what are some books where I can learn about occult rituals and stuff across the world? maybe mainly in western countries? I want to learn more about magic and shit because sometimes I see media reference some wacky rituals
>>24972300I just think it's metal \m/
>>24972300>t. occultist trying to make himself sound harmless
>>24972092It gets a little less exciting once you learn about it. I have developed a certain aversion to the Judaic and Egyptian and even Greek influences present in what they call 'modern magic'. It's very kitschy and it feels divorced from the human element, not because it's unchristian and muh demonic, but because it's not speaking to any truth the way magic is supposed to. It's not magical, so to speak.
>>24972317Just study field theory and math. Sigil shit is mostly larp
>>24972092The basis for a lot of occult books is Agrippa's The Occult Philosophy, but the book is massive.I'd recommend you to go for something that has to do with folk magic first, like picrel.
The bulk of western fantasy (yes even today) is based on Christian philosophy, or its bastard child humanism. Good and evil, sin and redemption, sacrifice, justice, moral character arcs, etc.The remaining works that aren't, are largely based on some flavor of nihilism or existentialism. There's nothing wrong with this, but I want something fresh. Off the top of my head the only western fantasy series that isn't really based on the above is the Earthsea series.
Conan of course
>>24972219A Hell of eternal torment becomes almost the fulcrum of this series' plot towards the end. The initial trilogy is also about a Crusade, the not-Christians are henotheist to distinguish them from the not-Muslims, but the latter are a lot more on the nose. There are addition direct or near-direct analogues to both the Bible as well as the Iliad.
>>24972027Aren't epic poems a form of proto-fantasy? The Odissey in particular with the protagonist meeting all sorts of mythological creatures in his long journey.
>>24972151Based on Norseshit (nihilistic) and is literal will to power Nietzsche-slop.>>24972219Undisguised analogue for the Crusades as well as a vehicle for Bakker's biological determinism.>>24972231Anyone on this board who isn't a retard agrees with it. >>24972373No, retard.
>>24972382>No, retard.Why not?
No one on this board has anything interesting or useful to say. There’s nothing to be gained from reading the your posts. No books I haven’t heard of, and no unique insights I can’t find elsewhere.I guess it’s just in your nature to drive away any actual discussion in favor of shitflinging and circlejerking the same 5 topics over and over. Bunch of bitter losers that fancy themselves fart huffing elitists.
>>24972297Either contribute or leave.
>>24972297ChurchofBedrock.aternos.meMinecraft Server
>>24972297What exactly are you adding to the conversation, because it seems like you're just whining like a little bitch.
>>24972305>deep friedAll of it.
>>24972297>There’s nothing to be gained from reading the your posts. No books I haven’t heard of, and no unique insights I can’t find elsewhere.You just reached the level of culture of the average /lit/izen (which is low), and now rightly see that this place has nothing to offer (anymore). That and also the fact that over the past 10 years this website has been invaded by normalfags.You might still come here hoping to recreate those experiences of coming across esoteric books/knowledge/topics like when you were new to /lit/erature. You have also probably matured from wanting to flex your knowledge at random internet strangers. Therefore it's time to realize that you should focus on reading more books instead of ever wasting time on this board again. The bibliography section of books are all the recs you need.Happy New Year.
What do you think of Simone Weil's Christianity?
>>24971883I mostly think of her hairy dork cooch
>>24971883an invention made by catholics to downplay the paganism of her thought
>>24971883She looks like the kind of girl who would rim my arsehole.
>>24971883She's extremely clever, intellectually honest, with a slight poetical tendency, so she became my entry point in christianity, despite me trying to get into it for a long time.I'm not christian nor anything, but she was the first to show me, and maybe make me feel, the beauties of this particular faith.Emotionnally and intellectually, I found her works the easiest stepping stone into christianity for non-believiers, but maybe it just clicked for my particular mind at this particular moment.My second important author, and I mention it since it felt a bit the same.way to me, was Jacques Ellul. "The subversion of christianity" was enlightening and made me more confident in christianity, like Weil, and unlike more classical authors.Weil is a non-baptized catholic, Ellul is a protestant, but I found the truths they were trying to express and convey were close, and had in common their detachment from the organized, socially ruling religion christianity has become.
Literally who?
It's that time of year again! Vote for which books you wish to see on this year's top 100 chart. You can vote for as many books as you want. If there are any books not on the list that you wish to vote for, request the author and title ITT and they will be added. Responses can be changed after submitting.Voting closes on the New Year, after which will be the tiebreaker poll. To prevent spamming, a Google account is required to vote, but will not be collected or stored.Vote here:https://forms.gle/LqHa5xS1q5CVikem6
>>24969550Bible is hard
Please add:Bonjour Tristesse (Francoise Sagan)Bowling Alone (Robert D Putnam)Fooled by Randomness (Nassim Nicholas Taleb)Oh and the list should have included MUCH more non fiction books like scientific treaties, though we all know STEMfags rarely if never read books, they read papers and use other mediums to gain knowledge
>>24970579>>24970533Kek
>>24971048Added>the list should have included MUCH more non fiction books like scientific treatiesAdded Hippocrates, Galen, Archimedes, Ptolemy, Copernicus, William Harvey, William James, Freud, Einstein, Keynes, Alfred Marshall, and Henry George.
>>24962296Why Joseph Smith? That's not the claim
So what did everyone get for Christmas?picrel is the kindle book hauls I got, plus I got 125 dollars in Barnes & Noble credits, which I'm probably to use to get some Marx, Smith, Hegel, and Tocqueville and maybe others, possibly a history of China or something. I also got tons of coffee, some food items and a few articles of clothing. more to come.
>>24971302I've read the Shadows of Carcosa collection, be prepared for disappointment with about half the stories. Luckily it includes The White People which is peak.
>>24970926This book, a book voucher and other non /lit/ items.
>>24971873I wanted that Shelby Foote since two Christmases ago
>>24971881*peak patrician zoomer
>>24971755I hate those Pynchon covers
>decide to finally "start with the Greeks">the very American translator spends eighty pages of his introduction to this grandfather of all literature spoiling the story ahead and explaining the themes explored therein as if I'm retarded Why do they do this?
>He didn't skip the introduction Why the FUCK do people ever read the fucking introduction?
Start with the Peano Axioms
how the fuck am i supposed to start with the greeks if i only had latin lessons and failed even those horribly?
>>24966613Always skip the introduction.Read the translator's note if you wish.
>>24966634Yes, you're supposed to learn Ancient Greek and Classical Latin like all the literati prior to 1900s.
what was the best book you read this year?
>>24972348>It's clearly Jewish literature because that's what it is by definitionOk, let me make myself more clear.I don't talk about Jewish literature in the broader sense, I'm talking about the Avot specifically, a tractate that is very much sui generis.>TalmudThat's probably because it is built upon the Mishnah structure (and contents).It also adds a lot of stuff from other sources too, like the Tosefta.The Talmud is at the end of the day a commentary on previous halakhic works, of course it's not gonna be awfully compiled.It's a different matter from the text it is commenting upon. The Mishnah was both the commentary and the formalization of what came before. I don't think there are previous sources for Hillel's opinions, for example.The Mishnah had way more freedom in its systematizing efforts than the Talmud.I'd recommend you to read a couple Wikipedia articles (at least) before going into Hillel.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zugothttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TannaimComment too long. Click here to view the full text.
>>24972380Okay, so your initial comment was saying you just didn't like how the book was laid out then. Okay.
>>24972363>Surah of the CowWhat were they thinking?
>>24972383Basically that.The Mishnah is a nightmare to read from cover to cover, though if you've already read some Talmud it shouldn't come to you as a suprise.Happy reading.
>>24972388Ah, okay. Sorry, I guess we were just talking past each other. 4chan probably isn't the best place to talk about these kinds of topics lol. I'm fairly well versed in both Talmud and Mishna, sorry if our exchange seemed off. Have a good one.
Is "Show, Don't Tell" good advice for writers?
>>24965872>>24972217This and this. Show don't tell is good advice for beginners who have no fucking clue what they're doing and can't write a scene where stuff happens with characters. Sort of like "don't use adverbs" is good advice for people who write like this >>24972218But when autistic morons take this advice too literally, as if it's the key to success, they in for a rude awakening. No. Having literally zero adverbs in your story won't make it successful or a good read. No. Showing every single thing regardless of how unimportant it is will not make your story a hit.
>>24964161>Aaron stood still, eyes wide open>Daniele sat on her bed, knees to chest, alone>Carl smiled>Kashvi frowned, grunted, squatted, and shat on the carpet
>>24972342Hey now, that last one is GRRM not SK
>>24964161this is 8th grade essay advice
>In the evening R. reads to us from Carlyle, about the women’s uprising led by Maillard. In this remarkable description R. once again points out that Carlyle never introduces his people with speeches or allows them to talk; he shows their acts, and in that way reveals their characters to us.t. Cosima Wagner>it's just screenwriting advice bla blait's the fundamental quality of good poetry, no abstract info, no "concepts", everything as vivid as possible. Ideally you "reveal something general through something special" (t. Schiller)
Spooky Psychic Vampires Edition>Old:>>24957211>Recommended reading charts (Look here before asking for vague recs):https://mega.nz/folder/kj5hWI6J#0cyw0-ZdvZKOJW3fPI6RfQ/folder/4rAmSZxb>Archive:https://warosu.org/lit/?task=search2&search_subject=sffg>Goodreads:https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/1029811-sffg
>>24972118Cuckolded by his own virgin bride, tho
>>24968664because goodread feminists ruined everything
>>24971602that's exactly the problem. movies are commodified, every aspect of them designed to engage the viewer and make money efficiently. they have little artistic valuethis also happens with books, but to a lesser extent. and, there are so many books, and so many books were written before the modern enshitification took hold, that there are much more good or masterpiece books than movies
I need great scifi standalones, more recent would be preferable.
>>24972379Rejoice, A Knife Through the Heart by Steven Erikson
>OMG anon you like to read???That's so quirky, what are your favourite books?How do you respond?
>>24970059my mom read Danielle Steele in the early 90s.
>>24962442>>24962445>Chuck TingleA masterwork in literature.
>>24970068I'm not even sure my mother can read.
>>24962442they look kinda zesty if you ask me
>>24963863>why are fags like thisRead Nietzsche>>24962442>How do you respond?https://www.youtube.com/live/zCevULtoOcU
Does solving crosswords make you a better writer, by training and flexing your manipulation of definitions?
>>24972369No, writing makes you a better writer.
>>24972369No, nothing makes you a better writer. Either you are born with it or not.
So I am reading Alcibiades and Socrates says the education and lineage of the kings of Persia is superior. This has been bothering me for a while, in quite a few greek texts Ive read (from Xenophon and Plato, or from Xenophon, Plato, and wrongly attributed to Plato) they show some admiration for the Persians and recognize some superiorities, I thought Greeks were extremely chauvinistic and saw all non greeks as inferior.
>>24971785>>24971799In Charmides, Socrates also refers to Thracian king Zamolxys as the perfect monarch iirc.
>>24971785Xenophon was a Persophile who adored Cyrus the Younger and fought for him. He also had an axe to grind with Athens so he talked down their system.
>>24971907He admired Cyrus the Great. About working under Cyrus the Younger, he semed to think he was decent based only on what Proxenus told him, but he also reflected that (recalling he speaks about himself in third person):>He went on the campaign like this, then, fully deceived―not, however, by Proxenus, for he did not know that the attack was against the King, nor did any other of the Greeks except Clearchus. When they came to Cilicia, however, it then seemed clear to all that the expedition was against the King. Although they feared the journey and were unwilling, the majority nevertheless followed along out of shame both before each other and before Cyrus. Xenophon too was one of these.He wasn't a fan of all things Persian, and what he likes about Cyrus the Great reminds much of Sparta, and he did seem to be more evidently a Laconophile.
>>24971785Why does this look like Nick Mullen?
>The Stoics taught the doctrine that Hellenes and barbarians were equal in that they were the children of the same gods. A hundred years after Alexander, Eratosthenes could say:>"They are wrong who say that mankind is divided into Hellenes and barbarians; one had better distinguish men according to excellence or depravity, for many Hellenes are morally corrupt and many barbarians morally noble like the Indians and Aryans, and also Romans and Carthaginians with their remarkable political organization.">From here it was but a short step to the glorification of the barbarians. This was in part motivated by a longing for inchoate conditions of life, a longing found at times in the late and highly refined periods of every culture, and it is significant that one expects to find such conditions in lands far away. At that time it was fashionable to single out the primitive people in Homer and Aeschylus, like the glorious Hippemolgoi, the law-abiding Scythians, or the Abioi, a fabulous tribe of the north and the most just of all peoples, for even in early antiquity men knew the central portions of the world so well that they sought goodness and happiness on its margins. Such notions gradually turned into rationalizations. The barbarians were supposed to have profound religious insight; in the temple of Asclepius in Aegium a Sidonian contended in the presence of Pausanius that the Phoenicians understood divine matters better than the Greeks did. Whereas formerly the fabulous Hyperboreans had been credited with a prodigious piety, now barbarians in general were praised for their piety, in contrast to the growing godlessness of the Greeks. Finally, the barbarians were considered to be morally superior; the late Greek thought of his own nation much as Machiavelli did of the Italians. And the inevitable conclusion was that if the barbarians were depraved, the Greeks had corrupted them.t. Burckhardt
>That only can be called science (wissenschaft) proper whose certainty is apodictic: cognition that can merely contain empirical certainty is only improperly called science. A whole of cognition which is systematic is for this reason called science, and, when the connection of cognition in this system is a system of causes and effects, rational science. But when the grounds or principles it contains are in the last resort merely empirical, as, for instance, in chemistry, and the laws from which the reason explains the given facts are merely empirical laws, they then carry no consciousness of their necessity with them (they are not apodictically certain), and thus the whole does not in strictness deserve the name of science; chemistry indeed should be rather termed systematic art than science.-Kant, Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, Preface
>>24971485a priorily refuted by >>24971562
>>24970908Kant was wrong about causality.
>>24971695nice ungrounded assertion bub
i'm way happier here than i was on x.com. there's too many stupid annoying hot women there. it was so depressing. i'd rather be here with retards like me.
>>24971562ideas are not knowledge
Was he right? What comes after the Faustian civilization?
>>24971252If you draft a contract you generally need a notary, a marriage requires witnesses, etc. Obviously this wouldn't work for tort law, but I would see it as beneficial for our current marriage laws, for instance, which are destroying rates of family formation. Enlightenment thinkers like Rousseau emphasized the volonté générale but in a post-national society there is no longer a singular people for a singular law to apply to and this solves the problem of minorities without directly affecting the majority.>>24971295It's not really a Trojan horse when I'm outright saying what I want and advocating it, is it? I think Shariah law would be an improvement on our current system, at least for people who wanted to opt in to it, because it emphasizes virtue as an active quality. I also think that certain segments of Western populations, conservative christian groups in particular, would benefit from a liberal and disinterested system which is flexible enough to accommodate different legal codes in so far as they apply to different groups of people.Open discourse is pretty central to any society worth living in, imo. Just focusing on marriage law, our current system can completely ruin a man financially and doesn't even ensure he won't get cheated on. The results of this are obvious enough, marriage rates are collapsing across the West. Under Shariah, the man pays a dowry up front to his prospective wife, that she herself sets, which is intended to support her financially in the event of a divorce. So the cost of divorce is front-loaded into the contract. This is obviously preferable, even if you aren't a religious fundamentalist, so allowing people to opt into this kind of contract (or not, I think that there should be a plurality of options that have to compete on a free market of ideas, the state is bigger than any one religion) creates a much more flexible and open system.
>>24971488We had these conversations centuries ago. We came to the conclusion that church and state should be separate and to enforce rule of (secular) law under a single constitution. Creating laws for each individual or even just the myriad of different groups of people foolish and impractical. I do appreciate you showing all of us how conniving and aggressive Islam really is.
>>24970407>Currently there's a huge unresolved question in Islam with regards to it's evolving synthesis with Western society. So literally what I said? All the inward questions are answered, all the forms are already set in place. And the only problems are how to react to external eventualities. Which they are admittedly rather adept at doing. Fundamentalist Islam is just a re-stating of old maxims in response to a new encroaching civilization. Not even the explosive ISIS like movements are unprecedented. They actually kind of remind me of certain extinct Shia groups, or the Almohads, or Sufi messianists, etc.It all goes back to the past, to tradition, and the way things were done then. >Something I would like to see, personally, is a greater pluralism towards civil law, allowing for Shariah courts to manage issues like inheritances, contracts, marriage and divorce. Very Magian, I reckon you are an arab and not a convert, yes?If so, you are just hoping to reproduce the Ghetto living natural to your culture. Sunni muslims here practicing muslim law, Christians there, Shias over there, etc. Religious Jews do it a lot too. >>24970682I don't know, I like Liszt, and do not think one should ignore the role Poland had in medieval HRE politics. And anyway, my heuristic for whether a specific European ethnicity or state was/is part of Faustian Europe is this: Did they natively participate in the reformation? If yes, then they are Faustian, if not, then they are not. Incidentally, it seems to exclude the Gaelic Irish. But that means it works.
>>24972079Finally, someone who gets what I am proposing.Convert, but from a very Magian strain of Germanic culture; a breed of conversos that never fully integrated into the modern world (but were early and energetic participants in the reformation, ironically). You're right about the Ghetto living, in the absence of meaningful nation states (which admittedly aren't coming back, that question was settled in 1945) the medieval Ghettos are the most immediately applicable way to reintroduce community and meaning into the West.It's notable that Indian Reservations, another form of primitive communitarianism, is one of the only places in Western countries that has managed to maintain replacement birthrates and even grow. The Chinese hukou system is another interesting concept which Westerners haven't even begun to grapple with.
>>24972139>It's notable that Indian Reservations, another form of primitive communitarianism, is one of the only places in Western countries that has managed to maintain replacement birthrates and even grow.What? Don't Injuns have abysmal birth rates?
