#effective method really

[kuravix-art]

Director Haoling answered a question about what the boys would do if the other was having a nightmare, it's so funny

[eggtomatosoup]

How do you pick colors for the gore rendering? I'm mesmerized withe the vibrant yet mildly sickly tone of colors you use, that along with the paint marker way of shading is amazing, I love it

thanks!! admittedly I've been meaning to do more studies and such bc I'm missing out on a lot of things imo but here's my lazy guy method where I put varying reds down regardless of lighting....

i generally go between dark reds and lighter pinks/oranges, and then have some "blue(grey or just Less Red Reds" and green/yellow. green and red are just fun to work with so I think a lot of my drawings have that. Pinks and greys can be fun too so I'm trying to do more w those..... bleh. I'm very much not an expert at drawing or anatomy so. You know how it is. Here's a picture i tried to explain with a while ago

[serpentface]

SPIRITUAL POLLUTION, THE GESTURES AGAINST EVIL, AND ABLUTION: A POST

The concepts of spiritual purity and pollution are central to the Faith of the Seven Faced God (and similar takes on the concept predate it throughout and beyond the immediate Wardi cultural sphere). There is no clean cut distinction between physical and spiritual health in this belief system (these concepts exist as a heavily overlapping venn diagram) and many methods intended to cleanse spiritual pollution address both realms.

The word for the concept referred to as spiritual pollution is 'mesechitse', which can translate to 'blockage' or 'severance' depending on the context (its underlying meaning is a pathway that has been stopped in some capacity).

At its core, spiritual pollution is a corruption of the living spirit (which is carried by/IS the blood). It causes both physical and spiritual problems. Polluted blood flows improperly and does not maintain the body’s natural stasis or integrity, causing or allowing disease or other bodily dysfunctions to occur. Many ailments are seen as wholly physical and internal in nature, occurring directly due to polluted blood flowing improperly and affecting key organs. Other diseases (particularly contagious or infectious disease) are known to be caused by dagi, which are harmful spirits that enter the body through orifices or wounds. A limited number of ailments (most notably pronounced schizophrenia-spectrum disorders or cognitive disabilities, unfortunately) are thought to be caused by possession by more powerful evil spirits.

At its worst, severe spiritual pollution is thought to impact or sever one's connection to God. Summarized very basically, severe pollution = blockage of flow between one's own living spirit and the greater spirit of God, which deprives a person of God's blessings and protection, severs them from the natural cycling of life and death (and prevents their necessary participation) and can put their afterlife in jeopardy.

Some degree of corruption to the living spirit is seen as completely inevitable and managed by the body, which physically expels some polluting agents via urine and feces, as well as menstruation (thus all of these substances are themselves dirty and polluting agents). It is reckoned as impossible for any living body to exist in a Completely spiritually pure state. The goal of cleansing (and broader practices revolving around spiritual integrity) is rather to maintain stasis of the body's natural cycling (and by extension a connection to God's living spirit) and to keep pollution contained and minimized.

If one's immortal soul successfully reaches the afterlife, it is then reborn into a spiritually pure existence incapable of being 'severed' from God in any capacity. God Itself is a spiritually pure being, but Its body and living spirit (the world and its cycles, manifested as Faces) is vulnerable. The purity of God's living spirit (and therefore the life-sustaining functions of the world that all beings depend upon) must be sustained, protected, and restored through right practice, which is what much what the public religion revolves around.

Spiritual pollution is a separate but overlapping concept with:

-Metaphysical vulnerability, the word for which is 'namne couyibase' (literally ‘lacking integrity of Being’). This is a state in which the body and living spirit is considered vulnerable to great change, for good or for bad. These states can have vital and positive uses (they are utilized in many rituals, and it is what allows for conception and birth), but must be entered with caution and intentionality. Uncontrolled namne couyibase can otherwise leave one open to forms of spiritual harm. -Curses, which are targeted infliction of harm (of all sorts- bad luck, evil spirits, etc) onto a person, place, or thing. A spiritually polluted body is has less resistance to curses, and curses can intensify this pollution. -Possession, which is when evil spirits attach themselves to or inhabit the body. In the vast majority of cases, possession does not mean an evil spirit is Controlling the body, merely harming it. A spiritually polluted body has less resistance to possession, and possession can intensify this pollution. -Ritual uncleanliness, which is a state of intensified spiritual pollution that requires complete prohibition from a person from entering sacred spaces or participating in certain rituals until they are made clean. The most common reasons for ritual uncleanliness are active menstruation, being in the mourning period, or having performed a known dirtying action without its required ablution (see below).

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Multiple levels of religious-medical practice are centered around maintaining the body's stasis and cleansing it of mesechitse whenever possible. The methods are both active and passive.

Passive methods include the wearing of protective objects/amulets or having the motifs on household items or as decoration (the most ubiquitous are charms like the pelatoche (lit: '(ocean) eye') or odatochent (lit. 'Gods eyes'), the skimmer woman, or phalluses, and the wearing of gull feathers), in addition to other beneficial/protective iconography (guardian lions are most common, though physical representations of each Face of God have beneficial functions).

Active methods cover a broad swath of rites and behaviors (which is even broader in non-doctrinal folk practices). I'll be focusing here on the two main everyday methods of protection/cleansing (rather than more specialized rites) that are supported by core doctrine and may be performed by anyone, rather than being restricted to priests.

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Gestures against evil

These are the absolute most basic protection methods, comprised of three core gestures.

Purity of intent: the hand is held with the palm facing upward, the pointer and pinky finger extended and the thumb and inner two fingers pressed together. This is the most directly ‘cleansing’ gesture, it attempts to bind uncleanliness within the body and thus to prevent inevitable background level spiritual pollution from the body infecting a pure environment or another person. You mostly perform this gesture while entering/leaving a protected or vulnerable space (literal or figurative).

Protection of spirit: the hand is held with the first two fingers pointed together, held upwards for generalized use or pointed for directed use. This is the simplest of apotropaic gestures, aiming to protect the body and spirit from outside harm. This is commonly used before or while entering contexts seen as physically and/or spiritually dangerous, or to un-aggressively counter an evil eye curse.

Dispelling of evil: The hand is held with the first two fingers pointing together, touched to the lips, and flicked away from the body. In practice, this is most commonly used to prevent attachment by malicious or otherwise harmful spirits that may have been evoked (you might perform this after you speak of someone believed to be an earthbound ghost or refer to an evil spirit directly, or immediately after touching a potentially contagious sick person (ideally followed by ablution)). This will not help you if evil spirits have fully Attached themselves to you, but can remove ones that have been attracted to you. Doing this gesture and flicking in the direction of another person is very rude.

These gestures have separate uses, but will often be performed in conjunction (usually in the order given) as a quick means of protecting oneself and the spaces around them. It is not considered a doctrinal replacement for ablution as it does not actually cleanse the spirit, but it attempts to reduce harm (both sustained and produced by the user).

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Ablutions:

Ablution is spiritually and physically cleansing the body with clean water. The metric for clean water is fairly expansive- ocean water, any flowing water, any clear lake, shallow water sources that are clear and free of (obvious) polluting elements such as animal corpses or unclean animal feces, any clear collected water.

The core requirement of an ablution is for the hands to be cleaned in all circumstances, and for other body parts to be cleansed in addition if the situation requires it. One must fully wet the hands/other affected areas and scrub thoroughly, and then use fresh water to rinse. If you have to clean other parts of your body, you save your hands for last (as they will be used for the cleaning).

It is appropriate to perform ablutions cooperatively, but the person assisting you should participate as well (ie- if you have someone washing your back, they should scrub and rinse their own hands after). Someone considered to be in a ritually unclean state that ablution will not immediately fix (the most common are actively menstruating or being in the midst of the mourning period) should not perform ablutions on others.

Note that there is no Hard distinction between bathing for spiritual cleanliness and bathing for physical cleanliness (there is a separate set of cultural standards for physical hygiene, but most hygiene expectations are Covered by ablution). In most circumstances, ablution is just a regular, sometimes tedious everyday activity rather than a solemn or special occasion.

The ritualized requirements denote that only the hands + any given affected body parts Must be washed, but ablutions will often be an aspect of a full-body bathing routine to meet other hygiene standards. (ie: someone performing ablution before making offerings or eating a meal is only Required to wash their hands, but will very often wash their whole bodies and clean their hair- offerings and a meal are (typically) daily activities, so this is a good time to just get a full bath in while you’re at it). It may additionally involve washing the skin with oil or soap, moisturizing the hair with oil, scraping away dead skin, and applying perfumes. This is not a ritual requirement and is performed because generally, people like to feel clean and smell nice.

The hard physicality of cleansing WITH WATER is KEY to this practice. Per core doctrine, there are no DIY cleansing methods that replace washing with water. If one does not have access to clean water for ablutions, they should not perform offerings whatsoever (but are allowed to pray) until they can be cleansed, and accept that they are receiving spiritual pollution by performing ablution-required tasks in the meantime. A blessing from a priest is the only doctrine-supported spiritually cleansing replacement for water ablutions. In practice many people will use the gestures against evil as a replacement (which is not supported by doctrine and is more common in folk religious practice), and virtually everyone will find ways to get physical contaminants off of their body either way (if you step in dog shit and don't have any water nearby, you're going to wipe it the hell off even if that doesn't make you ritually clean).

Times when such an ablution is generally considered a hard requirement:

Before bloodletting in prayer or making other offerings

Before meals

Before assisting in a birth

After menstruation ends

After receiving penetrative sex

After defecating

After urinating (this isn't as ubiquitously seen as a hard requirement, in a lot of cases people interpret it as 'only if you actually get pee on your hands')

After touching urine

After touching feces (many lines of thought make exceptions for the excrement of cattle and khait due to their clean and sacred status- this makes life a easier for the majority of people who have to use dry dung as fuel)

After touching a dead body (human or animal)

At the end of your mourning period for dead kin (traditionally as part of a larger ritual involving full body submergence in flowing water, rather than as a common ablution)

After touching someone else's blood (aside from rites that require it, in which the blood is expected to be clean and the cross-pollution of living spirit is intentional) (technically includes semen but this does not come up very often)

After touching most sick people (particularly with contagious diseases or any skin ailments)

After recovering from an illness (ablutions will be performed as an aspect of treatment as well)

Before entering most temple's inner shrines (and some temples altogether)

Also a requirement for participation in certain specific rites and/or festivals

The exact nuances on how hard these requirements are sometimes vary, particularly in instances revolving around touch. Official doctrine is that any unclean touch requires ablution, but in common practice this is sometimes reinterpreted as only a hard requirement when the touch occurs to the hands. Most practitioners do not perform an ablution immediately after an unclean touch occurs (if you're a field laborer and step in dung, you're probably going to wait to wash until you retire for the night), and not everyone performs ablutions every single time they 'should'.

Only drawing I have related to ablution under the cut (nudity)

This is one way to do it

[fisheito]

Fish Yakumo is canon. Magical girls event is shining on the horizon. Kuyorb. We are free

the complete confusion on my saggedskin dehydrated face as i rouse from my impromptu hibernation and everyon'es talking about orbs

[gingermintpepper]

I was reading the Orphic Argonautica last night and the author has mentioned the various methods of divination Apollo knows and guess what? One of them is prophesying by studying the entrails of organisms. As soon as I read that I was reminded of your headcanon of Apollo being into hepatoscopy for divination and I giggled.

Awww 😳😳It's so nice of you to think of me!

Hehe, so fun fact, the overall practice of divination by studying the entrails of animals (including blood, lungs, intestines and so forth) is extispicy while hepatoscopy is specifically using the liver in prophecy and divination readings.

If, like magic in old text exactly like the sort Medea is described as using, the types of divination spoken about in the texts are reflections of the popular divination cultures of the time, I much rather prefer ascribing those to Apollo than I do some vague, somewhat mysterious power which he uses to see the will of the fates, especially since it's mentioned a few times that he'll teach his sons the language of the birds and how to read their signs and so on and so forth.

In short: HEPATOSCOPY APOLLO IS COOL!! HE'S SO NEAT!! Apollo at the altar who predicts the coming droughts and famines from the entrails of his flock!! It's just such a neat little image (to me)!

Also the Orphic Argonautica bangs, genuinely I hope you enjoy it! Orpheus is an insane man and I do not think him along with the collective subspecies of mythical man known as 'sons of Apollo' get enough credit for how truly unhinged they are at any given point in time.

[shamebats]

Maybe I'm desperate because it's been really bad lately but I'm now considering trying to go on a second birth control method that suppresses or at least stabilizes estrogen (in addition to my hormonal IUD which doesn't do that). Just to see if it helps with my migraines. Because estrogen fluctuations are supposedly a frequent migraine trigger and the reason why women are more likely to have migraines than men.

[dkniade]

Some screenshot colour studies I did some time ago. I really like how the glow and blurs are done on Glacial Waltz

Reference screenshots and another study below

The glows and curves are beautiful

[zharizard666]

I think I never updated on my hard drive situation :')

Bad news: Everything is lost.

Good News: I dgaf I will rewrite things from scratch >:(

I have multiple projects unfinished that require my attention, but I will try to be more organized from now on so I can actually make faster progress and post quicker (literally all the things I posted are the things that got saved from that deadly format :'>).

Meaning I will put the Competent Zim Comic on the top of priorities. Once I'm done with that the Ness & Lucas Askblog follows, then Some Earthbound AMVs I also lost.

[snapcracklepop-myjoints]

local tumblr user forms parasocial relationship with random ass addict, places undue importance on their continued sobriety: more at 11

[moe-broey]

Somewhere in here I gotta fit a speech bubble BUT. Sillies...

[anarchonist]

That post about guilt and shame only being effective as deterrents but not in inspiring anyone to change their behavior in any meaningful way got me thinking about those other posts about progressive circles consisting way too much of people not with a desire to do something right but instead with a fear of doing something wrong, and...

Yeah. Those two are related. Guilt and shame are the weapons of the status quo, designed to instill in everyone with a conscience a fear of failure, of hurting others, of being a bad person. And it's pretty fucked up when people are being shamed for that, since, well, shame doesn't inspire any meaningful change. So the problem persists, deepens, even. Since by shaming someone for not getting over that shame, you've now discouraged them from thinking about that instilled shame and maybe finding a solution.

It's shame and guilt all the way down. Perhaps shame and guilt could be used against people who tend to shame and guilt others in order to shame and guilt them out of shaming and guilting others? I don't know. And that's a true shame.

[t3rm1n0s]

Fishtober #1 - Catfish!

Thought I'd have some fun and draw some fish people for this! Don't know how consistent I'll be but I'm certainly enjoying it <3

[zivqa]

something i think about constantly is how earthborn Shepard was literally canonically a gangster and then ended up in the military. with Anderson as a father figure no less. like. There is sooooo much potential there it drives me insane.

[answrs]

"oh no, what horrible Take™ is getting dragged for filth on my dashboard this time? this mutual usually skips those, must be pretty serious and/or hilarious then."

*clicks*

"ah, nevermind. just a generic shitpost with a dumbfuck tagging it. on your way, then."

[TO BE CLEAR: THE OP TAGGED THE OG POST THAT WAY, NOT MUTUAL]

[starlit-roses-ships]

changed my theme in order to cope with not being able to play the game Zayne is from anymore for now🥲 (and bc I’m fixated on Pic.colo)

[sealer-of-wenkamui]

LimDan is the easiest pairing to make sure it makes sense cause he’s so over the top evil and sadistic and their whole relationship is him wanting to hurt her so so badly so it’s like. Would he do this horrific act of physical/sexual violence? And the answer is always hahah yeah. (The one thing I don’t think he’d do is wipe her memory though, cause they can’t make her suffer as much if she lacks that and her interlude was specifically about him restoring a single precious memory to her so he could more effectively devastate her)