Supernatural 4.01
Goes without saying - SHOW IS AWESOME! BOBBY AWESOME! DEAN AWESOME! SAM AWESOME! OMGOMGOMGOMG!!!! *flaily*
*sighs* Am worried about where they're going with all this. Susan says to watch Constantine because she thinks, after due consideration, there are spoilers to where things are going with the mythology there. Haven't yet. Even so, not sure if that will make things better or not, really. Don't think I'd like it if Supernatural's answers were as simple as being taken from another movie's/comic book's mythology.
Just whined in Phaedra's lj over Lucifer and the angels thing... I hope that the mythology of the show will turn out more ecumenical than some are suspecting it will be. I like inclusiveness. Inclusiveness is FTW. Where has that gone, Show? I miss the Devas, and the Strigas, and the other monsters and demons of other cultures/religions, and since there are monsters and demons of other cultures/religions, the mythology should be a little less specific and a little more inclusive of a wider worldview. IMHO.
I have a gripe though about one of the previews they've been airing where they say that "The Torah spoke of the End of Days." Just to say, to the best of my knowledge, the Torah did not say anything about "the End of Days." Genesis 49:1 says "the days to come," but is sometimes mistranslated as "the End of Days" by people trying to justify an apocalyptic prophesy there, but no, not so, seriously. Not there. Also, nowhere else in what is properly called "the Torah." Such thoughts did not exist in the times and places of the Torah's period of composition. Later stuff, like the post-Alexander's conquest writings, like Daniel, some of the prophets, like Isaiah and Jeremiah, some of the extant texts that didn't make it into the Hebrew canon, there's apocalyptic stuff there because that was of the time, but that's not "the Torah." Those are different collections. This misunderstanding of the Torah and what is and isn't in it does not make me feel better about the show being inclusive in future. /rant of me the religious studies scholar.
Religious scholar in me also wrote down the Hebrew text they flash across the screen in that commercial. Now, I - being a bad Jew - do not read Hebrew. I can tell you all the letters, but I don't know what any of the words from that commercial. On top of it, there's no vowels in what they flash across the screen, so I can't even sound out what the words are to transliterate them into Roman letters so I can search the web. None of them are remotely familiar. But still I wonder if they're significant or if they just put random stuff up there. I've already checked in my bilingual Torah and it isn't Gen 49:1. That's all I know about it though... I simply want to know if that was where they're getting this "End of Days" thing and if so, what is it? So... Anybody read Hebrew fluently?
ETA: I found the translation and I've confirmed it. It seems to be stuff out of Revelations of all things - who thinks that's the Torah? What have they been smoking if they do?... The Hebrew text on the commercial says, "Armageddon (which seems to be a Greek word of Hebrew origins, transliterated back into Hebrew here), Har-Mageddon ("the mountain of the assembly" - this time in real Hebrew), the battlefield between the kings of the earth and the end of the world."
On to happier thinky thoughts about mythology... So, this Castiel person is the Angel of Thursday. 'Twas mentioned in the ritual Sam did in Red Sky at Morning, along with 5 other demons/spirits/angels. I'm still wondering if the ritual was part of the "hand of glory stuff" which isn't posted online, and who exactly "Erly" is... I've continued to try to work on trying to figure out that ritual, and I have more of it now, but it is on my other computer which is currently inaccessible to me. The gist is that it is a conjuration of some sort, asking God to bind these six entities together for some purpose. Haven't figured that part out yet. Is it possible that what Sam was doing there did more than bring back the spirit of that sea-captain? I dunno...
Listening to it now, this is what I think it says:
Aziel, Castiel, Laminiel, Raboc, Erly and Balam
I unite you together through the true god, through the living god
who created that which is above the mountains, and who formed Adam and Eve,
and who ...(lost it there for a line or two)...
and who founded the angels...
I loose the coherency completely at that point... I can get snatches of it here and there, but nothing that I can write out off the top of my head. "Seculum seculi" is in there several times. That's "forever."
*** Notes to self ***
"Stabat (stare - stand) aquae non ... et seculum seculi ... stabat aquae alphagramaton(?) ... per hoc nomen (through this name) et per hoc (and through this) peracionem(?) percipio (I gain/learn/perceive/understand) nobis (to/with us)."
(Sorry, am writing what I'm hearing here in case I don't have these bits on my computer. Please, ignore my notes...)
*** *** ***
I know I've got more/different bits on my computer. I still have no idea what "alphagramaton" or whatever he says there might be. Anyone else know?
Castiel is so obscure, and was also used in this ritual and now he's shown up as having pulled Dean out of Hell per "God's orders"... It's got to be connected. I would think it has to be connected...
Also, these entities that are all called in this particular ritual, they're all obscure, and they're all found in grimoire and other (what I'm going to call for lack of a better term) magical texts from the Middle Ages, and the devil's traps are too... I would think some of the other stuff that actually works against demons, etc. in Supernatural might also be in such books/belief systems. (Have we ever found out what the witches in Malleus Maleficarum were saying? I think I saw something somewhere about it not being Latin.) So I would think that there's got to be more answers to what's going on in the mythology in those sources. I just don't know what, if anything...
k... have a headache because of lack of food. Been too busy squeeing and attempting to think to eat! That's how excited I've been! Woah! LOL! So going to go eat now...
*sighs* Am worried about where they're going with all this. Susan says to watch Constantine because she thinks, after due consideration, there are spoilers to where things are going with the mythology there. Haven't yet. Even so, not sure if that will make things better or not, really. Don't think I'd like it if Supernatural's answers were as simple as being taken from another movie's/comic book's mythology.
Just whined in Phaedra's lj over Lucifer and the angels thing... I hope that the mythology of the show will turn out more ecumenical than some are suspecting it will be. I like inclusiveness. Inclusiveness is FTW. Where has that gone, Show? I miss the Devas, and the Strigas, and the other monsters and demons of other cultures/religions, and since there are monsters and demons of other cultures/religions, the mythology should be a little less specific and a little more inclusive of a wider worldview. IMHO.
I have a gripe though about one of the previews they've been airing where they say that "The Torah spoke of the End of Days." Just to say, to the best of my knowledge, the Torah did not say anything about "the End of Days." Genesis 49:1 says "the days to come," but is sometimes mistranslated as "the End of Days" by people trying to justify an apocalyptic prophesy there, but no, not so, seriously. Not there. Also, nowhere else in what is properly called "the Torah." Such thoughts did not exist in the times and places of the Torah's period of composition. Later stuff, like the post-Alexander's conquest writings, like Daniel, some of the prophets, like Isaiah and Jeremiah, some of the extant texts that didn't make it into the Hebrew canon, there's apocalyptic stuff there because that was of the time, but that's not "the Torah." Those are different collections. This misunderstanding of the Torah and what is and isn't in it does not make me feel better about the show being inclusive in future. /rant of me the religious studies scholar.
Religious scholar in me also wrote down the Hebrew text they flash across the screen in that commercial. Now, I - being a bad Jew - do not read Hebrew. I can tell you all the letters, but I don't know what any of the words from that commercial. On top of it, there's no vowels in what they flash across the screen, so I can't even sound out what the words are to transliterate them into Roman letters so I can search the web. None of them are remotely familiar. But still I wonder if they're significant or if they just put random stuff up there. I've already checked in my bilingual Torah and it isn't Gen 49:1. That's all I know about it though... I simply want to know if that was where they're getting this "End of Days" thing and if so, what is it? So... Anybody read Hebrew fluently?
ETA: I found the translation and I've confirmed it. It seems to be stuff out of Revelations of all things - who thinks that's the Torah? What have they been smoking if they do?... The Hebrew text on the commercial says, "Armageddon (which seems to be a Greek word of Hebrew origins, transliterated back into Hebrew here), Har-Mageddon ("the mountain of the assembly" - this time in real Hebrew), the battlefield between the kings of the earth and the end of the world."
On to happier thinky thoughts about mythology... So, this Castiel person is the Angel of Thursday. 'Twas mentioned in the ritual Sam did in Red Sky at Morning, along with 5 other demons/spirits/angels. I'm still wondering if the ritual was part of the "hand of glory stuff" which isn't posted online, and who exactly "Erly" is... I've continued to try to work on trying to figure out that ritual, and I have more of it now, but it is on my other computer which is currently inaccessible to me. The gist is that it is a conjuration of some sort, asking God to bind these six entities together for some purpose. Haven't figured that part out yet. Is it possible that what Sam was doing there did more than bring back the spirit of that sea-captain? I dunno...
Listening to it now, this is what I think it says:
Aziel, Castiel, Laminiel, Raboc, Erly and Balam
I unite you together through the true god, through the living god
who created that which is above the mountains, and who formed Adam and Eve,
and who ...(lost it there for a line or two)...
and who founded the angels...
I loose the coherency completely at that point... I can get snatches of it here and there, but nothing that I can write out off the top of my head. "Seculum seculi" is in there several times. That's "forever."
*** Notes to self ***
"Stabat (stare - stand) aquae non ... et seculum seculi ... stabat aquae alphagramaton(?) ... per hoc nomen (through this name) et per hoc (and through this) peracionem(?) percipio (I gain/learn/perceive/understand) nobis (to/with us)."
(Sorry, am writing what I'm hearing here in case I don't have these bits on my computer. Please, ignore my notes...)
*** *** ***
I know I've got more/different bits on my computer. I still have no idea what "alphagramaton" or whatever he says there might be. Anyone else know?
Castiel is so obscure, and was also used in this ritual and now he's shown up as having pulled Dean out of Hell per "God's orders"... It's got to be connected. I would think it has to be connected...
Also, these entities that are all called in this particular ritual, they're all obscure, and they're all found in grimoire and other (what I'm going to call for lack of a better term) magical texts from the Middle Ages, and the devil's traps are too... I would think some of the other stuff that actually works against demons, etc. in Supernatural might also be in such books/belief systems. (Have we ever found out what the witches in Malleus Maleficarum were saying? I think I saw something somewhere about it not being Latin.) So I would think that there's got to be more answers to what's going on in the mythology in those sources. I just don't know what, if anything...
k... have a headache because of lack of food. Been too busy squeeing and attempting to think to eat! That's how excited I've been! Woah! LOL! So going to go eat now...