#the old religion

[wytchoftheways]

Horned God Invocation: ⛦

By the flame that burneth bright

O Horned One!

We call thy name into the night

O Horned One!

Thee we invoke by the moon led sea

By the standing stone and the twisted tree

Thee we invoke where gather thine own

By the nameless shrine forgotten and lone

Come where the round of the dance is trod

Horn and hoof of the goat-foot God

By moonlit meadow on dusky hill

When the haunted wood is hushed and still

Come to the charm of the chanted prayer

As the moon bewitches the midnight air

Evoke thy powers, that potent bide

In shining stream and secret tide

In fiery flame by starlight pale

In shadowy host that ride the gale

And by the fern-brakes fairy-haunted

Of forests wild and wood enchanted

Come! O Come!

To the heartbeats drum!

Come to us who gather below

When the broad white moon is climbing slow

Through the stars to the heavens height

We hear thy hoofs on the wind of night

As black tree branches shake and sigh

By joy and terror we know thee nigh

We speak the spell thy power unlocks

At Solstice, Sabbat, and Equinox

Word of virtue the veil to rend

From primal dawn to the wide world's end

Since time began---

The blessing of Pan!

Blessed be all in hearth and hold

Blessed in all worth more than gold

Blessed be in strength and love

Blessed be wher'er we rove

Vision fade not from our eyes

Of the pagan paradise

Past the gates of death and birth

Our inheritance of the earth

From our soul the song of spring

Fade not in our wandering

Our life with all life is one,

By blackest night or noonday sun

Eldest of gods, on thee we call

Blessing be on thy creatures all.

🕯️🐐🕯️

🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿🌿

#the horned god #invocation #herne #cernunnos #karnayna #the great god pan #the bucca #the man in black #old nick #folk devil #old hornie #paganism #faery tradition #traditional witchcraft #gardnerian wicca #cunning craft #the old religion #the old ways #witchcraft #cornish witchcraft #altar of cunning

[gaiusbunnymask]

the divine right of kings and the old religion: why arthur pendragon is the one and future king, and what the "two sides of the same coin" thing is all about

(disclaimer: this is my opinion and point of view, you are welcome to disagree. if someone else has already talked about this before, please let me know!)

throughout the show gaius displays extreme loyalty and servitude to uther and later arthur, the pendragons in general, though that loyalty doesn't inhibit him from lying and acting behind their backs if he thinks he has to. but his belief system establishes that even if uther is a tyrant, he must obey him, for uther is his king. gaius could have run away during the purge but he chose not to. was it because he considered uther his friend? or is there another reason?

later merlin will do things following gaius' example and instructions: act behind his king, protect him in secret with the use of magic, and put his loyalty to the king over everything else.

...but why????? (long meta below the cut!)

when gaius is asked in 1x01 if he practiced magic, he says "uther banned such work 20 years ago", meaning, what's important is what uther has sanctioned as monarch of camelot. yet he still thinks magic is a gift that must be used to do good, and somehow in his mind this equals to supporting the pendragon family, which has banned and persecuted magic for two decades. it also means that he finds merlin using his magic to support and protect arthur, the future king, perfectly plausible and aligned with his philosophy of life, even in a kingdom where being caught using magic will get you killed. his beliefs seem very contradictory and it's no wonder that a lot of sorcerers and the dragon hated him.

but i think there's something more to it

even with magic being outlawed gaius still thinks that the only magic that should be done is the one in service of his monarch. so if merlin does magic to do his chores is "bad", but if he uses sorcery to save uther that's "good".

this is why i think gaius was, intentionally or not, developed as a character with an intrinsic belief on the divine right of kings. at some point before the beginning of the show he must have sworn an oath of fealty to uther, which ties him indefinitely to the pendragon family. taking into account that the old religion was THE religion camelot lived by before the purge, that means that when gaius became uther's servant/sorcerer/court physician at the time, the old religion was pretty okay with the pendragons ruling. nimueh, a priestess of the old religion, was friends with uther, and was ruling alongside the king at the time. with this in mind we can safely conclude that, before the purge, in the eyes of the old religion, the triple goddess and its representatives, uther was a legitimate king.

this means a few things:

-gaius is a follower of the old religion; even if he has stop practicing magic, he grew up in it

-it was probably the custom that a monarch would have a priest/priestess in their court ruling alongside them; at the very least the magical/religious representative would have an official position in the court and a seat on the monarch's council. the ancient round table has a seat for magic placed on the right side of the king, which as the merlin wiki says, it "suggests that magic was held in great esteem in the time of the Ancient Kings".

-said magical/religious representative would legitimize the king's power, and in turn, said king would give the magical/religious representative status and power.

-because, functionally speaking, the old religion can be understood like any other religion in medieval times, meaning that the doctrine of the divine right of kings also applies here

-all this to establish that the subjects and authorities of the old religion, and the triple goddess, believe in the pendragon's divine right to rule over the land

-and that the old religion gave uther the right to rule before the purge

-but since uther has rebelled against the old religion and threw the balance into chaos, he must be punished and someone else must take his place and right his wrongs, bringing the world back to the goddesses'-ordained natural order (yey shakespeare reference!)

-uther's replacement must be legitimate, recognized as a rightful heir in the eyes of the old religion and the common people;

-and who are the easier candidates to choose from? the pendragon children, morgana and arthur

-but morgana is an illegitimate child in this feudal worldview, and therefore in the eyes of the old religion too. however, she is still a better prospect than uther, and even arthur, because she's both a pendragon and a priestess of the old religion, so she's able to gather subjects through the course of the story

-this brings us to why the old religion and it's followers believe that arthur must be the king to unite the land of camelot and "bring magic back to the land", which is code for legalizing and reinstating the old religion to its previous status:

he was born from magic, literally, which means he's literally a son of the old religion and its godesses and source of power (jesus parallelism lmao)

he is a pendragon, a family that had ruled with the blessing of the old religion in the past

he is a legitimate heir

and the role that merlin plays in all of this? he's supposed to guide arthur to do "the right thing", what the old religion wants him to do. he already comes with great status, what with him being emrys, which means his power and influence will be immortal. he is to take a position of authority, the same place that nimueh used to have, so that united with arthur the two of them will constitute a sort of dual power (secular and magical) that legitimize each other and bring back the natural order of things.

in this aspect, s3 morgana and morgause could be seen as arthur and merlin's counterpart; they encapsulate another dual power with the potential to rule rightfully. if only they hadn't chosen to kill so many innocent people...

and with arthur being the once and future king, and merlin being immortal, this means that they could hold this positions in the distant future, when arthur comes back. In conclusion: they have the potential to be perfect dual power, legitimate and eternal.

i think this is what the prophecy of the once and future king is about and where the two sides of the same coin thing comes from.

kilgahrrah, who loathed uther with all his enormous being, believed in arthur's divine right and the necessity of a dual power. gaius also believed this. the druids believed this, and the same can be said of almost every subject and creature of the old religion that we encounter throughout the show. most of the non-magical people also believe in the divine right of kings.

this is why it was so easy for merlin to believe his destiny is to serve arthur. the society, the religion and the environment he lived in reinforced these beliefs.

#zy rewatchs merlin #bbc merlin #merlin meta #the old religion #uther pendragon #arthur pendragon #merlin #gaius #two sides of the same coin #merthur #morgana pendragon

[great-art-and-a-purple-tongue]

I just gave a sermon at my church today about asexuality and how to be an ally. Not only did I get a lot of comments about how much people liked it (and how it was easy to understand for so many old folks), but one old lady came up to me afterwards with tears in her eyes and she said, "I'm 77 years old and I finally know what I am. Thank you." And that just made everything I've done worth it.

(also, thank you @onbearfeet for letting me use one of your blog posts. It resonated with a lot of people)

#let me know if anyone wants my notes or the slideshow #update: check the notes to see the video #asexual #asexuality #ace #old queers discovering themselves #ace pride #asexual pride #international asexuality day #religion #unitarian universalism

[danu2203]

Kate Bush Waking The Witch (Music Video 1985)

PAGAN

PANTHEISM

#youtube #THE OLD RELIGION

[hauntedmoors]

this show rules sorry

#I’m thinking about the other caps I posted where a lesbian entraps a partner into a relationship by donating her liver. great stuff. #I don’t have the chops for it but someone could say some really interesting things about how the show plays with genre awareness / the tug #and flow relationship between love and pain / religion and playing god as a healer / sexuality and love framed by corporate settings #and some good old surgery as sex metaphors #text #house md #liverisms tag

[rongzhi]

The absurdism of localising religious art

English added by me :)

#李林讲艺术 #douyin #video #tiktok #arts #religion #matteo ricci u old bastard we meet again

[luciewitch13]

Sidney Sweeney in immaculate

#girlblog #ave maria #sidney sweeney #religious art #religious trauma #religion #christianity #coquette #black swan #lizzy grant #ultraviolence #girlblogging #lana del rey #girlhood #dollete aesthetic #dollette #femcel #just girly things #sofia coppola #girl rotting #girly thoughts #girl interrupted syndrome #tumblr girls #hollywood #old hollywood #horror #horror movies #pinterest #moodboard

[zemi-noelle-art]

Webcore Angel 💿

#my art #illustration #digital art #art #webcore #angelcore #angel #tw religion #religious trauma #tw christianity #old web core #2000s internet #internet core #internetcore #pixel art #pixel #weirdcore #oddcore #nostalgiacore #cybercore #y2k #y2k millennium

[ilovemesomevincentprice]

Vincent Price and Jane Asher

The Masque of the Red Death (1964) // dir. Roger Corman

#vincent price #jane asher #the masque of the red death #masque of the red death #edgar allan poe #god #devil #religion #devil worship #satanism #satanist #bicon #bisexual icon #god hes beautiful #i need to be locked in his dungeon and treated like his bitch #im good. #this is fine. totes fine #hes so sexy #horror #old horror movies #vintage #movie #actor #handsome #gif #gifs made by me #gif set #my gifs

[twistedshipper]

high priestesses + fire

#bbc merlin #merlinedit #merlingifs #merlin gifs #tvedit #female characters #morgana pendragon #morgause #nimueh #bbc morgana #merlin #twistedshipper #merlinladies #high priestesses of the old religion

[wytchoftheways]

#traditional witchcraft #altar of cunning #cornish witchcraft #the old one #the bucca #witches god #witch master #the horned one #the great god pan #folk devil #witches devil #the man in black #the old religion #the old ways #my practice #pagan #witchcraft #paganism #folk magick #cunning folk #pellar #cunning man

[mx-anthony-janthony-crowley]

listens to queen and hozier and recognises every other lyric from good omens fic titles

#it's such a funny experience #this post was sponsored by 'get religion quick (cause you're looking divine)' from breakthru by queen i was like #'huh that's a cool line i'm sure i recognise it from somewhe-OHHHHH' #good omens #ineffable husbands #aziraphale #crowley #ao3 #good omens fanfiction #queen #hozier #also shoutout to that video on youtube that's 'good old fashioned lover boy but it's ao3 titles' that had a good omens fic counter ahsgdgbc

[wannabeskyferreira]

12 years ago today (December 30, 2011), the world changed forever, and Lana del Rey released the masterpeice Born to Die, as the second promotional single for her first official album Born to die. 🇺🇸🚬🌹

#old tumblr #born to die #lana del rey #lana del slay #lana is mother #lana is god #lana is our queen #lana is my religion #lana is queen #bring back 2012 tumblr #2012 aesthetic #2012 tumblr #tumblr aesthetic #i miss old tumblr #btd #mood board #2014 tumblr #2014 aesthetic #bring back 2014 #ldr #ldr aesthetic #btd summer

[thedepartmentofdiscoveries]

From The Ilustrated Police News from https://www.facebook.com/newspaperscom

#mother superior jump the gun #nuns with guns #old newspapers #the illustrated police news #nunsploitation #nuns #religion

[dad-galaxy]

🐊🦩

#dofuwani #sir crocodile #donquixote doflamingo #monkey d. luffy #okay inside joke but if one of my b0bad1n followers likes dofuwani. These two idiots are reading a certain tin can helmets fanfic (?) #because im old and do I still rp with my gf and sometimes I draw the scenes and we were joking about ...so what its doffy reading? #“well dear hes reading this book about a knight in his personal exploration about religion. sexuality. beliefs. concepts of love. family...” #my gf inmediate response: HES READING[...] Gf again: of course he's not reading it completely for the story he's reading for the sexy parts #hatta art #my art

[judaicsheyd]

PSA: The Torah is NOT the equivalent of the Old Testament. That is the Tanakh. The Torah only covers the first five books (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy).

I've seen too many people be highly confident in this idea and it's driving me a bit mad. Oh and also the Jewish understanding of these texts is worlds away from the Christian understanding, so just keep that in mind. Anyway, that's all.

Ignore the tags, B"H.

#judaism #torah #tanakh #psa #old testament #christianity #bible #jewish #jumblr #religion #carverop #yeshivawithcarver #references