petermorwood:

normal-horoscopes:

boydsjosten:

normal-horoscopes:

normal-horoscopes:

normal-horoscopes:

I love videos of people performing religious ceremonies for small animals. Especially if it’s not something a small animal could participate in theologically.

Sadie the Dog has been BLESSED upon this fine ASH WEDNESDAY she has been reminded of the FRAGILITY OF LIFE and has observed the start of the LENT SEASON

Butters the Cat is wearing a TINY KIPPAH

Cat on tiny praying mat !!!

Cat on a tiny praying mat!!!

@muslimgamer​ and others might confirm this for me: AFAIK cats are Clean Creatures in Islam, so cats on prayer mats - especially their own mini prayer mats - aren’t offensive. One website I looked at said “cats will be cats, cats like to mirror people, and giving them their own mat helps stop them being a distraction during prayers.”

c3rvida3:

Speaking of #tw blasphemy, one time I saw a T*RF refer to top surgery as “iconoclasm against The Divine Feminine” and I was honestly so upset that I hadn’t thought of it first. That’s so cool.

adventuresoutsidethegenderbinary:

LGBTQ+ people who are religious: deserve to be respected.

LGBTQ+ people who aren’t religious: deserve to be respected.

LGBTQ+ people with a complicated relationship with religion: deserve to be respected.

It’s not fair to tell a member of the LGBTQ+ community that their religion is “wrong” just because some people have used it to spread homophobia. It’s also not fair to tell them that they have to have some form of religious belief. Religion is personal, and it should be treated as such - don’t apply the rules of your religion or lack thereof to others, and expect that others follow suit and let you follow your own beliefs.

With love from your local queer Muslim <3

unicorn-and-bluebells:

texnessa:

“I want to tell a story about an invisible elephant.

Once upon a time, when I was in graduate school at UCSB, the department of religious studies held a symposium on diasporic religious communities in the United States. Our working definition for religious diaspora that day was, “religious groups from elsewhere now residing as large, cohesive communities in the US.” It was a round table symposium, so any current scholar at the UC who wanted to speak could have a seat at the table. A hunch based on hundreds of years of solid evidence compelled me to show up, in my Badass Academic Indigenous Warrior Auntie finery.

There were around 15-20 scholars at the table, and the audience was maybe fifty people. There was one Black scholar at the table, and two Latinx scholars, one of whom was one of my dissertation advisors. The other was a visiting scholar from Florida, who spoke about the diasporic Santería community in Miami. But everyone else at the table were white scholars, all progressively liberal in their politics, many of whom were my friends. Since there was no pre-written agenda, I listened until everyone else had presented. I learned a tremendous amount about the Jewish diaspora in the US, and about the Yoruba/Orisha/Voudou, Tibetan Buddhist, Muslim, and Hindu communities, and even about a small enclave of Zoroastrians.

As they went on, I realized my hunch had been correct, and I listened to them ignore the elephant, invisible and silent, at that table.

So I decided to help her speak the hell up. “Hello, my name is Julie Cordero. I’m working on my PhD in Ethnobotany, Native American Religious Traditions, and history of global medical traditions. I’d like to talk about the European Catholic and Protestant Christian religious diaspora in the United States, as these are the traditions that have had by far the greatest impact on both the converted and non-converted indigenous inhabitants of this land.”

Total silence. And then several “hot damns” from students and colleagues in the audience. I looked around the table at all the confused white faces. My Latinx advisor slapped his hand on the table and said, “Right!!?? Let’s talk about that, colleagues.”

The Black scholar, who was sitting next to me, started softly laughing. As I went on, detailing the myriad denominations of this European Christian Diaspora, including the Catholic diocese in which I’d been raised and educated, and the brutal and genocidal Catholic and Protestant boarding schools that had horribly traumatized generations of First Nations children, and especially as I touched on how Christians had twisted the message of Christ to try and force people stolen from Africa to accept that their biblically-ordained role was to serve the White Race, her laughs grew more and more bitter.

The Religious Studies department chair, who’d given a brilliant talk on the interplay between Jewish and Muslim communities in Michigan, stopped me at one point, and said, “Julie, I see the point you are so eloquently making, but you’re discussing American religions, not religious diasporic communities.” I referred to the definition of diaspora we had discussed at the start of the discussion, and then said, “No, Clark. If I were here to discuss religions that were not from elsewhere, I’d be discussing the Choctaw Green Corn ceremony, the Karuk Brush Dance, the Big Head ceremonial complex in Northern California, the Lakota Sun Dance, or the Chumash and Tongva Chingichnich ritual complex.”

It got a bit heated for a few moments, as several scholars-without-a-damn-clue tried to argue that we were here to discuss CURRENT religious traditions, not ancient.

Well. I’ll let you use your imagination as to the response from the POC present, which was vigorously backed by the three young First Nations students who were present in the audience (all of whom practice their CURRENT ceremonial traditions). It got the kind of ugly that only happens with people whose self-perception is that they, as liberal scholars of world cultures with lots of POC friends and colleagues, couldn’t possibly be racist.

Our Black colleague stood and left without a word. I very nearly did. But I stayed because of my Auntie role to the Native students in the audience.

I looked around at that circle of hostile faces, and waited for one single white scholar to see how unbelievably racist was this discursive erasure of entire peoples - including my people, on whose homeland UCSB is situated.

Finally, a friend spoke up. “If we are going to adhere to the definition of diaspora outlined here, she is technically correct.”

And then my dear friend, a white scholar of Buddhism: “In Buddhist tradition, the Second Form of Ignorance is the superimposition of that which is false over that which is true. In this case, all of us white scholars are assuming that every people but white Americans are ‘other,’ and that we have no culture, when the underlying fact is that our culture is so dominant that we’ve deluded ourselves into thinking it’s the neutral state of human culture against which all others are foreign. Even the Black people our ancestors abducted and enslaved we treat as somehow more foreign than ourselves. And, most absurdly, the peoples who are indigenous to this land are told that we belong here more than they do.”

People stared at their hands and doodled. The audience was dead quiet.

And you know what happened then? The elephant was no longer invisible, and my colleagues and I were able to have a conversation based on the truths about colonialism and diaspora. We were THEN able to name and discuss the distinctions between colonial settlements and immigrant settlements, and how colonial religious projects have sought to overtake, control, and own land, people, and resources, while immigrant and especially refugee diasporic communities simply seek a home free from persecution.

As we continue this national discussion, it is absolutely key to never, ever let that elephant be invisible or silent. You are on Native Land. Black descendants of human beings abducted from their African homelands are not immigrants. European cultures are just human cultures, among many. And the assignation of moral, cultural, racial superiority of European world views over all non-Euro human cultures is a profound delusion, one that continues to threaten and exterminate all people who oppose it, and even nature itself.

I hope that this story has comforted the afflicted and afflicted the comfortable.”

- Julie Cordero-Lamb, herbalist & ethnobotanist from the Coastal Band of the Chumash Nation

I want this tattooed on my forehead. Fuck dude

grymmdark:

tuiccim:

Say it LOUDER!!!!

im not christian, but i have encountered so many transphobic christians that actually hearing someone in a position of authority in their religion actively support trans people makes me feel like maybe there is hope

saintrobot:

animentality:

metalheadequestrian:

artistic-ape:

beyoursledgehammer:

kaible:

popculturepagan:

I am a student at an art university.

There is an infamous building on our campus, called “Montgomery House” or more commonly, “Monty.” Monty is the building for animation, game design, special effects, sound design, and basically everything that requires highly powerful, highly specialized computers and software. The building is infamous for a couple of reasons. It’s located pretty far away from any other building, for one. The building itself used to be a coffin factory, no joke.  Another is the building has no windows. None. There are also no clocks anywhere. Once you enter Monty, you are completely separated from the flow of time and the light of day.  Probably the reason Monty is most known though is because students in the “monty majors” have to spend a lot of time there. A lot. It is not uncommon for somebody to spend more than a few days exclusively within the sunless, dark walls of Monty. If you go to the building, it is not surprising to see students sleeping on the floor, on the few chairs available, on the computers. Some bring sleeping bags and rations. Some just forgo sleep, buy espresso shots and work. The entire building just smells of coffee and sweat. It really seems like an exageration, but its not hyperbole. 

Why I bring this up is because of something that’s started recenetly. Inside the building, the school has hung up artwork on the walls from other majors as is typical on campus. One of the artworks was a self-portrait painting of a man with long, scraggly brown hair and a full beard looking pensively off into the distance. The painting became known as “Monty Jesus.”

Students, in their desperation for their files to render, or the computers to work, began to offer prayers to Monty Jesus. Soon, they began writing their prayers and taping them next to the painting. The wall is now covered, completly plastered, in prayers to Monty Jesus for things like “Fix the wifi” and “let me live through finals” and more simply “help me.” Candles have been added. Literal candles are placed around Monty Jesus in hopes he will help them.

This is how religions are born. Monty Jesus is considered a “joke”, but people at Monty still hold…. quite a lot of superstitious faith in the concept. There is even talk of a “Monty Satan” that creates software failures. It might be in jest, but these students really are hoping for some force to help them. And they’ve given it a name, an image, and respect.  Monty Jesus is real, and I’m sure of it. The desperate students have created their own spirit and their own form of worship, out of need.

Religion, spirituality, didn’t stop being relevant. It didn’t stop being something people need and want, and have the desire to create. It’s still happening, and it always will as long as their are people.  The spirit of creation, new deities and new worship, is alive and well today and should not be ignored simply because it is “new” or “a joke.”

Monty Jesus is Real and Strong and Our Friend

SCAD is such a weird and magical place.

As soon as I saw “Monty” I knew this was about my school

I go to this school and I can confirm he is real. Another weird happening that occurred in the dorm adjacent to Monty is the smashed fly incident. Basically, someone smashed a fly on the stairway wall in the dorm and, because no janitor in this building ever bothers to thoroughly clean the place, the fly stayed there for a good few weeks. Eventually, one of the students wrote “ART” next to the fly with a sharpie, and a few days after that, someone made a tiny frame and name tag to accompany the art piece

Eventually some fool took this beautiful art piece down, and someone wrote a goddamn article about it in our school newspaper

which prompted several students to erect a mini shrine on the stairwell in honor of the smashed fly. Art school is truly a magical place.

Your school is a microcosm of how human culture develops, incredible.

That’s called an egregore!

naamahdarling:

leafmoldandearth:

glampersand:

claidilady:

claidilady:

okay but what if angels are black holes and halos are just the light warping around them being pulled in by gravity 

1. paronomaniac said: Then receiving a visit from one is extra terrifying.
2. pugletto said: oooh… story fodder
3. elaienar said: That’s terrifying and I approve 100%.

WELL HERE IS THE THING, RIGHT? black holes you basically literally have to be in their gravity like pretty much on top of them to be sucked in. so that’s not really an issue. it’s TERRIFYING sure, but explains a few things which I will list:

• my astronomy teacher said if you were somehow able to survive entering a black hole and reached the bottom or singularity, the way time works is that you would be able to see the entire universe laid out - like you’d know when the universe ended if you looked back outwards
  
• which falls into line with the idea that the angels know all of time and everything except when it will all end precisely (or scientifically, the collapse of this universe is unknown, but supposing angels were black holes they would see until this unknown point)
• matter falling into a black hole creates a disc of light which is probably among the literal BRIGHTEST things in the universe 
• there are angels which are supposed to be the wheels of God’s Chariot, so it would make sense if, according to theories, that there ARE massive blackholes at the center of all galaxies which is what cause them to rotate, and those black holes are angels which make the galaxy spin. 
• black holes were formed sometime after the big bang, which lines into the story of creation, that the angels came after the universe. 
• angels can choose to physically manifest like humans, but aren’t actually. it’s said that you cannot survive looking at them or hearing them directly. NASA says that the “note” a black hole emits is the deepest sound found in the universe. i am just guessing here but you would probably die if you heard it up close instead of a bazillion light years away. ALSO side note cool fact apparently that “note”: “…It’s worth pointing out that the “sound” in question is 57 octaves (and one semitone) below middle C, which makes it 247×2−57≈1.71×10−15Hz, or one whole cycle every 18.5 million years.” CRAZY RIGHT although apparently some sing other notes and basically if there’s anything people know about angels it is that they DEFINITELY SING. anyways you can’t see black holes but you can see the things around them and the soundwaves surrounding them. 
• also apparently scientists picked up a death “scream” of a star falling into a black hole but like…
• anyways literally every angel is terrifying BE NOT AFRAID “haha okay but i’m crying though is that cool” 
• black holes are probably angels. i’m just saying. 

this is exactly the kind of weird christian gnostic-empiricist apologia i like to see on my dash

!!!!

Merry Christmas! Let the black holes sing!

This is the coolest thing I have ever read.