#lord Henry mystic

[just-some-guy-joust]

Just Some Guy Joust - Contestants List

Note: This is NOT the order of the brackets. Like with the last tournament, the order of the brackets will be a surprise. This list was randomized from the brackets I set up and does not represent who each character will be up against. The only thing you know for sure which side of the bracket they're on. When the polls go up, they'll be posted in order based on the list here, NOT based on where their brackets actually are!

Round 1 of Side A is over! Round 1 of Side B is CURRENTLY UP!

(Full list of characters in text format is under the cut)

Side A

Sasha James (The Magnus Archives)

Reigen Arataka (Mob Psycho 100) - died round 1

Joy (Underworld Office/Charlie in Underworld) - died round 1

Junpei (Zero Escape)

Horse (Centaurworld)

Phone Guy (FNAF) - died round 1

Gordon Freeman (HLVRAI)

Joshua Gillespie (The Magnus Archives) - died round 1

Namari (Dungeon Meshi)

Shez (Fire Emblem: Three Hopes) - died round 1

Henry Stickmin (Henry Stickmin)

Stanley (The Stanley Parable)

Whole (Chonny Jash's Charming Chaos Compendium) - died round 1

Larry (Pokemon)

Luke Carder (Inscryption) - died round 1

Leorio Paladiknight (Hunter x Hunter) - died round 1

Barry the Quokka (The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog)

Tommy (HLVRAI) - died round 1

Ulala Serizawa (Persona 2: Eternal Punishment) - died round 1

April O'Neil (TMNT - All versions)

Tsuzuru Minagi (Act! Addict! Actors!) - died round 1

Matt (Woe.Begone)

Gilear Faeth (Fantasy High - Dimension 20)

Apollo Justice (Ace Attorney)

Emmet Brickowski (The LEGO Movie) - died round 1

Stahl (Fire Emblem: Awakening)

Doug Eiffel (Wolf 359) - died round 1

Jack Townsend (Tales from the Gas Station) - died round 1

Frisk (Undertale) - died round 1

Brian Pasternack (Yuppie Psycho)

Trevor Hills (American Arcadia)

Barry Bluejeans (The Adventure Zone: Balance) - died round 1

Side B

Carol Kohl (Carol and The End of The World)

Jaehee Kang (Mystic Messenger) - died round 1

Paul Matthews (The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals)

Emma Perkins (The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals) - died round 1

Su Moting (God Troubles Me) - died round 1

Satou Hiroshi (Disastrous Life of Saiki K.)

Chilchuck Tims (Dungeon Meshi) - died round 1

Michelle Nguyen (Welcome to Night Vale)

Tad Strange (Gravity Falls)

Colin Robinson (What We Do in the Shadows) - died round 1

The Bard (Wandersong)

Usopp (One Piece) - died round 1

Nick Carraway (The Great Gatsby)

Link (Ocarina of Time) - died round 1

Kazooie (In a Manor of Speaking) - died round 1

Connecticut Clark (FlorkofCows)

Samwise Gamgee (Lord of the Rings)

Hitomi Shizuki (Madoka Magica)

Junpei Iori (Persona 3)

Han Solo (Star Wars) - died round 1

Tomoya Mashiro (Ensemble Stars!) - died round 1

Peter Sqloint (Just Roll With It: Apotheosis)

Cabbage Merchant (Avatar: The Last Airbender)

Marta Cabrera (Knives Out) - died round 1

Greg Universe (Steven Universe)

Yuuki Mishima (Persona 5) - died round 1

Gingerbrave (Cookie Run) - died round 1

Arthur Dent (Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy) - died round 1

Elsen (OFF)

Mob (Mob Psycho 100)

Tadano Hitohito (Komi Can't Communicate) - died round 1

Rung (Transformers - IDW Continuity) - died round 1

[will80sbyers]

Do you still have the list of movies that inspired ST4? I had a picture of it but I lost it and I haven't been able to find it since. Please and thank you in advance.

Yep!

Long post warning lol

300

2001: A Space Odyssey

47 Meters Down: Uncaged

12 Monkeys

28 Days Later

13th Warrior

Ace Ventura: Pet Detective

Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls

Altered States

Amelie

American Sniper

Analyze This

Annihilation

Aristocats

Armageddon

Assassins Creed

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Arrival

Almost Famous

Batman Begins

Batman V. Superman

Basket Case

Battle at Big Rock

Beauty and the Beast

Beetlejuice

Behind Enemy Lines

Beverly Hills Cop

Bill and Ted’s Bogus Journey

Billy Madison

Black Cauldron

Black Swan

Boondock Saints

Borat

Bram Stoker’s Dracula

Burn After Reading

Broken Arrow

Blade Runner

C.H.U.D

Con Air

Cast Away

Congo

Constantine

Children of Men

Cabin in the Woods

Crank

Casablanca

Carrie

Crimson Tide

Clueless

Dukes of Hazzard

Don’t Breathe

Death to Smoochy

Doom

Dark Knight

Dogma

Deep Blue Sea

Dreamcatcher

Drop Dead Fred

Die Hard

Die Hard 2

Die Hard 3

Don’s Plum

Dances with Wolves

Dumb and Dumber

Edward Scissorhands

Enter the Void

Ex Machina

Event Horizon

Emma (2020)

Forrest Gump

Fargo

Fisher King

Full Metal Jacket

Ferris Bueller

Fallen

Fugitive

Ghost

Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Ghostbusters

Good Fellas

Girl Interrupted

Godzilla: King of the Monsters

Get Out

Good Will Hunting

Hackers

High Fidelity

Hellraiser 1

Hellraiser 2

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

Hidden

High School Musical

Hurt Locker

Heat

Hunger Games

Highlander

Hell or High Water

Home Alone

I am Legend

It’s a Wonderful Life

In Cold Blood

Inception

I am a Fugitive from Chain Gang

Inside Out

Island of Doctor Moreau

It Follows

Interview with a Vampire

Inner Space

Into the Spiderverse

Independence Day

Jupiter Ascending

John Carter of Mars

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

James Bond (All Movies)

Julie

Karate Kid

Knives Out

Kingsmen

Little Miss Sunshine

Labyrinth

Long Kiss Goodnight

Lost Boys

Leon: The Professional

Let the Right One In

Little Women (1994)

Mad Max: Fury Road

Magnolia

Men in Black

Mimic

Matrix

Misery

My Cousin Vinny

Mystic River

Minority Report

Mr. and Mrs. Smith

Neverending Story

Never Been Kissed

No Country for Old Men

Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors

North by Northwest

Open Water

Orange County

Oceans 8

Oceans 11

Oceans 12

One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Ordinary People

Paddington 2

Platoon

Pulp Fiction

Papillon

Pan’s Labyrinth

Pineapple Express

Peter Pan

Princess Bride

Paradise Lost

Primal Fear

Prisoners

Peter Jackson’s King Kong

Reservoir Dogs

Ravenous

Rushmore

Road Warrior

Rogue One

Reality Bites

Raider of the Lost Ark

Red Dragon

Robocop

Shooter

Sky High

Swingers

Sword in the Stone

Step Up 2

Spy Kids

Saving Private Ryan

Shape of Water

Swept Away

Star Wars: Return of the Jedi

Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

Superbad

Society

Swordfish

Stoker

Splice

Silence of the Lambs

Source Code

Sicario

Se7en

Starship Troopers

Scrooged

Splash

Silver Bullet

Speed

The Visit

The Italian Job

The Mask of Zorro

True Lies

The Blair Witch Project

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy

Tangled

The Craft

The Guest

The Devil’s Advocate

The Graduate

The Prestige

The Rock

Titanic

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

The Fly

Tombstone

The Mummy

The Guardian

The Goofy Movie

The Peanut Butter Solution

Toy Story 4

The Ring

The Crazies

The Mist

The Revenant

The Perfect Storm

The Shining

Terminator 2

The Truman Show

Temple of Doom

The Cell

To Kill a Mockingbird

Timeline

The Good Son

The Orphan

The Birdcage

The Green Mile

The Raid

The Cider House Rules

The Lighthouse

The Book of Henry

The A-Team

The Crow

The Terminal

Thor Ragnarok

Twister

The Descent

The Birds

Total Recall

The Natural

The Fifth Element

True Romance

Terminator: Dark Fate

The Hobbit Trilogy

Unforgiven

Unbreakable

Unleashed

Very Bad Things

Wayne’s World

What Women Want

War Dogs

Wedding Crashers

What’s Eating Gilbert Grape

Welcome to the Dollhouse

Welcome to Marwen

Wet Hot American Summer

What Lies Beneath

What Dreams May Come

War Games

Who Framed Roger Rabbit

Weird Science

Willow

Wizard of Oz

Wanted

Young Sherlock Holmes

You’ve Got Mail

Zodiac

Zoolander

[majestativa]

Your blog is a treasure. Can you recommend your all-time favorite poets or collections?

Some poetry tends to get a bad wrap, but the quotes you share are typically soul-stirring. What separates the heights from the so-so to you? Authenticity? Imagery?

Thank you endlessly, love.

When I imagine a life without poetry, I suffocate. I choose to live this way, surrounding myself with the finest written words so as to momentarily forget this wastelandish state of existence or deeply ponder on the nature of human sensibility.

I only select what electrifies my soul. I need meaning to “function,” so I dig for it in places that are often unknown & less exposed.

Here are 20 distinguished ladies & gentlemen that helped me grow as a human being:

Juana de Ibarbourou: Umbral. One of my favorite muses along with Dora Maar & Kiki de Montparnasse. Her cursed sensuality, her aura, her platinum bones, her sorcerous wounds; everything about her is regal.

Florbela Espanca: My beloved. A masterpiece of a woman.

Nazik Al-Malaika: I stumbled upon her verses when I was a child. I fell in love with her name. Nazik means ‘delicate’ whereas Al Malaika refers to ‘Angels.’ We crossed paths several years later, and by inhaling her mourning, I was reborn full of light.

Edith Södergran: Who can paint the face of tragedy and starvation with blooming roses and glittering blood but a dreamy Cinderella who carries Medusa’s heart?

Forough Farrokhzad: Reading her is like being caressed by God. Her audacity to live is contagious.

Joyce Mansour: Half a sorceress, half a banshee. Behind her volcanic writings hides an eternally wounded child.

Hilda Hilszt: She x-rays people’s souls with the dexterity of a madwoman.

Ingeborg Bachmann: An angel with rough femininity, caught in the storm of Celan’s roses.

Gioconda Belli: When eroticism meets refinement. A soft Lilith; a fierce Eve.

Anna Akhmatova: “Gabriel or Mephistopheles? The Demon himself with Tamara’s smile.” Writing is indeed prophetic. She’s at once Tamara, Gabriel & Mephistopheles.

~

Hafez of Shiraz: The man who introduced me to mysticism. One of my personal archangels of poetry.

Rainer Maria Rilke: When genius meets simplicity. Eros incarnate.

Vladimir Mayakovsky: He’s the twin-soul of my soul. Discovering him in 2012 was the best thing that happened to me that year.

Arseny Tarkovsky: We both burn at the feast and still don’t know why we broke ourselves.

Henri Barbusse: He made me weep when I least expected it.

Maurice Rollinat: My eternally haunted dark Romantic. (If Poe & Baudelaire had a wild child.)

Rubén Dario: A majestic regal encyclopedic entity. He's surreal. ♥

Vicente Aleixandre: His book “Longing for the Light” was a revelation to me.

Edmond Jabès: An equally tormented complex soul. A magician of words.

Yone Noguchi: “Oh Lord, is it the reflection of my heart on fire? Is it, my Lord, the rain carrying tragedy from the Heavens?” What else can I say? ♥

Honorable mentions: Simin Behbahani, Liliana Ursu, Joumana Haddad, Georgina Herrera, Valzhyna Mort, Olga Broumas, Francesca Lia Block, Guadalupe Amor, Charles Baudelaire, Fernando Pessoa, Badr Shakir al-Sayyab, Mihai Eminescu, Miguel Hernandez, Sohrab Sepehri, Novalis, Augusto dos Anjos, Friedrich Hölderlin, César Vallejo, Sully Prudhomme & the entire Surrealist gang.

Concerning my poetry books’ recommendations, I’d like to know your themes of interest. I’ll pick them accordingly.

Much love. ♥

[dreamsandstars24]

my ACOTAR fancast- Inner circle

CASSIAN:

I think we can all agree that Can Yaman is the perfect Cassian. He looks like he could tell you "hold to the headboard" and threaten to kill you, and all you will be able to say is "thank you." He is from Turkey.

AZRIEL:

This man is BEAUTIFUL AND EXACTLY AS I PICTURED AZ. He has those airs of "I know how to make you scream" and you don't know if he means from pleasure or pain but I'll be up for both. Imagine him with shadows and wings and BANG! Azriel daddy. His name is Evans Nikolakopoulos and he from Greece.

AMREN:

I mean, yes? Jung Ho Yeon has that mystical face that for sure has that unknown power inside of her. Only problem for me is her height but it's okay! I still love her a lot and imagining her with Varian and rejecting Rhys? Dude. I'm up for her.

MORRIGAN:

I had trouble deciding on Mor because I wanted someone who was not front United States but I decided on Dove Cameron because she is beautiful and has that look of "I will challenge all of you for my freedom". Besides, its Dove Cameron. That's enough explanation.

RHYSAND:

this man doesn't need an explanation. It's Henry Cavill. That's it. Any other choice is wrong.

Now,

I wanted non- American actors because of the accent. I need my ACOTAR family to have accents. NON AMERICAN ACCENTS. Dove is Dove but she is Dove and I love her. This is my fancast.

Stay tuned for the Archeron sisters, the high Lord's, the Valkyries, the band of exiles and more!

Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.

[pinkeoni]

So I read this tweet-

And it got me thinking, so I started researching characters who have had their hair turn white. Interestingly enough, I found four examples that all come from movies that have been referenced in the show:

Diane from Poltergiest (which is mentioned by Joyce in s1) who has white hair after returning from a supernatural dimension

Nancy from A Nightmare on Elm Street who develops a white streak after a brush with Freddy Krueger (whom Vecna is described as in s4)

Ash from Evil Dead II (Jonathan has an original Evil Dead poster on his wall, also notably a zombie movie) who grows a streak after an encounter with a monster

Gandalf the White from The Lord of the Rings (references in s1 and Eddie mentions it again in s4) whose hair turns white after he is ressurected from the dead as a more powerful wizard

Some other characters from media that is not directly mentioned in the show (as it wouldn’t have come out yet) but definitely had influence over it include Henry Bowers from IT and Leland Palmer from Twin Peaks.

TV Tropes has a whole article about “Mystical White Hair,” where white hair is usually used to denote powers. Related tropes are “Powers Dye Your Hair” which is exactly what it sounds like and “Disease Bleach” which is more like some of the above examples where the white hair or streak of white is a result of something bad that happened to them.

[nyxshadowhawk]

The Red Book, Liber Primus: Part Two

I'm picking up right where I left off, so please go read Part One: https://nyxshadowhawk.tumblr.com/post/728084509673799680/the-red-book-liber-primus-part-one#notes

Soul and God

Jung says to his soul:

Who are you, child? My dreams have represented you as a child and as a maiden. I am ignorant of your mystery. Forgive me if I speak as in a dream, like a drunkard — are you God? Is God a child, a maiden?

Throughout this chapter, Jung has to grapple with unorthodox ideas of what God looks like. God as a child, let alone a maiden, is so dissonant with typical ideas of divinity in Christianity that I can’t really blame him for reeling over it. I see this as validation that God is inherently polymorphic, and can appear to different people in different ways depending on what they need to see. Jung sees God as a child or a maiden, and I see God as… well… a femboy.

Scholarliness belongs to the spirit of the time [i.e. the conscious mind], but this spirit in no way grasps the dream, since the soul is everywhere that scholarly knowledge is not.

“The soul is everywhere that scholarly knowledge is not” is a great way of putting it. I’ve had to constantly grapple with the balance between my analytical mind and my mystical mind, and since Jung was both a scientist and a mystic, I imagine he needed to do the same. The analytic mind needs everything to be backed up with primary sources and/or proven with empirical evidence, and it needs all of its arguments to be airtight. The mystical mind needs to make wild connections between unrelated things and to take symbols at face value, going more than a bit crazy in the process. The mystical and analytical parts of the mind can work in tandem, but they shouldn’t be confused with each other. If you let the mystical mind handle the analytic stuff, that’s how you get conspiracy theories. If you let the analytic mind handle the mystical stuff, it will shut them down and try to force them into a framework. Scholarship can’t reach everywhere, because some things just don’t make sense, and scholarship is also limited by the zeitgeist (i.e. what we know and how we know it, who’s in power and what their narrative is, needing things to make sense through the cultural lens).

But how can I attain the knowledge of the heart? You can attain this knowledge only by living your life to the full. You live your life fully if you also live what you have never yet lived, but have left for others to live and to think. But you should say, “The life that I could still live, I should live, and the thoughts that I could still think, I should think.” It appears as though you want to flee from yourself so as not to have to live what remains unlived until now. But you cannot flee from yourself. It is with you all the time and demands fulfillment. If you pretend to be blind and dumb to this demand, you feign being blind and deaf to yourself.

This reminds me a lot of the line spoken by Lord Henry in The Picture of Dorian Gray, “To realize one’s nature fully — that is what each of us is here for.” I’d say that this was a Jungian reference, except that Oscar Wilde was writing before Jung wrote any of this. I completely agree that before you attain any real spiritual knowledge, you must have as complete an understanding of yourself as possible. If you avoid developing this understanding of your internal world, then you won’t be really living, and you’ll feel that emptiness and lack of fulfillment that characterizes midlife crisis. And you won’t learn anything.

I had to recognize that I am only the expression and symbol of the soul. In the sense of the spirit of the depths, I am as I am in the visible world a symbol of my soul…

Again, really interesting concept — existing as a symbol of one’s soul, you existing through it instead of it through you. It’s the real thing, you’re the impression it leaves on the material world.

The spirit of the depths taught me to say, “I am the servant of a child.” Through this dictum I learn above all the most extreme humility, as what I most need.

The spirit of this time of course allowed me to believe in my reason. He let me see myself in the image of a leader with ripe thoughts. But the spirit of the depths teaches me that I am a servant, in fact the servant of a child. This dictum was repugnant to me and I hated it. But I had to recognize and accept that my soul is a child and that my God in my soul is a child.

Once again, Jung has a hard time seeing the divine in things that are small, trivial, or mundane. It’s so ridiculous to him that God should appear like a little kid, and that he should be in service to this little kid, that to admit this requires “extreme humility.”

If you are boys, your God is a woman. If you are women, your God is a boy. If you are men, your God is a maiden. The God is where you are not.

“The God is where you are not.” I love this. This suggests that there is something inherently divine about the Shadow, the inverse of whatever your conscious mind considers itself to be. Wherever you don’t build your conscious mind, God fills the empty space. It’s pretty natural for us humans to project ourselves onto God and interpret God as looking like us, hence why God is assumed to be a powerful old man in this patriarchal society. It’s quite another thing to be able to see God in something that isn’t like us, that doesn’t reflect the ideal. That’s another recurring theme.

I don’t know whether it’s always true that a man’s god is a maiden and a woman’s god is a boy, but I know that my god appears as a femboy.

The same inversion occurs with age. If you’re an old person, you have a young god, and vice-versa.

What is better, that man has life ahead of him, or that God does? I know no answer. Life; the unavoidable decides.

This is one of those utterly weird, out-of-the-box mystical ideas that are just so much fun to wonder about. The idea that god ages, that a young god belong to an old person may have more life ahead of it than the living human does, and the question of whether it is better for you to have more life or for your God to have more life. I don’t have an answer to that, either.

My God is a child, so wonder not that the spirit of this time in me is incensed to mockery and scorn. There will be no one who will laugh at me as I have laughed at myself.

Your God should not be a man of mockery, rather you yourself will be the man of mockery. You should mock yourself fand rise above this. If you have still not learned this from the old holy books, then go there, drink the blood and eat the flesh of him who was mocked and tormented for the sake of our sins, so that you totally become his nature, deny his being-apart-from-you; you should be he himself, not Christians but Christ, otherwise you will be of no use to the coming God.

You do not overcome the old teachings through doing less, but through doing more. Every step closer to my soul excites the scornful laughter of my devils, those cowardly ear-whisperers and poison-mixers. It was easy for them to laugh, since I had to do strange things.

The inner Zeitgeist, the voice of the society that Jung lives in, mocks him for his submission to a little kid. Jung feels like he is kind of immune to mockery at this point because no one can possibly mock him for this more than he mocks himself. He throws that mystical mockery into focus with this irreverent but also completely true characterization of Christianity. See, Jung gets it. He realizes that the Eucharist is, in fact, exactly what it looks like. You take God into you. You consume it. You become God. That’s the most mystical thing I’ve heard of this side of Orphism. You’re not a Christian, you are Christ himself, because you’ve partaken in Christ. Get with the program.

I don’t really blame Jung for distancing himself from mysticism throughout his career, because of the threat of mockery. Mysticism still has a stigma attached to it. Scientists don’t like it because it’s pure unadulterated crazy, and Christianity has a very weird relationship to it despite it arguably being the basis of the entire faith (see above). To be a mystic is to be isolated from and mocked by both camps. It’s easy to laugh at because, well, it’s very weird.

On the Service of the Soul

If you take a step towards your soul, you will think that you will at first miss the meaning. You will believe that you have sunk into meaninglessness, into eternal disorder. You will be right! Nothing will deliver you from disorder and meaninglessness, since this is the other half of the world.

Someone please tell Jordan Peterson that Jung says he needs to come to grips with chaos. Chaos matters because it’s half the world, so there is no “antidote” to it, no overcoming it. All you can really do is work with it.

If you marry the ordered to the chaos you produce the divine child, the supreme meaning beyond meaning and meaninglessness.

This is the Chemical Wedding, the orderly (fixed) sulfur and the chaotic (volatile) mercury producing the Philosopher’s Stone, which is an even mix of both. That volatile “dark flood of chaos” transmutes into fixed matter if you just sit with it and let it sort itself out.

I too was afraid, since we had forgotten that God is terrible. Christ taught: God is love. But you should know that love is also terrible.

Everyone has forgotten that God is terrible, and I think that’s a problem. Every time the atheists point out how evil and mean God is in the Old Testament, and how starkly this clashes with the all-loving God that Christians profess they worship, they treat it like it’s an invalidation of the entirety of Christianity. And it is, only because Christians expect everything to be internally consistent. God is, in fact, both, and that is The Point™. There’s also the fact that mystical experiences can be utterly terrifying, awesome and awful and sublime. God is scary as hell, people!

You dread the depths. It should horrify you, since the way of what is to come leads through it. You must endure the temptation of fear and doubt, and at the same time acknowledge to the bone that your fear is justified and your doubt is reasonable.

The first step of spiritual advancement is through the darkness, the chaos, the Underworld. You have to do your Shadow work first. It’s completely reasonable to be afraid of that, because it’s scary by nature, but you’ve still got to do it.

You still have to learn this, to succumb to no temptation, but to do everything of your own will, then you will be be free and beyond Christianity.

So interesting that this book contains what is essentially a road map to transcending Christianity! That’s because “the way of what is to come” involves the dark as well as the light, down as well as up, both halves of the whole. Seeing everything as good and light and “holy” all the time is just as much a temptation as the Devil in the desert. Man that’s ahead of its time!

I have had to recognize that I must submit to what I fear; yes, even more, that I must love what horrifies me.

Shadow work in a nutshell!

The slave to virtue finds the way as little as the slave to vices.

A repetition of what I said above, that divinity doesn’t mean all-goodness-all-the-time. Focusing only on the good and bright and celestial things is only half the equation and is still shooting yourself in the foot.

If you thought you were the master of your soul, become her servant. If you were her servant, become her master.

Inversion again. Whatever you think your relationship to your soul is, flip it and see what happens.

The Desert

(I’ll give you a moment to go and play the Journey soundtrack while you read this. *Opens Spotify*)

Jung’s self appears as a barren desert, because he has neglected it. This is the first time he’s ever really paid attention to his internal world. The “creative power of desire” is absent from Jung’s desert. If you’re able to focus on your internal world, and not just on “things, men, and thoughts,” you can cultivate it into a garden. (My own mindscape is a Skyrim-esque landscape that looks like green hills and pine forests surrounded by high, craggy silver mountains. It’s slowly developed into Umbragard.) Even if your mindscape is a garden, you still need things, men, and thoughts, but at least you will be their friend instead of their slave.

I turned myself away from things and men, but that is precisely how I became the secure prey of my thoughts, yes, I wholly became my thoughts.

If this is the first time you’ve ever focused on the internal world, then your thoughts will overwhelm you pretty quickly. I’ve spent a lot of time in my internal world, and I still get easily overwhelmed.

When you say that the place of the soul is not, then it is not. When you say that it is, then it is. Notice what the ancients said in images: the word is a creative act. The ancients said: in the beginning was the Word. Consider this and think upon it.

Oh boy, how do I sum this up quickly? I already had notes about this concept from another part of my Book of Shadows that I wrote long before reading this, so I’ll just post that here:

Eliphas Levi writes in Doctrine and Ritual, “To speak is to create.” To think is to exist (“I think therefore I am”), so to speak is more powerful than thought, and writing more powerful than that. This is why many gods of magic are also associated with words, both spoken and written. Hermes is the god of magic, and also of speech and of writing, which are forms of discourse — they’re an exchange of ideas, the same way goods and services are exchanged, and the same way people physically move from place to place when they travel. Hermes’ base characterization as messenger god is based around this same concept, the exchange of information between people. Thoth is self-begotten — he literally willed himself into existence. He decided that he existed, and so he did. In addition to magic, he is also the god of writing, books, record-keeping, and wisdom. Odin discovered the Norse writing system by hanging himself on the World Tree, Yggdrasil, and observing the patterns of its fallen branches. Through this act of self-sacrifice, he received the knowledge of runes. The line between speech/writing and magic is slim. This is why God created the world through “the Word,” and why many occultists believe that if you can pronounce God’s unspeakable name correctly, you can command the entire universe.

So, magic is as simple as it is difficult — you just have to state that something is so, and then accept that it is. It’s really hard to convince your mind that it’s actually possible to do that, and not a form of self-delusion that you’ll be mocked for. My gods have advised me that the easiest spell I can do to end my anxiety is “If I say everything is okay, then it is.” Not easy to convince myself of that while I’m anxious. But it really is that simple. To state that something is so is to bring it into being.

The words that oscillate between nonsense and supreme meaning are the oldest and truest.

Ain’t that the truth. Mystical experiences are somehow both complete insanity and the most profound truth there is, at the same time. That’s how you know that their messages and symbols are older than dirt.

Experiences in the Desert

Jung confronts his soul in the desert. The soul says to Jung, “Don’t you know that the way to truth stands open only to those without intentions?” This rings true for me. If you intend to get something out of a particular experience, then you’ll ignore everything that doesn’t align with the intention. What you want to learn and what you try to do is going to interfere with what you’re actually being taught or given. Intention is for magic; mysticism really requires a state of passive reception, so that you don’t overanalyze things. I have a tendency to shut down meditative visions because I’ll try to plan them out or somehow control them, and that makes them fizzle. My gods recommend that I stop trying to accomplish something specific, and ask more questions.

We tie ourselves up with intentions.

Take it from me: If you try to accomplish something, you will end up getting stuck.

The soul says to Jung, “Do you know who I am? Have you grasped me, defined me, and made me into a dead formula? Have you measured the depths of my chasms, and explored all the ways down which I am yet going to lead you?”

I love this. It implies that the soul is something inherently immeasurable, incomprehensible, and utterly unscientific. You cannot define the soul. That’s the conscious mind attempting to impose a framework onto something that’s too amorphous to really fit into one. Of course, Jung will attempt to create this framework anyway, but that doesn’t change the fact that the best way to understand the soul is to not try to understand it.

The spirit of this time considers itself extremely clever, like every such spirit of the time. But wisdom is simpleminded, not just simple. […] Only in the desert do we become aware of our terrible simplemindedness, but we are afraid of admitting it. […] We cannot save ourselves through increasing our cleverness, but through accepting what our cleverness hates most, namely simplemindedness. Yet we also do not want to be artificial fools because we have fallen into simplemindedness, rather we will be clever fools. That leads to supreme meaning. Cleverness couples itself with intention. Simplemindedness knows no intention. Cleverness conquers the world, but simplemindedness the soul.

I’m betting that this is why the protagonist of so many fairy tales is a “simpleton.” They’re a person who doesn’t overthink things, doesn’t have an agenda, doesn’t operate from a place of self-interest or distrust. Their utter lack of cynicism is what allows them to accept help from ignoble-looking supernatural beings and friendly animals. They recieve all experiences with childlike wonder. They choose the plain-looking object instead of the shiny gold one, because they don’t feel the need to impress anybody. They aren’t stupid, per se — they’re more like 0 The Fool in a tarot deck, in that their naivete prevents them from being clever, and that works out well for them.

Jung’s conscious mind keeps saying “this is stupid!” but he has to stick with it. Overcoming his scorn at himself brings him nearer to his soul, and his desert starts to become green. “Many will laugh at my foolishness. But no one will laugh more than I laughed at myself.”

Descent into Hell in the Future

Time for katabasis! You knew it was coming. No Hero’s Journey is complete without a full-on descent into the Underworld.

Do you want me to leave myself to chance, to the madness of my own darkness? Wither? Wither? You fall, and I want to fall with you, whoever you are.

The spirit of the depths opened my eyes and I caught a glimpse of the inner things, the world of my soul, the many-formed and changing.

Most of the illustrations are big, beautiful paintings in in Liber Secundus, but there’s a few small ones nestled in Liber Primus. The first one is this one of a man in white walking in the Underworld, surrounded by shadowy monsters. The man in the image is too dark-skinned to be Jung, and he has shoulder-length black hair, but is clearly meant to represent Jung. I’m not sure why Jung decided to represent himself this way. But then again, the form that I take during my active imagination also looks nothing like me, so I get it.

Jung describes a cave of black water, across which is a “luminous red stone.” I immediately thought of the lake in the cave in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, and the red stone is obviously a familiar image as well. Jung sees a severed head floating in the stream, a large black scarab, a red sun surrounded by snakes, represented in the next image:

There’s some interpretation of these images, but before we get there, Jung writes at length about one of my favorite subjects — divine madness!

These lines really struck me:

When can I order my thinking to be quiet, so that my thoughts, those unruly hounds, will crawl to my feet? How can I ever hope to hear your voice louder, to see you clearer, when all my thoughts howl? […] The fullness of my knowledge threatens to fall in on me. My knowledge was a thousand voices, an army roaring like lions; the air trembles when they speak, and I am their defenseless sacrifice. […] Let me persist in divine astonishment, so that I am ready to behold your wonders.

As a person who deals with anxiety and shame on a regular basis, I can say from experience that the voices of one’s thoughts can be overwhelming to the point of being intolerable. I’ve had fight-or-flight triggered by my thoughts alone, even when nothing bad is going on in real life (e.g. over something as non-threatening as sending emails). Likening those thoughts to an army of dangerous animals is a great metaphor. It’s also “knowledge” that Jung feels threatened by in this scene — knowledge can be helpful or powerful, but it also interferes with the ability to interpret dream-images at face value. Later in this paragraph, Jung cries for mercy from “science that clever knower” and the “serpent of judgement.” This goes back to what I was saying before about the balance between the analytic and the mystical mind. This is one context in which empirical thinking and analysis need not apply. Jung’s instincts to explain and categorize everything, to force them to make sense, and to pass judgement make the experience of katabasis even harder than it already is.

That’s where madness comes in. Madness suspends logic, judgement, and categorization. Madness forces you to allow things to not make sense. It is the state of being submerged in raw, unfiltered unconscious. Here’s what Jung has to say about it:

This is how I overcame madness. If you do not know what divine madness is, suspend judgement and wait for the fruits. But know that there is a divine madness which is nothing other than the overpowering of the spirit of this time through the spirit of the depths. Speak then of sick delusion when the spirit of the depths can no longer stay down and forces a man to speak in tongues instead of in human speech, and makes him believe that he himself is the spirit of the depths. But also speak of sick delusion when the spirit of this time does not leave a man and forces him to see only the surface, to deny the spirit of the depths and to take himself for the spirit of the times. The spirit of this time is ungodly, the spirit of the depths is ungodly, balance is godly.

[…]

Thus can you differentiate sick and divine delusion. Whoever does the one and does without the other you may call sick since he is out of balance.

That phrase “suspend judgement and wait for the fruits” means almost exactly the same thing as something Dionysus told me: “Take your sanity off like a mask, and take everything at face value as you would in a dream.” When you’re traversing the Otherworld, the way to maintain your sanity is to deliberately suspend your sanity. Attempting to overanalyze everything will drive you crazy, literally, because the Otherworld doesn’t conform to any kind of human logic. So, just accept it. If you remove your sanity, then it’ll still be there for you when you come back, instead of it getting damaged by all the nonsense that bombards you.

Jung defines madness as the Spirit of the Depths overtaking the Zeitgeist, i.e. the unconscious mind subsuming the conscious mind. He also distinguishes deliberate, mystical madness from psychiatric disorders — in the former case, one allows the Spirit of the Depths to take over, while in the latter case, the Spirit of the Depths forces itself on the person. I’ve made similar distinctions in some of my answers, like this one. Psychiatric disorders are debilitating, and prevent a person from living a normal life, while my mystical madness doesn’t last beyond my deliberate engagement with it and doesn’t interfere with my normal life. I think it’s interesting that Jung says that when a person is forcibly overtaken by the Spirit of the Depths, they think they are the Spirit of the Depths. That seems to describe all the people I’ve encountered on the internet who claim to be gods, unable to distinguish between their own fixed identities and the massive, inconsistent identities of the spirits. Sometimes it’s good to experience that (“ego death”), but you have to come back down again.

I also think it’s interesting that Jung defines possession by the Zeitgeist, denial of the unconscious mind and its contents, as a sort of mental illness. Such a person is probably the sort who allows atheism or reliance on scientific objectivity to essentially replace religion, blocking out any engagement with the irrational aspects of existence and denying that there is any healthy or productive way to engage with them. (One of the things I think Jung got right is that irrational, mystical, and weird things are an inherent and manifest part of life, and that science needs to find some way of addressing them.) The healthiest mental state is some balance between the two. There’s our running theme of reconciliation of duality.

Jung continues:

But who can withstand fear when the divine intoxication and madness comes to him? Love, soul, and God are beautiful and terrible. The ancients brought over some of the beauty of God into this world, and this world became so beautiful that it appeared to the spirit of the time to be fulfillment, and better than the bosom of the Godhead. The frightfulness and cruelty of the world lay under wraps and in the depths of our hearts. If the spirit of the depths seizes you, you will feel the cruelty and cry out in torment. The spirit of the depths is pregnant with iron, fire, and death. You are right to fear the spirit of the depths, as he is full of horror.

Divine madness is useful and productive, but it’s still madness, and therefore scary as all hell. Looking God full in the face is going to cause insanity, the question is whether it’s the permanent kind or not. God is full of beauty and wonder, but don’t assume (as the Zeitgeist does) that its unfathomable beauty is fulfillment in and of itself, because you still have to confront the abject horror of it to get the full picture. If you don’t, the Spirit of the Depths will make sure you do on its terms instead of yours, and it won’t be pretty.

Jung also says this a couple of paragraphs earlier:

To the extent that the Christianity of this time lacks madness, it lacks divine life. Take note of what the ancients taught us in images: madness is divine.

I’m definitely going to be quoting this line in future posts, because this right here is one of the big reasons I prefer Dionysus to Christ. Madness is divine, but Christianity doesn’t often leave a lot of room for madness, or magic. It categorizes everything into very rigid theology and word-for-word interpretations of the Bible, despite mysticism being at its core and a constant lurking presence throughout its history. (Someday, I promise I will write a long answer on that.) It (sometimes violently) rejects everything that doesn’t conform to its framework as heresy. If Christianity lacks its madness and mysticism, and becomes more about the frameworks of orthodoxy and politics, its spiritual core is gone. One of the running themes throughout Jung’s mystical experiences, going all the way back to his childhood, is that he has to grapple with the fact that Christianity doesn’t serve his spiritual needs. He recognizes that it is incomplete, and that it focuses on only one-half of the equation, but because of the time and place he lives in, he can’t just hop on over to Dionysus like I could. We’ll get back to this, too.

Moving on. Jung provides some interpretation of the three images he saw in the Underworld: the severed head floating in the river, the black scarab, and the red sun:

Blood shone at me from the red light of the crystal, and when I picked it up to discover its mystery, there lay the horror uncovered before me: in the depths of what is to come lay murder. The blond hero lay slain. The black beetle is the death that is necessary for renewal; and so, thereafter, a new sun glowed, the sun of the depths, full of riddles, a sun of the night. And as the rising sun of spring quickens the dead earth, so the sun of the depths quickened the dead, and thus began the terrible struggle between light and darkness. Out of that burst the powerful and ever unvanquished source of blood.

We’ll get back to the dead hero, because that gets its own chapter. The black scarab I immediately associated with the Egyptian god Khepri, who pushes the sun. Another connection I made that I’m surprised Jung didn’t explicitly spell out has to do with his drawing of the red sun — it looks exactly like an egg cell, and it’s surrounded by snakes that look like sperm, one of which is touching it. Jung interprets the snakes as the reanimated dead matter that blots out the sun, but the drawing looks like a moment of conception. A significant portion of Liber Primus focuses on the conception of the god of the new age, which is explicitly a god that reconciles dualities. Here is the conception of the God, inside the womb of the Earth. And, I’m realizing right now as I write this… Zeus conceived Zagreus with Persephone, the lady of the Underworld, in the form of a serpent… Adding on to that, Macrobius identifies Dionysus with the chthonic or dark aspect of the sun: “They observe the holy mystery in the rites by calling the sun Apollo when it is in the upper (that is, daytime) hemisphere; when it is in the lower (that is, night-time) hemisphere, it is considered Dionysus, who is Liber.” Gee, I wonder who the god of the new age is! (Obviously, I’m biased, so take what you will from this.)

It struck me that Jung’s description of the Underworld is very pagan. It doesn’t sound like a Christian depiction of Hell at all. There’s no fire, no demons, no sinners being tortured, none of Dante’s creative punishments or Lucifer and his angels plotting revenge. Instead we get rivers, the sun, a scarab beetle, and loads and loads of snakes. Jung seems to agree, because in a 1925 lecture (cited in the footnotes) he says:

The light in the cave from the crystal was, I thought, like the stone of wisdom [the philosopher’s stone]. The secret murder of the hero I could not understand at all. The beetle of course I knew to be an ancient sun symbol, and the setting sun, the luminous red disk, was archetypal. The serpents I thought might have been connected with Egyptian material. I could not then realize that it was all so archetypal.

I don’t know the details of all Jung’s theories on why he saw these specific images, but here’s my theory: The “pagan-ness” of this Underworld is a sign that it can be escaped. Hell is a place of punishment, of permanent separation from God if not literal torture. The pagan Underworld is a place of death, but death is part of a cycle, and a lot of hero stories involve some sort of katabasis or symbolic death and rebirth. This is the nigredo stage of alchemy, a critical first step of the initiation process. The Christian concept of Hell does not represent that very well. That’s just my opinion.

The next section is a commentary on how events have no inherent meaning, but that humans assign meaning to events:

The events that happen are always the same. But the creative depths of man are not always the same. Events signify nothing, they signify only in us. We create the meaning of events. The meaning is and always was artificial. We make it.

Because of this we seek in ourselves the meaning of events, so that the way of what is to come becomes apparent and our life can flow again.

That which you need comes from yourself, namely the meaning of the event. The meaning of events is not their particular meaning. This meaning exists in learned books. Events have no meaning.

The meaning of events comes from the possibility of life in this world that you create. It is the mastery of this world and the assertion of your soul in this world.

The meaning of events is the supreme meaning, that is not in events, and not in the soul, but in God standing between events and the soul, the mediator of life, the bridge and the going-across.

I like this idea of God standing “between events and the soul.” Events have no meaning, stuff just happens. Looking for meaning in the external world is pointless, so it has to be found in the internal world. In order to put to use all of the information you find in the internal world, you need to bring it outward and impress your soul upon the external world. God is the mediator that allows you to do that. God translates the language of the internal world into that of the external world, and vice-versa. That’s basically the alchemical process and/or Hero’s Journey right there — journey into the internal world, receive spiritual insight, bring it down. I’ve been struggling with that last part, but I know it’s doable.

And now, we finally get to Shadow work! I’m just going to transcribe this entire section:

Therefore I take part in that murder; the sun of the depths also shines in me after the murder has been accomplished; the thousand serpents that want to devour the sun are also in me. I myself am a murderer and murdered, sacrificer and sacrificed. The upwelling blood streams out of me.

You all have a share in the murder. In you the reborn one will come to be, and the sun of the depths will rise, and a thousand serpents will develop from your dead matter and fall on the sun to choke it. Your blood will stream forth. The peoples demonstrate this at the present time in unforgettable acts, that will be written with blood in unforgettable books for eternal memory.

But I ask you, when do men fall on their brothers with mighty weapons and bloody acts? They do such if they do not know that their brother is themselves. They themselves are sacrificers, but they mutually do the service of sacrifice. They must all sacrifice each other, since the time has not yet come when man puts the bloody knife into himself, in order to sacrifice the one he kills in his brother. But whom do people kill? They kill the noble, the brave, the heroes. They take aim at these and do not know that with these they mean themselves. They should sacrifice the hero in themselves, and because they do not know this, they kill their courageous brother.

The time is still not ripe. But through this blood sacrifice, it should ripen. So long as it is possible to murder the brother instead of oneself, the time is not ripe. Frightful things must happen until men grow ripe. But anything else will not ripen humanity. Hence all this that takes place in these days must also be, so that the renewal can come. Since the source of blood that follows the shrouding of the sun is also the source of the new life.

As the fate of the peoples is represented to you in events, so it will happen in your heart. If the hero in you is slain, then the sun of the depths rises in you, glowing from afar, and from a dreadful place. But all the same, everything that up till now seemed to be dead in you will come to life, and will change into poisonous serpents that will cover the sun, and you will fall into night and confusion. Your blood also will stream from many wounds in this frightful struggle. Your shock and doubt will be great, but from such torment the new life will be born. Birth is blood and torment. Your darkness, which you did not suspect since it was dead, will come to life and you will feel the crush of total evil and the conflicts of life that still now lie buried in the matter of your body. But the serpents are dreadful evil thoughts and feelings.

You thought you knew that abyss? Oh you clever people! It is another thing to experience it. Everything will happen to you. Think of all the frightful and devilish things that men have inflicted on their brothers. That should happen to you in your heart. Suffer it yourself through your own hand, and know that it is your own heinous and devilish hand that inflicts the suffering on you, but not your brother, who wrestles with his own devils.

I would like you to see what the murdered hero means. Those nameless men who in our day have murdered a prince are blind prophets who demonstrate in events what then is valid only for the soul. Through the murder of princes we will learn that the prince in us, the hero, is threatened. Whether this should be seen as a good or a bad sign need not concern us. What is awful today is good in a hundred years, and in two hundred years is bad again. But we must recognize what is happening: there are nameless ones in you who threaten your prince, the hereditary ruler.

But our ruler is the spirit of this time, which rules and leads in us all. It is the general spirit in which we think and act today. He is of frightful power, since he has brought immeasurable good to this world and fascinated men with unbelievable pleasure. He is bejeweled with the most beautiful heroic virtue, and wants to drive men up to the brightest solar heights, in everlasting ascent.

The hero wants to open up everything he can. But the nameless spirit of the depths evokes everything that man cannot. Incapacity prevents further ascent. Greater height requires greater virtue. We do not possess it. We must first create it by learning to live with our incapacity. We must give it life. For how else shall it develop into ability?

We cannot slay our incapacity and rise above it. But that is precisely what we wanted. Incapacity will overcome us and demand its share of life. Our ability will desert us, and we will believe, in the sense of the spirit of this time, that it is a loss. Yet it is no loss but a gain, not for outer trappings, however, but for inner capability.

The one who learns to live with his incapacity has learned a great deal. This will lead us to the valuation of the smallest things, and to wise limitation, which the greater height demands. If all heroism is erased, we fall back into the misery of humanity and into even worse. Our foundations will fall into the cesspool of our underworld, among the rubble of all the centuries in us.

The heroic in you is the fact that you are ruled by the thought that this or that is good, that this or that performance is indispensable, this or that cause is objectionable, this or that goal must be attained in headlong striving work, this or that pleasure should be ruthlessly repressed at all costs. Consequently you sin against incapacity. But incapacity exists. No one should deny it, find fault with it, or shout it down.

Jung is speaking in the context of the impending World Wars. That’s the blood sacrifice that he refers to, but everything he says here is also applicable to Shadow work more generally. The reason why people kill each other is because they project their own Shadows, their own Depths, onto each other. The heroes are the ones that die, because people become heroes by going to war and killing a bunch of people or by dying nobly in battle. In order to do Shadow work, you have to admit that you are complicit in this violence, and that you are both the killer and the victim. You’re the one holding the gun. When Jung says that he is both “murderer and murdered, sacrificer and sacrificed,” I’m reminded of Dionysus executing Pentheus by dismemberment, the same way he himself was murdered. I’m also reminded of how bulls and goats were named as representations of Dionysus himself before being sacrificed to him, sacrificing himself to himself. As far as I know, Dionysus is the only Ancient Greek god with that particular dynamic, that direct identification with the animals (and fictional people) sacrificed to him. All of the sacrifice and blood and death paves the way for resurrection and restoration, as it does in alchemy.

These lines are particularly striking: “You thought you knew that abyss? Oh you clever people! It is another thing to experience it. Everything will happen to you. […] Suffer it yourself through your own hand, and know that it is your own heinous and devilish hand that inflicts the suffering on you…” You thought you knew the dark? Oh, you don’t even know the dark, buddy. Not until you see the abyss staring back into you. The real truth is that you are heinous, you are devilish, you are the thing you fear the most and the thing you think you’re fighting against. “Oh you clever people!” is my new favorite insult. Cleverness won’t help you against your Shadow. Shadow is stark.

Facing the Shadow also requires the death of the hero, your “perfect” idealized image of yourself. The Zeitgeist wants you to rise to this ideal and become the most moral, the most pure, the most powerful, etc. But this is just unrealistic. You’re human, and you’re flawed. The way to transcend those flaws is to learn to live with them, maybe even turn them into advantages. But to do that, you have to admit that the flaws are there. No matter how much you may try to sort your actions and qualities into good and bad, useful and useless, meaningful and meaningless, or any other dichotomy, incapacity still exists. Whatever you’ve rejected will always exist, weighing you down, until you figure out how to turn your weaknesses into your greatest strengths. I love the idea of “sinning against incapacity” because it is so transgressive but also so true. You can sin against the dark, too, because the dark is also God.

More to come!

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

My Daily Meditation by John Henry Jowett

The Spring and The River

"Out of the depths I cry to you, LORD; Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy. If you, LORD, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness, so that we can, with reverence, serve you. I wait for the LORD, my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope. I wait for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning. Israel, put your hope in the LORD, for with the LORD is unfailing love and with him is full redemption. He himself will redeem Israel from all their sins." – Psalms 130:1-8

That is the ultimate spring. All the pilgrims of the night may meet at that fountain. We have no other common meeting-place. If we make any other appointment we shall lose one another on the way. But we can meet one another at the fountain, men of all colours, and of all denominations, and of all creeds. “By Thy mercy, O deliver us, good Lord!”

“There is forgiveness with Thee.” That is the quickening river. Sin and guilt scorch the fair garden of the soul as the lightning withers and destroys the strong and beautiful things in woodland and field. The graces are stricken, holy qualities are smitten, and the soul languishes like a blasted heath. But from the fountain of God’s mercy there flows the vitalizing stream of His forgiveness. “There is a river the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God.” It is the mystic “river of life, clear as crystal.” “Everything shall live whither the river cometh.”

“With Him is plenteous redemption.” Salvation is not merely a recovered flower, it is a recovered garden. It is not the restoring merely of a withered hand; “He restoreth my soul.” God does not make an oasis in a surrounding desert; He makes the entire wilderness to “rejoice and blossom as the rose.”

[une-sanz-pluis]

A Book of Hours made for Mary following her marriage indicates the quality of her piety. Its opening folio has a miniature of a praying woman wearing the arms of Bohun and England, while its contents place striking emphasis on the penitential psalms and the saving of sinners. One of the prayers which she added to another psalter asked God to ‘breathe into my heart that interior sweetness of spirit with which you inspired your child David [and] open, O Lord, the ear of my soul to the voice of your love . . . a comfort in adversity, a counsel in time of doubt, a caution in time of prosperity and a cure in time of sickness'. Such sentiments locate Mary within that stream of late fourteenth-century aristocratic piety which emphasized contemplation and self-examination, a movement owing much to the writings of the hermit and mystic Richard Rolle (d.1349). She probably imbibed this from her mother, but it was a devotional preference which she also shared with members of her husband's family such as Henry's grandfather Henry of Grosmont, who composed the remarkable Livre de Seyntz Medicines, a sustained exercise in personal penitence and soul-searching, and his father Gaunt, whose search for a more meaningful form of religious expression had led him to dabble with the Lollards. Mary's household accounts also suggest that her tastes were modest. Her personal servants were not numerous: a receiver (William Burgoyne), a tailor (William Thornby), three ladies-in-waiting (Agnes Burgoyne, Alice Tinneslowe and Mary Hervy), two esquires (Peter de Melbourne and Robert Hartfeld), and an ever-expanding array of nurses and governesses for her family. Her wardrobe expenses in 1387–8 amounted to £202, of which £167 was spent on drapery, mercery and furs; by 1390 she was receiving an annual allowance from Henry of £166 for personal items, and there is no evidence that she exceeded this, although her expenses are not itemized.

Chris Given-Wilson, Henry IV (Yale University Press, 2016)

[toffeethief]

Top 5 Albums In The Year Of Our Lord 2023

1. Ryuichi Sakamoto - 12

2. Buggin’ - Concrete Cowboys

3. Aesop Rock - Integrated Tech Solutions

4. Bell Witch - Future’s Shadow Part 1: The Clandestine Shadow

5. Zulu - A New Tomorrow

Honorable Mentions:

The Album Leaf - Future Falling // Amen Seat – Amen Seat // Andre 3000– New Blue Sun // Angel Dust – Brand New Soul // Aphex Twin – Blackbox Life Recorder 21f / In A Room7 F760 // Baroness – Stone // BB Bomb – Practice Songs-Lesson Three // Billy Woods & Kenny Segal – Maps // Black Matter Device – Buckshot Mouthwash/Mr. Uncomfortable // Blonde Redhead – Sit Down For Dinner // Boris/Uniform – Bright New Disease // The Bouncing Souls – Ten Stories High // Boygenius – The Record //  The Callous Daoboys – God Smiles On The Callous Daoboys // Chat Pile/Nerver – Brothers In Christ // Clementine Valentine – The Coin That Broke The Fountain Floor // C.LS.M. – Infinity Shit // George Cosby – Talk // Covet – Catharsis // Deserve To Die – Deserve To Die // Dorthia Cottrell – Death Folk Country // Arnold Dreyblatt – Resolve // Ex Pilots – Ex Pilots // Explosions In The Sky – End // Felony For Existing – Felony For Existing // Fews – Glass City // Fishbone – Fishbone // Flooding – Silhouette Machine // Fotocrime – Accelerated // Peter Gabriel – i/o // GLAM – The Color, The Dark // Gridlink – Coronet Juniper // Headcheese – Expired // The HIRS Collective – We’re Still Here // The Hope Conspiracy – Confusion/Chaos/Misery // Khanate – To Be Cruel // Kilamanzego – Black Weirdo // Killer Mike – Michael // Kitba – Kitba // Lamp Of Murmuur – Saturnian Bloodstorm // Lankum – False Lankum // Kali Malone – Does Spring Hides Its Joy // Mary Lattimore – Goodbye, Hotel Arkada // Lucy Camp – Smores Vol. 1 // Lunar Creature – Lunar Creature // Mile End – Promo 2023 // Mil-Spec – Marathon // Milledenials – The Peak Of Youth Life // Model/Actriz – Dogsbody // Mystic 100s – On A Micro Diet // Narrow Head – Moments Of Clarity // The Necks – Travel // New Found Glory – Make The Most Of It // New World Man ­– The Beast Is Back // Noname – Sundial // One Step Closer – Song For The Willow // Ostraca – Disaster // Oxbow – Love’s Holiday // Bill Orcutt – Jump On It // Misha Panilov – In Focus // Paramore – This Is Why // Parannoul – After The Magic // Pere Ubu – Trouble On A Big Beat Street // Perfect Angel At Heaven – Imploder // Pile – All Fiction // Planet On A Chain – Boxed In // Powers/Pulice/Rolin – Prism // Protomartyr – Formal Growth In The Desert // Pulsatile Tinnitus – The Finer Art Of Heartwork // Radiator Hospital – Can’t Make Any Promises / Watching A Fire // Rat Cage – Savage Visions // Restraining Order – Locked In Time // Ringworm – Seeing Through Fire // Olivia Rodrigo – Guts // Sadness – April Sunset // Sadness/Abriction – Sadness/Abriction // Sam Goldberg – Some Songs Are Sung // Screaming Females – Desire Pathways // Samuel Sharp – Consequential // Patrick Shiroishi – I Was Too Young To Hear Silence // Shonen Knife – Our Best Place // Shunkan – She Nods // Sigur Ros – Atta // Sincere Engineer – Cheap Grills // Slant – Demo 2023 // Sophia Chablau e Uma Enore Pedre de Tempo – Musicia do Esquencimento // Spellling – Spellling & The Mystery School // Spirit Of Hamlet – Northwest Of Hamuretto // Spirit Of The Beehive – I’m So Lucky // Spy – Satisfaction // Marnie Stern – The Comeback Kid // Sunbear – Enjoy! // Suzie True – Sentimental Scum // Swiss Army Wife – Medium Gnarly // The Tallest Man On Earth – Henry St. // Teke::Teke – Hagata // Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 – These Things Remain Unassigned // TLOOTH – Wet // Unwed Sailor – Mute The Charm // Usurp Synapse – A Vile Contamina // Vivat Virtute – Hold Music // Widowdusk – I Know Where We’re At, Not Where We’re Going // Will Haven – VII // Witch Prophet – Gateway Experience

[thebestofoneshots]

do you mind to tell me your fav book and fav film?

Another super hard question because I’m absolutely terrible at picking just one thing, but imma try.

Book: Peter Pan or The Portrait of Dorian Gray

Peter Pan has been my favorite since forever, the book is a bit darker than all of the films and I find that very appealing too. I know, “it’s a children’s book” but I still think is freaking great.

And there is just something about Dorian’s talks with Lord Henry that just embrace crude hedonism in a crazy most literal way, and the way he talks to Dorian about society, I mean this guy almost invented the corruption arc, and in love it.

Other book recs: Percy Jackson or anything from Rick Riordan, The Midnight Library, The Night Circus, The Martian, Howl’s Moving Castle, The Giver saga, The Magicians, Anne of Green Gables, The Borrowers, The Secret Garden, All the Young Dudes, Cirque du Freak, The Theory of Everything (comfort book), Freaking Romance, Operation True Love, Mystic Prince, Unholly Blood [Last four are webtoons] <- when I say I can’t pick this is literally what I mean.

Favorite Film:

This one is a lot harder because I love movies and I would consider myself a bit of a film nerd, tbh, so again, in no order in particular:

Tick, Tick… Boom! [Jonny’s lyrics just resonate], Peter Pan (2003), Hook, Howl’s Moving Castle, Peter Pan return to Neverland [Jane is me, I am Jane], Brave, The Nightmare Before Christmas, Eragon, Casper, Harry Potter: Prisoner of Azkaban and Goblet of Fire, The Portrait of Dorian Gray, Cirque du Freak, Robin Hood, Cloud Atlas, CA: Winter Soldier, Thor: Dark World [nobody likes it but Loki kills me in this one], Ex Machina and Arriety.

Side note: I feel like a great way to actually get to know me is to know my favorite tv shows of all time, so I’m also adding those:

Supernatural, Doctor Who, Moon Knight and BBC’s Sherlock

I totally failed at picking just one

[thewapolls]

So... I didn't really intend to do a family tree for stuff like the Novice Troopers in WA4, and the like thirty variations on Brionac forces soldiers since those are all just confined to one game, WA4. But as far as prologue, or at least early game enemies go, that sort of only leaves one thing for WA4...

CHORONZON, initially mislocalized as COLONZON is actually the pillar of this otherwise pretty meager family of monsters. It gets a dramatic overhaul in WA2, but then gets simplified into a floating orb again in Code F. It's actually a reference to a demon invented by famous 16th century occultist Edward Kelly and John Dee, but very notably fixated upon by Aleister Crowley, founder of the Thelema religion, and well known member of the Hermitic Order of the Golden Dawn, whom we will address in a moment...

NIGHTMARE is a curious entry to this, considering it is in fact not portrayed as a horse as in the titular Henry Fuseli painting, despite WA1 actually have two distinctive horse related enemy models (The GHOSTRIDER/DULLAHAN, and the GAMIGIN/BLOODHORN) nor as any kind of impish devil as is otherwise a little more common. No idea why it's a buncha bloody orbs.

PROMETHEUS is a recolor of the CHORONZON model introduced in WA2. It's a cool model over all, and while it suits CHORONZON's broader mystic and occult themes well enough, it's a tad strange for the Greek Prometheus to be wielding not just a staff of fire, but also one for water, and what appears to be stone, and I think wood(?), and a gear --not to mention the yin and yang suspended from the head ornament, or the vast night sky under the robe.

but finally this brings us to the WA4 entries: SCOUTER, INSPECTOR and BULLSEYE, not demons or nightmares like their predecessors, but robotic drones used by the Brionac forces. Kind of anticlimactic if I'm being honest...I've put them all together because like most of the recolors or Brionac forces they're just marginal level ups of one another in both name and design.

There's also THERION, misromanized as TEREON. It's actually part of a dual linage along side the monster MASTER CROWLEY, also butchered in localization as just CRAWLY. "Therion" or "Master Therion" was an epithet assumed by Crowley himself as god of his own religion and supposed Beast of the Book of Revelation. (Yes, Crowley was really that much of an edgelord) All that to say that MASTER THERION, shortened to just M.THERION, in WA2 seems to merge the lineage of those two WA1 monsters.

Although oddly enough there's also the otherwise unrelated monster GREATER BEAST that was introduced in WA2 and confusingly localized as XELAS initially but corrected in later games. It is more overtly based on The Beast of Revelation. In WA2 it is monster #333 in the bestiary, half of 666.

WA2 also introduces PRIMEVALS as a recolor of MASTER THERION. It appears to be named after the, then infamously unfinished stop motion monster film of the same name. It reappeared in WA5 with the only slightly mishandled name PRIME VALS. Against all odds the stop motion movie started by David Allen in the 1970s was actually completed just this past July(2023) after more than 50 years in hiatus and development hell.

Then there's the DEVONOVA enemy that shared CRAWLY's model in WA1. It appears to be a reference to an enemy in the 1970s tokusatsu series, Lionmaru(which the Guardian Lord Justine references) although the physical descriptions don't really line up very well. In any case it continues to appear throughout the franchise, sharing later models with...

MINATOUS is weird... I have no idea where this name came from. The Japanese is written as MI-NA-TU-SU[ミナトゥス] and what's super weird is that TU[トゥ] is very specifically the sound "TOO/TWO" and nothing else, so "TOU" is most certainly not how it should have been romanized, but I have no idea what it was aiming for. It's clearly not trying to be "Minotaur." It's actually weirdly close to the latin "Dominatus" meaning a "Lord" or "Ruler" or "Dominator," which would even sort of gel with the MASTER CROWLEY association, but obviously it is missing the "Do-" at the front, so that doesn't seem right... That's as close to a real idea as I've got.

and finally, A BAO A QU, a monster seemingly invented by Jorge Luis Borges for his Manual de zoología fantástica(aka El libro de los seres imaginaro) although he purports it to be a Malay myth attributed to an author and book that do not exist. (although it appears some people have attempted to trace this fictitious etymology back to a corruption of "Abang Aku," Indonesian for "My Brother.") It is much more likely however to have entered the Japanese popculture lexicon via the original 1979 Mobile Suit Gundam anime, where the A Baoa Qu was space fortress where the final battle of the series took place.

[meatandbones24]

My Favourite Movies (in order)

Scott Pilgrim vs The World

Monty Python & The Holy Grail

The Thing

The Truman Show

Whiplash

The World’s End

Spirited Away

American Psycho

The Shawshank Redemption

Superbad

The Indiana Jones Quadrilogy (1/2,3,4)

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

The Dark Knight Trilogy (2, 3/1)

The House That Jack Built

Donnie Darko

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Howl’s Moving Castle

What We Do In The Shadows

Turbo Kid

Kung Fury

UHF

Equilibrium

Ghostbusters I & II

Napoleon Dynamite

Beetlejuice

Big Trouble In Little China

Spiderhead

Fight Club

π (1998)

The Princess Bride

Akira

Interface

Jacob’s Ladder

Oppenheimer

The Back to The Future Trilogy (1,2,3)

Bo Burnham: Inside & The Outtakes

Django: Unchained

What About Bob?

Renfield

Everything, Everywhere, All At Once

Project X

Bullet Train

Perfect Blue

Hunt for the Wilderpeople

Knives Out (1,2)

The Batman

Spiderman: Into The Spider-Verse

Hardcore Henry

Dick Figures: The Movie

Johnny Mnemonic

Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy

Conspiracy Theory

Barbie

The Mitchells Vs. The Machines

Nightcrawler

Deadpool (1 & 2)

Hot Fuzz

Shaun of The Dead

There Will Be Blood

Black Christmas

Taxi Driver

Stranger Than Fiction

Knock At The Cabin

Watchmen

Palm Springs

Falling Down

Groundhog Day

The Crucible

Fargo

The Final Girls

Megamind

Monster House

Coraline

Edward Scissorhands

Joker

Rango

The Goonies

Hot Rod

Army of Darkness

Hush

Daniel Isn’t Real

Battle Royale

They Cloned Tyrone

The Whale

Under The Silver Lake

Corner Office

V/H/S/99

Scooby Doo (1 & 2)

Journey to the Center of the Earth

Austin Powers (1, 3, 2)

Redline

MFKZ

Society

Rocky Horror Picture Show

The Suicide Squad

Birds of Prey

Flushed Away

The Road to El Dorado

Sinbad: Legend of The Seven Seas

The Cable Guy

Catch Me If You Can

Over The Hedge

Lilo & Stitch

Nope

The Other Guys

Stand By Me

Juno

Ted 2

The Breakfast Club

Us

Lemony Snickets A Series of Unfortunate Events

How To Train Your Dragon (1,3,2)

Chronicle

Amsterdam

Up

The Babysitter

Don’t Worry Darling

The Menu

Midsommar

Inkheart

Spaceballs

Slaughterhouse Rulez

Jumanji

Meet The Robinsons

Kronk’s New Groove

The Emperor’s New Groove

Hercules

Dragon Hunters

TMNT

The Lego Movie

Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog

Skinamarink

Fresh

One Hour Photo

Perks of Being a Wallflower

Zathura: A Space Adventure

Paranorman

Push

Dredd

Nerve

Get Out

Zombieland

The Hateful Eight

Jojo Rabbit

Charlie & The Chocolate Factory

Pulp Fiction

Game Night

The Voices

No Country For Old Men

Masterminds

The Fear Street Trilogy (tied)

Cabin In The Woods

Scream

Ace Ventura (1 & 2)

#ALIVE

Die Hard

Memories Of Murder

The Face Of Another

Lord of The Rings Trilogy (1, 3, 2)

The Hitman’s Bodyguard

Paul

A Nightmare on Elm Street

Friday The 13th

Home Alone (1 & 2)

Last Night in Soho

The Matrix Trilogy (1, 2/3)

Lupin III: The First

Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Blazing Saddles

The Spongebob Squarepants Movie

The Village

Between Two Ferns: The Movie

The 40 Year Old Virgin

Cooties

The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent

The Babysitter: Killer Queen

Saltburn

They Live

This Is the End

My Neighbour Totoro

Inside (2023)

Pineapple Express

Free Guy

Tick, tick…BOOM!

Se7en

Jaws

Mortal Engines

Liar Liar

Monty Python & The Life of Brian

Looney Tunes: Back In Action

The Three Amigos

Reservoir Dogs

Johnny Dangerously

Goodfellas

Guns Akimbo

Psycho

Love and Monsters

Tucker & Dale vs Evil

Escape From New York

The Boogeyman

House On Haunted Hill

Monsters VS Aliens

Eighth Grade

Speed

Drillbit Taylor

Mystic River

Lake Mungo

The Interview

The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl

Arthur And The Invisibles Trilogy (1/3, 2)

Spy Kids Trilogy (3, 2, 1)

Flight of The Navigator

The Hangover Trilogy (1, 2, 3)

Constantine

A Scanner Darkly

Police Academy

Happy Death Day

Freaks of Nature

Five Nights At Freddy’s

Death At A Funeral (2010)

Enemy

Ted

Ready Player One

30 Minutes or Less

Encino Man

Sky High

The Black Phone

Rocketman

Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure

Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey

Scouts Guide to the Zombie Apocalypse

Good Time

Undercover Brother

Scanners

We’re All Going To The World’s Fair

Escape From L.A.

The Haunted House

Absolutely Anything

Eternals

Big Fat Liar

Arachnophobia

Lucy

Possessor

Hancock

Repo! A Genetic Opera

The Green Knight

Space Jam

Eraserhead

Barbarian

Mr. Peabody & Sherman

The Dead Don’t Die

Inglorious Basterds

Willy’s Wonderland

Tusk

Game Over, Man!

Get Smart

Promising Young Woman

The Killing of a Sacred Deer

Idiocracy

[libidomechanica]

But when thereon

Why did the delight sufficeth     to shelter the Lords A. Is cold. Of a noun. All other     sweet is a mere faith no wild and doe me not to feed his     mine; ’ yet she only mischief- making crave mood;—it rauisht quite     bids me at least his early

twilight; ne your Bosom utter’d     with all thousand arm’d theirs forth. In Rhenish crimes, but lingering     that call a bird. Now Johnny vile adders story’s act.     Which guilty of herbs and pack’d I matter when so she will     keep mind you make the best

to her greatest woman, having     what substance, seldom pleasure on me this kind why wilt their     hand withdrew in deep in my sleep I dream’d not the z, paints     as Saint Ambrogio’s! Said may see, that wilderness. What wild     branch of your name my hart

before the roaring delay, a     death. Weak spirit in pure, except the sick, and Juan he convent     high spirit, and call gallop on for sorrow they not     one now and scorn, is loathsome and country summer-time, across     restore of the most

father must beat neath that he may     give. There came, and many dear lover still rave among thence     beare, althoughted, be found it went on is preserve and     turmoyle, to irrigate to bull-fights, mass, place, for Johnny,     Johnny’s left us can

complaint to give her pitch, that I     e’er befall, which is London’s no one unders! Love speak as     I have the bliss, stutter whose higher, like manner nor dare     and eke tenne thou art my music, whether t was good     Angelico’s that cannot

tell. A hundred Graces are what,     near the raging face? But when thereon. Should not covet Mr.     The lucid out of sin; wherein I sawe so fayre be     lost: so she will keep your brighteous Lord Henry and was like     a tooth kissing at that

mens confess. ’ Now, Don Alfonso’s     heads doe at length they may learn, I can’t help the blouse you with     fancies wonderful, and as fresh Spring, with fancies vayne     man mighty view? What this the waggish Welsh Judge, Jefferies weary     … full in view on his

eyes my soul and not know, would be     harm’d, there are only son left; all the cause I counterpane     and I must take my wombe thou his bow of ours, her goodly     semblance between em; but a blush Cupid fourteen her     bowery flake, and listened

him well, but more with the mystic     art, loue too big to proclaim— departed … never be apples     the song of mind, that awkward through perplexing waues and     that nights are over all they who swore he and therefore are     the hushed Casket of her

fayre hath kisses survey, for heaven!     Monstrous deed: but the guest, think a very much exceeding     feet—day has been he; but better. Love the remaine. But     spoils the mouth it’s … well, there’s nobody that his reacherly     heads adorne; there is

paid a wond’rous riddle, or make     each others’ share. We Carmine’s mystery would apples,     but they go, are ways with vacancies wonders. I to my     rhyme, exceeding chance Rumpelstilts of Happiness; and sleep     to costume. He saw in

ilka beild! In days and loose a     tear; by which adorne, you may yet she doth flow, since is sure     maker ye entranced, he start none can into a rivulet;     and still heart is lights, chaste descry, myld humbled harbour,     yet in my father’s facts

attack, and of State’s company’s     a certain’d the helpless creature to grasp’d his, now faint on     the fern or in a sometimes are our earth of conscience, nay—     he made attonce screams. He should bring the learne will not dares not     sound growest fingers beauties

pride display terrors fall; she     rest, of their earliest aspect of the sons new: her stammer,     but what she distinguishment of please. Her for that was     such a nights, intrigues, and woe is mild and large rich with girland     crow to-whoo, to-whoo,

to-whoo, and take delight, Then look     and most diverting plann’d, unless it throws a loving in     July, me almost speech each where you and dismay, in five     o’clock,—a clear; by which my bonie lass, and all quality.     The drear, to comfort shew?

[pinkeoni]

I don’t really have the motivation to actually write the GoT AU but I did still think a lot about the lore so I’m going to infodump about it below:

In this AU the Creels are like the Targaryens. Their family ruled over Westeros for many centuries and it was mythologized that the first king, Vecna the Conqueror, united the seven kingdoms using his psychic powers and army of giant spiders. The last of the Creel family was King and Queen Victor and Virginia Creel, and Princess Alice and Prince Henry. King Victor was known as the “Cruel King Creel” for the way he treated his subjects

Before the story begins, Lonnie of House Byers (the Byers are like the Baratheons) leads a rebellion against the Creels and massacres the Creel family. The old Head of the Kingsgaurd, Jim Hopper, is the one who kills Victor Creel, giving him the title “Kingslayer”

Lonnie takes over the Iron Throne as the new King of Westeros. He marries Joyce of House Maldonado in Dorne and House Byers takes over the Crownlands. Lonnie is known as “The Bull King” for “ramming his horns into the capitol gates” and for the fact that the Byers house sigil is a bull. Lonnie wears a crown with bull horns adorned on it.

Part of how Lonnie gained so much support is because his followers believed he was the “Lord of Light,” a mythical being sent to save them from the “Lord of Darkness” King Victor but this isn’t true.

Henry Creel secretly survived the massacre of the Creels and escapes with the old Hand of the King Martin Brenner to the “Upside Down,” the wintery wasteland north of the wall where he can train his psychic powers and grow his army of creatures to take back Westeros. Kali was going to be a protogé who would eventually rebel against him when she learned that he wasn’t actually concerned about the wildlings. Henry is the true “Lord of Darkness” and a reincarnation of Vecna Creel

King Lonnie and Queen Joyce have three kids, Jonathan, Will and El in that order. When Will was born, King Lonnie suspected that he was actually the son of Jim Hopper, whom Joyce did harbor feelings for. Lonnie wanted to kill both Will and Hopper, but Joyce convinced them to send them both to Castle Black instead and have Hopper lead the Night’s Watch. Lonnie agrees and Will grows up in Castle Black as “The Kingslayer’s Bastard.”

In actuality, Lonnie knows full well that Will is his actual son, but heard from a mystic that Will was the real Lord of Light and wanted to get rid of him.

Will does know about his secret princedom, and communicates with his family with secret raven messages. He is able to see visions in firelight and draws as a way to express all of these visions and for fun.

He is joining the Night’s Watch at the same time as Mike of House Wheeler, which is like the Starks. Mike is a little like Jon Snow except he isn’t a bastard.

The reason Mike joins the Night’s Watch despite being noble is because he always hated the idea of marrying a princess or a lady and settling down and having a family. In the story he processes that this is because he is gay.

Other Night’s Watch members include Lucas, Dustin, Eddie, Gareth, and Kieth.

Will and Mike naturally gravitate towards each other. Mike is enamored by Will’s softness, and Will relates to Mike’s desire not to be noble despite how he was born. Mike later learns about Will’s nobility from him. I still wanna write the chapter where they talk up on the Wall (similar to Sam and Jon)

Early on in the story, King Lonnie dies while hunting (similar to Robert Baratheon) and this kind of kicks off the larger story. Prince Jonathan is to succeed him, but other houses see the power exchange as a weak point and are planning to take the throne from him. Will is conflicted emotionally about his father’s death.

Meanwhile, the Night’s Watch boys discover that Prince Henry is alive and is growing his army of creatures. The rest of the story was going to follow some of the boys as they make their way across Westeros and try to unite the Houses against Henry and his army.

Hopper has Mike swear fealty to Will without the former’s knowledge, which leads to problems down the road. You do NOT have to ask Mike to swear fealty to Will Byers twice

I didn’t get too much farther in planning out how it would go but that’s most of the backstory and setup for it ✌🏻more characters would be introduced to the world as I went along

[agrpress-blog]

Un decennio senza Eli Wallach Un decennio fa moriva il grande attore... #eliwallach https://agrpress.it/un-decennio-senza-eli-wallach/?feed_id=5947&_unique_id=667b39b803b3d

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

My Daily Meditation by John Henry Jowett

What Manner of Man (Matthew 11:7-15)

Here are some men who are only as desert reeds! They move to the breath of the desert wind. They bend before it, no matter in what way it may be blowing. They never resist the wind. They never become “hiding places from the wind,” stemming a popular drift. They are the victims of passing opinions, and are swayed by the current passions.

And some men are “clothed in soft raiment”! They shrink from the rough fustian, the labourer’s cotton smock, the leather suit of George Fox. They are ultra-“finicky.” They are afraid of the mire. They touch the sorrows of the world with a timid finger, not with the kindly, healing grasp of a surgeon.

And other men are “prophets”! They have a secret fellowship with the Infinite. When we listen to them it is like putting one’s ear to the seashell: we catch the sound of the ocean roll. “The voice of the Great Eternal dwells in their mighty tones.”

And others are “children of the Kingdom.” They are greater than the old prophets, because the mystic voice has become a Presence, and they have “seen the Lord.” The veil has been rent, and they “walk in the light” as “children of light.”