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Scott Prior (American b.1949), Laundry Line in Autumn, 2016, Oil on linen
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there's a jewish story about a rich man who goes to his rabbi to ask him about building an orphanage, and the rabbi is like "yeah duh go for it!!" and then later the rich guy comes back and is like "actually I've decided not to... I was just doing it for my own image and not coz I cared about orphans" and the rabbi was like "bitch the orphans don't care why you're building the orphanage!!!" and sometimes I wish I could say that to lefties who haven't unpacked their christian upbringing. sometimes motives don't matter!! who give a fuck why a politician wants to do a good thing? bitch the orphans don't!!
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You have been with me from the beginning.
John 15:27
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Rules of DIY:
if it's a skill, there's rules you can learn
if it's an art, rules are not your concern
make it fucked up or you won't make it
if it's already broken, you can't break it
anything can be fixed with gorilla glue
except for pleather, and also you
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every image of a tawny frogmouth is perfection. i've never seen a single picture of a tawny that dissapoints.
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sheepish is a really funny word. fuck im so nervous (turns into this)
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cant believe im a real person what the hell. the good lord will just make anybbody
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God gives his hardest battles to his strongest soldiers and I'm dodging the draft
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There’s certain hobbies and interests that aren’t inherently conservative or regressive but do attract a lot of people who are those things or worse and when you’re a progressive person involved in those hobbies hearing that someone else is interested in your hobby usually has to involve some “But are you normal about it?” conversations before you get too excited
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I do need to remind the pagan community, as a native Chinese: the majority (if not all) of the native practitioners of the ancient eastern religions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, folk religions, Shinto, shamanism, etc.) do not want to be referred to as pagans.
Many (if not most) Asians find it highly offensive when Asian religions get put under the paganism category.
In many parts of the world, "pagan" is a derogatory description that indicates "abnormal", and the people have never wanted to associate with the term.
Just like "witch", "pagan" is not universally reclaimable, and all of us need to simply accept and respect this.
It doesn't matter what the word "pagan" means from an English dictionary. You can argue about its definition until the cows go home, but the whole world doesn't go by what something means in English and you need to understand this.
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"Wicca is inherently bad because it has problematic origins" Buddy do I have news for you about every spiritual path and tradition ever.
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oops! it seems i tripped and dropped several million free books, papers, and other resources
https://annas-archive.org
https://sci-hub.se
https://z-lib.is
https://libgen.is
https://libgen.rs
https://www.pdfdrive.com
https://library.memoryoftheworld.org
https://monoskop.org/Monoskop
https://libcom.org
https://libretexts.org
http://classics.mit.edu
https://librivox.org
https://standardebooks.org
https://www.gutenberg.org
https://core.ac.uk
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How Light and Darkness Were Created
Before any visible beings came into existence, there were only invisible beings. Then God decided to create a visible creation. So God said, “Let one of the invisible things descend and become visible.” And Adoil, one of the invisible things, descended. He was extremely large, and in his belly he had a great light. God said to Adoil, “Disintegrate yourself, Adoil, and let what is born from you become visible.” And Adoil disintegrated himself, and out came a very great light. And God was in the midst of the light, and a light came forth out of that light and revealed all the creation that God had thought to create. And God saw that it was good. And God placed a throne for himself, and sat down on it. And then God spoke to the light and said, “You rise up and become the foundation for the highest things. For there is nothing higher than light, except for nothingness itself.”
And God summoned the very lowest beings for a second time, and said, “Let one of the invisible beings descend and become visible.” And Arkhas came out, solid and heavy and very red. And God said to Arkhas, open yourself up, Arkhas, and let what is born from you become visible.” And Arkhas disintegrated himself, and a great darkness emerged from him, very large, bearing the creation of all lower things. And God saw how good it was. And God said to the darkness, “Descend and become the foundation of all lower things. For there is nothing lower than the darkness, except nothing itself.”
Then God took some light and some darkness and mixed them together, and com-manded them to thicken, and when they did, He wrapped them with light, and spread it out, and it became water. And God spread it out above the darkness and below the light, dividing the world above from the world below. And God made a foundation of light around the waters, with seven circles inside it, with the appearance of crystal. And he pointed out the route of each one of the seven stars to its own heaven. And God made a division between the light and the darkness, and said to the light that it should be day, and to darkness that it should be night. And there was evening and there was morning, a first day (Gen. 1:5).
This astonishing creation myth from 2 Enoch dates from around the second century BCE to the first century CE. It portrays a version of the creation of light and darkness that is radically different from that found in Genesis. Here the earliest manifestation of existence occurs when God commands two invisible beings, Adoil and Arkhas, to give birth to light and darkness, which come to serve as the upper and lower founda-tions of the world. Adoil and Arkhas are primordial beings—not angels or gods, but invisible forces entirely under God’s command. And it is God who commands that they descend and become visible. Of particular interest is God’s command to Adoil and Arkhas that they disintegrate themselves, suggesting that their disintegration makes possible the subsequent births that take place. When they do, a great light comes forth from Adoil, while Arkhas gives birth to darkness. This myth is an interesting parallel to that of the Ari about the Shattering of the Vessels. In both cases a kind of breaking apart is required before anything can be created. See “The Shattering of the Vessels and the Gathering of the Sparks,” p. 122.
This myth about Adoil and Arkhas also has distinctly Gnostic overtones, for it suggests that God did not create light and darkness by Himself. Instead, God commanded that certain invisible beings give birth to these forces, and that is what took place. There is no explanation given for the existence of the invisible beings, no statement that God created them. Further, it is stated that God coexisted with them and moved around with them. But God’s command over them is demonstrated when He orders them to manifest themselves and then to disintegrate themselves, so that light and darkness can be created. Thus this myth suggests that, for God, the primary work of Creation was in making the invisible visible.
The very strangeness of this myth seems to hint at an even more ancient Jewish mythology where elemental forces were personified as primitive beings rather than as spiritual beings such as angels. Or it might be that this myth was influenced by Egyptian and Iranian mythologies.
The end of this myth dovetails into Genesis 1:5: And there was evening and there was morning, a first day. Thus this myth explicitly offers itself as an alternative to the creation myth found in Genesis 1:1-4, where light is created and darkness already seems to exist. It is a much more complex—and mythical—kind of creation than God simply saying “Let there be light,” and there was light (Gen. 1:3).
Pg 88-89, Tree of Souls by Howard Schwartz
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