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dailyadventureprompts · 3 months

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Monsters Reimagined: Yeenoghu, Demon Lord of Insatiable Hunger

It's been some years since I did my overhaul on the lore of the gnolls and how they embody the weird de/humanization that goes on with various monsters over d&d's history. Ever since I've had more than a few folks write in asking about how I would handle the default Gnoll God Yeenoghu, who exists in a similar state of "Kill everything that ever existed" to Orcus and a good portion of the game's other late game threats, thematically flat and not really useful for building stories around.

For a while I've avoided doing this post because I thought it might skew a little too close to my personal philosophy, and risk going from simply being influenced by my views to an outright soapbox. I personally hold that despite being part of our nature hunger is the source of the majority of human cruelty, and if society and cooperation are the tools we developed to best fight against the threat of famine, it is fear of that famine that allows the powerful to control society and secure their positions of privilege.

I've also dealt with disordered eating in a prior period of my life, alternating between neglecting my body's needs and punishing myself for needing in the first place. I'm well acquainted with hunger and the hollowing effect it can have, though I'd never claim to know it so well as someone who went hungry by anything other than choice and self hatred.

Learning to love food again saved saved my life. The joy of eating, of feeling whole and nourished, yes, but there was also the joy of making: of experimenting, improving, providing, being connected to a great tradition of cultivation which has guided our entire species.

If I was going to talk about an evil god of hunger, I was going to have to touch on all of that, and now that it's out in the open I can continue with a more thematic and narrative discussion on the beast of butchery below the cut.

What's wrong: Going by the default lore, there's not much that really separates Yeenoghu from any other chaotic evil mega-boss. He wants to kill everything in vicious ways, and encourages his followers to do the same. He's there so that the evil clerics can have someone to pray to because the objectively good gods are on the party's side and wouldn't help a bunch of cannibalistic slavers.

This is boring, we've done this song and dance before, and the only reason that there are so many demon lords/evil gods/archdevils like this is because the bioessentialism baked into the older editions of the game's lore was also a theological essentialism, and that every group had to have their own gods which perfectly embodied their ethos and there was no crossover whatsoever, themes be damned.

Normally I'd do a whole section about "what can be salvaged" from an old concept, but we're scraping the bottom of the barrel right from the inset. Likewise my trick of combining multiple bits of underwritten d&d mythology to make a sturdier concept isn't going to work as most of d&d's other gods of hunger or famine are similar levels of paper thin.

How do we fix it: I want Yeenoghu to be the opposite of the path I found myself on, a hunger so great and so painful that it percludes happiness, cooperation, or even rational thought. Hunger not as a sumptuous hedonistic gluttony but a hollowing emptiness that compels violence and desperation. More than just psychopathic slaughter and gore, it is becalmed sailors drinking seawater to quench their thirst, the urban poor mixing sawdust and plaster into their food because their wages are not enough to afford grain.

This is where we get the idea of Yeenoghu as an enemy of society, not because violence is antithical to society ( I think we've learned by now how structured violence can really be) but because society fundamentally breaks down when it can't take care of the people who provide its foundations. Contrast the Beast of Butchery with one of my other favourite villainous famine spirits: Caracalla the grim trader, who embodies scarcity as a form of profit and control in to Yeenoghu's scarcity as suffering.

Into this we can also add the idea of the hungry dead, ghouls yes but also vampires, anything cursed with an eternal existence and appetites it no longer has the ability to sate. A large number of cultures across the world share the idea that the dead cannot rest while they are starving, which is why we leave offerings of food by their graves or pour out a glass to the ones we lost along the way.

On that topic, there's also a scrap of lore involving Doresain god of ghouls, who has been depicted as an on and off servant of Yeenoghu. Since I'm already remaking the mythology, I'd have Doresain act as a sort of saint or herald for the demon lord, the wicked but still partially reasonable entity who can villain monolog before the feral and all consuming demon god shows up.

Summing it all up: Yeenoghu isn't a demon you wittingly worship, it's a demon that claims you, marks you as its mouthpiece and through you seeks to consume more of the world. It gives you just enough strength to keep on living, keep on suffering, keep on filling that hole in your belly and feed it in turn.

The greatest of these mouthpieces is Doresain, an elf of ancient times who's unearthly hungers elevated him to demigod status. Known as the knawbone king, he dwells within a dread domain of the shadowfell, and is sought out only for his ability to intercede with the maw-fiend's rampages.

Signs: Unnaturally persistent hunger pangs, excessive drool and gurgling stomach noises, the growth of extra teeth in the mouth, stomachs splitting open into mouths.

Symbols: An animal with three jaws, a three tailed flail or spiked whip. A crown of knawed bones (Doresain)

Titles: Beast of butchery, the maw fiend, the knawing god

Artist

#monsters reimagined #fiend #yeenoghu #undead #deity

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opencommunion · 4 months

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"There is an inherit bias towards 'Israel' that sustains the continual colonization of Palestine. Christian theologians, in few cases consciously but in most cases subconsciously, keep using a 'biblical' language and producing 'theological' concepts whose 'Sitz im Leben' is blunt colonialism. They might do this 'innocently' because their minds are occupied with the Bible on the one hand and with a Western cultural narrative on the other.

For Palestinians, including the Palestinian Christian community, Palestine is a real land with real people; it is our homeland. For Christians in the West, Palestine is an imagined land, a land that they know mainly from the Bible. It has little if anything to do with the real Palestine. When Christian pilgrims visit Palestine, they want to reinvent the Holy Land of the Bible. They are excited about how the Bible comes alive in Palestine. Nineteenth-century archaeologists, while digging in Palestine, were looking for the Bible. This is true also for theologians. When Christian theologians write about Palestine, their minds are occupied with the Bible and a Western dominant narrative. They write about the Land as if it exists in a vacuum; they strip it from its socio-political context, from its real people, and they rarely think about how such a theology has been and is being used to enhance settler colonialism. These occupied minds reinforce the continuing occupation of Palestine. Here, I’m not talking about evangelical theologians or Christian Zionists alone, but I’m concerned about those who are well-regarded, mainline, and accomplished theologians of many denominations. In the last seventy years, many theological concepts were developed and occupied the minds of several generations of theologians worldwide. Many of these concepts might have been well intended at some point, but they mean something totally different in the current context of occupied Palestine. Theologians in their naiveté are still using a language and concepts that support current Israeli settler colonialism. ... It is incomprehensible to me when the occupation of Palestinian land is not seen as part of modern European colonial history, but as part of biblical and thus salvation history. It is very disturbing when theologians ignore the ways in which biblical ideology is used as a political claim with major colonial consequences. ... Christian theologians have been playing, consciously or subconsciously, a major role in aiding the ongoing colonization of Palestinian land and people. The land theology was one of the theological tools used for Palestinian dispossession and oppression. Christian theologians failed to see that the promised land is but the confiscated land."

Mitri Raheb, "The Occupation of Theological Minds: The End of Innocence," in Resisting Occupation: A Global Struggle for Liberation (2022)

The main terms Raheb critiques in this essay are "the Temple Mount" and "the Promised Land" (or simply "the Land"). He also touches on the conflation of the biblical Israel and theological concepts of Israel with the state of Israel, the ethnonationalist notion of "God's chosen people," and the narrative that Joshua's conquest of Canaan was divinely ordained and salvatory. He identifies in these concepts an overarching "theology of conquest" that also informs other European settler colonial projects.

#palestine #zionism #colonialism #theology

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cryptotheism · 5 months

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Learning about religious writing in Islamic Spain is so funny knowing that it's eventually the birthplace of Kabbala.

These 11th century Arab polymath mystics keep doing crazy things with theology and math and then they like, leave it in a box. It's just fun little iterations on common folk talismans to them. They were about these concepts like they're just fun little correspondences with very little experimental value. Nobody tries to unify it in a big way.

Imagine if one day George Lucas was out for a walk and he overhears two guys talking like "I wanna see a war movie!" "Well I wanna see a sci-fi movie!" "Wouldn't it be cool if there was a movie that involved some sort of war in the stars that we could see?"

Its like that, but it's Moshe de Leon reading Sufi texts like "What if the alphanumeric values of Arabic letters were spiritually significant?" "What if the whole of the heavens could be described with mathematics?" "Wouldn't it be cool if there was some kinda theological bridge between language and the natural sciences?"

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tyrantisterror · 3 months

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The Fuck's Up With Mammon?

Ok, so, in the grand history of Christian folklore, there are dozens of different ways that the society of Hell and its various demons can be structured. One of the most popular is The Seven Princes of Hell, which divides Hell between seven ruling demons, each of which represents the seven deadly sins (and is opposed by saints who represent the seven heavenly virtues). It's fun because it's got a solid theological theme and not too many working parts - seven is a more digestible number than nine or, like, however the fuck your sort out all the demons in the Lesser Key of Solomon, each of which has some arbitrary number of legions of demon soldiers under their command, and the deadly sins theme gives you a clear way to make each prince's domain stand out.

(Obviously I'm a bit biased here, since I used a modified version of the Seven Princes of Hell for my own story about demons, but still, I think the point stands.)

Now, who the seven princes of Hell are can differ. Binsfield, the guy who coined the name, lists them as follows:

Lucifer, Prince of Pride

Mammon, Prince of Greed

Asmodeus, Prince of Lust

Leviathan, Prince of Envy

Beelzebub, Prince of Gluttony

Satan, Prince of Wrath

Belphegor, Prince of Sloth

However, there are earlier versions of the seven princes that rearrange things. Beelzebub has been given the sin of Envy at times, Belphegor has been given gluttony, and both Belial and Abaddon/Apollyon have taken the role of prince of Sloth. With me so far?

Right, ok, so here's the thing: ALL of these demons have shit going on in folklore outside of their role as potential princes of Hell. Well, all except one. To wit:

Lucifer, despite being a translation error, quickly became the front-runner in the grand race of "Who is THE Devil in the Bible, i.e. the leader of Hell itself?" It helps that said translation error was made by King James in his version of the Bible, which, while a terrible translation, is an amazing piece of poetry in its own right and beloved by many Christians because of it. Notably, Lucifer is The Devil of Paradise Lost, which is up there with Dante's The Divine Comedy in being one of the most important and influential depictions of Hell of all time.

Beelzebub is one of the oldest demons in all of demonology, predating Christianity itself, and is pretty close to Lucifer in the race for "Who is THE Devil," with arguably a better claim to the position despite Lucifer being the more popular candidate for the role.

Satan gets kudos for being one of the few devils that's ACTUALLY named in the Bible... even if it's less a name in context and more a title akin to "prosecuting attorney." Because of that, he's arguably got the greatest claim to being The Devil, and in most works where a different devil gets the title, Satan is treated as one of his alternate titles anyway.

Asmodeus was set up in folklore to be The Devil, and has a pretty strong claim to the title because of that. He's also clearly what Dante based his description of the devil's physical appearance on, with his three different colored heads and all, and that gives him some major props.

Leviathan is also a rare demon who gets mentioned in the Bible, although in the Bible it's pretty clear he's not a demon but rather a big sea monster, and a lot of Christian folklore treats him as such instead of as a demon. So that's a pretty big "other thing going on" for him - sometimes he's not even a demon, but more of a godzilla.

Belphegor was mentioned in a good number of texts predating the concept of arranging demons by the seven deadly sins, and while he was mostly a minor demon (akin to most of the other residents of the Lesser Key of Solomon, like Shax or Marchosias or what have you), that's still something. Becoming a Prince of Hell gave him a greater claim to fame, but still, he had a career before it.

Abaddon/Apollyon is one of those demons whose name is ALSO a synonym for Hell itself, which is a pretty big deal. He can be a demon, or he can be hell, or he can be BOTH, like in the takes where Hell has a literal mouth to swallow sinners and is portrayed as kind of a living monster in its own right. He also got to be The Devil in Pilgrim's Progress, and that's pretty cool.

Belial is one of the absolute earliest demons, having been cast as The Devil in the Book of Enoch, which is kind of the O.G. Abrahamic demon story (as much as any written story could be the source of it, anyway). Thus, while Belial may not have the most popular claim to being The Devil, he arguably has the best claim to it, or at least the earliest. Also, Belial is just as often depicted as a lady demon as he is a male demon, which means Belial is the best candidate for a Princess of Hell.

But that leaves... Mammon. And as far as I can tell in all my research, Mammon's claim to fame is and has always been being the Demon of Greed. Like Lucifer, his existence is owed to a translation of the Bible personifying something that was not originally a person - "mammon" was just supposed to mean money and other material wealth, but then it became, well, Mammon, the demonic personification of Greed.

He's the demon who was made for his sin, rather than being given it after his creation. The only demon whose existence purely hinges on needing a personification of a sin, the only one who has no other shit going on. Lucifer, Beelzebub, Asmodeus, they all have rich histories as demons in folklore, but Mammon? He's just greed.

And that's weird to me. Were there no other, more popular demons who could embody the concept? How does Mammon feel having nothing else to him beyond his sin? It's kinda weird, right?

I've got no greater point to this, I just thought it'd be fun to share.

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communistkenobi · 3 months

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also I know I’m strolling in seven years late to Horizon’s representation problems but I feel like these games are an instructive example in how the liberal imagination understands “good representation.” the game seems to take a lot of care in demonstrating (what the developers understand to be) a fully post-racial society by way of universal racial integration - every society or ‘tribe’ or group of people you encounter is almost uniformly racially diverse. Being generous, I think this is an attempt to avoid any possible racist implications in the fanciful costumes and outfits that Horizon is known for; there is a lot of focus in representing the different people of Horizon’s world through what they wear. You can immediately tell an Oseram from a Carja, not by their racial makeup, but by their clothing. This means that, if you meet a particularly ‘savage people’ (a term characters in the game use semi-frequently) who wear ‘exotic clothing’ and face-paint, the diverse racial makeup of the group prevents (or is intended to prevent) a racist conclusion about that group.

Likewise, the game presents a world free from systemic homophobic prejudice - Aloy is notably gay, but also her asking people about their partners, or assuming other people around her are gay, generally passes without comment. Horizon is presenting a fully ‘integrated’ social world, one whose conflicts are not meant to map onto ‘modern-day’ racism and homophobia.

But the underlying logic and structure of racism and homophobia (and binaristic, oppositional gender) are left intact. Humanity in Horizon is still presented as fundamentally separate from nature, moving overtop of it, extracting what they need from it, but never part of it as such. And this construction of nature as separate from “man” is not problematised, “man” just gets universalised into “human,” and “human” gets universalised into a non-racial category. This is completely side-stepping the history of this construction of nature as a white supremacist, colonial, capitalist construction, an understanding of nature as something colonial Europe is meant to hold dominion over through the dehumanisation of non-white, non-European people, converting them into non-human labourers and pests who live atop the land Europe is attempting to colonise and enclose. “Nature” in the modern western understanding is a fundamentally racial concept; nature is a ‘scientific, rational, biological’ container meant to house everything non-human about the world, an object to be studied and exploited by the one true subject of history, Mankind - and who is considered part of mankind is a question of whether you belong to the white European ruling class.

I think Aloy in particular represents this problem well - her access to and understanding of pre-apocalypse technology makes her universally suspicious and dismissive of any religious or ‘spiritual’ beliefs she encounters in other groups, frequently getting into reddit-atheist-adjacent quibbles with the ‘unenlightened,’ ‘primitive’ people of the world about the fact that the machines that harvest food for them and take care of the land are not gods, silly, they’re just machines! Her only real counterpart in terms of technological understanding is Sylens (a Black man), who is an antagonist. Like despite the game’s attempts at neutralising race as a coherent category, it is kind of unavoidable to notice that the protagonist is a white woman who’s only equal is a Black man engaging in constant deception for his own benefit lol

And Aloy’s anti-religious sentiments are deeply funny, because the game’s narrative itself has a theological relationship to technology - humans destroyed the world with technology, yes, but salvation of humanity is only possible through technology, specifically a globe-spanning technological system meant to be an environmental steward to the planet, repairing the damage caused by previous technological catastrophes and human wars. Human beings themselves are insufficient to the task of taking care of the planet, and “nature” itself is incapable of self-governance or regulation. And the way this technological system is made to function properly again is, hilariously, unlocked through the genetic code of a white woman, a perfect clone of the technological system’s original creator. the solution to Horizon’s central conflict and threat is, ultimately, a white saviour

And so the appropriative elements of Horizon - calling the Nora ‘braves,’ the abstracting of hundreds of north american Indigenous cultures into mere aesthetics and symbols, the invocation of words like savage and primitive, and so on - are not surface-level problematic elements of an otherwise anti-racist game, they are indicative of a liberal anti-racist imaginary, a place where we’re all equal human beings whose main problem are vague sectarian grudges, without looking at or dealing with any of the underlying ideological frameworks that produced race or gender in the first place.

So I think Horizon is, despite attempts to imagine a post-racist world, nonetheless very limited in how it represents this post-racial world because it understands racism as prejudice against particular phenotypic characteristics, not an underlying logic that renders “nature” and “human” as fundamentally racial concepts in history

#um. idk what to tag this #also what’s the consensus on citing sources for tumblr posts. I’m using Quijano and Lugones’ work on coloniality of power & gender if you #want to read more about the colonial history of nature #I should probably just post excerpts of those works instead #horizon

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blackhistorystoryteller · 8 months

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The black culture is not all about slavery

This is a message for my black brothers and sisters

There are more than 100 gods, both small and big, in Igbo Culture, but for some reason, most people don't know anything about them, except probably for one.I think colonialism and the entrance of Christianity are to blame because they made us forget our roots as Africans. But that's a narrative we must work hard to change.Out of the over 100 gods we have, I will be talking about the nine strongest and most popular Igbo gods (Alusi)

also known as ani, ana & ale in numerous dialects, is a female god representing the earth, fertility, creativity, and morality. She is the most respected god in Igboland.

She is considered the wife of Amadioha, the skygod, and commands authority in Igbo land. The symbol of the ala is a python & crescent moon

This is the most popular god in Igboland, and he is the god of thunder & lightning. He is the strongest of all.He is considered a gentleman among the deities and the cruelest when annoyed.Amadioha represents the collective will of the people. A white ram represents him, and his color is red. He is still one of the most feared gods in Igbo land to this day.His shrine can be found in rivers state, Nigeria.

This is the god of strength and war, as its name means "place of strength." It is a horned deity and is one of the most powerful and respected gods in Igboland.The Ikenga can is given a title to men of good reputation, wealth, and integrity.

This is the god of health and divination. This god is one of the basic theological concepts used to explain good and evil, health and sickness, poverty, and wealth in Igbo land.Belief in the deity was widespread, with most villages having some agwu priests, who also doubled as physicians in the land.

This is the goddess of the sun. As is done in almost all ancient religions and traditions, there is always a deity in respect of the sun.It is revered as the goddess that promotes productivity, hard work, and the overall positive well-being of the people.The Igbo kept this deity in high esteem. That's why many households took the name to be their surname.

This is the guardian deity of yam in Igboland. (Yes, yams 😂)In many parts of Igbo land, people did rituals in honor of the goddess of yams, known as ifejioku.She is prayed to for productivity during the farming season.Children who were dedicated to this goddess were called Njoku and were expected to be prosperous in life

The goddess of the ocean & the seas. It is believed to have found the Idemmili community in Anambra state.Its shrine can be found in that community and is one of the oldest shrines in Igbo land.It is a secret shine & the worship of pythons (eke) goes on there. Hence the killing of pythons in that area is forbidden.

I don't think this list will be complete without a god of death.Meaning "the one that kills at night," he is known as the death deity.His victims are said to be criminals and those who have committed abominations in the land, and he is known to kill violently.

#life #animals #culture #aesthetic #black history #history #blm blacklivesmatter #anime and manga #architecture #blacklivesmatter #niger coup #blackawareness #black community

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greenthena · 4 months

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Why then was this forbid? Why but to keep ye low and ignorant

(If evil, why tasty?)

In the Garden (the one in Eden, not in Tadfield or Berkeley Square), Aziraphale is tasked with protecting the Tree of Knowledge. He is, as he says, "On apple tree duty," that day when Crawly suggests to Eve that the fruit might be extra delicious, and worth a rather significant gamble.

And about that fruit...what was it that was so corrupting to humanity that they had to be cast from paradise after consuming it? Aha! You just fell victim to one of the classic blunders. You thought I was here to argue theology. Even I'm not that much of a masochist. What I will say is this, the fruit gave them knowledge--specifically, the knowledge of Good and Evil--which made them like God. In Paradise Lost, where (let's be honest) Western Christians get most of their context for the Fall of Man, Milton describes humankind's experience prior to that Original Sin as being fully Good. Good (as defined by the Almighty) is available to Adam and Eve from their conception. But Evil can only be known by disobeying God...by eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. And, oh, does does that Wily Old Serpent entice Eve to eat the fruit. The Serpent's temptation is a hefty stanza, but my most particular favorite part is this,

Why then was this forbid? Why but to awe, Why but to keep ye low and ignorant, His worshippers; he knows that in the day Ye Eate thereof, your Eyes that seem so cleere, Yet are but dim, shall perfetly be then Op'nd and cleerd, and ye shall be as Gods, Knowing both Good and Evil as they know.

(Milton, Book 9, lines 703-709.)

Ah, Crawly, you did such a good job. "Get up there and make some trouble." And you certainly did.

So knowing, knowledge...theologically these are heavy themes in the Eden narrative. Once Eve and Adam partake of the fruit (oh, spoiler alert...sorry...yah, they eat the apple) their eyes are opened and they realize that they are naked and everything changes. They're exiled from paradise, never to return to the sanctuary of creation's womb.

Remember what Aziraphale was doing that day? Well, what he was supposed to be doing, anyhow... Guarding the Tree, yes? Guardian of the Eastern Gate of Eden, but also Steward of the Tree. Keeper of the Knowledge. Hold that thought; I'm going to need you to come back to it in a bit.

Crawly...well, Crowley and Aziraphale spend the next six millennia on earth addressing the assignments given by their respective Head Offices and eventually forming their Arrangement. And through this time, Crowley introduces Aziraphale to a vast array of different types of knowledge: the knowledge of what food tastes like in the definitely-not-a-temptation form of ox ribs; the knowledge of what wine does to an angel's corporation; the knowledge that he has more free will than he realizes and can lie directly to Heavens' Supreme Archangel; and, perhaps most impactfully, the knowledge that he has a friend hereditary enemy who will keep his secrets safe.

As Aziraphale experiences existence on earth, he accumulates volumes of knowledge that other angels will never have, and even begins to collect this knowledge for himself in the most human way imaginable.

He acquires books. Little storehouses of knowledge in which people express their ideas, ask questions, and perform humanity in a way that is really only possible because Eve took the apple and defied her Maker. If they'd stayed in the Garden, there would be no questions, no new ideas, no sushi restaurants, and no dusty little bookshops where angels keep their precious hoards of human knowledge.

Remember that little thought I asked you to hold onto oh, say two paragraphs ago? Here's where it fits. A.Z. Fell & Co. is the New Eden. It's a safe haven containing a vast store of knowledge guarded by the angel of the Eastern Gate. Even the physical design of the bookshop mimics the walls of the Garden.

Just as in the original Eden, where the angel gave the demon the shelter of his wing, the bookshop provides a true home for Crowley (especially in S2, when we see him consistently remove his sunglasses upon entering the shop as an act of vulnerability.)

And like God in Her Garden, Aziraphale is covetous of his Knowledge, refusing to sell his books just as the Almighty denied the breeding pair of humans access to the fruit.

(Also, I literally asked God, and She said that Aziraphale will get mad if you try to eat his books.)

#good omens #meta monday #go meta #crowley #aziraphale #angel of the eastern gate #anthony janthony crowley

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nicosraf · 3 months

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quite certain you've probably had this ask before and have answered it but what books/specific sections of the bible do you recommend reading for angel research? and are there any good websites/other sources/other religious texts outside of the bible?

Hello!

Off the top of my head, I would say the biblical books that are more angel-related than others are Genesis, Ezekiel, Job, Revelation.... hmmm I would say the gospels tend to mention angels being physically present quite a bit too — like when Jesus leaves the desert and the angels run to comfort him (very cute of them btw). And, of course, you might want to take a look at the Book of Enoch.

One non-Bible source I remember very well is The City of God by Saint Augustine, specifically Book 11. For a secondary source on Augustine, I highly recommend Augustine's Theology of Angels by Elizabeth Klein.

I like Augustine's stuff in general, and I personally try to look for angel mentions in theological/philosophical work before Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite's Celestial Hierarchy (which took over western christian angel understanding). I do still recommend reading Celestial Hierarchy mostly because it's what you're going to find in every single angel-focused book/site.

I don't really have website recs for that above reason but I do make use of Christian q&a sites a lot because they tend to stick very strictly to what the Bible says and I like knowing what the contemporary consensus tends to be about angels for Christians.

Also, I really like to crawl along JSTOR and I'd really like to set up a list of my favorite articles to share, but it'll take a while. I really recommend reading a source — for example, Thomas Heywood's The Hierarchie of the Blessed Angells, which I quite like – then looking it up on JSTOR to understand what the historical context behind it is and what it might be responding to (researching Heywood's book is what made me see why the 9-level angel hierarchy concept has been so persistent in angelology).

One JSTOR paper I'll go ahead and link now is this one about angel Lucifer's beauty that I like very much.

Anyway, I swear one day I'll have a very neat organized database of sources......... I Swear.

#also of course Milton and reading discourses surrounding Milton (!) are very helpful #mostly because the discourses will go into detail about the understanding of angels in the period and a general history of them #mine #ask #theology

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comicaurora · 1 year

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How does Aurora's broader cultural/existential relationship with death differ from ours? Since the main thing influencing our view of death is that we don't know what happens when we die, and the Aurora people (Aurorans?) already have a factual explanation for this, would that make them accept death more, or fear it more?

Well, they have a factual explanation, but it isn't quite the same thing as an understanding.

In the real world, we know what happens to our body when we die, and some people find it comforting that the atoms that make them up are going to go into the cycle of growth and rebirth that makes up the planet's ecosystem. We are a concrete, tangible thing, and we know what it means to die.

However, there is a core unanswered question, which is "what part of me makes me me?" I think, therefore I am; I exist, and I am the observer contained within this body. I contain a theoretically infinite inner world of thoughts and imagination and can conceive of worlds beyond number. There is something in me that makes me different from you, that explains why I see the world through these eyes and nobody else's. "The Brain is wider than the Sky, For put them side by side, The one the other will contain With ease, and you beside."

But what is that observer? Where is it in the body? Where does it go when the body dies?

The observer cannot conceive of a world without itself in it, because the observer by its nature only knows the world it has seen.

In the real world, many people call this observer "the soul", an ephemeral and intangible concept. Many attempts have been made to find a physical core that is or holds this ephemeral concept, because we really want it to physically exist. I think, therefore I am, therefore I must be something. In ancient Egypt, the heart was thought to be the seat of consciousness. Nowadays that's how we think of the brain. But the brain is a very complicated thing, and we don't really know what each part of it corresponds to when mapped to the mind, and every time we think we have a solid answer, we learn something new that makes the whole thesis unravel. People who have suffered brain damage or illnesses often have difficulty engaging with the world around them, but if and when they are lucid they are often clearly still themselves - which indicates that their Self, their Observer, isn't just "the brain", because even when the brain is harmed the self persists, just somewhat disconnected from the world, lacking some of the tools it previously had access to that allowed it to engage with its surroundings.

People have tried weighing bodies at the moment of death to see if the soul has a weight (it doesn't) and many theological arguments have debated its existence, because nothing is more fun to argue about than something that can absolutely never be proven one way or another.

Many religions build core tenets around "where does the observer go when the body dies." Reincarnation is a popular concept - because the observer cannot conceive of a world without itself in it, it might find it comforting to believe it could continue to observe the world from new vantage points. Afterlives are another popular idea, the belief that an observer "goes somewhere else" when the body fails. We're not very good at comprehending endings, I think; the way we see the world and the way we engage with our memories can sort of leave us feeling like our past is one big eternal moment, and people we've lost linger forever in our memories - it doesn't always make sense that they simply don't exist anymore, and it's easier for us to think of them as simply Somewhere Else. Somewhere we can't get to, but somewhere. It's why we get so dizzied when we go back somewhere like a childhood home or an old school and find the place refurbished or demolished - it's eternal in our memories, and we don't really understand how it could simply stop existing. How can the world move on without us, when the world we lived in is so clear in our memories? How can a person be gone, when they're so vibrant and alive in our memories?

In Aurora, souls are a concrete thing, a weaving of an energy that is documented, omnipresent and has tangible effects on the world around it. But does that tell an Auroran person where their observer is? Their personhood exists in the latticed weave of an energy that is vaster and older than the world. When they die, the energy unweaves; the pattern is lost, but the energy remains. To my mind, this is no different than how we relate to the atoms that make up our bodies. They're physical, known quantities, but the thing that makes us us is some metaphysical concept contained in the information of how those building blocks are specifically put together. When we die, those atoms do other things; every part of us remains, but we are gone. Where did we go? What is the "we" that is gone?

I don't think the people of Aurora have any more answers than we do about this. Knowing for sure that they have souls doesn't tell them anything more about who they are.

#asks #aurora

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cosmic--dandelion · 6 months

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So how did we get from this

Dedicated to his Worshippers, George Frederic Watt (1817-1904)

To this?

A brief history of Mammon

Addendum Because We Can't Have Nice Things: this essay is in no way meant to be a "critique", criticism, or personal attack against Helluva Boss/Hazbin Hotel/Vivziepop as I am, in fact, a big fan of all three! I actually loved the newest episode and Mammon as a character. Seeing him in motion, I think he looks damned near perfect as a modern take on the King of Greed. I wrote this ONLY for educational purposes.

Mammon is a Chaldee (the Semantic language of ancient Chaldeans, the people of a small Mesopotamian country who were later absorbed by the Babylonians) or Syriac word meaning "wealth" or "riches".

The Worship of Mammon, Evelyn De Morgan (1909)

He is best remembered from the Sermon on the Mount from Mathew 6: 24 (King James version): “No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.”

Some scholars believe Mammon might have been loosely based on Dīs Pater, originally a Roman God of mineral wealth and fertile lands who was later merged with the chthonic deities of the underworld Pluto and Orcus (because minerals come from underground). Pluto was depicted in the Divine Comedy as "wolflike demon of wealth"; wolves in the medieval times were symbols of greed. Others think he might have been an ancient Syrian god, though no trace of his cult or temples exists.

Mammon transformed over time from an abstract concept to major demon. This is thanks to later philosophers and theologians such as Saint Gregory of Nyssa, a third century Byzantine scholar, Archbishop of Constantinople John Chrysostom, and Peter Lombard, bishop of Paris from 1159 to 1160. His book of Four Books of Sentences (Sententiarum libri IV) was the standard theological text of the Middle Ages.

Mammon was assigned the sin of greed according to the Peter Binsfield classification of demons.

John Milton of Paradise Lost fame imaged him as a fallen angel. He is described as being stooped over (literally the "least erected" of Lucifer's demonic host) because he always has his eyes downward looking for gold and would rather use Hell's resources to finance his lavish lifestyle than wage war against Heaven.

In Edmund Spenser's 16th long poem, The Faerie Queene, Mammon is a “uncouth, salvage, and uncivile wight” who sets up his cave of riches right next to the entrance to the underworld. Subtle, huh? He tries to tempt Sir Guyon, the protagonist of Book II, with all his fabulous wealth, arguing that he could use it for good. (This is a religious-moral-political allegory about temperance, so you can guess how well that went.) He shows up again in Jacques de Plancy's Dictionnaire Infernal as Hell's ambassador to England. Yes, really.

Just like in Biblical times, reformists used Mammon as a symbol of exploitation and unfettered capitalism during the industrial age.

Fun fact: Mr. Burns lives at the corner of Croesus and Mammon street.

So how does Vivziepop's version compare to the historical Mammon? I dunno, he hasn't appeared in the show yet. It's not my favorite design, but I like the fact that half the fandom was expecting him to be the Big Bad of Helluva Boss, and he's a just big heckin' chonk who sort of looks like a demented Dr. Suess character crossed with a demonic air freshener. It's a silly design for a silly dude, but he could be more dangerous than he looks...

#helluva boss #mammon #religion #history #vivziepop #mythology #demonology

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nicklloydnow · 22 days

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““Dorothy reminds me in so many ways of Toni Morrison,” West said. “You know Toni Morrison is Catholic. Many people do not realize that she is one of the great Catholic writers. Like Flannery O’Connor, she has an incarnational conception of human existence. We Protestants are too individualistic. I think we need to learn from Catholics who are always centered on community.”

(…)

She viewed belief in God as “an intellectual experience that intensifies our perceptions and distances us from an egocentric and predatory life, from ignorance and from the limits of personal satisfactions”—and affirmed her Catholic identity. “I had a moment of crisis on the occasion of Vatican II,” she said. “At the time I had the impression that it was a superficial change, and I suffered greatly from the abolition of Latin, which I saw as the unifying and universal language of the Church.”

Morrison saw a problematic absence of authentic religion in modern art: “It’s not serious—it’s supermarket religion, a spiritual Disneyland of false fear and pleasure.” She lamented that religion is often parodied or simplified, as in “those pretentious bad films in which angels appear as dei ex machina, or of figurative artists who use religious iconography with the sole purpose of creating a scandal.” She admired the work of James Joyce, especially his earlier works, and had a particular affinity for Flannery O’Connor, “a great artist who hasn’t received the attention she deserves.”

What emerges from Morrison’s public discussions of faith is paradoxical Catholicism. Her conception of God is malleable, progressive, and esoteric. She retained a distinct nostalgia for Catholic ritual, and feels the “greatest respect” for those who practice the faith, even if she herself wavered. In a 2015 interview with NPR, Morrison said there was not a “structured” sense of religion in her life at the moment, but “I might be easily seduced to go back to church because I like the controversy as well as the beauty of this particular Pope Francis. He’s very interesting to me.”

Morrison’s Catholic faith—individual and communal, traditional and idiosyncratic—offers a theological structure for her worldview. Her Catholicism illuminates her fiction; in particular, her views of bodies, and the narrative power of stories. An artist, Morrison affirmed, “bears witness.” Her father’s ghost stories, her mother’s spiritual musicality, and her own youthful sense of attraction to Christianity’s “scriptures and its vagueness” led her to conclude it is “a theatrical religion. It says something particularly interesting to black people, and I think it’s part of why they were so available to it. It was the love things that were psychically very important. Nobody could have endured that life in constant rage.” Morrison said it is a sense of “transcending love” that makes “the New Testament . . . so pertinent to black literature—the lamb, the victim, the vulnerable one who does die but nevertheless lives.”

(…)

Morrison is describing a Catholic style of storytelling here, reflected in the various emotional notes of Mass. The religion calls for extremes: solemnity, joy, silence, and exhortation. Such a literary approach is audacious, confident, and necessary, considering Morrison’s broader goals. She rejected the term experimental, clarifying “I am simply trying to recreate something out of an old art form in my books—the something that defines what makes a book ‘black.’”

(…)

Morrison was both storyteller and archivist. Her commitment to history and tradition itself feels Catholic in orientation. She sought to “merge vernacular with the lyric, with the standard, and with the biblical, because it was part of the linguistic heritage of my family, moving up and down the scale, across it, in between it.” When a serious subject came up in family conversation, “it was highly sermonic, highly formalized, biblical in a sense, and easily so. They could move easily into the language of the King James Bible and then back to standard English, and then segue into language that we would call street.”

Language was play and performance; the pivots and turns were “an enhancement for me, not a restriction,” and showed her that “there was an enormous power” in such shifts. Morrison’s attention toward language is inherently religious; by talking about the change from Latin to English Mass as a regrettable shift, she invokes the sense that faith is both content and language; both story and medium.

From her first novel on forward, Morrison appeared intent on forcing us to look at embodied black pain with the full power of language. As a Catholic writer, she wanted us to see the body on the cross; to see its blood, its cuts, its sweat. That corporal sense defines her novel Beloved (1988), perhaps Morrison’s most ambitious, stirring work. “Black people never annihilate evil,” Morrison has said. “They don’t run it out of their neighborhoods, chop it up, or burn it up. They don’t have witch hangings. They accept it. It’s almost like a fourth dimension in their lives.”

(…)

Morrison has said that all of her writing is “about love or its absence.” There must always be one or the other—her characters do not live without ebullience or suffering. “Black women,” Morrison explained, “have held, have been given, you know, the cross. They don’t walk near it. They’re often on it. And they’ve borne that, I think, extremely well.” No character in Morrison’s canon lives the cross as much as Sethe, who even “got a tree on my back” from whipping. Scarred inside and out, she is the living embodiment of bearing witness.

(…)

Morrison’s Catholicism was one of the Passion: of scarred bodies, public execution, and private penance. When Morrison thought of “the infiniteness of time, I get lost in a mixture of dismay and excitement. I sense the order and harmony that suggest an intelligence, and I discover, with a slight shiver, that my own language becomes evangelical.” The more Morrison contemplates the grandness and complexity of life, the more her writing reverts to the Catholic storytelling methods that enthralled her as a child and cultivated her faith. This creates a powerful juxtaposition: a skilled novelist compelled to both abstraction and physicality in her stories. Catholicism, for Morrison, offers a language to connect these differences.

For Morrison, the traits of black language include the “rhythm of a familiar, hand-me-down dignity [that] is pulled along by an accretion of detail displayed in a meandering unremarkableness.” Syntax that is “highly aural” and “parabolic.” The language of Latin Mass—its grandeur, silences, communal participation, coupled with the congregation’s performative resurrection of an ancient tongue—offers a foundation for Morrison’s meticulous appreciation of language.

Her representations of faith—believers, doubters, preachers, heretics, and miracles—are powerful because of her evocative language, and also because she presents them without irony. She took religion seriously. She tended to be self-effacing when describing her own belief, and it feels like an action of humility. In a 2014 interview, she affirmed “I am a Catholic” while explaining her willingness to write with a certain, frank moral clarity in her fiction. Morrison was not being contradictory; she was speaking with nuance. She might have been lapsed in practice, but she was culturally—and therefore socially, morally—Catholic.

The same aesthetics that originally attracted Morrison to Catholicism are revealed in her fiction, despite her wavering of institutional adherence. Her radical approach to the body also makes her the greatest American Catholic writer about race. That one of the finest, most heralded American writers is Catholic—and yet not spoken about as such—demonstrates why the status of lapsed Catholic writers is so essential to understanding American fiction.

A faith charged with sensory detail, performance, and story, Catholicism seeps into these writers’ lives—making it impossible to gauge their moral senses without appreciating how they refract their Catholic pasts. The fiction of lapsed Catholic writers suggests a longing for spiritual meaning and a continued fascination with the language and feeling of faith, absent God or not: a profound struggle that illuminates their stories, and that speaks to their readers.”

#morrison #toni morrison #catholic #catholicism #religion #literature #art #nobel prize

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khensaptah · 3 months

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Mystic Egyptian Polytheism Resource List

Because I wanted to do a little more digging into the philosophy elements explored in Mahmoud's book, I took the time tonight to pull together the recommended reading he listed toward the end of each chapter. The notes included are his own.

MEP discusses Pharaonic Egypt and Hellenistic Egypt, and thus some of these sources are relevant to Hellenic polytheists (hence me intruding in those tags)!

Note: extremely long text post under this read more.

What Are The Gods And The Myths?

ψ Jeremy Naydler’s Temple of the Cosmos: The Ancient Egyptian Experience of the Sacred is my top text recommendation for further exploration of this topic. It dives deep into how the ancients envisioned the gods and proposes how the various Egyptian cosmologies can be reconciled. ψ Jan Assmann’s Egyptian Solar Religion in the New Kingdom: Re, Amun and the Crisis of Polytheism focuses on New Kingdom theology by analyzing and comparing religious literature. Assmann fleshes out a kind of “monistic polytheism,” as well as a robust culture of personal piety that is reflected most prominently in the religious literature of this period. He shows how New Kingdom religious thought was an antecedent to concepts in Hermeticism and Neoplatonism. ψ Moustafa Gadalla’s Egyptian Divinities: The All Who Are The One provides a modern Egyptian analysis of the gods, including reviews of the most significant deities. Although Gadalla is not an academic, his insights and contributions as a native Egyptian Muslim with sympathies towards the ancient religion are valuable.

How to Think like an Egyptian

ψ Jan Assmann’s The Mind of Egypt: History and Meaning in the Time of the Pharaohs is my top text recommendation for further exploration of this topic. It illuminates Egyptian theology by exploring their ideals, values, mentalities, belief systems, and aspirations from the Old Kingdom period to the Ptolemaic period. ψ Garth Fowden’s The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind identifies the Egyptian character of religion and wisdom in late antiquity and provides a cultural and historical context to the Hermetica, a collection of Greco-Egyptian religious texts. ψ Christian Bull’s The Tradition of Hermes Trismegistus: The Egyptian Priestly Figure as a Teacher of Hellenized Wisdom provides a rich assessment of the Egyptian religious landscape at the end of widespread polytheism in Egypt and how it came to interact with and be codified in Greek schools of thought and their writings.

How To Think Like A Neoplatonist

Radek Chlup’s Proclus: An Introduction is my top text recommendation for further exploration of this topic. It addresses the Neoplatonic system of Proclus but gives an excellent overview of Neoplatonism generally. It contains many valuable graphics and charts that help illustrate the main ideas within Neoplatonism. ψ John Opsopaus’ The Secret Texts of Hellenic Polytheism: A Practical Guide to the Restored Pagan Religion of George Gemistos Plethon succinctly addresses several concepts in Neoplatonism from the point of view of Gemistos Plethon, a crypto-polytheist who lived during the final years of the Byzantine Empire. It provides insight into the practical application of Neoplatonism to ritual and religion. ψ Algis Uzdavinys’ Philosophy as a Rite of Rebirth: From Ancient Egypt to Neoplatonism draws connections between theological concepts and practices in Ancient Egypt to those represented in the writings and practices of the Neoplatonists.

What Is “Theurgy,” And How Do You Make A Prayer “Theurgical?”

ψ Jeffrey Kupperman’s Living Theurgy: A Course in Iamblichus’ Philosophy, Theology and Theurgy is my top text recommendation for further exploration of this topic. It is a practical guide on theurgy, complete with straightforward explanations of theurgical concepts and contemplative exercises for practice. ψ Gregory Shaw’s Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus demonstrates how Iamblichus used religious ritual as the primary tool of the soul’s ascent towards God. He lays out how Iamblichus proposed using rites to achieve henosis. ψ Algis Uzdavinys’ Philosophy and Theurgy in Late Antiquity explores the various ways theurgy operated in the prime of its widespread usage. He focuses mainly on temple rites and how theurgy helped translate them into personal piety rituals.

What Is “Demiurgy,” And How Do I Do Devotional, “Demiurgical” Acts?

ψ Shannon Grimes’ Becoming Gold: Zosimos of Panopolis and the Alchemical Arts in Roman Egypt is my top text recommendation for further exploration of this topic. It constitutes an in-depth look at Zosimos—an Egyptian Hermetic priest, scribe, metallurgist, and alchemist. It explores alchemy (ancient chemistry and metallurgy) as material rites of the soul’s ascent. She shows how Zosimos believed that partaking in these practical arts produced divine realities and spiritual advancements. ψ Alison M. Robert’s Hathor’s Alchemy: The Ancient Egyptian Roots of the Hermetic Art delves deep temple inscriptions and corresponding religious literature from the Pharaonic period and demonstrates them as premises for alchemy. These texts “alchemize” the “body” of the temple, offering a model for the “alchemizing” of the self. ψ A.J. Arberry’s translation of Farid al-Din Attar’s Muslim Saints and Mystics: Episodes from the Tadhkirat al-Auliya contains a chapter on the Egyptian Sufi saint Dhul-Nun al-Misri (sometimes rendered as Dho‘l-Nun al-Mesri). He is regarded as an alchemist, thaumaturge, and master of Egyptian hieroglyphics. It contains apocryphal stories of his ascetic and mystic life as a way of “living demiurgically.” It is an insightful glimpse into how the Ancient Egyptian arts continued into new religious paradigms long after polytheism was no longer widespread in Egypt.

Further Reading

Contemporary Works Assmann, Jan. 1995. Egyptian Solar Religion in the New Kingdom: Re, Amun and the Crisis of Polytheism. Translated by Anthony Alcock. Kegan Paul International. Assmann, Jan. 2003. The Mind of Egypt: History and Meaning in the Time of the Pharaohs. Harvard University Press. Bull, Christian H. 2019. The Tradition of Hermes Trismegistus: The Egyptian Priestly Figure as a Teacher of Hellenized Wisdom. Brill. Chlup, Radek. 2012. Proclus: An Introduction. Cambridge University Press. Escolano-Poveda, Marina. 2008. The Egyptian Priests of the Graeco-Roman Period. Brill. Fowden, Garth. 1986. The Egyptian Hermes: A Historical Approach to the Late Pagan Mind. Cambridge University Press. Freke, Tim, and Peter Gandy. 2008. The Hermetica: The Lost Wisdom of the Pharaohs. Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin. Gadalla, Moustafa. 2001. Egyptian Divinities: The All Who Are The One. Tehuti Research Foundation. Grimes, Shannon. 2019. Becoming Gold: Zosimos of Panopolis and the Alchemical Arts in Roman Egypt. Princeton University Press. Jackson, Howard. 2017. “A New Proposal for the Origin of the Hermetic God Poimandres.” Aries: Journal for the Study of Western Esotericism 17 (2): 193-212. Kupperman, Jeffrey. 2014. Living Theurgy: A Course in Iamblichus’ Philosophy, Theology and Theurgy. Avalonia. Mierzwicki, Tony. 2011. Graeco-Egyptian Magick: Everyday Empowerment. Llewellyn Publications. Naydler, Jeremy. 1996. Temple of the Cosmos: The Ancient Egyptian Experience of the Sacred. Inner Traditions. Opsopaus, J. 2006. The Secret Texts of Hellenic Polytheism: A Practical Guide to the Restored Pagan Religion of George Gemistos Plethon. New York: Llewellyn Publications. Roberts, Alison M. 2019. Hathor’s Alchemy: The Ancient Egyptian Roots of the Hermetic Art. Northgate Publishers. Shaw, Gregory. 1995. Theurgy and the Soul: The Neoplatonism of Iamblichus. 2nd ed. Angelico Press. Snape, Steven. 2014. The Complete Cities of Ancient Egypt. Thames & Hudson. Uzdavinys, Algis. 1995. Philosophy and Theurgy in Late Antiquity. Wheaton, IL: Quest Books. Uzdavinys, Algis. 2008. Philosophy as a Rite of Rebirth: From Ancient Egypt to Neoplatonism. Lindisfarne Books. Wilkinson, Richard H. 2000. The Complete Temples of Ancient Egypt. Thames & Hudson.

Ancient Sources in Translation Attar, Farid al-Din. 1966. Muslim Saints and Mystics: Episodes from the Tadhkirat alAuliya. Translated by A.J. Arberry. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Betz, Hans Dieter. 1992. The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation, Including the Demotic Spells. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Copenhaver, Brian P. 1995. Hermetica: The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius in a New English Translation, with Notes and Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Guthrie, Kenneth. 1988. The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library: An Anthology of Ancient Writings which Relate to Pythagoras and Pythagorean Philosophy. Grand Rapids, MI: Phanes Press. Iamblichus. 1988. The Theology of Arithmetic. Translated by Robin Waterfield. Grand Rapids, MI: Phanes Press. Iamblichus. 2003. Iamblichus: On the Mysteries. Translated by Clarke, E., Dillon, J. M., & Hershbell, J. P. Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature. Iamblichus. 2008. The Life of Pythagoras (Abridged). Translated by Thomas Taylor. Whitefish, MT: Kessinger Publishing. Lichtheim, Miriam. 1973-1980. Ancient Egyptian Literature. Volumes I-III. Berkeley: University of California Press. Litwa, M. David. 2018. Hermetica II. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Majercik, Ruth. 1989. The Chaldean Oracles: Text, Translation, and Commentary. Leiden: Brill. Plato. 1997. Plato: Complete Works. Edited by John M. Cooper and D. S. Hutchinson. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing. Plotinus. 1984-1988. The Enneads. Volumes 1-7. Translated by A.H. Armstrong. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Van der Horst, Pieter Willem. 1984. The Fragments of Chaeremon, Egyptian Priest and Stoic Philosopher. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

#mystic egyptian polytheism #resource list #philosophy #neoplatonism #egyptian polytheism #hellenic polytheism #hermeticism

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togglesbloggle · 2 months

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Evolution, Metaphor, and the Meaning of Gay Alligators

A few times recently, I’ve run across discussions about animal sex that are wrong in interesting ways. I don’t want to derail those conversations, and I certainly don’t want to call out anybody in particular, so I’m branching off here- but the most recent one was in the notes about the discovery (original paper) that most alligator sex is between two males.

Anyway, a not-uncommon element of these discussions is for somebody to frame animal homosexuality as ‘confusion’, particularly with simpler animals. The idea behind this isn’t too tricky: it proposes that the animal’s sexual instinct is functionally oriented towards (or intended for) heterosexual coupling and reproduction, but that the perceptions and processing power of the animal’s brain are too limited to reliably distinguish between the sexes. As a result, simpler animals of the same sex may occasionally copulate with one another by accident, as one of the failure modes along the way to biological reproduction.

If you are a card-carrying member of the Tumblrati, the word ‘heteronormative’ might well be in your brain already, and fast approaching your tongue. You might be building an argument about how sexuality has social as well as reproductive functions, that a lack of human imagination doesn’t prevent evolution from building towards homosexuality for its own reasons, and anyway human sociolinguistic concepts are a lousy fit for animal behavior. These are pretty good arguments, but I’m asking you to pause that line of thought briefly; it’s not where I’m going.

Animals confound us in an interesting way: their agency is without question, but their sapience is limited, and we struggle to imagine ‘what it’s like to be an alligator’ for that reason. What is it like, after all, to be conscious but not self-aware? So when we ask ourselves why an animal does what it does, we tend to use evolution as a way to paper over that gap, and say “well, the alligators must be having sex in order to reproduce and succeed as organisms.” Persistently, in odd and elaborate ways, we make this assumption that animals are themselves pursuing adaptive fitness in a way that’s much more direct than humans do, as if natural selection were a motive for animal behavior and not just an explanation for it.

This is the deeper and more interesting error that I’m trying to chew on. The ‘mistake’ theory of animal homosexuality assumes that animals are motivated to pursue biological reproduction, not because of what we know about them as individuals or as a species, but because of what we know about the forces that produced them. This assumption gets silently made in the case of alligator sex in part because we often make this assumption, it’s nearly our default way of thinking about these things.

I’m very sympathetic to this error! Biology and especially anatomy is our go-to example of purpose in nature; questions like “what are your lungs for?” have obvious (if surprisingly sophisticated) answers. Behavioral instincts are a little more complicated, but it’s still kind of the same thing- we can cogently talk about the reasons why we shiver when we’re cold, for example. And every time we have this conversation, natural selection is looking over our shoulder waggling its eyebrows at us. This kind of language can be very, very misleading, inviting a slip from “we <are born with an involuntary reflex to> shiver in the cold because it helps us survive,” to “we <agentically prefer or choose to> shiver in the cold because it helps us survive.” It’s practically designed to trip us up like this.

I think this happened in our language because of the theological fights around evolution in the early days of its discovery. You know how it was- Darwin, the monkey trials, all that nonsense. Natural selection accounts for biological diversity and the seeming-purpose of natural forms in a way that requires no conscious designer (or Designer), and so what might have been a purely scientific discovery also ended up blowing a hole in the social and religious functions that that sense of purpose provided- and was called upon, in some ways, to fill that hole again. Evolution got smooshed into a sort of theological shape, and now we have the sort of culture where the phrase “evolutionary imperative” feels like it makes sense to us instead of being an obvious contradiction in terms.

That theological shape comes back again and again when we try to speak poetically about natural selection, because it’s always lurking very shallowly under the surface. In these failure modes, we talk about natural selection in almost filial terms, a generative entity that hangs out in a workshop occasionally holding up new animals for our perusal; it’s hiding behind Kipling’s ‘gods of the copybook headings’, NRx’s ‘gnon’, Scott’s ‘Goddess of Cancer,’ and so many others. I did it a little bit myself, not three paragraphs ago! I called evolution “a force that produced them,” like it was some sort of creator-deity sculpting gay alligators out of clay. Like “what evolution wants” is something that a person can talk about…

Metaphors and language are hard, but I’ve been trying to think a lot lately about how to build a story about evolution in my head that doesn’t have this problem. Something passive, you know? Something that doesn’t have the property of being a designer, doesn’t tempt us into treating ourselves and the organisms sharing our world as if we were all agents of some Lovecraftian entity.

I’m not entirely satisfied with my answer just yet, but for now, I’m trying to let evolution be a labyrinth. It’s filled with twisting corridors and strange rooms, dead ends and loops, and terrible, deadly traps. It’s unfathomably large, and mostly empty- even though trillions and trillions of us have explored this maze, we’ve only really seen a small part of it, and out beyond the edges of our knowledge, there’s still mile after endless mile of quiet, dark corridors that have never known a footfall.

It’s not a comforting place, and even though we were born here, it’s not really home; it’s not something built for us, or one that’s especially concerned with our wellbeing. But the thing about this labyrinth is that most of the rooms have prisoners in them, strange and unfamiliar beings held in stasis and waiting for the door to open so they can spring into life and begin their own wandering. And this is a treasure of a kind, if you want to see it that way; not wooden chests full of gold coins, perhaps, but something new and beautiful all the same. And if that’s not reason enough to explore the maze, to go out beyond the relative safety of the room you were born in- then, well, there’s always the rumors that there’s a real exit, hidden somewhere among the twisting corridors.

It’s… not bad, I guess? The metaphor has its uses.

I think it does a decent job of capturing and illuminating lots of our moral intuitions; bioconservatism (and to a lesser extent, social conservatism) as a refusal to explore the maze, rejecting the insane dangers of exploration and the questionable rewards of the search and instead preferring to stay at home in the room where we were born– still trapped in the labyrinth, but at least alive, at least for a while. It shadows that position with the correct amount of irony, reminding us that human existence follows from a four-billion-year history of discovery, adaptation, and mutation by nonhuman organisms; it reminds us that the discovery of human beings came at a terrible cost for those who came before us. And importantly, it allows any given organism to be a thing-in-itself. Sure, life originates in certain places and certain patterns according to the latent shape of the labyrinth (though my metaphor isn’t very good at describing that shape…), but it’s free to act as it prefers, and live or die by those choices.

My hope, anyway, is that by dwelling on this metaphor, and stepping back from all the talk about creators and purposes and imperatives, you’ll find it easier to see what ought to have been fairly obvious to us: alligators have gay sex because they think the other alligators are sexy, and they want to have sex about it.

The questions that follow after, like “why do alligators find each other sexy?,” are also important! It is vital to learn as much about the shape of this labyrinth as we can, the better to traverse it safely, to explore it comprehensively, and maybe even to find the exit. But those are different questions, and conflating them can only lead to confusion. We must begin by acknowledging that we and our fellow-travelers on Earth do not exist for the sake of natural selection, and that any willful concessions to it are strategic, not moral. The creatures all around us- human and otherwise- carry their own motives and their own reasons within themselves. To live in the world as it is, we have to confront that radical pluralism head on, and not try to wipe it away by pretending these are all just masks over some domineering force of nature puppetting them towards inscrutable ends.

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a-queer-seminarian · 28 days

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Decolonizing Palestine (2023) by Mitri Raheb: a Palestinian Christian’s call for a theological paradigm shift

As I dig into various responses to Israel’s colonization of Palestine, this book has become my top recommendation for Christians.

Lutheran pastor Dr. Mitri Raheb (b. 1962) is Palestine’s most widely published Christian theologian. His latest text, Decolonizing Palestine: The Land, the People, the Bible, could hardly have been more timely, coming out just a few months before the events of October 7, 2023.

If you are Christian — or are otherwise interested in unpacking how Christian theology has fueled Israeli settler-colonialism, and what Christian theology that centers and supports the Palestinian cause might look like — I strongly urge you to read the book in full. But if you don't have the time or inclination, I've published a Medium article that provides a thorough summary of his book.

Click here for the full review & summary of the book; what follows below the is a much briefer summation of Raheb's main points:

Western Christian theology today is dominated by Christian Zionism, all forms of implicitly endorse the oppression of Palestinians.

While conservative forms of Christian Zionism, with their focus on Israel’s supposed role in the Second Coming, tend to be centered, Raheb proposes a definition of Christian Zionism that reckons with “liberal” forms of Christian Zionism as well.

His definition emphasizes action over belief: “I argue that Christian Zionism should be defined as a Christian lobby that supports the Jewish settler colonialism of Palestinian land by using biblical/theological constructs within a metanarrative while taking glocal considerations into account.”

A paradigm shift is urgently needed in Christian theology, one that applies the lens of settler colonialism to our biblical interpretation.

Of the book’s four chapters, much of the first two focus on presenting Palestinian history through this lens, successfully arguing that modern Israel is a settler colonial state funded by Western powers:

“Today, empire is bigger than one state, nation, or military power. …Israel is part of this empire and is sustained by it” with both the “hardware” of military weapons, and the “software” of “a biblical blueprint that paints colonial practices with theological justifications of a ‘promised land’ and ‘chosen people.’”

To move towards a decolonial theology, our two hermeneutical keys are the land and the native people of Palestine. Understanding Palestine as:

the name of the “multiethnic, multicultural, and multireligious region that was able to include diverse identities and peoples within its boundaries” for the past 2,500 years; and

a land on the margins of “five regional empires that have determined its fate” for millennia,

we come to recognize that the voices lifted up in the Bible are colonized voices, those who are oppressed by and who resist Empire.

This lens helps us understand the theme of chosenness or “election” as well:

in Deuteronomy, Isaiah, and elsewhere in scripture, “Election was and will always be…a promise to those weak and powerless, to those who begin to despair about themselves. …It is with a notion like election that the people of Palestine were able to face the diverse imperial occupations throughout millennia.”

Therefore, the appropriation of the concept of election by various imperial powers, from the British Empire to the United States to modern Israel, is completely contrary to its biblical significance.

That sums up Raheb’s main points in Decolonizing Palestine; for more information, go read his book — or read my full article over on Medium!

#decolonizing palestine #mitri raheb #palestinian christians #palestinian theology #christian zionism #free palestine #books #essays

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