#what catholicism does to u ig

[greenlaut]

death of the divine ✸

as your flatter talk shivers down my spine i hear the Holy One exposing all the lies (Lord, forgive me, i know my flesh needs to die) x

baal / lucifer / michael from angels before man and angels & man by @nicosraf

close-ups + work progress under the cut

og sketches

cleaned up sketch (i can't perceive my own messy sketch's coherency ok)

1st version. didn't like how thick the lineart and the colour palette isn't clicking with me. is so i scrapped it. decided i want to do frame/illuminated manuscript thingy so i added frame and re-centered michael.

i kind of winged it for the final version, so i don't have progress of me picking colour palette or compositions. idk how i did it, i just did it, it was hard. i had a bad day so i blanked out the entire day to just lose myself in this illustration. and then uh. tada.

now some close-ups:

and some notes:

i know i want lucifer's skin to come across as "gold", so i keep picking his colour in the orange spectrum. bcs yanno--the sun (morningstar). naturally baal is more red leaning, which i think also suits his lion associated imagery well (because lion -> strength card (in tarot deck) -> red. idk, it's how my brain is)

originally michael doesn't wear an armour. i decided last minute to put him in one because fuck it; (1) armour cool and (2) i am a masochist ig

both baal and lucifer wear lipgloss. this is entirely dedicated to rafael's (the author. not the angel.) suffering. they share lipgloss by kissing, you fools.

michael has "jellyfish" hairstyle because. the front bob kinda reminds me how catholic friars/monks in certain schoolings cut their hair in that bob hair? yknow the one?? ya?? anyway it's for that imagery.

both baal and lucifer's legs are caging michael. bcs they're what ground him (vices/temptations) ahahahahaa

i actually asked rafael (author not the angel) and he said he imagined baal is a brunette, which is the same like i had in mind. except that baal asked that he got depicted as a wizened old man/wizard. so now he gets a beard and his hair is white. (he also insisted i gave him a stylish beard)

if u look closely at the jewelries the demons wore; one of lucifer's rings and baal's visible earring have gemstones the colour of michael's eyes

in return, michael's sash is the colour of the demons

baal has a ring with heliodor (yellow) for lucifer, and lucifer has a(nother) ring with red ruby for baal

baal's other gemstones are topaz and lucifer's are yellow jasper

both demons have pearl necklaces. they're supposed to represent michael('s wings ahahahahahaahaha)

my headcanon is that michael's wings are brown like sparrow's actually. BUT during the war, god gave him more power and authority and my understanding is that he got tempered into a perfect sword; so his wings turned white. when book 3 came out and they finally bang (I FUCKING HOPE THEY DO. RAFAEL. THIS IS FOR YOU RAFAEL.) his wings will turn brown againehehhehe

lucifer's coat has wing-like cut at the ends to represent his no longer existing wingsbye

michael is blue because one time i shared this imagery with rafael; michael wearing blue because of the same reason virgin mary is depicted in blue. god's favourites are in blue; fated to suffer and be left behind.

fin.

[satanfemme]

i definitely agree doing that to babies is awful and indoctrination but like, it doesn't actually mean anything does it? isn't a baptism just symbolic? someone could just grow up and decide they don't want to be a part of the religion and just stop having it be a part of their lives still

it means you're being counted among the church's demographic numbers for life, it means you're "technically a xtian" for life, it means you've been tasked with xtian obligations for life, and depending on ur spiritual beliefs (as not all ex-xtians become atheists!) it means you've got the xtian g-d's eyes on you for life -- if not non-consensual implications about ur afterlife one way or the other. also, growing up in xtianity still permanently affects you and the development of your psyche/worldview for life too ofc. so like idk I can only speak on catholicism ig which I know is considered one of the "worse" branches but like. basically the things u teach a child, the way u treat a child, and the guilt you force upon a child are very much permanent and real. so yeah I mean technically baptisms are "just symbolic" but all that ^ is what they symbolize, so.

but also, in the end I know I'm not the only one who's had a difficult time coping with the fact I was baptized as an infant. that experience is actually very very common among ex-catholics and ex-cult members. and people with religious trauma which would be a large percentage of those prev groups anyway (or… virtually 100% tbh). + it's a common enough issue that there's services available specifically to help u cope with/undo ur baptism (ex. http://unbaptism.org/index.html) which was my jumping-off point for my unbaptism certificate as well btw!

so idk all things aside, "just symbolic" is a moot point. whether it "actually" does anything or not doesn't matter to me as much as the very real and recorded affect it has on people. clearly it does actually mean something, or else it wouldn't be such a weight on so many people who undergo it. :/

[blackwoolncrown]

Hm this is a long shot but do u have any readings on the topic of spirituality in organizing? Or spirituality by another name, but the behavior u are getting at ig. Growing up the closest religion I had at hand was Catholicism thru my grandma, and my mother was ‘spiritual’ but used it to confirm her own biases in a weird way. These made me wary of religion (well like a type of christianity and white co-option of spiritual practice, but I didn’t realize that growing up) but I definitely think in “religious” ways like u described, however because I haven’t considered myself a spiritual person, I’ve left it unexamined which I’m sure is leading to problems. Got into organizing last year with a prisoner support group and it would be nice to develop a way to critique/understand our approach to the work in these terms but wouldn’t know where to start.Thank you and if this isn’t something that can rlly be learned thru reading like I kinda expect, no worries and no need to answer this ask! Have a good day!

Hmm.. Nothing wrong with a long shot. I'm a believer in high aim.

So the thing with this is yeah, you're right, you can't really learn this through reading. Largely bc what you need is to unlearn something and partially because it's very difficult to unlearn something in the same medium or framework you learned it.

FIrst off though let me say congrats on actually, like, following that thread of self-reflection. It's incredibly important to have that level of self-awareness and perspective especially when your aim is compassion and social work- if we are not aware of ourselves we continue to do harm to others even when we intend otherwise.

You're definitely not alone in your position. Two main points:

1. This is actually sort of the first step in the Ancestral work I mentioned, something largely left out of mainstream western culture because aside from patron saints and black church traditions, ancestor veneration is largely absent from this culture specifically due to the practice having been persecuted by xtianity in other cultures and also because the traumas of war and colonization lead to people not wanting to go back and learn their histories or not knowing, or only knwing hugely inaccurate sensationalized versions of who their ancestors were. Asking yourself "What beliefs and behaviors did I inherit from my parents?....and where did they get theirs from?...And where did my grandparents get theirs? (and on all accounts how did the lives they lived affect this, and how does that relate to me today..?)" is the very beginning Ancestral Work. This is how you find out about deeper layers of yourself in order to decide what to do with them. But I don't wanna say more on this bc it's a whole huge thing.

2. And here is my second biggest gripe with xtianity: Aside from the whole persecuting and killing people thing, and the upholding a separation between self and spirit (so fucking dangerous), the fact that xtianity caused so much damage and trauma has been sufficient to cause a significant number of people to become avoidant of not just religion, not just spirituality, but even belief in general.

This has robbed humanity of so much and caused so much violence.. ugh but that's another rant. Anyway it's the source of this really ironic but common thread of people who consider themselves Atheist or anti-religion when they're really anti-xtian, but in doing so cut themselves off from meaning-making and deeply human forms of connection and self empowerment. And this has wrecked culture and mental health and so on and so on.

So anyway to come back around, I would, as ever, point you to the work being done around decolonization. In my experience, which began from an agnostic scientific-philosophical lens, moved through buddhist practice and philosophy for years and grew all the way into reclaimed indigenous animist practices of my lineages, I find that decolonization is the most efficient and accurate key path, because knowing what, specifically, was imposed upon and persecuted out of various cultures and why will tell you precisely where, culturally, you got your preconceived notions from and- very importantly- what other meaningful notions or worldviews preceded them.

It's one thing to say "well I don't wanna be religious like my family" it's another thing entirely to actually replace that empty space with informed, personally aligned meaning. Nature abhors a vaccum and that space DOES get filled with shit if you don't organize it yourself.

Happy life journey.