#divine intervention as an extension of human will in history

[chicago-geniza]

From the translation project I'm hoping to resume and finish next week. Stefania wrote this between the end of 1939 and January 1940. The fragment is reportage-documentalist quasi-memoir in the style of Kafka's paradoxical parables, the Book of Kings in Lublin & Elijah as tailor. Calling the chapter that addresses Stefania’s. Unaddressed. Everything. About the Holocaust. “Ten dom, gdzie byla moja zona, to sie zawalil na moich synow.” 

[who-is-page]

Regarding my survey - do you think it would be better to have "genetic" and "physical" as two separate origin categories or wrap "genetic" under the "physical" umbrella and do both in one category labeled "physical?"

Hmmm... I would personally say separate, but hear my logic out before you decide one way or the other yourself.

"Genetic" can refer to differences that have been passed down lineages, that come from family histories and argued DNA differences. While it is a physical difference and origin in that sense, people might not personally think to qualify it as physical in their own minds.

"Physical" in comparison, can include people who may attribute their otherkinity to their claimed ability to physically shapeshift, a phenomena that some p-shifters do claim is because of genetics, but that others claim is because of nature magic, divine intervention, etc. "Physical" can also include people who have always viewed their human bodies as nonhuman bodies, because they (a nonhuman) are the ones driving the show. That's more philosophical, but still a relevant perspective that some people have and include in their understandings of origin. This is where "physical" origin categories can get a little murky, because you don't know if someone is being entirely literal or entirely philosophical, because both exist in the community. You might want to break it down further.

That's my thinking in having the two be separate, but at the same time, I think that if you chose to wrap genetic underneath the "physical" origin label and then made extra sure to define it as being included in the category proceeding the questions about it, that would work too. The biggest thing here is that you have to get your respondents on the same page about what they're being asked about. You need to make sure to clearly define these categories beforehand, so your respondents know exactly what is referring to what. Defining them is also really helpful to try and reduce questions leaking into one another, where something is mentioned in the definition of multiple origins, for instance (which can be confusing and makes it hard to combine the data for that specific item). If you wanted, you could do "genetic" (physical family lineages), "physical" (having a body which is physically, literally nonhuman in a visible and distinct way such as through drastic transformation), and... hmmm... "metaphorically physical" (I am a nonhuman in a human body so therefore this is a nonhuman body by extension and that is how I am or understand my nonhumanity). Not perfect wording here, but you get my general idea.

[isaiahbie]

Can We Believe In Miracles?

David Hume has been championed by many scholars generally critical of miracle stories. Hume suggests that one can never positively identify a miracle. His reasoning is as follows: miracles are violations of the laws of nature. Therefore, by definition miracles occur less often—and as such are less probable—than natural events. The wise man will always favor the more probable explanation over the less probable explanation. In the case of miracles, human experience is heavily in favor of natural laws over miracles. Everyone agrees that people do not normally rise from the dead, for example. As such, no matter how good the evidence may be in any particular case in favor of a “resurrection,” that evidence is canceled out by the “uniform experience of human beings” that people who have died stay dead.

However, as William Lane Craig, the American analytic philosopher, points out, Hume’s views fall prey to at best erroneous, and at worst fallacious, reasoning. For if by “uniform” Hume means that no miracles have ever occurred, he is begging the question. The only reason to believe that premise is to already assume that all reported miracles are false. If, on the other hand, “uniform” simply means “general” or “usual,” then there is no discrepancy between saying that (1) miracles generally do not occur and (2) miracles did occur in well-documented particular cases. Hume appears to be making a categorical error, confusing the processes of science and history. Let’s grant that miracles violate the laws of nature; this only means that science can tell us that miracles do not naturally happen. But that is not to say that miracles have never happened; this latter question is for history to answer on an individual basis after the careful analysis of all available evidence. “General” human experience establishes a norm, a usual pattern of events. But a norm cannot cancel out or nullify good evidence in any particular case.

There is a danger in bringing an a priori commitment to the table when evaluating historical data. For Hume, as a naturalist, he must assume—before the examination of any evidence, no matter how convincing or well-documented the eyewitness testimony—that all alleged miracles are false. This would be like going into a courtroom and, before hearing the evidence of the prosecution, saying that the defendant did not murder his wife because the probability that husbands of such and such socioeconomic status kill their wives is very low. But maybe in this particular case, there is good evidence that increases the probability that the husband murdered his wife: namely, fingerprint and DNA evidence, a motive, lack of an alibi, eyewitness testimony that confirms the husband was at home at the time of the murder, etc. So in this case, an a priori commitment actually hampers one’s ability to follow the evidence wherever the evidence leads.

It is important to note that if one believes in some sort of deity or supernatural power, there is no reason to suppose this higher being could not step in and override the natural order from time to time should he desire to do so. In other words, the possibility of miracles is a logical extension of theism. This is not to say that the theist must embrace every purported miracle at face value. Rather, miraculous claims must be evaluated on an individual basis to determine if the evidence makes plausible a natural cause or a supernatural one. The theist leaves open the possibility for divine intervention; the naturalist must close this door before any evidence is brought forward.

Around this time of year, Christians celebrate a miracle: the virgin conception of Jesus, God Incarnate. Most people are at least familiar with the story, though arguably fewer realize that the story is set in a historical time period that is subject to investigation and inquiry. A historian must approach the Gospels like he would any other historical document—namely, as a collection of first-century documents to be scrutinized for accuracy and compared to other contemporary sources. It is beyond my purpose for this article to detail how well the Gospels fare (in terms of historical reliability) when evaluated in this fashion. My main point is this: we do ourselves a disservice by arbitrarily passing over these ancient texts because the writers challenge our preconceived notion of what is real and what is not. Certainly, after careful evaluation of the Gospels themselves, we are free to remain unconvinced. But until we put in the intellectual work, we cannot claim these writers are wrong on miracles for historical reasons. Our issue with miracles is not historical in nature, but metaphysical.

[scotianostra]

On April 16th 1117 Earl Magnus of Orkney, later St Magnus, is betayed and murdered by his cousin Håkon on the island of Egilsay in Orkney.

This is a great wee story, most of it gleaned from OrkneyJar, dates differ on other sites and I will post a link at the end going through the alternatives.

Orkney was ruled for most of its history by Norway. It occupied a crucial position off the north coast of Scotland for the Norwegian ships that harried England, Ireland and Wales and indeed Scotland, from the 9th to the 12th Centuries.

Hakon and Magnus grew up in Orkney. Their fathers, brothers Paul and Erlend, were joint Earls of Orkney: each ruling half of the islands. It was a period of peace and prosperity. Hakon developed into a proud fighter and warrior. Magnus preferred books to fighting and turned to the church for his strength.

Upon the death of their fathers, the Earldom passed to Sigurd, the son of King Magnus of Norway. During this time Hakon accompanied the King on various expeditions down the west coast of of the British Isles and lived up to his reputation as a fierce and fearless warrior.

Magnus joined the king on one expedition – a raiding expedition down the west coast of Scotland, travelling as far south as Angelsey. He refused to fight against English noblemen with whom he said he had no quarrel. (Some version say they were Welsh)

Rather than join battle, he sang psalms and prayed. He was no coward, but did not believe in fighting for its own sake. The king’s wrath was incurred so Magnus escaped from the King’s ship one night and swam to shore of Scotland where he had to disappear for several years until the old King was dead.

When the old king died, Sigurd succeeded to the Norwegian throne and Hakon was given the Earldom of Orkney.

Hakon ruled alone for a while, until Magnus arrived from Scotland and claimed possession of his patrimony, with the blessing of the new King. Hakon initially refused to give up any of Orkney, but as the local noblemen wouldn’t fight Magnus, he had to cede half of the islands. They ruled as their fathers had done.

Hakon and Magnus ruled Orkney in harmony for seven years; defending their Earldom from invaders and marauders with success. They appeared to have had a good understanding and Orkney flourished under their joint rule.

It seems that Magnus was the more popular of the cousins. The Orkneyinga Saga tells of a blameless life, a wise man, eloquent, strong-minded, magnanimous, and more beloved than any other man. He was generous to the deserving but severe with robbers and raiders. He punished rich and poor impartially for wrong-doing. His justice was fair and consistent. To cap it all, he was God-fearing. He married a Scots girl and lived with her for ten years without touching her, to honour a bond between him and God. When he was tempted to break his bond, he plunged into a tub of freezing water and prayed for divine guidance.

Hakon became increasingly jealous of Magnus’ popularity, fuelled at least in part by men of evil dispositions, Sigurd and Sighwat Sokki, who spread inflammatory rumours in the courts of both Earls. It resulted in Hakon and Magnus both taking troops to the regular meeting of Orkney noblemen on the Mainland. Battle was only averted by the intervention of noblemen who, as friends of both earls, managed to broker a truce.

To seal the bond of their reconciliation and continued cooperation, Hakon and Magnus arranged to meet on the island of Egilsay. They agreed to take only two ships each and few men. Magnus stuck to this arrangement and was on the island, praying, when Hakon arrived with eight ships and men armed to the teeth. His intent was clear.

It is recorded that Magnus had no concern for his own life, but wanted to save his cousin from the consequences of a shocking crime. He offered to leave on pilgrimage, never to return to Orkney. Hakon refused. He offered to submit to imprisonment in Scotland. Hakon refused. Finally he said “Let me be maimed as you like, or deprived of my eyes, and throw me into a dark dungeon”. Hakon was set to accept this offer, but his noblemen objected, saying that one or other of the Earls had to die that day. Hakon replied he would rather rule than die. Magnus’ fate was sealed.

In one more twist to the story, Hakon ordered his standard bearer to kill Magnus. He refused, knowing that the killer of such a popular man would be an outcast in Orkney. It was to his cook, Lifolf, that Hakon turned, knowing that he would not dare refuse the order. As Lifolf wept, Magnus prayed for him, forgave him, then prayed for the souls of his enemies, Earl Hakon included. Lifolf took up his axe and brought it down on Magnus’ forehead.

The place where Earl Magnus was slain had been rocks and moss, but after his death, grass grew strongly, indicating to the saga-writer that it was the death of a holy and righteous man. Hakon permitted the body to be buried in the church on the Brough of Birsay, which had been built by their Grandfather, Thorfinn. Soon after the burial a holy light was seen above the church and the sick were cured when they prayed at the grave. Pilgrimages started from all over Orkney.

Earl Hakon took over the rule of all of Orkney and extracted huge fines from those who had been loyal to Magnus. After a while, he made a pilgrimage to Rome and perhaps he saw the error of his ways, because against all the odds, he returned to Orkney to become a just and popular ruler, much lamented when he died, many years later.

The cult of Magnus spread well beyond Orkney’s shores. He died on April 16th 1117 and that day is kept as the day of his martyrdom. In the 12th Century saints could be chosen by popular acclaim; the canonisation process did not need a process at Rome. By 1136 he was a saint, authorised by the Bishop of Orkney. In 1137 the building of St Magnus Cathedral, which stands in the centre of Kirkwall today, was started by Earl Rognvald, Magnus’ nephew. It was erected with the express purpose of receiving the relics of St Magnus, which were transferred there when it was ready for use.

There was no firm evidence that the bones of St Magnus really did reside in St Magnus Cathedral until 1919, when extensive cathedral renovation was going on. Some loose stones were removed from a pillar, with the intention of re-mortaring them. Within a cavity behind these stones there was a box containing most of a human skeleton. The state of the skull conformed with the story in the sagas about St Magnus’ death wound to the head. St Magnus’ relics had been found. They were replaced and the stones fixed back in place.

A couple of links here the first is regarding a reconstruction of his face, fascinating stuff! http://www.bbc.co.uk/…/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetla…

The second link explains the dates of his murderhttp://www.orkneyjar.com/history/stmagnus/magnus6.htm

[silvokrent]

Auratic Diseases

Overview

An Auratic disease (colloquially known as “soul sickness”) is an adverse condition that typically affects a person’s Aura, and by extension, their Semblance. Certain diseases can occasionally lead to the patient acquiring secondary complications, such as immunodeficiency. Unlike other infectious illnesses, Auratic diseases can’t be spread between people; instead, the disease is transmitted from infected Grimm to humans and Faunus. As apneumatic (soulless) organisms, Grimm are immune to the diseases they host and are thus impervious to any complications. It’s currently unknown what pathogens (if any) cause the diseases, though the prevailing theory is that they’re transmitted through a phenomenon known as “Auratic contamination.” When Grimm are infected with an Auratic disease, a black, smoke-like substance known as miasma [1] trails off of their bodies. Miasma differs from moribund vapor (the black gaseous matter that Grimm hemorrhage when injured) in that the former is not a byproduct of physical damage, and the latter has no role in disease transmission. When people come into contact with symptomatic Grimm, it’s speculated that the miasma at close proximity “pollutes” a person’s Aura, analogous to how a smokestack pollutes the air around it by emitting toxic chemicals. It’s impossible to tell what disease an infected Grimm has until post-transmission symptoms begin to manifest in the patient.

While there aren’t any genetic or epigenetic factors that predispose a person to these illnesses, certain parts of the population tend to be statistically more susceptible to infection. Huntsmen disproportionately have the highest number of cases per year, followed by people living in extraregnal settlements. Unlike traditional diseases caused by organic pathogens (viruses, bacteria, fungi, arthropods, and parasitic worms), Auratic diseases can’t be vaccinated against. The most effective countermeasures include education, public awareness, and reduced exposure to Grimm. In cases where preventive measures are ineffective or difficult to implement, medical intervention is the next step. Out of all the known Auratic diseases, only one is directly fatal, while the others have mortality rates attributed to secondary effects. Disease symptoms and conditions range from temporarily inconvenient to permanently debilitating, depending on the disease and whether or not the patient receives timely medical care.

History

The history of Auratic diseases is checkered and incomplete, in part due to the collapse of past civilizations, and the loss of any archives that might have been buried with them. Collaborative interdisciplinary research between epidemiologists and anthropologists places the earliest written accounts circa 1200 AB. [2] At the time, the only consensus was that Auratic diseases were related to Grimm; causes and treatments were virtually unknown. Ancient societies which believed Grimm were the spirits of tortured animals assumed that Auratic diseases were curses. Similarly, cultures that practiced archotherolatry, or Grimm worship, believed these conditions to be signs of divine judgment and exiled anyone that was symptomatic.

In the following centuries, focus shifted toward remedying the worst of the effects and finding potential cures. Before it was understood that Auratic diseases can’t be transmitted between people, infected patients were usually quarantined. The deceased had their remains cremated, and the ashes were often buried in designated “disease pits” outside the settlement. Treatment methods included, but weren’t limited to: exposing the patient to burning incense; prescribing plant-based oral drugs; starving or inducing emesis in the patient to detoxify or “cleanse” the body; and even feeding patients the blood of people that had recovered from the same disease, in order to transfer their resistance.

It wasn’t until 300 AB when pathologist and surgeon Cinchona Rigel made a connection between Auratic diseases and Dust. Specifically, Rigel noticed that patients exposed to Dust had their symptoms go into remission. At certain concentrations, patients had a greater likelihood of being completely cured. This observation aligned with the ancient practice of people ingesting Dust to alleviate symptoms. While patients of antiquity had to deal with the unintended side effects of acute Dust poisoning, according to early medical records, the treatment seemed to work. Rigel concluded that there must have been a specific property of Dust that radiated the patient’s Aura field and stimulated its recovery. He spent the remainder of his career applying his research to his patients and fine-tuning the procedures, with incredible success. His work gave rise to the next generation of Dust-integrated Aura regenerative medicine, and earned Rigel the moniker “Father of Pneumatophysics.”

Today, fatalities are less common, and the quality of life for those affected by Auratic diseases has significantly improved thanks to new developments in medicine. The Kingdom of Atlas is the world’s foremost leader on Aura regeneration, courtesy of technological advancements made in the last eight decades, and access to naturally-occurring Dust deposits in Solitas. The number of cases per year has steadily been in decline as a result of programs that discriminately target and kill plague-type Grimm.

Plague-type Grimm

While all species of Grimm are vectors for Auratic diseases, diseases are primarily transmitted via archotheronotic species (plague-type Grimm) such as Ravagers (Mimochiroptera confluens), Swarmers (Pantomenos asticum), Rotweilers (Haemocyon morbifer), Pestilice (Aspidentomon chiliades), Virovultr (Auredax solfur), and Wringwyrms (Echidnascolex constrictor). Plague-type Grimm are defined by strict epidemiological characteristics. In order to be classified as archotheronotic, the species must:

Be capable of transmitting ≥ 5 Auratic diseases.

Have more than 75% of the population infected at any given time. [3]

Be capable of transmitting the disease among Grimm that aren’t conspecifics.

To reiterate: All Grimm species can become infected and transmit diseases to humans and Faunus, but only plague-type Grimm can transmit diseases to other Grimm.

Treatment

Modern treatment is based on a combination of diagnostics and EMF Dust-stimulation therapy. Pathologists detect abnormalities in the patient’s Aura by performing a pneumatophysioscopy—an imaging technique that uses electromagnetic radiation to obtain real-time images of a patient’s Aura field. The device is capable of recording both inactive and dormant (or unlocked) Auras, and measuring field fluctuations (a phenomenon known as “flickering”).

Once a patient’s infection has been verified, and their disease has been ID’d through symptom diagnosis, physicians can begin treatment. Patients are placed within a Dust vortex generator, or EMF-DS grid. The machine generates a charge and uses electromagnetic radiation to stimulate Dust crystals. The charge radiates the Dust at a threshold below Rigel’s number to activate its Auratic-regenerative properties without triggering a volatile reaction. The Dust types involved, the number of crystals, and the strength of the current passed through them vary according to the disease. Success rates are often contingent on the amount of time that’s lapsed between exposure and seeking out medical attention.

Diseases

The 11 diseases mentioned below are the most common or well-researched. This list doesn’t preclude the existence of undiscovered diseases.

Note: All of the diseases listed below can affect individuals with unlocked Auras, but only five can affect individuals with dormant (locked) Auras. Those five are denoted by [†].

auralysis (Gr. aúra, soft breeze, + -lysis, lúsis, destruction) A disease that prevents a person’s Aura from regenerating. The patient will not be able to activate it, and by extension, won’t be able to use their Semblance. Auralysis is characterized by the Aura field erratically flickering whenever the patient attempts to engage it. Onset usually begins 5 days post exposure, and can last anywhere from 2 weeks to 1 month. In severe cases where a patient has repeat exposure to infected Grimm and doesn’t seek out treatment, the disease can last far longer, and rarely, become permanent. Deaths attributed to this disease are usually secondary in nature; ex. a Huntsman in the field is unaware of the fact that they’re infected, is unable to engage their Aura during combat, and dies as a result of injury. By far the most common Auratic disease, with over 5,000 cases reported every year.

[†] archotherianthropy (Gr. archo-, arkhós, ruler, + -ther-, thḗr, beast, + -anthropy, ánthropos, man) An incredibly rare disease, with less than 45 documented cases in the last century. Onset is estimated at 3 weeks post exposure. The disease is characterized by a sudden, dramatic change in behavior. The patient typically displays the following symptoms: agitation, aggression, confusion, fear of Dust, and restless movement. Late-stage symptoms include a tendency to provoke verbal or physical fights with others, and an outwardly withdrawn or disengaged appearance. This process culminates in the patient’s identity becoming completely subsumed by the disease, leaving behind a single-minded compulsion to seek out and kill other humans or Faunus. At this stage, the patient loses their ability to communicate. Clinicians advise euthanasia as the most humane option for alleviating suffering, as there is currently no cure.

[†] CAD (Chronic Aura Degradation) An uncommon disease that’s sometimes referred to as soul siphoning. CAD causes the patient’s Aura to gradually begin to deteriorate at 5 weeks post exposure. The pathognomonic sign used for diagnosing CAD is the distinctive gaps in the patient’s projected Aura. These “holes” have black edging, like burns on a sheet of paper, and can no longer extend protection to the sections of the body where the Aura has eroded. As the disease progresses, the patient can acquire secondary symptoms, such as paralysis in the limbs where Aura has deteriorated, or immunodeficiency. While there is no cure, the disease process can be slowed down or halted through weekly EMF-DS therapy. Patients may sometimes wear specialized medical accessories—bracelets, pendants, etc—made with Dust crystals to provide additional treatment. Gaps in the Aura start out small and expand with time, which can make this disease easy to overlook or misdiagnose until symptoms begin to worsen. [4]

cataegida (Gr. kataigída, storm) A disease that disables the thermoregulatory properties of Aura. The disease is diagnosed by a patient’s sudden ability to feel extreme heat or cold even while their Aura is engaged. Onset can begin as early as 2 days post exposure, making this disease potentially life-threatening if the patient is in a location with hazardous weather phenomena, such as drought or blizzards. Infected people caught unaware can succumb to hypothermia, heat stroke, dehydration, and other complications as a result of exposure. Every year, cataegida-induced thermoregulatory failure kills upward of 200 people in Solitas, northern Anima, and western Sanus. Clinicians have found that Fire and Ice Dust are the most effective at treating this disease.

[†] dustblight A disease that causes allergic reactions in the patient when exposed to Dust. Symptoms include urticaria, rhinitis, conjunctivitis, bronchoconstriction (if Dust powder is accidentally inhaled), and inflammation of the sinus. Extreme cases can cause anaphylaxis. Onset begins at 1 week and can last up to 6 months. If treatment is not sought out during this time and symptoms are allowed to worsen, the disease can potentially become permanent. Patients must take antihistamines in order to receive EMF-DS therapy.

esthesiosis (Gr. esthesio-, aísthēsis, sensation, + -osis, -ōsis, a condition or disease) A disease more commonly known as Auratic blindness because it disables a person’s extrasensory capabilities, and dulls their perception of their surroundings. Onset occurs between 7 to 10 days post exposure and can last for five weeks. Patients with this disease are seldom diagnosed, despite cases being estimated at 250 per year. This is likely because people outside of Huntsmen Academies are rarely trained to refine or hone this skill.

Huntsman’s disease A disease that causes a patient’s Aura to revert back to its dormant state. Unlike auralysis, Dust-based therapy is largely ineffective and considered a waste of time and resources. After onset occurs at 4 days post exposure, patients are advised to immediately seek out someone who can unlock it for them. If the patient’s Aura is not unlocked again within three weeks of contracting the disease, the condition becomes permanent. The disease was named because it tends to inconvenience Huntsmen the most. Researchers debate whether Huntsman’s disease is a separate illness, or simply a more advanced version of auralysis, given the overlap of symptoms.

inertia pulveris (L. inertia, inactivity; pulveris (SG.GEN.MASC), dust) A disease that renders the patient unable to activate Dust with their Aura. This disease tends to be harder to diagnose, as most people rely on technology that uses already-activated Dust-integrated mechanisms. Onset occurs 1 week post exposure, and tends to be noticed by patients that either use it in raw/less refined forms (crystalline), or who work in professions where Dust is handled frequently (such as in Dust mines). This disease can be a hassle for Huntsmen that extensively use Dust for fighting, but for some, it can be unexpectedly profitable. In recent years the Schnee Dust Company has begun to target patients at clinics or hospitals and offer them jobs working in their warehouses and mines. This business practice has sparked controversy, with more and more people petitioning the Council to investigate this behavior on the grounds of being “predatory and exploitative.”

[†] proselkia (Gr. prosélkysi, attraction) A disease that causes nearby Grimm to prioritize attacking the infected individual. Onset usually begins 9 to 15 days post exposure. Diagnosis is nearly impossible without pneumatophysioscopy, as pathognomonic signs aren’t visible to the naked eye. Imaging techniques reveal that a person’s Aura field—whether unlocked or dormant—exudes vaporous emissions that trail behind the patient. These vapors are often likened to pheromones, and can compel even cautious species like the Goliath (Archaeotherium vagum) to attack on sight. While the disease only lasts for three months (without treatment), it can result in social ostracization due to fear of the patient drawing in Grimm.

[†] psychosomaticide (E. psychosomatic, relating to the body and mind, + L. -cide, -cīda, one who cuts) A poorly-understood and highly stigmatized disease. While anyone can contract it, the effects of psychosomaticide tend to impact people with depression, anxiety, PTSD, or other debilitating psychiatric disorders more intensely. Once onset begins at 20 days post exposure, it can lay dormant for years with the patient completely unaware of their infection. The symptoms of the disease are only triggered in the direct presence of Grimm. When confronted by a Grimm, the patient is inundated with a sudden, overpowering sense of despair and anguish. The patient then willfully lowers their weapon (if wielding one) and lies down, allowing the Grimm to tear them apart. Unless another person is close enough to intervene, the end result is always death. Survivors of these encounters often require social interaction and psychological treatment, in addition to Dust-based therapy. The willpower-draining scream of the Apathy (Lorem ipsum) is considered a more potent, weaponized form of this condition.

therapistasis (Gr. therapeíā, medical treatment, + -stasis, stásis, cessation) A disease that disables the innate healing factor of Aura. The disease is diagnosed by a person’s sudden ability to sustain injuries even while their Aura is engaged. Onset can begin as early as 3 to 4 days post exposure. While the patient is still capable of activating their Semblance and using other Aura-related abilities (thermoregulation, extrasensory perception), they can take damage as if their Aura were already broken. The disease can last for up to a month. Fatalities as a result of this disease are more common among newly-licensed Huntsmen and Academy students, who tend to overestimate their skills, and assume that they can still fight despite being susceptible to lethal attacks.

Notes

[1] The term miasma is an allusion to miasma theory, an obsolete medical theory that tried to explain how illnesses were formed and transmitted. Up until the late nineteenth century, the medical community believed that infectious diseases were caused by a noxious form of “bad air.”

[2] Because RWBY doesn’t have a canon calendar era (like the Before Common Era/Common Era used today), I decided to make my own: AB, or antebellum, refers to before the Great War; IB, or intrabellum, refers to the 10-year period during the Great War; and PB, or postbellum, is the last 80 years after the Great War.

[3] The reason not all Grimm are visibly infected/have miasma is due to a retcon I made with RWBY’s animation. During V1 - 3, the Grimm didn’t have that black vapor trailing off of their bodies. After the V4 Character Short the Grimm were restyled to have that smoke effect. But here’s the thing: it’s inconsistent. The Manticores and Sphinx in V6E01, for example, don’t have it. I decided to liberally interpret that to mean that black vapor is a sign of Auratic disease, but not all Grimm are actively infected. It also explains the inconsistency between the Grimm in V1 - 3 and V4 onward—the Grimm that the kids encountered while they were at Beacon just so happened to not be infected.

[4] CAD is based on Pietro Polendina’s condition. We have no confirmation of this in canon, but I think that donating a percentage of his Aura (his god damn soul) to Penny has slowly chipped away at his health. Technically, Pietro would have a manmade version of CAD.

[arjuna-vallabha]

GOVINDA DEV - the king of Vrindavan.

   In the year 1514 , a Bengali brahmin was walking alone , leaving behind everything that he had in search of spirituality . He was the Dabir-i-khas or chief secretary to the Sultan of Bengal , Allauddin Hussien Shah . But due to his free mixing with the muslims , he was ostracized from his own caste and society , as was common in those times . Some days earlier , Shri Krishna Chaitanya had paid a visit to the village of Ramkeli , situated just outside the capital of Bengal at the city of Gauda . Thousands of people had gathered to catch his glimpse and pay their respects . Out of the thousands , the chief secretary to Sultan was also there . We do not know what transpired between them , but what we know is that the dabir-i-khas of the Sultan had such a deep change of heart that the entire meaning of life changed forever . Secretly he left home in search of the higher cause ! Dabir-i-khas became Shri Roop Goswami . His destination – the holy town of Mathura . Mahaprabhu through his spiritual insight undertood a forested wilderness near Mathura to be the lost pilgrimage of Vrindavana ! Back in those times , the fabled Vrindavana of the puranas was just a name . Nobody knew where the place was . Mahaprabhu had instructed Shri Roop – “ Go to Vrindavan and stay there . Ask Sanatan ( Roop's elder brother and the chief treasurer to sultan of Bengal , who would also become a renunciate monk later in life ) to vist me . In vraj write the scriptures that would expound the philosophy of divine love and rediscover and establish the lost places of pilgrimages . Spread the name of Krishna and the message of Bhakti . I shall visit once to see your work . “ So Roop set off with the intention to rediscover the lost site . But after reaching the forested wilderness of Vrindavan he was in a lurch ! How to search for something without any clues ? He got himself a manuscript of ‘Mathura mahatyam’ and started investigating . Alongside he led a life of exemplary renunciation and prayed to the divine to show him a way . Shastras describe the glories of Govinda as the supreme lord of Vrindavan . Agamas , nigamas and puranas sing in unison the glories of this form of lord . Varaha purana says – “One who sees the Govinda of Vrindavan does not need to go to the abode of Yama and attains punya . In Mathura Khanda of Skanda Purana , Narada says – ‘ Vrindavan is the abode of Govinda who is always served by his servitors . The king of Vrindavan resides with his beloved within the eight petalled lotus . ‘ SammohanaTantra says – ‘ I bow to Shri Radha along with Govinda of yogpeeth in center of Vrindavan . In Vrindavan Mahatmya , Mahadev answers Devi’s questions – “The groves of Vrindavan are dense with manju trees and numerous branches and creepers . This is the abode of sweet rasa and fragranced by aroma of pravala and other flowers .Within such a beautiful abode is the hallowed siddha peetha – the place of Govinda ! At the center of this yoga peetha stands a golden building . At its center is a bejeweled eight cornered golden throne on which blooms the transcendental eight petalled lotus . Govinda , the king of Vrindavan and his beloved ladies of vraj resides in the center in his beautiful vigraha form . . Roop was determined to locate that yoga peeth where Govinda resides eternally and shastras always glorify ! Even before him , Advaita Acharya , the most intimate associate of Chaitanya had come to Vrindavan and located the deity of MadanGopal atop the dwadashaditya teela hillock . Still earlier , the Guru of Advaita Acharya , Shripad Madhavendra Puri had discovered the deity of Shrinath Gopal ( now called Shrinath Ji ) near Govardhan mount . But the lord of Vrindavan , Govinda is yet to be located . It is said that after the demise of Shri Krishna , His great grandson had installed quite a few deities in vraj area . But in due course of time , all the sites had fallen into disuse and were forgotten . Roop Goswami started his penance in attempt to discover the lost sites . Finally he got the divine intervention that he was seeking . A local villager informed him that on the top of Gomaa teela hillock he sees a cow shower milk everyday on a fixed spot . Overjoyed at hearing this . Roop Goswami set off immediately with some other villagers and started digging at the aforementioned spot . Soon , Govinda manifested himself under the dirt ! The whole of Vraj was immersed in great joy and the deity was re installed in a simple hut on the Shukla Panchami tithi of Maagha month in the year 1536 . This news reached Mahaprabhu at Puri and he was overwhelmed with bhava hearing this miraculous manifestation . He immediately sent his associate , Kashishwar Pandit to take charge of the seva of Govinda . But Kashishwar was reluctant to leave the blissfull company of Mahaprabhu . Realising his pain of separation , Mahaprabhu gave him a metal deity of two armed Krishna as an extension of his own self . Kashishwar named the deity Gour Govinda and arrived at Vrindavan to help others in seva of Govinda . During those times , some other associates of Mahaprabhu were also residing in Vrindavan . Amongst the six main Goswamis was Raghunath Bhatta Goswami . His disciple built the first temple to Govinda . But presumably that temple was damaged pretty soon . At this point , Maharajah Maan Singh , the general to Mughal emperor Akbar , offered to build a new temple for Govinda . The funds for contructing this temple came from the Mughal imperial treasury ! And Akbar is said to have allowed the use of red sandstone , which was otherwise reserved for royal use . Red sandstone is the same variety that’s used to build the Red fort at Delhi , Agra fort and parts of Taj Mahal . The chief architect who designed the city of Delhi , Govinda Das , was appointed as the brain behind this project . A whooping 13 lakh rupees was spent in those days just as labour charges ! And finally after much waiting , the temple was consecrated through a lavish ceremony in the year 1590 . No temple of this size and opulence had been constructed in entire northern india , since the coming of islam till the end of british days !! Not atleast to my knowledge . Hindus of northern India back in those times had to regularly deal with external agressions and attacks on their religious places and hence had totally given up their traditional practice to erect big temples to gods . This history can easily be noticed in the art of the Govinda temple . Though the temple is huge and opulently carved , the eaternal walls are completely devoid of any representations of gods/humans or animals ! Which is very untypical of a hindu temple ! Whatever little human figures are to be found , are mainly concentrated around the main entrance door to garbhagriha , and they are not of particularly high craftsmanship . It is understandable that the artists working under Islamic regimes , being used to the Islamic tenant of not depicting human figures , had forgotten their skills in depicting anthropomorphic forms ! But that part apart , the rest of the temple is a glorious testimony to artistic excellence . Someone who has visited the earstwhile capital of akbar at Fatehpur Sikri would instantly understand the striking similarities between the two places . Krishnadas Kaviraj Goswami , a eyewitness to the opulence and poularity of the temple in its haydays leaves behind a graphic description of the same – “ Situated in the center of Vrindavan Stands a golden palace . Inside that maha yoga peeth is a bejwelled throne , over which grows an eight petalled lotus . Inside the lotus eternally resides Govinda Dev - the dispeller of lust ! He is served like a king with different items of luxury . Jewels , valuable cloth abound ! Thousands of servitors do run errands daily around the temple The richness of seva cannot be described by a thousand mouths ! “ In British era the collector of Mathura district , F.S. Growse wrote in his records – “The temple of Govinda Deva , is not only the finest of this particular series , but is the most impressive religious edifice – that hindu art , has ever produced , at least in upper India . “ It is said that emperor Akbar himself had once come to meet the goswamis of Vrindavan , which is perhaps not an exaggeration , when you think of his inclusive religious nature and also the fact that he went out of way to fund this luxurious hindu temple using mughal funds . It is probable that he was impressed with the renunciation and eruditeness of the Goswamis . It is also quite possible that he was curious to see the man who gave up his position of chief secretary and is now living under a tree out of love for god ! Maharajah Man Singh donated huge tracts of land and other riches for the maintainence of the temple . Sehnai and other instruments used to sound daily from the Naubat-khana in the temple premises . By that time , Vrindavan had become a small human settlement from forested wilderness . But sadly the will of god would have it otherwise . Govinda Dev could not stay in his new temple for long . In 1669 , the great grandson of Akbar , Badshah Aurangazeb would order a demolition of all the temples of Mathura and Vrindavan . Perhaps the growing emergence of Vrindavan as a new site for idol worshipping hindus alarmed the rigid Islamic mind set of the king . Armies marched to Mathura and destroyed the temple of Keshava deva at the site of Krishna’s Birth , replacing the site with a Shahi Idgah ( mosque ) which still stands today . But Hindus were used to such events by now . News of impending attack reached the Goswamis of Govinda temple and they secretively escorted the deities out of Vrindavan and hid them in Radhakunda , some 20 kilometers from Vrindavan . Other principle deities of Vrindavan , Shri Nath Ji , MadanGopal , Gopinath were all moved out of the area . Only Radharaman , the tiny self manifested deity , was hid inside an alcove in the inner wall of a well where he remained for many years until the fear of Mughals subsided . Banke Bihari , another important deity also did not move out of vrindavan , because back then he was enshrined in a simple hut inside nidhivan without much fanfare . So his presence was unknown to outsiders and he would not have attracted the wrath of the marauders . The gigantic temple of Govinda was desecrated and its spire broken down completely and a small idgah made hastily on the top of the roof . That structure remained into recent times untill Growse had it removed as a part of archeological restoration project and thereby restored the temple to its original identity . Today the temple is maintained by the archeological survey of India . After staying for 2 years at Radha Kunda , Govinda was brought to Kamyavan . This way , Govinda Dev continued to shift between places for the next few decades . Initially the servitor Goswamis tried their best to protect the deity from iconoclasts and as well as try keep him within the borders of 'vraj mandal' ( the expanse of territory where child krishna lived and sported his leelas ) But inspite of their efforts , the political situation continued to worsen and finally they felt compelled to shift Govinda Dev out of the vraj mandal into the safety of Rajputana . Maharajah Sawai Jai Singh , a descendant of Man singh , came to rescue and brought Govinda to his own palace and built a temple to him within his palace compounds to ensure safety . He then dedicated the entire estate as the property of Govinda and himself as a mere servitor . His seal was etched with the words – “ Shri Govindacharan – Sawai Jaisingh Sharan” Even today , Govinda dev is being worshipped royally as the presiding deity of the town of Jaipur . And even today , the descendants of Bengali Goswamis serve them . Now let us come to the topic of this painting . I have tried to depict the temple of Govinda as it would have originally stood at its prime days . A natural question that may arise is - on what proof did I base my artistic reconstructions ? Is it merely an imagination or is there any solid evidence behind it ? Only the walls of the temple stands today at Vrindavan . The top is completely demolished . But there is a line drawing preserved in Jaipur city palace which has sketches of the temples of Vrindavan as well some of the important religious sites of northern india . This was painted when the temple still stood and provides the much needed clues as to how the original structure might have looked. But I shall post a detailed post on my artistic reconstruction later in this page . Hence im restricting my words for now on this topic . On the right hand side of Govinda Dev stands Shri Roop Goswami . On the left is Kashishwar pandit with the deity that Mahaprabhu gave him personally – Gour Govinda . Gour Govinda is still worshipped in the temple at Jaipur . Right beneath him stands Maharajah Man Singh in white clothes . Opposite Man singh in blue suit is Maharajah Sawai Jai Singh who helped the cause in times of distress . These two characters are thereby immortalized in the leela of Govinda . Today , a new Govinda temple erected in late 18th century stands next to the original temple in Vrindavan . And more recently , a new set of Gour Nitai vigrahas have been installed in the original garbha griha of the desecrated temple . The mind of a bhakta feels saddened to see the empty temple today . But I want to put forward a question to all readers at this juncture . Is divine manifestation only to be found in a deity and nowhere else ?! Can the eternal yoga peetha ever be detached from the eternal presence of the lord ?! Can we not say that Govinda is as much present in Jaipur as he is in Vrindavan yogpeeth ?! Wherever Krishna resides , that verily is the vrindavan . So when Govinda moved to Jaipur , the city became the new vrindavan ! And Govinda through his continuing presence in Vrindavan changed the place into a flourishing tirtha that it is today ! The dream of Mahaprabhu was fulfilled at last ! That is precisely why , one of the greatest gaudiya mystics of 20th century , Ramdas Babaji Maharaj never went to Jaipur to see Govinda . To him , Govinda eternally resides in the yogpeeth . Krishna promises to the gopis – “Vrindaavanam parityajya paadamekam na gacchaami” – I shall not leave ever from the land of Vrindavan . The divine leela of Govinda are eternal . And that all auspicious leela has created a thread of bond that runs from Bengal in the east to Rajasthan in the west with Vraj bhumi at its heart ! Jai Govinda !

Painting and text by Halley Goswami, more at https://www.facebook.com/Halleysart

[amomentintimeblackcattales]

A Moment in Time - Descending in The Darkness

Chapter 0004

All of this, by pretending to be a psychiatrist and hypnotist in order to remove from the mind of a Jew the secret of what he was looking for.

There, in that place, there were several laboratories, and strange and totally suspicious substances, which he can see that daylight did not come.

Being able to say that where in his opinion, both he and his patient, to which he can see why, he wanted to be well buried, and he had not recovered from his traumas until today, as long as he remembers the torture he suffered.

Realizing he was in a bush without a dog, he realized that he would also be in trouble if he revealed even half the truth of how he came to the exact knowledge of the truth about the Nazi treasure.

There were documents and records, which reported and there were family histories and documents which had reports about these two scientists, who, in his view, were the main men, the freezers and the preserved bodies.

In addition to a large number of barrels and tanks with chloroform and preserved bodies, that Jew did not seem that innocent.

As much as he discovered that the man he reportedly was supposed to be dead and kept there, which raises countless questions, as to the experiments, what he would be ...

Mind transfer between brain waves, in addition to copying genetic material, from one living being to the other.

Creating a serum similar to the super soldier, but that had their own alternative purposes, in addition to harmful, that besides transferring genetic material from one body to another.

Discovering what they were doing in addition to a copy of shape change, in addition to brainwaves and absorption of life time by multiplying their time by 3 times.

It was the transfer of energy, strength and power from a body or environment, sucking the vital energy to amplify and take the life of a being or environment around, towards another body as an anchor.

The one he saw was the source of eternal life that would be stealing life from a place like nature, and thousands of other bodies, transferring like a fog, and that they did.

In their experiments, they were using the gas chambers as a source of power, transferring the energy of thousands of bodies towards each other.

All of this, in three other beings that were in that room, each one of the tests he saw when taking it to his computer was recorded.

They were using the energy and strength of thousands of victims, turning it into a single capsule of energy that was waiting for the transfer of so many other individuals.

That place was filled with a single capsule of energy, genetic material life for thousands of victims, and all the Jews who died in the concentration camps in the gas chamber.

The stabilization time was 4 weeks, until the energy stabilized, and the time to stabilize the organism, and create a new identity, in addition to being used to absorb the life energy around it, such as contact with the body. life of an environment.

Then, leaving it dry, the life span of an environment leaving it sterile, which would multiply its time by three times.

All of this, when it would absorb a quantity of life equivalent to a thousand outside the environment itself.

So he gained the life span of each of them, when he can use it to stay longer on earth, in case they were to die, sucking the life span of each one of them.

If each of them, they would not die from human intervention, violence, in the gas chambers, from diseases and other unnatural means, that procedure.

What he saw was embedded in just a single syringe of white colored glass, which he saw that could be injected for that moment, he would not say.

Which gave no Nazi time to take the lives of millions of Jews and victims killed in Nazism.

None of those doctors would say what really happened there, would raise questions that no Nazi wanted to say.

Now, all that time of life, it was injected into him, it took him a while to discover the fountain of youth, where the countless lives of thousands of Jews were inside a single syringe ,

When he was using the Joker headquarters to find a way that he could beat Batman.

It was then, when he visited that place for the first time, that he was able to live for a long time, after all, the life span of more than millions of men, women and children who were subjected to experiments was in that syringe.

He knew that the doctor who actually pretended to be a Jew using only a body change procedure to transfer consciousness from one body to another, while he recorded the procedure in question.

Planning his steps, he now toured the tunnels in which he could know that he would give right to the Austrian forest between fields and underground mines, between Russia and Czechoslovakia, between the tunnels and France, which traversed that place.

Where he knew it would possibly lead to an underground railroad and the other side of underground railroads, there was no owner, specifically.

So this man who supposedly called himself Ebraim, 89 years old, was not 89 years old, but 136 years old, that he took a part of the serum of life.

The difference was that it was not a lazaro pit, it was what he called the Nazi philosopher's stone, made up of the lives and souls of captured Jews .

Bruce discovered that according to records, he was born, on November 12, 1884, there were other tests, which were not with just two men, but 4 men, who underwent the experiment, from the source of life.

Even though he did not need to say that few knew about that railroad, in short what they knew was the Nazis and only one of them, was alive and cannot claim it.

Talking to his lawyer that he could both convert and transport those wealth in alternative ways, that would be for gold and jewelry trade, where they would not be suspicious of how it would happen.

It was then, that he was transferring suspicious wealth through illegal and underworld trade with suspicious auctions that he could never be linked not directly, due to his origin and his age, because the only ones who would know that, would be those who died more than 100 years.

Although he had his treacherous plans, he hid the boat, and he didn't seem to care how it came later.

Using all the insecurity of each of those involved, their lawyers, summoning the Gotham police for better measures, prosecutions, and all the problems caused by the Joker invasion of Wayne Tower.

The heroes who did not show up in time, his press conference when he was taken better, to clarify.

Joker's threat letters were leaked to the Gotham police.

Now, he was investigating him, even if he stayed for that reason, amid the commotion, which helped him to be the victim.

They would never be suspicious about the plan, because in the end, it wasn't him who shot, Bruce used his rich money to bury everyone inside the building, there was a commotion and many people who went to participate in the collective burial.

Some time later...

Superman looked like a purebred dog as soon as they met after saving Kara from Darkseid's brainwashing, and coming back to Earth, he looked too close, too close to a man aimlessly.

At that point, he seemed to always find an excuse to be in the Batcave, at least three months ago when he was expelled from the cave.

It was more than a week later Kent's parents' house was rebuilt with the help of the League, Kara looked surprised to see everyone gathered ...

The dark knight was aware that everything was fleeting. Darkseid would not leave it at least he would return ...

So when he went down to the cave and started researching and never again wore the cloak as soon as he returned.

So before your Apartment exit the kolips, Batman had entered the laboratory center and control center copied several files and intergalactic documents and some documents from an extensive outer library.

What he accumulated in his built-in belt system and what was most interesting was the connection between the sovereign of Apokolips and Luthor.

In his scheme, which he was planning, on his computer, there were some bargains between his research, various forms of experiences, all of this, between exchanges of mutant slaves and thus transferring directly to his cave computer.

It happened, so for the next three months, he started to isolate himself and research about Apokolips and his machinery and the way it worked.

While they were storing and searching using the bat-computer and storing and searching.

Hidden there were the cave data, patrolling less and less leaving it to its associates, while it was exclusively translating studying and unraveling the mysteries of the world of Apokolips.

The arsenals of Apokolips were extensive and had several mutagenic processes and experiments with the divine DNA of the new gods and a graph of evolution, between species, fusion of Kryptonian cells.

Meanwhile, it was however, even though they were from another race derived from Kryptonians and or ancient caste, and artificial crosses, between ancient beings and biological and bionic forms, even artificial technology with organic form, he crossed graphics.

In the next moment, it was when he copied from the Fortress of Solitude with what he stole from Apokolips, and the most interesting seeing graphical searches for hybrids in an alien form of an ancient race.

There, at that time, there was a race that he researched were as old as the guardians of the Green Lantern Corps and that by standards had already been extinguished for millennia, where he also stole an explosion tube.

The omega gallows were the main source of a way to reproduce the fusion between the omega gallows in a controlled manner, and the ancient gallows that govern the dimension and ancient dimensional temples.

But again , he dealt with someone who was moved to a base of conscience and he knew that at some point he was going to relieve some part of himself ...

All he knew was that he was capable of thinking, both in some degrees of emotions ...

This was the wall between dimensions, creating slaves for ç omega and controlling their minds cutting parts of your consciousness and cerebellum.

While brain and times for cleaning O cosmic, and artificial and natural manner and thereby the power generating omega thus being derived from cosmic energy ...

By encrypting various alien language data as old as time itself and coming across information collected from both the guardians and ancient Krypton.

There, where he researched, he found that there was a lot of information, from extinct civilizations, he ended up in the cave without sleeping for several days and so without caring he turned off the communicator and in turn ignored calls from the league and his own children.

There was something wrong going on there, there was a barrier, a secret password, an obscure story.

What was something that should not be shown in one of these stories and more encrypted data and there in the background we have something worse, someone blocked some Krypton data ...

He exchanged information with Hal, there were an immense amount of alien races in a troop database, and an ancient civilization was extinct.

It was a period before the inhabitants of Krypton, but nothing was known about the mutagenic fusion of hybrid research.

So that in this case, it seemed to be part of the black book of the guardians who had what they knew to be cut out of the book like the dark era of the troops.

Sometime later on his journey through the multiverse and through time.

Bruce Wayne discovered many secrets, stories and tales around the time, everything he needed to know, the countless secrets that the multiverse hid.

Each of those gods and demons, took him towards moments of time, when he found himself in several stories.

Bruce had come back, some time ago, he had his gap year, not showing up, for a long time, he should have come back, but he wasn't in the justice league for a while.

It was the exact time he used to travel, and get an excuse for how he had money.

He had not automatically returned to the justice league, he needed to catch up on business and affairs, his celibate year was not over yet.

When Bruce researched a mutagenic bomb that would dramatically change cells amid Lex Corp's slave trade. at the time of Luthor's presidency, however, trafficking.

What was not over, was a benefit exchange agreement between Darkseid and Luthor, which when doing data exchange and translation, it was this week that they would meet that day he already knew, three days from now.

Bruce had a plan coming up, which made his discovery over time, made him discover a way to avoid the events that led each of the futures to materialize, he heard several strange sounds and when he least expected Superman to appear he looked very sulky .

So that in the end, he found out more, and after all it didn't matter at all at the moment, he should really unveil an intergalactic human trafficking, after all, that was the mystery of the present, which Tim, and the others were unable to solve with your absence.

Again, when he researched Darkseid's life, he had only one love in his life, Suli, and later married at the behest of his mother.

It was all discovered at some point in their research until Darkseid killed his mother Queen He g g ra, he followed all his orders and not to that it killed his elder brother under his orders ...

He found out a lot about the new god, and as far as Darkseid is who he is by creation, himself being who he is has emotions he may fall in love at some point .

He can change ... but sometimes not for the better, and he could manipulate him for those goals ...

So, when he saw his surroundings , he had an enemy with little libido or was well controlled ...

You could try a test and see how it would help you.

When, he was in the watchtower, it was when he talked to Hal, if there would be in space on other planets sex traffics and if there would be women on these planets who would sell themselves for money, sex enlightened mind ...

Several nights before he was isolated in the cave, he was in the watchtower and there was Jordan ...

It was a certain period of time, in which he came back and was seen again with a young air in the tabloids, he was not the destroyed man nor the victim of so many difficulties .

In the midst of this, rumors were urgent, he said that he met a distant relative who had left an inheritance that he did not detail how much, it would then be, he hid his money well hidden.

While he returned and Alfred's presence, which was previously welcome, now, he planned a way to give him a vacation, to keep him out of his plans.

Now, you ask, he had given holiday a month , so your coffee , lunch and dinner boiled down to him to fast food, sometimes , he did, but it really was not as good as .

The what he wanted it to be, it made him learn to cook ..., I would not give to live just ready dishes warmed in the microwave.

Well after his death, that he had more than one no from his clown war, now, returning to being rich, he went to find out if the hidden money was still as hidden as he left it.

His battle prior to his return to land, when he died, did not last long to return, and who gave the ring to the black lanterns, was none other than the host of the bet.

One thing Bruce remembered was his agreement with the creature, so that he could return, he knew that by his side, there was not only him, but other versions of him who made agreements, which were his most intimate desire, the desire most hidden from your heart.

That wish that each one of them, would do everything to be realized.

Receiving from her, in the hands of the attack of his alternative versions, he met the host of the bet, knowing that he began to formulate his plan, he did not know, when or how, but it was at some time, quite sure if respectively, and not an alternative version of you.

The multiverse of darkness, was a fertile field for good ideas, which he can, over time, talk to any version of himself.

Before becoming what they became, they had other ideas, they, like him, had a desire, and when for a glimpse of time, they did not know if they saw, witnessed or dreamed of a future.

The darkest knight, at some point in time, when everything changed, at a point in time, he or someone, or several versions of him saw what each of them saw, so he didn’t know who, but he saw that he should keep the plan for him, start ...

That was a life of dreams and nightmares, he wanted to find the host of the bet, he wanted to find a way that the futures that he saw again when traveling through the multiverse, that he could use to prevent it from happening ...

About that.

When Bruce returned, he went to find out a few things, followed Superman's request towards the watchtower, there were some maintenance he needed to do in the monitor room ...

When he was in the watchtower in the monitor room.

It was formulating a plan, at that time in question, when he started with the question.

- Flashlight. - He said while they were both looking at the monitor.

- Yes ... - Hal said after a while ...

- Is there sex trafficking on other planets? - He said , looking at the stars.

- What? - Asked the flashlight in his direction.

- What do you mean. - Asked the Green Lantern, looking into his eyes.

- It's a logical question. - Said Batman.

- If in some countries on earth prostitution is a crime and there is human or sexual trafficking. - He said looking at the chart of the planets.

- Then it must exist in others. - Said.

- Why do you want to know? - Hal said suspiciously.

- You are an intergalactic policeman. - Said.

- In which galaxies is this a crime? - He asked.

- Yes. - He said.

- Have you arrested any? - He asked.

- On which planets and galaxies is this allowed? - He asked.

- I already did, yes. - Said Hal looking in your direction.

- But I was never interested in knowing which ones. - Said.

- So, how would you know to say where it is or is not allowed? - I wanted to know Batman.

- The ring warns. - Said Hal.

- Only when the ring said. - Said.

- Why do you want to know? - Asked evaluating the bat.

- A curious question came to mind. - Batman said, measuring the words.

- I wonder if Darkseid has any male or female slaves. - Said.

- After all, Apokolips is a different place, I thought that in the remote possibility that each planet or galaxy of a usurper or conquered can make its rules. - It said.

- And that is outside the jurisdiction of the lanterns can do what they want and make their own laws. - It said.

- And who has sex with prostitutes, or if there is a woman even though she is an alien who willingly surrenders to him or to any despot. - It said.

- After all, some planets do not demean themselves to the green lantern. - It said.

- It is well ... - It said.

- Each civilization has its own rules and laws and what they think is right. - It said.

- Not everyone follows the rules of the corporation. - It said.

- Even so, not everyone agrees with the words slave or prostitutes. - He said.

- In fact, it is so deeply rooted in society that it is something common and even well regarded to have sex for money, some simply accept it. - It said.

- It was as if it were of high class, the value of a being in the sexual act, and seen with values ​​and in itself a person of high class. - Said.

- As for Darkseid. - Hal said.

- I heard that he seduces his companions and is even well endowed. - It said.

- He, from what I heard, is capable of taking his son for hours. - It said.

- And he's considered a sex god. - Said.

It was in his studies, and in his research, that he discovered ...

Darkseid liked submission, and he managed to hack into the computer information of some Darkseid allies, and he can research about it ...

Again, when he found out more about Darkseid's occasional escapes between these sporadic and infrequent periods ...

That scene, and the situation he didn't think it would be difficult to insinuate for Darkseid ...

Even so, he was planning when he became thoughtful, well-endowed, because he didn't see many suitors and even maybe those he could tell someone to cut the reins of the conqueror ...

When again, he saw only one woman and was killed by Darkseid's mother.

Being that upon learning about the queen, she was already killed by him , a long time ago to be a hindrance for him, if Batman thought how he would do it, perhaps, how he could start investing in it.

As time passed, it was when he formulated the plan.

If he were able to conquer the Emperor of Apokolips , he could conquer anyone, and it would be unprecedented.

When again, he thought more about that situation ...

Bruce could test the idea, he can test his theory and so he would if he had a chance ...

About that.

This was not the first time, when Batman was molested and cornered by Darkseid, it was more of a test, but seeing that the new god was more than receptive and dominant.

The new god would not let him stay in control, the test said he would dominate him there and would not let him set any pace, he had the idea, he knew his plans.

Before he embarked on a language battle with Darkseid, while he would not go to the throne room of the new god, diverting his attention, Bruce headed towards the throne room, in his rush, when he entered the room. control.

- Wait. - What he knew that insinuating himself to the new god was dangerous, the case was that he would not just leave him between just kisses.

Darkseid was kissing Bruce next, the dark knight, turning the man on his back to him, Bruce leaning on the computer controls, the new god lowering his pants.

- Please do not. - Bruce cried, then, when the new god was sticking his fingers in his mouth making him suck .

- Suck. - He ordered a new god with a growl, and that in turn, thrusting it with his fingers inside it, he received slaps on his butt.

- Come on, see, let's not go. Growled Darkseid.

- Now. - growled Darkseid - Suck. Growled Darkseid, Bruce had no choice but to suck.

It was a fuck of fingers, in and out of him, Bruce tried to squirm away, but for each attempt, the smaller man was slapped on the ass and squeezed on his penis.

- Behave yourself. Snarled Darksied. - Or it will be worse. - He snarled, pulling him, while Bruce held the side of Darkseid's pants , spreading his legs, and Darkseid's fingers, the new god holding him to his feet, he held him upright against his chest.

The new god had a hand holding his waist, another hand behind him, thrusting in his hole, his penis was hard and erect, swinging, as the new god fucked him with his fingers in and out of it.

That was his first experience of anal sex, fingering with his fingers, inside him, with thrusts and his screams, Darkseid kissed him in the middle of feeling his pants huddled together .

The new god, behind him fucking Bruce with his fingers, the smaller man felt that the zipper on Darksied's pants was also huddled on his heels, he felt his penis rubbing against his slit , rubbing his penis at its entrance , almost entering , between the crack, almost giving way .

At that time, Bruce thought he was going to be fucked there, but there was a crash, towards the ceiling, a knock that shook the walls and tempted him, listening to a growl from Darkseid.

Then the new god who turned him, rubbed, the new god commanded the rhythm, between his kisses, and moans, and lips, coming between his stomachs.

Darksied turned him over, Bruce saw that huge thick penis, rubbing himself, Darkseid, both rubbing themselves, pushing towards the controls, he made him lie down.

- Let's be quick, your Kryptonian friend, soon be here. Growled Darkseid.

Again, when opening his legs, high and spread, holding between the inner thighs, fucking with his fingers inside him, with taps in the middle while switching between his tongue and mouth.

The new god was sucking and stocking him with deep knocks in and out of him, while the new god, swallowing his hole, pumping his penis, with his hands.

Bruce came in the mouth of Darkseid between fucking tongue and fingers were soft and deep, hitting a magical place that made him scream and engag s gar.

Before Bruce had a new orgasm, Darksied pulled his fingers and tongue out of him, forcing him to dress roughly, him pulling and whispering in his ear, before letting go.

- One hour, you will not have a league hero to prevent me from deflowering you, Batman, you will be mine. - Said the new god. - I will destroy this hole. Growled Darkseid. - And you will belong to me. - Snarled the new god.

- It won't just be my fingers and tongue inside you. - He pulling him pushing towards the control with violence.

- Have you given it to any other man ...? - He snarled.

- Did anyone but me touch your hole? - he growled with his eyes bright s .

Bruce gasped, shivered, tried to break free, but the ones in his arms were an iron grip , one hand on his penis, his hands inside his pants.

- No one. - Bruce gasped.

Seconds before if the new god was going to hurt him or hit him or anything, he smiled, took his lips in a kiss and seconds before between a push, Bruce was on the other side of the control room .

Bruce was stunned and in the middle of a breach dividing the wall in half and being protected by Superman who came in front of them separating them and starting a fight into the air .

Then, with Darkseid, half of that location destroyed , without paying attention to Batman, the man taking advantage of this situation and transferring .

In the meantime .

Happening in the middle of the fight and the crashes, some files, towards his flash drive , some crashes falling around, then Bruce and he were using his ropes, and taking with him towards his belt .

At that time, Batman was leaving there happy that his plans had progressed and worked out, sometimes drugs and pheromones like Poison Ivy's would come in handy, but it was his own composition.

It took a few weeks, it seemed like a wave of attacks by Apokolips, it was what appeared to be a periodic and common monthly.

Again, Batman entered another Apokolips control center.

At that time, Bruce taking advantage of the distraction of the god fight, he transferred some files, which he was looking for, there was a fight later, but he needed to threaten the new god, somehow, he needed to finish the transfer to the chip and the keep in your belt.

All that happened next was when he saw Kal when, some time ago, when it was his first foray into it.

It was when he initially helped to rescue the Kryptonian, some time ago, he was almost killed by Darkseid the base of the blow by pushing towards the wall with his hands on his neck.

All this for his own satisfaction, just to show power, even if he wanted to sweep the floor with him.

Then he was thrown on the wall and made a painting and before that while there was a possibility that Darkseid would dent his face and Bruce in turn would become a modern work of art, now .

Darkseid folded him, hugging Batman from behind, and shoving his fingers inside him, fucking him, with his face, being pushed towards the wall, between his screams and gagging.

At that time, the new god was fucking with his fingers, his pants huddled on the floor, between his butt being reared up, his hole being abused.

Beating between his screams, between his thrusts, Batman was fucked with fingers, and being fucked little by little with a penis hitting his slit, he thought, how much and how, they would be interrupted again.

Well, at best, although he should think quickly, about a solution, and put the theory into practice , but now, he was fucked up, pushing and pulling, close to losing his virginity altogether.

He impulsively took Darkseid's lips , tried to pull away and then, in the midst of the new god hang him, unsuccessfully, that he thought he stopped hanging him, to return the kiss and command the movement of his body.

This was not the first time, if it was really a problem, it didn't seem that Darksied would care , it was in the middle two months later between his marriage to Selina and his escapades towards the rescue of an ally in Apokolips.

At first, the new god did not answer, until he kissed back and dominated him, taking control, Bruce thought he would stay, to pull and push his body, Darksied grabbed him, he kissed him licking his lips, snarling and kissing him.

Rubbing their bodies, my god, Darkseid kissed him, he caressed him, sucked him, Bruce with his hands with just one attempt or perhaps a foray, experiencing his first time, with his gloved hand on Darkseid's covered cock.

Clinging, kissing, licking, listening to the growls.

Bruce gasped, the new god, was lowering his trousers thronging on his heels, the new god , with the s jerks, toward his lap, between her kisses .

Thinking back then, that there were pheromones from Poison Ivy at his disposal were enough to do it with fire, for a while , but apparently Bruce realized he didn't need it, it was tasty by nature .

What he saw was scary, he gasped, it was huge, Darkseid, he masturbated in his hands, he opened his pants, there was no room for escape, he did not expect .

The MBOs had their pants pulled, Bruce gasped again, and was startled, he saw that Darksied was huge, the new god, took him on his lap revealing all his strength .

At that time, he was being caught, wrapping his legs around his waist, rubbing his cocks together, Darks and i d got Batman.

The new god caught him like an iron rod, lifting him by the thighs, towards his face.

He was...? - It was true, he was going to suck it.

- Wait ... - Bruce gasped. - I ... - He tried.

- Still. Growled Darkseid, slapping his ass.

- I never ... - But his words were interrupted by a shrill scream.

That's what Darkseid did, he raped him with his tongue, sucking his hole, Bruce gasped, trying to break free.

It was at that time, that he gasped and moaned, screaming in the middle of his attacks of his tongue inside him, it would be his first anal stimulation.

Darkseid was fucking him with his tongue inside his hole, stretching and penetrating him, against all odds, in less than ten minutes of stimulus.

- Please. - Bruce shouted shrillly.

- That's right, beg. Growled Darkseid.

With that stimulus Bruce enjoyed, between the screams, that soft tongue passing through each muscle ring, hitting a place that shocked him.

The bat man screamed, shrieking, at one point, between the thrusts, and his cries, pleading to stop, in less than ten minutes, Batman came.

The smaller man, barely recovered, the new god pulled him from his face, and pushed him towards the wall.

Then, the new god swallowing his cock, good ten minutes of sucking, between swallowing and vibrating, forcing him to come in less than ten minutes, in his mouth pulling him, when he picked him up again in his lap.

Again grabbing your legs, and with your legs being forced around your waist .

Q hen Bruce was pushed into his lap, then rubbing their dicks together, pass between his arms around the neck where Darkseid .

The new god took his lips, rubbing his cocks together, when Darksied pushed his shirt up and sucked on her nipples, hard in the middle of rubbing his cocks together.

Before he thought he was going to be fucked, Darkseid stopped, he gasped, feeling semen dripping from his penis wetting his groin, when the new god pulled him taking his lips.

- Let's see how much you like it like that. - Said Darksied.

- What...? - Bruce said.

The new god was passing semen wrapped around his fingers, and stuffing it into his hole, which was wet from his saliva, into it, Bruce screamed, choking.

Darkseid was shearing Bruce by shoving and thrusting forcing Bruce on his back with his legs spread and pumping his penis with the same strength and speed as the thrusts in and out of him.

He was tight, apparently, he would be the first to do that to him, if Batman didn't give it to any villain then he would be his.

- God ... - Bruce shouted, was thrusting him pushing him towards the ground, between the thrusts, spreading his legs, and taking his lips in the middle of his screams fucking him with his fingers.

Each scream and each thrust was together, frantic beats in and out of him.

Bruce thought he would be fucked later with Darksied's penis, he wanted to at least take him into his territory, if he didn't squirm, he would be fucked on the floor, without any other complaints, but in the middle of his screams.

His cock squirting, Darksied stopped and pulled his fingers out of it, slapping his ass, giving several in a row.

Without any other words, Bruce was pushing and pulling violently, towards his pants being put on.

- Come on, get yourself together. Growled Darkseid.

Bruce dressed and tried to get up on wobbly legs, he received a hard slap on the face that made him roll and fall with bleeding lips .

The next minute, when Bruce turned around, before saying a word, Superman came crashing through the window, throwing Kara towards Darksied.

Bruce looked destroyed, but not in the way Superman thought, Bruce at that point, stood up and realized that somehow Darkseid realized that Kal was approaching, but he didn't want to be caught fucking his enemy.

They left without each of them knew that Bruce invaded some Darkseid files amid its infiltration, before arriving to the new god throne room, if Darksied knew, he said nothing .

Bruce downloaded the data to the batcave's computer, he was happy to know that the new god was receptive, and accepted his experience.

[sushisulliedcelestialbody]

Good Omens and Beetlejuice AU

I’m still Big Sad because of Beetlejuice the Musical’s eviction but also since my fixations this year would be a Venn diagram with “snakes” and “demons” in the middle, here’s my attempt at a Beetlejuice AU.

- Zira Fell and Anthony Crowley are a typical couple who live in a beautiful Victorian home outside London that they worked together to make a home. The garden is an Eden to the point that the neighbors are suspicious that there’s SOME sort of divine intervention. Inside, it’s a little bit of a mess because their aesthetics are very different. Black marble granite countertops with antique blue china, hard minimalist coffee table in front of a chaise lounge. But they adore it.

- Zira is a library curator with his own extensive collection of books with religious texts being his specialty. He lectures at a local University about the history of some of these texts. Crowley worked at a flower shop in the village nearby. For reasons, they’re not close to any of their families, but they’ve one all their own.

- The house is so fucking old though and through a series of plumbing issues, the basement floods and through a series of electrical issues, there’s a fire. 

- They don’t remember getting it under control, but it is. The damage doesn’t seem TOO bad, dearest. I think I’ll pop by the hardware store and talk about getting the walls re-wall papered. 

- Zira can’t leave. He.... can’t. He ends up And when Crowley gets into his beloved car to go out as well, the car will start and he will drive it but it always pulls itself back into the garage and stops.

- Through a series of testing their theories, they find out that they didn’t survive that fire. And there’s.... so much with that. They were planning a trip to Paris soon. They wanted to adopt a baby. Both cry a little bit over what they’ve lost , but they have each other. It’s going to be okay.

- Eventually, they get a letter telling them to report to the Afterwards, which is like purgatory and where they get a hearing about where they’ll spend eternity. Zira, who was charitable and gave to organizations frequently, is being sent to Heaven. Crowley, who was a good person but made some mistakes and wasn’t as grand with his goodness as Zira was, is going to be in purgatory longer, but things aren’t looking good. 

- Zira refuses to go anywhere without his partner, certainly not the afterlife. So they leave and their souls return to stay in the house for.... ever. They still have the hose they love. It’s going to be okay.

- Eventually, their house gets sold to an American ambassador, his wife, and his tweenage son, Warlock. It was a great buy, newly renovated after a horrific fire. The former owners passed, but they’ve been assured that the problem has been solved. They take all of the antiques away and overhaul the house. Harriet is impressed with the library, which was never willed to anyone and is planning on donating it to the University.

- Warlock, who isn’t particularly fitting in with this move to the UK or his brand-new elite prep school and is definitely so goth, scans the titles for anything they might want to keep and finds a couple books on demons and ghosts he thinks look interesting enough. 

- The one book mentions Beelzebub, Prince of Hell, who was expelled from Heaven and then Hell for leading a revolt against Lucifer. They’ve been roaming Earth for eons now, serving a Prince of False Gods in their own exile. Summoned by saying their name three times in a row, Beelzebub brought chaos to the lives of anyone who brings them into this world. 

- Warlock is so tempted to do it. He loved spooking the hell out of his friends in D.C. with this kind of shit. He prepares to try it for himself, but oh shit wasn’t that plant *over there* a minute ago. 

- Warlock is convinced that the house is haunted by the ghosts of the people who died in the fire. So he works on a plan to summon them that involves his Ouija board.

- The Ouija board does, in fact, summon Crowley and Zira who can now be seen by the kid. Warlock is SO EXCITED because holy shit his old house never had any ghosts. 

- Crowley and Zira explain they want to be left alone and they really want their house back. They can’t move on because they’ll be separated for eternity if they do. Warlock is “You can have the house, hate it here.” And then he’s like.... hmm, why don’t you scare the shit out of my mom and dad so we can move. 

- Crowley and Zira are absolutely shitty at being ghosts though and struggle to do anything really spooky. Zira hated horror movies and Crowley’s idea of haunting is minor inconveniences that are suspicious but annoying.

- Warlock and Crowley especially spend a lot of time trying to convince Thadeus and Harriet that the place is haunted and they really bond over it. Zira isn’t as close but Warlock comes to love spending time. He understands what it's like to not fit in with your family no matter what you do and he’s always there to heat up cocoa (even if he gets sad he can’t taste it anymore.)

- Warlock really wants to leave, so he found the information in one of Zira’s books before they were carted off! He’s going to summon this demon because it might be the only way to absolutely get his parents out of this house. 

- Zira and Crowley warn Warlock to mess with that intensely supernatural. He doesn’t know what could happen. 

- (IT’S SHOWTIME.)

- Beelzebub, in all their rotting, fly-ridden glory, emerges from Hell to Wreck Shit. They offer Warlock the deal to possess the house if they give them their undivided devotion.

- “Becoming a Satanist? Sweet. Another to piss dad off. :)”

- Thadeus and Harriet and the Dowling household staff are scared shitless of some of the demonic things that are happening now within the house. (Crowley and Zira hide in the attic and want No Part of the shit the Lord of the Flies is pulling). At first they humans are scared of it being up to terrorists, but nothing can be explained in the physical. It’s supernatural.

-The cook then comes up with plan to call a priest to ward off the demons in the hosts.

- If it comes to an exorcism, all supernatural entities are going to be forced to leave the house. Crowley and Zira will never see each other again. Beelzebub will,,,, move on and be the same miserable banished Prince.

- So it’s up to Warlock, Crowley, and Zira to figure out how to get Beelzebub to leave the house so that the Ghosts can stay and spend their eternal lives together.

That’s all I really have because.... finals. But uh I just need more demons in my life I guess. 

[theharellan]

Headcanon Elaboration Meme. Accepting.

@ofrevas​ asked: tell everyone everything about his ongoing fight with Ancient Aliens

I imagine his introduction started innocently enough. Solas has never been an avid watcher of the history channel. Even back before it became a place for conspiracy theories and network decay rotted out a lot of its educational value, it was never a place catered for people who like an in-depth look at a subject. They’re surface level, mostly grade school-level, and often guilty of whitewashing or downplaying the actions of historical figures, so Solas typically avoided it.

What most likely happened was a student made a wisecrack about the show when they’re discussing ancient elvhen inventions-- or perhaps alluded to the conspiracy theories having been something someone they knew believed in. He watched as a curiosity, and more than likely had the bad luck of landing on one about Elvhenan. Ancient Aliens is like the perfect storm, almost tailor-made for Solas to hate it, but he wasn’t prepared for it.

 If you’ve never seen an episode, they take a premise– say, how the Egyptian pyramids were made, or Leonardo da Vinci’s renowned intelligence, then they say “aliens did it.” They’ll often recruit people with doctorates in History and they’ll say something normal like “the pyramids were marvels of engineering” and then a clip of a guy with a bachelor’s degree in Communications will play after and go “there’s no way they had the technology or knowledge to make them on their own, so it had to be aliens.” They will obscure the truth or deliberately lie about the facts to draw the viewer to their conclusion, and will never present information or alternate theories which contradict their claims, unless those claims also involve extraterrestrial activity. Seriously, I think they have like a dozen different theories about the moai and they’re all terrible. It’s a deeply misanthropic show, and as rightly pointed out by many critics, is even quicker to jump to the assumption that non-white cultures throughout the world couldn’t accomplish anything without the intervention of super advanced alien societies, despite ample evidence that they had the tools and innovation to do so themselves. Although with the show lasting like 9 seasons it has gotten around to pointing at things like the Emancipation Proclamation being the result of aliens beaming the speech into Abraham Lincoln’s-- ok I can’t talk about their theories anymore or I’ll be here forever. Moving on.

Solas is not only someone who believes strongly in people and their ability to do good and evil-- or in this case, their ability to build structures without divine intervention-- but he was also there to see elves create eluvian, floating islands, all the wonders dreamers could dream. For centuries after the fall of Elvhenan humans liked to say that the empire never existed, that the elves weren’t capable of creating these great works so they simply Could Not Be. Now it seems they’re willing to concede they existed, but that it had to be an outside force. Ancient Aliens is also a show that likes to attribute the divine to alien influence, so on top of all this there is a 100% chance there’s an episode about Fen’Harel (along with the rest of the evanuris) being aliens.

Finally, the show also has a terrible understanding of art. There is no such thing as stylisation or symbolism in the world of ancient aliens, artists are only capable of depicting what they see. For a good example of this, medieval depictions of the sun, moon, and angels often are described as clearly being alien spacecrafts. This may or may not actually wind me personally up, even worse than the rest of this, but from what we’ve seen of ancient Elvhen art in Solas’ murals and elsewhere in-game, stylisation and symbolism are everywhere. So like. They’ve definitely attributed random objects in the sky in Elvhen art to being UFOs, even though there definitely is research identifying/explaining them.

In short, Ancient Aliens is not only bad history but advocates for a worldview that Solas absolutely hates.

After watching a few episodes, I imagine he tried to move on with his week, but anyone who knew him at the time would likely hear him complain about it at least once. I imagine this culminates in him investing a lot of time and research into debunking many of the show’s theories, as someone with a doctorate and an extensive background in studying the ancient Elvhen world and also someone who was there much of the video would go towards debunking their claims regarding elven history, from Elvhenan forward, but honestly he’d also have an interest in debunking a lot of their poor understanding of art and any episodes about the Avvar. Over the years it’s racked up a fair amount of views, and convinced some people that the theories are wrong, which is enough for him. It’s a war Solas tries to forget about because it’s a war he’ll never win, although he does take some comfort in the idea that surely he will outlive the show. I mean, he’s essentially immortal, so he has to, right?

Right??

Every so often Vher likely puts it on because they’re a gremlin who likes to wind Solas up, and according to Joly Mio has contributed to the show, again because they’re a gremlin. I imagine Solas has also uses the show as a demonstration in bad history. Alien theorists, and conspiracy theorists in general, start at the conclusion and work their way back, twisting evidence to fit their conclusion, when any good historian will let the evidence inform the conclusion.

As a final note, I think the worst/best thing about Ancient Aliens in modern Thedas would be that Thedas is a place where conspiracy theories might have some merit to them. Like, I can only imagine Solas watching an episode about the evanuris not truly being gods and he’s like “.... okay......” and then it follows up with “but could these otherworldly beings actually be extraterrestrials? ancient astronaut theorists... say yes.” And then throws his hands up in the air and has to go nap off his frustration.

[troybeecham]

Today, the Church remembers St. Athanasius, Bishop.

Ora pro nobis.

St. Athanasius, also known as Athanasius the Great and Athanasius the Confessor, was a bishop and doctor of the church. He is called the "Father of Orthodoxy," the "Pillar of the Church" and "Champion of Christ's Divinity." Athanasius became one of the most dedicated opponents of the heresy of Arianism. Much of his life was a testimony to the divinity of Jesus Christ.

Born in either AD 296 or 298 in Alexandria, Egypt to a prominent Christian family, Athanasius received a wonderful education in Christian doctrine, Greek literature, philosophy, rhetoric and jurisprudence.

He was well studied in the Hebrew Scriptures and the Gospel accounts and the Christian texts which would later be recognized by the Church as the canon of the New Testament. He credited the confessors during the Christian persecution under the Roman Emperor Maximian as his teachers of theology.

Bishop Alexander of Alexandria became a strong influence in Athanasius' life after Alexander witnessed him playing at administering Baptism as a young boy, with other children. Alexander called the boys over and after questioning them, he determined the baptisms were valid and decided to train them for priesthood.

As he grew up, Athanasius befriended many monks and hermits of the desert, including St. Antony. He later wrote the biography of Antony.

Athanasius became Alexander's secretary in AD 318 after being ordained a deacon. Around this time, Athanasius wrote his first work, a theological treatise on the Incarnation which is still quoted extensively in Christian theological studies and spiritual literature.

Around AD 323, Arius, an ambitious priest of the Alexandrian Church, or his students, denied the Divinity of Christ, and began spreading word that Jesus Christ was not truly divine, but merely created in time by the Eternal Father.

Alexander demanded Arius produce a written statement on the false doctrine. It was condemned as heresy after two dissenting Bishops came forward. Arius and 11 other priests and deacons were deposed, or removed from their office, for teaching false doctrine.

Arius left for Caesarea, but continued to teach his false doctrine and enlisted support from the Bishop of Nicomedia, Eusebius and other Syrian prelates.

Athanasius, as Alexander's secretary, was present during the great Church debate. He may have even composed the letter that announced Arius' condemnation. Athanasius stood alongside Alexander during the famous Council of Nicaea to determine the matters of dogma.

It was during this meeting, summoned by Emperor Constantine, that Arius' sentencing was officially confirmed and the Nicene Creed was adopted as the Creed of the Church and a worthy symbol of the orthodox Christian faith.

The early Christian Church, still undivided, rejoiced at the defense of the true nature of Jesus Christ. To this day, Athanasius is considered the great defender of the Faith in both the Orthodox and Catholic Churches.

Just five months later, Alexander died and Athanasius succeeded him after being unanimously elected. He was consecrated as the new Bishop of Alexandria in 328 and continued the fight against Arianism.

In AD 330, Eusebius approached Emperor Constantine and convinced him to command Athanasius to allow Arians back into communion. Athanasius refused, noting the Catholic Church could not hold communion with heretics who attacked the divinity of Christ.

However, Eusebius did not give up on his cause. He wrote to Athanasius trying to justify Arius and he wrote to the Egyptian Meletians in efforts to have Athanasius impeached.

The Meletians charged Athanasius with the crimes of exacting a tribute of linen for use in his church, sending gold to Philomenus, treason against the emperor and authorizing one of his deputies to destroy a chalice being used at the altar by a Meletian priest.

He was tried and proved his innocence on all accusations.

The Arians didn't stop there though; they came forward with another charge, claiming he murdered a Meletian bishop. Athanasius was ordered to attend a council at Caesarea, but knowing the bishop was alive and in hiding, Athanasius ignored the summons.

In AD 335, Emperor Constantine commanded Athanasius to go to the Council of Tyre, Lebanon. The council was full of Athanasius' opponents and was led by an Arian. Athanasius realized his condemnation was already pre-decided.

Athanasius was exiled for the first time to Trier, Germany. While there, he kept in touch with his flock by letter.

Athanasius' exile lasted for two and a half years. He returned to Alexandria in AD 338 to find both Emperor Constantine and Arius had died. Constantine's empire was divided between his three sons, Constantine II, Constantius and Constans.

After he returned to Alexandria, his enemies continued to try to bring him to exile. They accused him of raising sedition, of promoting bloodshed, and detaining his own use of corn.

Eusebius was able to obtain a second sentence of deposition against Athanasius and get the election of an Arian bishop for Alexandria approved.

After this, a letter was written to Pope St. Julius asking for his intervention and a condemnation of Athanasius. The case for Athanasius was set forth, and the pope accepted the suggestion offered by Eusebius for a synod to discuss the situation.

Meanwhile, a Cappadocian named Gregory was installed in Alexandria, and Athanasius went to Rome to await his hearing.

Athanasius was completely vindicated by the synod, but was unable to return home to Alexandria until the death of the Cappadocian Gregory in AD 345.

Athanasius returned to Alexandria to scenes of people rejoicing after he had been absent for eight years.

However, in AD 353 Athanasius would face more condemnations by the Arians in the councils at Arles, France and again in AD 355 in Milan, Italy.

Persecution continued against Athanasius and escalated to physical attacks against him. While he was celebrating a vigil Liturgy in a church in Egypt, soldiers forced their way in and killed some of the congregation. Athanasius managed to escape and hid in the desert, where a group of monks kept him safe for six years.

During his years as a hermit, he wrote his Apology to Constantius, the Apology for His Flight, the Letter to the Monks, and the History of the Arians.

Athanasius returned to Alexandria after the death of Constantius in AD 361 and the new emperor, Julian, revoked all sentences of exile enacted by his predecessor.

This lasted only a few months though. Emperor Julian's plan for paganizing the Christian world couldn't get very far so long as Athanasius, the champion for Catholic faith, was around. Therefore, Julian exiled Athanasius and he once again sought refuge in the desert.

He stayed there until AD 363 when Julian died and the next emperor, Emperor Jovian reinstalled him. Jovian's reign was a short one, and Athanasius was again banished just eight months later.

Jovian's successor, Valens issued an order banning all Orthodox bishops who were exiled by Constantius.

Four months later, Valens revoked his own order and Athanasius was restored permanently.

Over the course of his life, Athanasius was banished five times and spent 17 years of his life in exile for the defense of the doctrine of Christ's divinity.

However, the last years of his life were peaceful and he died on May 2, AD 373 in Alexandria.

His body was transferred, first to Constantinople, then to Venice.

St. Athanasius is often shown as a bishop arguing with a pagan, a bishop holding an open book or a bishop standing over a defeated heretic. He is a patron saint of theologians, and faithful Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christians and hailed to this day as a great Defender of the Faith.

Uphold your Church, O God of truth, as you upheld your servant Athanasius, to maintain and proclaim boldly the catholic faith against all opposition, trusting solely in the grace of your eternal Word, who took upon himself our humanity that we might share his divinity; who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever.

Amen.

[zamancollective]

Protected Religious Minorities under Iran’s Islamic Regime: an analysis of ideology and policy

Anonymous submission

The Iranian Revolution of 1979 was one of the most significant milestones in the modern history of the Middle East. For the first time, a parliamentary system rooted in the promotion of the core tenants of Shi’a Islam was established, making the nation a theocratic republic. The Islamic regime, which remains in power ever since, is completely juxtaposed to the notion of individual freedom that prevails in Western democracies, as it is based on the strong rapport between religious and civil authorities, and intentionally purged from public life the elements that were opposed to its political principles (Amanat 813). In this essay, I would like to highlight the notion that within this system, there is a distinct tendency to prioritize the rights of the people of Shi’a Islamic faith over all other religious minorities. The Islamic regime tends to link the presence of religious minorities to the possibility that foreign powers might use these minorities as vehicles to undermine the Islamic Republic of Iran: Sunni Muslims via Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, and Jews via Israel. Therefore, the system of government that operates in the Islamic Republic of Iran masks its systematic subjugation of religious minorities under the guise of threat to national security.

I will note that this essay focuses in particular on Iran’s “protected” religious minorities, or ahl al-kitab (lit. people of the book). This term refers to Jews, Christians, and Zoroastrians, who were granted this status on the grounds of their pre-Islamic origins and supposed reception of divine revelation. Importantly, Shi’a clerics exclude followers of the Baha’i faith from this paradigm. As such, unlike protected minorities, they face more formalized discrimination and frequent imprisonment on the mere basis of faith. Although the issue of Baha’i oppression in Iran certainly merits attention, the ensuing analysis will center on the conditions of ahl al-kitab.

The prevailing intellectual framework behind the Islamic Revolution of 1979 originated in the eagerness to use Islam as a vehicle for the liberation of the people of Iran from their state of oppression. The regime led by the Shah of Iran, generally accepted as a puppet of the United States, maintained a grip on power through violent means. In response, Islamic scholars of the time emphasized the need to employ a more revolutionary approach to the practice of the Muslim faith to combat the Shah’s radical secularism (Dabashi 113). Three prominent scholars, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Morteza Mutahhari, and Ali Shariati, are recognized as the most influential thinkers in laying the ideological framework of the Iranian Revolution. These three figures were not concretely part of a single intellectual movement, nor were their political, philosophical, or spiritual trajectories wholly aligned; regardless, they ultimately coalesced in the minds of Iranian revolutionaries as catalysts of the Revolution. Together, Khomeini, Mutahhari, and Shariati called upon the redemption of Iran from foreign influence and the establishment of a system of government based on the tenets of Shi’a Islam—depicted as the best framework for promoting well-being among Iranians. It should be added that these writings are notably conspiratorial and consistently highlight the moral and intellectual superiority of revolutionary Shi’ism over other religions and strands of Islam (Dabashi 119).

A meeting of the Council of the Islamic Revolution in 1979. The committee was created by Khomeini and chaired by Mutahhari until his assassination.

The intervention of Shi’a clerics in the political debate arose in Iran during the Imperial period. The politicization of Shi’a Islam had the ultimate effect of denouncing the complicity of the Shah in the pillaging of the country’s natural resources and the suffering of the citizenry, and the Shi’a clerics delegitimized the efforts of the Imperial regime to introduce Western democracy and liberalism into Iran. From the beginning, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini singles out the Jews as a social group “who first established anti-Islamic propaganda and engaged in various stratagems.” Khomeini draws upon the Quran in formulating this specific argument, as the Quran frequently depicts the Jews as people who corrupt Muslims, transgress the laws of God, and actively fight Islam (Quran 4:50, 5:13, 5:41, 5:51, 5:59). The Ayatollah observed that “later [the Jews] were joined by other groups, who were in certain respects, more satanic than they. These new groups began their imperialist penetration of the Muslim countries about three hundred years ago” (Khomeini 7).

This doctrine also served to establish a strict demarcation line between Sunni Islam, an ideology that served to perpetuate tyrannical leaders in power (in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States), and Shi’a Islam, an ideology which not only liberates the oppressed people of Iran but also other peoples of the post-colonial Third World (Ahmad 12). The main focus of Khomeini’s writings are the “agents of imperialism,” both in Iran and abroad (Khomeini 17). Khomeini states that these agents of imperialism “are not converting [Muslims] into Jews and Christians; they are corrupting them, making them irreligious and indifferent, which is sufficient for their purpose” (Khomeini 79).

Most importantly, he warns for preparation to fight the Jews and other people he accuses of conspiring to harm Muslim populations. Khomeini states, “if the Muslims had acted in accordance with this command, and after forming a government, made the necessary extensive preparations to be in a state of full readiness for war, a handful of Jews would never have dared to occupy our lands and to burn and destroy the Masjid al-Aqsā” (Khomeini 22). In this context, Khomeini sets the foundation for the future Islamic Republic’s repudiation of Zionism—one of the immutable pillars of the perpetual Revolution (Dabashi 598). Though Khomeini nominally declared protection for ahl al-kitab, this clear conflation of Zionism and Judaism by Khomeini undermines such protection and at the time of the Revolution posed a serious threat to Iranian Jews by legitimizing anti-Semitism as a form of revolutionary progressivism. This is why, almost immediately after the Revolution, leaders of the Iranian Jewish community like Habib Elghanian were labeled Zionist Spies and promptly executed (Haaretz). As a consequence, Chief Rabbi of Iran Hakham Yedidia Shofet was urged by community members to publicly denounce the Shah and announce allegiance to the Revolution, not because he necessarily agreed with it, but in order maintain community security within this rapidly changing political context (Sternfeld, “Iranian Revolution: Unintended Consequences”).

In Mutahhari’s case, it is clear that certain motivations necessitated a level of subjugation and incitement against religious minorities. Mutahhari argues that “not all the People of the Book are the same; some believe in God, Resurrection, and the laws of God. These are the People of the Book whom we are to leave alone. The second category, those of whom we are to fight, is the People of the Book in name only” (Mutahhari 15). The implication of this claim is that it defers power to the jurisprudence of the ulama (clerics) to determine which factions and sub- factions of social groups pose threats, regardless of if they are ahl al-kitab. However, Mutahhari observed that it was not possible to seek the conversion of infidels as a panacea to this problem: “faith and rejection, iman and kufr, must be freely chosen, and cannot be forced onto others. Islam says that whoever wants to believe will believe, and whoever does not want to, will not” (Mutahhari 67). Mutahhari also highlighted that the Iranian people had a prominent role in propagating the most just, and consequently superior, interpretation of Islam: “the Iranians observed that the only group of Muslims that was free of prejudice and very keen to establish justice and equality in society and showed an unlimited sensitivity in regard to these values was [the Shi’a Muslims of] the Household of the Prophet” (Mutaharri, “Islam and Iran” 54-55). Mutahhari’s writings illustrate the need to remain vigilant about the potential ramifications of adopting religious principles based on national or racial allegiance. This also incorporates a clear warning against following the teachings of the strand of Islam espoused by people of Arab descent, explicitly distinguishing the moral superiority of Shi’a Islam over Sunni Islam (Mutaharri, “Islam and Iran” 58).

While Mutahhari highlighted the difference between a Persian and Arab pursuit of Islam, Ali Shariati’s writings were key in noting ways in which Shi’a and Sunni Islam espoused different forms of governance. At first, Shariati criticized Western democracy, which he considered to be an ideological tool that effectively oppressed people in positions of disadvantage, such as the poor (Shariati, “Reflections of Humanity”). Shariati advocated for a political system based on liberty and equality, albeit informed by the spiritual perspective that characterized pre-modern societies. The main problem that can be identified in this political approach is that the status of minorities is significantly diminished. Shariati’s arguments emphasize the need to keep “alive the hope of redemption after martyrdom,” promoting the advent of “revenge and revolt” against the tyrannical leaders that did not work for the benefit of the people (Shariati, “Red Shi’ism vs Black Shi’ism”).

A 1980 postage stamp honoring the memory of Ali Shariati.

Shariati highlighted the need to preserve the “faith in the ultimate downfall of tyrants and the decrees of destiny against the ruling powers who dispense justice by the sword” (Shariati, “Red Shi’ism vs Black Shi’ism”). Shariati’s writings set the tone for the strict distinction between Sunni and Shi’a Islam that would inform the system of government that prevails in Iran, alluding to Sunni Islam’s tendency to espouse tyrannic dictators (indicating Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States), and emphasizing the moral superiority of Shi’a Islam in its usefulness for advancing the idea of the unity of mankind and God.

The tenets of Shi’a Islam additionally influenced the nationalist philosophy espoused by the Islamic regime since 1979. Ali Shariati emphasized the putative dangers involved in assimilating the cultural perspective of other people, noting that the person who adopts other religious and cultural models “forgets his own background, national character and culture or, if he remembers them at all, recalls them with contempt.” One of the main implications of this way of thinking is the reduction of the scope of pluralism within the Islamic system of government established in Iran in 1979 (Shariati, “Reflections of Humanity”).

The system of government that has operated in Iran since 1979 is centered around the principle that all the political parties that participate in the legislative process need to abide by the tenets of the Islamic Revolution—this allows for a great deal of political debate regarding the best way to safeguard the interests of the country. As discussed prior, the Iranian Constitution nominally guarantees the basic freedoms of the ahl al-kitab religious minorities living in the country. Article 13 states: “Zoroastrian, Jewish, and Christian Iranians are the only recognized religious minorities, who, within the limits of the law, are free to perform their religious rites and ceremonies, and to act according to their own canon in matters of personal affairs and religious education.” Furthermore, Article 14 specifies that “the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and all Muslims are duty-bound to treat non- Muslims in conformity with ethical norms and the principles of Islamic justice and equity, and to respect their human rights.” Article 64 guarantees some minority representation in government, stating that “Zoroastrians and [Assyrian, Chaldean and Armenian] Christians and Jews will each elect one representative” to the Islamic Consultative Assembly.

The inauguration of the 10th Islamic Consultative Assembly-- Iran’s current parliament-- at the Majles headquarters in 2016.

Notwithstanding the existence of these constitutional guarantees, religious minorities face several constraints that effectively hinder their participation in Iran’s political system beyond their symbolic inclusion in the Majles. Non-Muslims are prohibited from occupying more than their one guaranteed parliamentary seat, which is arbitrary given the major differences in population size between different protected religious minorities. Members of these communities are also disqualified from holding any higher office. The system of government that prevails in Iran has established the primacy of Shi’a Islam as the main form of political organization; therefore, all candidates in the public sector are thoroughly vetted in order to determine whether they will use their public post to fulfill the Islam Republic’s mission “for ensuring the continuation of the revolution at home and abroad” (Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran). It would be impossible to suggest that any member of a religious minority who intends to run for office could ever fulfill the duties required for continuing the revolution in it’s entirety, as this would necessitate the individual’s own conversion to Islam. This can be highlighted in the Quranic verse 21:92, ”This, your community, is a single community, and I am your Lord, so worship Me,” which is referenced in the Preamble of Iranian Constitution, substantiating the Revolution’s attempt to establish a single [Shi’i] world community—more clearly, directly writing this Quranic verse in the Constitution reveals that the ultimate goal of the Revolution is to establish a single Shi’i world (Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran). By this logic, electing any non-Shi’i would be paradoxical and negate this ambition. 

There are significant obstacles that prevent religious minorities from enjoying full citizenship rights, in spite of the fact that religious minorities have political representation in the Islamic Consultative Assembly (Majles). For instance, access to a university education requires extensive knowledge of the principles of Shi’a Islam, which means that the members of religious minorities are put at a disadvantage or pressured to study overseas. There is also a penalty of death for any Shi’a Muslims who abandon their faith (whereas other faiths are actively encouraged to do so and adopt Shi’ism), and intermarriage is effectively forbidden unless the non-Shi’a partner converts. These are all issues that attest to the fact that freedom of religion in Iran is nominal and limited, at least in the way that it is conceived of in the Western world.

Iranian Jews were especially affected by the ideological undercurrent of the Islamic Revolution, namely because the Jewish population is perpetually threatened by allegations of their potential associations with Zionism. As previously mentioned, a number of Iranian Jews have been executed since the onset of the Islamic Revolution after being accused of spying for the State of Israel. Nevertheless, it is important to note that up until 1979, there was a great deal of support among Iranian Jews for the democratization of the country (Sternfeld 857-858). Before the advent of the Islamic Revolution, many Iranian Jews were involved in intellectual circles that promoted the liberalization of the country and the introduction of the democratic system of government. During the Imperial period, the Jewish population of Iran found opportunities for economic progression and social advancement, which led to their increased support for activities of Muslim clerics and leaders involved in revolutionary activities. Furthermore, during the period of revolutionary upheaval, the Jewish Sapir Hospital provided medical attention to the revolutionary protesters who had been injured by the police (Sternfeld 869).

Forty years after the Revolution, the relationship between Iranian Jews and the Islamic Republic remains tenuous, to say the least; the regime still peddles a strong degree of suspicion regarding the loyalty of the Jewish community to the Islamic regime, and continues to maintain a largely conspiratorial perspective on Israel’s actions and the occurrence of the Holocaust (Gerech and Takeyh). This is one factor of many that has led to the migration of most of the Jewish population to Israel, the US, and other countries since 1979. Those that have remained in Iran are generally quiet when it comes to politics, and hesitate to publicly criticize the status quo- although the head of Tehran’s Jewish community once criticized then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in the wake of his repeated denials of the Holocaust (Cohler-Esses). Jews in Iran today operate their own small institutions and practice their religion freely, reporting that they live comfortable lives and feel secure. However, it is difficult to gauge the accuracy of such claims, given fears of possible repercussions from the current Iranian regime, which strictly polices the content of interviews with foreign media outlets.

A man observes the decorations at Yusef Abad Synagogue in northern Tehran.

Overall, the official position of the religious minorities falls in line with the tenets espoused by the intellectuals of the Islamic Revolution during the erosion of the Imperial period. The religious minorities that receive official protection are considered to be the recipients of the divine message handed down by God to his prophets. Mentions of religious minorities in official documents are largely meant to paint a sanitized image of an Islamic regime which has successfully incorporated all its citizens, regardless of religion. The relationship between the Islamic regime and its religious minorities is guided by a strict ontological demarcation, which is meant to affirm the moral and intellectual superiority  of Shi’a Islam over all other religions, in spite of some attempts to incorporate other philosophical and intellectual perspectives into Iranian political life (Abrahamian 188). 

In conclusion, the system of government established in the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1979 is based on the exclusion of the religious minorities from political life. And while the Islamic Republic of Iran nominally protects the rights of religious minorities, it also imposes significant restrictions on their mobility within Iranian society, particularly when it comes to their participation in the various echelons of governance and their ability to criticize the status quo. The Islamic Revolution emphasizes the rights of the community over the rights of the individual, in clear contrast from the tenets of Western democracy. This ultimately entails the firm prioritization and privileging of the Shi’a majority by appealing to religious, nationalist and populist themes (Abrahamian 143). Moreover, the intellectual framework set out by scholars such as Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Morteza Mutahhari and Ali Shariati paved the way for the implementation of a guiding “Twelver Islam” redemptionist philosophy in government, necessitating the subjugation of minorities to create an environment guided by jurisprudence in anticipation of the Mahdi. Therefore, in spite of a rhetoric based on freedom and equality, the Islamic Republic of Iran tends to connect the presence of religious minorities to heresy, corruption of Islam, rebellion against the regime, and inhibition of the ever-continuous Revolution.

 The anonymous author is a Persian Jewish student from Los Angeles.

Works Cited

Abrahamian, Ervand. A History of Modern Iran. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Ahmad, Jal-al Al. Occidentosis: a Plague from the West. Tehran: Islam International Publications, 1984.

Amanat, Abbas. Iran: A Modern History. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2017. Constitution of the Islamic Republic of Iran (1979) – Retrieved from www.servat.unibe.ch/icl/ir00000_.html on November 4, 2019.

Cohler-Esses, Larry. “What PBS got right-- and so wrong-- about the Jews of Iran.” The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, December 4, 2018. https://www.jta.org/2018/12/04/culture/pbs-got-right-wrong-jews-iran

Dabashi, Hamid. Theology of Discontent: The Ideological Foundation of the Islamic Revolution in Iran. London: Transaction Publishers, 2005.

Gerecht, Reuel Marc, and Ray Takeyh. “Iran's Holocaust Denial Is Part of a Malevolent Strategy.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 27 May 2016, www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/irans-holocaust-denial-is-part-of-a-malevolent- strategy/2016/05/27/312cbc48-2374-11e6-aa84-42391ba52c91_story.html.

Haaretz. “Builder of Wrecked Tehran Tower: Iranian Jewish Businessman Executed in '79 as 'Zionist Spy'.” Haaretz.com, 15 Jan. 2018, www.haaretz.com/middle-east- news/builder-of-wrecked-tehran-tower-iranian-jewish-businessman-executed-as- zionist-spy-1.5487806.

Khomeini, Ruhollah. Islamic Government-Governance of the Jurist. London: Alhoda Press, 2017.

McHugo, John. A Concise History of Sunnis and Shi'is. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2018.

Mutahhari, Morteza. Jihad The Holy War of Islam and Its Legitimacy in the Quran, Teheran: Islamic Propagation Organization, 1988. https://www.al-islam.org

Mutahhari. Morteza. Islam and Iran: A Historical Study of Mutual Services, Teheran: Islamic Propagation Organization, 1986. https://www.al-islam.org

Shariati, Ali. Reflections of Humanity. http://www.iranchamber.com/personalities/ ashariati/works/reflections_of_humanity.php

Shariati, Ali. Red Shi'ism (the religion of martyrdom) vs. Black Shi'ism (the religion of mourning). http://www.iranchamber.com/personalities/ashariati/works/ red_black_shiism.php

Sternfeld, Lior. The Revolution's Forgotten Sons and Daughters: The Jewish Community in Tehran during the 1979 Revolution. Iranian Studies, Vol 47, no. 6, 2014. 857-869.

Sternfled, Lior. “Iranian Revolution: Unintended Consequences.” Tablet Magazine, 15 Jan. 2019, www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/278343/unintended- consequences.

[100witches]

49- Calypso/ Tia Dalma

49- Calypso (Greek Mythology). Tia Dalma (Naomie Harris, Pirates of the Caribbean).

The daughter of the Titan, Atlas, and Oceanid nymph, Pleione, Calypso is a sea nymph from Greek Mythology. Best known for her appearance in the Odyssey, Calypso trapped Odysseus on her island Ogygia for seven years. With her name etymologically meaning “to hide” and “to deceive”, Calypso fits the role of mystical women who are feared for concealing knowledge from and manipulating men. Calypso received a radical transformation in modern popular cinema, changing from a sea nymph to a magnificent personification of the ocean and feminine strength.  

Like Circe (#92), Calypso was responsible for delaying Odysseus on his return home to his beloved wife, Penelope. Calypso and Circe are often conflated, as each are magical women who appear in the Odyssey and overpower the tragic hero with their magic. Calypso seduces Odysseus through her singing, in much the way that a Siren would. She is often described as sitting by her loom, moving her shuttle back and forth, hypnotizing and bewitching the unsuspecting man in an attempt to force him into an eternal marriage. Eventually, Odysseus breaks free from her enchantments and wants to leave to return home. With actual divine intervention, Calypso concedes, and after giving Odysseus supplies for his journey, sends him on his way.

Fast forward from the Odyssey to the 2006 release of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, and Calypso is radically altered. What she was doing for those thousands of years I can only imagine, but by the time we see her cinematic portrayal in the modern era she has become fully realized as a powerful female archetype. She has shed her past as a side nymph of Greek legend and has become a great Sea Goddess. In the modern telling of her tale, she has again fallen in love with another sea-faring fool, this time the infamous Davy Jones. As the personification of oceanic divinity, Calypso entrusts Jones with the souls of those who have been lost at sea. I’ll spare you the love story, but eventually Jones betrays Calypso and instructs the Pirate Lords how to bind the Goddess to her human form. Through a misuse of this intimate knowledge, Jones tries to contain and control the wild Sea, and by extension, her divine feminine power.

Calypso’s human form is that of Tia Dalma, a truly remarkable character unique to the Pirates of the Caribbean mythology. As a Goddess incarnate, Tia Dalma is imprisoned. She practices an amalgamated and Hollywood-skewed spirituality of voodoo and Obeah magic. She’s flirtatious and remains associated with the seduction and persuasion of men. As a soothsayer and enchantress, she tries to make the most of a bad situation. Her distant past as Calypso has been largely forgotten. Now the great Ocean herself has been reduced to a sea witch who lives in the swamps. In many ways reminiscent of other swamp women like Jenny Greenteeth (#94), Tia Dalma is a shadow of her former self. While certainly still an enigmatic and powerful figure (who lives in one of the coolest residences ever), she is incomplete.

Tia Dalma represents the entombment and marginalization of the divine feminine. She has been betrayed by a man, and like many women before and after her, has been forced into a lesser role by the patriarchy and power structures existent in the world. She has been sent to the margins of the world, and while once free to roam the oceans, is now confined to pirate-ridden outskirts. Her culminating scene in the Pirates franchise, when she is released from her human captivity and regains her full power and strength as a Sea Goddess, mimics the latent power that resides in all witches and women. Tia Dalma grows to immense size and extreme power, breaking free from the chains which were suppressing and oppressing her.

The transformation from the Greek sea nymph Calypso of The Odyssey into the Sea Goddess and Caribbean sorceress Tia Dalma illustrates a vital shift in the collective portrayal and understanding of witchcraft and magic. Tia Dalma represents the intersection of various marginalized groups— women of color, women in power, witches, etc. She is one of the few witches of color listed in this project, due to a lack of representation of black witches in popular culture and throughout history. Certain traditions of witchcraft, like Calypso, may be largely portrayed as white in origin, but that is an anachronism. Through figures like Tia Dalma we are confronted with the whitewashing of magic and witchcraft, and are challenged to change our perceptions of what qualifies as witchcraft and by extension a witch herself. The sheer power that emanates off of Tia Dalma is truly incredible, reminding us to recall our inner divinity and set free the great goddess inside.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tia_Dalma https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calypso_(mythology)

[diarrheaworldstarhiphop]

Twenty-five years ago, in the February, 1994 issue of The Atlantic , I published a decidedly unAmerican cover story: unAmerican in that it was pessimistic, deterministic, and, most importantly, declared that the victory of the United States in the recently concluded Cold War would be not so much short-lived as irrelevant, because of various natural, demographic and cultural forces underway in the world that would overwhelm America’s classically liberal vision. It eschewed the debate over ideals that have traditionally been the fare of intellectual journals and newspaper opinion pages. Moreover, because of the unrestrained optimism of the era—globalization in the 1990s was being employed as a freshly conceived buzzword—the pessimism of my essay was deeply alienating, if not abhorrent, to many. The title that the editors chose said it all: “The Coming Anarchy: How Scarcity, Crime, Overpopulation, Tribalism, and Disease Are Destroying the Social Fabric of the Planet.” They turned “The Coming Anarchy” into “the most xeroxed article of the decade,” in the words of Lester Brown, president of the Worldwatch Institute.

My aim was to expose the illusion of knowledge where none actually existed among elites. At fancy conferences and in the major media of the era people spoke breezily about how democracy would soon be overtaking the world, without knowing firsthand what the world they were talking about was really like, especially in developing countries beyond the luxury hotels, government ministries and protected residential enclaves. To counter this trend, I visited the slums of cities in West Africa and Turkey, comparing the culture of poverty in the two regions, and drawing conclusions. What I said was provocative, or at least deemed to be by complacent champions of globalization.

I claimed that in an increasingly claustrophobic world made smaller by technology and the spread of disease, the most obscure places in Africa could eventually become central to the future of the West; that Africa, rather than be placed on a protective pedestal and treated exclusively on its own terms, should be legitimately compared in vivid cultural and developmental detail to other parts of the world.

Finally, I emphasized how political and social interactions, including war, would be increasingly subject to the natural environment, which I labeled “the national-security issue” of the twenty-first century. Whereas the opinion pages of the time, both liberal and conservative, were obsessed with the clashing ideas shaping the post–Cold War world, I zoomed in on how the increasing lack of underground water and the increasing lack of nutrients in overused soils would, in indirect ways, inflame already existent ethnic, religious and tribal divides. And this factor, merged with an ever-growing number of young males in the most economically and politically fragile societies, would amplify the chances of extremism and violent conflict. Natural forces were at work that would intensify political instability: if not necessarily everywhere, then certainly in the world’s least governable parts. The most benighted parts of West Africa were a microcosm, albeit in exaggerated form, of turmoil to come around the globe.

This all ran counter to the paradigm celebrated at the time by Stanford University’s Francis Fukuyama in The End of History and the Last Man . Fukuyama suggested—in profound and riveting form—that the triumph of liberal democracy in the Cold War indicated a thematic conclusion to the story of civilization, since no other system would ever make human beings as personally fulfilled. Democracy’s triumph, while certainly not assured, was nevertheless likely to succeed. This was agreeable to global elites whose own lives fixated on personal achievement and fulfillment. But it was an extremely American- and Euro-centric vision, taking insufficient account of what was going on beyond the West. And it did not comport with what I was witnessing in Africa, the Middle East and Asia.

Critics said that my dark vision was demoralizing. But I was merely following the dictum of the late Harvard professor Samuel P. Huntington, who said that the job of a scholar or observer is not necessarily to improve the world, but to say bluntly what he or she thought was actually going on in it. To do that meant focusing on matters that would be inappropriate to raise at a polite dinner party—that would elicit an embarrassed silence among the guests. For I have always believed that the future often lies inside the silences, inside the things few want to discuss.

And I would say something further.

When it comes to making predictions, a journalist like myself cannot know the specific, short-term future: whether a country will have a coup or not within the next week. That depends on the Shakespearian dynamics between vital political actors and key intelligence that even the best spy agencies have difficulty uncovering; nor can a journalist or analyst know the situation of a country several decades hence, since so many factors, especially the advance of technology, make such a prediction mere speculation. But what a journalist or analyst can do is make the reader measurably less surprised by what happens in a given place over the middle-term future: five-years, ten-years, or fifteen-years forward, say. And that is not an original idea. Ten-year forecasts or thereabouts are the time frame utilized by many corporations in their planning exercises, as I know from my own work as a geopolitical consultant.

SO JUDGED by the standard of a middle-term future assessment, how does “The Coming Anarchy” hold up?

It begins with a detailed description of Sierra Leone and Cote d’Ivoire (the Ivory Coast) in mid-1993, with references to the general situation in West Africa during this period. This constitutes roughly the first part of my lengthy essay, and it essentially paints the bleakest of possibilities for those places, which I basically describe as countries that are so weakly governed that they are not really countries at all, but merely places with fictitious, meaningless borders on the map. Sierra Leone was in an extremely fragile political state when I visited there, and Cote d’Ivoire, though imperceptibly deteriorating, was then still seen in the West—according to the cliché—as an African success story. Articles in major world newspapers through the second half of the 1990s painted an optimistic picture for the prospects of these places as fledgling democracies. In particular, the 1996 elections in Sierra Leone drew favorable press notices, declaring that West Africa was showing the way for the future of the continent.

But my point in “The Coming Anarchy” and a related Atlantic cover story titled “Was Democracy Just a Moment?” in the December 1997 issue, was that elections by themselves didn’t matter nearly as much as the building of modern bureaucratic institutions. And West African countries had developed virtually none. That made me pessimistic. In 1999, half a decade after my essay was published, Sierra Leone had descended into utter anarchy, with drug-crazed teenagers hacking the limbs off more than a thousand civilians in the capital of Freetown alone and killing an additional several thousand, as armed groups—mobs of young men more than disciplined soldiers—terrorized the city. The number of refugees and displaced persons was well over a million, almost a quarter of the total population. (UN peacekeeping troops would be forced to remain in Sierra Leone until 2005.) During the same time-frame, a coup rocked Cote d’Ivoire, and the country descended into a period of civil war and chaotic, geographically based political fractures lasting a full decade until 2011. War in Liberia continued through 2003, and Nigeria never arrested its decline as a coherent, centrally governed state. Over the past few years, Sierra Leone and Cote d’Ivoire have gradually gained a modicum of stability, even as political violence, tribalism and crime continue to rear their heads. In 2013–2016, Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea experienced a major Ebola outbreak. Of course, further afield in the Middle East, the chaotic meltdowns of Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen following either American-led interventions or the rigors of the Arab Spring indicated that beneath the carapaces of tyranny in those places lay complete institutional voids, comparable to what I had found in West Africa.

In Turkey in mid-1993 I also found slums, but of a completely different sort. There was poverty, but no crime or social dissolution. As I wrote in another lengthy part of “The Coming Anarchy:”

Slums are litmus tests for innate cultural strengths and weaknesses. Those peoples whose cultures can harbor extensive slum life without decomposing will be, relatively speaking, the future’s winners. Those whose cultures cannot will be the future’s victims. Slums—in the sociological sense—do not exist in Turkish cities. The mortar between people and family groups is stronger here than in Africa. Resurgent Islam and Turkic cultural identity have produced a civilization with natural muscle tone. Turks, history’s perennial nomads, take disruption in stride.

My take was that Turkish geopolitical power would grow in coordination with a rising Islamic identity. At the time, Turkey had been a secular republic for sixty years already. The idea that Turkey would emerge as an Islamic power—with a religious, authoritarian firebrand in control—was not on the horizon in 1994. As I wrote then:

Islam’s very militancy makes it attractive to the downtrodden. It is the one religion that is prepared to fight. A political era driven by environmental stress, increased cultural sensitivity, unregulated urbanization, and refugee migrations is an era divinely created for the spread and intensification of Islam . . .  

Moreover, in the course of arguing how maps lie, and how legal borders would become increasingly less meaningful, I stated that the Turkish-Kurdish frontier dispute would eventually become more central to the Middle East than the Israeli-Palestinian one.

“The Coming Anarchy” also focused on how elites would increasingly come to see the natural environment, especially water shortages and soil erosion—in addition to shifts in the earth’s climate itself—as a major foreign policy concern. This was far less obvious in 1994 than it is today. Moreover, I said that future wars would be motivated by communal survival, aggravated in some cases by environmental scarcity. The Middle East’s diminishing water table would never be mentioned in reports of armed conflict, but would operate as a silent indirect factor, nonetheless.

Of course, this was very Malthusian. And few thinkers are as regularly disparaged as Thomas Robert Malthus, who in 1798 wrongly predicted that as population increased, the world would effectively run out of food supplies. However, what critics fail to note about Malthus is that merely by introducing the subject of ecosystems into discussions of contemporary political philosophy, he immeasurably enriched such discussions. Humankind may be nobler than the apes, but we are still biological. Making nature itself part of the argument when it comes to geopolitics is something we owe to Malthus.

I also referred to the work of an Israel-based military historian, Martin van Creveld, to describe a “pre-Westphalian vision of worldwide low-intensity conflict,” in which “technology will be used [by warrior bands] toward primitive ends.” This was twenty years before isis would use the video camera to publicize its beheadings of hostages. Major interstate conflicts like the two world wars were not necessarily in the offing, in my view. Rather, the future would be “bifurcated”—between populations “healthy, well fed, and pampered by technology”—and therefore decidedly optimistic about the human condition; and others condemned to low-level violence and instability in many parts of the globe from which I had reported in the 1980s and early 1990s.

There were also a number of things that I got quite wrong. In particular, I drew too close a link between dissolution in the developing world and instability in the United States and the West. The American political system may now be in trouble, but it is for reasons—like the impact of video and digital technology on politics and society—that have little to do with the factors that I discussed then. Finally, though in almost all cases I wrote specifically about “West Africa” in the essay, it was quite understandable that people would conflate “West Africa” with “Africa” as a whole. But that was wrong. For example, whereas what happened in Sierra Leone and Cote d’Ivoire was a consequence of the virtual absence of institutions and authority, the genocide in Rwanda was unconnected to Hobbesian chaos. In fact, Rwanda was the opposite of West Africa. With a tightly organized political and security apparatus, which perpetrated a crime with a distinctive modernist and systematized aura, Rwanda represented the evil possible under a strong state. Indeed, race was an ideological weapon in Rwanda, as it had been in Nazi Germany; in West Africa ideology simply did not exist.

UNSURPRISINGLY, “THE Coming Anarchy” suffered the same fate as other essays and books that have become famous: they are alternately praised and criticized for the wrong reasons. Whenever the headlines are especially dreary anywhere for whatever cause, “The Coming Anarchy” is periodically invoked. Conversely, whenever something good happens, especially in Africa, “The Coming Anarchy” is periodically disparaged. What happened five years, ten years and fifteen years later in the specific places I wrote about has now been forgotten; so too have the details of the essay itself, and thus all that remains is a vague, general impression. For as news cycles become more vivid and intense, they also become more quickly erased from memory, as fresh images replace old ones. Wait long enough and a news cycle will come around that will prove any big idea either wrong or right, depending on the circumstances. Fukuyama’s essay has suffered a similar fate: his nuanced, brilliantly argued thesis has been reduced to a bumper sticker. The truth is, “The Coming Anarchy” accurately captured the beginning of an arc of dissolution and upheaval in significant regions of the world that may now be completed and is thus transforming itself into something new.

Nearly a decade ago, in my book Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power , I wrote about a whole new cycle of economic development that was just starting to characterize significant tracts of sub-Saharan Africa, especially East Africa, which I included in an emerging Indian Ocean prosperity sphere. In fact, it is becoming more and more superficial to think of Africa as Africa. Globalization is producing more identifiable regions: as the Persian Gulf, India and China have been able to invest increasingly more money in East Africa; as southern Africa attempts to garner more Western investment following the end of the disastrous reign of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe and that of Jacob Zuma in South Africa; as the West African sub-region of Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia continue to struggle following decades of real and incipient anarchy; and as the vast, often-densely forested tracts of the continent’s interior—far from any coastline and thus less effected by globalization and the outside world—remain trapped in ethnic-tribal disputes and overwhelming underdevelopment, from the Central African Republic and South Sudan clear through the whole of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Modernism has been especially cruel to both West Africa and the wider African interior, where ethnic, tribal and linguistic boundaries “crisscross and overlap, without the neat delineations so much beloved by Western statesmen since the treaties of Westphalia,” observes the French Africa scholar, Gerard Prunier. Here, he says, borders work best as “porous membranes” that are not set in the “cast-iron” lines favored by Western imperialists. “The Coming Anarchy” happened to describe West Africa at a moment when traditional culture was still being shredded by modernism and by modernism’s false boundaries, but before new political and societal forms could take hold.

Yet evolution is inexorable. Technology in particular is not so much defeating geography as shrinking it. This means the geopolitical world is becoming smaller, that much more claustrophobic, and consequently more nervous, with the fate of the West increasingly tied to that of Africa and other places. While Europe’s indigenous population stagnates, Africa’s population could grow from one billion to as much as four billion by the end of the century—and that is even with declining rates of population growth. Nigeria, whose population stands at 200 million, could reach 750 million by then, with concomitant erosion of agricultural soil. Thus, an era of migration from south-to-north may be only just beginning. This at a time, when, as experts suggest, the combined effects of automation, artificial intelligence and so-called 3d printing could make Western companies far less dependent on cheap labor in poor countries, further destabilizing them. Though middle classes are emerging in a number of African countries, that will only empower more people to vote with their feet and migrate. Peasantries rooted in place are far more politically stable than newly literate and empowered masses with rising expectations.

Don’t think even for a moment that economic development, where it does happen, will assuage political upheaval in Africa or anywhere else. In fact, it will only lead to great upheavals of a different kind. As Huntington wrote in his most important book, Political Order in Changing Societies, social and economic change in the developing world creates demands for new institutions and drastic reform of institutions that already do exist, leading to ever more sophisticated forms of political turmoil. An increasingly interconnected world, beset by vast technological change and absolute rises in population in the poorest countries, simply cannot be at peace. This means that I may have been wrong about downplaying major interstate wars as I did, especially given the hardening of military power in authoritarian states like China and Russia. Tumultuous change, both positive and negative—some of it violent and greatly so—must occur. For there will be no night watchman to preserve world order (and the established hierarchies upon which order depends). Of course, that is the very definition of anarchy, as intimated by the late Columbia University political scientist Kenneth Waltz. My vision—then and now—of vast geopolitical disruption is not ultimately pessimistic, but merely historical. n

Robert D. Kaplan is the author most recently of  The Return of Marco Polo’s World: War, Strategy, and American Interests in the Twenty-first Century . He is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a senior adviser at Eurasia Group.

[grimoiresontape]

Collyries: Cosmetics and Magical Gazing

This is a blog post about 'collyries', which I don't feel terribly bad about referring to as early modern magical cosmetics. I have frequent misgivings when Cool-Trying Historians attempt to excite interest in their topic by drawing clunky comparisons to some modern phenomenon ("hey fellow kids did you know books were, like, the iPads of medieval monastries?!") but, the thing is, these sorcerous 'confections' are fully designed to adorn the visage and literally empower and amplify the magic which comes out of faces. Gazing. Ensorcelling words. Enchanting breath. The evil eye. The look of love.

"Magical make-up" seems especially fair when we consider the mythic origins of cosmetics. In the Apocryphal Enochic materials, a particular fallen angel of the Grigori – the Watchers – is named as the explicit teacher of the violent and deceptive secrets of both weapons and cosmetics.

"And Azazel taught men to make swords and knives and shields and breastplates; and made known to them the metals [of the earth] and the art of working them; and bracelets and ornaments; and the use of antimony and the beautifying of the eyelids; and all kinds of costly stones and all colouring tinctures. And there arose much godlessness, and they committed fornication, and they were led astray and became corrupt in all their ways." [Book of Enoch 8:1–3a]

This tutelary patron, Azazel, is blamed fairly extensively by the Enochic God: ‘The whole earth has been corrupted through the works that were taught by Azazel: to him ascribe all sin.’ [Book of Enoch 2:8] Quite the reference for a curriculum vitae there.

So, 'collyries': a word describing magical preparations applied to the face, most typically the eyes. Thus, when Renaissance occult philosopher Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa warns of the power of sorcerous 'bindings', he offers some initial context for how these salves, pastes, and powders were considered:

'Now there are such kind of bindings as these made by Sorceries, Collyries, Unguents, love potions, by binding to, and hanging up of things, by rings, by charmes, by strong imaginations, and passions, by images, and characters, by inchantments, and imprecations, by lights, by sound, by numbers, by words, and names, invocations, sacrifices, by swearing, conjuring, consecrations, devotions, and by divers superstitions, and observations, and such like.'

Practically speaking, these collyries could come in the form of salves or washes. I am going to draw a line - however arbitrary - between the magic of beautifying or buffing oneself with compounds, and using these specialised magical preparations to imbue a 'magical expression' with greater potency. The former are employed to enchant oneself, whereas the latter I would argue enchant what one is throwing out, from evil side-eye to come hither glances. For instance, beyond this disclaimer, we will not consider the use of belladonna eye-drops - to widen the pupils and thus beautify the 'good lady' using them - despite these arguably being collyries, because they do not help with the "launching outwards" of a particular magical working, as much as they do glamour oneself. Likewise, the term 'collyrium' is sometimes used in medical herbalism to denote health-giving eye-washes and salves. I would also qualify these uses as internal 'buffs' like beautifying cosmetics. Now, this internal/external definitional divine falls apart in practice, I accept. If one is intending to stir the passions of lust in someone at a bar, we have two modes of looking: what we look like and how we look at them. For now though, if only for an artificial simplicity's sake (and brevity), I am going to concentrate on the latter. To reiterate for the herbalists: collyries can of course be employed to bolster health or affect one's physickal constituency, but for now we will content ourselves to consider those used to affect magical expression, especially gazing.

So how did such sorcerous eyeshadows and lipsticks work? In order to answer this we need to take a foray into understanding one of the underlying medical, occult, and cosmological models of the pre-modern magic: humoural theory.

But What Even Are A Humourals Theory Humoural theory formed the central operative European medical model for (at least) one and a half millennia, surviving from ancient Greece well into the early modern period. It was simply one of the most historically embedded, best regarded and most widely used medical models in the early modern period. It charted typologies of personality and behavioural proclivities of emotional expression, and indeed emotional experience. As Nogah Arikha puts it, ‘humoural theory explained most things about a person’s character, psychology, medical history, tastes, appearance, and behaviour.’ [Nogah Arikha, Passions and Tempers: A History of the Humours (New York: Harper Collins, 2007), xvii] It is proper to consider humoural theory as a magical principle concerning the organisation of the organic naturally magical cosmos, for the humours were considered the biological corollaries of the four classical elements.

Humoural theory posited substances (literally, ‘moistures’) that ‘controlled the whole existence and behaviour of mankind, and, according to the manner in which they were combined, determined the character of the individual.’ [Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky, and Fritz Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion, and Art (Nendeln: Kraus reprint, 1979), p. 3] Moreover, they linked humans and their environment in that they ‘corresponded, it was held, to the cosmic elements and to the divisions of time’. [Klibansky, Panofsky, and Saxl, p. 3] These cosmic elements, these 'originall grounds of all corporeall things' are of course understood by an occult natural philosophy of what Agrippa calls 'elementated world'. [Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy (London, 1651), 8] These classical four elements were corresponded to the humours: choleric Fire, sanguine Air, phlegmatic Water, and melancholy Earth.

As a brief but important note, the sanguine humour was often called 'blood', but the term could be used to refer to the actual sanguine humour, to the gross carrier liquid of all humours (which is why phlebotomy was thought to void all deleterious humours not just the sanguine ones). Sanguinity could even on occasion refer to 'subtle' sanguine vapours or aerial spirits in the body. Crucially also 'seed' (both male and female) and breastmilk were considered forms of rarified blood. Semen, especially, ‘as Galen had explained, was concocted out of blood’’[ Arikha, p. 164-5. For more on seed and blood, see Lesel Dawson, Lovesickness and Gender in Early Modern English Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), p. 25-6, 85-6, 165-6, 209] This resulted in a further level of association ‘that those that are of a sanguine Complexion, are generally very Amorous’. [James Ferrand, Erotomania or A Treatise Discoursing of the Essence, Causes, Symptomes, Prognosticks, and Cure of Love or Erotique Melancholy (Oxford, 1640), p. 141] There is a rule-of-thumb that dictates that, in a way, prior to the wider acceptance and application of Paracelsian ideas about the organs, that all medical pathology was the study of malfunctioning or 'wounded' blood.

Humoural theory worked with connections between physiological and psychological affectivity in an incorporated and ensouled mind-body subject. It offered discourses for the distempers of the passions to be just as important to physical as to mental health. After all, at least potentially, ‘passions distemper the body, loose the spirits, ingender the humors, and produce diseases’ - moreover, ‘inordinate passion, is [itself] a most sharpe and violent disease: always dangerous and deadly…’ [M.I. Abernethy, A Christian and Heavenly Treatise: containing Physicke for the Soule (London, 1622), p. 264] This was no mere complaint about hysteria:  'the idea that heightened passion causes diseases and even death was common wisdom.’ [Michael MacDonald, Mystical Bedlam: Madness, Anxiety, and Healing in Seventeenth Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), p. 181.]

The elements and their humours were apprehended by occult philosophers and astrologers (when those even were distinct personages!) through the elemental 'Triplicities': the four elementally-based groupings of the twelve signs of the zodiac, as when we refer to Aries, Leo and Sagittarius as 'Fire signs'. This created a greater degree of specificity of the elements and humours as apprehended in time, as when the Sun passed through these as the belt of zodiac revolved over the course of a year. What was time after all, mused Proclus (and, crucially, quoted Agrippa), but the movement of the celestial bodies? The wandering stars of the seven classical planets were also afforded elemental and humoural identities and associations, adding to the nuance of astrological diagnosis of humoural imbalances, and indeed to the range of astrological magical interventions, to either down- or up-regulate the humours of oneself or others, to balance or imbalance.

Such planetary humouralism and humoural planetary magic survives fossilised in idiomatic and figurative language to this day: we speak of people as saturnine, or mercurial, or having a sunny disposition, or even of lunacy itself. Such humoural theory did not simply set stringent "personality types", it articulated proclivities to particular experience and expression of passions. As one seventeenth-century passion theorist phrased the relationship, 'Passions ingender Humors, and Humors breed Passions'. [Thomas Wright, The Passions of the Minde in Generall (London, 1601), p. 64.] Such was the passional-humoural feedback loop of expression and habituation: a hot-headed angry Martial person not only lived in an angry world, but made themselves more likely to become angrier more easily. As we shall see, by the porous or "leaky" early modern self, such a choleric feedback might even extend its influence through and beyond the body, breath and speech of the angry person to begin to innervate and galvanise the natural choler of 'elementated world' around them. The angry person makes their world angrier. A stray furious look here, a bitter word there. Ripples in the imaginal fields of affect and contagion.

Express Your Bad Self The power of the humours - like other occult virtues - could be stirred, gathered, directed and deployed through words and signifying representational images, even images conjured and fixated in the imagination. This was most easily performed with humours and passions by being somewhat predicated on concepts of plethora (excess): from ‘the common Proverbe, ex adundantia cordis os loquitur, from the abundance of the heart, the tongue speaketh’. [Wright, Passions, p. 78-79] One could not help venting humours and passions when one expressed oneself. This welling tide of humours motivates us to speak up or pull a face at all. Indeed, the ex-pressive as well as behavioural affectivity of the passions was founded on the notion of the impassioned ensouled mind-body complex producing and being subject to inordinate unbalancing excesses. Impassioned and passionate, one simply had to get the words out.

Facial expressions, and especially the eyes, were some of the primary means to read and diagnose impassioned states. Yet this very readability also made them an excellent means of transferring passions. The seductive glance conveys a magical image as potentially powerful as any Venusian talisman of a maid holding a comb and mirror. Not only was this because ‘the countenance is the Image of the same’ passion prompting and enacted by it, but due to the origins of affections in the soul; for ‘by the eyes as by a window, you may looke euen into the secret corners of the Soule: so that it was well sayde of Alexander that the eyes are the mirror or Looking-glasse of the Soule.’ [Helkiah Crooke, Mikrocosmographia: A Description of the Body of Man Together with the Controversies Thereto Belonging (London, 1615), p. 8-9] The eyes did not merely convey meaning, but affectivity: the signifier was also the signified. An angry look carried an affective seed of anger itself. Thus a magnifying glass could also be a mirror, and this sense of reflection has a deep occult significance, as the ‘Looking-glasse’ looked both ways. As ‘the Eyes wonder at a thing, they loue it, they desire it; they are the bewrayers of loue, anger, rage, mercie, reuenge: in a worde; The eyes are fitted and composed to all the affections of the minde; expressing the very Image thereof in such a manner’. [Crooke, Mikrocosmographia, p. 9. Emphasis added.] Again, “expression” was a literal as well as figurative term. To think of expressions in both behavioural and idiomatic light, malefic choleric expressions and their dangerous martial qualities are preserved in much modern idiom: the sharp tongue, bitter words, cutting remarks, seeing red, staring daggers.

Gaze Amplifiers A particular expression while gazing was not the only way to augment magically affective ‘overlooking’. The clearest example is that of ‘Collyries', magical salves to smear upon the eyes to magnify the effects of fascination. Here is Heinrich Agrippa on their potencies:

‘Collyries, and Unguents conveying the vertues of things Naturall, and Celestiall to our spirit, can multiply, transmute, transfigure and transform it accordingly, as also transpose those vertues which are in them into it, that so it cannot act only upon its own body, but also upon that which is neer it, and affect that by visible rayes charmes, and by touching it, with some like quality. For because our spirit is the subtile, pure lucid, airy, and unctuous vapour of the blood; it is therefore fit to make Collyries of the like vapours, which are more sutable to our spirit in substance, for then by reason of their likeness, they do the more stir up, attract, and transform the spirit. The like virtues have certain ointments and other confections.’ [Agrippa, Three Books of the Occult Philosophy, trans. 'JF' (London, 1651), p. 90]

Such 'Collyries' would be made from ‘the gall of a man’, which was the main depository of yellow bile, and thus powerful for strengthening choleric gazes. Consider the very phrase "having the gall": filling with fiery boldness. Such collyries could also be compounded from animal ingredients, such as ‘the blood of a lapwing, of a bat, and of a goat’. [Agrippa, Three Books, p. 134] These animal components were considered sources of appropriate occult virtue. One reason for this consideration was the idea that humours and passions were regulated by the rational faculties of the human soul, faculties that animals lacked. So the beasts of the earth were considered to express and even, in their use as spell components, enmatter unadulterated humours and passions. Raw feelings, to be marshalled and manipulated. Wolf parts were choleric, as their howling indicated. Cats were melancholy... as their howling also indicated. For more on this fascinating dimension to Shakespearean witches' brews, see Gail Kern Paster's 'Melancholy Cats, Lugged Bears, and Early Modern Cosmology: Reading Shakespeare's Psychological Materialism Across the Species Barrier', in Reading the Early Modern Emotions, edited by Paster, Katherine Rowe, and Mary Floyd-Wilson.

Now, I hope I do not need to state the importance of knowing the chemical and biological as well as magical affectivity of any materials you might chose to use in this manner. I do not wish to speak down to anyone by stating "do not rub random blood into your peepers". But, yknow, maybe don't. There are a wealth of herbs and other ingredients that contain the appropriate occult virtues to work as collyries that won't cause other problems. Consider adapting planetary correspondences for plant allies you already work: choleric humours respond to Solar and Martial virtues; phlegmatic humours to those of Venus and the Moon; jovial Jupiter is considered especially sanguine; and Saturn is well known as the ruler of melancholy. Again, to disclaim, I must strongly advice that if you are pregnant or might be pregnant, do not attempt any working, magical or medicinal, where you are taking herbs or other substances internally or through a mucous membrane like the eyes.

By these means of compounding humourally and passionally-charged materia, the humours expelled through the eyes and the passions expressed, vivified, and received were empowered and amplified by the virtues of these salves and eye-washes: for ‘such like passions also can magical confections induce, by suffumigations, by collyries, by unguents, by potions, by poisons, by lamps and lights, by looking-glasses, by images, enchantments, charms, sounds and music’. [Agrippa, Three Books, p. 135] Such magical eye-washes were not some half-baked tacked-on gimmick; they were as core a part of magical tool use as lamps, images, and incantations.

Yet amplifying the ejection of a sort of astral poison out of one's eyes was not the only use of such preparations. Agrippa goes onto to foreground the importance of sight and vision in terms of the all-too-real magic of the imagination:

'Now the sight, because it perceives more purely and clearly than the other senses, and fastening in us the marks of things more acutely and deeply, doth most of all and before others, agree with the phantastic spirit, as is apparent in dreams, when things seen do more often present themselves to us than things heard, or any thing coming under the other senses. Therefore, when collyries or eye-waters transform visual spirits, that spirit doth easily affect the imagination, which indeed being affected with divers species and forms, transmits the same by the spirit unto the outward sense of sight; by which occasion there is caused in it a perception of such species and forms in that manner, as if it were moved by external objects, that there seem to be seen terrible images and spirits and such like. So there are made collyries, making us forthwith to see the images of spirits in the air or elsewhere...' [Agrippa, Three Books, p. 134]

There is also a strong dimension by which collyries affected the imagination. For ‘when collyries transform visual spirits, that spirit doth easily affect the imagination’ either of oneself – in order to ‘make invocated spirits to be seen’ – or of others, in order to manipulate their senses and passions. (Those interested in magical preparations for seeing spirits might find this blog post compiling grimoiric instructions for such material useful.) These perceptual distortions of the magical gaze upon the overlooked’s imaginations could induce targets to ‘hear horrid, or delectable sounds’ making them ‘angry, and contend, nobody being present, and fear where there is no fear’. [Agrippa, Three Books, p. 134-5] Here occult passion manipulation is working directly on the imagination, through the inducement of impassioned hallucinatory states.

Lest this talk of imagination sound "too psychologising", we should bear in mind Agrippa is also clear that 'by divers rites, observations, ceremonies, religions and superstitions; all which shall be handled in their places. And not only by these kind of arts are passions, apparitions and images induced, but also things themselves, which are really changed and transfigured into divers forms...' The field-like qualities of the pre-modern magical imagination did not mean "it's all in your head". Rather, that something moving through your head (and heart!) - the tides of choleric boldness and anger, phlegmatic fear and hope, sanguine love and lust, and melancholy cogitation - flowed through us, into and out of the world, reminding and reanimating 'elementated' components of the responsive interconnected cosmos of their own natural magic. Nature itself could also be charmed, in this continually unfolding dance of attraction and rebuffing; the inhale and exhale of sympathia and antipathy expressing itself through the actions of a dancefloor or cast shade, variously as majestic and cutting as the turning celestial orbs spinning to the music of the spheres.

[x--daughters-of-darkness--x]

DOROTHY Announces 'Gifts From The Holy Ghost' Album Details

DOROTHY, the band led by Hungarian-born vocalist/writer Dorothy Martin, will release a new album, "Gifts From The Holy Ghost", on April 22 via Roc Nation. She has also shared her anthemic new track "Black Sheep" — an homage to her fans and a rallying cry for unity: "we are blood, we are family," Dorothy breaks curses, going toe-to-toe with the blistering guitar riffs.

"Gifts From The Holy Ghost" was born from a sense of divine urgency, it is her most bombastic and gloriously, victorious rock and roll work yet. Each song built on triumph—the album is a healing and remedial experience, made to unify listeners and point them towards a life full of purpose.

Martin's life changed forever when she was forced to face death on her tour bus some three years ago. After her guitar technician had taken an overdose, Dorothy instinctively began praying for his survival. While he may have temporarily died, the technician was astonishingly, miraculously restored back to life. It was this moment that seemed to bring Dorothy to life too. It was this divine intervention that caused a radical and spiritual awakening in the singer, the result of which can be heard on "Gifts From The Holy Ghost", Dorothy's third studio album as front person for DOROTHY.

While the band's first, irreverently named album "Rockisdead", was made on a combination of whiskey and heartbreak — inspiring Rolling Stone to name them one of rock's most exciting new acts, and Jay-Z to sign them to his label Roc Nation — "Gifts" was built on recovery, health, and holiness, in a way that reverses the clichéd ‘good girl gone bad narrative'.

With the combined powers of Keith Wallen, Jason Hook, Scott Stevens, Phil X, Trevor Lukather, Joel Hamilton and the legendary ear of producer Chris Lord Alge, "Gifts From The Holy Ghost" is made from a musical palette which seems to encompass each of the musician's influences, as well as many of the essential sounds of rock music's history — from swampy blues to '90s alternative — in a way that makes the case for rock and roll itself. Not only is the genre alive, but it's more invigorated than ever.

Dorothy has always been an instinctual writer and artist. Throughout her life, she's been asking the big questions, both in and outside her art: "What's the meaning of life? Why are we here? How are we here?" When she couldn't find the answers to those questions, she'd numb out the empty uncertainty with drugs and alcohol. She was eventually admitted to rehab and a new chapter was opened in her spiritual journey.

The album's lyrics are a perfect balance of specificity and generality, so that the listener can attach their own darknesses and triumphs to the songs, while still getting a sense of Dorothy's own. "We are all one human family." she declares.

With "Gifts From The Holy Ghost", Dorothy identifies her purpose as an artist. She conquers darkness with light, numbness with feeling, disharmony with unity — all while delivering one of this year's most fun rock and roll records.

"Black Sheep" follows the album's monumental lead single "Rest In Peace" which pushed DOROTHY into Top 20 at Active Rock Radio charts this month and garnered over four million streams worldwide.

DOROTHY kicked off an extensive 40-date U.S. tour in her hometown of San Diego on Monday and continues southbound this week before heading up the East Coast.

"Gifts From The Holy Ghost" track listing:

01. Beautiful Life 02. By Guns 03. Rest In Peace 04. Top Of The World 05. Hurricane 06. Close To Me Always 07. Black Sheep 08. Touched By Fire 09. Made To Die 10. Gifts From the Holy Ghost

[scotianostra]

On April 16th 1117 Earl Magnus of Orkney, later St Magnus, is betayed and murdered by his cousin Håkon on the island of Egilsay in Orkney.

This is a great wee story, most of it gleaned from OrkneyJar, dates differ on other sites and I will post a link at the end going through the alternatives.

Orkney was ruled for most of its history by Norway. It occupied a crucial position off the north coast of Scotland for the Norwegian ships that harried England, Ireland and Wales and indeed Scotland, from the 9th to the 12th Centuries.

Hakon and Magnus grew up in Orkney. Their fathers, brothers Paul and Erlend, were joint Earls of Orkney: each ruling half of the islands. It was a period of peace and prosperity. Hakon developed into a proud fighter and warrior. Magnus preferred books to fighting and turned to the church for his strength.

Upon the death of their fathers, the Earldom passed to Sigurd, the son of King Magnus of Norway. During this time Hakon accompanied the King on various expeditions down the west coast of of the British Isles and lived up to his reputation as a fierce and fearless warrior.

Magnus joined the king on one expedition – a raiding expedition down the west coast of Scotland, travelling as far south as Angelsey. He refused to fight against English noblemen with whom he said he had no quarrel. (Some version say they were Welsh)

Rather than join battle, he sang psalms and prayed. He was no coward, but did not believe in fighting for its own sake. The king’s wrath was incurred so Magnus escaped from the King’s ship one night and swam to shore of Scotland where he had to disappear for several years until the old King was dead.

When the old king died, Sigurd succeeded to the Norwegian throne and Hakon was given the Earldom of Orkney.

Hakon ruled alone for a while, until Magnus arrived from Scotland and claimed possession of his patrimony, with the blessing of the new King. Hakon initially refused to give up any of Orkney, but as the local noblemen wouldn’t fight Magnus, he had to cede half of the islands. They ruled as their fathers had done.

Hakon and Magnus ruled Orkney in harmony for seven years; defending their Earldom from invaders and marauders with success. They appeared to have had a good understanding and Orkney flourished under their joint rule.

It seems that Magnus was the more popular of the cousins. The Orkneyinga Saga tells of a blameless life, a wise man, eloquent, strong-minded, magnanimous, and more beloved than any other man. He was generous to the deserving but severe with robbers and raiders. He punished rich and poor impartially for wrong-doing. His justice was fair and consistent. To cap it all, he was God-fearing. He married a Scots girl and lived with her for ten years without touching her, to honour a bond between him and God. When he was tempted to break his bond, he plunged into a tub of freezing water and prayed for divine guidance.

Hakon became increasingly jealous of Magnus’ popularity, fuelled at least in part by men of evil dispositions, Sigurd and Sighwat Sokki, who spread inflammatory rumours in the courts of both Earls. It resulted in Hakon and Magnus both taking troops to the regular meeting of Orkney noblemen on the Mainland. Battle was only averted by the intervention of noblemen who, as friends of both earls, managed to broker a truce.

To seal the bond of their reconciliation and continued cooperation, Hakon and Magnus arranged to meet on the island of Egilsay. They agreed to take only two ships each and few men. Magnus stuck to this arrangement and was on the island, praying, when Hakon arrived with eight ships and men armed to the teeth. His intent was clear.

It is recorded that Magnus had no concern for his own life, but wanted to save his cousin from the consequences of a shocking crime. He offered to leave on pilgrimage, never to return to Orkney. Hakon refused. He offered to submit to imprisonment in Scotland. Hakon refused. Finally he said “Let me be maimed as you like, or deprived of my eyes, and throw me into a dark dungeon”. Hakon was set to accept this offer, but his noblemen objected, saying that one or other of the Earls had to die that day. Hakon replied he would rather rule than die. Magnus’ fate was sealed.

In one more twist to the story, Hakon ordered his standard bearer to kill Magnus. He refused, knowing that the killer of such a popular man would be an outcast in Orkney. It was to his cook, Lifolf, that Hakon turned, knowing that he would not dare refuse the order. As Lifolf wept, Magnus prayed for him, forgave him, then prayed for the souls of his enemies, Earl Hakon included. Lifolf took up his axe and brought it down on Magnus’ forehead.

The place where Earl Magnus was slain had been rocks and moss, but after his death, grass grew strongly, indicating to the saga-writer that it was the death of a holy and righteous man. Hakon permitted the body to be buried in the church on the Brough of Birsay, which had been built by their Grandfather, Thorfinn. Soon after the burial a holy light was seen above the church and the sick were cured when they prayed at the grave. Pilgrimages started from all over Orkney.

Earl Hakon took over the rule of all of Orkney and extracted huge fines from those who had been loyal to Magnus. After a while, he made a pilgrimage to Rome and perhaps he saw the error of his ways, because against all the odds, he returned to Orkney to become a just and popular ruler, much lamented when he died, many years later.

The cult of Magnus spread well beyond Orkney’s shores. He died on April 16th 1117 and that day is kept as the day of his martyrdom. In the 12th Century saints could be chosen by popular acclaim; the canonisation process did not need a process at Rome. By 1136 he was a saint, authorised by the Bishop of Orkney. In 1137 the building of St Magnus Cathedral, which stands in the centre of Kirkwall today, was started by Earl Rognvald, Magnus’ nephew. It was erected with the express purpose of receiving the relics of St Magnus, which were transferred there when it was ready for use.

There was no firm evidence that the bones of St Magnus really did reside in St Magnus Cathedral until 1919, when extensive cathedral renovation was going on. Some loose stones were removed from a pillar, with the intention of re-mortaring them. Within a cavity behind these stones there was a box containing most of a human skeleton. The state of the skull conformed with the story in the sagas about St Magnus’ death wound to the head. St Magnus’ relics had been found. They were replaced and the stones fixed back in place.

A couple of links here the first is regarding a reconstruction of his face, fascinating stuff! http://www.bbc.co.uk/…/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetla…

The second link explains the dates of his murderhttp://www.orkneyjar.com/history/stmagnus/magnus6.htm