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Lady Godiva by Jules Joseph Lefebvre (1891)

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🌿📖

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Charlize Theron as IMPERATOR FURIOSA MAD MAX: Fury Road│2015

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The Tudors (2007-2010) | s01e04 | 8/?

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In my dreams, you’re with me

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Under the Oak

Sunday’s rainstorm fed the marsh with box elder flowers and papery samaras; the whirlybirds and pollen float like a verdant oil slick across the shallow water.

We stroll past, hoping to spot a foal along the wooded embankment. Hearing a quickfire rustle -- like tavern matches clumsily struck

on their paper book -- we stop In the shade to look. We crane our necks over wild raspberry bushes, their thorns clawing at the loose threads in our polyester shorts.

Standing under the oak, its heavy leaves point at the pavement, hanging over our heads like a thousand serrated knives.

We see nothing but the burst sheath of a cattail: downy seeds trembling in the wind, gripping the bending reed.

I spot a worm twirling in the dirt beside your bootheel and I pull at your shoulder to save it from your giant steps.

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The problem with neo-paganism for me is that they are not living traditions. People want to connect with their ancestors and the spirituality of their ancestors, but the problem is, they've never met their ancestors. They were not raised by their ancestors. They do not share a world view with their ancestors. And, their ancestors did not choose to write things down. You can say they didn't have the technology, or, you could also say, they didn't need to. They didn't need to because they were part of a living oral tradition. And, our later ancestors changed and sometimes deleted those traditions.

Inevitably, even if it comes from a place of good intent, neo-paganism is recreationism, like experimental archaeology, and recreationism has a blurry line between itself and recreation, in the sense of a leisure activity, akin to live action role playing.

Neo-pagans tend to see this as an insult, I guess, I mean I was banned from r/pagan by anonymous mods, but they really shouldn't. It is simply an analysis. I suppose there is nothing controversial about this analysis to me, because I have always seen all religions as made up. The difference is, with a living tradition, you have something made by layers and layers of generations, each of whom have added, subtracted, and changed the tradition in the course of their lives, and in enculturating the next generations. Living traditions are aged. They are rich, complex, and internally contradictory.

Neo-pagans on the other hand learn about pagan beliefs from communities of people who have created a new thing from books they've read, Wikipedia, reddit, or world-built out of whole cloth. This whole thing grew out of Victorian era recreationism, which grew out of the 18th century Romantic movement.

If you are going to practice neo-paganism, know your true roots, at least.

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Chloe Salaman as Princess Elspeth in Dragonslayer (1981).

I was a high school freshman and crushed on this princess. Intelligent. Beautiful. But, why would she sacrifice herself like that? I mourned her in secret and barely cared about the main characters. I weirdly obsessed on this minor character in a way than I am embarrassed to admit even now, forty years later.

But, I know now why she did what she did.

The writers were navigating between a very old and dark idea of the virgin sacrifice and a the modern idea of strong female characters with agency, who direct their own fate, hence the intelligent and ethical princess.

They wanted their virgin sacrifice scene but had to justify it for modern sensibilities. Schrodinger's cake that is both eaten yet not eaten.

The result is something even more horrifying and ridiculous than the original trope. Here we have an intelligent character with agency who knowingly chooses to sacrifice herself and does so in a way that is stupid and pointless, sneaking past the hero, into the dragon's lair, forfeiting her life so that her body could become a tasty dinner for the cute little dragon cubs that were going to be killed anyway. I mean, they had barely just killed her and taken a couple bites out of her before they were killed by the hero. Just a waste. She was driven by a 2-dimensional code of ethics with no emotional depth.

Still, a pretty good movie for what it is.

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Gertrude Abercrombie, The Ivory Tower (1945)

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Gertrude Abercrombie, The Church (1938)

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90% of poetry on tumblr = first person, lost love, prose formatted as poetry

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Midwinter's End

Fractural icy enclosure Damaged beyond repair Holding what's left of me Decent and peaceable Now susceptible to threats As I hibernate in umbra Unaware of the ill omens

wpm

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Luna from "The Gods Who Preside Over the Planets" c. 1529 by Master I.B. German

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Notre grand tourment dans l'existence vient de ce que nous sommes éternellement seuls, et tous nos efforts, tous nos actes ne tendent qu'a fuir cette solitude. Albert Camus

** (auteur photographie inconnu jusqu’alors)