#the website uses anglo-saxon though
Note
https://twitter.com/nonregemesse/status/1665090309636644866?t=Wam_pcFXnis0kcl45Kg2Uw&s=19
Welp even Brits can't escape this nonsense. Teaching at universities that an important part of England history isn't real to make it anti racist?? How is it anyway??
In general i think it's some false stereotypes that has to do with skin colour otherwise i don't know why people in Europe view parts of their history as racist (and i fear USA started it).
I saw it when you sent it to me but now the Twitter link seems to have been taken down, so I found the Telegraph article on Reddit (because it’s behind a paywall in their own website)
I would like to comment on your use of the word “even”. Western Europe has been way more submissive to the expansion of American wokeness and it has been a few years it largely inflicts itself on it. It is not like in the east, where this is still more like an external trend we try to resist to, it has largely been embraced there. Of course we are talking about the problematic, hugely toxic new movement that has lost all sense and respect for historical truth in its effort to establish equality and justice in the very special and one-sided way it alone understands it. I am obviously not talking about any well-based, founded and studied movements for inclusivity of all groups of people or the respect and support of their rights in our lifetimes, which is CRUCIAL.
Back to the article, apparently Anglo-Saxons did not exist according to the University of Cambridge and the reason behind their non-existence is an attempt to stop nationalistic sentiment of British-born people claiming an Anglo-Saxon ancestry, therefore suggesting they originate from tribes coming from North and Central Europe, and therefore being white by heritage. Of course the Anglo-Saxons are one of the historical groups that make the genetic make-up of the old Brits, not the original or the exclusive one. I don’t understand why Cambridge feels the need to lower its IQ by 100 points and self-inflict a blow in its reputation just to converse with the potential dimwits who might feel superior for may or may not having some part Anglo-Saxon descent (also how can this be proved anyway?). But this is the problem with wokeness: instead of rising intellectually above its opponents, it falls on their level, except from the other side. The results are laughably sad, like in this case.
On the other hand, maybe the article is sensationalising (or the University is exaggerating) the fact that the Anglo-Saxons were more of a cultural group that developed any sort of unity after establishing themselves for long in Britain and not prior to that. They usually landed there in large spans of time as small groups of people migrating from NC Europe without any particular ethnic unity and sense of identity. It’s not like a full blown nation called “Anglo-Saxons” landed there and took Britain by force. From the little reading I did anyway, I am not all that knowledgeable on English history, even though it is fascinating and I would love to learn more in the future.
In any case, it’s evident by its arguments that the University did this for political reasons and not for reasons of exhaustive historical accuracy. And again it’s a different thing to say Anglo-Saxons were not like what the nationalists paint them to be from saying they never existed at all.
In the Reddit thread, someone has reposted the whole article.
Also spot on Greek-relevant comment in this thread under the cut:
🙃
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Hi I’m very undereducated on sex (proudly working on fixing that though) and I definitely see what you mean about issues with consent and health in fic but what do you mean about positivity? Like is that in terms of like purity culture and shame or is there something else we should be looking for to know we’re reading a sex positive fic?
Hey buddy! Kudos on trying to educate yourself. There's no shame in not knowing more and wanting to learn.
Sex positivity primarily means focusing on consent, pleasure, education, and safety; actively fighting shame about sex in ourselves and in our society; and being inclusive of queer people and POC. It encompasses so much more than that, like fighting for legislation that protects bodily autonomy and supporting institutions that provide services for survivors of sexual violence. It is very intersectional for many reasons. For example, BIPOC are disproportionately affected by things like involuntary sterilizations, STIs, sexual violence, and poor health care. Making our communities, culture, legislation, and everyday lives more sex positive is liberating for all.
One of the things that makes finding sex positive fic in the Supernatural fandom so difficult is that, despite being created by a Jew, the show is just very WASP-y. White anglo-saxon protestant ideals about sex are extremely shameful, and rely on control and ignorance.
In Supernatural, there is a lot of casual sexual harassment that is never addressed, and women and people of color have very little autonomy.
The broadly accepted fanon interpretation of Dean is that he is a deeply repressed and ashamed queer person. I don't find this to be unlikely, considering his age (Gen Xer), location (American Midwest), and community (hunters, primarily middle-aged rural white men), but it does make for some very sex negative fanfic.
To get to your actual question, there is very little explicit consent in Supernatural fanfiction, and I think this is largely due to what I mentioned above in the last few paragraphs. Good, respectful, healthy sex relies on constant communication, consent beforehand and consent during. Sex in SPN fic is also usually very unsafe. STIs are spread through vaginal, anal, and oral sex. Something I see far too often in SPN fic is that the people having sex don't have a condom, so they forgo anal sex and just have oral sex. The notion that you can't get STIs through oral sex is misinformed and dangerous. Another thing I see often in SPN fic is the use of the word "clean" to mean "doesn't have STIs". Having an STI does not make a person dirty.
While I hope that people don't rely on Supernatural fanfiction, of all things, to educate them about sex, how we talk about sex matters. The art we make about sex matters. So, I encourage everyone to include more consent and safer sex practices, and less shame, in their SPN fic.
If you want to read about sex ed more, the Planned Parenthood website is a really good resource. You're also welcome to hit me up and ask for resources about specific stuff.
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Hi, love your metas!
When you did the math for how long it would take Aro longer to Jane and Alec, did you do it by human walking distance between Volterra, Italy and say, "London" (which didn't "exist" but I mean picking an arbitrary point on the island for the sake of reference), driving distance, or did you add up the square miles of these countries and the countries in between them to get the distance between Aro and the twins?
Apparently the Twilight Guide notes that "vampires can run in excess of a hundred miles per hour" under the section of "Abilities and Limitations". So basically 100 miles (and a little more) per hour. But then there is the fact they feed every two to three weeks, which would give some delays as well.
(Anon is referring to this post.)
As explained in the original post, I used a distance calculator (like this one - the one I used seems to have changed since last time I used it, so I'm linking this new one instead. They give the same distance: 1612 kilometres.) to calculate the distance between Volterra and London. It is my understanding the website gave me the air distance.
London, originally Londonium, was founded by the Romans in the first century BC (though that one was on again, off again as a local tribe overran the city shortly after and the Romans had to refound the city). There is evidence of settlers in the London area even before that, the oldest signs of settlement dating back to 4800-4500 BC (x).
With the fall of the Roman Empire, Londonium fell into a decline. In 500 AD the Anglo-Saxons developed a settlement there known as Lundenwic, a settlement that would prosper from the late 7th century until the Vikings started badgering them in the 9th century.
"Why is Vinelle babbling about Anglo-Saxons," you may wonder, well, Jane and Alec were Anglo-Saxons who lived during the 9th century. Even if they didn't live in Lundenwic, the geographical spread of Anglo-Saxons was still concentrated around Southern England (specifically where Essex, Wessex, and Sussex is now) at the start of the 9th century(map).
Now, Jane and Alec did live in a village so they didn't actually live in Lundenwic, but London is surrounded by villages even in the modern day. Major settlements usually are.
London is not an inappropriate choice for location for Jane and Alec for the purposes of that post, is what I'm saying.
As for the maths, I bend over backwards to adhere to canon, I really do. To me, there's just no point if I'm going to make up my own facts.
However, every now and then even I must say "ehh fuck that", and Meyer describing her vampires as gods and then turning around and making them slower than your average car is an example of that. (I'm also just burned from years as a Harry Potter fan trying to make sense of JKR's maths.)
The fact of the matter is, they can move faster than the human eye can perceive. The human eye can perceive 100 mph (160km/h) quite easily (please enjoy this Mythbusters video I found featuring a car going at that speed).
So... in an attempt to be nice with canon I will agree with the Guide, vampires can run in excess of 100mph. Very very in excess.
(That being said - even if Aro runs at 100 mph and not one mile faster, he still would only need 10 hours, give or take, to get from Volterra to wherever Jane and Alec were held. No need for food breaks.
If he decides to run the circumference of the Earth, that takes him 250 hours assuming a straight line. That's 10 days and a few hours. Assuming Aro fed before leaving, he (or any other hypothetical vampire doing this run) would not need any breaks.)
Point being, I stand by my original calculations.
(Which led to a theory I'm very pleased with because it's so derptastic: Twilight takes place in an alternate dimension where the Earth is bigger.)
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How I Discovered My Classic Chanel Belt
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Lammas/Lughnasadh Pagan Holiday
Lammas or Lughnasadh is a Pagan holiday celebrated on August 1st. It symbolizes the end of the summer period (yes, even though you may not want to hear that we are on our way to the end) and the beginning of magical fall.
The Lammas holiday is also closely connected to the harvest season.
It is traditionally believed that the period of Lammas celebration was very important in the religious communities, not only from the perspective of Pagan or Christian traditions but also due to its agricultural significance.
Lammas versus Lughnasadh. What Is The Difference?
First of all, let’s talk about terminology a bit.
Lammas comes from Anglo-Saxon hlaf-mas, "loaf-mass", therefore also known as Loaf Mass Day and it is a Christian holiday.
The celebration of this holiday by the Christian community is in part similar to what we will be discussing later. The holiday signifies a period of being blessed by the first gifts of the harvest season. The wheat collected is often used to make the Lammas bread that would later be brought to church for a blessing.
Lughnasadh or Lughnasa is the name used by the “Neopagan” community and just as Lammas, marks the beginning of the harvest period. It is the time when we are grateful for the abundance of the Mother Earth.
How to pronounce Lughnasadh?
The term Lughnasadh comes from the Irish spelling of the word. The Modern way of Irish pronunciation is Lúnasa and pronounced Loo-nuh-suh. The Classical pronunciation is /’luɣ.nə.səð/ like LUGH-nuh-sudh (where “gh” is pronounced as i a word "give" and the “dh” is like the “th” in “that”.) It is probably the most correct pronunciation of Lughnasadh, as Lugh or Lug is the God from Irish mythology and the one this holiday is dedicated to at the first place.
How Lammas Originated?
Lammas came from a desire of people to thank and celebrate the “father” Sun and the Mother Earth for the fruits of their “love” - the harvest.
To bless the marriage of God and Goddess and ask for a buy dance and prosperity in the upcoming months.
It was considered that August 1st marks the first day of fall. And on August 2nd it was already the time to pick up the harvest and so the days of hunger and need would we over.
The holiday was widely celebrated in:
Ireland: the name Lughnasadh comes from the Irish God Lugh and is translated at “the marriage of Lugh.
Scotland
Isle of Man
In Slavic countries (called “medovyi spas”)
Let’s Talk More About The Harvest.
When we hear “Lammas”, we often think about the period of harvest right away. It is the most talked about moment of Lammas or Lughnasadh but we need to truly understand what stands behind the concept of harvest.
If you are a careful reader, you have noticed I specifically say the beginning of harvest. I also want to explain more what I mean by the time of being grateful.
You see, Lammas is the day of the beginning of the harvest period and NOT the time when we are assessing the outcome and are drawing conclusions of how successful we’ve been (there will be another holiday dedicated to this, called Mabon).
But the first day of harvest is the time when the quality of life changes. It is the time when it becomes predictable what expectations we can have and taste the first ripe fruits.
Simply put, it is the moment when something you worked so hard on, finally becomes tangible and it also becomes YOURS.
A skill you were developing is almost acquired but not to the point when it becomes a reflex. The investments you’ve made are starting to produce some cash flow but still need your attention.
You also need to understand that it is not possible to continuously perfect something or wait for an opportune moment. At some point, you need to release into the world what you have the way it is and improve things on the go.
Where am I going with this philosophical deviation, you probably are wondering…
This is what Lammas period really is about. It is the time when we transition from preparation to action.
What does it mean for you in real life situation?
Lammas gives you are opportunity of the perfect time to do something you were afraid of doing.
It may be that you were working on a website for your very own blog but we’re too afraid to press that “publish” button, thinking it is not perfect yet.
Or you may have been writing a book but haven’t started to search for a publisher, changing and tweaking things in an attempt for it to be perfect.
You may have been doing research for a new job you always wanted or university program you wanted to apply for but haven’t felt ready to finally made the move and submit an application.
Do you see the pattern?
Lammas is the time when you were ALREADY in the process of doing something but haven’t had the energy for the final step. And this period of the first week of August is for you to pull yourself together and make the move.
And when Mabon comes, we will be assessing the results of our actions.
"Can I celebrate Lughnasadh if I’m not pagan?"
First of all, like I mentioned in my other Blog posts related to the Wheel of the Year, you don’t need to be Pagan to celebrate or acknowledge Wheel of the Year holidays.
RELATED: What Is Pagan Wheel of the Year and How to Celebrate It? Beginner Pagan's Guide
You need to be aware of the existence of the energy of the Mother Earth, it’s changes and shifts and how this affects our lives.
So, What Can You Do To Celebrate Lughnasadh/Lammas?
Lammas/Lughnasadh Traditions and Rituals
Do Some Lammas Divination Work
The period from July 31st to August 6th is the perfect time for divination work. Tarot, Runes and oracles will provide with great messages, especially in career/money (material) and love questions (especially compatibility related).
Don’t forget to show gratitude to the Universe and Mother Earth. It is important to maintain the energy exchange, at the very least with the well known gratitude and love practices.
Show gratitude towards others too, don’t forget to show acknowledgment and say “thank you”.
Make Lammas Bread
During this period, it is the great time to infuse your food and drinks with the energy of love and gratitude, as well as thank the Source and the Planet for its generosity. Of course, the best way to celebrate this holidays is to make Lammas bread. I am giving you this quick bread recipe that does not require a lot of products or special skills
Lammas Abundance Bread Recipe
For this little Ritual you will need to make (not buy!) corn bread.
Lammas Bread Ingredients:
1 1/2 cup of corn flour
1 1/2 cup wheat flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 cup of sugar 2 tbs of cooled down melted butter
4 cups of milk
2 tsp of baking powder
Instructions:
Mix flour and salt together in a deep bowl.In a separate bowl with milk add baking powder; then add sugar and butter.Mix all the ingredients together in one bowl until the consistency is that of a sour cream. It will not be similar to regular bread dough you may be making at home.
*While you are mixing, talk into the bowl anything you want to accomplish that is related to the abundance. Whatever the abundance means to YOU. It does not have to be financial. Maybe you will feel abundant and complete when you have a large family. Then go for it.
Pour the Lammas bread dough into a baking dish (don't forget to butter the dish). Bake for about 40-50 minutes at 360 degrees F.When the colour is nice and golden, take the bread out and let it cool.
When you sit down for a meal, break off (not cut) a large piece of Lammas bread and say: "Large piece of bread in my hand will bring me abundance and plenty." Don’t forget to share your food with the Gods (leave some bread in nature, the way you see fit and depending on the type of deity you are working with.)
Lughnasadh Home Blessing and Abundance Ritual
This ritual can be done during the same time as you are making your Lammas bread.
It is done to invite luck and abundance into your home. BUT. You can change your intent to protection, if you’d like.
All you need to do is to set aside some dough when you are making it for your break and create a figure of an animal. My personal suggestion is to select a farm animal due to the nature of the energy of this holiday.
When you are done, you will need to follow basic figure talisman activation steps. I have adapted the suggestions of Vadim Zeland for this.
*If you are interested in who Vadim Zeland is, click here to read more about him. His book Reality Transurfing has changed my life forever.
Animal activation steps:
Come up with a name for your animal
Take a deep breath. Now breathe into the animal, imagining giving it energy and life.
Tell the animal its name. Tell it that you love and care for it and, in exchange, it's helping you with (whatever you want to ask for).
Place the animal anywhere in the house, depending on the task you give it.
Don't forget to revisit daily and remind the animal of your love and the important task it is doing for you.
Don’t forget to check out complete Blog Post on my website for more information on Lammas traditions, as well as my other Blog posts on Pagan holidays, Rune Meanings and more.
#lammas#lughnasadh#wheel of the year#pagan#paganism#baby wiccan#baby witch#witches#witchlife#witch lady#witchy#witch#wiccapedia#beginner wiccan#wicca#pagan wicca
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Cunning Linguists Author Interview: Ollie Fox
Property of Damien ♥, she writes on my arm, in blue, to see how long the markers last. The felt doesn’t tickle like I’d expected. It’s just a smooth, gentle pressure, with a hint of sharpness when she presses down. It feels like it’s scratching an itch I didn’t know was there.
-from “Written” in Cunning Linguists
Ollie Fox is an American writer and creator of The Queer Earthling, where they write sex toy reviews, erotica, advice, and real-life stories. Ollie, who is nonbinary and on the asexual spectrum, is passionate about showing the world that sexuality and relationships don’t have to look like anyone else’s to be joyful and fulfilling, and that sex positivity and inclusiveness go hand in hand.
What inspired you to write this story?
“Written” was a nonfiction piece I wrote about my experiences with body writing, initially published on my blog in 2019. It’s one of those stories that just tumbled out of my fingers, wanting to be written, inspired by kink, mental health, and my love for the written word; I also really enjoyed the anachronistic order and exploring my relationship to all those things at different ages. (I would note that it uses she/her pronouns for my spouse, which is what they used at the time; they do not any longer, but they encouraged me to leave their old pronouns even for this collection, as it reflects our reality at the time it was written.)
When did you start writing about sex? What are some of the challenges and benefits you’ve discovered?
I formally started writing about sex—and, specifically, my relationship—in 2019, initially as a standalone article on a website before launching my blog, Queer Earthling. My spouse and I are both a-spectrum and trans nonbinary (although at the time I didn’t know I was either of those things) and live a nonsexual kink lifestyle. I didn’t see many sex blogs or sex content that included relationships like ours or even acknowledged that folks like us were out there. I initially just wanted to write about how people could connect in intimate, but not traditionally sexual ways; it ballooned into writing personal anecdotes, sex toy reviews, contemplation of identity, kink guides, and—of course—erotica.
I still love writing about sex and relationships, but it can be hard to maintain a blog, keep a regular posting schedule, and balance what I want to share with the world and what I want to keep private, to say nothing of the discouragement I feel sometimes in the current political climate. However, even though I’m less prolific than I was when I began my blog, I am really proud of the work I’ve produced. I’m overjoyed whenever I hear people reach out to tell me if they find it relatable or even helpful, and participating in the wider sex-positive and queer community has been so rewarding.
What’s your favorite sexy word? Is there a word you really like that has an unfair bad reputation?
I’m a huge fan of the word “cunt” lately, when used to actually describe a vagina (rather than as a derogatory term for a human). It’s less clinical without being euphemistic, its single-syllable Anglo-Saxon simplicity makes it nice and punchy in either erotic writing or dirty talk, and its bad reputation can make it feel extra sexy when used without malice.
Cunning Linguists comes out May 18th, 2022! This anthology of language, literature, and lechery is available at
Gumroad (use coupon code NEWSMUTPROJECTFAN for $1 off)
Amazon.com Amazon.co.uk Amazon.ca Amazon.de Amazon.fr Amazon.es Amazon.com.mx Amazon.co.jp Amazon.it Amazon.nl Amazon.com.br Amazon.com.au Amazon.in
Smashwords
Support indie bookstores when you buy a paperback copy through Bookshop.org
Barnes and Noble
Indiebound (where you can arrange to get a copy through your local bookstore)
Book Depository
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Other retailers – Books2Read
And add it to your shelf on Goodreads and LibraryThing
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Divination Basics
From the Roman priest reading auguries to interpret the will of the gods to the modern fortune teller reading with a deck of playing cards, divination has been a part of human spirituality for thousands of years. Today, divination is an important part of many witches’ practices, and can be an important tool for self-reflection and analysis.
Merriam-Webster defines divination as, “the art or practice that seeks to foresee or foretell future events or discover hidden knowledge usually by the interpretation of omens or by the aid of supernatural powers.” Divination can be used for many things, not just to predict the future. It can be used to understand the past, identify patterns at work in your present, or as a tool for working through trauma.
In the book You Are Magical, author Tess Whitehurst describes divination as, “a way of bypassing your linear, thinking mind and accessing the current of divine wisdom and your own inner knowing.” As I’ve discussed in a previous post, all of us are receiving psychic information all the time, though many of us don’t realize it. Divination tools like tarot cards or rune stones act as triggers to help kickstart our natural psychic gifts.
Divination relies on the use of our intuition. Intuition is defined my Merriam-Webster as, “the power or faculty of attaining to direct knowledge or cognition without evident rational thought and inference.” These are the things you know without needing to be told. Another way of thinking of it is this: your intuition is the way you interpret the information you receive through your psychic senses.
The most important thing to remember when doing divination is that the tool you are using isn’t giving you information — it’s simply helping you to access information you already know. The revelations come from you, not from the cards or whatever other tool you may be using.
When using divination to foresee the future, it’s important to remember that the future is never set in stone. These tools can only show you the most likely outcome based on your current direction.
Beginner-Friendly Divination Tools
These are the divination methods I would recommend for beginners. For one thing, most of these systems are fairly easy to learn and use. For another, these are some of the most popular divination methods among modern witches, so it’s easy to find information about them and/or talk to other practitioners about their experience.
As you’ll see, each divination method has its own strengths and weaknesses, so you may choose to learn several methods that you can combine to get stronger readings. Or you may find that you can get all the information you need from a single method, which is also okay.
Tarot. This is my personal favorite divination method, but it’s also the one with the most misconceptions surrounding it. Tarot cards do not open a portal to the spirit world, and they probably didn’t originate in Ancient Egypt. In fact, evidence suggests that the tarot comes from a medieval Italian card game called Tarocchi, although the modern tarot deck as we know it didn’t come around until the 20th century. Tarot cards are not any more or less supernatural than ordinary playing cards. (Which, incidentally, can also be used for divination.)
Tarot makes use of archetypes, and many readers interpret the cards as a map of an archetypal spiritual journey. For this reason, tarot cards are especially useful for identifying the underlying patterns and hidden influences in any given situation.
Most tarot decks follow the same set of basic symbolism. Unfortunately, this does mean that new readers will need to study the accepted meanings. This isn’t to say that your readings will always match up 100% with the standard meanings of the cards — you may receive intuitive messages that deviate from tradition. Still, it’s helpful to know a little of the history and traditional symbolism behind this powerful divination tool. The good news is that, since most decks use similar symbolism, once you learn the traditional meanings you can successfully read with almost any tarot deck.
I’m planning to post a more in-depth introduction to tarot very soon, but in the meantime, if you want to learn this divination method I recommend starting with the book Tarot For Beginners by Lisa Chamberlain and/or with the website Biddy Tarot.
Oracle Cards. Oracle cards have been rapidly gaining popularity in the witchcraft and New Age communities in the last few years, and it’s easy to see why. One major appeal of oracle cards is how diverse they are — there are countless different oracle decks out there, each with its own theme and symbolism. Another big plus is how beginner-friendly they are; Oracle cards are usually read intuitively, so most decks won’t require you to learn a complex system of symbolism. (Of course, the fact that every oracle deck uses different symbolism can be frustrating for some readers, because they have to learn a new set of symbols for every deck.)
Some readers (myself included) also find that oracle cards usually give more surface level information. Tess Whitehurst says that, “While oracle cards can help us answer the questions ‘What direction should I take?’ and ‘What is the lesson here?’ tarot cards are more suited to helping us answer the questions ‘What is going on?’ and ‘What is the underlying pattern at work here?'” For this reason, many readers choose to use tarot and oracle cards together to get a more well-rounded look at the situation.
Another common complaint about oracle cards is that many decks are overwhelmingly positive and shy away from dark themes or imagery, which creates an imbalanced reading experience. I think this is best summed up by one Amazon review for the Work Your Light Oracle, which says: “Basically, this is very much a deck for Nice White Ladies(TM) who like crystals and candles but aren’t ‘super into all that witchy stuff.'”
There ARE oracle decks out there that address darker themes, but many of the most popular decks on the market are overwhelmingly positive. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes a little positive encouragement is more helpful than brutal honesty. However, too much focus on the positive can lead you to ignore your problems, which only makes things worse in the long run. For this reason, finding balanced decks is important — if you’re going to use a very shiny happy deck, my advice would be to alternate it with more grounded decks, or with a deck specifically designed for shadow work.
That being said, oracle cards are a great divination tool if you can find a good deck, especially for beginners who are intimidated by more structured systems like tarot and the runes. If you’re interested in working with oracle cards, the best way to start is to find a deck that 1.) you feel a strong attraction to, and 2.) has a good guidebook. (My favorite oracle deck is the Halloween Oracle by Stacey Demarco, which I use for readings all year.)
Runes. The Elder Futhark alphabet is a runic alphabet that originated in ancient Scandinavia around 200 AD. While this was an actual writing system, it also had magical and mythological associations in the cultures that originally used it. While using the runes for divination is a modern practice, it is based on the historical sense of magic surrounding these symbols.
Like tarot, the runes have a traditional set of meanings. However, because there are only twenty-four runes, there aren’t as many meanings to learn as there are with tarot. Some rune sets also contain a blank stone, which has its own special meaning. I have personally found the runes to be a great source of wisdom and insight, although they do tend towards “big picture” messages rather than small details.
However, there is one major stain on the runes’ history; they were studied and used by Nazi occultists before and during World War II. Like many symbols associated with historical Germanic paganism, the runes were appropriated as part of Nazi propaganda — for example, the Sowilo rune was incorporated into the SS logo. This isn’t to say that you can’t reclaim the Elder Futhark alphabet, but I do think it’s important to know the history going in. Because of their association with Nazism, it’s best to avoid wearing or publicly displaying the runes.
There are other ancient alphabets that are used for divination, like the Anglo-Saxon runes or the Irish Ogham, but the Elder Futhark is the most popular.
If you’re interested in learning divination with runes, I recommend the book Pagan Portals: Runes by Kylie Holmes.
Pendulums. Pendulums are interesting because, unlike tarot, oracle cards, and runes, they can be used to answer yes or no questions. For this reason, many readers use pendulums to get clarification on readings they’ve done with other divination methods, but you can also use pendulums on their own.
A pendulum is any small, weighted object hanging from a chain or string. You can buy a pendulum made specifically for divination from a metaphysical shop or an Etsy seller, but you can just as easily use something you already have: a necklace, your housekey, or a small rock or crystal tied to a string.
Pendulums may be the easiest divination method to learn. The only thing you need to do to learn how to interpret a pendulum is ask it what its “yes” and “no” motions look like. To do this, simply hold your pendulum in your hands and focus on your connection to it. Then, let the pendulum hang from its chain or string so it can swing freely. Say or think, “Show me ‘yes’.” Allow the pendulum to swing, and pay attention to its movements. “Yes” is often a forwards-and-backwards swing or a clockwise circle, but your “yes” may look different. (Some witches even notice that different pendulums in their collection have different “yes” and “no” movements!) Once you’ve gotten the pendulum to show you its “yes,” ask it to show you its “no.” For many readers, “no” is a side-to-side swing or a counterclockwise circle, but again, yours may be different.
The biggest downside to pendulums is that because they typically only answer “yes” or “no,” you have to be very specific with your questions. Pendulums aren’t the best tool for general energy readings or open-ended advice. However, that specificity makes them great for validating your gut feelings, interpreting your dreams, identifying a deity or spirit that you think may be reaching out to you, or any other situation that requires a little clarification.
#baby witch bootcamp#long post#baby witch#witch#witchcraft#witchblr#divination#divination witch#tarot#tarot cards#tarot meme#oracle cards#runes#runestones#elder futhark#pendulum#fortune teller#psychic#intuition#intuitive#pagan#pagan witch#christian witch#heathen#norse paganism#my writing#mine
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Now then. Hope you're doing well.
This ask is about runes in general, more specifically the Rune Poems and Havamal, so it's a 2 parter really.
I was wondering what purpose the Rune Poems originally served. Reading the translations of them, they don't, to me at least, seem to be a guide for magic or divination like some people claim. They're just poems, in the same way that a poem I write about autumn, as an example, is just a poem with no hidden meaning or message to be searched for. However, I feel I could be wrong in my assessment, so would like clarification if possible.
Also, I've seen mention in Facebook groups and in other websites and forums of Havamal being evidence for runic magic and divination, with each of the 18 charms in Havamal linked to a primary and supporting rune though from what I've read in the translations, such as the first charm being linked to Fé/Féhu, I struggle to see the connection. Is there something I'm missing or is it people just trying to make justifications for their own UPG?
Looking forward to your response, and thank you for taking the time to answer to my questions and queries.
It's really not clear what the purpose(s) of the poems were, and this is something that's debated consistently. They probably all worked in one way or another as memory aids, whether or not that was the primary purpose. It's also likely that they shouldn't all be explained the same way. Arguments have been made that the Old English Rune Poem was used in a sort of meditative introspection, and Marijane Osborne has even argued that that rune poem in particular actually could have been used for divination. If you're interested in more on the Old English runes in particular and how the people who used them thought of them, I highly recommend Runes and Roman Letters in Anglo-Saxon Manuscripts by Victoria Symons, a book I've only discovered recently but which will surely feature in my recommendations for runic studies in the future.
For the Norwegian rune poem, there is a speculative but interesting idea that the second line in each stanza was meant as a mnemonic for the actual shape of the rune. It's kind of a stretch for some of them, but they had to work with what they had. One where it's very believable is the m-rune ᛘ:
Maðr er moldar auki;
mikill er græip á hauki.
Man is increase of humus;
great is the grip of a hawk.
So by this theory, the shape ᛘ is compared to a hawk's talon to help remember how to draw it and identify it.
With the Icelandic poem it basically all goes back to those kennings that we keep talking about. The "poem" can be generated and re-generated on the fly by choosing kennings that happen to fit the metre, and in fact there actually is no single Icelandic rune poem. The earliest examples are too different from each other to assume that there was an original, and instead it's only explainable if they did recompile it on the fly from these kennings. That isn't to say that the entire corpus of them was already available in the 13th century when we see the first use of rune kennings to encode a message but presumably there were either more than three for each rune already then, or there wasn't even a set list at all and they were invented by the poet like any other kenning, some of which fossilized into the collections of kennings that appear later.
You're more right than you know about Hávamál. The idea that the ljóðatal ('song-tally') portion of Hávamál has to do with runes comes from Guido List's 18-rune Armanen futhork and is a bunch of bullshit. List either invented ("had revealed to him") a system of 18 runes and then had to cherry-pick whatever evidence he could to support the idea that it was genuinely pre-modern, or he found this part of the poem first and then made up a system around it. Hávamál does mention runes in connection to things other than "mundane" writing (see stanzas 80, 137, 142-3, and even 157 which is one of the 'song' stanzas, so explicitly about runes that it highlights the absence of runes from the others) but there's no evidence for mapping those stanzas to runes systematically.
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RE the Anglo-Saxon thing... All this discussion hinges on the idea that the university is "surrendering" the term Anglo-Saxon to American racists. It isn't at all. In reality the department still uses the term like they used to, they just added a bit to the syllabus exploring how the term has been used in different ways. Their website is still covered with the term Anglo-Saxon. So I really don't think it's a big deal like the Telegraph wants it to be. At worst, it's a tiny smidgeon of useless pandering that barely affects the course itself. Anyway, that's just my opinion on it. People are free to disagree.
Ah guys, here’s the thing. I have received mail regarding this topic that offer opposite reports. I appreciate everyone’s insight, which is why I have answered them with the intent to believe and agree.
The thing is that I neither study in Cambridge nor live in the UK, therefore by default I can not form a first-hand opinion of my own, so this is making this a ping pong mail posting which eventually distracts from the theme of the blog without landing anywhere in particular. I suppose it is time to put the topic to rest, at least until there is more solid press information about it.
Just as a last note from me, right-wing inclining media might have made this a bigger issue than it is and the university’s intent might have been misunderstood, either on purpose or not. You certainly have a point that at least at its website, Cambridge still uses the term in the title and the description of its course.
On the other hand, I don’t know how the topic is explored in the very courses and it is a fact that there are raised concerns by people who have studied there. It also seems that many Western European countries internalise problematic woke criticism (not talking about historically accurate strict and unbiased examination of the past), and they have embraced a trend of historical revisionism as easily perceived in at least their entertainment industry. If it is so, I wouldn’t find it hard to believe that a university which values its prestige very highly would like to keep up with what is trending in an effort to earn respect from the loudest voices at the moment (even if they are not the sanest).
But again I have no personal insight so I can’t know which one I lean towards more and I am becoming more and more indecisive the more mail about it I receive. Thank you all for your inputs though.
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how do you read dense and dry books and take in the info presented? i’m trying to get into reading more theory and my mind wanders sooo easily. and even when i do get through a book i feel like i retain so little
long and hopefully encouraging
your focus will develop. at the beginning you wrestle with every sentence, but you'll grow at it. you'll become more familiar with the kinds of arguments people make, and the more you read the more you'll recognize, the more that will feel familliar. this rhetorical language varies by time and place (so reading Schlegel feels a bit like reading Hegel, though they couldn't be more different thinkers), but you also won't be surprised to find similar devices used by very dissimilar authors, for example, Shen Dao and Plutarch can be similar, though when they lived neither was even aware of the other's country. and once you develop that background of familiarity you'll start to read not just where you are, but 'ahead', saying, 'i see where he's going with this', and you'll be able to compare it to how others have tackled the same problem, and you'll find that satisfying.
so if you are new to reading boring old books and have this problem, my advice is to read as much as you like, and only that much, and with as little discipline as possible. read what interests you, which you will naturally read with enthusiasm because you are interested in it. when you get bored read something else. you are like Horace's young boy who "alters by the hour", or young man who is "spirited, passionate, and swift to change his whim." there is time later to be his mature man, "wary of doing what they may soon labour to change." for myself, i have not ever read a work of theory or history all the way from start to finish. i'm trying to do that now, seven years in, but if i end up saying 'alright, i get the picture' and going on to the next thing before seeing the backmatter i won't be surprised. papers are better than books because they are shorter, and poems, the shortest, are best of all. "in drinking the question is how deeply?"
and as you travel through many books, staying only a night or two in every one, you will encounter the same problems over and over again, and these you will naturally desire to solve. this is the next step. your intellectual development has nothing whatsoever to do with the number of books you've suffered through, but which problems you have discovered, and how you work on their solution. so for myself, i started off having arguments on this website about eg. the existence of trans women in history, and to answer the problems of that debate i had to go and read books about history. and i read them in a polemical way, looking for exactly what i was looking for, coming to them with problems in mind, knowing which words to ctrl+f, reading as little as possible before getting back to win the argument. but the more i did that the more frustrated i became with my lack of knowledge of history, because i couldn't dispute any claim i read and the whole matter was mysterious to me. things were true because so-and-so said it, but what if they disagreed? so i had to sit down and learn the discipline, which is when i settled down on medieval England and so on, naturally specializing a little, and learning how to deal with historical evidence. now instead of saying 'the Anglo-Saxons had this word, which Fulk says means this...' i'm saying, 'Theodore uses this word, in this way, yet he was writing in this ecclesiastical context with this relationship to the rest of society...' and so forth, situating whatever i read. and a year or so after that i started to learn Old English, and i've stuck with it, where i never managed to learn a language before, because every day i would wake up and curse the fact that i don't know it yet, and waste a lot of time every day trying to find what someone else said about something i could read myself if only i knew how.
but anyway, there are some things you can do to help yourself. taking notes is good. i said before it took me perhaps six years to learn to take good notes, so don't expect it to work well right away, but maybe you can learn from my mistakes. i wrote about note-taking here, giving an example about how i used to take notes and how i take notes now. the purpose of taking notes is that your notebook will remember while you forget. all you need to remember is that 'i read something about this once before...', and hopefully remember where, and then you can go ctrl+f your notes, and find the page number, and now you can use that material in whatever you're doing. if you keep simple notes you only need to remember the most vague details of any paper for reading it to be useful to you.
the second good habit is to get a subject encyclopedia! i won't read anything without having at least one on hand. for medieval England i have the Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Anglo-Saxon England, for philosophy i have the Oxford Companion to Philosophy, for example. this way if you ever find something unfamilliar you can get a quick explanation of what it is, while if you want to know what has been said about a subject before you can find a quick list of references to get you started. if you're reading anything in another language these things are indispensible. i've written about using them here.
the third good habit is anki—the memory machine! this is why i have been able to learn OE effectively. you can't only use anki, and you have to use anki well (as Bjornstad puts it, anki is your partner), but just like i say i can divide my learning into pre-sci-hub and post-sci-hub, i can divide my learning into pre-anki and post-anki. mostly i've just used it for language, but this week i started using it for philosophy. it's too soon to say i guess, but it's felt helpful. how i'll use it is take little parts from my notes that seem helpful to actually remember (rather than chaff), and i'll make simple cards out of it. then i'll see those cards every so often for the rest of my life and i'll always remember their answers. so for example, Clatterbaugh's book on the Causation Debate is the one i've been ankifying. and he writes in this funny way, where it's almost like he's expecting you to make anki cards (or perhaps he was actually thinking about flashcards; they are an old way to learn and he was a professor). he'll say, 'the causation debate had three main arenas...' so i'll make a card that says: 'Clatterbaugh 1999, what are the three main arenas of the causation debate?' and the simple answer is '1. the interaction of bodies, 2. the mind-body problem, 3. the relationship between God and his creations.' and now if i ever go and read Spinoza or something and i see him talking about bodies (which he sure does), i can say 'ah, this is one of the arenas of the causation debate...' and i'll know what to listen for. then i can make some cards about how Spinoza approaches that problem, and so forth. i believe this will be helpful to actually memorize. but only put something into Anki if it's more useful in your brain than in your notes, otherwise you're just wasting your time.
hope that helps...
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Explore Every Stitch of the Famed Bayeux Tapestry Online
https://sciencespies.com/history/explore-every-stitch-of-the-famed-bayeux-tapestry-online/
Explore Every Stitch of the Famed Bayeux Tapestry Online
Since the Bayeux Tapestry’s rediscovery in the 18th century, scholars have painstakingly cataloged the 224-foot-long embroidered cloth’s contents. Today, they know that the medieval masterpiece features 626 humans, 37 buildings (including the Mont-Saint-Michel monastery), 41 ships, and 202 horses and mules, among many other objects.
Thanks to a newly debuted, high-resolution version of the tapestry created by the Bayeux Museum in Normandy, France, anyone with an internet connection can now follow in these researchers’ footsteps, reports the Associated Press (AP).
Though the work is widely known as a tapestry, it technically counts as a work of embroidery. Popular myth holds that Queen Matilda of England and her ladies-in-waiting embroidered the sweeping tableaux, but historians don’t actually know who created it, per the Bayeux Museum’s website.
In 75 chronological episodes, each titled with a Latin phrase, the tapestry depicts the struggle for power between William, Duke of Normandy, and Harold Godwinson, England’s last Anglo-Saxon king. The scenes concludes with William’s successful invasion of England in 1066, which earned him the nickname “William the Conqueror.” According to the museum, the illustrations depict William in a favorable light and would have served as a record of events—as well as propaganda—for the successful ruler.
As art historian Kristine Tanton writes for Khan Academy, the tapestry’s scenes are arranged in three horizontal zones, with the main events in the middle. The upper and lower zones depict husbandry, hunting and scenes from Aesop’s Fables that relate to the central action.
A group of Norman soldiers hold their first meal in England after arriving. In the center, Bishop Odo gazes at the viewer while blessing a cup in his hand.
(Bayeux Museum)
Harold, center, was crowned king of England in January 1066. He died in battle against William in October of that same year. The Bayeux Tapestry depicts Harold dying of an arrow through the eye—a symbol of divine fate.
(Bayeux Museum)
Panel 32 features the first known depiction of Halley’s Comet and the text “These men marvel at the star.”
(Bayeux Museum)
Throughout, Tanton notes, the “embroiderers’ attention to specific details provides important sources for scenes of [11th]-century life as well as objects that no longer survive.”
Scenes of a banquet, for instance, give historians crucial information about Norman dining practices, while battle scenes illuminate the types of military equipment and armor that soldiers would have worn in the 11th century.
The artisans who created the tapestry used ten colors of dyed wool thread and four types of embroidery stitches. In the high-resolution online version, viewers can zoom in on areas that have faded or grown discolored over the years. Interestingly, notes Cailey Rizzo for Travel + Leisure, the tapestry’s 19th-century restorations have faded more than the original colors and are now “almost … white.” As the AP reports, the tapestry’s curators plan to undertake a major renovation in 2024 aimed at fixing the wear and tear in the work’s weave.
Odo de Conteville, bishop of Bayeux and William the Conqueror’s half-brother, likely commissioned the work around 1070, either to decorate his home or to hang in the nave of the newly constructed cathedral of Notre-Dame of Bayeux. The tapestry was rediscovered by scholars in 1729 and has hung in a dedicated museum in Normandy since 1983.
“Such narrative hangings, occasionally put on display for all the faithful to see, were not just intended to decorate churches,” the museum notes on its website.
Instead, the museum adds, tapestries such as these “told stories that the people of the time, the majority illiterate, could follow. As with the Bayeux Tapestry, they could become a piece of propaganda for a victorious conquest.”
#History
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Is This a Remake of the 1941 Hitler Stalin Great War?
If we step back from the details of daily headlines around the world and try to make sense of larger patterns, the dominant dynamic defining world geopolitics in the past three years or more is the appearance of a genuine irregular conflict between the two most formidable powers on the planet—The Peoples’ Republic of China and the United States of America. Increasingly it’s beginning to look as if some very dark global networks are orchestrating what looks to be an updated rerun of their 1939-1945 World War. Only this time the stakes are total, and aim at creation a universal global totalitarian system, what David Rockefeller once called a “one world government.” The powers that be periodically use war to gain major policy shifts.
On behalf of the Powers That Be (PTB), World War II was orchestrated by the circles of the City of London and of Wall Street to maneuver two great obstacles—Russia and Germany—to wage a war to the death against each other, in order that those Anglo-Saxon PTB could reorganize the world geopolitical chess board to their advantage. It largely succeeded, but for the small detail that after 1945, Wall Street and the Rockefeller brothers were determined that England play the junior partner to Washington. London and Washington then entered the period of their global domination known as the Cold War.
That Anglo-American global condominium ended, by design, in 1989 with the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the disintegration of the Soviet Union by 1991.
Around this time, with the onset of the Bill Clinton presidency in 1992, the next phase– financial and industrial globalization– was inaugurated. With that, began the hollowing out of the industrial base of not only the United States, but also of Germany and the EU. The cheap labor outsourcing enabled by the new WTO drove wages down and destroyed one industry after the next in the industrial West after the 1990s. It was a necessary step on the path to what G.H.W. Bush in 1990 called the New World Order. The next step would be destruction of national sovereignty everywhere. Here the USA was the major obstacle.
“A little help from our friends…”
For the PTB, who owe no allegiance to nations, only to their power which is across borders, the birth of the World Trade Organization and their bringing China in as a full member in 2001 was intended as the key next step. At that point the PTB facilitated in China the greatest industrial growth by any nation in history, possibly excepting Germany from 1871-1914 and USA after 1866. WTO membership allowed Western multinationals from Apple to Nike to KFC to Ford and VW to pour billions into China to make their products at dirt-cheap wage levels for re-export to the West.
One of the great mysteries of that China growth is the fact that China was allowed to become the “workshop of the world” after 2001, first in lower-skill industries such as textiles or toys, later in pharmaceuticals and most recently in electronics assembly and production. The mystery clears up when we look at the idea that the PTB and their financial houses, using China, want to weaken strong industrial powers, especially the United States, to push their global agenda. Brzezinski often wrote that the nation state was to be eliminated, as did his patron, David Rockefeller. By allowing China to become a rival to Washington in economy and increasingly in technology, they created the means to destroy the superpower hegemony of the US.
By the onset of the Presidency of Xi Jinping in 2012, China was an economic colossus second in weight only to the United States. Clearly this could never have happened–not under the eye of the same Anglo-American old families who launched the Opium Wars after 1840 to bring China to heel and open their economy to Western financial looting–unless the Anglo-Americans had wanted it.
The same British-owned bank involved in the China opium trade, Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank (HSBC), founded by a Scotsman, Thomas Sutherland in 1865 in the then-British colony of Hong Kong, today is the largest non-Chinese bank in Hong Kong. HSBC has become so well-connected to China in recent years that it has since 2011 had as Board member and Deputy HSBC Chairman, Laura Cha. Cha was formerly Vice Chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, being the first person outside mainland China to join the Beijing Central Government of the People’s Republic of China at vice-ministerial rank. In other words the largest bank in the UK has a board member who was a member of the Chinese Communist Party and a China government official. China needed access to Western money and HSBC and other select banks such as JP MorganChase, Barclays, Goldman Sachs were clearly more than happy to assist.
“Socialism with Xi Jinping Characteristics…”
All told until 2012 when Xi took charge of the CCP in Beijing, China seemed to be willing to be a globalist “team player,” though with “Chinese characteristics.” However, in 2015 after little more than two years in office, Xi Jinping endorsed a comprehensive national industrial strategy, Made in China: 2025. China 2025 replaced an earlier Western globalist document that had been formulated with the World Bank and the USA, the China 2030 report under Robert Zoellick. That shift to a China strategy for global tech domination might well have triggered a decision by the globalist PTB that China could no longer be relied on to play by the rules of the globalists, but rather that the CCP under Xi were determined to make China the global leader in advanced industrial, AI and bio-technologies. A resurgent China nationalist global hegemony was not the idea of the New World Order gang.
China:2025 combined with Xi’s strong advocacy of the Belt Road Initiative for global infrastructure linking China by land and sea to all Eurasia and beyond, likely suggested to the globalists that the only solution to the prospect of their losing their power to a China global hegemon would ultimately be war, a war that would destroy both nationalist powers, USA AND China. This is my conclusion and there is much to suggest this is now taking place.
Tit for Tat
If so, it will most likely be far different from the military contest of World War II. The USA and most of the Western industrial economies have “conveniently” imposed the worst economic depression since the 1930’s as a bizarre response to an alleged virus originating in Wuhan and spreading to the world. Despite the fact that the death toll, even with vastly inflated statistics, is at the level of a severe annual influenza, the insistence of politicians and the corrupt WHO to impose draconian lockdown and economic disruption has crippled the remaining industrial base in the US and most of the EU.
The eruption of well-organized riots and vandalism under the banner of racial protests across the USA has brought America’s cities to a state in many cases of war zones resembling the cities of the 2013 Matt Damon and Jodie Foster film, Elysium. In this context, anti-Washington rhetoric from Beijing has taken on a sharp tone in their use of so-called “Wolf Diplomacy.”
Now after Washington closed the China Consulate in Houston and China the US Consulate in Chengdu, both sides have stepped up rhetoric. High tech companies are being banned in the US, military displays of force from the US in the South China Sea and waters near Taiwan are increasing tensions and rhetoric on both sides. The White House accuses the WHO of being an agent of Beijing, while China accuses the US of deliberately creating a deadly virus and bringing it to Wuhan. Chinese state media supports the explosion of violent protests across America under the banner of Black Lives Matter. Step-wise events are escalating dramatically. Many of the US self-styled Marxists leading the protests across US cities have ties to Beijing such as the Maoist-origin Revolutionary Communist Party, USA of Bob Avakian.
“Unrestricted Warfare”
Under these conditions, what kind of escalation is likely? In 1999 two colonels in the China PLA, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, published a book with the PLA Press titled Unrestricted Warfare. Qiao Liang was promoted to Major General in the PLA Air Force and became deputy secretary-general of the Council for National Security Policy Studies. The two updated their work in 2016. It gives a window on high-level China military strategy.
Reviewing published US military doctrine in the aftermath of the 1991 US Operation Desert Storm war against Iraq, the Chinese authors point out what they see as US over-dependence on brute military force and conventional military doctrine. They claim, “Observing, considering, and resolving problems from the point of view of technology is typical American thinking. Its advantages and disadvantages are both very apparent, just like the characters of Americans.” They add, “military threats are already often no longer the major factors affecting national security…these traditional factors are increasingly becoming more intertwined with grabbing resources, contending for markets, controlling capital, trade sanctions, and other economic factors, to the extent that they are even becoming secondary to these factors. They comprise a new pattern which threatens the political, economic and military security of a nation or nations… The two authors define the new form of warfare as, “encompassing the political, economic, diplomatic, cultural, and psychological spheres, in addition to the land, sea, air, space, and electronics spheres.”
They suggest China could use hacking into websites, targeting financial institutions, terrorism, using the media, and conducting urban warfare among the methods proposed. Recent revelations that Chinese entities pay millions in ad revenues to the New York Times and other mainstream USA media to voice China-positive views is one example. Similarly, maneuvering a Chinese national to head the US’ largest public pension fund, CalPERS, which poured billions into risky China stocks, or persuading the New York Stock Exchange to list dozens of China companies without requiring adherence to US accounting transparency increase US financial vulnerability are others.
This all suggests the form that a war between China and the US could take. It can be termed asymmetrical warfare or unrestricted war, where nothing that disrupts the enemy is off limits. Qiao has that, “the first rule of unrestricted warfare is that there are no rules, with nothing forbidden.” There are no Geneva Conventions.
The two Beijing authors add this irregular warfare could include assaults on the political security, economic security, cultural security, and information security of the nation. The dependence of the US economy on China supply chains for everything from basic antibiotics to militarily-vital rare earth minerals is but one domain of vulnerability.
On its side, China is vulnerable to trade sanctions, financial disruption, bioterror attacks and oil embargoes to name a few. Some have suggested the recent locust plague and African Swine Fever devastation to China’s core food supplies, was not merely an act of nature. If not, then we are likely deep into an undeclared form of US-China unrestricted warfare. Could it be that the recent extreme floods along the China Yangtze River that threaten the giant Three Gorges Dam and have flooded Wuhan and other major China cities and devastated millions of acres of key cropland was not entirely seasonal?
A full unrestricted war of China and the USA would be more than a tragedy. It could be the end of civilization as we know it. Is this what characters such as Bill Gates or George Soros and their superiors are trying to bring about? Do they plan to introduce their draconian dystopian “Reset” on the ashes of such a conflict?
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I have been considering magical ritual for a while and for that reason, among others, have been thinking a great deal about sound.
When I read about rituals and magical ceremonies I am looking for the levers that make them work because in general ritual does not work well for me - techniques do. I am interested in voice and breath because they are embodied means to achieve spiritual ends, but also because multiple texts (and experience) tell me that breath and manipulation of breath are the golden road to magic and mysticism. For these reasons I’ve been pretty fascinated by barbarous names and other vocalisations in ceremonial magic. This post is a fairly lengthy dump of thoughts around this topic.
I’m highly cynical about the idea that barbarous names are powerful mysteries that must be pronounced precisely as given. Some of them, of course, ARE the secret names of gods. However many are garbled nouns and misunderstood cultic language stolen by hedge sorcerers and outsiders. Nouns that have been mispronounced and misused for centuries. Take the example of the Christian misreading of JHVH (YHWH) to become Jehovah, or the common adoption of ‘Tetragrammaton’ as a name for god when it is, in fact, a placeholder for the name of god. This kind of mistaken adoption happens across time and traditions. You can see it in, for instance, in Scottish healing cantrips that are corrupt Church Latin versions of the Lord’s prayer (Plenty of examples in The Occult Laboratory ed. by Michael Hunter).
This is compounded for me by Iamblichus, who was influential in advocating magicians focus on the sounds of the barbarous names and not attempt to establish the real meaning of these words. The pronunciation of barbarous names is generally impossible to establish from the texts alone. Returning to the example of YHWH - through concealing the name of YHWH behind the tetragrammaton the correct pronunciation was forgotten and later reconstruction has been largely through contemporary accounts. This is not the only occasion on which pronunciation has been lost and Iamblichus’ position is undermined by other concerns, such as dialect.
However Iamblichus has a point that the sound itself is powerful. Barbarous names are often arranged to create a rhythm and momentum when spoken allowed. Rhythm is a potent instigator of trance as well as powerful in charging words and meaning. Bonner provides a number of interesting examples from amulets, including:
barzan boubarzan narzazouzan barzabouzath
What I like about this one is the progressive movement between alliteration and assonance, which you also find in inspired poetry. You particularly find it in poetry from the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon nations, though some of Rumi’s poems, for instance, have this element. Honestly I find that exciting because the rhythm and pace of Celtic poetry as a magical device is something I have been passionate about for years.
The use of vowel sounds in barbarous names (e.g. IAO) is also fascinating. Sometimes you will have long strings of vowels that encourage you to lose yourself in the shaping of your mouth and breath. This reminds me strongly of the way ‘om’ may be chanted in Buddhist and related practices. Om often becomes a prolonged exploration of the vowel sounds contained within the word. The word itself is almost a vehicle for the practice of vocalising. For people who like psychological explanations there is cross over here into the effect of vibration and tone on the brain. However in tantra sound, or vibration, is seen as the essence of being. That is a view I tend to favour over the psychological one.
Related to this, I think, are the animal sounds and vocalisations in ceremonial magic - itself a topic worth focused exploration. The ‘Howl of Orpheus’ that Sam Block has translated on their website is an interesting example of pure vocalisation, which I think has connections to kiai in martial arts. You can also see within the Howl a gradual build up from rhythmic barbarous words, to a ululating use of vowels, culminating in the final howl. Honestly, this is beautiful and reminds me of magic I performed years ago using dance and chanting to build energy toward howling. However there are also examples of vocalisation within barbarous names that seem to sit somewhere in-between vocalisation and verbalisation. For instance, the somewhat famous onomatopoeic ‘Falconic tongue’ incantation in the PGM:
CHI CHI CHI CHI CHI CHI CHI
TIPH TIPH TIPH
CHA CHA CHA CHA CHA CHA CHA
Sounds are not used alone. A common piece of advice is that barbarous names and incantations should be vibrated. If you were to just watch a video of Israel Regardie vibrating an incantation then you may be forgiven for thinking that vibration basically involves Shakespearean stage projection. That is part of it. However here is an outline of one Thelemic approach:
1. Breathe in, imagining that one is “aspiring” to the Divine, and that one is pulling divine power or Light down through ones’ crown-centre;
2. Contemplate the Word at ones’ heart-centre;
3. On the exhalation, chant or “vibrate” the word fairly loudly, so that you can both hear and feel it resonating - throughout your chest-cavity and body, throughout the room, and indeed throughout the universe.
This is a lot like some Tantric and Buddhist approaches to mantra – probably because Thelema lifted the technique directly from those traditions.
Tantra practitioners will use open mantras for public use, or receive closed mantras for their own use. Some people argue that old spells have more power because of how often they have been used, but this has never fit with my experience. I have always found that the best songs and names are the ones you receive directly. Second best are those received directly by another person and then handed over to you or a select group. My personal explanation for this is that if a god gives you a secret name to call them by they do not then expect half a nation to be using this name. Similarly you would probably not appreciate everybody at work using the pet name your partner calls you at home. However this is entirely my own hypothesis and it has no more basis in proven fact than any other theory you’ll find as to how or why magic works.
Mantras using god names tend to be collections of syllables, each syllable can be used to narrow down invocation to a particular aspect of a deity. These individual syllables are referred to as bija. They can be derived magically, either through ritual practices, as Sam Block describes in their adaptation of geomancy, or ecstatically.
There are some core principles that can be derived from all this, as well as signposts for wider investigation. Primarily I’m interested by the use of rhythm, of vowel sounds, and the way that vocalisation can be powerful independent of meaning. It demonstrates how barbarous names can be replaced, adapted or understood beyond their original context. That makes it possible to step beyond them to do original, spontaneous work.
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Hogwarts Needs Archaeologists, Part 1: Fantastic Antiquities and Where to Find Them
By Adrián Maldonado
The Harry Potterverse is crawling with ancient artefacts and old magic. That doesn’t make it a story about archaeology as such – there is very little effort from the protagonists to do more than treasure-hunt (and in at least one case, tomb-raid) to collect and then destroy these artefacts. In one sense, the Harry Potter cycle is a parable of Fantastic Antiquities and How to Break Them.
Tom Riddle, Tomb Raider (source)
Which is why I haven’t felt the need to do an ‘archaeology of Harry Potter’ post on this blog. But then I went back to the books again. Well, sort of. I am lucky enough to share a timeline with the Binge Mode podcast by the superheroic duo Mallory Rubin and Jason Concepcion. Their breakdown of the books and films, chapter by chapter and scene by scene, with added detail culled from the wider (so wide) Potter canon, has reawakened my appreciation for the depth of JK’s creation. And, this should surprise absolutely no one by now, it makes me think there’s lessons for archaeologists in the Potterverse.
This will take more than one blog post to tease out. To begin with, we can start by looking at the vast array of antiquities which feature in the books’ own timeline. From there, we can explore how archaeology might work in the wizarding world, and then bring it back to reflections on Rowling’s uses of the past more generally. Speaking of the past, if you don’t want books from 20 years ago spoiled, well, tough look, my guy.
Medieval archaeology
Getting medieval in Diagon Alley (source)
To begin in the most obvious place, there is a lot in the wizarding world which owes its origins to the Middle Ages. According to Rowling’s Pottermore website, Diagon Alley and its major landmarks such as the Leaky Cauldron and Gringotts go back to c. 1500, retaining a ramshackle medieval aesthetic. The prison of Azkaban originated as the fortress of the fifteenth-century sorcerer Ezkidris. Even things which don’t appear obviously medieval are revealed to be medieval on Pottermore: the Quidditch World Cup has been played since 1473, and Floo powder, the magical form of transport, was invented in the thirteenth century by Ignatia Wildsmith (which, if I have another daughter, I will definitely adopt as a name).
The structural medievalism of the Potterverse includes Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry itself, a ponderous castle-university suffused with old magic. Oddly for Britain’s premier (only?) centre of magical learning, we do not seem to know exactly how old it is, but its founders all seem to have lived in the tenth century according to Pottermore. This would make it earlier than the first Muggle universities, themselves a product of the twelfth century and later. It is interesting to think that the robe-wearing denizens of Oxbridge and St Andrews are merely replicating earlier Hogwarts traditions.
Echoes of Hogwarts (source)
What is less immediately obvious is that Hogwarts’ medieval origins are communicated largely through material culture. The Sorting Hat belonged to founder Godric Gryffindor, and so is at least a thousand years old. The Mirror of Erised is also said to be ancient, though we are vague on dates. Does age confer magical properties, or have these objects survived due to the power of their magic? It can’t be the latter, as we are continually reminded of the precarious state of antiquities in the Potterverse. The Hogwarts houses retain stories about early medieval artefacts associated with the lives of their founders, including Rowena Ravenclaw’s lost diadem, Helga Hufflepuff’s cup, and Gryffindor’s Sword; Slytherin House has no equivalent relic-mascot although it does boast its own Chamber of Secrets (not a euphemism). Each of these objects is lost, stolen, or defiled in the course of these stories.
Ravenclaw’s diadem was lost almost as soon as it was made, and Slytherin’s Locket was never kept in Hogwarts, showing the somewhat less than reverential treatment of these artefacts, even among those who should best appreciate their value. More on Slytherin’s personal effects later, but it may be worth noting here that his Chamber was until lately populated with a living balrog, I mean Basilisk, which was at least as ancient as Slytherin before its murder by a student dangerously swinging another medieval artefact in 1998. Guys. Lock down your antiquities.
Days without an accident on site: 0 (source)
Of these artefacts, only the Sword of Gryffindor was curated to any extent, even if only as a wall-hanging which, let me repeat, students were allowed to handle. Hufflepuff’s cup was kept in the common room of its founder’s house, allowing it to be stolen and inhabited with cursed fragments of soul which almost led to the demise of the rules-based wizarding world order. In the end, Helga’s cup was found in a damn bank vault instead of a climate-controlled museum store. Listen, a secure, alarmed case may not have stopped Voldemort, but we could have at least saved these precious witnesses of wizarding origins from being callously destroyed in the war. Who will be the wizarding Mortimer Wheeler next time?
Excavating Hogwarts
Reading through Pottermore, it transpires that paying no heed to the medieval material world our protagonists live in is actively causing them harm. Two of Voldemort’s horcruxes, Slytherin’s Locket and Marvolo Gaunt’s Ring, date back to the early medieval period, but were kept as personal possessions passed down the Gaunt family line, allowing them to be easily stolen or sold, and, again, be haunted by evil curses. Guys. Where do I send my CV to develop a course in Material Culture Studies at Hogwarts? Better yet, let’s make it a MOOC, train members of the public, and then maybe next time someone tries to pawn an ancient relic our world isn’t threatened by cursed archaeology.
Please don’t drink from the archaeology (source)
My favourite revelation is that the Hogwarts pensieve, the expositional device in Dumbledore’s office which allows Harry to experience flashback sequences along with the reader, is a noted antiquity itself. It is said to be a stone basin inscribed with Saxon runes, and to have been found buried on the spot where Hogwarts would be built.
I can’t just pass this by. Why would a pensieve be buried? We know that wizards are buried with their wands, as recounted to plot-driving effect in Dumbledore’s case. It also transpires that, like wands, pensieves are very personal items, and are customarily buried with their owners along with any memories they have stored. What an incredible boon this would be for a wizarding archaeologist! And how well would this explain all the now-empty vessels we have found used as grave goods since prehistory, usually explained by us dull-minded archaeologists as ‘food-offerings’. Along with the spell priori incantatem, which allows one to see the last few spells a wand was used for, an archaeowitch encountering a burial furnished with wand and pensieve would have an unparalleled insight into the lives and deaths of the wizarding dead.
Back to the Hogwarts pensieve, then, we have a massive stone basin inscribed in Saxon runes, which would be rather out of place in the early medieval Scottish highlands, where Hogwarts is based. Is this a disturbed wizard’s tomb or a ritualised offering in a wetland setting? Once upon a time, this find would be taken as evidence for Anglo-Saxon invasion, but now we recognize that objects could be transported for a variety of reasons, and indeed are themselves more likely to be used in votive deposits due to the value they have accrued in the journey. It would certainly merit further investigation whether the Hogwarts loch was chosen by its founders not for its now-isolated and depopulated landscape, itself a product of fairly recent historical processes, but because it had an existing heritage as a site of ritual deposition. We can only hope, for the sake of its students, that the founders undertook some due-diligence magical remote sensing to detect any complicating factors from buried magic, dark or light, before undertaking a major construction project. But beyond health and safety concerns, I feel that we have lost something else by not recording what has presumably been a cult place.
A medieval inheritance
Pottermore also traces the origins of several major wizarding families to the Middle Ages, most notably the Malfoys. Their lineage can be traced back to Armand Malfoy, who helped William the Bastard become Conqueror of England in the real-world timeline: “Having rendered unknown, shady (and almost certainly magical) services to King William I, Malfoy was given a prime piece of land in Wiltshire, seized from local landowners, upon which his descendants have lived for ten consecutive centuries.” In gratitude for their help with the Norman Conquest, he was granted a manor, which has passed down the family for 1000 years to Draco Malfoy. The mansion itself is said to be filled with ancient magical and muggle artefacts and priceless artwork, as so many stately homes were by the nineteenth century. Many of Britain’s museums were founded through bequests of such private collections, and these would make an interesting, if dangerous, Dark Magic wing of a Wizarding Museum. Given the spectacular fall from grace of the Malfoy family in the second wizarding war, I do worry about the status of the Malfoy collection, and whether it is at risk of being hived off in auction. The Draco Malfoy essay does reveal that he still lives in the manor with its artefacts after the war, so we still live in hope that this heritage resource has not been lost.
Even dark artefacts need curators (source)
In light of their family history, it would be easy to laugh off the Malfoys’ malevolence as the entitlement that comes from old money, but it should be noted that Harry Potter is a noted trust-fund baby himself. For all his remarkable magical prowess, Harry Potter’s destiny is also down to some serious inherited privilege. His medieval progenitor Linfred of Stinchcombe, who also lived in the Norman era, built up the family’s wealth through his famous inventions, including potions like Skele-gro. Their marriage into a wealthy family in Godric’s Hollow is also auspicious – as home to the Peverils and the Dumbledores, whose stories are so indelibly entwined in the history of wizarding Britain, this little village in England’s west country seems to have been the epicentre of magical achievement for a millennium. Something in the water, perhaps? Or a self-segregating community of elite families? It is through these connections that the Potter family came into possession of one of the Deathly Hallows, the invisibility cloak, in another form of inheritance which increasingly looks like the secret of Harry’s success.
Godric’s Hollow - in dire need of graveyard survey (source)
The Hallows themselves are the key to Dumbledore and Harry’s success, and Voldemort’s undoing, Unbeknownst to many, the Resurrection Stone, invisibility cloak and Elder Wand all seem to be inventions of the Peveril brothers in the thirteenth century. We know this partly because Harry and Hermione stumble on Ignotus Peveril’s medieval gravestone in the churchyard of Godric’s Hollow, clearly marked with the sign of the Deathly Hallows, at which point things begin to come together. Basically, Voldemort is able to be defeated because he only trafficked in antiquities, without researching their archaeological context – but in fairness, neither did Dumbledore and Harry until very late in the game. A simple bit of churchyard recording may have brought this to the attention of local history buffs much sooner, and we may all have been safer for it. Basically, folks, local heritage is all of our heritage, and is not just for tourists obsessively chasing only their own family history.
Potter’s pedigree
And so we come to genealogy, which is the secret engine of this cycle of stories, just as it seems to be in so many of our favourite fantasy worlds. The objects, people and places profiled here all seem to be the remnants of stories which seem to begin no earlier than the tenth century or so. But it is clear that the wizarding world existed before then, and the limits of our vision can be explained by the fact that the first university was established at that time, and presumably the recording of historical events as well. In short, the narrow focus on a small pool of influential families and their feuds are the unresolved business of the formation of medieval kingdoms of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, as indeed is so much of our own contemporary politics. What if our consciousness extended to the messier early medieval kingdoms, or (whisper it) prehistory? Just how problematic would a wizarding archaeology be? And could it free us from the Great Men and Their Battles vision of the human journey? Let’s pick up our trowel-wands and find out.
***
Forward to Part 2: Excavating Magic
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Hello! :-) I just wanted to pop by and mention how much I love seeing pictures of Aberuthven! It's such a beautiful 'hood and I love all of the detail in the lots and the families :-) I have a few questions, I hope that's OK? I was wondering what made you decide to play this particular time period? And also, how historically accurate do you try to be with your lots, sims and gameplay? Did/do you read up on Anglo Saxon history? Oh, and where do you get the names for your sims? Laura :-)
Thank you so much for your lovely words, Laura, and I don’t mind questions at all.
I was inspired by the Anglo-Saxon time period mainly through reading the Bernard Cornwall series ‘The Saxon Stories’ and then watching the TV series based off those books, ‘The Last Kingdom’. I loved the society that Cornwall created,and also loved the mix of architecture, namely the wattle and daub of the Saxons and the stone villas of the Roman’s. I did some ‘research’ and read a few books, such as ‘The Anglo-Saxon World’, ‘Fortifications in Wessex’ and ‘Everyday Life in Medieval London’. I also read another fiction series by V. M.Witford, starting with ‘The Bone Thief’. In addition to the books, I searched the internet and read various blogs, academic papers and websites that gave me more information. I’m a big nerd, especially when I’m interested in something!
One thing I really loved about Anglo-Saxon society and why I choose to play that period was that the women had quite a bit of status, commanded their own wergild and could own and inherit land. I also loved that I didn’t need as much fancy Medieval CC for the Anglo-Saxon period, such as Tudor outfits. A noble lady could wear a very similar style of dress to a peasant, it would just be richer in colour. Almighty Hat’s dresses and the Viking tunics have been great for this ‘hood.
I tried to be somewhat historically accurate within the neighborhood Aberuthven as much as I can withing the confines of the game. For example, many of the Saxon houses are one room wattle and daub huts, maybe with a curtain to separate living spaces. It is up for debate about really how intact any Roman structures would have been around 700-900AD, but they are described in Cornwall’s books and I really wanted that Roman vibe in the ‘City’, to simulate medieval Lundonia/Lundene. As I continued building the neighborhood, though, things got less and less historically accurate, like with the Chaple of Eostre and the band of Travellers. I didn’t mind so much, as it made the neighborhood more interesting and I’m not that much of a stickler for accuracy.
With Eowerrania, I am still playing Anglo-Saxon, but it is more ‘inspired’ rather than ‘based-on’. I wanted to remain in that time period, but I also desperately wanted a big, stone, Norman castle, so it’s a bit of a mash-up.
Regarding the Sims, I randomly rolled the families using the MCC method and made up back stories for them then. I found their names mainly through baby name web sites, such Behind the Name, Baby Name Guide and 2000-names, although I did keep a list in my phone of names I came across while reading various fiction and non-fiction books.
Hope that has answered your questions. If you want to know anything else, please let me know. I’m always happy to ramble about the Sims!
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