justamagpie-ohshiny

[justamagpie-ohshiny]

“When we set children against one another in contests - from spelling bees to awards assemblies to science “fairs” (that are really contests), from dodge ball to honour rolls to prizes for the best painting or the most books read - we teach them to confuse excellence with winning, as if the only way to do something well is to outdo others. We encourage them to measure their own value in terms of how many people they’ve beaten, which is not exactly a path to mental health. We invite them to see their peers not as potential friends or collaborators but as obstacles to their own success… Finally, we lead children to regard whatever they’re doing as a means to an end: The point isn’t to paint or read or design a science experiment, but to win. The act of painting, reading, or designing is thereby devalued in the child’s mind.”

— Alfie Kohn, The Myth Of The Spoiled Child

#alfie kohn #children #what winning teaches #and what it doesnt #competition versus collaboration

[justamagpie-ohshiny]

PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (1995)

#y’all can keep your 05 version this is MY p&p #pride and prejudice #austen

[justamagpie-ohshiny]

this is so fucking insidious

#words are insuffient #fb meta is fcking evil #fb meta is monstrous #fb meta deserves to be hated #fb meta is a evil malignant cancer on humanity

[justamagpie-ohshiny]

Every writer in the English language, I should imagine, has at some point hated Shakespeare, has turned away from that monstrous achievement with a kind of sick envy. In my most anti-English days I condemned him as a chauvinist (“this England” indeed!) and because I felt it so bitterly anomalous that a black man should be forced to deal with the English language at all — should be forced to assault the English language in order to be able to speak — I condemned him as one of the authors and architects of my oppression...

...

I still remember my shock when I finally heard these lines from the murder scene in Julius Caesar. The assassins are washing their hands in Caesar’s blood. Cassius says:

Stoop then, and wash. — How many ages hence Shall this our lofty scene be acted over, In states unborn and accents yet unknown!

...What I suddenly heard, for the first time, was manifold. It was the voice of lonely, dedicated, deluded Cassius, whose life had never been real for me before — I suddenly seemed to know what this moment meant to him. But beneath and beyond that voice I also heard a note yet more rigorous and impersonal — and contemporary: that “lofty scene,” in all its blood and necessary folly, its blind and necessary pain, was thrown into a perspective which has never left my mind. Just so, indeed, is the heedless State overthrown by men, who, in order to overthrow it, have had to achieve a desperate single-mindedness. And this single-mindedness, which we think of (why?) as ennobling, also operates, and much more surely, to distort and diminish a man — to distort and diminish us all, even, or perhaps especially, those whose needs and whose energy made the overthrow of the State inevitable, necessary, and just.

...

My relationship, then, to the language of Shakespeare revealed itself as nothing less than my relationship to myself and my past. Under this light, this revelation, both myself and my past began slowly to open, perhaps the way a flower opens at morning, but more probably the way an atrophied muscle begins to function, or frozen fingers to thaw.

...

The greatest poet in the English language found his poetry where poetry is found: in the lives of the people. He could have done this only through love — by knowing, which is not the same thing as understanding, that whatever was happening to anyone was happening to him. It is said that his time was easier than ours, but I doubt it — no time can be easy if one is living through it. I think it is simply that he walked his streets and saw them, and tried not to lie about what he saw: his public streets and his private streets, which are always so mysteriously and inexorably connected; but he trusted that connection. And, though I, and many of us, have bitterly bewailed (and will again) the lot of an American writer — to be part of a people who have ears to hear and hear not, who have eyes to see and see not — I am sure that Shakespeare did the same. Only, he saw, as I think we must, that the people who produce the poet are not responsible to him: he is responsible to them.

That is why he is called a poet. And his responsibility, which is also his joy and his strength and his life, is to defeat all labels and complicate all battles by insisting on the human riddle, to bear witness, as long as breath is in him, to that mighty, unnameable, transfiguring force which lives in the soul of man, and to aspire to do his work so well that when the breath has left him, the people — all people! — who search in the rubble for a sign or a witness will be able to find him there.

#shakespeare #william shakespeare #james baldwin #baldwin #writing #poetry

[justamagpie-ohshiny]

Boss is asleep, cannot stop me from frogposting

#froooooogggg #frog #chaser

[justamagpie-ohshiny]

Audrey R., who’s running for the OTW board, is apparently also currently running for office. As a Republican

so uhhhhhh keep that in mind when you’re voting

#otw #otw elections #ao3

[justamagpie-ohshiny]

Diagrams of shadow puppets from a book on children’s activities. 

#shadow puppets #vintage illustration #hands

[justamagpie-ohshiny]

How do cards gain meaning in an occult sense? Like, both tarot and french-suited playing cards started as game pieces, but they have gained an understood meaning. Is it just someone whips up an organized table of connected ideas or is each card interpreted from a certain framework?

Oh good question!

Many things that we now consider staples of western magic are ideas that have been added to over generations by several layers of thinkers. Tarot Divination specifically is an excellent example of this!

In 1770, A french printmaker and occultist going by Etteilla published a book about how to do cartomancy with a 32-card Piquet deck. He writes down some simple but strict associations for the cards, and makes what is probably the first mention of reversals in carotmancy. He said that he learned the system "from an Italian." Now, its unclear how much of the system is his own invention, people have been doing cartomancy for as long as there's been cards, but the text presents a larval, bare-bones version of the cartomancy methods we know and love today.

Its 1780-ish. The Rosetta stone hasn't been discovered yet. Occult-inclined Europeans are obsessed with Egypt. That's where our boy Trismegistus is from! There's a concept in Egyptian mythology called The Book of Thoth, a mythical book of spells penned by the God of Knowledge himself. This was the Holy Grail for European Occult Egpytaboos.

In 1781, Antoine Court de Gébelin claimed that Tarot cards were the "original book of Thoth," Saying that Tarot cards had been used by ancient Egyptian priests for their own magical ceremonies, and that their designs contained ancient mystical secrets. This is 100% not true, but he writes a pretty fun pseudohistory for Tarot that involves Romani people bringing the decks to Europe through the Levant where they then taught its esoteric secrets to several Popes.

Then in 1783, Ettellia responded with another book. Manière de se récréer avec le jeu de cartes nommées tarots ("Way to recreate yourself with the deck of cards called tarots") Where Ettellia basically claims "uhm actually I knew about tarot divination way before Court de Gebelin published that big ass book. But anyway here's an interpretation of Tarot symbology that includes multiple references to Egyptian, Zoroastrian, and Greek mythology." But the smartest thing he did was include spread methods that involved Thoth and Numerology. Napoleonic Occultists fucking loved Thoth and numerology.

In 1788, he formed a little magical society for the express purpose of discussing and workshopping ideas for Tarot divination. In 1789, he made a TRULY smart decision, and published a Tarot deck that was Specifically For Magic, and that basically cemented Tarots place in magical history.

Occultists just kept iterating! Someone would speculate "maybe the suits correspond to the elements" and people went "yeah, they correspond to the elements! That makes this tool even more fun and interesting to use!" Then people go "What if the suits and the elements also correspond to parts of the Self?" and people went "Sure they do! That makes this tool even more interesting!"

But its also not just one thread. Eventually you get the Golden Dawn saying "The Major Arcana correspond to the nodes and paths on our version of the Quabbalistic Sefirot, you know, the hermetic version with a Q." and some occultists responded "Idk about that! Love what you've done with the color symbology though!"

The development of magical ideas is an iterative process. It is people whipping up a table of correspondences, but that table needs a mythology to keep it together. Originally, the mythology that gave tarot "power" was its Egyptian pseudohistory, but these days its the fact that occultists have been iterating on and fine-tuning this system for hundreds of years.

Humans don't think in tables of information, they think in stories. The cool thing about stories is that they're flexible. If magic is anything, its learning how to engineer stories to make the tables of information more effective.

I'm gonna plug my patreon where I post all of my occult research if you wanna see more stuff like this

#tarot #history of tarot #divination

[justamagpie-ohshiny]

visitors are strongly encouraged not to approach the eel in the reflection pool after 9 p.m.

#eel #eel words

[justamagpie-ohshiny]

#ballet #insane and impressive

[justamagpie-ohshiny]

"Will I get strong if I grow my hair long?" the young man asked. "No," said the witch, "but if you do, you are strong." "I don't understand." "Many will tell you to cut it, even if it's not their hair." "I see. And your short hair…" "Is how I like it," said the witch.

#Microfiction

[justamagpie-ohshiny]

蟠龙老井, xintai新泰, shandong province by 刘聪lclclc

#china #photography #wide eyes #wow

[justamagpie-ohshiny]

#old growth forest #humans are a plague

[justamagpie-ohshiny]

(... for when a tad more swearing is needed.)

#adhd #ocd #autism #no not everyone #not even close

[justamagpie-ohshiny]

[justamagpie-ohshiny]

#reminder to self

[justamagpie-ohshiny]

I fucking hate SO MUCH how we still have so many people in this stupid sphere of the internet who think that "proship" and "antiship" are two stupid sides of a pointless debate when in reality it is an intentional smear campaign created by people who want to bully other people with no moral repercussions or guilt; A group who created discourse out of thin air where it didn't need to exist just so it could harass and dogpile on some randos just trying to fucking exist.

I'm sorry people, but you cannot compare constant cyberstalking, death threats, suicide baits, false accusations, and constant bigotry with trying to defend yourself against said harassment.

We're angry because a bunch of snot nosed little brats who have an entitlement problem and recycled purity culture arguments are trying to place moral responsibility on writing fanfiction, and there are literally hundreds of examples of such dogpiling happening all over the fucking place. Just look at the "anti receipts" tag right here on tumblr, and you will be overwhelmed with examples.

I was able to figure this out in FIVE FUCKING MINUTES OF GOOGLING. There is no excuse. I hate this ridiculous false equivalence leveling bullshit being played by people who clearly have no idea what the actual stances of each side are, and god forbid you get upset that people are mass breaking the law just to tell you to kill yourself ten thousand fucking times in a row because then you're just as terminally online as the users dedicating all their time and energy to mass reporting people who did nothing wrong and falsely accusing them of heinous crimes they didn't commit!

I am just so sick and tired of this. I just want to ship and let ship. That's it. That's literally all I want. Just let me have this and we won't need this pointless "you're no better than them" game created by people who think step sibling porn will lead to mass inbreeding all over the world and the haye's code was a good idea.

I'm sure this is one reason why proshippers often feel so stuck and so victimized; Even people who don't like antis aren't on their side. How can you just not know about all the harassment? Or do you just not care? I don't know which is worse, to be honest.

I need some actual fucking sleep for once, goddammit. My head hurts.

#just being clear where i stand #there is no secret third thing when it comes to people trying to kill someone #if you aren't in a place to be supportive of treating other people as humans #then just stay quiet #don't posture about how cOoL you are to be in the middle