[The Freaky Friends are hanging out before a Sparrow Scouts meeting. Raven Leader approaches the group of kids]
Raven Leader: Alright everyone, for this next activity you’ll be pairing up in groups of four.
Hilda: That makes it easy for us-
Raven L: Upp upp upp, not you four.
Hilda: What? Why not?
Raven L: While I do find you four’s friendship to be very endearing, the fact that you seem to 1. Get into trouble more often than not and 2. The recent series of pda between the couples in your group has gotten to a point that makes many other scouts uncomfortable.
Hilda: PDA?! The trouble I’ll admit to but what’s wrong with showing my girlfriend that I love her?
Frida: Not to mention that there’s no where in the rules that says you can break up our group for those reasons.
Hilda whispering to David and Louise: Just watch, when she gets like this about rules she looks so cute <3
David: Okay, I’m not sure what Raven Leader means but some change ups wouldn’t hurt one time.
Louise snuggling with David: Yeah, and some distance will make the reunion kisses even sweeter
Strong, wilderness savvy, and armed with years of experience keeping Hilda under control - Lauren is the perfect candidate for a Raven Leader! Just so long as she can work up the confidence to ask about an interview…
Something I keep noticing in chthonic gods is that they often tend to be associated with the power of binding. By "chthonic gods", I tend to mean either gods of the underworld, gods who dwell beneath the earth, or god who are associated with some vital power or mystery associated with the underworld. I often kind of joke about it in relation to BDSM, but it's kind of worth discussing on its own.
I think I'll start with Odin, because that's usually where this theme starts for me. Even though Odin is not popular understood as a chthonic deity, owing to his status as the ruler of Aasgard and leader of the Aesir, many traits point to a very chthonic character. He was called the "lord of the gallows", and sometimes received hanged men as sacrificial offerings to the ravens. His many epithets included Valdrgalga ("ruler of the gallows"), Farmrgalga ("burden of the gallows"), Draugadrottin ("lord of the Draugr/undead"), and Foldardrottin ("lord of the earth"), all denoting his sovereignty via the chthonic realm. His horse Sleipnir allowed Odin as well as other deities to travel between worlds and particularly to the underworld. In some interpretations, even Valhalla may have been an underground place, or a kind of underworld in itself.
Anyways, the main connection to binding comes from the Valknut, a mysterious Germanic symbol likely associated with Odin. No one really knows its meaning, but the fact that it almost solely seems to appear in connection with the cult of the dead suggests that the symbol is tied to death in some way. The other major theory about the valknut is that it represented Odin's power to, in the others of Hilda Ellis Davidson, "lay bonds upon the mind, so that men became helpless in battle, and he could also loosen the tensions of fear and strain by his gifts of battle-madness, intoxication, and inspiration". In this understanding, the valknut represents Odin's power to bind and unbind the human mind, or more specifically those of his enemies and allies respectively, as well as the cycles of transition between death and rebirth.
The binding and liberating aspect of chthonic power is also reflected in Kronos, or Saturn, one of the many chthonic gods seen in Greek and Roman polytheism. Throughout the Greek Magical Papyri, the "chains of Kronos" are apparently invoked as a binding force. In the "Prayer to Selene", within the Greek Magical Papyri, the goddess Hecate, as Selene, wears the chains of Kronos upon her body, as well as wielding a scepter made by Kronos, which gives her power over even the primordial chaos itself. The influence of Saturn has often been believed to involve binding in some way. At the same time, Saturn was also undoubtedly a god of liberation, honoured in festivals such as Saturnalia where the whole order of Roman society was temporarily inverted.
In Vedic India, two chthonic gods, Varuna and Yama, share the attribute of binding sinners or wrongdoers with a rope for judgement. In Varuna's case this is by way of the nagapasa, his weapon and instrument of justice. Varuna himself lived in the underworld, his "stone house" where the waters of his night sky also dwelled and into which the sun withdrew after dusk. Yama, as the first mortal who upon death became the lord of the departed, also dwells in the underworld, and presides over it as the judge of the souls of the deceased. Yama's rope was an instrument by which to "capture" the souls of people who are about to die so that he can deliver them to death. In the Brahma Purana, Yama attempts to capture Markandeya with that rope, but is saved by the intervention of the god Shiva.
Varuna's and Yama's binding power is perhaps reflected in the Japanese Buddhist figure of Fudo Myo-O, one of the Vidyaraja (Wisdom Kings). Fudo Myo-O uses his rope to, depending on who you ask, bind each thing to its "nature", bind the ignorant, or capture demons. Fudo Myo-O, in his own way, has his own chthonian persona. Bernard Faure notes in Gods of Medieval Japan that Fudo was identified with the earth and thus positioned at the centre (or rather honzon) of earth-quelling rituals and identified with another earth deity named Kenro Jijin, as well as linked to a complex quasi-demonic deity named Kojin.
I won't go much further than I already have for this post, mostly to maintain to some sense of brevity for a Tumblr infodump. To round this out, though, I don't have that good an idea of why the chthonic powers are often tied to binding. But, if Odin and Saturn are any indication, maybe it's just a central part of the duality and polarity embodied by the chthonic realm, wherein the bondage of the chthonic powers is inseparable from a larger liberating power that, as I think Frater Archer said, is an essential part of the underworld, and the experience of mystery to which the underworld is central.
We’re officially one month into 2024! With that, our first event of the year has come to an end.
Housekeeping
Current Month in TOA: Horsebow Moon
Our mission board this month is for the Blue Lions house! Please refer to this post for a list of new tasks. Don't forget that you'll need a Blue Lions affiliated character in order to participate in any of the main mission tasks.
Information regarding how to claim your Apollyon Ouranos grand prizes can be found in this post [here].
While you're at it, don’t forget to leave feedback on our [feedback form] about your thoughts on the event (or otherwise)!
However, when submitting feedback on behalf of another person, please be sure that the other person wants you to submit feedback. Lately, when we've reached out to individuals that feedback allegedly affects, we have been told that there isn't a problem or that they're handling it themselves. For the record, we want our members to handle problems themselves first, and then call on the mods to enforce boundaries.
We would also like to remind everyone to read and reread both our server rules & official rules, especially if you haven't freshened up on them lately. We've received some feedback lately about behavior which may not fall under the umbrella of accepted community etiquette, but does not actually constitute breaking rules. This etiquette should not be referred to as a formal rule, and so there should be no expectation on the mod team to enforce it. There are no "hidden" rules. This is not to be confused with setting reasonable boundaries and having those boundaries encroached on. That in itself constitutes the breaking of a rule, and you should approach a mod about it.
Last month, we announced that we will begin requiring that everyone link skill point trackers to their stats pages. We will begin enforcing this rule on March 1st, so don't delay. This is ONLY to track skill points and will not replace your regular stats page. If you would like to use a template, we have several listed on our app page. You may also make your own, as long as it breaks down how many skill points you have and where you got them. If you need help figuring out your skill points, please reach out to Mod Rai.
Other
February Mun Birthdays: Oro (3rd), Mar (9th), Ari (15th), Kuja (18th), Squids (24th), Neku (24th)
February Muse Birthdays: F!Mark (1st), Nephenee (1st), Hilda (3rd), Leif (3rd), Python (5th), Kent (13th), Freyja (14th), Sain (14th), Alm (19th), Felix (20th), Knoll (22nd), Nyna (22nd), Celica (23rd), Nel (24th)
First-year mun anniversaries this month: Tcheschire (16th), Aria (26th)
Second-year mun anniversaries this month: Vergil (10th)
Fourth-year mun anniversaries this month: Ren (20th)
First-year muse anniversaries this month: Raven (16th)
Muses who have been in the group for a solid year will also be granted an Academy Brooch to put in their inventory. It doesn’t do anything. It just lets others know your character has been around the block. These characters are also granted a new opportunity to change houses if they wish to do so.
I actually love the way Hilda The Series tackles hierarchies.
The school’s mayor is an airhead and the one that really keeps things on track at the school is the teacher.
Elves have a Prime Minister and a King, but the real progress is achieved by a common citizen who decided he wanted to help. Even then, he was almost out out of a job when his word was declared untrustworthy without a proper evaluation.
The nightmare spirits will throw the newest members in harms’ way to get a chance to escape.
The most powerful and competent witch is an elderly woman, and the one you’re supposed to root for and sympathize with the most is one that is pushed around by her superiors, and both of them are strongly disliked by the aforementioned witches in charge.
The head of the Safety Patrol is a twat, and his second in command is clearly shown to be smarter and braver. Only not as smart and brave as a third member of the patrol, who we only see badmouthing and downright sabotaging the institution he works for.
The entire main plot hinges on the fact that the people with the most power seized a land that wasn’t theirs with no regard as to what harm was being caused.
Power structures, the way we know them, aren’t supposed to keep you safe. They’re supposed to keep you in line. The people on top of them aren’t there because they’re inherently better, more competent, more worthy at all. You owe this world your rebellion in the same way you owe it your kindness. I love this show.
At least in the what of au was Lauren ever in sparrow scouts and if yea did she like it/how’d she do etc
Yes! And she loved it! She was almost as good as Johanna, and maintains that the only reason she didn’t beat her badge count is because they moved to the wilderness before she could
I can’t remember if I’ve ever mentioned this but, she loves the sparrow scouts so much that she becomes a Raven Leader herself once they move back to Trolberg! She gets the job during The Tide Mice, that’s what her mouse helps her with. What prompts her to go for the job in the first place is in a new episode that comes before it that I only have a vague outline for.
Lauren being a Raven Leader is another thing that makes Hilda feel pressure to lie about having no badges, bc when she first said she wanted to get more badges than Johanna Lauren was very encouraging, because “hey, one of us has to!”. She doesn’t mean it seriously ofc, but Hilda doesn’t know that