Admiral Ray posted:

one of the interesting things to me about witchcraft is how gendered it is. at least in the Americas and Europe it seems like it's highly associated with women, but that may just be due to Christian cultural flattening and genocide. it seems appropriate to say that the shamanistic beliefs would also be considered witchcraft, much the same as many of the other pagan beliefs and systems were. still, it would be weird to say that shamans are witches.

anyway, i dunno if witchy-ness is only due to bourgeoisie affectation because, honestly, what other actually powerful and independent women do girls and women have to look up to, historically? there's a few figures, and they are sometimes revolutionary and sometimes not, but witches are somewhat unique in that they don't rely on anyone else for their power. they are powerful in and of themselves and it takes dedication and skill to learn the craft. i think the cultural flattening that comes with witchcraft today is a shame, as there's a lot of history behind some of the rituals but they've been misrepresented and purposely persecuted. it means all we have to go off of when someone says "witchcraft" is what we've seen in movies or heard a friend of a friend of a friend say.

the whole kerfuffle over Marina Abramovic and spirit cooking comes to mind here, as many heard something from somewhere or watched a lovely video from 1997 with her writing random poo poo on a wall with pigs blood. that conjures up the popular conception of what we think witchcraft is, but in reality blood is a pretty taboo substance in many belief systems. you don't use it for anything, and curses aren't really enough to base a belief system on. besides, Abramovic's spirit cooking is a literal made up phrase and the cookbook is pretty much just a shitpost that she got paid for. you can see the entire book at the new york museum of modern art website, but there's a few parts that made people get all and it was:



and



but conveniently, they never consider the one where recipe where she recommends you become a loving Pokemon:



or the "recipe" that's just two words on a page:



even neglecting the obviously silly ones, the initial ones don't make any loving sense either. they certainly don't make sense as part of a ritualistic, and therefore strict and codified, practice. what the gently caress is an "earthquake night"? how do you milk a sperm? the only one that's marginally worrisome is the one about self-harm, but that's only because that's a problem we know exists. the entire thing is just a shitpost that she made money on. a poster's dream. oddly enough, nobody thought Milo Yiannopoulos's pig blood bath stunt was witchcraft, just loving stupid and attention seeking. here though, it tapped into popular suspicions of women being witches and grew into something much larger.

Admiral Ray posted:

Pentecoastal Elites posted:

god drat what I wouldn't give to have absolute fuckin sicko freaks like the podesta brothers throw gigantic sacks of money at me for making GBS threads out this sort of stream of consciousness drivel on an old timey typewriter and getting it posted up at the moma or whatever. absolutely incredible grift.

Kit Walker posted:

Yeah the fine arts world is basically an exclusive club now (arguably always has been) and the best way to make it as an artist is to either be related to someone with connections or hook up with someone with connections. Your level of actual skill and talent is maybe 10% of the total, and that 10% is getting the interest of someone with connections if you don't already have them

Kit Walker posted:

Yeah the fine arts world is basically an exclusive club now (arguably always has been) and the best way to make it as an artist is to either be related to someone with connections or hook up with someone with connections. Your level of actual skill and talent is maybe 10% of the total, and that 10% is getting the interest of someone with connections if you don't already have them

Sharkopath posted:

There is actual blood ritual and belief systems based around it but the the perception of it as it is now is also a bit uncharitable for obvious reasons. The central underpinning of the aztec flower war style sacrifice was that with royal bloodletting and heart sacrifice of war captives the victim was rejoining their energy with the sun, improving quality of life for everybody. It's interesting to me and I learned a lot about it ages ago.

The priesthood were of course wiped out by the Christian priesthood the conquistadors brought with them but theres a lot of parallels to their kind of blood worship and christian rite and tradition in terms of repaying a sacrifice of life the gods gave to us.

Pentecoastal Elites posted:

god drat what I wouldn't give to have absolute fuckin sicko freaks like the podesta brothers throw gigantic sacks of money at me for making GBS threads out this sort of stream of consciousness drivel on an old timey typewriter and getting it posted up at the moma or whatever. absolutely incredible grift.

Pentecoastal Elites posted:

also it's always good to remember the CIA basically created the modern art ecosystem as part of their propaganda war against the Soviets. It is and always has been worthless imperial capitalist bullshit.

Pentecoastal Elites posted:

the CIA obviously didn't create all nonrepresentational or experimental forms of art but they did absolutely fund and develop, like I said, the modern art ecosystem. In America, which doesn't really matter because after the cold war it exists exclusively as a vehicle for the world's ultrawealthy to launder their money, like Marzzle said

Admiral Ray posted:

yeah there's a book about this that i've been meaning to read called Think Tank Aesthetics.

gay_crimes posted:

this looks dope from what I just read and im going to get it. where did you hear about it?

Admiral Ray posted:

i'm not sure how much we can draw from that, tbh, since the Aztecs were basically a post-apocalyptic civilization that suffered from civilization ending plagues, famine, and civil war. the conquistadors were as successful as they were because they arrived while the Aztecs -- and other indigenous societies -- were barely hanging on. in that context human sacrifice makes some sense because they were so desperate, but i don't really believe that human sacrifice -- unless it was a war captive and even then i'm still somewhat skeptical -- was a central part of their non-crisis belief system. that's an internal bias of mine, tho, because frankly human sacrifices are extremely goddamn wasteful. a cow or pig or whatever, sure, but a human? lotta stuff that human could be doing instead of bleeding out on top of a pyramid. the popular conception of Aztecs is that they just chopped people open willy nilly with no thought to the greater logistical issues that causes (thanks Mel Gibson, you loving racist hack) which seems awfully convenient for the conquistadors.

there's some parallels with the christian and jewish blood rituals, but there's a bit of historical context there that we don't have with the Aztecs since the conqies destroyed their history. judaism is an outgrowth of a polytheistic religion with a specific god winning out and eventually becoming the only god, so there's all kinds of rumors and poo poo about the other contenders. some, like the baby sacrifices to moloch, read a bit like exaggeration to me. part of that is because moloch is essentially the ancient hebrew way of mocking someone's god, basically the spongebob meme of the god's proper name. the other part is that judaism still demands human/blood sacrifices, but just the tip, in order to continuously solidify the pact with god. pretty good deal compared to the baby/child sacrifice that moloch was said to have demanded or what yahweh apparently asked of Abraham at first. christians, of course, have the weird as hell "blood of christ" thing and the eucharist, as well as a bunch of them performing circumcision despite it being unnecessary for their deal. the self-flagellation rituals of some christian sects and Shia islam are also blood sacrifices, but in terms of enduring pain and suffering as proof of devotion. devotion ain't useful if you're dead.

now though, people don't react to those as blood rituals, even tho they are, and don't associate them with witchcraft. they are too embedded in the cultural practices of our day so even if someone thinks they're hosed up and weird (self-flagellation is controversial to say the least), they aren't seen as spiritually heinous in the same way witchery is. to some degree this may be due to sexist belief systems -- these religions are all extremely patriarchal -- , but overall i think it's just because they are familiar to us.


yeah podesta's brother paid $10k through kickstarter to have a dinner with her. fun fact, tho, one of the other $10k tier rewards was this:



amazing grift.

the kickstarter page is even still up, so you can see what she was selling.

christmas boots posted:

I thought I read somewhere that the other civilizations were more than willing to assist the conquistadores when they first arrived in no small part because everyone was so fed up with the Aztec's poo poo. Or did I make that up?

Pentecoastal Elites posted:

the CIA obviously didn't create all nonrepresentational or experimental forms of art but they did absolutely fund and develop, like I said, the modern art ecosystem. In America, which doesn't really matter because after the cold war it exists exclusively as a vehicle for the world's ultrawealthy to launder their money, like Marzzle said

e: in rereading my post I guess I should make clear that I don't mean it to be read as saying like "only soviet realism counts as Real Art", or whatever

Admiral Ray posted:

i'm not sure how much we can draw from that, tbh, since the Aztecs were basically a post-apocalyptic civilization that suffered from civilization ending plagues, famine, and civil war. the conquistadors were as successful as they were because they arrived while the Aztecs -- and other indigenous societies -- were barely hanging on. in that context human sacrifice makes some sense because they were so desperate, but i don't really believe that human sacrifice -- unless it was a war captive and even then i'm still somewhat skeptical -- was a central part of their non-crisis belief system. that's an internal bias of mine, tho, because frankly human sacrifices are extremely goddamn wasteful. a cow or pig or whatever, sure, but a human? lotta stuff that human could be doing instead of bleeding out on top of a pyramid. the popular conception of Aztecs is that they just chopped people open willy nilly with no thought to the greater logistical issues that causes (thanks Mel Gibson, you loving racist hack) which seems awfully convenient for the conquistadors.

there's some parallels with the christian and jewish blood rituals, but there's a bit of historical context there that we don't have with the Aztecs since the conqies destroyed their history. judaism is an outgrowth of a polytheistic religion with a specific god winning out and eventually becoming the only god, so there's all kinds of rumors and poo poo about the other contenders. some, like the baby sacrifices to moloch, read a bit like exaggeration to me. part of that is because moloch is essentially the ancient hebrew way of mocking someone's god, basically the spongebob meme of the god's proper name. the other part is that judaism still demands human/blood sacrifices, but just the tip, in order to continuously solidify the pact with god. pretty good deal compared to the baby/child sacrifice that moloch was said to have demanded or what yahweh apparently asked of Abraham at first. christians, of course, have the weird as hell "blood of christ" thing and the eucharist, as well as a bunch of them performing circumcision despite it being unnecessary for their deal. the self-flagellation rituals of some christian sects and Shia islam are also blood sacrifices, but in terms of enduring pain and suffering as proof of devotion. devotion ain't useful if you're dead.

now though, people don't react to those as blood rituals, even tho they are, and don't associate them with witchcraft. they are too embedded in the cultural practices of our day so even if someone thinks they're hosed up and weird (self-flagellation is controversial to say the least), they aren't seen as spiritually heinous in the same way witchery is. to some degree this may be due to sexist belief systems -- these religions are all extremely patriarchal -- , but overall i think it's just because they are familiar to us.


yeah podesta's brother paid $10k through kickstarter to have a dinner with her. fun fact, tho, one of the other $10k tier rewards was this:



amazing grift.

the kickstarter page is even still up, so you can see what she was selling.

Admiral Ray posted:

the epstein thread lol

gay_crimes posted:

oh poo poo i guess i should read all cspam threads always and all day

Sharkopath posted:

That seems like a really poor and pop-history revisionist reading of Aztec culture to me since they were a powerful empire that existed for a long time and codified the flower wars over generations. The amount and nature of the sacrifice is misunderstood in popular understanding but we have records of its existence and importance to both aztec culture and the earlier, bordering mayan culture.

Atrocious Joe posted:

https://twitter.com/SabrinaSiddiqui/status/1347002063847243776?s=20

US democracy is witchcraft

Truga posted:

obviously, that's why there's no documented evidence of it working lmfao

Taintrunner posted: