ex post facho posted:

i think it's an interesting line, like what separates the demon hunter from the demon

smarxist posted:

please hex Mitch McConnell so that he chokes to death on his own bile while sleeping

Homeless Friend posted:

Dongicus posted:

yew sure I got the Inverted Hanged Man, witch? that's a rough 'un it is. me gran pulled that t' last solstice and next think you know 'ad her caverns betwixt - er, by way of meanin' cunny if you're the sort with 'oles in yer pate - become a right rutfest of spectres, wraiths, and even a banshee that deafened young Gorm, the village a-neurotypicals. anyways t' local lordship in the DSA mentioned 'irin of witcha but neither I the coin nor the trust for those freaks on account of one takin a dump in the granary, stunk to heavens all year round it did, nasty bastards - the lot.

some plague rats posted:

It seems dubious to try and draw a connection from "the one woman in the village who knew about herbs, and midwifing, and germs" to "well off white girls messing about with cards and pretending star signs mean things" and act like that's a meaningful historic throughline, honestly

snoo posted:

imagine hating women this much

staticman posted:

I got a witch for a mom, and thanks to DNA being a dick I got it passed down to me from birth. I gotta admit, one of my first real post-9/11 crack-pings was being in the last stages of my "Magic's not real, gently caress you mom" rebel phase while watching meme-magic literally send TUETNRO into the white house.

Message received and lesson loving learned

fart simpson posted:

thats dumb. what separates the deer hunter from the deer?

staticman posted:

This is gonna be some dumb gay goonrant, BUT LET'S HOP ONBOARD MY WILD RIDE ANYWAY~!

Let me get straight to the point:

Raise your hand if you've killed the cop in your head. Good.
Now, raise your hand if you've killed or are killing the colonizer in your head. Many of you are asking "w-what...?", "lol are you serious?", etc. We all know about the entity called "the cop in your head", and it's death is a necessary part of unchaining oneself and others from the prison of Capitalism. There's just one problem, especially if you're pale, there's another entity implanted in you called the Colonizer. This entity's actively driving you to not just hate non-Christian faith, but to destroy it in whatever ways you can. As above, so below, just like fascists use liberal free-speech as a Trojan horse to deliver white supremacist An Orwellmaidenheirazilneworltheylivatrix's Tale, the Colonizer's favorite horse for ecocidal Christendom these days is ~skeptical atheism and loving loving science~. I don't know if you've been paying attention, but scientists are as listened to by the government as Indigenous elders.

There's a reason natives are screaming from the rooftops for y'all to listen to them, cause if you keep ignoring them, you're literally going to continue the colonial cycle, but this time forcing the "superstitious savages" to surrender their ways and adopt the immortal science. That's exactly what the colonizer in your head wants, and why you must kill him.

Not sure what else to say on this, again, sorry if this came out a dumb goon rant, just my observation

F Stop Fitzgerald posted:

goldmine

tristeham posted:

tristeham posted:

staticman posted:

Oh for fucks... Another thing I'm sick of is when I state my views, from the bottom of my heart, everyone immediately assumes I'm trolling. This isn't trolling, they are/were literal loving poo poo. They were dancing naked around a fire while we were building an empire. I'm stating the facts. gently caress this loving Indian apologism, I'm done with it, done. They offered nothing to the world, never have, never will.

(USER WAS BANNED FOR THIS POST)

Al! posted:

ok but where does the homestuck cosmology fit into all of this christian stuff

vyelkin posted:

five years of growth and change led this poster from

to "I get to speak for Indigenous people and what do you know, they all agree with me"

Red Baron posted:

that’s uh… wow

staticman posted:

Am I the only one getting sick of all this Jackson bashing? Seriously, the guy did nothing wrong. What were the loving Indians doing with that land, anyway? Oh that's right, NOTHING! "We've gotta scalp and torture men, women and children to keep the white man from stealing the land and resources we're not taking advantage of at all!"

Can we PLEASE stop pretending the Indians were these sweet little angels who never did anything wrong? They were loving savages and deserved everything they got. End of story.

staticman posted:

ftfy

Edit: posted this before I read the vibes warning. Real-talk tho, would it absolutely kill the good vibes and I should make a new thread for it, or can I bring up how anti-magic attitudes are literally almost without fail covers for extreme anti-native/racism and misogyny?

vyelkin posted:

the "Andrew Jackson did nothing wrong" to "I'm here to call out extreme anti-native racism in the witchcraft thread, Do Better" pipeline

Al! posted:

ok but where does the homestuck cosmology fit into all of this christian stuff

tristeham posted:

LITERALLY A BIRD posted:

As for mageia, it derives from the Old Persian magu, which seems to have referred to a sacrificial priest or a similar functionary. Having been imported into Greek no later than the sixth century BCE, a positive understanding of mageia as "worship of the gods" (Plato Alcibiades 1.122A) survived at least as late as Apuleius in the second century CE and was revived during the Renaissance (De Jong 1997: 387-394; Otto 2011: 143-272).

https://www.ancient-origins.net/myths-legends-asia/magu-hemp-goddess-who-healed-ancient-asia-008709 posted:

A prominent religion that valued cannabis was Taoism (or, Daoism) in ancient China. The Chinese even had a caretaker for this herb; her name is Magu. Considered in ancient East Asia to be equivalent to the divine ambrosia of the Greek gods, hemp has long been named an "elixir of life". The goddess Magu's association with cannabis primarily lies in its use as a healing plant - as the majority of Magu's mythological stories revolve around the ways in which she aided the poor and the sick either as a goddess outright, or as a priestess of an unnamed healing deity. Magu takes on a more definitively divine role in the ancient literature of Korea, however the core of her person remains relatively the same.

Throughout China, Japan, and Korea, Magu (or Ma Gu MaKu, Mako) is depicted as a beautiful young woman, no older than 18 or 19 (in human years). Her youth and beauty are symbols of the health and healing of the universe she is believed to protect. She is a guardian of vitality throughout East Asia, not only in the world of mortals but also the cycles of the earth. Magu is regularly considered to cast aside the winter in favor of flora and fauna. In Korea, Magu's role is elevated from goddess to Creator god, akin to the Japanese Shinto goddess Amaterasu, and her abilities extended to incorporate the creation of the world and humanity.

Chinese writers appear to have been the most determined in preserving her mythology. Magu is more prominently displayed in the art of China as well, allowing one to understand her Chinese persona and thus compare her to her other forms. Though Korea considered her a creator deity, Chinese Taoists believed Magu had a mortal upbringing. The most cohesive version of this tale states that Magu lived a poor life in the war-torn 5th and 6th centuries AD, working as a seamstress. There is no mention of her mother, but her father was a horse breeder and he and Magu worked together to make ends meet. One day, Magu was given a peach by one of her clients, but instead of sharing it with her father, she passed it along to an even poorer elderly woman in the street. Magu then made the woman some porridge out of her own cupboard.

Unfortunately, Magu was unable to deliver the porridge in a timely fashion as her father arrived home and locked her in her room. When she finally managed to escape to see the old woman, the woman was gone - a peach stone was all that remained in her place. Magu planted the stone and cared for it as it grew into a vibrant peach tree, and later gave away the fruits freely to those in need. Before long, Magu's peaches were said to be healing, and Magu was immortalized as a goddess possessing the elixir of life.

Though this tale is only one of many relating Magu's existence, it reveals the primary emphases of her worship: namely, caring for the sick and poor and cultivating the natural world. Here, Chinese writers depicted her "elixir of life" as peaches, evidenced further by early Magu's symbols in early Chinese art, but cannabis has also been intricately tied to her healing abilities - though on a spiritual rather than physical level. Records of Taoist practices have listed the consumption of hemp seeds as protecting against demonic possession and increasing the "Second Sight", while burning the seeds was pertinent in purification rituals. Often, it was Magu who was invoked during these times, and she came to be associated with the Taoist landmark Mount Tai for its heavy growth of the plant.

Having a goddess whose healing abilities are specifically tied to cannabis is not as unusual as it may sound to westerners. The likelihood that cannabis was first farmed in ancient China is strong due to the earliest discovered historical references from the region. In fact, in the world of Classical Greece, early China was occasionally referred to as "The Land of Mulberry and Hemp." This also likely influenced the naming of Magu—or perhaps the naming of the plant, depending on the answer to "which came first: the goddess or the plant?"—as her name has often been translated as "hemp." Magu's name does have other connotations, such as "maiden" and "aunt", but these also align with her youthful and naturally protective capabilities. Further, that hemp appeared to grow so plentifully on Mount Tai, it may have even seemed that the gods were handing the plant directly to the priests and priestesses of the Taoist religion.

Charlatan Eschaton posted:

had to look up magu and check this out

lold at (in human years)

quote:

Though Korea considered her a creator deity, Chinese Taoists believed Magu had a mortal upbringing.

Colonel Cancer posted:

Im casting spells

LITERALLY A BIRD posted:

love this, thank you

Interestingly this bit

reflects some thoughts I have been having on the roles of creator deities, in pantheons. In modern process theism we see ideas about the way entities co-Create with God/the Divine/the Source of reality. In process theism of course we are talking about humans but in mythological narrative we can instead be talking about Gods, plural, the Deities, who in the human-like structure of their parables also perform acts of Creation with "God." The title of Supreme Creator then, in the context of polytheism, is debatably similar to a title of Head Architect; at a given point in time, various Deities having individually taken turn at performing the role of Supreme Creator, the "Head Creative," makes complete sense from the mytho-theological perspective.

For you, specifically, I posit this relates to why Inana is perceived as a God of so many important multi-faceted things that She maintains a position as one of the supreme Deities for hundreds and hundreds of years; but is never (I don't think?) elevated to position of an actual "Creator" God. It's a specific job description and she don't fit it

https://aeon.co/essays/does-language-mirror-the-mind-an-intellectual-history posted:

The roots of our present ideas about linguistic relativity extend at least as far back as the Enlightenment of the late 17th to the 18th century. Enlightenment discussions were often couched in terms of the ‘genius’ of a language, an expression first coined in French as le génie de la langue. The term was used in a wide variety of senses, to the point where it was often not clear what precisely was meant. One contemporary commentator remarked: ‘[W]e often ask what is the genius of a language, and it is difficult to say.’ What we can say is that the genius of a language was understood as representing its distinct character, the je ne sais quoi that constitutes the idiomatic in each idiom. This unique character was frequently taken to embody something of the national mentality of the speakers of a language.
A classic – and highly influential – formulation came in 1772 with the Treatise on the Origin of Language by the German philosopher and poet Johann Gottfried von Herder (1744-1803). In opposition to contemporaries who saw the ultimate origins of human language in animal cries, Herder insisted that there is a difference in kind between human and animal communication. Human language, so Herder argued, rests on the irreducible human capacity for ‘reflection’ (Besonnenheit), our ability to recognise and think about our own thoughts. In coining our words, we reflect on the properties of the things they name, and choose the most salient of these. Different peoples will have focused on different properties, with the result that each language with its characteristic forms will encapsulate a slightly different perspective on the world. As languages are passed on from generation to generation, the differences between them accumulate, making the languages and the worldviews they contain more and more distinct. In order to understand the unique perspective of each language, we must trace the forms of words back to their etymological origins.
The Herderian thread was picked up in the early 19th century and woven most expertly into a broader account of language and literature by Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835). Humboldt endorsed an element of linguistic determinism – that is, that language not only reflects a particular worldview but is actively involved in shaping it: ‘Language,’ he wrote , ‘is the forming organ of thought.’ The relationship he envisaged, however, was not one-way but dialectic. Between language and thought there inheres an endless feedback loop: our thoughts shape our words, and our words shape our thoughts. His account was not restricted to individual words – more important were the grammatical structures exhibited in the languages of the world. But even the study of grammar was only a preliminary to the real task, according to Humboldt. Grammar and vocabulary merely represent the ‘dead skeleton’ of a language. To capture its character, to see its ‘living structure’, we must appreciate its literature, the use made of the language by its most eloquent speakers and writers.

Colonel Cancer posted:

Im casting spells

tristeham posted:

Charlatan Eschaton posted:

~language is magic~

Charlatan Eschaton posted:

also to take it to egypt for a sec i liked hearing some pronunciations (one thing you miss out on in just reading words vs hearing stuff spoken) of thoth and realizing it's p much just a recreation of the sound that ibis make when they're talking to each other. learning from animal friends
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIWq_k2tiYg&t=306s
timestamp 5:06 esoterica

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJVWPG4FxNM

LITERALLY A BIRD posted:

you've seen that magio-rhetoric paper right? I feel like you must have. I can link it again if not.

LITERALLY A BIRD posted:

omg that's perfect. I have never cared for the Grecian take on his name, ~Thoth~ sounds so limp compared to nice emphatic Djehuty.

H.P. Hovercraft posted:

i know a grown woman who believes in faeries

she's a teacher

Sherbert Hoover posted:

you know what grinds my gears? when someone tells me to have a blessed day

where the hell do you get off assuming such authority, bub

Fleetwood posted:

the other day a teenage girl with down syndrome bagged my groceries and said this. i was taken aback at first but i didn't hate on her, i said 'thank you for your service.'

Sherbert Hoover posted:

I would have told her about the keys of heaven and the primacy of st peter

Fleetwood posted:

i was taken aback at first but i didn't hate on her, i said 'thank you for your service.'

Charlatan Eschaton posted:

think so but i usually have to read things like three times to be able to recall anything specific so link it anyways thanks! im sure others will appreciate it too

unfortunately due to imprinting on a playstation game ~twenty years ago i default to thinking of a very goofy giant robot when i hear the word jehuty lol. probably gonna have to stick w thoth on that one. djehuty does seem like another sound a bird would say though like maybe a powerful owl

Thought, Utterance, Power posted:

Abstract

To the ancient mind, magic was a powerful force to be subjected to or to control. Egypt, more than any other early culture, stressed the importance of intellectual agency as the antidote to the imperfection perceived between foundational thinking and anti-foundational speaking. Just as rhetoric seeks to express the conceptual ideal pursued by philosophical inquiry, these earlier thinkers stressed magical language as the key to unlocking the power of the cosmos. This article will explore the Ancient Egyptian concept of rhetorical magic as a practical wisdom that allows an individual to function fully within the boundaries established by a perceived cosmic order. The Ancient Egyptians applied rhetorical magic to ease the dissonance felt between intellectual engagement and the semiotically saturated cosmology in which they dwelt. These same ancient rhetorical practices hold promise in assisting our own attempts to navigate a world inundated with information.

quote:

Going back as far as the Old Kingdom (2450-2300 BCE), ancient Egyptian speculative thinkers had already developed a complex understanding of the relationship between personal agency, power, and the role of magic. What is more, these early philosophers saw that this world (individual and social) and the other (cosmological) operated according to the same principles.
The rules by which one secured power were the same whether one was a peasant or a god. Through perception, the heart/mind would design an idea, the mouth would speak it and, as if by magic, the task would be accomplished. Thoughtful, reasoned speech was the mechanism for reestablishing the order that was manifested in the reasoned creation of the universe. Power and magic were not mysterious or esoteric to the Egyptians. Instead, power and magic were a part of an individual's very existence.

Ohtori Akio posted:

instead of a paper how about you read the gospel

LITERALLY A BIRD posted:

Which gospel world you recommend Ohtori. I have one here by a man named.... Thomas??