#courage and prudence

[cyber-soul-smartz]

Navigating Virtue Paradoxes: Strategies for Holistic Personal Development

Embracing the paradoxes of virtues can be a profound yet challenging journey. Balancing humility with confidence or courage with prudence often feels like walking a tightrope, but it's here we find true moral growth. #virtues #moralexcellence #selfaware

[voi-inspo]

Most of the evil I’ve seen in the world…was done by people who intended good, who thought they were doing good, by reasonable people, staying polite, making accommodations, laboring under slight misperceptions, who haven’t had the inclination or taken the time to think things through, who’ve been sheltered from or were blind to the negative consequences of the belief system of which they were part, bowing to expedience and/or “commonsense” notions that have come to them via their culture and that they have failed to interrogate.

But on the mundane side of things, if we want to understand evil (nastiness, oppression, neglect) we should recognize that the people who commit these sins don’t always cackle while committing them; often they smile, because they’re feeling so useful and virtuous.

— George Saunders, A Swim In A Pond In The Rain

[thinkingonscripture]

When Hiding is Wise

Sometimes hiding from others is a valid response to avoid unnecessary persecution. The believer who operates on wisdom and faith will make the right choice at the right time. Solomon wrote, “The prudent sees the evil and hides himself, but the naïve go on, and are punished for it” (Prov 22:3; cf., Prov 27:12). In this verse, the prudent man is shrewd and sees evil ahead, and by wisdom “hides…

[subway-dove]

the canon legal loophole, so to say, that the church uses for changes in teachings is that the holy teaching is unchangeable but practical application is fallible, cuz humans are fallible and the core of holy things can't rly be restrained by the customs of time and culture and such. bigger than them. now the organ who is allowed 2 go change this things is the magistrate, and as far as i gather laypeople arent either allowed or disallowed to question the magistrate's decisions even if we r discouraged of it (on the basis of theyve been so studious to get there). as an aside, id say the first impulse when such a big institution is questioned is 2 dig its heels but. st. thomas aquinas has my back here with relative being shoutout to st thomas aquinas

On change in the Catholic Church.

I've been seeing a post go around where people are defending their stance that if the Catholic Church was to change its mind about gay sex being sinful they would have to leave because the Church would have been inconsistent, and therefore they wouldn't be able to believe in the holiness of the Catholic Church anymore. Because the Church going back on a stance on the inherent sinfulness of a group of people would be a great betrayal, simply because it's a doctrine held for centuries. I saw well-meaning and (I believe) perfectly reasonable and vaguely progressive people add that they believe this.

Not to be that guy, but does anyone on this website know that the Church already did this, not very long ago? Like, y'know, in Vatican II?

The Catholic Church, for centuries, was extremely antisemitic. This is not news, this is not a controversial opinion, this is fact. The Catholic Church was the primary driver of antisemitic speech and action in Europe, over many centuries. This was due to an actual doctrine the Church promoted, which held all Jewish people responsible for the death of Christ--the "deicide" accusation. This was a normal, accepted, established belief held by the Church for centuries. In the latter half of the 20th century, for obvious reasons, Church authorities realized that this needed to change. That they were responsible for unimaginable suffering, and that the teachings of the Church itself had to be wrong.

So, they changed the teachings.

I don't write this to deliberately shake anyone's faith. I just write this to say, if you need the Church to be consistent in order to be believable, it's too late. The Church has already been inconsistent. And it's not the end of the world. It's fine, and good, that the Church decided to change that teaching. Nobody's been smited, or anything. And, in my opinion, if the Church can change its mind about antisemitism, something that so occupied its actions during the entire Middle Ages, then maybe, just maybe, it can change its mind about other things, too.

[fishnapple]

Healing yourself & Helping others

We often talked about the wounds of Chiron in Natal chart, the pains associated with Chiron placements, but I think exactly because of those wounds that the native can obtain a deep understanding of the matters related to those wounds, and can sympathise with other people who experience the same kind of pain, understanding creates kindness.

Where Chiron is in your chart will always be a sensitive spot. Exactly because it's such a sensitive spot that we pour so much effort into it, always be mindful of it, we might excel at it, become a master, but might never feel good enough.

Through healing the other person, we, in turn, would also be healed, it's a kind of projection. There's often an element of unfulfilled dreams, dreams were thwarted or the feeling that the reward isn't worth the effort. In extreme case, this can manifest as projecting our failed wishes and dreams on other people and burdening them with the responsibility to make them come true. On a lighter note, we would want to see the other person success in our stead, to see that someone finally made it. And here is where our Chiron can actually help people, making us a great counsellor, a teacher or a cheer leader in that matter. We help people in the matters related to the sign/the house Chiron is in, the aspects Chiron makes to other planets. In turn, we are known to people by our Chiron. Yes, Chiron can be a fame indicator, not by shining on its own, but by helping others shine.

What about ourselves? will we forever have to endure that pain of Chiron? We might actually find peace and healing through the positive manifestation of the sign/the house opposite of Chiron. The two opposite ends of an axis always provide answer to each other.

So don't associate Chiron with just wound and pain, associate it with the gift you can give to the world and in turn, the reward you can receive through the act of giving.

The way Chiron in each sign/ house and aspect finds healing and helping others:

Chiron in Aries/ in 1st house/ aspecting Mars

The wound: being judged as too direct and aggressive, having trouble in asserting yourself and putting yourself first, wound about your appearance & sexuality, self-confidence issue, fear of accidents, physical pain

How you heal yourself: be considerate of others when asserting yourself, be direct in a tactful way, be in the company of people that allows you to be yourself without judgement, find an aesthetic that matches you and makes you comfortable, allow yourself to explore your sexuality and desires without judgement, practice prudence

How you help others: help others stand up for themselves, give people courage to take the initiative, boost people's confidence, make others feel protected, be a role model, spread body positivity, normalise "defects" in appearance, stand against bullies

Chiron in Taurus/ in 2nd house/ aspecting Venus

The wound: finding security and stability, being objectified, feeling lack, self-loathing, placing values on external validation, finding independence, over indulgence

How you heal yourself: focus on your inner life to find true stability within, financial independence, let go of unhealthy attachments, listen to gut feeling and body's response to everything, take good care of your body and health

How you help others: generous with your resources, understand the pain of "lack", fundraiser, be the rock for other people, have a stabilising effect on people, help people beautifying themselves, , promote mindfulness in spending and healthy consumption

Chiron in Gemini/ in 3rd house/ aspecting Mercury

The wound: voicing your thoughts, being unheard, not feeling intelligent enough, being too talkative or too quiet, mental/ physical restriction, being neglected, favouritism, being misunderstood

How you heal yourself: be honest & objective, explore diverse subjects, learn constantly, share your knowledge with others, travel frequently, widen your perspective, see life in good humour

How you help others: help people find their voice, spread awareness about mental illness, create a safe space for others to express their ideas, understand different viewpoints in a conversation, be the voice of people, soothing voice, humour, a good listener and a story teller

Chiron in Cancer/ in 4th house/ aspecting Moon

The wound: birth trauma, abandonment, being neglected, lacking care and nurture, feeling unsafe in your own home, unstable family environment, repression, being ridiculed for your emotions, mother wound & complicated relationship with motherhood

How you heal yourself: build your own family, emotional stoicism, assume responsibility for your own emotional and physical well-being, give yourself the utmost respect, find peace and safety in structure & order, let the desire to have children come naturally along with your maturity, look for stability and resilience in a life partner

How you help others: provide shelter and protection, create/support programs for children, donate to causes, charity, raise awareness about vulnerabilities, make others feel safe to express their emotions, "sensitivity is not a weakness", be present for other people

Chiron in Leo/ in 5th house/ aspecting Sun

The wound: struggle with feeling creative enough, discouragement of expressing individuality, being yourself is painful, self- confidence issue, feeling not appreciated (especially in childhood), invisibility, having trouble acting carefree and playful, father wound & complicated relationship with fatherhood, feeling unlucky in love, physical pain

How you heal yourself: find your own community that will welcome you, surround yourself with children, being unapologetic in expressing yourself, revel in weirdness & uniqueness, being your own audience and your own judge, detach yourself from your own creations

How you help others: promote creative activities in everyday life, nurture other people's creativity, give space to people to express themselves without shame or guilt, acceptance of other people's individuality, humble, caretaker

Chiron in Virgo/ in 6th house/ aspecting Mercury

The wound: not feeling good enough, feeling like you have to constantly perform well, perfectionism, being nitpicked, judgmental, being denied consistency and stable routine, exploitation, mental & physical health issue, overworked, feeling hard to relax

How you heal yourself: take good care of your emotional and spiritual health, good sleep, incorporate quiet moments into your routine, be kind to yourself and tolerate your mistakes, treat yourself with compassion like how you treat a vulnerable person, have patience

How you help others: tolerance towards mistakes, encourage people to notice small beauty in life, good at giving detailed and practical advice, help others build a more efficient routine and work process, excellent organiser, spread awareness about the struggle of illnesses, advocate for green and healthy lifestyle

Chiron in Libra/ in 7th house/ aspecting Venus

The wound: being indecisive, having to choose between asserting yourself vs keeping the peace, feeling unlucky in love and partnership, being betrayed, witnessing bad examples of partnership, being judged as superficial, not feeling beautiful and lovable enough

How you heal yourself: be direct and honest with your desires, practice interdependence in relationships, take good care of yourself first before attempting to take care of others, be bold in your style, setting boundaries

How you help others: be a mediator, independent, fair to people, polite, know when to compromise, try to make people comfortable, change beauty standards, relationship counsellor, make a team work, help people work together, take commitment seriously, fight for equality

Chiron in Scorpio/ in 8th house/ aspecting Pluto

The wound: witnessing deaths early on, fear of mortality, boundaries violation, experiencing paranormal activities that left scars and fears on your psyche, having the wrong kind of people attracted to you, sexuality exploration is considered taboo and restricted, having things taken away from you, having your secrets exposed, lack of privacy, trust issue

How you heal yourself: setting boundaries, emotional stoicism, surround yourself with stable and orderly environment/ people, minimalism, ground yourself/ connect with nature, practise your own brand of spirituality, listen to your body's response , explore your sexuality in your own safe place and by your own pace

How you help others: fierce protector, keep people's secrets, counsellor, fight against and spread awareness about abuse, allow space for others to explore their own psyche and sexuality

Chiron in Sagittarius/ in 9th house/ aspecting Jupiter

The wound: having your freedom restricted, further education is denied, feeling like a stranger in your own family, being chastised for being too honest/ too blunt, constant moving, being taught distorted views about the world, having problems with spirituality and religions, having your faith challenged, constantly being shot down, lacking boundaries and guidance

How you heal yourself: listen to different viewpoints, strive for diversity in your pursuit of knowledge, know when to get up and get out of situations, question various schools of thought before committing to one, take a light-hearted approach in communication

How you help others: setting an example for being truthful, support and advocate for the right to education, hype people up, make people have faith again, humour, stay open-minded and help people see a different perspective, make people feel accepted, guiding and teaching

Chiron in Capricorn/ in 10th house/ aspecting Saturn

The wound: being demanded perfection constantly, having to perform, stifle yourself to keep an 'image', being attacked/ criticised/ scruntinised openly, feeling that you have to do more than others to be recognised, having your goals and plans thwarted, being restricted in any form, father wound, trouble with authority

How you heal yourself: allow yourself to express vulnerability and emotions in front of others, keep your goals and ambitions close to your heart/ avoid discussing them too openly, act quietly, be kind to yourself when you're disappointed, allow yourself alone time/ away from public's eyes, place importance on emotional fulfillment when considering a life partner

How you help others: a pillar of strength that people can lean on, be exemplary, help others find authority in themselves, support and help others achieving success, build people up, give structure, show the importance of mastery

Chiron in Aquarius/ in 11th house/ aspecting Uranus

The wound: being considered weird/different, struggle with a sense of belonging, loneliness, being misunderstood, feeling excluded, bully, trouble building a long lasting friendship, sudden upheavals, feeling like you never get what you wish for, feeling like you are living a wayward life

How you heal yourself: have fun with yourself, find your own niche and focus on it, spend time for hobbies, express your individuality more but in a warm and nonserious manner, bond with people who have the same interests and hobbies, play with children

How you help others: make others feel welcomed in a group, bring excitement, acceptance of people's many quirks and unique self, fight against bully, encourage others to follow their dreams, strive to do good, support humanitarian causes

Chiron in Pisces/ in 12th house/ aspecting Neptune

The wound: experiencing losses early in life, being lost, lacking boundaries, boundaries violation, nightmares, solitude, struggle in feeling real, addictions, disillusionment, being betrayed and back stabbed, lacking a firm structure and guidance

How you heal yourself: practise meditation daily, setting up routines to follow (especially sleep routine), consider swimming, take good care of your physical health, muse about small beauties in everyday life, practise discrimination when you're asked for help or to do something, avoid sharing about yourself too much

How you help others: counsellor, provide understanding ears, charity, support humanitarian causes, help people find peace, soothing, empathise with people's suffering, provide spiritual guidance, create art that can speak directly to people's souls

About me | Masterpost

[ghostlyferrettarot]

📀⚡️The Part of Fortune and how we find happiness⚡️📀

❗️All the observations in this post are based on personal experience and research, it's completely fine if it doesn't resonate with everyone❗️

✨️Paid Services ✨️ (Natal charts and tarot readings) Open!

🫧Join my Patreon for exclusive content!🫧

📀If you like my work you can support me through Ko-fi. Thank you!📀

⚡️Masterlist⚡️

⚡️ Part of Fortune in Aries: you experience your greatest joy and delight when you feel the potential of trust, faith and hope flowing in the most selfless generosity throughout your being. Generosity begins with oneself and always discovering new ways to give it will attract your greatest luck and fortune.

⚡️ Part of Fortune in Taurus: you experience your greatest joy and delight when you feel the relationship with the divine without intermediaries and in the first person and, thus, you can transmit to each individual inspiration, harmony and a priceless feeling of being welcomed and accepted in the world. Your ability to understand with kindness through empathy will attract your greatest luck and fortune.

⚡️ Part of Fortune in Gemini: you experience your greatest joy and delight when you feel the potential of free will and the ability to love (yourself) in total freedom flowing through your entire being in order to learn to choose (yourself). The activation of your shamanic mind and the balance of forces within you will attract your greatest luck and fortune.

⚡️Part of Fortune in Cancer: you experience your greatest joy and delight when you open new routes to success and deploy your power, your mastery and your magnetism in unthinkable ways. Going for triumph and success that allows you to assert yourself as an individual and realize your desires for action in the world will attract your greatest luck and fortune.

⚡️ Part of Fortune in Leo: you experience your greatest joy and delight when you feel the potentials of courage, will, passion and valor flowing, in a serene and calm way, throughout your being. Finding and feeling the centering, the magnetism in the axis around which your own life revolves will attract your greatest luck and fortune.

⚡️ Part of Fortune in Virgo: you experience your greatest joy and delight when you connect with the depths of your soul. Pursuing the call of your desire to be one with the divine and cultivating introspection, wisdom, prudence and perseverance will attract your greatest luck and fortune.

⚡️Part of Fortune in Libra: you experience your greatest joy and delight when you feel the potentials of balance, rigor, loyalty, authenticity and honesty flowing through your entire being. Finding yourself in a balance that is not, in reality, static but in continuous transformation, looking life in the face and people directly in the eye… will attract your greatest luck and fortune.

⚡️ Part of Fortune in Scorpio: you experience your greatest joy and delight when you move towards the future in a totally dynamic attitude and are willing to explore unknown regions. Continually being reborn into new ways of being, destroying the superficial and leaving only the essential at every step, will attract your greatest luck and fortune.

⚡️ Part of Fortune in Sagittarius: you experience your greatest joy and delight when you feel the potentials of harmony, tolerance, connection and peace flowing through your entire being. Seeking and finding the middle path between light and shadow, activating kind understanding and intelligence of the heart will attract your greatest luck and fortune.

⚡️ Part of Fortune in Capricorn: you experience your greatest joy and delight when you feel the potentials of all your material power and capacity for seduction that are available in your physical vehicle, the temple of your body. Your efforts and determination to access leadership will attract your greatest luck and fortune.

⚡️ Part of Fortune in Aquarius: you experience your greatest joy and delight when you do not let your ideas go to waste and, when you get down to work, you feel the potentials of know-how, structuring and realization flowing through your entire being. The world needs you to invent things and put your contributions into practice, so attending to and honoring your need to exercise your activity in the field will attract your greatest luck and fortune.

⚡️Part of Fortune in Pisces: you experience your greatest joy and delight when you feel the potentials of unlimited vision and the most fertile creativity flowing through your entire being. Your willingness to feel the mobility of all emotions and all feelings will attract your greatest luck and fortune.

[fuckyeahlabynight]

VtM Fang Fest 2025!

Hello tumblr Vamily! I'm pleased to present:

The fuckyeahlabynight Vampire the Masquerade Fang Fest 2025!

To be held June 1 - 14, 2025.

This year's theme is Vices and Virtues, as used in the nWoD system. In the New World of Darkness system (home of Vampire: the Requiem, amoung others...) acting within their Vices and Virtues are one way how characters regain Willpower, and often inform aspects of the character's personality.

"Virtues and Vices are held by every single denizen of the World of Darkness. They show the duality of morality, and give a character something to strive for as well as a tempting place to fall."

How it works:

This is a super low-key fandom event fuckyeahlabynight hosts each year. The point is to have fun and make something creative to fill the prompts.

Each day, starting on June 1 and finishing on June 14, post whatever fan work you've made inspired by the Vices and Virtues prompt (eg. art, fic, gifs, poetry, music playlists, mood boards, whatever). I am giving you several weeks heads up to aid your creative process. You do not need to focus on LA by Night, NY by Night, or Project Ghostlight. Feel free to use your vampire OCs if it pleases you to do so!

When you post your creations, please include the hashtag #fangfest25 so they can all be collected here. If you can't think of anything for a particular prompt, or are otherwise unable to finish, it's perfectly fine to skip it. It's also fine to post your creations late. So long as you use the hashtag and I'm able to find it, it will be reblogged here regardless.

As always, those who are not taking part in making fan works are encouraged to like, comment on, give kudos, and share their favourites! Part of the fun is seeing what everyone else has made. Collaboration is also encouraged, so reach out to your fellow Kindred and see what you can come up with!

More info on each of the prompts will be below the cut. See you in June!

Pride: Extreme self-confidence, arrogance, ego, vanity. When you exert your own wants (not needs) over others, thinking you are better than them.

Greed: Avarice, desire for material objects to the point of excess. When you WANT something that you don't actually NEED, at the expense of another.

Wrath: Sadism, anti-social, hot-headed, uncontrolled anger and fury. Using your anger in situations that are completely unwarranted and inappropriate, often leading to violence.

Envy: Covetousness, jealousy, paranoia that others want to hurt you for what you have. Similar to greed, but more specifically you want only what others have.

Lust: Uncontrolled desire, lasciviousness, impatience. (Not always sexual!) You need to satisfy your passions in a way that victimizes another person.

Gluttony: Epicurean, over-consuming, over-indulging, addiction. You may not necessarily be indulging in food. It also applies to drugs, drinking, etc. to the point of harming yourself or others.

Sloth: Apathy, depression, cowardice, ignorance, laziness and lack of gumption. When you avoid completing a task, whatever that task may be, and others are forced to do it for you.

Faith: Conviction, humility, loyalty, belief. (Not necessarily in a god, though this is often the case.) It offers you a feeling of stability and meaning in a dark, chaotic world.

Charity: Generosity, sharing, giving instead of receiving, compassion, mercy, altruism. You risk yourself to help another in spite of any losses that may be suffered.

Fortitude: Courage, stoicism, mettle, integrity, stubbornness. You are able to withstand pressure to stray from your chosen course or long-held ideals.

Hope: Dreams, optimism, utopia. You refuse to allow yourself or others give in to despair and horror.

Prudence: Patience, vigilance, restraint. You refuse to take action that feels good in the short term, in favour of actions that benefit you in the long term.

Temperance: Moderation, chastity, even-temperament, being frugal and balanced in all things. You never indulge in any kind of excess behaviour.

Justice: Righteousness, condemnatory, judgement, protecting those who cannot protect themselves and punishing the atrocities and cruelties committed against them. You do The Right Thing, based on what you think is the right thing to do, regardless of how it may set you back.

~

Special note: Something to keep in mind when completing the prompts... In moderation, the vices are not always bad. A complete lack of pride, for example, can lead to zero self-worth and low self-esteem. Likewise, an excess of the virtues can also be a bad thing. For example, someone who is charitable to a fault may give away things they need for their own survival.

[seyvia]

One evening...

As the fair maiden gazes into the sparkling night sky. An unexpected bright twinkle catches her eye, and taking a closer look, it seems as if a star is falling straight towards her...

But it is, in fact, a magical scroll with wings! It flutters open in front of the curious princess, and it reads: You are here by invited to participate in the fairy Queen of Spellbyndells challenges! to meet and potentially marry the Prince of Spellbyndell, hero of all Regalia.

Do you accept?

Welcome to the world of Regalia!

A magical world full of kingdoms and magical beings! (see my first post!)

rules and more info below:

ABOUT THE PRINCE:

the Queen describes Prince Lumin's character as a responsible and kind-hearted young man with a vivid imagination and a courageous spirit. During his boyhood, he spent countless hours outdoors, playing with toads and gathering unique treasures. At times, he even preferred to sleep under the stars. As he matured, his interest in various art forms blossomed, and the Queen takes great pride in his numerous talents. However, these passions have also revealed a challenge for the prince, as he often chooses to focus on his projects rather than connect with the people around him. ( she still sees him as her little boy who needs protection and guidance. ( •̯́ ₃ •̯̀) )

HOW IT WORKS:

8 ladies. 4 Queen trials. All of them will have four chances to win a spot to meet the prince and proceed to the Bachelor potion of the challenge. The remaining four who didn't win any of the challenges will be sent home. The Queens Trails will be a mix of skill and dumb luck. The Bachelor potion will be like what you've seen before, they will be introduced to the prince then left to their own autonomy for a mingle day. Then all 4 ladies will go on a solo date with him. at the end of the week a sim will be eliminated until there is only one...The One! (I will be playing it with royal prudence, so no woohoos until marriage)

SUBMISSION RULES:

Reservations for spots are first-come-first-serve. If for any reason you'd like to give up your reservation, contact me immediately so I can give that reservation to someone else!

Young adult woman only.♀️

occults & humans welcome!

tell me why your princess decided to accept the queens invitation, a little backstory! I'm really curious about their situation weather its good or bad! (you can ask me any questions you might have)

Must have 1 negative trait; Can't have Romantic traits.

You can have as many likes & skills as you want, but skills can't go past level 2. Since you are a princess you are distinguished, so you can have your choice of two skills at level 4.

Only Maxis Match Hair🪮 but Maxis Mix outfits are welcome. (be sure to include the cc when sent to me)

All ladies must have one outfit in each category. Your princess should be adorned in a ballgown for their formal.👗 (here is a link to a creator in case you need it. tsr warning) I can supply your sim with a gown if necessary.

Must be comfortable with minor changes being made to your sims appearance. And possible story dialog writing.

Here is a link to a list of the sliders I use if needed.

I own all packs except for Journey to Batuu & the newest Hobbies one; the only CAS Kits I have are Incheon arrivals, Moonlight chic, Throwback fits.

NO DEADLINE! Submissions will close when all 8 spots are filled. Please provide your sim’s tray files as soon as convenient

I will be updating the number of spots reserved periodically and will announce when all spots are taken, but if you’re ever unsure, don’t be afraid to DM me/send an ask!

ALL SPOTS ARE FILLED. THANK YOU!

@jonquilyst

@rebelangelsims

@sanitysims

@riverofjazzsims

@paracosmic-sims

@perolesims

@simscici

@bloomingkyras

Remember to have fun!!!

[romanticvictorian]

Cressida’s redemption arc took a nose dive in Part 2. (To be fair, redemption should be the last thing on her mind when she’s faced with 4-5 pregnancies with Lord Crypt Keeper).

But the FEATHERINGTON redemption arc was a thing of beauty which I enjoyed immensely.

Portia humbled. Proud of Penelope. Comes to believe in love as she is increasingly enchanted by Polin. Thinking she was nothing like her youngest daughter, only to discover that they are both crafty, clever, ambitious survivors.

Prudence working through her initial jealousy of Penelope to be genuinely moved at the wedding, seeing her sister as lovely and having the courage and maturity to tell her so. Realizing that Penelope’s happiness is something that can be shared, not just scorned or dismissed.

Philippa’s genius idea of the “bugs” and her masterful timing of the butterfly release after Pen’s speech and tense interaction with the Queen. Hoping her daughter becomes a famous writer like her auntie.

Pen being genuinely touched and accepting of her mother and sisters trying to do better. Pen is so happy to make her sisters’ vision for the ball—in secret, no less—a reality (there is little that Pen’s earnings and Varley’s resourcefulness couldn’t accomplish). Pen allows Portia to take the credit to heal their relationship, as Prudence and Phillippa were a little hurt by the excitement of Pen’s wedding. (They were both wed when the family’s position was more precarious.)

As Part 2 progresses, Pen starts to embrace her birthright Featherington boldness (on her terms) with the increasingly rich colors and patterns in her dresses and glamorous hair and makeup.

The Dankworth/Finch Ball, with its glorious purple and orange and ostrich feathers, was the highlight of the social season. The Featheringtons are not merely gaudy—they are extravagant, exuberant, and captivating. Never dull.

In the end, the girls all have completely besotted husbands who are good, kind men and have given birth to beautiful children. The title is secure. The only place for the season to end is at Featherington House. Season 3 was their triumph.

[thelien-art]

Elrond´s heraldic for @peasant-player and @purpleflowerluminaryus

house/dwelling/home = Bâr: Sindarin affable/kindly/welcoming = Nathol: Sindarin lord/master = Hîr: Sindarin

Azure (blue) represents truth and loyalty.

Purpure (purple) represents royalty, justice, and dignity.

Or (gold/yellow) and Argent (silver/white) symbolize generosity, openness, peace, and sincerity.

The Stags represent wisdom and long life strength, courage, grace, nobility, harmony, and healing.

The Swallow are known for being a bringer of good news and hope.

The Owl represents prudence, protection, and wisdom. They are a symbol of the Crusades.

In heraldry the oak tree is seen as a symbol of strength and endurance, as it leaves less easily shed in the fall than the leaves of other trees.

In heraldry the stars symbolize unity and independence, and when put together in groups, they represent a nation.

Crowns, collars, and chains symbolize obligation to the people that the wearer of the heraldic rules and protects.

[sag-dab-sar]

"Pillars" of Hellenic Polytheism... A Rant

Time for me to be grumpy annoying person again

"Seven Pillars of Hellenic Polytheism" often called Seven Pillars of Hellenismos do not exist. Even with people that are like "my interpretation of," there is no interpretation to be had. Because the entire concept you are interpreting is based off Timothy Jay Alexander an ableist, sexist, homophobic-sympathizer — Link

⭐️Disclaimer If I am completely wrong and it was made by someone else please correct me

.🔹.

TJA's list is made up by his own conglomeration of different Classical philosophers especially Sallustius born in 89 BCE and presented as if part of the ancient religion. His list:

Ethike Arete: the practice of habitual excellence; ethics

Eusebia: reverence, loyalty, and a sense of duty towards the Gods

Hagneia: the maintenance of ritual purity by avoiding miasma

Nomos Arkhaios: the observence of tradition, religious law, and customs

Sophia: the pursuit of wisdom, understanding, and truth

Sophrosune: the control of self through deep contemplation

Xenia: the adherence to hospitality and the guest-host relationship

.🔹.

Most other online lists go:

Xenia

Kharis

Eusebia

Hagneia

Arete

Sophia

Sophrosyne

Which is very similar to TJA's original. I have also seen people add to them and drop the word "seven." Such as Katharmos, and one list with like 10+ that I've never heard before.

Kharis is sometimes defined wrong, not always but I've seen some claim "giving to the gods without expecting anything in return".

Hagenia makes zero sense because humans are fundamentally pure and miasma is not what modern Hellenic Polytheists think it is — Link. Also I really encourage you to read the TJA post's section on his views of miasma before you consider this one

Sophrosyne this may come from four cardinal virtues temperance (Prudence, Courage, Justice being the others — Wikipedia)

I have personally stated that Arete being fundamental without a historical source and I will go change that because I don't like my previous conception.

.🔹.

This grouping of 7 (and its derivatives) is not fundamental concept to the ancient religion. The ones that seem truly entrenched in history, and thus based on that are fundamental to Hellenic Polytheism imo are:

Kharis: it is absolutely fundamental

Robert Parker is adamant: “almost the whole of Greek cultic practice is in fact founded … on the belief or hope that reciprocity of this kind is a reality.” link also link

And its not even on TJA's version.

Xenia: it is ubiquitous and even the epithets of the Gods Zeus Xenios & Athena Xenia.

"Theoxenia (‘theoxeny’), in myth and cult the entertaining of a god or gods by humans, usually at a meal. The thought pattern is old, and reaches beyond the Graeco-Roman world. In Homer, the gods are said to ‘meet’ or be present at a sacrifice; more specifically, at Od. 17. 485–8 they roam the earth in disguise, testing the moral qualities of mortals. This is the germ of the typical theoxeny myth, in which a deity is given—or refused—hospitality, and after an *epiphany effects a reward or punishment. ‘Failed’ theoxenies are exemplified by the story of *Pentheus, while successful ones form an aetiology for very many cults, especially of *Demeter and *Dionysus. In this pattern the host is often worshipped as a hero (see hero-cult), having been instructed by the deity and thus become the cult's first priest or the introducer of a new technique such as viticulture (see culture-bringers)." — Theoxenia by Emily Kearns Link

"Ubiquitous in ancient Greek culture, the ethical principle of xenía may broadly translate as hospitality to strangers, doing so through taking interpersonal, political, and architectural form. Since xenía includes the accommodation of foreign guests, some evidence of xenía in architecture is logically found in houses and hostels" — On the origin of the architect: Architects and xenía in the ancient Greek theatre by Simon Weir Link

Quick look on wikipedia shows Xenia in the Iliad, Odyssey, Argonautica, as well as Platoism

.🔹.

"But" I hear you typing "this is a modern religion so the modern 'Pillars of Hellenic Polytheism' are useful!"

No they aren't. The only well known religion that uses the word "pillars" (in English) to define religious practice is Islam.* In Islam they are absolutely fundamental and non-negotiable. They even use a number just like this concept. Type "pillar religion" into Google and it'll prove my point.

So making a list of "pillars" is going to give newcomers the wrong idea, that these things are fundamental. When they aren't. That they have to try and work them all into their religious practice which is daunting. When they don't. I don't really care about "my interpretation of it" "my spin on it" etc

You are "interpreting" a concept specifically created by a bigot.

I'm not telling you that using them is immoral (it isn't), I absolutely cannot change your practice, I can't even change your mind about the usefulness. You can ignore me. I am a stranger on the internet.

But I am going to share my opinion because damn do I hate seeing posts sharing it as Helpol Religion 101. I needed to rant because there are dozens of posts on tumblr; and blogs other than tumblr; and from plenty of reconstructionists.

*Christian Martin Luther used it once but I've never heard a single Christian use it and its not commonly held doctrine among laity

[aceofcupsbiggestfan]

Pillars of Hellenic Polytheism

In the ancient world the Pillars did not explicitly exist. Though, many sources were destroyed, modern historians and Hellenic Polytheists have identified the Ancients' values and morals mainly from Plato and Aristotle writings. There can be as many as you please (traditionally up to twelve) though most stick to the following due to overlap.

χαρις - kharis

giving without expectation of return, gratitude for benevolence received

εὐσέβεια - eusebeia

reverence and duty towards the Gods, piety and devotion

ἀρετή - arete

striving to live to one's fullest potential, virtues like courage, justice and wisdom, encompasses moral goodness as well

ἁγνεία - hagenia

spiritual and ritual purity (cleansing) also associated with chasity, however many people do not recognize this aspect. One can acknowledge this aspect of arete by not praying or involving the Gods in sexuality.

σοφία - sophia

the pursuit of wisdom and understanding, encompassing both mortal and divine wisdom and philosophical significance

σωφροσύνη - sophrosyne

healthy state of mind encompassing self-control, moderation, controlling hubris, temperance, prudence and deep sense of self

ξενία - xenia

hospitality, generosity and courtesy regarding those seeking asylum. Offering housing, food, bath and safety to those in need without asking questions.

While most Hellenic Polytheist strive to live by these Pillars, many will focus their efforts on one based on their interests, life or patron deity. Pillar focus may change with time, as everything does.

[sanguinarysanguinity]

Sawyer and Hobbs

Rewatched Mutiny and Retribution the other night, and found myself absolutely fascinated with Hobbs' and Sawyer's relationship. Sawyer, a captain with a celebrated career, whose past courage and exploits are the pride of the fleet, but who, in his advancing age, is no longer fit to command. And Hobbs, his loyal defender, who served with him for the length of that celebrated career, who devoutly loves and esteems him and protects him from all comers, even as it becomes more and more incontrovertible that Sawyer really is unfit to command.

Sawyer in decline, his former glory gone to ashes. And Hobbs, Sawyer's loyal partisan, his heart breaking to watch the man he loves become a ruin of himself.

And all I could see was Hornblower and Bush. Would not Bush behave exactly like that, should this fate befall Hornblower? Hornblower's last and most savage defender, even in the face of all prudence and reason? Would not his heart break, exactly like that, as it became clear that Hornblower's true enemies were not the men that surrounded him, but the demons slowly eating away his mind?

I've written several stories in which Hornblower fears becoming like Sawyer: falling to dementia and paranoia, a victim of the mental demons that plagued him for his entire life.

Do I need to write one about Bush, too, savaging all who came near, even as he utterly fails to protect Hornblower from the true enemy, the fallibility of his own flesh?

Or is it enough that Mutiny and Retribution already gave it to us, in the form of Hobbs and Sawyer?

[mariacallous]

Out of guilt or amnesia, we tend to treat wars, in retrospect, as natural disasters: terrible but somehow inevitable, beyond anyone’s control. Shaking your fist at the fools who started the First World War and condemned millions to a meaningless death seems jejune; historians teach us to say that the generals did their best under impossible conditions. Mournful fatalism is the requisite emotion, even when mad fury would be more apt. Efforts at de-escalation are cast as weakness or cowardice, while those who lead nations into catastrophe are praised for their “strength of character,” or for stoically accepting what was supposedly unavoidable. We rarely honor those who turn back at the brink. John F. Kennedy’s compromise during the Cuban missile crisis is an exception, though only because prudence and caution—our removal of nuclear missiles from Turkey—were neatly covered up and presented as pugnacity and courage: we had made the Russians “blink.”

The habit of describing war with metaphors drawn from natural disasters is as old as war writing. Homer himself uses natural metaphors to ennoble violent human actors: Achilles is a wildfire sweeping across the Trojan plain. Given what Greek warfare actually entailed—pitched battles of close combat, where victory meant cutting others to death with edged weapons—the figure feels less like a metaphor than a mask.

So it is with us. The Civil War lingers in memory as brutal and heartbreaking, but also as heroic and tragic, accompanied by an Appalachian campfire fiddle. It is the altar of American existence—a sublime sacrifice and a perpetually contested example—so thoroughly sanctified that to ask if it might have been avoided by pragmatic compromise feels almost obscene. No war, no Lincoln, no Emancipation Proclamation, no Gettysburg—neither the battle nor the address—to inspire and instruct us? And yet three-quarters of a million people died, and the enslaved people in whose name the war was fought emerged still trapped in an apartheid terrorist state. Was it worth it?

In “1861: The Lost Peace” (Grand Central), Jay Winik—the author of several fine works about American history—takes up that question of whether the Civil War might have been avoided. The title overpromises a little. Nowhere in the book do we encounter a truly plausible compromise that might have averted the conflict. What Winik offers instead is a portrait of two sides talking past each other, rather than with each other. Still, he traces the efforts of those who genuinely wanted to prevent war and the trauma of secession—and shows how Abraham Lincoln tried at first to listen and then at last refused.

The early chapters are given over to what will be, for many, a familiar story. We hear again how an underrated, grotesque-looking backwoods lawyer with scant experience (one term in Congress and two failed Senate runs) managed—by virtue of being a moderate and, usefully, an outsider; a man of the frontier rather than of Boston or New York—to wrest the Republican nomination from the seemingly inevitable William Henry Seward, of New York, and go on to win the national election against the pro-slavery Democrat John Breckinridge.

We’re told about the assassination plots brewing before Lincoln had even taken office, forcing him—in ways widely seen as comical, not to say cowardly—to sneak into Washington under the protection of the newly founded Pinkerton private-detective force. (By rumor, though not in fact, he was dressed in women’s clothes.) Southern states were already passing resolutions of secession one after another, with South Carolina taking the lead. Meanwhile, the Confederate noose was tightening around Fort Sumter, in the waters off Charleston, where the Northern garrison was effectively under blockade.

The reasons for the radical action were plain. Lincoln, despite his efforts to present himself as a moderate, was what we would now call a single-issue candidate. The issue was slavery, and his categorical rejection of it. “If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong” was his most emphatic aphorism on the subject, along with his famous injunction: “A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this government cannot endure permanently half slave and half free.”

Though absolute on the moral question, Lincoln was neither the hard-core political abolitionist we may wish him to have been nor the apologist for slavery some later commentators have made him seem. He was, instead, a democratic politician trying to build a coalition—and he knew that, to keep the border states within it, a firm New England abolitionist line would fail, while a focus on containing slavery, not eradicating it, might succeed.

And so, during that strange American interregnum between election and Inauguration—it was even longer in the nineteenth century, with the ceremony held in March—Lincoln struggled to find common ground with the Southern secessionists. He began a pre-inaugural exchange of letters with Alexander Stephens, of Georgia, a friend from his congressional days who made it clear that, in the Southern mind, everything was secondary to the preservation of slavery. “We at the South do think African slavery, as it exists with us, both morally and politically right,” Stephens wrote. “This opinion is founded upon the inferiority of the black race. You, however, and perhaps a majority of the North, think it wrong. Admit the difference of opinion.”

The enterprise of avoiding war was likely doomed from the start. Nonetheless—and here lies the new emphasis of Winik’s book—there was an attempt at a “Peace Conference” (Winik oddly capitalizes it throughout) during this pre-inaugural period, and it was more substantial than most subsequent histories have acknowledged. If it didn’t resolve the crisis, it at least exposed the depth of the deadlock.

The conference took place in Washington, at the Willard Hotel, where Lincoln had stayed since his arrival, using his suite as his office. The Willard, like the Waldorf-Astoria, in New York, has gone through many incarnations, but in the nineteenth century it seemed more central to Washington life than either the White House or the long-unfinished Capitol. (Its cast-iron dome was still incomplete.) From February 4th to the 27th, the conference drew delegates from twenty-one of the thirty-four states then in the Union. It brought together representatives from the South—most notably from Virginia, the cradle of Presidents, which had not yet committed to secession—with Republicans from the North, many of them, as Winik reveals, operating under the direct or indirect guidance of Seward. Though the delegates were mostly former members of Congress, the gathering wasn’t limited to them; the former President John Tyler, of Virginia, who held no official position but remained influential, was present.

It was, by all indications, a comfortable negotiation. Both sides dined—if a Willard menu from that year is to be trusted—on lamb chops, stewed kidneys, and, precociously, frozen custard, which, like baseball, would not become a national mania until after the war. It is perhaps less surprising, then, given their shared table, class, and manners, that both sides, including almost all the Republicans, were ready to concede the permanence of slavery in the South in exchange for ending the threat of secession. A Thirteenth Amendment was proposed, and could probably have passed, guaranteeing the continued existence of slavery in the states where it already prevailed. Even Lincoln was prepared to accept this.

The unresolvable issue was the extension of slavery into the territories. Here, the arguments were fierce, layered with subtexts and overtones more audible then than now. For all the civility of tone and talk of compromise—Lincoln went so far as to agree that a fugitive slave could be recaptured and returned to bondage—the real conflict was profound and, in the end, unbridgeable. Like the conflict in the Middle East today, it was rooted less in clashing interests than in vast and irreconcilable mutual fears. The underlying meanings were evident to all: any limit placed on slavery, the Southerners believed, was intended to hasten its extinction; any constitutional blessing of slavery, the North understood, was intended to support its extension.

To use an awkward but apt modern analogy, it was as if the right-to-life movement, having won the Presidency, were to concede that reproductive freedom would remain protected in blue states like New York and Massachusetts, but be entirely eliminated in red states, with harsh penalties. Blue-state voters would see that the true goal was to end abortion everywhere, and that agreeing even to a temporary truce meant accepting the long-term influence of hostile neighbors on a vital and defining issue.

Behind the Southern delegates’ suspicion was a kind of post-October 7th trauma: John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, in 1859, had convinced the South that the Black population was poised to rise up in bloody rebellion if given the chance. This, in retrospect, was plainly chimerical—the enslaved had not, in fact, joined Brown’s insurrection, and, when Black enfranchisement did eventually come, however briefly, during Reconstruction, Black Americans, far from turning violently on their former masters, embraced electoral politics with enthusiasm. But the Southern establishment was unshakable in its belief that any concession to abolitionists would end in the massacre of white families. Stephens wrote indignantly to Lincoln of “such exhibitions of madness as the John Brown raid into Virginia, which has received so much sympathy from many, and no open condemnation from any of the leading men of the present dominant party.”

Lincoln nonetheless participated warmly in the Peace Conference debate, insisting that his task was simply to follow the Constitution, which he understood to prohibit secession from the Union as an act of treason. Yet, for all his provisional concessions, he effectively ended the conference by declaring, “In a choice of evils, war may not always be the worst. Still I would do all in my power to avert it, except to neglect a constitutional duty. As to slavery, it must be content with what it has. The voice of the civilized world is against it.”

Those words may now strike us as unduly mild, but behind them lay the doctrine of the “Scorpion’s Sting”—the idea, adopted by antislavery advocates around the world, that if slavery could be encircled and confined, it would destroy itself, as the scorpion is said to sting itself to death when trapped in a ring of fire. The scorpion metaphor, though pungent, was poorly chosen. Just as frogs do not, in fact, remain in water as it boils but leap out when they are scalded, scorpions are actually immune to their own venom, and, when encircled by fire, they die not by stinging themselves but from heat-induced convulsions that only appear to be self-inflicted. That image offers a better metaphor for the war to come. Stoic suicide doesn’t occur in nature. Frenzied, senseless self-destruction does.

Yet Lincoln’s words signalled—clearly, to anyone attuned to their overtones, and everyone at that conference was—that slavery was to be put, or left, in a position where it would have to end itself. Slavery had a cursed past, and a present to be tolerated, but no future. No one quite said this; everyone grasped it. And so the Willard Peace Conference quietly foundered. Its resolutions were rejected in the Senate and never even reached a vote in the House.

Southern paranoia and Northern complacency together may explain what, at first glance, seems to us the oddest feature of the Willard meetings: that no one on the Northern side proposed a rational plan for gradual emancipation and enfranchisement, presumably subsidized by the already wealthy industrialists of the North and carried out over some specified interval. Such plans had been tried before—in Pennsylvania, as early as the seventeen-eighties, and proposed for Virginia, though unsuccessfully, by Thomas Jefferson. Surely a similar scheme, however brutal its delay for the enslaved, might have spared the country the full scale of the war to come. Lincoln himself returned to the idea in 1862, when he proposed a program of compensated, gradual abolition for the border states. Yet even then, at the height of the war, sympathetic border-state representatives refused to act. Slavery had embedded itself too deeply, not only as an economic engine but as a terror-bound cultural institution.

The tragedy was that, while the South could not overcome its paranoia about the violence it would suffer if the slaves were freed, the North could not imagine the scale of the violence it was choosing. The assumption, of course, was that the conflict would last twelve weeks—just long enough to put the erring states back in their place. But only a few months later Julia Ward Howe would be staying at the same Willard Hotel when, in the course of a day, she saw a column of freshly inducted Union soldiers, in blue uniforms, marching and singing lines from a newly adapted spiritual: “John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the ground.” The words struck her as too direct, and she composed a loftier version in her hotel room, substituting God’s vengeance for that of the abolitionist: “He has loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword / His truth is marching on.” “The Battle Hymn of the Republic” was born. It was only November, and already more than forty thousand soldiers had fallen. The eternal language of euphemism—swords and lightning—had begun its work, displacing the reality of bullets breaking bodies.

In the wake of the failed conference, Lincoln skillfully replaced “abolition” with “the Union” as the war’s compelling purpose. The case he made to connect the end of slavery with the preservation of a political arrangement was subtle. Secession, he maintained, was a denial of democratic rule. Slavery had, from the beginning, been a national issue. It could not be fenced off and become a parochial one now. This was the logic, easily lost to us because it’s so familiar, behind the memorable line in the Gettysburg Address, delivered two years later, that the great question of the war was whether “any nation so conceived and so dedicated”—that is, to liberty—“can long endure.” Without a strong central authority—not a dictator or a king but a unifying rule of law—a free state would be torn apart by demagogues and dissension.

Yet the argument, though it has come to seem foundational, is in some ways specious. As Southern critics noted at the time, for the wrong reasons but not with the wrong logic, the American Revolution was itself an act of secession—from a functioning and successful union. Many regions have broken apart at the will of their inhabitants. It is easy to imagine horrors today that could make, say, California and Oregon and Washington want to declare themselves a separate polity, and it is hard to invoke a moral principle to tell them that they can’t. From this perspective, the idea of “union” was one of the most disingenuous diversions in American history: the transformation of an abstract constitutional principle into a cause worth dying for.

Why this new argument proved so powerful remains something of a mystery. Edmund Wilson, in his study of Civil War literature, “Patriotic Gore,” saw in it the blunt, power-fixated logic of human history: big states swallow small ones. The North was stronger and bigger, and it swallowed the South. The bleak truth, Wilson suggested, is that people like joining armies of conquest. Presumably, when the Great Canadian campaign begins, there will be no shortage of soldiers to fight it, or of apologists ready to enumerate the horrors of Canadian life that must be erased, poutine aside.

And yet Canada, oddly, offers a clue to the peculiar appeal of Lincoln’s abstract ideal of “union.” Donald Trump’s threats have, almost overnight, caused a famously divided and centrifugal nation to cohere into a single national front. Something like that happened across the North at the outset of the Civil War, when “the Union” became not just a constitutional principle but a moral rallying cry. The South, for its part, responded in kind: secession swiftly forged a fractured region into a reactive unity, bound by fear of emancipation and faith in a mythic agrarian freedom.

In an illuminating study of American Jews during the conflict, “Fear No Pharaoh” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux), Richard Kreitner notes that even pro-slavery rabbis in New York were converted by Lincoln’s unionist rhetoric. Morris J. Raphall, who led the Greene Street Synagogue and had defended slavery on Biblical grounds, abruptly reversed himself when Lincoln invoked the vision of a united America. American Jews, Raphall insisted, knew the “difference between elsewhere and here.” His son enlisted in the Union Army and lost an arm at Gettysburg. As in the post-mass-immigration moment of the First World War, a crisis proved necessary to forge a common identity. “Elsewhere” and “here” always make for more compelling rallying cries than “right” and “wrong.”

This bleaker view is reinforced by the historian Michael Vorenberg’s new book, “Lincoln’s Peace” (Knopf), which picks up the story at the other end of the conflict, as the war was drawing to a close after unfathomable death and suffering. Vorenberg’s account, despite the intervening carnage, returns us to a situation eerily similar to the one that preceded the war: the white South, though militarily defeated, had no intention of accepting anything resembling racial equality. And, while Robert E. Lee might have declined to resort to guerrilla warfare, many of his lieutenants carried on a program of suppression by terror. In that sense, Vorenberg argues, the Civil War never truly ended.

Lincoln’s assassination was, in this light, a last-ditch terrorist assault on the national government—one that very nearly succeeded. Seward and Vice-President Andrew Johnson survived the conspiracy only by chance. The pattern of compromise persisted, with the politics of the border states still exerting undue influence. Indeed, one of the most fateful disasters in American history—Johnson’s embattled Presidency—was a by-product of those very compromises: Johnson, a Tennessean, was chosen to replace Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine, on the 1864 ticket in a bid to appease the border states, with predictable results.

In “American Civil Wars” (Norton), Alan Taylor broadens the frame to include parallel struggles over national identity and democratic renewal in the eighteen-sixties—not only in the United States but in Canada and Mexico as well. One could broaden it further and argue that the period from 1848 to 1871—bracketed by the liberal revolutions and the end of the Franco-Prussian War—was marked by a series of violent shocks across the Western world, culminating in the establishment of a liberal political compact that, in some form, endured into our own time. Lincoln’s “passion” became so sanctified, in this reading, because it was the most extreme instance of a common struggle. In this view, the American experience was not exceptional but emblematic—a subset of the painful emergence of something resembling genuinely popular democracy.

What’s striking about the new literature on Lincoln and the war is that, though one may expect him to be in some sense debunked or “deconstructed,” he remains a largely idealized figure. Winik is admiring of his firmness of purpose at the war’s outset; Vorenberg mourns its absence at the war’s end. Matthew Stewart, in his recent study of the influence of idealist philosophy on abolitionism, “An Emancipation of the Mind,” goes further. Drawing on quotations from Karl Marx, a Lincoln enthusiast, Stewart argues that Lincoln was essentially the first Marxist President: embracing a view of labor not far from Marx’s own, and opposing the peonage of working people in all its forms.

This is obviously tendentious—nor does Stewart mean it entirely seriously—but, then, Lincoln, like Jesus, is easily made to conform to whatever ideological need the historian brings to him. If a left-wing, quasi-Marxist Lincoln is a plausible invention, so is a far-right, conservative one of the sort evoked by Harry V. Jaffa, the godfather of the Claremont Institute. Jaffa saw Lincoln’s choice of war in 1861 as wholly heroic—an almost Christlike epiphany that united revelation and reason in a moral crusade. He cast Lincoln as the embodiment of a set of absolute values: Biblical revelation and Greek reason joined in opposition to the relativism of modern liberal humanism, with its taste for irony and its acceptance of a plurality of forms of existence. Jaffa was, in effect, allying Jerusalem and Athens against New York. He wanted the American home built on rock, not shifting sand, and believed Lincoln was its carpenter.

In truth, we have no difficulty building our abodes on sand—that’s why the most expensive homes in Los Angeles and Long Island are called “beach houses.” There is no bedrock to build on, in the world or in morality. The political ground beneath our feet shifts, grows squishy, and is meant to. What we feel when we study Lincoln’s life through the war is not so much the force of fixed convictions imposed on others as the gradual emancipation of his own mind—a sense of his discovery, in real time, of what he believed. A powerful intuition that slavery was absolutely wrong evolved into a tragic fatalism, haunted by a sense of Providence, and finally opened into a horizon of hope, shaped by the scale of suffering Lincoln had helped to unleash. This much death had to make for a better land.

Yet believing that the war was inescapable is not quite the same as believing that it was right. Was the Civil War “worth the sacrifice”? Suppose that someone had had the force and the imagination to craft a plan for gradual emancipation. Full enfranchisement might have been delayed for several years, but the enslaved would have been free at last. And what of the human cost? If eight hundred thousand people had been deliberately murdered over the next four years—in some expanded version of the Trail of Tears or the Bataan Death March—would we see that as an unfortunate necessity of history or as an unforgivable crime?

Of course, some eight hundred thousand did die—many in horrific ways—while the formerly enslaved were left to fend for themselves in a postwar state where apartheid was enforced by terror. Why, exactly, is that outcome morally preferable—or more readily excused? These were not slaves but soldiers, who, in some collective sense, chose to fight. But was that choice entirely their own? Or was it made for them, by circumstance, by duty, by the illusions of glory, not to mention the blunt force of conscription? We are far too ready to depict the suffering of others as the price of the history that seemingly rewards us now.

The truth is that we accept mass dying with enormous aplomb. More than a million perished in the COVID-19 pandemic, but those who complacently predicted that it would be no more than a season’s pain appear to represent the new common sense: lockdowns were excessive, the health establishment overreacted. Mass dying barely fazes us—until, that is, it becomes personal and particular. Leo Tolstoy revered Lincoln, calling him “a Christ in miniature, a saint of humanity, whose name will live for thousands of years.” Yet in “War and Peace” he captures the raw vulnerability of a young soldier—brave, devoted, almost absurdly loyal to the cause and its flawed leaders—wounded in battle. As blood seeps away and he imagines death nearing, the soldier slips into a state of wonder at existence. These passages, among literature’s most poignant and strangely affirming, bridge the gap between the vastness of war and the intimacy of a single death. A youth, swept into combat by patriotic fervor, faces bullets and, fallen, gazes at the sky, not with moral clarity or anger but with innocent bewilderment: Existence is so good—why am I dying for this? Major Sullivan Ballou, writing to his wife, Sarah, before the First Battle of Bull Run, mused, “I know I have but few claims upon Divine Providence, but something whispers to me—perhaps it is the wafted prayer of little Edgar—that I shall return to my loved ones unharmed. If I do not, my dear Sarah, never forget how much I love you, nor that, when my last breath escapes me on the battlefield, it will whisper your name.” Early in the fight, a cannonball tore off his leg. He lingered in agony for a week, very likely in no condition to whisper anything, least of all her name.

Lincoln’s elegiac words about the dead soldiers at Gettysburg remain true: from their sacrifice, we still can take renewed commitment to their cause, that of liberty against tyranny. But we should also remember that the purpose of the struggle of liberty against tyranny is not to carry on the fight but not to have to. We can’t forget these soldiers’ lives, but neither should we forget the manner of their dying. Even if we return to the original proposition—that the Civil War was unavoidable, or that of all the bad choices war was not the worst—it doesn’t alter what happened at Bull Run or Antietam. Remaining alive to other people’s pain, in the face of heroic rhetoric, retrospective rationalization, and two-sided tribal terror, is perhaps the hardest moral task we face—and one at which we almost always fail. Sometimes the only people who can see the sky are the soldiers who die beneath it. 

[daytaker]

Sins, Virtues, and Motivations: A Critical Analysis of Characters in Shall We Date?: Obey Me!

In this essay, I will argue that each demon brother some of the demon brothers can be associated with a sin (no duh), a virtue, and a core motivation--and that this motivation is best pursued through a synthesis of that sin and that virtue. Hegel would be very proud. Yes, this is critical media analysis. No, I will not try to explain the twisted, broken path that led me to this point in my life.

I will be looking at Lucifer, Mammon, and Levi in this study. Their core sins are obvious - Pride, Greed, and Envy. Their accompanying Virtues and Motivations are listed below.

I used the Seven Heavenly Virtues for this little game. These are Prudence, Justice, Fortitude, Temperance, Faith, Hope, and Charity.

They should not be confused with the Seven Capital Virtues, which are inversions of the Seven Deadly Sins. These are Humility, Charity, Kindness, Patience, Chastity, Temperance, and Diligence. I tried these first and damn were none of them easy to match up. Tell me, fandom for this mobile game designed for players to lust over hot demon men, which brother should have the "chastity" virtue?

Lucifer

Core Sin: Pride. Core Virtue: Fortitude. Core Motivation: To protect his family.

Lucifer's core motivation is to protect his brothers. He looks at this as a sort of penance for the outcome of the Great Celestial War. He knows that he's the reason they rebelled, and he feels responsible for their wellbeing. He is able to endure the relentless pressure of the responsibilities he puts on himself thanks to his core virtue, fortitude.

Fortitude is strongly associated with courage. Specifically, it is courage in the face of pain and adversity. We see him displaying this trait any time those he cares for are in jeopardy, and it often helps him make difficult decisions where neither outcome is ideal. Lucifer is decisive, canny, and accepts the consequences of his choices, good or bad.

His driving motivation is also bolstered by his core sin: pride. He views himself as ultra-competent, while his brothers consistently make mistakes; beyond that, it's only natural that he take responsibility for the choices of his brothers (like the choice to join him in rebelling) because he is so significant an influence as to virtually rob them of their autonomy.

This has led to Lucifer having a somewhat toxic relationship with his brothers. Lucifer often acts as a parental figure rather than a peer, while the rest of them are all in arrested development of some sort, often acting more like kids than the adults they insist they are.

Lucifer either doesn't recognize that by doing everything for the family on his own, he's stemming their ability to grow and learn, or he does know the consequences of what he's doing and he feels conflicted about it. He ultimately blames himself for the fact that they're all in the Devildom in the first place, living as avatars of sins to the extent that they struggle to function as independent adults.

So, while fortitude and pride allow Lucifer to simulate the act of protecting his family, it's a matter of perspective whether controlling every element of their lives is protection or harmful coddling.

Mammon

Core Sin: Greed. Core Virtue: Charity. Core Motivation: To be valued and valuable.

Mammon is simultaneously a vessel of greed and its inverse, charity. This is because his core motivation is twofold, and those are the rewards of greed and charity; to be valued - to fulfill a want, to be desired, to look flippin' cool - and to be valuable - to fulfill a need, to have inherent worth, to serve a purpose.

Setting aside his unhealthy relationship with money, let's examine how Mammon behaves and what his deeper interpersonal motivations tend to be. He clearly places a high value on his brothers and MC, and he has shown on multiple occasions that he is willing to put himself at risk to help or protect them. Early on in both the original game and in NightBringer, Mammon attempts to heroically rescue MC (and his younger brothers, in NightBringer). In both cases, though, Lucifer shows up and does it for him. Mammon's pursuit of his core motivation clashes with Lucifer's quest for his, and Lucifer is strong enough to simply take it from him. Although in NightBringer he and his brothers do earn the not-insubstantial reward of the title "Lords of the Underworld" after Lucifer's rescue, he appeared so dejected by Lucifer's oneupmanship that he spent a good portion of the next day sulking. In the original game, Mammon wants MC to promise that they won't be saved by anyone else besides him in the future. It appears that his greed for an improved status in his interpersonal relationships is left unfulfilled.

Mammon wants to be heroic - to be valuable - and he wants to be admired for it - to be valued. The cognitive dissonance that accompanies motivations like these is all that sustains a person with such a diminished sense of self-worth.

Speaking of a diminished sense of self worth...

Leviathan

Core Sin: Envy. Core Virtue: Hope. Core Motivation: To find joy in the things that give him joy.

Confusing motivation? Yes it is. But envy is a confusing sin. All the other sins--pride, greed, wrath, lust, gluttony, and sloth--are enjoyable to indulge on some level. Losing your temper when you feel you've been wronged, or eating a bunch of delicious food, or sleeping through the snooze alarm: We know why we do those things. We might regret them later, but we indulge them in the moment because of the enjoyable side.

There is nothing enjoyable about envy. Wanting something that isn't yours, that belongs to someone else, be it tangible goods, talents, a partner, a job... is nauseating. And it makes you feel like a bad person, and it drains the joy out of things that you used to love. Speaking from personal experience for a second, when I was a teenager, I played music in a company with a much younger musician who was incredibly talented, and I was deeply envious of her. I wanted her talent; I wanted the praise she received; I wanted to impress people; I wanted what she had. But there was nothing I could do. I hated feeling that way, but I couldn't shake it. And it ate away at my desire to play music. It took the joy out of something that once gave me joy.

You see the connection?

Levi struggles to find pleasure in anything he does, despite how many interests he has, because, in spite of his blustering dismissal of all things "normie", he is deeply envious of those he perceives as his social superiors. Now, I am not in any way saying that Levi is or would be an inc3l, but there's an element of his character that has a strong parallel to inc3l culture. The idea that there is something fundamentally wrong with him that prevents him from achieving what he wants socially and that the only way he can protect himself from those who would ridicule him is with a defensive contempt for the group that rejects him... Does any of that sound familiar?

But Levi is not an inc3l. No, not because you're willing to **** him and his two *****, though I'm sure that helps. It's because he has his core virtue: hope.

Have you ever heard of the black pill? It's kind of like the final stage of inc3l culture, where you accept that you're not an alpha male, you'll never be one, you'll never be accepted by a woman, you're ugly and unloveable, and you might as well just stop existing. It is sheer despair.

Levi maintains hope for the future, even if he prefers not to admit it out of fear of jinxing himself. He is able to form a deep bond with MC, who he views as a "normie", without renouncing his hobbies or being mocked for them. In fact, I would argue that the anxiety Levi sometimes displays over the possibility of being made fun of (for example, in NightBringer when he considers trying out cosplay) is emblematic of the hope he has that he can be accepted.

"But wait, daytaker," you say. "That doesn't sound like he's making progress towards his core motivation of getting joy out of the things that bring him joy! Being self conscious is not joyful!" Well, you're right. What Levi needs is to somehow find the right balance between enjoying his hobbies and allowing himself to enjoy other people as well. As we can see from his effusive excitement in sharing his favorite games and stories with MC and his brothers, the social component of media consumption is a major component in making it enjoyable. If Levi loses hope, he loses that connection to the world offline, and if he loses that connection, he loses the joy.

@blackstqr (I did it.)