#where god creates both adam and the tree of knowledge

[inbarfink]

I’ve seen some interpretations of the Rocky Horror Picture Show that compare Frank to the Christian Devil and/or the Serpent of Eden. And… it’s not like that doesn’t make sense. Frank is a tempter who stands against the restraint of the explicitly Christian morality of the mainstream culture our protagonists come from. The Criminologist even calls his temptation of Brad and Janet a “forbidden fruit”.  But… I just think that’s not the only angle one can take when looking at Frank. Frank is many things both as an in-universe person and a narrative character. But we are first and foremost introduced to him, before we even get a chance to see him, as a Frankenstein Pastiche.

Is it any wonder that he does such a good job of playing God?

Like any good Postmodern Prometheus, Frank creates new life, but this goes beyond just Rocky. It’s Brad and Janet who are kind of the Adam and Eve in this comparison, and while Frank didn’t literally create them with mad science - he did re-make them in his own image.

(And after first turning them to stone - a form of earth - and then back to flesh)

Also, if we're looking at the Frankenstein's Place as a sort of twisted Garden of Eden -  a place where Brad and Janet lose their innocence, gain greater knowledge and understanding of themselves, commit a transgression by giving into temptation, and then get cast down to Earth unsure of what to do with what they have learned - then Frank as the Master of the castle, who first welcome Brad and Janet but eventually then targets them with furious punishment, fits much better playing the role of God than a random snake or even the Devil himself. 

Yes, it's a weird-reverse-sort-of-God whose creed is exactly the opposite of the Conservative Christian God in whose church Ralph and Betty got married - but this is already a weird-reverse-sort-of-Eden as well. Adam and Eve started off so 'innocent' in that they felt no shame about their nude bodies, and when they lost said innocence is also when they started feeling the need to cover up. Brad and Janet’s 'innocent' state has them dressed very modestly, and their 'corruption' is marked by them... well, they're never fully naked, but certainly gradually get more confortable walking around in their underwears or lingerie.

And following the narrative thread of this weird-reverse-Garden-of-Eden, the real Forbidden Fruit isn’t actually Frank’s dick, it’s Rocky. The Garden of Eden was this wonderland of earthly delights where Adam and Eve could pertake of any fruit they desired.... except for the Tree of Wisdom. That was the one pleasure they were forbidden from. And the Frankenstein’s Place is similarly a paradise of desires - just less of a fruitbowl and more of the Sex, Drugs and Rock n’ Roll variety - but the one thing you can’t do, the one person you’re not allowed to have sex with... is Rocky.

And I think the interesting question here is ‘why is Rocky the one thing that’s off-limits in Frank’s Fantastic FuckCastle?’.  Because, well, if we look at it from an Eden Perspective, here’s what the Serpent had to say about the subject of the Fruit of Knowledge:

Eating the Forbidden Fruit isn’t just about succumbing to mortal pleasures about godly morality or whatever, it’s about becoming kinda like God. And maybe that’s the real reason why Frank’s so upset about the idea that Rocky has slept with someone else. It’s less actual romantic jealousy and more... galling at the idea that someone else can tempt his Significant Other to cheat on him. That’s his thing!

And like, espacially since Janet has that line in “Touch-A-Touch-A-Touch-A-Touch Me”

Which I always read as a kind of admission that she’s like... exploiting Rocky’s desire for an emotional connection for own sexual pleasures. She is maybe falling into this very Frank-Brand of hedonistic manipulativeness. Her newfound knowledge of her sexuality is making her more like ‘God’ in a way, and now this God is pissed about that idea.

And this also does places a ‘Serpent’ figure in our Garden of Eden and that’s Riff-Raff. It’s through his manipulation of events that Janet get offered that Forbidden Himbo in the first place. He probably wasn’t really counting on it directly, more like just causing random chaos in the hopes of distracting Frank long enough to prepre for the coup. But still, without Riff-Raff and Magenta’s tormenting of Rocky, he wouldn’t have fallen in Janet’s lap like this.

And I think, this is taking very directly from the Christian interpetation of the Garden of Eden myth, where the Serpent is retconned as Satan. Riff-Raff is, after all, a resentful servant planning to usurp his master out of jealousy and uses the humans as pawns in his scheme to do that. If Frank is playing God, than Riff-Raff is clearly playing Devil here!

And, like the pitchfork is OBVIOUSLY a reference to the American Gothic motif but... there’s no reason why you couldn’t also connect it to a Satanic motif? Especially as, with Frank being a Reverse-God who preaches for sin and pleasure, Riff-Raff is a Devil of... well, I dunno if he necessarily believes in all of that sexual conservatism stuff - but he’s certainly willing to use it as an excuse for his personal beef with Frank! Either way the point remains, the pitchfork ties together the concepts of traditionalism and sexual shame, as symbolized by American Gothic, with the Devil.

[jessicalprice]

the two trees

(reposted from Twitter)

Been reading a lot about religious abuse and a lot of people writing about it talk a lot about Eden and the trees, and I'm feeling like it's time for a little thread about the trees. 

So. Everyone knows this story, right? 

Cool. Where was each tree located in the garden?

Here's the text. (Incidentally, "Eden" is the same word, essentially, as "edna", pleasure--when Sarah hears the promise that she will bear a son, she laughs to herself at the idea that she will have "pleasure", eden/edna, again.) 

And here it is in a different translation (Hebrew and English are so different that it’s hard for a single English translation to capture everything about the Hebrew--in this case, while I generally prefer Everett Fox’s translation, it doesn’t capture the link between adam (the human) and adamah (the earth/soil).

They both basically preserve the structure of the Hebrew as far as where the trees are: “the tree of life in the center of the garden... and the tree of knowledge of good and bad.”

So in the center, we have the tree of life.

And... somewhere, there's also the tree of knowledge. (Tov v'ra, "good and bad," is an idiom that means "everything"--the English equivalent would probably be closer to "Knowledge from A-Z”.)

Ok, so, we've got the tree of life called out as being at the center of the garden. And somewhere in the garden is the tree of knowledge. And then we get instructions.

So if you want to read this literally in English, these instructions are given to Adam, because Eve isn't around yet. But as I noted above, adam in Hebrew is also just "human." (adam from the adama, an earthling from the earth, a human from the humus.)

And there's a popular Jewish reading that says that the first human was actually male AND female, and Eve wasn't *created* from Adam--the first human was split into two. So maybe she was around. But if you want to be literal, the text only records this instruction to the man.

Anyhow, we have the tree of life in the center, and the tree of knowledge somewhere, and the man gets told don't eat from the tree of knowledge, and Eve doesn't exist yet (at least as a separate being).

So, Eve gets separated/created, and along comes the serpent, with a question that is already framed incorrectly (a tried and true lawyer technique--people will jump to correct you and accidentally admit things). “Did God really say: You shall not eat of any tree of the garden?”

So, we don't know what Eve has actually been told, or by whom. Did God give her the same instruction God gave Adam? Did Adam have to pass on the instruction to her? Did he do it correctly?

So let's look at her answer:

What’s interesting here is that while the translation inserts the “other” to make it make sense, it’s not there in Hebrew.

What’s even odder is that the first sentence is actually in the singular:

and said the woman to the serpent from the tree-of-the-garden we will eat

is the closest I can get to word-by-word, one-to-one translation. 

It should be in the plural construct form, atzei-, but instead it’s in the singular, etz-.

Then she goes on:

and/but from the fruit of the tree that is inside/in the center of/the essence of the garden, said God do not eat from it and do not touch it lest you die

So, first, let's get something out of the way: she adds to the instruction. The original instruction didn't contain anything about touching.

(And if you're going, eh, so what?, well, the Hebrew here is SUPER-terse. If something gets repeated, it's significant. And if it gets repeated with a change, that change basically has flashing lights over it.)

So either: 

God gave Eve different instructions (Adam wasn't told not to touch; she was). 

Adam relayed the instructions to Eve and added the part about not touching.

Eve added the part about not touching.

If the story wanted us to know that God gave Eve different instructions than God gave Adam, I'm pretty sure we would have gotten a scene with that. 

So either Adam or Eve engaged in the first instance of the rabbinic practice of "building a fence around the law”. The practice of building a fence around the law is, if the Torah says "don't cook a kid in its mother's milk," you don't eat milk and meat together just to be sure. It makes the law stricter. (BTW, for Christians: Jesus was super-into the rabbinic practice of building a fence around the Torah--if the law is "don't murder," he says don't even get angry with someone.)

And the instruction is changed in another way: 

God tells Adam don't eat from the tree of knowledge. 

Eve says we're not supposed to eat from the tree in the center of the garden (which has already been identified as the tree of life in 2:9).

So, the serpent says, you're not going to die, your eyes are going to be opened and you'll be like divine beings, knowing tov v'ra (literally good and bad, but colloquially, everything from A-Z).

And so she eats from... the tree. The tree in the center of the garden? The tree of knowledge? Nope. Just the tree.

Oh, and btw, the text is literally: she took from its fruit and ate and gave also to her husband THERE WITH HER (imah) and he ate. This entire time, the shmuck was standing right there not saying anything. All those stories about her running off to find him and seduce him? Heh.

Funny how the majority of translations just... don't translate that word.

So anyway, God asks them if they ate from the tree God had commanded them not to eat from (God initially identifies the tree of knowledge, Eve identifies the tree in the center of the garden--it's like the text is doing a shell game with the trees.).

There's a lot I could say about how bad the "pangs of childbirth" translation is (it's work, an explicit parallel to Adam's work of tilling the soil). Equal weariness for equal work, but that's a whole different discussion.

But then we get God speaking (unclear to whom, or who can hear), saying "we can't let them also eat from the tree of life" or... they'll live forever. But they were already eating from that tree, no? They had permission to eat from everything except the tree of knowledge.

So what's going on? Midrash goes WILD about the trees. It was two trees with a single root system, it was the same tree, one tree was the root system of the other, etc. I haven't encountered it, but there's probably stuff about the trees switching places somewhere.

Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism, goes even WILDER, collapsing space and time. Adam and Eve were originally a single being, and so were Lilith and Samael, and those two in their combined form were the tree of knowledge, they got split when the fruit was plucked, which is why Lilith is so pissed.

But also, the serpent was Samael and the tree was Lilith, there's stuff I can't remember exactly with the tree and the flaming sword of the cherub guarding the way back to the garden being somehow related... Jewish mysticism doesn't always treat time as linear, so.

But I keep coming back to those two instances of:

Eden as paradise.

Sarah laughing to herself at the idea that she will have pleasure (edna) again in her old age. It's a root that doesn't occur all that often, so the link between those two instances rings out.

And you can read the text as God imposing punishment, like a vengeful parent. You can also read it with God as an overprotective parent, who wanted to keep the knowledge of what inevitably awaits adults--toil, exhaustion, and ultimately death--from the kids for a little longer.

But adulthood holds joys kids can't experience, too, like the joy of bringing life into the world. And birth is intimately connected with death. They are inextricably linked, the departure from the garden of Eden into the world of toil and death, and Sarah’s edna at the idea she will have a child. 

As bioethicist Laurie Zoloth observes in Born Again: Faith and Yearning in the Cloning Debate:

Birth, in its messy, uncontrollable tumult, is the closest moment we ever have to facing our own death, of course. The Jewish rabbinic tradition requires women to re-enact this by the ritual immersion and the public recitation of the prayer of rescue, both acknowledgments not only of the obvious risk involved in physical childbirth (a fact rather cheerily forgotten in all of the cloning debates) but also of the fact that the birth of a child re-states the ending of the self. It is the entrance into the room of your life of the he-who-will-hold-you-as-you-lie-dying...

At stake will be how it is to love like that, not the chosen one, not the close-as-can-be replica, but the surprising stranger who will live at your side... The act of parenting is the act of encounter with the other who is both not-you and of-you, your future and your responsibility, your obligation and your joy. In this way, we all learn to have the stranger, not the copy, live by our side as though out of our side.

God is not a human parent, but perhaps the departure from Eden is the moment when humanity becomes the beloved stranger, who is both not-God and of-God, future and responsibility, obligation and joy. 

I think here of one of our readings for Yom Kippur here:

You are our Beacon; 

we are Your burden. 

You are our Enigma; 

we are Your frustration. 

You are our Call to Conscience; 

we are Your critics. 

You are our Touchstone; 

we are Your loyal opposition.

Perhaps as a species, we’re still teenagers. 

What the link between birth and death, expulsion from paradise and the promise of a child, seems to tell us is that they’re the same tree.

Life beyond childhood and knowledge and death are all of a piece. Or, you can read it as both of those concepts--life/innocence and knowledge/death playing peekaboo with you throughout the text. 

But in any case, textually speaking, there is something VERY WEIRD going on with the relationship between those two trees.

And, most importantly, there is NOTHING simple about this story. It can't be read literally, and it's too mysterious to serve as a just-so story about men and women.

Photo credit: Johannes Plenio

[thebindingofpillo]

Now you! tell me about Adam, since he's wholesome and honestly I have been beating him like a dead horse (oﾟvﾟ)ノ

HAH you have fallen into my TRAP and now will have to suffer. Keep in mind that this is still a first draft, and while the core of the story is done, some details might change in the future. Adam doesn’t even have a finished design but it’ll look something like this

This all started when my brain went “huh wouldn’t it be fun if Adam was a goth just like Eve?” And let me tell you. My brain was right. Also BTW there will be mentions of pregnancy down there. Because they had kids at one point.

Anyway, Adam was the first man ever created, and while he did like to hang around the garden, God knew he was lonely, so he made him a friend (Eve). The two clicked immediately, being made from the same substance, but were still different enough to not get bored of eachother. Where Adam was shy and introverted, Eve was more upfront, and pushed him to do more. While Adam was more than content with hanging around animals, Eve was never able to keep still for too long, and could be usually found bothering the big flaming angel at the garden’s gates. This caused the two humans to butt heads from time to time, but they always made peace in the end. Neither of them wanted to be left alone, and even if they fought, they still found solace in each other. It didn’t last.

One day, Eve found the Serpent on one of her walks, and it taunted her for not knowing anything about the world outside the Garden. She was flabbergasted, a world outside the Garden? Who could have ever imagined something like that! The Serpent laughed, and revealed something that would shatter her world. You see, Eve at the time was already pregnant. And how could she expect to be a decent mother if she didn’t know the first thing about the world? Shaken, Eve returned to Adam, who was absolutely overjoyed at the thought of being a father, but the Serpent’s words had planted doubt in his heart too. God had never told them anything about “the real world” as the Serpent said. Was He keeping something else from them? And what about their unborn child? They didn’t know the first thing about raising a child, maybe the Fruit of Knowledge could have made them better parents. Adam didn’t want to be a bad dad.

The two quickly grew restless, and while Adam still had some doubts about the whole ordeal, he chose to trust Eve and the two ate the fruit together, one half each. Because that’s what parents do, they want the best for their children, even if they make mistakes, even if they risk going against God. The Great Almighty took the news of their disobedience surprisingly well, but even He couldn’t risk keeping them in the Garden. After all, the Tree of Immortality was right beside the Tree of Knowledge, and He didn’t want the first two humans to become gods. He tasked the cherub guarding the garden (Eden themselves, they’ll also come into play later) to escort the humans outside, and they did (even if they went a bit overboard with the flaming sword and all).

So now the first man and the first woman were out, in the open, without protection, and without guidance. They quickly got to work, making a shelter, that later turned into a small farm (with a little flock of sheep too), and soon enough Cain was born. Adam was elated. He loved his kid, and he loved his wife, and when Abel came along, it felt like his life was even more perfect than when he was stuck in the Garden. This didn’t last either.

When Abel was killed, Cain knew he would have been in trouble, so he ran away, as fast as he could. Adam spent a whole week looking for him, calling his name until the wee hours of the morning, and he would have spent the whole month looking for him if Eve wasn’t in desperate need of help. After losing not one, but both children in a single day, she fell into a deep depression, refusing to speak, eat, or take care of herself. Adam was destroyed, but had no time to grieve the loss of his sons, not when his wife was in such a state. She couldn’t even bring herself to go outside, everything reminded her of her children. With Adam busy taking care of her and their farm, he worked himself half to death, until someone showed up at their door, offering a hand.

You see, Eden (the angel, not the garden) actually felt bad about chasing them away. And while they would never admit it, they missed their talks with Eve, and seeing the humans frolic in the Garden. Since they were a Cherub, they could use their divine sight to keep an eye on the two of them, and seeing Eve in such bad shape was the thing that made Eden get away from their assigned guard post and come to Earth. Seeing them, Adam was elated (and since Eden was in human form, he could not recognise them) finally he could devote more time to Eve, and to his grief. He put them to work right away, and didn’t even notice they didn’t seem to need food, or that the crops were growing a bit too fast, or that the flock seemed a bit afraid of the new farmboy (farmperson?) he didn’t care.

Slowly, Eve started to heal. It was little things at first, like getting up from the bed, or eating on her own, and with the help of Eden, she was able to return to a somewhat normal state of mind. She would never be again the sunny, adventurous girl Adam fell in love with, but it was okay for him. Speaking to her again after years of silence was enough. Eventually she was strong enough to help on the farm again, and the three became some sort of weird family. Eden eventually left on their own, but would periodically come back to check on the two, and was pleasantly surprised when they found a new member of the household: Seth, their third and last child. Adam and Eve could never have their old family, or old life, back but they could make a new one with what they had.

Aaaand the backstory is done now. Personality wise, Adam is someone who deeply cares about people. He might seem a bit sour, and not inclined to make friends, but that’s just because of his crippling shyness. He is always the first one to offer help, even at his own detriment. He cares so deeply for others he sometimes forgets to take care of himself, and always needs someone to keep an eye on him, lest he burns himself out. He also deeply loves animals, is a staunch advocate for their rights, and has an encyclopaedic knowledge of their needs and keeping conditions, so if you need help with a pet, he’s the guy for you. Since he was supposed to be the only human in the Garden, God gave him the power to speak to animals so he wouldn’t be alone, but animals usually don’t make for great conversations. At the time of the story, Adam works at a pet shop, and I still don’t know what his character arc will be. While both he and Eve keep getting reincarnated, they haven’t met eachother for quite a long time, and while he does kinda remember her, and still feels some fondness for her, they’ve become two completely different people at this point, and are perfectly content in their new lives. Still, they might become friends, who knows. Also, last thing, since they were guilty of giving birth to the first murderer, both Adam and Eve are cursed with the WOB symbol (which is actually the Mark of Cain in this AU, but shh that’s for later). Eve is also the Whore of Babylon of the Revelations, while Adam uuuuh idk it’ll come to me. He will have a part in the Apocalypse, I still need to think about it. Since Eve is the Mother of Harlots, he might be their Father. It takes two to tango etc. etc. this sucks I’ll stop now.

[spinallyspiraling]

Sephirothic Eden: The God Androgynous; Dual Soul

The original Adam was pure and not driven by animal instinct. The original Adam was male-female: an androgynous being with both polarities.

The real human being does not practice this sexual generative behavior because it is animal; the Human Being is the mystery of the double polarity of Elohim (male-female: one flesh). Husband and wife form a complete positive-negative Elohim.

Those who want to return to the Edenic state have to form an Elohim first: a stable of union of male and female, that harnesses all of their energies in order to free themselves of suffering.

In Kabbalah, יהוה Jehovah is pronounced Jah-Chavah, because the name יהוה Jehovah or Jah-Chavah shows the two polarities: יה Jah is masculine, and הוה Havah or Chavah is feminine. So when we say Jah-Chavah we are immediately naming an androgynous entity related with the Elohim, which is a plural word that means Gods and Goddesses.

The name of God in Chokmah, the second Sephirah in the world of Atziluth, is יהוה Jehovah. We always translate it as Jah-Chavah, because it is masculine and feminine. Immediately after Chokmah is Binah, whose Holy Name is Jah-Chavah Elohim.

... the Mother, is the feminine aspect, what we call Chavah, the Nukvah, the feminine aspect of the Holy Spirit. This is why we always state that in Daath is the union of the masculine and the feminine aspects of the Holy Spirit; those aspects are hidden in the word Jah-Chavah (Jehovah or Iod-Havah). Jah is the masculine, and Chavah or Eve is the feminine. Jah-Chavah is sometimes called Adam Kadmon, the two superior creative forces of Binah hidden in the trinity, since Adam is also Adamah the feminine aspect, the ground (Eden).

There is a masculine and feminine aspect within Jehovah Elohim. In other words in the sexual act, Jah and Chavah must be united so that through Ha’arets, the earth, Adamah, Elohim can build.

As above so below, and as above so below; this means that Binah, the Holy Spirit creates through our bodies; unfortunately it is done through fornication, because animals fornicate. But above, in Briah, there is no fornication. In Briah, we see that God impregnates the chaotic matter with Shin (fire), and then the earth becomes filled with life. This is how we have to understand the first chapter of the Book of Genesis where this is explained in more detail, but Alchemically, Kabbalistically. And yes, only by walking on the path of initiation can we understand this.

"Elohim created Adam in his own image, in the image of Elohim created he him; male and female created he them."

~ Genesis 1: 27

Father and mother are Adam and Eve who are Iod-Chavah, Jehovah above. To honor them is to make the fiery image—which is within them—concrete inside of us by lifting it through the initiation, through the alchemical work that we have to perform. But I repeat, it is necessary to study the Tree of Life because it has different lands; every single Sephirah is a land.

"And out of (Adamah, Eden) the ground (our physicality) made Iod-Havah Elohim to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life (the medulla) also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil (the genitalia)."

~ Genesis 2:9

Which is this river? When you imagine a river you imagine a line, even if it is serpentine like a spinal column, because a spinal column is linear but serpentine, like a river.

When we read that a river went out from Eden we have to understand that this upper Eden is Daath (sixth dimension) that corresponds in us to the brain; in other words, in us, the river (the Vav, the medulla) comes down from the brain. Remember that the one who works from the brain (pineal gland) down to sex is Jehovah Elohim, Binah, the Holy Spirit.

The Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge are the two trees in the mist of the garden (our physicality). Daath is Hebrew for knowledge, the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

When we read “in the midst of the garden” we imagine the spinal column that is always represented by the letter ו Vav, which has the shape of a line, a straight vertical line, with a dot (Iod) on top. That dot on the top is the brain. So, the letter ו Vav is a prolonged dot upon a straight vertical line. The dot in the top is the brain that points to Kether, Chokmah, and Binah that are in the head, the brain; the straight line is the spinal column. The letter ו Vav is directly connected to God, that is why ו Vav in Hebrew means “connection” or “and.” This is why many verses in Genesis start with ו Vav: I.e. “And God said”, “And God saw”, “And God called”, “And God made”, etc… “And” in Hebrew is written with a single letter Vav, like in Spanish “y” means “and.” In Hebrew the single Vav means “and” and is pronounced Va.

So in its entire significance ו Vav is telling us that the whole creation is made within the medulla through the three primary forces, that as we already explained are the three forces that create. Divine creation is done through the spinal column, which starts precisely in Daath. Daath appears below the first triangle on the Tree of Life; it is precisely in the throat, directly in the very beginning, the top of the spinal column, since the end of the spinal column is Yesod. This is why we always state that the letter Vav connects the brain (Adam) with sex (Eve).

The first Garden of Eden is Daath and the second Garden of Eden is Yesod.

[ask-de-writer]

About NERA, a reading in four parts

@mordenheim​ LISTENED to, LIKED and

REBLOGGED all four parts of

the audio story NERA to

@nevermord​ who commented :

Yup.  I have mentioned before the origin of this tale.  It is rooted in ancient Hebrew manuscripts and beliefs about 3000 years old.  Genesis back then was quite a different tale than the version that is in the Old Testament now.

Lilith was the first of Adam’s seven wives.  She ate of both the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life.  She fled into, and I quote from the translation that I read, “into the darkness where The Source of Light could not go.”

Adam’s other five wives all made the Eve mistake but failed to convince him to share in the Fruit of Knowledege.  They were banished from Eden and became the mothers of the “children of the earth” whom Cain later married.

Calling God the Source of Light was a common euphemism in that translation.

The ancient belief was that Lilith gained God like powers and created in the Darkness where God, the Source of Light, could not go, completing Creation.

I did not make up Lilith, The Source of Light or the Angel with the flaming sword that guarded Eden.  I did make up Nera and Rostov.

Later peoples, both Christian and pre Christian distorted the whole Genesis tale into what we now have.  They also demoted Lilith to a mere evil spirit who caused still birth and strangled infants in their cribs.

On a side note, I just listened to the original MP3 recordings of NERA and the nasty buzzing and odd Loud bongs that seem to be a feature of the Tumblr copies are NOT present.  My now deceased pet birds, chirping at times Are present

[vaspider]

Me: figuring out how I’m non-binary and suddenly remembering that one time my oldest sister told me about a conversation she and my mom had where apparently my mom said that you can’t be both genders and it’s not how god made them

Also me: knowing that she’s just sorta uneducated about lbtq+ and that she’d be accepting when she gets taught about it all and understands it better but also knowing that she’s probably say something like “no you can’t do that” and go on a rant about that

Me: Haha yaaay fun🥲

(Sorry just needed to mention that somewhere)

Is she sure about that, though?

Here's Genesis 1:27, the first mention of the creation of humanity. In this verse we see Adam (the only extant human at the time) referred to not only as "him" but "them," and also referred to as "male and female" in the same verse.

We don't see any reference to Eve until a full chapter later:

In Genesis 2:22 (still in Bere'shit, the first Torah portion), we see a explicit reference to the later creation of Eve.

While some people may argue that this is simply two separate verses referencing the same thing - the creation of Adam as a "him" and then the later creation of Eve from Adam, in Jewish tradition we understand that there are no spare words in Torah, and every word is there for a purpose. So through that lens, and looking at how far apart the two verses are, I'd argue this is absolutely not the case.

Let's look at the sequence of events: G-d creates Adam, breathes life into him, in 1:27. And then we have an entire chapter explaining that (according to Bere'shit) Adam was created before plant life* but after all other animals; explaining the location of Eden; explaining the issue of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil; explaining the naming of the animals... and after all that we get to the creation of Eve. These are clearly discrete events!

So... the next time she brings that up, maybe you can ask her: is she sure about that? Because I'm pretty sure that G-d created Adam as either bigender or non-binary or intersex or some or all of the above, and regardless of that, the other thing that Bere'shit makes very clear is that all of humanity was created b'tzelem El'ohim**, made in the image of G-d, so the way you were made? That is no more or less 'made by G-d' than Adam. If you believe that G-d fashions each of us individually and according to His purpose, then you are no less wonderfully, intentionally, and correctly made according to your gender and true nature than Adam.

So, like.

Your mom is wrong on several levels, and your gender is not only supported by the text of Torah but even if it weren't, uh, so what? If she believes G-d is infallible and made each of us intentionally, then she must also believe He made you correctly to His purpose, non-binary and beautiful in His eyes.

Thank you for bringing this to me. I happened to be sitting here with my Tanakh open and reading a different parsha, but it was my delight to flip back a couple of weeks to Bere'shit for you.

* I don't think this means literally "before plant life" but is a reference to the beginning of agriculture, but that's another discussion.

** Intentional slight misspelling.

[helluvascribe]

Adam and Lute potential backstory Hazbin Hotel

Adam – God’s first man created in His image. Adam as the first man grew to be prideful and admired. Lucifer was God’s favorite angel and frequently played divine music for Him. But Lucifer refused to bow to the first human because he believed that angels were superior to these strange humans. Why would God suddenly favor this new “man” experiment over his right-hand angel he had for centuries? God made Adam from dust and then created Lilith. Lilith wanted to be Adam’s equal, but since Adam was made first, he believed that she should be subservient to him. Lilith argued that they were both made of the same stuff and that their relationship should be equal since God created both of them. Lilith got angry when Adam got on top of her and was rough. She was banished/ran off from the garden, but not before meeting Lucifer, who had witnessed the whole thing. They quickly bonded, as Lucifer was increasingly jealous of Adam getting special attention. Lucifer and Lilith, to get back at getting kicked out of paradise, helped convince Adam’s second more subservient wife, Eve into eating an apple from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This led to Adam and Eve’s banishment from Eden and the first sin of man. Lucifer and Lilith became king and queen of Hell, ruling equally side by side. Eve eventually divorced Adam after their fall, standing up for herself. Adam became angry. He blamed Eve for being tempted by Lucifer and for eating the apple, which led to their banishment. He was angry at Lilith for not obeying him and causing the problems. And he was angry at Lucifer, jealous of his position and involvement with getting them banished. (He was also furious at Lucifer for fucking his ex.) 

After Adam died, he went to Heaven where he told God the whole story. Still impressed with His creation and without Lucifer, God made Adam His right-hand man and he turned into an angel. Once Adam found out that Lilith and Lucifer had demon children, he wanted to be rid of them once and for all, to get back at Lilith and Lucifer for his fall from paradise/former glory. Most disturbing of all, Adam grew maniacal with his newfound warrior powers (and his music playing – he entertained God with his guitar-playing.) When he found out that human sinners went to Hell, he grew bloodthirsty, his appearance changing into something monstrous. Not caring about his human descendants and wanting revenge on Eve, blaming her for the banishment and giving him the apple (when in truth it was both of them and Lucifer), he instead sought to have them…exterminated. Adam fabricated a story to strike fear in the denizens of Heaven. “There are hundreds of sinners every day in Hell. Think about what would happen if all of them and the demons were to try and enter Heaven. Destroying our order and our families. Not to mention you having to deal with Lucifer again and another war.” So God and the elite made Adam the leader of the Exorcists (“Attack the demons but not us”), who “cleanse” sinners every year to instill fear in the hearts of demons/sinners and to keep them in line. Lucifer doesn’t interfere and allows it to happen…but every year, Adam plays his electric guitar and laughs manically over the bloodshed, determined to rid Hell of sinners for good and make Lucifer and family bow to him. Adam has Lute, an exorcist lackey who is more serious and cold than Adam, and very protective. Eve reincarnates as a heavier African protector woman living in South America, more confident of herself. She later helps Charlie with the Hazbin Hotel and protecting humanity and sinners.

[scarletarosa]

Ningishzida 

Mesopotamian god of the tree of wisdom

Ningishzida’s name means "Lord of the Good Tree", which is also known as “The Tree of Death”. It is this sacred tree that grants wisdom once eaten from, causing a “death” to one’s ignorance and a rebirth through knowledge. This tree is also an entrance to the Underworld, since wisdom comes from allowing one’s current self to die. Its sister-tree is the “Tree of Life” which is equivalent to Yggdrasil.

In depictions, Ningishzida is shown as either a large serpent, a serpent with the head of a man, a crowned man with snakes coming from his shoulders, or as a double-headed serpent that is coiled into a double helix. This last representation makes him the first appearance of the caduceus symbol, predating the one shown with Hermes and Asclepius in Greece. In another depiction, Ningishzida is shown beside the Tree of Death (a unique tree that is shown bearing some sort of fruit), along with two griffins, which are divine protectors. Ningishzida is also associated with dragons, the mušhuššu and balm. He is also referred to as a snake, (muš-mah, meaning “exalted serpent”). Due to these, he is moreso a serpentine-dragon, rather than just a serpent.

Myths: In mythology, Ningishzida is one of the deities thought to travel to the Underworld (Kur) during the dead seasons (mid-summer to mid-winter); the other deity being Dumuzi. These two gods are also featured in the myth of Adapa, one of the first humans. When Adapa is commanded to arrive before Anu, god of the heavens, after speaking a curse to break the south wind, he sees both Ningishzida and Dumuzi placed as guards for Anu’s celestial palace. As for Ningishzida's chthonic connections, a title of his is “gu-za-lá-kur-ra” (the chair-bearer of the netherworld). He is also the overseer for the twin-gods who guard the gates of the Underworld: Lugal-irra and Meslamta-ea. An additional role of his is being involved with divine law in both the Underworld and on Earth, making him a guardian/overseer of many things.

The Tree of Death had also been linked with the serpent or dragon (winged serpent) for over 1,000 years before Genesis was written. In 2025 BC, the cup of the Sumerian King Gudea of Lagash showed two winged dragons holding back a pair of opening doors to reveal a caduceus of uniting snakes, the incarnation of the god Ningishzida, to whom the cup is inscribed: “Lord of the Tree of Truth”. In northern Babylonia the goddess who embodied the Tree of Wisdom was called the “Divine Lady of Eden” or “Edin”, and in the south she was called the “Lady of the Vine”, an understandable change of name given that the Sumerian sign for ‘life’ was originally a vine leaf.

Appearance: Ningishzida is an enormous serpent with yellow eyes and a body that is over 30 meters in length. His body is made out of black Sumerian syllables that shift all around his form, due to his power of words. He also has shimmering black plumes on his head and around his neck. While his form is that of a great serpent, he is a species of dragon and has similar abilities to them.

Personality: Ningishzida is reserved, serious, highly intelligent and wise, honest, diligent, intuitive, and deeply loyal. He is a highly respectable being and seeks to teach promising humans of true wisdom and knowledge. He has said that the path to true wisdom is a painful one and very few make it; yet those who do are fully reborn. Just like a serpent, they must shed themselves and become anew. Although the majority of humans do not impress him anymore; he wishes to work only with those who fully love truth and are willing to achieve spiritual evolution despite the strife it costs. He dislikes laziness, pretentiousness, cruelty, stubbornness, and those who prefer to believe lies in order to be comfortable. Ningishzida has also stated that he is neither Lucifer nor Satan, or any other demon; he teaches very similar things as Lucifer and is on good terms with him, but they are not the same. Overall, Ningishzida is a god of vast knowledge and wisdom who seeks to bring enlightenment to those who prove themselves worthy to him.

The Story of the Tree of Death: Ningishzida has described that the tree mentioned in Biblical texts is indeed his own tree, but the actual event was much different than described. He tells that when humans were being created, it was done so through guided evolution. The birth-place of the final result for humanity took place within several gardens full of life upon Earth, such as Dilmun and Eden (e-din: “the land between two rivers”; i.e. a location within Mesopotamia). When the humans were created within these sacred gardens, they were not actually created in pairs, but as large groups. This is because there is no possible way that two humans alone could populate the Earth. Once these humans were created, they were often visited by certain deities (such as Enki, their creator), as well as some dragons. The dragons are a race of beings who possess advanced intelligence and wisdom, many of them are also deities. These beings all came to the humans in order to teach them and show them how to become independent. One such mentor to the humans was the serpentine-dragon himself, Ningishzida, who guarded the Tree of Wisdom.

These gardens of paradise were select areas upon Earth that were enhanced with magickal fields due to divine pillars the deities had placed within. This caused the gardens to be otherworldly in their beauty, with plenty of food, water, and even luminescent architectures where the humans could live. The Tree of Death is a divine tree of otherworldly beauty that was projected into each of these sacred gardens, each one being protected by Ningishzida. These gardens were to serve as temporary dwelling places for the new humans, allowing them to be closely mentored until they were fully ready to become independent. Once a human made it far enough in their training, Ningishzida would allow them to eat from his tree and become truly wise.

However, the tyrant Aeon god, Jehovah, sought to take Earth as his own by manipulating mankind. He managed to convince many humans that they were being held captive in these gardens and that eating from the Tree of Death meant literal death, in order to prevent them from becoming wise. Due to this, very few humans got to eat from the fruits of wisdom. Thinking that their mentors had been corrupting them all along, the humans prematurely left from the gardens and convinced others to do the same. Once many had left, the humans gradually began to realize how difficult surviving on Earth actually was and tried to enter one of the remaining gardens. But in order to keep the humans inside this garden safe, the deities prevented them from entering and guarded the entrances with flaming swords. In a rage, the humans attacked the divine pillars of all the gardens, causing them to lose their magick essences. The gardens of paradise thus lost their power and became nothing but regular places of nature, eventually being absorbed into the rest of the landscape. 

Believing the lies of Jehovah that the fruits had condemned them all to a painful fate, the humans placed the blame on Ningishzida and the rest of the dragons. They raged at their old mentors and cursed their names. It did not take long until the humans began hunting down the dragons in order to kill them, though only succeeding a few times. This act of treachery greatly angered the draconic beings and eventually, they abandoned the humans to completely fend for themselves on Earth. All because of the coaxing of Jehovah, a long history began of humans portraying the dragons as evil and selfish, whereas humans are their victims. However, the humans who had remained in the gardens did not end up following Jehovah, which allowed them to pass down an actual record of the divinities and how Ningishzida represents truth. Unfortunately, a lot of the records were eventually destroyed by zealots and this act of giving wisdom was twisted into meaning something “evil” for many people. Overtime, this account was reformed and simplified into the Abrahamic texts (along with plenty of other Mesopotamian myths). The humans “Adam and Eve” are representations of humanity overall, and the giver of wisdom, Ningishzida, is portrayed as a devil.

Devotional actions: Ningishzida mainly prefers offerings of action over physical offerings. He can be honoured through actions such as gaining knowledge, overcoming your Ego so wisdom can develop, making mystical pilgrimages for enlightenment, seeking deeper meaning of yourself, and allowing the struggles of life to transform you for the better.

Offerings: lapis lazuli, amethyst, bitter oranges (signify the bittersweet taste of wisdom), snakeskin, desert sand, cedar trees, skulls (represent death), femur bones (contain the oldest tissues), Arab incense, incense of oud, amber, saffron, or saffron + rose

[trashy-corvian]

pls (if you’re able and willing) can you tell me more about hemlock bc 😳😳😳 but also AAAAAA i’m obsessed with angel ocs and fallen angel lore and i wanna hear more about them !!! and lowkey i’m curious if there’s a chance that ariel would know them from the celestial realm

Bestie, once again you're giving me the opportunity to ramble about my OC's and i'm READY TO UNLEASH THE LORE

warning: this shit is long

"I know you’ve been hurt. I have something that will make your life better."

On the third day, God separated the water from the land and assigned control of the land to a separate group of angels. These Nebulae, called Artisans, ruled the land and everything in it and loved it. They were given an attachment to the soil, plant life, to precious stones and rocks, to the fire that is rolling under the ground, and especially to the metals.

Verdant Chain Subdues The Holy was one of them. He, like all of his fellow Artisans, wasn't given a proper name because it wasn't important. His specialty was medicinal herbs and caddis (hence the Weedman nickname). After the creation, he was located in the Garden of Eden where the first seeds of doubt were sawn in his mind.

Humans were the greatest of God's creations. All angels were instructed to guard them but not show themselves to the humans. This was puzzling for Verdant Chain. He wanted to share the knowledge of the Creation with humans, to teach them to love and care for the life that was crafted specifically for them. Adam and Eve were akin to animals in their ignorance, happy and carefree but blind to the ones who were created for them.

So, when a certain serpent has found his way into the garden Verdant Chain described and explained to him where to find a tree that humans should not touch. So the serpent can avoid it of course.

After the Exile, it was also the duty of the Artisans to help people enjoy the gifts of the land - to cultivate the fields, to mine the ore, to make the tools that they need to develop the world. Angels willingly carried out their work, wishing to share their love of the earth and its subsoil with their subjects. That was when Verdant Chain realized that his love towards the Human realm outweighs his love towards his Creator.

Believe it or not, it was Lilith who gave him his scar. She tried to steal from Heaven and he was unfortunate enough to get in the way. He didn't hold a grudge, in fact, he surprised her by joining the rebel side soon after.

After the Fall almost all fallen angels that weren't dead were recruited by Diavolo. But there was a small part of the fallen that refused the Prince's offer. Some out of pride, some out of anger disdain towards demons. For Verdant Chain it was both. He refused to kneel before the new boss when he fought so hard to escape the old one. And he always despised the demons. Punishing the wicked and shitty people? Sure, but enjoying torturing the weak? Exploiting humans at their weakest point in life and taking pleasure from it? He refused even associate with them.

Nowadays, mankind has finally learned to work with tools and has become a race of creators, but in doing so, people have devastated the land and begun to treat it with indifference. For the fallen, the world is an open wound, so sometimes he is overwhelmed by the desire to just throw himself on the ground and cry. But if the world is going to heal, then he should forget his experiences and start working, as they did millennia ago.

And so he continues to live in the Human realm not as an instrument of God but as Hemlock. Just the local guy with the garden who always has tea, baked goods, herbal medicine, or weed for you.

Some random facts:

One of the oldest angels there is. Lucifer and Barbatos are the only ones out of the cast older than him.

Goes by he\him cuz that's how the first human he ever met addressed him and he just rolled with that

Has slept with many humans, mythical creatures, and gods.

Had FWB relationship with Dionysus for a few centuries before the wine god got married to Ariadna

Because of his connection to the Earth soil is MUCH stronger in the Human realm than any other plane of existence

Met Val when they ran away from the Devildom and housed them for some time

Had to be physically restrained from throwing hands with Belphegor and Diavolo after Val told him about what happened

Thinks that the Exchange program is a good idea that should be postponed for a few centuries because demons are absolutely not ready to live with humans, they still have human flesh in the streets for fucks's sake!

Would be a pride demon if he ever got to join Diavolo

Gets nervous around big herbivores

[germanicseidr]

Merkwede

The Merkwede is the ancient primeval woods that seperated the Germanics from other people. This forest has been named in the poetic edda, its location was at first thought to be somewhere in Scandinavia, per example the Kolmården forest in Sweden but it is way more likely that this forest was located somewhere on the borders of ancient Germania.

The word itself, 'Merkwede' is the Dutch word for this forest. It is a composition of the Proto-Germanic words 'merkwiz'and 'widuz' meaning dark and forest. This forest is named Myrkviðr in old Norse and Mirkwidu in the old Saxon language. Acccording to the poetic edda, Múspells sons will cross this very forest when they appear from their realm Muspelheim during Ragnarok.

It almost appears as if Merkwede is a mythological place but there are however older written sources that suggest that this forest is very much real and not just known by the Scandinavian people. Thietmar, a bisshop of Merseburg, mentions a place called Miriquidi, a forest located near the ore mountains which lies in South-East Germany on the border of the Czech republic. Thietmar however also mentions a Mircwidu forest which was located in the South-West of the Netherlands. This could refer to the Meriwidu forest in the Netherlands, named after the Merwede river. These two are possible candidates for this mysterious forest as they are both located on the borders of ancient Germania.

Another written source, a 13th century Norse story called Hervarar saga og Heidreks, speaks of a conflict between the Goths and the invading Huns from the East of Europe. In this story a forest is mentioned by name, the Myrkviðr forest that seperates the land of the Huns from the Goths. The location of this forest must have been near the Maeotian swamp close to the Don river in modern day Southern Russia.

Another more possible candidate is the Hercynia Silva, the ancient Hercynian woods described by Julius Caesar in his work 'de bello Gallico'. This is how Caesar described the forest:

"There isn't any person belonging to this part of Germania who says that he either has gone to the extremity of that forest, though he had advanced a journey of sixty days, or has heard in what place it begins. It is certain that many kinds of wild beast are produced in it which have not been seen in other parts of which the following are such as differ principally from other animals, and appear worthy of being committed to record."

About a century later, a Roman historian Velleius described how emperor Tiberius moved through this forest from the land of the Chatti towards the Marcomanni. Another Roman historian, Florus, described how Drusus managed to cross this forest in 12BC during his campaign against the Germanics. Where did the name Hercynia Silva come from? The Romans didn't invent this name but copied it from the Greeks. Aristoteles already described the landscape of modern day Southern Germany in 350BC in his work Meteorologika. Greek historian Strabon described how the Celtic Boii's homeland was located in Herkúnios Drumós.

The Greeks didn't invent the name either, no they got the name from the Celts who lived near this woods before the Germanics migrated southwards. The name can be traced back to the Proto-Celtic word 'Erkunia' which means mountain range. Perhaps the Proto-Indo European people were already aware of this forest and could have named it Perkunia, we can however not be certain about this but apparently this forest was immens and known by ancient people before the Germanics settled in this area.

Unfortunately most of Hercynia forest has been cut down throughout the centuries but a small part of this forest still exists and is now known as the black forest in modern day Germany. This is an excellent candidate for the Merkwede forest as it is located on the border of two different cultures, that of the Celts and the Germanics. Even now the Black forest is huge, imagine it was only a part of the ancient Hercynia forest and you can understand why the Germanics thought this forest must have been endless.

It is very possible that this forest was once so large that the Germanic people might have viewed it as the end of the world or civilization. No one could possibly live inside this immense primal woods except for otherworldly beings and Gods. Walking in this forest meant walking into two different worlds, that of the humans and of the Gods. Mysterious things could happen or be seen while wandering through this dense forest with its ancient trees, a place forgotten since the beginning of time. Perhaps the Allfather himself wandered through these woods thousands of years ago, searching for knowledge.

The name of this forest also lives on in popular culture. J.R.R Tolkien used the name of this forest to create Mirkwood, a great forest where the woodland elves live in his work the Hobbit.

Here are pictures of: Modern day Ore Mountains forest, Biesbosch forest in the Netherlands (location where once the Meriwidu forest could have stood), Black forest in Germany, Artist's view of Myrkvidr forest by Adam Wesierski,

[thekillingjoke-haha]

Beauty Sleep

Marvel and Supernatural bingo

Square:Sleeping Beauty

Castiel x Archangel!Reader

Warning?: Reader seems bad, Twist on Sleeping Beauty/Snow White, Poisoning, Wicked Father,ect.

A/n: [This text is a memory]

Tag: @thisismysecrethappyplace

The loud clap of a book dropping on the table startled the brothers for their own research. "What the hell,Cas." The eldest said more then likely woken up for his half sleep mind set. "I found it." He said as he pointed to the thick book.

"Found the weapon that can restore balance." He explained further causing them to grow intrigued. It was the weapon they were looking for that could keep Angels in heaven,demons in hell,and other supernatural in purgatory. The one thing that can fix everything."Perfect where do we get it?" Sam asked as he pulled the book three times thicker then the largest dictionary towards him. "Where do we find her you mean." Castiel said making the Winchester's look at him confused.

Dean cleared his throat and dragged his hand down his face. "Her? The weapon is a person?!" He asked. "Not exactly. She was the first Archangel made by both God and Amare. Legend has it she's more powerful then both of them she could create life with ease and equally wipe it without so much as a single thought. Because of this she had to be put to rest." The angel explained further.

"If she's so powerful how is she "put to rest" can't she wake herself up?" Dean asked as he looked over his brother's shoulder at the book. "Apparently her prison has hex symbols that takes away and returns her grace in a constant loop to keep her weak yet alive." The younger brother explained pointing out the drawing of the three symbols on the page. "So a real life sleeping beauty? Sweet! I always fit the role of prince charming ya know?" Dean said cockily posing victoriously.

The angel rolled his eyes. "There's a catch,Dean. It says once we break those symbols all of heaven and hell will feel it. The creations that she made will hunt her down...all things supernatural will come for her,but once she's back in full power she'll be able to cloak herself." Cas said as he paced slightly. If she was a powerful as legend had it she could fix it all for them. "Her creations? She made the monsters we hunt?! I thought that was Eve." Dean exclaimed as he ran a hand through his hair. "That's a common misconception the apple she ate gave he knowledge that only three beings knew. That special apple was made from her grace." That's when the angel paused as his words raked over him. "Her garden was never just a place it was her prison."

"The garden of Eden. What's this Angel's name?" Sam asked as he flipped through the book and tried to find a name,but all he saw was angel of light and darkness,the perfect balance. "God was nice enough to name it after her. Eden the first Archangel,but she's gone by many names before." He said.

Dean looked at the book with Sam. "Where do we find the magical garden? No book supernatural or not ever gave a location." The eldest asked and it was a good question. "The garden never stays in the same place for to long it moves often. One day it could be in a forest the next in a mountain." Cas said with a sigh it was impossible to find the prison with out a bit of her grace to track the source.

"Her grace is strong even a little can help us. Even if a millennia has gone by and it's became one with the elements it can help." Cas explained. "Cain" The name fell from Dean's lips as he numbly rubbed where the mark once was. "Cain is the son of Adam and Eve. Eve had that grace in her system she must have pasted it to him!" With that the boys packed up and were heading to Cains house to use him as a tracking device. The day long drive dragged on and with those time Sam continued to ask questions.

Most of the questions the angel had no answer to until one made him freeze up. "How did it happen in the first place? Was she casted out of heaven like Lucifer?" The younger Winchester asked. "I think Chuck poisoned her. She was like Lucifer she questioned a lot of things it was a new angelic trait, curiosity, except she loved all creatures and things Chuck made so when he makes something new she was the first to see and that was the last time any angel has seen her." The vivid memory came to mind.

The giggle of the young fledglings filled the air. A girl with H/c hair dragged a younger version of himself around. "My little raven come look! Father has created such beautiful things." She said as she showed him the flowers in her hand each different from the other. "What are they called?" He asked tilting his head. "Father said I can name them,but I can't think of anything...come help me plant them on earth there we can name them!" She said using her three pairs of large F/c wings to bring them to earth before humans were even thought about.

The soil on the ground was dark and it was vastly different from the sand surrounding it. With gentle hands she planted all of the flowers and together the angels named them. "Hmmm..." The girl hummed. "What is it Y/n?" He asked her. "We need something to keep them growing in numbers, raven." She said using a stick to draw on the dirt. "What should it look like?" Y/n asked him as she was going to go to her father to create it.

"Um...give it wings and make it the color of those sunflower over there." Castiel suggested. The drowning at took a couple tries,but as the kept adding and removing things they got what they wanted. Without realizing that the archangel just made multiple winged creatures on a whim and she wasn't even trying. God saw it all a d it scared him,but he couldn't do anything about it when his sister along with his other archangels would be there to stop him. He had to wait.

Three mil past and the two children grew bigger and she grew stronger. The small patch has turned into a garden of various plants that were only found in different climates around the world. Together they went there everyday even more often after the imprisonment of Amara and Lucifer along with the disappearance of Gabriel. Michael was busy trying to keep order after the two archangels left so it was his chance. Chuck called his daughter to see another one of his inventions,but that time was so much different from the others. Afterwards she didn't comeback she was never seen in heaven again and on that day a tree taller then any other in that garden with apples of pure gold grew.

The garden of Eden disappeared after Eve ate the forbidden fruit and it wasn't ever seen again by man,angel,nor demon knew of it location. Cas lost his friend and he knew it was god that did it even if he was suppose to be a loyal soldier he couldn't when he knew that the father of creation so willingly got rid of his most prized pupil what would he do to all the underlings.

Hours have past they stand in Cains living room. "Cain we don't need much from you just some of your blood that's all." Cas said as Dean explained what for. It took some convincing,but he agreed and bleed into a vile. "You guys better stop this apocalypse before shit hits the fan." He said as he shut them back out of his house. Sam handed the vile to Cas. "Now what do we do?" He asked the angel. Without saying a word he pulled something from his pocket a old looking compass. "Rowan taught me a location spell all I need to do is..." Pouring the small amount of blood on the glass of the compass and spoke in Latin causing the red substance to disappear. "...follow the arrow." Cas finished.

The arrow spinner rapidly as it settled on the strongest pull of the grace. "Looks like we're heading west. We have a estimated week before it changes course so off we go." Cas said as they all went back to the car. Keeping his eyes trained on it a small smile formed on his lips. "I'm coming N/n." He whispered to himself. Almost five thousand miles away a the unmoving body had a shocking pull of her lip at the mention of her name if only that could have woken her up for her comatose state.

It's been three days on the road and the impala had to come to a stop a thick treeline stopped them. The dirt road turned into a hiking trail and they had no choice,but to go on foot. Together they hiked up the trail blindly following the arrow through the woods. "Cas what are we suppose to be looked for?" Sam asked as he stepped over a fallen tree branch. "The closer we get the more exotic the plants and animals will be. Also be careful some of the wild life is experimental." The angel warned causing the brothers to freeze. "What do you me by experimental? Are we going to see a truducken?!" Dean asked jokingly as he looked around.

A loud snarling noise caused him to pull out his gun and look around. "More like human eating plants and venomous insects." This made Sam tense and stick closer to a still walking Castiel and Dean to cautiously does the same looking at each and every plant close by. "What is this fucking Jumanji?!?! Everything can kill us." Dean said keeping his gun up and ready to fire. "Oh, that was the name of the movie. Yeah those types of movies were based off of what explores experienced when getting to close to the garden." The blue eyed angel said with a shrug.

In a clearing they all look with widened eyes at the land before them. Flowers of all types with various animals and inserts. They watched in wander at everything creatures they've never seen or never insisted out of the garden. Everything was in bloom even though it was mid fall. There was a clear gravel path cutting off between the forest and wonderland in front of them.They wandered around since it became more difficult to find where the pull was unclear. "She won't be in plain sight she'll be hidden well. Look for something that doesn't quite match the rest. Trees of all kinds surrounded the area,but it was Sam who noticed the sand that mirrored a sky full of stars. He slowly followed it till it grew thick into a sanded path.

The youngest Winchester had his eyes trained down so when he looked up the apple tree before his eyes took his breath away. It looked straight out of a child's most imaginative fantasy. A white trunk with red leaves and the most noticeable feature the solid gold apples on it's branches. Sam didn't hear the voices of his brother or friend as he stepped closer directly under one of the low hanging fruits. Reaching up he picked the ripe fruit his brown eyes glazed over by temptation and curiosity. "SAM DON'T EAT THAT THAT!!!" Cas yelled using his grace to stop him mid bite. The angel looked in horror at the item in his hand a dark purple almost black apple sat in his friend's hands.

To anyone mortal it looked beautiful with it golden exterior,but Cas could see the ugly,fermented,poisoned inside. Glancing up the tree was rotting with barely any leaves and the few left were the color of blood. "It's poisoned their all poisoned." His words cleared the Winchester's vision of the tree and the surrounding woods all the plants were dead all around it. "It's beautiful on the outside,but deadly on the inside. And we're seeing it for what it truly is."

"It's clear as day that's she's here. Just how do we get to her?" Dean asked looking around. Castiel snapped towards Sam holding his hand out. "Do you still have the book?!" Sam nodded quickly taking the strap off his shoulder to dig it out of the bag. He handed it over the the angels that viciously flipped through the pages. "He made her a monster so a beast she became. She was blinded by curiosity and temptation she chose wrongly that day. Pick the fruit that doesn't call to you for the right one will choose you." He read word for word trying to see through the riddle. A beast? She was never a monster,but she was depicted as one. A angel that tainted the flock.

The Archangel landed gracefully in front of her father. She bowed on one knee as a warrior would clashed in her white armor and sword by her side. "Stand my child." She stood up looking at him. "Yes,father?" Her voice was gentle,but that didn't make the God of creation hesitate in his actions. "I've made something new for you to try and plant in the garden." Chuck said handing her the item. The skin was red and the surface was smooth unlike the peach that had a light fuzz. "What is this?!" Her e/c eyes burned bright her wings fluttering in excitement. "A red apple my dear." He said softly a smile on his lips stepping closer "Taste it."

Bringing it to her mouth she took a bite out of it and started to chew. It started of sweet,but became bitter within seconds and no matter how long she chewed it never broke down in size for long. "Father...something not right." She said that single bite still in her mouth. "Trial and error,darling, try to swallow it." Her h/c hair bobbed as she nodded. With a gulp she swallowed it down,but to her shock it stopped. Using her free hand she beaten at her chest to unblock her air way. Looking up at her creator she saw a look that can only be described as pure evil as a liquid poured out of her mouth.

Touching her chin a dark violet substance came dripped to the ground. Her gaze shifted to the apple within her hand and the inside no longer looked right. It was as if it gone bad from the inside,but the outside stayed fresh hiding the disgusting center. In fear she stepped back and with that she fell and continued to fall watching her home fade away. Y/n broke through the soil of the earth in a prison of her own design that she cared for and nurtured. Her arm dropped from her side the apple rolling away. The deceitful visibly harmless fruit planted it seed and grew becoming the only way to enter her personal mausoleum.

Castiel looked at the tree. All of the fruit looked the same nothing was different about a single one of them. Together the trio walked around the looming tree. The Winchester's saw something beautiful and they couldn't help,but want to pick one of the apples to taste. "What do we do,Cas. We don't have much time before this place disappear and possibly taking is with it." Dean said flinging his hands in the air. "The riddle said to wait then that's what we must do.

They grouped together and sat at the base of the tree waiting for who knows what to happen. "This is stupid! Let's just get the shovels from baby and start di–" His words were cut short as a apple full down from above them. "Well that was covenant." Sam said as Cas picked it up. To the brothers it looked odd a bronze color compared to the rest just less appealing. While to Castiel it looked horrible making the clearly deadly fruits more appetizing. "Our key in." He said. Using his hands to break it open to reveal the mouth watering interior that a honey like liquid dripped from,they picked correctly. The ground began to shake and they all stepped away from the base of the tree as the dirt around it caved in making a spiral staircase down and down they went.

It was pitch black down there so Sam and Dean pulled out flash lights to look around. They all went around the surprisingly large pocket in the ground. Dean checked for the symbols when he tripped over roots and landed on something hard and and moving. Snapping up he shined the light on the women laying as if sleeping in front of him. She was in white leather armor with a sliver sword in her hands on her chest. "Didn't find any hex symbols,but here's sleeping beauty." He said looking her over she rested on a raised stone that worked as her bed. "Never mind found them." The markings from the book in a pyramid shape was on one side of the bedrock glowing a soft F/c. Sam walked over along with Cas. The knifes both brothers held was used to break the engraved symbols,but nothing happened.

"No no no that's not right. Y/n is suppose to be freed!" The angel in distress said as he flicked through the book nothing else was said to be imprisoning her, why didn't it work? The Winchester's examined her the youngest looking at the elegant armor while the oldest focused more of the feminine features. "Sammy you read that book while in the car. Didn't you say something about her being the first female?" He asked his eyes not leaving her. "Yeah a model for Eve and later Amara's less celestial form. Why?" Sam asked touching the blade of the sword. "Yeah if that’s try why does she have a Adam's apple?"Cas wasn't fully paying attention until that sentence. His blue eyes imminently went to her throat were a noticeable lump was. "That wasn't there before." He mumbled loud enough for them to hear. Placing his ear just a centimetre away from her lips a shallow breath was let out and a wheezed inhale drew it back in.

The angel put his overlapping hands on her chest. He didn't know everything about humanity,but he knew enough to understand what he was about to do. He pushed with all his strength and he heard a sharp breath push out it just wasn't enough to dislodge whatever was there. Cas continued his actions and just when he was giving up hope she coughed up the chunk of apple and a weird substance. F/c glowing eyes snapped open as she lurched forward her grace burning bright casting a shadow behind her. It was a sight to see three sets of wings,what can only be described as a halo,along with twisted horns. After the grace calmed down her eyes returned to their normal color and they instantly when to Cas a wide smile spreading on her face. "My raven." She said. Y/n knew why she was awoken after all this time. To fight in a war she wanted no part of,but with the thought of putting everything in balance and striking down her father where he stood made her ready to fight. After all she felt like she's had enough Beauty Sleep.

/////////

A/n: This one took a minute,but I was torn between sleeping beauty and snow white since both of them fall asleep so a mix of both.

Also post #69....Noice

[rotationalsymmetry]

A brief history of Unitarian Universalism (casual, with swears, have not fact checked as such but I think it’s correct): In New England back before US independence, there was Calvinism -- you know, that predestination thing, you’re already going to go to heaven or hell, but you should be good anyways so people will think you’re going to heaven, or something like that. Then there wasn’t. Then there was Congregationalism. Which was a lot more chill, but still very “fuck Catholicism”. And around this time, deism was on the rise: the idea that maybe God created the universe, then fucked off, and hasn’t been actively involved with anything since. Then, some people who were actually reading the Bible, because you can’t look down on Catholicism unless you actually read the Bible, were like... wait, maybe Jesus isn’t all that. You know -- the Savior, the Son of God, one third of the Trinity, all that. Maybe he was just, like... a prophet, or some guy who said some interesting things. A teacher. And other congregationalists were like: uh, what, no, Jesus has to be all that. If you don’t think Jesus is all that, how can you even call yourself a Christian? And they decided they couldn’t really be around each other any more. So the first group, which was mostly in Boston, started calling themselves Unitarians (because they rejected the doctrine of the Trinity and instead believed in a one part God), and incidentally at some point also stopped calling themselves Christians because the other guys had a point, and the others called themselves the United Church of Christ (UCC.) Emerson and Thorough -- sorry, Thoreau -- were both Unitarians, as were John Adams, John Quincy Adams, and pretty much everyone else from Boston in early US history. (We like to claim Jefferson, because his beliefs were kindasorta similar to Unitarian beliefs at the time, but as I understand it he was never actually part of a Unitarian congregation.) (Btw: if you’re lgbtq+ and Christian, they’re a pretty friendly denomination. If you’re lgbtq+ and Christian and you think the UCC is too liberal (in the religious sense) or you want a majority-lgbtq+ congregation, consider MCC, which is otherwise unconnected to all this. If you’re not Christian and are lgbtq+ -- atheist/agnostic, or maybe something else if you’re down with worshipping with people that aren’t specifically your thing -- Unitarian Universalism tends to be pretty good. As in: we have a bunch of gay/lesbian ministers and other religious leaders, and a few transgender ones. (Knowledge of less mainstream lgbtq+ identities can vary a lot between congregations and generations -- the younger generations tend to be more aware than the gen x’ers.) I’ve been involved with Church of the Larger Fellowship for most of the past year, which did zoom worship before it got cool and serves people around the world, and people like me who live a mile from a UU brick and mortar congregation but still can’t get their disabled ass over there anyways. Anyways, CLF has more POC on the worship team than most UU congregations (the denomination does tend to run pretty white), is very social justice oriented even by UU standards, and is somewhat more cool about general weirdness than most congregations, which again for UU congregations is saying something.) Then, at some point (sadly, I’m significantly more familiar with the history of the first U than the second) there was this other protestant denomination in the South (as in, the US South) where people decided that God was too nice to send people to hell for all eternity, so they started calling themselves the Universalists, as in Universal Salvation. All dogs go to heaven. Well, time passed, each denomination evolved in its own way. (In particular, Unitarianism caught humanism pretty hard -- the joke was the Unitarians believe in one God at most.) In the -- ok, I’ll look this one up -- in 1961, there was a big old merger, creating Unitarian Universalism, and in the process, everyone got together and was all...wait, so what are our official beliefs about God and stuff? Should we even have official beliefs about God? Maybe we can unify around some ideas around how people should treat each other instead. So they did: they drafted a set of Principles (broad-strokes guidelines on how people should act -- peace is good, truth is good, people have value, stuff like that) and a set of Sources (where UU’s get their ideas about God and morality and so on from, starting with direct experience) and left everything else up to the individual. And then a little while later, the tree-huggers got a seventh Principle and a sixth Source added in -- respect for the environment and Earth-centered religions, respectively -- so now the joke is that UU’s believe in one God, more or less. Currently there’s a movement on to add an 8th Principal that explicitly names racial equality and fighting oppression as something we value, since while the current Principles mention justice and equality, they don’t specifically name race, and the people of color who have stuck with the predominantly white denomination figure Unitarian Universalism can and should be doing better on that front. Unitarian Universalism runs religiously liberal (ie, decentralized, individualistic, non-authoritarian, non-dogmatic, inclined to believe science over the Bible) and politically progressive. Unitarian Universalist congregations tend to be very politically active and concerned with social justice, mostly in a well-educated middle class kind of way: committees, Robert’s Rules of Order, donating to non-profits, Get Out the Vote, inviting in speakers and asking “questions” that aren’t really questions, forming partnerships with other congregations and community organizations, etc. Many UU congregations have put a Black Lives Matter sign out (and when necessary keep putting it out when it gets torn down or vandalized), shown up for the protests, opposed the weird immigration BS that’s been going on in the US recently, etc. In addition to more charity style work, like food pantries and homeless shelters.

Point is: yeah it’s got flaws (don’t even get me started on Unitarian Universalism’s flaws) but if you’re a social justice person and want to meet other social justice people who are doing things, Unitarian Universalism can be a good place to look for that. You get more done in groups.

You’re less likely to burn out, too. With marginalization, it’s complicated, right? Again, for LGBTQ+ people, it’s going to be better than most religious organizations. For people a little bit on the autism spectrum, you probably won’t be the only one. (If you’re unmistakeably autistic, people might be weird/ableist; it might depend on the congregation.) If you’re from a working class background or are currently kinda broke, you might run into some frustrations or feel like you don’t fit in; if you’re a poc or if you’re disabled (or your kid is) or you want a lot of personal support, you might struggle more -- this really might vary a lot, but at least the congregations I’m used to tend to assume congregants can mostly stand on their own feet, metaphorically speaking, and have some extra time/money/skills/whatever that can be directed out into the wider world. It can be a good place for pagans and Buddhists and other people who don’t want a church but are having trouble finding a church-like religious community where you can hang out with people on the same spiritual path. (Uh, for a while UU congregations were emphatically not churches and some officially still aren’t; others gave up and were all “eh, it looks like a church, whatever, we’re just a weird church.) Some congregations are more atheist-dominated than others -- many avoid Jesus language most of the time, some avoid God language most of the time (UU’s who believe in God tend to believe in God in a relatively abstract/metaphorical way), some I hear are pagan-heavy, others do use Christian language a lot more. In all honesty you don’t have to go to Sunday worship if you don’t want to, and really a lot of UU’s don’t; if you want to be heavily involved in the congregation but don’t want to go to Sunday worship and don’t want to deal with pressure to, one way out is to teach RE (religious education -- basically “Sunday school”) the RE curricula are amazing, just absolutely astounding, and if you’re teaching it you get a ton of leeway with adjusting anything you don’t like. (Which could happen -- a lot of this stuff was developed before the idea that cultural appropriation is a big problem became mainstream in social justice circles.) What adult worship is like has basically zero correlation (perhaps negative correlation) to what RE is like. (Which sucks for young adults coming of age in a UU congregation, like I said don’t get me started on UU’s flaws.) Finally: for people who care about sex positivity and sex ed, Unitarian Universalists (in partnership with UCC) developed Our Whole Lives, a sex ed curriculum that, well, it’s not abstinence based education. You wouldn’t expect sex ed coming from a religious org to be better than the sex ed in schools, would you? And yet. Comprehensive sex ed that acknowledges gay bi and trans people and that disabled people have sex too and teaches about birth control and masturbation and abuse and consent and boundaries and bullying and internet safety and abortion. It’s good stuff. The course aimed at teens is most popular of course, but there’s actually (age-appropriate) OWL curricula for all stages of life: young kids, adults, older adults, everyone. And it’s versatile enough to be taught in secular contexts (after school programs etc). Given the direction that unfortunately a lot of school districts in the US have been going in in terms of sex ed, it’s a really important program.

[laughtermagick]

Learning Tarot With Memes

Keywords: Connection, harmony, shared values, choices.

Key concept: The Lovers can signify the most beautiful of relationships. In a reading, this could indicate a deep connection overflowing with understanding, compassion, and appreciation. This card is often automatically associated with romance and sexuality, and while it can easily include those elements, this card goes deeper still. It can sometimes even be about just yourself. At its heart, the Lovers is about deciding how to connect with others and on what level. Whereas the Hierophant offered indoctrination, the Lovers offers freewill.

Key Symbols

Two People: In the creation story of Judaism, Adam and Havah were the first humans on earth. Adam had been alone at first and became very lonely, so he was given Havah as a companion. The ancient Greeks understood very well that "love" was multi-faceted and had many different words for it: eros (passion and lust), philia (authentic friendship), ludus (playful flirtation), storge (unconditional family loyality), philautia (self-love), pragma (invested, time-developed commitment), and agape (universal empathy). These diverse kinds of love all help make life worth living.

Angel: The ancient Greeks and Romans called the intermediaries between humans and gods by the name "daimons" or "daemons". This protective spirit here is named Raphael which means "God heals". The wings expand past the borders of the card, suggesting there's an even larger situation that can’t be perceived. When someone amazing enters your life, sometimes it feels as though synchronicity has placed them here just for you.

Two Trees: To the left is the "Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil" and to the right is the "Tree of Life". Each has its pros and cons, and you cannot choose both paths. Knowledge gives greater awareness and all the troubles that come with it, whereas the pure bliss of ignorance also comes with the inability to grow. You need to understand your own personal beliefs and values, and be clear what you will and won’t stand for, and only then will you have authentic connections with people who bring out the best in you.

Clouds: Two very different substances (water and air) have unified together to create something greater than the sum of their parts, and the results can be awe-inspiring. Whether it's with friends, family, or partners, there is something synergistic about how relationships grow. The artist Michelangelo said [paraphrased], "Every block of stone already has a statue inside and it's the sculptor's job to discover it. I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free." In the healthiest of relationships, your greater potential is set free and you have the honor of helping someone else do the same.

Mountain: The mountain touches both the highest point on earth and the earth's navel where creation first began. In every choice, there is an equal amount of opportunity and challenge, and love flows from that balance. No relationship is perfect and there will always be "highs and lows". How you choose to treat the people in your life (especially when it's most difficult) can create heaven on earth.

Waite-Smith Fun Fact

Before the Waite-Smith deck was published in 1910, the Lovers card was traditionally depicted with a couple getting married. Because tarot was created in the mid-1400's by the Catholic cultures of Italy and France, marriage was understood then as unbreakable vows, and a common interpretation of the Lovers is that it represented an irreversible choice. In that sense, the story of Adam & Havah was an excellent replacement for the card's design.

[thesigilsofbaphomet]

Lucifer Wants What’s Best For You

(And God is Your Enemy)

So... I touched on this in my response to someone talking about using Micheal in Catholic Folk Magic as a protective, social justice spirit. But I cut my overall take short, because it was off topic. But I wanted to talk about it, so, it’s time for one of my rare non-reblog posts on this blog.

I’ll begin by restating my overall premise- If you look at both canonical and folk-loric sources on Satan, you see a figure who simply desires to help people.

The Snake in the Garden

It is important to note that The Serpent in Genesis is not Lucifer/Satan/The Devil. It’s just... a serpent. Like, it’s not even, specifically, a demon. But the serpent, being a magical talking animal who convinces humans to act contrary to the will of God, is commonly seen as a demon. And I’ll go with that.

So, God creates the whole universe. This includes The Garden of Eden, the paradise that God rents to the first humans in exchange for their obedience. They’re allowed to eat from any tree in the Garden, except the tree in the center, known as the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (The ToKoGaE).

Note- God created Eden for Adam and Eve. God is omniscient, meaning all knowing, thus he knows that Adam and Eve will eventually eat the fruit of the tree. The general Christian take is that the tree is a test. However, if you know that the test takers will fail a test, and you know you will give them a rather extreme punishment for that failure, is it not extremely cruel to present that test?

So the serpent talks to Eve, and there’s an exchange, and eventually, the snake convinces Eve to eat ToKoGaE fruit. Giving her knowledge of Good and Evil. And there’s some really weird thing here where suddenly she knows she’s nude, because she ate fruit that gives her moral knowledge, and apparently there’s a moral weight to nudity? And it’s bad? But God made them nude? So God explicitly create humans in a state of Sin and this whole original sin shit doesn’t really fucking hold up if they were created in a state of sin to begin with? I digress. Eve gives Adam the ToKoGaE fruit, now they both know their nude, so they start gluing leaves to their skin with sap or something (I refuse to believe they had any actual knowledge of how to weave leaves into clothes like it’s just a thing you can do and not something you have to learn how to do, and there’s literally no reason for them to have done that prior, so this is literally the first time they’re trying to use leaves as cover).

And the usual Christian take is that the snake is wrong in this. But... knowledge is good, and God was specifically withholding knowledge from Adam and Eve. So the Serpent was helping them.

Satan Scares a Guy’s Ass

No, literally. A guy named Balaam is riding a donkey and Satan appears to scare the donkey to stop him.

This story makes no goddamned sense, even when you read it in a vaguely modern dialect. But, basically, the Israelites leave Egypt and settle, and the guy who rules the land next to them says “holy shit, that’s a lot of guys, they might come take my shit.” So he sends some messengers to a seer, Balaam, to ask him to curse the Israelites so he can beat them in battle. Balaam says “Ok, sleep here, I’ll tell you what God says in the morning.” In the morning, Balaam’s like “Bad news, guys. God says I can’t go with you. The Israelites are blessed.” The king sends more messengers who are more official looking and they say “Look, dude, our lord will give you SO MUCH HONOR if you come curse these guys for us”

So Balaam says “Look, I don’t care if your king sucks my dick gives me his palace and all his money, I can’t go against God. But stay here, I’ll tell you if he says anything more in the morning (and on reflection, it almost seems like this is explicitly acknowledging that God is just extremely capricious). God tells Balaam, “Ok, go with them, but do exactly what I tell you.” So Balaam saddles his ass up, and goes with them.

And God gets pissed off? Because, I’ll repeat, God is a capricious asshole. So Satan (or, An Angel of the Lord, depending on the translation you read, but the original Hebrew says it’s Satan, who, in Judaism, is an angel of YHWH, and basically exists to test humans) appears, only visible to Balaam’s donkey, and the donkey says “oh fuck that, I’m gonna go to this field over here.” Balaam hits the donkey and the donkey goes back to the pass. So Satan appears again, this time in a narrow pass, so the donkey say “eeengghh...” and tries to, like, slide past Satan by scrapping the wall, and scrapes Balaam’s foot, so, again, Balaam beats his ass. Finally, Satan appears on, like, a narrow bridge, and the donkey can’t turn, can’t just scrape against a wall, and so just lays down. Balaam is, again, pissed off, and Satan opens Balaam’s eyes and asks him why he’s beating his donkey, and God opens the donkey’s mouth so the donkey can be like “no seriously, what the fuck, dude?”

But, so, in Numbers, Satan appears to just stop a guy from doing what God told him not to (and then to) do.

“They go through houses — they go up, they ring doorbells”

In Chronicles, David, king of Israel, decides to have a census. Or Satan tells him to. It’s not clear. In Samuel, David has the idea independently, but in Chronicles Satan tells him to. But anyway. David wants to have a census, which is a pretty reasonable thing. Censuses have a purpose, they tell a government how many people there are, and where they live, and, in America, give data that can be used to decide where and how to spend tax money. But for some reason, authoritarians don’t like censuses.

I want to say more about this, but... it’s literally just “Satan tells David to take a census, God doesn’t like that.” and then God sending an angel to tell David “pick a punishment!”

The Outlier--Job

I feel like a broken record, but, again, this story makes no fucking sense. Job’s super devout, and God’s blessed him. Satan walks up to God and says “Dude, he’s only devout because you gave him shit. Let me take his shit, and you’ll see how devout he really is.” And God says “Ok, sure, but you can’t kill him.”

So Satan just absolutely shits on Job. He gives Job boils, he kills his family, he financially ruins him, and through it all, Job refuses to reject God, so Satan is forced to concede, and God’s like “Haha, told you. Now, Job, how’d you like a new wife?”

This is the one story I’m aware of where Satan is legitimately just screwing with a guy and not trying to help him.

And Satan’s There, Too!

Satan next appears in Zechariah, in, like, a vision, and he’s just sort of there? This is another “The Satan” thing, where Satan is an angel of God whose purpose is to test humans. He doesn’t really do anything, he just gets mentioned as being there.

Then there’s a mention of Lucifer in Isaiah, and, literally, it’s just a reference. He’s not even there, it’s just a throwaway line saying “Lucifer was cast out of Heaven.”

Satan Asks Jesus Out to Some Beers

The last three mentions of Lucifer in the Bible occur in the New Testament, two of them are just Lucifer tempting Jesus.

Mark just mentions that Satan tempted Jesus.

Luke actually describes the temptation. So, Jesus goes out into the desert and fasts for forty days. Lucifer shows up and says “dude, you’re the son of God, just turn this stone into some bread, and have something to eat.” Jesus rebukes him in a “completely missing the goddamned point” way. So Lucifer takes him up to a mountain and says, “Look, dude, come with me, and can rule over everything you see here. It’s all mine, and it’s mine to give to who I choose. Just worship me.” And Jesus rebukes him. So Lucifer takes Jesus up to the top of a temple and says “God gave the angels to you, they’ll protect you, jump off and they’ll catch you.” And Jesus rebukes him again, and Lucifer disappears in a poof of exasperation.

Now, what’s the purpose of this? Well, there’s the standard Christian reading that Satan is trying to lure Jesus away from serving God’s plan because he’s EVIL and his SOLE PURPOSE IS TO OPPOSE GOOD AND THAT’S GOD. But... Ok, so Jesus is the son of God, he’s divine, and, it’s reasonable to assume that he can’t die unless God allows it, because it’s part of God’s plan for him to die in a specific context. So.... why does he fast for forty days? It’s not like he can starve, and he’s divine, so it’s not like he can suffer the pangs of hunger, unless he chooses to, so... is there any meaning in his fasting? I argue not. It’s exactly as meaningless as the act of turning a stone to bread and having a bite.

Then, there’s the second temptation. If we assume that Jesus is benevolent, and divine, and I argue, even as a Satanist, that Jesus is benevolent. I also believe that Lucifer is benevolent and the creator god is the standout as the not-benevolent one in the game. But I expect Christians believe that Satan is evil and Jesus good. Therefore, in Luke 4, Satan says “this world is mine, to give to they who I see fit.” And Jesus refuses to even pay lip service. Despite the fact Jesus ruling the world would presumably be better for people than a world rules by Satan. And Satan is offering that, maybe as a fuck you to God, but he is freely offering up his temporal power to someone who would make the world a better place.

The final temptation, I would argue, is Satan trying to free Jesus from God’s plan that demands he suffer torture and death. He’s trying to show Jesus “you have power of your own, you don’t have to subject yourself to this plan that ends in your death.”

If we interrogate the narrative from it’s own perspective, then Jesus is both God and human, and Satan is appealing to him as a human, saying “you’re a god, you don’t have to do this. You don’t have to die.”

Luke 22 is the last mention of Satan in the Bible, and it just says that Satan entered Judas (not in a sexy way), and Judas went out to talk to the pharisees about how he could betray Jesus. But...well, ok, literally the line is-

3 Then entered Satan into Judas surnamed Iscariot, being of the number of the twelve.

4 And he went his way, and communed with the chief priests and captains, how he might betray him unto them.

Like... it makes me think that a lot of the time, when Satan is mentioned in the Bible, they don’t mean a literal figure named Satan, and they’re using the name poetically to refer to people working against God or Jesus. Because... Jesus’ death is foreordained. It’s part of God’s plan, so why would Satan be involved in Judas’ betrayal of Jesus? Unless this is going back to the Judaic idea of Satan as an angel of God who acts as an adversary of humanity, in which case, Satan is acting on God’s orders to make Judas betray Jesus.

To Infinity and Beyond

So, that’s the extent to which Satan is mentioned in the Bible in anyway, either as a figure never called Satan but often conflated with him, to The Adversary, to Lucifer.

After that, you have to look at folk lore and media, and this is simultaneously difficult, because pretty much anyone can make a story up and it can get traction, and actually kind of easy in this particular case, because... most folk lore is one a single track when it comes to Satan.

Most folk lore involving Lucifer/Satan/whatever you want to call him-

I hear he misses the old names, so, special shoutout to “Little Horn”

-involves a human who wants something, and Satan showing up to give it to them for their soul.

And this comes to a realization I made last year- In these stories, if you take the Christian worldview, Satan is actually... giving these things away for free, not for people’s souls.

I’m pretty sure I talked about this on this tumblr, but I’ll go through it so you don’t have to hunt it down.

In Christianity, your soul is not yours, it belongs to God, so you can’t actually give it away or “sell” it

However, to do so, if your could, would be a sin

In Christianity, or at least Catholicism, conceiving of a sin with full intent to commit it is the same as committing the sin.

Therefore, even if you can’t, technically, “sell your soul to the devil,” if you decide to do so, you have immediately sinned, and in fact, you have committed pretty much the biggest sin there is in Christianity, Apostasy, one which cannot be forgiven by any temporal power, and the forgiveness of is the sole domain of God himself.

ie, If you commit Apostasy, you are immediately condemned to Hell, unless God himself intervenes. If you decide to sell your soul to Satan, you have already committed apostasy, even though that’s not a thing you can actually do.

Thus, when a person resolves to trade their soul for something, they are immediately condemned, their soul already destined for Hell, simply for deciding they would give it to Satan instead of trusting in God. Satan should obviously know how this works, he should be aware that a person just deciding to trade their soul is sufficient, and Satan has no reason to actually give the person anything.

So, given that, here’s what happens- A person wants something, they want it so badly, they decide to sell their soul to Satan for it. Satan is fully aware that at that moment the person’s soul is already his. But then he goes and gives them what they want.

The only possible way to interpret that is that Satan literally wants to help people.

But What About Hell?

So, how does one suppose that Satan just wants to help people if those people are still condemned to Hell for accepting his help?

Well, again, we’re going to go back to my background of having been raised Catholic.

In the Catholic tradition, Hell is not a place of fiery torment, it is not a place where demons break out the medieval torture shit and rend your soul. The torment of Hell, in the Catholic tradition, comes from the fact that God is absent. The Catholic tradition believes that Hell is painful because God’s presence is not there, that those who are in Hell are cut off from God.

Obviously, Catholics believe a lot of stuff is the natural consequence of this, they probably believe that without the presence of God, people are more malevolent in Hell, and so there are probably plenty of “mundane” torments there in addition.

However, I believe that the presence of God is not a perceivable thing. If it were, there should not be any atheists, or even non-Catholics. If you could perceive the presence of God, then why would you ever not believe in that God? Therefore, Hell should not feel any particularly different from life on Earth. But even if it does, that is, even if the absence of God is apparently despite his presence not being so, I contend that the human spirit can become accustomed to anything.

Therefore... Hell is not a place of torment, especially for the sinful who reject God in the first place.

Aside: Is God’s Presence Desirable?

If we look at the figure of God from the Bible, I contend that God is worthy of nothing but contempt and hatred.

God is said to have created the universe and all life in it--so that it might adore and adulate him.

God is, supposedly, Omniscient, Omnipotent, and Omnibenevolent (The Three Omnis). But he created a world of pain and suffering, and not all of that is the consequence of free will on the part of the person who suffers. You can argue that pain and suffering is a consequence of people choosing to do evil, but that does not explain the presence of suffering innocents. An omniscient being would know that free will would result in some people choosing to harm innocent children. An omnibenevolent being would wish to prevent that. An omnipotent being, creating a world ex nihilo, could create a world where the natural consequence of trying to harm a child prevents or punishes that attempt. It would not affect free will to create a world where trying to hurt a child caused the would-be perpetrator to burst into flames or have an immediate heart attack--just like it does not infringe on free will that we as humans cannot naturally fly and the natural consequence of jumping off a cliff trying to do so is to fall. It would not affect free will to create a world where children are immune to harm. God created a world where children can be harmed, and he chose to do so, knowing it would happen.

God paid disobedience with exile and painful death--when he would logically know that it would happen to begin with, due to his omniscience.

God looked at his “children” and murdered them in droves for disobedience.

In fact, God killed around 25 million people in the Bible, and that’s only counting adult men. Satan is responsible for about 10 specified deaths in the Bible (Job’s seven sons and three daughters), but the number of Job’s servants aren’t given, and they were slain at his prompting as well. But Job likely wouldn’t have had more than a few hundred servants, and even if he had ten times that number, even if he had 10,000 servants, God is responsible for at least 2,500 times as many, in adult men alone.

Altogether, the Bible itself paints an image of God as an abusive, selfish authoritarian who throws his “children” away in a fit of pique, or boredom, or to win a bet. Is this a figure deserving of worship? Of adoration? Of love? Christians seem to believe yes, believing that their creation at his whim is all that is needed to earn such. It is the position of an abused child who loves their toxic parent simply because of their relation, and despite their abuses.

An Image of Satan

So, on the other hand, we have this figure who staged a rebellion against a heavenly authority, who rules over a land eternal where the only torment is the absence of his foe, who we have already examined and found to be an abusive authoritarian.

A figure who has killed not even 1% of the people this authoritarian did, and who freely gives what is needed to those who, essentially, pledge themselves to his domain.

A Matter of Interpretation

In the end, it comes down to interpretation and belief, since we actually don’t have any kind of primary source on, well, anything to do with the Bible, or religion in general, to be honest. Personally, I think that if you’re looking at the Bible as any kind of authoritative source, then this is the only possible honest conclusion. If you believe that God is any way not reprehensibly abusive, then you can’t view the Bible as any kind of authoritative source, at least as regards God.

I’m a Satanist, so of course I’m given to a more sympathetic view of Satan, but given that there is no particular authoritative source for Lucifer (even the Bible would have been written by his enemy), the character of Satan can only really be inferred from non-authoritative sources, and interestingly, whatever a person says about their enemy, those statements are incredibly revealing of the speaker, as well.

I don’t, necessarily, believe that all Christians follow such a reprehensible creed, I don’t even think all Christians who view the Bible as, if you’ll pardon the pun, gospel, do. But I think a lot of Christians do not take any time to honestly evaluate the Bible and what it says about their God.

[mybeautifulchristianjourney]

1 Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them.

2 And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made.

3 And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

4 These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens,

5 And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground.

6 But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground.

7 And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

8 And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.

9 And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

10 And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads.

11 The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah, where there is gold;

12 And the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone.

13 And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia.

14 And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates.

15 And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it.

16 And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat:

17 But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

18 And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him.

19 And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.

20 And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him.

21 And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof;

22 And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.

23 And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.

24 Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.

25 And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed. — Genesis 2 | King James Version (KJV) The King James Version Bible is in the public domain. Cross References: Genesis 1:3; Genesis 1:11; Genesis 1:24; Genesis 3:2; Genesis 3:7; Genesis 3:24; Genesis 13:10; Genesis 15:18; Genesis 25:18; Exodus 16:23; Numbers 11:7; Deuteronomy 4:19; Matthew 19:5; Romans 5:12; 1 Corinthians 11:8-9; 1 Corinthians 15:45; Ephesians 5:28-29; 1 Timothy 2:13; Hebrews 4:4; Revelation 2:7

[ask-de-writer]

About NERA, a modern fantasy of the Bizarre Border : Part 4 of 4

@mordenheim READ, LIKED and REBLOGGED

NERA : Bizarre Border (Part 4 of 4) to

@nevermord who shared this with us:

So very true.  Hulden is gone to a just reward.

As for an Angel, yes.  Demons?  Nope.  This tale goes back to a VERY ancient Kabalistic notion of both creation and the afterlife.  I stumbled upon the foundation of this while reading for fun in the Library of Princeton University.  I was not a student but my older brother was a graduate student there and I visited for several months. With THAT LIBRARY there, you expect that I would not play about?  If so, you don’t know me very well!

So, to the bare bones of what I dug out from translations of VERY ancient texts.  The First Act of Creation was separating the Light from the Darkness, making two parts.  God was referred to by those people as The Source of Light as a way to avoid trying to say or write the True Name of God.

Adam had SEVEN wives one after another.  The first was Lilith (modern spelling).  As recounted in the story, she ate of BOTH the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life, no temptation needed.  Basically, she immediately sorted out that she blew it, as far as following the Commandments of God was concerned, and fled, quoting from the translation of the ancient text, “Into the Darkness where God could not follow.”  Reason being that, as told in my tale, for God to do so would undo the basic act of Creation, destroying it all.

The ancient tale goes into what Christians (MUCH later) would call the Manichean Heresy.  God was right, as stated in the Bible that with eating of both trees, she became “as God Himself.”  Lilith, in the safety of Darkness, proceeded to create, thereby filling all parts of Creation and making it complete.  All according to God’s sneaky plan!

Lilith was a being to be feared, not because she was a devil or monster, but because she represented the Dark side of creation and people were of the Light side of creation.  That, and many perfectly ordinary dangers lurked in the dark.

These same people, in other parts of the text, made clear that humans who die sleep without dreams.  There is neither reward nor punishment after death.  That all goodness and evil are things that living people do.  As a result, people live on only in the memory of others, so one should live the best and most ethical life that they can so that they will be remembered as good and kindly folk.