#the salamander cult is thriving

[doctordiscosbignaturals]

look what i got for my birthday <3

eeeeeeeeee :)

[totally-lyrical]

What is different in Crown of conquest compared to the regular COTL universe? (Does Kallamar play any role in that AU?)

WOO I GET TO TALK ABOUT CROWN OF CONQUEST

btw go here for stuff on lamb gift culture in my au it was inspired heavily by op's wedding bells au which yall should totally take a look

ok so first i added a sixth grown, being the crown of amnesia. it's not actually in the land of the old faith, Woolbur's gonna have to go find it elsewhere but its an orange eye :3 (im also gonna write its own fic about it, bc i thought of it awhile ago) but i added another crown so i could justify the last crown having a seven pointed star lol

second, i gave all the other crowns animal forms as well. none of these are set-in-stone, but shamura's crown is a scorpion, kallamar's is either a jellyfish or a locust, heket's is probably a gecko or a salamander, and leshy's is probably a mouse or rat. leaning towards rat. the crown of amnesia is probably gonna be like a really small elephant or smth idk imma need help with that one, but the final crown, the crown of conquest, is gonna be a butterfly.

third, I want woolbur to interract with other lambs. that doesn't mean their people survived, oh no, he gets to meet lambs from outside the old faith. he joins a council of lambs, gathered to protect their kind, and quickly the rest of the council realizes that they placed a very powerful person on the council.

fourth, all of the bishops eventually join him. Narinder is last. in each one he overcomes their domain and gains their trust: for Shamura, they win a war they had no chance in. for Kallamar, they find a cure for a terrible plauge and administers it to all afflicted people in the cult. for Heket, they pull the cult through a great famine, and they even begin to thrive. for leshy, they whack him really hard on the head and runs away. in narinder's case, though, he just proposes to them and they get married lmao

theres a lot more that im going to talk about but these are the main things about it!! im really excited for this au

(also, OF COURSE Kallamar plays a role, hes my favorite guy!!!! hes important!!!!! this may be a narilamb au but i simply could not write anything without including kallamar even if its just subjecting him to minor suffering, also im still looking for more members of Kallamar's polycule so send me an ask if you want your follower oc to date him lol i'll also make a separate post abt it)

[bookoformon]

Joseph Smith and the White Salamander.

Did Joseph Smith really meet a White Salamander in order to discover and transcribe the text of the Book of Mormon? As a sibling of the Torah, this is how the Spirit of God would perform this kind of work.

From the writings contained in the Holy Talmud:

September 17, 2017

Sanhedrin 63b ~ The Fireproof Salamander

A salamander unharmed in the fire. From Koninklijke Bibliotheek, KB, KA 16, Folio 126r, c 1350. From here.

סנהדרין סג, ב 

אף חזקיה מלך יהודה ביקש אביו לעשות לו כן אלא שסכתו אמו סלמנדרא 

During a discussion of idol worship, today's page of Talmud notes that some cult practices demanded that parents sacrifice their children by burning them alive. “Even the father of Hezekiah the king of Judea wanted to sacrifice him in this way, but his mother saved him by covering him with the blood of the salamander.” Rashi gives this explanation:

The salamander is a small creature that emerges from a furnace which has been burning for seven consecutive years. Fire cannot burn someone who has smeared himself with the blood of the salamander.

From where did Rashi get the idea that the salamander emerges from a fire that has been burning for seven years?  Perhaps from the Midrash Tanchumah, where it burns not seven years but seven days.

מדרש תנחומא (ורשא) פרשת וישב סימן ג

 בריות הגדלות באור ואין גדלות באויר ואיזו זו סלמנדרא כיצד הזגגין העושין את הזכוכית כשהן מסיקין את הכבשן שבעה ימים ושבעה לילות רצופין מכובד האור יוצא משם בריה הדומה לעכביש (ס"א לעכבר) והבריות קורין אותה סלמנדרא אדם סך ידו מדמה או אחד

  למה? על שתחילת בריאתה מן האור מאיבריו אין האור שולטת באותו מקום 

There are creatures that thrive in fire and not in air, like the salamander. How is it created? When glassmakers leave a furnace continuously alight for seven days and seven nights, out of the fire there emerges a creature that resembles a spider (or a mouse). That creature is called the salamander. If you cover your arm or any limb with its blood, it that place will become impervious to fire. Why is does the salamander have this ability? Because it was created from fire.

Elsewhere in the Talmud the fire-proof properties of the salamander are used as a homiletic device:

 חגיגה  כז , א

תלמידי חכמים אין אור של גיהנם שולטת בהן, קל וחומר מסלמנדרא; ומה סלמנדרא שתולדת אש היא - הסך מדמה אין אור שולטת בו, תלמידי חכמים, שכל גופן אש, דכתיב הלוא כה דברי כאש נאם ה' - על אחת כמה וכמה 

The fires of hell do not burn Torah scholars, and this is learned a fortiori. Consider the salamander which is created from fire and its blood protects from fire. How much more so is a Torah scholar protected, for his entire body is fire, as it is written "for my words are not as fire, says God" (Jeremiah 23:29).

This is all rather strange. Where does this legend come from, and does science have anything to say about fireproof salamander? Read on.

“[The salamander] has no digestive organs, and gets no food but from the fire, in which it constantly renews its scaly skin.

— Leonardo da Vinci, Book XX: Humorous Writings, The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci, edited by Jean Paul Richter, 1880.

This is further proof the Book of Mormon was written by highly literate Jews for the sake of broadening the understanding of the Gospels and their potential use as a medium for ending slavery in America.

So, what is different between the White Salamander and Moroni? Moroni is a Holy Phenomenon of God that is designed to partially illuniminate the contents of a new, unborn Script, like the Book of Mormon was at the time. All Scribes and Prophets must be human; only human beings can be fully illuminated in the Glories of God. Angels cannot aspire to the Fullest of Glories.

So, after Seven Days in the fire, which meant the sins of America had ripened, out of the Aether comes Moroni who used a vehicle for transcription called a White Salamander, a looking glass into the DNA of the new script which was written in the salamander's blood, which was of the purest white like the lizard itself, transparent except to the most trained of eyes.

The Gematria for a white salamander is 1295, אב‎טה abata, "a gift from father to son."

White salamander yields 1294, אבט‎‎ד‎, avatav, which is Hebrew for avatar, or "a form of the formless infinite." It is my belief the Angel of the Lord showed the Prophet a luminiscent white salamander in the fores, was directed to refer to the Talmud for an explanation, and then he began working on the Book of Mormon in real time.

Angels have been known to show prophets the contents of compressed files within iconic images, so this is the most plausible explanation for the mention of the salamander in Joseph Smith's letter.

The Book of Mormon is almost certainly a miracle, certainly not the result of a bunch of mysterious crates filled with brass plates showing up in Joseph Smith's back yard in upstate New York. The Book of Mormon is 588 pages long. There is no conceivable way they were just dropped off into a big hole in the forest by primitive people.

It is critical we treat the reality of the Document properly. It was given to mankind beginning in 1824 as a response to the most uninventive horror that has ever existed, and it is imperative we give God and the Prophets that carried its message to victory their due.

Imagine if it really worked- the Book of Mormon warns us about the evils of mechanized wars and they broke out seconds after the Civil War concluded, the Book's champions killed or scattered.

If Abraham Lincoln survived, there is no doubt Mormon Missionaries, the real things, could have changed history all around the world as they did during his brief time.