It is not “progressive” to denigrate another person’s religious beliefs. If those beliefs do not entail a denial of scientific reality, if they do not entail abusing or harming other people, if they - on the contrary - inspire and motivate meaningful community, why would you be an asshole?

Finished up this neat little French clock with some beautiful inlays today.

Okay so this is kinda cool: this is an old German striking clock, with a signature from 1851. It's a really bizarre mechanism, too; it counts the quarters (like you'd expect), but every single quarter it also strikes the hour! And yes, that gets annoying quite fast.

Some good ol' mystical Bible reading on the dial of this old English longcase clock.

Real

TradBros saying tolerance is a sin because St. Nicholas supposedly assaulted Arius (likely a myth from the later Middle Ages) are beyond dull.

The same legend indicates St. Nick prayed for forgiveness for his fault.

Wittgenstein: the eye is not contained within the perceptual frame; it "shrinks" to a supernal point beyond individuation. "Das Ich des Solipsismus schrumpft zum ausdehnungslosen Punkt zusammen, und es bleibt die ihm koordinierte Realität."

My article on the Textual Criticism of the Quran can now be downloaded from the Leiden University Repository!
hdl.handle.net/1887/3761723

(this time with working URL)

Just as a spider spreads and withdraws its thread, so out of the Immutable does the phenomenal universe arise

Muṅdaka Upaniṣad 1.1.7

Dionysius on the sustaining, eternal act of the Good:

“Anyone who tells you to deny yourself is from Satan”

- Paula White, Donald Trump’s faith advisor

“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.”

- Jesus of Nazareth

Just when I thought I couldn't love Agrippa anymore...

Perhaps the most hauntingly beautiful work of Christian mysticism ever written.