• Maeve
    link
    fedilink
    3
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Alastair Crowley? Gardener? Eta: The Catholic Church?

    • MudMan
      link
      fedilink
      5
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      Weren’t both of those people English?

      Do English people think the Catholic Church is magic? I know they sometimes wear dresses, but their hats are round, not pointy. Completely different thing.

      And yeah, they say they are turning wafers into human flesh, but I’ve had the wafers and trust me, they don’t taste like chicken at all.

      • James Dreben :mw:
        link
        fedilink
        11 year ago

        @MudMan

        I think this is an interesting topic

        This comment from an old Reddit post seems to contain some knowledge, imo

        https://reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/s/1SHtAFS093

        As noted in that comment, in reading Goethe’s Faust I remember distinctly that line, ERITUS SICUT DEUS, SCIENTES BONUM ET MALUM.

        Something about its oldness, religiosity and simplicity make it magical to me

        • MudMan
          link
          fedilink
          11 year ago

          Sure. I guess what I’m saying is that perception is fundamentally anglocentric.

          Obviously, by being retained as a liturgical language romance language speakers associate it as much to demonology as they do to… you know, your cousin getting married or a nerdy college student having obnoxious debates at the pub.

          I’m also saying that it sounds dumb to me. Just culturally it immediately flags somebody copying their homework or resorting to things that sound fancy to them when they’re not.

        • MudMan
          link
          fedilink
          21 year ago

          My grandma was a matron and used tricks like those when I was a kid.

          You guys keep giving me anecdotes about how the anglosphere mistook common latinsphere practices for mystical ancient spells as a response to my post about how the anglosphere mistakes common latinsphere practices for mystical ancient spells.

          I get how it would have become fancy-sounding shorthand to them, I’m saying that using it as pop-culture shorthand for mysticism feels ethnocentric and silly to me.