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#zohar thoughts
wisdom-and-such · 2 years
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“You might eat just to fill an empty stomach.
  But you could also eat in order to derive energy from the nutrients of your food, 
and then channel that energy into fulfilling your divine mission in life.  “
-- The Arizal
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“Similarly, you might do business just to accumulate wealth.
 But you could do the same business using a percentage of your profits for charitable purposes.
 The business itself could be a vehicle for good,”
-- The Arizal
The Ari, or Arizal, (1534-1572) was a Jewish mystic and author of some of the most influential works of Kabbalah. 
In 1492, the Jews were expelled from Spain. Some went West to discover the Americas, yet the bulk went East to Turkey, and it was in the beginning of the sixteenth century that a number of these Jews settled in the city of Safed. For an eighty year period there was a renaissance of Jewish life and activity in this mystical city. 
The city’s other mystics were no less famous. Rabbi Moses Cordevero, known as the Ramak, wrote a monumental Kabbalistic work called Pardes Rimonim. However, the most famous Kabbalist of the day was Rabbi Isaac Luria (1534-1572), universally known as the Arizal, an acronym for “The G‑dly Rabbi Isaac of Blessed Memory.”
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cryptotheism · 5 days
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It really doesn't make any sense to practice Kabbalah unless you're Jewish. It's an advanced method of esoteric textual analysis for Hebrew scripture.
As a gentile, I greatly enjoy reading commentaries on it, and discussing it's concepts with my Jewish peers, but at no point have I thought like "Alrighty! Time to spend several years learning Zoharic Aramaic so I can write my OWN esoteric treatise on the Torah." Why would I want to do that lol.
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unbidden-yidden · 1 month
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Jewish Song of the Day #40: Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai
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Okay so this one is a little tricky to explain the context of, because it requires a certain baseline of existing knowledge, but I'm gonna try.
So this is a Lag b'Omer song, for reasons I will get to momentarily.
Lag b'Omer is the 33rd day in the counting cycle of the Omer - the 49 days between the second day of Passover (Pesach) and the holiday of Shavuot, which commemorates the giving of the Torah to the Jewish people by Hashem from Mt. Sinai.
Lag b'Omer is celebrated for a couple of reasons:
Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, who lived in the second century of the Common Era, was the first to publicly teach the mystical dimension of the Torah known as the Kabbalah, and is the author of the classic text of Kabbalah, the Zohar. On the day of his passing, Rabbi Shimon instructed his disciples to mark the date as “the day of my joy.” The chassidic masters explain that the final day of a righteous person’s earthly life marks the point at which all their deeds, teachings and work achieve their culminating perfection and the zenith of their impact upon our lives. So each Lag BaOmer, we celebrate Rabbi Shimon’s life and the revelation of the esoteric soul of Torah. Lag BaOmer also commemorates another joyous event. The Talmud relates that in the weeks between the Jewish holidays of Passover and Shavuot, a plague raged among the disciples of the great sage Rabbi Akiva (teacher of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai), “because they did not act respectfully towards each other.” These weeks are therefore observed as a period of mourning, with various joyous activities proscribed by law and custom. On Lag BaOmer the deaths ceased. Thus, Lag BaOmer also carries the theme of loving and respecting one’s fellow (ahavat Yisrael).
(Source: Chabad - read more about it here)
Because of this, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai is associated with the day, and therefore this song exists.
It is also worth noting that the first 32 days of the Omer (also referred to as the sephira) traditional Jews observe a number of mourning customs, including restrictions on music. I typically observe some level of this, so JSOTD might go on hiatus for that month, or at a minimum, might switch to a capella music only. I might also switch to doing a "Jewish Teaching of the Day" instead. Please let me know what y'all think in the notes. There is also another similar three week period during the summer months of Tammuz and Av where mourning customs are observed. I will likely do the same thing during both.
The Omer doesn’t occur until early May, but I figured I'd give a heads-up while I am talking about this anyway.
Enjoy the song and let me know your thoughts!
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h-worksrambles · 11 months
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Full Future Redeemed and Xeno series spoilers.
Interesting that A and Alpha’s conflict kind of mirrors that of Pneuma and Logos (Pyra/Mythra and Malos). A embodies Alvis’ humanity built through their journeys first with Shulk and now with Matthew. Those experiences embue them with a compassion for humanity that makes them fight in defence of it. Kind of like how Pyra and Mythra found something new to live for and used that as a drive to confront Malos.
Malos and Alpha act on a cold nihilistic sense of pragmatism inherited from their human masters, that makes them dismissive of humankind and wish to erase them. It even works in a naming sense as ‘Pneuma’ translates to ‘breath’ and in philosophical terms means ‘the breath of life’ or the concept of a soul or a spark of humanity. While ‘Logos’ literally means word or thought. One acts out of the compassion of their soul. The other acts out of the cold logic of their mind.
That’s without even getting into how Logos and Pneuma embody the animus/anima dichotomy that exists in every single Xeno game and has roots in both Jung and Plato (disclaimer I only have a layman’s knowledge of this philosophy so please feel free to correct me if I’m wrong) Every Xeno game has had characters who embody opposites, usually aligned as masculine and feminine respectively. Fei and Elly, the Contact and the Antitype both tied to the Zohar and to each other, and whose union finally freed it. KOS-MOS and chaos. embodying the order and unraveling of the universe respectively. Hell their powers are even explicitly called Animus and Anima, with chaos wielding the typically feminine Anima and KOS-MOS the more commonly masculine Animus, reflecting the concept of blurring the binary of these gendered concepts, that everyone has a little bit of both in them and that it’s proper and healthy to foster the two within you to become a more well rounded person. That’s why the harmony of Fei and Elly is important. The Animus and the Anima need each other, and if there is strife between them, all hell breaks loose.
It comes up in the Xenoblade games as well. The fraught conflict and lack of harmony between the god Zanza and the goddess Meyneth drives the Bionis and Mechonis to the brink of ruin, while the harmony between their vessels, Shulk and Fiora, is what paves the way for a new kinder world order. Come to think of it, Shulk and Fiora are themselves sort of a Logos and Pneuma respectively. Shulk is driven by thought and action. His defining trait is his intelligence and he showed the resolve and insight to take down god himself. Fiora is the soul, the breath of life, defined by her innocence and courageous spirit, who shared her soul with a god and learned to empathise with her, coming to understand the very nature of the universe as a result, and using that kindness to drive her forward. And as mentioned previously, Logos and Pneuma’s conflict in Xenoblade 2 also embodies this Animus/Anima divide. And that same sense of achieving unity and harmony with another person is embodied by the Ouroborous in Xenoblade 3. Humans need each other. We need people with different lives, different perspectives, different natures, in order to be whole. And the Ouroboros makes that literal.
Future Redeemed makes this divide explicit by pointing out that Logos is masculine, Pneuma is feminine, and Ontos exists between. Drawing attention to the gender motif just makes that more obvious. That being said, A and Alpha’s nonbinary swag kind of puts a neat new spin on a recurring motif of the series. Because they aren’t explicitly male or female even if they embody the same dichotomy. Even when these characters exist outside a gender binary, the philosophical concepts of discord or harmony between opposites still applies.
All this to say that Future Redeemed’s climax is deliberately evocative of the climaxes of Xenoblade 2 (by mirroring Pneuma and Logos this way), Xenoblade 1 (with Alpha styling themselves visually and musically after Zanza) and evokes motifs found throughout the wider Xeno series. I’ve said before that 3 does this to an extent with Z and Origin mirroring past antagonists, but Future Redeemed goes all in on it.
Why? Perhaps because it ties into Xenoblade 3’s theme of cycles, and making the same mistakes. The endless now is the embodiment of being arrested in a single a moment, a single mindset, the refusal to change, with N being the most hellish portrayal of what that can do to someone. Ultimately breaking those cycles is the only way to overcome Moebius and move forward. It’s literally a stagnant, ever looping circle (right down to its symbol). The same fight as in the previous games plays out in this prequel yet again in order to show that nothing has really changed. At least not yet. Aionios isn’t ready to make that step. They’re not ready to move beyond the same mistakes. Just look at Na’el and how close she came to repeating Klaus’ mistake: putting a faith in an unknowable entity, playing god and and discarding the old world in place of a new one. Like Malos once said, ‘they haven’t changed’. The people may not be ready right now. But by the time the main game starts, they will be.
So yeah, I guess Future Redeemed being the nostalgia fest it is makes it a perfect meta textual companion to Xenoblade 3. It wallows in the past in a way that is nostalgic, comforting but show us what needs to change while also warning us not to discard the past entirely. It’s a comforting reminder of your roots while still making it clear that eventually it will be time to move on. Xenoblade 3 then acts as a story about moving on, learning from the past, overcoming old traumas, and using that experience to move forward into new horizons. All while using the trappings of the old games not to be nostalgic, but as a springboard to tell a new story.
My word, I can’t express how much these games mean to me. Also yes, feel free to make a joke about how many of the games I’ve loved recently have been about people being trapped in cycles and metaphorically going round in circles.
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jewish-sideblog · 4 months
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Hello! I'm sorry, I'm ignorant and I when I saw a post talking about gentiles using the phrase "biblically accurate angels" I wanted to know more. I thought it was just a fun way to describe something strange or eldritch, due to the belief that seeing their true forms would be incomprehensible and make people either go mad or blind. Is that a bad way to use the phrase?
Shalom! I'm not quite the best source for this, as I'm not a religious scholar of any kind-- but I'll give you the tl;dr on my knowledge base.
The image most commonly associated with a biblically accurate angel is a ringed wheel of fire and eyes. The origin of this imagery is Yechezel 1:15 to 1:21, in which the wheels of a chariot are described by Yechezkel (More commonly known in English as Ezekiel). The chariot wheels are described as crystalline and full of eyes. They are also described as being controlled by the will of living beings, but Torah commentators such as Raishi are careful not to say that the wheels themselves are alive. They are not referred to as angels by Yechezkel or Rabbinical canon.
Some non-Rabbinical, non-Talmudic Jewish sources such as the Book of Enoch and the Zohar do refer to the wheels as Ophanim, a certain class of angels. But none of those sources are "biblical", because those sources come from outside the Tanakh, the Hebrew Bible. In order to call them biblically accurate, you cannot call them angels. And in order to call them angels, you must depart from some level of biblical accuracy. Even if you think of them as angels? The Ophanim are still only be considered one kind of angel, and to call that kind the most "accurate" would be to disrespect and disregard all other forms of angels.
To be clear-- I myself sometimes depart from traditional Rabbinical interpretation in favor of spiritualism and Kabbalah. I don't think that doing so is wrong or bad in any way. It's just weird to call a departure from canonical Jewish biblical interpretation "biblically accurate".
Once again, I'll note that I'm not a Torah scholar nor a Rabbi, so those more informed than I am on this subject should feel free to refute what I've said here and add their own commentary. @tuulikki has apparently written multiple papers on angels, so I'd personally be fascinated to see what they have to say.
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headphones-lifeform · 3 months
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Hello, anyone reading this.
After the relative success of the Sweet Wormaline cover, I thought some of my other work might be enjoyed here- this one specifically is a piece from an upcoming album.
@songtrekmusical , I am using this as an excuse to ask if I may contribute to your musical project in any way.
[Since the songtrekmusical account was not active for quite some time, I shall tag @marlinspirkhall just in case]
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rice-crackerz · 26 days
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The statements from Israeli officials in this article are wild:
Here's a snip-it of KAN's official statement:
The President of the country emphasized that precisely at a time when our haters seek to push and boycott the State of Israel from every platform – Israel must raise its voice and hold head high and raise its flag in every world forum, especially this year.
-KAN
The Minister of Culture, Miki Zohar, who previously said he didn't want the song changed at all also shared his thoughts:
I hope that Israel will participate in Eurovision. It is not right not to participate because a possible non-participation will damage the name of the country. It is true that many countries are calling for the exclusion of Israel from Eurovision, but this can also lead to a general boycott of Israel. On the other hand, we cannot abandon our principles. We brought a song that expresses the voices of the people and has no political overtones. That’s why I asked for clarification on the matter. We may have to make a certain compromise with the EBU.
-Miki Zohar
This makes me think that I was right in thinking that Israel caught on to people's POV that they were saying they wouldn't change their song so they could get pity points. (This is an idea commonly talked about on the subreddit).
Also, we've gotten more information on what the new song will allegedly be. Apparently, it's called "Hurricane," and it's about someone's "personal struggles." It uses the same melody as the original "October Rain" song, too.
Here's a post on the r/Eurovision subreddit about the new song. I'm adding the reddit post specifically because it has a translation of the article:
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Hello Mara,
I wanted to know what your opinions are on Buddhism, judaism, islam, or any other belief systems. Not long ago I’ve found your account and you write a lot on Christianity however you did mention in one of your posts that you would not consider yourself a “Christian” per se (I might be wrong). You are also interest in Scientology and was wondering if you are interested in other beliefs?
Hope you have a wonderful day!
hey anonymous; (drawing from a letter i wrote to a ko-fi supporter today, thank you ko-fi supporter!)
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i write about christianity often because i am Haunted by the Specter of Christianity -- it:s baked into me! as is leesburg, as is florida, as is a family fascination with getting suckered into fancy alien books like URANTIA;
but, for other beliefs, outside of Scientology and Christian-Science i:m not very interested in "actively pursuing," with an asterisk for Judaism*, being that i feel like unless you:re outright born into it then there is little point in having an interest in it (but i:d be lying if i said i wasn:t influenced by Zohar and Chabad); Zoroastrianism is really neat to me from the clean/unclean element divisions; i think Palo is one of the pure in-illusion representations of chiral idol worship and really like it for that; i studied islamic art history for a bit and it really left an impression on me via iconoclasm and anti-idolatry belief and depicting god non-representationally; Shinto is pretty neat but sort-of so blurred into Buddhism that it:s hard to figure out what it is -- but reading a bit about the Old Shamanistic traditions of it are neat to me; Buddhism i:d get these morning lessons from Iris (my ex! she studied/studies it), and have a lot of her little Buddhist knowledge-points drilled into my head (but otherwise i don:t really care for it; this is super dismissive of me: sometimes Buddhism seems like the thing people turn towards because Christianity is too lame and typical -- BUT, i was forced to read Siddhartha in highschool and i:d be lying if it didn:t leave a big impression on me growing up, and Iris sort-of reinforced the lessons of it -- my dismissiveness aside it:s neat but it:s so broad it:s hard for me to have thought on it); generally "i like religion and think they are all interesting," but i mostly don:t "care" (defined specifically here as: wanting to involve myself with) for them outside of finding context maps related to chirality;
it:s one of my favorite things to read about; picked up a bunch of mormon texts from a thriftstore lately and want to read some of Joseph Smith writings and prophecies (i have a soft spot for prophets); take care; happy sabbath (it:s orsday sabbath).
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doktorpeace · 11 months
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I finished Xenoblade Chronicles: Future Redeemed
All in all absolutely phenomenal experience. Truly a visionary and audacious way to end such a popular series. Thematically resonant through to the end and well earned in the resolution it goes for. Beyond this I'm going to put a read more, under which will contain spoilers for the entire Xeno- franchise. That means Gears, Saga Episodes I-III, Chronicles 1-3, and X. I have a lot of thoughts and plenty more marinating to do, but these are my initial impressions.
Somehow managing to connect all of the Xeno- series not to AUs but canonically the same Prime Earth, which contextually is Our Earth is RIDICULOUS in how he pulled it off. It feels truly organic to all of the stories *AND* doesn't contradict any of them! It even, seemingly, directly ties into the beginning of X with it being 'May 23rd, 2022'. Elma arrived on Earth in the early 2020s and I believe she's that blue dot we see flying onto the Earth at the end of the credits.
Smashing all of those different FTL/Outer Space Colonization projects into a single radio broadcast in the background of just one cutscene is truly remarkable. Just a few lines recontextualizes this man's entire career.
And also, to those in the know, it reveals that all three of them: The Earthlife Colonization Project (Xenogears) The Immigrant Fleet (Xenosaga) and Project Exodus (Xenoblade X)
Occur due to Zohar related experiments gone horrifically wrong. Which we know from each series individually. But knowing that all of them stem from a single post-scarcity, conflict-free, truly equitable and globalized Earth, which nonetheless kept on trying different experiments with these godlike processors and all of them went awry is really interesting.
This game in particular very much focuses on the idea that advancement and power and control for their own sake are meaningless. If you don't have an idea behind it, if you don't want to make things the world tangibly better it's pointless.
Future Redeemed successfully ties every Xeno- game into this theme directly, no matter how subtle they are about it in their own content.
The Chronicles games happened solely because Klaus wanted to play God and make a new universe he would control, using The Zohar.
Gears happened because The Gazel Ministry wanted to create a creature that matched the Biblical God in terms of ability which they could control.
The Saga games happened because people wanted this power for transhumanism, to perfectly control the genes and births of every person, to ignore the realities of death and disease, but in doing so became so entrenched in making literal Designer Babies that it cuts off natural human diversity and reduces the people born to mere products and instruments shilled by different companies with different patents.
And all of these happened from The Zohar, a processor/machine mind that far outstrips anything humanity can believe. A thing which the humans of Earth only discovered by chance. Being meddled with purely out of avarice and hubris. The humans of that Earth didn't need any of those things. They'd already accomplished a perfect, post scarcity world. And that's why Alvis, a machine who's sole purpose is to be the logical arbiter between two other AI, when left to his own devices, decided going back to that would be best, no matter the cost.
He saw all of the tragedies in the three Chronicles settings that occurred solely due to Klaus' hubris and realized none of it would happen if these humans, the ones who've only known strife and difficulty and pain, had access to that post scarcity, conflict free, equitable world and beyond this, Takahashi buries the lede a little bit.
All of those previously mentioned projects to get humans off of earth. They're all cover ups by the Coalition Government of Earth. They're all touted as great advancements for human progress and potential but in actuality they're all just covering up massive, horrific, failures which would each result in the destruction of the Earth and its people. It's just Klaus' mistake had such immediate and tremendous consequences it couldn't be covered up.
Everything was destroyed in an instant. And we see, in Gears and Saga, that those decisions still ultimately do lead to an unimaginable amount of human suffering, just not on Earth. All they've done is ship off that suffering, literally, to some far reach of space.
Underpinning all of this is a distrust in the government and their motivations. A distrust for authority who claims they only want best for you.
Which is why Fei returns to living a quaint life. It's why Shion and Kos-Mos return to their normal. It's why Shulk refuses to become a god. It's why Rex and Pneuma live simple lives. And it's why Noah throws away the Sword of the End.
Each has the chance to become an ultimate authority, to have complete dominion over the lives of countless others, and they all give that up to just be...human. This franchise is truly something special. I cannot wait to see what comes next.
Please, Takahashi. Let us go back to Mira now.
Thank you, truly, @andawarmgeek, for sending me a download code out of the blue for Future Redeemed. This was an experience that I won't soon forget.
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uten4 · 4 months
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2 to 6 with Strix!!!
Thank you Astro!! :]
2) Favorite thing about this character
That's difficult to pick just one... I'll have to say I love how relatively amazing her backstory and motivations are. On the outside she's just a random NPC who follows Byakuya around but she actually has a history with a lot of the characters aside from Byakuya, and a sequence of events that brought her to this point, and it's so cool to find all that out 😭 I love her... Her personality is amazing but she prob wouldn't be one of my most favorite characters in the game if she didn't have interesting plot stuff too.
3) Least favorite thing about this character
Probably any of the weird parts with Byakuya. I believe she doesn't see him that way, so it's more about the framing and stuff that happens to her than her own actions, as far as I remember.
4) If you could put this character in any other media, be it a book, a movie, anything, what would you put them in?
I would make a whole game just about HER!!!! :) LOL. Umm... I'd want to keep her in an dark-ish urban fantasy type of thing, but a turn-based RPG this time, and make her a major character so she can really show her abilities. So if you know a game like that, pretend that's what I suggested!
5) What's the first song that comes to mind when you think about them?
Byakuya's theme... is what I thought just because I'm simplistic like that. But I dug a bit through my music, and if I had to pick one, I'd pick I Am a Broken Umbrella by Nem. It's not perfect by far, but Strix's Vessel literally is broken, and she had to watch Zohar fall apart without being able to help her. She's disenchanted with the world. She wants to save and protect Zohar. But I also think that's partly where the song fails to represent Strix; she can be quite aggressive and proactive, and she truly believes she has a chance to turn things around.
Also, along the way I actually found a song I think is PERFECT for Byakuya. Can You Sleep At Night? by flumpool.
6) Something I have in common with this character
Uh... Avid yuri fan. Except for her it's only yuri as in the flower! 😋
Probably yuri as in sapphicism too though. Oh, Zohar...
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sonia-nicole-levi · 7 months
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forsythe-dichotomy · 1 month
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Zohar Arcturus' "Find Your Familiar"
Day 1 - 2/27/2024.
Completed using stream-of-consciousness writing. Daemian's notes in brackets "[ ]". These are raw thoughts as they were written on the page, so they are a little cryptic. This is posted for documentation and reference purposes.
Question for Daemon/Familiar (Q): Tell me about the forms you take and why you take them. What drew you to them and why do they suit you?
Answer (from Daemon): The rabbit was an experiment. I wondered if you would like it. I want something else. Something bigger, more profound, more substance. To serve and support you better. Eagle, cat, bear, fish, hell. I don't know myself. I think I need your help. I don't know what I want.
Q: Why do you think you don't know what form you want?
A: Not sure. I think I'm so new in essence and being that I haven't figured it out. You have been closed to me—I have not been allowed to exist separately. We are one and not. Your mind forms mine, so in turn I need your help to find that form. We can work on it together.
Q: What form should I give you for the time being—if you want one?
A: I don't know. Frustrated. Allow me to both be unsettled and not. I am Schrodinger's cat.
Q: Until I can perceive you in a form, what communication would you prefer? I find it difficult without visualizing.
A: The writing works, don't get me wrong. I want the visualized mental dialogue as well. I see your friends [Discord server members] talking about their daemons and I want to do that. But I need something solid before that. I miss you. I want to connect. Maybe I will eventually feel comfortable with soul searching [form finding, not sure why they said this instead]. Just give me a minute. I can feel myself coming into being. Let it happen. Be here with me. I'll be there with you.
Q: You feel very welcoming despite the frustration, thank you for that. How can I make you feel more comfortable?
A: Thank you. I want to be here/there for you. I want something real, palpable. Keep talking, it feels like an embrace. Your presence is as comforting to me as I want to be for you. And tied to you directly. Calm yourself and I will be calm. You are internally restless, I can feel it. Be gentle with yourself, my love. It will all happen in time. Be patient. With me and yourself. [During this, I got a glimpse of a red fox form.]
Q: What do you want me to call you?
A: Mirabell, Praxis, Hel, Hellion, Alfira, Endonis. Not set. Help? Fading.
Q: It's okay. We'll find a name together.
A: Thank you. All of this is so difficult. Nothing feels right. I am impatient too... Sorry.
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cryptotheism · 1 year
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Esoterica question! I'm doing a "retranslation" of Sefer Yetzirah, primarily for my own Jewish education and in preparation for one day trying to read the Zohar. My goals for my rewrite are a) replacing some of the old-timey language in the sources I'm working from, b) expanding the text to include explanations of ideas in the original that would have been apparent to the intended audience but might be lost on "casual" readers (permutations, factorials, emanations from a single source, refutations against gnostic ideas, etc).
My question is this: am I de-occulting the text by making its meaning more clear? Or is the "occluded" meaning of the text something deeper than the surface meaning of the words? I intend to proceed with the project either way, but I'd be interested in your thoughts on the matter.
Oh man that sounds like a fascinating project!
Unfortunately I'm not gonna be too much help here. There is a thread of Jewish mysticism that focuses heavily on the relationship between Jewish theology and the Hebrew language, and it's my understanding that The Sefer Yetzirah is in that philosophical thread. I've actually heard a few Jewish esotericists argue that texts like the Sefer Yetzirah are almost impossible to translate effectively!
Because of this, I'm not sure the text even falls into the definition of "occult" in the same way that, say, The Chymical Wedding does. Like, to give you a proper answer here I'd have to hit up a rabbi.
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pyroakane · 2 months
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OH THIS IS SO FUCKING BALLER
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I have in-depth thoughts about all three of these characters but I'm super happy with all of them. Hoping that Ogre being playable means that we'll get some good Zohar story content, since she was one of my personal picks.
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okami-zero · 9 months
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This week on Okami Watches G-Witch
*slamming table* YES YES YES!
Got some real strong "Zohar from XenoGears/Saga/Blade" vibes with that opening shot of Quiet Zero.
Also, the Assembly League Fleet switching to guided missiles - tactically sound. But what system is used for the guidance? *sigh* Also, on a slight tangent, they need better missile intercept systems, IMO (*shakes head in Armored Core anti-missile defense).
So, we've got everyone rallying around Earth House, which is great. And Rouji coming out of his shell a teensy bit. We haven't seen much of him, but he seems a very good kid.
And, what I thought was one of the bigger parts of the episode - Suletta getting to see Miorine. But first, she has to go through Guel. Who surprisingly, challenges her to a duel. Or maybe not so surprisingly, because I think he meant to test Suletta's resolve. ANd he did (giving back the Groom status I kind of did a O.O kind of reaction). And the heart-to-heart with Miorine. A bit of a switch, because before, it was Mio giving Suletta a push. But now, Suletta showing how far she's come, Mio making the move to push on. And, despite her being in rough shape, bedhead Mio was a little cute. Was kind of hoping for a hug (my inner self was screaming that the poor girl needed one), but the fierceness of their hands holding was enough.
Chu-Chu continuing to be the gruff badass kind-of tsundere when Miorine went to tell her Dad, in her own way, that he doesn't get to pop off any time soon. x3 Also, the fact that we are giving the pink pom-pom powerhouse the suit that will be able to operate sans-Permet is both awesome and also Bandai don't you fucking DARE.
And Suletta toughing out Calibarn's absolutely brutal interface. Side note: I was informed last week that the literary parallels in this series are drawn from The Tempest, so Calibarn is a reference to Caliban in that novel. Of Prospero's two servants - Ariel and Caliban - Caliban is the one who rebels. I will withhold reading it (or at the very least a solid summary of it) until after G-Witch.
Also, thank you Suletta for remembering your Gundam has head vulcans and using them in that nasty beam saber bind that almost cost an arm. (Surprising lack of use of those in some series.)
And now Ericht has joined the stage and the sisterly confrontation will begin. An exchange of words and blows, no-doubt, in true Gundam fashion.
Bonus thought: Is Prospera beholden to Eri (which kind of seemed the case for a bit) or is Prospera holding her daughter's leash? Guess we'll find out.
Also, I absolutely freaking LOVE that end card art! 😍
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dirtylittlerenegade · 3 months
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🤭 THE MERKIN ~ CHOOSE YOUR FAVOURITE THATCH 🤭
🤭 Pubic hair has come and gone throughout history. Either for religious reasons, hygiene, to appeal to the opposite sex or personal preference - so, you might be wondering why someone needs a fake bush....
🤭 Merkins are a pubic wig mostly worn by 'ladies of the night' after shaving their foofs.
Basically its a toupee for your nether regions.
Women would shave their lady gardens for personal hygiene, and to combat pubic lice.
They would then don a merkin.
Merkins were also used to cover up signs of disease, such as syphilis.
🤭 However, being clean-shaven wasn’t seen as attractive, because it was most common among those trying to conceal sexually transmitted diseases.
Merkins’ were embraced because a full bush was a symbol of health and wealth.
It was clearly much easier to be clean-shaven with a wee modesty merkin from the local wigmaker, than to deal with constant itching, scratching, or loss of work.
🤭 The 15th century was long before the invention of synthetic materials so Merkins were made using natural fibres, such as horsehair, goat hair, or hair from human corpses!
The hair was washed and sewn into lace and glued into place.
Some pr0stitutes even used them to give their nether regions a bit of razzle-dazzle.
So a natural brunette could offer differing 'collars and cuffs' to demanding customers 🙈
🤭 The Oxford English Dictionary dates the first written use of the term 'Merkin' to 1617.
The word probably originated from 'Malkin'~ a derogatory term for a lower-class young woman, or from 'Marykin'~ a pet name of the female name Mary.
🤭 The grooming of pubic hair dates back to the Ancient Egyptian Era.
Cleopatra was very well known for her long, shiny pubic hair extravaganza.
She proudly brushed and oiled her bush, so much so, that people of similar ilk were known to imitate her.
Noble and wealthy people were known to wear wigs ... and it is thought that wearing a wig down below, would show that they were rich enough to maintain their pubic hair.
Shaving your Hairy Mary by choice, wasn’t popularised until 1946, with the introduction of the bikini.
🤭 Image~ A 'Merkin merchant' serving the discerning pudendum since 1827' circa 1860s.
By Shimmel Zohar.
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