tinyrosemarysparrows:

celestialinkbrush:

tinyrosemarysparrows:

adragonnamedspot:

tinyrosemarysparrows:

adragonnamedspot:

tinyrosemarysparrows:

I was driving a few days ago and drove past a house with the Christian flag and I was struck with the vivid memories of when we used to have to say our pledges to the American flag and then the Christian flag in grade school. I cannot for the life of me remember the actual pledge, but I never questioned the pledges until now. 

Imagine what my grade school education could have been if I didn’t go to cult schools. Maybe I would have learned how to balance chemical equations or basic geometry instead of being able to sing the books of the Bible song or memorizing hundreds of verses. Instead I am a lesbian pagan who knows way too much about modern Christianity for it to be healthy.

What the great might fuck is a christian flag.

Had one in every classroom because it was just as important as the American one.

It burns! It burns!!! I mean seriously though, that is freaky.

Probably what all those people said when they were burned at the stake in the name of God.

Luckily I was too poor to go to a Christian school for more than a year, but the church I grew up in was a cult! So I am also a (bi ace) pagan who knows way too much about modern christianity to be healthy and too many hymns. So many hymns….

Not to be shady, but to be intentionally shady, what Church isn’t a cult?

We didn’t say the Christian pledge, but we did say the school prayer every morning. It was also our school song and we sang it like a hymn every thursday for chapel. I still remember every word.

Religious schools are all so weird.

ROMAN POLYTHEISTS I NEED YOUR HELP!

blogyehetgirl:

redrokingpunkwitch:

Hi there Roman friends! I have a buddy who is asking about rituals. I suck at rituals and rites but I know some of you know them far better than me. Please reblog this with any info you have. Sources, or just personal knowledge about Roman religion rituals, rites, and ceremonies. THANK YOU.

Okay so since I’ve been in a course and a lecture about Roman Religion/Religion in Rome this semester, I might be able to help you.
Since I don’t know whether they want to know about a specific ritual, I’ll just start with the general rite for offerings as I know it. (I study in Germany, so I can’t guarantee that I’m translating all the words correctly.)

There are various kinds of offerings, the most widely known being the sacrifice of an animal of any kind, but also the offering of wine or portions of meals. An offering always has to be made by at least three people (tres faciunt collegium), but of course there can be more.
Offerings can be made for the wellbeing of the people of Rome (or any city, I guess) - then they are payed for by the state - or for the wellbeing of a smaller group, like a family, who has to pay for it themselves. The first one would be part of the sacra publica, the latter part of the sacra privata. This determines who is present: normally, a priest (probably from the college of pontiffs) or a commander would be the leader of a procedure that is part of the sacra publica, while for a sacrum privatum the pater familias, the head of the family, would be supervisor.

Everyday offerings were made to the lares, for example portions of meals, at the lararium.
The offerings made on feriae (basically public holidays) were mostly animal sacrifices, though there could be different ones depending on the deity. The most important thing for an animal sacrifice was that the animal itself was 100% flawless. Sometimes there were stipulations for what kind of animal should be sacrificed, what colour it should have and what sex. Generally speaking, female animals were offered to female deities and male ones to male deities.
An offering rite has three steps:

praefatio
A prayer is recited and wine and incense are burned.

immolatio (let’s assume this is a sacrum publicum)
There are two options: in the ritus Graecus, a line is drawn from the head of the animal to its tail with a sacrificial knife and a few hairs from its head are burned.
In the ritus Romanus, a salted spelt, the mola salsa, is sprinkled on its head.
Then the animal is killed by a slave, but it’s very important that the animal does not get nervous. Sometimes it’s stunned with a blow to the head.

litatio
The animal’s entrails have to be inspected for any flaws or abnormalities. If there are any, the offering has not been accepted has to be repeated ad usque litationem, until the gods accept it. When it’s been accepted, the entrails are burned and therefore offered to the gods.
The rest of the meat is either cooked and served to the sacrificial community, or given to the community to carry home, or it can be sold to butcheries, where people who weren’t at the offering can buy it so that they were, in a way, part of the offering rite.

There are several people who can, but don’t have to, be part of an offering:

• victimarii - servants who are responsible for looking after the sacrificial animal
• ministri - sacrificial servants
• a musician who is making noise to drive bad spirits and such away

Basically every offering is made within a specific context. Ovid describes some in his fasti (a literary calendar of sorts), like the larentalia or the robigalia. That’s a good source for specific rites and rituals with sometimes very detailed descriptions. Of course, not everything has necessarily been exactly the way Ovid describes it.

The compitalia, for example, an annual festival that was held to honour the lares compitales, the lares of a whole village or city. People would hang as many puppets as residents lived there into the compital chapels, and little wool balls for the slaves. Then they would offer and celebrate, and the slaves would get an extraration of wine.

The cults also have rites of their own that can be quite peculiar. The cult of Isis had an annual festival where they would search for the corpse of Osiris in a body of water, “find” him and then have a very noisy pompa, a procession, to the sea and back to the temple, where they would offer.

The cult of Bona Dea held an annual festival called the December festival, where only women were allowed. They would gather in the house of a member of the societal and political elite and make an offering, plus celebrate, of course.

Additional sources:

• The fasti by Ovid (there should be lots of translations)

• Basically any book on Roman cults, there should be at least one ritual in there

I know one or two more cults, and I’m happy to do some research, so don’t hesitate to ask (though at the moment I’m a little busy so it might take some time).

Thanks for your help bro but its been YEARS since I posted this and I am neck deep in my faith now so I got this. Thanks though.

lovely-loreley:

naturallytom:

hi can we normalize the idea of choosing not to drink

@redrokingpunkwitch

What she says: i’m fine

What she’s thinking: Red Dead Redemption 2 is the third game in the series, but people are treating it like a sequel or stand alone. Have these people ever heard of Red Dead Revolver? Have they played Red Dead Redemption? Have they never heard the beautiful mulitiplayer character lines? Have they seen the undertaker with his swingin coffin? Will they ever knkw where they come from or are they too enamoured with Rootin Tootin Cowboy Skyrim to learn its history?

Alright I need help from all you readers out there. I am working on some stuff for my current writing project and writing some character backstories, but they feel lacking. So my question for y'all is this: what things do you want from a backstory? What questions about a character do you want answered by their backstory?

Campaign Journal #1

So I am now running a pathfinder campaign for my brother R, his boss B, and his bosses wife S. R decided to play a human barbarian named Reidar, B is a gnome rogue named Locutus, and S started as an elven druid named Xenon. 

The full campaign is called Galterra Revived and is set in the world of Galterra which I have created from the ground up. The adventure they are currently running is called Death Undone and is a quest to retrieve a godly artifact that controls the laws of death in this world. Currently as the artifact is missing, death is broken and people are coming back from the dead, though they are not themselves when they come back. They come back darker and more sinister. 

Our adventurers all got a summons from the king of Darthamshire Kingdom, one of the 4 human kingdoms in Galterra, requesting their presence. He informed them of the death problem and the cause and sent them on their way with the aid of a priest of Torag. This priest is a dwarf cleric named Byk. The party explored the town that surrounds the castle and met many people in their attempt to gather information about the thief Carlisle Dubhar. They met his father Toka Wulvedon, a priest of Kildarim the death god, in a tavern and asked him about his son. They gathered enough information and left him there. 

After the day had passed and they felt they had gathered enough information, they made their way down to the castle dungeon to talk to the queen who had returned from death. Though they gained very little information from her, they quickly realized that she was not the queen they had all heard about. She seemed dark, emotionless, cruel. The party left her in the dungeon and made their way to the fanciest tavern/inn to make their rest for the day.

imtootiredtocomeupwiththis:

ADHD culture is never doing a second draft ever

We submit our first drafts in their unedited glory like men

HEY TUMBLR I NEED U

wildehacked:

ARE TIEFLINGS HOT? REBLOG IF U AGREE. 

i’m proving a goddamn point to my gnome wizard pal.