kermecat

Japan, ostensibly one of the least religious countries in the world, had its political order upended by the lay Buddhist organization Soka Gakkai. That is THE story about Friday's epochal shift in Japanese politics (thread follows):

Illustrations from a copy of the apocryphal "Cause and effect sutra", attributed to one Brother Niu 牛哥

今生做官是何因。前世黃金裝佛身
What's the cause of being an official now?
In a past life, you adored the Buddha's body with gold.
archive.org/details/caus...

i've regrettably just caught up on what has been happening to my friends at @transnews.network: a corporation-endorsed harassment campaign targeted at journalists.

Itch's behavior is inexcusable. plainly.

The thing that's so difficult in fighting pseudoscience is that its followers fundamentally don't believe in expertise.

Exceptional people? Sure. The naturally gifted? of course.

But I've talked to people face-to-face who simply don't believe people can get better at things.

I recommend this well-written article
www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/...

The lack of 4 feathered wings amd canine features is what bothers me the most.

It's like someone ordered Satanic Panic on Temu.

I am very irritated that this viral image of "Pazuzu" is AI-generated and looks *nothing* like historical depictions of Pazuzu, who has "claws or talons, two separate pairs of wings, the tail of a scorpion, a penis with the head of a snake, and a canine mouth".

Perhaps you'd be interested in this museum exhibition?

Not an expert but I think it could be argued that 'youths' were assigned male not at birth but at 15 years old.

deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/ha... scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/server/api/c...

if anyone knows how to find the text being chanted during this exorcism, please let me know www.youtube.com/watch?v=BKH2...

木剣加持祈祷 - 日蓮宗 慈鏡山 妙立寺 (東大和市) https://www.myoryuji-kohan.com/service/%E6%9C%A8%E5%89%A3%E5%8A%A0%E6%8C%81%E7%A5%88%E7%A5%B7/

Rituals of exorcism are performed at the temples, by monks who have undergone the hundred-day ascetic practice called aragyō. During these “fierce austerities”, the practitioner undergoes regular cold water ablutions (mizugori), food and sleep deprivation, exhausting chants of sūtra and learns how to manipulate bokken (magic castanets used for expelling the spirits) in order to acquire the ascetic power necessary to fight malevolent nonhuman beings. Monks who undertake this ascetic training are entitled to perform exorcism, usually consisting in a direct confrontation with the spirits, practising persuasion (settoku) in order to force the entities to mend their wrong conduct (aratamemasu) and leave the body of the patient (Blacker 1999). Padoan, T. (2015) 'Buddhism', in Laycock, J. P. (Ed.) Spirit Possession around the World: Possession, Communion, and Demon Expulsion Across Cultures, Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, pp. 54-62. isbn:978-1-61069-589-3

When were y'all going to tell me about magic castanets in the Nichiren tradition?

How did ancient Hebrew literature, a cascade of alternative visions, become the unified Torah of the Rabbis, that predated, predicted, and served as the plan for the universe itself? 🧵 from my book in progress, a sort of counter-history of the Hebrew Bible:

Request for Information on the Development of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action Plan On behalf of the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), the NITRD NCO requests input from all interested parties on the Development of an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Action Plan ("Plan"). Th...

The government is about to give OpenAI the ability to legally steal if we do not flood this page in the next 12 hours.

OpenAI will have immunity from all lawsuits regarding copyright infringement. All other AI companies will follow.

Do you despise AI? Dissent, retweet. Do something. #furry #art

source: myoshinji.jp/1059/2019/05... ameblo.jp/mahasattva/e... www.barks.jp/news/?id=100...

Yoko Ono also wrote in 2011 that she chanted daimoku during an earthquake, while taking cover with her family.
"I learned [daimoku] just by watching people around me recite it since I was young. It's like a kind of music, and even if you don't know the meaning, just reciting it calms your mind." 2/2

YouTube video by kyleeld123 yoko ono namyohorengekyo music video

TIL Yoko Ono released a song titled "Namyohorengekyo" in 1992. As the title implies, it's her singing the daimoku. A priest from (Nichiren) Honmon Butsuryū-shū commented on his blog that her way of chanting is identical to that of his tradition. 1/2 www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vizx...

The Haitian “zombie” folklore and mythology entered white American cultural consciousness during the 1920s-30s, that is, during the U.S. military occupation of Haiti.

Ephesians 6 is a classic reference for spiritual warfare, deliverance prayers and other anti-demonic practices, so I'm confused why the author chose Ephesians 1:18-19.

the character recites it like this, omitting the beginning of the 18th verse: "聖徒たちがつぐべき神の国がいかに栄光に富んだものであるか、また、神の力強い活動によって働く力が、わたしたち信じる者にとって" and suddenly cuts off because the chant proves ineffective against an enemy that doesn't have ears

does anyone know if Ephesians 1:18-19 is used in any exorcism or deliverance prayers? It's recited by a character in Blue Exorcist against a giant squid demon. They also refer to this piece of scripture as eishou 詠唱, a chant(?).

In pinyin: Fótúchéng 佛圖澄 (ca. 232–348 CE) on his way to Luòyáng 洛陽

He knew that Lo (the Hun chieftain) did not understand profound doctrines but would only be able to recognize magical power as evidence of the potency of Buddhism... Thereupon he took his begging bowl, filled it with water, burned incense, and said a spell over it. In a moment there sprang up blue lotus flowers whose brightness and color dazzled the eyes. Lo was deeply impressed, and for the next two decades he was an ardent patron of Buddhism.

from "Buddhism in Chinese History" by Arthur F. Wright, 1959, p. 56.

now live with day 3! donates and shares very appreciated! 🦖

YouTube video by Joshua Citarella Catherine Liu: Trauma, Virtue and Liberal Elites | Doomscroll

this video was very insightful for me regarding trauma and celebrities publicly narrating their trauma: youtu.be/Ia6m3pIIS2k?...

I was devastated to learn that in Chinese, Mao's book is not called the little red book. It's 红宝书 - red treasured book. The app is 小红书.

A student somehow accidentally emailed the entire NYU faculty and the reply-all carnage is like a freeway pile-up

Cartoon crab with the text "I come not to praise Caesar, but to bury him"

Took a nap and dreamed that this became a hot new meme

Holy Family with the Horoscope of Christ by Luis de Morales

The "iconography refers not only to Erasmus’s commentary on the Gospel of Saint Luke but, in the diagram of the horoscope of Christ which he includes, the De astorum iudiciis, an edition of a work by the Greek astronomer Ptolemy, published in Basel in 1554."

this is the reason why I love the term 'protestantized buddhism' it explains why a lot of modern buddhism is the way it is (focus on Pali texts; denigration of magical aspects).