Starlight

Lucifer/Satan gets to replace Jesus/God (the representation of XYZ Christian theologies they have issues with) and Lilith gets to replace Eve (the representation of XYZ Christian theologies relating to women that they have issues with).

The replacements represent - to some extent - themselves. They choose means of interpreting these characters that specifically make them into people who were unfairly victimized (within Christian theology) and marginalized, and who were ultimately "right." Or more "powerful," or ultimately more sympathetic/human/compassionate.

It's a fantasy wherein they get to validate their own frustration/pain/feeling of exclusion or powerlessness/treatment of being seen as an "ungodly" or "bad" person, and then make that person who typifies those things in their mind as the real hero, regardless of how doing that affects other people, or even if it makes sense.

also even if Eve never existed to counterpoint Lilith in the myths; for the whole world, Lilith would still have beauty to inspire by her divine journey🌬️

My own personal response (which other Jews may disagree with): Appeasing spiritual colonizers won't actually benefit you or protect you in the long run. You are making yourself a token, an accessory — gristle for culture vultures to tear out and devour.

While the attention and appreciation from these people might initially feel great, someday you will be forced to realize they don't care about or respect you if you don't have immediate utility for them, and if you don't continually validate their ego and desires they will lose interest.

I, personally, do not actually care if someone worships Lucifer because that's "the devil," or "evil," or whatever. I don't believe in a "Lucifer", and it has no bearing on me, and you can hardly culturally appropriate an awkward mistranslation that got smashed up into the eschatology of a majority religion like Christianity. That alone isn't a material issue to me.

Just like any religious practice, the vast majority of those people aren't extremists who want to kill people or perpetuate evil on purpose. So frankly, on that level, I simply don't think it's my business. If someone wants to worship Humbaba or Pazuzu or whatever, that's not actually my problem. We'd all be liars if we acted like there's no way someone could psychoanalyze our own approaches to religion. It would be misguided of me to think I'm above getting my own human ego in the way of things, or that my ego never gets validated by things I do or believe, just because I'm not interested in demon worship or whatever. I'm human too. It happens.

If they want to work out their personal demons with some Mesopotamian demons, it's not for me, but it's also not like I don't use religion to wrestle with myself, my own identity and baggage, my feelings, how society exists, etc. It's a big part of any religion: dealing with the realities of being human, and working out how to live in the world and what it means to do so.

The issue I have here is moreso that when people spiritually colonize from living communities, it's harmful to both the people they thieve from, and to themselves, because it's dishonest and stolen.

And yes, things can be stolen. From an academic standpoint — hell, from a personal standpoint, I am all too aware that syncretism exists and can't be prevented. That's not how the world or people work. Judaism is full of syncretism. But syncretism happens from within the community in question, naturally and usually as a result of dominant cultural hegemony being synthesized by minorities and blended communities. Theft happens from without, and is constructed. That's why, to me, Kabbalah is a closed Jewish practice, and Christian or pagan cabala/qabbalah is theft. People who left Jewish life to convert to Christianity and then adapt Kabbalah for their new, Christian purposes — that's not syncretism to me, that is stealing. It came from someone who made themselves outsiders.

Judaism having strongly Hellenized elements that impacted our religion is syncretism (and sometimes assimilation) because those ancient pagan empires wanted to influence our culture and religion (cultural hegemony!), and because two communities living together like that will influence each other. It is organic, messy, and complex. It's still often the result of empire, but not always a result of majority culture inflicted on minority communities.

Neopagans adopting Lilith as a first women/mother of monsters are stealing because there is no flourishing pagan-jewish world where such a syncretism might've existed. Even the Babylonian Jewish world that saw incantation bowls — that heavily predates Lilith being associated with "first Eve." There's no place where the modern associations, ideas, and Lilith worship could have developed except out of being stolen.

My issue is pretty much not at all "they worship demons," because I don't understand why people do or enjoy or think a LOT of things in life, and I'm okay with just shrugging and moving on. I'm (personally) much more likely to be judgemental about the shoddy historical arguments people make in favor of whatever.

As long as they don't harm people. But stealing is harmful, and does hurt people.

The Torah wisdom is not only for Jewish people. It is for everybody who want to live a life full of grace. Blessings to you @keshetchai​

dude you are not getting it. Yes, the wisdom of the Torah is for all of mankind.  No, not all of mankind is Jewish. No, being a righteous gentile, or a gentile who observes the laws of Torah does not make you Jewish. The Kabbalah is ONLY for Jewish people, not gentiles. it is not for everyone. 

When you post about Pinchas in the Zohar as part of your cure for jealous or hatred you are….illustrating a few things:

A.) you haven’t realized the irony of referencing a parasha where Pinchas kills a man who slept with a pagan woman - the irony here being that YOU are mixing non-Jewish beliefs within Kabbalah, which is exactly the sort of crime Pinchas felt compelled to kill someone over. You can’t reblog appropriations of the Hindu gods and saints in Christianity and then claim you are appropriately using kabbalah, & then cite a text which is in direct and radical opposition to Jewishness being diluted with other religions. 

b.) you don’t understand that kabbalah was considered dangerous, and therefore heavily restricted to only the most learned Jewish scholars. Given that I am almost certain you don’t have a rabbi, I assume this means you study alone, without a Rav, and therefore improperly. Improper study is worse than no study because you are dealing with things you do not understand.  

and C.) your lack of actual knowledge of Torah, as shown your your inability to understand the parsha you cited, plus your unawareness of the difference between a noachide or righteous gentile and a Jewish person, and your insistence that you know better than actual Jews about these matters is absolutely detrimental to your ability to even approach “real” Kabbalah.

 I am a real convert. I spent over a year studying with about 5 different rabbis (and one main one) and after intensive study and a year + of observance of Jewish life, holidays, and reading the Torah cycle, I stood before a beit din and then dipped in a mikvah, entering into the Jewish people. I have only scratched the surface of studying torah. Why on earth would you, some gentile who has done none of those things, be better equipped, or hell, be equipped at all to study Kabbalah? 

You talk about Torah’s wisdom being for everyone. This is true. But you show utter disrespect and contempt for Torah scholars and Kabbalah scholars by pretending as if you can just read some books and know what you’re talking about. How dare you use the wisdom of torah but scoff at those who are more learned than yourself! You disrespect our traditions and our studies, and you fail to grasp where humbling yourself might allow you to lean more. 

You show your ignorance and your carelessness by thinking you worked even a tenth as hard as I have, or any other convert or jewish person has. 

you are not allowed to read about it. you are not allowed to wear red bracelets. you are not allowed to practice it or think it’s cool and mystical.

Like, Kabbalah is not just “mysticism”. It was/is a Jewish spiritual/religious reformation, born/created very deliberately as a response to the surrounding social pressures.

And by “social pressures”, I mean “Medieval Christians were freaking jerks”.

Now, when discussing anything to do with medieval Judaism you need to know Jews place in medieval society. Which was somewhere close to the bottom. Jews were tolerated — Christians, technically, aren’t allowed to make money off of lending to other Christians, so Jews were tolerated politically so that someone could run the banks. “Jews run all the banks!” yes, because you literally forced us to. Also, it was pretty useful for the nobles to, whenever they built up a lot of debt, say “The Jews ate a Christian baby!” and kill them all and incidentally burn their records. Apparently that wasn’t well known, so have a wikipedia article.

But anyways, I was talking about Kabbalah. Jews were tolerated religiously for a different reason — the “Wandering Jew” was said to be an example of “that’s what happens when you deny Christ”. They were tolerated as, basically, a theological argument — “These people deny God, and look at how sucky God made their life! They worship God incorrectly, and so God doesn’t protect them! They were once right, and now look at them stuck in the past! Look at how inconsequential they are!”

The last bit, especially, was a big one. Being Jewish sucked and got you less than nothing and accomplished nothing. It felt like it was worth nothing — “Why are you Jewish?” “Well, God told me to.” “But God doesn’t really do anything for you, or help you at all, or…”. And that wasn’t just subtext — it was a fashion in medieval kingdoms to bring some random (or sometimes not) Jew in to court and have them debate with professional Christian theologists. Medieval Christians were weird. But, so it wasn’t just subtext — you were literally yelling that at us whenever you had a chance. Jews were being demoralized on a literally national scale.

And that’s where Kabbalah came in. Kabbalah was a brilliant invention — by God, if you believe the tradition, or by the Rabbis, if you don’t. Kabbalah is a set of mystic knowledge and interpretation passed down orally, secretly among the Rabbis. It notably reinterpreted, but didn’t reshape, Jewish traditions. What did a Kabbalist Judaism look like? exactly like anyone else’s. A Kabbalist would do the exact same lighting candles, saying prayers, ripping off a bit of the dough while baking it… but what Kabbalah added was meaning, was “your actions affect things at the highest spiritual realm”. Was “lighting Shabbat candles holds together the multiverse on a fundamental level”. Was “if no enough Jews prayed every day, the universe would stop.”

And that was exactly what medieval Judaism needed. “Why are you Jewish?” “Well, yeah, it isn’t easy, but somebody needs to keep the world spinning.” “You’re lying. I don’t understand how.” “Well, you can’t understand it — you’re not Jewish.” Kabbalah completely reshaped the purpose of being Jewish — and it did it without changing anything, or doing anything even the slightest bit unorthodox. The laws were still the same — and this wasn’t even the first time Oral traditions had been written down. It fit perfectly with Judaism, and spread like a wildfire from Spain out. Even if it’s fallen out of style, it’s probably one of the major reasons why there are still Jews today.

So what does that mean nowadays. Well, for one, it means that Kabbalah is basically intellectual sacred ground in Judaism. You — if you were Jewish — don’t even consider learning it until you’re 30. Taking it is saying “there’s literally no idea you can have that you can keep for yourself”. Christianizing it, Secularizing it, is saying “that thing that you, Jews, made, in order to save Judaism — it’s too Jewish. I don’t like it. I’d rather it be my way.” Kabbalah intellectually — and in stories, physically — shielded Jews and Judaism. Taking that says “you can’t have that shield because I want it.”

Learning about Kabbalah is fine — Kabbalah is a really cool thing that happened. But learning Kabbalah? No.

End of Evangelion: You are all a bunch of weird perverts. Take a shower, touch grass, get a shrink, and get the hell away from me.

Plus there's some psychoanalytic theory and some Schopenhauer in there AFAIK. The anime nerd in me doesn't care, those ideas usually make for good fiction, but I know the philosopher in me is going to be all:

OK so to make sense of this we need to clarify two philosophical ideas: The hedgehog's dilemma and the death drive (aka Thanatos). The hedgehog's dilemma is mentioned in the anime itself, but I'm going to say it anyway. The idea comes from Arthur Schopenhauer, and is intended as a metaphor for the difficulty of human intimacy. The dilemma is that two hedgehogs (or porcupines) are in the blistering cold, and want to huddle for warmth. Of course, they also don't want to get too close or they'll stab each other. So it is with human intimacy.

The other idea is the death drive. Full disclosure, even by the standards of psychoanalytic theory, the death drive is controversial and most people (myself included) don't believe it's a thing, but for the sake of explanation we're going to assume it is. Freud speculated that somewhere deep down in our unconscious mind, there was the drive to end all other drives, to return to nothing. This shouldn't be confused for simply suicide, which could still fall under Freud's pleasure principle. Rather, it was simply a desire to annihilate.

So in the Third Impact, we see Shinji essentially wrestling between the death drive and the will to live. On the one hand, it appears as though he's come to the conclusion that living really isn't worth it, and maybe humanity really was a mistake. But, of course, as anyone who's been on the ledge knows, this isn't the real feelings at hand. Shinji genuinely does want to live, it's just that living sounds horrible. In order to live, Shinji must get over the fear of intimacy. But there's that barrier, the hedgehog's dilemma. The Other is terrifying.

The easy solution, obviously, is to get an acceptable distance from the Other. But Anno isn't fully convinced of that answer. We see with the women of Evangelion - most notably Misato - an attempt at this idea of a comfortable distance, but all that really does is restate the dilemma in different terms. It doesn't actually solve the problem of intimacy, it just attempts to dictate it. Which of course is impossible.

Making sense of The End of Evangelion

First: See my infodump on Schopenhauer, because this will in part assume you've read it. Also, my post on Kaworu & psychoanalysis will probably help to understand this too.

Second, this will be, in some ways, only a partial explanation. Evangelion is soaked in psychoanalytic theory, philosophy, and what I can only call postmodern Christianity.

Third - TW/CW: Discussion of suicide, and also THAT scene (IYKYK)

To understand the themes of the EOE, we need to begin with a primer. One philosophical idea Evangelion wears on it's sleeve is Schopenhauer's thought experiment: The hedgehog's dilemma. The idea goes like this - two hedgehogs (or porcupines) are in the freezing cold and wish to huddle together for warmth. However, either animal would pierce and kill the other if they got too close. This experiment is seen as a metaphor for intimacy, and depending on your read of Schopenhauerian pessimism, you get different answers. It is my contention that Anno solves the dilemma, but we'll get there.

The other thing we have to discuss is Shinji himself. Shinji is frequently self-serving throughout the series. This is not entirely without reason, as he is clearly being emotionally harmed by those around him. However, he also frequently runs away from his problems & obligations, and projects maternity (and the obligations of it) onto the female cast of the series.

This all, of course, culminates in the infamous hospital scene.

I won't go into detail about the scene due to Tumblr guidelines, but it's worth noting that Anno here takes a massive departure from how he originally portrayed Shinji. Whereas previously he represented Anno's ego, in the movie, he represents the audience, and the audience has the camera turned on them, so as to critique an attitude he finds common in otaku. It's worth noting that Anno's reason for this change was due to the hostility the original ending was met with, where the message was one of support for the audience & their wellbeing.

With Shinji covered (no pun intended), we can move straight to the Third Impact, and what it means.

During the Third Impact, two particular concepts are at play. The first is Schopenhauer's will to life, and the second is Freud's death drive. The death drive, in psychoanalysis, posits that at the base level of our subconscious, is a drive to cancel all other drives, a drive towards annihilation. This isn't simply a suicidal inclination (Freud notes that offing yourself would still fit into the drive of the pleasure principle), but a desire to kill, destroy, smash, etc; One can hear this during the song that plays during the Third Impact, "Komm Susser Tod (lit. "Come Sweet Death")":

It all returns to nothing

It all keeps

Tumbling down, tumbling down, tumbling down

It all returns to nothing

I just keep

Letting me down, letting me down, letting me down

Shinji is on the verge of suicide, and is willing to take the entire planet with him. However, like anyone who's ever been on the ledge knows, dying isn't really the desired effect, just the best idea for ending pain. For Shinji to end the Third Impact without killing everyone - in other words, to step down from the ledge - he must solve the hedgehog's dilemma.

The dilemma is shown throughout the series with multiple characters, but none as thoroughly as Misato & Kaji, who I'd like to focus on here, because it will elucidate Anno's answer to the dilemma. Throughout the series, Misato tries to dictate the emotional position between her & Kaji. Not because she lacks, but precisely because she has feelings for him.

At first glance, this appears to be the reasonable answer to the hedgehog's dilemma - if closeness is dangerous, then the smart thing to do is dictate how close one is willing to be. But this solves nothing, and Misato's regret and frustration after Kaji's death shows us why: By trying to do this, she hasn't actually done anything. Rather, she's restated the dilemma in different terms.

So then, how does Shinji of all people manage to solve the hedgehog's dilemma? He is, after all, profoundly anti-social and irresponsible. In the end, Shinji is told that if he doesn't end the world, he'll still have his fear of the Other. And he accepts that. In doing so, in this moment, we see how Anno solves the dilemma: By dissolving it as such.

The hedgehog's dilemma, stated differently, could just as well be: "Accept the existence of other people or die." And a meaningful dilemma would not have a clear lesser of two evils. In the end, both by criticizing an audience that fails to care for itself, and by using Freud to overcome Schopenhauer, Anno's message is clear: Touch grass.

Psychoanalytic Theory and the Death of Kaworu Nagisa*

*In the original, I haven't watched the Rebuilds

TW/CW: Depression, Suicide

To understand Evangelion on the whole, an understanding of psychoanalysis is pretty handy. Today we'll focus on a particular thing: Kaworu. In order to make sense of Kaworu, we'll need to briefly go over a little bit of Freud and a little bit of Jung.

According to series creator Hideaki Anno, Shinji is a stand-in for his Ego. In psychoanalysis, the Ego is the part of the unconscious mind that gives us a sense of self (not to be confused with yourself), and works to regulate the Id & Superego. The Id is the part of the unconscious that knows only gratification. It's not evil, it just doesn't know anything else. The Superego, meanwhile, knows only the norms and boundaries placed on you by society. It is the job of the Ego to please the two, and when it fails to do so, neurosis occurs. So that's Freud, onto Jung.

According to Anno, Kaworu represents his Shadow. The Shadow, in Jungian psychoanalysis, is the part of the unconscious where your Ego stashes away everything that does not conform to its ideal. This isn't simply a sum of evil thoughts - though it can include those - but rather everything you reject about yourself to yourself. For example, let's say you were raised in a conservative Christian household, and you're deep in the closet. You repress your sexuality. This is part of your Shadow.

We can see this contrast between the two: Kaworu is everything Shinji denies; Outgoing, openly gay, personable, but also deeply violent. He is also singing the Ode to Joy. At first glance, given we know both characters are suicidally depressed, this seems weird. But not so.

There's a clip of psychoanalytic theorist Slavoj Zizek that I'm going to include here, you can watch the whole thing if you like, but I'll summarize & connect it below the clip.

Zizek notes that The Ode to Joy is used by basically everyone in politics, because the song is basically making the same promise that nearly every ideology makes: All of humankind unite, we are on the verge of a free human being, the promised land is just ahead. Of course, as Zizek notes, in politics that's never true. It's never ALL of humanity, someone gets the short end. I believe Kaworu & Shinji both identify as that exclusion, and I'm gonna show you why. But first, back to Jung.

In Jung, the Shadow is not meant to be done away with, even though its contents may not be all that desirable. The proper approach for Jung is neither to allow the Shadow full control (we see the consequences of this during Kaworu's siege), nor to push it down, but rather to integrate it. Like in all psychotherapy, the point is to bring things to the surface. But, hypothetically: Let's say you tried killing your Shadow.

The Shadow is part of the whole psychic structure. Killing it is like ripping out a vital organ. When we see Kaworu's death at Shinji's hand - this is of course sidestepping the symbolism of Unit-01, of the mother protecting the cowering son - it is a symbolic suicide. Shinji has no friends, no loved ones, no loving family - his fate is now sealed as his truest self dies at his own hand.

When Shinji asks Misato at the end of the episode if he "did the right thing", he's obscuring the real question. Because the answer is obvious - Kaworu was a clear and present threat. Instead, he's really asking - and Misato of course doesn't pick up on this - "Would it be wrong to kill myself?". And of course, Misato can't read between the lines and assures him "No, you didn't".

Yesterday, I was invited to Evageeks’ official discord chat. 

I decided to take a peek. Several of Evageeks’ longtime moderators (including Reichu, who is infamous) were arguing that Shinji’s attempt to kiss an unconscious Asuka in Episode 9 is not attempted sexual assault, but “average teenage sexism.” They also tried to argue that Asuka kicking Shinji during their synchronized dance-off is “on the same level” as Shinji’s attempted sexual assault in Episode 9. They also emphatically asserted that Shinji’s attempted sexual assault in EP9, actual sexual assault in EOE, and the choking/attempted murder don’t rise to the level of “violent misogyny” - just average, teenage, (Japanese?) male sexism. (If you’re American and remember the Kavanaugh hearings, this is an especially potent and popular argument.)

“abuse” is a loaded term to characterize a traumatized 13-year-old girl’s relationship with a boy who would eventually attempt to kill her twice. asuka is louder, more abrasive, and more unavoidably bitter than the seemingly meek, soft-willed shinji, but that’s not abuse. asuka calls shinji stupid, but that’s not abuse.

is it asuka physically pushing shinji away from her after he invades her space and demands that she be nice to him? is that abuse? 

when shinji sexually assaulted asuka at her lowest point? when shinji tried to choke asuka after she accuses him of objectifying her? the word asuka uses is “side-dish”/おかず - a cultural euphemism for a girl who is the frequent subject of a boy’s violent masturbatory fantasies. 

when shinji tried to kill asuka again, after realizing he’ll be stuck with her, just the two of them? did asuka abuse shinji with her reaction - a gentle stroke of the cheek, that frankly, shinji did not deserve?

Throughout the whole series shinji is put into sexual situations. He is mocked and harassed for not experiencing sexual attraction i.e. them making fun of him for not wanting to bang misato, assuming his want to understand rei is because he wants her. He gets teased by adults to be more sexual (i.e. misato and then kaji in the rebuild which /:) and is constantly put in a sexual eye by asuka because of her own conditioned views of sexuality. He is surrounded by it and confused by it and hes obviously uncomfortable but he also seems to be frustrated that being close to someone must mean something sexual and it confuses him further

people discredit kawoshin because they are obsessed with the ‘de-bitchfiying narrative’ through which asuka, The Red She-Devil, is knocked down a few glorious pegs. if you’ve ever browsed evageeks or other asushin-dominated spaces it becomes clear that asushin isn’t so much about not finding “merit” in kawoshin – they don’t care if kawoshin was “subtle” or “overt” b/c it literally does not matter to them - they’re homophobes. rather, it’s about asuka, and their obsession with asuka fulfilling the perfect waifu role, with shinji

but how interesting that this whole second paragraph conveniently neglects the fact that shinji was pervasively objectifying+sexualizing asuka (and rei! and misato!) throughout the entire show. did you forget wall of jericho, where shinji lingers at asuka’s breasts before responding? or when asuka falls in his bed and shinji ogles at her breasts before attempting to kiss her in her sleep? (but asuka forced him into that uncomfortable situation, uwu!!) or when EOE revealed how shinji is deeply repulsed by overt displays of sexuality on part of asuka+misato but secretly gets off to them, because shinji cannot comprehend the fact that women can be more than a mother, a madonna, or a whore? when shinji yells at asuka, misato, and rei (yes! even rei!) for not attending to his needs while his subconscious projects smiling, placated, and most importantly naked images of asuka, misato, and rei gazing at him fondly in the foreground? 

but these inconvenient points go neglected because it tarnishes the smol birb infantilized fandom shinji that everyone’s so obsessed about. because it attacks the dominating narrative that vilifies asuka, the very same narrative that paints her as an abuser and/or “equally complacent in the asuka-shinji abuse”, the narrative that claims asuka levies power over shinji and not the other way around.

shinji and kaworu can sit, bathe, and sleep together without gross sexual objectification from either side – shinji loves kaworu. kaworu is the only character in the show shinji loved and respected. like that’s the whole point. shinji objectifies girls/women as a desperate vie for control. shinji does not feel the need to exercise power over kaworu because they are equally matched. c+p’ing this to underscore:

Specifically, it is important that Shinji takes to Kaworu immediately and how Kaworu’s Position as being a boy affects the way Shinji receives him.

Shinji’s sexual assault on Asuka in EOE is 100% motivated by Asuka being a girl and Shinji being a boy, and is about power and overpowering someone who is more vulnerable than you. & When you truly, truly look at who Shinji has the power to hurt the most, it all leads to Asuka. He objectifies Asuka, he sexually abuses Asuka in the hospital room, he strangles Asuka twice. The way that Asuka protects herself verbally as a defense mechanism is contrasted with the extremely violent ways that Shinji seeks power over her.

These events do relate to Kaworu, too, because who immediately resolves to forgive Shinji and encourage Shinji to forgive himself for whatever sins he may have committed? The thing with that is that it’s not exactly Kaworu’s place to do that, but Asuka’s.

Asuka stole this shirt. This shirt isn’t Asuka’s — it’s Misato’s.