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#KUPALA - Jerry Heil, alyona alyona, Ela.

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Diana Khomutina

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Holiday in the Village (Kupala Night) Vladimir Golub, Belarusian

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Sergiy Kapran, Ukrainian

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Kupala’s Night in Lublin, Poland

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Celebrations of summer solstice in the Museum of Lublin Countryside, Poland.

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Kyiv, Ukraine: Women in traditional Ukrainian costume dance and sing traditional songs during the Ivana-Kupala celebration at the Mamayeva Sloboda open air museum in Kyiv. Kupala Night, also known as Ivana-Kupala, is a midsummer holiday in many Slavic countries. Among the common rituals, women may float wreaths down a river to divine their romantic fortune, and couples leap hand-in-hand over bonfires in a bid for future togetherness.

Photograph: Alexey Furman/Getty Images

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The Eve of Ivan Kupalo/Vecher nakanune Ivana Kupala, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, 1968

“A master of Ukrainian poetic cinema, Yuri Ilyenko gained world-wide acclaim as the cinematographer of Parajanov’s Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. As a director, he stands proudly in the anti-realist tradition of Dovzhenko: of his nine films, all but one were banned until last year, when A Spring for the Thirsty stunned SFIFF audiences. The Eve of Ivan Kupalo-based on Gogol’s rendering of a Ukrainian folk tale-is probably Ilyenko’s most inspired and experimental work. The opposite of what one expects from a film taken from peasant mythology, it is neither quaint nor corny, and doesn’t depend on broad acting and hearty singing. Suffused with the earthly pantheism of a half-pagan Christianity, Ilyenko’s film celebrates the unbridled passions of a people linked to nature and the rites of the seasons, to animals and the spirits of the forests. The story-a young peasant’s pact with the evil spirit in order to win the hand of a rich man’s daughter-is a simple parable of the evil power of gold over man. The cinematic treatment is dazzlingly complex, a series of astonishing and inventive images-boldly composed in color Cinemascope-married to an equally ambitious sound montage of music and stylized effects.”

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Depiction of Ivan Kupula Night - Midsummers Eve

Artist Unknown

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Kupala Night (21/22 June) - Slavic Celebration of  summer solstice. 

Girls may float wreaths of flowers (often lit with candles) on rivers, and would attempt to gain foresight into their relationship fortunes from the flow patterns of the flowers on the river. Men may attempt to capture the wreaths, in the hope of capturing the interest of the woman who floated the wreath. (via Wikipedia)

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Budapest mayor says city will organise Budapest Pride, circumventing Orban's legislation

BUDAPEST, June 16 (Reuters) - The city of Budapest will organise Hungary's Pride march by the LGBTQ community on June 28 as a municipal event celebrating freedom, Budapest's liberal mayor said on Monday, in a move to circumvent a law that allows police to ban LGBTQ marches.

Hungary’s parliament, in which Prime Minister Viktor Orban's right-wing Fidesz Party has a big majority, passed legislation in March that creates a legal basis to ban LGBTQ marches, citing protection of children. It also lets police use facial recognition cameras to identify people who attend.

Pride organisers have said the 30th Pride march in Budapest would proceed despite the new legislation, and on Monday Budapest Mayor Gergely Karacsony said in a video that the city would team up with organisers. The mayor added since the march will be a municipal event - a celebration of freedom - "no permits from authorities are needed."

Karacsony said Budapest's history was about freedom and solidarity.

"In this city, there are no first- or second-class citizens. In this city we know that we can only be free together," he said. "So in this city, neither freedom, nor love can be banned, and the Budapest Pride cannot be banned either."

Government spokesperson Zoltan Kovacs did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Orban, who faces a challenging election in 2026, pushed through constitutional changes in April stipulating that Hungary recognises only two sexes, male and female.

His government has a Christian conservative agenda and its intensifying campaign against the LGBTQ community has aimed to please Fidesz's core voters, mostly in the countryside.

Orban has said organisers "should not even bother" organising Pride in Budapest this year.

Over the past 15 years of Fidesz's dominance, Orban has appealed to conservative Hungarians who believe their country is in a struggle to protect its Christian identity - from Muslim immigrants to what they call "gender and LGBT ideology" allegedly foisted on the central European country by Brussels.

His government's anti-LGBT campaign escalated in 2021 when the Fidesz-dominated parliament passed a law banning the use of materials seen as promoting homosexuality and gender change at schools, citing again the need to protect children.

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Today’s advice from your Goth Auntie

Unclench your jaw, have a snack, take your meds.

Do an Onerous Task that future you will thank you for.

The Lurking Horror accused the Cursed Object of eating all the jam. Lurky’s suspicions aren’t unfounded.

❤️ Auntie Jilli

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Learning Herbs with the Four I’s: Intellect, Instinct, Intuition and Imagination

Article by Dana O'Driscoll, The Druid's Garden

Anyone who follows a nature-based spiritual path is often interested in the different ways that the land offers food, shelter, medicine, and more.  One of the ways that I’ve deepened my awareness and connection to nature is through the practice of herbalism.  Herbalism is a wonderful practice because it is a path of connection and wisdom surrounding your local ecosystem (at least the way I practice and teach it). But, those newer to herbalism often wonder what the best approach is to learn herbalism: there’s medicine making, body systems, botany, energetics and tissue states, herbal contraindications, holistic health, and so many other areas. A foundation of any herbal practice is wisdom about plants: where and how they grow, when their medicine is most potent, their actions, how they taste, and their energetics.  You can know a great deal about the other areas I listed, but without the basic knowledge of plants—none of the other areas of learning matter as much.  In this post, I’ll offer a comprehensive introduction to getting to know medicinal plants, herbs, and trees using the framework of the Four I’s: Intellect, Instinct, Intuition, and Imagination.

Read the full article on The Druid's Garden and check out Dana's herbalism series and published works!

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Okay, here’s a new one.

In a new paper published in Physical Review D, the researchers propose a new model for the origin of the Universe - claiming that its formation is the result of a gravitational collapse that generated a massive black hole, followed by a ‘bounce’ inside, which means that our universe may have emerged from the interior of a black hole formed within a larger parent universe. They are calling the new model the ‘Black Hole Universe’, offering a radically different view of cosmic origins which is grounded entirely in known physics and observations The paper suggests that rather than the birth of the Universe being from nothing, it is the continuation of a cosmic cycle - one shaped by gravity, quantum mechanics, and the deep interconnections between them. While the existing standard cosmological model, based on the Big Bang and cosmic inflation, has been successful in explaining the structure and evolution of the Universe, it leaves some fundamental questions unanswered.  Professor Gaztanaga said: “The Big Bang model begins with a point of infinite density where the laws of physics break down. This is a deep theoretical problem that suggests the beginning of the Universe is not fully understood.  “We’ve questioned that model and tackled questions from a different angle -  by looking inward instead of outward. Instead of starting with an expanding Universe and asking how it began, we considered what happens when an overdensity of matter collapses under gravity.”

(See also "Kicking The Can Up/Down The Road", Universe Creation variant...)

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y'all it's about to get really fucking humid and hot