I’ve been here since 2011. It’s not going down. 

Am I the last asshole who actually enjoys tumblr and has made some good friends here?

I’ve got too much love and magick in this site for it to die. Everyone put your apocalyptic hard-ons away. Frater T gonna take care of this shit. I’m callin’ in the spirits. If I have to save tumblr single-handedly I’ll do it.

tariqah:

tariqah:

Link

“We want the museum to understand that the moai are our family, not just rocks. For us [the statue] is a brother; but for them it is a souvenir or an attraction,” said Anakena Manutomatoma, who serves on the island’s development commission. “Once eyes are added to the statues, an energy is breathed into the moai and they become the living embodiment of ancestors whose role is to protect us.”

justinbthemagician:

HERAKLES was an Olympian demigod worshipped as the divine protector of mankind.

In classical art Herakles was depicted as a muscular man with a club and lion-skin cape.

Pausanias, Description of Greece 4. 8. 2 :
“The ancestral gods (patroioi) of the Dorians, Herakles above all.”

Pausanias, Description of Greece 1. 19. 3 (trans. Jones) (Greek travelogue C2nd A.D.) :
“There is also the place called Kynosarges, sacred to Herakles; the story of the white dog [Kynosarges may mean ‘white-dog’] may be known by reading the oracle. (Think Sirius and The Fool)

Orion (Ὠρίων in Greek) is the most splendid of constellations, befitting a character who was in legend the tallest and most handsome of men. His right shoulder and left foot are marked by the brilliant stars Betelgeuse and Rigel, with a distinctive line of three stars forming his belt. ‘No other constellation more accurately represents the figure of a man’, says Germanicus Caesar.
Manilius called it ‘golden Orion’ and ‘the mightiest of constellations’, and exaggerated its brilliance by saying that, when Orion rises, ‘night feigns the brightness of day and folds its dusky wings’. Manilius described Orion as ‘stretching his arms over a vast expanse of sky and rising to the stars with no less huge a stride’. In fact, Orion is not an exceptionally large constellation, ranking only 26th in size (smaller, for instance, than Perseus according to the modern constellation boundaries), but the brilliance of its stars gives it the illusion of being much larger.
Orion is also one of the most ancient constellations, being among the few star groups known to the earliest Greek writers such as Homer and Hesiod. Even in the space age, Orion remains one of the few star patterns that non-astronomers can recognize.

In the sky, Orion is depicted facing the snorting charge of neighbouring Taurus the bull, yet the myth of Orion makes no reference to such a combat. However, the constellation originated with the Sumerians, who saw in it their great hero Gilgamesh fighting the Bull of Heaven. The Sumerian name for Orion was URU AN-NA, meaning light of heaven. Taurus was GUD AN-NA, bull of heaven.
Gilgamesh was the Sumerian equivalent of Heracles, which brings us to another puzzle. Being the greatest hero of Greek mythology, Heracles deserves a magnificent constellation such as this one, but in fact is consigned to a much more obscure area of sky. So is Orion really Heracles in another guise? It might seem so, for one of the labours of Heracles was to catch the Cretan bull, which would fit the Orion–Taurus conflict in the sky. Ptolemy described him with club and lion’s pelt, both familiar attributes of Heracles, and he is shown this way on old star maps. Yet despite these parallels, no mythologist hints at a connection between this constellation and Heracles.

Chinese associationsChinese astronomers knew Orion as Shen, a great hunter or warrior, one of the rare cases in which a constellation was visualized almost exactly the same way in China as in Europe. Shen was at the centre of a great celestial hunting scene, for the full Moon was in this part of the sky during the hunting season, November and December. Shen (‘three stars’, referring to the stars of Orion’s belt) is also the name of the 21st lunar mansion; evidently Shen originally consisted of just the three belt stars, and the others were incorporated later.

In its final form Shen consisted of 10 stars: the four that make up the traditional outline of Orion (Alpha, Gamma, Beta, and Kappa), the three stars of the belt, and three stars in the sword. The sword stars had a dual identity, for they also formed a sub-constellation, Fa. In keeping with Shen’s identity as a warrior chief, the 10 stars were also imagined as his various army generals.
The triangle of stars that forms Orion’s head (Lambda, Phi-1, and Phi-2) was known as Zi (also written Zui), ‘turtle beak’, although it might also be the beak of a falcon used for hunting. Zi was also the name of the 20th lunar mansion. It was the narrowest of all 28 mansions, barely 2° wide. The arc of stars that we see today as Orion’s shield was interpreted in China as a banner, Shenqi, or sometimes a longbow.
Being one of the oldest Chinese constellations, Shen gathered many different and conflicting identities down the ages. Early on, it was seen as the forequarters of the White Tiger, one of the four seasonal divisions of the Chinese sky. It was also somehow associated with judicial investigations and punishments.
Shen featured in an ancient Chinese legend concerning two sons of the Emperor, Shichen and Ebo, who were always fighting. So bad was the antagonism that the Emperor had to banish them both. Shichen was sent away to become responsible for sacrifices to Shen, while Ebo became responsible for sacrifices to the lunar mansion Xin, in present-day Scorpius on the opposite side of the sky from Shen. This story parallels the Greek legend of Orion and his antagonist the scorpion being placed on opposite sides of the sky to keep them permanently apart. –

Ian Ridpath

The cult of Hercules was one of the oldest and most popular in Italy. Believed to have been introduced from the Greek colonies of Croton and Tarentum in Magna Graecia, statues have also been found as early as 500 B.C.E in Eturia, which bordered Greek Campania. Hercules was regarded as a protector of travellers due to his myth and he was also worshipped by philosophers; Pythagoreans, Cynics, and Stoics viewing him as the ideal man. –

C. Schultz

Images of Orion in classical art are difficult to recognize, and clear examples are rare. There are several ancient Greek images of club-carrying hunters that could represent Orion,^[59] but such generic examples could equally represent an archetypal “hunter”, or indeed Heracles.^[60] Some claims have been made that other Greek art represents specific aspects of the Orion myth. A tradition of this type has been discerned in 5th century BC Greek pottery—John Beazley identified a scene of Apollo, Delian palm in hand, revenging Orion for the attempted rape of Artemis, while another scholar has identified a scene of Orion attacking Artemis as she is revenged by a snake (a counterpart to the scorpion) in a funerary group—supposedly symbolizing the hope that even the criminal Orion could be made immortal, as well as an astronomical scene in which Cephalus is thought to stand in for Orion and his constellation, also reflecting this system of iconography.^[61] Also, a tomb frieze in Taranto (ca. 300 BC) may show Orion attacking Opis.^[62] But the earliest surviving clear depiction of Orion in classical art is Roman, from the depictions of the Underworld scenes of the Odyssey discovered at the Esquiline Hill (50–40 BC). Orion is also seen on a 4th-century bas-relief,^[63] currently affixed to a wall in the Porto neighborhood of Naples. The constellation Orion rises in November, the end of the sailing season, and was associated with stormy weather (

I am the one who maketh the lightning flash and the thunder roll )

On the last day of the Sun’s passage through Gemini, the day of his entry into the sign of Cancer, the Sun loses his head on the Summer Solstice, and the days begin to shorten in the Northern Hemisphere.  Light slowly bleeds out of the day, and darkness rises.

And so here it is.  The Headless One’s Head is the Sun, and the execution day when the head rolls off the shoulders is the Summer Solstice.  Suddenly, a great many folk and spiritual and astrological traditions make sense — that a period of ten or so days just before the Summer Solstice is the only time of year that the Headless One actually has a Solar head.

The answer, at a minimum, was that if Taurus was the home of the Full Moon, that meant that the Sun had to be late in Sagittarius or early in Capricorn.  The Seventh Mansion of the Moon, dedicated to Scheliel, was a possibility. So was the Fifth Mansion, whose image is traditionally a Head, at least according to Picatrix. And The Fifth Mansion, tropically, is in the right-ish place, although sidereally it leaves a lot to be desired.

That places the season of the Headless One’s return in the First-ish Decan of Capricorn.

When is the Sun in the First Decan of Capricorn?  And some calculations later… Capricorn begins around December 21…  

So The Headless One, i.e. Orion, approximately wears the Full Moon as his head at around the Winter Solstice.  More or less every year. Some years it might be more precisely timed — some years it might be a little out of whack, left or right.  I’m not sure it matters to me although I can see some years as being worthy of greater celebrations because the Moon was in exactly the right place, right at the middle of the shoulders.

And it explains the tremendous relief and celebration of the winter Solstice throughout the northern hemisphere, to my mind, as well — The Sun is returning, and the Moon is riding on the shoulders of Orion. Again.  It’s a never-failing promise, really, and for ancient peoples it was a relevant sign that the universe had an underlying order and synchrony.

In truth though, sometimes it’s all of the planets.  At times, such as when the moon sits upon the shoulders of Orion, it’s the Moon. Sometimes it’s the Sun. Sometimes it’s Jupiter or Mars. Sometimes it might be Venus or Mercury or Saturn.  And I imagine that these different moments carried very different meanings to those who observed them — that the Headless One wore the planets like a series of helmets or heads at various times.

But it strikes me as no accident that one of the Behenian Stars, Capella, helps place a secondary marker in the sky, above the shoulders of Orion, to help judge when a given planet is coming into the right place at the right time.  Capella marks the position of Almathea, the nurse-maid goat of Zeus, who fed the god in diapers and in hiding when Saturn/Cronos threatened to eat all his children.  When one of the other planets comes upon the shoulders of the Headless One, otherwise known as the constellation Orion,  the light of Capella nourishes and feeds that divine emanation, and the newly headed Headless One beams new power into the world — love and sex when the Head is Venus, war when the Head is Mars, and so on. – https://andrewbwatt.com/2016/11/06/the-headless-one/

I am in awe of this.

emergentanimism:

Cultural appropriation in magick has always been a sticky
issue. From Crowley incorporating yoga into his magick outside of the Hindu
belief structure, to the Romans stealing entire pantheons of gods, people seeking
spiritual experience have always seen the neighbor’s grass and felt envy. Most
of this comes from a genuine respect of those cultures, and a feeling that
their own culture doesn’t have what they need to express their own
spirituality. So they steal.

For the magus, the biggest danger here comes from taking
things out of context. No spiritual practice occurs in a vacuum. The people whose
traditions are being stolen have every right to say, “No. You’re doing it
wrong. That’s not how that works.” Because their practice only works in their
specific cultural milieu. In most instances, you will never get it right and
you will never understand because you were not raised in that culture.

Not to mention that this kind of stealing most often comes
in the context of colonialism. Greece was Rome’s colony when they decided to
make off with an entire pantheon of gods.

But this doesn’t mean you can’t learn from other cultures.
It doesn’t mean you can’t use their concepts as a part of your own practice. It
takes some work. But if you’re willing to do it right and put things in the
context of your own culture and your own locality, it’s going to work better
for you in the long run.

Here’s an example. In my attempt to rebuild by own paradigm
with a stronger foundation, I’m still doing a lot of ancestor work, but I am
thinking about the next step. In the working theory of Emergent Animism that
means contacting a wider range of spirits, which includes spirits of place or
spirits of the land. Recently, one of my followers (thank you again @aweandimagination)
reminded me about Shintoism’s strong animistic beliefs. So I did some poking
around, and one thing I noticed right away were the shrines, some huge and
elaborate structures, but others tiny roadside shrines dedicated to local Kami.

They instantly reminded me of the Thai Spirit Houses I
learned about from Jenx and his interviews on Runesoup. (Go and
listen to those episodes if you want to learn how to be respectful to other
cultures.) 

So I want to do something similar. I think building a shrine
to leave offerings and make a connection to land spirits would be extremely beneficial
in getting to know those spirits and honoring them. But I certainly don’t want
to build a “Thai Spirit House.” I’m not in Thailand. Why would the spirits near
me understand the symbolism and motifs of that culture? So I did some more
research.

Actually, I already knew that the Ancient Greeks created
thousands of tiny shrines to local ancestors and spirits. In fact, the general
populace in Greece were much more concerned with those spirits than they were
with the fuckery of Zeus, Apollo, and their buddies. Those are gods for the
nobles. They have rich people problems. The commoners were much more concerned
about how they can appease the spirit of that big ass rock so they don’t piss
it off when they go plowing all the land around it. What I didn’t know was that
the practice continues to this day. The names have changed, with the shrines
being dedicated to saints, but they sure look like a continuation of the
ancient traditions.

Chances are, if you see a magical practice in another
culture that appeals to you, dig just a bit, and you’ll find something similar
in your own culture. That practice will probably make more sense to you, and
even if it doesn’t, why not give it a try? You should also be tailoring it to
local traditions and listen to the spirits and ask them what they want.

So I’m not going to build a Shinto shrine or a Thai Spirit
House. It won’t have peaked and curved Asian architecture. I won’t leave
strings of tropical flowers as offerings. I won’t be including Eastern Orthodox
icons either. Incense, water, beads, these things are universal, and
appropriate. But I will be using local products and things that resonant in my
culture. 

You should research other cultures and be inspired by their
magick. You should be awed by the great variety of spiritual practice in this
world. But you should also be amazed when you learn that the core concepts
themselves cut across cultures and across time. A true thief steals because they
are lazy and don’t want to do the work themselves. Do the work.  

hadit93:

Thank you for asking a very complicated question! I am not going to go into the various theories because you have asked me for my opinion.

I think angels are spiritual beings, nothing more. I think they are beings which have presented themselves as being agents of the Abrahamic God or they are beings which seem benevolent and people have simply ascribed the label angel to them.

I believe Jewish angels, especially canonical angels to be expressions of the force which is called God, they have always seemed cold to me, as though they have no personality. Some angels within the qabalistic systems do have personalities and so I whilst I still see them as forces of nature, I see them less as expressions of God and more as benevolent individual beings- they are still expressions of God, as are we all, but I believe they are less directly so. I apologize if this makes little sense.

The Enochian angels in my experience are a completely different kettle of fish and I believe that these beings do not belong to the Abrahamic system, but told Dee that they did so. I believe these beings to be completely different to the angels found in qabalistic systems- not that they aren’t benevolent, but I believe they told Dee, or rather Kelley, that they were angels as that is what they needed to hear.

Of course, a lot of Angels had roots spanning back before Judaism was even thought about, I believe the terms angels and demons are nothing more than labels individuals use to categorize spirits into good and bad or benevolent and malevolent. The individual’s own method of deciding what is good and bad is subjective. Therefore someone may think that Michael is benevolent and state he is an angel, that same person would probably label Lilith a demon. 

I use the term angel and demon as far as referring to a system. When I am talking about spirits I encounter randomly, or in general, I just use spirit- I don’t judge people before I meet them and I don’t judge spirits by hearsay either. 

So in short, I think angels are spirits just like demons perhaps with different intentions.