#theological discourse

[goodwomanbadlady]

So Aziraphale is in Heaven, Crowley is unspecified. The humans from S1 have vague fuzzies, Most of the humans from S2 have the same. But we know that Nina at least and possibly Maggie as well (not convinced one way or another on Maggie's humanity) have at least some more distinct memories of the situations they experienced. I'm basing that on Nina being aware of the party behavior of the shopkeepers. The control doesn't seem as strong with her.

Anyway, if Nina (& Maggie?) have more distinct memories of what went down, I'm wondering about their current existential crisis. Every story I've read so far seems to gloss over their acceptance of the situation with their personalities, but I'm guessing they wouldn't be the first humans (by a long shot) that our beings have revealed themselves to and left aware (at least in part) of their true natures and what that would mean for humanity. Confirmation of a Christian eternity, but oh wait, heaven's not great and hell is exactly as described. So eternal torment is a certainty in one form or another. Not to mention, bringing another element to the predestination vs. free will debate we already see in Aziraphale and Crowley.

It would be interesting to see a theological debate or simply a discourse on how (if it were real and as depicted in GO) that particular brand of knowledge would affect a living human, or two. I've seen a few where Nina does freak out but I'm curious that if neither Aziraphale or Crowley is there to answer any questions, what would that mental tornado look like? If Maggie does remember more clearly, like I believe Nina does, what would that do to their relationship? There are obviously multiple scenario possibilities. I've just not seen that being explored. Possibly because Aziraphale and Crowley are already written to be so human like that we are still playing with that, but there are some really interesting deep dives to be done with some other characters.

This just came to me, but the possibility of Mr. Brown (an admittedly very apt name) finding out he has a pash on an actual angel. And then a later reveal of Crowley's true nature. His reactions would be well worth the read.

If these fics are out there and I'm just not aware of them, please please comment fic recs!

[edwardseymour]

"Given the marathon that Jane’s uterus had just been through, it’s likely that her uterus would have a reduced capacity to contract and effectively expel the after-birth contents of her uterus; lengthy labours tend to shred the membranes, especially if, like Jane, her membranes had ruptured early in her labour. I believe that here is where the best intentions again contributed to disastrous consequences. Wanting to ensure the best possible outcome, Henry bucked confinement tradition by inviting male physicians into Jane’s lying-in chamber. While we might see a physician’s help as a good thing, please keep in mind that Tudor era physicians weren’t trained in obstetrics. Had Jane’s immediate postpartum been similar to the above description, a physician would likely not have been well-versed in how to manage it. Had the midwives noticed retained tissue, they probably would have known to remove the offending product, manually if necessary, causing Jane further discomfort. To a Tudor physician, this would have been appalling, and protocol dictated that the physicians had seniority. Had they forbade an intervention, it would not have occurred."

— Dayna Goodchild, Jane Seymour and the Birth of Edward VI: A Midwife's Opinion

[whoneedslovewhenyouhaveknives]

…for some reason, it took me until just now to consider the implications of 1. God being a woman along with 2. Jesus being the son of God, Mary, and Joseph.

My conclusion: Mary is a bisexual (biromantic?) queen. Plus Jesus now has two moms and a very patient step-dad.

[brown-little-robin]

.

[mysticismmess]

I just called Song of Songs "theosiscore" to my boyfriend and idk how I feel about myself now

[cuntstable]

thinks about this convo and smiles

[sadsongsandwaltzes]

Okay I need a new every day purse cuz mine is falling apart.

The first one is cuter and the vibes are right.

The second one is alright but not my favorite. But more practical with the outside pockets and also cheaper. But the vibes aren’t the same

What do?

CC: @she-is-amused cuz you’re always great at helping me make these decisions

[ominouspositivity-or-else]

”hey tell the kids to shut up the grown ups are talking'” look you want me to be honest I’m just frustrated at a decent amount of young Christians (we’re in the same age range I’m not an old man) I know who are infinitely more knowledgeable on the mechanics of faith than I’ll ever be but still act like teenagers. They still constantly insult people and put struggling people down and hurl slurs at everyone and occasionally even speak about injuring people. They irritate me constantly. They’re smarter than I’ll ever be but the way they act honestly driven me, as a neophyte in the same age, farther away and into more confusion.

*sighs deeply* Beloved, I understand where you're coming from. But I need you to understand that you cannot expect the Church to mandate this, nor expect anyone to enforce it. Your personal opinion isn't going to change anyone's mind.

I'm 19 years old, my brother in Christ, and I have known plenty of people like the ones you're talking about right now, but guess what?

You are the one thing in life you can control. Likewise, I am the one thing in life I can control. And so that's what I'm going to spend my time focusing on. My response to them, my behaviors towards them, my love of them. Because that's the only thing that I will have to answer for at the end of my life.

And unfortunately, as much as it might pain you, you need to understand that people are idiots and jerks sometimes, but telling them to sit down and be quiet will do nothing but make them resentful of the very thing that you want them to love.

Moreover, and I cannot stress this enough, who are we to judge? There but by the grace of God go I. No one is perfect, and we are all in different places. Simply because someone is in a different place than you despite being the same age or having more of a theological background does not mean that they shouldn't speak, but rather that you should develop the understanding to know the truth from the lies. When someone tells you that God's not real, is your faith shaken? No. It's a lie. Therefore so does it follow that you should learn how to respond in both truth and charity to those who spout nonsense from a place of authority, no matter their age.

Perhaps this is not what you wanted to hear, but as far as I can tell and have lived, it is true.

[lechatelierlaw]

THAT LAST COMMENT IS SUCH A MEAN THING TO SAY, OMFG I WAS READY FOR THE AMAZING ATHEIST DISCOURSE, I WAS LAUGHING AT THE CONFUSION IN THE TAGS

WHY??? WHY WOULD YOU SAY THAT???

*sobbing on the floor*

FMA is fascinating because there aren't many works about what it means to be an atheist and a heretic to a god that you can not only see, but who has personally snatched body parts off of your living body and made fun of you for it.

[moonsappho]

evangelical christianity is purely anti-intellectual bro before the enlightenment era the bible was a LIVING DOCUMENT. what the FUCK is “biblical basis” ??????

[ivehadanapophany]

The most impressive part of the cultist simulator/book of hours universe is the amount of insane theological discourse all these different groups were having, genuinely fascinating to read about the different ways the Hours were worshipped. It's also impressive because this has meta-game consequences to where I will see an in game piece of lore and go "ah no i disagree with that interpretation of the solar hours I don't think the Door-In-The-Eye can be counted among them" and I'll realize I've fallen for the trap.

[hedge-rambles]

Y'know, this really kinda works because I was thinking along the lines of a sort of...religious function? Like, at yes, Honourables are vital to the spiritual wellbeing of society and the household, somehow???

And it might be tough to reconcile a patriarchal religious structure which was a kinda important part of the development of Victorian ideals, with it being run by non-binary individuals. Which, yeah I don't have a solid answer for that currently, but it would lead neatly into the idea established above though.

A lot of local administration and record keeping in Europe before that era was the purview of the church. They recorded marriages, births and deaths for example. And they also made up the vast majority of the literate and educated class for hundreds of years. Many early academics of all bents were, first and foremost, clergy. Early universities were religious institutions first, evolving from church and monastic schools.

So it kinda makes sense for it to move from a more spiritual (but still administrative and advisory) role to academia, admin and advise.

I don’t think adding nonbinary to Victorian’s gender system would’ve fixed their weird sexism. If anything I think it would’ve made them weirder and sexismier

[centrally-unplanned]

My take on Dante Theology discourse is that the book is obviously an impressive piece of literature dealing with wide themes of man and morality, that never claimed it was making any concrete theological claims. Any criticism of the book itself on that axis is bogus.

But also that there are many people out there - more than have read The Inferno probably! - that do kneejerk treat its concept as theological canon, and that is both a fair enough thing to criricize and in fact it is difficult to explain why its criticism-worthy without admitting that all Christian conceptions of hell are equally fictional. And not just because Christianity is wrong inherently; Christian traditions have constantly vagueblogged and flip-flopped over what hell actually is. That is why Dante's tale so easily slipped into canon, it is filling a vacuum.

[nastasya--filippovna]

WHO IS CROWLEY AFTER THE FALL?

so there is a LOT of debate over who Crowley was before The Fall. I have seen a lot of headcanons going around the place saying he was Raphael or Kokabiel or Baraqiel.

I mean this is the Exhibit A for saying that Crowley is Baraqiel. I think NOT.

Because this is a handbook written by demons for demons. The title is literally (if my memory serves me right) a guide to angelic beings that walk the earth. SO Crowley is not That..

Other than the red hair thing, no other physical characteristic matches. This Baraqiel guy sounds like an absolute gremlin. grisly slug, occasionally damp. NOT CROWLEY. I mean she's the most dashing thing around.

NO. #3 It says CROWLEY one line above the name Baraqiel. If Crowley is Baraqiel then why would his demon name appear right under that?????

And I think somewhere Neil Gaiman refuted this theory (I'm not really sure but I think so plz don't come at me with pitchforks if I got it wrong). So.......

But this is all beside the point. What I'm trying to say is that too much has been said about who Crowley was before he fell. There is very little, if not none, that has been said about who he was After.

Some say that he's an insignificant demon or some loser guy in Hell or whatever the equivalent of an angel principality deputy on Earth is.

I BEG TO DIFFER.

He is Important. Just look at the kind of assignments he's given. Original Sin, Major Historical Temptations and Evil Acts, Delivering the Antichrist and bringing about Armageddidn't.

But who is he exactly??????????

So canonically we're never told what Crowley's rank in Hell is. But there are more that enough hints for us to figure that out for ourselves.

But where does one place him when the hierarchy is so complex and varying across different historical and theological sources.

Such as here:

I have been thinking about this and I have two current theories

Crowley is Astaroth

Crowley is The Leviathan

I'll discuss only one in this post. I'll save the other for the next post.

Now book!Omens clearly tells us that Crowley or Crawley is not his real demonic name. For those who haven't read the book this happens when Hastur Lavista and Ligur come to hand over the antichrist to Crowley in the churchyard and as he's about to sign his name as "Crowley" they tell him to sign his real demonic name.

Are you with me?!!!!!

NANNY ASHTORETH!

Why did she use this particular name for her nanny disguise. What if...... what if this IS her real demon name.

A lot of my real life friends are annoyed beyond measure by my constant ranting about etymologies, origin and construction of discourse and epistemology, especially when it comes to presenting my thesis over how all Abrahamic religions and their symbology and iconography is, how do I put it, inspired from pagan religions that they expunged. I mean the concept of angles, the man shaped being with wings that is actually just a ball of fire or eyes or hale discs or sth is a pagan Persian concept.

Back to the matter at hand.

Ashtoreth, Astaroth, Astarte, Ishtar, are all the same name in different dialects and languages. All of these refer to a certain Babylonian goddess. When the People of God probably cleansed off all the infidels they decided to literally demonize their god and name a demon after her. In Milton's Paradise Lost Astaroth is one of the three princes or Grand Dukes of Hell alongside Beelz and Lucifer. If this theory might be true Crowley is a Prince/Grand Duke of Hell.

Now this gets even more interesting. Ashtoreth, Astarte, whatever you may, is a goddess of fertility and is associated with childcare. I mean at this point I just stopped to marvel at the attention to detail that Mr. Gaiman's work hold, the smallest hidden meanings in the storytelling.

Another thing. The Babylonians built these temples called ziggurats to worship Astarte and they looked something like this

and this

they were also known as sky temples.

Because Astaroth was first and foremost the goddess of stars and the Babylonians were stargazers and the temples were constructed as a stairway to heaven to take them closer to the stars and functioned as an observatory at times.

I'm just imagining Crowley turning up in ancient Babylon and with her other-worldly looks, knowledge of the stars and compassion for children they just..... started to worship her.

Before the Christians came and declared them pagans and the rest is history.

Continued in next post for the second theory......

[hyperpotamianarch]

All right. So, first: if you are either Jewish, like His Dark Materials, or both, please reblog. If you aren't any of those but know someone who is - please share it with them. I want to get as many thoughts on this as possible.

In essence, I just want to ask two simple questions. I have the beginnings of answers for myself, but Judaism is nothing if not full of discourse and many opinions on one topic. So, again: reblog. Share your thoughts and opinions. Hopefully, it will give us a wide variety of possibilities and answers.

The two questions are: where are Jews in Lyra's world? And what are the theological and Halachic concequences of having dæmons?

I intend to share my opinions in two separate reblogs, but please share your thoughts even if you don't see mine. The short version is that I looked about events in Jewish history around John Calvin's time for the first question (pope John Calvin being the major alternation of history in HDM). As for the second question - I have some thoughts relating to the Chabad thought stream. Elaborations, again, going in reblogs.

Thank you in advance!

(PS, question number 1 was handled once by the sadly deactivvated user the Tea Detective, though their full post disappeared. Link to a reblogging of the first half: here. Note, another reblog mentions other religions - feel free to discuss them, I'm focusing on Judaism because I'm Jewish. Another post asking this question was posted here, so have fun with it. Meanwhile, this post is about dæmons and religions in general and lightly touches Judaism.)

[ingravinoveritas]

I absolutely love the comment about Crowley being a Jewish character, because in my opinion it makes his and Aziraphale’s relationship even more poignant. It makes me think of the other angels as Christians who want to convert Crowley, who proselytize and think their 'way' is the only way. Aziraphale doesn't. They tell him to look down on Crowley, but he doesn’t, because Aziraphale believes in faith, not doctrine. And he loves Crowley the way Christ actually taught his followers to love...not the exclusionary, haughty "love" the Christian angels display, which isn't love at all. Aziraphale loves Crowley not because he is commanded to, but because he chooses to love him. And I think that’s incredibly beautiful...

Ello Mr. Gaiman!

My friend and I had a question!

So Dr Google says you are of Jewish background. May we ask why write about such Christian themes (particularly in GO)?

This is plain curiosity coming from us being Jewish and we both feel like Judaism is not properly presented in popular media.

All the love!

-R&N

Because by definition there isn't a Jewish Antichrist story. I mean, that's going to be from the Revelation of John of Patmos any way you cut it.

If it's any consolation, the opening of Episode 1 and the first two scenes of episode 3 are very Jewish. And you'll get another biblical epic in Season 2.

But then again, I tend to think of Crowley as the most Jewish character I've ever written. Even more Jewish than Harry the violinist in Sandman.