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It's also important to remember that placebo effects *are* real and measurable. Aside from that, just the feeling of control you can get from casting some spell intended to help you can also be a moral boost that helps you. Also also if we assume you were already working towards a specific goal, you might find yourself casting a spell with an intended effect only for that effect to then happen.

Also also also God works in mysterious ways.

i am sure you have answered this one million times but like. what was up w the dudes making grimoires. do we think they believed all that shit and just were too afraid to test it? or did it work for them? was it symbolic? assumedly it depends from person to person but like do we know what any of their deals were.

You gotta remember that basically the only people actually participating in the european grimoire tradition were priests. If you actually look at a lot of the spells, it's stuff like "bind a demon that allows you to learn really fast" a particularly useful thing for someone mired in clerical work.

When you think about it, it's not that different from prayer. The church has sanctioned that you can pray to god, and he is listening, and he may answer your prayers. The Bible says sheydim can be bound with names of God, and Christ has power over all demons, so why not conjure up a demon and temporarily enslave it to your will? It's not actually that different from mailing a prayer to God by way of angels and saints.

Grimoire magic was supressed because clerical authorities have a vested political interest in controlling how people can interact with God. Heterodoxy cannot be tolerated past a certain point, or you risk a schism, and thus a potential rival organization.

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best places to look for information on gnosticism? any particularly fun reads or quirky youtubers or anything? morgue keeps showing up on my feed but i'm not entirely sure about the vibes there.

I don't know who that is. Read The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels.

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Lord Eric, heir to the duke of Hornwood (OC)

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How do you come up with all of the weird races and techno-babble for Amber Skies? There’s so much of it and I could never keep track

A lot of them are based on existing historical stuff. Like the Lwes-Atalan are based on some shit I read about the similarities between native Caribbean politics and the mercenary city-states of the holy roman empire. I really like how island nations tend to have these very complex networks of power based on control of shipbuilding and fresh water. It's all simultaneously insular to the island but interconnected to the others like how every little Italian dutchy was it's own little kingdom.

So I liked to imagine an ithsmus nation of a 100 little royal families ruling over their own little Venices. They're all constantly hiring each other to steal each other's land, and the whole thing is held together by a quasi-religious legal system that had its origins on who gets to irrigate their crops and when. And also they're big clam people.

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Shit man, this wizard war is fucked

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Everyone welcome Nami to the Strawhats! 💖💖💖

So far we have Luffy as a sun conure, Zoro as a red tailed hawk, and Nami as a baltimore oriole!

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Art by 星空

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everything in the natural order is either a miasma or a crystal

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Polymer balls that are invisible in water

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greta was time's person of the year a few years ago. she was adored by all liberal world leaders and parties. and when she learnt about people's struggle under occupation and colonialism, she stood in solidarity with them . she now stands with palestine and armenia and kashmir and every oppressed person in the world. she could have been rich as fuck by simply remaining as a climate activist. yet she chose to do the right thing. i love her for her integrity.

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In the "I Was Absolutely NOT Expecting This" dep't...

...I was searching for those one-day-at-a-time travel boxes for prescription medications, right? And this came up.

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Signs of No Kings Hollywood

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i got these knockoff boots online and instead of the brand name on the tag they have the name of an apparently nonexistent martin scorsese movie??? what the fuck

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I was recently rendered speechless by this snippet of Epic: The Musical sung by Morgan Clae and covered by Rose the Mermaid (https://va.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_s5h952180H1qejsnd.mp4) and I found the original audition by Morgan Clae, whose acting is haunting. Haven't been captivated like this in a *while*.