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astronicht · 26 days

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Okay I'm almost done with Fellowship, here's an incomplete list of shit I noticed and thought was buck fucking wild on my first ever read-thru: medieval edition.

In literally the second line of the book, Tolkien implies that Bilbo Baggins wrote a story which was preserved alongside the in-universe version of the Mabinogion (aka the best-known collection of Welsh myths; I promise this is batshit). This is because The Hobbit has been preserved, in Tolkien's AU version of our world, in a "selection of the Red Book of Westmarch" (Prologue, Concerning Hobbits). If you're a medievalist and you see something called "The Red Book of" or "The Black Book of" etc it's a Thing. In this case, a cheeky reference to the Red Book of Hergest (Llyfr Coch Hergest). There are a few Red Books, but only Hergest has stories).

not a medieval thing but i did not expect one common theory among hobbits for the death of Frodo's parents to be A RUMORED MURDER-SUICIDE.

At the beginning of the book a few hobbits report seeing a moving elm tree up on the moors, heading west (thru or past the Shire). I mentioned this in another post, but another rule: if you see an elm tree, that's a Girl Tree. In Norse creation myth, the first people were carved from driftwood by the gods. Their names were Askr (Ash, as in the tree), the first man, and Embla (debated, but likely elm tree), the first woman. A lot of ppl have I think guessed that that was an ent-wife, but like. Literally that was a GIRL. TREE.

Medieval thing: I used to read the runes on the covers of The Hobbit and LOTR for fun when I worked in a bookshop. There's a mix of Old Norse (viking) and Old English runes in use, but all the ones I've noticed so far are real and readable if you know runes.

Tom Bombadil makes perfect sense if you once spent months of your life researching the early medieval art of galdor, which was the use of poems or songs to do a form of word-magic, often incorporating gibberish. If you think maybe Tolkien did not base the entirety of Fellowship so far around learning and using galdor and thus the power of words and stories, that is fine I cannot force you. He did personally translate "galdor" in Beowulf as "spell" (spell, amusingly, used to mean "story"). And also he named an elf Galdor. Like he very much did name an elf Galdor.

Tom Bombadil in fact does galdor from the moment we meet him. He arrives and fights the evil galdor (song) of the willow tree ("old gray willow-man, he's a mighty singer"), which is singing the hobbits to sleep and possibly eating them, with a galdor (song) of his own. Then he wanders off still singing, incorporating gibberish. I think it was at this point that I started clawing my face.

THEN Tom Bombadil makes perfect sense if you've read the description of the scop's songs in Beowulf (Beowulf again, but hey, Tolkien did famously a. translate it b. write a fanfiction about it called Sellic Spell where he gave Beowulf an arguably homoerotic Best Friend). The scop (pronounched shop) is a poet who sings about deeds on earth, but also by profession must know how to sing the song or tell the story of how the cosmos itself came to be. The wise-singer who knows the deep lore of the early universe is a standard trope in Old English literature, not just Beowulf! Anyway Tom Bombadil takes everyone home and tells them THE ENTIRE STORY OF ALL THE AGES OF THE EARTH BACKWARDS UNTIL JUST BEFORE THE MOMENT OF CREATION, THE BIG BANG ITSELF and then Frodo Baggins falls asleep.

Tom Bombadil knows about plate tectonics

This is sort of a lie, Tom Bombadil describes the oceans of old being in a different place, which works as a standard visual of Old English creation, which being Christian followed vaguely Genesis lines, and vaguely Christian Genesis involves a lot of water. TOLKIEN knew about plate tectonics though.

Actually I just checked whether Tolkien knew about plate tectonics because I know the advent of plate tectonics theory took forever bc people HATED it and Alfred Wegener suffered for like 50 years. So! actually while Tolkien was writing LOTR, the scientific community was literally still not sure plate tectonics existed. Tom Bombadil knew tho.

Remember that next time you (a geologist) are forced to look at the Middle Earth map.

I'm not even done with Tom Bombadil but I'm stopping here tonight. Plate tectonics got me. There's a great early (but almost high!) medieval treatise on cosmology and also volcanoes and i wonder if tolkien read it. oh my god. i'm going to bed.

edit: part II

#astro lotr #at what cost

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trans-cuchulainn · 4 months

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i don't have the words to articulate it at this moment but there's something about the way that people have specific expectations for "authenticity" and will dismiss anything that falls outside them as a mangled, anglicised version of the thing when actually that is the older and more traditional form of something, it just doesn't match their expectations. obviously in my personal experiences i'm mostly talking about medieval literature here especially medieval irish literature

sometimes this is as simple as spelling – i've had people argue that the name "finn" is anglicised and it should always be "fionn" to be Really Irish, but "finn" is an older spelling, glide vowels are later, if you wanna go real far back it'll be "find" (nd in place of nn is an older spelling pattern). or they'll hear someone say "ogam" and assume they're mispronouncing "ogham" due to lack of knowledge of irish and not consider the fact that medievalists tend to use the older form of the word. or they'll Well Actually you about "correct" terminology which wasn't standardised (and/or invented) until the 20th century

a lot of this is defensive and the result of seeing a lot of people ACTUALLY get this stuff wrong and have no respect for the language. in that regard i understand it, although it becomes very tedious after a while, particularly when people sanctimoniously declare something "inauthentic", "fake", or "anglicised" without doing enough research to realise it's not trying to be modern irish and is in fact correct for older forms of the language

more often however this search for the projected "authenticity" is ideological and has much larger flaws and more problematic implications. "this can't be the real story because it's christian" well... that's the oldest version of the story that exists and it postdates christianity in ireland by about nine hundred years, so... maybe question why you're assuming the only "real" version of irish stories can't be a christian one? this is especially true when it comes to fíanaigecht material tbh, but in general there seems to a widespread misapprehension about ireland's historical relationship with christianity (i have seen people arguing that christianity in ireland is the result of english colonialism which took their "true" faith from them... bro. they were christian before the "english" existed. half the conversion efforts went the other way. please read some early medieval history thank you)

however i also saw someone saying this about arthurian literature lately which REALLY baffled me. "we'll never have the Real arthurian stories only the christianised versions" and it was in the context of chivalric romance. buddy you are mourning something that does not exist. this "authentic" story you're looking for isn't there. that twelfth century story you're dismissing as a christian bastardisation is as "real" a part of this tradition as you're going to get

#in general if you do not want christianity in your medieval literature maybe arthuriana is not the best choice #it is. so fucking christian #as for fíanaigecht. did they think st patrick was there by accident #the arthuriana comment took me out though.#the christianised versions. of chivalric romance.#YOU MEAN THE CHRÉTIENISED VERSIONS?? IS THAT THE PROBLEM?#anyway this is not a pro christianity statement this is a pro historical accuracy statement #medieval #medieval literature

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cryptotheism · 7 months

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do u have any interesting or fav facts about miriam? i had never heard of her until your blog

Chronologically, she's probably the first alchemist in history. We only have copies of her writings as transcribed by Zosimos several centuries later. But she's the first alchemist we can confirm was a real person who existed.

One of my favorite things about her is that basically every culture that found her writings wanted to claim her. Christian alchemists refer to her as the bridge between neoplatonist alchemical ideas and contemporary Christianity, calling her "Maria Prophetessa" or Mary the Prophetess.

Islamic alchemists equated her with Maria al-Qibtiyya, or one of the wives of Mohamed, and often referred to her as "Maria the Copt."

Given that she claimed alchemical literature can only be properly transcribed in Hebrew, it's safe to say that her name is probably best translated as "Miriam." Jewish and early Christian sources often equated her with the biblical figure of the same name.

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broomsick · 6 months

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List of interesting ressources pertaining to norse paganism, scandinavian folklore and history, and nordic religions in general

These are sources I have personally used in the context of my research, and which I've enjoyed and found useful. Please don’t mind if I missed this or that ressource, as for this post, I focused solely on my own preferences when it comes to research. I may add on to this list via reblog if other interesting sources come to my mind after this has been posted. Good luck on your research! And as always, my question box is open if you have any questions pertaining to my experiences and thoughts on paganism.

Mythology

The Viking Spirit: An Introduction to Norse Mythology and Religion

Dictionnary of Northern Mythology

The Prose and Poetic Eddas (online)

Grottasöngr: The Song of Grotti (online)

The Poetic Edda: Stories of the Norse Gods and Heroes

The Wanderer's Hávamál

The Song of Beowulf

Rauðúlfs Þáttr

The Penguin Book of Norse Myths: Gods of the Vikings (Kevin Crossley-Holland's are my favorite retellings)

Myths of the Norsemen From the Eddas and the Sagas (online) A source that's as old as the world, but still very complete and an interesting read.

The Elder Eddas of Saemung Sigfusson

Pocket Hávamál

Myths of the Pagan North: Gods of the Norsemen

Lore of the Vanir: A Brief Overview of the Vanir Gods

Anglo-Saxon and Norse Poems

Gods of the Ancient Northmen

Gods of the Ancient Northmen (online)

Two Icelandic Stories: Hreiðars Þáttr and Orms Þáttr

Two Icelandic Stories: Hreiðars Þáttr and Orms Þáttr (online)

Sagas

Two Sagas of Mythical Heroes: Hervor and Heidrek & Hrólf Kraki and His Champions (compiling the Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks and the Hrólfs saga kraka)

Icelandic Saga Database (website)

The Saga of the Jómsvíkings

The Heimskringla or the Chronicle of the Kings of Norway (online)

Stories and Ballads of the Far Past: Icelandic and Faroese

Heimskringla: History of the Kings of Norway

The Saga of the Volsungs: With the Saga of Ragnar Lothbrok

The Saga of the Volsungs (online) Interesting analysis, but this is another pretty old source.

The Story of the Volsungs (online) Morris and Magnusson translation

The Vinland Sagas

Hákon the Good's Saga (online)

History of religious practices

The Viking Way: Magic and Mind in Late Iron Age Scandinavia

Nordic Religions in the Viking Age

Agricola and Germania Tacitus' account of religion in nordic countries

Myths and Symbols in Pagan Europe: Early Scandinavian and Celtic Religions

Tacitus on Germany (online)

Scandinavia and the Viking Age

Viking Age Iceland

Landnámabók: Book of the Settlement of Iceland (online)

The Age of the Vikings

Gesta Danorum: The Danish History (Books I-IX)

The Sea Wolves: a History of the Vikings

The Viking World

Guta Lag: The Law of the Gotlanders (online)

The Pre-Christian Religions of the North This is a four-volume series I haven't read yet, but that I wish to acquire soon! It's the next research read I have planned.

Old Norse Folklore: Tradition, Innovation, and Performance in Medieval Scandinavia

Children of Ash and Elm: A History of the Vikings

The Penguin Historical Atlas of the Vikings by John Haywood

Landnámabók: Viking Settlers and Their Customs in Iceland

Nordic Tales: Folktales from Norway, Sweden, Finland, Iceland and Denmark For a little literary break from all the serious research! The stories are told in a way that can sometimes get repetitive, but it makes it easier to notice recurring patterns and themes within Scandinavian oral tradition.

Old Norse-Icelandic Literature: A Short Introduction

Saga Form, Oral Prehistory, and the Icelandic Social Context

An Early Meal: A Viking Age Cookbook and Culinary Oddyssey

Runes & Old Norse language

Uppland region runestones and their translations

Viking Language 1: Learn Old Norse, Runes, and Icelandic Sagas and Viking Language 2: The Old Norse Reader

Catalogue of the Manks Crosses with Runic Inscriptions

Old Norse - Old Icelandic: Concise Introduction to the Language of the Sagas

A Companion to Old Norse-Icelandic Literature and Culture

Nordic Runes: Understanding, Casting, and Interpreting the Ancient Viking Oracle

YouTube channels

Ocean Keltoi

Arith Härger

Old Halfdan

Jackson Crawford

Wolf the Red

Sigurboði Grétarsson

Grimfrost

(Reminder! The channel "The Wisdom of Odin", aka Jacob Toddson, is a known supporter of pseudo scientific theories and of the AFA, a folkist and white-supremacist organization, and he's been known to hold cult-like, dangerous rituals, as well as to use his UPG as truth and to ask for his followers to provide money for his building some kind of "real life viking hall", as supposedly asked to him by Óðinn himself. A source to avoid. But more on that here.)

Websites

The Troth

Norse Mythology for Smart People

Voluspa.org

Icelandic Saga Database

Skaldic Project

Life in Norway This is more of a tourist's ressources, but I find they publish loads of fascinating articles pertaining to Norway's history and its traditions.

#ressources #masterpost #heathenry #research #sources #norse paganism #norse gods #spirituality #polytheism #deity work #pagan #paganism #deities #norse polytheism #mythology #eddas #sagas

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grassbreads · 8 months

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I've been doing a lot of reading lately about the history of vampires in fiction and how the vampire as we know it today first entered literature, and the subject is honestly fascinating. The traditional folklore around vampires and vampire-like creatures is largely very different from what we'd think of as a vampire today, and it's also very different from how vampires appeared in even their earliest literary incarnations.

For one thing, there's nothing particularly alluring about most traditional vampires. They're bloated corpses that have crawled out of their graves, not dashing mysterious counts in lonely castles. They're not a particularly stylish or sexy monster.

However, from pretty much the moment that western literature first turned to the vampire myth for inspiration, writers saw something in the concept to sexualize. The poem "Der Vampir" (The Vampire) by Heinrich August Ossenfelder is often cited as the first ever true literary depiction of a vampire (published 1748!), and it is about a man corrupting a chaste and religious woman through his unwanted kiss/vampiric bite. John William Polidori's 1819 short story "The Vampyre" is widely seen as the first work to truly codify vampire fiction, and the titular Vampyre Ruthven is in large part inspired by the womanizing Lord Byron. Le Fanu's Carmilla depicts an intense attraction between Carmilla and her victim Laura. Stoker's Count Dracula is a man with overly flushed lips and hair on his palms, marks of Victorian fears of sexuality.

From the very start, vampires in literature have been a sexual monster. They're emblems of the seductive and terrible—the kiss of death that you can't help but be drawn to anyway. A violent forced intimacy that will corrupt you and drain away your very life force. There's a great deal of xenophobia and fear of the un-christian in early vampire fiction as well, but the fear of sex and sexual assault have always been a driver of literary vampires' horror and allure. Writers seem eternally split between desire for the vampire and revulsion at that very lust, even from the moments that the creatures first graced the page.

There's a great tradition of vampiric fiction both using vampirism to evoke sexual predators and making vampires themselves desirably sexy. Thus, given that it is very concerned with sexual assault and bodily autonomy as themes, often uses predation by a vampire to evoke sexual violence, and is deeply horny about vampires and blood drinking, Jun Mochizuki's The Case Study of Vanitas is actually one of if not the best modern successor to the canon of early vampire literature. In this essay, I will

#rare vnc post on main bc starting off with my obvious vnc icon and url would spoil the punchline #wanna take y'all by surprise a little ;P #anyway this post is a joke but the point I'm making genuinely kinda isn't #you know how it is #I am genuinely fascinated by the ways that vnc is in conversation with the literary sources that it pulls from #it really is riffing on a LOT of the same ideas through a modern lens #vnc #vanitas no carte #the case study of vanitas #invasion of the frogs

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max1461 · 1 year

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Given that Christianity emerged out of Judaism, and most early Christian literature (including the New Testament) was written in Greek, it is kind of weird to think about how Christianity emerged in Italy. Indigenous Italian religion.

#navel gazing #the world

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totopopopo · 2 years

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Everybody knows by now I think that harrow’s name comes from the (early) Christian concept of the harrowing of hell.

To summarize briefly, in Christian mythology, when Jesus died on the cross, he descended into the underworld for the three days that he stayed dead. I say the underworld—the word they use is Hades, not Hell, although some translations use the word hell. This pre-dates the Christian conceptions of hell that we are more familiar with—fire and brimstone and punishment etc—and reflects the idea that it was more of a neutral place where everyone went when they died, stemming from other traditions like the Greco Roman hades (obviously, which it took the word from) or the Jewish Sheol. The harrowing of hell refers to what Jesus does when he gets to this place. He descends and he kills death itself (using the cross as a weapon)—the death of death—and he leads ALL of the dead people there up out of the mouth of hades. He frees them from the shackles of death. This is all laid out in the early apocryphal text the gospel according to nicodemus. You should read it it’s fun.

When I say mouth, I mean that literally. In art and literature, even in the gospel of nicodemus, hades was characterized as an actual living creature, and in the harrowing, Jesus kills it and leads the souls out of its gaping mouth. This has lead to some frankly excellent art:

Okay, back to the locked tomb. Why am I bringing this up (other than the fact that I partially wrote my thesis in this so I will talk about it whenever possible)? Well, we know harrow’s name is… significant. We also know that in Alecto, she will find herself in hell. Okay. Where do we see ^ this imagery pop up in the universe of the locked tomb? What place does John call hell? The Soma, under the river. Soma, which means body in Greek. The body that houses the dead in its belly, the body of hades, the living body of hell. And we’ve seen it’s mouth already, a gaping mouth lined with teeth.

EDIT: it was pointed out it’s called the stoma not the soma, but. Stoma means fucking mouth in Greek so…. The point stands. The point very much stands.

Like.. mouth indeed.

I think harrow is gonna go into the stoma. I think harrow is going to kill death—or maybe, in a delicious inversion the likes of which Tamsyn Muir loves so much, she is going to kill necromancy. The death of the death of death. And she’s going to lead out the souls in there. All the people—Augustine? Cassiopea?—and all the fucking planets too.

Idk we’ll fucking see.

#the locked tomb #gideon the ninth #harrow the ninth #nona the ninth #alecto the ninth #anyways GO READING THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO NICODEMUS #I did part of my thesis on this. for reals. i love this and I’m so so so excited to see how much or little of it pans out

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sensualnoiree · 2 months

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astro notes: the sun 🌞

The Sun represents the central principle of vital energy and conscious selfhood in the birth chart. Just as the Sun is the central entity in the solar system, it is also the central entity in the individual psyche reflected in the birth chart. Your Sun sign is considered the core of who you are in astrology. It represents your vitality, your sense of self, and your individuality. The Sun in your birth chart symbolizes your spirit, inspirations, motivations, personality, expressions, life force, and personal identity. The sign the Sun sits within on the day of your birth shows how this life force expresses itself in the world and what traits you are building throughout your life to feel and become more of yourself.

The Sun represents spiritual intelligence. Light is a symbol of intelligence or an awakening, and the Sun, as the supreme source of light in the human world, represents the highest form of intelligence, spiritual intelligence. The Sun symbolizes the Creator in various spiritual traditions, with prophets and messengers acting as mirrors, reflecting the sun's rays. This concept is central to progressive revelation, the belief that the universal God continually sends guidance to humanity through different prophets, all reflecting the same divine light.

In Japan, the Sun is revered as a goddess, the personification of the physical sun and the Ruler of Heaven. The Japanese Sun-goddess, Amaterasu, is considered the founder of Japan, and all emperors are known as "Sons of the Sun." In Shinto, the ancient religion of Japan, nature is worshipped, and the Sun plays a central role in rituals and customs. The Sun is seen as a source of physical stamina, business success, and protection from invasion.

In Christianity, the Sun has been used metaphorically to represent Christ. Christ is often referred to as the "Sun of Righteousness," and his birth was symbolically linked to the sun's creation in early Christian literature. The winter solstice, December 25, was chosen for Christmas because of its association with the invincible sun in pagan celebrations.

In ancient Greek art, the sun symbolized eternity and stability, despite the constant flux of time. The sun god Helios was worshipped in the Seleucid east, with bronze coins depicting a fusion of Helios and Apollo. The Vergina Sun, a rayed solar symbol, represented completeness and totality, symbolizing the 12 gods and the four elements.

In Native American traditions, the Sun is revered as a living being, connected to all aspects of nature. Native to the Americas understood themselves to be part of a larger interconnected web of life, where everything is sacred and connected. The Sun is viewed as essential for life, providing warmth, light, and energy to sustain all living beings.

The Sun holds immense significance across various cultures and spiritual traditions. It represents the core of who you are, your vitality, and your sense of self. Spiritually, it symbolizes the highest form of intelligence and the source of all light.

The Sun's symbolism reflects its universal importance as a life-giving force that sustains all living beings. Whether as a celestial body in astrology, a goddess in Japanese mythology, a metaphor for Christ in Christianity, or a symbol of stability in ancient Greek art, the Sun's significance transcends cultural boundaries, reminding us of our interconnectedness with the cosmos and the natural world.

follow for more astro insights like this and support me over on instagram @sensualnoire or yt @quenysefields

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normal-horoscopes · 2 years

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There's something really interesting about how early Christian accounts of exorcisms like from the Genesis Apocryphon are performed by use of a single repeated idiom like "dumb and deaf spirit, I command you to come out of (the demoniac) and never enter him again" whereas accounts of exorcisms from rabbinical literature of the same period feature exorcists performing their work through extended dialogue or even heated negotiation with the demon.

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forestdeath1 · 1 month

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Lily and James — the alchemical Queen and King. Lily is the main symbol of the entire saga.

In Harry Potter, there are two levels - the mundane and the symbolic. On the mundane level, Lily is a character with her own strengths and weaknesses. On the symbolic level, Lily is the main symbol of the entire saga. Perhaps that's why there's so little talk about her because symbolically Lily is what everyone strives for, everyone searches for but cannot find. Harry learns more about Lily only before the final battle, and there's a reason for that.

It's no secret that HP books are heavily laden with alchemical and Christian symbolism. I'm not religious, and to me, all these symbols are just cultural codes that have had a significant influence on almost all classic literature and art.

Philipp Otto Runge, Chagall, Goethe — they're all alchemical codes

Firstly, alchemy is not about literally turning lead into gold, it's a path of spiritual development, a path of transformation, a "hero's journey," the journey of the Son returning to the Father. Alchemical transformation is described in the text "The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz." This is the third manifesto of the Rosicrucian Brotherhood.

So, lilies are a very ancient symbol.

According to Jewish legends, the lily grew in Eden just at the time of Eve's temptation by the devil and could be defiled by him, but even amid temptation, it remained as pure as it was, and no dirty hand dared to touch it. In early medieval depictions, Christ was placed against a backdrop of lilies or in the lily flower, seen as a symbol of the Virgin Mary. The orange lily often symbolizes the blood of Christ.

Symbolically, Lily is the love of God, a divine spark, and the blood of Christ itself, which was shed in the name of redemption and salvation to atone for the sins of all humanity. And what is the blood of Christ? In Christian tradition, the blood of Jesus Christ is a symbol of the life-giving and saving spirit of God.

By the way, lilies and roses were often confused in translations, and symbolically they are the same. Many suspected that the Rosicrucians' rose is a stylized version of the Egyptian and Indian flowering lotus, and the lotus has often been considered a water lily (they are different, but symbolically they merged). But calling the main character Rose would be too dull and obvious a reference.

Lily - symbolically, she is both the mother of Christ and the Spirit of God herself, the bearer of divine love, to which all seekers are drawn. This is not the only meaning, but for now, it's enough.

God is love, says John the Apostle. (Remus John Lupin, hehe. It was absolutely unnecessary to know his middle name. It's intentionally inserted because each of the marauders, except Sirius, by name signifies one of the disciples closest to Christ. Sirius is a separate story, he signifies something completely different.)

And who is drawn? Well, primarily we see two - James and Snape.

One of the most important things we learn about James is that he's a deer. The deer is a well-known symbol. In myths and folk beliefs, the deer was associated with the soul's aspiration to heaven and purification.

"As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God" Ps. 42: 1

In the Alexandrian "Physiologus," there's an ancient enmity between the stag and the serpent. The serpent hides from the foe in the clefts of the earth, but the stag, with the help of water, draws out the serpent and defeats it. (Water has always been a symbol of the serpent, even in Slytherin's element water, but the stag fights the serpent not with ordinary water but with the water of baptism. The snake has another important meaning for alchemy, but more on that later.)

Snape belongs to the Serpent, to secret knowledge, occult knowledge, "philosophical" reason, dark magic, which has always been contrary to the divine nature in Christian understanding and originated from the devil. James belongs to the Lion and the Deer.

The Lion is a typical alchemical symbol. Also, the Red Lion is Christ. Gryffindor embodies the soul's aspiration towards light and transformation, towards salvation. By the way, St. Godric (the hermit) also had his own pet deer, which he saved.

The deer seeks love, the spirit of God, the divine spark, God Himself, and in this persistent pursuit is shown James's path, as a seeker and as an alchemist. The Potters — if not alchemists themselves, then at least from the lineage of alchemists — the Peverells (The symbol of the Deathly Hallows is an alchemical-masonic symbol). And this means that the Potters are at least seekers; in their souls, there is a desire to find the divine and undergo transformation. The Potters have a strong hatred for the 'serpentine essence' of evil, and this is what needs to be transformed. (By the way, the graveyard is located near St. Jerome's Church. Besides translating the Bible into Latin, Jerome also healed and tamed a lion).

Masonic-alchemical symbol. Symbol of the philosopher's stone. Symbol of the Deathly Hallows. Solve et coagula is a principle of alchemy meaning "dissolve and coagulate".

An alchemist is a gardener, and this is another interesting reference to James and Lily. The way James tries to find an approach to Lily is an alchemical process. The alchemist tends to the Garden. In Vrisvik's Great Work (the Magnum Opus), it appears as the Garden of the Wise. The Gates to the Garden of the Wise for the Chosen become the process of dissolving "our Substance." James manages to approach Lily only when he dissolves his Ego. The Ego is the main enemy on the path to transformation.

The tradition of "hermetic gardening," that is, "cultivating the flowers of Wisdom in one's garden," becomes a leading line in alchemical symbolism. James cultivates wisdom.

While Snape cultivates "dark knowledge," although his soul also strives for light and love. But Snape is still too captured by his Ego, too captivated by base emotions, a thirst for revenge, recognition, or power, a craving for "secret knowledge." He cannot resist it, no matter how much he may strive for Lily, for the divine transformation of his spirit, and James, still dwelling in his Ego, instead of showing mercy to Snape, pushes him further away. The stag fights the serpent, but God is love. Ultimately, Snape temporarily closes off the paths of alchemical transformation for himself.

The Rebis is the end product of the alchemical magnum opus or great work. The lion must dissolve the serpent. Hermetic gardening. The alchemical wedding: the Queen and the King.

But besides all this, the deer is also a symbol of eternal renewal and victory over death ("The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death" 1 Corinthians 15:26 ). A symbol of Christ. His constantly renewing antlers represent eternal life.

In the original Greek of the New Testament, the names Jacob and James are variants of the same root—Yaaqob. James is an active force, a seeker, an investigator, a supplanter. James the Great was of a rather impulsive character, but everyone was also amazed by his courage, he was the only one who acknowledged Christ as the Messiah. And he is the only apostle whose death is described in the New Testament. He dies at the hands of King Herod, a cynical and evil king who was willing to murder babies for his purpose. James also dies at the hands of Voldemort, who is willing to kill a baby for his purpose.

Moreover, it was Saint James who was considered the heavenly patron of alchemists. His tomb was located in Santiago de Compostela, which was the oldest center of adepts. It was there, in 1378, after twenty years of unsuccessful attempts to decipher the Book of Hieroglyphic Figures, that Nicolas Flamel, the most famous alchemist of the Middle Ages, went. By the way, Shell Cottage... the scallop shell is a symbol of the apostle James and the "trademark" of the Way of St. James. Shell Cottage is also alchemical. It is there that Harry sees the symbol of the Deathly Hallows around Lovegood's neck.

James is a seeker. Lily is a symbol of the divine spirit, sparks, transformation. That to which all must ultimately come, that which must change in our world in the image of God. But for now, our world is seized by evil, by the antichrist. To defeat death means to defeat the antichrist in one's soul.

James finds Lily. The Soul finds the Spirit. The Spirit descends into the Soul. The King and Queen marry—and a new life is born, another hero capable of defeating the evil that has engulfed the world, capable of cleansing the world of evil. The connection between Harry and Christ is no secret to anyone.

The power of love conquers death. A rune appears on Harry's forehead—Sowilo rune—the victory rune, the sun rune, the irreversible rune. It symbolically serves as the key to the world of Alfheim—the world of the light elves, that is, the bright ideas, the prototypes of the buddhial plane, the ideality in this world.

The key to God. Harry becomes marked. His scar is a reminder to him that he came into this world not just by chance, but to destroy evil. And coming into this world, materializing, a person invariably receives a particle of the antichrist within himself. That's how this world works. Evil is in the soul of each of us, and through the Great Work, a person must purify himself.

And none can live while the other survives, because they mutually exclude each other by their very nature. Christ and antichrist.

But Harry has a difficult path ahead, the path of the Great Work before he can achieve victory. And that will be the theme of all 7 books, 7 years — exactly 7 days is the duration of The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz for the transformation oh his soul, for victory over death.

#jily #jily meta #hp meta #harry potter meta #lily evans #james potter #lily potter #harry potter

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familyabolisher · 1 year

Text

okay so basically:

thanks for your 100% unprompted and completely unsolicited enthusiasm everyone >:) god i am NOT doing any full essays because i am forcing myself to hold back on committing to Positions wrt tmuir's various intertexts until after alecto when i have an actually complete narrative to work with, but, to throw together my best effort at an abstract: as we probably know and as many have pointed out before (and as tmuir says in the gtn notes), the name 'dulcinea' references cervantes' dulcinea del toboso, a wholly made up woman whom don quixote projects onto a peasant girl called aldonsa as a necessary 'lady' to his own invented 'knight.' the essential premise of don quixote, put crudely, is that the title character reads an absurd amount of chivalric literature such that he imagines himself to be a knight errant and behaves as such in a period long after the social logics of chivalry make coherent sense; sharp contrasts between idealism and realism (as with the infamous tilting at windmills scene, for example) serve to drive home the absurdity of don quixote’s pretense. within this, the imagined dulcinea del toboso stands as a necessary element to the chivalric ideal that don quixote imagines himself to participate in; the knight’s ‘lady,’ as fictive as the knight himself, must be ‘sweet’ (as of course denoted by her name), of a high social class, genteel, and beautiful according to ideals of upper-class spanish beauty (blonde, pale skin, etc—of course in-text exaggerated to a comic degree). all of this, ofc, tells us something about the social allegiances of the chivalric world.

crucially, don quixote was written in the early 17th century, with the first part being published in 1605 and the second in 1615. the reconquista—the process by which christians took control of the iberian peninsula from its previously muslim rulers—was concluded in 1492, with expulsions and forcible conversions of muslim and jewish populations taking place between 1492 and 1526 and creating a new class of ‘converso’ or new christians, ie. former jews who converted to christianity but lived with a degree of suspicion cast over the legitimacy of their christian practice. (incidentally, a handful of scholars have theorised that miguel de cervantes’ family were converso jews, which i think casts a fun new light on don quixote, but the evidence is too flimsy to justify seriously committing to the reading). immediately following the reconquista was the establishment and expansion of the spanish empire, which by cervantes’ lifetime had grown to cover most of the americas and the philippines. spanish chivalry was articulated via the knightly orders carrying out such a process of christian conquest—first on the iberian peninsula, then exported to the so-called ‘new world.’ by the time cervantes was writing, chivalry had already reached its apex and was in a period of decline; as i’ve already said, the fulcrum of don quixote is this tension between the ideal and the real, this sense that don quixote’s perception of the world is no longer compatible with modernity. cervantes writes of a christian ideal at a time when aspersions were cast on conversos, where the distinction between ‘old’ and ‘new’ christians and fear of the persistence of judaism (and islam, though muslims who were forcibly converted were expelled outright) against persecution undercut this understanding of forcible conversion as a ‘success’ for christianity; far from writing about the ‘old order’ (if you will) with a straightforward elegiac nostalgia, he emphasises its illegibility in the modern period.

as i’ve talked about before, chivalry bears a relationship both to historical periods of christian conquest and subjugation of so-termed ‘infidel’ groups and to contemporary fascist aesthetics, and also holds currency in contemporary articulations of butchness/transmasculinity/queer masculinity/etc. wherein those relationships tend to be elided. one of tamsyn muir’s most prominent registers is the persistent usage of similar such touchstones: from chivalry [via cavalierhood] as a language by which lesbian articulations of desire become possible (cf., obviously, gideon/cytherea, and the ‘medieval’ aesthetics of the seventh house in general) but also as a hegemonic touchstone of an imperialist social formation to jeannemary’s having been named for jeanne d’arc to lyctors as a reference to lictors ie. roman bodyguards who carried fasces in what could plausibly be gesturing to the etymological root of ‘fascism,’ she’s v clearly working with the tensions present in these cultural building-blocks that can be used to construct an empire around the bedrock of catholicism & antiquity and to situate queerness (largely focalising lesbianism) comfortably within it.

so, like—what’s the don quixote thing doing? like, why reference a picaresque from the 17th century, rather than an ‘actual’ chivalric romance?

there’s a fairly straightforward, surface-level reading to be done here: the crucial dimension of pretense and artifice that cervantes adds to don quixote’s ‘knighthood’ maps pretty clearly onto gideon, and dulcinea as a woman who is very much Not Real but in fact a ‘disguise’ formed around what she ‘ought’ to be maps equally well onto cytherea. & ofc, cytherea and gideon’s relationship as this process of seduction-inclulcation-tutelage by which gideon ‘learns’ cavalierhood similar to how don quixote’s artifice of knighthood depends upon the presence of dulcinea of toboso in order to make sense of itself; knight-gender (if u will) as relational. much like how the driving tension of don quixote comes in part from our asking, does don quixote realise his own pretense? does his calling himself a knight and behaving as though he were a knight make him a knight in a world where the relation he tries to invoke makes no social sense & he has to literally alter the world around him (windmills into giants, aldonsa into dulcinea) to make it coherent? at what point does gideon not ‘really’ being a cavalier stop mattering, and how much is cytherea facilitating that, and how much is their relationship doubling as an inculcation into a social relation to which she was previously only peripheral? and, obviously, what does the fact that their relationship is pretty transparently predatory tell us about the relationship muir tries to draw between socially sanctioned exploitative relationships, imperialism, sexual violence and its aestheticisation, &c. &c.?

BUT LIKE….i think you can take the reading a bit further and think about the fairly common interpretation of dulcinea of toboso as something of a stand-in for, or else a counterpart to, allegiance to the spanish empire; that a feminised ideal of empire becomes the ‘lady’ to the (arguably conquistadore) knight, and that don quixote’s allegiance to her in turn becomes an allegiance to empire & imperial conquest. & ofc, the falsity of all of this; how ‘idealism vs realism’ then becomes transformed into an ideal of empire vs its reality. what gendered formations are made possible by empire, etc.

i also think you can draw some lines around the shifting balance of power between don quixote & dulcinea of toboso and gideon & cytherea; that don quixote ‘makes’ dulcinea out of aldonsa, but cytherea very much ‘makes’ herself into dulcinea (using a real woman whose identity she stole as a very loose proxy); that cytherea sits in an ambivalent position wherein she at once, unambiguously, holds power over gideon that she exploits (socially, sexually), but also occupies a position of subjectivity not shared by eg. mercy, augustine, gideon the first &c. via her blood cancer & the eugenicist practices of the seventh house; cytherea as a character who seeks power where she has the ability to seek it as an ineffective means of responding to the sites where she finds herself powerless—a trait she v much shares with john gaius, but not with mercy et al.! this ambivalence is best expressed through the relation that naming & renaming & remaking bear to one another in the wider text, which, as we well know, is used as a particular discursive expression of ownership tugging on thematic strings around sexual violence and empire (alecto into annabel; i am deliberately not doing nona spoilers in this post but redacted into redacted as well; you know the drill!); cytherea undergoing that process of obfuscation and recreation at her own behest & at once becoming subject and instigator, invisibilising the ‘real’ dulcinea in doing so & removing the external agent (gideon as don quixote) from the equation … it’s doing a lot of work around the ambivalences of power & agency (sexual and otherwise) happening there! and, of course, ask other questions about, like—as ‘dulcinea’ is an agent in the process of gideon occupying that don quixote-equivalent position, does she not then become a similar agent in cytherea’s occupying the ‘dulcinea’ position—does the relational configuration not go both ways—how much of cytherea, who we receive through gideon’s close third, is her fantasy/idealism/etc. and how much of it is cytherea’s own construction? like, is gideon actually removed from the equation? chicken-egg?

there’s a whole separate argument to be done here as well around palamedes & the ‘actual’ dulcinea/dulcie, and what this invoked projection of an imagined ideal onto a very real woman could do for a more compelling reading of their relationship than just … like, oh he was in love with her, it’s unrequited, sad! well i guess he’s just blown himself up in cytherea’s sickroom. i’m interested in these little undeveloped tendrils of, like … dulcie as a character completely and unequivocally removed from the narrative in gtn, only to establish her own presence in htn but even then only really be made sense of in relation to cytherea (i think All The Time about dulcie wearing predominantly white and cytherea wearing predominantly green … girl help they swapped colours), palamedes as being, iirc, pretty significantly younger than her … and then the fact that you could pretty easily make a case for palamedes’ name being a reference to the palamedes/palomides of the arthurian canon, a ‘saracen’ knight and convert to christianity, what that dimension can do to these readings of tmuir’s invocation of chivalry as a particular social dimension to conquest.

this is all very very roughly sketched out and if i were to ever actually try and pitch a take that wasn’t just a quickly glossed few paragraphs on tumblr dotcom i would absolutely be delving properly into the scholarship around don quixote such that i could produce something somewhat less hamfisted than All This, but. hopefully this gives the broad gist of it, lol!

#tlt

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