Many christians kneecap themselves by being panicky about magic.

They have unconsciously absorbed a materialist standpoint, where magic includes literally anything metaphysical.

Let's look at how this happened and why christianity has been losing its magical chops The traditional view of sorcery is basically something like "metaphysical engagement that serves the ego at the expense of the whole/community/divine unity.

Boomers and Zoomers appear to each other as unsolvably mind-raped because they have both been mind-raped by mutually unintelligible powers. The boomer grew up in a terrarium designed by the military industrial complex, the zoomer in one made by the military intelligence complex The boomer was taught to cling to "america" as a state and an ideal because television's propagandistic power relies on the recipient personally owning and nurturing enough of the ideology that scheduled one-way TV news can accurately predict the effect of its messages

THE EGYPTIAN PYRAMID TEXTS:

These are the oldest surviving religious writings on earth - which makes it extremely remarkable how much their themes still resonate today and how many similarities they share with modern religions. But what are they? Well, they're not a book or even a scroll. Instead they're a loose collection of songs and prayers that were carved into the walls of Old Kingdom-era royal tombs.

One comparison people often make between America and China, or at least the mythologized ideals of these two civs, is the difference in "time-horizon," i.e. how far into the future society orients itself. 1/ The idea, so it goes, is that for various cultural and institutional reasons - like the stock market and term-limited offices - America plans and executes on a much shorter time-scale than China, prioritizing quick profits and often tripping on our own feet because of it

I’m sure you’ve all heard of the “jungian archetypes” before, but what actually are they? Today, lets examine the 4 Core archetypes that give rise to all the others First, we need to establish what an “archetype” is.

The word comes from Greek “archein,” which means both “begin” and “rule,” reflecting an ideological connection between parenthood and rulership.

Cops suck. They're wildly unpleasant and even dangerous. Police presence is a drain on communal quality of life.

Part of the reason criminals need to be swiftly and harshly prosecuted is so that sustained police presence to deal with repeat offenders is not necessary Like I don't know how people don't get this. You guys know that municipal police are a recent invention right? And that before them there was less crime, because you just whipped or hanged people who became obvious dangers to society?

THE SWORD.

The archetypal weapon, once a reality of everyday life but now a symbolic token of almost religious significance

In this thread, we’re going to get into the guts of what the sword really represents, and why What comes to mind when you think of swords abstractly? Maybe justice, protection, the authority of a king or hero. This is all true, but it comes downstream of something much more basic:

The sword cuts.

PAGAN SAINTS

In honor of yesterday being Julian the Blessed and Gemistos Plethon's day of ascension, here's a (non-exhaustive) list of people who I propose to be worthy of "pagan sainthood" First, some clarifications and criteria:

I'm not married to the term "saint," but I don't want to surrender the term, which has Latin origins, just because of christian use. Esp. not when there are equivalent ideas in Hinduism etc that people feel fine translating as sainthood.

Paganism has to develop the ability to assert its own morality and its own politics, based on its own first principles and not on baggage from its 99%-convert constituency

https://twitter.com/true_concinnity/status/1540660865631928321

This is currently extremely difficult because many of the pipelines people come in through are either explicitly political or are extremely steeped in meta-political subcultures. But it has to be done.

To a large degree, conspiracy theory culture is a kind of magical initiation. The people who cling to it hardest and longest... are usually failing the trial There is no possible worldly theory of everything, there is no framework that can adequately account for the sheer amount of facts and nuances in the world.

GOBLINS.

Imps. orcs. bugbears.

They are the quintessential subhuman cannon fodder of any fantasy story or game. But do they have a deeper meaning, hidden in their origins? Like many fantasy fixtures, their names and attributes originate in medieval folklore where there was no sharp delineation of the “fictional” from the real.

Virtual Insanity, not only the song but the video, is imo the most prescient piece of 90's media

"It's a wonder man can eat at all
When things are big that should be small
Who can tell what magic spells we'll be doing for us"

"Futures made of virtual insanity,
Always seem to be governed by this love we have
For this useless twisting of our new technology
Oh, now there is no sound, for we all live underground"

Early christians were the original groomers. Isolate the child from their parents and guardians, make tempting promises and exploit their fear of parental authority/punishment. If anyone or anything is bypassing you to access your children, no matter how innocuous an explanation they offer, the safe, reasonable, and historically supported assumption is that they are attacking you.

The historiography of Constantine and his dynasty has a sort of mythology about it that he forcefully set the empire on a new path and rejuvenated it, that he was a caudillo who appeared at a time of crisis. But on closer examination a different image comes into focus: If you were tasked with describing his dynasty in one word, it would have to be "byzantine."

In two words, "eunuch intrigue."

Julian's biography is such a trip. Needs to be made a movie Need Ryan Gosling to grow a massive beard bc Julian has the potential to be the single most "He's Literally Me" character in film history for a huge swath of white boys

You could pick any subject out of a hat and the Platonist response will be "yes looks good, but it's not enough."

And this is why its always under fire from people who want physics or genetics or history etc to be a unified theory of everything. They can't tell "yes, and" or "yes, but" from total rejection and denigration. This is basically where sophistry comes from.

This is stupid for both practical and ethical reasons. On the one hand, making something radically more available *increases the size of its market* and creates tons more possible points of contact for people with it. Radically increasing the market cap for cp, even if all of it is ai generated, would increase the amount of p*dos in the general public. Even if we accept her fantasy prior that access to simulated rape reduces actual rape by some percentage,

It's vital to understand the importance of warfare to human history and how it's one of the most powerful selective forces at all scales because almost everything uncomfortable and inhumane about a society can be traced back to military necessities. The cruelty and brutality of prehistory through to medieval civ, for example, was necessary because of how warfare worked back then.

Disagreement about this imo can really only come down to misunderstanding the different assertions about the structure of reality itself. This is why ontology and cosmology are so essential to nail down before you can even begin to discuss theology

https://twitter.com/arrikirri/status/1511909868978192385

The recurring argument I see from this camp is that to think the myths aren't *physical* is to think they aren't *real.*

This can only emerge from an incorrect belief that "realness" is rooted in the material and dissipates like steam as you go "upward"

https://twitter.com/AngloPlayboy/status/1511927708468584454?s=20&t=kr0A0BCuuUhlg-9-mz2u3A

The internet doesn't connect people to each other. It connects devices to each other. And attaching yourself to those devices to gain simulated access to the people attached to the other side doesn't come without a cost Today I discussed with some irl friends how normalized isolation has become and how you'd think the internet would have the opposite effect that it seems to be having.

Why does Zeus have so many lovers?

What do they all mean, and do they say anything about greek morality? To answer these questions we’ll have to traverse a few different layers of analysis. The first, and frankly least interesting, is simply cultural. Whenever discussing mythology, the historical reality of a fairly diverse classical Greece has to be remembered.