Nice thread idea! I can never not upvote books :)

Yeah I'm not sure how you guys will even lead to that now. Radically getting rid of grades paired with a drastic reduction in the amounts of required reading? Centering on reading as the primary goal in itself, akin to breathing?.. I honestly don't know...

But earlier last month I was here, which definitely made me think of your posts!! Same confession, neighboring region, but different century, and almost opposite vibes in a way...

Say last week I was here

Scary and exciting are definitely not opposites haha. But it's really interesting how the intended vibes of churches change over time

Biblically accurate bagel sandwich

Oh this one isn't scary for a change 😇

My kid had a pirate week in the Kindergarten, learned about pirates. Why?

MILLENIA-OLD TRADITION!!! (🧵👇)

~3000 ya apotropaic rituals develop around spring equinox
2600 ya: they get codified as an origin story
2000 ya: a prophetic preacher follows them, conflicts with authorities, gets executed
1/4

a woman (the artist) laying on a layer of eggs, fixing them in place

The end result: a giant mosaic, reminiscent of renaissance paintings

close-up on some pisanka eggs

Oksana Mas is a contemporary Ukrainian artist who makes ginormous mosaics out of traditional Ukrainian Easter eggs (aka "pisanka")

Btw, all this while, Isfahan, beautiful and incomparable Isfahan, keeps on getting pounded every day and night. That city is like an open air museum. Like Venice. Every inch of it is historical. I cannot even imagine what has already been destroyed and pummeled.

Nice edible mandala

Wow it's so widespread?? I still kinda can't quite believe that it's real tbh, it sounds scary. But it's a major supermarket chain, not some alt right niche shop 😶

An interesting update: if whipping your beloved's posterior with a twig is no longer fun enough, you can also use a sausage for the same purpose! (The brand can be roughly translated as "Easter-timed butt-whipping salami")

I absolutely love these tiny chapels coz they achieve the impossible: you get a church in your village without having to invest into building a church in your village! (Or having to attend a church in your village too often) They minimax sanctity, in a way!

Chapel from the outside

Inside the chapel

Tiny chapel

A small bite-sized chapel in the village of Oparno, near Velemin, Czechia

Yes! Let the ancient source be exactly as weird as it is!

Still it's a bit more nuanced than "slavonic is bad". It's a very protestant position to have, but really not the only one imaginable. Think of Sanscrit, classical Arabic, Sant Bhasha, classical Chinese. There are more different motivations there, other than the "you should be as clear as possible"

That said, I obv agree that Russian orthodoxy is too flexible and is often no longer Christian at this point. But so is American evangelicalism (not always, but often) so there are many alternative ways to the same bad end. I also totally agree that reading Gospels and Epistles in slavonic is silly.

3. Slavonic sounds like poetry. It's a curious type of poetry where the shimmering unclarity of meaning, the flexibility of interpretation, stems not from the author's intention, but from the vague familiarity of a related but foreign language. Very much related to points 1 and 2 but also separate

2. Slavonic protects the service from devolving into truisms of self-improvement, from becoming a meeting, losing a sense of mystery, a live protective body of folksy paganism. It's impossible to say anything smart about God. The therapeutic healing value of religion lies in it's strangeness

1. Slavonic protects the service from medieval theology and poetics that frankly feels extremely obsolete (sexist, racist) in the modern world. People are blessed to not understand some of the things they are singing. Not all, but some. You can't just flip the language, you'd needed a deeper reform

That's a well known position, and I attended semi-schismatic services in modern russian once, as well as orthodox services in modern English for years, and I'm not sure I agree. For three reasons:

multilingual Psalter, 12th-14th century, monastery of saint macarius, wadi al-Natrun, Egypt

Ethiopic/Ge’ez, followed by Syriac, Coptic, Arabic, and ending with Armenian.
www.africanhistoryextra.com/p/historical...

Very excited to see a new volume on Slavic Native Faith by Kaarina Aitamurto and Scott Simpson published in @universitypress.cambridge.org's Elements in New Religious Movements series - currently free to download! www.cambridge.org/core/element...

Bad take in the context

The exhibition on the second floor shows devils created by folk masters, craftsmen, and authors of professional art, which were donated to the museum after the death of the initiator of the collection A. Žmuidzinavičius. The collection increased intensively in the 1970s and 1980s. The prevailing political system at that time was favourable for making this mythological character popular. It was not merely an artefact illustration of the past time folklore. The character of a devil became a convenient reflection of Soviet ideology to introduce the Catholic faith as a rudiment of the past to be destroyed. Anyone could make fun of the faith by portraying a devil, and it was a funny joke to impart to a negative character an "innocent" transformation into a cheerful, naive, trustworthy, charismatic, or even sympathetic personage. At that time, there was an increase in the production of folk art souvenirs with devil images (medals, wooden masks, sculptures, ceramic vases, mugs, candlesticks, whistles, cups), which were purchased as merry holiday gifts.

On the third floor, the gifts donated by foreign visitors are shown. These are devils and masks from the European, American, Asian, African countries. The exhibits help to reveal the concept of a devil in the ethnography of the nations of the world, demonological beings, celebrations. They are displayed according to foreign countries from which the objects have come to the museum. Most of the exhibited works are the gifts of visitors.

A fine fellow in my Insta comments told me about the Devil Museum in Kaunas, Lithuania, home to over 3000 demonic items. It's going on The List. Particularly fond of the accordion guy...

Aragorn's Tax Policy and Other Weird Shibboleths - Reactor Finally, a helpful explanation of why medieval rulers and modern tax policies don't mix...

Inspired by a discussion of Tolkien and making medieval fantasy more “realistic,” Liz Bourke (@hawkwinglb.bsky.social) tackles the question of what Aragorn's tax policy would look like—and why such a thing wouldn't really be possible in a place like Middle-earth.
reactormag.com/aragorns-tax...

Eww what a bad take

Could it be that they meant metal detectors but tried to sound clever?

Fascinating thread! tldr: in the middle of WWII she got popular by barfing swallowed toilet paper, shaping dolls or of it, then ventriloquating which military ship will sink and which one won't. The authorities struggled to stop her, but realized an anti witchcraft law from 18th C was never repealed