The Devil’s Own

Here’s how to see the sunrise at the earliest moment, by actually turning your back on the east.  The text reads: “To see the sunrise at the earliest moment. If, instead of looking towards the east, you turn your back to the point where the sun rises, you will perceive the first gleams of light on the top of any tall object, as a spire, a chimney, or a tree, long before the rays will be apparent on the eastern horizon.” From The Magician’s Own Book, 1871.

On the rise: my collection of vintage sun imagery.

In early modern Scotland the term 'fairy' seems to have covered a wide range of spirits and supernatural beings who were condemned, or whose existence was disputed, by the church. And among the most controversial of these were 'spirits of the dead'. Although the reformed church taught that the dead were not able re-appear to the living after death, people often claimed that they had seen deceased friends and relatives among the fairies or, less commonly, that a deceased friend or relative was a fairy. Both fairies and the spirits of the dead who consorted with them resembled saints in the sense that they were believed to possess supernatural powers and could be petitioned for a variety of benefits, but they differed from their holier counterparts in that they displayed more moral ambivalence and enjoyed a more ambiguous relationship with Christianity. This dissonance was further reflected in the fact that these categories of spirit did not live in heaven, but in fairyland or 'elphame', where they adopted a strange, simulacrum of human life: feasting under fairy hills, hunting with horses and packs of hounds, and following the fairy king and queen on their nocturnal processions through houses and across the night skies.”

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The Visions of Isobel Gowdie:

Magic, Witchcraft and Dark Shamanism in Seventeenth-Century Scotland

‘Devotion to Spirits: Saints and Fairies’

Here’s a quick handy reference list or anyone who isn’t sure:

Homosexuality does exist in almost all social species.

“Alpha males” are not a real phenomenon and in fact the most aggressive males tend to be the least reproductively successful.

“Survival of the fittest” simply means that the success of a species hinges on how well it “fits” its environment. It does not mean that stronger or smarter individuals are supposed to succeed. Those things can even be a detriment in nature by wasting too many resources.

“Race” is not a biological concept. Someone who looks different from you has the same human genes, just a different grab-bag of dominant traits.

Evolution is not a march towards higher complexity, more intelligence or even more adaptability. It’s just a fluctuation of characteristics dictated by environmental pressures and mutation. A slime mold isn’t “less evolved” than a hawk, just adapted for success under different parameters.

People didn’t evolve “from apes.” It’s more complicated than that. We are a category of ape, sharing a common ancestor with the other apes.

No human on Earth is “closer” to an evolutionary ancestor than any other. We all descended from the same one.

Neanderthals were also a “sibling” species of ours. We didn’t evolve from them.

Humans are actually more genetically homogeneous than most people suspect. This is possibly due to a population bottleneck at some point in our evolutionary past. Two chimpanzees from different sides of a jungle are likely more genetically different to each other than any two human beings in the world.

Our big brains may help us use tools, but what was really principal in their development was the need for empathy, communication, and cooperation.

Humans. Are. Social. So social it drove an incredibly energetically costly increase in our brain size.  Don’t believe anyone who says its our nature to fight “every man for themself.” We’re humans, not bears. We fight for each other.

And we always have. Fossil remains are found of ancient humans who bore signs of crucial mobility impairments that lived to notable ages. Some even have sticks or other mobility aids – community care and support is our way. We don’t cast off those with impairments, we stand by them.

Human sexual dimorphism is on a decreasing trend. Our ancestors had greater difference in canine size and overall size. Our dimorphism gap has gotten smaller.

Occam’s razor is the principal that whatever is the simplest explanation is probably the most likely one. Don’t believe someone who says the reason we evolved bipedalism is so that males could carry gifts to females to woo them. Yes, this is a real ‘theory’ on how bipedalism evolved.

Skin tone is an adaptation of UV levels vs vitamin D levels. Both come from the sun. UV is harmful, so where sun is plentiful populations develop a darker skin tone for more protection. The skin needs sun to create vitamin D, so where sun is scarce, the skin tone lightens to allow more sun in. This is literally all it is.

Final thing: No one’s mind is really equipped to fully understand how long a billion years is, or a million, or even tens of thousands of years. Evolution takes place over a loooong time. Its very, very, slow, slower than we can really comprehend. We can’t “stand in the way” of natural selection by caring for our ill. We don’t need to “help” evolution in any way. It inevitably happens, but not on any sort of timescale we could possibly affect, so don’t fall for anyone that tells you not to “stand in the way” of natural selection. That’s fascism, and its utterly pseudo-scientific.