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byjove

> be me

> the smallest most pathetic sopping wet knight in Camelot

> enjoying a nye party at uncle artie’s

> dude walks in and he’s green for some reason

> not worried about it just thought he was doing a bit

> asks to play a Yule game where someone strikes him with an axe and he gets to do it back next year

> mfw

> uncle art goes to accept the challenge

> I say fuck it and volunteer because I’m not doing anything with my life anyway

> chop the green guy’s clean head off

> he picks his head up and laughs

> says I have to meet him at some chapel so he can do thing to me next year

> I piss myself

> he lets me keep the axe so that’s nice

> what do I doooo guys

byjove

> 10 months pass

> set out to find the chapel I’m supposed to meet this guy at

> bring my sickkkk new axe

> ladies love my sick new axe. get lots of play

> fight beasts and highway men and things for 7 weeks straight

> eventually end up at this huge castle in the middle of nowhere

> turns out it belongs to this extremely sexy guy and his extremely sexy wife

> says his name is bert and he knows where the chapel I’m supposed to be at is

> weird old lady in the castle freaking me out

> guy says I can stay at his place until my beheading appointment and I get a poly vibe from him and his wife so I ignore the old lady

> guy says he’s going to go hunting everyday and give me whatever he hunts if I give him whatever I was gifted in the castle

> first morning his wife tries to fuck me immediately but I don’t know if they have an open relationship or not so I turn her down

> get a kiss instead

> that evening he gives me a deer and I give him a kiss

> next morning she tries to get in my pants again. we kiss twice.

> that evening he gives me a boar and I give him 2 kisses

> the next morning his missus tries to give me a gold ring I say no bc gold isn’t my color tbh

> she offers me a green sash that’s enchanted so the wearer can’t be harmed while wearing it

> mfw I realize this could keep me from being beheaded

> take the sash

> she kisses me 3 times and leaves

> bert gives me a fox that night and I kiss him 3 times

> leave for the chapel the next day wearing the sash

> the green guy is there and he’s sharpening another axe

> mfw

> where does this guy keep getting axes?

> get down on the chopping block to have my head cut off

> he swings. I flinch

> he calls me a little whiny baby

> he swings again. doesn’t hit me

> hate this guy

> he swings a third time and it only cuts me a little

> he starts laughing

> turns out he was bert just fucking with me the whole time using magic

> the old lady in the castle was my aunt morgan who made him do this bullshit so she could make fun of us knights

> tells me he cut my neck a little because I lied about the stash

> earth shattering sex with the green man commences

> return to Camelot wearing the stupid green sash. the other knights tell me I have to wear my fucktrophy green sash forever.

> goddamnit

aeneassuggestions

honestly what the pictures on my shield signify is none of my business

cryptotheism

I have a question regarding Jewish occultism and theology, I hope it's ok to ask you.

I assume that as part of your job, you've read Jewish texts such as the Talmud, Sefer Yetzira, Zohar, and etc. Are there reliable translations of these texts available, or would I have to read them in the original Hebrew?

Talmud: multiple excellent translations with high quality English commentary available online for free at places like sefira.org.

Sefer Yetzirah: same as above. But the text is also only like 3000 words it has some excellent critical scholarship in english

Zohar: You are fucked. Sefer Zohar is effectively impossible to translate into English. Content yourself with the (excellent, voluminous, dense, thank you Gershom Scholem) scholarly commentaries, or commit the next few years to learning Zoharic Aramaic.

cryptotheism

Sefer Zohar --the book of radiance-- is the crowning achievement of medieval Jewish esotericism, and remains one of the most complex and influential mystical texts in history.

To oversimplify, it is a grand synthesis of Jewish mysticism, an attempt to bring the panoply of peripheral Jewish mystical traditions more in line with the Orthodox mainstream. It's author, Moshe De Leon, was horrified by the medieval neo-aristotelian rationalism of rabbis like Maimonides, who he saw as stripping Judaism of its emotional and spiritual core.

As such, Sefer Zohar is a systematic literary tour of Jewish esoteric history. An esoteric history which involves a robust literature on the mystical significance of the Hebrew language itself. Because of this, much of the text is recursive analysis of its own language; full of things like theologically significant puns, numerology, and other such esoteric language games.

It is also not written in normal medieval Hebrew. For several complex reasons, the author was attempting to pass the text off as a copy of a rediscovered manuscript from 2nd century Palestine. So it's actually a 13th century Andalusian rabbi trying to write like a 2nd century Syrian rabbi who wrote in Aramaic. It is written in its own dialect, generally referred to as Zoharic Aramaic. Also much of the text is a gloss on the Hebrew Bible itself. All of this makes it effectively impossible to translate.

Go listen to the Dr. Sledge lecture about the Zohar its fascinating.

jacquelinebartholomew

"I asked ChatGPT and—"

Well I called upon the Muses before a recitation of an ancient tale so they could imbue me with poetic inspiration and knowledge of history, and they said you're wrong

ulises-aithon

I called Pan bihorned and now I'm pacing around while the spirit of wine and madness has overtaken me in a ritualistic frenzy and the group has dictated: death by limb tornement

animate-mush

The thing about the whole AD vs CE vs whether it's all just cosmetic discourse is that it totally ignores where this numbering system comes from. We should just call it what it is: Bede notation.

It was invented by one person for a specific purpose - to have a universalizable way of establishing historical dates, rather than having to deal with dynastically based date systems. And it was a really good idea. This is not surprising, since Bede is basically the father of Historiography. He also is the guy who gave us the notion of Primary Sources. Bede is amazing.

When a guy revolutionizes the entire way calendaring is done, he has the right to set his zero point wherever he pleases.

People have pointed out that one problem with CE notation is that it presents itself as neutral when it is exactly the same system as AD. What exactly is "common" about this era? The zero point doesn't become neutral just by effacing its source.

(Also BCE is nonsense. Just use negative numbers)

It makes sense for scholarly tradition to not want to be tied to a specific religion. But scholarly tradition is very enthusiastic about being tied to earlier scholarly tradition. The convention of AD was established by a scholar for a scholarly purpose. We know his name. We know what he was doing, and why, and how. And he was doing it better than anybody else. That is worth honoring.

Rather than pretending that it's a neutral system, acknowledge that it's not. It's not some naturally occurring "common era," it's the system developed by Bede, centered around dates that were important to him personally (but which he intended to be universally applicable).

Like we should be honest about the facts that (a) an awful lot of people have been measuring dates this way for nearly 1400 years and changing it in a non-cosmetic way would involve a lot of seriously obnoxious bookkeeping, and (b) the zero is where it is because that's where the guy who invented the system decided to put it. "Anno Domini" is meaningless to people who aren't into that particular Dominus, and "Common Era" is meaningless period (and imparts a false appearance of neutrality). Pinning it to its creator, though, is already scholarly convention and is objective. It may or may not be the year of Our Lord, and it certainly isn't Common (whatever that means) but it is unarguably the schema developed by Bede, for better or for worse. So unless we're actually going to rebuild it from scratch, we may as well call it that. And even if we do rebuild it from scratch, we should still call it that. Because that is what it is.

animate-mush

Reblogging in honor of the feast of St. Bede today.

I have been informed that Bede notation may in fact have been first devised by Dionysus the Humble of Scythia to calculate the date of Easter more accurately. But my broader point stands.

Bede, yo.

thoodleoo

this is so fucking funny to me. who wants to join the ancient athenian evil dining club with me

ozempicofficial

cozyrogue

the "rip ___ you would have loved ___" meme is inherently more fun with ancient characters. rip clytemnestra you would have loved morse code. rip theseus you would have loved the airtag. rip callisto you would have loved wearing shorts.

newsiesiswhyimhere

rip Icarus you would have loved parachutes

cryptotheism

The term "book of the dead" doesnt really give you perspective to how big a lot of Egyptian funerary texts are.

Imhoteps book of the Dead is 64 feet long.

somethingusefulfromflorida

Okay, but a lot of books would be that long if you laid the pages out

nsomniacsdream

the average printed page is 6 inches wide. so if a book is 128 pages, its 64 ft long. I dont think I own a book with fewer than 128 pages.

cryptotheism

It's honestly not that impressive at all. Fuck Imhotep and his pathetic short book.

mothermara

remember to bury the dead with a phone, everyone. these days the ferry terminal at the river styx wants you to download a fucking app

resonanteye

I HAVE BEEN WAITING ALL WEEK TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT TREPANATION.

edit: completely upset that more people seem interested in Bible thumping metaphor than ACTUAL SKULL REMOVAL in this economy but go off I guess

double edit: Warning for blood and surgical photos/description in the last link (at news.bme.com) this is about holes getting cut into people's heads, that link has some gore in it

it's the oldest known surgical procedure, we have human remains from as far back as possible showing healed trepanations. healed! it was known to work on a lot of things, but pressure within the skull from injury primarily. in Stoker 's day it would have been the only treatment for such a thing.

poor renfield.

there have been multiple people who did self-trepanation, it's cool in a way- that this procedure is simple enough to do to yourself (sometimes) and that prehistoric people could do it.

Trepanation is “the practice of making a hole in the skull in order to improve the brain pulsations and hence the overall well being. It has

prehistoric surgeons had a BETTER SURVIVAL RATE than 18th century surgeons- simply because there were less pathogens around. less infections!

Trepanning is one of the oldest known forms of surgery that was historically used to address issues pertaining to the skull.

the woman who filmed her own self-trepanation, Fielding, screened it at a small number of theaters and it is considered lost media, although there's a few clips of it floating around

There was a group of body mod people working on this as a personal project, as well as a group doing it for "enlightenment", in the 90s-00s. (it doesn't work for that)

VH is able to do it very quickly, all things considered. It seems like renfield isn't his first trephine patient.

also FUCK the Boys for being so foolish. renfield could have been saved, and Mina better protected, if they had only listened to him. they've seen supernatural evil and still, STILL can't wrap their minds around listening to and believing someone who's mentally ill, listening to and believing a woman. that is how fucking bad that era was. that bad.

what are we learning besides the power of friendship? that women, the disabled, the mentally ill, the poor are HUMAN BEINGS and FRIENDS and you believe and respect them. for fucks sake.

just because your friend eats spiders, or is a white lady, doesn't mean you blow them off and ignore what they tell you. (renfield was institutionalized got being zoophagous- he was eating bugs before he got there)

thelowlystylite

Reblogging for the future for a little light reading...

cuties-in-codices

14th c. pheasant hunting trick (a pheasant being lured into a hunter's trap by its own reflection in a mirror, which it believes to be a particularly beautiful mating rival that it needs to fight)

illustration from a manuscript of henri de ferrières' hunting manual, le livre du roy modus et de la royne racio. paris, c. 1375-1400

source: Paris, BnF, Français 1297, fol. 88r ; for more context on the mirror trick see this blog entry by artifexinopere as well as this edition of ferrières hunting manual (pp. 283-286 for the pheasant chapter)

art-mirrors-art

****** @cuties-in-codices shares another interesting mirror (and another interesting manuscript). Below is the full folio from this particular 'edition' of this manuscript (Fol 88r):

The book is known as Le livre du roy Modus et de la royne Racio {The Book of King Modus and Queen Ratio}, and is usually attributed to a certain Henri de Ferrières. It is believed that the earliest manuscript was commissioned by the French king Charles V, also known as Charles the Wise, and produced in Paris in the late 1370s.

The book consists of two parts: Livre des deduis du roi Modus - which is essentially a long treatise on hunting, and includes both accounts of various animals (deer, bears, boar, and so on) and birds, including ways to hunt them; and the second, shorter part, called Le songe de Pestilence.

The hunting section apparently became very popular, and multiple copies were made for various patrons. Even today more than thirty manuscripts exist, and many more likely didn't make till now. The most famous copy was commissioned by Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy and made around 1455. It is now kept in the Royal Library of Belgium (KBR) and its illuminations (attributed to Master of Girart de Roussillon) are perhaps the best known of all the manuscripts.

Here is how the scene with the mirror-loving pheasant looks there:

The legend of birds being lured by mirrors is often traced back to Pliny, who wrote in his Natural History: "Our eyes are so perfect a mirror that even a tiny pupil reflects the whole image of a man: this is why most birds that we hold in our hands try to peck at our eyes, because, seeing their image there, they are drawn to them as to the objects of their natural affection."

This illumination is from another manuscript, also in the BNF {BNF Français 12399 fol 90v}.

The treatise itself offers quite an elaborate explanation of why a pheasant can be reliably caught with this mirror trap: "Here I shall tell you why the pheasant strikes at the mirror: pheasants are of such a nature that the male cannot tolerate in his company any other male pheasant; thus they clash with one another and rush at each other. "The reasons are these: one is that, because of his beauty, he is envious of his likeness; the other is that a pheasant is never without a female, and for these reasons they do not at all like being in one another’s company.

And so he will not hesitate in the least to enter the cage if he sees his own form in the mirror, for he will strike at it very fiercely, believing he sees another pheasant; and thus the cage falls and he is caught.

And this is a certain and true thing."