But not that ritual, nor that approximation

The wise anon.

The wicked anon.

The simple anon.

and a big fuck-you to religions where their entire thing is being community-focused.

I have deep respect for most of our practices as well as the philosophy that underlies them and the community we create.

does G-d exist? no. do I feel spiritual connections to stuff or places? not really.

Expand on that, king (genuinely curious)

I feel like…

okay, so it’s a lot like conceptual art, or like introspective meditation, at the risk of sounding pretentious

Like. It’s not so much about “the cards are a portal to a higher wisdom that knows more than me” thing- it’s more of a, “given the symbols drawn, could I interpret them posing a question or possibility or suggestion?” Followed by, “is this applicable to my current context? COULD it be?”

Like.

I don’t lay out á tarot hand and say “ah yes, the devil and the tower, I am about to be betrayed”

But I MAY lay out a hand and say, “okay, devil and the tower. Something treacherous and danger. Am I approaching a treacherous or risky situation in my life? What might be a tipping factor? Am I being deliberately reckless? Maybe I should spend some more time working on X project I’ e been thinking of before spending money on it” or “you know what, I HAVE been kind of uncomfortable with X thing, I should say something” or “yeah okay I KNOW Tom from work sucks to work with, I KNOW, yeah maybe I should consider ways of handling that”

Less of a magic oracle, more of a tool for doing literary analysis on real life. Like simplifying everything and laying it out flat so I can gain some distance to untangle my problems without in-your-head crap like projected feelings and social obligation getting in the way and muddying the waters.

So like. I don’t think tarot cards can legit tell the future, but I DO think that self-reflection, mindfulness, and consideration sometimes allow us to predict and calculate our own circumstances.

So, IMO- It’s not real. But it works

(source: https://www.wrhs.org/learn-discover/history-at-home/then-now-blog/2023/02/22/the-greatest-american-hero-the-story-of-jerry-siegel-and-joe-shuster)

And the first comic book convention was held at a Jewish fraternity.

(source: "Is Superman Circumcised?" by Roy Schwartz published 2021)

And Siegel and Shuster gave much of their Superman profits for tzedakah.

(source: https://www.jta.org/2018/10/03/united-states/tragic-tale-supermans-jewish-creators-told-graphic-novel-form)

Don't even try signing up for Artfight if you're Jewish. I posted something totally unpolitical on their Discord where I got the star in my handle and promptly got banned for genocide denial. I didn't post anything political on that server, my Art Fight profile, and nothing "discriminatory or hateful" anywhere else.

NO ONE CAN TELL ME WHERE THE GIANT PRIMORDIAL NORSE COW WENT

STILL

there is a giant cow out there

licking shit, possibly bringing other giant beings into creation

and like no one ever thought to mention it?

And in the gap

My busy tung

Dus lick and lap

My huf is strong

My horn is curld

I wandr round

ek sleiki ís.

_______

Rough translation:

My name is cow from me ther flow all the rivers down belo. and tho my tung  do pay the price, now i stand here.

Depending on the size and amount of coral you eat, eating coral wouldn’t be bad for you. Are you swallowing large enough chunks to cause intestinal blockages? or grinding it up and using it as an additive? People use coral as a source of calcium in vitamins.

But yeah, it all goes back to "seems easier to just use regular ol' marble dust.

...related important question: are we sure that coral is considered alive, and an animal of any kind, like, halakhically speaking?

I mean:

Coral doesn't bleed (which is the important part about eating a still living animal)

They don't have lungs or gills

They generally don't move? (I guess corallimorphs can...kinda crawl? But otherwise no they don't move).

How is coral really different from like, fungi above water? Sure it can be a collective mass (mushrooms and their mycellium colonies!), but it's not capable of bleeding, and it doesn't have lungs or gills, and it doesn't really move. It just kinda...spreads.

No because fungi are bottom feeders of the ground and yet mushrooms are kosher.

The issue is whether or not these are creatures according to Torah. From Leviticus 11:

These you may eat of all that live in water: anything in water, whether in the seas or in the streams, that has fins and scales—these you may eat.

But anything in the seas or in the streams that has no fins and scales, among all the swarming things of the water and among all the other living creatures that are in the water—they are an abomination for you

and an abomination for you they shall remain: you shall not eat of their flesh and you shall abominate their carcasses.

Everything in water that has no fins and scales shall be an abomination for you.

Now, I am going to reference Bible hub here mostly because they have a nice Strong's Hebrew concordance feature that sefaria doesn't have that is easy to copy and paste from.

But basically I would argue that the important words we have to distinguish here are:

the teeming

שֶׁ֣רֶץ (še·reṣ)

Noun - masculine singular construct

Strong's 8318: A swarm, active mass of minute animals

life

הַחַיָּ֖ה (ha·ḥay·yāh)

Article | Adjective - feminine singular

Strong's 2416: Alive, raw, fresh, strong, life

and creatures

נֶ֥פֶשׁ (ne·p̄eš)

Noun - feminine singular

Strong's 5315: A soul, living being, life, self, person, desire, passion, appetite, emotion

So. Is coral an active (teeming) mass of minute animals? Well. It is a living colony in the same way that mushrooms are colonies of living things. But other things that swarm or teem are like... krill. shrimp. Locusts. Flies. Ants.

Y'know, stuff that moves. Swarms. Coral doesn't teem or swarm. It's static.

Which leaves us with living and creatures.

I would argue again that "living" implies regular movement — for example, you can have living waters. (Same root word for mayyim chayyim).

But also the other terms which appear beside the root word for life/living over and over again are basically:

Creeping, moving (Strong's 7430 רָמַשׂ ramas)

Flesh (Strong's 1320 בָּשָׂר basar)

Flying or soaring (5774 עוּף)

Having a soul (or literal breath) (5315, נֶפֶשׁ)

And nefesh is of course, also the last one in that list!

So is coral alive in the way Torah usually means things are living beings? Well, coral doesn't creep or move. It also doesn't have blood (which, arguably, means it can't have a carcass. It sort of has bones! But no carcass). It...MIGHT have flesh? I'm sort of unclear about this.

It can't fly or soar.

Which leaves us with:

Do corals have flesh? and,

do corals have souls? And if not metaphorically souls, do they have breath?

Well, coral do respirate. But so do plants. And neither of them have lungs. Also according to @montereybayaquarium's website coral get oxygen from algae? (Don't worry Monterey bay aquarium no one is actually going to eat the coral, this is all hypothetical)

Coral reefs get their bright colors from the algae — called zooxanthellae — living in their tissues. The zooanthellae provide the coral polyps with oxygen and nutrients produced from photosynthesis. In return, the coral polyps provide zooanthellae with carbon dioxide (a byproduct of the polyps’ “breathing” oxygen) and shelter.

Coral polyps can have mouths, but they don't really breathe with lungs. So I'm not sure they have that kind of nefesh (breath of life). And corals are like, a bunch of skeletal base material with living polyps on the top. But are they fleshy? But all their color comes from the algae living in them.

For this I go back to the presence of blood being a big factor, because again, mushrooms have flesh but don't have blood, and so halakhically...that fungi is a plant.

Also apparently Octocorals don't have those exoskeletons? So at that point how would we know something is an octocoral versus like...a seaweed?

I think either seaweed isn't meant to be kosher, or actually corals are kosher because seaweed is. Oysters have gills and hearts. Scallops have a gajillion eyes. Really easy to see those aren't plants.

Basically if you look at a coral does it have a breath and soul, does it fly or creep, does it bleed, does it have flesh, does it move around in general? Could it possibly be a plant, halakhically speaking? (Not by scientific taxonomy!) Would bronze age folks look at it and go "yeah, that's a plant."? Also important: what IS a plant? Halakhically?

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Happy Pride loves!

Oh, but had the artisan who made me created me instead – a worthy woman... ...I would say "how lucky am I"

Father in heaven who did miracles for our ancestors with fire and water... ...Who would then transform me from a man to woman? Were I only to have merited this being so graced by goodness...

What shall I say? why cry or be bitter? If my father in heaven has decreed upon me and has maimed me with an immutable deformity then I do not wish to remove it. the sorrow of the impossible is a human pain that nothing will cure and for which no comfort can be found. So, I will bear and suffer until I die and wither in the ground. Since I have learned from our tradition that we bless both, the good and the bitter I will bless in a voice hushed and weak: blessed are you [HaShem] who has not made me a woman.