#magic and religion

[mondoreb]

End Times Prophecy Headlines: January 9, 2023

End Times Prophecy Headlines: January 9, 2023

End Times Prophecy Report.com HEADLINES MONDAY January 9, 2023 And OPINION “And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.” —Matthew 24:4 ===INTERNATIONAL UKRAINE: Russia-Ukraine war live: Kyiv accuses Putin of breaking his own ceasefire RUSSIA: Putin avoids Russia blame game – for now – after Ukraine attack RUSSIA: New US Sanctions Target Supply of Iranian Drones to…

[dragoncodex]

The Sacred Ashes of Andraste

Codex #091

Only one person witnessed Maferath's betrayal: Havard the Aegis. A childhood friend of Maferath, he accompanied his chief to the meeting with the Tevinters, not realizing what was planned. When he understood that Maferath was giving Andraste over to be executed, Havard, unwilling to draw swords against his friend and liege, placed himself between Andraste and the Tevinter soldiers. The Tevinters struck him down, and Maferath left him for dead

Gravely wounded, Havard made his way to the gates of Minrathous to stop the execution. When he reached it, the terrible deed was already done, the armies on the plains long since dispersed. Havard, cursing his weakness, gathered the earthly remains of Andraste that had been left to the wind and rain, and wept. When his fingers touched the pile of ash, his ears filled with song, and he saw before him a vision of Andraste, dressed in cloth made of starlight. She knelt at his side, saying, "The Maker shall never forget you so long as I remember." .

The song faded, and the vision with it. And Havard was alone. But his wounds were healed. With new strength, Havard took up the ashes of Our Lady, and bore them back to the lands of the Alamarri.

--From Thedas: Myths and Legends, by Brother Genitivi.

[pottermetaarchive]

After all he’s done … all the people he’s killed … he couldn’t kill a little boy? It’s just astounding … of all the things to stop him … but how in the name of heaven did Harry survive?

Philosopher’s Stone, Ch. 1

Are wizards religious? We see people use Christian-based expressions fairly often - “heaven’s sake,” “My God,” “Good Lord,” and so on, and we have Word of God (ha) confirmation that Anthony Goldstein is Jewish, but wizards as a rule don’t seem to subscribe to any particular faith. Hogwarts doesn't seem to have a chapel or anything similar that we’ve seen.

[arcane-offerings]

Raisa Maria Toivo, Faith and Magic in Early Modern Finland (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016).

https://www.ebay.com/itm/254443690347

[birdwinged]

I’m not against diversifying your religious portrayals and wanting to deviate away from Eurocentric norms. These are good things, but for the love of Aiur don’t just dive in armed with nothing but good intentions. Research the cultures and religions you’re pulling from extensively, and pay sensitivity readers from those cultures to help verify your content for accuracy, and also to help point out your own blind-spots where you may have missed something or stumbled into problematic territory.

[twoleggedgauntfreak]

Reformist preachers also denounced magical practitioners in violent terms, alongside other groups who were believed to be polluting Christendom such as heretics, Jews and homosexuals.

Catherine Rider, Magic and Religion in Medieval England (2012) [As a pansexual Jew with a growing interest in magic, I would definitely probably have been killed in Medieval England.]

[mondoreb]

End Times Prophecy Headlines: January 7-9, 2022

End Times Prophecy Headlines: January 7-9, 2022

End Times Prophecy Report HEADLINES FRIDAY-SATURDAY-SUNDAY January 7-9, 2022 And OPINION “And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.” —Matthew 24:4 “The best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he’s in prison.” —Fyodor Dostoevsky ===INTERNATIONAL ITALY:  Italy requiring everyone over 50 to get a COVID vaccine RUSSIA: What’s Behind…

[dragoncodex]

Beyond the Veil: Spirits and Demons

Codex #089

It is challenging enough for the casual observer to tell the difference between the Fade and the creatures that live within it, let alone between one type of spirit and another. In truth, there is little that distinguishes them, even for the most astute mages. Since spirits are not physical entities and are therefore not restricted to recognizable forms (or even having a form at all), one can never tell for certain what is alive and what is merely part of the scenery. (It is therefore advisable for the inexperienced researcher to greet all objects he encounters.)

Typically, we misuse the term "spirit" to refer only to the benign, or at least less malevolent, creatures of the Fade, but in truth, all the denizens of the realm beyond the Veil are spirits. As the Chant of Light notes, everything within the Fade is a mimicry of our world. (A poor imitation, for the spirits do not remotely understand what they are copying. It is no surprise that much of the Fade appears like a manuscript translated from Tevinter into Orlesian and back again by drunken initiates.)

In general, spirits are not complex. Or, rather, they are not complex as we understand such things. Each one seizes upon a single facet of human experience: Rage, hunger, compassion, hope, etc. This one idea becomes their identity. We classify as demons those spirits who identify themselves with darker human emotions and ideas.

The most common and weakest form of demon one encounters in the Fade is the rage demon. They are much like perpetually boiling kettles, for they exist only to vent hatred, but rarely have an object to hate. Somewhat above these are the hunger demons, who do little but eat or attempt to eat everything they encounter, including other demons (this is rarely successful). Then there are the sloth demons. These are the first intelligent creatures one typically finds in the Fade. They are dangerous only on those rare occasions that they can be induced to get up and do harm. Desire demons are more clever, and far more powerful, using all forms of bribery to induce mortals into their realms: Wealth, love, vengeance, whatever lies closest to your heart. The most powerful demons yet encountered are the pride demons, perhaps because they, among all their kind, most resemble men.

--From Beyond the Veil: Spirits and Demons, by Enchanter Mirdromel.

[pottermetaarchive]

…The Easter holidays weren’t nearly as much fun as the Christmas ones.

Philosopher’s Stone, Ch. 14

This seems to be pretty consistent at Hogwarts — that Christmas holidays are fun while Easter holidays are spent doing homework. That Hogwarts even designates an Easter holiday rather than some kind of “spring break” is interesting — are wizards religious? Do they celebrate Christian holidays? I’m pretty sure we’ve heard mentions of paintings of monks somewhere in the castle, but that and the holidays are about as far as it goes. As far as we know, it doesn’t have a chapel or anything of that kind built in. 

We also have retroactive confirmation from Rowling that Anthony Goldstein is Jewish, but it’s never addressed in the text. Given her frankly inappropriate handling of Native American religious and spiritual traditions with relation to magic recently on Pottermore, I’m not sure we want to know. 

[thepostmodernpottercompendium]

On the origins of magic: of cosmic beings (2/?)

There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and they bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. - Genesis 6:14

From Mythologiques Magicales: le Sacré et le Profane by Franciscus Leclère-Tantomile (1964)

Mankind divides the world into two realms, the higher and the lower, the divine and the mundane. Mortals may reach out to the immortals, distant beings who shape the world the mortals live in - but the immortals are not beholden to them and do not always answer their prayers.

So mankind creates for itself a mediator. Sons of gods. Mighty men. Middle-men, with some unearthly power, yet not quite like gods, to stand between them and the beings they worship. And these mighty men they hold to a higher standard. They cannot do as they please, as the gods do as they please, for they are still mortals. Their power is their own as long as it lives to serve the men who put them there in the first place - the men who give their women over to appease the hungers of these wilder, higher powers; gods, demons, angels, djinn, spirits, elves. And yet, they cannot show weakness as ordinary men might, for they are powerful, they are above all weakness, they are invulnerable.

Thus, the function of the possessor of magic - named god-men in these myths, but commonly known as wizards today - is to serve as a means of reconciliation between the mundane and the divine. In such a society, heresy is no longer a conceivable possibility as all responsibility for a breakdown in the system, or failure on part of the divine in fulfilling expectations of the mundane can be laid at the doorstep of these intermediaries. Thus the layman, demanding service from a cosmic being is no longer faced with the irreconcilable quandary of an all powerful being not being able to perform a task - the fault lies with a failure on the part of an intermediary, unable to adequately use his powers to convince the cosmic being to cause a particular act to happen. Furthermore, as intermediaries with a certain degree of unusual power, closer than the cosmic beings that need to be appeased, they become stand-ins for those beings and are required to use their powers solely for the service of their underlings, lest they be punished or threatened with social isolation. In some societies this has led to an implementation, albeit in a lax fashion, of the Statute of Secrecy - not uniformly applied internationally as its title would suggest - in order to protect witches and wizards from being exploited for their powers.

In other societies, this excess of power concentrated in the hands of these alleged intermediary beings, when coupled with a gradual distortion in belief culminating in forgetting the cosmic beings with whom these intermediaries were supposed to intercede on behalf of those less powerful, has led to the development of a strong and unhealthy fear of beings who possess magic, such that these individuals are perpetually forced to occupy the fringes of society and are constantly blamed for any mishaps or fatalities that society may face to the point of persecution. Rather than implementing the Statute of Secrecy as a means of protection, magical folk, in these areas, reacted by turning hunter, and hunting down those with non-magical abilities as means of punishing them for not according them the apotheosis due their position as intermediaries between the cosmic and the mundane.

A widely held belief amongst non-European wizards, who still persist in retaining an irrational belief in the existence of gods, demons and other cosmic beings, magic is apparently the result of interrelations between these cosmic beings and human women. There are few to no historical or archaeological sources corroborating this story, although it is a popular myth and still widely believed. However, it can be used to explain the transmission of magic from one generation to the other, via the means of sexual relations and certainly is a far better explanation for the origins of magic than the older, classic myth formerly held in reverence in our society. - C.R.

Addendum: Excerpt from the private papers (1966) of ministry employee, Unspeakable Caius Rookwood. Mythologiques Magicales is still widely available, but rarely read, its analyses of myths long debunked by those who argued that its extrapolations and generalizations ignored cultural perspectives of the countries of origin of each myth in favour of the author's native paradigm.  Furthermore, the author's obfuscatory language in some passages, particularly those referencing the apparent similarity in structures of these myths, blithely used to dismiss concerns that such similarities were the result of an overreading of the text in question, has led critics to wonder if the author's theories are truly substantiated by the material he has worked with, or whether he has held fellow magianthropologists at bay with the threat of using Arithmancy to prove himself right. - A.R.

(Pics: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6)

(Credit goes to essayofthoughts for giving me examples of interrelations between cosmic beings and humans (and the treatment of their offspring) in Mesopotamian, Egyptian and Celtic mythology & for the fantastic term, magianthropologist.)

[waiting-for-something--beautiful]

Going to finish reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone for class tomorrow.

That's right i said CLASS. 

Oh, the perks of Mizzou.

[dragoncodex]

The Four Schools of Magic: Spirit

Codex #088

And the voice of the Maker shook the Fade Saying: In My image I have wrought My firstborn. You have been given dominion Over all that exists. By your will All things are done. Yet you do nothing. The realm I have given you Is formless, ever-changing. --Threnodies 5:4.

The first of the two Schools of Energy, Spirit is opposed by the Primal School. It is the school of mystery, the ephemeral school. This is the study of the invisible energies which surround us at all times, yet are outside of nature. It is from the Fade itself that this magic draws its power. Students of this school cover everything from direct manipulation of mana and spell energies to the study and summoning of spirits themselves.

By its nature an esoteric school, as most others know virtually nothing about the Fade, studies of spirit magic are often misunderstood by the general populace, or even confused for blood magic--an unfortunate fate for a most useful branch of study.

--From The Four Schools: A Treatise, by First Enchanter Josephus.