'The Stoakes-Whibley Natural Index of Supernatural Collective Nouns', by David Malki of Wondermark

That’s right. The WORST kind.

David P posted this a few weeks ago on Facebook, and I’m only just now getting around to posting it. Retrosexual David Malki has composed a list of fictional collective nouns for supernatural entities, and some of them are religious. I’ll let you work out which ones. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

I have one bone to pick with Malki, however, about some of his collectives. “A chimney of djinns”? Really? When the English ‘genie’ is so commonly known, which comes from the Arabic plural djinni?

It’s not all bad, though. I’m a big fan of “A solace of Babas Yaga”. As far as I know there’s only ever been one Baba Yaga, despite what some authors may assume. I also dig the pluralisation of the title, as in ‘Attorneys-General’. And let’s not even raise the hilarity of “An itself of Yahwehs”.

This also gives me an excuse to link to the blog of a colleague of mine, Fall of Mythos, which concerns religion and popular culture. In this post she discusses the various summonable deities in the Nintendo DS game Scribblenauts, which I’ve been dabbling in on-and-off myself.

David Malki ‘Supernatural Collective Nouns‘, Wondermark (30/10/09)

Kanyegate didn’t happen than two days ago, and it’s already spawned a healthy internet meme. As with most memes, some of these involves religious themes and imagery.

And because I’m a HUGE fan of Supernatural:

I heard rumblings along the inter-tracks about a religion based on the Twilight novels (and, I suppose, films), but a Google search just pulled up a bunch of pages that seem to stem from an Urban Dictionary post (wherein the original poster coined the term “Twiligion”).

The straighter-faced side of this stems from a thread at the forum Twilight Academy (which is inaccessible to non-members and no longer accepting new ones. They must have copped a lot of flack from Anti-Twilighters or “Antis”, as their opponents the “Twihards” call them). Calling their ideology “Cullenism” (after the lead vampire character, Edward Cullen and his vampiric ‘family’), it seems to have arisen when one of the posters half-jokingly suggested they cement their Twilight obsession by creating a religion based on the moral code followed by Edward and the Cullens (now THAT’S a bad emo band just waiting to happen). I’ll post some extracts here in full, because they’re no longer easily accessbile:

Just like any other religion, we have beliefs and values. Each belief may take on more importance for one person than it may for another, there is no wrong way to decide which beliefs are more important than others. So here are the main Cullenism beliefs, however, this list is not a limit to what you can believe in when it comes to the Cullenism religion, Cullenists are a welcoming and caring group of people, and we will accept any other Cullenism beliefs you may have!

These are our beliefs (in no certain order).

As a Cullenist we believe:
* Edward and the rest of the Twilight characters are real
* Stephenie Meyer is the (or one of the) best author(s)
* The twilight series should be worshiped
* If you are good in life, you will be bless with eternity with the Cullens, if you are bad in life, you will be sent to James’ cave

A later post added some more:

In the grand scheme of Cullenism, there are four gods and now four goddesses that we pray to; Edward, Bella, Carlisle, Esme, Jasper, Alice, Emmett and Rosalie, each god can (and probably will) have a different significance to each Cullenist. However, each Cullen god is unique in his or her own way.

Edward is the god of protection, chivalry and game.
Bella is the god of Insecurities, Closure and beginnings
Carlisle is the god of health and prosperity.
Esme is the god of care and compassion.
Jasper is the god of war, stradegy and educational pursuit.
Alice is the god of fashion, fun and love.
Emmett is the god of strength, friendliness and happiness.
Rosalie is the god of beauty and grace.

In turn, each god/godess can be prayed to for different reasons, at differnt times, some, you may pray to regularly, others on occasion. Each god is equally as amazing as the next. There may be different reason you pray to a certain one, whether it’s because you’re part of their house, or because they’re your favorite Cullen, or perhaps it’s because you’re in need of their specific guidence.

*Each god/godess will eventually have their own lesson and a few prayers, feel free to pm me your suggestions!*

Hopefully, this was a resourceful and provided some good information. May the Cullens bless you, may the road rise to meet you, may the wind be ever at your back, may the sun shine warm upon your face and the rain fall soft upon your fields.

It seems clear from this that the Cullenites approach this production with a certain amount of playfulness, and remain constantly self-conscious of the artificial origin of their system. There have even been attempts to establish a weekly “Twichurch“. From their page:

Christianity has grown exponentially from it’s beginnings, it has reached many people all over the world. If you have seen from personal experience then you can tell that some people have taken their religious beliefs to extremes, either within themselves or within their community. Some take it upon themselves to know every detail of the Bible,every single aspect of the religion. And then some just follow what they have been taught by others, they don’t think it even necessary to read further into it. There are ignorant people out there who don’t take the liberty in trying to find the true meaning behind their worship, but then there are people who find the meaning and enjoy it within themselves.

Twilight has reached a point like this. Ultimately we are going to be faced with many different people with very different aspects of their personality’s that view Twilight should be worshiped in different ways. Some people aren’t reader’s so they watch the movie, some people don’t like movie’s so they never even give the film a shot. It’s like celebrating your religion only at your home and not going to church or mass. That is perfectly fine to do. When someone believes in Jesus and chooses not to read the Bible, it is their own way of following their faith. Just as many other people will see Twilight in many different ways. They will either watch the movie, read the series, or skim over the books and watch the film. At the bottom line of it all, Twilight will be known through different mediums and the people of our planet will set forth and find the tellings of the story in different forms. Cullenism is growing.

Perhaps unsurprisingly – given the amount of hatred there is directed at the Twilight phenomenon and its comparable legion of teenaged fans – a Google search generates more hits for sites antithetical to Cullenism than those in favour of it. That said, there are some funny pictures out there. I found the above image on Anti site Frozen Sparkles.

[For a recent paper on Twilight and Mormonism, see: Massimo Introvigne 'New/Old Mormon Family Values: Italian Reactions to Big Love and Twilight', paper presented at the 2009 CESNUR Conference, Salt Lake City Utah, 12th of June, 2009:]

A fluff piece on the Harry Potter Alliance, who follow the ancient moral code laid down for Harry by Professor Dumbledore in the Harry Potter books. This seems more an ethical than religious group, who have donated 13,000 books to the community (Potter, perchance?) and US$15,000 to genocide intervention in Darfur. Their teachings are more metaphysical, however, and some lessons treat resurrection and the soul. I wonder what their angle on J.K. Rowling, Tracey Ullman and copyright is?

I’ve been meaning to read Adam Possamai’s (UWS) book Religion and Popular Culture for some time now, having picked it up a while back considerably reduced from its launch price. He talks about (shock horror!) religions derived from pop culture artefacts such as films like Star Wars and The Matrix. I’ll let you know when I do.

Bibliography
Adam Possamai Religion and Popular Culture: A Hyper-Real Testament (Gods, Humans and Religions 7), P.I.E.-Peter Lang, Brussels, 2005

Last week ABC Radio’s ‘Lingua Franca’ programme interviewed Martin Grondin, founder of the LOLcat Bible wiki. Grodin is a software engineer who served more as editor and abritrator than translator on the project. Grodin describes himself as coming from a religious background, although his faith lapsed some time ago. He still balks, however, at the idea of reading the crucifixion narrative in LOLspeak. The word “blasphemy” is bandied around.

It also seems strange that he considers the Bible (in English) to be a fixed work, and his wiki to be part of a new, more open text. Evidently he isn’t aware of there are one or two other English translations of the Bible out there.

The receptionist at a school in Devon may face dismissal for misconduct after she allegedly made claims against the school and its staff. Jennie Cain’s 5-year-old daughter was reprimanded by a teacher after she was overheard discussing Jesus and Heaven with a class-mate. She met her mother in tears after school, who subsequently approached the teacher to discuss it outside school hours, and thus in her capacity as a parent rather than a fellow staff member.

The next day she was called into the principal’s office, ostensibly for another reason but the incident involving her daughter was soon raised. “He started talking about my daughter about how he wasn’t happy about her making statements about her faith”, she said. “At that point I froze, I felt very small and I felt trapped as I was a junior member of staff.”

Feeling intimidated, Mrs Cain sent an email that weekend from her home computer to ten church-going friends, requesting that they pray for her family, the church and the school. A few days later she was summoned again to the principal’s office who, armed with a printed copy of the email, accused her of making allegations against the school and its staff to members of the public. He refused to tell her how he obtained the email and, while not suspending her, initiated an investigation into the matter to be conducted by two of the school’s governors, who would gather statements and contact witnesses. She was informed possible disciplinary action may include dismissal.

Mrs Cain is bewildered by these events, especially as the school celebrates Christmas with carols, and observes the Hindu festival of Divali. She described herself as a “quiet Christian” who would never force her beliefs upon others. Recently a nurse, Caroline Petrie, was suspended for two months after offering to pray for a patient. She was finally allowed back to work last week.

Her case is being supported by the Christian Institute, a spokesman for whom, Mike Judge, views this sort of nonsense as “persecution” of Christians. Perhaps a more pertinent question is how the school was able to obtain a copy of a personal email. The ten recipients were all members of Mrs Cain’s church and, presumably, sympathetic to her cause and thus unlikely to forward it to the principal. This sort of invasion of privacy seems to me much more of a worry than the “public” allegations she stands accused of, which were really just a private concern sent to a few friends in the form of a prayer request.

via Caroline Gammell ‘Primary school receptionist “facing sack” after daughter talks about Jesus to classmate‘, The Daily Telegraph (UK).

I’ve just been informed of another Cthulhu/Chick tract. Readers may remember this other one from a few months back.

It’s been a while between drinks and I needed somewhere to host this pic so I could forward it to a few people, so I thought I’d make a new post.

It’s one of the more appropriate coincidences in life that the sort of people who are amused by Jack Chick’s evangelical comics are also into the stark cosmic horror of H. P. Lovecraft and, indeed, the fire and brimstone myopia of Chick’s God has much in common with the rather impersonal world-devouring hunger of a Cthulhu, or Nyarlathotep. So it’s perhaps unsurprising that someone did a Cthulhu mythos parody of a Chick tract.

Interestingly, when I tried to find the original site and artist Google gave me a dead link. Thank heavens for Google Cache, who even still only produce Howard Hallis’ (the artist’s) apology for having removed the original comic. Apparently he took it down due to “legal stuff”, although he opened the page to comments by readers. Most of these revolve around astonishment that the parody was not protected from accusations of copyright violation by the provisions of fair use, and I find myself similarly amazed. Undoubtedly the more flush Chick had his lawyers issue Hallis with a general ‘cease and desist’ notice, and Hallis chose not to contest it in court even though he should have won. Chick just went up a notch on my dodginess scale.

The offending comic:

Christmas is as good a time as any to point people towards the LOLcat Bible. For anyone unfamiliar with the ideas of LOLcats, here is a link and an example:

The LOLcat Bible comes after such colloquialisations (is that a word? It is now) as the Cockney Bible and Australian copycat the Aussie Bible.

I’m sorely tempted to get one of their T-shirts, probably the Matt. 3.13-15 extract.

PS: In my Googlings to find the above links, I came across the Blue Letter Bible, a hyperlinked Bible that is simultaneously a clever pun on the more traditional Red Letter Bible. That’s just the sort of thing I’m going for on this blog.