Ἀστροθύτης

From the stars, knowledge ✨ High Priestess of T'Khasi, emphasis on the "high" ✨ Raygun, she/her

[who-tops-poll]

James T. Kirk & Spock

Who tops?

Kirk tops

Kirk usually tops, Spock can top

They switch almost equally

Spock tops

Spock usually tops, Kirk can top

they are asexual

they are sides

Voting ended onAug 19, 2025

see pinned for rules. Nuance? Add a comment :)

[ex--astris--scientia]

Sorry for party rocking but Spock is a pillow princess who requires a phaser to the head to make him top. Kirk is a service top who likes to bottom on occasion but not the fuck with Spock. Kirk asks Spock to top and suddenly Spock can't hold an erection

[purpleenma]

Warrior and Mother

I wanted to sketch something to warm up back into traditional and, going with the Vulcan women warriors mood, and thinking of those athletes that are competing in the Olympics little after giving birth or while still breastfeeding, this came into existence.

Borrowing also @ex--astris--scientia idea that I love that Vulcans wear their babies in slings below their chest placing their heads where the Vulcan heart is so they can hear their heartbeats 💜

And now I'm thinking, what if Vulcans are born hairy, with quite long, fine and soft hair from the shoulders down the forearms, the lower part of the happy trail and legs? And then they lose that baby hair and it doesn't grow back again till puberty.

I sadly have to go to bed now and won't be able to modify the sketch till Saturday, but I most possibly will 👀✨

[ex--astris--scientia]

Qui'lari

According to the Deep Space Nine episode "the Muse" (season 4, episode 21), the telepathic openings within a Vulcan's psionic system are called "qui'lari". These are commonly also referred to, though mostly in fanfiction or beta canon, as "meldpoints" due to them being most often used for melding. But just what are qui'lari? Based on canon and my own musings, I've come to the conclusion that they are a type of telepathic chakra. They are a pinwheel of psionic energy that can be opened in order to facilitate deeper telepathic linkages and mental mingling. They act as sluice gates for kash-tepul (mental energy) and the proper health, alignment, and care of the qui'lari assists in the flow of kash-tepul throughout the Vulcan psionic system as well as keeps them healthy and skillful enough for melding. While the entire Vulcan body is open to telepathic touch, the true depth and breadth of it comes from the stimulation of the qui'lari.

In traditional Vulcan religion, there is an emphasis on the Inner Chorus, a grouping of numinous beings that seem to represent the inner emotional landscape of any individual Vulcan. These beings are named for the planets in the Vulcan solar system, which leads me to believe that the solar system itself is the Outer Chorus with which the Inner Chorus is meant to be aligned. Thus embodying the idea of one's inner life being just as ordered as the mechanisms by which planets find their orbit. The harmony that is produced between the Inner and Outer Choruses is the song of C'thia ("reality-truth" or the religious doctrine of logic that Surak preached). It is my belief (which is to say, not backed by canon or beta canon or anything of the sort), that the Eridanic solar system therefore plays a strong symbolic role in Vulcan thought and religion (due to the realities of pon farr and its homeward draw, as well as the tendency of Vulcans toward tradition, I believe the hearth plays a central role for them and once they'd become aware of their planet as the ultimate hearth and the way it's situated in space, the entire system, with its mathematically clean and organized movements of the cycles of the celestial bodies, would represent the ultimate proper ordering). Due to this, I've decided that it's pretty likely that the qui'lari would be organized and named for the celestial bodies.

This is completely of my own invention but the qui'lari system is as follows:

1. Alam'ak. Named for the primary of Vulcan's three suns, this meldpoint is located around where the third eye is, at the center of the forehead. Since Alam'ak is the deity of divine illumination and inspiration, this qui'lar is the one used for connection with the Econ, the universal mind or the mind of God.

2. Behr'ak. Named for one of the suns that are in binary orbit, this meldpoint is found on the left temple.

3. Czar'ak. Named for the other binary sun, this meldpoint is found on the right temple. Both of these temple qui'lari are indicative of mental revelation and inspiration that is a little more enfleshed and closer to home. These are the primary receptive meldpoints, typically passively accepting kash-tepul and mind connection.

4. Ket-Cheleb. Named for one of the planets, this qui'lar is found in the mouth, under the tongue. Ket-Cheleb is known as the Destroyer and is a violent deity aligned in the Inner Chorus with emotions such as rage and anger. This meldpoint is the one that is most hidden and the cultivation and health of it has to do with the Vulcans' belief in sacred privacy. The keeping of ones thoughts to one's self (keeping them under the tongue, as it were).

5. T'Khut. The left hand. While technically made up of a system of minor qui'lari which are all located on the fingertips, due to their closeness and the tandem in which they work, the hand meldpoints are taken as one.

6. T'Khasi. The right hand. Alongside T'Khut, these two qui'lari (or systems of qui'lari if you want to be technical) represent the active meldpoints, as opposed to the passive ones found at the temples. It is through the fingers that Vulcans touch another mind (as opposed to being touched).

7. Valdena. Located at the heart and named for the deity aligned with feelings of love and joy, this meldpoint is the emotional center. Thoughts flowing from Valdena tend to be wordless and more emotionally charged. This meldpoint is meant only to be utilized, therefore, by bondmates or other close relationships.

8. Tel-Alep. While the other meldpoints are typically a single point (such as a fingertip or one place on the skull), this qui'lar is the entire length of the twin tentacle-like organs near the Vulcan genitals that are called fra'als. These are the most telepathically sensitive locations on a Vulcan's body and melding with them is the most telepathically erotic.

9. Kal-Apton. The left ankle.

10. Kir-Alep. The right ankle. Both this point and the previous one are the primal meldpoints. Typically unused for connection with another humanoid mind, they are instead meant for mental focus and rootedness. Essentially anchoring one's thoughts to the ground they walk on. The connection to the living web of a planet. A Vulcan may self-stimulate these points in meditation in order to achieve emotional and mental grounding.

[purpleenma]

When I saw this post by @timcurrysteeth about Vulcan Spirituality and their deities I inmediately knew I had to draw them.

I took it as a personal project to picture each deity and, in the future, create a series of illustrations of each one of them.

These are the initial sketches of the first 10 in the list, the designs are not final but I had a lot of fun working on them and thinking the elements I would add in each one based on their descriptions.

I highly recommend you give a read to the post, it's absolutely fascinating, as well as this second part.

This is going to be a long term project since I have several deadlines for other works but I hope to be able to update you soon enough with more sketches of the remaining deities!

[ex--astris--scientia]

This art is so perfect it makes me fucking feral. My eyes have never beheld such beauty!!! Aaaahhhh

[ex--astris--scientia]

C'Thia, Surakian Philosophy, and Vulcan Polytheism

While most would consider Surak to merely be a philosopher and reformer, thereby removing any hint of religion from the discussion and forming instead an idea of both Surak and his philosophy as being, at best, atheistic or agnostic, and at worst, being anti-theistic, I have to strongly disagree with this assessment. Especially when it's used as proof to claim that modern, post-Awakening Vulcans are also at best atheistic or agnostic, and at worst anti-theistic. I believe this comes about due to a commonly held misconception that religion in and of itself is anathema to science, to progress, to intelligence, and therefore, to logic itself. This is, of course, a blatantly false binary and we are shown over and over again in canon that while Vulcans place a great importance on science, education, intellect, and logic, they are also a very spiritual people. Most of the important locations on Vulcan that we see in canon tend to be temples, sacred mountains, or holy ruins. Leaders tend to be high priestesses. Meditation is almost universal for Vulcans, and while it can be argued that it is very much a mental discipline as well, meditation was birthed, and continues to find its roots, in spirituality, and at its heart, is a spiritual discipline. Meditation, after all, was not invented by scientists, but by monks.

In the episode of the Animated Series, "Yesteryear", Spock tells Sarek that he is merely passing through ShiKahr on his way to the family shrine to "honor our gods". This one line proves to me that, at least for Spock, there is no incongruence between his modern Surakian belief and practice of C'thia (commonly this is translated as just "logic" but a more accurate Vulcan translation is "reality-truth") with that of traditional Vulcan polytheistic religious practice. One can assume that this is not, however, unique only to Spock, seeing as shrines require some semi-regular maintenance and he very rarely visits his father's homestead so it is unlikely that Spock alone is the one who maintains them. Sarek also is unsurprised by Spock's actions, which suggests a kind of normalcy to it. One does not get the impression that Spock is doing something rebellious by performing religious rites to Deities.

Likewise, in the Voyager episode, "Hunters", Tuvok receives a letter from his wife. In it, she tells him that she and their children have asked the priests at the Temple of Amonak to say prayers for Tuvok's safe return from the Delta Quadrant. Prayer requires something to which a person prays to and the assumption here is, again, the existence of Vulcan Deities as well as devotional practices targeted toward them existing even until the time of Voyager. While one of the purposes of prayer has to do with the person praying, as in, a benefit to prayer is that it gives the praying person something to do when they may not be able to do much else about a situation, and therefore T'Pel and her and Tuvok's children may be using it as a kind of meditative practice meant to give their grief and worry about Tuvok's safety somewhere to go that may then help them control it, I believe even this would still imply belief in the existence of Deities. One could meditate without the use of prayer involved but that was not the course of action that T'Pel took. She specifically made a trek to a sacred temple with the intention of saying prayers for Tuvok and told him about it, again, just as with Spock and Sarek, showing that there is something normalized about the action. Belief in the Gods and religious practice utilizing them is, therefore, not something performed only in the dark or in secret.

So, Vulcan polytheistic spiritual practice has continued past the Awakening and into the Vulcan Reformation. Is it the same as what it looked like to pre-Reform Vulcans? What's different? I wish we got more glimpses of Vulcan religion beyond mostly backdrop (while we are explicitly shown rituals and ritual locations in episodes like "Amok Time", "the Gambit" and many places in Enterprise, and in movies like "the Motion Picture" and "Search for Spock", very rarely do we see explanations for what the Vulcan lay people and priest(ess)es are doing and why) but that simply means that I instead get to make things up. Which is my favorite thing to do. So while the entirety of this post is built on a core of canon and information from Memory Alpha and Beta, as well as the Vulcan Language Database, most of what follows is my own musings and thoughts.

Firstly, in my research I've established that there seems to be two major pantheons within Vulcan spirituality, the Ka-ta-pak, or Inner Chorus, and the grouping I've named Ek-tam'a-ta, which is where I've placed every other named Deity not belonging to the Inner Chorus. The Inner Chorus, being made up of Deities that seem much more akin to emotional archetypes, become a much more thorny topic to consider when it comes to reconciling the worship, or, at the very least, acknowledgement of these Beings with the rigorous control of emotions that is to be expected within the Surakian cult of C'thia. As such, they are what I plan to focus on here.

The Inner Chorus is made up of the following Deities: Tel-Alep and Alep-Tel, Kir-Alep and Alep-Kir, Valdena and Dena-Vel, Kal-ap-Ton and Tyr-al-Tep, and Ket-Cheleb. Other than the last Deity, each is a part of a pairing where one represents the lighter, more acceptable form of a suite of emotions, whereas the other is the darker, shadow side. It's a concept similar to reading Tarot cards, where a card's reversal typically points to the darker reading of the themes the card communicates when right side up. For example, Valdena is famously the love Goddess and rules over emotions such as joy, beauty, fullness, pleasure, etc, whereas Dena-Vel, her shadow twin, rules over the darker side of love, namely concepts like possessiveness, covetousness, envy, domination, etc. What I would posit as probably one of the fairly radical reforms within Surakian thought, is the idea that C'thia is meant to subjugate and control both sides of what the Inner Chorus represents, not just the shadow side.

Isn't it illogical, however, to worship archetypal manifestations of emotions that one is trying to suppress? This was the big question that came out of my exploration of Vulcan Deities and led me to conclude that there is a difference between how Vulcans interact with Ek-tam'a-ta Deities vs the Ka-ta-pak, wherein the former is treated much more like how one stereotypically interacts with Gods, ie with reverence, worship, offerings, prayers, etc, as well as an understanding of the Deities being Beings outside of the mind in their own rights, while the latter is much more localized and symbolic. The Ka-ta-pak are not so much outward Beings, as they are emotional symbols and touchstones, metaphors to be focused on in meditation rather than as Gods to be worshipped.

Even the name, the Inner Chorus, suggests this kind of community of emotional beings, of aspects of the interior Vulcan mind, and furthermore, points to a need for a harmony amongst them. It is my thought that the Ka-ta-pak are less like sentient beings with personhood and more like the Platonic ideal of the emotion they represent. They are the emotion in its most perfected form and by experiencing this, experiencing the presence of this being, this outward-focused inner spirit, in the relative safety of meditation, the average Vulcan is able to meet that emotion and learn how it manifests within their own body and mind. In this meeting, they are able to name the emotion, learn it, experience it, and understand how to master it so that when they experience it outside of meditation, they need not be conquered by it and brought into chaos but instead are able to hold to order and logic in the face of it.

In the Enterprise episode, "Fusion", we are shown that Vulcans don't typically dream and that meditation has usurped the role that dreaming would usually take in the Vulcan psyche. It follows, therefore, that they process the emotional stimuli of the day through meditation and that symbolism, which is an important language for the sub-conscious and the language that dreams are written in, would probably play a role in that. Thus, the use of the Inner Chorus as a symbol of focus, as the emotional tangle that one seeks, through meditation, to sort out and bring order to, makes sense. I believe that this constitutes some of the work of t'san s'at, or the intellectual deconstruction of emotions that Surak preached. T'san s'at is the study of one's own emotions, and the effects these emotions have over one's actions. The peace and tranquility that lies at the end of t'san s'at is the goal of every Surakian Vulcan, and is a lifelong aspiration. It is through working with the Ka-ta-pak with this goal in mind that brings these ideas together.

Another idea I found interesting about the Ka-ta-pak is that the names of the Deities match the names of the other planets within the Vulcan solar system (according to the Memory Beta article that I believe is based on a Trek inspired ttrpg). A solar system, with its constant routine of stable orbits and cycles, would be an obvious metaphor for the idea of Order. The Inner Chorus strikes me, then, as the microcosm within the Vulcan mind/spirit as connected with the macrocosm of the living universe around them. It is the connection between the Vulcan mental and katric interior space and the exterior physical space. Just as the solar system is in constant harmony, subjugated to the laws of gravity, order, and simply the natural mechanisms of the living universe, one's own interior system should likewise be ordered. That it is called an inner chorus is very telling to me, since when choruses are working correctly, they are making music in harmony, just as the broader cosmos makes the music of the spheres, which is the sound of mathematics purified. It is the goal of every Surakian Vulcan to harmonize their inner chorus (part of which involves meditating on the form of the Inner Chorus) with the music of the macrocosm. In this, I believe the mind, or the reasoning capacity, represents a kind of conductor, who directs the inner chorus of emotions to properly allow for the production of music. The music produced by this harmony is C'thia, which is the same substance that keeps the planets in their orbits and the universe ticking onward.

This post is getting a bit long but there's one last thing I want to talk about and that would be Surak himself. As mentioned earlier, there is a common misconception I've seen that, again, makes Surak some kind of radical atheist philosopher who, in stomping out the violence and ignorance that marked the culture of his planet, must also have gotten rid of its religion, not just superstition or conservativism but religion more generally. Again, this comes more from the mistaken belief that spirituality and science are necessarily at odds. But what we see of Surak doesn't actually support this erroneous belief. Instead, one of the things that Surak is famous for is his pilgrimage. A pilgrimage is a religious journey undertaken for religious purposes. Surak set out to visit many religious orders and temples, before traipsing into the wilderness in places like Vulcan's Forge and Mount Seleya, to learn from and connect with the various priest(ess)es, as well as to connect in solitude with his own mind. C'thia is always shown as a revelation. Surak perceives it for the first time and discerns its meaning while on pilgrimage, while in meditation, while studying spiritual truths. He discovers it, not in a laboratory, but in deep contemplation on a mountain peak. Thus, Surak strikes me as much more akin to a Hindu yogi or an enlightened New Age seeker than he does a Richard Dawkins type. He doesn't dismiss the spiritual lessons he learns from visiting the other religious orders but instead incorporates them into his new cult. I think it's this incorporation of c'thia with traditional polytheism within Surak's own spirituality that allows for modern Vulcans to do the same.

In conclusion, anyone who claims that the post-Reform Vulcans shown in canon are atheists have not been paying attention to the actual canon, first of all, and secondly, are doing nothing more than showing their bias toward the science vs religion binary. I think the Vulcans are a little too smart to fall for this dichotomy, and they are certainly aware of the need for a philosophy to be an open one, if it's to be sustainable at all. I think having access to the neverending mystery of space, peopled as it is with many different kinds of beings, has allowed the Vulcans to be open-minded toward religion and the existence of Gods and other numinous beings. After all, they fully accept the existence of katra and thus, souls, spirits, and the idea of beings existing without bodies. It is not an illogical leap to suppose that since animating spirits (ie souls that are housed by and animate a body) exist, other kinds might also, including Deities. And since Vulcans possess a psionic system, capable of the extrasensory perceptions involved in their version(s) of telepathy, they may be able to perceive these spirits telepathically, even when psi-null folks may not be able to.

So, I don't think Vulcan polytheism is relegated to some point in the planet's distant past but instead continues, alive and well, into the post-Awakening world.

[ex--astris--scientia]

Since I have way more thoughts on the topic of Vulcan polytheism and spirituality than I think can be easily contained in my one little post, I decided to remake this blog and start exploring some of that more in depth. So if you want to hear more about Vulcan pagan nonsense, this is where it shall be

[timcurrysteeth]

Kator-Dva: Vulcan Spirituality

I gave myself the task of collating information to create a, at least somewhat, cohesive understanding of Vulcan spirituality, mythology, and polytheistic religion in order to create something that one could use within their own spiritual practice (or as simply a way to improve immersion within fan creations). This big ole post is the result.

I used Memory Alpha, Memory Beta, the Vulcan language dictionary (found here), the Kir'Shara blog and this Tumblr post as references. While the foundation of this information is canon, I must admit that most of it comes from my own understanding of how polytheistic systems and Deities work and what I felt made sense for a living religion featuring living Deities working within the broader Vulcan philosophical understanding (including concepts like Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations, Kaiidth, meditation, etc etc) and what I would expect a desert dwelling people to have incorporated into their religion and system of spiritual metaphors. To this end, it made sense to deify the planets and stars in the Vulcan solar system and to place water as a center of importance, especially in ideas of hospitality and gift-giving. The sharing of water seemed, to me, like a symbol of the sacred establishment of guest-host relations, friendship, and frith. Tea, as a beverage made mostly of water with just some plant detritus, would be an extension of this central importance of water and this is why it features heavily in a lot of Vulcan ritual.

Vulcan polytheism is similar to that of the Ancient Egyptians' in, just as the Egyptians had an understanding of the Atum or Atum Ra as the Supreme God from Whom the other Gods and all of creation continually flow, so too do Vulcans have a Supreme God in the form of Ekon, who is the Cosmic Mind, or the universe thinking itself into being. Vulcan polytheism is also similar to Old Norse religion in that they both have 2 pantheons of Gods (the Norse boasts both the Aesir and the Vanir, while Vulcans have Ek- tam'a-ta and Ka-ta-pak).

Most of the spheres of influence for each Deity was divined by me based on knowing only a sentence or so about each and extrapolating from there. While I did not make up the names, the functions of the Deities of the three stars in Vulcan's trinary solar system were invented wholesale based on the idea that each Deity would be connected to a season, a kind of fertility (flowers, crops, and livestock) and to a type of light/heat (the white light of inspiration, the red light of the hearth, and the flickering, unstable light of sexual/creative passion).

A last note before I get into the meat of the post: I used f, m, and n to refer to a Goddess, God, or Goddex respectively.

Sha Ka Ree (the Great Oasis) is the place from which all creation rose. A fountain and gushing water stream emanating from the mind of Ekon. It lies at the center of the Cosmos

Deities:

Ekon (n): supreme oneness, nirvana, ecstasy, clarity, the cosmic mind, wellspring of creation, the mycelium network personified, consciousness, kash-tepul (psionic energy),  source (shu-pal), IDIC, the universe (stukhtra)

Ek- tam'a-ta, "All-Spirit (animating energy)-Grouping", aka the main pantheon:

T'Khasi (Vulcan) (f): fertility, life, civilization, freedom, nature, creation, creativity, marriage, wisdom, order, wife, light, motion, noise, music, epiphany, t'hy'la, magic

-married to T'Khut

T'Khut,"the Watcher" (f): trickster, wife, marriage, pon farr cycle, pleasure, death, vision, mystery, entropy, chaos, liminality, sacrifice, darkness, balance, stillness, secrets, privacy, t'hy'la, cycles, vision, divination

-T'Rukhemai "the Eye of the Watcher" aka T'Khut's moon

Shariel (m): death, transformation, fear, change, renewal, rebirth, rot, divination, prophecy, destruction 

T'Kay (f): trickster, fire (She stole from the Deities of the 3 suns and brought to mortals), humanity (vulcanity), mortality, liminality, freedom, expression, humor, revolution, revelation, queerness, discovery

T'Vet (f): warrior, duty, obligation, oaths, expectation, dignity, grace

Khosarr (m): war, masculinity, power, strength, conquest, the body, exercise, healing (physical)

-husband to Akraana

Akraana (f): privacy, mystery, devotion, femininity, witchcraft, the mind, telepathy, mental connection, mindmelds, way-clearing, healing (mental)

Natara (m): water, generosity, abundance, oasis, Sha Ka Ree, offerings, gift-giving, love, group obligation, family, expectations, bonding, healing (spiritual)

Reah (f): the underworld, death, grief, bereavement, sorrow, comfort, ancestors, family line, guardian of katras, guidance, the unknown

Ny'one (m) and T'Priah (f), together form Terish (n) "Combination" or "Completion", a mystical living unity: fertility, union, oneness, intimacy, bonding, the universe, spectrums, marriage, renewal, completion, links, childbirth 

Alam'ak "White Eye" aka Eridani A, brightest star and the one Vulcan orbits (n): flowers, life, connection, fertility, light, heat, the desert, summer, epiphany, knowledge, enlightenment 

Behr'ak "Red Eye" aka Eridani B, in binary with C (m): livestock, fertility, autumn/winter, the hearth, illumination, inner vision

Czar'ak "Wandering Eye" aka Eridani C (f): crops, fertility, spring, sexuality, heat, passion, fever, pon farr, outward vision, blood, menstrual cycle, lust

Ka-ta-pak, "the Inner Chorus", pantheon dealing with emotions. Each couple is a mirror image of the other, the shadow of each other. The first in each pair are planets in the Vulcan solar system:

Tel-Alep (m): curiosity, knowledge, intellectual pursuits, drive, pride

Alep-Tel (m): bitterness, cynicism, ignorance, stubbornness, arrogance

Kir-Alep (n): peace, acceptance, serenity, wisdom, optimism, vitality

Alep-Kir (n): apathy, pessimism, ill health, black thoughts, jealousy, weakness

Valdena (f): love, joy, beauty, lightness, pleasure, delight, fullness, gift-giving, hospitality, freedom, grace

Dena-Vel (f): covetousness, envy, jealousy, control, subjugation, domination, hunger, lust

Kal-ap-Ton (m): grief, enduring love, journeys, separation, acceptance, letting go, forgiveness 

Tyr-al-Tep (m): brooding, lack of forgiveness, possessiveness, resistance to change, fallow, holding onto the past, nostalgia, anger

Ket-Cheleb "the Destroyer" or "the Blood Drinker" (killed His counterpart) (m): rage, fury, loss of control, the plak tow, kal-if-fee, challenge, violence, revenge, brute force, blood

Spirits:

Rushan: air spirits, preside over smoke offerings and incense

Fletan: water spirits, preside over liquid offerings as well as any gift-giving in general

Gratan: desert spirits

Sreman: mountain spirits

Sirshos'im, "Soul Eater": will-o'-the-wisp type fire spirits/demons who prey on hapless people lost in the deep desert, devouring their katras (possibly comes from the idea that if one is lost out in the lonely desert, they probably die alone and unable to place their katra into another vessel before death)

Giidas: guardian spirits. Ancestors/lares (lars familiaris)

Holidays:

Rumarie: festival of fertility involving nudity, orgies, hedonism, and riilan grease

Kal Rekk: day of contemplation, solitude, atonement, and silence

Tal-Shanar: festival not permitted to outsiders. Meditation on Vulcan's violent past with rituals to usher in long lasting peace. Contemplation of IDIC and Ekon. Ancestor cult holiday for honoring Surak

Uzhaya Wak-krus, the season of renewal: A spring festival and time of reflection and restorative meditation and exercises at the beginning of the calendar year. Honors Czar'ak

Ho-rah, "ritual":

Fullara: rite to suppress a memory and the emotions associated with it

Kahs-wan: Vulcan maturity test. Rite of passage wherein a child is left to fend for themselves in the desert, specifically Vulcan's Forge (the location of Surak's pilgrimage) 

Kohl-lodzh'a: new year ritual. Kohl-lodzh'a means "meditation clay". They are miniature tablets adorned with one word or sentiment carved in ritual script that is to act as affirmation for the coming year ("peace" or "sochya" is most common) before being hung in the household shrine as a focus for meditation. Sometimes the tablets are annointed with scented oils

V'Shal: traditional ceremonial engagement dinner where the perspective mate is evaluated by the other's family

Van-kal t'Telan: the ceremony of bonding

Relevant Vocab:

Vai: "holy"

Kohl-tor: "meditation"

Kol-Ut-Shan: "IDIC"

Loshirak: cross legged (lotus) meditation posture 

Lesh'riq: kneeling with feet tucked under buttocks meditation posture

Tho'san stone: stone seat a Vulcan sits on for meditation in front of their firepot

Savan-don-tak: "teachings"

Tei: human tea

Theris: Vulcan tea 

Van-kal: "ceremony"

Eglus: "religious shrine"

Odva: "religion"

Za-vel: "relic"

[megairea]

“But when I lean over the chasm of myself — it seems my God is dark and like a web: a hundred roots silently drinking.”

— Rainer Maria Rilke, from I have many brothers in the South; Book of Hours (tr. by Joanna Macy & Anita Barrows), 1905

[goodnewsfeedorg]

[noquietrevolution-deactivated20]

divinity will stain your fingers and mouth like a pomegranate. it will swallow you whole and spit you out, wine-dark and wanting. you will reach for it again and again, greedy human fingers clutching at everything you can reach. the divine will curl its way through your veins and take you over, and it will not leave you quietly. i feel divinity in my bones like aching; like fire.

[taltos-seidmadr]

“HOW TO WORSHIP I. Leave your ego at the door. Bury it like a shameful family secret. II. Surrender. To prayer. To devotion. To all that is (Un)Holy. III. Find solace, comfort, in cheap wine poured. In routine. In being nameless. IV. Lose yourself. Scream. Praise. Forget what you used to Be. V. Quarry; dig yourself apart down to the bones. Burn them in offering.”

—

“Sacrifice” (via

ichorinvocations

)

[bluebeardsbride-archive]

— Caroline Walker Bynum, Holy Feast and Holy Fast: The Religious Significance of Food to Medieval Women, 1987. 

[adhdcatholicheretic]

A Catholic Prayer for Things that Aid in Transitioning

O Creator of All Things, who knit me into being,

O You who contain all genders, and none of them, and who is beyond gender,

O Loving Parent, O Love beyond all love,

Just as You where transformed before your disciples,

Please allow this (packer, breast forms, hormones, pronoun pin, surgery, etc)

to transform me more fully into the person You made me to be.

Just as You gave us wheat instead of bread

 so that we may participate in creation

allow this (transitioning aid) to help me participate in my own creation.

O Mary, loving mother, pray for your (son, daughter, child, etc.).

Your Son was cast out and killed for showing the world who He was.

But this, the greatest of rejections, did not stop Him from being who He is

And He rose into the fullness of His being shortly after.

Pray that I too will survive any rejection I might face as I show the world who I am.

O St. Jeanne d’Arc, who was arrested and executed, in part, for defying the ideas of gender of your time,

pray to our Magnificent Creator for my safety

and that I too might have your courage.

O Mother Francis, who welcomed Brother Jacoba,

pray to the Bringer of Day and of Darkness and all the times in between,

That I might meet others as welcoming as you.

Amen.

[secretcatholicwitch]

For all those who are transitioning💕

[helloagauniverse]

“To be a poet is to have an appetite for a certain anxiety which, when tasted among the swirling sum of things existent or forefelt, causes, as the taste dies, joy.”

— René Char (1907-1988), from “The Formal Share”, translated from the French by Jackson Mathews (via finita–la–commedia)

[boykeats]

what is poetry?

you know how, when you’re a young kid, your parents take you to visit a lake, and you’re doing all that fun young kid stuff like cannonballs off the dock, digging your toes into the mud, pretending to be a mermaid or a manatee or submarine captain? when suddenly the clouds that had covered the sun move aside, and the surface of the lake is touched everywhere with bright gold flecks of light, and you stop what you’re doing to stare in awe at something you’d never realized before was so heart-wrenchingly beautiful? and the moment is gone as quick as it came, you’re right back to splashing water at one of your siblings, but that night, after showers and dinner and climbing into bed, just before you fall asleep, the image of the sun-kissed lake returns to you, hazy with your almost-dreaming but still so warm and striking? poetry is the written act of recognizing the way the light touches the water and the way that you looking at this changes you

[magicandman]

[digitised-celluloid]

Kedi. Dir. Ceyda Torun. 2016.