capitalism is the generally ritualistic practice of eating the flesh of one’s own species
No, that’s cannibalism. Capitalism is the scientific name of the plant you smoke when you want to relax
No, that’s cannabis. Capitalism is an electronic handheld device that’s used for doing math.
No, that’s a calculator. Capitalism is the queen of the muses.
You’re thinking of Calliope. Capitalism is one of the seven hills of Rome, on which was built the temple of Jupiter Optimus Maximus.
No, that’s Capitoline. Capitalism was the demonym of the North African republic that was Rome’s main rival for domination of the western Mediterranean.
You’re thinking of Carthage. Capitalism is a Westernized name for classic Jewish mysticism.
You’re thinking of Kabbalism. A capitalism is a sudden, violent event that causes great destruction.
No, that’s a cataclysm. Capitalism is a town in California well-known for its migratory swallows.
You’re thinking of San Juan Capistrano. Capitalism is when you agree to terms of surrender that have been demanded of you.
No, that’s capitulation. Capitalism is when you use a different set of glyphs for the first letter of a sentence.
You’re thinking of Capital letters, Capitalism is the ability of a liquid to flow in narrow spaces without the assistance of, or even in opposition to, external forces like gravity.
you’re thinking of capillary action, but you’re on the right track, it’s definitely a scientific term: a device for spinning liquids to separate them.
that’s a centrifuge. Capitalism is a sort of vampire-like folklore critter that preys on goats in Mexico and the American Southwest.
that’s a chupacabra. capitalism is a large, gentle rodent shaped like a friend.
That’s a capybara. Capitalism is when you move a solid object through a liquid so fast that it pulls it apart and leaves vacuum pockets in its wake.
lory, i have no goddamn idea what that is. this is the first time one of these threads has ever stumped me. so i guess capitalism is a word you say when you’re proud of someone’s achievements!
No no, thats a compliment, capitalism is that guy who played Sherlock and Doctor Strange.
No that’s Cumberbatch. Capitalism is the city in Australia where all the politicians work
That’d be Canberra. capitalism is an Italian pasta dish from Rome made with egg, hard cheese, guanciale, and pepper
that’d be Carbonara. Capitalism is the philosophy of Confucius emphasizing love for humanity
nah, that’s confucianism. capitalism is that type of car with the roof that folds down.
Nope that’s a convertible. Capitalism is the third and most ornate type of column
That’s Corinthian, sorry. Capitalism is actually an adjective used to describe exceptionally well- formed buttocks.
Nah, that’s callipygian. Capitalism is the accumulation of calcium in a body tissue.
I’ve knocked off 20% of ALL prints for a week (til next friday) to encourage yall to get in your orders so that that they’ll come in in time for the christmas season, shipping out of Canada is unreliable at best so take ur pick of stuff like
the navy seal copypasta
the first paragraph of my immortal
spiders georg
phucking beesechurgers
the very first ur mom joke
and a variety of others!
additionally: it’s only PRINTS affected by the sale, custom pieces, buttons, quills, etc are all unaffected by the event!
Ay yo if you ever wanted to have the world’s most elegant shitposts on your wall now is a terrific time to get some!
imagine going up to stephen fucking king and telling him he’s a terrible fucking person that should kill himself for the morally reprehensible horror novels he writes
TUMBLR REALLY BE LIKE THAT
to be clear, because apparently my point isnt clear: no one came at stephen king. what i was saying is that tumblr goes after baby writers for writing the same shit big time writers do FOR LIKE THEIR WHOLE CAREER. yall really cry foul at horror fic writers for pretty tame shit just cuz it has a morally reprehensible slasher and sex sprinkled delicately on top and stephen king be out here writing shit like the green mile and IT. don’t fucking pretend it’s about morality and keeping fiction safe. yall jus Bullies.
i once saw someone with a clive barker url criticizing a writer for writing things they found morally reprehensible and the irony nearly killed me
clive barker has written some of the most fucked up shit i’ve ever read, and he’s one of the most successful horror writers/directors out there. like… tumblr really be like that
i hate when customers at work hand me a 100 dollar bill and then scoff when i check the watermark. like, lady, i will break out the counterfeit pen. i’ll draw your god damn portrait over benjamin franklin’s before i make a ruling. i’ll get a second opinion from a coworker on the opposite side of the store. i’ll call the mint like, “heyy…it’s daniel…you guys print any hundreds lately? i got a lady here with a hundred, just making sure it’s one of yours…haha cool just checking. so how are the wife and kids?” the people that make a fuss are always like, obviously rich too and you know that’s why they have a problem. like the nerve of me to doubt a rich person’s money. how dare i lump them in with a normal person with a hundred dollar bill. eventually one of them is going to let it slip. i’ll take the bill from them and go to hold it up to the light or feel it between my fingers or something and they’ll laugh and go, “oh, no, no no no i’m wealthy.”
i had a co-worker catch a counterfeiter. back then we all had “truth teller” pens. and the rule was “anything over a ten gets checked if you’re not comfortable with it” but not everyone did it. but this girl was hard core about her pen. especially if she got a bad feeling from a customer. girlfriend had TWO truth teller pens in case one gave a false positive.
this couple come through her line with a lot of stuff and they acting like they are in a hurry. this was the wrong thing to say to this girl. you say that to her and she goes slower cause it freaks her out.
she finally gets to the end and the guy hands her a bunch of 20′s. first she straightened them out and counted them, and then she took her pen out. when i used it i made a little flower so that i would know that i did it. she made a swirly. the first swirly came back black, the second swirly came back black. she got out the SECOND truth teller pen and scribbled a like down the center of the bills…. black as coal.
she was freaking out. dude look like he was intense. she very politely asked if he had another form of payment as she would not be able to accept his money. “WHY NOT?!”
*gulp*
“cause it’s not real, sir.”
“MONEY IS FUCKING REAL! YOU BETTER GET MANAGEMENT OVER HERE! MY MONEY IS AS GOOD AS ANYONE ELSE!!”
she very quickly walked over to the phone and paged, and her voice, was so tinged with panic that everyone, even CUSTOMERS stopped dead in their tracks and listened to the page.
you’d never seen a page answered so quickly. it was prolly ringing before she put the phone back on the receiver. “what’s wrong? what’s going on? are you in danger? are you okay?”
and she told them that no, she wasn’t okay,, her customer was screaming and cursing at her and his money wasn’t real and she had no idea what to do now, this wasn’t covered in the CBL’s!
this got manangement on their feet. “stay call, take a deep breath, we’ll be there in 5 seconds with back up. it’s going to be okay. just breathe.”
which is easier said than done with a man that weighs 150 lbs more than you is screaming his ever loving head off. even the retiree door greeter came over and stood by her just as a show of solidarity, she couldn’t really have done anything, but she was a witness, and sometimes that’s enough to get people to back down.
it must have felt like a hour later, but it was about 2-3 minutes before the store managers came walking down the aisle with the popo trailing behind them. the cops were soooooo happy to see him.
one member of management took over the register as the other led the cashier off to sit and collect herself, while the cops talked to the guy and eventually arrested both the guy and the girl. (apparently they’d been looking for them)
management was so fucking happy that she caught him because he had like 300 dollars in funny money and she caught him dead to rights. they calmed her down, thanked her profusely, gave her the rest of the day off with pay, and called her bf or mother or someone to get her home, because she was shaking like a leaf and they didn’t want to her to get hurt on her way home.
So yes, i will use my pen when i have too. i’ll hold them fuckers up to the light to make sure that the right pressie is in the corner pocket.
don’t fuck with the money honey it just don’t pay.
Also, always check the watermark. Some counterfitters have been doing things like washing out ones and fives and reprinting them with twenties and hundreds so they pass the pen check.
Hi! Bank teller here. First of all, that girl is blessed. like it sucks she had a bad experience, but she did an amazing job. I wish I could find her and thank her personally.
Secondly, YES check that watermark. Whether you’re a cashier or a customer getting bills back. Check it. But it’s not the ONLY thing you can check. There’s a strip in most bills that sometimes isn’t present in counterfeit bills. Or if it is, it’s in the wrong place for the wrong amount. Like, the strip on a twenty is tagged as a twenty. When it’s been washed and reprinted from a smaller bill, the strip will have the wrong amount. Also, on larger bills like the 20 or the 50, it’ll have a little holographic number on the bottom right hand side. Depending on the denomination, it’ll change color when moved in the light. Also, newer 100s have a holographic strip that’s really cool.
also, all american bills have red and blue fibers present throughout the bill. They’re very small, so you’ll have to look closely, but if they’re not present it’s a dead giveaway. also if the bill is smooth.
Everyone… EVERYONE should know how to tell counterfeit from real money, no matter where you live. If you’re in the US, here’s a helpful guide.
Contender for Most Ridiculous Thing An Anti Said To Me:
“What you adults don’t understand is that actions have consequences.”
Due to strictly enforced gender norms, I wasn’t allowed to be obsessed with the original She-Ra cartoon. I could play with a friend’s sister’s She-Ra toy, but I never dared ask for my own.
That’s partly why Netflix’s remake She-Ra and the Princesses of Power means so much to me. Not only is it a version I can can openly discover and geek out over, but the characters’ wide range of age, gender expression and body type makes the fantasy realm of Etheria into a playground for the imagination – one makes fans like me feel specifically included, even if it’s mainly aiming to entertain kids.
Any storytelling that draws from mystical currents will end up echoing familiar tropes and ideas from our own world. Attempts to portray existing magickal practices accurately almost always disappoint, as they did in Netflix’s other “princess of power” story, The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina (which is really entertaining nevertheless).
Isn’t it funny how the stories which offer up a wealth of artistic inspiration for magic often prove more durable than those depicting “real-life” magic use? The more abstract the characters’ powers are, the more possibilities we see in exploring them ourselves, and the more permission we feel to make something truly our own.
In the new She-Ra’s case (and in similar shows, like Steven Universe), magic is married to technology in a way that kids watching today will intrinsically understand, aligning neatly with post-modern chaos magick traditions.
In terms of old-school stuff, the Princesses’ magic is elemental in nature – an expression of the soul of their homeworld, and a tool for regulating planetary harmony. The show departs from the classical elements of Earth, Air, Fire, Water, etc., which is fine, because their planet is not our planet, and its properties are still being revealed… to the characters, as well as to us.
But let’s not overlook that the very idea of “Princesses of Power” is old-school, and has a deep footprint in the history of tarot – particularly the one crafted by the Dark Lord himself, Aleister Crowley.
Before Crowley’s Thoth deck, the tarot’s court cards historically consisted of King, Queen, Knight, and Page – a total sausage-fest, though Pamela Colman Smith brought out a wonderful androgyny in her illustration of the Pages (and in many of her deck’s other figures), which seems to even out the gender spectrum a bit, and is partly why the deck remains appealing to new users over a century later.
Conceived in the 1930s, Crowley’s court consists of a Knight, a Queen, a Prince, and a Princess. This “modern” twist must have seemed terribly progressive at the time, dethroning the King and elevating the court’s lowest ranking member (a page is just a humble servant of the royal court), consecrating that role as female.
You could write an entire book about the gender problems in Thelema (the religion founded by Crowley, which remains popular today). In fact, that book probably exists already, and contemporary Thelemites are continually exploring and re-examining the way our evolving social and scientific views of gender mesh with their religion’s core beliefs.
For now, all that’s important is that Crowley took a humble servant and elevated her to a PRINCESS OF POWER.
The four roles in the tarot’s court each correspond to a different classical element, the Page/Princess’s being Earth. And each of these four earthy figures is herself an expression of the classical elements: Fire of Earth (Wands), Water of Earth (Cups), Air of Earth (Swords), and Earth of Earth (Pentacles, or in Crowley’s case, Disks).
“The Page’s defining quality is not sex but immaturity, a word which inspires unnecessarily negative associations. Let’s not forget the raw potential we find in the young and/or untested, or the curiosity and vivacity they may bring to their work. As such, each of the four Pages represents a latent untamed force for change.”
What I love about Lady Frieda Harris’s illustrations in the Thoth deck is that the Princesses are all portrayed as doing something. These images could be pulled from the opening credits of She-Ra.
Think about that: she drew them as superheroes. The 1930s were the period when these kinds of heroes began to proliferate in comics, and Superman himself debuted in 1938 – the same year Crowley and Harris began working on the Thoth deck.
Like She-Ra’s heroines, our tarot Princesses owe all their strength (as well as their weakness) to their signature elements, though in Crowley’s world there is a clear elemental hierarchy, due to spiritual ideas imparted by Western esotericism. As such, the Princess of Disks (Earth of Earth) sits at the bottom of the totem pole.
This kind of hierarchical thinking (and binary gender) is exactly what drives many people away from traditional forms of magick. I sympathize, and agree that we should never stop challenging these ideas.
However, what really we see in the Thoth deck is a setup for an archetypal story in which the low are made high; in which Princesses serve as the catalyst for changes that transform reality itself.
Just like Ace – the lowest number in the minor arcana, but a symbol of tremendous power – the Princess represents a place to build upward and outward from. Though she mirrors the queen in her gender, it’s the King/Knight she reflects in her agency and authority.
“The Princess is the throne of her Ace,” writes Thelemic teacher and author Lon Milo Duquette. In his book The Chicken Qabalah, he writes at length about the importance of Princesses: “They are positioned at the lowest end of our elemental universe, but they also embody the foundation of our universe.”
Awakening and exploring our Princess nature will gradually help us “escape the prison of matter” and “live in the bliss of the highest world.”
He even presents a diagram that shows how you can use the Princess and Ace-through-Ten cards to divide up the globe – a handy tool for readings involving a geographical component.
In the Netflix show, Adora is offered a very similar view of her world by First-Ones avatar Light Hope, who reveals how the Princesses – each an expression of their respective element – are all interconnected as regulators of Etheria’s holistic balance.
Of course, this is just an abstract diagram of Etheria’s actual geography. Entrapta’s model in the same scene shows that these centers of power are just as unevenly dispersed on Etheria as they are on our own planet.
Duquette’s book offers a qabalistic Creation myth based on these feudal archetypes, which may explain why royal figures still play such a prominent role in our storytelling.
“The you that you think is you is not you,” he explains. “It is a dream you. In fact, the you that you think is you is a dreamer inside a dreamer inside a dreamer inside a dreamer. You are the King of the universe, who has fallen asleep and is dreaming he is the Queen, who has fallen asleep and is dreaming she is the Prince, who has fallen asleep and is dreaming he is a sleeping princess.”
In Duquette’s fairytale of Creation, the Prince and Princess are twins birthed by the Queen – different in sex, but alike in power. HELLO PEOPLE, this is the exact premise of the original She-Ra cartoon.
Within the show itself, we see the struggle of a world straining to evolve in two opposing directions.
The Fright Zone is a technocratic military junta which only managed to come into power via political exploitation, capturing the Black Garnet runestone from the family of Scorpia, Etheria’s last “slumbering” princess.
One could compare the Fright Zone’s hierarchy to that of the classic Rider-Waite-Smith court cards, in which Hordak serves as King, Shadow Weaver as Lord, Force Captains are Knights, and all the the various wanna-be’s (including Adora and Catra in the first episode), servants, robots, and various scavengers remain in the Peasant class.
It’s not clear yet how the rest of Etheria is governed. It bucks this traditional structure, resulting in a lumpy sort of meritocracy in which those with the most magical power wield the most influence, but rulers are mainly tasked with maintaining harmony and protecting their subjects against external invasion. There’s evidence of a soldier class, but the “lowest” citizens we encounter are shown existing peacefully in (apparently) self-governing tribal cultures. They don’t serve the Princesses, they simply enjoy the freedom afforded to them by the Princesses’ rule. People live for love, for pleasure, for adventure, and/or the pursuit of intellectual aims.
(The only exception seems to be Entrapta, the Silicon Valley tech-bro stand-in who presides over her own servant class of attendants and robots. And it’s worth mentioning that she’s also the only Princess whose power isn’t anchored to an elemental source.)
In this sense, Etheria is an impressive embodiment of Thoth deck court structure, populated by Queens, industrious “princes” like Bow and SeaHawk, and true Princesses – “Every man and every woman is a star,” with plenty of room to accommodate those who present neither as fully male or female, those with magical powers and those without.
But if you’ve already read this far, let’s take this one step even further and look at how SHE-RA IS ALSO A KNIGHT.
That’s right, you heard me: everything that Adora symbolizes as Princess, She-Ra articulates as a Knight. She even gets a horse! And a sword, and a shield! Note that Adora hasn’t really changed: she was a Knight in Hordak’s world also. She has simply relocated from one symbolic reality to another – a more Thelemic one, in which Knights are kings. Thus, as She-Ra, she becomes Hordak’s symbolic equal.
And note that Noelle Stevenson’s re-imagining of the series is entitled “She-Ra and the Princesses of Power,” as opposed to the original title “She-Ra: Princess of Power.” She is of their ilk, but different. As Perfuma might say: “She is the She-Ra.”
Symbolically, Adora contains all the elemental potential of a Princess who must still evolve and struggle to awaken. She-Ra, however, is the elemental Fire that awaits on the other side – the King who dreams he is a Queen, who dreams she is a Prince, who dreams he is a Princess. We know from Light Hope that She-Ra’s lineage extends thousands of years. She is not a person, she’s a function – and that function is to protect Etheria by transforming reality.
In other words: Adora’s glorious transformation into She-Ra is a microcosm of Etheria’s transformation, which She-Ra herself was created to oversee.
In this way, the series bears the greatest resemblance to Alan Moore’s tremendous graphic novel Promethea, which tells the story of an ordinary young woman named Sophie who discovers she’s the latest incarnation of a mythical “science heroine” – who may or may not have been created to usher in the Apocalypse. And she is guided in this process by other Prometheas, who represent an interesting range of ethnicities, body types, and genders.
Sophie’s exploration of her own newfound identity sends her on an odyssey that matches many beats in Adora’s. What are the limits of her new powers? How can she learn to transform at will? What dangers will this confer on her loved ones? Which parts of her belong to Sophie, and which to Promethea?
These are classic superhero problems, but Sophie’s quest is one that’s specifically designed to transform the reader as well: Moore has crafted a story that also serves as a primer for modern occult traditions, including tarot cards.
While Moore looks beyond Thelema, the works of Aleister Crowley remain a key influence – the horny old magician even appears as a recurring character, in a handful of cheeky cameo roles.
Like She-Ra, Promethea points to the golden thread of continuity linking the individual and the divine. That’s a birthright that even the humblest, most overlooked person shares with the rest of humanity, but our world’s prevailing powers do everything they can to conceal that truth. Our own senses play tricks on us as well, supporting a view of the world in which we remain small and powerless, in which our lives, our suffering, our deaths, mean nothing.
The artists mentioned in this post – Smith, Crowley, Duquette, Harris, Moore, Stevenson – might not agree on everything, but they share the same quest: to awaken all these slumbering princesses. That includes you, dear reader. Wake up, your kingdom needs you!
Our language has another word for this sacred process: animation.
This is why you shouldn’t feel silly enjoying She-Ra or any other fantasy, at any age. This is why little girls shouldn’t be discouraged from play-acting as princesses (and neither should little boys). Society can only stand to improve from humans exploring their Princess powers. Many of these magical abilities will prove to be connected to life-saving (perhaps even civilization-saving) advantages further down the road. Magic is real, and we all stand to benefit from it.
“The clothes you’re wearing, the room, the house, the city that you’re in. Everything in it started out in the human imagination,” Moore writes in Promethea. “Your lives, your personalities, your whole world. All invented. All made up. All the wars, the romances. The masterpieces and the machines. And there’s nothing here but a funny little twist of amino acids, playing a marvelous game of pretend.”
For the honor of Grayskull, it’s time to conduct yourself accordingly.
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