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pigeonflavouredcake · 1 year

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My Grimoire Research Library

this is a list of my major resource I've referenced/am currently referencing in my big grimoire project. For books I'll be linking the Goodreads page, for pdfs, websites and videos i'll link them directly.

There are plenty of generalised practitioner resources that can work for everyone but as I have Irish ancestry and worship Hellenic deities quite a few of my resources are centred around Celtic Ireland, ancient Greece and the Olympic mythos. If you follow other sects of paganism you are more than welcome to reblog with your own list of resources.

Parts of my grimoire discuss topics of new age spiritualism, dangerous conspiracy theories, and bigotry in witchcraft so some resources in this list focus on that.

Books

Apollodorus - The Library of Greek Mythology

Astrea Taylor - Intuitive Witchcraft

Dee Dee Chainey & Willow Winsham - Treasury of Folklore: Woodlands and Forests

John Ferguson - Among The Gods: An Archaeological Exploration of Ancient Greek Religion

Katharine Briggs - The Fairies in Tradition and Literature

Kevin Danaher - The Year in Ireland: Irish Calendar Customs

Laura O'Brien - Fairy Faith in Ireland

Lindsey C. Watson - Magic in Ancient Greece and Rome

Nicholas Culpeper - Culpeper's Complete Herbal

Plutarch - The Rise and Fall of Athens: Nine Greek Lives

R.B. Parkinson - A Little Gay History: Desire and Diversity Around the World

Rachel Patterson - Seventy Eight Degrees of Wisdom: A Tarot Journey to Self-Awareness

Raleigh Briggs - Make Your Place: Affordable & Sustainable Nesting Skills

Robin Wall Kimmerer - Braiding Sweetgrass

Ronald Hutton - The Witch: A History of Fear in Ancient Times

Rosemary Ellen Guiley - The Encyclopaedia of Witches and Witchcraft

Thomas N. Mitchell - Athens: A History of the World's First Democracy

Walter Stephens - Demon Lovers: Witchcraft S3x and the Crisis of Belief

Yvonne P. Chireau - Black Magic: Religion and The African American Conjuring Tradition

PDFs

Anti Defamation League - Hate on Display: Hate Symbols Database

Brandy Williams - White Light, Black Magic: Racism in Esoteric Thought

Cambridge SU Women’s Campaign - How to Spot TERF Ideology 2.0.

Blogs and Websites

Anti Defamation League

B. Ricardo Brown - Until Darwin: Science and the Origins of Race

Dr. S. Deacon Ritterbush - Dr Beachcomb

Folklore Thursday

Freedom of Mind Resource Centre - Steven Hassan’s BITE Model of Authoritarian Control

Institute for Strategic Dialogue

Royal Horticultural Society

The Duchas Project -National Folklore Collection

Vivienne Mackie - Vivscelticconnections

YouTube Videos

ContraPoints - Gender Critical

Emma Thorne Videos - Christian Fundie Says Halloween is SATANIC!

Owen Morgan (Telltale) - The Source Of All Conspiracies: A 1902 Document Called "The Protocols"

The Belief it or Not Podcast - Ep. 40 Satanic Panic, Ep 92. Wicca

Wendigoon - The Conspiracy Theory Iceberg

Other videos I haven't referenced but you may still want to check out

Atun-Shei Films - Ancient Aryans: The History of Crackpot N@zi Archaeology

Belief It Or Not - Ep. 90 - Logical Fallacies

Dragon Talisman - Tarot Documentary (A re-upload of the 1997 documentary Strictly Supernatural: Tarot and Astrology)

Lindsay Ellis - Tracing the Roots of Pop Culture Transphobia

Overly Sarcastic Productions - Miscellaneous Myths Playlist

Owen Morgan (Telltale) - SATANIC PANIC! 90s Video Slanders Satanists | Pagan Invasion Saga | Part 1

ReignBot - How Ouija Boards Became "Evil" | Obscura Archive Ep. 2

Ryan Beard - Demi Lovato Promoted a R4cist Lizard Cult

Super Eyepatch Wolf - The Bizarre World of Fake Psychics, Faith Healers and Mediums

Weird Reads with Emily Louise -The Infamous Hoaxes Iceberg Playlist

Wendigoon - The True Stories of the Warren Hauntings: The Conjuring, Annabelle, Amityville, and Other Encounters

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booasaur · 9 months

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It's funny, because Dulcie is somehow surprisingly *kind* without being especially *nice*, if that makes sense. Like, she doesn't necessarily know, or bother with, all the nice polite appropriate things to say, but the stuff she *does* speaks for itself. She's patient with all the town's crackpots, and generally willing to listen even to people who would never return the courtesy; she doesn't have much of an ego and never really hesitates to take the brunt of doing the right thing to look out for everyone under her watch, even when some of them are the wooooorst. She's outraged on Vanessa's behalf when she's been nothing but horrible to her, for example, she's furious with Phil for leaving the bar with Eddie when she's drunk, she looks out for Abby...

Anon, it makes such perfect sense I literally considered using nice when writing that reply and then went with kind, for the same reasons you said.

She really is so good and tries so hard... All those examples, Vanessa, Eddie, the way she gets angry about James and how he treats Abby instead of ignoring it, which a lot of other shows might have for the comedy.

She was legit so concerned and upset about not being able to warn the women they were going to be arrested, even though they were all so angry and hating on her by that point. And all this isn't just because she loves being a detective, she tries her best even when it was small time stuff, and just wants to help everyone.

Not that she's perfect, the cheating, and well, unlike a lot of other viewers, I didn't love that line to Cath about the job being more important than her, but she's allowed to lash out, after everything. Mostly, she's just really patient and absorbs people being selfish and petty in a million little ways, I really loved her.

#replies #femslash related stuff #Anonymous #sent on 20230706 #5 #deadloch #dulcie collins

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writer-at-the-table · 2 years

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Josh breaks my heart a little in this episode

#julie watches #the west wing #the crackpots and these women #mine #My posts

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ohnoitstbskyen · 1 year

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Reflecting on my work in 2022

As this official Hell Of A Year™ draws to a close, I guess it is appropriate to both reflect on what I've been doing this year, as well as do a bit of plugging for work which I am proud of.

So here's a list of some of the videos I made this year, along with some thoughts on their creation and how I feel about them, some self-criticism, some behind-the-scenes, and a little self-congratulation where it is appropriate.

I struggle somewhat with memory and a clear sense of time - to me, time is more of a continuous stream than a series of delineated moments. This is often frustrating - I get lost in it, and when I look back on a list of my work and activities, it is less an experience of "oh yeah, ha ha, that happened" and more of a "wait what do you mean that happened then? And before that other thing? But after that one? What the hell?"

Worst case scenario, it can be kinda distressing, honestly. It feels out of control, anxiety inducing, like I don't have a handle on my life.

... which is an absolutely fantastic tone to strike for a New Year's list of my favourite videos. 2023, woo!

The Boss Designs of Bloodborne Finale (February)

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It took me nearly three months after the penultimate episode of the series to finally put this video out. My The Boss Designs Of series is some of the best work I've ever created, at least I think so. It's certainly some of the most creatively fulfilling work I do, and some of the most challenging too.

I try to walk a line between providing a fresh perspective on the games I've played for the series, but not getting contrarian or off-the-wall just for the sake of it. With Bloodborne, I do think I managed some really good critical contributions to the readings of the game, like my reading of the Blood-starved Beast as a self-sacrificing martyr for the beast community of Old Yharnam, which was apparently quite novel, or my crackpot Parasite Theory of Bloodborne's madness.

And I do think I've gotten better and better at editing gameplay footage too, I think I've managed to learn a good balance between joke-edits and continuity and story editing. I always kinda fret on the one hand that the gameplay footage and my live commentary is too boring to stand on its own, and on the other hand that editing in too many jokes and gags would just be obnoxious and tedious to sit through.

The thing Bloodborne nails more than any other horror game I've seen is the sensation of the nightmare. And not just in its visuals or its monster designs or the surface storytelling, but in the push and pull between extremely specific imagery and story beats and complete ambiguity the moment you scratch at the surface. Bloodborne is on the one hand a fairly obvious story about the abuses of organized religion and unethical science, but then underneath that there's also this deep obsession with the violence done to women's bodies specifically, and how that violence spills out and caustically eats into the humanity of everyone who is complicit in it.

And then underneath that there's an exploration of birth trauma, where the Great Ones are parental figures as incomprehensible to the player as parents are to a newborn child, pushing you here and pulling you there and inflicting incomprehensible violations of your bodily autonomy out of apparent sympathy.

And underneath all of that... it's also about how cool it would be to transform into a werewolf, actually. The themes of self-creation and transformation and claiming monsterhood as self-empowerment are incredibly queer and especially apt for trans readings.

It all flows together in this soup of imagery and meaning that I cannot crystalize into a unifying Theory of Bloodborne, no definitive reading, no comprehensive hot take. Which is frustrating when you're trying to create a video essay, but infinitely compelling when trying to think about it.

I don't know that I managed to capture all of that in the The Boss Designs of Bloodborne finale, but I do know that I tried to, and I'm proud of that.

Melina, the Maiden - Boss Designs of Elden Ring #1 (March)

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Staying with The Boss Designs of, here's a video about which my feelings have become decidedly mixed. Not because of anything that is in the episode, mind you, but out of a certain disempowered bitterness I've developed about Elden Ring over the course of the year.

I cannot overstate how excited I was for Elden Ring, and how desperately I enjoyed finally getting to play it back in March. It's a brilliant game, an incredibly immersive world, and one which I badly want to return to.

... and then I didn't get to play the game for nine months. It was partly my own mistake - I tried recording an absolute ton of footage for episodes early, playing as much of the game as I could while it was still fresh, hoping to put out a lot of episodes of the series early while the game was fresh and Relevant In The Algorithm™, and also just out of sheer excitement. In so doing, though, I ended up shooting myself in the foot, because as I began to edit episodes together I also found myself feeling more and more distant from the experience of playing.

The pile of footage in front of me, begging to be converted into episodes, became a roadblock of work looming over me, a source of guilt and stress and frustration, that put extra stress on my mind every time I tried to make any other video and which stood between me and getting to play more of the game I have anticipated more than any other for years.

In 2023, I will get back to Elden Ring, I swear to god I will, but in the meantime I am quite happy with how the three episodes I've made of this series so far have turned out.

Also, the new intro song I commissioned from @trewatsonmusic absolutely slaps.

What's the deal with Zeri and Neon (June)

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My ambition for the What's the Deal videos has always been to expand them beyond League of Legends (and I have done videos on characters from other things), but being a YouTuber is also my job, and League of Legends is the moneymaking subject on my channel, at least for now.

Not that I resent that. For all that League deserves the criticism it gets, I still insist that it has one of the greatest casts of characters in modern gaming, underserved and ignored though most of them are by Riot Games. There's so much to talk about once you get even a little bit under the surface, and I do feel like I've been doing a better and better job at doing that in the What's the Deal videos over 2022. Zeri, for example, is a fantastic addition to the class warfare dynamics of Piltover and Zaun, especially in her conflict with Renata Glasc and the themes that could be explored through that conflict. And it's not lost of me the extent to which she was a direct response to the xenophobic attacks on Asian-Americans that have surged out of American politics in recent years, either. There is value to proclaiming that someone like Zeri belongs in the worlds of big pop culture institutions like League of Legends, even if (as always) it is the workers at Riot Games making that proclamation, and Riot Games Inc. allowing it because it serves their commercial goals.

I brought in Nickyboi for an assist on this one as well, which is something I want to do more. I want to do more collaboration. First of all because it's nice to offload work to someone else, but also because this job is fundamentally kind of lonely. I'm just a guy in his office making videos 99% of the time, and collaborating with a fellow creator feels like being part of a creative community in a way that solo work and shitposting at each other on Twitter simply doesn't.

And I am proud of the little fanfiction snippets I've started writing in the The Future segments. One of the points of the What's the Deal videos is to communicate to an audience why I'm excited about a character, why I feel like they're worth giving a shit about, and I think those fanfiction segments have done a better job at getting that across than almost all of my character design and animation chatter. Plus, it's nice to flex a bit of creative muscle in that way now and then.

Speaking of which, I still need to write that happier ending for Kai'sa and Taliyah, don't I? I have A Plan™ for that, it's just about finding the time to make it real...

The 15 Most Beautiful Splash Arts in League of Legends (September)

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This one is easily the biggest surprise of the year for me. In the latter half of 2022, I took quite a lot of sponsorships - first of all because they were offered (good lord there was a rush of them in August!), but also because I really wanted to save up and pay down debts.

One of the consequences of that was the extreme delay of Elden Ring, but another was that all of a sudden I had to get content out on a very set schedule. Most of my work is done on the steam of Whatever Catches My Creative Attention At The Time, but with a deadline hanging over my head, suddenly I had to find video ideas whether they presented themselves naturally or not.

I feared that a list-video would be a turn-off for my audience, I feared that it would be seen as shallow and tacky, like a 2010s Buzzfeed listicle. I feared that people just wouldn't be interested in the kind of art analysis I like to do, or would find it pretentious to seek meaning in what is - let's be real - commercial artwork meant to promote game cosmetics.

The benefit of a sponsorship is that the video has already made a profit, whether it does well or not, and I thought that in making this video, I was being self-indulgent and "ignoring" the desires of my audience.

Instead, it's one of the best performing videos ever on my channel, and people have cited it as a favorite among my videos quite a number of times.

Which was really... encouraging, honestly. I didn't expect it, but this video really did give me a confidence boost that the things I care about and find interesting do have an audience, even extra-nerdy rambling about League of Legends cosmetics.

Building a Better Soraka (September)

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Building a Better is a series title I sometimes regret a little bit, because no matter how much I try to explain in the videos themselves that there is no such thing as a perfect character design and that my revisions and ideas are not meant to be definitive in any way, I always get comments from people accusing me of declaring myself The God of Character Design and sitting in holy judgment over the work I'm critiquing.

To an extent, I guess that's unavoidable on the internet, but... maybe the series title was a bad gamble on that front.

I do stand by, though, that my designs have a reasonable argument that they are improvements over the originals. Arguments that can be interrogated and criticized, but valid, reasonaed arguments, not mere polemics.

Building a Better Soraka was an experiment in creating the series, as instead of working with a single artist to iterate on design improvements, I ended up commissioning more than a half dozen people for artwork and using different renditions to make my argument. It did hurt the coherency of the video a little, I feel, but it did open me up to a much more flexible way to produce videos like it in the future, which I'm happy with.

Plus, I really do like what I came up with here, and I adore the ways that @sabtherobot, @sinizade and @lekyrin executed my ideas and brought their own visions of the character. Soraka is a character who deserves a lot better than the basic design she's stuck with, and whose story can do so much more visually than Riot is willing to allow it to do.

"Not Without You" - the story of Nasus and Renekton (November)

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Of all the writing I did this year, this is by far what I am most proud of.

The video itself did not perform very well, nor did I expect it to, but the reactions I saw from the audience on this piece... yeah. That filled a very hungry part of my heart, I'm not gonna lie.

Writing a novel is a life ambition for me, as it is for many people. Actually writing it is a lot more elusive, though, in part because I struggle to feel confidence that my writing would ever hold up to the scrutiny of an audience. I struggle to feel that I would ever be able to connect emotionally with people, that I would be able to make what I feel sensible through writing.

This story proved that I can. Not to a big audience, perhaps, and I certainly don't have any delusions of genius or grandeur. I do not ever expect to be a famous or fêted writer, nor an important one. But... I do feel like with this story, I proved that I can at least be a competent one, which is frankly all I want.

And Nasus and Renekton were grateful subjects, too. Their story is naturally deeply emotional, albeit strangled by Riot's chronic indifference towards their most compelling narratives, and a lot of what I ended up exploring in there did come from a very genuine place in myself. It was nice to touch that part of my soul, and make something out of it, even if it's only silly fanfiction for a silly video game.

I am cautiously optimistic about 2023

Looking back over the videos I made this year, while I have a lot of work that I am proud of, I also see a lot of videos that I think I made less out of a desire to make them and more out of a fear of not making them. Videos that I made because I felt like the audience expected it, because the algorithm demanded it, because rent is always coming due and I am petrified of ever being broke again.

This is normal and natural, it is to some extent just the nature of the creative process under a capitalist market system where your work must always have some sort of price tag. But... I don't want to keep doing it. If I have an ambition for 2023, it is to make more of the videos I want to make, more videos that I only I can make. To give myself a little bit of a break and ease up on the self-recrimination and stress.

I have so many projects I want to get to, and being in my 30s I am becoming more and more conscious that while I (hopefully) have something like twice my current lifetime left to create the things I want, time is a finite resource, and spending it trying to please a website algorithm probably won't do me that much good in the end.

Anyway, some other things I did which I am quite proud of:

Played through God of War: Ragnarök while telling stories about the mythology of my childhood.

Ran around the world of Eorzea, accompanied by some of the funniest, silliest and most generous FFXIV players a man could dream of.

Finished a Pokémon HeartGold Nuzlocke with possibly the most nerve-wracking finish I have ever had to a Pokémon game

Reviewed every single Gen 1 Pokémon

Finished Great Ace Attorney Chronicles 1, probably the let's play with the most voice acting I have ever done. Some of it is even good!

If you've read this far, thank you so much for your time, your attention, your interest and your indulgence. Your 2023 be a good year, and may the tides of history wash gently over us all.

#tbskyen #bloodborne #from software #fromsoft #elden ring #Youtube #league of legends #bel'veth #belveth #zeri league of legends #zeri lol #neon valorant #nasus #renekton #shurima #soraka

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drawbauchery · 4 months

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Crackpot Theory: As seen in the Mukuro rations post, Junko doesn't need to eat therefore she is an immortal AI

ummmm, no, it's because women don't need to consume food for survival, duh

#the-quick-brown-fox12 #asks #bus au

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religion-is-a-mental-illness · 29 days

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By: Stephen Knight

Published: Apr 1, 2024

Once again, an interview with evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins is inspiring a significant amount of brain melt on social media.

There’s an odd feeling of relief generated by witnessing the man most famous for inspiring global sceptical and atheist movements continue to resist the lunacy of progressive dogma. Especially when so many previously sane people have fallen for it so spectacularly. But I suppose that’s the difference between an actual critical thinker and a poseur.

The interview in question was on LBC. You can watch a clip of the most ‘controversial’ section below:

In the clip, Dawkins reiterates that he is not a believer in the claims of Christianity, and is “pleased” to see a decline in belief in Christianity. He describes himself as a “cultural Christian” however and says he thinks it would be worse if Islam dominated our culture in place of Christianity.

He says he holds this view because he believes Islam to be especially hostile to women and gay rights. He’s also very clear and careful to make the distinction between Islamic ideas and Muslims in general or as a whole.

It’s worth pointing out that despite the celebrations from my fellow culture warriors that Dawkins has finally ‘caught up’ and seen the light—the reality is that Richard Dawkins has been open about his ‘cultural Christian’ identity for a long time. Not to mention his criticism of Islam. This interview does not reveal anything new to those of us familiar with his work.

What is especially telling however is the amount of people now hurling the accusation of “Islamophobe” in Richard Dawkins’s direction, such as Mehdi Hasan.

In doing so, they have inadvertently revealed what many of us have often argued: that they simply use the word ‘islamophobia’ to mean ‘blasphemy’ rather than describing genuine bigotry towards Muslims—given there isn’t a single instance of bigotry towards people in Dawkins’s words.

Richard Dawkins was absolutely right to single out Islam for criticism. Those who are honest in their criticism of religion will have noticed that not all religious ideologies are the same—either due to their doctrinal contents, or the way in which they are practiced and understood in the current day. Some religious ideas really are preferable to others.

I think Sam Harris provided the best explanation of this important distinction with the following sports analogy:

Religion is a term like sports: Some sports are peaceful but spectacularly dangerous (“free solo” rock climbing); some are safer but synonymous with violence (mixed martial arts); and some entail little more risk of injury than standing in the shower (bowling). To speak of sports as a generic activity makes it impossible to discuss what athletes actually do or the physical attributes required to do it. What do all sports have in common apart from breathing? Not much. The term religion is hardly more useful.

And this is a truth that appeared to lead to the complete redundancy of organised atheism, especially in America. It was all fun and games patting each other on the back for mocking those crackpot Christian Republicans or sharing Flying Spaghetti Monster memes—but a lot of balls seemed to suddenly fall off when it came to saying anything useful about the bigger threat of global fundamentalist Islam.

American atheism has been utterly infected with dogmatic ‘progressive’ cowardice—exemplified by the fact numerous American atheist organisations condemned and cut ties with Richard Dawkins for asking some mild questions about gender self-ID.

Online drama aside, this whole discussion about the function of our Christian culture in the modern era does raise some interesting, yet potentially uncomfortable questions for me and my fellow secular atheists.

In the past, I had hoped—perhaps naively—that my fellow leftists would fill our cultural ‘god shaped hole’ with a staunch secular liberalism built on enlightenment principles. Instead, what we saw was the emergence of new godless religions.

These new ideologies are dogmatic and hostile to science, free expression and women in ways that could give conservative religion a run for its money. A vindictive, authoritarian, godless culture of cancellation was born.

And as many of us have previously warned until we were blue in the face, this was always going to have the undesired effect of making Christianity seem more appealing to a whole new generation—as well as inspiring older generations to reconnect with their faith in response to what they perceive to be the replacement of their culture and identity with something far worse.

On a personal note, I have just recently, over the space of a few months attended two funerals for close family members. Both of these funeral services were Christian in nature—including the singing of hymns and readings from the bible by the vicar.

And if I’m being honest, there was something comforting about all of us being unified in a familiar tradition to pay tribute to people we loved. It was a very Church of England affair.

Losing people you love is an especially difficult time. The anxiety inducing, guilt ridden question of “what are we supposed to do now?” is made slightly easier by the existence of a shared, familiar tradition we can all recognise and participate in. We all knew the steps to this dance.

It was a great honour to fulfil the role of pallbearer on both occasions. A tradition with roots in Roman/Christian tradition. Of course, Christianity is not necessary to sing songs and carry coffins—but we absolutely wouldn’t be doing these things, in the synchronicity and understanding with which we did them, were it not for the influence of our Christian culture.

Did I think about god or Jesus at any time? Of course not. That’s all nonsense. And the eulogy I read was entirely secular. But was it deeply meaningful and comforting that a room full of people I cared about united in a familiar tradition to pay tribute to people we loved? Of course it was.

This is the kind of thing Dawkins maintains his affection for—dignified tradition. And it’s very difficult to argue that secularism can, at this time, provide an equally uniting alternative, despite the efforts of humanist organisations to do so.

The simple truth is that Christianity had a head start on our culture, and whether you are practicing, non-practicing or a committed anti-theist, the cultural impact of Christianity appears to be here to stay. And whether this is a good or bad thing compared to the alternatives on offer is a perfectly legitimate topic for anyone to grapple with.

Despite new “woke” ideology achieving little more than creating a massive PR win for conservative Christianity, we should never be complacent enough to forget how things were when Christianity had the run of it however. As the late, great Christopher Hitchens warned us:

“Many religions now come before us with ingratiating smirks and outspread hands, like an unctuous merchant in a bazaar. They offer consolation and solidarity and uplift, competing as they do in a marketplace. But we have a right to remember how barbarically they behaved when they were strong and were making an offer that people could not refuse.”

So, I will continue to push back on the encroachment of Christianity (or any worldview) in the direction of secularism and liberal freedoms. I happen to be someone who doesn't need Christianity for anything, but it would be dishonest to pretend I didn't understand its value to some people, some of the time. And it would also be dishonest to pretend that Christian tradition—if we are going to have a tradition—isn't preferable to Islam or woke lunacy.

But I’d much prefer an alternative to both options of course—so I once again appeal to my fellow secular leftists to reacquaint themselves with staunch liberal, secular enlightenment values, before it’s too late. If it isn’t already.

For years I had to put up with Islam apologists and useful idiots insisting to me that Islam wasn't a religion of totalitarianism, worldwide supremacy and thought control.

Mehdi Hasan has proven them wrong. I was right.

Reminder: it's completely okay to hate Islam. Islam isn't a person. It's a set of ideas, tenets and beliefs, and you can hate it as much as you want without any guilt or shame.

#Stephen Knight #Richard Dawkins #islam #christianity #religion #islamophobia #islamic supremacy #cultural christianity #blasphemy #criticism of islam #criticism of religion #religion is a mental illness

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