The unseating of Zeus

One myth that I'd say is in the offing amongst those elements of the pagan community receptive to it is the unseating of Jupiter as chief of the gods, and it's had a long run up.

The pieces are all there though, an ideological turning from strict gender roles as a cornerstone of social organisation amongst a large segment of the population, a defacto changing of the roles of women in society due to the demands of capitalism, combined with the roots of the pagan revival (in Aradia, with Diana as goddess of witches and all that entails, and with Pan and Dionysus as gods of nature and liberation), paganism cast as opposition to Christianity, at whose head sits a Jupiter analogue, patriarchal lightning god (and the Romans saw it too, with their construction of the temple to Jupiter Capitolinus over the site of the temple mount in Jerusalem).

The association of paganism with the feminine by academics, theologians and most of the important early figures in the pagan revival (basically the entire intellectual firmament of the west post the rise of Christianity) leads to an easy reading that paganism in the revival is the domain of Juno, which automatically causes problems for the relevance of Jupiter, but it goes beyond that.

The "feminine" nature of paganism is shorthand for the oppositional nature of paganism, much in the same way that Hera in Greek myth exists primarily as an oppositional figure (she was never a particularly well drawn or compelling character, nor for that matter was Zeus). And we know the possibility of Zeus being unseated exists from the Iliad. specifically the plot between Athena, Poseidon and Hera that was thwarted by the actions of Thetis.

Ofttimes in my father's house have I heard you glory in that you alone of the immortals saved the son of Saturn from ruin, when the others, with Juno, Neptune, and Pallas Minerva would have put him in bonds. It was you, goddess, who delivered him

But the unseating of Zues leads also to the unseating of Hera. Hera requires Zues, and both their marriage and their opposition point to Zeus requiring Hera, and for a significant portion of the pagan community (that recognizes them at all) both are gods of minor importance rather than deities whose tyranny is necessitated by its justice.

At any rate the unseating of Jupiter, his loss of primacy, exists defacto, it just awaits explanation.

LIMINAL ART Tokyo Restricted Area

The make-up on the face of the ancient city of Tokyo is plated by concrete, but beneath its antiquities and modernities, the city is sick.

Crimes and tragedies are not only created by human behaviour. The power of land is also the cause.

Memories of the land are older than when the human myth begins. Its spiritual assault on us is like an expulsion of a buried trauma.

The spiral power raged from

Ancient ages transform the linear timeline. Memories of the land try to demolish the concrete and further bring about the disintegration of human societies.

A souce who keeps watch on us from a slight crack within the concrete.

The places that contain these dangers are not mentioned on maps.

These are the restricted areas of Tokyo, and if found are not recommend to penetrate.

But our starved souls are sometimes attracted by these areas.

Areas where the protective spirit transcends human morality.

But could contain a trigger to release or destroy our soul.

The relationship with the land is also a hope to change our entropic society

If not an opposition of our community.

"Tokyo Restricted Area" presents an unknown story of these ominous memories of the land.

https://dreamcatalogue.bandcamp.com/album/tokyo-restricted-area

LIMINAL ART hookland

In the talk, Epping Forest became a lens to look at landscape. It is the only royal land in England handed over to the people for our use and enjoyment. The 130 square miles of forest is the liminal blur of London, the people’s Commonwealth of the Imagination
I talked about how the forest provides space in London where the imagination can still place non-human monsters in. I talked of the 18th Rabbi Falk, who in Jewish folklore buried treasure in it. The Rabbi then brought the clay from his treasure pit back to the East End of London to build a golem to protect his people from anti-Semitic paranoia. I talked about how in 2009, a new folklore sprang from the forest – the cryptid Hollow Ponds Bear. How this new monster had been adopted by the cottaging community that uses the forest. Distant centuries and the connective muscle of folklore doing what it often does, giving the persecuted a sense of protection, giving their persecutors something to be afraid of.

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Hookland was always about creating this haunted space that anyone could play in. As authors we often create spaces where we want others to feel they have lived in, but then deny them permission to stay. Permission to build and explore in their own way.

It is an open, shared universe to explore those connections between place and our sometimes forgotten myth-circuits.

The England that never existed is always more powerful in our imagination than that which was there and now isn’t.  Hookland is where all the secrets and mystery edited out of accepted England gets put back in. It is a reactivation of Albionic myth circuits. A love letter to the artist and author Paul Nash and a conscious act of re-enchantment; restoring high weirdness to childhood landscape.

It is a different way of approaching the strangeness held in the landscape, hopefully a bit of a landscape punk way that everybody can access without the need for theory. It is my attempt to explore folklore and its impact on our lives without academic autopsy killing the joy.

For while landscape changes and stories decay,  the marriage of the two – folklore – remains the constant dance in our collective memory. As C.L. Nolan, one of the characters I created to give voice to Hookland might say: ‘Those that think folklore does not exert gravity on us, those that think it is dead, these are the people who know not themselves or the landscape they live in.’

http://folklorethursday.com/urban-folklore/970/#sthash.gqIlteMO.HWMTe44n.dpuf

LIMINAL ART rabbit island residency

Each year our residents receive funding to live and work on Rabbit Island amongst the forest, rocks, and wildlife; and the vast waters of Lake Superior that surround it. In addition to a generous honoraria, artists are invited to participate in our annual exhibition, event series, and publication, presented in partnership with the DeVos Art Museum in Marquette, Michigan.

The Rabbit Island Residency provides time and space to investigate and challenge creative practices in a wilderness environment. Artists live and work on the island for 2-4 weeks, engaging directly with the landscape, responding to notions of conservation, ecology, and sustainability via their individual practices. The residency reflects on the American continent’s four hundred year history of settlement and division of land, and stems from the idea that in a developed society intelligent organization of wild spaces is one of the most civilized things we can pursue.

The island itself, an unsettled and undivided space, enables artists to present commentary on these ideas, creating interpretations and solutions to issues of global importance–climate change, loss of natural habitat, the value of pristine watersheds, the environmental implications of entrepreneurship, and so forth. Modern understanding of our natural reality, as well as our cause-and-effect relationship to it, dictates a need for principles worthy of our time. If artists do not create the work that defines this new space, who will? Art is perhaps the purest form of creation, and serves fittingly as a symbol for all human constructions.

http://rabbitisland.org/art

Ernest Westlake

Ernest Westlake, author of the first English language text of pagan revival that addressed what resurgent paganism would look like (rather than as the dipping of the toe into the pagan current by occultists of various stripes). It's amazing how resonant with later developments his writing is specifically the role of women (though that is a thread that runs deep, not just in the christian mythos of what paganism is, but in 19th century academia) and in the citation of Jung as an important source

The role of the diabolic in reenchantment with a digression on animal rights and class

[01:53] <obli> i guess the question i am getting at

[01:55] <obli> if that if christians assert that the gods are demons within the lens of christianity: is it better to say "yeah, so what?" and be fared, or say "no, they are gods" and have them dismissed as non existant

[01:55] <obli> fared =feared

[02:00] <@Otter> hmmm

[02:00] <@Otter> i don't think i've ever felt a need to respond to that at all

[02:02] <@Otter> i often tell chrsitians that "saint" is a reasonable translation of "god", but nto because they're ranting about how Brid is a demon

[02:02] <obli> out of the 3 what is the most spiritually effective though... the most effective at the reenchantment of the west

[02:03] <obli> i think terror is a valid avanue of reenchantment

[02:03] <obli> horror

[02:03] <@Otter> lol

[02:04] <@Otter> hmmm

[02:04] <@Otter> you may have a point there

[02:05] <obli> look at the rise in the belief in satan as an actual entity after the exorcist

[02:05] <@Otter> the sort of christian who has the preacher over to perform an exorcism because he doesn't like his teenager's t-shirt definitely beleives in magic

[02:06] <obli> how good a propaganda tool for paganism has the wickerman been

[02:06] <@Otter> or wicca

[02:07] <obli> yeah

[02:08] <obli> i mean.. the contemporary christian line i think works well for asserting the spiritual potency of the gods

[02:08] <@Otter> which line is that?

[02:09] <obli> the idea that "hell" is just a state of separation from "god"

[02:09] <obli> and that "demons" have the supernatural power

[02:09] <@Otter> what does that have to do with our gods?

[02:10] <@Otter> i don't engage with abrahamism

[02:10] <obli> well when hell isn't being drowned for eternity in lakes of boiling piss and more not being stuck singing the praises of yhwh for eternity, it's less effective of a threat

[02:11] <obli> and doesn't really contradict other conceptions of the "afterlife" such as they are

[02:11] <@Otter> if someone is looking for an alternative, i'll try to help

[02:13] <obli> I think paganism has a great destiny

[02:13] <obli> bigger than jesus

[02:13] <obli> sacrificing 3 times as many animals

[02:14] <obli> worshipping 10 times as many idols

[02:14] <@Otter> i think that hell, being separated from the divine, isn't possible

[02:14] <@Otter> it's an illusion

[02:14] <@Otter> LOL

[02:15] <@Otter> how did animal sacrifice get demonized?

[02:15] <obli> search me

[02:15] <obli> i know how it stays demonised

[02:15] <@Otter> the bible gives instructions

[02:16] <obli> you only need to pay attention to the bibles instructions when its telling you who to hate :P

[02:17] <@Otter> maybe it's just that peopile moved off the land and so stopped raising and slauggghtering the ir own meat

[02:17] <obli> not to get too sidetracked, but i think theres a definate class aspect to it... alienating the lower classes from nature

[02:18] <obli> all the initial animal protection measures were aimed at lower class passtimes

[02:18] <obli> cock fighting, dog fighting

[02:19] <obli> look at how little political will there is to put an end to fox hunting in the uk

[02:19] <obli> or bullfighting in spain

[02:19] <@Otter> LOL

[02:19] <@Otter> yeah.  i tried that one where they tell you to dash the heads of babylonian children against rocks

[02:19] <@Otter> it really works

[02:19] <@Otter> i've been much happier since i stasted doing that

[02:20] <@Otter> hmmm

[02:21] <@Otter> don't they have laws against fox hunting over there now?

[02:22] <@Otter> i vaguely recall a brit complaining about how  he wasn't allowed to kill the foxes taht were eating his chieckes

[02:22] <@Otter> chickens

[02:23] <obli> they do, but the new primeminister wants to repeal them

[02:23] <obli> and

[02:23] <obli> i dunno how hard they are enforced

[02:24] <obli> definitely a lot less hard than laws against dogfighting

[02:24] <obli> anyway

[02:24] <@Otter> might not apply to rich folk hunting on the ir own land

[02:24] <@Otter> i see a difference

[02:24] <obli> sorry

[02:24] <@Otter> fox hunting is hunting

[02:24] <@Otter> what did you do now, obli?

[02:25] <obli> back to weaponising christian metaphysics as a vehicle for reenchantment

[02:27] <obli> basically demons are seen as having power, christianity gives that which it idenitfies as demonic a level of spiritual authority. and hell is no longer a punishment

[02:28] <obli> i wonder if it's worth taking that and running with it

[02:29] <@Otter> the goal being to combat mechanism?

[02:29] <obli> and to exult the gods

[02:29] <obli> but yes

[02:30] <obli> crush materialism

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@OtterobliTj_Teddy

Why I write

there's a reason why i don't show you - or anyone, my writing

qed

qed

you're too afraid of criticism

yeah, that's because i've only been writing for like 4 years

i wanted to make an effort to suck as little as i possibly could before i solicited opinions

i still expect them to be negative

maybe i'm just a terrible salesman

doomed forever

by my lack of salesmanship

unable to give up

due to my hatred for americans

thats probably healthy

it's hard to justify creation when there is so much stuff...

so much of it is produced by americans though

and if you stay silent then you are allowing them to dominate the conversation

becuase they feel no shame

nor self awareness

preach it sister