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infiltrate-it · 2 days ago

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thinking about religion and bill cipher is very fascinating to me. for one, there’s no structure or organization, because of course there wouldn’t be. bill becomes unrecognizable when he becomes fond of order and structure.

worship of bill cipher becomes this secret, hidden thing later on, but he was generally widely worshipped by large communities in the beginning of his time on earth, such as the native people of gravity falls who loved bill, and the ancient egyptians who grew to hate him.

he speaks fondly of all of them nonetheless, such as when he rejects the ancient aliens theory in defense of the ancient egyptians and their capabilities. or he cuts easter island and the aztecs some slack for trying and failing to entertain bill’s dumb ideas, and admits that they tried their hardest. clearly, they both worshipped him enough to do these things for him, even if they became sick of him in the end.

after he meets the wizard, worship of bill becomes something to be kept secret as a result of the first ever ‘bill panic’ in the 1500’s. to overcome this, he tried to make secret deals with vikings, sought out the emperor of atlantis (and even the lobster lord of the deep, who he considered a nice guy and may have been friends with), who probably didn’t care about the bill panic seeing as he lived underwater, and even women.

bill cipher’s women worshippers

one of the latter examples would be martha frubbins, the founder of PudgyLilDarlins (founded in 1993), who he possessed after ford went into the portal and who she saw as his “one true master”. he may have possibly been friends with henry viii’s wives? or king henry was just a paranoid misogynist, it isn’t explicitly stated that he for sure wasn’t in their heads. but we do know for sure that he approached the women of salem in the form of a goat (with the intention of being discreet since the eyes of a goat don’t change when possessed). he offered them, fun, laughter, and occult magic in exchange for absolutely nothing, so that the accused housewives could take their revenge and gain freedom (something he personally values). apparently, a lot of paranoid moms also mistakenly trusted bill cipher. he also had several wives, such as starshine cipherwife, and miss iowa nineteen-fifty something, i can’t recall what year she won. according to a video transcript quoted by donna rutherford, silas birchtree did ask a group of men if he could marry all of their wives.

if there are any more lovely ladies who crossed bill’s wretched path, let me know.

preferences in disciples/common offers

so we can deduce that a. worshippers of bill do it in secret, and b. they seek out revenge (one example of many would be when he offers the reader, who he calls a good disciple, revenge over a nemesis as a reward), power and knowledge (which he offers to stanford pines and the wizard), or freedom. the salem witches were enticed by all three of the above examples, c. he prefers either helping or luring in vulnerable people to help him with his quest to build a portal.

if they choose to make a much more risky deal and offer full ownership and control of their bodily autonomy, bill claims to offer “no more pain or responsibilities” and access to the mindscape. but he requires consent (usually done in the form of a handshake and a good enough reason. and with offers of knowledge, that may come with some secrets of the universe, as well as the ability to comprehend new languages, colors, and numbers.

usually, he seeks people out and approaches them with an offer, but we can easily infer that people have attempted to summon bill themselves/initiate contact first, seeking him out and wanting to make a deal (more on that later). we also know that he favors “brilliant, morally ambiguous, and romantically challenged” worshippers.

bill’s relationship to devotees/disciples

bill, at a certain point, also trusted humans enough to extend a lot of effort when meeting his end of a bargain. an example would be when he met the wizard. he distracted the knights, per his request, and didn’t once suspect that the wizard would trap him. he trusted the shaman and stanford pines enough to consider them friends/pals at the very least, he exchanged interesting knowledge and taught them skills they didn’t know, which he didn’t do for most of his humans. he also trusted gideon enough to do hard work for him without enforcing any extra failsafes or making a backup plan, and wasn’t able to do anything when gideon chose to back out.

bill also avoids mentioning how the shaman immolated himself when he burned down the portal in tbob. the implication there seems to be that he is still mourning him (and reading his annotations in journal 3, where we get the most accurate information about bill’s feelings, values, and beliefs since he’s intentionally sharing with ford, he’s still incredibly bitter about that decision), and seems to be particularly fixated on him, especially with how often he references modoc’s prophecy—the one he found personally offensive and rude (example of a reference—from the 20th century: ‘when gravity falls and earth becomes sky, this little guy’s gonna steal your pie’). or alex hirsch just forgot the small little detail that he burned himself alive. we can easily assume bill feels love, trust, and and admiration towards his favorite humans. as well as grief and betrayal. and as mentioned before, sometimes he chooses to help humans with no favor in return. for example, the salem witches, or stanford pines. a year into their partnership, ford claims that bill bestowed upon him many gifts of knowledge and in exchange all he asked for was ford’s company (and a rather possessive tattoo). again, this was one year in, so this was possibly a journal 2 entry? and there isn’t any mention of the portal just yet, so either bill asked about it later OR ford didn’t view it as a request and instead as a shared journey they went on together to accomplish both of their dreams (ad astra per aspera and all that).

bill even offers them genuine gifts without expecting something in return, such as his birthday gift for ford. it’s also…loosely implied that bill posed for one of ford’s tapestries. ford accuses bill of hanging out with other scientists and inspiring them, and “posing for a tapestry” when he needed his help and bill didn’t show up. the implication there is that bill is doing things he did with ford…with OTHER scientists, like he had threatened so frequently. it isn’t entirely impossible since the whole sequence with ford dropping the snow globe because bill had appeared on his shelf one morning seems to mean that ford can either 1) interact with physical items while communicating to bill from the mindscape, 2) since bill is in his head, he doesn’t have to be unconscious or in the mindscape to see bill, 3) bill can become physical when he wants to and just chooses to remain in the mindscape, maybe it’s safer? i’m rambling so either way, let’s move on.

epithets and appearance

he also has epithets: “god of mischief” and “god of thrills” used by the aztec people, and the “perverse pyramid/fallen angle” by the americans (lol). other epithets include “king of fear”, “king of dreams/nightmares” and i would assume anything to do with lucifer could be an epithet of his given the play on words of his name with “william lucipher” and the “fallen angle” epithet. he also uses the alias of silas birchtree. additionally, he is considered a “spirit of inspiration”, with an androgynous appearance, feminine eye and a feminine way of presenting himself, and a masculine, authoritative cadence. he is viewed as a muse or a spirit upon first contact, and then he is perceived as a demon or a monster when humans figure out his true motives or go back on a deal.

objects of worship/devotional activities

worship of him seems to differ from place to place, but can be done through occult spells, engaging in ‘sin and pleasure’, offering yummy food (spaghetti with parmesan is a favorite), renouncing all gods, inscribing his face into their cultural items and art (the dollar bill, the pyramids, etc), creating effigies, painting or drawing him (more so specific to stanford, who was an artist), creating tapestries with his face (the northwests AND stanford), etc.

contacting bill cipher

to contact the demon, if you’re lucky you may come across some sort of haunted toy you can use. otherwise, a summoning circle, dialing the entirety of pi into a phone, burning a letter written in blood and is addressed to bill, or a good old fashioned occult spirit board.

it seems as if he’s been historically summoned using occult tools like spirit boards and summoning spells/circles, as well as leaving food offerings in the middle of a forest. the occult community has been around for a while, as well as the demonaltry community. i would assume that as long as worship of lucifer has existed in our world, attempts to summon bill have existed in this world as well. so he isn’t always the only one reaching out. additionally, the slander man once spread a rumor that bill “practices his entrances for hours before he’s summoned” which we can take with a grain of salt, but it’s evidence that he at least gets summoned by people. humans do attempt to reach out first, so bill isn’t always the only one initiating contact. he likely has other worshippers that are not shown in the book of bill, because they aren’t notable historical figures. and they may be seeking him out in pursuit of freedom, revenge, and power. what does it say about bill that this is what he represents to people?

motifs

he is usually associated with knowledge and dreams, as well as anarchy and chaos. and he usually defaults to torture or nightmares when punishing someone. of course, the most common motif is the triangle or pyramid. birch trees/trees in general are also a lesser known motif. there are supposed eyes in the trees, he is said to be ‘watching from within birch trees’, and cutting open a tree in the gravity falls region shows how many trips bill has made there. in the last mabelcorn, he can be seen in the beginning of the episode spying on the pines family (and stanford specifically) through the trees outside of the shack.

fire could also be a potential motif.

if you made it this far, thank you for listening to me ramble about a fictional god/demonic entity from a disney how and the many ways in which he is worshipped throughout history. it may not seem like it, but i don’t actually worship bill cipher. ironic, i know.

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