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mask131 · 2 years ago

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Dante’s Hell: Ten little frauds...

XIV) The Eighth Circle: Fraud

The Eighth Circle of Hell is a very particular and unique one, as it is all made of sub-divisions. In this circle are punished those who committed Malice not by Violence, but by Fraud, aka trickery and deceit. The Circle itself is divided into ten sub-divisions. They are called “Malebolge” (Evil Pockets) because these sub-divisions are large holes of iron-colored stones or ravines within the Circle, large ditches or small valleys that Dante and Virgil walk over through over-arching bridges, looking at the sinners below. Each Malebolge is dedicated to a very specific type of Fraud (again, ten in total) and each Malebolge has its own form of punishment.

1) Panderers and Seducers

The First Malebolge is host to two lines of naked sinners, each walking into a different direction, and each line pushed forward by horned demons who uses enormous whips on their backs, laughing with cruel delight at the souls suffering. The first line is the one of the “pimps”, those who gained power, influence and favors by using girls and women as prostitutes and sexual tools ; the second line is the one of those who deceived people through seduction – the most famous sinner here being the Greek hero Jason, who seduced several women with big promises so that they would help him in his quest, before ditching them away. Both are basically deceivers and frauds who used sexual desire and love to reach their goal.

2) Flatterers

The Second Malebolge is for those that used flattery as a way to commit fraud, or gain influence and power: they are condemned to forever be plunged in a vast pool of human excrements, representing the true nature of the “flattery” these sinners used and surrounded themselves with to please those in powers, or those they wanted to obtain things from.

3) The Simonists

In this Malebolge are sent those that committed religious frauds: members of the Church accused of the sin of “simony”, that is to say selling religious favors, goods or powers. When people gain positions in the Church by buying them, and not by faith and hard work ; when people sell relics and holy items as if they were just random goods ; when people say “I will absolve your sins in exchange for money” or “I only agree to baptize you if you pay”, this is the act of simony – it is basically making the religion a business. And more generally, it is religious corruption as a whole: popes that give high-ranking positions in the Church to their friend and family rather than those deserving it ; high-ranking church members who use their religious powers to gain material and political favors, popes who were only elected to papacy through intrigue and manipulation, etc, etc… Again, all forms of religious corruptions.

Their punishment is to be thrown into stone holes (shaped like baptisteries, places in churches designed for the priest to stand in while they baptize people), but head at the bottom of the hole, with only their legs sticking out of it – and their feet are constantly burning, forming a grotesque parody of a candle. As the simonists (or simoniacs) corrupted the Church’s practices, they are forced into a painful twisted version of religious symbols. What is even worse is that the feet sticking out and burning (the flame hotter or weaker depending on the sinner’s level of crime) are only those of the latest arrivals in the Circle – below these upside-down sinners, others are below, down into the stone tube that open up at the surface, all piled up in there. When there is a new one arriving, the sinner with the burning feet is pushed down the stone tube, so that the new one can take their place.

4) The Sorcerers

In this Malebolge are sent the soothsayers, auguries, diviners, fortune tellers, astrologers and other “false prophets” – those that, from esoteric science, scam-tricks or real (but then demonic) magic tried to see/guess/reveal the secrets of the future to humanity… which is something only God can know, and a knowledge forbidden from humanity unless God himself choses to reveal it. So, for their punishments, these sorcerers are condemned to have their heads twisted so that they can only walk backward, never knowing what is in front of him, and only constantly seeing what is behind them. You tried to see ahead in time, boy? Well now you’ll only look behind!

5) The Grafters

This Malebolge is for the “grafters and barrators” – not a religious corruption, as with the simonists, but a political corruption. Selling public offices for good money, abusing one’s political powers and position, making dirty political moves to gain more power, accepting bribe to let criminals escape or send innocent people to death… This Malebolge is similar to the one of the Flatterers, as it is a pool filled with a liquid substance – but instead of feces, here the corrupted politicians are bathing in thick, black, boiling pitch; a sticky, viscous, burning tar. And while the flatterers could be seen splashing, swimming, and drowning in their fetid pool, here the grafters are plunged below the surface of the tar, with only air bubbles indicating their presence. Here, the Malebolge is overseen and guarded by a group of devils known as the Malebranche (Evil Claws) – described as terrifying, cruel even in their movements, black in color, with outstretched wings, claws, and “high-hunched, pointed shoulders”. Their job is to throw the sinners into the pitch, and then with forks and grappling hooks make sure the damned stays under the surface, poking them back below if they ever appear. If the sinner persists in trying to get out, the Malebranche will simply tear them apart. And unlike other demons, the Malebranche are actually very talkative – they keep cracking jokes at the expense of sinners and mocking their suffering in various ways.

Upon seeing the Malebranche demons, Virgil demands to Dante that he hides, because if they ever see him, he’ll be in BIG troubles – while Virgil knows already the mechanics and ways of these cruel and insulting demons. Virgil has a talk with the leader of the Malebranche, called Malacoda (Evil Tail), who upon learning he is on a Heaven-sent mission drops his pitchfork and lets them pass, agreeing to not have any of his demons hurt them – when one of them, called Scarmiglione (Disheveled Hair) tries to stick his prong in Dante’s “rump”, Malacoda quickly puts him in his place. Malacoda also informs Virgil that the bridge over the sixth Malebolge is actually broken (destroyed by the Harrowing of Hell). Hopefully there is a second bridge they can cross – but they will need to first walk along the ridge of the Fifth Malebolge, and to escort them safely Malacoda gives them a squad of his own demons (who will also have a secondary job on checking on the sinners as they make their way). Dante is not at all reassured at the idea of being surrounding by awful, sadistic, terrifying demons, but Virgil tells him it is all fine… Spoiler: it won’t be fine.

Here we get a list of more demon names. Some of the Malebranche are called by animalistic or monstrous traits : Draghighnazzo (“nasty/sneering dragon”), Ciriatto (“swine” or “wild hog”), Graffiacane (“dog scratcher” or maybe “scratching dog”), Farfarello (might be an Italian word for “goblin”), Cagnazzo (“nasty dog”)… These names are later confirmed to seemingly be related to the demon’s physical attributes (Ciriatto has “two tusks on each side of his mouth”, while Cagnazzo has a “muzzle or “snout”). Others have much more comical names similar to Scarmiglione: Barbariccia (“curly beard”), Libicocco (could mean “Libyan hothead”), Alichino (a variation of “Harlequin/Arlecchino”), Rubicante (“red-faced”)… And you have bizarre name the exact meaning of is unclear, such as Calcabrina (“Grace-stomper”? “Frost-trampler”? “Brine-walker”? the expression seems to hint at someone nimble and light on his feet). But overall, one has to understand these names as not serious at all – as commentators pointed out, the whole passage is actually very farcical, with a sort of comedy-horror to it, and if the jokes cracked by the demons themselves at the expense of the sinners or their nonsensical names weren’t enough, the first “canto” they appear in ends with the demons saluting their superior… with farts.

But below this comical aspect, there is a true danger, because as Dante understands (and as Virgil takes some time to understand, too trusting that he is in his Heavenly power), there is no “second bridge” and the demons are just luring them away in hope of inflicting on them some nasty torture… Hopefully for our duo, another farcical adventure distracts the demons enough for them to escape: one of the sinners, who was trying to get out, gets ripped apart by the demons. Being a corrupt man, he tries to make a deal with the demons: if they agree to stop tearing him to pieces, and hide a bit far away, he will convince other sinners in the lake of pitch to get out, so that the demons can have more victims to “play” with. The demons, thinking he is a sell-out, agree – but as soon as they hide, the sinner just plunges back into the boiling tar, where the demons can’t catch or torture him. And indeed, one angry Malebranche (Alichino, the one who agreed to the sinner’s bargain despite Cagnazzo skepticism) tries to dive after him to get him back, only to end up stuck in the tar. Another demon, Calcabrina, who wanted to punish Alichino for making the deal in the first place, tried to beat him up mid-air, only to also get stuck in the tar with him. And as the other demons rescue their fallen companions, our duo escapes the demons and whatever doom they had planned for them.

6) The Hypocrites

The Sixth Bolgia is here for those who were hypocrites in life, and their punishment, per the contrapasso, is a reflection of their very sin. They walk across the Malebolge in a single line, constantly forward, and they are dressed (which is unusual since all damned souls are naked). They are dressed with a golden hooded cloak, shaped like a monk’s robe… but the lining of the cloak is actually lead. I can let you imagine that a cloak of gold lined with lead is VERY heavy, and this is what they are forced to wear and walk with for all of eternity, as a metaphor for their hypocrisy: shining and holy on the outside, unpleasant and painful on the inside.

One specific sinner suffers a different fate: a man, lying naked on the ground, crucified by three stakes, his body stretched on the road so that all the hypocrites walk over him and crush him – he is literally “bearing the weight” of the others’ hypocrisy. As we learn, his special place is because he is Caiaphas, a Biblical character. He was the High Priest of the Jews during the time of Pontius Pilate, and he was the one who orchestrated, alongside other high religious figures among the Jewish community at the time, the downfall, fake trial and death sentence of Jesus due to how much influence and power the latter got. It is for this supreme “religious hypocrisy” that he now suffers a special punishment in the Sixth Bolgia.

[I do want to point out something here – I keep using “Malebolge” for the sake of simplicity, but “Malebolge” is actually the plural of the word. In singular, it is a “Malebolgia”, or simply a “bolgia”. I’ll try to switch a bit the terms going forward, but just know there is a grammatical difference.]

As a note, Malacoda did not lie when he said the bridge over the Sixth Malebolge is broken – the duo has to get down into the bolgia and then climb back up on their own. But what he lied about was the existence of another bridge – which you would except from the demons working in the circle of “Fraud” out of all things.

7) Thieves

The seventh bolgia is a great mass of writhing snakes, of all kinds and species (including fabulous ones talked about in Lucan’s books, such as the chelydrid who leave smoking trails in their path, or the amphisbenes, two-headed snakes) – lots and lots of snakes from which the naked damned souls try running away or hiding from, even though they can’t – in fact, lots of sinners have snakes (or lizard-like snakes, aka snakes with “legs”) binding their arms like handcuffs, or twisting their bodies around them in coils.

This passage is, in Dante’s own word, true confusion and chaos as he assists to a series of mysterious, bizarre and gruesome transformations. One man gets bitten by a snake, and upon being bitten bursts into flames and crumbles into ashes… only for the ashes to reform themselves in the shape of a man. In a second case, a snake with “six feet” attaches itself to a man, each of its clawed feet on different part of its body, and bites through his cheek – and then the man and the snake start “melting” into each-other like hot wax, until they become one tangled, deformed mass of flesh, limbs and facial features. The last and final transformation occurs when another snake bites a man at the navel – smokes comes out from the man’s wound, smoke also comes out from the snake’s mouth, and as all this smoke whirls and twirls around them, they “exchange” their shape through transformation – the snake becomes a man and the man becomes a snake, in perfect synchronicity. For example when the snake’s tail forks in two, the man’s legs fuse in one; and when the man’s skin grows scaly, the snake’s skin grows soft…

This circle is where the souls of thieves are sent, and this nightmarish mess of chaotic transformations is a poetic metaphor for theft itself. In the contrapasso logic, here the thieves get their very identity and shapes stolen away like they stole the goods and belongings of other, the monstrous snakes and lizards forcing all sorts of transformations onto them, ranging from deforming the sinners to stealing their appearance and reducing them to snakes, until nobody can recognize nobody and no one knows anymore who everyone is.

We also get a special treatment as one particular soul starts cursing God and insulting Him with obscene gestures – immediately all the snakes of the pit wraps their body and coils around his limbs until he cannot move, and a centaur with hundreds of snake on his horse-back and a “crouching, winged, fire-breathing dragon” on his human shoulders arrives looking to punish him. This centaur is actually Cacus (a fire-breathing monster of Roman mythology, here reinvented as a centaur with a dragon-pet apparently), and Virgil explains that unlike the other centaurs, who after their death became overseers of the first Ring of Violence, Cacus got in charge of this Malebolge because his death was brought by him stealing cattle and being killed by Heracles in the process. So he is the only centaur of Hell outside of the Seventh Circle. [Yes, it is confirmed that the centaurs were definitively alive, and then were sent in Hell after their death, but became there part of the “staff” rather than damned souls – after all, the heroes of Greco-Roman mythology are also said to have lived in humanity’s past in this universe…]

8) The Fraudulent Counsellors

Within this Malebolgia, there are hundreds, thousands of moving flames – and inside of each flames is actually a sinner, that is constantly burning up, surrounded by the flame, which moves when they move. (In fact the flames are so bright you can’t see the sinners in them, you just hear their voices). And precisely, now only their voice remain, for in life they were “Fraudulent Counsellors”, evil advisers and counsellors of fraud who encouraged others to commit sins of fraud and deceit. As such, we see several figures of cunning people or trickster figure, who used their intellect to advice other on various traps and deceiving plans, or encouraged others to do evil. Most famous of them being Ulysses. For you who know your Greek world, you’d know him as Odysseus, the cunning hero of the Greeks whose tricks and intelligence allowed him to overcome all problems and troubles… But for Dante, a fan of Roman culture, literature and mythology, Ulysses was the one responsible for the fall of Troy, Rome’s ancestor-city, and thus an enemy of the Roman culture and a villain rather than a hero. This is why Ulysses is condemned here, stuck within a twin flame alongside his “partner” in crime Diomedes, both guilty of their triple plans of deceit: the Trojan Horse ; the “grief of Deidamia” (when Ulysses convinced Achilles to abandon Deidamia, his then girlfriend, and their baby, to go to war) and the theft of the Palladium, the sacred statue protecting Troy, all things that Ulysses and Diomed planned and ordered. We also have a third soul mentioned, Guido da Montefeltro, who was a cunning fox of a man, called by pope Boniface VIII, who wanted to get rid of a family of political opponents, and Guido invented for him a perfect plan to, with false promises, attract the family into the pope’s clutch so he could take everything from them. This last part is quite interesting because Guido is freshly arrived in the Malebolgia, and recalls to Dante how when he died, Saint Francis was about to take his soul (due to him having repented from his youth’s cunning and trickster ways, confessed his sins and pronounced monk vows) when a “Black Cherubim” or “Black Cherub” (the demonic corruption of the Cherubim angels) appeared and debated with the saint, ultimately claiming Guido’s soul for Hell, over the proof that his repentance was false – Guido had repented from his sins of using tricks and dubious ways to gain fame and power as a young man/warrior, before entering the orders and confessing/repenting… but as the Black Cherubim points out, he then redid the very same sin of plotting, conspiring and inventing deceitful tricks, per the demand of the Pope. And, as the Black Cherub continues, one cannot claim to be repentant from his sins… and then commit the exact same sins after having been confessed of them, it was clearly a false repentance adding to his deceiving nature.

9) The Sowers of Discord

In the ninth Malebolgia, the sinners condemned are those who created scandals and schism, the “sowers of discord” who removed peace and unity from the world, be it in religious, politic, social or familial domains – and as per the contrapasso law, the same way they tore the world, institutions and communities into pieces, they themselves are condemned to be cut up into morsels and mutilated to no end. The sinners line up in front of a devil holding a huge sword, and upon presenting themselves to him, the devil slices them in various ways, before they are healed and must be cut up again. A certain “Pier da Medicina”, who spent his life feeding the fires between the principalities of the Italian city-states, has his throat slit and his nose cut off. Mahomet has his body torn from chin to crotch, and his first disciple Ali his head cut off from the top to the chin (In Dante’s view, and for many Christians at the time, the Muslims weren’t a different religion so much than a sort of schism among Christianity, and their departure from the Christian canon wasn’t seen so much as a question of faith than a question of trying to wage war against Christian – notably, a very common belief in the Christian world at the time of Dante was that Mahomet was originally Christian and wanted to become pope, but since he couldn’t created his own religion just to be at the head of his own church… If it wasn’t clear already, Dante and the Christians of his time had a very WEIRD viewpoint of history.)

Curio, who helped Caesar turn into Rome and had him march onto the city in an act of civil war, now has his lower jaw cut off ; Mosca, the one who caused the feud between the Guelf and the Ghibelline, has his hands cut off ; Bertran de Born, who encouraged prince Henry to rebel against his father, Henry II of England, now carries around his cut-off head, etc etc…

10) The Falsifiers

The tenth and final bolgia is home to falsifier of all sorts and kinds – and like the sowers of discord, they suffer from a general punishment with specific tortures. Just like the sowers of discord were all cut off, but each in a different way, all the falsifiers are suffering from horrible diseases, but each one a different affliction. (For, in the contrapasso logic, the falsifiers themselves were a “disease” onto society). There is a pair of alchemists (alchemy being seen as an art of falsifying things, metals and products, and a true scam by Dante) suffering from a form of leprosy, their body covered in scabs, itching so much they constantly scratch themselves and scrap their skin to no avail as the scabs and itch keep returning, again and again… Another duo, a couple of impostors who falsified their identities and imitated other people to falsify their will or trick others into sleeping with them, are now suffering from a rabid rage, running naked like beasts, snapping at everything they see, biting into other sinners body by the teeth and dragging them away, like insane. There is a counterfeiter, a maker of false money, that now suffers from an extreme form of hydropsy – his body so bloated with fluids he is the “shape of a luth, if a luth had legs”, unable to move due to his swelled up legs and heavy weight, his skin tight like a drum over his enormous abdomen, and yet suffering from an intense, unquenchable thirst that even “curls up” his lips in dryness. Finally, there is a couple of perjurers, “falsifiers of words”, givers of false accusations and false testimonies, who are cursed with an intense, burning fever, a fever so intense they are constantly soaked in a stinking sweat, and they actually are even STEAMING due to how high their temperature is!

#dante #dante alighieri #hell #inferno #dante's inferno #circles of hell #eighth circle #fraud #malebolge #malebranche #the divine comedy

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deflare · 3 years ago

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Games Workshop didn’t do a funny by putting the Alpha Legion* in at number 20, so instead, we present: the Emperor’s Spears!

Sometimes a chapter’s job is a bit shit. In this case, the Emperor’s Spears were founded to be one of a few chapters guarding a nebula called Elara’s Veil. No crusading for these lads. Maybe that’s why they have anger issues; one of the only notable events in their history is that they got into an outright war with another Space Marine chapter. Since both of them were Ultramarine successors, the Ultramarines sent an envoy to tell them to chill out, officially blaming the Spears for starting shit. They’ve had to work on getting less surly to avoid getting wrecked by later events.

The Spears’ homeworld of Nemeton is an oceanic world, and the Spears carry that naval tradition into space. They field an unusually large fleet, and specialize in rapid deployment from space. In other words, they’re skilled at being marines in the classic sense of ‘amphibious warfare specialists’, if you think of space as a really big ocean.

The chapter’s culture seems to have a pre-Roman Briton vibe to it. Their chapter master is called the High King (a title used by the old kings of Ireland), and their leaders are referred to as Druids. The chapter maintains layers of mystery cults and esoteric rituals, reinforcing that druidic vibe.

When the galaxy cracked in half, Elara’s Veil was right near the crack. This has led to a predictably bad time for the Emperor’s Spears, as the worlds under their protection get swarmed by daemons and Chaos Space Marines. Will they survive? Who knows! (Probably; they have a novel about them now, which bodes well for their place in the ongoing lore.)

All in all, a pretty normal chapter. I like their colors, and the Celtic theming is neat.

*What’s an Alpha Legion, and why would they be in the box of loyalists?

This seems like a good time to do a quick overview of all the traitor legions, since we’ve finished covering the loyalists. So, here are the legions that followed Horus into treason:

-III Legion Emperor’s Children, led by Fulgrim, purple and gold; steadfast perfectionists and duelists, the Children fell into the indulgent embrace of Slaanesh, becoming a bunch of murder-horny weirdos. Notable for pioneering the ‘Noise Marines’, using high-powered sonic weaponry.

-IV Legion Iron Warriors, led by Perturabo, steel and hazard stripes; grim siege-breakers known for throwing themselves into long grinding bloody wars, the Iron Warriors were led astray by their petulant man-child of a leader, who turned against the Emperor out of spite. They’re the premier weaponsmiths of the traitor legions.

-VIII Legion Night Lords, led by Conrad Kurze, dark blue with lightning bolts; stealthy terror troopers, who like doing things like “flaying enemies alive and adorning their armor with the skins”. They were on the edge of being declared rogue for being a bunch of violent sickos before the Heresy, so it only seemed natural to roll with Horus.

-XII Legion World Eaters, led by Angron, white and blue (turning red with spattered blood); the most vicious berserkers of the Space Marines, driven to greater violence by their traumatized gladiator of a Primarch. They practically waltzed into worshipping the murder-god Khorne, having already stucky Murder-Horny implants in their skulls.

-XIV Legion Death Guard, led by Mortarion, bone white and green; some of the toughest Marines, stolid death-bringers specializing in chemical warfare. Mortarion hated the Emperor for being a kill-stealing bastard, so he was an easy sell; he wound up embracing the Plague-Father Nurgle in order to save his legion from a super-pox while they were stuck in the Warp.

-XV Legion Thousand Sons, led by Magnus the Red, red and gold (turned blue and gold); an entire legion of mystic psykers, they got fucked up just before the Heresy when Horus manipulated the Space Wolves into trying to kill all of them. The legion had a problem called the ‘Flesh Change’, where members would turn into horrible meat-monsters; they made a deal with the magic-god Tzeentch to try to fix it, which turned most of the legion into haunted armor automatons. Whoops.

-XVI Legion Sons of Horus, led by Horus, seafoam green and gold; Horus’ own legions, brutal gang fighters who specialized in decapitation strikes against enemy leadership. Formerly the Luna Wolves (white and black armor). After Horus beefed it, they became the core of the Black Legion, the largest and most powerful warband of Chaos Space Marines.

-XVII Legion Word Bearers, led by Lorgar, stone grey (turning to dark maroon); once the most devout followers of the Emperor as a god, they got chastised, and desperately seeking any god who would take them, became the leading evangelists for Chaos. It’s all their fault, really. Get really excited about working with daemons.

-XX Legion Alpha Legion, led by Alpharius and Omegon, shiny teal; the sneakiest of Space Marines, specializing in infiltration, spy stuff, and truly kooky levels of secret-keeping--including the fact that they had two Primarchs, somehow. A bunch of aliens told them “the best thing for the galaxy in the long run is for you to join Horus and help humans go extinct, because that will starve Chaos forever,” and for some reason, the Alpha Legion believed them. The reason they might sneakily have been in the box is because large parts of the Alpha Legion work against other Chaos Marines, leading to speculation that they’re actually secret loyalists. Of course, given how sneaky they are, it’s possible that this Emperor’s Spears guy is actually an Alpha Legionnaire in disguise. Layers within layers.

Master post here

#warhammer 40k #space marines #advent calendar #text heavy #lore dump #40k advent #emperor's spears #traitor legions

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blogdemocratesjr · 3 years ago

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Untitled & Untitled by Marcel Antonio

Levels of Consciousness

All these levels of consciousness are contained within man today:

1. The consciousness of the mineral—corresponding to deep sleep.

2. The consciousness of the plant—ordinary sleep.

3. Animal consciousness-dream—life.

4. Physical, objective consciousness—the normal waking state. The two former states are atavistic survivals.

5. A consciousness which repeats the third stage but retains the acquired quality of objectivity. Images have definite colours and are realised as being quite distinct from the perceiver. The subjective sense of attraction or repulsion vanishes. In this new imaginative consciousness, the faculty of reason that has been acquired in the physical world retains its own powers.

6. Sleep itself — not the dream — here becomes a conscious state. We do not only behold images but we enter into the living essence of beings and hear their inner tones. In the physical world we give names to things but the names are merely outer appellations. Only man can express his own being from within by saying ‘I’ — the ineffable name of conscious individuality. By this word we distinguish our own personality from the rest of the universe. But when we become conscious of the world of sound, each being, each thing communicates its own true name; in clairaudience we hear the sound which expresses its innermost being and rings forth as a tone in the universe that is distinct from all others.

7. One stage further and deep sleep becomes a conscious state. Description is impossible, for this condition passes beyond the limits of comparison. All that can be said is that it exists.

—Rudolf Steiner, An Esoteric Cosmology: Lecture XIV

See also The Twelve Senses, Forces & World Views

#Marcel Antonio #anthroposophy #spiritual science #Sagittarius

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mikrokosmos · 5 years ago

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Messiaen - La Transfiguration de Notre-Seigneur Jésus-Christ (1969)

Today is the Western Christian feast day of the Transfiguration, a miracle in the Gospels where Jesus led some of the disciples up a mountain to pray, only for him to become luminous, be situated between Elijah and Moses, and a voice from the heavens calls Jesus the Son. The Trinity revealed, as well as a glimpse of how humans will be at the end of time. This is a very...esoteric story, and more theologically packed than many of the Christian stories that are easier to get from surface level hearing. It only makes sense that Messiaen would be drawn to this moment in the Gospel to work through its Mystic implications. But the combination of overt Christian Mysticism, the gargantuan orchestral ensemble, and the length of the work, have all come together to keep this piece from being performed more often. Which is a shame because, musically, it has some of the best aspects of Messiaen’s style, along with inventive and colorful writing. The work is divided into two parts of seven pieces each, and it is unified by and oriented around the opening three note phrase on gongs. At four points, lines from the gospel are sung in a homophonic plainchant style, each time announced by the gongs which, along with the use of added percussion, evoke a sense of Eastern mystery. The choruses use quotes from Aquinas, elevating the dry language through Mediterranean and Indian rhythms, decorated with birdsong, and of course, dense rich harmonies. Even if you aren’t Christian, you can love the music, and I’d recommend listening to it on a long hike through a forest preserve.

Movements:

First Septenary

I. Récit évangélique (Gospel)

II. Configuratum corpori claritatis suae (To be like his glorified body)

III. Christus Jesus, splendor Patris (Jesus, reflection of the Father)

IV. Récit évangélique (Gospel)

V. Quam dilecta tabernacula tua (How lovely are your tabernacles)

VI. Candor est lucis aeternae (She is the reflection of eternal light)

VII. Choral de la sainte montagne (Chorale of the holy mountain)

Second Septenary

VIII. Récit évangélique (Gospel)

IX. Perfecte conscius perfectae generationis (Perfectly conscious of that perfect generation)

X. Adoptionem filiorum perfectam (The perfect adoption of sons)

XI. Récit évangélique (Gospel)

XII. Terribilis est locus iste (How awesome is this place)

XIII. Tota Trinitas apparuit (The whole Trinity appeared)

XIV. Choral de la lumière de gloire (Chorale of the light of glory)

#Messiaen #transfiguration #music #classical #classical music #orchestra #choir #choral music #orchestra music #20th century music #sacred #sacred music #oratorio #la transfiguration de notre seigneur jesus christ #the transfiguration of our lord jesus christ #Jesus #Messiaen transfiguration #Messiaen la transfiguration de notre seigneur jesus christ #Olivier Messiaen

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taeon-xiv · 6 years ago

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What is Your Spiritual Archetype?

Most famously associated with the esoteric practice of turning metals into gold, Alchemists seeks spiritual Unity, blessings, atonement, and alignment through the practice of rituals, spells, and ceremonies. Often, these rituals, spells and ceremonies include the invocation of non-physical beings such as spirits and elemental forces through the careful arrangement, manipulation or construction of physical objects. Alchemists are devotional and down-to-earth people who enjoy expressing their faith through sincere religious, cultural or self-designed rituals. To an Alchemist, service, sacred rites of passage, and everyday acts of faith aid in strengthening their connection to the Divine.

An Alchemist’s daily rituals may be aesthetically rich and simple (as can be seen in Wiccan spells) or rigid, repetitive, and complicated (such as in orthodox Christian sects).

Through patient daily invocations, prayer, ceremonies, experiments, spells or rituals, Alchemists seek empowerment and the achievement of their highest potential above all else.

Shadow Side:

It can be easy for those with the Alchemist archetype to easily lapse into boredom, dry rituals, intellectualized offerings, and emotionally empty rituals. Rituals rely on habits, and habits can easily become a source of spiritual constriction, especially when they’re not allowed to flow and transform. For the Alchemist to receive the most benefit from his/her spiritual power, he/she must become fluid in his/her daily practice.

For Alchemists who are drawn to the practice of Magick or Shamanism, the casting of spells or creation of rituals may lapse into bitter, angry or jealous forms of “black magic” that are designed to harm others. Inevitably, the practice of black magic leads to negative karmic consequences.

Finally, one of the greatest pitfalls for the Alchemist archetype is to use ritual and spiritual practice as a way of unconsciously avoiding direct spiritual experience. When too much emphasis, importance, and trust is put on daily practice rather than the inner integration of spiritual wisdom, disempowerment is the result. While rituals, spells, prayers, and ceremonies are a beautiful and powerful way to connect with Divinity, don’t mistake them for the experience of Spirit itself.

Strengths:

These strengths are developed when you’re open, aware, and internally balanced.

Perceptive

Devotional

Methodical

Disciplined

Curious

Imaginative

Artistic

Self-Expressive

Weaknesses:

These weaknesses arise when you become unmindful, imbalanced, and spiritually stagnant.

Rigid

Obsessive-compulsive

Superficial

Traditionalistic

Morally aberrant

Self-disempowering

Spiritual Purpose: Finding harmony in life through Divine action.

Existential Fear: Losing your connection to the Whole through inaction.

Lesson to Learn: Fluid self-expression, devotional harmony, empowerment is in the intent not the practice.

Alchemist Totem: Butterfly; metamorphosis and transformation.

Alchemist Crystal: Nuummite; ancient crystal known as the “Sorcerer’s Stone” used for spiritual transmutation, magic, and grounding.

Alchemist Herb: Burdock; purifies and cleanses.

Alchemist Mantra: By transforming the inner, I transform the outer.

Famous Alchemists: Hermes Trismegistus, Paracelsus, Madame Curie, Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Angéle de la Barthe, Aleister Crowley, Isaac Newton, Eliphas Levi, Arnold Crowther, Dame Alice Kyteler.

Alchemists in Fiction: Albus Dumbledore & Hermione Granger (Harry Potter), Merlin & Morgan le Fay (Arthurian Legend), Helena Markos (Suspiria).

Test here.

Tagged by: Nobody, stole it from @roxinova

#character meme

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crownedcroweprince · 6 years ago

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15 QUESTIONS + 15 MUTUALS

Are you named after anyone?

Not really? My middle name comes from Tristan and Isolde though.

Last time you cried?

Yesterday over my cat being cute while using a ouija board.

Do you have any kids?

I have two cats if that counts?

Do you use sarcasm a lot?

Yeah, probably more than I should.

What’s the first thing you notice about people?

Do vibes count? There are people I’ll meet and just be repulsed by for reasons I can’t place. Otherwise it’s how a person dresses and holds themselves.

What’s your eye color?

Blue-gray??? I don’t know. Arguments have ensued over this.

Scary movie or happy ending?

Scary movies have happy endings if you hate the characters enough???

Any special talents?

Being weirdly flexible, a knack for picking up languages, and generally being creative???

Where were you born?

In the mountains of Arizona, yee haw or some shit.

Hobbies?

Writing, gaming, drawing, witchcraft, playing instruments, learning languages, sewing, cosplaying, ghost hunting, researching cemeteries, collecting ghost stories, poetry, and reading.

Do you have any pets?

Marceline Muse Pink Petticoats and Sir Ezio Duckington Esquire. They are the cats I parent with @thefoxiibox and we love them.

What sports have you played?

Hhhhhhhh, I did ballet and tap as a smol thing. Then AYSO (soccer/football) for some years. Gymnastics... Then a whole lotta modern dance to the point I did a dance entirely in a chair on stage after being elected by my professor for a dance showing at the University. These are all sports and you can fight me. You’ll probably win, but fight me.

How tall are you?

5'3″ or 5′4″ I think? This is also very contested because I haven’t been able to get my height for a long while. :/

Favorite subjects in school?

Depends on the level of academia.

Elementary - ART

Middle - Art and Orchestra (viola player representation)

High - Mixed Media, French, Chemistry, World History, and Orchestra

College - Esoteric and Occult Religions (Crowley was a flaming asshole btw), Japanese, Gender Studies, Buddhism (I took so many courses on Hinduism and Buddhism for having a Japan focus), and Arts of Japan.

Dream job?

Something that uses my degree I guess? Which is mostly translating. Otherwise I would love to own a bookshop/cafe/metaphysical shop. Voice acting would be cool too if I wasn’t so dang self conscious.

Tagged by @weaveroftruth. Thank you for the tag!

Tag you’re it @song-of-glass @kalyianffxiv @captainkurosolaire @mai-takeda @spririte @ramblingsofseh @benes-diction @witch-hause @xiv-endora @roxinova @paleshadeofrose @shard-kilamarii @cahli-tia @straypromises @nilhin and anyone who so wishes to do this. If you don’t want to do this, no judgement or worries from me, I know I tagged some people who are new mutuals, so if you’d rather me not tag you please let me know! ; w ;

#ooc #kei speaks

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nitewrighter · 7 years ago

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Of Blades and Broomsticks pt. XIV

(7 Minutes left on the clock!! Happy Halloween, Y’all!)

Previous Chapters: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 11, 12, 13

Witch AU on AO3

----

The doors to the temple library were heavy, and Mercy had to throw a significant amount of her weight against them just to get them open, her soft-soled monk’s slippers sliding slightly across the floor. The door opened with a rumble and opened into an only-marginally-better-lit-than-the rest of the temple library. It was cool and musty-smelling, lit by a great glowing green chandelier of black glass tendrils winding around each other like a tangled mass of kelp on a beach. Mercy’s breath went short in her throat as she ran her fingers along the cold spines of a few of the thousands of books lining the walls. “Incredible,” she said, picking a book off the shelf, “There must be centuries worth of--”

“Dreck,” she heard a familar voice and then a clatter of a book on the floor and followed its source. She walked between imposingly tall shelves.

“Hogwash,” the voice came again and another clatter.

“Keep this,” no clatter.

“Bunkum,” another clatter.

“Codswallop,” another clatter.

“Pointless smut--actually hold on to that,” no clatter.

“Esoteric frippery,” another clatter.

Mercy reached the source of the commotion to see Junkenstein surrounded by dozens of littered books strewn about the black stone floor, and the Monster standing behind him, holding an impressive pile of precariously stacked volumes in his massive hands. Junkenstein was glaring at the bookshelf, tapping his chin with his prosthetic hand thoughtfully.

“Making yourself right at home, I see,” said Mercy, smiling.

“Would that it were, but a place of a god is no place for a man of science, Gramercy,” said Junkenstein, picking up a book and leafing through it before setting it on the pile in his monsters’ arms, “We stand at an interesting point. We cannot return to Adlersbrunn, obviously. But how long can we stay here? And... your demon’s brother said something that’s stuck with me--He spoke like... like we set things into motion back in Adlersbrunn. Things that are going to have consequences far larger than we could ever dream of controlling.”

“We’re very far from Adlersbrunn,” said Mercy, “If the church sends more hunters after us, there’s not much of a trail for them to track with Zenyatta’s portals.”

"This goes well beyond the church, now, Gramercy, all it takes is one glance at the company we keep to know that,” said Junkenstein, looking back at his monster, “Speaking of which, how fares your demon?”

“He’s glad to be near his master, but this place puts him on edge like you,” said Mercy with a shrug, “But it’s mostly for my sake.”

“He is quite taken with you,” said Junkenstein, pulling another book off the shelf and leafing through it.

“He would have me believe he is taken with me,” said Mercy, putting her hands on her hips, “But he’s a demon.”

“Ah and you would have him believe you’re taken with him,” Junkenstein clapped the book shut and tossed it over his shoulder, “But you are a witch. It’s a dangerous game of cat and... other cat you two play,” he scoffed, “Come now, Gramercy, you think I don’t know you? You’re not putting up those haughty witch walls around yourself now, are you? The two of you have been through the fire together! Literally! There was a column of fire that burned a hole in the sky! We were there!”

“Jamison...” Mercy pushed some of her hair back.

“You’re always telling me to have a bit more faith,” said Junkenstein with a shrug as he and his creation gingerly stepped around the mess of books at their feet and walked down the narrow stacks.

“’If you can’t trust your demons, who can you trust?’” Mercy suggested wryly.

“In a sense, yes,” said Junkenstein as he and his creation set their pile of books with a thunderous clatter down on a stone table, “Our old home is well behind us, and we’re on the brink of an entirely new world---one we understand very little of, by the way---We need friends. We need allies.” He gave an affectionate pat to his creation’s stomach, “And you’re in even deeper with all this magical whatnot than I am.”

“Good to see you’re actually calling it ‘Magic,’” said Mercy, smiling.

“Blame Squidface,” said Junkenstein, flipping open a book, and taking a seat, “It’s just one more thing for me to figure out isn’t it? That’s all science is, really.”

Mercy watched as Junkenstein’s eyes traced over the page.

“How long do you intend to stay?” said Mercy.

“Still figuring that out,” said Junkenstein, “Not too long, obviously. Though if your demon has any ideas on where to head next, you should check with him.”

“Are we to be traveling companions?” said Mercy with a smile.

“As if you’d last a second without me,” said Junkenstein with a grin. The creature gave a grunt behind him. “Us,” he corrected himself, “Last a second without us.”

“Oh, my heroes,” Mercy said with a smile, before walking off and leaving Junkenstein and his creation to their books.

Mercy lingered in the library a while longer, though Junkenstein’s words stuck with her. She knew she was no worshipper of Zenyatta, and part of the reason she was letting herself stay here was because it was the first place where she wasn’t feared or hated for being a witch--she was tolerated, but did she belong? No. She wondered if she would even know what it felt like to belong somewhere--if she would ever recognize the feeling. The question had previously depressed her, but now it trailed and tugged like a fishline to Genji. She remembered the words that fell out of her as they descended from the sky in what felt somehow both distantly long ago.

“I’m your witch, aren’t I? I’m your witch and you’re my demon.“

In all the panic of that moment she had clung to that thought like a ship’s mast in a storm.

She thumbed through a few tomes mindlessly. Pre-Babel scrolls in languages-before-language that she had no hope of translating since they sounded like everything and nothing, complicated histories of the cult with names of a pantheon that made her happy Zenyatta’s name was as easy to pronounce as it was. As she set a book back on the shelf, she heard a soft whisper. She was used to hearing a lot of whispers and tuning them out, but this whisper gave her pause. It sounded like the old woman. The Gramercy before her--but the words were indistinct, and they weren’t berating or scolding, but wondrous and soft. Mercy followed the source of the voice, but there wasn’t a source, she knew that much... nothing like the commotion Junkenstein had been creating with all his book-throwing. Still her feet walked and her chin lifted, listening, through she was half-sure the voice as only in her mind. As she walked some words formed themselves.

“--some point the chain was nearly broken, and much knowledge of its true potential was lost--”

The words cut out altogether.

Mercy stopped walking and found herself in those same narrow cathedral-like stacks. She looked around, not really sure what she was looking for. She was far at the back of the library. She puzzled at the spines of books on either side of her, then shrugged and moved to walk out from the rows of shelves when there was a clatter of a book hitting the floor behind her so sudden it gave her a start. A grubby looking steel-and-leather book was on the floor--no title, save for the word ‘Vitae’ written on it. She picked it up, dusted it off, and carried it with her out of the library. She would read it later, she decided. For now, she did have to find Genji and discuss their plans for the future. Once again with considerable effort, she was able to open the doors to the library, and with her vitae book under one arm, walked through the temple’s dark corridors.

She noticed, as she walked, a significant more amount of bustle by cultists going through the halls. Of course, usually it took only the slightest statements by Zenyatta to work them up into a tizzy. Still, she could feel Genji’s presence in her mind as she set out to find him--not actively talking to her, or seeking her out (though she could twist the hair lock around her finger for that) but the memory of his promise a presence in and of itself, like the whisper she would leave on her door when she left her cottage.That presence in her mind seemed to burn brighter as she pushed some heavy doors out to a covered walkway overlooking the temple courtyard. Down below, Genji was sparring with three cultists with staves.

She smirked. Genji conjured all of his clothing from the selfsame smoke he used to shift his form--technically he could give himself a shirt, and it wouldn’t make him any sweatier like it would a human, but he did not. The scar from the Witch Hunter’s consecrated bullet still marred his shoulder like a raw pink star. Her eyes trailed to his shoulders as he fought, gripping a staff and spinning it around, deflecting blows from the monks’ own staves. She had seen him easily use his strength to disorient and subdue opponents, but here he fought more like a man than a powerful yokai... or was at least attempting to fight like a man. His leaps were graceful, his blocks of enemy blows either solid and unyielding, or gracefully redirecting the force of the blow. His scars spread and contracted across his skin as he moved, his red eyes sparking with a furious focus.

She was so involved in watching the acrobatics of his form and the dance of muscles on his back that she was caught quite off-guard when a cultist carrying large rolls of paper nearly ran headlong into her, but managed to catch themselves on impact, stumble with their armload slightly, then hurry on.

“Just what is going on with them today anyway?” Mercy murmured, before turning her attention back to Genji.

“There is to be a celebration,” a deep and tranquil voice spoke next to her and she nearly jumped right out of her skin from the surprise.

“How did you just... sneak up on me like that?!” Mercy managed to blurt out, gripping her chest with her heart thumping hard against her ribcage.

Zenyatta gestured down, and Mercy remembered that he didn’t really walk anywhere, but rather floated with his legs crossed in a lotus position.

“...ah,” Mercy brushed her hair back, moving to watch Genji again before catching herself, “Wait---A celebration? Of what?”

“Have you not heard?!” exclaimed one cultist, hurrying by carrying armfuls of something slimy and brackish-smelling that Mercy didn’t want to look too closely at.

“The Master Zenyatta in all his Generosity and love for our worthless pointless forms has declared that he shall stay in this plane for 200 years!” said another, hurrying by and carrying lanterns of black iron.

Mercy blinked several times and looked to Zenyatta.

“I don’t see what they’re so worked up about either, honestly,” said Zenyatta, “I’m only staying to see how the pattern of magical flux in this plane pans out. And...humans live, what, 15,000 years, don’t they?”

There was a pause. “They do not,” said Mercy.

Zenyatta looked thoughtful for a moment. “Oh!” he said, “That was this plane’s sea sponges! I get you all so mixed up sometimes,” He gave a slight chuckle and the mass of tentacles forming the lower half of his face twitched and tickled each other, “But as they say,” he added, catching himself, “There is to be a celebration, tonight, possibly an orgy--they were unclear on the second part.”

“...good to know,” said Mercy.

“I know you are not a devotee, but as a companion and partner of my student, you are invited nonetheless.”

Mercy smiled. “Master Zenyatta, you and your followers have been so hospitable. I don’t know how to begin to thank you.”

“I am thankful to you as well, Witch Mercy,” Zenyatta addressed her in the same manner Genji did--treating ‘Witch’ as what seemed almost like an honorific, “You freed my apprentice from a prison and gave him more focus and direction than I have ever seen him have.”

Mercy blushed a little, “Really?”

“I will admit, I previously saw you as a distraction he was overly invested in, but since you saved him, I see now that yours is a remarkable partnership. While I have felt the magic waning in your plane, I see now that it can flourish in the most unexpected places, shining brilliantly even in adversity.”

“Oh...” Mercy glanced down, but then found her eyes on Genji, still sparring, still scarred and sweaty down in the courtyard and found that that sight did not help her loss for words, “I---Thank you,” she managed, managing to tear her eyes away to look at Zenyatta.

“I know you intend to leave,” said Zenyatta, looking down at Genji, “He is bound to wander as well---but know that you will always find support and safety here. As much safety as this plane can allow.”

Mercy smiled, “If you ever require my help---” she started but Zenyatta put a hand on her shoulder.

“You cannot even begin to comprehend my dealings, but I shall keep your offer in mind, Bearer of the Flame of Creation,” he spoke warmly before floating off.

Mercy turned her attention back down to the courtyard but found that the clack of staff on staff and the thud of blows landing and the shuffle of feet across stone had stopped. The other cultists were talking, some quietly nursing bruises, but Genji still stood out there, looking up at her. In that moment she knew. She knew he knew that she had been watching all that time. Her eyes widened and her mouth drew to a thin line as she hurried off to the interior corridors of the temple.

She knew she meant to speak with him about where they would go from the temple, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it for the rest of the day. His presence in her mind was half an itch now, one she knew she could relieve just by going to talk to him, but her self control told her to treat it as was befitting itches: Leave it alone, and hopefully it would go away. The rest of the day was spent back at the library, with the Vitae book and Junkenstein’s skeptical side-glance upon her. He knew she meant to talk to Genji. He knew she didn’t talk to Genji. He knew her too well and she hated him for it and he was her best friend for it. The preparations for the celebration left her afternoon largely vacant--no bickering cultists meant no gashes or stab wounds to worry about. She let herself fall into an abyss of books, the hours wheeling away until a growling stomach and a setting sun finally managed to drag her from her reading.

She had all but forgotten of the celebrations and was briefly jarred by the merry atmosphere in the temple refectory and the decorations dangling from the ceiling as the cultists all sat on their mats around a great carpet of countless plates of food. Mercy managed to find a seat and was able to sate her hunger on snails and samphire. A carafe of a bitter herbaceous spirit was being passed around, and Mercy filled her little clay cup with that as well and knocked it back. It was a celebration, after all, wasn’t it? She wasn’t quite sure when the music had started--maybe around the time the cultists were getting up from their mats and moving out to the very temple courtyard where Genji had been sparring earlier, but in that square of stone, Mercy saw a great bonfire with crackling green flames. And then there was the music. It bounced off the cold stones and seemed to thrum from her ears to her ribcage. There was a rain-like shake of some grain-filled gourd, two-stringed fiddle, flute, and some long loud wooden instrument that rumbled and croaked, and then the drums kicked in.

The cultists pulled each other into whirling dances, gripping each other’s wrists, hooking each others arms. There was a feverishness about the way they touched each other, like tidal pool creatures bracing for the impact of a wave. And then the music picked up and they were leaping, some lifting others over their heads and twirling them as their necks craned back in ecstasy. Mercy found herself almost hypnotized. The bodies, once previously shuffling around hidden by voluminous black robes were casting off their outer mantles, rendering themselves lithe silhouettes against the green glow of the fire. Even Junkenstein had managed to be pulled into the revelry, his creation tossing him in the air and catching him as Junkenstein swan dove and swept and danced as much as he could manage with a peg leg.

“Glad you could make it, Witch,” a voice familiar and casual, yet honeyed with charm managed to slip over the din of music and the thud of bare feet on stone. Mercy turned her head to see Genji. “I was worried you’d spend all night in that library,” Genji said with a smile.

“I’ve been meaning to talk to you,” said Mercy, shifting where she sat a little.

“Ah yes, I gathered as much by your running away as soon as I made eye contact with you,” said Genji with that half-smile of his.

Mercy reddened and glanced off and Genji snickered before catching himself. “Apologies---What was it you wanted to speak of?”

“Leaving the temple---We don’t worship Zenyatta like they do and it’s bound to get us into trouble at some point.”

“I am the one bound to your service,” said Genji, “Where do you desire to go?”

MeMercy thought for a few moments. “You know... I suppose Zenyatta’s portals leave our options far more open than I’ve been thinking--truth be told my world has been so limited by the wood and my old village and Adlersbrunn... it’s hard grasping the idea that I can be somewhere else--even here,” she looked at the dancing cultists. Genji watched her wistful expression, the reflection of the green flames shining in her gray-blue eyes, making them glitter like an unearthly sea. “It’s almost dreamlike....” her voice softened a little, “It wasn’t like the old woman and I could join in on harvest festivals... I’ve never been able to get this close to people dancing before---or even see people dance like this.”

“Beg pardon?” said Genji, his eyebrows raising.

“Oh--it’s nothing, it’s not important--” Mercy started.

“You’re telling me you’ve never danced!?”

“I’ve danced!” Mercy snapped, “Just... in rituals, you know.”

Genji promptly stood up and held a hand out to her.

“Genji--” Mercy started, nervously running a hand through her hair, “I--we still need to figure out where to go from here.”

“As your demon, I must say that your wellbeing is paramount, and as such it is imperative that we dance.”

“You’re ridiculous,” said Mercy, smiling.

“I managed to get trapped in the same tea leaf pot twice. I’m well aware I’m ridiculous. But this is important,” said Genji, still holding his hand out.

Mercy took his hand and he pulled her into the whirling storm of bodies leaping and dancing around the bonfire. She started out awkwardly bobbing to the music, but Genji took her hands in his and twirled her around, lifted her as if she were light as a feather. She noticed he wasn’t wearing the mask nearly as often these days, nor was he bothering to hide his scars as much. He made her feel light on her feet, redirecting her weight around him easily. She easily lost herself in the dance, just as much if not moreso than her abyss of books. The satisfaction of flow, the feeling of “Yes, this is what I ought to be doing” that was so ingrained in the pursuit that the feeling and the pursuit were one and the same. She only regained her senses with the brief flush of adrenaline brought on by Genji sweeping her out of the path of a cultist who was railing and dancing like a maenad.

“Are you just avoiding helping me pick where to go next?” said Mercy.

“We can multitask,” said Genji, picking her up in a twirling lift that forced a spill of giggles from her, “As you said, with Zenyatta’s portals greatly expand our horizons--Perhaps somewhere with white beaches and warm seas? I don’t know how well you can swim...perhaps a port city, somewhere treasures are being traded daily...”

“Perhaps we should find Satya,” said Mercy.

“There’s a plan,” said Genji.

“I don’t know if there’s anything more she can teach me about the flame, but it wouldn’t hurt to try--even if we have no idea where to start.”

“She has her own path, as well,” said Genji, “Even there is nothing more you can learn, the things I’ve seen you do are breathtaking, Witch.”

Mercy smiled and glanced down, “I was terrified and had so little idea of what I was doing,” she said quietly, “Have you thought about it since then? That night in the cave?”

“Of course,” he said easily. His answer caught her off-guard, “I’ve been puzzling over it, trying to remember more of it, but I was delirious from my true form and my injuries so...” he trailed off, “I remember you,” he said quietly, “You were holding something sharp and black and then you...” he trailed off, took his hands about her waist and pulled her close--the movement wasn’t a sudden jerking of her against him, but a steady pull, in-step with the music. He took her hand and looked at it, studying it for a scar.

“It’s fine,” said Mercy, letting her hand break from his grip and putting it against the side of his face. His eyes on her softened at her touch.

“Still not sure how you did it,” murmured Genji, leaning in, studying her face.

Magic,” Mercy smiled, bringing her other arm around his shoulders.

“I never would have guessed,” said Genji closing the distance between them. Mercy tilted her head to him, her hand on the side of his face guiding him towards her, the bonfire crackling green behind her. Genji drew a breath, taking in the scent of that herbaceous spirit that had been handed around at dinner, moved to drink in more of the scent.

“West,” Mercy suddenly said. The word threw Genji off.

“Pardon?” Genji snapped out of the haze.

“We should search for Satya in the lands west of Adlersbrunn. They probably expect us to flee east---deeper into the forest, they won’t be looking for us in the west.”

“Clever,” said Genji, bringing a hand up under her chin, “See? I told you we could multitask.”

“The task you had in mind seemed to demand most of your attention, demon,” said Mercy.

“It had your attention too, if memory serves,” said Genji as her fingers wove into his hair. Their lips had only barely brushed against each other when they broke apart at the sound of fabric ripping and the music now ratcheting up to a thunderous din.

“What was--?” Mercy looked over to the source of the sound and saw the bare back of one of the cultists, who was now in a writhing mass of bodies. More fabric ripping. Tatters of cultist monk robes flew up like large violet autumn leaves. Mercy’s jaw dropped. While she was no stranger to skyclad rituals, the suddenness and intensity with which the cultists set upon each other was jarring. With all Genji’s talk of cultists stabbing each other there were a few panicked seconds where she expected the frenzy to be violent, but it wasn’t, well, literally violent.

“Ah. So there was an orgy,” said Genji, as Mercy slapped both her hands over her eyes as more tatters of cultist robes fluttered out from the mass of writhing bodies, some falling into the blazing green fire, “Really wish Master was more clear on these sorts of things.”

“Genji!” Mercy’s face was burning, her hands still covering her eyes. She split her fingers apart only briefly to peek through, saw a mass of limbs in what seemed almost reminiscent of the mass of tentacles forming Zenyatta’s face and wondered, briefly if this too was a form of worship of Zenyatta for them, Then she saw that one of the cultists had even further escalated the situation with a summoning circle, then clamped her fingers tight again.

“Yes, I know, we’re leaving, don’t worry,” said Genji, taking her up into his arms.

“Tell me when it’s safe to look--woah!” Mercy cut herself off as Genji leapt, with her in his arms, up to the temple walkway that bordered the courtyard. Genji walked into the interior of the temple and set Mercy down on the stone floor. “It’s sa--” Genji caught himself, “Wait--”

“Wait--? Wait for--?”

Genji lightly kissed the knuckles of Mercy’s hands covering her eyes.

“...ah.” she said.

#gency #witch mercy au #nsfw-ish but not really

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system-of-a-feather · 3 years ago

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Dear Problematic Siblings; An Open Letter to Older Siblings Survivors from a Youngest Sibling Survivor

(TW: Some levels of emotional abuse, neglect and psychological abuse mentioned. Not sure what level of detail to warn since its that whole Trauma Thing where you don't know what is and isn't 'that bad' so just be careful if any of those are particularly touchy topics)

Don't think too formal of this writing despite the formal sounding title, this is a bit of an open free form letter I wanted to put out to those who have siblings you aren't in contact with or don't have a relationship with following an abusive childhood environment may that be due to having to cut contact for safety or bad blood from how you hurt each other growing up.

I am / We are the youngest of two sisters - one older by 6~ years, the other older by 4~ years and our household was unsafe since before I was born. In theory, my oldest sister might have seen the abuse arise, maybe my middle sister had a bit of time before plunged into hell, but I was born condemned. First and foremost, its important to acknowledge how even these few years have likely developed how we perceive our lives and our situation greatly; far more than either of us can probably have the conscious awareness of as - regardless of how old we were when we first faced it, we were still learning and forgetting a lot of things that would innately frame the way we see the others and the world.

To the sister that made my life miserable, to the one that actively attacks and bullied me, actively tried to silence me and turn my parents against me, actively made the already bad neglect worse and actively took away all of the very few to no resources I had; to the sister that told me I couldn't complain because I was "too young" to remember the worst of the trauma; to the sister that I threw out of my life for four years and refused to so much as be in the same room as or see for two years, to the sister I gave up on after she disappointed me by repeating the same harmful behaviors over and over again over the six to eight years I had made an attempt to come to an understanding and make things work with; to the sister who - after time apart and given independent healing - came to the realization that our lives and childhood sucked, that we both were put through, that over time realized that the there was a lot more to life than the petty stressors we had built a habit of fighting over; to the sister that still from time to time, when prompted with specific triggers, will still revert back to those survival mechanisms and begin behaving in ways that are similar to how she did when we were younger; to that sister, I understand and I forgive you.

It took a while to get around here - a lot of work of healing and a lot of time apart to work through, process, recover and grow from the damage I had sustained in childhood both at your hands and not, but I understand. We were both children and we were both trying to survive. Children being forced to survive like we did will almost always look ugly, will almost always make a mess, and thats not your fault nor mine. Neither of us should have been put into that situation, and I understand why we were that way before, I forgive you and I hope you forgive me for whatever slights I likely did while trying to survive myself. I also understand that just acknowledging and being aware of this doesn't stop the trauma and immediately cure the pain and wounds that were inflicted upon us, and while we might relapse into old dynamics, I understand and forgive you already so as long as you do the same back. Healing isn't easy and more than anything, the thing that I value and cherish most is that we both have reflected on our pasts and how they affect our present and have made active genuine effort to handle it. The past is in the past, and the future is what we make of it. I'll be patient with you if you are patient with me.

To my oldest sister; to the sister that saw my pain when I was seven and came to help me; to the sister that took responsibility for making my life good and making sure I succeed; to the sister that saw the danger I was in and became dedicated, obsessed even, with making sure I did better than she did; to the sister that sat me down when I was not even in middle school to plan out all my classes up until graduate school and planned to help me enroll in the military at age 14 to pay for my tuition; to the sister that wanted to see me happy all the time to the point of recognizing a complex dissociative disorder and intentionally triggering one part out regularly to make herself feel better; to the sister that trained me in the brutal world of capitalism and taught me how to live on nothing because she knew, for a certain, that no one would be there for me and made sure I knew that I was entirely on my own; to the sister that gave me freedom and protection from my parents in exchanged for the knowledge that no one would help me should I fail; to the sister that got me a bird when she knew she was going to leave me alone and unprotected; to the sister that taught me to dominate everyone and everything to maintain peace, safety, and control; to the sister who was extensively traumatized and scared who used me as a subject to project her anxieties upon with good yet selfish and inconsiderate intent; to the sister who both saved me from my parents, but also made the effects of the 10x times worse and more dramatic; to the sister who I defended for 21 years of my life and kept from being disowned 6 times when no one else in the family would stand up for her; to the sister who - upon the slightest push back and watered down critique to acknowledge the damage done - threw me to the side as a party not trying in the relationship; to the sister who doubles down and refuses to reflect and grow, I appreciate what you have done for me and understand, but I do not forgive you - nor do I see myself forgiving you in the near future.

The most I can hope for is that you, much like my other sister, when given time apart, will come to realize the damage that you have done. That you will come to realize the true shittiness of our lives and understand that by constantly running, by constantly living in the ways that we originally learned to cope with our lives, by perpetuating the trauma that we were born and raised in, by never looking back to move forward, we will never truly escape and live the life that we deserve but were denied. As much as I wish I could sit here with you and help you through this process, that would cost me my own ability to heal, to move forward, to grow. I understand that you were doing the best for yourself, and I am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt that you did what you thought was best for me - growing up how we did was hard and you more than any of us three had to deal with a lot of it on your own and without warning. You were of an older generation - mental health information was not as accessible and far more stigmatized - people were more conservative and less progressive. I completely understand how and why it is that your pain had been redirected onto me; however, I can't see that you see that. You seem unable to see your own fault and folly along with the consequences I was forced to bare. I can not forgive you, if you can not acknowledge your part in this show.

To that sister, all I can say is I hope you heal. I hope you get better and I hope you see that life doesn't have to be a constant game of run away from the past and trauma. I hope that one day you will realize why it is that conflicts follow and case you around. I hope that one day you reflect on the past and realize how your pain had caused others pain and I hope you can still love and accept yourself anyways. I hope then that we can talk again and start anew, but until then, I can not forgive you.

To both my older sisters, I don't know what our childhood was like for you - I lived it, I watched it, I saw it, but I could never truly fullly understand or begin to fathom what it was like on your side of the table, so I won't act like I do any more than I need to understand that I don't need to hate you for the rest of my life. Our childhood was hard, harder than any of us can properly remember by the sheer nature of it. I don't wish to hold bad blood over things happened in the past that will only get further and further in the past until they disappear to irrelevancy. I don't wish any ill upon either of you (excluding the acute moments when you really piss me off and/or we trigger one another****). I truthfully hope we all can heal, move on, and live our lifes regardless of how bad our first two or so decades of our individual lives have been. We are all survivors and thats something to be respected of.

Sincerely,

The Youngest Sibling

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tomasorban · 7 years ago

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Excess (from essay: The alchemy of desire)

There is one final alchemical concept that irrevocably binds Schwaller’s operative alchemical principles to his metaphysics of sex. This is the ‘sense of excess’ (le sense de l’excès), which he compares directly to both catalysis and orgasm. If eroticism is the desire for union—culminating in marriage via the conjunction of opposites to reconstitute the primordial androgyne—then the orgasm is the transfiguring flash of eternity that catalyses this union, raising the conjoined being beyond duality.

Excess is accorded a vital role for it is seen as a phenomenon in the moral domain that corresponds to crucial processes in chemistry and alchemy. ‘Now, that which in morality is called excess corresponds to that which in alchemy is called fermentation, identical to that which in chemistry is called catalysis’:

By this last term [catalysis] we can better comprehend the phenomenon. More and more one has noted in chemistry that this mysterious catalysis plays a preponderant role in reactions. It consists of the inexplicable action of the presence of an apparently strange body upon the milieu or upon the named phenomenon. For my part, I know that this body is never effectively a stranger, but, as occult atomic physics reveals, it intervenes always as the excess of affinity in the composition. Excess intervenes in the material phenomenon exactly as in the moral, or, better said, in consciousness. It is the instant thanks to which the present possibility is surpassed; this is also the moment thanks to which the passage is possible from one state to a superior state.

The transfiguring ability to ‘surpass the present possibility’ is pivotal here, and we can see how this ‘sense of excess’ forms an important precursor to what he would later call ‘qualitative exaltation’, a concept central to his esoteric theory of evolution. In its earlier formulation, however, it is described specifically in relation to the function of the orgasm:

The sexual function, in itself, is not an excess; the orgasm properly speaking is an excess: an excess of erotic tension. This is the most natural excess, imposed by nature. Now, all excess—whatever it may be—leads to this consciousness, even if it comes about that its effect should be death. The effect is secondary. What is essential is what passes into the consciousness of this being who knows that, if it pushes such a thing to [the point of] excess, it can result in death. If his act is the consequence of a logical decision with himself, and is therefore an absolutely conscious act accomplished after mature reflection upon his desire for ecstasy, without anger, without any weakening of his faculties by intoxication or narcotics, then, even if death ensues, the act is not to be morally condemned. In this case, he does not want his death, he wants the supreme exaltation in which he hopes to find the annihilation of his I, his ego, his sensorially fascinated being.

The need for infinity exists in man: but he must learn to make the sense of excess conscious. The sense of excess leads all things from evil to the veritably mystical—that is, to the most complete abnegation, to complete fusion (confondement). If this is difficult or impossible in many cases for some, it is yet possible for him, in things that his nature requires or that an erotic disposition imposes, to find in these things the point of support in order that they may be exalted to the supreme. This is the sense in which eroticism is sublimated to the mystical.

As the Italian esoteric philosopher Julius Evola (1898–1974) recognises, this passage (which he cites in his Metafisica del sesso), pertains to a form of erotic alchemy that is comparable to the secret ritual of the Ordo Templi Orientis (article XIV of De arte magica), which speaks of an initiatic ‘death in orgasm’ called the mors justi. This ‘limit of exhaustion or frenzy and intoxication’, comments Evola, ‘is also indicated as the moment of magical lucidity, of powerful trance in man or woman’.

Evola, whose Metaphysics of Sex is a veritable tour de force of the initiatory role of eros, also points out the pertinence of Schwaller’s ideas to the tantric distinction between different types of desire (Sanskrit kama), which encompasses animal desire, human desire, and superhuman desire. Only the superhuman desire is ‘capable of total and superindividual abandon’, according to Evola, and he concludes his position by citing Schwaller’s distinction between a ‘Greater Desire’ and a ‘Lesser Desire’. ‘In essence’, remarks Evola, ‘animal desire is contrasted with that which might be called [and here he cites Schwaller] “the Greater Desire which unites body with spirit well beyond the union of bodies in the Lesser Desire”’.

For Schwaller, this ‘Great Desire’ is intimately bound to a mysterium whose ‘deep cause’ lies in a ‘desire for infinity’, but which ‘in its expression becomes the sense of excess’. This great desire for infinity can lead either to ‘the most absolute destruction’ or ‘the highest evolution’. All the excesses that human desire evokes—whether for physical eroticism, ecstasy, inebriation, intoxication, works of genius, and even criminal transgression—are so many substitutes for this primordial call to infinity. Now, because the infinity sought through the sense of excess is beyond duality, it is also beyond good and evil, and for this reason the entire spectrum of extreme acts undertaken in the quest for infinity can never actually satisfy this higher need, which nevertheless acts like a magnet for it through the chain of lesser desires. The genuinely anagogic effect of the sense of excess is only attained when the individual absolves themselves completely of duality through divine union in the metaphysical state of androgyny—the alchemical marriage. Indeed, it is precisely the attainment of this‘mystical ideal’ that is the true purpose of marriage, a ‘state wherein sexuality ceases, where the “divided souls” effectively reunite and are no longer engaged in coitus, which is merely a simulacrum of Union’.

The desire for infinity, and the sense of excess, also underpin the evolution of life, which for Schwaller is always determined by the desire for consciousness to achieve its perfect, immortal form: ‘the Universe is nothing but consciousness, and through its appearances presents nothing but an evolution of consciousness, from its origin to its end, the end being a return to its cause’. To the extent that all terrestrial bodies are partial realisations of this primordial or absolute ‘body’, the process of evolution through the kingdoms of nature mirrors the process of the desire for infinity. The bodies generated through the evolution of life are in a sense akin to the substitutes that we use to assuage the desire for infinity—they are vehicles but not destinations; approximate but never ultimate. Moreover, they only genuinely lead us ‘further’ if the confines that define these very states of existence are broken through acts of excess.

Thus, in addition to the general perception that visible evolution is the material expression of the mutation of consciousness, desire is implicated as the specific instrument by which consciousness ‘chooses’ or ‘determines’ the forms that express an entity’s ontological status in the chain of being. Within this framework, the aim of embodied life is to intensify consciousness through excess: to make it more integral and thus liberated from duality, whereupon (as a result) the physical instrument will become more integrally (and less dualistically) constellated. This is the goal toward which all becoming appears to be moving, but which, paradoxically, always existed, ever-presently, as its origin and foundation. It is at once the homogeneous equilibrium of the originary spiritual milieu in which agent and patient are latent, as it is the neutral ground that is produced when agent and patient differentiate, interact and neutralise. This is why Schwaller can speak of an incarnation that is simultaneously a liberation from corporification:

This is the moment in which consciousness is integrally corporified and, paradoxically, in which it becomes independent of the body: the body itself becomes energy, being no longer the support of an energy, no longer the container but wholly the contents’.

Image W. Russell

#metaphysics #esoteric #alchemy #spirituality #consciousness #walter russell

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pauljosephrovelli · 8 years ago

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A Commentary on NOAH WAS A KABIR, HENCE HE MUST HAVE BEEN A DEMON by HPB

It seems one of the most potent voices behind the inner order secrets of the Golden Dawn was that of Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. Accordingly, Thelema, which also owes much to the inner order secrets of the Golden Dawn would clearly show its Theosophical roots. We present here a Thelemic commentary on HPB’s essay: NOAH WAS A KABIR, HENCE HE MUST HAVE BEEN A DEMON.

HPB: It matters little whether it is Isis, or Ceres -- the "Kabiria" -- or again the Kabiri, who have taught men agriculture; but it is very important to prevent fanatics from monopolising all the facts in history and legend, and from fathering their distortions of truth, history, and legend upon one man. Noah is either a myth along with the others, or one whose legend was built upon the Kabirian or Titanic tradition, as taught in Samothrace; he has, therefore, no claim to be monopolized by either Jew or Christian. If, as Faber tried to demonstrate at such cost of learning and research, Noah is an Atlantean and a Titan, and his family are the Kabiri or pious Titans, etc. -- then biblical chronology falls by its own weight, and along with it all the patriarchs -- the antediluvian and pre-Atlantean Titans.

AL:I.46 "Nothing is a secret key of this law. Sixty-one the Jews call it; I call it eight, eighty, four hundred & eighteen."

AL:I.47 "But they have the half: unite by thine art so that all disappear."

pj comment: Per Liber AL, the Jews have the half; but that doesn't mean that that half includes everything in Jewish lore and history. Though there's much, including and especially the Qabalah that they did carry; yet I think it important to understand Thelema as a Western paradigm. The East did not have the same ideological enslavement brought upon by the Roman church in the West, and its mystery tradition did not suffer the broken lineages subsequent to Roman persecution in the West. Though possibly, the whole world lost when the library at Alexandria was destroyed.

HPB: As now discovered and proven, Cain is Mars, the god of power and generation, and of the first (sexual) bloodshed (As he is also Vulcan or Vul-cain, the greatest god with the later Egyptians, and the greatest Kabir. The god of time was Chium in Egypt, or Saturn, or Seth, and Chium is the same as Cain.). Tubal-Cain is a Kabir, "an instructor of every artificer in brass and iron"; or -- if this will please better -- he is one with Hephaestos or Vulcan; Jabal is taken from the Kabiri -- instructors in agriculture, "such as have cattle," and Jubal is "the father of all those who handle the harp," he, or they who fabricated the harp for Kronos and the trident for Poseidon (See Strabo, comparing them to the Cyclopes -- XIV. p. 653 et seq. (Callim in Del., 31 Stat. Silo. IV., 6, 47; etc., etc.)).

pj comment: Tubal-Cain is the secret word of the Freemasons; a holy and esteemed word. We can see here that Tubal-Cain is then the Cain of the Bible, who was of the race of Giants or Titans (the Kabir and even the Nephilim). As an artificer or creative artisan, he fits perfectly with the craft of mundane masonry, upon which the Freemasons are said by their lore, to have evolved. But as Vulcan, the god of Fire, we can connote the idea of the element of Spirit, which is dually attributed to the element of Fire in the Western system. As well, we see an allusion to Horus and the importance of sexual Magick. Albert Pike writes in the Freemasonic document, Morals and Dogma:

AROERIS or HAR-oeris, the elder HORUS, is from the same old root that in the Hebrew has the form Aur, or, with the definite article prefixed, Haur, Light, or the Light, splendor, flame, the Sun and his rays. The hieroglyphic of the younger HORUS was the point in a circle; of the Elder, a pair of eyes; and the festival of the thirtieth day of the month Epiphi, when the sun and moon were supposed to be in the same right line with the earth, was called "The birth-day of the eyes of Horus."

AL:I.16 "For he is ever a sun, and she a moon. But to him is the winged secret flame, and to her the stooping starlight."

pj comment: The Sun and the Moon of course, are the symbols of male and female. The spilling of blood in the story of Cain and Abel must have a symbolic and not literal significance. HPB writes in a footnote:

HPB: Adam-Jehovah, Brahma and Mars are, in one sense, identical; they are all symbols for primitive or initial generative powers for the purposes of human procreation. Adam is red, and so also are Brahma-Viraj and Mars -- god and planet. Water is the blood of the Earth; therefore, all these names are connected with Earth and Water. "It takes earth and water to create a human soul," says Moses. Mars is identical with Kartikeya God of War (in one sense) -- which god is born of the Sweat of Siva, Siva Gharmaja and the Earth. In the Mahabharata he is shown as born without the intervention of a woman. And he is also called "Lohita," the red, like Adam, and the other "first men." Hence, the author of "The Source of Measures" is quite right in thinking that Mars (and all the other gods of like attributes), "being the god of war and of bloodshed, was but a secondary idea flowing out of the primary one of shedding of blood in conception for the first time." Hence Jehovah became later a fighting god, "Lord of Hosts," and one who commands war. He is the aggressive Zodh -- or Cain by permutation who slew his (female) "brother," whose "blood crieth from the ground," the Earth having opened her mouth to receive the blood. (Genesis iii.)

pj comment: Jubal, the "father of all those who handle the harp" seems to draw an overt allusion to the three employed artificers (Jubela, Jubelo and Jubelum) of the Third Degree in Masonry, who conspire and kill Hiram-Abif, the Master Mason overseeing the construction of Solomon's temple. But also, HPB’s assertion that the god of procreation is also the god of war is clearly echoed in Thelema:

AL:III.3 "Now let it be first understood that I am a god of War and of Vengeance. I shall deal hardly with them."

HPB: The history or "fables" about the mysterious Telchines -- fables echoing each and all the archaic events of our esoteric teachings -- furnish us with a key to the origin of Cain's genealogy (Genesis, ch. iii.); they give the reason why the Roman Catholic Church identifies "the accursed blood" of Cain and Ham with Sorcery, and makes it responsible for the Deluge. Were not the Telchines -- it is argued -- the mysterious ironworkers of Rhodes; they who were the first to raise statues to the gods, furnish them with weapons, and men with magic arts? And is it not they who were destroyed by a deluge at the command of Zeus, as the Cainites were by that of Jehovah?

AL:III.11 "This shall be your only proof. I forbid argument. Conquer! That is enough. I will make easy to you the abstruction from the ill-ordered house in the Victorious City. Thou shalt thyself convey it with worship, o prophet, though thou likest it not. Thou shalt have danger & trouble. Ra-Hoor-Khu is with thee. Worship me with fire & blood; worship me with swords & with spears. Let the woman be girt with a sword before me: let blood flow to my name. Trample down the Heathen; be upon them, o warrior, I will give you of their flesh to eat!"

pj comment: To better understand this, the construction of the name Hiram-Abif as discussed in Pike's tome is essential:

In the ancient Phcenician character, and in the Samaritan, A B, (the two letters representing the numbers 1, 2, or Unity and Duality, means Father, and is a primitive noun, common to all the Semitic languages. It also means an Ancestor, Originator, Inventor, Head, Chief or Ruler, Manager, Overseer, Master, Priest, Prophet. is simply Father, when it is in construction, that is, when it precedes another word, and in English the preposition "of" is interposed, as Abi-Al, the Father of Al.

Also, the final Yod means "my"; so that by itself means "My father. David my father, 2 Chron. ii. 3. (Vav) final is the possessive pronoun "his"; and Abiu (which we read "Abif") means "of my father's." Its full meaning, as connected with the name of Khurum, no doubt is, "formerly one of my father's servants," or "slaves." The name of the Phcenician artificer is, in Samuel and Kings, [2 Sam. v. 11; 1 Kings v. 15; 1 Kings vii. 40]. In Chronicles it is with the addition of [2 Chron. ii. 12]; and of [2 Chron. iv. 16].

It is merely absurd to add the word "Abif," or "Abiff," as part of the name of the artificer. And it is almost as absurd to add the word "Abi," which was a title and not part of the name. Joseph says [Gen. xlv. 8], "God has constituted me 'Ab l'Paraah, as Father to Paraah, i.e., Vizier or Prime Minister." So Haman was called the Second Father of Artaxerxes; and when King Khurum used the phrase "Khurum Abi," he meant that the artificer he sent Schlomoh was the principal or chief workman in his line at Tsur.

pj comment: The Trident is also interesting here: in the GCL document, Liber Tridens, I write:

The trident is the fork, which mysteriously appears in our mythology, held traditionally by Neptune, while today it shows up in our cultural depiction of the Devil and interestingly enough, even the classic Norman Rockwell painting of the American farmer and his wife. Its nature is thoroughly understood by our collective unconscious. But the cartoon images of Satan don’t represent it well at all. They are the result of our cultural repression after centuries of domination by the Roman heresy. The trident is a real Magickal weapon and its powers are complex and hard hitting. With its power derived from the AUMGN going forth, the Trident directs and commands the way of the AUMGN; the spiritual content of our world, our reality in its unborn state.

The Trident is held up or down in a vertical line, relating to the equations: 2=0, and 0=2, referring in its downward position, to the birth of duality/polarity, the birth of qualities within the world; or if held upwards, it refers to the process of Aspiration, to reconcile duality with each other in order to take a position beyond good and evil. It points therefore to the highest or the lowest, and make no mistake about the lowest genius, it culminates in poison, disease and corruption. And by comparison, the Rod in the Gnostic Mass is also held upwards and downwards, expressed in both ways during the rite. The Trident as we’ve presented it here, is a very lofty weapon, and the attainment of it (no less to be able to wield it) is possible for but a very few. It is a type of a wand in that it is the AUMGN going; the dynamic expression of the content of Kether. But it must not be confused with the Lance of the Gnostic Mass, as This Lance personifies the one-pointedness of the Magus. The Trident balances its holy tip containing the unborn essence by two sides, which will be recognized in this connection as Binah and Chokmah, but the correspondences and virtues of the Trident are many...

Continuing with the HPB essay:

HPB: The Telchines are simply the Kabiri and the Titans, in another form. They are the Atlanteans also. "Like Lemnos and Samothrace," says Decharme, "Rhodes, the birth-place of the Telchines, is an island of volcanic formation." (Genii of Fire, p. 271.) The island of Rhodes emerged suddenly out of the seas, after having been previously engulfed by the Ocean, say the traditions. Like Samothrace (of the Kabiri) it is connected in the memory of men with the Flood legends. As enough has been said on this subject, however, it may be left for the present.

pj comment: It is enough to state the obvious; the superstitious denotation that sees a God that created the deluge to destroy the race of Giants/Nephilim. For that matter, he was quite inefficient as enough of that race survived; that we could even get story of Davey & Goliath--so much for the denotative interpretation of myth. Yet this can be so rich in its connotative virtue.

HPB: But we may add a few more words about Noah, the Jewish representative of nearly every pagan God in one or another character. The Homeric songs contain, poetized, all the later fables about the Patriarchs, who are all sidereal, cosmic, and numerical symbols and signs. The attempt to disconnect the two genealogies -- those of Seth and Cain (Nothing could be more awkward and childish, we say, than this fruitless attempt to disconnect the genealogies of Cain and of Seth, or to conceal the identity of names under a different spelling. Thus, Cain has a Son ENOCH, and Seth a Son ENOCH also (Enos, Ch'anoch, Hanoch; -- one may do what one likes with Hebrew unvowelled names). In the Cainite line Enoch begets IRAD, Irad MEHUJAEL, the latter METHUSAEL, and Methusael, Lamech. In the Sethite line, Enoch begets Cainan, and this one MAHALEEL (a variation on Mehujael), who gives birth to JARAD (or Irad); Jarad to ENOCH (Number 3), who produces Methuselah (from Methusael), and finally Lamech closes the list. Now all these are symbols (Kabalistically) of solar and lunar years, of astronomical periods, and of physiological (phallic) functions, just as in any other pagan symbolical creed. This has been proven by a number of writers.) -- and the further attempt, as futile, to show them real, historical men, has only led to more serious inquiries into the history of the Past, and to discoveries which have damaged for ever the supposed revelation. For instance, the identity of Noah and Melchizedek being established, the further identity of Melchizedek, or Father Sadik, with Kronos-Saturn is proved also.

pj comment: Perhaps there is some connection here with Enoch and the antidiluvian races that once existed on this planet. In HPB's exposition on races, there were more subtle (less material) races that preceded our race (giving some credence to the Nephilim as a spiritual or lower astra race) that ultimately would have contacted someone such as Enoch; who himself was not Hebrew and as a descendent of Cain (as HPB points out here) is of this race of Giants.

HPB: That it is so may be easily demonstrated. It is not denied by any of the Christian writers. Bryant (See "Analysis of Ancient Mythology," Vol. II., p. 760) concurs with all those who are of opinion, that Sydic, or Sadic, was the patriarch Noah (as also Melchizedek); and that the name by which he is called, or Sadic, corresponds to the character given of him in Genesis, chap. vi., 9. "He was , Sadic, a JUST man, and perfect in his generation. All science and every useful art were attributed to him, and through his sons transmitted to posterity." (See New Encyclopaedia by Abraham Rees, F.R.S.)

pj comment: With some puzzlement, I'll state that Melchizedek is said by some to be one of the names of Akhenaten (the first priest/pharaoh of monotheism); along with Oedipus and Aeschylus. The latter is an ancient playwriter of great renown; the seeming originator of the ancient Greek myths that especially have to do with the stories of creation and are as closely woven into Judaic lore as could possibly be. In the essay that follows this essay in HPB's Secret Doctrine: The Curse from a Philosophical Point of View, she writes:

Pointing to antiquity he will prove that there never was an original sin, but only an abuse of physical intelligence -- the psychic being guided by the animal, and both putting out the light of the spiritual. He will say, "All ye who can read between the lines, study ancient wisdom in the old dramas -- the Indian and the Greek; read carefully the one just mentioned, one enacted on the theatres of Athens 2,400 years ago, namely 'Prometheus Bound' " The myth belongs to neither Hesiod nor AEschylus; but, as Bunsen says, it "is older than the Hellenes themselves," for it belongs, in truth, to the dawn of human consciousness.

--and--

The subject of AEschylus' drama (the trilogy is lost) is known to all cultured readers. The demi-god robs the gods (the Elohim) of their secret -- the mystery of the creative fire.

pj comment: This is the Promethean drama; reflected in the pseudepigraphal myth of Lucifer being exiled from heaven. Returning to the present HPB essay:

HPB: Now it is Sanchoniathon, who informs the world that the Kabiri were the Sons of Sydic or Zedek (Melchizedek). True enough, this information, having descended to us through Eusebius (Preparatio Evangelica), may be regarded with a certain amount of suspicion, as it is more than likely that he dealt with Sanchoniathon's works as he has with Manetho's Synchronistic Tables. But let us suppose that the identification of Sydic, Kronos, or Saturn with Noah and Melchizedek, is based on one of the Eusebian pious hypotheses. Let us accept it as such, along with Noah's characteristic as a just man, and his supposed duplicate, the mysterious Melchizedek, King of Salem, and priest of the high god, after "his own order" (See Hebrews, ch. v. 6, and vii. 1, et seq.); and finally, having seen what they all were spiritually, astronomically, psychically and cosmically, let us now see what they became rabbinically and KABALISTICALLY.

Speaking of Adam, Kain, Mars, etc., as personifications, we find the author of "The Source of Measures" enunciating our very esoteric teachings in his Kabalistic researches. Thus he says: --

"Now Mars was the lord of birth and of death, of generation and of destruction, of ploughing, of building, of sculpture or stone-cutting, of Architecture . . . . in fine, of all . . . . ARTS. He was the primeval principle, disintegrating into the modification of two opposites for production. Astronomically, too (HPB Note: The AEolian name of Mars was [[Areus]], and the Greek Ares, [[Ares]], is a name over the etymological significance of which, philologists and Indianists, Greek and Sanskrit scholars have vainly worked to this day. Very strangely, Max Muller connects both the names Mars and Ares with the Sanskrit root mar, whence he traces their derivation, and from which, he says, the name of Maruts (the storm-gods) comes. Welcker, however, offers more correct etymologies. (See Griech. Gotterlehre, I., 415.) However it may be, etymologies of roots and words alone will never yield the esoteric meaning fully, though they may help to useful guesses.), he held the birthplace of the day and year, the place of its increase of strength, Aries, and likewise the place of its death, Scorpio. He held the house of Venus, and that of the Scorpion. He, as birth, was good; as death, was Evil. As good, he was light; as bad, he was night. As good, he was man; as bad, he was woman. He held the cardinal points, and as Cain, or Vulcan (HPB Note: As the same author shows: "The very name Vulcain appears in the reading; for in the first words (of chap. iv. Genesis, 5) is to be found V'elcain, or V'ulcain, agreeably to the deepened u sound of the letter vau. Out of its immediate context, it may be read as "and the god Cain," or Vulcain. If, however, anything is wanting to confirm the Cain-Vulcain idea, Fuerst says: , Cain, the iron point of a lance, a smith (blacksmith), inventor of sharp iron tools and smith work"), or Pater Sadic, or Melchizadek, he was lord of the Ecliptic, or balance, or line of adjustment, and therefore was THE JUST ONE. The ancients held to there being seven planets, or great gods, growing out of eight, and Pater Sadik, the Just or Right One, was lord of the eighth, which was Mater Terra. ("Source of Measures," p. 186-70.)

pj comment: It is interesting to note that Libra, the scales of Justice; connected with this age of the Hammubi Code and the Ten Commandments, is opposite Aries on the astrological wheel. The origin of the Jewish myth and the Torah is placed in this aeon, as discussed in my book: The Starry Gnosis.

HPB: This makes their functions plain enough after they had been degraded, and establishes the identity.

The Noachian Deluge, as described in its dead letter and within the period of Biblical chronology, having been shown to have never existed, the pious, but very arbitrary supposition of Bishop Cumberland has but to follow that deluge into the land of fiction. Indeed it seems rather fanciful to any impartial observer to be told that there were "two distinct races of Kabiri," the first consisting of Ham and Mizraim, whom he conceives to be Jupiter and Dionysus of Mnaseas; the second, "of the children of Shem, are the Kabiri of Sochoniston, while their father Sydyk is consequently the Scriptural Shem." (Append. de Cabiris, ap. Orig. gent. p. 364, 376, and the latter statement on p. 357.)

pj comment: The chapter in my book, Gnostic Cycles asserts that the deluge is actually shown to be in the Manifestation of Scorpio (that includes the Aeon of Aries) and its aeon of Gemini. So it's not that the deluge itself is pure fiction as HPB suggests, but rather the Hebrew myth of the deluge is fictional.

HPB: The Kabirim, "the mighty ones," are identical with our primeval Dhyan-Chohans, with the corporeal and the incorporeal Pitris, and with all the rulers and instructors of the primeval races, which are referred to as the Gods and Kings of the divine Dynasties.

pj comment: Identifying the Kabirim (the race of Noah as shown at the beginning of this essay) with the Dhyan-Chohans and the Pitris more clearly shows the spiritual importance of the Nephilim and validates further my speculation on the Nephilim being the Augoeiades or race of beings that are connected with the Thelemic idea of the Holy Guardian Angel, which itself evolves of Greek and Hebrew/Merkabah (Psuedpegripha) traditions. Note also that the Jews, as descendants possibly of Akhenaten that when he was overthrown, settled into a region of ancient Greece (from which we get the Hellenic Jews), carried on the idea of Monotheism. We should not be terribly surprised to see Jewish and Hellenic mythology to be so closely intertwined. Indeed, the Greek connection of numeric values to the letters of their alphabet had a profound effect on the Jews; leading to the development of the Qabalah.

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lati-will · 8 years ago

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Science & The Paranormal – The Question Of Consciousness

With so many people (many indeed being iconic scientific and historical figures) experiencing what they are supposedly not meant to, according to materialistic thought, the reasonable individual might be forgiven for wondering if there is something more to consciousness than our present “scientific” paradigms would have us believe. Can we go further than questioning the assumed legitimacy of orthodox materialistic theories which reduce consciousness to a mere epiphenomenon (by-product) of physical matter (the brain) and even—heaven forbid—suggest that they are not merely incomplete, but actually types of superstitions in themselves?

Etymologically, the word consciousness derives from the words scire (to know) and cum or con (with). Consciousness is “to know with.” So if you, the persona, recognize (to know or be aware of), who are you recognizing with? Is there more to consciousness than the Freudian ego and unconscious?

Mathematical physicist Roger Penrose has written:

A scientific world-view which does not profoundly come to terms with the problem of conscious minds can have no serious pretensions of [sic] completeness…I would maintain that there is yet no physical, biological, or computational theory that comes very close to explaining our consciousness or intelligence.[i]

Indeed, in the past (and even today?) some scientists had taken the absurd position that consciousness is an illusion. This, while providing a nonsensical reason to ignore the problem of consciousness, obviously fails to sate the curious inquirer’s queries regarding how we got here and what we are doing here as conscious beings. Materialistic philosophy as we know it—derived from the mechanistic worldview—had, more or less since the dawning of the Age of Reason in the 1700s, steadfastly maintained that what we call experience arises solely as a by-product of the brain’s internal workings. No brain, no consciousness.

But is it really that simple? What about functions of consciousness that appear to transcend the cranial boundaries of our heads? The Age of Reason said that these forces had only ever existed in man’s imagination; only reason could show man the truth about the universe. “The trouble was,” according to Colin Wilson, “that man became a thinking pygmy, and the world of the rationalists was a daylight place in which boredom, triviality and ordinariness were ultimate truths.”[ii]

The Age of Reason glorified the rationalist, who, enamoured of his endless linear cogitations, was blinded to faculties of consciousness that actually transcended them: faculties that would have allowed him not to merely philosophize about deeper levels of reality, but actually access them. “This is the great tragedy of modern man,” wrote occultist, philosopher, and composer Dane Rudhyar. “His much acclaimed scientific spirit frees him of the compulsions of subrational and subconscious states of mind, only to bind him to an empty rationalism and a quantitative analytical intellect, both of which actually entomb him in a sarcophagus filled with only the mimicry of life. This sarcophagus is the ‘megalopolis’—the monstrous city.”[iii]

But something stirs in the bowels of the concrete jungle. An international online survey of paranormal experiences had met with an overwhelming response, according to Australian researchers in 2006. The survey, on phenomena that cannot be explained using the current “laws” of science, is by researchers at Monash University in Melbourne. A recent (for the time) Gallup poll revealed that 75% of Americans hold at least one paranormal belief, and a UK newspaper poll showed that 60% of Britons accept the existence of the paranormal, say the researchers. According to the researchers, the survey is not about beliefs or whether parapsychological phenomena exist, rather it is about what people have experienced and the impact it has had on their lives.Some 2,000 people had made contact via the internet within six weeks of the survey beginning. A whopping 96% of respondents claim to have had at least one brush with the paranormal. The exercise seeks to gauge the frequency, effect, and age of onset of unexplained phenomena such as premonitions, out-of-body and near-death episodes, telepathy, and apparitions. Results as of 2006 showed that 70% of respondents believe an unexplained event changed their lives, mostly in a positive way. Some 70% also claim to have seen, heard, or been touched by an animal or person that wasn’t there, 80% report having had a premonition, and almost 50% recalled a previous life.[iv] In May 2000, the New York Times Sunday Magazine published results of a poll conducted by Blum & Weprin Associates; a huge 81% said they believed in life after death.[v]

Virtually all of these beliefs hint at (and require in order to be true) the existence of other realms or dimensions in which consciousness can operate. A 2005 poll taken by the Scottish paranormal society showed that more people are likely to believe in ghosts and the paranormal than have faith in any organized religion. A Gallup survey taken in 2005 showed that about three in four Americans profess at least one paranormal belief.[vi] This is a massive amount of “paranormal” experience and belief—all of it depending on the existence of other levels of reality, without which such experience can only be labeled as delusion and fantasy.

Did you know that the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) has now been amended so that genuinely psychic people are no longer considered “disordered”?[vii]

Intuition and Creativity

Srinivasa Ramanujan (below, left), born in India, 1887–1920, has been called the strangest man in all of mathematics, probably in the entire history of science. Working in isolation from his peers, this genius was single-handedly able to re-derive a hundred years’ worth of Western mathematics. As Michio Kaku reports in Hyperspace, the tragedy of his life is that much of his work was wasted rediscovering known mathematics.[viii] Most interesting to us, Ramanujan said that the goddess Namakkal inspired him in his dreams; in other words, the source of his creative genius was this other realm within his sleep, rather than ordinary waking consciousness.

Is there a link between this other realm of sleep and paranormal phenomena? At a glance, such a presumption appears to be a stretch, but the reservation of judgment is highly recommended at this point. Carl Jung (below) once said: “The images and ideas that dreams contain cannot possibly be explained solely in terms of memory. They express new thoughts that have never yet reached the threshold of consciousness.”[ix]

Ramanujan appears to provide an excellent example of the type of non-ordinary information access that the Russian paranormal researchers might call hypercommunication, and he isn’t alone among specialists, pioneers, giants of science, and so-called regular people. In fact, pioneer psychiatrist and consciousness researcher Stanislav Grof found that during LSD experiences his own patients were capable of accessing the “collective unconscious,” obtaining very specific, accurate, and detailed knowledge. In the LSD training program for scientists, relevant insights occurred in fields as diverse as cosmogenesis, the nature of space and time, subatomic physics, ethology, animal psychology, history, anthropology, and many more.[x]

Ramanujan, assuming he really did receive detailed formulas in his dreams via the subconscious, provides perhaps some indication of just how accurate and detailed this knowledge can be. As we will see, these insights that defy the Freudian and Newtonian-Cartesian (reductionist) worldview/s abound in the literature. In 1862 the chemist Friedrich August von Kekule famously arrived at the solution for the chemical formula for benzene in a dream wherein he saw the benzene ring in the form of a snake biting its tail—an archetypal symbol in itself—the Ouroburos. In a supreme historical irony, Descartes’ principles of what ultimately became the mechanist philosophy originated from a dream on the eve of St. Martin’s day of 1619 in which the “Angel of Truth” explained to him that mathematics was the key to unlocking the secrets of Nature![xi]

Similarly, Nikola Tesla constructed the electric generator…after the complete design of it appeared to him in great detail in a vision. The design for the experiment leading to the Nobel Prize–winning discovery of the chemical transmission of nerve impulses occurred to the physiologist Otto Leowi while he was asleep. Albert Einstein discovered the basic principles of his special theory of relativity in an unusual state of mind; according to his description, most of the insights came to him in the form of kinaesthetic sensations.[xii]

Einstein had said:

“The supreme task of the physicist is to arrive at those universal elementary laws from which the cosmos can be built up by pure deduction. There is no logical path to these laws; only intuition, resting on sympathetic understanding of experience, can reach them.”[xiii]

Many of the great scientists have said very similar things. From out of nowhere a revelatory vision or understanding hits them, as if suddenly downloaded into their minds from some esoteric conceptual repository. It is interesting that many people find in lucid dreams that they can learn skills that translate directly into real waking life or they can solve problems in the conscious dream state that in the physical world had stumped them, and moreover, these solutions actually work.[xiv] Francis Crick was under the influence of LSD in 1953 at the moment when he perceived the double helix shape and unraveled the structure of DNA.[xv] The chemist D. I. Mendeleyev saw his entire periodic table of elements one night in a dream. And of course, many of history’s greatest and most successful musical artists came up with their best material under the influence of one drug or another.

Oprah Winfrey says, “My business skills have come from being guided by my inner self—my intuition.”[xvi] She’s not alone among the financially abundant. Researchers have tested CEOs of successful corporations for their ability to see the future, such as by predicting a string of numbers they would be shown later. They found that the CEOs who are good at this are usually those who are also highly successful in running their corporations, while CEOs who did not have this ability tend to have mediocre success rates in their corporations. “In one study,” says Dr. Larry Dossey, “experimenters were able to predict in advance the most successful corporate balance sheets by how well the CEOs did on tests that measured their ability to predict the future, such as a string of numbers they’d be shown later.”[xvii]

In 1982 the St. Louis Business Journal tested how a psychic would fare against professional stockbrokers over a six-month period, and reported that the psychic, who had no formal training in stockmarket trading or analysis, outperformed 18 of 19 professional stockbrokers. During the testing period, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 8% but the psychic’s stocks went up an average of 17.2%, while the sole broker who beat her achieved 17.4%.[xviii] Physicist and psi researcher Russel Targ’s research group Delphi Associates succeeded in psychically forecasting for nine consecutive weeks the fluctuations in the silver commodity futures markets, earning them a tidy $120,000.[xix]

Psi* techniques are playing an increasingly important role on Wall Street, according to Dean Radin’s sources.[xx] In 1987 Richard S. Broughton, scientist and former president of the Parapsychological Association, pointed to the need-serving nature of psi and the competitive advantage it often provides in the struggle for survival—Darwinists rejoice.[xxi]

Many scientists have had profound interests in fields beyond the reach of the science of their day. For instance, Isaac Newton was an obsessive alchemist[xxii] and Freemason in search of the way to transform consciousness, Thomas Edison built machines to try to facilitate communication with the dead, and Marie Curie attended séances. The list of such eminent scientists with keen interests in the paranormal goes on and on. Is it a credible suggestion that they all were merely deluded into pursuing these areas by cunning charlatans or irrational, wishful thinking? Even Freud, whose attitude towards the occult was originally negative, changed his tune as he matured and learned more about it, suggesting, in a 1949 paper called Psychoanalysis and Telepathy, a union between psychoanalysts and occultists: “[O]ne might expect a mutual sympathy between the two…[A]n alliance of, and collaboration between, psychoanalysis and occultists would seem to be both plausible and promising.”[xxiii]

What about those modern-day scientists and professionals who have experiences in the “paranormal” realm? Brian Weiss, psychiatrist, hypnotherapist, and author, wrote:

The respected chairman of a major clinical department at my hospital is a man who is admired internationally for his expertise. He talks to his deceased father, who has several times protected him from serious danger. Another professor has dreams that provide the missing steps or solutions to his complex research experiments. The dreams are invariably correct. Another well-known doctor usually knows who is calling him on the phone before he answers it…[xxiv]

If these insights come from only one man, imagine what else we might be missing out on if we keep our heads in the sand while new paradigms form around us…

* Psi (pronounced “sigh”) is a term for parapsychological (occult) phenomena derived from the Greek, psi, twenty‐third letter of the Greek alphabet; from the Greek psyche, “mind, soul.” First used in a parapsychological context by biologist B.P. Wiesner, it was first used in print by British psychologist Robert Thouless in 1942.

By: Brendan D. Murphy

#consciousness #soul #spirit #science #dreams #telepathy #multidimensionality #articles

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theageofchivalry · 8 years ago

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Hi! You know me, and you know I'm crazy -mad interested in Edward !V! I may or may not have told you that when I tell my friends, etc., that Edward was fabulously good-looking, even when he gained weigh is my hero, well, they think I'm nuts, or have some kind of interest in the most obscure, most esoteric guy in history. Undoubtedly, even though he was a tyrant, people would be much less surprised if I told them I liked Henry VIII, or that other Sun King, Louis XIV. But Edward IV? Who the hell .

Hey! Sorry it took me a while to respond to this! Yes, I do know you :)

But I didn’t know you told your friends about Edward IV about him being good-looking lol.

Yes, Edward is pretty obscure compared to the other Kings in history, especially the ones you mentioned.

This ask is in a lot of parts, so I will just respond to what is in the parts as I answer each individual one.

(1/8)

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relic-xiv · 7 years ago

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ABOUT

Introduction

The Thanalan Acquisitions and Reliquarium (RELIC) is a medium-intensity roleplaying free company on the Balmung server of Final Fantasy XIV. We come from a range of backgrounds and are a mostly tight circle of friends who prefer quality over quantity in membership. We’re NA Based, with most of our events happening between the hours of 4-11PM EST on weekdays, and late on Fridays and Saturdays. RELIC prides itself on collaboration with several other groups and works hard to coordinate schedules with its partners. We’re located in the Goblet, ward 9, plot 15. We are currently using a Monster of the Week hack for our main quests and events. Background Thanalan Acquisitions was established by a notoriously belligerent, stubborn, private, and ambitious man, Dr. Gray (G’rha Nunh), with the intent of realizing his lifelong dream of establishing his own museum. More importantly, after having had enough run-ins with dangerous megalomaniacs and desperate men (and having had his own share of mistakes and hard-learned lessons), Gray sought to create a place where dangerous, unspeakable, esoteric artifacts could be safely contained where they would be unreachable by the likes of those who would seek to abuse them--people, admittedly, like the man he had once been. This secondary goal is kept close to the chest, and only reclaimers and curators know about this goal. In order to facilitate the attainment of these artifacts, as well as to help fund the museum, an acquisitions operation was promptly formed to generate a steady revenue stream as well as help make a name for themselves. What We Do We’re scholars, treasure-hunters, well-intentioned thieves, and adventurers! Our RP largely revolves around acquisition of artifacts and day-to-day museum life through our robust Quest System, occasional public events centered around entertainment and education of the public, as well as taking acquisition requests from both NPCs, FC Members, and non-FC members alike to facilitate community engagement and help deliver plot hooks and light worldbuilding. This takes the form of event-based oneshots and lighthearted, energetic, pulp adventure novel fun. Additionally, more intense arcs continue in the background on a fairly consistent basis with major events taking place biweekly--these are the backbone of the closeted, quiet goal of attainment and containment of dangerous and unpredictable artifacts.

Quests

RELIC operates on a Quest System, with 3 primary forms of content. Main Quests are time-limited quests which advance the overarching RELIC narrative, and are explicitly DM’d by Officers. Sidequests are quests which may or may not have a deadline, and are often able to be DM’d by anyone, with any style you prefer--Officers ask for logs and results of these events, and will communicate with a DM what to expect. Sidequests may be just for fun, or they may open up new and previously unforeseen routes for the MSQ to take! Lastly, we have Character Quests which are our form of user-generated content! Often DM’d by the creator, unless specifically requested, these events are any character-centric or user-submitted quest or quest chain and open up involvement from our membership beyond simply running or participating in events we put out. Attached are examples of each!

Main Quest

Sidequest

Character Quest

New quests are generally thrown up weekly or as-completed, so there’s almost always something to do! Roles Within the Company Roles are largely fluid and little more than a way of distinguishing particular dynamics pertinent to museum life and providing flavor to RP. There is considerable overlap and any member may be active in several roles at once. That being said, we do have several distinct roles which influence the interactions within the company: Curators are responsible for research and identifying goods, and often helm expeditions to retrieve them. They are also responsible with expanding the museum. Curators are expected to turn a private room into a personal exhibit hall based around their own theme and interests. Current exhibits will be listed on the company tumblr (here!). They are the closest thing to a supervisory role within the company, and are always fully briefed on the full motives of the company. Reclaimers are the muscle of the company, handling artifact retrieval, acquisitions jobs, and wetwork. Conservators are responsible for restoring and maintaining collections, as well as the occasional recreation of a device or artifact. They’re the tinkerers of the company.

Custodians are responsible for handling museum affairs, interacting with the public, and helping with social events. This is largely suited for alts, or as a secondary role, considering the casual nature of this position.

The Mentees are often younger characters, accepted on a provisional basis, who do safer, low-risk jobs at the museum while acquiring valuable experience. They may be wards, interns, or aspiring heroes who don’t quite have the age or experience for the fields of glory. This role was designed to facilitate the youth of RELIC. Most of these are alts, and it is not recommended you apply as your main.

Who We Want

We’re looking for members who are active in game, as well as proactive in pitching story ideas, arcs, and events, in a collaborative effort. Participation in events, as well as producing ideas for events oneself is strongly encouraged. If you’re unfamiliar with running events, we’re happy to help you! Any character with a history in mercenary work or adventuring, scholarly pursuits, or craftsmanship with any interest in museum/acquisition work or containment and protection of highly volatile artifacts is a good fit for the company. We are predominantly good-aligned, though we veer into neutral territory frequently--most of our membership, if placed on an alignment spectrum, are Chaotic Neutral, Neutral Good, and Chaotic Good. Outright evil characters are discouraged, though exceptions can be made if they’re played exceptionally well and add to the overall narrative experience. We try to keep our membership small and tight-knit, but active. Please be understanding of this atmosphere. However, you are not required to be in the Free Company to be a part of our events, and if you are already in another Company you are welcome to be an affiliate and spend time in our discord and linkshell!

Interested?

Contact tsundozer#4085 for any questions, or fill out our application!

#about #relic #thanks for reading!

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