in the book of ezekiel, angels are described as eyes on their wings. sound familiar?
so what i want to know is what the hell type of predator was preying on biblical angels to make them evolve eyespots
possibilities include:
what the hell else were the Old Gods supposed to feed on?
theAngelusgenus contains a diverse array of species whose members regularly cannibalize each other
the Holy Spirit swoops around heaven clicking its tongue like a bat out of hell, and in this manner echolocates and consumes thousands of pesky angels every night, thus maintaining the celestial ecosystem’s delicate natural balance
God keeps swatting them
Ancient humans monster fuckers liked it and furthered the bloodline of eyes-patterned wings through intense breeding.
I don’t know if this needs to be said or not, but for those of y'all who grew up with Christianity:
Continuing to fear Hell, despite not believing in it, is not evidence that Hell actually exists. That’s a conditioned fear response kicking up.
Fear of hell is a delusion, but they can’t let that go because heaven is likely bullshit too if hell isn’t anywhere you can be sent.
This is actually super funny, because if I’m not mistaken, Hell originally wasn’t a place humans could even go to, while Heaven was free game for the rich and poor alike (this was actually really radical back thousands of years ago because many other religions believed you needed wealth and status to have a good afterlife).
Rather than a place of eternal damnation for humans, Hell was thought of as the realm of all things antithetical to Godly creation, which humans are a part of.
But I think this is from Judaism. I’ll need to double-check with my Jewish friends about it.
Also, if it helps, both the word and concept of “Hell” are actually very modern, and were only introduced to the Christian canon after the forced Christianization of Scandinavia (1104 - 1721 AD.) The word “Hell” is pulled from Hel, the goddess of the realm of the dead (Helheim) in Old Norse paganism.
Anytime you see the word ”Hell” used in the Bible, it has replaced one of SEVEN different Hebrew words with a variety of meanings ranging from “the grave” to “a literal place outside of the city where people go to burn their trash.”
Also also, the most complete “descriptions” of Hell that we have in modern literature are literally from Bible fanfiction. (Yes, I did just call The Divine Comedy a fanfic and that is exactly what it is. It is a self-insert Bible fanfic by Dante Alighieri.)
So when somebody tells you what’s “waiting for you in X circle of Hell,” you can think of that and laugh about it.
Witchs, pagans, and people of all religions have a responsibility to protect our planet! Please sign to show that people of faith demand meanful climate action!
My new favorite hobby is pouring myself a nice glass of wine and browsing popular Amazon reviews for tarot decks.
In all seriousness, as a theologist I find this sort of thing utterly fascinating. There is a complete disconnect of the self in the kind of person that the first reviewer must be, an utterly uncritical cosmology of what external pressures likely brought them into the occult community.
Humanity has repeatedly sought to create religion in times of upheaval, both on a societal and a personal scale. There’s a reason why New Age spirituality and interest in the occult have so rapidly exploded within the past decade or so of the Information Age. People are distancing themselves en masse from organized religion–and ESPECIALLY Christianity, and its politicized trappings within the United States government–but feel the need to keep the religion aspect. In difficult times, belief in something beyond the self and the material is a thing of fundamental comfort. It makes the random suffering and confusion of the world more bearable, grants a sense of satisfaction and control in your life otherwise lacking.
But the occult, specifically, is antithetical to the Information Age in many ways, and utterly anathema to capitalism, and this intersects in a very key way for a person like Jen B. The occult is the infallibly unknowable. It is finding things you can never understand and the joy of trying to grasp the impossible however you can. The world is filled with unexplainable and the strange, and there is a deep and potent joy I feel in studying it, both on a practical level and in an academic level. I love examining why we as a species keep reinventing wizards and powerful spirits who exert influence over our lives in ways we cannot comprehend.
But that is not the occult that Jen B wants. Jen B wants a very, very, very, very, VERY new understanding of the Occult. She wants the occult to be a place of peace and tranquility and sterilized, sanitized self help. She wants clean pale blues and neutral earth tones with lots of natural lighting in a yoga group. She wants to buy crystals that will alleviate her anxiety and realign her chakras, and she does not want to examine why she thinks buying crystals will alleviate her anxiety, and she does not want to research what chakras actually are beyond Pinterest infographics of see-through people in a lotus pose. She, as a Lightworker VERY specifically, wants to feel important, and like it is her duty to heal a broken and toxic world, but she has no idea why she wants to do it or how she could actually do that, and she won’t examine that because the answer isn’t easy and comforting.
The world is a chaotic and cruel place filled with random suffering and deeply ingrained toxic power structures which seek to literally profit off of sucking the life out of billions of people in a slow and miasmic way. But Jen B cannot approach this from a radical mindset, cannot bear the mundane and banal reality of “These problems are caused by political and corporate structures to enforce government control and subservience”. Jen B seeks the occult because she wants to discover that the reason she hates her job and feels no satisfaction from it is actually psychic emotional vampires draining her life force chi, and she can prevent them from feeding off her by thinking really hard about how they can’t actually do that.
For the marketing directors of Target’s next New Age self help book, for the contracted freelancers who are hired to write a cutesy pastel purple “101 Spells For The Working Witch” to be sold for $10.99 at Barnes and Noble, for the white reiki masters and yoga instructors who like houseplants, the occult is not a place of wonder and mystery and the unknown and the unknowable. The occult is not the occult for them, because they want to learn that spiritual enlightenment can be found on Amazon.com for 24.99 plus shipping and handling, because the world is scary and complicated and doesn’t make sense, and crystals are pretty little rocks you can arrange into shapes, and this makes them feel like they can survive another day of being forced into doing absolutely nothing of worth, meaning, or time, so that they can use an imaginary high score in their bank account to buy water and a studio apartment.
We were all just humans at one point, a point that may now seem far too distant to exist again. We were all just human before humanity drove a wedge in itself and began to divide us. We were all just humans before race drew lines that defined us. We were all just humans before socioeconomic status classed us. We were all just humans before religion split us, before politics polarized us. Now we are lines, lines that should not not crossed, labels that cannot not be ripped off and groups from which ones own they should not venture. We are white or black, Muslim or Christian, Republican or Democrat. I dream of a day when we are labels no more, a world where we are more than what we are called and the lines that once divided us are begging to be crossed. I dream of a life for our children where instead of a white christian and a black atheist we are all once again just human. I believe only then will the world know true peace.
“Volendo istituire cerimonie guerresche, perché non si facessero guerre senza prima averle dichiarate secondo un certo rito, fissò la procedura, tratta dagli antichi Equicoli e ancor oggi seguita dai feziali, con la quale si richiedono riparazioni. Quando il messo giunge nel territorio del popolo al quale si chiedono riparazioni, col capo bendato dice: «Ascolta Giove, ascoltate oh confini - e qui nomina il popolo a cui essi appartengono - ascolti la giustizia divina: io sono il pubblico rappresentante del popolo romano; vengo delegato giustamente e santamente e alle mie parole sia prestata fede».
Quindi espone le richieste ed invoca Giove a testimone: «Se io chiedo che mi vengano consegnate quelle persone e quelle cose contrariamente al diritto romano e divino, non permettere che io riveda mai più la mia patria». Queste cose ripete e varca il confine, quando incontra il primo uomo in territorio nemico, quando entra nella città e quando giunge al foro, mutando solo poche parole della formula.
Se non vengono soddisfatte le sue richieste, passati 33 giorni, in questo modo dichiara guerra: «Ascolta, oh Giove e tu, oh Giano Quirino e voi tutti, oh dèi del cielo, della terra e degli inferi, ascoltate; io vi invoco a testimoni che quel popolo - e qui ne fa il nome - è ingiusto e non concede il risarcimento dei danni. Ma su queste cose consulteremo gli anziani in patria, su come possiamo far valere il nostro il nostro diritto».
Tornato a Roma, il re poi si consultava col Senato e se si decideva per la guerra […] era usanza che il feziale portasse al confine nemico un'asta con la punta di ferro o bruciacchiata e tinta di sangue, dichiarando guerra e lanciandola nel territorio nemico.”
✍️Tito Livio, I, 32, 5-11 (a cura di Claudio Moreschini), BUR, Milano 2013.
(Nell'immagine: affresco proveniente dalla necropoli dell'Esquilino,tomba dei Fabii o Fannii, oggi ai Musei Capitolini.Datato alla prima metà III secolo a.C. ritrae forse un rito feziale.
Nel calendario romano il 5 dicembre ricorreva la festa delle Faunalia, che si svolgeva non in città, ma nelle campagne. Le Faunalia venivano celebrate in onore di Fauno, una divinità italica oggetto di un culto antico, dio della fertilità, protettore degli animali, dei campi e delle selve.
In questa giornata i contadini sospendevano ogni attività lavorativa nei campi, sacrificavano a Fauno un capretto o una pecora e gli offrivano del vino, affinché proteggesse i boschi, il bestiame e le colture e bruciavano incenso sulle are. Queste informazioni ce le ha tramandate il poeta Orazio (Odi, III, 18), senza nascondere l'ironia degli occhi del cittadino nei confronti degli usi di campagna:
“Fauno, che corteggi le ninfe fuggenti,
cammina leggero sui campi
assolati della mia terra e vattene
senza fare del male ai piccoli del mio gregge, se a fine anno
ti viene offerto un capretto tenero
e non manca vino abbondante
alla coppa, compagna di Venere, e il vecchio altare
fuma di molto aroma.
Alla tua festa di dicembre il bestiame
gioca tutto sull’erba,
e assieme ai buoi oziosi il villaggio
fa festa sui prati; passeggia
il lupo in mezzo agli agnelli
audaci, ed il bosco riversa in tuo onore
le foglie sparse; il colono gode di battere
col piede tre volte la terra odiosa”.
Le caratteristiche principali di Fauno sono evidenziate dai suoi appellativi. Fauno è “Agrestis” (Ovidio, Fasti, II, 193), si aggira nelle foreste e nelle campagne, per apparire spesso ai contadini, che si diverte a spaventare, di giorno e anche di notte; è “Incubus” perché grava sul corpo di chi dorme e lo affligge con inquietanti visioni notturne; è “Inuus” (fecondatore), ovvero è perennemente intento ad accoppiarsi con donne e ninfe, ma anche con le femmine di tutti gli animali; è anche “Fatuus” o “Fatuclus” (Servio, Commento al'Eneide, VI, 775; VIII, 314) quindi dotato di parola, che utilizza per dar voce alla foresta e per pronunciare i suoi oracoli. Fauno si trova spesso associato a divinità a lui simili, come Silvano, dio delle selve e Luperco, una sua manifestazione sotto forma di lupo ed è anche identificato con un antico re del Lazio, nipote di Saturno, figlio di Pico e della ninfa Canente e padre di Latino, la cui figlia Lavinia sposò Enea (Virgilio, Eneide, VII; X).
Dalle sembianze umane, quando l'interpretazione ellenistica identificò Fauno con Pan, iniziò ad essere rappresentato con corna e zoccoli di capra, come il suo equivalente greco.
(Nell'immagine: Fauno in marmo rosso (II secolo d.C.), proveniente da Villa Adriana, ora conservato presso i Musei Capitolini a Roma).
One thing I cant quite just understand is the one with feminism and spritiuality.
I get that not only the big world religions, but almost every existing spiritual or religious cult has been or is deeply patriarchal and needs to be critisized immediately.
But you know in Germany there is a saying called “alter Wein in neuen Schläuchen” which basically means selling the old shit in a new package.
For example, when it came to gay and lesbian marriage while some were happy that LGB people were equal to heterosexuals in that way, others argued that marriage itself was an outdated institution and we should focus more on the establishing and equalizing of all sorts of families instead of just expanding the overhault.
The same goes with religion/spirituality.
Just replacing male with female godesses just wont do it. Furthermore, every right critisizm involves - at least for me- also questioning the idea of the supernatural itself and the search for answers in it.
I would even go ahead that much and say that there is no place for such things in a modern, enlightened time.
