Weirdary

The library of the weird and interesting (history, arts, life, etc.)

[uncleclaudius]

Mosaic with sea creatures from the House of the Faun, Pompeii.

[biggest-gaudiest-poltergeist]

we gotta get back into revolving bookcases i'm begging

truly we allow the pinnacles of human achievement to wither and collapse into ashes in the wind

[sometiktoksarevalid]

[sometiktoksarevalid]

[hometoursandotherstuff]

[ltwilliammowett]

This need to put a coin under a mast just won’t let me go. It is originally a Roman custom, as the Greeks also did and put the coins under the pillars of a temple when it was built to hope for protection and luck. This is also what the coin under the mast is said to do. However, there is one thing that may also play a role. A silver coin was placed under the tongue or on the eyes of a dead person so that he could pay Charon, the ferryman of the underworld, for his passage. If a ship sank, it was hardly possible to give a coin to the dead and not everyone had a coin directly with them when this happened. What if this coin was not only a good luck charm but also a means of payment for Charon when this happened? I will think about it further and read some books, maybe there is a clue for this thesis….

[verecunda]

Oh! Is this a widespread custom, then? I know I’ve read about a Roman shipwreck in the Thames that was found with a coin in the mast-step, but I didn’t realise it was a common thing. That was the first time I’d ever heard of it.

Interesting theory about it being intended to pay Charon!

[ltwilliammowett]

Oh that was even very common, so far 17 ships have been found with a coin, like this one

Dr. Deborah Carlson has written a very interesting article on this subject,  “Mast‐Step Coins among the Romans”  maybe you want to read more about it.

[archaeos]

If you don’t mind me adding — ships themselves were often held to contain a sort of divine or living spirit, which may possibly connect to this notion of payment for the dead. From Brody, A. 2008, ‘The Specialised Religions of Ancient Mediterranean Seafarers’, Religion Compass, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-8171.2008.00079.x:

Evidence for divine spirits imbued in ships is found in diverse sources. There are very few extant Canaanite or Phoenician maritime texts, yet we know from the Ugaritic Kirta epic that the sacred mountain, Mt. Zaphon, was represented as a ship, and a parallel reference from an Egyptian papyrus details that Ba‘l Zaphon was worshipped in the form of a ship (Brody 1998). In later periods, seafarers dedicated ships, or model ships, to Zeus Kasios, Ba‘l Zaphon’s direct Hellenic counterpart, or more generally to Zeus the Savior, Zeus Soter. A letter from the king of Tyre to the king of Ugarit details the sinking of a ship in a storm. This ship is said to have literally died in the tempest, suggesting an animate spirit that perished with the loss of the vessel […] (Wachsmuth 1967; Göttlicher 1981; Brody 1998).

[ltwilliammowett]

Thank you for adding it. This is really a very exciting topic and I had already talked about it with one of my former professors who works a lot in the field of ancient religion. She hasn’t come across it yet either, she also finds my suggestion exciting and now we’re sitting down together to see if there are any research approaches in this area. However, it’s still at the beginning and quite rough, because so far we haven’t found anything in this direction. So now we have to search through ancient texts…

[donnamissal]

[parasect]

Thanks, tumblr mobile, for unintentionally making this even funnier

[po-acus]

Just as I said, “is this ever going to load?” One gif loaded and honestly it answered my question perfectly.

[sternenhimmel-mond]

Together they create the full set.

[bartziefluff]

saw this again on my dash after reblog and…

[tuntematonkorppi]

tumblr black out poetry

[boomer-mythology-destroyer]

[weirdary]

Let's not forget kibinai

From Karaite ethnic minority in Lithuania (similar to cornish pastry, usually has mutton and onion inside)

[dreamstars]

[chantssecrets]

Visitors gather to watch giant gushes of water released from the Xiaolangdi dam on the Yellow river in Jiyuan, China.

[jareckiworld]

Tuula Lehtinen — Van Huysum VI (oil on canvas, 2023)

[ansitru]

Fite me (pastel goth edition) ⚔️

[jabberding0]

Wei Weaving is a Chinese artist

[nepharim-tree]

[thoughtportal]

[commasameleon-deactivated202510]

Sorry as someone who teaches rhetoric this is a wonderful response to the Paradox of Tolerance. I cannot tell you how many times my students have had debates about this. This is the response. This does indeed fix it. I cannot wait to tell this to my classes now. Philosophically and rhetorically this completely resolved the Paradox of Tolerance and I am floored by its simplicity and angry I never saw it before.

[elfwreck]

Tolerance is not a moral precept

The title of this essay should disturb you. We have been brought up to believe that tolerating other people is one of the things you do if…

Tolerance is not a moral absolute; it is a peace treaty. Tolerance is a social norm because it allows different people to live side-by-side without being at each other’s throats. It means that we accept that people may be different from us, in their customs, in their behavior, in their dress, in their sex lives, and that if this doesn’t directly affect our lives, it is none of our business. But the model of a peace treaty differs from the model of a moral precept in one simple way: the protection of a peace treaty only extends to those willing to abide by its terms. It is an agreement to live in peace, not an agreement to be peaceful no matter the conduct of others. A peace treaty is not a suicide pact

[archiveofillustration]

Fabián Cháirez

[dogmotif-deactivated20240505]

the main problem i have with america is that nothings old as hell there. i cant be so far away from a castle it damages my aura

[chillyfeetsteak]

man people really just say stuff on here huh

[lame-kid-on-couch]

Noooo haha don't spread racist ideals and colonizer propaganda by idolizing white european aesthetics above all else and denying the life and accomplishments of native peoples on their own lands

[brehaaorgana]

People have been living in the downtown area of Tucson, Arizona for at least 4,500 years. The greater Santa Cruz river valley has been occupied by humans for 12,000 years.

You see this?

That's not a river. That's the South Canal in Mesa, Arizona (Phoenix metro area).

This is a view of the East and South canals. At least half of all the Phoenix metro canals were originally built by the Hohokam (from roughly 200-1400 CE), and are still in use (restored) today.

Phoenix, Arizona actually has more miles (kilometers) of Canals total than both Venice and Amsterdam. No, really. Phoenix has about 180 miles of canals, many of which are built on ancient canal foundations.

below is an aerial view photo taken in the late 1930's of one branch of Phoenix's canal systems:

Also have the "Montezuma Castle," if you need a castle:

I don't need to look at some 12th century European castle to see age.

[fakepsuedonym]

@isuggestlandback

[isuggestlandback]

I HAVE A SUGGESTION

[weirdary]

Burning resistance

May 14th, 1972 a 19 year-old Romas Kalanta poured gasoline over himself and set himself on fire in Kaunas, Lithuania (Soviet Republic of Lithuania at the time).

He used to write poems, liked the Beatles (a banned band at the time of Soviet Union), according to his friends he was quite calm, a bit closed off, did not like injustice. He was part of the protests against the occupation of Lithuania by Soviet Russia and country's annexation to Soviet Union and its imposed rules at the time - such as the ban of rock music and long hair. He did not pass his history exam because he refused to use marxism leninism ideology in his answers, this has stopped him from finishing high school. Overall he was an average student.

At noon on Sunday, May 14, 1972, not far from the former Kaunas City Executive Committee building, R. Kalanta doused himself with gasoline from a three-liter jar and, shouting “Freedom for Lithuania!”, set himself on fire. According to official records, R. Kalanta died on May 15, 1972, at around 4 a.m. In his notebook, which fell into the hands of the KGB, there was an entry: “The system is solely to blame for my death.”

The idea of burning himself could have come from the secretly passed around news that another protestor - Jan Palach burned himself in Prague in 1969, also in protest against Soviet Union.

The soviet country administrators of the time rushed R. Kalanta's funeral in order to keep the event as private as possible, but this sparked outrage and more protests from the youth at the time. The main youth protest took two days - 18-19th May, 1972. In the protest there were not only Lithuanians, but also Latvians and Estonians. About 400 people were arrested for attending the protest. It is believed, that the rush of R. Kalanta's funeral, administration's accusations of mental illness , arrests for the protest sparked the liberal side protests in Lithuania against Soviet Union.

Sources and more information:

Anti-Soviet self-immolating protester Kalanta named honorary citizen of Kaunas

Romas Kalanta, a 19‑year‑old who set himself on fire in 1972 in protest of the Soviet rule, has been posthumously named ...

Romas Kalanta: A Symbol of Lithuanian Resistance

Beata Bruggeman-Sekowska “What should I live for? For this system to kill me slowly and mercilessly? It would be better to end my life at on

1972 – The Sacrifice of Romas Kalanta

The Soviet regime was opposed in various forms. Sometimes the action or sacrifice of one person grew into large waves that caused considerab

[yebreed]

Old Chinese houses are an inexhaustible creative space in terms of wooden interiors. To me, something alike is associated with childhood memories of a countryside house in Zhejiang.

Photo: ©遗产君