I‘m back from the depths of flu-dom and ready to take on the world, or at least some of its most terrible and ridiculous aspects. I’m not quite at full strength yet, so posting may be a bit light for a few more days. But the flu is definitely on the way out. Thanks for your patience and support!
So does anyone want to discuss that picture up there at the top of the post? Everyone else is. Is Kellyanne Conway being weird and disrespectful to the oval office visitors, a delegation from historically black colleges and universities? Or is everybody being mean to her because OMG she was just trying to take a picture with her phone?
I’m going to go with “weird and disrespectful” but what do I know.
@Rach
Why must you trolls deny readers the inspiration for insipid poetry?
OT:
https://mobile.twitter.com/ryangrim/status/836765188372193280
CT special election results are in. Ds win 2, Rs win 1. CT state Senate stays tied. Big story is that the district that Trump won by 35 only went +10 to the Republican in this race. Lotta money spent in that one
5-3 Dems so far this year. Next is a state House seat in PA late March
@Axecalibur: Middle Name Danger
That’s alot better than expected. Let’s keep it up.
Rach here is boring,
Unlike our usual trolls.
Do something funny!
@Alan
I used to think that it was a case of parallel development that might indicate some kind of underlying truth to various magical practices, but nope.
Or, you know, that humanity all shares the same basic neural architecture, on account of our being the same species and all. It’s hardly surprising when people come to similar conclusions, given similar inputs and similar brains.
Do poppets and wax doll babies share an origin? Outside of NOLA I thought american doll babies were always wax, maybe clay?
@Cleverforagirl
Context? Do you mean just toy dolls made of wax, or are you referring to something specific? Because if they’re a thing used for magical purposes, then yeah, they almost certainly share an origin. Otherwise, wax was a relatively easy thing to sculpt dolls (or more often doll heads, attached to cloth-stuffed bodies) out of in the days before injection-molded plastic, which IME is what most American baby dolls are made of these days.
@Dalillama: Irate Social Engineer – yes in america wax dolls predate the cloth or stick and moss voodoo dolls. Hoodoo specifically, uses wax “doll babies” but I’m not quite sure of the earliest mention of them.
http://giphy.com/gifs/12FVVAr0TsiHDi
((link leads to a gif of kittens getting startled by a bucket and fleeing))
@Cleverforagirl
Oh yeah, those are totally poppets. Wax is preferred because a reasonably skilled artist can make them look a lot like the target, and you can conveniently mold it around bits of hair, nails, blood, etc. without worrying about it falling out or being contaminated.
@anyone who’s interested:
http://galabes.blogspot.co.uk/
is a great ongoing thorough knowledgeable and clear history of Western magic. I can’t recommend Greer unreservedly because he’s one of those ‘black people would be better off if they stopped scaring white people’ dudes (so is James Howard Kunstler, unfortunately), but he does write very well about what he knows.
I’m just curious about how it entered the african diaspora, since it was mentioned as early as the 30’s, but the european influence would have been limited to a few copies of some grimoires, and maybe from pow-wows and some limited exposure to hexcraft?
Not super important, just wondering if anyone had any insights since the history tends to be a bit spotty until drug store hoodoo took off.
Hello.
Happy recovery, David.
Well, except for two or three guests and trump giving the fullteeth smile, the major part of them looks a bit tense. Like “oh my, what am i doing here ?”. And trump is now going to say “i have more than one black friend (my ni**rs ?) !” except i doubt even one would like to be considered or even called “his friend”… And it is also strange that white supremacists had not made public harmful comments about this picture.
About the couch, i suppose the feet are inserted between the sofa back and the sofa sit cushion. Anyway, if she had kept her shoes on, that going to damage the sofa, especially if there are sharp parts like the heel of hig heels, and the sole of shoes may be a bit dirty too, so, like weirwoodtreehugger: chief manatee said, it is quite not a good thing for the furniture. I mean, if i am not wrong, children are taught not to put their shoes on furnitures (the ones not designed for, obviously), so i suppose you could expect that from adults too ?
Have a nice day.
@Rach
“Like” a cult?!
You underestimate us.
We are the cult — the cult that other cults try, but fail, to imitate.
@Cleverforagirl
You’d not need a grimoire; poppets are a folk magic thing, although IIRC some formalized European traditions use them as well. Any herbwife or cunning man would know the making of them. Especially relatively early on, there was a fair amount of friendly contact between enslaved Africans and poor (and/or indentured) whites. Some of whom would have been people who knew some folk magic. That got syncretized into Vodun along with the Catholicism the overseers tried to impose, and the result was Voodoo. (In French colonies; in Spanish colonies it was Santeria.)
@occasional reader
For a long time I would have expected white supremacists to be angry about this kind of picture too. I was sure that once they discovered that Ivanka and Jared were Jewish, for example, they would turn on Trump.
Such is not the case.
My conclusion is that — at least at this point in their hoped-for counterrevolution, one that takes us back to Nazi Germany or maybe ancient Rome — most of them are not abiding by the traditional Nazi playbook. Politics make strange bedfellows of them. I suppose their plan is that once the people rise up and demand a Nazi government that is unashamed to say its name, they will cast aside these friends of convenience.
As it turns out, Richard Spencer, the dapper Nazi, has admired Jewish presidential adviser Stephen Miller since their college days at Duke University. It’s a touching friendship — one that Miller disavows.
Jewish Trump Adviser Wins Praise From White Nationalist Leader
http://forward.com/fast-forward/357201/jewish-trump-adviser-wins-praise-from-white-nationalist-leader/
Try as I might, I can’t see a problem with KAC’s behaviour in this photograph. Everywhere else, yes, but whatever is setting off everyone else’s alarm just isn’t hitting me at all. I don’t understand the moral outrage against someone taking a photograph while kneeling on a chair.
There is a mixture of formal and informal in the picture, sure, but so what? The formal part is obvious bullshit anyway, it’s people being ushered into posing for a photograph. I find that part way more offensive than the informality.
Mystified.
> Kat
You have got a point. Like “religious for the money and/or the material power” before, would you suggest this is “opportunistic neo-nazism” ?
To note, the french far right historical party, the “Front National”, have a Jewish cell, a Black people cell, a Maghreb people cell and maybe some others minorities cell (and let us not forget that the current vice-president of the party, Mr Philippot, is a declared gay – and as you can guess, he is used as a huge caution for the “bleaching” of the party).
According to Le Monde, those cells are a gathering of (a few) far-right (so, extremists) people of said minorities. As an example, the Jewish ones are those who would prefer the French Jews to go in Israël rather than staying in France (at which point you may wonder : why this extremists are still installed in France ?), and are also religious extremists (not in the terrorist meaning).
I suppose (the journal does not provide example for the other minorities) it may also be the case for other “geographical” minorities, making this strange coalition a “we are not racist, we are for putting everyone in its own country” straw-alliance. So, extremists may hate the others for their beliefs, but the “my soil” being a common part of their claims, they gather around that and use it for bonding and shielding (against those who accuse them of extremism, of course).
Opportunism of the leaders and extremism of the base, dangerous cocktail, indeed.
I don’t think it’s inappropriate to criticize Conway here; if it was Spicer or Bannon there I’d think it was just as rude and unprofessional. If it’s not your living room and not your couch, you don’t put your feet on it. Not even for a good picture.
But of course I also agree that this is small potatoes compared to the lying and such.
I was going to post some stuff about protestants, hoodoo and the grimoiric? influences, but the caffeine just wore off and my brain is alternating between cute kitties and throwing short ribs in the Sunday gravy lol
KAC – I think the problem with the pose is how *casual* it is which can be read as disrespectful, esp. she is more formal for white visitors. . .
I think maybe if EVERYONE had a casual pose, and the body language suggested some sort of rapport. . .
Ok, enough trying to string together thoughts, goodnight all!
@Kootiepatra but how do you know this isn’t perfectly normal behaviour? Why do you get to decide what is professional in that situation and what is not? Why does the putative unprofessionalism bother you anyway?
@Clever:
Yes, I get the apparent difference between the formality and the informality, but these are people getting ready to pose for a picture which is deliberately formal. It doesn’t say a single thing about the attitude in the room or the expected behaviour because it was so artificial in the first place.
But even if it was inappropriately informal – GOOD. Let’s have less bullshit formality and more sincerity.
It makes me feel physically sick to be sort-of defending KAC, but I guess I kind of am.
@ cleverforagirl
If you ever get a chance after a future caffeine fix, I’d be very interested to hear more about that.
@ dalillama
TBH, that’s really what I was hankering after too. All the Jungian stuff though and the collective experience is fascinating. I can see how the common brain wiring means there are certain universal fundamentals (hence the common initial experiences and visions in shamanism and/or just any sort of consciousness expansion) but then there’s like that secondary overlay from external cultural influences. I love all that sort of thing.
@AlanRobertshaw
When it comes to English Magic, I tend to side more with Mr Norrell than Mr Strange.
@weirwood
Your cat pictures, and the general discussion about British magic, reminded me of the old tradition of leaving an ‘offering’ bricked up in walls of new buildings, bridges, etc. This was often a cat, or sometimes a chicken, as this quote from a book about chimneys reveals:
In a superstitious age, chimneys and fireplaces became receptacles for sacrifices. When Lauderdale House, Highgate, London, was built in the 1600s four chickens, a candlestick and a plaited rush thong were bricked into a chimney recess in the first-floor fireplace. Two of the chickens were buried alive. Their mummified remains were discovered during house renovations in the 1960s. Other customs – thought to be lucky – involved the burial of shoes. From ‘Chimneys and Chimney Sweeps’ by Benita Cullingford.
There was a pub I used to go in occasionally called the Three Stags Heads, which had one of these mummified cats on the bar, which had been found on the walls. It’s usually bad luck to remove such items, so my thinking is:
1. Find out if there is anything like this hidden in the walls of the White House.
2. Remove it.
3. Laugh as the edifice comes crumbling down (or, more likely, Trump is plagued by piskies, hobgoblins and unquiet spirits until the item is retrieved and restored.)
It is a long shot, I admit…
@ danholme
It’s interesting how ritualistic the construction industry still is today. There’s still a thing of getting someone significant in the community to lay the foundation stone. And it’s quite common to put something underneath it. Not cats I’m glad to say, but freshly minted coins or other symbolic objects. And there are a few cases where, during restoration work, they’ve found something archeologocally interesting and its ended up in a museum; but then when weird things start happening they’ve asked for it back and replaced it.
ETA: you’re probably also aware of the various ‘topping out’ ceremonies on completion of a build.