Wait, is the occultism a hobby into a neat historical field and subculture or like do you actually believe certain mystic actions produce material outcomes through unseen and supernatural means?
Like, the world is always far stranger than we give it credit for, but that doesn't mean you can cast fireball in real life, or use astrology to concretely predict anything.
At the same time, the more you learn about this magic stuff, the more you understand how deeply and powerfully present it is in life. Both poetry and marketing count as magic and it's fucking weird.
Here’s a guide of what I’ve determined the meanings to be
walking around - self explanatory
fellowship - hanging out with friends
deliciousness - having something tasty
transcendence - feeling that you have reached a different level of some sort; alternatively, when you do one of the other delights to the extreme and feel really good about it. (you know transcendence when it happens)
goofing - having a good laugh at smth
amelioration - working towards the betterment of something, for example, working on a skill you hope to improve
coitus - fuckin’
enthralment - becoming incredibly engaged in something, hyper focusing on something
wildcard - anything that you feel was a delight in your day that does not fit one of the above delights
no, no, come back here and tell me how stupid it is to talk about how the power dynamics inherent to christianity are built upon the rhetoric that failure is unavoidable and there is never enough you can do to make up for it
if you draw a baphomet with a fat pair of tittes but no nine incher to match then u are immediately sent to jail. this is true the other way around too btw
Here's a "hot take" that shouldn't be controversial but probably is: I am a better person than I was the day I was born.
What I mean by this is that I was not born in a state of purity that was corrupted by being alive. I do not become sullied by learning things. I become better. And I have become better. A lot of the rhetoric surrounding "protecting children" imagines children as essentially "perfect until ruined". A lot of "inspiring" things like "these children don't even know their friend is black! They don't see race!" are based on this idea(and bogus idea of 'color blindness' being the ideal). Yes, it is true a child must be taught bigotry, but they also much be taught compassion and racial sensitivity.
Knowing about prejudice and choosing to act against it is more morally upstanding than just not knowing and that should be a radical idea, I think.
...could this explain how some people seem to prefer,
even to protect their ignorance?
is it a way to protect themselves from feeling responsibility around the evils of the world?
"I don't know about it, so it's not my problem, and I plan to keep it that way."
if you draw a baphomet with a fat pair of tittes but no nine incher to match then u are immediately sent to jail. this is true the other way around too btw
So, the difference between starseeds and indigo children...
Starseeds is the idea that highly evolved alien souls are incarnating into human bodies to help the rest of us spiritually evolve. The concept appears to go back to around the early 20th century; it’s mentioned in A Series of Lessons in Gnani Yoga: The Yoga of Wisdom, which was published in 1907.
Indigo children is the idea that some people are being born with highly evolved (but still human) souls, and are basically meant to help the rest of us spiritually evolve. It originated with Nancy Anne Tappe in the 1970′s, who assigned colors to various kinds of people based on her synesthesia.
Both of these concepts are strongly connected to giving weird spiritual explanations to what most of us would recognize as autism or ADHD, and they’re both popular among New Age types. They’re both tied to the idea of spiritual evolution. But they aren’t quite the same thing, and one did not develop from the other.
Its also not without mentioning that both of these ideas have HUGE ties to white supremacy eugenic ideals. Rarely ever are they attributed to Autism or ADHD so much as they are to some idea that white people are closer related either spiritually or ancestrally to “higher beings”. Sometimes angels, aliens, master spirits, whatever- the term changes depending on the belief you get the idea.
In fact this “Indigo” idea really often functions as a cousin to idea like those shared in the Urantia book and their Purple Race- which is just blatantly racist as all hell.
As someone who has ADHD and married to a man with autism- I’d love to think we are special evolved souls here to make everyone as great as we are. The reality is though, like an annoying amount of things, these ideas are often just flowery mediums for eugenics and racism…again. 🙄
Can we talk about Theosophy, while we’re at it? Like you might think that was a fad that’s come and gone, but nah, it’s just morphed into “new age”, and I had someone going off with that shit on one of my posts just last week.
Keep that “Aryan root race” bullshit the fuck away from me.
@a-witch-named-crow actually yeah CAN we talk about Theosophy? I’m not very familiar with it beyond it’s surface level idea of basically the idea that you can know God through transcendentalism without a church or specific religion. Do you mind talking a bit about that more?
Oh man, alright, there’s…. a LOT here, and it’s been a while since I really went down this rabbit hole, but I’ll try to give you an overview and hopefully not get too much wrong…
Theosophy (or at least the Theosophy I’m talking about) was founded by Helena Blavatsky in 1875, and incorporates/frequently misinterprets a bunch of concepts from various other religions, but especially Hinduism and Buddhism. She claimed it had been handed down to her by an ancient secret society of “masters” located in Tibet (there is some doubt that she was ever in Tibet at the time she claimed), and that their aim was to revive an ancient global religion which would replace all of the other religions of the world.
I’m going to gloss over a lot of their beliefs, but it involves concepts like reincarnation, karma, and a new twist: Akashic records, which are non-physical records of the entire history of the universe, past lives, etc. So, if you’d like, you can pay an Akashic records reader to tell you about your past lives. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This is all whatever. But then we get to root race theory, which had been around, but like so many other things, Blavatsky incorporated it into her religion. This is where we get ideas about lost races like Atlanteans and Lemurians, which you may have heard about in relation to New Age beliefs.
The fifth, and current, root race is supposed to be Aryans, who Blavatsky chose to represent with a swastika. Note that this all predates the Nazi party by quite a bit, but Nazi occultists lapped this shit up, and it shows.
Now, just because she didn’t deliberately influence the Nazi party doesn’t mean we can let Blavatsky off the hook. She had plenty of racist and antisemitic shit to say.
Basically within the Aryan race she claimed that there are subraces, and as people become more spiritually enlightened they are reincarnated into a higher subrace of Aryan. You will probably not be surprised to learn that the more advanced the subrace, the lighter their skin tends to be, with the highest subrace being Teutonic, AKA Germanic.
She claimed the people who she deemed “savages” lacked the “sacred spark” of the Aryans, and were inferior races who would die out as the Aryans continued to become more spiritually advanced.
Also not included in the Aryan race were the Semites, who she deemed spiritually degenerate, as well as other ethnic groups (some of whom she claimed were part animal because they descended from the Lemurian race rather than the Atlanean race).
She theorized that the inferior races would naturally die out as the Aryans reached higher subraces, the sixth of which was supposed to emerge in America (which is where she chose to start her religion) and Australia.
If any of this is sounding familiar, it’s because it’s basically the foundation that the New Age movement was built on.
There’s a lot more to all of this but I’ve already written you an essay at this point, so I’ll just end by mentioning that the new age to alt right pipeline that people talk about makes A LOT of sense once you know about the roots of the New Age movement.
Funny enough, this is actually the argument 19th century Romantic then political Satanists were making in agreeing with the powers of society that God was on the side of kings and generals and bankers and landlords.
The sort of "Huck Finn" idea that, if this is what the so-called godly are saying is the proper social order, "All right then, I'll go to hell" is the better choice.
Per Faxneld wrote an academic piece on this sort of imagery called The Devil is Red: Socialist Satanism in the Nineteenth Century.
Here's the abstract:
During the nineteenth century, socialists all over the Western world employed Satan as a symbol of the workers’ emancipation from capitalist tyranny and the toppling of the Christian Church, which they perceived as a protector of this oppressive system. Starting with the English Romantics at the end of the eighteenth century, European radicals developed a discourse of symbolic Satanism, which was put to use by major names in socialism like Godwin, Proudhon, and Bakunin. This shock tactic became especially widespread in turn-of-the-century Sweden, and accordingly the article focuses on the many examples of explicit socialist Satanism in that country. They are contextualized by showing the parallels to, among other things, use of Lucifer as a positive symbol in the realm of alternative spirituality, specifically the Theosophical Society. A number of reasons for why Satan gained such popularity among socialists are suggested, and the sometimes blurry line separating the rhetoric of symbolic Satanism from actual religious writing is scrutinized.
An early, proto-anarchist Felix Pignal wrote "The Philosophy of Defiance", and the fragments that remain are one of the earliest and still best examples of this political Satanism.
Satan, in his revolt, is my father, and, in his courage, Cain is my brother!
Which is just an absolutely banger quote, especially for 1854.
It's also a great answer to the idea, usually from LaVeyan Satanists, that Satanism is "apolitical" (as they define it), and people using the image of Satan to attack the idea of power hierarchies rather than reinforce and justify those hierarchies are "doing Satanism wrong" or whatever.
Now, in order to enjoy that liberty, it is necessary to prevent tyranny, and as we have already said: The king is certainly not the only tyrant in a kingdom.
A king is only the summit of a governmental pyramid, the base of which is calculated to maintain it.
As long as that base is not broken up, it would be useless to sacrifice ourselves to knock down its peak in order to acquire liberty…
… To cut off the head of a king, but allow the principle which requires him to remain, a principle which demands that so many other kinglets fatten themselves at the expense of the proletariat, is just like trying to stop the current in a rapidly flowing river with a saber blow!… Laugh in the faces of the idiots and schemers who, on the basis of similar stupidities, will cry out to you: To arms!… I have said, or have meant, that to obtain true liberty we must wait for the governmental pyramid to be broken apart, by itself even!… I stand by it…
If you think Satanism is about worshipping power and wearing black, then Satan fought God for nothing, and Satan truly was defeated.
@/RegretaGarbo: i'm sorry, but this is fucking HOT
Sin was born in heaven in the heart of Lucifer as he gazed upon he shining throne of his Creator and decided in his heart that he was entirely too wise, too beautiful and too powerful to be subordinate to Jehovah. He immediately started a campaign to brainwash the angels and lead them to believe that under his leadership they could overthrow God, take His throne, and set THEIR thrones above that of God, thus being no longer subordinate to God but being even higher than their Creator.
@/RegretaGarbo: "Lucifer fucking unionized the angels to stand up against BIG GOD
I truly do think that one of the best things to come out of the horrible Texas abortion ban is the fact that the "Satanic Temple" (not actually Satanic, just a religious freedom organization with a provocative name) is using Texas' own religious laws against it by insisting that abortion is a "sacred Satanic ritual" and that families involved with the temple should be exempt from Texas' abortion ban by virtue of their "religion."
It's an amazing strategy, it might work, and they have a donation page here.
I love the chutzpah but it absolutely will not work lol
The laws are not there to stop people with power, they’re there to stop the powerless from getting that power. Dominionists cannot be “by your logic”d out of controlling other people.
it's a matter of setting precedent for future court cases. the premise that a law is applicable to multiple interpretations, not ones that the writers of the law intended, is how the u.s. judiciary system functions. whether it'll work or not depends entirely on the judge, lawyers, and potential plaintiff and defendant.
the optimal situation would be a middle or upper class white woman, with the support of her husband, who was denied service directly as a result of this law; and the born child had a congenital affliction resulting in death soon after the birth that was unpreventable and was found during common testing during pregnancy. then it would come down to how competent her lawyer(s) were and the past ruling history of the judge. this isn't being crass it's just how this shit gets decided.
The Satanic Temple has an ongoing abortion suit in the Southern District of Texas which is part of the country's most reactionary Appeals Court, the Fifth Circuit Court, and this is during a 6-3 Republican majority Supreme Court. This is about as bad a path as anyone could chose to challenge abortion restrictions.
But it gets worse.
The Satanic Temple has already challenged abortion cases twice in a more favorable climate and lost badly. In one of them, they also badly mistreated their client.
Reproductive Rights in Missouri
OSS: Did you feel you were in good hands?
Mary: I had a false sense of security. The Missouri Chapter was good, but this was early on. Beyond that, I didn’t realize how far differing some opinions in TST went. There were anti-Semites as well as other hate-filled individuals who had found their way into TST.
I felt like I was championed pretty well at first… When it was lucrative for them and they could make money off of my case. As soon as I questioned them, they began handling things weirdly. I contacted the attorney to pull out of the case almost 3 years ago. His response was to impose a gag order on me.
I couldn’t speak to anyone in TST, not even friends. I heard from no one for years.
When you are pregnant in Missouri, choice is a tricky thing. The billboards tell you "Choose Life," but what other options are there? The st
So for the short version of all these, with Mary Doe's abortion case, The Satanic Temple failed their way out of federal court, then failed at each level of state court. They lost.
For Judy Doe's abortion case, it was more straightforward. The case was dismissed in federal court, the appeals court upheld the dismissal, and the Supreme Court didn't bother to hear it.
The Lamar Advertising billboard ad case was a failure from the start, and maybe only existed to get them attention before withdrawing the suit quietly. (If so, it worked.) No media bothered to look into the part about TST wanting to run ads claiming it could avert state abortion laws despite providing no evidence that was true (indeed, just the opposite).
The Satanic Temple also lost their Scottsdale invocation case and its appeal. Just absolutely brutal, that appeal hearing, if you want to read about or watch it.
The Belle Plaine veterans monument case got nine of 10 counts dismissed already. So it's alive, but barely.
TST is currently embarrassing themselves on the ACLU's Arkansas 10 Commandments case that TST clownishly forced themselves into as intervenors. The Satanic Temple doesn't want to disclose their company's finances and just admit they're a for-profit company that joined that lawsuit because its owners hadn't created the church org when that case started years back.
Their Boston invocation case survived the first dismissal but runs into the fatal flaw that they sued it with The Satanic Temple Inc., based out of Salem, rather than a local group actually in Boston, which has shuttered under strange circumstances. Plus, they're going to run into a problem with the complaint being made by "Malcolm Jarry", a pseudonym of one of the owners.
Not enough has happened with the Ann Doe abortion case in Texas, but the fact that they brought Planed Parenthood in as a Defendant is... not ideal.
They do not show you how much total money they have brought in since forming in 2014 (or beginning fundraising in 2013); they do not show you how it has been spent; their legal track record so far is bungling, setting bad precedent, and—oh, they're also suing us and have apparently threatened to sue other former members to intimidate them when the NDAs they've continued to lock people into were not enough.
Go back to that Scottsdale appeal hearing. Watch it for yourself for a few minutes.
The problem is not that the deck is stacked against them in an unfair system. The problem is they suck. If you're going to give money to legal activism, you should be giving money to lawyers who are actually qualified in their field instead of doing all of these different things all over the country (badly).
But more to the point, the right wing spent 40 years getting to this point. They didn't just vote, or sign petitions, or march. They organized for 40 years, stole and packed the judicial benches at all levels, state and federal. If now The Satanic Temple is saying their only strategy is "pointing out the hypocrisy" — we fucking know. We get it. It is a waste. We have better things to spend resources on, and better organizations not run by better people than TST's owners.
not to be a hedonist but. pleasure IS the whole point, my loves. we are made for pleasure. humans have not survived out of spite or sheer grit or simply to make more humans. we live for pleasure. the pleasure of licking the last delicious crumbs off your fingers and feeling sunlight on your skin and massaging a loved one's shoulders. we're made to fill our bellies with delicious food, to nap in soft grass, to touch each other in joy and comfort.
there is no shame or guilt in our bodies doing what they were made to do. and we are made for pleasure.
So showing my age here, but back in 2012 on Sept 5, someone posted a photo of an offering to Loki that was a little premade spongecake. And there were folks in the Heathen community that went off on them over it because it wasn’t a sufficient offering for one reason or another. They didn’t make it themselves, it wasn’t an expensive offering, ‘why would Loki want this? It all boiled down to a ridiculous standard of what was ‘right’ for an offering
The other side of the Heathen community countered extensively on how a little premade spongecake was an appropriate offering to Loki specifically, citing all kinds of historical context for it.
This went back and forth for an entire day. Just… Heathens, Lokeans, Polytheists of all stripes putting in their two cents on the matter before it devolved into trollish jokes- people pulling photos of spongecake from google images and turning them into memes.
Finally, the people who said that it was their right to make an offering how they pleased overpowered the people who disapproved of it and it became an unofficial holiday in tumblr pagan calendars. Some people are setting this day aside for Loki, others use this as an excuse to exercise their right to make offerings to their particular gods in whatever manner of their choosing (no matter how silly it may seem.)
Just today, the person who made the offering came forward with context of their offering, which is that they did not have much money at the time and the spongecake with fresh strawberries was just about the height of luxury. And if anything, this makes an even further point- that what seems like a silly and pointless offering to some people might be a huge sacrifice to others.
On a larger level, I think about how the Masai tribe of Kenya donated cattle to Americans to help with the aftermath of 9/11. Cows would not have helped the US much during that time. Practically, fourteen cows is not a lot and we have plenty of cows already. But for the Masai, donating cattle was an immense gesture. It meant a lot for them.
Offerings to gods are not always going to be practical. How are we even supposed to know what gods consider practical or right or good? In the end, the only person who can refuse an offering is the god themself. If anyone scoffs at spongecake or fourteen cows or a ho-ho with a cigarette sticking out of it needs to sit down and think about why they feel they have room to tell people how to worship.
And it’s a silly holiday to celebrate, but this debate was a big step for a lot of people standing their ground on how they choose to interact with their deities.
