snowy-equinox

[snowy-equinox]

You know, an interesting tumblr transformation that's happened gradually, and which I've seen no one talk about: ask-culture has essentially dropped off to nothing.

By which I mean, asks used to be WAY more of the tumblr economy. They used to be more common to send, and receive, and see. They were integral to the collaborative, forum-like behavior of old tumblr communities, not even to speak on the HUGE number of ask-blogs that used to exist to only be interacted with in ask-form.

I'm not saying this in a vying-for-attention way but instead in an observational way: I used to get way way more asks in like 2015, even with a fraction of my follower count. I wonder if it's due to the homogenization of social media sites? There's a lot more of this divide between "content creator" and "consumer" instead of just a bunch of peer blogs who would talk to each other. "Asks" aren't really a thing on twitter, are they? And as I understand it, the closest thing to an "ask" on instagram or tiktok would be a creator screenshotting some comment and responding to it in a new reel or video or whatever those content mediums are. Are asks just too tumblr-specific? Is that aspect of the site culture dying out as more and more people converge to using all their social media sites in the same way?

[snowy-equinox]

Hundreds of Jewish anti-war demonstrators have been arrested during a Passover seder that doubled as a protest in New York, as they shut down a major thoroughfare to pray for a ceasefire and urge the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, to end US military aid to Israel.

The 300 or so arrests took place on Tuesday night at Grand Army Plaza, on the doorstep of Schumer’s Brooklyn residence, where thousands of mostly Jewish New Yorkers gathered for the seder, a ritual that marked the second night of the holiday celebrated as a festival of freedom by Jews worldwide.

The seder came just before the US Senate resoundingly passed a military package that includes $26bn for Israel.

[snowy-equinox]

How do you intepret the ending of Apollo and Cassandra, where He curses her because of Her rejection of Him? I enjoy the eay you look at mythos, and if you have a take other than "Apollo is awful" I'd love to hear!

The ApolloxCassandra relationship is complex. And we unfortunately don't know why Cassandra rejected Apollo. We only have Aeschylus' Agamemnon as a Greek source covering the curse's origin, because the other sources are either Roman or too late (after Christ centuries). Cassandra says that Apollo was in love with her and fought to win her. When she is asked if she had intercourse with the god, she replies that she consented, but that she "broke her word":

The "broke my word" verb in ancient Greek is ψεύδω which means to lie, to deceive by lies, to trick, or to break a promise.

And then Cassandra says she committed a fault (or "sin"):

So, Cassandra agreed or promised to have sex with Apollo and then didn't do it. But, the thing is that WE DON'T KNOW WHY. No source explains this. We don't know if Cassandra wanted to cheat Apollo to fool him and get away with her way, or if she wanted to love him but then regretted it out of fear. We have no idea. But if Cassandra deliberately tricked him, that's hybris and it was severely punished. Any mortal daring to trick, offend, or attack a god would get killed or punished harshly. So, again, we don't know if Cassandra "deserved" her punishment or if she didn't, there is no way to answer. Also, we have no idea if Apollo raped Cassandra or not. Cassandra says he fought like a wrestler over her, but we don't know if that is a metaphor for rape or not. Cassandra's sexual status is a debated topic (here is a paper in Jstor for example: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/651713)

In the Aeschylus' play, Cassandra is very bitter towards Apollo and calls him her destroyer, she even steps on her priestess' garlands to express how much she hates what Apollo did to her (curse her and then have her dead). But in Euripides' Trojan Women, the story is the opposite. Cassandra loves her lord Apollo and calls him her "beloved". And she throws her priestess' garlands to the wind so her symbols may stay "pure" because now she'll "lose her virginity" to Agamemnon.

Cassandra was a priestess of Apollo, which means she was willing to become her loyal religious servant, she loved him. But their relationship is complex, and we don't have enough information to know all of it. So, since we have contradicting sources, we might think that the ancient Greeks saw their relationship as nuanced and complex, so it wouldn't be ok to just claim that Apollo is bad and Cassandra is a helpless victim of his cruelty. From a religious perspective, I think Cassandra loved Apollo, and probably she regretted having sex with him because she was scared. We know that encounters with gods can be frightening (think of Semele and Zeus). Even after her curse, Cassandra still acts as Apollo's servant, she is still his priestess. I think she feels love, shame, guilt, sadness, and a lot of feelings for him. And religiously speaking, I believe Apollo did everything so Cassandra would become immortalized and forever remembered. Despite we don't have sources, I like to think that Apollo avenged Cassandra by supporting Orestes. Hope this helps!

#apollo

[snowy-equinox]

My husband crafted this special pot, inscribed with symbols of protection and painted using a pottery glaze that he crafted using ashes from our hearth.

A House Leek was ritually planted within this pot before it was placed atop our roof to help protect the home from both Spiritual Malefice and Dangerous Weather—a piece of ancient Anglo-Saxon folk-magic that is dear to my family.

[snowy-equinox]

I'm inviting participants 18 years or older who identify as Hellenic Polytheist practitioners or closely related religions that include worship of the Greek gods to participate in a questionnaire for my PhD thesis. If interested, I will send over the participant information.

[snowy-equinox]

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen 2 Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkein Kinda? Didn't finish the last book 3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte 4 Harry Potter series 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 6 The Bible 7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte 8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman 10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens 11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy 13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - Read most, not all 15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier 16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien 17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks 18 Catcher in the Rye 19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffeneger 20 Middlemarch – George Eliot 21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell 22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald 23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens 24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams 26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh 27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky 28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck 29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll 30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame 31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy 32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens 33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis 34 Emma – Jane Austen 35 Persuasion – Jane Austen 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini 38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres 39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden 40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne 41 Animal Farm – George Orwell - A favorite of mine! 42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez 44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving 45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins 46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery 47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy 48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood 49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding 50 Atonement – Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel 52 Dune – Frank Herbert 53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons 54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen 55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth 56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon 57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens 58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez 61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck 62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov 63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold 65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas 66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac 67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding 69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie 70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville 71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens 72 Dracula – Bram Stoker 73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett 74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson 75 Ulysses – James Joyce 76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath 77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome 78 Germinal – Emile Zola 79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray 80 Possession – AS Byatt 81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens 82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchel 83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker 84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro 85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert 86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry 87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton 91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad 92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery 93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks 94 Watership Down – Richard Adams 95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole 96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute 97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas 98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl 100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Total: 28

How many have you read?

The BBC estimates that most people will only read 6 books out of the 100 listed below. Reblog this and bold the titles you’ve read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen 2 Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkein 3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte 4 Harry Potter series 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee 6 The Bible 7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte 8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman 10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens 11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott 12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy 13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller 14 Complete Works of Shakespeare 15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier 16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien 17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks 18 Catcher in the Rye 19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffeneger 20 Middlemarch – George Eliot 21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell 22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald 23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens 24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy 25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams 26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh 27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky 28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck 29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll 30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame 31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy 32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens 33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis 34 Emma – Jane Austen 35 Persuasion – Jane Austen 36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis 37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini 38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres 39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden 40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne 41 Animal Farm – George Orwell 42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown 43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez 44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving 45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins 46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery 47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy 48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood 49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding 50 Atonement – Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel 52 Dune – Frank Herbert 53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons 54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen 55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth 56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon 57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens 58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley 59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon 60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez 61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck 62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov 63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt 64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold 65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas 66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac 67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy 68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding 69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie 70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville 71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens 72 Dracula – Bram Stoker 73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett 74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson 75 Ulysses – James Joyce 76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath 77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome 78 Germinal – Emile Zola 79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray 80 Possession – AS Byatt 81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens 82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchel 83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker 84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro 85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert 86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry 87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White 88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom 89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton 91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad 92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery 93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks 94 Watership Down – Richard Adams 95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole 96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute 97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas 98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare 99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl 100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

#books #personal

[snowy-equinox]

@robert702

doing important research on this fine sunday morning

[snowy-equinox]

Please put where you live (in general terms you are comfortable with like countryside versus city or part of the country) in the tags.

[snowy-equinox]

Patron saint of obscure bird knowledge!

#ask

[snowy-equinox]

Reblog if you want anon messages of what you would be the patron saint of

[snowy-equinox]

Not everything the Christians do is stolen from some anonymous pagan culture. I'm sorry y'all but the Christians did actually come up with a bunch of shit on their own.

[snowy-equinox]

[snowy-equinox]

Which Canaanite gods you work with?

None, actually! It's something I was looking into a while ago, and I did try contacting Shemesh, but it just didn't pan out.

I've started honouring the Shekhinah, the female aspect of G-d in Jewish mysticism.

#judaism #shekhinah

[snowy-equinox]

NOT "is it a good movie", "do you enjoy watching it"

I mean do you consider Mean Girls to be a movie about empowering and uplifting women?

#mean girls #tumblr polls #poll

[snowy-equinox]

I agree with everything said here, and I wanted to add my two cents.

I call this my Spirit Lake Theory.

Imagine you are walking beside a small lake. You can't see anything except the occasional glimmer of a fish. You stick your head in while sitting on the pier, and wow! Look at all these fish that have suddenly appeared! Obviously a bunch of fish didn't suddenly swim upriver to see you. You entered a space where they are more visible to you, and could interact with you if they wanted.

I don't think starting magic is anything at all like a beacon, where spirits are automatically drawn from far and wide. As an animist, I believe we are surrounded by spirits all the time. We don't occupy quite the same space, so we aren't keenly aware of them, and they aren't keenly aware of us. It's only when we start entering and manipulating their space that they notice us. Some of them will be curious and come closer, like Chicken mentioned. A lot of them will ignore us.

Ok I got some witchcraft questions because I'm starting to think that my experiences are not universal.

I've run into so many people that say that using magic makes you a beacon to malevolent spirits and thats why you should always ward and protect and all that but like...

... I haven't ever felt like my magic makes me a beacon or anything? I usually do warding and whatnot first anyways or I incorporate it into the working somehow. But its less about warding off the creepies and more like... part of the ritual.

So I'm wondering where this warning comes from. Like... culturally.

#witchblr #witchcraft #spirit work

[snowy-equinox]

Laika to Ground Control

Prints

[snowy-equinox]

Reminds me of the time my first grade teacher got mad at me for insisting sharks are fish, and not mammals.

"They don't have scales." She said, a minute before she turned the page and the book explained how sharks do, in fact, have scales.

when i was in third grade we were made to give a report about one particular animal and since everyone else picked stuff like lions and elephants and other common stuff i decided to pick something more obscure and chose the capybara. all was well until i began presenting in front of the class and the teacher was pissed off and said "I told you to pick a REAL animal, not a made up one!" i suppose describing it as a labrador-sized guinea pig wasn't a good way to sway her

everytime I look back at the pre internet era and the American Public's general unawareness of animals outside of like the standard ones you see in your backyard, I take a deep breath and give a pair of thanks for Wikipedia

#zoology #personal