#but discussions about theology and what to believe in

[bnuyy2]

i need u girlies to hop on this barbarian quest with me so that you can all meet and fall in love with urich

he is my baby angel

and also a terrible beast

and u should love him too. thank you. 💗

[katakaluptastrophy]

You know when you're at a dinner party with God and things start to get...weird...? It's Maundy Thursday, and it's time for more Bible study for fans of weird queer necromancers!

It's currently Holy Week, the week where liturgical Christians reenact the events of Jesus' death and resurrection in real time. And today, it's Maundy Thursday, which commemorates the Last Supper, where Jesus ate with his friends before he was crucified.

Before we get to the Locked Tomb, what's so special about the Last Supper?

There are actually a few significant things that happen during the Last Supper, but this is where Jesus introduces the concept of communion:

Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying, “Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood. - Matthew 26:26-28

This isn't actually the first time Jesus has told his followers they will need to literally eat him:

So Jesus said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. - John 6:53-56

If you're thinking that sounds a bit intense, you're not alone - the Bible says that "many" of his disciples left after being told that they were apparently going to have to eat Jesus to be saved and resurrected.

While many Protestant denominations take this symbolically, Catholicism teaches transubstantiation: that when the priest prays over the bread and wine at mass, they really do become Jesus' body and blood.

With this in mind, let's circle back to necromancers:

"Overseas to Corpus. (She likes the word corpus; it sounds nice and fat.)"

This is probably Corpus Christi College, Oxford (named after the Solemnity of the Most Holy Body and Blood of Christ, where the church celebrates the real presence of Jesus in the eucharist). The symbol of the college is a pelican - there's even a fabulously gilded pelican atop the sundial in their main quad.

What do pelicans have to do with the eucharist? Quite a lot, actually... The pelican is a really old symbol for Jesus, because it was believed to feed its young on its own flesh and blood in times of famine. The pelican on the Corpus Christi sundial is pecking at its own chest.

The pelican, like Jesus, was believed to give its own body to save those it loved.

Okay, so we've talked about Jesus, and weird cannibal birds, but why is this relevant to necromancers?

Specifically, the necromancer, the Necrolord Prime. John Gaius styles himself as "the god who became man", echoing Jesus as "the word became flesh". His entire pastiche of divinity is a sort of bootleg Catholicism. But while Catholicism posits Jesus' offering of his own body as foundational to the salvation and resurrection of humanity to eternal life, John's godhood relies the exploitation of other's bodies as the foundation of an empire of eternal death.

I've mentioned before in discussing Lyctorhood, how vampires have been understood to represent a sort of inversion of the eucharist because instead of consuming Christ's blood to receive eternal life in heaven, they consume other people's blood for an cursed eternal life on earth. John, and the Lyctors who followed him, gained power and eternal life from the consumption, body and soul, of another person.

In Catholic theology, Jesus offered his own body to degradation and death for the eternal salvation of humankind, but John forcibly consumes someone else's in service of his own apotheosis and immortality, dooming humanity in the process. He wants to be a Catholic flavoured god, but without the suffering that entails. But he's perfectly willing to outsource that suffering to others.

There's something just achingly awful about Alecto liking the feel of the word "corpus" - "body" - when she so hates the body that John constructed for her. John describing Alecto as "in a very real way" the mother of humanity and the mother pelican on the Corpus sundial rending her own flesh for her children. John forcing the earth into a personification of femininity and playing Jesus on another's sacrifice. His daughter, unwillingly trapped in her own corpse walking around with the wounds of her significant self-sacrifice like the resurrected Christ but yet again another body exploited by John in support of his performance of godhood. It brings to mind a very different fantastical engagement with Catholicism, where in the Lord of the Rings Tolkien - riffing on St Augustine - suggested that evil cannot create, it can only mock and corrupt. The ethics of The Locked Tomb may be messier than that, but there's something indicative in how John shies away from his creative powers - his abilities to grow plants, and manipulate earth and water - in favour of his dominion over death.

The metaphysical world of The Locked Tomb is clearly not intended to be the same as that of Catholicism. But with hindsight, perhaps John was onto something when he was surprised that he didn't "get the Antichrist bit" from the nun too.

John isn't the Antichrist. But he is, thematically, anti-Christ.

If we're talking about John and Jesus, there's also, of course, the question of Resurrection. But we've got to go through Hell and back before we get there on Sunday...

[hero-israel]

Let me tell you being a former Christian this shit goes so much deeper than a lot of born Jews realize. The Christian worldview (specifically Calvinist/Puritan) seeping into and pervading all of modern leftism is honestly frightening. But also it's very funny.

They believe that there are Good people and Bad people, and that any mistake or lapse in judgment or instance of not being educated is a Mask Off moment, showing who is a member of the Elect and who is not. If you fuck up, that's not just a fuck up, it's Revealing. You are damned, were always damned, you were just good at hiding it, and now we know the truth and are doubly angry because not only are you evil, you lied about it. The only recourse is to shun you, and if that leads to your death, so be it. Anyone who's seen any micro celebrity get canceled saw this in action.

And the only way you can prove you're a member of the Elect is to operate as if you have nothing to hide. You have to loudly and proudly proclaim your righteousness. If you don't have anything to hide why would you be worried? Privacy is suspicious. You Must Speak on everything they deem important or else you obviously agree with the Bad People. There is no room for discussion or healthy debate. There are no loopholes or subclauses or other points of view to consider. You're with us or against us. If you don't constantly go around saying you're with us, you're probably secretly against us. The only way to convince your neighbors, whom you inherently distrust, that you're one of the Good Ones, is to perform righteousness, parrot righteous words. The only way to redeem yourself is by grandiose acts of self flagellation, perhaps being the right demographic, or by accusing others of Heresy.

The goal is not to bring good into the world, it's to recruit more people into the same thought patterns (that's kind of all Christian denominations though). Because if you can convince your community that you're one of the Elect, that means G-d preselected you for Heaven, and you're golden. No repercussions or consequences baby. The only material benefit for you is that you "get" to proclaim you're going to Heaven and everyone has to agree with you. If anyone doesn't they're probably going to Hell anyway. You're on the right side (of history), so why should you ever self reflect or grow? Why should you question anything? Why should nuance or empathy exist? This is about Right and Wrong. We know where we stand, where do you stand?

Every single aspect of American culture and politics, right and "left" alike, was planted by the pilgrims, and it is so fundamentally antithetical to true Leftist thought. Remember all the actually successful Western Leftist movements were started in Europe (and Israel cough cough)... because they kicked all their fucking psychotic Calvinists out. Those people went to America and that's a big big big reason why we don't have any near as much of a robust Leftist movement as even socially conservative European countries (and Israel cough cough). And what's funny is I still find myself slipping into these thought patterns, which is so not compatible with Jewish philosophy or theology. It's been years and I'm still not done.

It's a hell of a drug to kick, so I definitely don't trust white goysiche college kids who've been antitheists for about 6 months since they left their Republican parents' homes to have any great success in unlearning and unprogramming from this. Which is kind of obvious in that I see them acting just like their conservative Christian parents every day on every social media platform, swap out a gun toting white Jesus with some noble savage idea of Palestine, absolving the West of its sins against the Global South.

It is a cult structured around spiritual isolation, antisocial behavior, and it is inherently against any kind of political movement that centers and celebrates the Community. It is designed to tear communities apart and foster obedience to whatever authority can force itself on them. And this has been going on for almost 500 years, there is nothing we can do about it.

Thank you for the insightful look. Their "purity culture" approach definitely had to come from somewhere.

[bulbabutt]

not to still be all up in arms about the transformers religion but holy fuck, robots having religion is nothing new, they can have theology! that makes sense! robots who are fully sentient seeking out a reason for their souls is totally fine! im not saying the transformers shouldnt believe in primus or the all spark or believe in the 13 primes that whole thing works, it just bothers me that the canon of their religion is canon to the story. why is their planet LITERALLY their god. why is their religion based in literal history. i shouldnt even call it their religion, its just their canonical history. thats the problem! it comes from the perspective of writers who see religious doctrine as real history!

it also sucks for the nature of the robot as a concept! instead of being machines so advanced they are sentient, they are now fully formed beings granted souls by their god. thats no longer synthetic life conceptually, is it? that is a higher being creating life out of nothing. the concept of robots comes from slave labour, machines created by man to further their own advancements. machines created by organic life, not machines granted life by an ethereal being. they were created as commentary on capitalism. it asks the question "if this life is created synthetically, but it forms sentient thought, it is alive?". most other stories containing robots do this. think about overwatch's omnics, mass effects geth, star trek characters like data and the doctor, we the audience see them as alive but people in their worlds have to debate about it. that is the point of science fiction, to have theological discussions about robots.

what disappoints me about transformers isnt the changing of the lore, but the fact they couldnt conceive of anything more interesting to say about robots. i was watching g1 thinking "i cant wait to see future adaptations take this concept and flesh it out", and watching these adaptations strip the nature of the robot entirely from the lore in place of some all powerful god really sucks! imagine if their theology was the same, but their history was not. imagine robots who believe their planet is their god in spite of not actually knowing that to be true. wouldnt that be conceptually more interesting? wouldnt that say something?

instead of a unicron who is just a cosmic horror, a rogue planet who hungers for other worlds to sustain itself, unicron now represents all evil in the universe. hes a being of pure evil, existing as the equal and opposite to the canonically good god primus, the planet of cybertron. that ruins the concept to me. theyre taking the fun of science fiction out of it, turning it into basic "all good in the universe comes from god". it takes the choice of being good or evil out of it. giving them literal souls takes them choosing to say they have souls out of it. it takes the choice of valuing biological life away from the robots themselves to say that it is simply evil to not.

maybe some adaptation i havent gotten to yet will say something else, but as it stands right now im just so disappointed that this is the route it took.

[thrashkink-coven]

OKAY

I think we need to discuss something that I’ve literally never heard any other practitioners talk about but I think it’ll immediately clear up A LOT of confusion! This is obviously my own upg so take it with as much validity as you please.

When doing any kind of work with any kind of deity, you really need to understand the concepts of archetypes and syncretism.

Religion, faith, and mythology, it’s all a big mess. Our clumsy archaic human language and our tendency to destroy and distort information means that the ancient world is really, to our modern understanding, A LOT (and I mean a LOT) of hypothesizing.

We often use the same words to describe different concepts, mix up names, combine names, and misunderstand each other. Such is the nature of humanity.

Theology is always fluid. Different entities have different cultural associations, some major entities or characters are even shared among multiple groups of people. Syncretism means that groups of people develop their ideas with the influence of other groups of people, though shifted to make sense for their personal experience.

My favourite thing in the world is when different religions share stories- viewing history from totally different perspectives- Retelling the same events through the scope of their theology.

This is why we have archetypes. There are many goddesses of love and sex that are associated with the planet that is commonly known as Venus. Why these archetypes emerge in the way they do? That’s up for you to debate with yourself.

The question of whether Aphrodite is Astarte or Ishtar or Lucifer or Helel or Eosphoros or Hesperus is not a question that can be answered entirely objectively. It can never be proven and it can never be disproven. Because sometimes the answer is yes, sometimes the answer is definitely no, and sometimes it’s really hard to tell.

The way that we all experience the energy that is “Venus” is going to be different. If she definitely feels like the same energy as Astarte to you, then that could be the case. There’s no objective authority on reality or faith. There is no reason why the findings of 1000 year old magis are more legitimate than yours. Study, learn, experiment.

I like to imagine it similar to colors. We all agree that wavelengths between 620 to 750 nm are red. We have silly little cones in our eyes that work with our brains to turn information into color. But we all understand that there are thousands of shades of red, and some people can’t even see red. Do you see where I’m going? I hope this makes sense.

Because of the way that we interact with reality, there are as many Aphrodite as there are people who believed in Aphrodite- and this is true for every God (at least in my silly little opinion).

There are as many variations in her energy as there are variations of people who follow her.

I try to scope this around what Jophiel told me once. YHWH created him, sometimes. But not at the moment when I was talking to him. When I asked him if Lucifer was the Satan of Christianity he said “sometimes” as well. It depends. It all depends. That’s the beauty of this weird wacky thing that we do.

Anyways,

I don’t know how else to write this but to say some people aren’t compatible with every archetype lol. This is totally okay though, it’s not anyone’s fault! It’s just like … spiritual chemistry. Alchemy? Stay with me!

Nature has laws. If you try to push against these laws you will experience difficulty and suffering. ☹️

Nature creates certain compounds. Stable compounds thrive 🙂 and unstable compounds explode ☹️. Interactions create products and outputs. When two or more elements that are not compatible are introduced they may have a volatile reaction.

I will not claim to know how divinities operate. This is all just my silly billy pondering. But I do know for fact, that at least in my experience, certain entities that share the same address interact with different people in different ways- and some entities will only respond to you under a specific face. Some entities will share faces, and some won’t even respond to you at all.

I’ll use a couple personal examples for reference.

When I first started working with Prince Cerberus, I addressed him using his Goetic name Naberius, as recorded in the Lesser Key of Solomon. I used his sigil and addressed that name.

One of the first things that came through crystal clear was his request to not be called Naberius. He made it very clear to me that he wanted to he called Cerbere or Cerberus, or that I could make up a personal name, but never should I use Naberius. He did not give a reason but he was firm on it.

Now, does this mean that we all can’t use the name Naberius and that we should all blacklist the name? NO! and this doesn’t mean that anyone who works with Naberius is disrespecting Cerberus!!!

For whatever reasons, I don’t know why, my Naberius is Cerberus. I don’t know if Naberius and Cerberus are the same entity or not, I just know that when I think of Naberius I get forwarded to Cerbere. I’m still able to use Naberius’ sigil, but I always get Cerberus.

That might not be true for you. That might not even be logical. That’s just the way that my spirit interacts with that spirit.

I’ve been a long time admirer of Lord Hermes. I approached him and tried desperately to gain his favor, but he refused 💔💔. He made it pretty clear that it wasn’t going to happen through a few ways, and since then he’s repeatedly rejected me…

lol 🥲

I was confused about that for a while, until I started getting hints towards Lord Mercury.

I can’t explain why, I have no idea what the real reason behind this is, but I feel extremely compatible with Mercury, but not with Hermes, like at all. Their energy feels quite separate and different to me. My Mercury isn’t quick like silver, he’s actually quite slow and contemplative.

I was bummed to not be able to establish a “work” relationship with Hermes but it’s probably for the best. Mercury is an excellent teacher.

What I mean to say through all of this rambling is that these things are not concrete. My Astaroth is only Astarte sometimes. Sometimes they feel very similar, sometimes they feel very distinct.

It’s important to remember that the Gods are not one thing, but many things at once. The answers to these questions are all variable. Only you can find the answers for yourself.

If you read this far you’re a real one 🫡

[transmascpetewentz]

This post seems pretty innocent, but if you look through the notes and OP's blog, it becomes evident that this post is operating under the assumption that Jews are inherently right-wing, or that converts to Judaism are "victims" of a "zionist agenda" "disguising itself as leftist" (sound familiar?).

Like, what these people seem to not understand is that

Religion isn't a synonym for xtianity. Just because you think that xtianity is inherently right wing (spoiler alert, it isn't) and that you associate the word "religion" with cultural xtianity doesn't mean that Judaism or the Jewish community shares any negative aspects of cultural xtianity or the xtian community that you are thinking of. The idea that converts to Judaism only want to convert because they want "xtianity without the bad stuff" is very insulting, antisemitic, and supersessionist.

Converts are able to have just as complex and deep of a relationship with Judaism as those who were born into it, and converts are equal with Jews from birth under Jewish law. Like, just because someone is trans/leftist and converting to Judaism doesn't mean that they just want to convert to Judaism because it's trans-accepting (which is true for the vast majority of Jewish communities). Many trans converts and people converting do often point out that some Jewish traditions can be expressed in transphobic ways, but that doesn't make Judaism transphobic as a whole, that just means that they present a challenge for trans Jews, and a discussion to be had within the Jewish community, without the influence of gentiles. Because I haven't fully converted yet, I too need to recognize when my opinion is not wanted or needed, so I find it insulting when gentiles with no connection to Judaism disregard Jewish law and tradition entirely to make highly generalized, incorrect statements about Jewish theology and practice. It's also offensive to imply that a queer or trans gentile specifically cannot have a connection to Judaism beyond believing that it's inherently leftist. Some people have heritage (hi, the only reason I'm not already Jewish right now is because my grandfather was forced to give up his Jewish community with the threat of being sent to a death camp in Siberia), some people have participated in the community for years, and some people enjoy Jewish theology! All of these are perfectly valid reasons to convert, and why should it be up to random gentiles to decide they aren't?

Anyway I'm sorry, rant over, time smash a hole in my wall.

[saintmachina]

One million dollar question: is it true that the Bible condems homosexuality? I had a discussion with two conservatives who sent me some verses that seem to confirm that but i don't know much about the context although i know this is important too

Let’s start here: why is this the million dollar question? Why does it matter what the Bible has to say about sex, or love, or human relationships? At the end of the day, it’s just a book, right?

Oceans of ink (and blood) have been spilled over not only what the Bible says, but what it does, how it functions. The course of empires, nations, and families have been shaped by the contents of this book, and from a historical and cultural perspective, it holds a lot of weight. But you didn’t ask about the sociological, you asked about the theological, so let’s explore. 

Different Christian traditions vary in their approach to scripture. For example: some Protestant denominations believe that the Bible is inspired, inerrant, and infallible. In this paradigm, God is the ultimate author of scripture working through human hands, and the resulting text is both without error and in no way deceptive or mistaken. Similarly, The Second Vatican Council decreed that “the books of Scripture must be acknowledged as teaching solidly, faithfully and without error that truth which God wanted put into sacred writings for the sake of salvation.” When a member of the clergy is ordained into the Episcopal Church they swear that they “do believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, and to contain all things necessary to salvation.”

Can you see how many of these points of doctrine overlap yet seek to distinguish themselves from one another? Theologians have spent lifetimes arguing over definitions, and even when they manage to settle on solid teachings, the way that the teaching is interpreted by the clergy and incorporated into the lives of the laity varies WIDELY. As much as systematic theology may try, humans aren’t systematic beings. We’re highly contextual: we only exist in relation to others, to history, to circumstance, and to the divine. We simply cannot call up God to confirm church teaching, and I think a lot of people cling excessively to the Bible as a result of the ache (dare I even say trauma) of being separated from God via space and time in the way we currently are.

God is here, but God is not here. God is within us, God is within the beloved, God is within the sea and sky and land, and yet we cannot grasp God to our bodies in the way we long to. In this earthly lifetime, we are forever enmeshed in God, yet forever distinct, and that is our great joy and our great tragedy.

So barring a direct spiritual experience or the actual second coming, we're left to sort through these things ourselves. And because humans are flawed, our interpretations will always be flawed. Even with the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives guiding us.

When engaging with any sort of Biblical debate, it is essential that you have a strong understanding of what the Bible means to you, an an embodied individual living a brief little awful and wonderful life on Earth. Otherwise it's easy to get pushed around by other people’s convincing-sounding arguments and sound bites.

Here’s where I show my hand. As a confirmed Episcopalian I believe that reason, tradition, and scripture form the “three-legged stool” upon which the church stands, interdependent and interrelational to each other, but I’ve also like, lived a life outside of books. I’ve met God in grimy alleyways and frigid ocean waters and in bed with my lovers. So my stool is actually four-legged, because I think it’s essential to incorporate one’s personal experience of God into the mix as well. (I did not invent this: it’s called the Wesleyan quadrilateral, but the official Wesleyan quadrilateral insists that scripture must trump all other legs of the table in the case of a conflict which...*cynical noises*)

Please do not interpret this answer as me doing a hand-wavey "it's all vibes, man, we're all equally right and equally wrong", but I do absolutely think we have a responsibility as creatures to weigh the suffering and/or flourishing of our fellow creatures against teachings handed down through oral tradition, schisms, imperial takeover of faith, and translation and mistranslation. Do I believe the Bible is sacred, supernatural even, and that it contains all things necessary to find one's way to God, if that is the way God chooses to manifest to an individual in a given lifetime? Absolutely. Do I believe it is a priceless work of art and human achievement that captures ancient truths and the hopes of a people (as well as a record of their atrocities) through symbols, stories, and signs? Unto my death, I do.

However, I am wary of making an object of human creation, God-breathed though it may be, into an idol, and trapping God in its pages like God is some sort of exotic bug we can pin down with a sewing needle.

Finally, we have reached the homosexuality debate. One of my favorite sayings of Jesus is Matthew 5: 15-17: "Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's clothing but inwardly are ravenous wolves. You will know them by their fruits. Are grapes gathered from thorns, or figs from thistles? In the same way, every good tree bears good fruit, but the bad tree bears bad fruit." In other words: look at what religious teachings have wrought in the world. When I look at homophobic interpretations of the Bible, I see destruction, abuse, suffering, neglect, alienation, spiritual decay, and death. When I look at theology that affirms the holiness of LGBTQ+ relationships, I see joy, laughter, community building, thoughtful care, blooming families, creativity, resilience, and compassion. I see the love of Christ at work in the world. I see the hands of a God who chose under no duress to take up residence in a human body, to drink wine with tax collectors and break bread with sex workers and carry urchin children around on his shoulders. That's my limited little pet interpretation, but hey, that's all any of us really have, at the end of the day.

So, I am absolutely happy to do a play-by-play breakdown of why those passages you were given (we queer Christians often call them "clobber passages" or "texts of terror") don't hold water in a theological, historical, and cultural context. We can talk about Jesus blessing the eunuch and the institution of Greek pederasty and Levitical purity laws and Paul because I've done that reading. I've spent my nights crying in self-hatred and leafing through doctrine books and arguing with my pastors and writing long grad school essays on the subjects. Send me the verses, if you can remember them, and I'll take a look. But it's worth noting that out of the entire Bible, I believe there are only six that explicitly condemn homosexuality AND I'm being generous and including Sodom and Gommorah here, which is a willful and ignorant misreading if I've ever seen one.

In the meantime, I recommend books by people smarter than me! Try Outside The Lines: How Embracing Queerness Will Transform Your Faith by Mihee Kim-Kort, or Does Jesus Really Love Me by Jeff Chu, or Transforming: The Bible and the Lives of Transgender Christians by Austen Hartke!

And take a breath, dear one. Breathe in God, in the droplets of water in the air and in the wind from the south. Breathe in the gift of life, and know that you are loved, now and unto the end of the age and even beyond then.

[tamamita]

i followed you for GO WHITE WOMAN and stayed for the korn and islamic discussions

This is what Taqiyya is all about:

1. Tricking people into believing there is porn of Jalter

2. Introduce them to the Korn

3. Talk about Islamic theology

4. Post anime tiddies

5. See if they stay or leave

6. Islamization of the west

[mask131]

Thinking about it, I do believe that the big misunderstandings of the Greek gods on the Internet today (or in media recently) is due to a problem of... let’s say “character VS personification”. 

People have grown too much accustomed to the consumption of Greek myths and legends as... not so much “stories” but... as fiction. Which leads them to treat the Greek gods as characters of tales and stories. Which leads people to treat them like... well, like people. Like full humans. Thinking about their actions only in terms of human/social/psychological reasons and consequences. And people forget the very essence and nature of the gods...

The Greek gods are personifications. They are allegories, and their actions always reflect their actual nature as a part of the world or a human phenomenon. It is true that when you read the Greek myths as they reached us today, you will read what seems to be stories about super-humans, because said stories were given to us through epic poems and theater plays. But there was a whole theology and religious thinking behind those myths (to the point some of the ancient litetature of the Greeks was criticized by religious authorities for deviating from their actual beliefs) ; and there was an entire philosophy surrounding those myths. Literal philosophy - with Ancient Greek philosophers not only re-reading and interpreting the myths in the lights of their teaching, but also inventing their own “philosophical myths”. The Greeks had time to read and rewrite and discuss their own myths and stories for centuries and centuries - and thus these stories ended up with numerous layers of meaning and interpretations woven through them.

Which is why to fully understand a myth, one must look behind the simple story. A god in the story is never just a character, but always something else. Poseidon is a grudge-holding, monster-birthing deity prone to mood swings which place him alternatively as an ally or an antagonist - but it isn’t just because “he is like that”. He is like that BECAUSE he is the god of the sea, and the Greeks, as sailors and explorers and island-dwellers, knew very well that the sea was a changing and treacherous thing, the sailor’s best friend and worst enemy at the same time. The fact that Apollo is at the same time the god of truth, the god of beauty and the god of art isn’t just because it’s his hobbies - it is because for the Greek all these concepts were inter-connected, art being beauty, the truth being beautiful, the best art being the truthful art, etc... And as a result myths are always about something else than their own story. The most famous case being Persephone’s abduction. People keep treating it as just being a love story - forgetting that, beyond the story of a guy in love with a girl and a mother worried for her missing girl, it is actually also a fable for the brutality anf unfairness of death striking young people, and how a mother can deal with her grief. It is literaly the story of “Kore” (which isn’t a proper name, but just means “maiden” or “young girl”), being ravished by Hades (whose name is ALSO the name of the Underworld), of a young girl plunged from the world of the living to the world of the dead, and a distressed mother crying for her disappeared daughter... 

I can list on and on the examples, but I think you get my point. Yes, it is nice to know the story. It is better to try to understand them. The topic came when I read something about Zeus recently... It talked about the gods embodying “order” - and it listed Zeus, for after all he was the ruler of the cosmos, punisher of wicked ones and fighter of monsters, the god of justice overseeing all oaths and the basic principles of Greek society... But this text added that however, his behavior character wise was “much more chaotic”. Notably pointing out towards Zeus’ wild behavior around females of all kinds. It is true that a serial cheater with a HUGE number of lovers of all kinds, and lots of “bastard children” everywhere seems to contradict his role as a god maintaining order and morals... But again, the key is looking beyond that. Yes, Zeus is massively unfaithful on his wife and seemingly can’t keep his thunderbolt in his pants - if you pardon me the expression. But the question that nobody asks is... Why is he like that? Why does he do that? Just because he is a horny guy? That’s the superficial explanation, that’s the joke explanation. That’s not what the Ancien Greeks would have answered you. This precise topic is one I like to reuse frequently because it illustrates perfectly something that feels natural to those that read about Greek mythology from experts, and yet can seem like a sudden mindblow for those that only know Greeks myths from popular fiction. 

I do not recall where exactly I read this explanation - but I am certain it was in one of the books about Greek myths written by famous French experts, so it was probably from Jean-Pierre Vernant or Pierre Grimal, or someone of those waters. Why is Zeus such a horny dog? We have to think about his titles. “Father of Men and Father of Gods”. It isn’t just a nickname or a title, it describes what he does: he birthed most of the major Greek gods, and he birthed many ancestors of humanity. It also makes you think: what was Zeus’ first action when he became king of the cosmos, when he took over the world after fighting the Titans? He married, several times, and had numerous lovers, with which he birthed some very important gods. Through sex he actually created important elements needed for the world. Not counting the other Olympian gods, he gave birth at the beginning of his reign to the Arts (Muses), the Seasons (Horae) and Fate itself (the Moirai), basis for the civilized world and an ordered, stable cosmos. And who are the other children of Zeus, all those “bastards” children he got out of being unfaithful? Heroes. Heroes who build principles of civilization, heroes who destroyed monsters, heroes who threw down criminals and tyrants. Good things. That’s the thing with Zeus: he constantly lusts after women, yes, and he constantly has sex, yes... but most of the time, if not always, it is to create something good. He keeps procreating beings, things and people needed for the universe to form itself, for civilization to form itself, for the world to get better and evil/chaos to be defeated. Herakles and Athena and Perseus... Even through his unfaithfulness, Zeus keeps creating new agents and champions of order, law and justice. 

It is in fact quite interesting to look at Tumblr here, because on Tumblr there are favorite deities who are depicted right because people love them enough to go dig into their symbolism and their religious festivals and their philosophical meaning. Dionysos is the one that comes to mind. And then other deities whose deeper meaning gets thrown out of the window. 

A good counterpart to Greek mythology, in the approach of “character vs personification”, is Norse mythology. Because the Norse gods, as depicted and represented in mythological texts such as the Eddas, are actually “characters before the personifications”, the reverse of Greek gods which are “personifications which were given character”. I am not saying that the Norse gods aren’t personifications, that would be a stupid claim. But what I am saying is... Often people try to enter Norse mythology asking “So, this god, what is he the god OF?” because they assume Norse gods are like Greek gods, defined by their field of action and what they represent or rule over. When in truth, the Norse gods are defined by who they are, not so much by what they are. Odin is the one-eyed wanderer, and the eight-legged horse-rider king of the Aesir, and the cunning rune-master ruling over Valhalla. Thor is the very strong god, and the hammer-wielding jötunn killer riding on a goat-chariot, and the red-haired hero of Asgard who fears nothing and fished Jormungandr out of the sea once. Everybody knows today that Thor is the god of thunder and lightning - but it isn’t said, or explicitely spelled out in most of the Old Norse texts. It is not like Zeus who is explicitely said to use thunderbolts on his ennemies - Thor’s hammer doesn’t have lightning shooting out of it. To get this, to get what a Norse god is the “god of”, there is a work of research that needs to be done. For a Greek god it can be obvious due to their attributes and names (Hestia for example - her name literaly means “hearth” and she started out as the hearth being venerated, before being personified). For a Norse god, to get the “what” of the deity, you will need to look at the archeological remains of the religion and cult of Norsemen, you will need to theorize based on the etymology of the deity’s name and its relationships, you will need to collect the kennings and local expressions and other folk-sayings and interpret them. It is a para-characterization that isn’t obvious, or sometimes doesn’t even appear, in the Norse texts per se. Because in the Norse legends as they came to us, the gods are mostly defined as characters - by their function (guardian, warrior, king), by what they do (power to see far-away, power to know the future), by what they look like (missing one hand, or golden hair)... For exampe, for a very long time it was thought that Loki was the god of fire. It was a strong, popular and famous interpretation - but research and experts have proven that it is a late re-interpretation of the deity, who originally probably didn’t had anything to do with fire and was just mixed up with other fire-figures (like Logi) with time, the same way Loki was mixed with Utgard-Loki as a “master of illusions”. 

This phenomenon of inversion can be summed up quite easily. In Greek mythology, we have TONS of secondary and tertiary deities who are basically personifications without any kind of legend or myth to them, uncharacterized allegories that sometimes are just a name appearing in a list of concept. In Norse mythology, you have tons of secondary and tertiary deities without myths or legends, who are just names in a list - but this time, we have their names, we have a basic characterization, we know who they are, and the problem is that we don’t know what they are supposed to represent. You have tons of small Norse gods about whom people keep asking and searching “What did they embody? What did they personify?”. The character without the personification. 

[loveerran]

There are LDS folks who believe a) all Spirit Children of our Heavenly Parents are binary male or female, and b) everyone's assigned sex at birth matches their Spirit's eternal gender. Since LDS theology holds that our underlying Spirit is part of an eternal existence that has no beginning or end, the binary gender view is particularly significant.

However, consider that there are times sex at birth is assigned incorrectly or cannot be determined:

Perhaps 100 billion humans have lived. If only .02% have had ambiguous/divergent genital/chromosomal presentation, we're discussing 20 million individuals, up to 2 million of whom are alive today. At broader definitions of intersex, that number is more than 100 million persons alive today - about the same percentage as people born with red hair.

Use whatever criteria you want to determine whether a body is male or female, somewhere there will be an individual who rides the line between male and female such that you cannot determine which side of the line they fall on. No matter who defines the criteria, or what those criteria are, there comes a point where we just can't tell.

Which Spirit does God put in that body? What if, under given criteria, the body is 60% male/40% female outside and 60% female/40% male inside? What Spirit is sent to the body then?

We don't have to go far to find cases that raise questions. Castor Semenya was born, raised and competed as a woman her entire life, until it was discovered she was XY (and she still competed as a woman some after that). Other cases, like a 33 yr old man with a uterus, ovaries and XX chromosomes internally, but full outward male genitalia, or an XY woman who never got her period, are mentioned relatively frequently in medical literature and the news. Development factors, natural and artificial, further complicate gender and sex identity. We're still learning about neurological differences outside of typically identified intersex characteristics.

If someone who is reproductively female spends their entire life as a man, what Spirit did God send to that body? Because somewhere, somewhen, this has happened and it may be more often than you think.

Since we cannot make a blanket statement about the gender of Spirits matching assigned sex at birth, let's be more careful about what we say. The truth is we don't always know. The gospel is about ministering to the one, and somewhere that one is listening to you. Be kind to them. Tell them the truth, even if that truth is 'we don't know all the answers for everyone' (LDS Handbook 38.7.7). There is goodness and power in admitting to not knowing everything and in pleading with the Lord for further light and knowledge. Such honesty may give us less to repent of later.

[nuwanders]

so tell us about velothi philosophy :3c how does it differ, to say, its imperial counterparts? how has it changed across time?

Where to start!! Going to try my hardest to produce a semi-coherent answer here lol

quick note before i get into it— due to the nature of religion in the Elder Scrolls, i’m going to treat theology and philosophy as more or less the same discipline. there will obviously still be some discussions which fall more squarely into one field or the other, but in a world where ‘gods’ are demonstrably real and regularly involving themselves with the affairs of mortals, there’s going to be a great deal more overlap than there is irl. 

with that out of the way, i’ll limit my discussion to three main areas of philosophy in which Velothi attitudes differ the most from their Imperial counterparts; (1) the determinism/free will debate, (2) notions of faith vs veneration, and (3) the relationship between religion and morality. This isn’t too long dw but I’ve put it under a read more just in case

1. determinism vs free will

the imperial pantheon being headed by a god of time would, i think, have significantly shaped imperial philosophy. teslore is riddled with prophecies, as well as the Elder Scrolls themselves and ‘heroes’ as a category of beings who are uniquely capable of ruling their own destiny. ignoring the doylist explanation for a moment (that heroes are player characters in an otherwise scripted video game), it is clear that Imperial philosophy is dominated by a deterministic streak. 

Velothi philosophy however would fall (imo) more in the compatibilism camp. rather than our futures being predetermined by what is written in the Scrolls, I think the Velothi might say instead that what is written in the Scrolls is determined by what we, in the future, choose to do. ‘Outside of time’ =/= ‘before time’— by which I mean that if the Scrolls truly are from outside of time, it would be nonsensical to conclude that the contents of the scrolls is what causes certain events to then occur— because that would imply some kind of linear progression.

why do i think this? i won’t lie it is 80% headcanon, however the ability of Mephala to ‘pull but a single thread’ and unravel the weave of fate reflects, i think, the central position which the ability to determine one's own destiny holds in Velothi identity. An Imperial philosopher might say that Daedric Princes, like mortals, do not exist ‘outside time’ in the way that Akatosh does, so Mephala’s own actions would themselves be considered pre-determined. But I think the Velothi philosopher here would just cycle back to the compatibilist argument outlined above. Dunmer are a proud and independent people and I think they would strongly resist any attempt to imply that they do not have control over their own actions lol

2. faith vs veneration

Also central to Velothi philosophy and culture is the notion that respect and power must be earned, and i think this would apply to their gods as much as to themselves. Veloth turned away from the Aedra after Boethiah came to him in his dreams and visions. Why dedicate your life to the worship of invisible—and seemingly impotent—gods when the daedra are right there, showing themselves through positive action to be worthy of your fear and your love?

I think the notion of ‘faith’—being a belief in something which cannot be proven, both in spite of and because of that fact—would be dismissed by the Velothi as fanciful and ridiculous— a way for the elite to control the masses. This isn’t to say that they don’t believe in the aedra (there is a text somewhere in Morrowind which suggests that House Redoran, at least, adopted some kind of aedra worship during Imperial occupation), however they wouldn’t consider the aedra worthy of veneration. And Akatosh in the Velothi sense might be understood a little differently— perhaps even as a simple literary device designed to personify what is otherwise just the abstract notion of time.

3. ethics, and the relationship between religion and morality

It’s worth taking care here not to map Christian notions of morality and sin onto the Imperial cult, however there are some broad similarities. The Divines don’t necessarily represent moral virtues, however they all encapsulate some kind of virtue in the more holistic, Aristotelian sense; and the fact they are each virtuous in some way is taken both as reason to worship them and as reason to emulate those characteristics. (Not gonna get into the Euthyphro dilemma, but regardless of which view you think they'd take, it is clear there is some kind of relationship here). 

The same cannot be said of the Good Daedra, nor of the Tribunal. Any ‘virtue’ these figures happen to possess is incidental to their status as figures deserving of worship. This is not to suggest that Dunmer have no moral code or care not for virtues such as generosity or benevolence; it’s just that ethics is seen as divorced from divine law (ignoring the above mentioned lore text which says the exact opposite wrt House Redoran ;_;)

At the extreme end of this spectrum you find Telvanni ethics– “According to Telvanni principles, the powerful define the standards of virtue.” Which is very Nietzschean lmao. But I don’t think this would reflect Velothi ethics at large. If I were to summarise, I would say that the Velothi reject any notion of morality as intrinsically good, but that they generally recognise moral virtues as instrumentally valuable. Humility and selflessness in the Alessian, slave-morality sense are rejected, but social cooperation, justice and generosity are rightfully recognised as qualities which lead to the betterment of society overall.

--

given how long this is already i will save the question of how velothi philosophy changes over time for another post :') the Fourth Era transition from tribunal worship to the New Temple is something i'm exploring in my soon-to-be-published little novella hehe. thank you for the ask! <3

and tagging @ervona who expressed some interest in this topic >:)

[notthesomefather]

UPG vs. SPG vs. Canon

UPG - user's / unique personal gnosis SPG - shared personal gnosis Canonical - what is in the source materials and/or what is most commonly believed across communities/practitioners/etc.

I've been thinking a lot lately about what we call UPG and how we interact with UPG vs something considered to be canon or shared gnosis. I believe it's incredibly useful to call out experiences, notions, and correlations that we have personally experienced or felt drawn towards. Through doing so, we establish shared gnosis within groups or across online communities and help keep the old gods alive with new sparks of life. But when does UPG become SPG and when does SPG become canonical to the faith? Is it important to differentiate and if so when/to what degree?

Heathenry doesn't have a rule-book or sacred texts, so I feel we have a lot of freedom with what constitutes "canon." What does Loki represent? Up to you! How do we celebrate a wedding? Up to you! What is the ritual for contacting deceased loved ones? Up to you! Are Frigg and Freyja different? Up to you! We have some sources that remain, and while they can be incredibly useful, they are all locked within a far-off sociological context and we know we are missing considerable details. We can utilize these sources and archaeology for best guesses as to practices that were practiced historically, but at the end of the day a lot of it is just that: a guess. A well-educated guess to be sure, but nothing close to a universal "heathen" theology.

So why do I bring this up?

I see a lot of apologies and fear related to "upg." People worry it isn't legitimate to experience something they don't see widely reflected in texts or within groups. I want to tell anyone who's had those fears: this is normal! We are discussing working with and/or worshiping ethereal beings that operate outside the confines of our sense of time and space--we are going to experience these entities differently. Maybe even differently than how we did in previous years of our own practices. This goes hand in hand with the idea of not prescribing our upg onto others. We may experience something incredibly real and powerful, but we may be alone in the specifics of that experience. That is in no way indicative of the upg being fake, invalid, or incorrect, and there is no need to force this upg onto others.

In short: don't worry about what's "canonical." It is a living, breathing faith that is currently undergoing a large resurgence and shake up. Let's help construct the canon together, and let's not be afraid to share our unique experiences with the divine.

[queenlua]

i decided to read some theology & omg i kind of love this writer already

he spends the entire "preface to the paperback edition" yelling "WHY ARE YOU BOOING ME? I'M RIGHT" at all his haters (emphasis mine):

"I have to confess, however, that since this book first appeared—not quite a year ago, as I write—I have discovered dimensions of religious psychology of which I had formerly been blithely ignorant, or at most only obscurely conscious [... Nothing] quite prepared me for the passion and, in many instances, vehemence that this text has provoked, at least from its detractors [...] The topic of this text, apparently, touches deeper springs of disquiet. It has in some cases inspired polemic so shrill, intellectually diffuse, and rhetorically abandoned as to suggest unhealthy psychological sensitivities. As yet, though, it has elicited not a single cogent, interesting, or even vaguely accurate critique. I am not exaggerating."

other choice bits:

"While I am willing to accept some blame for misunderstandings, in the decorously insincere manner expected of any author, I am not willing to grant that the book's argument—and it is a single, continuous, and necessarily indivisible argument—is really all that difficult to follow."

"Now, to be fair, some of the book's critics have also complained about its 'tone,' which I cannot say is a first for me" lmao

"All that said, however, I suppose I do have to plead guilty to a certain breach of etiquette. I knew before setting out that there are some fairly inflexible rules about how one is allowed to discuss this topic, and I chose to ignore them. No one has ever written them down, of course, but everyone is tacitly expected to observe them, and anyone so tactless as to violate them—to raise serious questions in the wrong way [....]—risks the sort of censure that can scour a social calendar clean."

"The reason that this topic, more than any other in Christian tradition, has an almost magical power to provoke ungovernable emotions, I am convinced, is that most Christians do not really believe what they believe."

[borntolurk]

METATRON: or an explanation about why his inclusion in the S2 and S3 narrative is fascinating and weird, actually

Originally, this was going to be a stupid, unlikely, and mildly cynical theory about what I think is going to happen in S3 and how it might compare to my third least favorite TV show finale.

But while I was writing it I went down a Metatron rabbit hole and honestly? It's pretty crazy. Like, really crazy.

Part 1: Metatron

So who is Metatron, anyway?

(This gets a bit detailed but I promise it pays off!)

I think a lot of people, because Metatron is in the book (which is a Book of Revelation parody), assume that he was also a figure in the New Testament- or barring that, in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. But he wasn't! In fact, Metatron isn't in Christian scripture or early literature at all.

Metatron is really a (very nearly, he's also mentioned in Islamic texts) Jewish figure. The exact origins are a bit fuzzy to me, as while I'm a scholar of Jewish history this isn't my era (it also gets pretty mystical and my worst grades were on mysticism-related papers), but essentially you're not seeing the name until a century or two after the Common Era at the very least. In antiquity, the name is largely found in the 3rd Book of Enoch (and later other Merkabot/Hekhalot literature) and in the Talmud.

The 3rd Book of Enoch is a work whose origins date back to anywhere from the 1st to the 5th century CE and it continues the themes of the 1st and 2nd books which discuss Enoch, the seventh generation from Adam in the Book of Genesis. In Genesis, Enoch is noted as having been taken by God rather than dying, and the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Book of Enoch expands on this idea of Enoch being a massively powerful figure in Heaven (keeper of treasures, God's right hand figure, leader of the archangels, etc)- and even potentially being a lesser/dual version of God. In the 3rd book in particular, the word Metatron is used to describe him.

For those who are aware of Jewish theology, it might have occurred to you that the idea of there being a duality of God in any way is a pretty fraught one; Enoch is largely non-canonical in Judaism*, but it was still cited reasonably frequently by Jews in the early Common Era. In the next few centuries, we start to see more mentions of Metatron (at this point, not explicitly identified with Enoch) in Jewish literature, and this becomes a pretty big deal.

We then have three Talmudic mentions of Metatron, and one of them (Avodah Zarah 3b) is relatively minor, but does suggest, importantly, that God deputizes Metatron to do tasks that God would otherwise do. The other two are more interesting here. In Sanhedrin 38b, we see a debate between Rav (Rabbi) Idit and a heretic, who suggests that perhaps Metatron, which Rav Idit has mentioned as a representative of God, should be worshipped on par with God; Rav Idit makes clear that this is not correct.

The most interesting, though, is the story in Chagiga 15a, which tells the story of Rabbi Elisha ben Abuyah, otherwise known as Acher (the Other, signifying that he is a heretic). The story of Acher is a quite famous one, but here it's told with a particular twist that didn't make it into the versions that I learned in Jewish day school- the involvement of Metatron and its influence on the precise nature of Acher's heresy.

Rabbi Elisha ben Abuyah was a 1st century rabbi and teacher who was one of the leaders of his generation who is described as having been one of the four rabbis who entered the "Pardes," or orchard- and he cut down the saplings, becoming a heretic. This is usually interpreted to mean that he was exposed to deep, fundamental understandings of God which caused him to turn away. In this particular version of the story, what he saw was a vision of Heaven in which Metatron was sitting in God's presence. To Elisha ben Abuyah, this was a massive affront to God- surely one should stand in God's presence! This led him to believe that maybe there were two powers in Heaven, and thus led him down the road to heresy and the epithet Acher.

The story continues that as a result, Metatron was beaten with fiery rods to make a statement that he was not parallel to God, contrary to what Acher believed. Metatron was also asked why he hadn't stood up when Acher arrived, to avoid the conclusion. The answer is that the Metatron had permission to sit in order to "write the merits of Israel."

And, because of this heresy by Acher, Metatron is given permission to erase Acher's good deeds. There is a voice from Heaven saying that all sinners may return- except for Acher. This leads to Acher's purposeful slide into heresy more broadly (his first stop is literally to a sex worker, something that would be unacceptable for a rabbi, to PROVE that he's now gone bad).

(Also worth noting- in the Jerusalem Talmud, an entirely different reason is given for Acher's heresy- not that he believed in dualism but that he was angry about unfair human suffering.)

The story of Acher is interesting, in this context, for two reasons:

it's another indication that Jewish tradition is going to absolutely reject any possibility of duality and

it gives a clear indication of what Metatron's power is

So... we know all that. Now what? (You may already have some inkling.)

Part 2: Cosmic Megatron

I've called this section by this name because everything I'm going to say should be foregrounded by my belief that most of this is likely coincidence.

Metatron is a character in the original book of Good Omens, and as far as I can tell is there to fill two functions- to have a heavenly representative and thus avoid having to write dialogue for God, and so that they can have a joke where Pepper confuses him with the Cosmic Megatron, apparently a toy made of plastic, which features laser cannon and can turn into a helicopter.

(He's also called the Metatron- I'm not 100% sure why.)

We know from what Neil Gaiman has been saying that he and Terry Pratchett wrote the book in a pretty casual way. Obviously, the book is written with a certain amount of knowledge about the Bible and Judeo-Christian** religion, which from things that Gaiman has said I think he attributes to their being two bright, well-read men who were educated in a Christian-majority country but which I'm sure also included a decent amount of research- hence the bit in the beginning with different calculations for the year of creation. (Gaiman is of course Jewish but I don't get the impression that he had any formal Jewish education, though I could be wrong.) But it seems to be written largely as satire of some pretty well known Christian concepts, for the most part, though nicely detailed.

That's why my assumption is that Metatron must have been included as an offhand joke, by one of them who had heard of him as a spokesman figure in some other context. Because despite the fact that the Book of Enoch is known within Christianity, that's largely the 1st Book of Enoch, not the 3rd, which is the one where the name Metatron is identified with Enoch. If there are any scholars of Christianity reading this, please correct me if I'm wrong, but- I don't think that Metatron would be a familiar angelic/heavenly figure to the average person given a cursory de facto Christian thinking in purely Christian terms. Therefore, presumably the name was one that either Pratchett or Gaiman had heard in another context and that one of them (possibly Pratchett, as he was apparently the one who mostly wrote the kids) thought would make for an entertaining joke about plastic toys that turn into other plastic toys.

We then know that in a hotel room, after they wrote Good Omens, Pratchett and Gaiman plotted out a potential sequel, tentatively titled 668: Neighbor of the Beast. We know that this was going to feature more of Heaven's side, as Gaiman said in the run up to the expanded S1 (which of course featured the new-to-us characters of Gabriel, Uriel and Michael) that the angel characters were already part of the plan for the sequel. We also know, of course, that S2 is meant as a transition to S3, which is the actual plot to the sequel book.

Obviously, we don't quite know yet what that plot is going to be- but presumably, at some point in it Aziraphale was going to go up to Heaven. But presumably Gabriel, who we can now be quite confident was written out of S3, would have been part of that story in the book! The fact that we AREN'T getting Gabriel in a S3 that's based on a sequel idea that specifically included Gabriel (or so we're told) means that that role must be filled by someone.

It seems very likely that

what would have been Gabriel's role is being filled by Metatron and

Metatron wasn't necessarily supposed to be in the sequel, and thus (in theory) S3, at all.

Now Point 2 is only a guess, and it's entirely possible that it's wrong. But I wonder (and this is a totally separate theory, in some ways) whether the role that Metatron played in S2 is one that would have been played by Gabriel if Jon Hamm had wanted to stay. The casting of Sir Derek Jacobi in S1 was not one that implied to me that this was a character who they had plans for- it was a one-scene role in a show with a decent number of minor cameos for well known actors. His return this season was honestly a pretty big shock to me- and seems to be setting him up as a significant figure in the upcoming season. (Which, incidentally, seems like one that can be pretty easily acted in voiceover/green screen, making it a good role for an actor who may not want a full six episode season of a show.)

So- whether we accept my above hypothesis as true or not- why Metatron?

Part 3: Cosmic Metatron

So mostly these are questions. I obviously don't know the answers any more than anyone else does. I could even be wrong about some of my basic assumptions as far as the timeline.

But regardless, I think that the use of Metatron will be incredibly interesting this season for a few reasons.

First of all, let's discuss the Book of Life. It is, unlike Metatron, actually in the Bible- both Hebrew Bible and Old/New Testament. (In fact, the Book of Life is mentioned in the Book of Revelation- the main source material for the book/S1!) In Judaism, the Book of Life is actually something that is still part of Jewish tradition to this day. On Rosh HaShana, the first day of the year, our prayer for a new year is so that our names can be put in the Book of Life due to our good deeds.

We already know, from Part 1, that Metatron is God's scribe, who writes down people's good deeds- and while the story of Metatron and Acher above is never directly connected to the idea of the Book of Life, the thematic similarities are undeniable and it seems pretty clear that they're talking about the same idea. So we have a potential connection between Metatron as a potential character in Good Omens with the Book of Life as a potential concept in Good Omens- along with the fact that a person can be erased from the Book of Life with eternal ramifications.

It seems pretty clear that, whatever reason Pratchett and Gaiman may have had for including Metatron in the book, he now has a pretty solid reason for being here in the show, based on what we already know.

Also relevant is the status of Metatron. In the 3rd Book of Enoch, we know that he is God's right hand, head of all the archangels, and even is given a title that connotes him as a "lesser God." Which is, as noted, pretty theologically wild for Judaism, and a big reason why Metatron and Enoch don't get a lot of play in contemporary Jewish theology (besides for mysticism). We also know that it's the idea that there can be TWO powers behind the throne that led Acher to be eternally condemned as a heretic.

Someone posted a VERY interesting meta here- I can't find it right this moment- which suggested that God is no longer really around in the world, and that the Job minisode- the final time in the show's chronology when we hear God's voice as anything but narrator- Heaven is bathed in golden light, whereas afterward it has a more sterile and empty white light. I find that to be an fascinating idea- that Metatron is actually serving in some kind of parallel-God role in God's absence.

I'm not going to pretend to know WHY this is. There are lots of interesting potential plot angles- you could have Metatron deposing God, you could have God purposefully withdrawing from humanity/the bureaucracy of religion (maybe something similar to in Pratchett's Monstrous Regiment, which would actually make quite a bit of sense if this was part of the unwritten sequel as he could have recycled the idea), you could have some kind of a power struggle, etc. But it does seem clear- we have Metatron as what is essentially a Godlike figure, with enough power to completely depose Gabriel, shut down the other angels, and elevate Aziraphale (if that's indeed what he does- he is at least able to convince Aziraphale that he has that power, which is something).

We have a Metatron strong enough for someone to, potentially, question whether maybe HE'S the one exercising Godly power. And potentially face the worst of consequences for those questions, consequences that we know Metatron is able to deal out. Consequences which were already threatened in S2.

Now that would certainly fit in VERY well with the kinds of plots we might expect from a Good Omens 3...

It also could lead to a fascinating dynamic if they give Metatron an origin story of being Enoch. Having the big cheese in Heaven be someone who used to be human? That's a fantastic concept, just like how S2 centered a character for whom so much can be explained by the fact that he's a demon who was once an angel.

Basically, I think there is the potential for some interesting stuff here.

Caveat

None of this answers a separate question that I have- why bring in a Jewish angelic figure for a story as intensely Christian as the Second Coming? I have a feeling that the answer is going to be "because it's fun"- regardless of how Metatron is used. That said, if there ends up being a narrative where there's Metatron representing the vengeful God of the Old Testament and Jesus as a nice dude who represents something more forgiving then... Idunno, I'm not gonna be super thrilled.

And also- I'll put it out here now- I didn't love S2. Among other things, I think it was pretty simplistic and I don't think that it developed its ideas to their full potential. I don't know that I trust S3 to be as interested in these details to have ANY of this show up in the plot. It could totally be that Metatron is only there because he's in the book, and the Book of Life is only there because it's in the Book of Revelation. Obviously, I don't know.

But I do think that, whatever Gaiman does write if the show gets renewed, there's a lot of material here for him to work from, if he wants to.

*with the exception of among Ethiopian Jews- in fact, the only extant complete version of the 3rd Book of Enoch is in the Ethiopian religious language Ge'ez

**this is a terrible term and I use it only under protest

[mariacallous]

In 2007 I published what was probably my most-read book What’s Left. It asked novel questions.

"Why is it that apologies for a militant Islam which stands for everything the liberal-left is against come from the liberal-left? Why will students hear a leftish postmodern theorist defend the exploitation of women in traditional cultures but not a crusty conservative don…Why, even in the case of Palestine, can’t those who say they support the Palestinian cause tell you what type of Palestine they would like to see?

“After the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington, why were you as likely to read that a sinister conspiracy of Jews controlled American or British foreign policy in a superior literary journal as in a neo-Nazi hate sheet? And why after the 7/7 attacks on London did leftish rather than right-wing newspapers run pieces excusing suicide bombers who were inspired by a psychopathic theology from the ultra-right?”

In short, I asked why was the world upside down? In the past conservatives made excuses for fascism because they mistakenly saw it as a continuation of their democratic right-wing ideas. In the early 2000s, overwhelmingly and everywhere, liberals and leftists were more likely than conservatives to excuse fascistic governments and movements, with the exception of their native far-right parties. As long as local racists were white, they had no difficulty in opposing them in a manner that would have been recognizable to the traditional left. But give them a foreign far-right movement that was anti-Western and they treated it as at best a distraction and at worst an ally.

I say my questions were novel because, although socialism was one of the great political movements of the 20th century, few discussed the consequences of its collapse in the 1980s. The decline of the socialist religion had as profound and as perverse consequences as the collapse of Christianity in the late 19th century. But no one, or next to no one, wanted to think about them.

As a good atheist I hated to paraphrase GK Chesterton, but there’s no escaping the old Catholic apologist.  My argument boiled down to saying that what Chesterton said about God applies just as well to socialism.  When men stop believing in it, “they don't believe in nothing; they believe in anything.”

After dreams of socialism and communism vanished in the 1980s, large sections of the radical left preferred any enemy of the West to the West having no enemies at all: radical Islam, insane Sunni and Shia dictators, Putin’s Russia, violent misogynists and homophobes. As long as they were anti-western, and in particular the enemies of the US and Israel, the radical left was happy to form alliances.

Or as Judith Butler explained the new orthodoxy in 2006, “Understanding Hamas, Hezbollah as social movements that are progressive, that are on the Left, that are part of a global Left, is extremely important.”That by any normal standard Hamas and Hezbollah were tyrannical, inquisitorial, and misogynist was irrelevant. They were anti-western and that alone made them “progressive”.

Not everything I wrote in 2007 stands up well today. In the 2010s we began to see Conservatives fawning over trash like Viktor Orban, and from 2016 on we have seen the wholesale abasement of the US right before Donald Trump. The lure of authoritarianism was by no means confined to the left

But overall, what I said remains true. And just to be clear, I did not then and do not now believe in the horseshoe theory. The far left is not the same as the far right. There is a huge difference between living in a country ruled by Donald Trump and a country ruled by Nicolas Maduro or between Iran and North Korea. The far left and far right target different people, and serve different interests.

It is better to think of radical Islam seducing elements of an exhausted radical left. The white western working class would no longer die for the revolution (truth be told, it was never that keen on dying for the revolution even at the best of times for the left). But young Muslim men would fight and kill Americans and Israelis. And if you could forget about the obscurantist religious tyranny, the hatred of every human right, the persecution and murder of Arab and Iranian leftists, they might in a certain light appear to be a replacement for the western working class that had let the far left down so badly.

When What’s Left came out respectable critics said words to the effect of “come on, Nick, you are just talking about tiny groups of post-Stalinists and post-Trotskyists. The real left was in the then Labour government, trade unions and charities and campaign groups.”

I replied with words to the effect of politics is downstream of culture. Look at academia, the comment pages of the Guardian, the organisers of demonstrations, the left trade unions and many of those supposedly respectable campaign groups and charities. They are getting drunk on a weird mixture of far-leftism, far-rightism and postmodernism. They will embrace medieval levels of superstition and regimes they would have no hesitation in describing as fascist if they were white.

I asked where this was leading. The far left provided an answer when, to the astonishment of my respectable critics, it took over the Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn.

Now the Gaza war has led to another pact being formed between the western far left and radical Islam. Over at Quillette,  an American academic, Susie Linfield, has gone through the whole hideous detail of how leftist thought leaders and academics celebrated the murderers. Some of those she indicted are so predictable you would miss them if they were not there.

Linfield notes that in the New Left Review, Britain’s leading Marxist journal, Tariq Ali praised the terrorists for “rising up against the colonizers” and implied, bizarrely, that the murders resulted from Palestinian frustration with Israel’s recent enormous pro-democracy demonstrations against the Netanyahu government.

Elsewhere depression replaces tedium. Anyone who remembers the scrupulous work of Michael Waltzer on what constituted just war will be appalled about what has happened to Dissent, the journal he edited.  Dissent used to believe that the deliberate targeting of civilians was a war crime. Not so now when the civilians are Jews. In its pages, one writer  described Israel as a ‘genocide machine’ and argued that Israeli victims should not be grieved.

“It is not possible to publicly grieve an Israeli Jewish life lost to violence without tithing ideologically to the IDF—whether you like it or not.” So grief is impermissible. Indeed, it’s worse than that: grief is colonialist.

 Elsewhere tenured academics were unable to contain their enthusiasm: the attacks were “innovative,” “astonishing,” a “major achievement,”  “awesome,” “incredible,” and “a stunning victory,’’ one wrote.

Ah professors. They write in ink and dream of blood.

The essential point to bear in mind is that these expressions of joy at the death of Jews on 7 October was almost instantaneous. It came before a single Israeli bomb fell on Gaza. It was not a condemnation of Israel’s disproportionately violent response. That was still to come. Instead of rational protest there was a celebration of the mass murder of Jews by Hamas, a terrorist group inspired not only by Islamism but by European fascism.  As if to confirm my argument in What’s Left the far left was cheering the far right because it has no one else to cheer.

The same question I asked in the early 2000s can be asked now: where is this heading?

I do not go along with the view among conservatives that all who march with Islamists and their leftist allies are antisemites by definition. From the start of this war, I have said that Israel’s aim of destroying Hamas is impossible. I was going to say that it is impossible without unacceptable civilian casualties. But in truth it is impossible in all circumstances. The Israeli forces simply cannot find Hamas fighters as they melt into a population of two million disorientated people. This is not simply my view. Military specialists are noting the low level of Israeli casualties and the small number of Hamas kills the Israeli Defence Forces are claiming to have made.  The odds are that Hamas is refusing to opt for a direct confrontation, and allowing civilians to pay the price. It is always reasonable to protest against futile wars and needless suffering, and this war is no exception to the rule.

And yet before I turn too accommodating, let me say there is no other area of progressive life where liberals and leftists ally with racists and don’t show even the smallest embarrassment about their behaviour.

Here’s a thought experiment. There is a growing concern on the western far right about low birth rates. Rather than allow immigration, Viktor Orban in Hungary is offering tax exemptions to women who have four or more children. The left naturally wants higher welfare payments for mothers, too, and in the case of the UK wants to end a nasty Conservative policy which penalises families on benefits if they have more than two children.

For all that, no progressive would join a demonstration of neo-Nazis or alt-right supporters in favour of encouraging British mothers to have more children. They would think that there was a serious flaw in a campaign that attracted ultra-right white support. They would worry about inciting prejudice against ethnic minorities in the UK.  And yet they see nothing wrong in going along with campaigns that attract ultra-right Islamist support or in worrying too much about the UK's Jewish minority.

If the grim absurdities of the left of the early 2000s presaged Corbynism and the collapse of the Labour party, what do the 2020s have in store? I am trying to be objective and so won’t go off into long laments about the moral health of the sacred “Left”. I long-ago gave up worrying about that in any case.

First and most obviously the failure of the white left for more than a generation to oppose Israel while also opposing antisemitism has mainstreamed racial prejudices. The explosion in anti-Jewish attacks since 7 October is an inevitable consequence. I have never seen Jewish people feel so isolated. It’s not simply the far left and Muslim agitators who scare them. BBC presenters and others in the mainstream, who make their indifference to the massacre of Jews plain, foretell a future where Israel is a pariah state and Jews are damned by association and must pay the price. Perhaps that future is already here, and we will be permanently in a Corbynista world where Jews are seen as sinister agents in a Zionist conspiracy manipulating western policy.

Second, the uncritical treatment of Hamas naturally reinforces the most bigoted and reactionary elements in British Muslim communities. The consequences we can only guess at, but I think we can say by looking back at the last time the British left ran off with radical Islamists, they will lead us down new spirals of extremism.

[eirxair]

no bc i love my granda so so much, he's literally the epitome of what teenage boys and young men should idolise, instead of andrew tate and all that bullshit.

he loves and geniunely cares about animals and children, he geniunely tried to raise his children the best he could, even after 50 or so years of marriage he still looks at my granny like she's hung him the stars and moon, he compliments her every chance he gets, his eyes geniunely light up when he talks about his grandchidren, children, wife, and dogs.

he's never once raised a hand to my granny, and even after all the time they've been together he's still at her beck and call and he always walks on the side of the footpath closest to the road.

he's not afraid to act stupid when he's playing with his grandchildren, wearing tiaras and cowboy hats and putting on horrible american accents. he used to be a teacher in a low income part of his city and didn't give up on those children, he never taught the boys or girls differently, he would take my ma and my auntie and uncles to get a poke every friday after school. (the vanilla kind that you get in the wee metal things in ice cream shops, so proper good ones)

he always listens to what me and my sister and my cousins have to say and he doesnt look down on us and isnt condescending at all just because we're young. he treats me like an academic almost when we discuss theology and history together. the man lives and breathes respect.

the only time i've ever seen him ever lose his temper was when the topic of pedos and people harming children came up. the only time i've ever been scared of him is when i was like 6 and he dressed up as santa and came to our house, (i didnt realise he was santa at first and thought some strange man with a strange voice broke into our house)

he's insanely smart and gave me tips on how to slack off in classes and still get good marks (it was at that conversation i realised thats where i got it from)

idek, just, my granda is soft spoken, he treats service workers with respect, he always always always treats my granny like she deserves the world and more, in all my years i have never ever heard about or seen the man making a joke or demeaning comment towards her, the only thing close to it would be teasing where they both go back and forth.

not to mention how much i love my granny, she could make everything out of nothing and still stretch it. she's resourceful and soso witty. i'm always told i look like her and remind people of how she acted when she was younger, and i hope thats true. she takes no shit from anyone, and battled breast cancer (and won) like it was no ones business, my granda supported her 110% of the way. her ma and da were scottish and she likes to cling onto that heritage, making shortbreads and all. back when my granny and granda used to race greyhounds (ages ago before i was even born) she always had a knack for picking out good ones.

i know this was supposed to be about my granda but theyre a package deal, they come in a pair. and my granny's fecking amazing and its a sin to not sing her praises.

tbh, my granny and granda are some of my most respected ever role models. and he and my granny are the reason i believe that true love can exist and that it can prevail. idek why but they give me hope.

in terms of incels or whatver the fuck, he's what a "high-quaility man" should be. not some wifebeater who objectifies and harms women.