#Subsets and Power Sets

[class11maths]

00:00:22 Introduction to Lecture 2 of Sets

00:01:32 Basics Explanation of Subsets

00:09:42 NCERT Exercise 1.3 Question 1

00:18:00 Detailed explanation and difference between subset & belongs to (Set belongs to another set)

00:37:32 NCERT Exercise 1.3 Question 2

00:42:52 NCERT Exercise 1.3 Question 3

00:48:52 Total number of subsets in a set (NCERT Exercise 1.3 Question 4)

00:55:12 Power Sets

00:58:12 NCERT Exercise 1.3 Question 5

01:01:32 Represent Real Numbers through closed and open intervals

01:10:32 NCERT Exercise 1.3 Question 6

01:12:02 NCERT Exercise 1.3 Question 7

01:14:42 Universal Sets

01:18:02 NCERT Exercise 1.3 Question 8

01:19:32 NCERT Exercise 1.3 Question 9

Master NCERT Exercise 1.3 of Sets (Class 11 Maths Chapter 1) with this detailed lecture by expert Ashish Sir from MathYug. Learn subsets, power sets, universal sets, and interval notation for real numbers with step-by-step solutions to all questions.

Download notes and assignments from https://mathyug.com/class-11-maths

Explore CBSE + IIT JEE Syllabus (in Hindi): https://mathyug.com

[maerossi]

i want all the children of the world to know that no matter how old you get (im 30), there are people who will be condescending jerks to you and try to make you feel small due to your age (and based on observation at some point this switches and they will try to make you feel small because you are Too Old). Those people are stinky and should be avoided jsyk.

[alexanderwales]

There was some discussion on the discord about how most "superhero fiction" gets tainted by the fact that there are such established things as "superheroes" and "supervillains" in these settings, and that this then taints everything about these pieces of fiction because wide swathes of psychology and character immediately get swept to the side. There's a flattening effect to that, I think I would agree with that, and anyway, it's well-mined territory.

So instead, you could write a superhero novel (or comic) where the entire concept of "superhero" doesn't actually exist, in the same way that zombie movies don't recognize the concept of zombie.

And I think that this would be interesting, but would also immediately introduce a few constraints of its own:

The timescale is relatively short. There's very few imitators, and not enough coverage/traction that people have started to say "hey, these guys are all kind of like each other".

The scope is relatively narrow, probably not more than ... ten characters? And they can't overlap with each other all that much. Maybe you can have small clusters that expand the cast, I guess, a recognized subset of the unrecognized superhero.

This works best in a novel, not in a webfic, because webfic loves to sprawl (and this is one of the best things about webfic).

So to game it out a bit, you have all these different characters, and none of them thinks of themselves as a "superhero". We're pretending the whole concept doesn't exist in this universe. We're making no sweeping generalizations about superheroes, because they're just not a thing here.

Instead, we draw from as many different genres and ideas as possible.

People aren't wearing costumes, there's one guy who's wearing a costume, dressing up like a mascot. Someone else is wearing a uniform. Another guy is wearing a disguise, totally different thing meant to protect his identity, nothing more. There's a guy who summons armor around himself, a guy that transforms, they have distinct individual powers that come from different places, there's nothing that unites them except that they come into conflict with each other. There's no ethos of superheroism or supervillainy.

Part of the idea is that you cannot sort these people into typologies, each of them is individual, except maybe there's a brother-sister couple in there, or a group of five super sentai types or whatever, because we also don't want to make a rule that each and every person is a unique individual.

I think there's a lot that you could get from this. Normal superhero fiction tends to have a lot of ideology in it, and here, because these people don't recognize each other as being the same thing, you have more room to move around. No one is doing things because it's expected of them, except the people who are, who are fighting crime because this is part of their family legacy, or the guy who's a space cop and this is just literally his job. There's greater room for intersectional discussion if you drop "superhero" from the vocabulary.

And it's much closer to what superheroes used to be, before the genre calcified and congealed, when everyone was just their own weird person with their own weird agenda. There is something fresh about that, I think, something that I haven't seen very often, a way of writing superheroes that tries to be in the genre by being outside of it.

I'm not sure I have any ambition to actually write something like this, but I do think that it's probably worth doing. (And I also imagine that if I had infinite depth of knowledge on superhero fiction I would be able to point to three specific pieces of media that did this exact thing.)

[foone]

Bad idea for a story:

The kingdom is in flames, and the King lies dead in a commoner's grave. The people have risen up in a glorious socialist revolution, and they're in power now, the monarchy that ruled this country for centuries is gone... Or are they?

The king had many sons and daughters. The daughters they're not worried about, the kingdom never had a queen, the rules were always sexist. But the princes? Any of them could rally an army of loyalists and try to take back the kingdom.

The more hardline elements of the revolution says that the princes must die. Anyone who has a "legitimate" claim on the throne is a threat.

But the more flexible elements of the revolutionary council have an alternative idea, one that'll prevent any more bloodshed.

We simply feminize the princes! If all the heirs of the King are princesses, none of them can make a claim on the throne!

Sure it's a little unorthodox but it'll mean fewer bodies buried under the foundations of our new more-equal society.

We don't want to set the tone for our enduring society by eliminating some people because they were inconvenient. That's the kind of thing that gets normalized and then you've got genocides and purges as regular things.

Instead we're just building our society on forced-feminization which I'm sure won't affect anything at all.

(I wrote this because I thought it was funny, but I do acknowledge that there's a certain subset of Tumblr users who would think "the Soviet Union but they forcefem you" is the hottest idea ever)

[ohnoitstbskyen]

Have you ever gotten into power scaling? Do you have any thoughts about it and/or its culture?

I haven't engaged with it enough to have any deep knowledge of the culture of it so I won't comment on that. Like, I used to watch Death Battle, that's basically it.

For myself, I think power scaling is a fun intellectual and creative exercise, especially when you're trying to reconcile power sets from disparate properties that have vastly different thematic meanings and try and figure out some common metric by which they might be measured.

The part about power scaling I dislike is how easily it feeds an obsession with power as the primary metric or worth or value, and the ways in which it can lead to some really reductive and at worst anti-intellectual interpretations of media. Like, there's a subset of One Piece fans for example who insist that Nami - the navigator of the goddamn pirate ship - is "the most useless Straw Hat," entirely because she doesn't win a lot of big fights. Or there's a subset of Batman fans who very defensively insist that Batman could ALWAYS win ANY fight with ANY opponent so long as he has time to prepare, because their metric for whether or not he's a good hero is entirely measured by who he could take in a fight.

That sh*t is annoying, juvenile and often pretty reactionary, but like most such things it also comes from a very loud but very small minority of the fandom group, who probably shouldn't be held up as representative of the whole.

tl;dr power scaling is fun, people who make power scaling the center of their engagement with media are not fun

[writingwithcolor]

Desi Parenthood, Adoption, and Stereotypes

I have a story set in the modern day with supernatural traces, with three characters: a young boy, his bio dad, and his adoptive dad. The boy and his bio dad are Indian, the adoptive dad is Chinese. The bio dad is one of the few people in the story with powers. He put his son up for adoption when he was a child because at the time he was a young single father, had little control of the strength of his powers: he feared accidentally hurting his child. The son is adopted by the other dad, who holds spite to the bio dad for giving up his son since he lost his father as a young age and couldn't get why someone would willingly abandon their child. This also results in him being overprotective and strict over his son. When the child is older, the bio dad comes to their town and the son gets closer to him, which makes the adoptive dad pissed, mostly acting hostile to the other guy, paranoid that he'll decide to take away the child he didn't help raise. Later when they get closer he does change his biases. I can see the possible stereotypes here: the absent father being the darkskinned character, the light-skinned adoptive dad being richer than the bio dad, the lightskinned character being hostile and looking down on the darkskinned character, the overprotective asian parent, the adoptive dad assuming the bio dad abandoned the son. The reason for his bias isn't inherently racist, but I get how it can be seen that way. Is there a way to make this work? Would it be better to scrap it?

Two problem areas stand out with this ask: 

You seem confused with respect to how racial stereotypes are created, and what effect they have on society.

Your characterization of the Indian father suggests a lack of familiarity with many desi cultures as they pertain to family and child-rearing.

Racial Stereotypes are Specific

Your concern seems to stem from believing the absent father trope is applied to all dark-skinned individuals, when it’s really only applied to a subset of dark-skinned people for specific historical/ social/ political reasons. The reality is stereotypes are often targeted.

The “absent father” stereotype is often applied to Black fathers, particularly in countries where chattel slavery or colonialism meant that many Black fathers were separated from their children, often by force. The "absent black father" trope today serves to enforce anti-black notions of Black men as anti-social, neglectful of their responsibilities, not nurturing, etc. Please see the WWC tag #absent black father for further reading. 

Now, it’s true many desis have dark skin. There are also Black desis. I would go as far as to say despite anti-black bias and colorism in many desi cultures, if one was asked to tell many non-Black desis from places like S. India and Sri Lanka apart from Black people from places like E. Africa, the rate of failure would be quite high. However, negative stereotypes for desi fathers are not the same as negative stereotypes for non-desi Black fathers, because racially, most Black people and desis are often not perceived as being part of the same racial group by other racial groups, particularly white majorities in Western countries. Negative stereotypes for desi fathers are often things like: uncaring, socially regressive/ conservative, sexist. They are more focused around narratives that portray these men as at odds with Western culture and Western norms of parenting. 

Desi Parents are Not this Way

Secondly, the setup makes little sense given how actual desi families tend to operate when one or both parents are unable to be present for whatever reason. Children are often sent to be raised by grandparents, available relatives or boarding schools (Family resources permitting). Having children be raised by an outsider is a move of last resort. You make no mention of why your protagonist’s father didn’t choose such an option. The trope of many desi family networks being incredibly large is not unfounded. Why was extended family not an option?

These two points trouble me because you have told us you are writing a story involving relationship dynamics between characters of both different races and ethnicities. I’m worried you don’t know enough about the groups you are writing about, how they are perceived by each other and society at large in order to tell the story you want to tell.

As with many instances of writing with color, your problem is not an issue of scrap versus don’t scrap. It’s being cognizant of the current limits of your knowledge. How you address this knowledge deficit and its effect on your interpretation of your characters and the story overall will determine if readers from the portrayed groups find the story compelling.

- Marika.

I have one response: what? Where are the father’s parents? Any siblings? Is he cut off? Is he American? A Desi that has stayed in India? 

Estrangement is not completely out of the question if the father is Westernized; goodness knows that I have personal experience with seeing estrangement. But you haven’t established any of that. What will you add?

-Jaya

[bellshazes]

Taxonomy, like adultery, is a sin - but since it doesn't stop the Bdubs Patented Third Wheel Effect, we won't let it stop our categorizing its manifestations either.

The Third Wheel Effect

Bdubs has been engineering partnership and love triangles since his first SMP over a decade ago. In fact it's the consistency across such a long time that obscures the pattern's specifics: it's easy to tell he likes to play on jealousy and cast himself as a villain, but harder to look past the variations of who is pulled into what role obscures the fact that there's truly a small group of overlapping tropes where the players of each role may change, but fundamentally, it's the Third Wheel Effect all the way down.

The Tropes

WELCOME HOME, CHEATER: The earliest, but also the most flexible, as Bdubs is just as happy to have the B-Team in jeopardy because Genny caught him shacked up with Etho as he is to confront Doc for making out with Ren in his absence. As long as someone's mad with cause, it's good fun.

I NEVER LIKED HIM ANYWAY: In contrast to Welcome Home, Cheater, in this subset it's revealed the presumed original pair was a lie, and the third person has had his heart all along. The willingness of the surprised third party is mostly irrelevant to the high drama unfolding, probably under duress in a death game. In a certain light, the crumbling of Team BEST is not not this.

iS THIS A HAPPY COUPLE?: If you read the last description and thought it was missing handcuffs, you know where this is going. For some reason, partners are shaken up and new ones are established on the threat of death if they don't work together. Whether there's still lingering longing for the new third wheel is an open question. Oddly, tends to backfire with a karmic kind of irony, like Impulse and Bdubs' death in Double Life, or dying to your own bear trap anyway in Survival of the Fittest.

POWER STRUGGLE: Bdubs has a habit of appointing heads of state and then somehow acting affronted when he transitions from election champion to one of many civic advisors. Suddenly the subtext turns sharply toward not just governance but government affairs. The threatening third(s) may be or act oblivious to their alleged love triangle, like Cub's nonchalance at Bdubs' rage while they both worked for Mayor Scar.

THEY DON'T LOVE YOU LIKE I DO: Most often instigated directly by Bdubs, the triangle becomes a game of tug-o-war - or at least Bdubs sees it that way. This is especially likely as a result of a Power Struggle, although Etho gets a less angry, more angsty flavor of this in some Life seasons. Also plays very well with Welcome Home Cheater.

Conclusion

Although Etho is a focal point of many past and present love triangles, sometimes even instigating conflict related to them himself, Bdubs' pattern of needing a third wheel to flesh out relationship dynamics is both broader and more predictable than it might appear. Any combination of players who will yes-and him and let him be a little stupidly vindictive or encourage interpersonal drama is a valid combination. It's Etho happily playing into Bdubs' natural wheelhouse and drawing it out of him pre-emptively that adds to them being a pair with no set configuration but that is more enduring than any other alliances they've made over the years.

[wonderjanga]

I Saw The Fantastic Four Trailer and now I have Ideas

When I saw this trailer, I thought it was fascinating (no pun intended) that they were gonna have it set in the 60s because I love that. Then I remembered that the fantastic four were made in the 60s. So I got to thinking that Marvel could potentially have a subset of movies set in the 60s.

Like the fantastic four could start in 61 because that’s when the characters were originally made.

I would also love to see a Spider-Man movie set in the 60s. They wouldn’t even have to pull a random ass plot out of their ass. They could steal from the comics because the original comics have interesting source material in my opinion.

A 60s Spider-Man movie could start with the inevitable Peter getting bit. That’s a given. But I would love to see them explore his original origins. I think that the movie could potentially be about Peter discovering that he wants to be a hero. Like, at first he’ll stick to what he originally did in the comics which was actually performing as a showman with his powers. Then we could see him hit the hurdle of not being able to cash his check because he didn’t want to reveal his identity as Spider-Man. Then we could see the second hurdle with J Jonah Jamison ruining any chance of him doing any more shows. We could even see him save JJJs son and still get flamed by the guy. The villain could be whoever because they all have interesting storylines in my opinion it doesn’t really matter to me. But if we wanted to stay in the 60s timeline, we could go with chameleon who in the first chapter was a communist. But I think the villain could be anyone as long as they were in that 60s time frame.

Speaking of which, we could honestly have a mini series set in the 60s instead of multiple movies.

It would obviously have to come out after the fantastic four movie because it’s first episode, in my opinion, should be Peter breaking into the Baxter building, fighting the entire fantastic four, winning and then dipping because he found out they didn’t pay money if you were on the team. (A real comic issue)

Another episode should have daredevil who was also made during the 60s still in his fuckass yellow and red costume teaming up with Spidey to take down the Mad Hatter. (Another real comic issue)

We could have an Ant-man a Wasp adventure!

We could have an episode about Tony making his suit and finding his inspiration. Said episode could have Doctor Strange learning his magic and maybe the two meet one day and they try to combine it only for terrible results which causes them to have to work together and solve the issue.

We could have an episode about the X-Men forming and how they deal with the prejudices against mutants and people of color and women which was considerably worse during the 60s.

We could have a Quicksilver and Scarlet witch origin story! We could see them with their parents and how Pietro stole for his family, which got them chased out of the Roma camp! We could see their trauma, and we could see them wandering around Europe.

We have a Thor and Hulk friendship episode!

There are so many heroes made in the 60s, and that gives them MORE source material! They have so much but give us so little.

Anyways, thanks for reading!

[tanoraqui]

obviously the Historical Figure Episode(TM) of Doctor Who that I’d write would of the Noted Author subset endemic to the RTD Era; it’d be called “Spiders in the Trenches” and be set in the middle of World War One ft. one Lt. John Tolkien.

idk if the main aliens are spiders or if they're just using giant robotic spiders as soldier-minions. Either way, Tolkien is a little too defensive when he says he's not afraid of spiders.

The alien invaders want some sort of shiny mcguffin, maybe as a power source for their ship? Or for a mega-weapon? We do not want them to get it, at any rate. Race to find the Shiny Power Jewel-Thing which has been lost somewhere in this like 20-mile radius of the Western Front.

When our heroes narrowly beat the spiders to the SPJT, Tolkien realizes that the spiders only ever attack at night because light hurts them somehow, so he holds the SPJT up as it flares and shouts, "Get back, foul creatures! Back into the shadows from whence you came!"

(They're from the dark side of a tidally locked planet, and made for extremely low-light conditions? The SPJT flares because it's controlled telepathically and it connected to Tolkien's mind when he touched it?)

Ideally Tolkien's first encounter with the Doctor is that he wakes up in the trench one day (after losing some men to a mysterious monster in the darkness a couple nights ago?), and there's 2 random strangers in weird clothes idly singing and playing an instrument which they stole from someone a couple bedrolls down. (This works well with Fifteen & Ruby's established inclination to music!)

We do need an Eowyn Moment, because that's iconic, but I'd split it: for dialogue, at one point the head boss evil alien boasts, "No human can defeat the Tenebrarachnid Empire!" and the Doctor replies, "Good thing they've got me, then."...

[I don't know if this is a Fifteen line yet. I know it's a very Eleven line]

...and there's a soldier in Tolkien's unit who is revealed to be secretly a woman! Who disguised herself as a man in order to enlist for ??? reasons, and who dramatically pulls off her hat to reveal her long hair.

The third notable local character is the sort who inspired Sam Gamgee, "...the English soldier, [like] the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognized as so far superior to myself.”

^those two can have a romantic subplot if it fits (comrades-in-arms is also extremely good). Tolkien, however, at some point shows Ruby the picture of his wife Edith which he carries at all times, she of the black hair and bright grey eyes, and is obviously ready to monologue about how wonderful she is.

In the same scene(?), Tolkien looks up at the stars and says their brightness shining afar, clear of all the horrors on the ground, is always a source of hope and strength to him.

Maybe also in the same scene? Tolkien is shown to make up stories for fun, or to read them in his little spare time - fairy tales and mythological epics. Maybe he tells them to the men around the fire, maybe he keeps a little notebook, maybe he just admits to daydreaming... When asked why, he paraphrases his quote from later life, " Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?"

At some point (Star-watching scene? when the Doctor inevitably has to explain that aliens exist? when they're all saying goodbye in the end?) there's a line drawing attention to the Doctor's parallels with Eärendil - eternally wandering figure of hope, sailing the stars in a ship with a light on top, not quite mortal...

Tolkien DEFINITELY tries to figure out the alien language, in writing or speech.

Something the aliens are doing is making people sick. Maybe the attacking robo-spiders are venomous, maybe there's a toxic byproduct of the alien ship, maybe it's a deliberate first assault of the planned invasion... By the end of the episode, Tolkien is very ill. The Doctor has figured out an antidote and given it, but Tolkien says goodbye to him and Ruby only to stumble to a medical outpost - from where, the Doctor explains to Ruby, he'll be sent home with this bad case of what's assumed to be trench fever. Between the fever and the brief psychic entanglement, and unentanglement, with the SPJT, he won't even remember most of this, and what he does remember, he'll put down to fever dreams amidst the horrors of war.

But he'll remember some things! He'll remember an eternal wanderer of the stars, unaging and undying and ever-hopeful, heralded by light (and a vworrrp vrorrrp noise).

[noir-bug]

Fraggle Rock MLP AU! Info under the cut...

Setting: The subterranean town of Fraggle Rock, on the outskirts of Equestria. Home to ponies of all kinds, and a newly discovered race of ponies called Doozers, a subset of Breezies with no wings and tough, stocky builds. Near the exit of Fraggle rock lies the Gorg castle, home to a race of enormous, mountain-like horses called Gorgs.

The caves and tunnels beneath Fraggle Rock twist and turn deep underground, and are filled with mysterious magic.

Characters:

Compass Rose, the leader of his little herd. He's an explorer, delving into the caves below the Rock to map them out and discover their magic. Compass is a very gifted unicorn, even though he rarely studies spells. His magic comes from experience, copying the natural magic he stumbles across while exploring.

Silver Scale, Compass's adoptive brother. This earth pony has a very special gift, the power to see and understand all sides of an argument. This lets him make big, important decisions with confidence, but leaves him practically unable to make small, inconsequential choices.

High Dive, the athlete. She's hyper-competitive and constantly moving. Though her confidence can get her in trouble sometimes, it can be essential in protecting her friends. Her talent is swimming, and she truly is one of the best at it. She has a friendly rivalry with Compass Rose.

Wet Blanket, the pessimist. He's just here to make sure the others don't get themselves killed while adventuring. He'd much rather be practicing his talent, laundry. He's repressed his fun side so hard that it's practically a different pony! (It literally becomes a different pony later in the series, when an ancient collection of chaos magic is accidentally sealed inside Wet Blanket. It fuses with his fun side to become Firework, Blanket's new headmate.)

Purple Prose, the artist. She loves the Rock and every living thing within it. Her main outlets for showing that love are painting and poetry. She has very fine control over her magic, though it isn't very powerful. Some of her poems have magic weaved into them, and can cast spells when spoken aloud.

[book-of-forbidden-knowledge]

How to Become an Occultist:

An easy (?) step-by-step guide.

SO YOU WANT TO BE A WIZARD?

There's no easy step-by-step guide to the occult; someday I'd like to write a course on it for my patreon, or maybe a book. But for now, I'll give the short version:

I’m just going to say upfront, research is the enduring and eternal step. You can’t become an occultist without doing research, and you’re never going to stop doing research. I have a list of pdfs of classic occult texts and grimoires here, and a recommended reading list here.

Step 1: Pick a tradition, practice, or subfield.

The first step is to know what you’re signing up for. Western esotericism is a large field with lots of different subsets. Here’s just a few of them:

Witchcraft: A broad umbrella term that covers everything from historical folk magic, to Wicca and its offshoots, to modern WitchTok folk magic, and beyond. “Witchcraft” has become something of a general term for pop-occultism in recent years, and it’s what people tend to see first. Witchcraft seems more folk-magic-focused than some of the other fields, but that’s not universally true. Modern witchcraft is almost the melting pot of the Western occult tradition, so, if you’re able to find good reading material, it’s a good place to start.

Wicca: Wicca is an neopagan religion founded in 1951 by Gerald Gardner. Wiccans worship a God and a Goddess, practice magic, and call themselves witches. The ritual structure of Wicca is largely inspired by the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn (see below), but it also takes inspiration from folk magic, witchlore, early anthropology, and a bunch of other things from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Wicca is probably the best-known occult religion, and it’s mostly responsible for the association between witchcraft and paganism in pop culture.

Ceremonial Magic: Ritual magic or “high magic,” mostly codified in the Renaissance era by grimoires like The Lesser Key of Solomon. This kind of magic is characterized by the evocation and binding (summoning) of spirits — angels, demons, “olympic spirits,” and so forth. One can theoretically command these spirits to do one’s bidding. Modern magicians who work with demons typically fall into two camps: traditional Solomonic magicians who believe that the demons need to be bound and controlled, and demonolators who worship and work with the demons the way witches might work with pagan deities. Also in this subfield is planetary magic, rituals that exploit the powers or influences of the planets by using the tools associated with each one and doing rituals at particular times on particular days, etc. Enochian magic, a system of communicating and working with angels developed by John Dee and Edward Kelley, also falls into this category.

Folk magic: Folk magic or “low magic” is a catch-all term for magic practiced by average people to solve everyday problems. This is your healing magic, love magic, apotropaic (protection) magic, luck charms, spells to find lost objects, curses, etc. etc. Almost every culture has their own local form of folk magic, but there are also some ideas and techniques that are consistent across most of them (e.g. “like attracts like”). There’s also considerable overlap between folk and ceremonial magic; sometimes the only real difference is the social class of the practitioner.

Hermeticism: A system of philosophy based on the Corpus Hermeticum, a set of ancient Greco-Egyptian philosophical dialogues about the nature of the universe. It’s a short but dense text, not the simplest introduction to occult philosophy, but still worth reading because of how influential it was. It’s the loose basis of a nineteeth-century occult society, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, which is the great-grandfather of most modern occult societies (including Wicca). The HOGD was concerned with a lot more than classic Hermeticism; they also practiced ceremonial magic, astrology, alchemy, and mysticism. Golden Dawn liturgy is so common in modern occultism that you should probably look into it, whether you plan on practicing it or not.

Alchemy: A historical practice that is at once science, philosophy, art, and poetry, alchemy is a thing unto itself. The short version is that alchemy is early chemistry. Alchemists’ attempts at understanding how matter worked was understood to be a philosophical study of the nature of existence, on both a physical and spiritual level. That’s why the goal of alchemy is called the Philosopher’s Stone. The Philosopher’s Stone is allegedly a perfect substance, crystallized divinity, that is able to physically and spiritually perfect anything it comes in contact with. Alchemy is very complicated and hard to understand without diving deep into it, but some alchemical imagery and maxims (“as above, so below”, solve et coagula) have made their way into the general Western esoteric sphere.

Thelema: A religion developed by Aleister Crowley in the early twentieth century. It combines Golden Dawn material with a lot of Crowley’s own personal philosophy and general edginess. Its core tenant is “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law,” which means that one should always follow the guidance of what Thelemites call the “True Will,” the divine intention of one’s Higher Self. Its most important foundational text is a short, cryptic… poem, I guess?… written by Crowley, called The Book of the Law.

Chaos Magic: When Thelema meets postmodernism, you get Chaos Magic. Chaos Magic is more of a philosophical approach to the study of magic than a particular practice. It does away with the pomp and trappings of ceremonial magic and cuts right down to the basics, the magician’s relationship with their subconscious mind. That makes it very straightforward, but also difficult, because you can’t rely on any of those more complex tools. Chaos magicians (or “chaotes”) interpret belief as just another tool, so, they aim to pick up and put down different beliefs and traditions at will, based on whatever suits them in the current moment. The only specific practice associated with chaos magic is sigils, a symbol or other abstract representation of one’s desire that one uses to cast a spell. Chaotes tend to be deliberately haphazard — they have a “fuck the rules, do what you want” kind of attitude.

Satanism: The best-known of the spookier, edgier, “left-hand path” occult traditions. There’s two main varieties of Satanism, atheistic and theistic. The Church of Satan or LaVeyan Satanism (after its founder) is atheistic. It uses Satan kind of like a mascot for their beliefs of self-indulgence and free will. Although they don’t believe in any gods, they do practice magic; it’s mainly Golden Dawn material with an edgy “black mass”-style twist (like invoking demons, using a naked woman as the altar, etc.) The Satanic Temple is also atheistic, and it’s not really an occult society. It’s more a political activist group that fights for religious freedom in the United States. Theistic Satanists believe that Satan is an actual entity, and usually believe that he’s a positive being that represents free will and enlightenment. Some are demonolators, meaning they evoke and work with the demons of traditional ceremonial grimoires as though they’re gods (some believe that they literally are gods). The majority of Satanists are pretty chill. Very few believe that they worship literally evil entities.

That’s just scratching the surface, and keep in mind that this is all in the realm of Western esotericism. It’s a huge field. I recommend having an idea of what you want to study going in, because it’s a lot of material, and it’s easier to find good sources if you know what you want to focus on. Speaking from my own experience, I wish I knew what my options were going in.

Step 2: Learn a divination method.

Every occultist needs some kind of divination method. There are potentially thousands, but I’ll give you some of the big ones:

Cartomancy is card reading. There's lots of different kinds of cards: tarot cards, oracle cards, Lenormand cards, you can even use normal playing cards. It's a super common and super popular method. Tarot is definitely the most popular system. This method is easy to learn and very accessible.

Cleromancy is divination by lot, or casting objects onto the ground — dice, sticks, bones, stones, etc. — and reading the random pattern they make. There's lots of different types. This method is very old and very common. One of the more popular methods nowadays is casting runestones, which use Norse letters.

Scrying is gazing into a blank object until you see visions projected onto/into it. The object can be a crystal ball, a black mirror, a bowl of water, even a dark window or a blank wall (though that's not particularly mystical). Scrying is often used to see spirits in ritual magic. I can't scry worth a damn, so I can't tell you more than that. It's worth trying if you're a visual person, though.

A pendulum is a stone or other heavy object on a chain. You can use it to answer yes/no questions. Lots of crystal shops sell fancy pendulums, but you could just use a pendant. You say to the pendulum, "show me my yes" and "show me my no." Usually the "yes" is going around in a circle and "no" is going back and forth, or vice-versa. Pendulums are fun, but not super reliable because you can influence them easily. I wouldn't interpret any answer a pendulum gives you as final.

Oneiromancy is dream interpretation, and it’s another ancient method that’s used all over the world. I don't have significant dreams very often, though, despite my best efforts. With the abundance of other methods, I don't recommend relying solely on this one.

Automatic writing or “free-association writing” is my personal preferred method. It’s writing a question, and then writing whatever comes to mind as the answer, regardless of whether it makes sense. This technique is very, very effective for me, and has triggered full-on mystical experiences more than once.

Astrology is also a type of divination that involves interpreting the position of the stars and planets on the 2D plane of the sky to learn about the future and/or about specific people. It’s a much more complicated system than horoscope apps make it look. Practically a necessity for planetary magic, but in this century, you can be a wizard without being an astrologer. It’s good to have at least a foundational knowledge of it.

Different methods are useful for different things. Automatic writing and scrying are good for talking to spirits. Astrology is pretty useless for talking to gods, but is a good way of determining the outcome of your spells and the various influences upon your life at a given point. Cartomancy and cleromancy can be used for either, with some benefits and drawbacks. I recommend playing around with different methods to find one that works for you.

Step 3: Develop basic magical skills.

In addition to divination, you’re going to need some other basic skills. The most important one is meditation — if you don’t know how to meditate, learn. Meditation doesn’t have to mean sitting still. I definitely can’t sit still; I meditate by pacing back and forth. Anything you can do to lull yourself into a trance state can work, even singing in the shower.

You’ll also have to practice visualization, imagining your magic as though it were something tangible. For example, a lot of ritual formats will begin by asking you to imagine a white circle of light around yourself, or imagining taking each of the four elements into your body. Next is energy work — manipulating these imaginary forces and seeing how they affect your body, your emotions, other people, and the external environment.

You’ll also have to learn the basics of how to conduct a ritual, and gather your basic tools (which don’t have to be fancy or expensive). Rituals can feel awkward and silly at first, but that changes with practice. The basic point of a ritual (“supernatural” stuff aside) is to create the conditions to put yourself in a particular state of mind.

Finally, magic requires a lot of introspection and self-awareness. You have to really know what you want, not just what you think you want. And when your magic is successful, you have to have the humility to not have it go to your head (or else you’ll be afflicted with the dreaded “Magus-itis”). And that’s without going into the fact that ritual can drag up some intense stuff. Work through your shit, do your Shadow work. It’s hard, but it pays off in the long run.

Step 4: Practice a simple ritual.

Once you have some basic skills, it’s time to try your first ritual! You’re not going to want to try anything that’s labor-intensive or life-changing. Save the demon-summoning and stuff until later. The first ritual you do will probably be a banishing — a simple spell that’s intended to clear the space of any spiritual crap. Ideally, it should be used before and after every rite. Even if you don’t believe in evil spirits or “negative energy” or anything like that, a banishing is like the magical equivalent of turning it off and back on again. It’s a systems reboot. It wipes the slate clean. You’re gonna want to know how to do that, so you can 1. know what a space feels like when it’s free of influences, and 2. put down whatever you call up. It’s a good first thing to learn because it’s so essential, and also because it’s almost guaranteed to have no major repercussions.

The standard banishing ritual in the Western esoteric tradition is the Lesser Banishing Ritual of the Pentagram (LBRP), which is from the Golden Dawn tradition. It consists of intoning or “vibrating” the names of God and invoking the angels of the four directions. If that’s too Abrahamic for you, there are plenty of other variants that use different divine names. The Wiccan “circle casting” is essentially the same thing, trimmed down a bit. If the LBRP doesn’t appeal to you, there’s plenty of other banishing rites out there.

The first full ritual I did was actually a simple variant of the Wiccan “Drawing Down the Moon” invocation. I remember really feeling something the first time I did it, and that was enough to convince me that I wanted to continue.

And there you have it, a step-by-step guide to becoming an occultist, as simple as I can make it. Keep it simple to start, take your time, do your research. Whether you want anything specific out of occultism, you want to satisfy your curiosity, or you just like the idea of being a wizard, it’s fun to study magic.

[markrosewater]

Maro’s Teaser for Murders at Karlov Manor

Before previews for Murders at Karlov Manor officially begin, I thought it would be fun to do another of my Duelist-style teasers where I give tiny hints of things to come. Note that I’m only giving you partial information.  

  First up, here are some things you can expect:  

 • white gets a card that lets you play a subset off the top of the deck

• a new enchantment subtype Case

• a card with four different hybrid symbols in its mana cost

• a popular mechanic returns tweaked with a new name

• a green sorcery that you can have any number of in your deck

• a keyword mechanic not printed in a premier set since 2008 returns on a single card

• a creature that allows you an alternate nonmana cost for all your spells

• some creature tokens in the set: (note that some have abilities) 0/0 green Ooze, 0/0 colorless Thopter (also artifact), 0/1 green Plant, 1/1 black Bat, 1/1 white Dog, 1/1 red Goblin, 1/1 white Human, 1/1 blue Merfolk, 1/1 white and black Spirit, 1/1 colorless Thopter (also artifact), 2/1 black Skeleton, 2/1 black and green Spider, 2/2 white and blue Detective, 2/2 red Imp, and 5/5 green and white Wolf

• And yes, Murder is in the set

 Next, here are some rules text that will be showing up on cards:  

  • “Whenever a creature an opponent controls dies, if its toughness was less than 1, draw a card.”

• “Choose any number of target players.”

• “Creature cards in your graveyard gain ‘You may cast this card from your graveyard’ until end of turn.”

• “Then sacrifice it if it has five or more bloodstain counters on it.”

• “you may search your graveyard, hand, and/or library for a card named Magnifying Glass and/or a card named Thinking Cap and put them onto the battlefield.”

• “target opponent gains control of any number of target permanents you control.”

• “If an ability of a creature you control with power 2 or less triggers, that ability triggers an additional time.”

• “As long as there are no cards in your library,”

• “If one or more tokens would be created under your control, those tokens plus a Clue token are created instead.”

• “Whenever you sacrifice a Clue, target opponent gets two poison counters.”

 Here are some creature type lines from the set: 

 • Creature – Vedalken Artificer Detective

• Creature – Ogre Cleric

• Artifact Creature – Insect Thopter

• Creature – Lammasu

• Creature – Weird Detective

• Creature – Goblin Bard

• Creature – Viashino Assassin

• Artifact Creature – Clue Fish

• Creature – Elf Crocodile Detective

• Legendary Creature – Mole God

 Finally, here are some names in the set: 

 • Airtight Alibi

• Caught Red-Handed

• Deadly Cover-Up

• Eliminate the Impossible

• Homicide Investigator

• Innocent Bystander

• It Doesn’t Add Up

• Person of Interest

• Private Eye

• Scene of the Crime

 Follow the story each day this week and tune into the debut at 9:00 am PT on Jan 16 on twitch.tv/magic or youtube.com/@mtg to learn whodunit! Can you solve the mystery before detective extraordinaire Alquist Proft?

[laithraihan]

Ngl, I hate the way the MP100 fandom is treating artists, especially ones who dare drawing sensitive subject matters or anything deemed "controversial" by a specific (and rather annoying imo) subset.

I guess that is why I have been not much interacting with the fandom in general lately, and I am sorry for how others in this fandom have treated you.

I live by the famous quote that's set in golden letters on the outside of the "Wiener Seccession", a famous "clubhouse" of famous artists that fought against their art being censored (by our standards nowadays their art isn't even particularly outrageous): "Der Zeit ihre Kunst, der Kunst ihre Freiheit" (I am trying to freely translate this: "Each era its art, each art its freedom")

Like, ooohhh, I don't like Hermann Nitsch's blood paintings either, but I am an adult about them existing and being exhibited. I just don't look at them. I learned that as a child. To simply not look at stuff I don't want to see.

How do these people not learn such a basic and important principle?

Anyway, all the power to you and your awesome art ❤

Thank you for the kind message... I agree with everything you said. I do think some criticism I received was valid so I don't mean to dismiss that, but to be honest I didn't really look at most backlash I received to preserve my sanity lol (more specifically the sexual graphic ones) which... I believe is the right thing to do in general, to ignore the things that make you uncomfortable. To expect that everything must Never make us uncomfortable is a poor way of thinking & can easily lead to harm. Things have also been lacking creativity lately in general, because everything outside the norm is met with hostility, so I already found the fandom a bit boring for this reason. I usually abide by the mentality that it's ok to feel any emotion, but emotion shouldn't be a tool to control other people's content. Maybe it's because I deal with crazy religious parents so I can see the parallels between them & that subset of the fanbase, the need to have full control over an environment that clashes with a narrow worldview (not to mention the hypocrisy of what they allow & don't allow...) but rambling aside, I still have a pulse so I'm okay! I'm slowly recovering from other things & building my own site has been helping me express my thoughts more freely without fear, which I'm happy about.

[bethanythebogwitch]

Wet Beast Wednesday: hermit crabs

There are some animals in this series that I relate with more than others. I kind of envy hermit crabs. I would love to have a hiding place I can carry around and retreat into to avoid social interaction. I'd keep some books and headphones in there. Hermit crabs are also an example of the internet's favorite part of evolutionary biology: carcinization, the tendency for many animals to evolve a crab-like body plan. Contrary to what some people seem to think, carcinization is something that happens in crustaceans only.

(Image: a hermit crab. It is a crustacean with a bright red exoskeleton with white spots and spikes. The head (with antennae and eyestalks), pincers, and two pairs of legs are emerging from a mostly white, conical snail shell. End ID)

Hermit crabs are over 200 species of decapod crustaceans of the clade Paguroidea. They are more closely related to squat lobsters, king crabs, and porcelain crabs than they are to true crabs. What sets hermit crabs apart from the other decapods is their asymmetrical bodies and soft abdomens. the soft abdomen is a major weak spot as it leaves the body vulnerable to predators. In order to protect themselves, hermit crabs have adapted to live inside of the shells of other animals, usually snail shells, but the shells of other molluscs have also been used. A few species have evolves out of the need for snail shells, such as the terrestrial coconut crab. King crabs (which are even more crablike than hermit crabs but still aren't true crabs) may also be a subset of hermit crabs that became even more carcinized and lost their soft abdomens. The relationship between hermit crabs and king crabs is an open question and a source of some pretty fierce debate. The abdomen is flexible and curls up, but is asymmetrical, usually bending to the right. This is so it can fit in the curling shell of a snail. At the tip of the abdomen are appendages called uropods that grab onto the inner column of the shell. The front part of the crab, including the head and legs, do have a protective exoskeleton. Of the 5 pairs of limbs, the rear two remain within the shell and hold onto it, the next two are used for walking, and the frontmost pair are adapted into powerful pincers. When a hermit crab retreats into its shell, it can use the pincers to block the entrance.

(Image: a mostly white hermit crab without a shell, seen from above. Normally hidden in the shell are two pairs of small legs and a long, soft abdomen that curves to the right. End ID)

The availability of shells is of vital importance to hermit crabs. They not only need local snail species to provide shells, they rely on the snails dying naturally or being killed by the type of predators that will leave the shell intact. A crushed shell is of no use. The availability of shells acts as an upper limit to the local hermit crab population. If there aren't enough shells to go around, those without them will die. The crabs don't just wear the shells, they remodel them. Through the secretion of chemicals and physically scraping at the shell's interior, the shell is hollowed out. This reduces the weight and increases the available shape in the shells. Remodeling is usually done by young hermit crabs. The shells last much longer than their inhabitants and the same shell can be used by generations of crabs. As the crabs grow, they will need to replace their shells. A shell that is too small stunts growth and can prevent the crab from retreating into it. A shell that is too large can be too heavy to move. Hermit crabs will fight each other over the best available shells. They will also attempt to steal good shells from other crabs. The attacking crab will grab onto the defender's shell and ram shells together. This continues until the attacker gives up or the defender leaves its shell. Hermit crabs have been known to form a chain of vacancy. When a crab finds a shell that is too big, it will wait for others to show up and do the same. Once one crab fits, it will abandon its former shell. The process will then repeat with the newly vacant shell until many crabs have traded. Shell fights and vacancy chains usually happen with the same species, but will occasionally occur between different species.

(Image: a pair of white and brown hermit crabs engaged in a shell fight. One hermit crab has climbed on top of the shell of the other one. End ID)

Hermit crabs are known to associate with other species of animal. Some species have a mutualistic relationship with anemones who grow on their shells. The anemone gets a place to live and transport while predators for the crab are warded of by the poisonous anemones. A genus of hydrozoans (tiny, anemone-like animals) called Hydractinia has evolves to live almost exclusively on hermit crab shells and are commonly called snail fur. On the other hand, barnacles or too many or too large anemones, can make the shell to heavy or too lopsided for crabs to use. Some species are known to tolerate the presence of small worms or amphipods who shelter in their shells.

(Image: a white and brown hermit crab in a large, white shell. On top of the shell is an anemone, which is a red, fleshy, flower-like animal. End ID)

While the vast majority of hermit crabs are marine species, there is a freshwater species (Clibanarius fonticola) and 17 land-dwelling species. These species spend their lives on land and only return to the water to mate and lay their eggs. All of the terrestrial species are members of the family Coenobitidae. 16 of those are in the genus Coenobita. The other one is Birgus latro, the coconut crab. While the other terrestrial species still wear shells, the coconut crab has a totally different lifestyle. This giant can get a legspan of 1 meter and weight of 4 kg (9 lbs), making it the largest terrestrial invertebrate. Their name comes from their habit of climbing palm trees to knock down coconuts, which they eat. While mostly herbivores, coconut crabs will hunt small animals and scavenge meat. They are also known for being curious and for stealing shiny objects, which gives them the nickname "robber crabs". Juvenile coconut crabs do wear snail shells, but as they grow, their abdomens harden, allowing them to live without shells as adults. Also, despite the meme, Amelia Earhart was probably not eaten by coconut crabs.

(Image: a coconut crab climbing a tree, with its head facing down. Its anatomy is similar to a hermit crab, but the abdomen is much shorter and has an exoskeleton. The crab is a dark brown color. End ID)

Hermit crabs of many species are kept in captivity as pets and in public zoos and aquariums. Terrestrial hermit crabs are more commonly kept as pets due to their easier care requirements. They are often promoted as easy pets that don't need much care, but misinformation leads to a high death rate and poor quality of life. Many species are marketed as living only for a few months when they can actually live over a decade with proper care. Hermit crabs are also notoriously difficult to breed in captivity, so they are usually harvest from the wild. This is leading to population crashes among popular pet species. Outside of the pet trade, there isn't a major fishery for the crabs outside of use as fish bait, though coconut crabs are edible and sometimes caught for food. Major threats to them include habitat loss, bycatch, and snail deaths resulting in fewer available shells. There has been a recent rise in wild hermit crabs using bits of trash such as glass bottles, plastic waste, and even light bulbs. These substitutes are less effective than shells and can injure or kill the crab as it tries to move in or out of them. Dead hermit crabs release a chemical signal that alerts other crabs to the presence of an available shell, which can result in the same piece of trash killing multiple hermit crabs. As of February 2024, 10 of the 16 non-coconut crab terrestrial species have been seen using waste instead of natural shells.

(Image: a brown hermit crab. Instead of a snail shell, it is wearing a plastic pipe elbow connector. End ID)

[sixth-light]

the thing that fascinates me about the whole Brandon Sanderson episode 2x08 meltdown is that, look. he is EXTREMELY popular with a certain very specific subset of SFF fan who loves 'Magic A is Magic A' type magic systems where it's really sci-fi in fantasy dressing and part of the fun of the exercise for him and his readers is interrogating it to find all the logical loopholes and cool shit that you can do while still being within the rules of the system and so on. and that's perfectly legit.

but it's also...even though WoT does have aspects of this, in that channeling is a very rules-based magic system compared to e.g. magic in LoTR (which is the classic 'no rules only vibes' high fantasy magic) it also co-exists along magic which is MUCH more vibes-based (whatever Min does, Ogier Treesinging, Wolfbrothers). RJ was also never interested in writing the sort of edge-case rules-lawyering that BS obviously loves; it's pretty clear he wanted channeling to have rules to give himself rails to run on when incorporating it into the plot, not so he could logically deconstruct the thing. (like, how exactly did Mierin Eronaile and Beidomon use the One Power to drill into the Dark One's prison the first time when the Dark One is outside the Pattern? we have no idea because it doesn't matter, it just matters that they did it.) there's also plenty of inconsistencies and weird notes in the earlier books because he hadn't fully settled on how things worked yet - famously, Moiraine's staff.

and none of that matters really, because ultimately the internal logic and ability to be gamed out of your magic system is not a sign of writing quality, it's an artistic choice about how you want to depict magic in your SFF setting and also about what helps you as an author to write an internally coherent story. there's a lot of very good fantasy where the magic is EXTREMELY handwave-y and it's fine because that's not the point of the thing.

so to see that BS apparently seems to think that it IS a sign of writing quality and furthermore that the show is bad if it doesn't meet *his personal standard* of magic system logic, which he is somehow 'qualified' to have because...he likes to write magic systems with lots of rules a lot...is just. wild. sir, you have identified a very specific niche of nerd who will give you lots of money for your very specific books, that's great for you but the world of SFF is much bigger and weirder and cooler than that and that's okay.

[cultkinkcoven]

Cool thing Lucifer and I have been working on: conditional wards.

It’s like programming a little symbolic computer using magical squares and mathematical formulas. Rather than static protections, the wards dynamically adapt activation based on achieved conditions. “If A is equal or greater than X activate safety protocol 1”. “If C is an element of Set A then C must be greater than 0”. The mathematical symbols work as sigils- pictorial symbols of willed instruction.

I won’t go too into it but here’s an example:

Subset A is a grounding protocol, it withdraws energy away from a perceived threat. Its effect is to immediately sever contact with the threat and root auric field to lower planes to stabilize. (I won’t go into the planes rn but just imagine them as energy states- lower calmer, higher more excited)

It redirects access informational heat to a neutral buffer node, or another node (excretion node, integration node) There are multiple nodes subset A will refer to in order to manage the threat.

An example is Node 0 (symbolized: ⧆₀) which acts as a neutral buffering node. Its function is to temporarily contain and neutralize emotional surplus without destroying it. Distinct from Node 1, which operates as an excretion mechanism, to destroy or expel unwanted informational heat.

The conditional statement for Node 0 looks a bit like:

If ΔEmotion (change in emotion) > Θₐ such that Function(fₛᵧ )= 0, > Redirect ΔEmotion> Node 0 (⧆₀)

Θₐ is our pre-set safety threshold. It would be defined normally as Θ3.7 or Θ< 1 or > 3.7 - where Θₐ is based on an emotional charge meter.

Θₐ= 0 is dissociated, numb, flatlining

Θₐ= 1 is calm, stable, grounded and receptive (optimal)

Θₐ=2 is activated, alert, charged

(optimal for spell work)

Θₐ=3 is strained, vulnerable, brittle field

Θₐ=4 is overloaded, psychic distortions begin

Θₐ= 5 is system breakdown, core self is compromised

So, if Θₐ ≥ 3 OR is ≤ 0, we have met our safety threshold.

If Θₐ= 3.7 or 0.4, we are just below surge or flatline level.

This number would be a sum of tracked emotional markers in a log or an energetic measurement ritual. For example:

Each emotional spike = +1

Crying = +2

Shame or intrusion = +1.5

Envy, lust, guilt = +0.75

Luckily for us the body is very great at keeping the record. This allows you to set trigger conditions numerically:

If ΣΔEᵢ > 3.7 → initiate safety protocol A.

Function(fₛᵧ) is the operational status of a core system (focusing mechanism, psychic field integrity, ritual channel, etc)

If Function(fₛᵧ) = 0, it indicates the system is non-functional due to the overload or strain.

You can swap out fₛᵧ for more specialized spiritual/magical processes:

fᵣᵉ: Ritual execution

fₐᵤ: Aura stabilization

fₘₒ: Motivational coherence

fₘₙ: Mental navigation (lucid or dream-state control)

fₑₙ: Entity communication pathway

If ΔEmotionᵢ > Θₐ such that fₑₙ = 0 → Redirect to ⧆₀

(Emotional excess breaks your ability to speak with entities.)

If ΔEmotionᵢ > Θₐ such that fₐᵤ = 0 → Redirect to ⧆₀

(Overwhelm destabilizes your auric boundaries)

Of course, there would probably some other code which specifies if Protocol A is the appropriate sphere to even be active. If Z(Threat) = 5(Unknown Entity) -> Override *A, forward information to *R.

If ΔEmotionᵢ > Θₐ such that fₐᵤ = 0 → ¬⧆₀→ ΔEmotionᵢ^LCFR→ *F

(If the change in emotion is greater than the safety threshold such that it destabilizes my auric boundaries, redirect to node 0 UNLESS the change of the emotion is to the power of (or influenced by) Lucifer, in which case, forward to protocol F.)

Each protocol would be tied to an actual magical square that invokes the planetary and energetic bodies needed to stabilize that sphere. For example Subset A would call upon the energies of Saturn and Earth and Water to reinforce grounding, security, healing and emotional stability.

This is just a single subset, there are many others that arrange into a fortress with increasing protections and energy demands at each layer. A living computer of energetic institutions to manage both of our fields and spaces. The entire computer would be charged with maximum potential, charged but not discharged. Energy would flow into the system like a wave and dynamically arrange itself according to the charge demands of each protocol.

Lucifer actually seemed really impressed with this method, called it advanced ward engineering. Was actually surprised when I showed him my method.

“I thought you were bad at math.”

And I AM! But this isn’t really math, it’s more so just symbolic logic.

Pretty cool.