The Bombadil Option

No you paid money for a logo for your newsletter you don’t profit from and likely never will. I do feel a bit silly commissioning it, but I’m having a good time writing this every week so I thought I would treat myself.

Basically, this newsletter brings a bit of intentionality to my internet browsing because I have to think about what I’m scrolling past and whether or not it connects to anything else I’ve scrolled past recently. A good habit! Even if in reality my life would be better served by less scrolling, at least I can put the scrolling I already do to good use.

Despite the modest financial outlay, Modern Relics will continue to be free - I am literally not allowed to make money from this or else I am violating the terms of employment at my job!

But if you think you have a friend who’d appreciate the blend of religion and pop culture I do here, I’d encourage you to forward this email to them. I’m trying to get to 100 subscribers by the end of the year, purely for my own vanity.

Witches are hexing the Taliban..?

Further to when I wrote how the internet is for witchcraft, it looks like witches are now hexing the Taliban and using Reddit to share tips and coordinate their efforts.

It reminds me of 2017 when American witches cast a binding spell on Donald Trump, but this time around I’m getting kind of more of a teen vibe? Or maybe the whole thing is an elaborate troll on suckers like me?

Anyway, the cosmology these folks claim to have is interesting. Basically, everything is real, including Allah, but he is not untouchable - just very powerful.

Not to be disrespectful, but the talk of “power level” and healing crystals kind of sounds like they’re talking about a video game. Maybe there’s a PhD in how video game semiotics are influencing new religious movements.

The r/BewitchTheTaliban subreddit is only eight days old but has already been griefed into oblivion. The top post there at the moment is “I am Allah. Can you guys please stop hexing me? I'm in the middle of a bath.”

Other posts include “The taliban touched me in my no no zone” and “Complications in attempting to summon AOC as a succubus”.

So, yeah, I guess using the public internet to try and coordinate religious activity has its downsides too.

Check out this cheese nun

Eating cheese is a reminder of death, but also the promise of life beyond it. Memento mori!

The Bombadil Option

Sometimes there’s a post or meme I want to cover, but its reach is far too small - it’s not a trend of phenomenon, so why talk about it? However, there are things that crop up where the weird details are so specific to my corner of the internet, it ricochets around for days. So it is with this post:

The first thing you need to know: Tom Bombadil is a minor character from JRR Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. He pops up pretty consistently in all kinds of online spaces, I think because despite being one of the silliest characters in the story, he is paradoxically one of the most powerful beings in Middle Earth. It gives him a little x-factor.

He was also (justly, or unjustly!) removed from Peter Jackson’s cinematic adaptation of the trilogy. It means he’s got the runner-up effect going for him.

The second thing you need to know: Rod Dreher is a conservative Christian commentator who wrote The Benedict Option in 2017. He argues that secular culture is so out of step with Christianity, and many churches have become so weak and unsure of themselves, that virtuous Christians should withdraw to their strongholds and maintain traditional values.

He is highly respected, but his behaviour on Twitter draws criticism and ridicule on the site. For example, in one poorly-worded tweet he asks fellow Christian conservative Eric Metaxas, “would you piss on me, old friend?”

Tolkien was of course a Catholic, and a linguist, so his work remains popular with a subset of Christian Twitter (nerds who love languages). So when Plough Quarterly published this op-ed containing the phrase “The Bombadil Option” and (apparently?) got some Latin wrong - this was the reaction:

This is one of those things I don’t think I’ll ever be able to fully articulate why it was so amazing to see. It’s partly how the understated power and frivolous attitude of Tom Bombadil is compared with the over-seriousness of Rod Dreher and his obvious desire to win culture wars.

It’s also partly the Christian-adjacent nature of the whole thing, despite having nothing to do with Christianity proper, but it feels like a huge Christian in-joke.

I don’t know, but there you have it: A momentary, perfect crossing of the streams which (for this small community at least) became a perfect moment on the timeline.

All dogs are Christians and all cats are Muslims

And God loves them all and they all go to heaven :)

Doing virtual sacraments

Recently everyone’s been talking about Facebook’s incredibly boring and kind of hellish virtual office. In a paid post on Garbage Day, Ryan Broderick talks about how Horizon Workrooms just isn’t weird enough to succeed. If platforms like Second Life are anything to go by, people don’t want to be themselves, they want to be anime girls.

He also included a link to this 2019 video of a virtual baptism. I was trying to find an old interview with this same virtual pastor when I wrote about the “Catholic metaverse”, but couldn’t remember his name or anything - anyway here he is!

Here’s the same baptism from the anime girl’s point of view - it’s all kind of a joke to him, but the pastor talks about how it’s an accessible way for people with disabilities or who are curious about religion to attend church in an equitable way.

As a Chistain I don’t quite know what to do with this theologically, but I guess it’s kind-of-sort-of similar to video conference communion, which some denominations are allowing during the extraordinary time of COVID.

My own denomination, the Uniting Church in Australia, has an interesting discernment document which goes through reasoning for and against partaking in this extraordinary form of the sacrament (see attachments at the bottom of the page).

The ABC really said hail Satan

The last Jew in Afghanistan

Here’s a cracking read from Israeli outfit Haaretz about Zabulon Simantov, the last Jew in Afghanistan.

You’ve probably heard of this guy before due to his famous feud with the only other Jew in the country, who has now died. From Haaretz:

He became the country’s last Jew upon the death of Yitzhak Levi in 2005. The pair famously did not get along and in 1998 Levi wrote to the Taliban interior minister to accuse Simantov of theft of Jewish relics. Simantov retorted by telling the Taliban that Levi ran a secret brothel where he sold alcohol.

The Taliban was so annoyed by their constant fighting that they threw them in jail. But they eventually kicked them out when they continued to fight inside the prison.

He’s certainly an interesting figure, described in the article as “very stubborn, but also generous and quite fun”. He was offered evacuation from Afghanistan after the USA withdrew their military from the country, but he has refused - possibly because he didn’t want to abandon some debts he had incurred, or possibly because he didn’t want to give his wife (who lives in Israel) a divorce.