This one is particularly awesome, and you know why.
“The vindication of a man against his foes is brought about in the realm of the dead. The earth was hacked up when the Rivals fought, their feet scooped out the sacred pool in On . Now comes Thoth adorned with his dignity, for Atum has ennobled him with strength, and the Two Great Ladies are pleased with him. So the fighting is ended, the tumult is stopped, the fire which went forth is quenched, the anger in the presence of the Tribunal of the God is calmed, and it sits to give judgement in the presence of Geb.”
Interpretation: In life, you been fighting with people all the time and now you think you gonna carry on that way in the land of the dead. But you ain’t. ‘Cause Thoth is coming to give you the smack down and you gonna halve to calm your tits.
“And the Two Great Ladies are pleased with him.” Oh, yeah.
“How great is the monthly festival of the height of heaven, even the festival of the New Moon! The finger is removed from upon you, your trembling is taken away, since you have planted the plume at the horizon, at the place where are those who know you. You suck at your mother Sothis as your nurse who is in the horizon, Isis sits by you, she makes you bright, she makes for you fair ways of vindication against your foes, and those who would have judgement against you in the realm of the dead on this happy day.”
Interpretation: There’s gonna be some dope ass parties after you’re dead.
The Book of Going Forth By Day (The Egyptian Book of the Dead)/The Scroll of Ani is an excellent source and has multiple prayers to Thoth. My favorite prayer from that source, which is excellent for offerings, “I am thy writing palette, oh Thoth, and I have brought unto thee thine ink jar.” It is a prayer I use at least three times per day.
Just go to the direct sources and you will find plenty on Thoth. The Coffin Texts, The Pyramid Texts, just about any sacred scroll is going to have prayers to Thoth as he was the god of writing and magick and his priests wrote most of it.
How any structural critique of electoral politics is read as “don’t vote” and inevitably a bunch of liberals jump in to make sure you’re voting Democrat. Most leftists I know vote, and I don’t disagree with the idea of it as damage control of whatever, but there’s this massive Cult of the Vote™ in liberal circles that treats ballot-casting as the indispensable political act. Like, even leftists who endorse voting are still going to adamantly declare afterwards that unionizing, direct action, food drives, indigenous rights, resistance to white supremacy, community solidarity, dissemination of radical ideas, workplace democracy, prefiguration, etc. are all far more important in tilting the landscape leftward; and some liberals will concede that “sure, those other activities might be important”, but voting is still the only one that’s fetishized so strongly in these circles. Probably because “non-partisan” “rock the vote” sentiment is one of the least threatening movements in the eyes of the rich and powerful, and so it’s a sentiment that’s allowed to flourish and receive all these endorsements from celebrities and war criminals. In other words, you rarely see liberals wear shirts that say “unionize” or “restore the commons”, but you always see liberals wearing “rock the vote”-type shirts or “I just voted” stickers.
This isn’t me saying “don’t vote”. In fact, do vote. Damage control is good. But the way liberals approach this conversation perpetually shoots down any and all left-wing mobilization beyond the capitalist voting booth.
Haven’t posted politics in a while, but damn. This is the shit. I respect the choice to vote. I also respect the choice not to vote. As long as you are making a choice for good reasons.
I learned in a Latin Studies class (with a chill white dude professor) that when the Europeans first saw Aztec cities they were stunned by the grid. The Aztecs had city planning and that there was no rational lay out to European cities at the time. No organization.
When the Spanish first arrived in Tenochtitlan (now downtown mexico city) they thought they were dreaming. They had arrived from incredibly unsanitary medieval Europe to a city five times the size of that century’s london with a working sewage system, artificial “floating gardens” (chinampas), a grid system, and aqueducts providing fresh water. Which wasn’t even for drinking! Water from the aqueducts was used for washing and bathing- they preferred using nearby mountain springs for drinking. Hygiene was a huge part if their culture, most people bathed twice a day while the king bathed at least four times a day.
Located on an island in the middle of a lake, they used advanced causeways to allow access to the mainland that could be cut off to let canoes through or to defend the city. The Spanish saw their buildings and towers and thought they were rising out of the water. The city was one of the most advanced societies at the time.
Anyone who thinks that Native Americans were the savages instead of the filthy, disease ridden colonizers who appeared on their land is a damn fool.
Makes me happy to see people learn about the culture of my country 😀
Also, please remember that the idea of a nomadic or semi-nomadic culture being “less intelligent”, “less civilized” (and please unpack that word) was invented by people who wanted to make a graph where they were on the top.
Societies that functioned without 1) staying exclusively in one location or 2) having to make complicated, difficult-to-construct tools to go about their daily lives… were not somehow less valid than others.
This is why I fucking hate it when Europeans make jokes about how they have “more history” than the Americas. “This church is older than your country hahaha.” Actually, it’s older than the country you put there, massacring millions in the process, but go off, I guess.
“We have this extraordinary conceit
in the West that while we’ve been hard at work in the creation of technological
wizardry and innovation, somehow the other cultures of the world have been
intellectually idle. Nothing could be further from the truth. Nor is this
difference due to some sort of inherent Western superiority. We now know to be
true biologically what we’ve always dreamed to be true philosophically, and
that is that we are all brothers and sisters. We are all, by definition, cut
from the same genetic cloth. That means every single human society and culture,
by definition, shares the same raw mental activity, the same intellectual
capacity. And whether that raw genius is placed in service of technological
wizardry or unraveling the complex thread of memory inherent in a myth is
simply a matter of choice and cultural orientation.”
