Gabe, "one of Venus' Chosen"

OK, it's time to open up my astro offerings again. Next step is to put out my NORWAC talk on profections with some extras, hopefully in the next week. gabrielrosasastrology.com

I still got it 🦇

The Arsenal. Your Premier League champions.

This belongs to all of us.

@cybrwrm LOL

guy at the dispo was not amused when i told him i “love mids” ??? pussy

1/3 In the Theaetetus the inquiry begins by testing whether knowledge can be identified with perception. Perception grasps only what is in constant flux. What is in flux cannot remain identical with itself long enough to be known, and the perceiver is carried along in the same flux. No stable distinction between knower and known survives. The first definition collapses.

In Philosophy before the Greeks, Marc Van De Mieroop isolates Babylonian logic as a highly structured, textual system of reasoning that operated on its own coherent principles, entirely independent of the later syllogistic logic of Aristotle. Instead of deriving truth through deductive arguments or empirical observation, Babylonian scholars derived truth through the linguistic, systematic manipulation of the cuneiform script. For Babylonian thinkers, truth and reality did not exist prior to language; they were embedded directly within it. The universe was viewed as a text written by the gods. To understand reality, one had to master the mechanics of reading and writing. Cuneiform signs could represent multiple different sounds (phonograms) or concepts (logograms). Babylonian logic did not see this as confusing. Instead, it used these multi-layered meanings to connect seemingly unrelated concepts, discovering hidden truths through the shared properties of a single written sign. While Greek philosophy relied on the essay, the dialogue, or the narrative, Babylonian logic expressed itself strictly through lists. Thousands of surviving tablets consist of parallel columns compiling words, legal precedents, or natural phenomena. The list was the primary tool used to organize data, define boundaries, and classify the contents of the cosmos. Scholars used the internal rhythm and pattern of a list to extrapolate new, hypothetical entries. This allowed them to systematically map out possibilities that had never actually been observed in the physical world. Babylonian logic was fundamentally casuistic, meaning it operated via conditional, rule-based structures rather than abstract generalizations. This is most visible in legal codes and omen lists. Every logical proposition was split into a condition (Protasis: "If X happens...") and a consequence (Apodasis: "...then Y will occur"). To determine the consequence of an unobserved event, scholars modified existing rules using strict structural principles, such as switching a variable to its direct opposite (e.g., changing "right side" to "left side" in the condition meant flipping "success" to "failure" in the outcome). A defining feature of Babylonian logic was that its internal consistency was more important than physical reality. Omen lists frequently include scientifically impossible events, such as an eclipse occurring on a day of the month when it is astronomically impossible. To the Babylonian scholar, these impossible scenarios were still entirely logical and "true" because they correctly followed the linguistic and mathematical rules of the established system.

The Vaishnavisation of much of Hinduism in recent centuries is a non-negligible factor in this. Just look at what's become of the Katra shrine dedicated to Vaishno Devi, or the Ambabai Kolhapur temple. The Goddesses presiding over these places are forms of Shivapatni (all shakti-pithas and siddha-pithas are associated with Sati, and Sati only), and have nothing to do with the Vishnu family of Deities, and yet ... Leave aside the fact that these Goddesses, like most forms of Durga/Kali/Parvati, should properly be worshipped with animal sacrifice, even the stories surrounding the tirthas have been either revised or expanded to include Vaishnava elements and components.

Gods are living and over time can manifest any number of forms, syncretisms and transformations. Also, what in my original post suggests that I don’t accept Karuppu for what or who he is? Karuppu in his primal form exists all over TN and I respect the rituals at those shrines. At the same time, there is also a Mahākāla who is described in a way that is very similar to Karuppu. And some highly advanced worshippers of Śāstā have seen that Mahākāla in Karuppu. And in Aruppukōṭṭai, there are Sanskrit manuscripts relating to Karuppasvāmī’s worship under Śaivāgama. It is narrow-minded to call this cultural appropriation. In West Africa (including Nigeria), local, African people saw something inspiring and divine in the image of Dattātreya that the Hindu immigrants had kept at their homes and shops. They were inspired to see in Dattātreya an African God called Densu. See the following pages/links from actual African practitioners of tribal religions: 1. facebook.com/share/p/1C3YGE… 2. mamiwatamysteries.com/who-is-densu-2/ 3. worthpoint.com/worthopedia/po… - see poster below created by actual African polytheists. They created this poster based on divine inspiration received by their own Yoruba/Voodoo priests. Hindus didn’t do this for them. And Hindus are not accusing Yoruba priests of appropriation or demanding that they be the priests at Yoruba shrines for Densu. Be it Karuppasvāmī or Dattātreya, neither of them could care less about whether Āryas or Drāviḍas or whites or blacks worship them. They can inspire whomsoever they please. They can bless anyone they wish to bless. Over time, certain blessed/gifted people (be it Yoruba African priests or Śivācārya priests) saw connections between their own traditional deity and a “foreign” deity. Keep an open mind to the presence of the divine and graduate beyond reducing everything to cultural appropriation . The Gods can take multiple forms for different groups and in the course of history, we have come to find the connections between some of these forms—like Densu and Dattātreya or Karuppu and Mahākāla. There may be more connections that we are yet to discover because the Deity has not willed for us to find them yet. And just because we have seen a connection, it doesn’t mean that the older rituals must go away. Let Karuppu get his traditional offerings of meat and liquor at his usual shrines and let him get Āgamika offerings at other shrines.

Today marks Nakba Day, an annual day of remembrance to commemorate the expulsion of more than 700,000 Palestinians between 1947 and 1949 during the creation of the State of Israel and the year that followed. Inea is a New Yorker and a Nakba survivor. She shared her story with us — one of home, tradition and memory over generations.

may all sentient beings be at peace om mani padme hum om mani padme hum om mani padme hum om mani padme hum 唵嘛呢叭咪吽唵嘛呢叭咪吽唵嘛呢叭咪吽 唵嘛呢叭咪吽唵嘛呢叭咪吽唵嘛呢叭咪吽唵嘛呢叭咪吽唵嘛呢叭咪吽唵嘛呢叭咪吽 ཨོཾ་མ་ཎི་པདྨེ་ཧཱུྃ་| ཨོཾ་མ་ཎི་པདྨེ་ཧཱུྃ་| ཨོཾ་མ་ཎི་པདྨེ་ཧཱུྃ་

ME: fuck, this spreadsheet is going to be unreadable ENENTARZI (Sumerian accountant whose soul is imprisoned in my Excel program): O great scribe, by the blessing of Nadu, perhaps a pivot table? ME: hey thanks man ENENTARZI: Truly this afterlife is a wondrous and blessed one

@gorgons_kiss 👏👏👏

Elbow tattoos are impossible to show on camera. Anyway now that the mending rune of the death-prince is healed I think they look good together. 👹 The Ninetails seal needs a touch up pronto.

@themartiancarl 😍😍😍

Same night - Kid Cudi concert last week. 3H Capricorn Venus conjunct Neptune, square the Nodes & Aries Mars, sextile ASC & 5H Pisces Mercury/Jupiter. Second photo is me at home covered in sweat and rain from dancing all night ✨

And written (and fought for!) by me 💋

Free from Fear | Resident Evil 3: Nemesis

Another bucket list item checked off tonight: throwing down in the pit for The Prodigy

Polytheism is beautiful!

I'm pleased to announce that I will be contributing a chapter to the forthcoming Bloomsbury Handbook of Neoplatonism on Damascius' Parmenides commentary, and excited at the opportunity to work on this text, which has received relatively little attention.

Thinking there’s a “good guy” in a Greek tragedy