I'm Western esotericism, names have power beyond simply being signifiers for the thing they represent- they embody some part of the thing they represent. The word "fire" contains some intrinsic "fire-ness" but not the whole picture. After all, everyone has different names for the same thing. It is thought that everything has a "true name" that perfectly encapsulates all things about it in their entirety, and this true name could be found by intense study, meditation, or etymology. The Bible pays a lot of attention to names in this way. Adam, the first man, names all the animals. Genesis pays a lot of attention to the names of places, and a lot of stories in Genesis are essentially folk etymologies of locations. God's own name is of special importance, and its meaning was revealed to Moses by the Burning Bush. Even today Jews believe that even saying God's name is powerful and dangerous and that only the High Priest would be allowed to say it once every year during Yom Kippur. Jewish folklore says that even this name is merely a part of God's true name, and that Moses pronounced a longer more complete form of The Name to part the Red Sea, and some systems hold that there are even longer and even more complete forms that have been known to rabbis in the past.
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Okeely-dokelly
That god actually has a name?
Yes. God's name is super interesting because of the extremely strong taboos surrounding saying it, stemming ultimately from the Third of the Ten Commandments (Exodus 20:7)- "Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD they God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guitless that taketh his name in vain." Note the emphasis on the name of The LORD, and how the word "LORD" is all caps- this is a sort of censorship of God's actual name, which goes back to the ancient Greek translations of the Hebrew scriptures. When you see "LORD" in a Bible passage in English, the original passage has God's name in Hebrew. Jews have historically said the word "Adonai" (meaning Lord) instead of God's name when reading aloud, and almost all translations follow this and just use the word for "Lord" (Kyrios, Dominus, etc.) instead.
Anyway, the name is rendered in Hebrew as "" which is roughly equivalent to the letters "YHWH" in the Latin alphabet. Hebrew doesn't use vowels, and the vowel sounds hsve intentionally not been recorded by scribes. The modern academic reconstruction is "Yahweh" for the pronunciation based on names for people and places that include parts of the name. You may also see "Jehovah" in some contexts which is based on older German scholarship that incorrectly rendered the vowels of the word. The name's meaning is given to Moses in Exodus 3:14 where Moses asks who he should tell his people to worship and God replies "I AM WHO I AM" "Say this to the people of Israel: I AM has sent me to you" (in Hebrew, I am who I am is Eyeh Asher Eyeh). Modern scholarship agrees that the name has some connection with the word "to be" and means something along the lines of "The Existing One."
Myself, I interpret God's response in the story and the meaning of His name as a declaration of self sufficiency, that God is what exists in His own right, and doesn't need anything or anyone else to exists. It's not only a declaration of montheism, but a declaration of supremacy over all of the universe. But yeah, not only does your Bologna have a first name, but God does too if you're Christian or Jewish.
Oh, so that's where Christopher Paolini got the idea of true names for Eragon!
Yeah it's a very old concept and used in fantasy even before Eragon.
Shoutout Ursula K. Le Guin
From an old edition of the Pilot's Handbook of Aeronautical Knowledge:
An airplane's tire will hydroplane at a speed in knots equal to 9 times the square root of the tire pressure in PSI. So if your tires are inflated to 36 PSI, sq.rt 36 = 6 * 9 = 54 knots. If there is standing water on the runway, you will have no braking authority or steering control from the wheels, you will have to maintain control of the aircraft with the flight controls, and you cannot rely on short field stopping figures from the POH if it requires applying brakes above 54 knots.
I got that out of the 2003 edition; I don't know if it's in the current issue.
Everything you learn from being active on Tumblr from late 2012 to now
Mammals generally get 1.5 billion heart beats in their lifetime regardless of size.
And they all (above 3Kg) pee on average for 21 seconds.
See, mega corps are simply mimicking nature by implementing planned obsolescence
I mean I've spent time studying occult stuff, so I guess pretty much the trope codifier.
Turns out they mostly just like to do the macarena. ยฏ\_(ใ)_/ยฏ
- This is true and remote from all cover of falsehood
- Whatever is below is similar to that which is above. Through this the marvels of the work of one thing are procured and perfected.
- Also, as all things are made from one, by the condsideration of one, so all things were made from this one, by conjunction.
- The father of it is the sun, the mother the moon.
- The wind bore it in the womb. Its nurse is the earth, the mother of all perfection.
- Its power is perfected. If it is turned into earth,
- separate the earth from the fire, the subtle and thin from the crude and course, prudently, with modesty and wisdom.
- This ascends from the earth into the sky and again descends from the sky to the earth, and receives the power and efficacy of things above and of things below.
- By this means you will acquire the glory of the whole world, and so you will drive away all shadows and blindness.
- For this by its fortitude snatches the palm from all other fortitude and power. For it is able to penetrate and subdue everything subtle and everything crude and hard.
- By this means the world was founded
- and hence the marvelous cojunctions of it and admirable effects, since this is the way by which these marvels may be brought about.
- And because of this they have called me Hermes Tristmegistus since I have the three parts of the wisdom and Philsosphy of the whole universe.
- My speech is finished which i have spoken concerning the solar work