certified 100% american religion moment

(my manager said if i spend time writing this stuff i have to plug myself. here’s a black cat and what i’m making moves on this week.) https://hell.twtr.plus/media/0ad8ed410e26f7931d4e0093b83e261df35c2f7ac1585c896e741f0554e3ce7e.file https://hell.twtr.plus/media/607d8c213b2b0ae961a1865c789324a925bdcc60af13def6e4d766af6a82037b.file

halloween originated as the eve of all saints’ day. modern “goth” and much of dark aesthetics in the west is often just a rearticulation of some of our spiritual themes, like memento mori. maybe it’s two sides of the same coin. or perhaps it takes a fool to weave them together. https://hell.twtr.plus/media/8ebe6398261a5340c2d5c569666f9c5771586d5929c0ba4facefd0df03f5ce30.file

they may not be directly related, in terms of cause or effect in linear time, but the modern halloween aesthetic is very close to the aesthetic of ICP. traditional spooky fare, some death based oddities, some paranormal entities, some classic spiritual tropes, and horror movies. https://hell.twtr.plus/media/7b0ab543401288d97811f2e8963ba1f1a91d194f90733e234b0a293cbb2bf5bd.file

what we’ve briefly covered here is something like this. everyone, and their “group”, has concepts and ideas about the universe, but they’re rarely articulated. occasionally some weirdo will rise from their ranks and take these intuitions and cohesively encode them into something.

a crystal takes a complicated structure and puts it all into a single aesthetic package. everything has a place in it. its reflective and clear: you can see other things in it and through it. its also easy to handle: you can just pick all that up, no problem. https://hell.twtr.plus/media/72e847b79c431a456b11adbfe4a9f775668f0bbe82d995835bbd7021cf06ad57.file

in ‘signs and symbols in christian art’ by george ferguson, he says the renaissance aesthetic became eternal in western culture because its a total crystallization of western man’s spiritual experience. that word, crystallization, is really perfect. https://hell.twtr.plus/media/65d474c94c256f07104863162497412295cb296d6c92197b455b5c1b3b365508.file

america doesn’t embrace its odd spiritual creations, its embarrassed by them. they’re freaks. please put them in the other room, or the dumpster so if there is any uniquely american spiritual expression, its a safe bet normal people view it as a kind of embarrassing bizarre joke https://hell.twtr.plus/media/a09cd5e2e20e15402b56467af558dfcf6c9b95e9f7cc61c2376695e716a041f7.file

america specializes in making weird, atypical, spiritual views. christian offshoots, new denominations, new religious movements, cults, thats our speciality. no one else does it like us. not even close. that’s america. but the thing about america is: it hates these things.

i used to be very into hunter s. thompson. one of his things was going on a quest for the heart of america, to find the american dream, to find “america”. im unclear if he thought he succeeded. thing is, he wasn’t into religion. america is a religion place. maybe that’s my bias.