Fresh material up on my website. This one's a slightly edited and very discursive collection of comments about what various colors symbolize for me and why they're meaningful, with relevance to how I might employ them in #magick.

http://alphyne.com/colors.html

Was reflecting on the irony that, in a way, I've come to "believe" in the God of the Bible more completely and wholeheartedly than I ever did when trying to be Christian. That is to say, I'm willing to accept that YHWH and Jesus are every bit as real as I regard Loki and Thoth and Mettaton to be. I just think they're pipsqueaks and liars, that's all.

trying to assure yourself a steady following by trying to pretend that you're _solely responsible for all of creation_ is kind of a shabby trick. The god of the Old Testament is really nowhere near big enough a god to lay convincing claim to that. I don't think even American fundies can quite make that real in their scrambled little heads; I think it's significant that the story of Noah prompts _far_ more emotional investment from young-earth Creationists. JWHW's a bit lacking as a would-be Creator of Everything, but he's quite believable as a guy who'd fuck the whole world's shit up on a whim.

But then JHWH picked up a bit of Greek philosophy and decided to have another go at being The Almighty; this time it kinda worked, but still...can you honestly say it _really_ worked? It's striking how SMALL a figure Jesus really seems to be, despite the creditable attempt to claim that this street preacher was in fact _Logos_ himself. Great intellectuals and theologians have struggled mightily to stretch the Jesus story to make it big enough to hold the whole Universe but it's always seemed like mere talk. Jesus has shrunk with time, not grown, and in the decadence of his cult, he's merely a seven-foot-tall blonde nonentity.

hell, J. Random Videogame Character has probably inspired more variety of artistic expression than Jesus is capable of mustering up these days--unless there's some vast vein of awesome Jesus fanart I don't know about. Everything I've ever seen is greeting-card quality.

Similarly, JWHW has never managed to come across as anything but a fusty old beardy guy. Oh, he tries REAL hard to seem ineffable and mysterious, manifesting as burning bushes and the like, but it's not worked. The Bible's God is a meshugganah grandpa and that's that.

@kara_dreamer
SO I GOOGLED JESUS FANART BECAUSE HOW COULD I NOT
http://www.topito.com/top-fan-art-jesus-christ
Also the google image results are humorously filled with sonic fanart.

@Irick see, Jesus is so bloodless and insubstantial a figure that he's easily replaceable by SONIC THE FRICKIN' HEDGEHOG

@kara_dreamer
I don't think I agree with the foundational assumption there. There is a level of historical context that such a claim ignores including pretty much the entire history of western art. As much as I like some good pop culture jesus mash ups ignoring the institutional pressures of both iconography as a formalized style and iconoclasm is patently misrepresentative of the depth of experience within the personage.

@Irick "There is a level of historical context that such a claim ignores including pretty much the entire history of western art." Oh, believe me, I know something of this history, but honestly...it _is_ history. Of course religious artwork featuring Jesus still abounds but notice how it's all simply retreading the old work? Jesus _may_ have been a figure once to inspire creativity but those days are fading into distant memory.

@kara_dreamer
Again, that's the influence of iconoclasm. Depictions of jesus and the godhead increasingly became obscure if they wanted to be novel because of the threat of ostracization for great works that do not follow the formal iconography of the church. Hence the raise of Sacred Geometry within the artistic styles of later christendom.

@Irick I don't think that really cuts against what I'm saying though. In fact it seems to explain it: Jesus has become a stale and uninspiring figure because churches kept him trapped in outdated standards of depiction.

@kara_dreamer I don't really agree though. The cool stuff may be apocryphal, but it's around. It won't be promoted by the church, but i'd charge that no church promotes the secularised/fictionalized versions of their holy figures with maybe the exception of Discordianism/Church of the Subgenius and the embrace of the Illuminatus! trilogy.
Exoteric faith seems incompatible with expression through the sacred world when we distinguish it from the profane.

@Irick Hrm...I'd say that churches don't explicitly _promote_ such milk-and-water depictions of their holy figures, but they implicitly promote them by complaining about anything that's less inoffensive.

@kara_dreamer
*shrugs*?
The mythic Jesus is a living figure of a personal religion. American Gods (TV show) nails it pretty well visually with the myriad depictions of Jesus that have been mapped through the views of the various cultures and even just the internal cults of catholicism. Siddhārtha Gautama and Jesus just don't translate to our hero myths, so their depictions tend to break the popular mold. Personal salvation isn't killing Ice Giants.