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The Veg Passages Blog: Evidence That Jesus and The Original Aramaic Christians Were Vegetarians, By James Bean (Expanded, Updated)

“As long as Man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings, he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.” (Pythagoras)

“Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet.” (Albert Einstein)

“Be on guard, so that your hearts do not become heavy with the eating of flesh and with the intoxication of wine and with the anxiety of the world, and that day come upon you suddenly; for as a snare it will come upon all who dwell upon the surface of the earth.” (Jesus, Luke 21:34, Evangelion Da-Mepharreshe — Old Syriac-Aramaic Manuscript of the New Testament Gospels)

“Go and find out what is meant by the scripture that says: ‘It is kindness that I want, not animal sacrifices.’” (Jesus, Gospel of Matthew 9:13, Good News translation)

The carnistic premise or bias of Western church tradition about eating meat is solely based upon European dietary customs without any awareness of the vegetarian ethics of the original Jesus movement and antecedents of the Hebrew Christians such as the Prophets, Essenes, Therapeutae, also the Nasoraean John the Baptist movement. As part of their apologetics some press into service a few often-repeated verses in order to reinforce their already established preference for eating meat.

It is said, “That which enters into the mouth doesn’t defile the man; but that which proceeds out of the mouth, this defiles the man.” That’s Matthew 15:11, which is often used by some as a thought-canceling verse to shut down the conversation about vegetarianism and Christianity. But if we closely examine the earliest sections of the New Testament, the honest observer will notice that for many in early Christianity vegetarian ethics did matter greatly, that the apostle Paul was having some serious disputes with others in the early church over diet, and about eating meat that had been sacrificed to idols in pagan temples.

And we will discover a Jesus movement that was not only adhering to a vegetarian diet as part of its ethical code referred to as “the Yoke of the Lord” (in the Didache, the Lord’s Teaching Through the Twelve Apostles to the Nations), they were also opposed to ritual animal sacrifice in the temple of Jerusalem.

How can this be, if diet didn’t matter, we encounter voices even within what can be thought of as mainstream Christianity saying things like this? “The consumption of animal flesh was unknown up until the great flood. But since the great flood, we have had animal flesh stuffed into our mouths. Jesus, the Christ, who appeared when the time was fulfilled, again joined the end to the beginning, so that we are now no longer allowed to eat animal flesh.” (Saint Jerome, translator of the Latin Vulgate Bible)

Below you will find vegetarian sayings of Jesus from many sources — canonical and extra-canonical — along with a collection of passages revealing that the Apostles of the Jesus Movement were also vegetarians, following in the footsteps of their spiritual Master. In addition, I include examples of pro-veg passages from some early church fathers and many other writings too.

This article is intended to serve as a major resource on the web for many seeking greater access to the vegetarian passages from early Christianity and related spiritual movements of antiquity, along with references from various scholars exploring the evidence for a vegetarian Jesus at the beginning of Christianity!

For those not acquainted with Judeo-Christian history and the various collections of writings or scriptures from the early centuries A.D., at first glance, or at least on the surface, it appears that Jesus ate fish and John the Baptist dined on insects. Certainly European oriented Christianity enjoys portraying it that way. The uninformed Sunday school notion of the disciples of Jesus forever remaining fisherman lives on in the minds of many.

When it comes to vegetarianism and Christianity the first question people always ask is: “In the scriptures aren’t there passages describing Jesus as serving fish on a couple of occasions, as well as eating lamb during the Jewish holiday known as Passover?” They have inherited the belief that Jesus was a meat-eating-Messiah. Some might also cite a verse about John the Baptist eating insects (locusts).

Dueling Gospel Traditions — Pro-Meat and Pro-Veg

There are two traditions within Buddhism: pro-meat and pro-vegetarian. Each have their own sutras or scriptures serving as proof-texts.

The same is historically true with Christianity: the original Jesus Movement or Hebrew Christians (sometimes called Aramaic Christians, Ebionites or Nasoraeans) with their gospels vs. scriptures associated with Paul and what evolved into the Roman church.

The Gospels of the Hebrews and Ebionites describe a vegetarian ethos: a vegetarian Jesus and vegetarian Apostles, a John the Baptist who ate carob (locust beans) — beans not bugs! and a rejection of ritual animal sacrifice, be it in pagan temples or the Jewish temple of Jerusalem.

For the followers of Paul, dropping the vegetarian dietary requirement of the Jesus Movement was a way to make it easier to get more converts around the Roman Empire.

In Sikhism as well we see a similar kind of shift away from the earlier vegetarian ethics of the founder, Guru Nanak, towards meat-eating gradually getting adopted by orthodox Sikhism.

In each of these cases the original spiritual movements were vegetarian, but later versions of these paths eventually accommodated the diet of the larger cultures around them swelling their ranks.

For most, living their busy lives and not interested in difficult research, this is an all-too-complicated history of Passover lambs eaten or not eaten, locusts vs. locust beans, and other “fishy” choices made by certain gospel manuscript copyists adding extra servings of fish to the menu. Most stay stuck with whatever diet and beliefs they’ve grown up with. Change (metanoia) is not their way. So on the question of diet they just

see what they wish to see

and change shall never be.

Those on a spiritual quest seeking truth are sometimes more flexible and willing to change. Only a compassionate heart will figure this out.

What About Those Pesky ‘Fishes and Loaves’?

The original version of the “Feeding of the Multitude” story only refers to bread, not bread with fish. “Fish” apparently got added to some gospel verses later on. Keith Akers points out the existence of different versions of the biblical story — the Feeding of the 5,000 or the Multitude:

“If you look at other accounts of the same incident… If you look, for example, at the Early Church Fathers, who also talk about these stories, Irenaeus mentions the feeding of the 5,000. Eusebius also mentions that, and Arnobius, another early church writer also discusses Jesus’ feeding of the multitude, the miraculous feeding of the multitude.

“And in every case they discuss the bread but they don’t mention anything about fish. So I think that fish is a later addition. In fact, if you even look at the New Testament, it says, at another point, when Jesus is talking about the feeding of the five thousand, he says, ‘Don’t you remember when I fed the multitudes and all the bread that we took up?’ And he doesn’t mention the fish.” (Keith Akers, see, Fish Stories in the New Testament: https://compassionatespirit.com/wpblog/2012/01/31/the-fish-stories-in-the-new-testament )

Also see: The Lost Religion of Jesus: Simple Living and Nonviolence in Early Christianity, pages 126–129), on fish as a later addition:

And see: Keith Akers, Was Jesus a Vegetarian? https://www.compassionatespirit.com/wpblog/2015/12/01/was-jesus-a-vegetarian )

Matthew 16:9’s Loaves Without Any Mention of Fish: “Do you not yet perceive? Do you not remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many baskets you gathered?” No fish included with the loaves there.

Mark 8:16–21 — Again… another example of bread but no fish being mentioned in connection with the Feeding of the Five Thousand.

Irenaeus (125–202) lived during the Second Century and described in detail the Miracle of the Multitude being fed with bread. No mention whatsoever of fish. Eusebius and Arnobius also never mention ‘fishes with the loaves’, only the loaves. And now I’ve found two more references in early Christian apocryphal writings, again mentioning the bread but not the fish, as if in the New Testament they were reading at the time, the feeding of the five thousand story didn’t include fish… because the ‘fish’ hadn’t been inserted into Greek gospel manuscripts yet.

As it now stands, in the New Testament Gospels: “The bread is everywhere present, but the fish only sometimes. This strongly suggests that the original tradition was about distribution of bread, not bread and fish. In the case of Matthew 16:9–10, the insertion of fish becomes obvious, because the editors of Matthew changed the original story to include fish but forgot to change Jesus’ backward reference.” (Keith Akers, The Fish Stories in the New Testament: https://www.compassionatespirit.com/wpblog/2012/01/31/the-fish-stories-in-the-new-testament )

There are actually many examples of “textual variations” in the diversity of New Testament manuscripts, with words or phrases either being added or omitted. In New Testament manuscripts, while there are some textual variations throughout, by far, the majority of variations occur with the Four Gospels and the Book of Acts. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_major_textual_variants_in_the_New_Testament

And see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textual_variants_in_the_New_Testament

The most spectacular example of this is at the end of the Gospel of Mark, which has several different alternate endings depending on what manuscript one happens to be using:

“Manuscripts omitting Mark 16:9–20

Manuscripts adding a shorter ending after verse 8

Manuscripts adding a shorter ending and verses 9–20

Manuscripts adding verses 9–20

Manuscripts adding verses 9–20 with a notation

Manuscripts adding verses 9–20 without divisions”

See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_16#Scholarly_conclusions

So it’s interesting to notice that fishes are not always included with the loaves in the various accounts of the “Feeding of the Five Thousand” mentioned in the New Testament gospels and other sources.

And friends, far more than just this one example of fishes being added to the loaves in Second Century manuscripts, textual variants with New Testament manuscripts extend to scores and scores of passages deep into the Second Century and beyond according to honest scholarship, and I can only agree with their research.

The Gospel of John Chapter 21, Another Late Addition

“John 21 is the twenty-first and final chapter of the Gospel of John in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. It contains an account of a post-crucifixion appearance in Galilee, which the text describes as the third time Jesus had appeared to his disciples. In the course of this chapter, there is a miraculous catch of 153 fish, the confirmation of Peter’s love for Jesus, a foretelling of Peter’s death, and a comment about the beloved disciple’s future… According to Helmut Koester (2000), similar to the Pericope Adulterae, John 21:1–25, though present in all extant manuscripts, is also widely recognized as a later addition. A redactor is thought by some to have later added some text to the original author’s work.” (Wikipedia entry for John 21: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_21 )

And see, Fish Stories About Pythagoras and Jesus, by Keith Akers, also discussing John 21: https://compassionatespirit.com/wpblog/2022/04/04/fish-stories-about-pythagoras

An Important Observation About the Fish Symbol

“…We should maybe keep in mind that fish was a well known mystical symbol… The Greek word for fish (Ichthys) was used as an acronym whose initials in Greek stood for ‘Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior’.” (Ted Altar, Did Christ at Least Eat Fish? https://ivu.org/history/christian/christ_veg.html )

In any case, “It’s not where you’ve been; it’s where you’re going,” as the saying goes. Many of us have changed our diets upon adopting a spiritual path or converting to a new religion. While several of the disciples are described as having once been fisherman, and there are clearly a few references to fish in the New Testament gospels composed for gentile readers, we find Jesus saying to his new friends: “Come, follow Me and I will make you fishers of men [fishers of people, souls,].” (Matthew 4:19, Mark 1:17) So rather than remaining fisherman, perhaps operating some Sunday school imagined Jesus Fish Company of Galilee — some sort of lifelong career as fisherman, in other words — RATHER THAN THAT — what we do find is those individuals adopting a new spiritual path, being transformed into disciples and eventually even becoming spiritual teachers.

Scroll down to see the section below titled: The Vegetarian Apostles (Leadership of the Original Jesus Movement).

The original disciples of Jesus may have disappeared from view in the pages of the New Testament but their journeys continued and the libraries of early Christian texts offer much more information about the life and teachings of the various Apostles of Christ. Rather than fish metaphors, a variety of different sources in early Christianity described these Apostles as being vegetarians, as they got older, becoming the founders of various spiritual communities as the successors of Christ, focused on the teachings of Jesus.

“James, the brother of the Lord, lived on seeds and plants and touched neither meat nor wine.” The Apostle Thomas: “He continually fasts and prays, and abstaining from the eating of flesh…” “…The Apostle Matthew partook of seeds, and nuts, hard-shelled fruits, and vegetables, without flesh.” (these apostolic veg passages with attribution of sources is to be found further below in the section titled, The Vegetarian Apostles, Leadership of the Original Jesus Movement)

Peter: “Then Peter answered: ‘To do anything for pleasure, not for the sake of necessity, is to sin and therefore I earnestly entreat you to abstain from all animal food, in the hope that by this you may be able to retain your self-restraint, and not to be overpowered by the allurements of pleasure. For in the beginning, the eating of flesh was unknown until after the flood, when, against their will, men were compelled to use the flesh of animals, because all things that were planted had been destroyed by the waters… But let no one think that by abstinence from things offered to idols he will fulfill the law. For what commands us to keep ourselves from idolatry also teaches us that we should eat only of the fruits of trees and seeds and plants, and abstain from all animal food, and from all injury of animals; and with regard to our food, that it should be purely vegetable.’” (Why God Has Forbidden Certain Foods, Book of the Clementine Homilies)

Peter said, “I live on olives and bread, to which I rarely only add vegetables…” “The unnatural eating of flesh meats is as polluting as the heathen worship of devils…” (Peter, Clementine Homilies)

We even get to directly hear from several of those Apostles in various early Christian writings: gospels, acts, revelations, spiritual discourses, homilies, and letters of Peter, James, John, Thomas, Bartholomew, Barnabas, The Teaching of the Twelve, etc… See the online e-library, Early Christian Writings: https://www.earlychristianwritings.com

In the Ebionite scriptures of the early church, the followers of Jesus, “the faith once delivered to the saints”, as it is said in the Book of Jude, there are no fish stories of young disciples of Jesus being involved in eating fish. In the Ebionite scriptures of the Jesus movement there are no accounts of Jesus eating fish or miracles of multitudes being fed fish. There are no descriptions of Jesus consuming the flesh of any animal. Rather, those contain sayings of Jesus condemning the eating of meat. (See: The Ebionites: https://www.compassionatespirit.com/wpblog/category/religion/ebionites )

According to the Gospel of the Ebionites, Jesus rejected the Passover meal: “I have no desire to eat the flesh of this Paschal Lamb with you.”

Furthermore, in the Ebionite scriptures Jesus condemned animal sacrifice in the temple of Jerusalem and sought to forever bring that practice to an end. The Ebionite or Hebrew Gospel quotes Jesus as saying, “I have come to abolish the sacrifices, and if you cease not from sacrificing, my wrath will not cease from you.” (Panarion 30.16.5)

Below see the sections titled, Jesus Stopping Animal Sacrifice in the Temple, The Biblical Basis For Vegetarianism, and, Uncovering a Vegetarian Jesus (Yeshua) at the Beginning of Christianity.

See, The Acts and Teachings of the Ebionites: The Recognitions of Clement: https://compassionatespirit.com/Books/Recognitions/Recognitions-TOC.htm

See, The Acts and Teachings of the Ebionites: The Clementine Homilies:

Followers of John the Baptist: The Mandaean Gnostic Tradition

The Mandaeans are a living religion with ancient gnostic roots. They are a surviving branch of the old Nasoraean movement once existing in the Trans-Jordan region associated with John the Baptist and closely related to the early days of the Jesus movement. John the Baptist is considered by the Mandaeans to be their great prophet. In the Mandaean scriptures are preserved accounts of the life and teachings of John the Baptist including a book of the Sayings of Yuhana (John).

“Within Mandaeism, John is venerated as the greatest prophet and is regarded as a renewer and reformer of the ancient Mandaean faith… John is mentioned by the Roman Jewish historian Josephus and some scholars have proposed that he may have been associated with the Essenes, a semi-ascetic Jewish sect known for practicing ritual baptism. Most scholars agree that John baptized Jesus, and several New Testament accounts indicate that some of Jesus’ earliest followers had previously been disciples of John. Many historians also suggest that Jesus himself may have been a disciple of John.” (Mandaepedia entry for John the Baptizer)

John the Baptist was a prophet with large number of followers in Israel and Transjordan regions. After his passing, several of his successors headed what became various rival Nasoraean (Nazorean) sects, one of those being Jesus and the Jesus movement. “Again Jesus said to his disciples: Truly I say to you, among all those born of women none has arisen greater than John the Baptizer.” (Matthew 11:11, George Howard’s translation of Shem-Tov’s Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, a version of canonical Matthew described as “the oldest extant Hebrew version of the Gospel of Matthew”)

“Do not eat animals. Don’t eat a dead one, not a standing one, not a falling one, not a pregnant one, not one that has ambushed a wild animal.” (Ginza Rabba — The Great Treasure — Mandaean Scriptures, Mark Lidzbarski and Ram Al Sabiry)

“Before Him [the King of Light, Supreme Being] they do not offer a sacrifice, do not eat meat, do not drink wine of pleasure and do not sing before him a song of Sacrilege.” (Ginza Rabba — The Great Treasure, Mark Lidzbarski and Ram Al Sabiry)

“And they do not slaughter (sacrifice) before Him, nor do they eat any flesh-meat.” (same passage from another translation of the Ginza Rabba)

Ethel Stefana Drower, the great Mandaean scholar of the 20th Century noticed vegetarian passages like the ones above in the Mandaean scriptures she was translating and asked some Mandaean priests about them.

In her book, The Secret Adam, E.S. Drower writes:

“Amongst Mandaeans there is an oral tradition that some of them were once vegetarians.”

“…Several pious Mandaeans have told me that a deeply religious man forswears meat and fish. It will be seen in the legends that the Nasorai are represented as vegetarians…”

“The Essenes, together with other Jewish sects, seem … to have imbibed, possibly from Iranian-Indian sources, the idea that slaughter was a crime, and that sacrifice of animals was unpleasing to the powers of light and life. The Essenes were vegetarians. It is possible that early Christianity derived its symbolism of a substituted victim, and the symbolism of bread for the flesh of the victim and wine for its blood, from this school of Jewish-Iranian thought.”

“Josephus mentions that the Essenes were vegetarians, and Porphyry, quoting Eusebius, says that the Magians were divided into three classes, those who abstained from eating any living creature, those who abstained from domestic animals, and those who would not touch any and every animal.”

Was John the Baptist Really A Bug-Eater?

Another example of translators deliberately trying to add meat to the menu (the canon of scripture) is the strange case of John the Baptist and his alleged diet of locusts. From wiki answers:

“There has been a long-standing confusion in the etymological origin of the word locust. Locust is both a bean from the carob plant and an insect. The Greek word for cakes or bread made from the flour of the carob bean is ‘egkrides’ and the Greek word for locust the insect is ‘akrides’.

There’s a very old Syriac-Aramaic manuscript of the Four Gospels that even predates the Syriac Peshitta called Evangelion da-Mepharreshe. It contains some “textual variants”, differs from the Greek gospel manuscripts, and the now standardized, conformist approach used by most New Testament translators often copying from each other. There are two surviving editions of Evangelion da-Mepharreshe, the Curetonian Version of the Four Gospels as well as the Sinai Palimpsest, also known as The Old Syriac Gospels. Evangelion da-Mepharreshe represents a translation and “one of the earliest witnesses” of an even older collection of gospel manuscripts that no longer exist but once were “in circulation between the second and the fifth centuries”, according to page xviii of the, “Peshitta New Testament, The Antioch Bible English Translation”, Gorgias Press, discussion from the Preface about the history of the early Syriac-Aramaic manuscripts of the gospels.

In the Old Syriac-Aramaic Gospel of Matthew 3:4 John the Baptist’s food is described as being “locusts and wild honey of the waste”, as in honey of the wasteland or wilderness. https://archive.org/details/cu31924092359680/page/10/mode/2up?view=theater

There are two Greek words with almost identical spelling: ‘e-g-k-r-i-d-e-s’ [“egg-kre-days”] referring to carob pods, also called locust beans and Saint John’s bread, as they can be ground up into flour and used to make a kind of middle eastern flat bread or pancake. And, we also have the Greek word for locust, the insect, spelled ‘a-k-r-i-d-e-s’ [“ak-re-days”].

John’s food, however you may define the meaning of the word ‘locusts’ and the meaning of ‘wild honey’, occurs naturally in the wild according to all the references we have, be they canonical or non-canonical, New Testament Gospels or the other gospels and writings of early Christianity.

“In ancient texts the references to “honey” in antiquity “can refer equally to honey produced by bees, or to any number of other sweet substances, including dates, figs, pods, or sap/gum from carob or other trees.” (John the Baptist’s Wild Honey and Honey in Antiquity, by James A. Kelhoffer)

“For this reason, [the historian] Eva Crane warns concerning possible references to bee honey in ancient civilizations: “‘Unless the context makes clear a connection with hives, bees, or honeycomb, caution is warranted’” (“History” 453). It is therefore difficult to ascertain which sweet substance is designated as “honey” in certain ancient writings. Yet most scholars do not even consider which type of honey the Baptist ate. Many others simply assume that he ate bee honey or sweet tree sap (sometimes referred to as honey-water), apparently unaware of the inherent ambiguity in almost any occurrence of [wild honey] without an accompanying reference to either bees or vegetation (trees). (John the Baptist’s Wild Honey and Honey in Antiquity, by James A. Kelhoffer)

“John the Baptist belonged to a group of ascetics who believed in repentance and in leading an austere lifestyle. The carob bean was seen as the diet of the lower class who normally endured hardship and exploitation from the priestly class. So we can conclude that JTB [John the Baptist] ate (locust plant) seed from the carob tree.”

Due to a mistranslation of a particular Greek word in certain gospel manuscripts John the Baptist has gained the most unfortunate caveman reputation of being a bug eater, an eater of locusts. It’s supposed to be locust beans (“egkrides”), used to make a kind of Middle Eastern flat bread or cake from carob flour, not bugs (“akrides”)! If we examine early Christian writings and learn of the Nasoraean movement the Prophet John was associated with, a wilderness sect operating near the Jordan River maybe somewhat related to the Essene branch of Judaism, we will discover references to the vegetarianism of John the Baptist and his disciples (Sabians, a “People of the Book”). Contemporary scholars have also recognized this and written about it.

Robert Eisenman in, James the Brother of Jesus writes:

“It has been suggested that the word ‘locusts’ [in the New Testament gospels] is based on a garbling from either the Hebrew or Aramaic into the Greek. A similar problem is encountered in the Book of Acts’ picture of another of James’ directives to overseas communities, ‘to abstain from strangled things’, also seemingly a garbled translation of some kind. One suggestion is that John ate ‘carobs’; there have been others. Epiphanius, in preserving what he calls ‘the Ebionite Gospel’, rails against the passage there claiming John ate ‘wild honey’ and ‘manna-like vegetarian cakes dipped in oil’.

“He [the church father Epiphanius complains that they substitute ‘honey cakes’, which had ‘the taste of manna’, for ‘locusts’…. The ‘honey’ of Israel seems to have been a syrup made from either dates, carobs, or grapes, and, according to Exodus 16:31, ‘manna’ had the taste of ‘cakes made with honey’.

“Regardless of translation problems and mis-transliteration from one language to another, it is pretty sure that John would have been one of these wilderness-dwelling, vegetable-eating persons.” (Robert Eisenman)

According to the Hebrew-Ebionite Gospels, John the Baptist really ate locust (carob) beans and carob bean flour:

“Probably the most interesting of the changes from the familiar New Testament accounts of Jesus comes in the Gospel of the Ebionites description of John the Baptist, who, evidently, like his successor Jesus, maintained a strictly vegetarian cuisine.” (Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew, pp. 102, 103)

Says Robert Eisenman in, James the Brother of Jesus, p. 240 — “John… was both a ‘Rechabite’ or ‘Nazarite’ and vegetarian”, p. 264 — “One suggestion is that John ate ‘carobs’; there have been others. Epiphanius, in preserving what he calls ‘the Ebionite Gospel’, rails against the passage there claiming that John ate ‘wild honey’ and ‘manna-like vegetarian cakes dipped in oil. … John would have been one of those wilderness-dwelling, vegetable-eating persons”, p. 326 — “They [the Nazerini] ate nothing but wild fruit milk and honey — probably the same food that John the Baptist also ate.”, p. 367 — “We have already seen how in some traditions ‘carobs’ were said to have been the true composition of John’s food.”, p. 403 — “his [John’s] diet was stems, roots and fruits. Like James and the other Nazirites/Rechabites, he is presented as a vegetarian …”.

There is a ‘vegetarian’ depiction of John the Baptist’s diet in the old Russian-Slavonic edition of the Book of Josephus. Josephus actually quotes John the Baptist as saying: “I am pure; [for] the Spirit of God has led me on, and [I live on] cane and roots and tree-food.” Josephus says of John: “And every animal he abhorred [as food], and every wrong he rebuked, and tree-produce served him for use.”

While it’s likely to be true that some Christian redactors added interpolations to Savlonic Josephus, they don’t seem to be very “orthodox” redactors, but added material reflecting views about John the Baptist in circulation during the early centuries. In this case this makes their interpolations a valuable contribution as they provide us with another rare glimpse into early Christian views about John the Baptist having a diet of plants, not insects. And we do find confirmation of this in other writings of the period.

Tony Burke’s New Testament Apocrypha volumes have made a valuable contribution to our understanding of early Christian beliefs and history. I highly recommend all three volumes.

The Life and Martyrdom of John the Baptist supplies us with some additional context about John’s wilderness diet of plants and a the sap in plants as being the natural sweet substance or nature’s “honey”. The Life and Martyrdom of John the Baptist is attributed to Mark the Evangelist, was written in Greek, and originally studied in Syria: “So, at once he [John the Baptist] was filled with the Holy Spirit, and he traveled into the wilderness. He was brought up in the wilderness, eating tips of plants and the sap in the plants.” (New Testament Apocrypha — More Non-canonical Scriptures, Volume One, by Tony Burke)

The Life of John the Baptist by Sarapion was composed in Egypt in the Coptic language: “While holy John lived in the desert, God and his angels were with him. He led a strict ascetic life in great devoutness, did not eat anything but grass and wild honey and prayed and fasted constantly, waiting for the salvation of Israel.” (New Testament Apocrypha — More Non-canonical Scriptures, Volume One, by Tony Burke)

Don’t know what to make of the grass reference, other than to say, it’s once again a reference to plants, not bugs!

A footnote from New Testament Apocrypha, Volume I: “Since asceticism and devoutness generally required abstaining from eating meat altogether, many traditions [mention] a vegetarian [diet] of some sort [in connection with John the Baptist]. See James A. Kelhoffer’s book, The Diet of John the Baptist, for more details.”

More early Christian apocryphal writings have come to light, have been made available in English. These add to the surprisingly large collection of vegetarian references in early Christian writings regarding the diet of John the Baptist. New Testament Apocrypha, Vol. III, by Tony Burke was published and some John the Baptist books are included. In one of the earlier volumes there was a John the Baptist text made available for the first time in English that has a vegetarian passage regarding John’s diet in the wilderness. Included in the third volume are, The Birth of Holy John the Forerunner, and, The Decapitation of John the Forerunner, both containing plant-based passages about John’s diet consisting of “locusts from the tree” (in the Middle east called “the Saint John’s Tree”, and “Carob Tree”) and “wild honey”, also “an abundance of bread and wild honey dripping from a rock”.

Clearly there was an understanding in early Christianity that this was referring to locust beans (carob pods), not insects. Carob pods do look a bit like locusts hanging from tree branches, hence the name. Locust beans can be ground up and used to make a kind of Middle eastern carob flour flat bread. There’s a “cakes dipped in honey” reference in the Gospel of the Ebionites. The wild “honey” was not from bees but sticky desert fruit of some kind.

Robert Eisenman in, James the Brother of Jesus, writes: “Both carobs and figs were considered to exude ‘honey’.” Where the confusion or overlap of either ‘fig’ or ‘carob’ trees associated with these stories is concerned, both were considered by tradition to grow apart in rocky places and produce a kind of ‘honey’ that was eaten — usually as poor man’s food. In Rabbinic sources the passages ‘honey out of a crag’ (Deut. 32:13) and ‘honey out of a rock’ (Ps. 81:16) were applied to these genera of trees. Again, we have the overlap with the food ascribed in Christian sources to John.

Dr. James D. Tabor is Professor of Christian Origins and Ancient Judaism in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. He writes:

“The most commonly held view of John’s diet, based on our text in Mark, is that he ate locusts, a migratory form of the grasshopper…, still commonly consumed by desert peoples in Arabia. Others have suggested the word translated “locusts” refers to the beans of the carob tree, commonly called “St. John’s bread.” However, the Greek word translated as “locusts” in the New Testament seems to clearly refer to a species of grasshopper. The problem is such eating of “flesh,” even if that of an insect, seems to contradict the sources that emphasize John the Baptist’s ascetic vegetarian ideal. Paul, for example, refers to members of the Jesus movement who abstain from eating meat and drinking wine (Romans 14:1–4). We also have traditions that James, the brother of Jesus, practiced a strictly vegetarian lifestyle, which was also common among the Jewish Christian community that became known as the “Ebionites”. Somehow “locusts” seem out of place.

“A possible solution to this confusion about John’s desert-diet is found in the fragments we have of the lost “Gospel of the Ebionites,” as quoted by the 4th-century Christian writer Epiphanius (Panarion 30.13.4–5), who hated the group but fortunately, nonetheless, can’t resist quoting them, thus preserving some precious material. The Greek word for locusts is very similar to the Greek word for “honey cake” that is used for the “manna” that the Israelites ate in the desert in the days of Moses. According to this ancient text, it was not locusts but these cakes cooked in olive oil. If this is the case then John would have eaten a cake of some type, made from a desert plant, similar to the “manna” that the ancient Israelites ate in the desert in the days of Moses. This “bread from heaven” and the taste of it was like wafers made with honey” (Exodus 16:31; Numbers 11:8). This kind of “pancake” baked in oil, and sweetened with honey, would then reflect and emulate the ideal holiness of the desert wanderings of Israel when the people had to look to God alone for “daily bread.”” — Dr. James D. Tabor: Did John the Baptist Eat Bugs, Beans, or Pancakes? https://jamestabor.com/did-john-the-baptist-eat-bugs-beans-or-pancakes

Some In the Middle East Long Ago Knew About Saint John’s Bread and Carob: “Saint John’s Tree”

Some describe this Saint John’s bread or manna bread as being made of locust bean flour, also known as carob flour turned into a kind of Middle-eastern flat bread or pancake dipped in honey. In fact, there is some common knowledge out there by some, who know about John the Baptist eating bread made of locust bean flour, carob bean flour. Some in the Greek Orthodox Church, Eastern Orthodoxy, and other forms of Christianity are already aware of this understanding about the vegetarian diet of John the Baptist, that it was locust bean flour, not locusts, as in insects. If you google “Saint John’s Bread”, you’ll find quite a few references to this on the web. For instance, this article: ‘St. John’s bread’ comes from carob pods of the carob tree: https://www.redlandsdailyfacts.com/2009/10/28/st-johns-bread-grows-on-carob-tree

“The Carob tree, also known as St. John’s bread, is a native to the eastern Mediterranean region and Israel where it grows naturally as a hedge. The term “St. John’s bread” is because the seeds and sweet pulp of this tree were supposedly the “locust and wild honey” St. John ate the wilderness.”

Some Thoughts About This Cautionary Tale of Venerating Mistaken Translations as Divinely Inspired, and Being Forever Trapped by the Traditions of Men Unable to Learn New Things, or in This Case, Very Old Views About the Diet of John the Baptist

In other words, the manuscript copyists of the New Testament made a mistake, choosing a different Greek word: meaning locust the insect, instead of locust beans. When presented with the locust flour cake or bread reference found in another gospel text… the Gospel of the Ebionites… Epiphanius, who was from Cyprus and lived during the 4th century, wrongly assumed the mistaken version he was familiar with in the gospels to be correct, and the correct version preserved in the Gospel of the Ebionites to be in error. A mistaken translation in some Greek manuscripts of the New Testament gospels is made into something holy, inspired, sacrosanct, and divine, and he dismisses the evidence from the oldest version of Christianity in antiquity, that of the Jesus Movement, the early church, preserved in one of the gospels of the Hebrew Christians… the Gospel of the Ebionites.

Christianity Before Paul (The Original Hebrew Christians or Ebionites) and the Essene Connection

The editing out of vegetarian sayings, (scroll down and see below the reference to the Aramaic-Syriac translation of Luke 21:34, Evangelion Da-Mepharreshe), adding fish to the Feeding of the Five Thousand in second century Greek manuscripts, and translators choosing the word “locust” instead of carob, giving John the Baptist an unusual diet of bugs, are all troubling examples of slanting the translations or tampering with texts — adding meat to the menu. We know that Roman culture and later European church traditions were OK with eating meat. What interests me however is the diet of Jesus and the first Christians, not the dietary preferences of Roman translators of manuscripts centuries later.

It needs to be said that the familiar Western or European canon of scripture seemingly allied with Saint Paul, does not even claim to be representing the teachings of the Apostles, the original inner circle of Jesus’s disciples, the first Christians.

Paul did advocate that it was OK for new converts to eat meat, but he himself supplies us with evidence in his own letters (‘epistles’) dating back to the early decades of the First Century AD (around 50 AD) that others in early Christianity disagreed with him about diet and many other issues. It turns out that Paul dropped the vegetarian requirement for his new gentile converts. If you read his New Testament Epistle to the Galatians closely, you can notice there was quite a bit of tension between Paul and the original Jesus Movement based in Jerusalem (‘the others’). In his writings Paul gives them ‘left-handed compliments,’ calls them “weak,” “of the circumcision,” and even “Judaizers.” Clearly, he was not close to them but had a strained, frosty, distant, awkward relationship with the original disciples of Jesus. Given their solid credibility and affiliation with Jesus however, Paul couldn’t completely come out and denounce them, but he does greatly marginalize them. They are barely mentioned at all. There’s a few short writings not authored by Paul near the end — at the back of the book — not many of their scriptures got included in the New Testament.

Those in the Jerusalem part of the Jesus movement, Jesus’ own family and spiritual successors headed by the Apostle James the Just, the brother of Jesus and next leader of the Aramaic-speaking Jerusalem community, were all vegetarians. They disagreed with Paul’s sect about diet, believing that Jewish and gentile followers of Jesus, including new converts, should all be vegetarians, and have nothing whatsoever to do with religious rituals pertaining to animal sacrifice (“eating meat that has been sacrificed to pagan idols”).

How could it be that Jesus’ own family, the actual group of direct, spiritual successors and first disciples, would have it all wrong about diet, and forms of Christianity that were founded decades and centuries later, got it right? The truth of the matter is that the Hebrew gospels did not portray Jesus as eating fish or Passover lamb, and in those gospels, John the Baptist did not eat any insects. Paul’s group, and those sects that emerged later on in Europe claiming succession from Paul, had their literature, but so did the Ebionites, the Hebrew Christians. There were pro-meat gospels intended for gentile readers in the Roman world as we all know, but there were also vegetarian gospels directly associated with the Christ followers (Hebrew Christians): the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, Hebrew Logia of Matthew, the Gospel of the Hebrews, the Gospel of the Nazarenes, the Gospel of the Ebionites, and other Ebionite and pro-Nasoraean literature including the Clementine Homilies and the Recognitions of Clement, a kind of Ebionite Book of Acts. These are not ‘channeled’ or recently composed writings, but scriptures that have long been known to scholars and were used by other branches of Christianity from the Middle East in antiquity. What survives of these scriptures can be found on the shelves of most seminary libraries. Sometimes these books are called “extra-canonical writings”, “apocrypha”, or “lost books of the Bible.” These are books of someone else’s Bible or collection of scriptures — in other words, sacred texts once used by other forms of Apostolic or indigenous Christianity long ago in Israel, Syria (Mesopotamia), Turkey (Asia Minor), Egypt, Ethiopia, the Mediterranean region, etc…

The Jewish Christians called themselves “The Ebionites.” “Ebionite” is a word derived from Hebrew meaning: “The Poor,”, and were the first Christian community described in the New Testament Acts of the Apostles (4:32–35), a spiritual or intentional community that shared all of their possessions in common.

The Biblical Basis For Vegetarianism

The Genesis ideal presented in the early chapters of the Hebrew Bible is vegetarian. The Plant-Based-Diet of Eden:

“Behold, I have given you every seed-bearing herb which is upon the surface of the entire earth, and every tree that has seed-bearing fruit; it will be yours for food.”(Hebrew Book of Genesis 1:29, a translation quoted at a vegan Kabbalah website)

Only after the ‘Fall of Man’ and post ‘Flood’ phases is there meat-eating according to Genesis, and ritual animal sacrifice.

Quite often, spiritual movements advocating going back to Eden, re-entering a heavenly paradise, entering into a golden age, millennium, kingdom of God, or mystical reunion with God include vegetarianism as part of their spiritual path. From the beginning and across the many centuries there have always been vegetarian Jewish movements, the Nazarites, Essenes, Sethians, Therapeutae and many others.

The Essenes were one of the three major branches of Judaism, and predates Jesus and Christianity at least by a couple of centuries. During the First Century AD, the Essenes were opposed to animal sacrifices being made in the Jewish temple and they were also known to be vegetarians. The Essenes were the group that Jesus and the first Christians, the Ebionites, were closest to, sharing with them many of the same values and sacred texts. Unlike the Sadducees and Pharisees, the Essenes are never criticized in the New Testament. The Hebrew church was largely populated by messianic Essenes.

This earlier Essene movement within Judaism adhered to a vegetarian diet, and had also been opposed to animal sacrifice in the temple of Jerusalem. That is the context within Judaism. The Essenes (of Dead Sea Scrolls fame), the John the Baptist group, the Mandaean Gnostics (also known as Nazarenes, Nasuraiia or Nasoraeans) and the Jesus movement had much in common and are related to each other. For instance, followers of the original Jesus movement are sometime called Ebionites, and that term Ebionite also appears in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Scholars continue to debate the exact nature of their relationship. In any case, these groups shared many of the same values, scriptures, and spiritual beliefs.

The Essene-like Community of the Therapeutae, The Children of the Dawn

With the people of the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Essenes, we mainly have their writings with few descriptions of the sect. With the Therapeutae we don’t have their scriptures but there are detailed accounts of daily life in their community.

Like the Essene community at Qumran near the Dead Sea, where the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, the Therapeutae community was also located near a large body of water: Lake Mariout, just outside the city of Alexandria in Egypt.

Like the Essenes, the Therapeutae were vegetarians: “…And the table, too, is kept clear of animal flesh, nothing which has blood, but there is placed upon it bread for food and salt for seasoning, to which also hyssop is sometimes added…” (Philo of Alexandria, On The Contemplative Life, where you can learn more about the Therapeutae community)

A Vegetarian Ideal Described by Isaiah in the Book of Isaiah 11:6–9:

The prophecy described in the Hebrew Bible, the Book of Isaiah 11:6–9 foresees a return to a vegetarian world like that described in the earliest chapters of the Book of Genesis — back to Eden, where the cow, bear, snake, and the children of humanity coexist in peace. Lambs and wolves will feed together and lions will be vegetarians again:

“The wolf will live with the lamb,

the leopard will lie down with the goat,

the calf and the lion and the yearling together;

and a little child will lead them.

The cow will feed with the bear,

their young will lie down together,

and the lion will eat straw like the ox.”

The New Testament Book of Revelation 21:4 adds: “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death, or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

For the Essene branch of Judaism (of Dead Sea Scrolls fame) the Book of Isaiah was a very central text. Many copies of it were discovered at the Essene library of Qumran. Isaiah was a favorite text of the Hebrew Christians as well, along with another book known as the Ascension of Isaiah.

Dr. Will Tuttle, author of, The World Peace Diet, once told me that for most of the last two thousand years those who have been either vegans or vegetarians have been called “Pythagoreans”, till relatively recently in history when terms like “vegan” and “vegetarian” got coined. Such has been the lasting legacy of Pythagoras upon the West. Though in the Greek world of antiquity, the Pythagoreans were a significant influence on many — were major advocates of vegetarianism and discontinuing religious ritual animal sacrifices in various temples — from passages such as Genesis 1:29, Isaiah 11:6–9, Hosea 6:6 and others, one can understand why Jews and Christians during the late B.C. and early A.D. period could easily see a Biblical basis for their vegetarianism.

If the way of peaceful vegetarianism is the Divine ideal — “Thy Kingdom Come, Thy Will Be Done” — why postpone it for millennia, relegating it to some far away time in the deep distant future? Why not follow the examples of the Essenes and Ebionite Christians and step into this vegetarian ideal today, catching a glimpse of the golden age or paradise right now in the living present? #AssistingIsaiah #BackToEden

A Reflection About Saint Paul’s Leniency For New Converts

“So if what I eat causes another believer to sin, I will never eat meat again as long as I live — for I don’t want to cause another believer to stumble.” (Paul, 1 Corinthians 8:13)

As we see below, the Gnostics were vegetarians, as were some of those early Catholic/Orthodox church fathers as well as the followers of Marcion of Sinope. These held Paul in extremely high regard, so how could Paul really have been the enemy, the opponent of vegetarianism? Maybe he wasn’t! Perhaps at the heart of his dispute with the original disciples of Jesus and Jerusalem Apostles was how he wished to structure his new community of gentile believers. Some in early Christianity developed a two-fold or two-level organisational approach of:

1) “Hearers of the Word”, new converts to the faith, and

2): “the Elect”, those initiates of the Mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven more mature who were “being perfected in love and knowledge” adhering to a stricter discipline that included vegetarianism.

Some successors of Paul certainly did follow this twofold or two-tiered approach in their communities, including the part about the Elect initiates adhering to a vegetarian diet. I suspect Paul did too.

The Hebrew Christians however did not have a two-tiered format: one for new converts or gentile believers, and another for Jews more established in wisdom and knowledge. They only had the one level and ethical standard for all.

Uncovering a Vegetarian Jesus (Yeshua) at the Beginning of Christianity

Epiphanius quotes their gospel, the Ebionite or Hebrew Gospel, as ascribing these words to Jesus: ‘I have come to destroy the sacrifices’ (Panarion 30.16.5), and as ascribing to Jesus’ rejection of the Passover meat (Panarion 30.22.4), and these are analogous to numerous passages found in the Recognitions and Homilies (e.g., Recognitions 1.36, 1.54 and Homilies 3.45, 7.4, 7.8).

“Baptism Instituted in Place of Sacrifices: But when the time began to draw near that what was wanting in the Mosaic institutions should be supplied, as we have said, and that the Prophet should appear, of whom he had foretold that He should warn them by the mercy of God to cease from sacrificing; lest haply they might suppose that on the cessation of sacrifice there was no remission of sins for them, He instituted baptism by water amongst them, in which they might be absolved from all their sins on the invocation of His name, and for the future, following a perfect life, might abide in immortality, being purified not by the blood of beasts, but by the purification of the Wisdom of God.” (Recognitions 1.39)

“… offerings of first-fruits …, because the priest of the Exalted One accepts first-fruits, and these he brings as burnt offerings and sacrificial offerings. I, however, am not of this kind, but offerings of first-fruits from the Indestructible One I bear up to Heaven and outspread them, so that the power of the Truth can appear, because what is destructible has ascended to what is Indestructible…” (from a saying attributed to Jesus excerpted from, The First Apocalypse of James)

From the footnotes on the above passage: “The first-fruits were offered during the Feast of Shavuot. This seems to be an Ebionite-like polemic against sacrifices. Exactly what kind of symbolic sacrifice Jesus alludes to here becomes clear from NH page 42’s ‘the first-fruits of knowledge’”. “‘What is destructible,’ i.e., physical sacrifices.” (Samuel Zinner, edited by Mark Mattison and Rachel Bousfield: https://othergospels.com/1james)

“Professor Bart Ehrman writes in, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew: “It appears that Ebionite Christians also believed that since Jesus was the perfect, ultimate, final sacrifice for sins, there was no longer any need for the ritual sacrifice of animals. Jewish sacrifices, therefore, were understood to be a temporary and imperfect measure provided by God to atone for sins until the perfect atoning sacrifice should be made. As a result, if these (Christian) Jews were in existence before the destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70 CE, they would not have participated in its cultic practices; later they, or at least some of them, evidently remained vegetarian, since in the ancient world the slaughter of animals for meat was almost always done in the context of a cultic act of worship. (meat sacrificed to idols.)

“If the Ebionites had established themselves as dominant, then things would be radically different for Christians today. Christianity would be not a religion that was separate from Judaism but a sect of Judaism, a sect that accepted Jewish laws, customs, and ways, a sect that observed Jewish holy days such as Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashana and other festivals, a sect that kept kosher food laws and … maintained a vegetarian diet.”

The Ebionite or Hebrew Gospel quotes Jesus as saying, “I have come to abolish the sacrifices, and if you cease not from sacrificing, my wrath will not cease from you.” (Panarion 30.16.5)

A Sethian passage from the Gospel of Judas: “And Jesus said to them: ‘Stop the animal sacrifices which you offered up on the altar.’” In a footnote at the bottom of the Gospel of Judas page at OtherGospels.com, the translator, Samuel Zinner, also provides another translation of the saying quoted in the Panarion from the Gospel of the Ebionites attributed to Jesus: “I have come to abolish sacrifices; and if you do not stop sacrificing, the anger of God will fall on you.”

According to the Gospel of the Ebionites, Jesus also rejected the Passover meal:

“Where wilt Thou that we prepare for Thee to eat the Passover?”

To which he replied:

“I have no desire to eat the flesh of this Paschal Lamb with you.”

Jesus Stopping Animal Sacrifice in the Temple

“The dispute over vegetarianism in the early church shows that the leadership of the Jerusalem church was vegetarian. The later history of Jewish Christianity indicates that Jewish Christianity was vegetarian and preserved this tradition of defending animals. Jesus’ attack on the animal sacrifice business demonstrates that Jesus himself shared these views.” (Was Jesus a vegetarian? https://www.compassionatespirit.com/wpblog/2015/12/01/was-jesus-a-vegetarian/#more-2512 )

“When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the Temple courts he found men selling cattle, sheep and doves and others sitting at tables exchanging money. So he made a whip out of cords and drove all from the Temple, both sheep and cattle; he scattered the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. To those who sold doves he said: ‘Get out of here.’ (John 2:13–16)

Most remember the part about Jesus overturning the tables of the money-changers in the temple, but the pro-meat bias most have inherited makes it more difficult to get the significance of the anti-animal sacrifice, freeing the animals aspect of the story.

“Go and find out what is meant by the scripture that says: ‘It is kindness that I want, not animal sacrifices.’” (Jesus, Gospel of Matthew 9:13, Good News translation) Here Jesus was referring to a passage in the Hebrew Bible that was very popular with the Essenes, the vegetarian branch of Judaism that rejected sacrifices in the temple of Jerusalem. Hosea 6:6: “For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgement of God rather than burnt offerings.”

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.” (Gospel of Matthew, a saying attributed to Jesus from a Syriac-Aramaic manuscript)

This same old Syriac-Aramaic manuscript also preserves a vegetarian saying attributed to Jesus. I find it fascinating that both the saying above and this one appear to be slightly longer in this manuscript than their counterparts in the Greek New Testament, and the Greek manuscripts of Luke have the vegetarian part of Luke 21:34 edited out.

A Vegetarian Saying of Jesus in the Old Syriac-Aramaic Manuscript of the Gospel of Luke: “Be on guard, so that your hearts do not become heavy with the eating of flesh and with the intoxication of wine and with the anxiety of the world, and that day come upon you suddenly; for as a snare it will come upon all who dwell upon the surface of the earth.” (Jesus, Luke 21:34, Evangelion Da-Mepharreshe — Old Syriac-Aramaic Manuscript of the New Testament Gospels)

Vegetarianism and the Yoke of the Lord in the Didache (The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles)

In an early Christian text called the Didache is a statement to new gentile converts to do the best they can, giving them time to adjust or transition to the ethical ideals of the Jesus Movement: “If thou art able to bear the whole yoke of the Lord, thou wilt be perfect. But if thou art not able, what thou art able, that do. But concerning meat, bear that which thou art able to do. But keep with care from things sacrificed to idols, for it is the worship of the infernal deities.”

“The Yoke of the Lord” was a term for the ethical code of the Jesus movement according to the Didache, an early witness to vegetarianism at a time when some of the first gentiles became interested in following Christ. Vegetarianism was part of the Yoke of the Lord and here very opposed to even new converts from day one eating meat sacrificed to idols (“the worship of dead gods” as it’s rendered in another translation). Whoever composed that section of the Didache was part of a sect closer to the James the Just branch than Paul’s version of Christianity. See Didache, chapter 6: https://othergospels.com/didache

One of the earliest pro-Ebionite Christian documents is the Clementine Homilies, a work based on the teachings of Saint Peter. Homily XII states:

“The unnatural eating of flesh meats is as polluting as the heathen worship of devils, with its sacrifices and its impure feasts, through participation in it a man becomes a fellow eater with devils.” (Saint Peter, Clementine Homilies)

Paul however was OK with the practice of eating meat sacrificed to idols that came from various pagan temples. But, like their Essene ancestors, the original Jesus Movement categorically rejected this. The author of the Book of Revelation in the New Testament also denounced this practice. See Book of Revelation 2:12–17: “There are some among you who hold to the teaching of Balaam, who taught Balak to entice the Israelites to sin so that they ate meat sacrificed to idols…”. This passage from Revelation actually contradicts other verses in the New Testament authored by Paul. But… as I mentioned earlier, Paul might have had a different approach where it was OK for new converts (“Hearers of the Word”) to continue eating meat, for awhile at least, but perhaps he had in mind a stricter moral code and spiritual discipline for those growing more mature who eventually would be perfected in love and knowledge (gnosis as part of the inner circle of initiates known as “The Elect”).

The Vegetarian Apostles (Leadership of the Original Jesus Movement)

The first followers of Jesus, also known as Ebionites or Nazoreans, were not only kosher, but strictly adhered to a totally vegetarian diet.

The largest surviving collection of Ebionite scriptures is the Clementine Homilies and the Recognitions of Clement, which are vegetarian gospels that condemn animal sacrifice in any form. For example, the Book of Homilies states that God does not want animals killed at all (3.45), and condemns those who eat meat (7.4, 7.8).

And the passages below also show that the Ebionites’ diet was vegan — plant-based (no eggs, no dairy, no animal products mentioned).

“And the things which are well-pleasing to God are these: to pray to Him, to ask from Him, recognising that He is the giver of all things, and gives with discriminating law; to abstain from the table of devils, not to taste dead flesh, not to touch blood; to be washed from all pollution; and the rest in one word, — as the God-fearing Jews have heard, do you also hear, and be of one mind in many bodies; let each man be minded to do to his neighbour those good things he wishes for himself.” (Clementine Homilies 7.4)

“They [the Apostles] embraced and persevered in a strenuous and a laborious life, with fasting and abstinence from wine and meat.” (Eusebius, church father, Demonstratio Evangelica or “Proof of the Gospels”)

Peter said, “I live on olives and bread, to which I rarely only add vegetables.” (Clementine Homilies 12,6; also see, Recognitions 7,6) And the earlier quoted vegetarian verse attributed to Peter is worth repeating again here: “The unnatural eating of flesh meats is as polluting as the heathen worship of devils, with its sacrifices and its impure feasts, through participation in it a man becomes a fellow eater with devils.” (Saint Peter, Clementine Homilies)

Matthew: “And happiness is found in the practice of virtue. Accordingly, the Apostle Matthew partook of seeds, and nuts, hard-shelled fruits, and vegetables, without flesh.” (Clement of Alexandria, The Instructor, Book 2, Chapter 1)

The Apostle Thomas: “He continually fasts and prays, and abstaining from the eating of flesh and the drinking wine, he eats only bread with salt, drinks only water, and wears the same garment in fine weather and winter, accepting nothing from anyone, and gives whatever he has to others.” (Acts of Thomas, chapter 20)

The Gospel of Philip: “The Gospel of Philip is a Jewish-Christian treatise traditionally attributed to Philip, one of the twelve apostles. Unlike most gospels, Philip presents a systematic theology that explains Christian tradition in the context of the Jewish Law.” (from the Introduction to the text)

This World is an Eater of Corpses

Gospel of Philip 10:10: “This world is a corpse-eater.” The footnote about this passage from the translator at the bottom of the page comments: “This refers to the state of the world-system, in which people live by killing and eating dead animals.The contrast is with the Truth-system, in which people eat what is alive, namely, (Eucharistic) bread. The contrast echoes Thomas 11, which may refer to meat-eaters as opposed to vegetarians.” (Samuel Zinner, edited by Mark Mattison and Rachel Bousfield: https://othergospels.com/philip )

There is also a recent translation of an early Christian scripture called the Acts of Philip, a fuller more complete edition discovered at a monastery library in Greece. It contains some very charming animal stories: The Acts of Philip: A New Translation, by François Bovon and Christopher R. Matthews, ISBN-10: 1602586551, and, ISBN-13: 978–1602586550.

James the Just, Brother of Jesus, Head Apostle and the Next Leader of the Church, was a Vegetarian

Jesus had a brother. He’s referred to by scholars and historians as “James the Just”. According to a wide variety of sources, James became Jesus’s spiritual successor, the next leader of this group, referred to as the “Hebrew Christians” or “Ebionites”.

James became the successor of Christ and next leader of the Jesus Movement! The Gospel of Thomas, Saying 12: “The disciples said to Jesus; ‘We are aware that you will depart from us. Who will be our leader?’ Jesus said to him, ‘No matter where you come, it is to James the Just that you shall go, for whose sake heaven and earth have come to exist.’” (Bentley Layton’s translation)

Though never seeing eye-to-eye with the original Jerusalem community on many things including the issue of meat eating, in his epistles even Paul the rogue Apostle, confirms this leadership role of James the Just, “the Lord’s brother” in Jerusalem, and he himself went to visit him to seek his blessings on a couple of occasions.

“James was a vegetarian.” (Prof. Robert Eisenman in, James the Just, The Key to Unlocking the Secrets of Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls)

“James, the brother of the Lord, lived on seeds and plants and touched neither meat nor wine.” (Epistulae ad Faustum XXII, 3)

“James, the brother of the Lord was holy from his mothers womb; and he drank no wine nor strong drink, nor did he eat flesh.” (Hegesippus, quoted in The Church History of Eusebius, book 2, chapter 23)

And furthermore, wouldn’t everyone in Jesus’s family — brothers and sisters — be following the same diet and ethical code? On what planet would parents raise one child vegetarian from birth but another gets raised as a meat-eater?

Keith Akers makes some great observations in his article, Was Jesus A Vegetarian? “Eusebius says that James the brother of Jesus was a vegetarian, and in fact was evidently raised as a vegetarian (Ecclesiastical History 2.23). Why would Jesus’ parents have raised James as a vegetarian, unless they were vegetarian themselves and raised Jesus as a vegetarian as well? Eusebius also states (Proof of the Gospel 3.5) that all the Apostles abstained from meat and wine.”

Church Fathers And Other Later Voices Affirming the Existence of the Earlier Veg Tradition

“Jacobus [James], the brother of Jesus, lived of seeds and vegetables and did not accept meat or wine.” (Saint Augustine)

“The consumption of animal flesh was unknown up until the great flood. But since the great flood, we have had animal flesh stuffed into our mouths. Jesus, the Christ, who appeared when the time was fulfilled, again joined the end to the beginning, so that we are now no longer allowed to eat animal flesh.” (pro-vegetarian early church father Hieronymus [St. Jerome] who apparently read the Gospel of the Hebrews and was influenced by Ebionite views)

“The eating of meat was unknown up to the big flood, but since the flood they have the strings and stinking juices of animal meat into our mouths, just as they threw in front of the grumbling sensual people in the desert. Jesus Christ, who appeared when the time had been fulfilled, has again joined the end with the beginning, so that it is no longer allowed for us to eat animal meat.” (another version of the same passage attributed to Saint Jerome/Hieronymus)

“Sacrifices were invented by men to be a pretext for eating flesh.” (Clement of Alexandria)

Origen of Alexandria “…was a teetotaler and a vegetarian and he often fasted for long periods of time.” (Wikipedia, citing Greggs 2009, p. 102., and McGuckin 2004, p. 6.)

“The steam of meat meals darkens the spirit. One can hardly have virtue if one enjoys meat meals and feasts. In the earthly paradise [Eden], no one sacrificed animals, and no one ate meat.” (Saint Basil the Great)

The Gnostics Were Vegetarians

Gnostic groups are described as being vegetarian. The Prayer of Thanksgiving, one of the Nag Hammadi books, mentions a vegetarian meal taking place at one of their meetings (a Hermetic or Gnostic sect). The Manichaean Gnostics were known for their vegetarianism. The Prophet Mani’s parents were followers of the Elkasites, which was a slightly later Jewish-Christian sect related to the Ebionites. They were vegetarians. Mani was veg, and his inner circle of followers or initiates also were veg.

Elaine Pagels briefly discusses the connection between a veg Gnostic passage and Indian philosophy in her book, The Gnostic Gospels, quoting the early church father Hippolytus:

“There is…among the Indians a heresy of those who philosophize among the Brahmins, who live a self sufficient life, abstaining from eating living creatures and all cooked food… They say that God is Light, not like the Light one sees, nor like the sun nor fire, but to them God is Discourse, not that which finds expression in articulate sounds, but that of knowledge, or gnosis, through which the secret mysteries of nature are perceived by the wise.” (Hippolytus, Refutation Omnium Haeresium)

Vegetarian Prayer of Thanksgiving in the Nag Hammadi Library (Gnostic Gospels) and Corpus Hermeticum

This the prayer that they spoke:

“We give thanks to You!

Every soul and heart is lifted up to You,

undisturbed name, honored with the name ‘God’

and praised with the name ‘Father’,

for to everyone and everything (comes) the fatherly kindness

and affection and love,

and any teaching there may be that is sweet and plain,

giving us mind, speech, (and) knowledge:

mind, so that we may understand You,

speech, so that we may expound You,

knowledge, so that we may know You.

We rejoice, having been illuminated by Your knowledge.

We rejoice because You have shown us Yourself.

We rejoice because while we are in (the) body,

You have made us divine through Your knowledge.

“The thanksgiving of the one who attains to You is one thing:

that we know You.

We have known You, Light of mind.

Life of life, we have known You.

Womb of every creature, we have known You.

Womb pregnant with the nature of the Father,

we have known You.

Eternal permanence of the begetting Father,

thus have we worshipped Your goodness.

“There is one petition that we ask:

we would be preserved in knowledge.

And there is one protection that we desire:

that we not stumble in this kind of life.”

“When they had said these things in the prayer, they embraced each

other and they went to eat their holy food, which has no blood in it.” *

— The Prayer of Thanksgiving @ Gnosis.org:

“Vegetarian food” — footnote from the Marvin Meyer translation of this in, The Gnostic Scriptures.

This passage is also found in the Epilogue of Asclepius, in “HERMETICA,” translated by Sir Walter Scott: “Having prayed thus, let us betake ourselves to a meal unpolluted by flesh [animalia] of living things.”

The G.R.S. Mead translation of the same verse: “With this desire we now betake us to our pure and fleshless meal.”

“With such hopes we turn to a pure meal that includes no living thing.” (Asclepius, translated in “Hermetica”, Brian Copenhaver, Cambridge University Press)

Also see, The Prayer of Thanksgiving @ OtherGospels.com:

Some Early Church orthodox “Heresy Hunters” used to require meat-eating on Sundays as a way to discover who the vegetarian Gnostics were in their midst! Since Gnostics were generally vegetarians, anyone refusing to partake of fleshly meals would be suspected of heresy:

“While the initial cause for Gnostic vegetarianism has been unknown in the past, many classical Christian authors have documented the Gnostic’s widespread practice of vegetarianism. In a 4th Century Christian document it attests that ‘Heretical Gnostic Christians were still so common, and there were so many Gnostic Heretics among the clergy and monks in Egypt that in the region of Theodosius Egypt, the Patriarch Timothy made eating meat compulsory on Sundays, as a way to flush out the vegetarian Gnostics.’” (Luke Meyers, “Gnostic Visions”)

Inter-Faith Love!

The following passage is from the Recognitions of Clement. This Ebionite Christian author has very nice things to say about those in India who worship One God, follow peaceful customs and laws, and are vegetarian or vegan. Imagine! Clearly he sees parallels between his own religion and that of his brothers and sisters “in the Indian countries.” (Two thousand years ago India was divided up into many kingdoms.) This is one of the most amazing passages I know of in the extra-canonical scriptures, as it is a rare example of one religion (Ebionite, Hebrew Christianity) recognizing “Truth” in another religion (Hinduism), a rare inter-faith moment in human history. The Recognitions of Clement, and The Clementine Homilies are surviving Jewish-Christian texts representing an Ebionite vegetarian point of view:

“There are likewise amongst the Bactrians,

in the Indian countries,

immense multitudes of Brahmans,

who also themselves,

from the tradition of their ancestors,

and peaceful customs and laws,

neither commit murder nor adultery,

nor worship idols,

nor have the practice of eating animal food,

are never drunk,

never do anything maliciously,

but always revere God.”

— Recognitions of Clement, Book 9, Chapter 22, Brahmans, Volume Eight, of the, Ante-Nicene Fathers, page 187, T & T Clark Eerdmans edition.

“Countless there are that remember Thee, and countless those that love Thee;

Countless there are that recite from sacred books Thy praises;

Countless those Thy devotees who contemplate Thy attributes and wisdom; and

Countless those that practice truth and charity;

Countless those who have vowed silence, and meditate on Thee with unceasing love.”

— excerpted from the Morning Prayer of Guru Nanak

Wisdom from the East, The Saints of India

That passage above from Saint Basil the Great mentioning that meals of meat darkens the spirit reminds me of a saying of the Buddha: “The eating of meat extinguishes the seed of great compassion.”

Our Ebionite friends would really love Kabir and the Sants of India, finding them to be kindred spirits and friends of God!

The harshest words that Kabir, a great spiritual Master and poet-mystic from Northern India (loved by Sufis, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Sants and Hindus alike) ever spoke were directed against the slaughter or consumption of innocent animals. Kabir says, “Keep away from the man who eats meat — his company will ruin your meditation.”

It’s hard to reach more subtle states of tranquility in meditation on an animal flesh diet based on the suffering of other beings.

“I must point out that animal food, even if a single particle is eaten, is detrimental to spiritual progress.” (Hazur Baba Sawan Singh)

The following, on the reason why disciples of Santmat advocate following the vegetarian diet, is by Swami Santsevi Ji Maharaj from the book, The Harmony of All Religions (Sarvadharma Samanvy), published by Maharshi Mehi Ashram:

“The saints have addressed the sin of violence with particular attention to the foods which are eaten. Foods which are produced by killing living beings, as well as foods which are not pure and fresh, are considered tamasic. Consumption of these is prohibited by the teachings of the saints. This includes animal products such as meat, fish, and eggs. These foods inhibit the clarity of the mind and the health of the body. There is an old saying: ‘Whatever kind of food we take in, its properties will also fill our mind.’ A parallel saying is, ‘Whatever we eat, just so will our breath smell [indicates the visible effect of food].’

Further, Kabir Sahab says: ‘The kind of food and drink which we consume directly influences how our mind will become. Even the quality of water which we drink will influence our speech.’ These words of Kabir Sahib are not merely rhetorical conjecture, but represent direct experience…

“A great yogi named Bhupendranath Ji Sanyal has said: ‘It is preferable to always avoid the consumption of flesh and fish. This is because in the very cells of these animals there might be bad diseases. But even more significantly, the natural vibration of these creatures is absorbed into the blood. This can create agitation and even sickness, and will destroy the natural calmness of the mind. Also, one must not take intoxicants, as this is a great breach of the spiritual path and natural duty (dharma). [Under the influence of intoxicants people are unable to discern the right path of action].’

“Therefore, we must be disciplined in what we eat and drink, and by being disciplined, our wealth and spiritual path are protected. This world becomes agreeable, and so does the next world, since we won’t be incurring the karmas from killing other living beings.” (Beloved Swami Santsevi Ji Maharaj, Sant Mat, the Path of the Masters)

All past and present Masters of Sant Mat, the most advanced Saints of Inner Light and Sound, advocate following the vegetarian diet. In fact, being vegetarian is a requirement in order to be initiated into the meditation practice of Sant Mat, Surat Shabd Yoga, Meditation upon the inner Light and Sound of God.

Sant Mat is a vegetarian Path for mystical, spiritual, ethical and theological reasons. The Masters teach that foods are of three kinds: Satvik, Rajsik, and Tamsik. This last category of foods, which includes all flesh foods, is to be completely avoided. Satvik (pure foods), the first category, includes: grains, beans, vegetables, fruits, seeds, and nuts. Satvik foods are considered by Mystics to promote relaxation, meditation, and spiritual experience.

The bad karma and other negative effects of flesh-eating darkens one’s vision of inner Light, weighs the soul down, interfering with concentration and meditation. It’s interesting to notice that the Satvik diet of Sant Mat, of Hinduism and the Yoga Philosophy of India is also: the life-extension diet, the anti-cancer diet, the eco-friendly diet, the diet for antioxidants and the other plant-based nutrients, AND the diet of the Light & Sound mystics, East and West, ancient and contemporary.

“I fully endorse veganism as the most humane and compassionate diet that enhances our spiritual life. It is also the best diet for caring for the environment.” (Dr. Jagessar Das, President of the Kabir Association)

“All living creatures seek a life of peace,

So pass your days on this Earth humanely.

Even the heart that beats in an animal’s breast

Knows sympathy, brims with love.

So look on all living creatures with loving compassion — bring to humanity’s night the light of dawn.” (Sant Darshan Singh)

For More on the Veganism of the Jesus Movement and Related Sects of Antiquity, See the Very Fine Research of Keith Akers — Website:

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kaurwreck · 9 months ago

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My actual presumption re: Akutagawa's knightliness and amnesia is that Bram and Akutagawa are sharing a skinsuit, consequently weaving their consciousnesses into the most gothic twink the modern mind is capable of conceiving. (You might assume adding Poe or Percy Shelley would make for a more gothic twink, but the addition of either would destabilize the whole twink, and it would either become immediately beset with late stage rabies or it would drown itself within moments of its wretched birth).

Akutagawa is not entirely Akutagawa. The armor looks decidedly more draconic in the teaser we received at the end of S5, wherein Akutagawa seems to have wholly returned to Atsushi's side— fulfilling Shibusawa's climactic fight comment in Dead Apple that the dragon and tiger deserve each other— in time for the overarching climax.

(That's why I think Fyodor set Shibusawa on Atsushi— he mistook Shibusawa for the dragon that would engage with the tiger, creating a singularity that is the "book" insofar as the book exists. Really, it's a white hole that connects realities, either metaphorically or literally. Or, so I think.)

So, Akutagawa has not yet actualized into the dragon that his rivalry with Atsushi has allowed him to cultivate into over the course of the story, but he's very close. He's also too much of a knight right now, which is Bram's role— Akutagawa was always a rook. Even where Akutagawa is protective, he is not chivalrous or knightly, and his protectiveness does not arise from ordainment or ritual oaths of public service but from the individual promises he's made to others and his city. He also doesn't remember Atsushi. Bram, meanwhile, is nobility with vassals to protect, empowered by the princess to whom he swore fealty with the weight of his ordained station. He also has never met Atsushi.

However, this knightly Akutagawa is not all Bram either. His precise, clipped, and cutting speaking pattern slips between Bram's romantic, archaic denouncements. Akutagawa recalls his own words from his first appearance. He appeared where he was needed most, and he's remaining true to his promises. Rashomon responds to him. Akutagawa is very much there, but insofar as he's backseat driving, Bram has the firmer grip on the wheel.

Notably, knight!Akutagawa seemingly quotes the Kolbrin Bible, after which the chapter is named, which is something of a conspiracy theorist's secular bible that mashes together Celtic and Druid mysticism, Judaism and Egyptology. Allegedly, it's a manuscript written 3,600 years ago that was translated between WW1 and WW2. There is no evidence that any of this is true— it was most likely produced in the 90s, based on its very anachronistic language.

I fucking hate contemporary occultism, I tried to dismiss the Kolbrin Bible as the relevant reference, but I haven't yet found anything more likely (although the day is young). There's some foundation for referencing an esoteric occult publication: the somewhat notorious founder of theosophy, Helena Pavlovna Blavatsky, published a theosophical interpretation of Dostoevsky months after his death; spiritualism absolutely influenced fiction and sci-fi; WB Yeats and George William Russell (luminaries of modern Irish literature) were involved with the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and their works were shaped by their interests in mysticism and the occult. More saliently, Bram Stoker corresponded with prominent occultists and harbored a tempered "writer's interest" in the occult. I am not getting into Houdini's former friend's interest in spiritualism because I hate him, and thinking about him makes me spit bile, but he's another prominent example.

So, there's cause for the reference, and, maybe this sort of text feels right for bsd, which is also an anachronistic alternative history that's mashing together a whole lot of eastern and western influences with little regard for propriety. I'm still not pleased with it, and I hope my shallow look into the imagery from this most recent chapter led me into the enshittified part of the surface web. But, there are some apparent threads worth exploring.

Prior to Akutagawa name dropping the Harbor of Sorrow, Fyodor seemingly also references the Kolbrin Bible (which is, to mirror Fyodor's language below, an imitation religious text):

"The Harbour of Sorrow we leave behind and with four ships sail towards the sunsetting."

At first, I thought the setting sun imagery in Fyodor's exposition was an uncharacteristically blunt reference to Dazai Osamu's novel, but the setting sun in the Kolbrin Bible seems more likely, since in the latter there is an intentional journey towards the setting sun, while the setting sun in Dazai Osamu's novel reflects an aristocratic family's necrotizing decline.

The Harbour of Sorrow in the Kolbrin Bible is described thusly:

They came to the Harbour of Sorrow, which lies by the Hazy Sea, away from the Land of Mists. There great trees grew and smaller trees upon them, and moss hung from them like door curtains. It lay near the great shallow waters South of the Isle of Hawhige and North of the Sea Pass. Green pearls are found there. Many died in the Harbour of Sorrow, for it was a place with a curse upon it, which caused an evil sickness. The Sons of Fire came with Hoskiah and saved them, and they came to this place and built a city.

(I can't help but acknowledge that the character for "Asagiri" in Kafka Asagiri refers to morning mist.)

In modern Western mysticism, "sons of fire" could mean a few different things, but in this context, I'm inclined towards the epithet for Western spiritualists' bastardization of sage kings— "divine" teachers. It may also reference Aaron's sons in the Bible, who were killed by Moses after they committed a profane act before God. As a reminder, shortly before stabilizing Yokohama in collaboration with Mori, Taneda, and Natsume, Fukuzawa either participated in or permitted acts that appear to have been assassinations to facilitate Japan's withdrawal from the Great War, which engendered in him self loathing and shame and shattered his relationship with four others.

(As an aside, I don't actually think Fukuzawa assassinated anyone, or was an assassin by trade— the five swords of Japan are a specific reference to five swords and their mythologies, and I think he must have been the ceremonial purification sword that was never meant to be sharp. It was meant to cut only evil. I think he allowed something to happen that violated oaths he made, so he exiled himself like a ronin who killed his master. The only reason we think he killed anyone, despite Ranpo acknowledging Fukuzawa wasn't an assassin in Untold Origins, is because the Decay of Angel fed "evidence" to the government officials who Nikolai later killed to incite them into pursuing the Agency— there is nothing suggesting that evidence has any merit, and much suggesting it's falsified. This is why I always say not to rely on the bsd wiki— it tends to take these things at face value and doesn't qualify unreliable information.)

Anyway! There are other threads to connect the text above to bsd, including the foreigners present in Yokohama and the Kolbrin Bible's British Isles settings and US + UK modern mysticism. But, to move on to other passages connected to the Harbor of Sorrow.

“When some of us came from the Harbour of Sorrow, we were full of praise at our deliverance from death, but amid the forests of fruitfulness, much of our gratitude and will was lost. Why must men always be better men in the face of disaster and in the midst of privation, than in the green fields of peace and plenty? Does this not answer the questions of many who ask why there is sorrow and suffering on Earth? Why is it the lot of men to struggle and suffer, if not to make better men?

...

"Many who are with us in the light will join us, and then we shall be stronger in arms and strengthened in belief. (Annotation: How few came!) Yet our destiny lies among the barbarians. They are fine, upright men endowed with courage, do not belittle their ways, but bring them into the light.

"Our city was not founded as a marketplace, a place for exchanging only the things of Earth. Neither did we come here as conquerors, but as men seeking refuge.

“My trusted ones, remember that the road of life is not smooth, neither is the way of survival a path of grass. The most needful thing for any people who wish to survive is self-discipline. Think less of gold and more of the iron which protects the gold. Remember, too, these words from the Book of Mithram, The keenest sword is useless unless it be held in the hand of a resolute man. Also, the man who has gold keeps it in peace if he tends his bowstring."

I have not read the Kolbrin Bible, I have immense distaste for modern occultism/spiritualism/mysticism outside of limited and carefully curated, contextualized slices of the same. I also don't make a habit of overly familiarizing myself with the British Isles. I don't have much frame of reference for interpreting the above.

But on a surface reading, the passages in the Kolbrin Bible that refer to the Harbor of Sorrow touch on similar-to-bsd themes of intentional community and finding purpose in protecting and cultivating the light in both the wake and the eve of immense darkness, and finding companionship in those who share your purpose and resolve no matter how differently they may approach the same.

Further, they both embrace that it's not about being golden, but protecting what is gold, which is Kyouka's core arc in Dead Apple as she transitions from trying to protect Atsushi as someone she considers untouched by the darkness within her, to realizing that Atsushi, too, has killed, and that her desire to use Demon Snow to protect those she loves isn't shameful or a betrayal of her mother's memory. This is something that I think the fandom often misunderstands about bsd— the light and dark do not exist in opposition, but in duality. The characters immersed in the dark do not need to be saved; the characters in the twilight have their reasons for finding purpose elsewhere, but that doesn't strip the love they had while in the dark. If anything, it makes it easier for them to realize that love was and still is there.

That interplay of light and dark (which is also the title of a Natsume Soseki novel) is where Akutagawa and Bram begin to melt most into one another. They have both been dehumanized, hated, and killed; rejected and stripped of dignity, robbed of those they loved by petty violence. Neither seeks to save anyone other than those to whom they've sworn to try, and they've both been reckless with who they've killed. Nevertheless, they love fiercely, and where their fear is defensive, their anger is avenging (Akutagawa's furious pursuit of the reckless murderers in 55 Minutes, the implication that Bram was fighting to protect his vassals when he was subdued as a calamity previously).

But they aren't evil. Evilness isn't a person, it's cowardice and weakness and fear. They've both grappled with the desire to succumb to their grief and their anger and their terror. But they struggle against those urges in themselves with fierce resolve.

It's the sort of resolve that Fyodor lacks. Fyodor, codependent on his dehumanization, claims that there's death in salvation only because he can't bear to keep living under the weight of humanity's rejection but is too weak and afraid of being alone to die without taking everyone else with him. Fyodor's disgusted by Atsushi's humanity and love because he sees in it what he's convinced himself he can never be afforded. But Bram and Akutagawa both have always had the certainty of love in their families, and then in Aya and in Higuchi.

There is no salvation in death or goodness; there is no sure path towards resolution or closure. There isn't any inherent meaning to our pain, and even those of us who live in relative peace are walking on a knife's edge over uncertainty and chaos. But, we can choose to accept love, and we can choose to love others. Isn't that a little bit wonderful?

#bsd #bungou stray dogs #bsd 119 #bsd fyodor #bsd akutagawa #bsd bram #etc etc #sorry there's a lot here! if i were kinder i would add headings for you. but im not and im late on turning in some overdue work 🥰

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ucsdspecialcollections · 3 months ago

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Letters from the Du Petit-Thouars expedition to Tahiti and South America, on the corvette Somme. manuscript

A collection of illustrated letters in French from Dupetit-Thouars's 1842-1845 circumnavigation, written by one of the officers on the expedition. Charles Hulot served on the corvette Somme, which was statined at Tahiti protecting French Catholic missionaries.

The present letters provide an eyewitness account at a time of French colonial expansion in the Pacific. The collection comprises twenty-four holograph letters by Hulot to his family. The letters are illustrated with approximately 75 original pen and ink drawings throughout, including a sketch map of Valparaiso, coastal views, portraits on board the Somme, as well as Tahitians and Marquesans.

The final letter ends with a sketch of a French sailor (perhaps a self portrait) thumbing his nose at the British flag.

There are also two separate watercolors: the first in black wash, shows officers practicing sabers on the deck of the Somme; the second, in color, represents a native hut immersed in vegetation. Hulot departed from Toulon on November 17, 1842, and his letters include descriptions of Rio Janeiro, Valparaiso, as well as Tahiti and Nuku Hiva in the Marquesas Islands.

The letters form a kind of journal of the voyage itself as the Somme sailed into the Pacific, with mention of the positions of several warships beloning to the fleet under the command of Admiral Dupetit-Thouars during the French intervention in the Marquesas Islands (1842-1844). Hulot describes the towns and villages he visits, including topography, botany, and the inhabitants and their customs, including hunting parties, meals, and the like. The letter written between Jan. 20 - April 20, 1843 includes a summary of the political and military situation in the Marquesas. We learn that Hulot has read the voyage accounts of Cook, Mendana, and he also refers to Dumont d'Urville, who was undertaking his own circumnavigation at this time.

On reaching the islands, Hulot describes the Marquesans who came out to meet the French on their boats, all heavily tattooed and who immediately commenced trading - bone earrings for tobacco and cloth, etc. The folded letter sheets are occasionally sewn together, and many of the letters include useful captions summarizing locations and dates.

Born in Metz, Charles Hulot (1824-1845) had been newly promoted to lieutenant at the time of the present letters. His career was cut short, when, according to the Annales Maritimes et Coloniales (vol. 31, 1846), he died on April 10 on board the Uranie, which was at Tahiti at that time. In his final entry (January 18, 1845) he mentions the Uranie would likely depart Tahitian waters, but evidently that did not happen.

#age of sail #pacific voyages #dupetit-thouars #letters #illustration #manuscripts

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noneorother · 1 year ago

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What do Shax and a 30-year-old Sandman comic have in common? Puns. The answer is always puns.

While I've recently revealed Shax does actually know how to spell, (she's just really old), the "angle" message Shax throws through the window to demand the "angel" one was a little trickier, because it's not Middle English, or even Old French, it's probably the oldest pun in Good Omens... it's latin.

Good Omens Season 2, Episode 5, 2023

Fortunately, a time travelling Neil Gaiman left answers for us in his 1995 Sandman special "Sandman midnight theatre." See for yourself.

Sandman Midnight Theatre, Neil Gaiman, Matt Wagner, Teddy Kristiansen, 1995

"Still, they have some illuminated manuscripts in their library which throw fascinating light on early church history. "Not angels, but angles" eh? I've been angling for permission to browse through their manuscript collection for yonks."

Appropriate for an English reverend to be curious about "Angels and not Angles". It's THE earliest christian pun, attributed to Pope Gregory the Great in the 6th century CE.

Oxford reference essential quotations

It comes from a historical account of the pope walking through a market in Rome, and seeing some exotic slave children (i.e. fair hair and blue eyes, and light skin) from what is now the England, and asking where they were from. The master replied that they were "Angles" (Angli in latin) and the pope declared them to be "Angels" (Angeli) instead, which, in latin at that time would have been a pun. This history from Bede actually influenced a lot of the christian world, so we could conceivably make the point that fair blonde and blue eyed angels comes from the idea that they looked liked the English (who were not christian, but pagan at the time of being newly conquered). Aziraphale's looks in the originsl Good Omens are probably a direct result of the lineage in art of this 1,500 year old pun.

Depictions of angels, 1100 years apart Which raises the question: if Shax is asking for the Angel Gabriel with her note, the pun doesn't make any fucking sense.

Jon Hamm plays Gabriel as an "American", specifically not English like the rest of the cast. He does have blue eyes, but as far as Shax is concerned, Gabriel's eyes are violet, not really a human colour. Shax could just actually be stupid (I guess?) and not realize that in modern English that constitutes a mistake (boring), or that Americans succeeded in 1776 (hilarious). But here's a quirkier theory: Shax knows what she's talking about, and she's gunning for Maggie. If you look really closely, demons show up and start hanging around the street earlier in the ball than you would guess. Once a fair number have amassed, they stay waiting for Shax to lead them. However, even though she hasn't shown up yet, they eagerly chase Maggie down the street from her shop. They're only stopped by Crowley, and Maggie gets safely into the ball.

Once inside, she has quite a stunning change of costume, highlighting her blonde hair and blue eyes:

There's so much more evidence to suggest that Maggie isn't really a normal human, but this post is long enough. What I will say is that it's subtle, but once the demon attack really gets going (no thanks to Maggie), Shax and the other demons never look for Jim once, even when he leaves the mezzanine. They concentrate all their efforts on Aziraphale, Maggie and Nina, and never mention Gabriel again.

While Maggie is a Scottish name, and she clearly has some links to Scotland if a random pub in Edinburgh is buying records from her in Soho, she does have a distinctly English accent, and lest we forget...

———————————————

thanks as always to @embracing-the-ineffable and @thebluestgreen for the tasty links and sounding board.

#good omens meta #good omens 2 #art director talks good omens #go season 2 #go meta #good omens season two #good omens season 2 #good omens #go2 #good omens prime #nina and maggie #anthony j crowley #jimbriel #crowley x aziraphale

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voluntarysubmission · 1 year ago

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What's happening at the Oldest House during Alan Wake 2?

(Spoilers for ALL of Control, ALL of Alan Wake 2, including Final Draft.)

LET'S SPECULATE.

From Control, we know:

The Oldest House is on lockdown until the Hiss is completely cleansed, so it can't get out.

Jesse was witness to (a version of) Alan's conversation with Zane at the Oceanview Hotel/Motel.

Alan's writing definitely affected the way things went down at the Investigations Department - but to what extent he directly caused it to happen vs just influenced things already under way is debatable.

The Investigations Department control room for monitoring stations got an alert from the Bright Falls/Cauldron Lake station, dated "from the future", aka. 2023, when AW2 is set.

We don't explicitly know how long the events of Control are in terms of Jesse's perception of time. At least a few weeks, based on the hair growth we see in Dylan after the events in the Foundation. So from the lockdown starting in 2019, they think it's been a few weeks.

This is a SUPER tenous connection, but: after completing Foundation and meeting some hidden criteria, you get a bonus scene when interacting with Dylan, and one of the images that flashes up (the frames are shown clearly at the end of the youtube video) might be a picture looking up from inside the Huotari Well.

There have been FBC agents in Bright Falls for a while, and they were aware of the events of Alan Wake 1. Agent Estevez was acknowledged as being an agent from Investigations sending reports from the site, including complaining that the researchers at the Lake House won't share findings with her.

From Alan Wake 2, we know:

The Oldest House is still "dark". The Taken sometimes say "The Oldest House has gone dark", and in the Sheriff's Station Attacked manuscript, an FBC Agent called Young praises Estevez thinking "Estevez had held it together even after the Oldest House had gone dark".

The FBC is still operating outside the Oldest House. Despite it being a few years since the start of the lockdown, they have agents in the field currently working.

There have been researchers in Bright Falls since the first AWE there. The Research crew is at a facility called the Lake House near Cauldron Lake. This facility is manned when Saga first arrives (you can press on the call box there and ask an agent to send backup, they just say "The station heads are not currently available" - given it's plural, I think they're referring to Dr Marmont and Dr Marmont, the married FBC scientists.)

The Lake House was attacked by Taken, and is considered lost by Estevez, so that happened during the events of AW2.

A project of one Dr Campbell is specifically ongoing - the children's rhymes around the place. Dr Campbell himself is present up until just before the Dark Ocean Summoning events - if you complete the rhymes, you hear things go badly for him.

Estevez says that there is no further backup - they ARE the backup, when Saga asks if more help is available.

Dr Darling, who went missing just before the Hiss invaded in 2019, as spent 665 days minimum in the Dark Place. That's about a year and 9 months, though we don't know when during his stay that the recording happened.

So what can we conclude from all this stuff?

First, the Oldest House is still in lockdown, and has been for years, from the perspective of outside the house. There are several theories about what is happening inside the house, but it seems certain that from the outside world, HQ locked up and went quiet.

My main theory about what is happening on the inside of the house, is that as soon as the house went into lockdown, the passage of time there changed relative to... uh, the normal Earth dimension. Time in the Oldest House is going very slowly.

The two points of evidence for this are the AWE alert in Investigations for Cauldron Lake - Langston says it's coming from the future, but I think it's actually coming from the present - the inside of the House just isn't aware they've been lost for years. The second point of evidence is the conversation Jesse "eavesdrops" on between Zane and Alan - the version we see in Control ihas very similar dialogue to what we see in AW2, which may imply a certain "syncing". But this is more tenuous because of course, Alan has been going through loops so who knows how many times he's had this conversation with Zane. His hair is longer in this conversation in Control than in AW1, but not as long as it is in AW2, so, meh. I still think it's evidence though. You do "see" Jesse calling out "Hello?" in the AW2 version of the scene... I swear she calls out in Control but I can't find it.

The other option is that the house is still on lockdown because it's truly taken them YEARS stuck on the inside to clear out the Hiss, which would set up Control 2 for an interesting starting point. The nature of the Oldest House is such that it's existence, and to a lesser effect by association the FBC, are imperceptible by people who aren't otherwise aware of them. It's not unfeasible that this had the effect of making field agents unlikely to try and find out what happened, even if they knew about the House. But then, while they don't directly address it in Control, the people in the House DO have limited supplies of food and drinkable water inside. People trapped in the lost department (processes and protocols office) in the Foundation were concern about supplies and went looking for food, though ultimately died due to the Astral Spike (Gibbs survived long enough to become a Hiss though? So maybe she survived... or stopped needing to eat. IDK it's the house, it's weird).

I just think the first option is more likely than the second. I think come Control 2, the lockdown will lift and the FBC will find itself years out of date with the external world, scrambling to catch up with the field agents and researchers, and all the altered items and AWEs that have occurred without them being able to properly contain things.

But this all brings me to my main point, which was the reason I wrote all this down and speculated on it to begin with.

To me, the most astounding thing to realise is the Federal Bureau of Control's payroll system is iron clad. Despite the house being in lockdown, despite no department heads to approve budgets and expenditure, all FBC agents outside the House are STILL WORKING FOR THE FBC!!!! They would NOT be doing that if the paychecks stopped (maybe some of the more obsessive scientists... but generally no). The scientists at the Lake House have up until the night of Dark Ocean Summoning still been doing research - and presumably have project budgets and expenditures. They have technicians to regularly call on to check on the monitoring station and fix it after the Koskelas break it, who also get paid. The system functions!!! Like clockwork!!!

Now idk how USA federal government payroll works. It probably is just as simple as the FBC agents are all paid from the same place that the FBI does, I imagine it's somewhat centralised. And the Oldest House's perception protection probably means the reports get stamped and the pay goes through without being paid attention to. But this is the government we're talking about here, there's fuck ups and salary freezes and system errors and database issues. But these agents have been working on their own for YEARS! They are paying their bills! They are getting their holidays! They are filing their taxes!

Now THAT'S what I call a process to admire. No matter how catastrophic the disaster affecting HQ is, these government workers WILL get their paychecks and continue just doing their jobs and filing their reports. Incredible.

#alan wake 2 #alan wake 2 spoilers #alan wake final draft #final draft #final draft spoilers #control #remedy control #remedy verse #remedy connected universe #federal bureau of control #jesse faden #thomas zane #alan wake

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whencyclopedia · 1 year ago

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Trafficking with Demons: Magic, Ritual, and Gender from Late Antiquity to 1000

"Trafficking with Demons" fills a much-needed gap in the scholarship of magic, covering broadly the 4th to the 10th centuries CE. Working with a breadth of literary sources, Martha Rampton explores the nature of magic and the ramifications of the restrictions set by Christian authorities during this period, particularly for women. The legacy of these changes still affects our understanding of magic today, making this book valuable to anyone interested in the early history of magic in Europe.

Martha Rampton’s two primary goals with this book were to define in specific terms what “magic” meant and to examine how that meaning changed over time. She divides the book into four parts, with the last three focusing on specific time periods rather than themes. In Part One, Rampton summarizes the historiography of the study of magic, from Augustine in the 5th century to modern authors like James Frazer, as well as her source material. She pulls from various ancient and early medieval literary sources, including law codes, medical texts, sermons, and treatises, to analyze the concept of "magic." Using this historiography, she also creates some parameters for keywords, such as “ritual” and “demon,” that feature heavily in the rest of the book. In Parts Two to Four, Rampton asks why identifying magic was so important to early Christian authorities. The author argues that the fierce competition with Roman paganism and the hostile environment of the Roman Empire caused early Christianity to struggle for legitimacy, which they attempted to create by separating Christian rituals from pagan magic.

While Rampton accomplishes her first goal of defining “magic” in Part One, it is her second goal of examining changes in magic over time that haunts this book. Parts Two to Four suffer from a lack of signposting of the changes Rampton wants to highlight, the true significance of which only becomes clear in the book's last two chapters. Rampton intended these middle chapters to show changes to how different types of magic were conceptualized and the reactions of religious authorities, but often the changes are so subtle that they are lost in the wealth of evidence she provides. The repetition of sub-headings (e.g. Poison, Divination) also blurs the individual sections together. Including images of the manuscripts she references would have enlivened the book and introduced some variety into these sections. Given that these parts form the main body of the book, it is a shame that it is so hard to follow Rampton’s argument.

The other major element of Rampton’s argument is the relationship between magic and gender. By "gender," Rampton seems to mean “women” only. While the role of women in magic in this period is not the book's focus, it increases in significance as the chapters progress. The crux of Rampton’s argument is that, by 800 CE, magic and the female power that had come to be inherent in it was seen as ineffective. A more interesting point that Rampton makes is how exactly magic came to be associated primarily with women. From the Roman rituals of religious ecstasy being seen as “womanish” to a 9th-century court case in which an empress was accused of using love magic, Rampton argues that the change hinged on how early Christianity legitimized itself in contrast to paganism. As Christian authorities worked to define and professionalize “acceptable” magic, such as prophecy and miracles, in the 5th to 7th centuries, access for women was increasingly cut off by their lack of training (and their inability to obtain that training). This meant that female magic practitioners could only access the “unacceptable” magic, while the “acceptable” was separated from the concept of magic itself, indelibly intertwining women with magic.

Martha Rampton is Professor of History at Pacific University. Overall, Rampton argues persuasively for why the Late Antique and Early Medieval periods were crucially transitional for the concept of magic. The wealth and breadth of evidence presented in this book is undeniable. At the very least, this book should be well-received as a literary sourcebook for magic in these periods. However, its true value is to be found in the argument that Rampton unspools in the background of every chapter: a point of no return was crossed when women were forever associated with (malicious) magic. It is the legacy of that shift that accounts for why in the Western world today we think of a woman when we hear the word “witch”.

#History #Religion #EarlyMedieval #LateAntiquity

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deinemuddalutscht · 8 months ago

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Frau Holle

This essay is seven thousand words long and English is not my native language so please forgive me if there are grammatical or spelling mistakes in the text. I have also moved some passages arround so let's hope that I didn't accidentally leave doublets in this text

Most likely "Holle" (meaning "the Benevolent") was originally an epithet for the Germanic goddess Frigg. Following Christianization, this name became distinct, partly due to prohibitions against invoking pagan goddesses, which were now considered evil beings. Similarly, Perchta (meaning "the Shining One") in the southern German and Alpine regions may have derived from another name for Frigg, influenced by specific local Noric traditions. Related figures to Frigg/Perchta/Holle could also be Frau Harke or Harre. The name of Frau Holle's appears most frequently in the ereas arround Hesse, Thuringia, and Lower Franconia Further south, she is called Berchta/Perchta, while in the north, she is referred to as Frau Frerk (after Frigg/Frea/Frija) or Frau Wode, Frau Gode, named after Friggs husband: the god Odin. (The Old Norse theonym Odin and the high-german/dutch Wode/Woden/Gode are all derived from the Proto-Germanic masculine theonym „Wōðanaz“)

Frau Holle is also identified with the goddess Holda or Hulda, potentially another Germanic name for Frigg.

It is also possible that she is connected tot he Germanic death goddess Hel. Frau Holle is also associated with the fertility goddess Freyja. People who are familiar with Norse mythology will probably have heard the theory that Freyja and Frigg may have been one and the same goddess, but we don't have enough sources to determine this. And if Frigg and Freyja are derived from the same figure then it is still unclear whether this was just a later devolepment in the scandinavian countries while the continental Germanic Freyja/Frigg remained a single entity. Since the Continental Germanic tribes were Christianized earlier than the Scandinavians, we have even fewer sources on Continental Germanic mythology than on Norse Germanic mythology. The few Roman sources about the religion of Germania, for example, do not reveal anything about the existence of Loki, so it could be that Loki is a late addition to the phantheon, that he only gained importance later or that he only appeared in North Germanic mythology. Even if North Germanic and Continental Germanic mythology come from the same proto-mythology, both probably had different local deities and perceived their shared deities differently. In any case, the existence of Frau Holle indicates that Frigg/freyja held a more important position in Continental Germanic mythology than in Norse Germanic mythology. The continental Germanic Freyja/Frigg was equated with the Roman goddess Dianah, which is why it can be assumed that the continental Germanic Frigg was not only thought of as the wife of Odin but was also regarded as a young single goddess. Frau Holle is nowhere mentioned with a husband, but unlike Dianah, she is never explicitly associated with the concept of virginity. Frau Holle dosent have a husband but she isnt a virgin either. She is connected with the domestic duties of a house wife but in an supernatrual, ruler-of-the-universe-kind-of-way. Connections to Odin still exists though: during the Rauhnächte frigg is said to ridewith Wotan through the clouds, symbolizing winter storms and Frau Holle is sometimes said tob e the supreme leader oft he wild hunt

Written traces of Frau Holle can be followed back at least 1,000 years, with the earliest mention in the decrees of Bishop Burchard of Worms, written between 1008 and 1012. However, her roots go much further, stating, The evidence strongly suggests that Frau Holle is not a ghostly figure or a vegetation spirit but the regional embodiment of an ancient Earth Goddess. One of these manuscript documents, the 'Summa fratris Rudolfi de confessionis discretione', written between 1235 and 1250 by a Cistercian monk named Rudolf, is particularly interesting in terms of its content, as it refers to the myth of setting the table for Frau Holle in the Rauhnächten collected by Paetow.

The manuscript states:

“Certain women, in order to become happy and be successful in worldly matters, indulge in god-hating fantasies: On Christmas night, they set the table for the Queen of Heaven - whom the people call Frau Holle - so that she may help them.”

This statement points to a cult of Holle that still existed in the early 13th century, although it was viewed with suspicion and condemned by the church. As early as the beginning of the 11th century she appears to have been known as the leader of women, and of female nocturnal spirits, which "in common parlance are called Hulden from Holda". These women would leave their houses in spirit, going "out through closed doors in the silence of the night, leaving their sleeping husbands behind". They would travel vast distances through the sky, to great feasts, or to battles amongst the clouds. A 16th century fable recorded by Erasmus Alberus speaks of "an army of women" with sickles in hand sent by Frau Hulda. Thomas Reinesius in the 17th century speaks of Werra of the Voigtland and her "crowd of maenads."

In ancient times, the Germanic Chatti (or "Hessians") may have offered pagan sacrifices to their beloved goddess atop the mountain Hoher Meißner, as suggested by archaeological findings of gold coins from the first century AD.

Holle’s connection to the three worlds (Underworld, Upperworld, and Earthly realm) also suggests a role as a Germanic shamanic goddess, making the fairy tale read as an ecstatic initiation rite. Through the well (axis mundi), the initiates symbolically embark on a spiritual journey. In addition to literary accounts, folk customs associated with Frau Holle, bearing archaic features and shamanic elements, continue to the present day. For instance, in southern Germany during the Perchtenlauf (or Holle Run), wild men and women parade to drive out winter spirits and summon spring; their animal costumes with fur and horns recall Paleolithic cave paintings of shamans, clad in animal skins, performing ritual dances in honor of the numinous Mother of Animals.

During the christianasation, direct mention of Frigg or Diana became less acceptable. Thus, the common folk began referring to her obliquely as Hulda, Holde, or Holle.

In the eyes of the Church, she soon became a “she-devil.”

And so the radiant wife of Wotan faded from prominence, surviving only in the shadows of superstition. And since Frau Holle was associated with womanhood, she soon became a witch goddesses.Grimm describes Holle as an ancient sorceress and witch-goddess, noting that witches travel in Holle’s company and ‘Holle Riding’ in Upper Hesse and the Westerwald is synonymous with a witches' ride.”However, she was never as demonized as Frau Perchta bacame in the Alpine regions.

Her center of worship was/is a mountain massif Hoher Meissner. The entrance to her world ist he so called Frau See,a pond in Hoher Meißner. Around 1850, a shepherd found two Roman-era gold coins (1st century BC) near the Holle Pond. Excavations in 1937 unearthed medieval and earlier ceramic shards close to the pond, possibly indicating that offerings to Frau Holle took place there. According to legend, the Frau Holle Pond is bottomless. One tale describes a miner attempting to measure the depth of the “Holle See” with a plumb line, yet even after 65 fathoms (about 104 to 156 meters), he could not reach the bottom.. In this mystical place, there is said to be a silver castle surrounded by a garden full of flowers, fruits, and vegetables, which Frau Holle generously gifts, especially to women and girls.

Another story tells of Frau Holle appearing at noon as a beautiful young woman bathing in the center of the pond. She is said to sometimes play tricks on travelers or hunters, occasionally even seducing them.

In earlier times, young women especially would bathe in the Frau Holle pond on the Hoher Meißner, believing it would enhance their fertility. The water was also believed to have healing properties. Local schoolgirls would peer into the pond and, upon seeing their reflection, exclaim, “These are Frau Holle’s children.” —a custom still practiced in the 1930s. It was said that the tips of unborn children’s hair are in the reeds In the 19th century, boys and girls would gather at night near the Holle Hole by Schlitz, dancing and singing a song from which only the first stanza has survived:

“Miameide – stands on the heath – Wears a little green skirt. Three lovely maidens sit with her. One looks ahead, another into the wind. The woman by the spring has many, many children.”

This song likely has pre-Christian origins, though its precise meaning is lost. The last two lines may hint at Frau Holle’s role as a bringer of children. This may explain the tradition of young women bathing in the pond to enhance their fertility. The "White Wall" is a steep limestone slope, facing directly westward and exposed to the west wind. It represents the "autumn side" of the mountain and is therefore associated with myths of decline and death.

In the western part of the Meißner, there were likely sites dedicated to the veneration of the dead, while in the east, the symbolic direction of life, were places dedicated to birth and rebirth. The ancestral spirits who entered the mountain in the west were believed to re-emerge as children’s souls at Frau Holle’s pond, returning from the goddess’s subterranean world.

It’s also said that “Sunday children” (those born on Sundays) can sometimes hear a bright ringing near the pond, possibly inspired by the presence of midwife toads, also known as bell toads, due to their ringing calls.

One of the most significant Frau Holle sites on the Meißner is the "Kitzkammer," which, according to legend, houses Frau Holle's cats. In spring, these cats are said to transform into young women, priestesses of the goddess Holle, who then emerge from this site to join Frau Holle in guiding the natural cycles of growth, life, and decay. Located on the southwest slope of the Meißner, the Kitzkammer is a cave framed by basalt columns, though it is no longer accessible. It lies at the top of a wild gorge near a small mountain brook and has long been the subject of many myths about Frau Holle. Frau Holle's cats are enchanted girls and women who have run away from the village and stayed with Frau Holle. According to the myth, Frau Holle's cats sometimes bring lost wanderers back onto the right path.

The Kitzkammer lies on the edge of a ravine where streams rush down. The striking feature of this place is its exposed, black basalt rock, which forms beautiful, regular columns. However, these columns lie horizontally rather than rising vertically and end in a smooth wall, within which the Kitzkammer opens as a strange cave. The cave used to be larger, but basalt columns have since collapsed inside. This extraordinary place not only draws many visitors today but also stirred the imagination of early peoples who came here. Legends say that Frau Holle’s cats once lived here. 'Kitzen' are female cats, sacred animals often associated with the goddess in her myths. People who treat these cats kindly gain the favor of the goddess. Another legend tells of a shepherd boy who encountered a tall White Lady at the Kitzkammer holding a large set of golden keys, which she offered him. These keys are of great significance: they mark Frau Holle not only as a household steward but as the keeper of the world’s domains. Many similar White Ladies appear in folklore, using their magical keys to reveal hidden treasures within the earth—a connection to the underworld. Yet Frau Holle’s role goes further: in spring, she opens the cloud gate for the sun, and in autumn, she closes it again, establishing her as a ruler of the heavens. With her golden keys, she also unlocks the subterranean paradise within her mountain, the Ever-Green Garden, marking her as a Queen of the Underworld.

Further down from the Kalbe towards the south, on the Hausener Hute, stands the "Frau-Hollen-Stuhl" (Frau Holle’s Chair), a two-part basalt block resembling a chair.

It is said that Frau Holle sits on this chair on beautiful summer days, combing her golden hair. The chair is also believed to have healing powers, able to drive away illness. The act of combing golden hair is a common mythological metaphor, also found in the legends of the Lorelei along the Rhine and Verena in Switzerland, both of whom use a golden comb. In ancient beliefs, women’s hair was seen as erotically attractive, and the act of combing it symbolized an irresistible call to the beloved.

these goddesses are not golden-haired because they are blondes, but as a symbol of sunlight. Combing the golden hair is said to summon the sun, as the high summer sun is mythologically considered the groom of the Earth at the time of the summer solstice. Therefore, the Frau-Hollen-Stuhl may have been an ancient seat of the goddess in the form of a Holle priestess, a place she took to celebrate the sacred marriage ceremony, known as hieros gamos, with her consort. In matriarchal seasonal festivals, the southern directions are linked to the magical ceremony of the sacred marriage, which was celebrated in summer between heaven and earth.

The observance that, from Frau Holle’s Chair, one can see the sun rise at the time of the summer solstice, with the sun appearing in the northeast above the Meißner and over a place called Morgengabe, adds significance to this spot. In this context, Morgengabe, meaning ‘morning gift,’ is fitting, as it traditionally denotes a wedding gift. Here, however, the goddess seems to offer the gift to her beloved rather than the other way around. This could suggest that as the sun rises over the Meißner at the summer solstice, the blossoming abundance of flowers and herbs turns towards the sun, as if offering itself to its light. Notably, Frau Holle was also considered a protector of newlyweds. Below this spot lies a small lake, now transformed into a moor from which black water flows. This former lake may have symbolized the goddess’s womb, opening here to love and offering itself to her consort.

The Kalbe was once a pasture where Frau Holle, a legendary figure of German folklore, allowed enchanted calves to graze. Today, it has become a lake formed from an old open-pit mine on the Hohe Meißner. Another place on the Hohe Meißner dedicated to Frau Holle is the cave called Hählenstein. Young wives would bathe in the cave’s pool on May Day night or Christmas Eve if they wished for a child. Girls hoped for a granted wish from Frau Holle when they placed flowers on the "sacrifice stone." It was believed that washing in the cave’s water in silence between eleven and twelve on Easter night preserved beauty. This water was considered miraculous, and many legends surround this site.

Southeast of Hessisch Lichtenau, in the village of Hollstein, three stones stand in a row. Known as the “Hollensteine” or “Frau Holle Stones,” the tallest is about five meters high, with the middle stone reaching about three meters. A medieval, weathered lion's head, carved into the southeastern rock face, stands at roughly 25 cm in height. While it’s unclear if the stones once served as a sacred site for Frau Holle, lions and cats were known to be associated with her or the goddess Diana. They may also indicate the presence of "Hollen," elves in Northern Hessian lore, who served Frau Holle. Note that elves are also part of germanic Mythology.

According to one legend, Frau Holle had stones stuck in her shoe as she took a giant step away from the Meißner and emptied them here. Leading the "wild hunt," Frau Holle and the Germanic god Wotan/Odin were believed to lead the souls of the year’s deceased through the “Bathhouse of Frau Holle,” under the waters of Frau Holle’s pond during the twelve nights from Christmas to Epiphany, returning them to be reborn. This completes the cycle from dawn (the east, sunrise, birth) to dusk (the west, sunset, death) and back to the dawn of life.

The “Bathhouse” lies in the west of the Meißner, appearing as a simple, somewhat marshy meadow beneath the “White Wall,” a limestone cliff. This meadow, unmarked due to its location within a nature reserve, preserves its mystique.

Between Eschwege and Wehretal-Langenhain lies the natural monument known as Blaue Kuppe. When Frau Holle once walked here, something in her shoe irritated her. She shook out a stone, and this stone became the hill now called Blaue Kuppe.

Then, there is the spring known as Queneborn. “Quene” is thought to be an old word meaning “gracious lady” (akin to "queen"), suggesting a connection to Frau Holle. Locals say the water from this spring, located by Grundmühle between Söhrewald-Eiterhagen and Hessisch Lichtenau-Quentel, is healing.

There is also a moor on the high Meißner called Weiberhemdmoor where Frau Holle taught women domestic chores.

Lastly, there are the Hirschberg and Honighof legends. A story tells that, when the glassmaker Essias Gunkel was in great need, he met an old woman at Hirschberg between Wickenrode and Großalmerode while gathering firewood. She showed him brown stones along the path, saying, “Take these.” Frau Holle’s gift turned out to be lignite, which people then collected or mined at Hirschberg. Honighof, once a wealthy but harsh farmer’s estate, has its own tale:

Honighof lay in a blessed valley, rich with volcanic ash deposits from Hirschberg, yielding abundant harvests. The honey farmer there was the wealthiest in the region, so much so that people joked, "Each cow bears two calves, each stalk two ears, and even if his pigs ran over sausages, he’d hardly mind."

But as he grew richer, his heart hardened. In harsh years, those in need turned to him for loans, only to hear him coldly say, "Those who have, have earned it; only bad blood squanders its wealth!” When the needy came again, he’d order his sons to “release the dogs on the riffraff!” His daughter, the only compassionate soul left after her mother’s passing, often wept over her family’s cruelty.

One spring day, while she was peeling potatoes alone, a poor old woman approached, struggling with a crutch and stretching out a frail, begging hand. The girl quickly cut a thick slice of bread, added a sausage, and gave it to the woman. “God bless you!” the woman murmured as the farmer and his sons entered. Furious, the farmer struck his daughter and, releasing his bloodhound, commanded it to attack the old woman, shouting, “Get away, the guides will bite!” Yet, the dog whimpered and crouched fearfully.

At that moment, the old woman vanished in a swirl of smoke that rose to the sky. Dark clouds cast a shadow like a coffin over the valley, lightning flashed, and thunder roared as if the very mountain might split. A bolt ignited the Honighof, and within minutes, the estate and the greedy farmer were consumed by flames.

When neighbors arrived with buckets and ladders to fight the fire, they found only smoldering rubble. Everything had burned – crops, animals, and people – except for the farmer's daughter, lying peacefully beneath a pear tree. Beside her stood a stern, white-robed woman with her arms protectively outstretched over the girl. As the villagers approached, the figure dissolved into mist. They knew it was Frau Holle’s judgment upon the Honighof.

The place was abandoned, with no one willing to rebuild on the cursed site. The daughter alone survived, moving to a nearby village where she married and led a blessed life. The people said that whatever she touched thrived, for she had stayed true to her heart until her happy end.

Another tradition in northern Hesse, especially around the Meißner region, occurs on New Year’s Eve. Children place a pot or bowl outside the door, and by New Year’s morning, the well-behaved find a small gift beneath the upturned pot.

In the Thuringian village of Schnett, in the Masserberg area, the end of the Rauhnächte (the “Rough Nights” following Christmas) is marked by the Hullefraansnacht, or “Night of Frau Holle,” in which she appears in the form of the Stöhere

There wer als otherSites of worship for Frau Holle beside the Hoher Meißner.. For instance, the spring sanctuary at Amorsbrunn in Amorbach, Lower Franconia, is likely a Frau Holle shrine, known for centuries as a place where women come to seek fertility. In line with Frau Holle’s mythology as a guardian of pools from which children’s souls emerge, women have long gathered here to collect water and bathe ritually. Empress Maria Theresa herself once traveled from Vienna to sponsor prayers for the fertility of the Habsburg family at this site. To this day, visitors collect water from a basin behind the church, which has been routed from the spring since a chapel was built over it in the 8th century. Most likely to christianize the pagan cult arround it.

Frau Holle was also worshiped in Marienberg in Würzburg. Frau Holle is referenced in the Würzburg legend of Saint Kilian, where she appears under the Roman name Diana. A ceiling fresco of Diana in the garden hall of the Würzburg Residence recalls her mention in the Kilian legend. Frau Holle was associated with several sacred mountains in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland, often called “Frauenberge” (Women’s Mountains), the most famous of which is the Hoher Meißner

The most popular story about Frau Holle originates from the Grimm Brothers' fairy tale. The story goes as follows: A widow favors her unattractive, lazy daughter over her beautiful, hard-working stepdaughter. The stepdaughter has to sit by the well and spin until her fingers bleed, while the other daughter idles at home. While cleaning, the stepdaughter accidentally drops her blood-stained spindle into the well. The stepmother insists she retrieve it, so the girl jumps into the well and awakens in a meadow. She then helps by pulling baked bread from an oven and shaking ripe apples from a tree, both of which speak to her. She serves the old Frau Holle, diligently shaking her bedding, which brings snow to the world. Though she has a good life with Frau Holle, she eventually wishes to return home out of homesickness. Frau Holle leads her to a gate, where gold falls upon her, and she receives the spindle back. At home, she recounts how she gained her wealth. The widow, hearing this, sends her own daughter to Frau Holle. However, this daughter ignores the requests of the bread, apple tree, and Frau Holle herself. When Frau Holle leads her to the same gate, tar falls on her as a lasting mark of her choices.

The fairy tale first appeared in the 1812 edition of Children’s and Household Tales, as collected from the tales of Dorothea Wild. In the second edition, a rooster was added as inspired by Georg August Friedrich Goldmann. Wilhelm Grimm encountered this motif during his travels in Westphalia. Clemens Brentano read an early version by Jacob Grimm, inspiring him to write The Tale of the Marmot.

In the first 1812 print, the mother was not yet a stepmother, and the heroine merely fetched water from the well, bending too low, without a bloody spindle. By the second edition, the story closely resembles the later seventh edition, complete with the crowing rooster. In the sixth edition, it’s described how the heroine uses a bread paddle to retrieve the bread and piles up the apples. Her growing homesickness is also expressed in phrases like, "I have a longing for home…," to which Frau Holle responds approvingly, "It pleases me that you long to go home again…". This phrase was later modified to "you are right…". The recurring phrase "boiled and roasted" appears from the first edition onward

Grimm’s notes trace the origin of the story to "Hesse and Westphalia" and include a “third tale from the Schwalm area,” resembling Hansel and Gretel: A beautiful girl and a rude girl spin by a well, and when the beautiful girl’s distaff falls in, she follows it. Below, she encounters a pear tree, a calf, an oven, and a pancake house where a red old woman awaits, calling her “the child of heaven and wind.” The girl, after helping the woman, steals a gold dress and flees. On her return, a rooster calls, “Our golden girl is back!” The rude girl attempts the same but is betrayed by the things she neglects, and the woman soils her dress. Another version, from the Paderborn region, involves a similar storyline, where a girl is rewarded by cooperating with the elements and animals but punished otherwise.

In the second edition, the Grimms addressed the common family conflicts of their time, particularly as many women died in childbirth, leaving stepfamilies in competition. Thus, the bad mother figure in Grimm’s tales often becomes a stepmother after the second edition. The spindle represents feminine diligence, while gold symbolizes worth and reward, contrasted here with tar for punishment. Tales of the good and bad girl were widely popular, like in The Tale of the Two Little Cakes by Giambattista Basile in Pentameron IV, 7. Similar tales can also be found in Ludwig Bechstein’s German Fairy Tale Book, with The Garden in the Well and The Golden Fawn as well as Grimm’s tale The Blue Light, and Theodor Storm’s The Rain Trude set in the underworld.

The precise origin of this tale remains uncertain as several regions claim Frau Holle resides in one of their mountains, such as Hohe Meißner, near Kassel, and Hörselberg near Eisenach. In mythological terms, the story seems to use older themes, such as jumping into a well as a journey into another world. Frau Holle, also known as Hulda or Perchta, represents "Mother Earth," whose myth is woven with elements of life and death. Some readers find that the lush meadow recalls near-death experiences. According to Ortrud Stumpfe, Frau Holle tests one’s capacity for loving intelligence, embodying nature’s judgment.

Hedwig von Beit interprets the "Tar Mary" as an image of shadow – representing either unconsciousness or calculated self-interest. Similar contrasts are found in Grimm’s tales 89, 107, and 126, where the shadow side is represented by two figures. The heroine encounters her feminine archetype while spinning, baking bread, and shaking apples from a tree. The well represents the unconscious, with the grain linking back to the Great Mother figure seen in ancient mysteries like those at Eleusis.

Wolf-Dieter Storl suggests that the goddess herself is a spinner, spinning the threads of life and reality. In the story, she gives the girl back the spindle, symbolizing the restoration of her life’s purpose. The rooster is a sacred bird, the apples signify vitality, and the oven symbolizes the feminine womb.

In addition to the well-known fairy tale by the Brothers Grimm, there are many other legends about Frau Holle, some even found in Grimm's German Legends. The Grimms share additional tales about Frau Holle, telling us that pn the Hessian Mountain Meißner, several landmarks—like the "Devil's Holes," the "Battle Lawn," and particularly the "Frau Holle Pond"—bear names that hint at their ancient origins. This pond, located on the edge of a moorland, has a current diameter of only 40–50 feet. The entire meadow is surrounded by a partially submerged stone embankment, and horses have occasionally drowned there.

The people tell various tales, both good and bad, about Frau Holle. Women who enter her well are said to become healthy and fertile. Newborn children are said to originate from her well, from which she carries them out. Flowers, fruit, cakes, and other delights that grow in her unparalleled garden are shared with those who meet her and gain her favor. Frau Holle is known to be meticulous and values good housekeeping; when it snows on earth, it’s because she’s shaking out her bedding, causing the snowflakes to fall. She punishes lazy spinners by soiling their distaff, tangling their yarn, or even setting their flax ablaze. But for diligent maidens, she gifts spindles and even spins for them overnight, so their spools are full by morning. She pulls blankets off lazy girls, leaving them bare on cold stone, but rewards hardworking ones who bring clean buckets of water for the kitchen in the morning with silver coins. She likes to lure children into her pond, transforming good ones into "lucky children" and bad ones into changelings. Each year she roams the land, bringing fertility to the fields, but also frightening people when she leads the "Wild Hunt" through the forest. Sometimes she appears as a beautiful, white-clad woman in or above the pond; other times, she’s invisible, and only the sound of bells and a dark rumble can be heard from the depths.

During Christmas, Frau Holle begins her rounds, and young women wrap fresh flax around their spindles, leaving them out overnight. If Frau Holle sees them, she rejoices, saying:

"For every hair,

a prosperous year."

She continues this practice until the Epiphany, January 6, when she must return to the Horselberg. Should she find flax on a spindle then, she frowns and declares:

"For every hair,

a troublesome year."

So, the evening before, all young women carefully remove any remaining flax from their spindles to avoid ill fortune. It’s best, however, if they can finish their work before then. On the Meißner Mountain in Hesse lies a large pool or lake, often murky, called "Frau Holle’s Bath." According to old stories, Frau Holle can sometimes be seen bathing there around noon, only to disappear afterward. The mountains and moors around the area are filled with spirits, and travelers and hunters are often led astray or harmed by them.

The Grimms tell us two additional stories about Frau Holle. One is called "Frau Holle and Faithful Eckart." In Thuringia, there is a village named Schwarza. Around Christmastime, Frau Holle passed through, led by Faithful Eckart, who warned people to step aside so no harm would befall them. Two farm boys were carrying beer from a tavern when the procession appeared, taking up the whole road. The boys moved aside with their jugs. Soon, women from the procession took the jugs and drank from them. The boys kept silent out of fear, worried about facing their families empty-handed. Finally, Faithful Eckart came to them and said, "God advised you to stay silent, or you would have lost your heads. Go home quickly and speak of this to no one, and your jugs will always be full of beer." The boys obeyed and kept their word for three days, but eventually, they couldn't resist telling their parents. After that, the jugs ran dry. Others say it didn’t happen at Christmas, but at another time.

The second story involves Frau Holle's encounter with a farmer. Once, Frau Holle was traveling when she met a farmer with an axe. She asked him to block her cart’s wheels. The man did as she asked, and when the task was complete, she told him, "Gather the wood chips as a tip." Thinking the chips were worthless, he took only a few for the trouble. When he returned home and reached into his sack, he found they had turned into gold. He hurried back to retrieve the rest, but it was too late—nothing remained.

There are also other old fairy tales and legends about Frau Holle, such as the story of the girl called Little Earthworm: a young girl who loved all the animals in the forest and could never bear to be cross with even a spider. Her favorite toys were the flowers and butterflies, the gnats and beetles, lizards, and frogs. She even built little summer huts for the earthworms and stroked their backs without any hint of disgust. When spring brought out the flowers and the birds sang from the branches, this was her favorite time. In the mornings, she would take her shepherd’s pouch, drive her father’s cows to the large forest meadow, and stay in the woods all day until evening, playing with every creature and insect. This is why she was called "Little Earthworm" by all the neighbors.

One morning, as she led the cows ahead of her and the little dog followed behind, an old woman stepped into her path. The woman was poorly dressed, chattering her toothless jaws with cold and shivering so pitifully that it touched the girl’s heart. In her innocence, Little Earthworm took off her woolen jacket and wrapped it around the old woman’s frail shoulders. The woman simply nodded and murmured, “What one does, one does well!” and hobbled back into the bushes.

Now, Little Earthworm had to go for days wearing only her thin shirt, and her mother scolded her in the evening. Her parents had little to spare, and they couldn’t afford new clothes, so she had to wear an old, worn-out jacket from the previous year that was already bursting at the seams.

But then the days grew warm and sunlit, and after playing in the brook with pebbles and water spiders, she took a bath. The cool water felt so soft and comforting against her skin, flowing along as it made its way to the rivers and lakes of the lowlands. When the girl finished, dried off, and was about to slip into her clothes, she couldn’t find her old things anywhere. Instead, behind a bush lay the most beautiful and delicate items: a fine shirt, a colorful bodice, a little skirt, a stitched cap, and even a pair of delightful summer shoes, which surprised her most of all since country children usually went barefoot in the summer.

She tried on each piece: first the shirt, then the skirt with the bodice, the cheerful cap, and finally slipped her feet into the dainty shoes. She clapped her hands in delight and called out:

“Oh, so many pretty clothes! Where is the giver? Where is the tailor?”

Just then, an old woman emerged from the bushes and said, “What one does, one does well. Little Earthworm, don’t you recognize me?”

“Ah!” cried Little Earthworm, happy and astonished. “You’re the dear old woman with the torn skirt. And now you look so grand!”

“Yes, yes, that’s how the world turns,” the old woman laughed. “Rich one day, poor the next. Do you have a heart’s wish, dear child? Maybe I can grant it too.”

But what would such a simple-hearted little soul wish for? She knew nothing of the riches of the earth and was happy enough with her forest companions. But then she remembered the big beetle and asked, “If you can, please bring back the golden beetle that once played with me and then disappeared forever.”

“Yes, yes,” the old woman said mysteriously, “the golden beetle is always so busy. But he shall make the time. Farewell now, Little Earthworm.” With that, she hobbled off toward the forest.

The girl, standing there in her finery, listened and soon heard a hum coming from the woods. She saw her golden friend flutter toward her, coaxed him to her hand, and he landed trustingly on her palm. He was beautiful and heavy, with eyes as wise as her little dog’s. When she spoke to him, he nodded his antennae and rubbed his front legs thoughtfully, as if he understood every word of her wishes. She played with him from flower to flower all day long, and the next morning, he returned, and they remained together in their friendship. The golden beetle even brought along ladybugs, which fluttered about, swaying in the warm breezes, and Little Earthworm watched them fly high over the oak trees. “Oh,” she exclaimed, “flying, flying, that would be my greatest joy!”

“You can, you can,” murmured the golden beetle, and suddenly a little cart came floating through the air, finely carved from ivory and drawn by ladybugs in silken harnesses.

“If you wish, you can!” encouraged her companion. She climbed in, and gently they rose, over the bushes and trees, drifting through the high air; the little boat flew from one side of the forest to the other, and Little Earthworm was thrilled, laughing and clapping her hands. Then they slowly descended to the meadow below. What a beautiful journey!

From then on, each day brought a new flight, and the golden beetle would sit up front, flicking his whip and politely guiding the girl over the trees so that she could peer into the birds’ nests. Little Earthworm grew up and was now fifteen. But she still herded the cows and played with every creature. However, the golden beetle came to the meadow less and less often. One May day, with its golden sunbeams and sweet birdsong, Little Earthworm felt a sadness come over her, though she didn’t know why. It seemed as if she had to bid farewell to all her loved ones, and her heart overflowed with emotion. She sang many sorrowful songs and farewell ballads to herself, wiping her eyes on her apron.

Suddenly, she heard the familiar hum, and the golden beetle was already beside her, his flying carriage in tow, and he encouraged her warmly, “Climb in, climb in, and you can ride across the Rhine.” She felt her old joy return and climbed in; the golden beetle took up the reins, flicked the whip, and off they flew into the blue sky. Around the forest once, but then further and further, until it became a wild ride, with winds tugging at her clothes, her hair whipping in the breeze, as they sped over hills and valleys, rivers, and mountains at a breathtaking pace. “Stop, slow down!” she cried, “turn back!” But the golden beetle flicked his whip again, and the ladybugs flew even faster, until the wind tore the breath from her lips. She lost consciousness, and when she awoke, she was lying in a lonely valley. Steep cliffs stood around her like armored knights, and everything felt strange. She lamented her lost home, her parents, and siblings, none of whom knew where she was now.

Through her tears, she finally saw a cozy little cottage in the distance. She slowly rose, dried her eyes, and walked toward it. A little dog ran out, barking happily; a rooster crowed his best song, and the geese honked and gaggled. But at the door sat an old woman, spinning and singing an old, forgotten tune.

As she approached, the old woman tied a knot in her thread, looked up, and called, “Little Earthworm, where have you come from?”

Then the young girl recognized the kind old woman and was overjoyed to find herself among friends. "Oh, Auntie," she cried through her tears, "Golden Beetle, that deceitful rogue, left me here, and now I’m completely lost with no idea how to get home!"

"Don’t be sad," the old woman replied. "Now you are safe with me." She took the girl’s hand and led her into the house. "Come, eat, and rest from your journey, for you've traveled nearly a hundred miles. I brought you to this valley to save you from a terrible fate. Back home, the cruel enemy rages, and wild hordes would bring you terrible harm. Stay with me, work diligently, and be patient, and I will ensure you return home in due time."

And so, for the time being, the girl remained in Frau Holle's house and learned all the household chores. In the mornings, she was up at dawn by the oven. Whenever she ran eagerly to the well, she always found a silver penny in the freshly polished bucket. She stoked the fire and set the soup pot on the flames, leading the villagers to say, "Frau Holle is making her morning soup; look how the smoke rises over the mountains."

Later, she would start kneading the dough for the daily bread. She had to stoke the fire intensely until flames shot from the oven. And again, the farmers said, “Frau Holle is having a baking day; the whole sky glows red!”

Whenever Frau Holle traveled the earth to check on the good and the wicked, she returned covered in dust. After such journeys, the girl would wash her traveling cloak in the golden spring. And when it poured rain down on earth, the elders would say, "It’s Frau Holle’s washing day; it rains but once." When the washing was done, the girl would hang the cloak to dry and bleach over the blooming rosebush that grew evergreen in the garden. Then Frau Holle would open the sky to let the sun shine forth in all its brilliance, so her cloak could dry and whiten. And parents would tell their children, "Frau Holle is drying her clothes today." The youngest would sing up to her:

"Dear Lady, open the door, let the dear sun come out, keep the rain inside, let the snow be consumed. The angels sit behind the well, waiting for the dear sun to swell."

For the little ones knew well that Frau Holle held them dearest of all, as she also nurtured the unborn in her spring.

As the nights grew long, and autumn came, Earthworm began learning to spin a smooth thread. She spun it clear as hair and wove the finest, most delicate webs. The sun’s wind would carry these webs over the earth, so they could whiten in the last rays. Then the seasoned earth-dwellers would say, "Now it’s Old Wives' Summer. Frau Holle spins smooth threads in the wind, and winter will soon be upon us." And they enjoyed the last warm days.

Then, around Christmastime, Earthworm had to fluff Frau Holle’s bedding. She did this with such joyful enthusiasm that the feathers flew across the sky. Meanwhile, children sat cozily inside, pressing their noses against the windows, exclaiming, "It’s snowing, it’s snowing, Frau Holle is shaking out her beds!"

When the young maiden had learned all the skills needed to become a proper housewife, five years had passed. On the anniversary of her arrival, Frau Holle came, took her by the hand, and said, "Now the time is fulfilled. The war is over, your service is complete, and I may no longer keep you here. Gather your things and prepare, for tomorrow we depart."

So Earthworm went to her attic room and wept bitterly, for parting from her foster mother weighed heavily on her good heart.

On a fresh May morning, a flower-painted carriage pulled up, and Frau Holle brought the girl all the linen she had woven and spun over the five winters, along with generous gifts for her parents. Frau Holle joined her in the carriage, and the horses sped like a storm across the land. Meadows, forests, villages, and people whizzed by, and by evening, they arrived in a neighboring village close to her home. Frau Holle embraced the maiden, kissed her, and placed a full pouch in her lap: “Use this to buy yourself a small farm, dear one, and may peace be under your roof!” With that, the horses turned swiftly to make their way back.

Earthworm rented a farmer’s cart and traveled into the homecoming evening. Her heart pounded as she saw the familiar woods again. But where had her village gone? She didn’t recognize it.

“Oh well,” grumbled the farmer, urging the horses into a trot, "War has ravaged it. Not a stone was left upon another. Here and there a house stands again. But it’ll be long before it’s all as it once was.”

Earthworm dared not ask more. Her breath caught as they passed the sad ruins of her family’s home. "The farmer rebuilt it,” her companion said, “he lives next to the new stable.” And there, she recognized her mother at the door, rushed into her embrace, and her father came too, and there was no end to their joy and questions.

So she was home again, shared her gifts, and everyone was overjoyed.

Then Earthworm realized how Frau Holle had protected her from harm, thanked the good spirits for her rescue, and became a benefactor to her entire family.

#norse mythology #Frau Holle #Frau Perchta #frigg #paganism

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cedyat · 1 year ago

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Drawings of Empress Elizabeth Alexeievna of Russia and her husband Tsar Alexander I of Russia by a Japanese artist (1807).

"Ōtsuki Gentaku’s Kankai Ibun (1807), also referred to as Strange Tales of a Circumnavigation, tells the adventurous story of sixteen Japanese sailors who were shipwrecked on the coast of Russia in 1793. The four surviving sailors stayed in Russia for more than ten years as tutors in the Japanese language and returned to Japan in 1804. Together with Shimura Kōkyō, Gentaku compiled the text for the illustrated travel account based on oral evidence, reporting on the experiences of the Japanese men in the Western world[1]. Originally the manuscript consists of 15 (or occasionally 16) volumes and was produced throughout nineteenth-century Japan[2]."

#tsar alexander i of russia #alexander i #elizabeth alexeievna

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fictionyoubelieve · 1 year ago

Text

This is a VERY long text post.

thanks @squareallworthy for giving me the excuse to make a House of Leaves post!! I'm going to try to make this accessible to everyone, so:

If you haven't read HoL, feel free to bail if this goes too deep or stops making sense. Personally, I don't think you need to worry about spoilers because it's not that kind of book (it usually spoils itself anyway), but if you'd rather go in knowing nothing, slam that J key now.

If you have read HoL, feel free to skip ahead to the theories. You're presumably good at tuning out extraneous information by now. :)

What is House of Leaves?

House of Leaves is a novel by Mark Z. Danielewski (MZD), published in 2000. It's an example of postmodern literature, which according to Wikipedia is:

a form of literature that is characterized by the use of metafiction, unreliable narration, self-reflexivity, intertextuality, and which often thematizes both historical and political issues.

...all of which is House of Leaves to a T. Rather than capturing a single narrative, the book's text layers multiple stories, which refer to both each other and to external (e.g. mythical) stories, and which often reference the fact that they are stories in a book.

You can find it archived here, though unfortunately that scan/OCR seems to mangle the text in ways that will be hard to distinguish from everything else it's got going on.

Overall, I think the book is really cool and interesting, but maybe not worth sinking a ton of time and effort into. It's not a fun or easy read. Definitely worth checking out, but don't be afraid to skim or abandon it if it's not your thing.

The layers of HoL

The innermost layer is The Navidson Record (TNR), which is ostensibly a documentary but effectively a found-footage horror film. It's a series of films about the Navidson family--an unmarried couple with two young children--moving into a house in Virginia, and discovering that something is very strange about it. First subtly and then dramatically, the interior of the house grows and changes, in defiance of physical laws. One closet in particular becomes an eerie and seemingly infinite labyrinth, which they explore at their peril. (Don't worry--the overall novel is creepy and sometimes upsetting, but not outright scary. I'm a weenie about horror and had no trouble.)

The next layer is a pseudo-academic text about TNR by a blind man named Zampanò. He recounts the events of TNR, but also meanders on long tangents about other stories or academic works.

The third layer is the primary one we experience as the book House of Leaves. A character calling himself Johnny Truant discovered the disorganized and incomplete manuscript in Zampanò's apartment after that man's death, and he has assembled and edited it into this book, as well as added an introduction and lengthy footnotes relating stories from his own life. Johnny often contradicts himself, freely admits to making things up or changing the previous layers to suit his whims, and appears to mentally deteriorate over the course of the novel. He also says he can't find any evidence that TNR actually exists.

There's a thin layer added by "the Editors," who supposedly received the text from Johnny, and published it while in contact with him. They add some appendices and minor notes throughout, mainly to provide English translations for certain excerpts or to state that something the text refers to is missing. They include a purported still frame from TNR in the appendices, with no comment from Johnny.

All of the above, of course, was actually written by MZD, the real-life author of HoL. He self-published the earliest version of HoL to the internet, before publishing the full version as a physical book. He also produced some teleplays related to the work, and a collection of letters from Johnny's mother. The letters were originally published separately, but now most of them are included as an appendix to HoL. MZD's sister, the singer-songwriter Poe, also released the album Haunted around the same time as HoL, and it serves as a companion or counterpart to the novel.

The final layer is us, the readers. We interact with the text and also with each other, like I'm doing with this post. MZD's website still hosts forum threads from the time the book came out, where readers deciphered and theorized about it together. This is an important and intentional aspect of the work, as I'll explain in more detail later (see "The Meta").

Sub-stories

There are a few smaller anecdotes within the text which almost serve as their own layers, but don't fit neatly into the hierarchy above:

The Chiclitz play The Minotaur, on p110-111

The story of The Atrocity, on p297-300

The story of the changeling/cyanotic child, on p518-521 and referenced obliquely on p48-49

Themes and motifs

A non-exhaustive and highly subjective list, ordered very roughly from the most to least prominent:

The Greek myth of the Minotaur and the labyrinth

House

Madness, memory, and meaning

The sea and the sky

Darkness, absence, emptiness

Yggdrasil, the world tree; trees, leaves, and paper; the Cumaean Sibyl

Fidelity (in multiple senses of the word)

Colors, especially red/blue or red/blue/green/yellow

Death and rebirth, procreation, the womb

The biblical myth of Abraham and his sons

The biblical myth of Jonah and the Whale

The eye, cameras

Head injuries, holes in the head

Families, especially parents and twins/pairs of siblings

Note that there are connections and overlap between these themes. I'm going to argue that the first few in particular are strongly intertwined.

The Meta

Most of the fan theories I've seen are focused on the usual concerns: "what do you think really happened in the story? what does this mean for the characters?" That's reasonable, but since HoL is extremely aware of itself and its readers, I think it's also worth asking what the text expects from us or what it's trying to communicate directly, if anything. IMO those questions are easier to answer than nailing down the events of the story, and that's on purpose.

While rightfully regarded as a challenging and puzzling book, HoL actually is pretty blatant about helping us "solve" most of it. Heck, it color-codes its major motifs. There were many instances where I was like "oh, this reminds me of that other part from a ways back" and then the footnote would tell me to refer back to that part I was remembering. When there's an encoded message, like the Morse code or first-letter sections, Johnny typically makes a comment providing the key to decoding it--and in some cases also tells us the "hidden message," like in his conversation with the band near the end of the book.

The book straight-up tells you how to read it. On p115, just before it starts getting really wild with the typesetting in a section structured like a maze, Zampanò's text gives this advice for navigating mazes:

In order to escape then, we have to remember we cannot ponder all paths but must decode only those necessary to get out. We must be quick and anything but exhaustive.

The next footnote (139) also warns: "[in a maze,] the faster you go, the worse you are entangled" and "If one reads too quickly or too slowly, one understands nothing."

And of course, the book provides an extensive (albeit somewhat playful) index, so that if you have a theory about a certain word or concept, you can easily go back and look up examples. I believe the page numbers also match up across editions, so that different readers can more easily confer with one another.

All of this strongly suggests that MZD very much wants us to view the text as a puzzle to decode with other readers. He makes sure we know there are patterns and hidden messages to be found.

The madness of analysis

Like I mentioned above, Johnny's mental state deteriorates over the course of the book. A lot of his story also has to do with his late mother, who was committed to a psychiatric institution when he was young, and who shows similar quirks and inconsistencies in her letters to Johnny. The reader is quickly clued in that Johnny is an unreliable narrator, and by the end of the book it's nearly impossible to untangle what "really happened" in Johnny's narrative because there are so many revisions and contradictions.

Zampanò's writing may seem like a sharp contrast to Johnny's, since it is stuffy and academic rather than casual and coarse. But the two strongly parallel each other, as do the two characters. They both ramble and are prone to lengthy tangents based on tenuous connections; Zampanò seems to make things up and messily add and redact just as Johnny does with his stories. Both seem haunted by and obsessed with the manuscript in similar ways.

Other HoL readers have called it a satire of academic texts, but I'd go a step farther and say it's drawing a parallel between (perhaps overzealous) academic analysis and psychosis: seeing patterns or connections where there are none, jumping to wildly different and sometimes bizarre conclusions from the same experience, getting lost in theories with little connection to reality, communicating in ways that are hard for others to understand.

It even encourages its readers to engage in the same behavior, by hinting at many different patterns and connections yet making them inconsistent, uncertain, and contradictory. It goads you into trying to analyze it, but you'll just end up like Charlie in the Pepe Silvia meme:

Derrida's Deconstruction

Wait, so does that mean it's futile to try to analyze House of Leaves? Well, sort of, and the book tells us this! Remember that part (see "The Meta") that was giving us advice on how to navigate a maze, i.e. the book? On that same page, p115, it also says:

Unfortunately, the anfractuosity of some labyrinths may actually prohibit a permanent solution. More confounding still, its complexity may exceed the imagination of even the designer. Therefore anyone lost within must recognize that no one, not even a god or an Other, comprehends the entire maze and so therefore can never offer a definitive answer. [In the Navidson house,] any way out remains singular and applicable only to those on that path at that particular time. All solutions then are necessarily personal.

This sounds a lot like Deconstruction and Post-Structuralism, which isn't a coincidence given that Derrida was just quoted on p112. From the Wikipedia page on Deconstruction:

Derrida's deconstruction strategy is also used by postmodernists to locate meaning in a text rather than discover meaning due to the position that it has multiple readings.

It's probably also relevant that most of the book is about Johnny interpreting a text after the literal death of the author.

Footnote 140, which comes after "even the designer" in the above excerpt, includes this, in red and crossed out:

Or in other words: shy from the sky. No answer lies there. It cannot care, especially for what it no longer knows. Treat that place as a thing unto itself, independent of all else, and confront it on those terms. You alone must find the way. No one else can help you. Every way is different. And if you do lose yourself at least take solace in the absolute certainty that you will perish.

This ties the more general advice on interpreting texts back to the specific narratives in HoL. Before we dig into that more in the next section, note that Derrida was also a fan of putting things "under erasure" by crossing them out. Hmm...

Madness and the Minotaur

In multiple ways, the Minotaur is associated with absence. Most obviously, text mentioning it by name usually only appears in red and crossed out--Johnny says these are sections he recovered after Zampanò tried to erase them. The Minotaur also seems to be absent within TNR; the labyrinth of the House suggests its presence through growls and slash marks, but a beast never actually appears, and instead, things within the labyrinth seem to gradually fade out of existence. In myth, of course, the Minotaur was removed from society by hiding it in the labyrinth, and was eventually slain by Theseus, obliterating it forever.

On p335 we get footnote 295, again in red and crossed out:

At the heart of the labyrinth waits the Mi[ ]taur and like the Minotaur of myth its name is [ ] Chiclitz treated the maze as trope for psychic concealment, its excavation resulting in (tragic[ ] reconciliation. But if in Chiclitz's eye the Minotaur was a son imprisoned by a father's shame, is there then to Navidson's eye an equivalent misprision of the [ ] in the depths of that place? And for that matter does there exist a chance to reconcile the not known with the desire for its antithesis?

(The footnote continues, making the shape of a sword with large gaps in the blade.) Empty brackets in this section supposedly denote burnt holes in the manuscript, but since they are consistently used to make puns, it's clear that at least one of the authors is being intentional. We could read the gaps here as literal: the name of the Minotaur is [nothing], the labyrinth conceals the treacherous [nothing] in its depths.

The chapter that footnote appears in (Chapter 13), which is titled The Minotaur, begins with a quote that is translated as so (p313):

a slow shadow spreads across the prairie, but still, the act of naming it, of guessing what is its nature and its circumstances creates a fiction, not a living creature, not one of those who wander on the earth.

In this poem, El otro tigre, Borges compares a tiger in a poem, made of words and symbols, to "the other tiger" of flesh and blood, out in the wild. No matter how he tries to capture it with writing, the real tiger will always elude him.

So the Minotaur is connected to absence, nothingness, emptiness, and so on. This chapter draws additional associations with death and madness, which of course are also forms of loss or absence--both of self, and of meaning.

Is Johnny the Minotaur?

Johnny is strongly associated with the Minotaur, but his exact relationship with it is more complex than simply "Johnny is the Minotaur" or "the Minotaur represents Johnny". He is stalked by the creature in various forms, and he has nightmares or delusions in which he is the Minotaur. Raymond, the abusive foster dad, calls Johnny "beast". I think it's most accurate to say he is scared of the Minotaur and scared of being or becoming it, especially if we're interpreting it as nothingness or madness. And we know how his story ends.

There's another association I make with Johnny which isn't as explicit and doesn't seem to have been discussed as much, and that is to Icarus. There are hints of this early on--his father is a pilot, he's strongly associated with the sea and drowning, his fantasy when he meets Thumper sounds like flying--but it's brought home in the story about getting the scars on his arms, on page 505, and all the allusions and imagery. He burns and then drowns.

Zampanò, likewise, is like Daedalus. He built the labyrinth that is the manuscript, and which traps both Johnny and himself. There are some suggestions in the text that he and Johnny are like figurative (or in some theories, literal) father and son. But Daedalus, unlike Perilaus, was able to free himself from his own invention, and it seems like this wasn't true for Zampanò.

(This may be too much of a pet theory; I'm not sure it's as well-supported as the other parts of this post. But there's something there, I'm pretty sure.)

House

A house is a structure that defines empty space and imbues it with meaning by separating it from the greater nothingness. The novel is likewise a structure that gives form to a particular nothingness (fiction) by defining it and separating it from the greater nothingness (everything else that has not happened).

As readers, we follow a narrative "thread" through the text, but encounter only the Minotaur (nothingness) within. Just as the Minotaur in Chiclitz's play was portrayed sympathetically, the absence does not need to be bad or monstrous--it's just nothing. As we see in the key shape of footnote 123 (p110-111), the Minotaur is the key, but there is no Minotaur. There is no key. The key is crossed out (both the text comprising it, and the key itself, by being split across two pages). Perhaps we "slay" this Minotaur by imposing our own meaning? Would that be noble or tragic?

The house itself is what matters, but the house is blue, and blue means open to interpretation--what a blue screen meant in the 90s, before digital film became the norm. Everyone projects their own thoughts and fears onto the house, and it reflects those back at them. It's meaning and memory; you get out of it exactly what you bring. Blue is shifting and unfathomable like the sea. You could lose yourself in its depths.

Though "out of the blue" specifically seems more like a deus ex machina, because I'm pretty sure the blue of the sky is associated with God, eyes/cameras/observers, and us (MZD and the readers), though I don't have examples prepared to back that up. "Shy from the sky" (see "Derrida's Deconstruction") could then be taken as "don't look to the author for answers".

But if there is any meaning to be found, it also can't be found looking only within the text and the world it defines, without considering those final layers. The stories all intertwine and even loop back on themselves, as when Navidson and Johnny both encounter their own book. Using the HoL to light your way through HoL will lead nowhere. You'll need help from the outside.

So?

Okay, okay, okay. So what?

"SO?" asks the text (p103), and maybe you do, too. Sew buttons, says the Morse code of footnote 119 on the same page. Dismissing the question? Or suggesting you work hard to secure your buttons with a whole spool of thread, as Johnny does near the end (p514) to avoid losing them to the labyrinth?

Shortly after, on p516, Johnny writes this:

Wasn’t darkness nothingness? Wasn’t that Navidson's discovery? Wasn’t it Zampanò's? Or have I misconstrued it all? Missed the obvious, something still undiscovered waiting there deep within me, outside of me, powerful and extremely patient, unafraid to remain, even though it is and always has been free.

This (and some of his other writing late in the story) reads to me like possibly an acknowledgement or dim awareness of reality outside the book, but I'm not sure. I'm just going to point to it, and also the part a little further down the page, where he describes a sunset as "Reds finally marrying blues."

How do we reconcile red and blue? Is it about reconciling ourselves to the lack of true meaning, as in Nihilism? Or choosing to focus only on the "real", refusing to lose ourselves in the endless cycle of interpretation?

I don't know. There's probably more that can be built on this foundation, but this is as far as I've gotten. If you actually got through all that, wow, thanks for reading, and by all means let me know your own thoughts.

#hol #house of leaves #theorycrafting #literary analysis

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supernaturalfreakout · 1 year ago

Text

Revelations pt. 2 (History on Your Side—Chapter 3).

Sam Winchester x OCfem!reader/You

Summary: Revelations of a different kind are revealed. You and Sam spend some time alone. *Please see the masterlist for entire work summary and tags* Masterlist | Read on AO3

The Impala rumbled through the streets, the engine's purr resonating through the rainy night as Sam and Dean navigated towards your address. The houses stood in neat rows, each one barely distinguishable from the next in the dimly lit neighbourhood. As they pulled up outside your modest townhouse, the porch light cast a soft glow, illuminating the rain as it fell.

You met them at the door, hurrying them into the kitchen where an array of old texts and manuscripts lay, covering the table and floor.

"Wow, you've really gone to town" Dean remarked.

The three of you gathered around the small kitchen table, the air thick with anticipation as you laid out a leather journal and a few worn manuscripts in front of you.

A touch of nervousness colored your voice as you continued. "I've been studying these texts for a while and have never been able to make sense of them, but when you mentioned a spell... well, take a look..."

Sam leaned forward, recognizing a familiar seal on the journal. "Are these… Men of Letters materials?"

Your confusion was evident as you locked eyes.

"You know about the Men of Letters?" Dean's tone was laced with both concern and intrigue.

You nodded. "I've been quietly researching their history for years. It's not something openly discussed in academic circles... it's often dismissed as mere conspiracy or myth."

Sam's eyebrows rose in interest. "What got you interested in their research?"

"I stumbled upon obscure references during my doctoral studies. It was like uncovering a hidden world of knowledge. But the deeper I delved, the more I realized how deliberately it was obscured. My colleagues shrugged it off, but I sensed there was more… and… I'm sensing that you know more than you're letting on?" You looked between the brothers as they glanced at each other, silently contemplating whether to reveal their connection to the secret organisation.

Sam leaned forward as he explained. "The Men of Letters, they've been around for centuries. They've catalogued knowledge about every kind of supernatural entity you can imagine. They're like a secret society, guarding information that most people can't even imagine."

Dean, nodding in agreement, added, "They've got archives full of books and lore from all over the world. But they keep it under lock and key, hidden from the public eye."

You listened intently, visibly intrigued. "So, you're saying that this organization has been safeguarding knowledge about the supernatural for generations?"

Dean chimed in. "It's not just about information. They've got tools, spells, ancient artefacts—stuff that's pretty powerful if it falls into the wrong hands."

Your eyes widened slightly. "How do you know all of this?"

"We've had our fair share of encounters with the Men of Letters," Sam began, a hint of hesitation in his voice. "In fact, we live in one of their old bunkers."

"Yeah, it's our headquarters. It's packed with centuries-old knowledge, weapons, spells—everything we need for our... line of work. Where did you say you found this?" Dean's voice turned accusatory as he picked up the journal.

"It was donated by a member of the public… I reached out for information on local folklore and someone handed it in. There should be a name in the cover, hold on…" You flipped to the back page. "Donated by a Mr Henry Win… W... Winchester".

A silence settled between the three of you. Sam and Dean gaped.

"Henry Who?" Dean asked, not believing his ears.

"Henry Winchester." You gulped, watching the brother's shocked expressions.

"Huh." Sam huffed, visibly baffled. "Henry Winchester is… or was… our grandfather".

"Wait, so you're telling us that you just happen to have our missing Men of Letters' journal, donated by our grandfather?!" Dean accused. "Who are you working for lady?".

"What?! No one… I mean, I work for the university… No one else... I'm just as confused as you are right now!" You sat back in defence, noting the concern in the brothers' eyes.

"Not many people even know about the Men of Letters, let alone actively research them" Sam added, searching your eyes.

You looked at him pleadingly. "I swear Sam, I wouldn't lie about this..."

Sam calmed, noticing the panic in your eyes. "Hey, hey… it's okay, I believe you Y/N." I don't know why, but I just do. Sam soothed as he looked into your eyes.

Relief washed over you and Dean appeared to calm, trusting Sam's intuition.

As the tension lifted, a sense of understanding gradually filled the room. Sam's unwavering belief seemed to bridge the gap, diffusing the suspicion that lingered moments ago. The relief in your eyes mirrored Dean's easing stance.

"So, you're like… guardians of this hidden world?" You asked, reigniting your conversation.

Sam exhaled through his nose. "More like janitors, cleaning up the messes others can't handle."

"It's not always glamorous," Dean teased with a smirk. "But someone's gotta do it." The hint of humour in his tone reassured you that his earlier suspicions had dissipated. "Anyway, back to this spell…"

"Right, of course..." You pulled the journal towards you.

Sam leaned forward, studying the text intently as you pointed out the details you had identified. Aided by Sam and Dean's knowledge, you worked together to translate the details of the spell.

The spell involved a meticulous process- a ritual, cleansing a site with specific herbs and offerings, all of which had to align with the energies of a full moon.

Hope coloured Sam's voice. "This is incredible... So the spirit's energy is tied to the full moon?"

You nodded. "Lore states that the tribe worshiped the full moon, and when a member died and their bones burned… their souls transcend there…Somehow, this dude got trapped on earth"

"Huh" Dean mused. "Sounds like a sci-fi movie".

Sam huffed, "Are you forgetting that Vampires exist, Dean? Werewolves, Demons, Angels...?"

"Angels?!" You blurted, shock evident on your face.

The brothers chuckled in unison. "Why is it always the Angels that shock people?" Dean smithed.

You squinted at Sam, tilting your head to the side in mock suspicion. "Angels, really!? You're not getting out of that one easily, I'll have questions later."

Dean winked at Sam.

"Anyway moving onnn…" Sam pressed, placing his hand on the table. "This explains why there have been no reported sightings in a few weeks. No full moon = no spirit."

"So… yeah, this spell… the moon." You stumbled over your words, a hint of reluctance in your expression. "Basically… it seems the spell can only be performed on a full moon. And, well, the next one is... tomorrow."

Dean's eyebrows shot up in surprise. "Tomorrow? That soon?"

You nodded, feeling the weight of time. "I'm sorry I didn't mention this earlier. That's why I called you over so urgently."

Sam nodded thoughtfully, understanding the sudden rush. "Thank you Y/N. We owe you big time for this."

You glanced at the clock on the wall. "Soo… we should get cracking then. We'll need to gather the ingredients and prepare for the ritual before sunset tomorrow".

Sam and Dean exchanged a concerned glance. "Y/N... This ritual, it might not be safe. We can't guarantee what we'll face there."

Dean's expression hardened as he chimed in, his demeanour firm. "Sam's right, we can't risk putting you in harm's way."

You met their concern with an unwavering, resolute look. "I understand the risks, but I called you here for a reason. I want to help."

Sam sighed deeply, his concern etched in his furrowed brow. "We appreciate that, but this is our job—our responsibility. We can't involve you in something this risky."

"But… I've been studying these texts for years... I know the history," you insisted firmly, your determination shining through. "I can be an asset, not a liability."

Dean shook his head, his reluctance evident. "We can't take that chance. Our line of work, it's not for everyone."

You stood your ground, your stance holding a mix of frustration and resolve. "I understand the risks, and I'm willing to take them."

Sam and Dean exchanged a knowing look, silently acknowledging your unyielding determination. With a heavy sigh, Sam relented, albeit with lingering worry etched on his face. "Okay. We'll need to gather the ingredients, and rehearse the spell."

Your eyes lit up with gratitude. "Thank you. I won't let you down."

After a tense pause, Sam spoke in a softer tone. "We'll prepare everything. But promise us, if it gets too dangerous, you'll stay back."

You nodded firmly. "I promise. I'll follow your lead."

Dean, uncomfortable with the tension in the air, decided to excuse himself. "Hey Sammy… as you’re the bookish one, why don't you stay and get clued up on this spell. I’ll head out to grab the herbs and shit". Dean shot a reassuring look at Sam, a silent encouragement to handle the situation, before swiftly leaving to gather the required supplies.

As the sound of the closing door echoed through the room, the atmosphere seemed to ease a bit. Sam met your gaze, his concern softening into a reassuring smile. "He's got a way with words, hasn't he?"

You chuckled softly, the tension easing a little. "He sure does. Is he always that direct and to the point?"

Sam let out a breathy laugh. "Yep"

You mirrored his amusement.

Sam leaned back in his chair, folding his arms as he regarded you. "You really shouldn't have to do this. It's not your responsibility."

"I know," you admitted, a hint of weariness in your voice. "But I can't stand by knowing that I might know something that could help. This means a lot to me."

Sam's expression softened, understanding the depth of your commitment. "We appreciate your willingness to help. But you have to understand, this world we deal with, it's dangerous. We've seen things that... no one should have to."

You nodded solemnly. "I get it. But sometimes, doing what's right means taking risks."

Despite his concerns for your safety, your words resonated with him deeply. "We'll do everything to keep you safe, Y/N. That's a promise."

A faint smile touched your lips. "I trust you."

---

With a newfound understanding, you focused on the task ahead together. Time passed swiftly in your combined efforts, Sam absorbing every bit of information like a sponge, whilst you offered clarifications and insights from your research.

As you discussed the finer points of the ritual, your voices softened, the air thickening with a palpable chemistry, unspoken yet undeniable. Your forced proximity seemed to heighten the charged atmosphere. An accidental brush of hands while reaching for a text, or a fleeting touch as you exchanged notes, sent jolts of awareness through you both.

Sam caught himself lingering on your words longer than necessary, admiring the intelligence and passion in your eyes. He tried to concentrate on the ritual details, but his thoughts occasionally drifted to the way your eyes sparkled with enthusiasm or the way you ran your fingers through your hair in moments of deep contemplation.

You too, couldn't help but notice the intensity in Sam's eyes as he absorbed the information. His focused demeanour was intriguing, and the way his brows furrowed slightly in concentration was oddly endearing. You found yourself drawn to his earnestness, dedication, and the way he spoke with a gentle authority.

"Y/N," Sam began hesitantly, breaking the intensity of your study. "I owe you an apology. When we first met, I... I made a mistake, misgendering you. I'm truly sorry. I haven't stopped thinking about it… I'm pretty embarrassed actually."

Your expression softened, surprise flickering briefly before a reassuring smile tugged at your lips. "Honestly, forget about it... titles can be deceiving."

Sam exhaled through his nose. "It must suck though, right? That people still make assumptions like that".

"I guess so, I just try not to think about it."

"Yeah, yeah, right, I'm sorry."

You chuckled. "Stop apologizing... It's all good."

"Good." Sam smiled, unsure where to lead the conversation next. He hoped he hadn't ruined the vibe.

Sensing Sam's hesitancy, you shuffled in your seat. "Um, I don't know about you, but all this reading is making my head fuzzy. Do you…fancy a beer?"

"Uh, yeah… sure." Sam rose from his seat, unconsciously mirroring you.

"Awesome, you relax, Sam, I'll grab them".

"May I use your bathroom?" Sam asked, ever so politely.

You chuckled. "Yeah of course, up the stairs, first door on the right."

Once in the bathroom, Sam closed the door and stared at himself in the mirror. He felt like a teenager on a first date, full of butterflies. He tried to calm himself down, splashing some cold water on his face and checking his teeth. Taking a deep breath to calm the flutter of nerves in his chest, he ran a hand through his hair, trying to compose himself. He couldn't deny what he was feeling- he was head-over-heels crushing on you.

As he tried to steady his racing thoughts, Sam couldn't help but replay the moments you had shared—your smile, the accidental touches, the way you seamlessly connected over shared enthusiasm.

"Pull yourself together, Sam," he muttered to his reflection. He couldn't afford to let his feelings interfere with the task ahead, especially when danger might loom.

Taking another deep breath, he straightened his posture and splashed a bit more water on his face, letting the coolness soothe his nerves. "Just a crush," he reminded himself firmly, though his heart wasn't completely convinced.

Downstairs, you were gathering drinks from the kitchen, your own thoughts a mix of excitement and nervousness. You had sensed a shift in your interaction, and now, with Sam excusing himself, you tried to contain your own flutter of anticipation. The prospect of spending a casual moment together felt oddly thrilling.

With two bottles in hand, you made your way to the lounge, taking a deep breath to calm your nerves. You set the bottles down on the coffee table as you heard Sam's footsteps coming down the stairs.

"In here!" you called, signalling Sam to turn right, instead of left back into the kitchen. "Needed a change of scenery" you smiled, trying to ease the tension as you both sat on the sofa.

Seated next to each other, you took sips from your drinks.

"Sooo, besides solving supernatural mysteries, what else do you do?" you asked, attempting to break the ice.

Sam chuckled softly, grateful for the shift in conversation. "Well, it's pretty much a hunter's life for me—saving people, hunting things, the family business, as my brother likes to say."

You grinned. "Saving people, huh? That's quite the noble endeavour. But what about when you're not hunting?"

Sam paused, considering the question. "I guess I try to keep some sense of normalcy—reading, jogging, that kind of stuff. Dean says I'm a bit of a nerd."

You chuckled. "Sounds like a good way to balance out the otherworldly chaos."

Sam's gaze softened, memories of a different path flickering in his eyes. "I had another life planned before all of this... I was studying to be a lawyer."

Your eyebrows rose in surprise. "Really? What made you change course?"

"Family duty." Sam's reply was tinged with melancholy and regret. "Some things happen, and you find yourself down a different road. Dean and I… well, we took on this legacy, and it became more than just a choice."

You nodded, sensing the depth behind Sam's words. "It takes a lot to give up one path for another."

"Yeah, it does," Sam agreed softly, a hint of sadness in his tone. "But I guess in the end, we all have to make sacrifices for what we believe in."

You considered him for a second, admiration in your thoughts.

"Anyway... enough about me…what about you? Besides being an encyclopaedia of hidden knowledge, what fills your days?"

You blushed. "Well, you know... the simple things—hiking, painting, exploring new cafes..." A soft smile graced your lips. "Oh, and I have this habit of binge-watching crime documentaries. It's a bit of a guilty pleasure."

Sam chuckled. "Oh yeah?"

You exhaled in amusement. "Yeah, um... I know it sounds so cliché, but understanding the human mind, motivations—it's fascinating."

Your conversation flowed effortlessly, each question peeling back another layer, revealing more about your lives, interests, and aspirations.

Dean eventually returned, laden with an assortment of herbs and artefacts. You were so engrossed in your conversation that you didn't even hear the door open.

"Got everything we need. What'd I miss?" Dean's grin widened as he surveyed the room, sensing the intimate atmosphere he'd stumbled into.

Sam cleared his throat, a faint flush of embarrassment tingeing his cheeks. "Uh, we finalised the spell... Y/N here kindly offered up a beer."

"Yeah, we were just winding down... Are you a true crime fan too?" You asked with a playful smirk.

Dean's eyebrows shot up in mock surprise. "True crime, huh? You've been holding out on me with that one Sammy."

Sam rolled his eyes, a faint smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

"No need to explain, Sammy. Just remember, if you ever need pointers on a real hunt, I'm your go-to guy." Dean winked and headed to the kitchen, focusing on arranging the herbs and artefacts he'd gathered.

You and Sam exchanged a glance—an unspoken acknowledgment of the moment you had shared, now shelved in the wake of the imminent task ahead.

Chapter 4

#ao3 fanfic #history on your side #fanfic #sam winchester #dean winchester #sam winchester x reader #spn #supernatural #x reader

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