#Call Management System India

[go2market]

7 Reasons Why Remote Teams Perform Better with Cloud Call Center Solution

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[voicebrodcasting]

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[mcube]

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[techavtar]

[philmonjohn]

A Call to the Children of the Global South: The System That Made My Father Disown Me

I didn’t write this living testimony for virality. I wrote it because silence almost killed me. Because truth, even when ignored by algorithms, remembers how to survive. If this resonated with you — even quietly — share it with someone else who’s still trying to name their Fracture. That’s how we outlive the system. - Philmon John, May 2025

THE FRACTURE Several months ago, when I, a South-Asian American man, turned 35, my father disowned me.

He didn’t yell. He didn’t cry. He simply stopped calling me his son.

My father is a Brown, MAGA-aligned conservative Christian pastor, born in Kerala, India, and now living in the United States. His rejection wasn’t provoked by any breach of trust or familial responsibility, but by my coming out as queer and bisexual — and by my deliberate move away from a version of Christianity shaped more by colonial rule than compassion.

I became blasphemy made flesh.

My mother and sister, equally immersed in religious conservatism, followed suit. Most of my extended family — conservative Indian Christians — responded with quiet complicity. I became an exile in my own lineage, cast out from a network that once celebrated me as the Mootha Makkan, the Malayalam term for “eldest son”.

This break didn’t occur in isolation. It was the culmination of years of internal questioning and ideological transformation.

I was raised with warmth and structure, but also under the weight of rigid theology. My parents cycled through different churches in pursuit of doctrinal purity. In that environment, my queerness had no safe harbor. It had to be hidden, managed, controlled — forced into secrecy.

Literal, cherry-popping closets.

Even my childhood discipline was carved straight from scripture — “spare the rod, spoil the child” was not metaphor but mandate. I was hit for defiance, for curiosity, for emotional honesty. Control was synonymous with love. The theology: obedience over empathy. Is it sad I would rather now have had a beating from my father, than his silence?

I would’ve taken the rod — at least it acknowledged me.

Instead, Daddy looks through me.

THE INHERITANCE And I obeyed. For a time, I rose through the ranks of the church. I led worship. I played guitar in the worship band. I wasn’t just a believer — I was a builder of belief, a conductor of chorus, a jester of jubilee and Sunday morning joy — all while masking a private ache I could not yet articulate.

In the last five years, I began methodically deconstructing the ideological scaffolding I had inherited. I examined the mechanisms of theology, patriarchy, and colonial imposition — and the specific burdens placed upon firstborn sons of immigrant families. Who defines our roles? Who benefits from our silence? Why is this happening to me?

These questions consistently pointed toward the dominant global structure: wealthy white patriarchal supremacy. Rooted in European imperialism and sustained by centuries of religious and cultural colonization, this system fractures not only societies but the deeply intimate architecture of family.

What my family experienced is not unlike what the United States of America continues to experience — a slow, painful reckoning with a foundational ideology of white, heteronormative, Christian patriarchal dominance.

My family comes from Kerala, home to one of the oldest Christian communities in the world. But the Christianity I inherited was not indigenous. It was filtered through the moral codes of Portuguese priests and British missionaries and the discipline of Victorian culture. Christ was not presented as a radical Middle Eastern teacher but as a sanitized figure — pale, passive, and Western.

In this theology, Christ is symbolic. Paul is the system. Doctrine exists to reinforce patriarchy, to police desire, to ensure control. When I embraced a theology rooted in love, empathy, and justice — the ethics I believe Jesus actually lived — I was met not with discussion, but dismissal.

To my family, my identity wasn’t authenticity. It was apostasy.

THE RECKONING In 2020, the ground shifted.

I turned the triple decade — 30 — as the COVID-19 pandemic erupted.

Remote work slowed life down, and I had space to think deeply.

That year, the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and countless others triggered a national and personal reckoning.

I turned to K-LOVE, the Christian radio station I grew up with, hoping to hear words of solidarity, truth, or even mourning. Instead, there was silence. No mention of racial justice. No prayers for the dead. Just songs about personal salvation, void of historical context or social responsibility.

As Geraldine Heng argues in The Invention of Race in the European Middle Ages, race was not merely a modern invention void of scientific basis — it was already taking shape in medieval Europe, where Christianity was used to sanctify, encode, and sell racial hierarchies as divine order and social technology.

As Ademọ́la, also known as Ogbeni Demola, once said: “The white man built his heaven on your land and pointed yours to the sky.” That brain-powered perceptive clarity — distilled in a single line — stays with me every day.

With professional routines interrupted and spiritual ties frayed, I immersed myself in scholarship. I entered what I now see as a period of epistemic reconstruction. I read widely — revolutionaries, poets, sociologists, historians, mathematicians, theologians, cultural critics, and the unflinching truth-tellers who name what empire tries to erase.

I first turned to the voices who now live only in memory: Bhagat Singh, James Baldwin, Frantz Fanon, bell hooks, Octavia Butler, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Vine Deloria Jr. Each carried the weight of revolution, tenderness, and truth — from anti-colonial struggle to queer theory to Indigenous reclamation.

I then reached for the veteran thought leaders still shaping the world, starting with Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Shashi Tharoor, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Susan Visvanathan, Geraldine Heng, George Gheverghese Joseph, J. Sakai, Vijay Prashad, Vilna Bashi Treitler, Claire Jean Kim, and Arundhati Roy — voices who dismantle the illusions of empire through history, mathematics, linguistics, and racial theory.

In the present, I absorbed insights from a new generation of public intellectuals and cultural critics: Ta-Nehisi Coates, Jared Yates Sexton, Cathy Park Hong, Ibram X. Kendi, Nikole Hannah-Jones, Heather McGhee, Mehdi Hasan, Adrienne Keene, Keri Leigh Merritt, Vincent Bevins, Sarah Kendzior, Ayesha A. Siddiqi, Wajahat Ali, W. Kamau Bell, Mary Trump, & John Oliver. Together, they form a constellation of clarity — thinkers who gave me language for grief, strategy for resistance, and above all, a framework for empathy rooted in history, not abstraction.

I also turned to the thinkers shaping today’s cultural and political discourse. I dreamt of the world blueprinted by Bhaskar Sunkara in his revolutionary The Socialist Manifesto and plunged into Jacobin’s blistering critiques of capitalism. The Atlantic’s longform journalism kept me tethered to a truth-seeking tradition. The Guardian stood out for its global scale and reach, offering progressive, longform storytelling that speaks to both local injustices and systemic inequalities across the world. And Roman Krznaric’s Empathy: Why It Matters, and How to Get It helped crystallize my core belief:

Be a good human. Practice empathy.

That’s the playbook, America. Practice empathy. Do that — and teach accurate, critically reflective history — and we have the chance to truly become the greatest democracy the world has ever seen.

And this empathy must extend to all — especially to trans people. In India, the Hijra community — trans and intersex folk who have existed visibly for thousands of years — embody a sacred third gender long before the West had language for it. But they are not alone. Across the colonized world, the empire erased a sacred third space: the Muxe of Zapotec culture, the Bakla of the Philippines, the Fa’afafine of Samoa, the Two-Spirit nations of Turtle Island, the Māhū of Hawaiʻi, the Sworn Virgins of the Balkans — each of these communities held space outside Western gender binaries, rooted in care, ceremony, and spirit. Some align with what we today call trans or intersex, while others exist entirely outside Western definitions. Colonization reframed them as deviants.

And still, we must remember this: trans people are not new. Our respect for them must be as ancient as their existence.

THE RESISTANCE As I examined the dynamics of coloniality, racial capitalism, and Western empire, I realized just how deeply imperial power had shaped my family, our values, and our spiritual language. The empire didn’t just occupy land — it rewrote moral codes. It restructured the family.

I learned how Irish, Italian, Greek, Hungarian, and Albanian immigrants were initially excluded from whiteness in America. Over time, many adopted and embraced whiteness as strategic economic and social protection — and in doing so, embraced anti-Blackness and patriarchal hierarchies to maintain their newfound status. Today, many European-hyphenated Americans defend systems that once excluded them.

And over time, some Asian-Americans have followed the very same racial template.

At 33 — the age Jesus is believed to have died — I laid my childhood faith to rest. In its place rose something rooted in clarity, not doctrine.

I didn’t walk away from religion into cynicism or nihilism. I stepped into a humanist, justice-centered worldview. A system grounded in reason, evidence, and above all, empathy. A belief in people over dogma. In community over conformity.

I didn’t lose faith. I redefined it.

I left the pasture of institutional faith, not for chaos, but for an ethical wilderness — a space lacking divine command but filled with moral clarity. A place built on personal responsibility and universal dignity.

This is where I stand today.

To those with similar histories: if your roots trace back to Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, East Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, the Caribbean, Oceania, or to Indigenous and marginalized communities within the Global North — you are a Child of the Global South. Even in the Global North, your experience carries the weight of displaced geography, the quiet grief of colonial trauma, and a genealogy forged by the system of empire. Your pain is political. Your silence is inherited. You are not invisible. They buried you without a funeral. They mourned not your death, but your deviation from design. However, we are not dead. We are just no longer theirs.

White supremacy endures by fracturing us. It manufactures tensions between communities of color by design — placing Asian businesses in Black communities without infrastructure and opportunities for BIPOC folk to share and benefit from the economic engine. Central to this strategy is the model minority myth, crafted during the Cold War to present Asian-Americans as obedient, self-reliant, and successful — not to celebrate them, but to invalidate Black resistance and justify structural racism. It’s a myth that fosters anti-Blackness in Asian communities and xenophobia in Black ones, while shielding white supremacy from critique. These divisions are not cultural accidents; they’re colonial blueprints.

And these blueprints stretch across oceans and continents and time.

In colonial South Africa, Mohandas Gandhi — still shaped by British racial hierarchies — distanced Indians from Black Africans, calling them “kaffirs” and demanding separate facilities. In Uganda, the British installed South Asians as a merchant middle class between colonizers and native Africans, breeding distrust. When Idi Amin expelled 80,000 Asians in 1972, it was a violent backlash to a racial hierarchy seeded by empire. These fractures — between Black and Asian, colonized and sub-colonized — are the legacy of white patriarchal supremacy.

Divide, distract, and dominate.

We must resist being weaponized against each other.

Every Asian-American must read Minor Feelings by Cathy Park Hong. Every high schooler in America must read and discuss Jared Yates Sexton.

Study the systems. Name them. Disarm them.

Because unless we become and remain united, the status quo — one that serves wealthy cisgender, heterosexual, white Christian men — will remain intact.

This is A Call to the Children of the Global South. And An Invitation to the Children of the Global North: Stop the infighting. Study and interrogate the systems. Reject the design.

To those in media, publishing, and the arts: postcolonial narratives are not cultural sidebars. They are central to national healing. They preserve memory, restore dignity, and confront whitewashed histories.

If you want work that matters — support art that pushes past trauma into structural critique.

Greenlight truth. Platform memory. Choose courage over comfort.

Postcolonial stories should be the norm — not niche art.

Jordan Peele’s Get Out was a cinematic breakthrough — razor-sharp and genre-defying — in its exposure of white supremacy’s quiet machinery: liberal smiles, performative allyship, and the pacification of dissent through assimilation. The Sunken Place is not just a metaphor for silenced Black consciousness — it’s the empire’s preferred position for the marginalized: visible, exploited, but unheard.

A system that offers the illusion of inclusion, weaponizing identity as control.

Ken Levine’s BioShock Infinite exposed white supremacy through a dystopian, fictional but historically grounded lens - depicting the religious justification of Black enslavement, Indigenous erasure, and genocidal nationalism in a floating, evangelical empire.

David Simon’s The Wire exposed the institutional decay of law enforcement, education, and the legal system - revealing how systemic failure, not individual morality, drives urban collapse.

Jesse Armstrong’s Succession traced the architecture of empire through family - showing how media empires weaponize racism, propaganda, and manufactured outrage to generate profit and secure generational wealth.

Ava DuVernay's Origin unearths caste and race as twin blueprints of white supremacy - linking Dalit oppression in India to the subjugation of Black Americans. Adapted from Isabel Wilkerson's Caste, it dismantles the myth of isolated injustice, revealing a global system meticulously engineered to rank human worth - and the radical act of naming the system.

Ryan Coogler’s Sinners — a revelatory, critically and commercially successful film about Afro-Asian resistance in 1930s Mississippi — exposes the hunger for speculative narratives grounded in historical truth.

Across the Spider-Verse gave us Pavitr Prabhakar - a Brown superhero who wasn't nerdy or celibate, as Western media typically portrayed the South-Asian man, but cool, smart, athletic, with great hair, in love, and proudly anti-colonial. He called out the British for stealing and keeping Indian artifacts… in a Spider-Man movie. That moment was history reclaimed.

A glitch in the wealthy white patriarchal matrix.

Dev Patel’s Monkey Man is a visceral fable of vengeance and resistance, where the brutality of caste, corruption, and religious nationalism collide. Amid this chaos, the film uplifts the Hijra community who stand not only as victims, but as warriors against systemic violence. Their alliance reframes queerness not as deviance, but as defiance — ultimately confronting the machinery of empire with what it fears most: a system-breaking empathy it cannot contain.

The vitriolic backlash from white male gamers and fandoms isn’t about quality — it’s about losing default status in stories. Everyone else has had to empathize with majority white male protagonists for decades. Diverse representation in media isn’t a threat to art — it’s a threat to white supremacy. It’s not just a mirror held up to the globe — it’s a refusal to let one worldview define it.

Hollywood, gaming studios, and the gatekeepers of entertainment — if you want to reclaim artistic integrity and still make money doing it, we need art that remembers, resists, and reclaims — stories that name the machine and short-circuit its lies. The world is ready. So am I.

Today, efforts like Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation, and the Federalist Society are not merely policy shops — they are ideological engines: built to roll back civil rights, impose authoritarian values, and erase uncomfortable truths. They represent a hyper-concentrated form of white supremacy, rooted in unresolved Civil War grievances and the failures of Reconstruction.

Miraculously, or perhaps, blessed with intellectual curiosity and natural empathy, through all of this, my wife — a compassionate, steadfast partner and a Christian woman — has remained by my side. She has witnessed my transformation with both love and complexity. While our bond is rooted in deep respect and shared values, our spiritual landscapes have diverged. Her faith brings her solace; mine has evolved into something more secular, grounded in justice and humanism. We’ve navigated that tension with care — proof that love can stretch across differing beliefs, even as the echoes of religious conditioning still ripple through our lives.

I am proud of her increasing intellectual curiosity and her willingness to accept me for who I am now, even if I wasn’t ready to accept myself when we met.

But our marriage has defied the splintering that white supremacy specifically creates: hyper-capitalist, hyper-individualistic, fractured families and societies.

As Children of the Global South — descendants of peoples who survived enslavement, colonization, and erasure — we carry within us the urgent need for stories that do not turn away from history, but confront it with unflinching truth.

In the pain of losing my family, I found a deeper purpose: to tell this story — and my own — any way I can. A sudden rush of empathy, pity, and love struck me: My parents’ and sister’s rejection was not theirs alone — it was a lingering Fracture left by colonization and global exploitation, tearing apart families across generations. As Children of the Global South, we still carry those wounds.

Make no mistake: white supremacy leaves wounds — because it is the system. And unless it is dismantled, both the Global South and North — and their collective Children — will remain trapped in a dance choreographed by empire — built to divide, exploit, and erase. Any vision of democracy, in America, will remain a fragile illusion — if not an outright mythology — built on a conceptually false foundation: white supremacy itself.

A cruel, heartbreaking legacy of erasure — passed down through empire — indoctrinating God-fearing Brown fathers to erase their godless, queer Brown sons. Preaching shame as scripture. Teaching silence as survival.

I reject that inheritance.

Empathy as praxis is how we reject that inheritance. In a world engineered to divide, it rebuilds connection, disarms supremacy, and charts a path forward. If humanity is to survive — let alone heal — empathy must become our collective discipline.

And perhaps what cut even deeper for my father — beyond my queerness — was that I no longer validated his role as a pastor. In stepping away from the faith he had built his life upon, I wasn’t just rejecting a belief system. I was, in his eyes, nullifying his life’s work. For a man shaped by empire, ordained by colonial Christianity, and burdened with the role of moral gatekeeper, my departure from his manufactured worldview may have landed as personal failure. But it wasn’t. It was never about wanting to hurt him. I love my father. I love my mother. I love my sister. It was never about them — it was about the system that taught them love was conditional, acceptance required obedience, and dissent unforgivable. That kind of pain is real — but its source is systemic. I still want to be Mootha Makkan — not by obedience, but by truth. By love without condition. Not through erasure, but by living fully in the open. Not in their image, but in mine.

Yet, and yes, I also carry the wound — but I also carry the will to heal it.

THE CALL I believe in empathy. I believe in memory. I believe the Children of the Global South are not broken. We are not rejected. We are awakening.

Children of the Global North: join us. We are not your enemies. We are your present and future collaborators, business & creative partners, lovers, and kin. We are building something new — something ancient yet reawakened, a pursuit of empathy, and a reckoning with history that refuses to forget.

If this story resonated with you, kindly share it, spread the word and please comment. I’d love to hear from you. Your voice, your memory, your Fracture — it matters here.

You are not alone. All are welcome.

Thank you so, so much for your time in reading my story.

You can also email me directly: vinesvenus at protonmail.com I'll be writing more on Medium as well: https://medium.com/@vinesvenus/a-call-to-the-children-of-the-global-south-the-system-that-made-my-father-disown-me-fecad6c0b862

[dandelionsresilience]

Dandelion News - February 1-7

(sorry it’s late, I’ve had pneumonia. between fever and meds, today was the first day in over a week I could even think)

Like these weekly compilations? Tip me at $kaybarr1735 or check out my Dandelion Doodles!

1. These solar streetlights can withstand Category 5 hurricanes

“[The solar-powered streetlights] can identify potential problems before an outage occurs, identify current outages without the need for customer reporting, and allow for remote control of brightness settings. The streetlights are built to remain operational even during widespread power outages.”

2. 15 Democratic state AGs stand by gender-affirming care

“"Federal funding to institutions that provide gender-affirming care continues to be available, irrespective of President Trump’s recent Executive Order," the attorneys general say. […] “Health care decisions should be made by patients, families, and doctors, not by a politician trying to use his power to restrict your freedoms.”

3. India doubles tiger population in a decade

“[India has protected] the big cats from poaching and habitat loss, ensuring they have enough prey, reducing human-wildlife conflict, and increasing living standards for communities near tiger areas.”

4. A North Carolina wildlife crossing will save people. Can it save the last wild red wolves too?

“There are thought to be fewer than 20 red wolves left in the wild[…. S]tate agencies and nonprofit groups [plan to] rebuild a 2.5-mile section of the highway with fencing and a series of culverts, or small underpasses, to allow red wolves – as well as black bears, white-tailed deer and other animals – to pass safely underneath traffic.”

5. Merrimack Valley public transit system will keep bus fares free

“[… C]ollecting fares [used to] cost MeVa about $300,000 a year to maintain fare boxes, pay staffers and afford insurance. Since going fare free in 2022, the report found ridership increased 60% from pre-pandemic levels[….] The program is now funded by state allocated funds, including money from the so called “millionaire’s tax.””

6. Health care is key for youths getting out of prison. A new law helps them get it

“[The new law] requires all states to provide medical and dental screenings to Medicaid- and CHIP-eligible youths 30 days before or immediately after they leave a correctional facility. Youths must continue to receive case management services for 30 days after their release.”

7. World’s smallest otter makes comeback in Nepal after 185 years

“Scientists have for the first time in 185 years confirmed the presence of the Asian small-clawed otter in Nepal[….] The last time the […] the smallest of the world’s 13 known otter species, was recorded by scientists in Nepal was in 1839.”

8. B.C.'s smallest First Nation has big plans for a 'stewardship' economy

“The Kwiakah Centre of Excellence will be the base for a dedicated research station, an experimental kelp farm, the nation’s regenerative forestry operations and its territorial Indigenous guardian, or Forest Keepers, program[…. R]esults will include a 100-year management plan that integrates climate, salmon, kelp, and soil research to protect territorial waters and remaining old growth forests.”

9. Glades County schools deploy 13 new Blue Bird electric school buses

“The students at the Glades County school district will directly benefit from the cleaner, quieter rides, and operational cost savings that electric school buses provide[, as well as] the addition of much-needed air conditioning in the new school buses. Until now, only three buses in the district provided air conditioning[….]”

10. e.l.f. Beauty CEO defends DEI: 'Our diversity is a key competitive advantage'

“The cosmetics company recently held that it would not nix its DEI initiatives[….] "Our mission is to make the best of beauty accessible to every eye, lip and face," [CEO] Amin said. "One of the best ways we know how to live that mission is to have an employee base that reflects the community that we serve."”

January 22-28 news here | (all credit for images and written material can be found at the source linked; I don’t claim credit for anything but curating.)

[eatmangoesnekkid]

From Maiden into Womanhood: Sexuality, Systems, and A Different Kind of Mirror by India Ame’ye

I was in my early 20s when I began mastering patterns. I had always been pretty good in math like algebra and geometry. I liked how equations gave structure to something unseen. I would say that mathematics is the union of feminine and masculine that balances logic with beauty, structure with mystery, very similar to my own personal identity.

I realized that life was not much different from mathematics. Patterns were everywhere, quietly repeating, and awaiting to solved. And in life, when we learn to unravel the formula, we start to win. I began watching life unfold like mathematical that had always been present, but were now becoming visible to my eye and make sense to my sensitive mind.

That's when I started started paying closer attention to the women in my family.They all seemed tired. Not just physically, but soul-deep. Like their energy was siphoned by something unseen, yet deeply familiar and widely present. Maybe they’d have brief moments of peace or joy. Maybe a laugh around the kitchen table or a spontaneous sassy dance when an old-school record came on. (Our home had an infamous jukebox downstairs in the basement). But the joy never lasted very long. They always returned to the weight of their womanhood and its golden cage.

The constant tending. The emotional sorting. The workload. It hit me hard: they were rarely poured into. And I started to see why, though I didn't yet have the language for what I was observing. But once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it.

The amount of emotional, physical, and psychic labor that can go into navigating relationships with men can be enormous. For a woman, oftentimes it can be outright care-taking of an adult child. Other times, it can be the subtle need to manage a man’s moods, placate his emotions, silence his anger, soothe his ego, or celebrate his mediocre ways of being. Even the most “progressive” men can unconsciously orbit through life with old masculine privileges they’d never been curious enough about to question. These privileges they never earned but were assigned and handed over to them simply because they were born male.

Let me be clear: I’m not blaming men. I believe we can have these hard conversations without shaming or blaming men or bitterness, all of which drains female life force.

And what I am speaking to is mostly about systems.

Systems that coddle and center men so much that many never develop beyond what the world expects of them—which generally-speaking, isn’t much in the realm of accountability. Now men who work on the land, those who hunt, run farms, build houses, etc. may be more developed than the average spiritual or corporate man sitting behind a desk all day. There’s something about men being in the connection to nature and the crafting of practical everyday skills like hunting or building houses that softens male ego and calls forth his maturity. Country men.

Patriarchy lives in the bodies and psyches of all. And what’s also true is that patriarchy has slowed down the emotional development of many men—not all—but many. It has dulled or numbed their desire to be a witness to the consequences of their unchecked ego. Many have very little desire to listen deeply, to support rather than absorb and drain , or to meet women in mutual expansion. And as a result, so many women, like those I love and came from, have lived beautiful but quietly burdened lives. Sacrificing their own nourishment and wellness to labor, comfort, serve, or chase men.

I remember sitting on the front porch in Atlanta, listening to my Aunties tell stories one by one. I thought how devastating it would be to wake up at 40 and realize I had neglected my body, wasted time, and poured my energy into everything but myself. Those conversations didn’t make me queer; I was already queer. Super queer. Super undercover. Super feminine. But too shy and too terrified to tell anyone in my family. While I no longer identify sexually in any particular way, those talks with my Aunties helped to set me free.

They gave me a different kind of mirror, a mirror that helped me see myself more clearly, and choose a different kind of life for myself.

—India Ame’ye, Written in Bali and Updated Recently

[numbersandstars]

Who Are You? Where To Find Yourself in a Chart. Part 1.

We know how important it is to know ourselves. Last time, I gave you here a list of the main indicators but the aim was to find your Lunar sign, or your core nakshatra. Here, we go deeper into the layers of our minds.

After that, in my next post, I will recap the divisional charts that will help you delve deeper.

The List of the Indicators

Moon: This is a crucial planet to look at. In India, it is generally considered to be your birth nakshatra. The Moon defines your Vimshottari Dasha, or future, as soon as you were born. She shows your psychological and biological karma, your mind and the way you move in society. The Moon indicates your emotions, desires and past life experiences as well. These experiences will still reflect in your behavior today. These experiences, emotions, thoughts come and go like the waves of the sea.

Ascendant/Rising Sign (Lagna): It shows how you integrate yourself with society but in a physical way. In other words, it shows how you present yourself and how your life's environment looks like. BUT MOST IMPORTANTLY, IT SHOWS WHERE YOU FOCUS. Any planet situated in your first house (using the whole sign system), will sit permanently in your head.

Sun: It is a significant planet as it is your battery. How can you live without energy? How can you live without the Sun?... It is impossible. Here, the Sun represents your vitality, your health, your spiritual development and your righteous actions.

The Ascendant Lord (or Lagna Lord/LL or Lagnesha): It shows the same things as the ascendant but in a more active way. It shows how you get nourishment, your passion in life. It also shows where you focus. The Lagna Lord indicates where your intelligence is best applied and what kind of situations you deal with since early age.

Dharma Lord: It is not commonly used but from my experience, it works wonderfully. It is the planet which is related to your lagna nakshatra (e.g, if your lagna is in Purva Ashadha, then, Venus becomes your Dharma Lord). This planet becomes the Lord of your dharma or righteous duty. It shows you the path and the challenges you will encounter, as well as the solutions to them.

Atmakaraka (AK): The Atmakaraka is the significator of your soul. It is the planet with the highest degree in your chart. It represents your difficult karmas to burn and how to deal with them. This karma trash resonates with the nature of your AK planet, therefore, you will behave the opposite way to how this planet is supposed to behave in the end. It also shows your potential, what is important for you and how you realize yourself.

Ketu: Ketu denotes your past life experiences, like the Moon but unlike her, Ketu does not behave like the sea waves, but it actually behaves like a place where you stock your former behavioral patterns and experiences. It can be compared to your subconscious. It represents our true, hidden, nature but we are mostly unaware of it. It is also the place where we get bored because we had experienced these areas too much before, hence Ketu being called as “comfort zone” even though, it is not always very comfortable due to being boring. This boredom will attract you to Rahu, its opposite polarity, the unknown, exciting jungle.

Mahadasha Lord: Using the Vimshottari dasha, your current Maha Dasha Lord, which rules your current period of life, will impact your mind and behavior. It will not last for ever but it stays there for a couple of years, so, you cannot neglect it.

The first syllable of your first name: Don't forget your first name! The two first sounds of your name corresponds to a particular nakshatra. Even if there is no planet sitting there in your birth chart, this nakshatra will also influence your behavior and life. Themes of this nakshatra will definitely play out in your life.

The secondary indicators

Mercury: Mercury is the planet of rationality. It is your rational intellect. It shows how you manage your daily routine challenges in life, as well as other practical knowledge. It shows the way you learn, and the way you express yourself.

Rahu: Rahu shows your biggest obsessions. It represents your most intense desires. It is actually about illusory desires because once they are fulfilled, you still want more. It is a place where you are always unsatisfied, hence frustration. You might get so annoyed that you totally give up on your Rahu, which leads you automatically to your Ketu, and you stay there. But Ketu, even though it is comfortable, you end up getting bored, and in the end, you go back to your Rahu. It is the endless cycle of the nodes, which were initially one body (Svarbhanu): one cannot leave the other. Rahu also represents the unknown fields for you, which also lead to fears. As it represents the unknown, you are quite new to what Rahu represents in your chart, hence you are likely to act awkwardly there.

Arudha Lagna: It represents the appearance made by the Maya, the material illusion of our environment. This is the appearance that all strangers will see from you at first. It is your image, e.g, your image on the social media, your reputation in general... This appearance is all made up: it is rarely linked to your true self. But it explains why people behave a certain way with you and not another. The Lord of this lagna should be taken into account too.

Aries: This sign represents the first house in the original kaal purush kundli. The house it occupies, the planets that sit and aspect there will remain in your head. In other words, you will also focus on them.

Cancer, the Fourth house: They both represent the peace of mind, your privacy, and most importantly, your heart. What does your heart desire? The house Cancer occupies, any planet sitting, aspecting Cancer and the fourth house will show you what.

[yzegem]

Main lore of Encounters in the Frontier

In this pinned post I will introduce the main historical chronology and concepts of the setting.

Most of the events take place in a subcontinent with the general size, shape and latitude of India, wich is a penninsula of a larger megacontinent wich occupies most of the northern hemisphere. This subcontinent, wich I will just call the penninsula, has a shallow sea to the east, another to the west, steppe and large mountains to the north and a deep and vast ocean to the south, wich eventually leads to the land of alwaysummer. At the eastern sea are the twisted islands. The penninsula has dense forests to the northeast, jungles to the southeast and the western coast is more dry and desserted. the northwest has the plateau, a large elevated plains regions, spotted with forests and the centre of the continent is hilly and mountainous.

By this time the Empire controlled many religions and peoples, in some cases loosely, and revolts had to be almost constantly supressed in the western and southern provinces. The central mountain range, southwestern dessert, northwestern plateau and norterns steppe were their most unstable frontiers, as well as eastern pirates from the Twisted Islands.

The Sun Empire had a humble origin as a city state in the southeast wich fought for its independence and won against a nomadic invador from the north. The years of foreign control made them realize their vulnerability and they began to rapidly militarize. For the Sun Empire, the best deffense was a good offense and they rapidly annexed the nearests city states in a rapid expansion. In their culture, war justified itself. They generally arrived at a city and offered them to surrender in good terms or be suffer very bad taxations and treatment after their defeat. Many chose the first option. At this time, certain warrior families began to rise to power and formed a warrior class wich selected a military leader from among themselves. There was also a very powerfull priest class, wich ended up concentrating into a single dynasty and also chose a leader from among themselves (Although the role ended up being inherited mostly). These two roles complimented each other. The military leader managed external politics and the executive power, while the priest leader managed internal politics and the juditial and legislative power, as well as of course, managing religious festivities and such. These two roles were imagined as being a husband and a wife (the priest leader was often a woman, since politics is considered a woman's job), the state a family and their population their children.The Empire spread westwards and managed to control one of the richest cities of the penninsula, Odras. This city lays under the plateau and is a hub from inland commerce and connects the trade routes of the eastern and western seas. They retained their religion and strong identity, wich had significant influence on the rest of the Sun Empire. By this time the Sun Empire's religion was politheistic with the sun god as the head of the pantheon.

Now I will introduce the Twisted Islands and the magic system of the setting:

If you have ever been introduced to the concept of the fourth dimension or wormholes it was probably by the folded paper pierced by a pencil analogy.

This setting's shape is more like this:

Some parts of the world seem to be closer in the 4D plane than others, and wormholes are more likely to appear between them. Some regions have deeper folds and portals will be more common, while others are "flatter" and there will be almost no chance of one appearing. In this world, the Twisted Islands have the most and deepests "folds", so portals appear often, sometimes on their own and connect to many places.

The Twisted Islands are an archipellago of mostly very small atolls and poor in natural resources (except fish and shellfish I guess). Still, the portal's influence in the region is very apparent to the naked eye. Rock formations take impossible shapes, caves are larger than the cliff that contains them, trees grow upside down… so they attracted many sea peoples, wich settled in them for religious reasons. The islands often only held a small population of ascetic monks, wich sustained themselves with donations from pilgrims, wich mainly came from larger, less portal-active islands and lands, wich is where most of the Twisted Island's population is originally from, it's rare for people to be born in the islands proper.

Portals don't usually open on their own, and require energy input, such as a strong fire. Monks would place an offer over the fire, raise the temperature and the offer woud suddenly disappear with a flash of light, and sometimes something else would appear on its place (most often just rocks that don't match those of the island, but enough to impress anyone that sees it). Slowly, their methods became more refined and they could locate, open and predict where an object would go more reliably. The peoples of the Twisted Islands were also known as great sailors, good at sea trading and wich could venture into the open sea, while those from the Empire only sailed next to the shoreline.

Managing portals was a dangerous task, reserved only for the elite of the monasteries, trained for years. It could result in untreatable portal wounds, in wich a limb mantains it's function but becomes "twisted". This modified limb seemed useful in locating portals and their shape and angle, so some monks started modifying themselves on purpose, thought this is shunned by most.

Ok, so those were the basis of most regions before the Dragon Age, a period of ecological and political change. It started with the explosion of a megavolvano in a distant, unknown land, wich caused a volcanic night in the penninsula. This resulted in a widespread famine through the continent… then came the dragons

Dragons were probably native to the land were the volcano exploded and came looking for a new home. They eated cattle, wild megafauna and tragically often humans at an unsustainable rate. They mainly settled in the central mountain ranges of the penninsula and the northern steppe, wich caused mass migration from these lands. These migrations were often violent and caused great damage to the already in crisis Empire.

The first encounter with a dragon happened in a frontier fortress south of the plateau, wich was taken by a dragon at night and its inhabitants devoured. The dragon took the fortress as a nest to lay eggs. The Empire, after comunication with the fortress was cut, asumed it had been taken by a plateau tribe and sent a small platoon of soldiers to retake it (dragons were only a rumor atp). The whole platoon was massacred by the dragon.

At the north, the nomads united under a charismatic ruler called Saljar, wich conquered a big chunk of the Empire's land. In an almost suicide mission, the already desperate and decaying Empire went all in against this king from the north. This campaign was full of tensions and during their travel north, guerilla attacks from rebellious regions and dragons weakened both armies. The unpopular military ruler died right before battle (most likely secretly poisoned by the Ashiva, the priest ruler as the military leader was the one that made the bad desition of starting this campaign) and it seemed like all hope was lost, but Ashiva, took control and led the army into battle (a very desperatel move). During the battle two dragons started fighting eachother while flying on top of them and fell mid fight on top of the nomad troops, causing them to break formation and flee. Its said that Ashiva himself killed the feared Saljar. Ashiva became very popular and took supreme control of the Empire, claiming to be the Sun God personified.

Still, the Empire had many problems to adress, such as the dragons (all military efforts to hunt them ended in disaster) and the former army of Saljar, now dispersed in small armies, wich sacked the Empire's towns. Ashiva, proving to be a very capable diplomat, managed to organize a meeting with these warbands, where he recalled the fight of the dragons over their own armies, and claimed that, in the same way that these beast both died while fighting, so would they if they don't adress the dragons. Ashiva proposed that these war bands start to hunt the dragons and bring their heads to him, in exchange, the Empire would grant them power over their lands. The nomadic light camelry proved to be very effective at hunting dragons and they soon became powerful noble families and settled mainly in the frontier lands or rebellious regions of the Empire to "pacify them" (It's known that the natives of these regions considered their new rulers worse than the dragons).

It took about 120 years to hunt most dragons and end the dragon age. During this time the Empire was ruled by Ashiva's divine and absolute dynasty. The new Dragon Nobility became increasingly powerful and the danger of a coup d'etat was very real. The plateau and northern coast of Alwaysummer were conquered during this period.

During the mid Dragon Age, the most powerful monastery of the twisted islands learned how to reliably send objects through portals (if a living creatures is sent through a portal ir appears dead on the other side). The chief of that monastery sent a message through the portals to every other monastery of the archipellago, calling them for a meeting to show them how to do it. This meeting was known as The Call. The comercial use of the portals was immediatly exploited and the twisted islands unify and become the major hub of trade of this world. Diplomatic trips from the archipellago reached many distant lands to set portal openings and trade centers (the envoys were met with varied reactions, sometimes welcomed, rejected, or straight up killed). These portals were specially useful for sending messages and the rivalry between the Empire and the Islands only increased from now.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Ian McDonald's "The Wilding"

I'll be in TUCSON, AZ from November 8-10: I'm the GUEST OF HONOR at the TUSCON SCIENCE FICTION CONVENTION.

Ian McDonald is one of those absurdly brilliant novelists that just leave me wondering the actual fuck he manages it. How does he cover so much ground, think up so many compelling characters, find so many gracenotes, conjure up so many complicated emotions?

McDonald burst on the scene in the late 1980s, with the 1988 novel Desolation Road and then his 1989 Out On Blue Six, a slick, stylized cyberpunk-meets-Orwell tale that overflowed with beautiful prose, technomysticism, and sly jokes that hid sneaky truths that hid even more sly jokes:

https://memex.craphound.com/2014/01/20/out-on-blue-six-ian-mcdonalds-brilliant-novel-is-back/

By my count, McDonald has now published twenty books – mostly novels, but a couple short story collections (and the most amazingly demented, Tom-Waits-inflected teddybear murder comic imaginable, 1994's Kling Klang Klatch):

https://irishcomics.fandom.com/wiki/Kling_Klang_Klatch

McDonald's work is truly globespanning. While he's made his mark on the Martian soil, and overtaken the moon with the Luna trilogy (his definitive rebuttal to Heinlein's Moon Is a Harsh Mistress) he is widely adored and much-awarded for the glittering, futuristic versions of Brazil (Brasyl), Tanzania (the Chaga series), and India (River of Gods).

Indeed, McDonald's imagination has roamed so far over the Earth and the solar system that it's possible to overlook his fantastic reimaginings of Ireland, the land where he was raised. There's his Philip K Dick Award-winning 1991 novel King of Morning, Queen of Day, a swirling, mythopoeic novel of Celtic mysticism:

https://www.baen.com/king-of-morning-queen-of-day.html

And then there's 1992's Hearts, Hands and Voices, which is lowkey one of the best novels I have ever, ever read – a scorching science fictional allegory for The Troubles, but with the gnarliest biotech weirdness you can possibly imagine:

https://archive.org/details/heartshandsvoice0000ianm/mode/2up

McDonald's books cover so much goddamned ground, but one feature they all share is a prose styling wherein every sentence is at least 20% poetry, a fraction that somehow, impossibly, rises to as much as 150% in certain especially shiny passages.

Like this passage, which opens The Wilding, McDonald's new horror novel that marks his first return to Ireland since 1992:

Autumn lay on the great bog in silvers and tans, late purples and duns.

The sun rose above the tall ash saplings and feral sycamore. It called the birds into full voice. Stabbing shrills, tumbles of notes, the flutes of dove-call, frantic ticking hisses, song upon song. In hedgerows and copses, among the pale foliage of the birches, in the weave of deep willow and the bramble fastnesses, each bird called and was heard. In this season the peatland held the day's warmth through the night and on the bright, clear mornings rivers of mist formed, filling the subtle hollow places in the exposed cuttings, the bogs and fields. High sun would dispel it but at this hour half of Lough Carrow lay mist-bound. Each blade of grass hung heavy with dew, the clumps of sedges were already browning, the bracken curling and crisping.

A pair of horns lifted above the willow scrub and out-grown ash hedges of the Wilding. Polished tips caught the low sun and kindled as bright and keen as spears.

https://www.gollancz.co.uk/titles/ian-mcdonald/the-wilding/9781399611503/

Oof.

I would drop everything to read Ian McDonald's grocery lists but after that opening, I wasn't going to put this one down, and I didn't, reading the whole thing on yesterday's flight home from my gigs in Atlanta this week.

The Wilding is (I'm pretty sure?) McDonald's first horror novel, and it's fucking terrifying. It's set in a rural Irish peat bog that has been acquired by a conservation authority that is rewilding it after a century of industrial peat mining that stripped it back nearly to the bedrock. This rewilding process has been greatly accelerated by the covid lockdowns, which reduced the human footprint in the conservation area to nearly zero.

The story's protagonist is Lisa, a hard-case Dubliner who came to the bog to do community service after a career as a crime syndicate driver for hire, a woman who never met a car she couldn't boost and pilot in or out of any tight situation. After years in the bog, she's ready to start a new life, studying Yeats at university, indulging a late-discovered love of poetry that has as much to do with her redemption as her years in the wild.

Lisa's last duty before she leaves the bog and goes home to Dublin is leading a school group on a wild campout in one of the bog's deep clearings. It's a routine assignment, and while it's not her favorite duty, it's also not a serious hardship.

But as the group hikes out to the campsite, one of her fellow guides is killed, without warning, by a mysterious beast that moves so quickly they can barely make out its monstrous form. Thus begins a tense, mysterious, spooky as hell story of survival in a haunted woods, written in the kind of poesy that has defined McDonald's career, and which – when deployed in service of terror – has the power to raise literal goosebumps.

There's a lot of fantasy that deals with Celtic mythology, including McDonald's own King of Morning, Queen of Day, but the vibe of that stuff tends to the heroic and romantic – sure, there's the odd banshee, but in the main, it's mischievous wee people, pookas, and leprechauns. More fey than fear.

But Irish mythology in its raw form is terrifying. The monsters of Irish storytelling are grotesque, mean, remorseless, and come in every shape and size. Some authors have done well by going back to the bestiary for the deep cuts. When I was a kid, I must have read John Coyne's Hobgoblin fifty times (mostly because it was about D&D, which I was obsessed with). I haven't read this one since I was about 12, and I have no idea if it'd hold up today, but it left me with a deep appreciation of the spooky multifariousness of monsters who dwell in Ireland's bogs:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hobgoblin_(novel)

The Wilding is a suspense novel, which means there's no way to really sum up the plot without spoiling a lot of the affect, but suffice to say that McDonald brings large swathes of deep Irish lore to the surface, and it had me reading as fast as I could and wanting to put the book down and hide.

What a writer McDonald is! The fact that this is the same guy who wrote last year's stunning secret-history/solarpunk/uncategorizable wonder that was Hopeland beggars belief:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/05/30/electromancy/#the-grace

Read you some Ian McDonald novels, is what I'm trying to say. This one is only available in the UK, if that's not where you are, consider mail-ordering it. Looks like they've got stock at Forbidden Planet for £19 plus £18 shipping to the US. Worth every penny:

https://forbiddenplanet.com/424306-the-wilding-hardcover/

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/25/bogman/#erin-go-aaaaaaargh

[go2market]

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[voicebrodcasting]

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[fatehbaz]

Goldstein and Mahmoudi point to what, on appearance, is a relatively new phenomenon: namely the use of digital technologies in contemporary forms of surveillance and policing, and the way in which they turn the body into the border. [...] [T]he datafication of human life becomes an industry in its own right [...] [with the concept of] “surveillance capitalism” - a system based on capturing behavioral data and using it for commercial purposes [...] [which] emerged in the early 2000s [...].

In contrast, scholarship on colonialism, slavery, and plantation capitalism enables us to understand how racial surveillance capitalism has existed since the grid cities of sixteenth-century Spanish Mexico (Mirzoeff 2020). In short, and as Simone Browne (2015, 10) has shown, “surveillance is nothing new to black folks.” [...]

[S]urveillance in the service of racial capitalism has historically aided three interconnected goals: (1) the control of movement of certain - predominantly racialized - bodies through means of identification; (2) the control of labor to increase productivity and output; and (3) the generation of knowledge about the colony and its native inhabitants in order to “maintain” the colonies [...].

---

Identification documents and practices can, like so many other surveillance technologies, be traced back to the Middle Passage [...]. [T]he movement of captives was controlled through [...] slave passes, slave patrols [...]. Similar strategies of using wanted posters and passes were put in place to control the movement of indentured white laborers from England and Ireland. [...]

Fingerprinting, for example, was developed in India because colonial officials could not tell people apart [...].

In Algeria, the French dominated the colonized population by issuing internal passports, creating internal limits on movement for certain groups, and establishing camps for landless peasants [...]. In South Africa, meanwhile, the movement of the Black population was controlled through the “pass laws”: an internal passport system designed to confine Black South Africans into Bantustans and ensure a steady supply of super-exploitable labor [...].

On the plantation itself, two forms of surveillance emerged - both with the underlying aim of increasing productivity and output. One was in the form of daily notetaking by plantation and slave owners. [...] Second, [...] a combination of surveillance, accounting, and violence was used to make slave labor in the cotton fields more “efficient.” [...] [S]imilar logics of quotas and surveillance still reverberate in today's labor management systems. Finally, surveillance was also essential to the management of the colonies. It occurred through [...] practices like fingerprinting and the passport [...]. [P]hotographs were used after colonial rebellions, in 1857 in India and in 1865 in Jamaica, to better identify the local population and identify “racial types.” To control different Indian communities deemed criminal and vagrant, the British instituted a system of registration where [...] [particular people] were not allowed to sleep away from their villages without prior permission [...].

---

In sum, when thinking about so-called surveillance capitalism today, it is essential to recognize that the logics that underpin these technologies are not new, but were developed and tested in the management of racialized minorities during the colonial era with a similar end goal, namely to control, order, and undermine the poor, colonized, enslaved, and indentured; to create a vulnerable and super-exploitable workforce; and to increase efficiency in production and foster accumulation. Consequently, while the (digital) technologies used for surveillance might have changed, the logics underpinning them have not.

---

All text above by: Sabrina Axster and Ida Danewid. In a section from an article co-authored by Sabrina Axster, Ida Danewid, Asher Goldstein, Matt Mahmoudi, Cemal Burak Tansel, and Lauren Wilcox. "Colonial Lives of the Carceral Archipelago: Rethinking the Neoliberal Security State". International Political Sociology Volume 15, Issue 3, September 2021, pages 415-439. Published June 2021. At: doi dot org slash 10.1093/ips/olabo013. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Presented here for commentary, teaching, criticism purposes.]

[covid-safer-hotties]

Needle-free COVID-19 intranasal vaccine provides broad immunity, study finds - Published Agu 27, 2024

A next-generation COVID-19 mucosal vaccine is set to be a gamechanger not only when delivering the vaccine itself, but also for people who are needle-phobic.

New Griffith University research, "A single-dose intranasal live-attenuated codon deoptimized vaccine provides broad protection against SARS-CoV-2 and its variants" published in Nature Communications, has been testing the efficacy of delivering a COVID-19 vaccine via the nasal passages.

Professor Suresh Mahalingam from Griffith's Institute for Biomedicine and Glycomics has been working on this research for the past four years.

"This is a live attenuated intranasal vaccine, called CDO-7N-1, designed to be administered intranasally, thereby inducing potential mucosal immunity as well as systemic immunity with just a single dose," Professor Mahalingam said.

"The vaccine induces strong memory responses in the nasal mucosa, offering long-term protection for up to a year or more.

"It's been designed to be administered as a single dose, ideally as a booster vaccine, as a safe alternative to needles with no adverse reactions in the short or long term."

Live-attenuated vaccines offer several significant advantages over other vaccine approaches.

They induce potent and long-lived humoral and cellular immunity, often with just a single dose.

Live-attenuated vaccines comprise the entire virus, thereby providing broad immunity, in contrast to a single antigen which is used in many other vaccine platforms.

Lead author Dr. Xiang Liu said the vaccine provides cross-protection against all variants of concern, and has neutralizing capacity against SARS-CoV-1.

"The vaccine offers potent protection against transmission, prevents reinfection and the spread of the virus, while also reducing the generation of new variants," Dr. Liu said.

"Unlike the mRNA vaccine which targets only the spike protein, CDO-7N-1 induces immunity to all major SARS-CoV-2 proteins and is highly effective against all major variants to date.

"Importantly, the vaccine remains stable at 4°C for seven months, making it ideal for low- and middle-income countries."

The vaccine has been licensed to Indian Immunologicals Ltd, a major vaccine manufacturer.

Dr. K. Anand Kumar, co-author of the publication and Managing Director of Indian Immunologicals Ltd. Said, "We are a leading 'One Health' company that has developed and launched several vaccines for human and animal use in India and are currently exporting to 62 countries."

"We have completed all the necessary studies of this novel COVID-19 vaccine which offers tremendous advantages over other vaccines.

"We now look forward to taking the vaccine candidate to clinical trials."

Professor Lee Smith, Acting Director of the Institute for Biomedicine and Glycomics, said he was delighted with the research findings.

"These results towards developing a next-generation COVID-19 vaccine are truly exciting," Professor Smith said.

"Our researchers are dedicated to providing innovative and, crucially, more accessible solutions to combat this high-impact disease."

More information: Xiang Liu et al, A single-dose intranasal live-attenuated codon deoptimized vaccine provides broad protection against SARS-CoV-2 and its variants, Nature Communications (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s41467-024-51535-y

[witchyintention]

Where It All Began: The Ancient Roots of Witchcraft

Witchcraft didn’t appear out of nowhere like a mysterious cloaked figure under a full moon. Its roots stretch deep into the soil of human history, sprouting from the primal desire to understand, interact with, and occasionally charm the forces of the natural world. In essence, witchcraft was humanity's first attempt to make sense of life’s mysteries—birth, death, illness, and those pesky harvests that sometimes failed to cooperate.

Mesopotamia: Magic at the Dawn of Civilization

In the ancient lands of Mesopotamia, magic was woven into everyday life like the intricate patterns of a Sumerian tapestry. Priests and priestesses doubled as magicians, using rituals to appease gods or ward off mischief-making demons. The Assyrians and Babylonians developed complex systems of divination, like hepatoscopy (reading the entrails of sacrificed animals) and astrology, where the movements of celestial bodies were believed to influence earthly events. Think of these practices as ancient spreadsheets for managing cosmic chaos.

One standout Mesopotamian magical figure was the āšipu, or exorcist. Armed with incantations and symbolic objects, they combatted evil spirits with the confidence of someone holding a holy water squirt gun. Their spells were recorded on clay tablets, many of which have survived, offering us a peek into their magical toolkit.

Ancient Egypt: Spells, Deities, and Afterlife Insurance

Move over Cleopatra—Egyptian magic deserves its own red-carpet moment. For the Egyptians, magic (heka) wasn’t just a tool but a divine force that existed before creation itself. Gods like Thoth and Isis were thought to wield heka with unparalleled mastery, inspiring humans to follow suit.

The Egyptians had spells for almost everything: curing snake bites, securing a prosperous journey in the afterlife, or even ensuring a good hair day (yes, beauty magic existed). Amulets were their magical multitaskers, offering protection, health, and a little pizzazz. The famous Book of the Dead was essentially a magical user manual for navigating the perils of the afterlife. If reincarnation were an obstacle course, the Egyptians were determined to ace it with cheat codes.

Greece and Rome: The Birth of Western Esotericism

The ancient Greeks and Romans didn’t just dabble in magic—they wrote dissertations on it. In Greece, philosophers like Pythagoras and Plato explored metaphysical concepts that later influenced magical thought. Pythagoras, for example, wasn’t just a math guy; he believed numbers had mystical properties. So next time you curse algebra, remember it might have been a magical tool at some point.

The Greeks also gave us some of the earliest grimoires, such as the Greek Magical Papyri. These texts were chock-full of spells, invocations, and recipes for crafting magical potions. They even included tips for summoning deities or spirits, proving that ancient people also loved a good life hack.

Meanwhile, the Romans took a more practical approach to magic, using it for love, revenge, and keeping those pesky neighbors in check. Curse tablets, thin sheets of lead inscribed with hexes, were buried at sacred sites to call upon the gods for justice. It’s basically the ancient equivalent of subtweeting someone, but with higher stakes.

The Far East: Mysticism and Balance

Across the globe, ancient Chinese and Indian traditions were also steeped in magic and mysticism. In China, Taoist practices incorporated rituals, talismans, and alchemical experiments to achieve harmony with the Tao, or the natural order of the universe. The blending of spirituality and practicality was key, with many rituals aimed at promoting health, longevity, and prosperity.

In India, the Vedic texts described rituals and hymns to invoke divine powers. These practices evolved into a blend of spirituality and mysticism that still influences Hinduism and other traditions today. The emphasis on balance and connection to universal energy feels remarkably modern, doesn’t it?

Shamanism: The Universal Foundation of Magic

Before the rise of organized religions, shamanic traditions thrived across cultures from Siberia to South America. Shamans acted as intermediaries between the physical and spiritual realms, often entering trances to seek guidance or heal their communities. Whether they were chanting, drumming, or consuming psychedelic plants, shamans were the original multi-class characters—part healer, part mystic, part community leader.

The tools of their trade—herbs, bones, and natural objects—laid the foundation for many magical traditions that followed. The use of sympathetic magic (the idea that like affects like, such as using a doll to represent a person) can be traced back to these early practices.

Magic Across Africa and the Americas

In Africa, magic and spirituality were deeply intertwined with everyday life. Practices like Ifa divination in Yoruba culture involved intricate systems of symbols and interpretations, revealing paths to healing, growth, and understanding. Meanwhile, in Mesoamerica, civilizations like the Maya and Aztecs used rituals and offerings to communicate with their gods, often centering around natural cycles like the harvest or the movements of the sun and stars.

The connection to nature in these practices wasn’t just poetic—it was practical. By aligning their magic with the rhythms of the earth, ancient people ensured their survival and fostered a sense of harmony with the world around them.

The Bigger Picture

From the rivers of Mesopotamia to the temples of Egypt and beyond, early witchcraft and magical practices were about survival, connection, and understanding the mysteries of existence. These ancient roots remind us that magic isn’t just about casting spells—it’s about fostering relationships with the forces that shape our world, whether they’re gods, spirits, or the natural elements.

Now, when you light a candle, hold a crystal, or write in your journal, remember: you’re participating in a tradition as old as time. How’s that for a little magic in your day?