak, whose skin is in one case described as green and scaly; Ishtaran, who might have been depicted with the lower body of a snake) didn’t even have any animal body parts. However, deified animals are nonetheless also attested - multiple examples of divine bulls are the main example, obviously (for instance Indagara, Buru, the borrowed Hurrian Sheri and Hurri, possibly Magiru, “obedient”), as expected divine lions also pop up every now then, but that’s not all.

There’s a number of deified birds, though most of them occur only in Early Dynastic sources which do not provide any real insights about their character. One example that comes to mind is the deity Kiki or Ninkiki (“lady of the kiki); we have no clue what sort of bird the kiki was though, other than that it was loud enough to be compared to the storm. Nirah is a deified snake.

Deified invertebrates are much less common but it’s still worth bringing up Eḫ, a member of the court of Nungal whose name is pretty semantically similar to English “bug” (though it might also specifically refer to a louse. There is also an either divine or demonic centipede, Ḫallulaya. Among the numerous ancestors of Enlil there is a pair named Engiriš and Ningiriš, “lord butterfly” and “lady butterfly”. It is often claimed that Uttu, the goddess of weaving, was portrayed as a deified spider, but the evidence is at best limited, see here and here for details. Peterson doesn’t list her among deified animals.

A mythical creature listed in enumerations of Ninurta’s enemies, kulianna (“friend of heaven”), might be a supernatural dragonfly, though it’s also possible it was imagined as something else altogether and the link to dragonflies is just the result of homophony with Akkadian kulīlu, “dragonfly”. For more detail see here, p. 89. In art there’s a fair number of depictions of animals behaving like humans, but the full context of such works remains poorly known. There’s a brief overview here from p. 237 onward. 

Especially in Assyria wild animals were customarily hunted by kings, and trophies acquired this way served as a way of showing off the extent of their dominion. It has been suggested that they could eventually acquire apotropaic qualities, as evidenced by the preparation of protective statues  of the apsasîtu, the burḫiš and the nāḫiru, sometimes interpreted as water buffalo, yak and whale. However, the meaning of these three terms remains uncertain, for some recent considerations see here.

[angstemperor]

That witchy vibe when

you want it to be Showtime so badly but man you're tired and doing stuff takes preparation and energy and follow-through and hngh