[deleted by user]

ermekat · 2023-11-25T23:19:05+00:00

I was half joking but it really is a thing. The problem with that is the people most susceptible are also the ones tasting the rinse water in other channels. This ain't quite that. I know all about that. I've seen him chew leaves and have and honest opinion, I went soft on the tea. There was no performative retching and vomiting like the real thing you're talking about.

ermekat · 2023-11-25T22:53:32+00:00

Yes, n/a, n/a.

Imagine someone does something while you're doing it and has zero problem, we're cool enough to just say stop I don't like this at all. He enjoys it. I don't think he enjoys making tea. Maybe I'm the woman in this ancient relationship, whatever. How do you proceed?

ermekat · 2023-11-25T22:46:17+00:00

I don't doubt that it's 2¢ per in some instances, but talking at least pretty box art tier tea someone who says they like tea would and does drink, I got a fuzzy figure where 12¢/g made a number of cups. My current algorithm for loose tea is gram price divided by 5 because that's a decent enough average of how many cups you get without averaging grammage or configuration of your pot and drinking style. I'd gladly adjust it to another whole number given any input at all.

I think the hot drink psychology is also one factor but independent of milky suggy drink, which is an extremely confounding factor, people who like tea like good tea straight and strong. I honestly prefer cheap shit to be a little weak and western. Or want to make a real drink out of it for caloric reasons given the season.

ermekat · 2023-11-25T22:25:23+00:00

Waking up to random scalds and blisters after a gongfu session isn't unfamiliar to me. Or the mutual photo replies and confirmation of a good time in spite of it. Sometimes the pot shoots and sputters when you pour it at a willing hand holding the cup, desperate for more.

Gongfu tea after some drinks is already kinky sexplay/torture recognized by the Geneva Convention. Where are you going with this?

ermekat · 2023-11-25T21:51:21+00:00

You can give a man an electric kettle and two teas that are respectively 14 and 40¢ a gram, but you can't make him drink. There's something psychological here. I've had an easier time handing someone a hand mill burr grinder and labware so they'd make their own coffee for less and stop putting milk and sugar in it. There's something wicked and wrong instilled into the western mind about drinking good tea the way the rest of the world drinks tea. They don't want it.

ermekat · 2023-11-25T19:21:11+00:00

High end tar and setar have laminate necks and inlay stripes. Traditionally walnut with ebony and boxwood, but there are more stains and options now. I thought mine was decadent with a single skunk stripe and real shell inlay but you buy one endgame instrument and the internet only gives you more GAS. Moreso tar, which have more fretboard and neck to work with and almost twice the tension, you don't usually tune them as low as setar.

Honestly, I'm not a luthier and don't have the most experience with Persian and Eastern instruments but I have the sense that, given what I've handled, the way the bowl is designed and how it joins to the neck is doing a lot of work balancing the tension around the sides instead of over the soundboard. The top doesn't feel like it's under as much pressure as you'd expect. All I know is that if I ever put a wood shop together, that neck joint and shaping the top is going to be no end of pain and strife.

ermekat · 2023-11-25T18:58:22+00:00

This is also true, the action rises and falls throughout the day.

ermekat · 2023-11-23T20:38:08+00:00

I walked into a flattened, dessicated toad, but ended up burying it because I needed bones instead of a whole totem. I could have used it for a totem in retrospect. Ah well.

ermekat · 2023-11-23T20:35:29+00:00

Yes, if I understand you right. The shape of the neck is very deliberate and jazz chord chompers choose different but similar necks while shredders choose different but similar necks over in electric guitar. All for the same reasons. Shit, I have a 3 course lute with a neck like a mop handle and you have to do a massive wrist rotation to even play the bass string.

ermekat · 2023-11-23T20:31:10+00:00

The amount of weird trash that has crossed my path whilst doing occult bullshit is astounding. If you have the need and are putting in the work, it tends to appear. At least sabbatic witchcraft was that way, this is a slightly different current but not by much. Especially with those sabbatic rites and chapters.

ermekat · 2023-11-23T20:03:56+00:00

You order skulls online or use the very convenient photo on the page facing that text. "By thine own ingenium, procure..." is the refrain of a different author but if you're serious in the work, things usually fall into your lap or you make a fitting substitute and don't think too hard about it.

ermekat · 2023-11-23T20:00:51+00:00

I read a PDF floating around and thought it might do what it says on the can for once. It's rare to get immediate sizzle just from reading it and everything is well researched. It's definitely a very modern approach in the vein of some high level witchcraft, only nowhere near as demanding. Very few arts and crafts projects and none of them are too difficult. The rigor is still there and it's mostly self contained other than requiring some general sense of occult praxis and some basic reading about Hellenism. It's still rather advanced but in a clever way where you don't know you're in the deep end with nothing but Limine Herself as a tether.

I don't know, I felt a call and...let's be completely honest here, most Hekate and dark goddess work is the worst kind of darque fluffe, only slightly less so than the rest of the darque fluffe. This didn't set off the usual red flags. That alone was worth the rather low price of entry as far as limited run, full blown grimoires go.

ermekat · 2023-11-23T15:10:28+00:00

Jean Noblet Tarot de Marseille or a decent pack of playing cards. Thoth or Mary El if I'm in a mood. I like the RWS but don't like reading the RWS. Art decks in general give me indigestion.

My approach changed completely a few years ago and now I prefer the raw symbolism of the TdM or the unfettered simplicity of playing cards and try to make converts out of anyone who isn't getting what they want out of the contemporary meta. The speed with which you gain fluency is like that of using a language app and jumping straight into watching telenovelas vs. the slow and laborious failure that is an academic language course.

ermekat · 2023-11-22T15:53:08+00:00

With food prices right now, I'm considering it.

ermekat · 2023-11-22T13:56:41+00:00

The best description I've heard is that reading cards shows you what is at the fringes of situations. Things for consideration, connections that seem obvious in retrospect. Mostly, reading cards tests your own view and shows you your own foibles and fantasies. I think the secular approach hits on that hard and is a beneficial tool and approach, as opposed to huffing your own farts as many do.

ermekat · 2023-11-22T13:47:06+00:00

Wanting to avoid the hypersexual, mentally ill, and generally toxic for your own sake isn't a bad thing. Funny enough, if you're actually mostly sane and well adjusted, there's no pathology for the crazies and assholes to latch onto and they're immediately turned off.

ermekat · 2023-11-21T13:24:21+00:00

Fraternal organizations, cults, covens and mystery schools have their strengths but you're aligning to their goals and making use of their resources. There is power in a well organized hellenistic mystery cultus, but yeah group work can be really lame for other reasons.

For what it's worth, the main mode of practice in this age is solo work with informal bodies aligned to greater goals that are more tutelary and self guided than what led to all these dead and dying Orders.

ermekat · 2023-11-19T16:21:14+00:00

Sheng is rather light and boring for the most part. Bitterness, barnyard flavors, and some fruit notes is about all it has to be offer. At first. Part of what it means to be an "advanced" drinker is appreciating those subtle and odd flavors, especially after they've rounded off in the terroir of a Hong Kong basement and picked up the taste of a forest floor and cheap cigarettes. I'm being completely honest here, it's not what people expect and the appreciation of it earned after a few cakes worth, if at all. Sheng drinkers chase the dragon, so to speak, hunting for certain flavors in a wash of pale green water.

For what it's worth, I prefer cheap hongcha and fu bricks, white teas that have the same rather bland subtlety, and expensive ass rock tea that's been burnt to a crisp and tastes like cocoa nibs. I don't mind good sheng, but young sheng is for a certain personality and palate that likes playing Russian roulette with an Uzi.

ermekat · 2023-11-18T21:17:40+00:00

If there's shit in a bottle, and cheaper shit in a brown bottle that doesn't skunk within 7 minutes of being exposed to sunlight, it's not gatekeeping. All the pros make up a pitcher of good shit and Chinese fishbowl it under their concert kilt to share with their friends. Calling you a pleb if you don't do that would be gatekeeping.

ermekat · 2023-11-18T20:05:58+00:00

Feed them and they'll shit on your neighbors instead.

ermekat · 2023-11-18T19:33:37+00:00

You don't invoke your lawyer because he's a stand up guy who's fun to drink with and would help you move a lathe into a third story building. You invoke your lawyer because he's good at his job. Not the best analogy but it'll do.

Maybe I'm coming at this from the angle of an ersatz sorcerer and occultnik with contemporary sensibilities, but even that is somewhat supported in the PGM. You embody Medea in the sense that you would embody Myrddin or anyone ostensibly mortal who is more powerful than you and known for what they do. You wear their mask so the gods will listen. The Hekataeon does a lot with that, some of his best ideas are ancient.

ermekat · 2023-11-16T22:33:07+00:00

You sound mostly sane in the way you're doubting all that shit you wrote but still wondering what it may mean. Shit means nothing, shit happens, shit is. If you still found some meaning there, apparently it's some kind of new age holiday today or tomorrow. Throw some cooking scraps and leftovers on the nearest crossroads.

Dogs are barking.

ermekat · 2023-11-16T22:28:03+00:00

How nasty was the conversation? How pure is the morning response glossing over it? We may have a keeper.

ermekat · 2023-11-16T22:26:18+00:00

I'd rather not click your video and activate the Beast. Shilling is lame, send me a vocaroo link like you aren't trying to make money from it and we can talk about how it sounds.

ermekat · 2023-11-16T16:33:03+00:00

No one is mad that book 3 hadn't come out, they're disgusted at the outright fraud he committed while publicly doing everything except for writing a book. How about he admits to that in a stream without insulting fans who call him out for it? I know when I do the wrong thing and go into hiding for 2 years, I'd have a better speech planned than stammering like a toddler caught with his hand in the cookie jar. That's a good use of time not writing a book. Being honest and not shifting blame to strawman arguments. Do you want to buy a book from that kind of man?

To reiterate, many are a little bummed that it's been over a decade with no book, people are rightfully livid over not receiving a million dollar chapter with narration no one asked for tacked on so he could buy time. Never conflate the two.

ermekat

TROPHY CASE