Corvismorelike00corvis - Corvis

Tumblr: Only neurotypical people do X. Neurodivergent people never do X. It's literally never necessary to do X, and if you do, you are by definition acting out of malice.

Neurodivergent person whose neurodivergence primarily expresses itself as X:

Nazis will never be welcome in paganism. They have no space in our communities, we will have a zero tolerance policy when it comes to nazis. You have no right to the cultures, gods and religions you hijack to spread your disgusting ideologies. You will find no refuge or comraderie amongst pagans.

Reblog to let nazis know they’re not welcome here.

I cannot believe there's absolutely no way to watch free shows and movies anymore, there are too many paid streaming platforms and pirating websites have viruses and ads preventing you from watching it uninterrupted((.)) id rather follow the rules and purchase media moving forward because it is too inconvenient. Seriously, free and no ads or viruses with 1080p streaming is DEAD.

It's kind of telling to see some of the exact same people who've cheerfully been making and/or circulating those "political action is supposed to be disruptive – if it was easy to ignore it wouldn't work!" posts turn around and jump on the "these Palestine fundraising requests making it mildly inconvenient to curate my Tumblr inbox must be part of some nefarious scheme" bandwagon. Like, disruption is good right up until the point it affects you personally, eh?

Nico: Dandelions symbolize everything I want to be in life

Percy: Fluffy and dead with a gust of wind?

Nico: Unapologetic. Hard to kill. Feral, filled with sunlight, bright, beautiful in a way that the conventional and controlling hate but cannot ever fully destroy. Stubborn. Happy. Bastardous. Friends with bees. Highly disapproving of lawns. Full of wishes that will be carried far after I die.

Will: edible

Folklore - Changelings

Warning - This post will briefly discuss infanticide, discrimination against people with physical and mental disabilities, and the physical abuse of children. Reader discretion is advised.

Please note that this is not the be all and end all account of Changelings. This is a vast and complex feature, one that I'd be naive to think I could fit into a single tumblr post.

What this will be is an introduction to the topic, heavily leaning on Dr Katharine Brigg's 'A Dictionary of Fairies: Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures', a wonderful book you can find here on the Internet Archives:

A Dictionary of Fairies: Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures

The other two main sources of information will be 'A Dictionary of English Folklore' by Jacqueline Simpson and Steve Roud, and 'Changling' by J. A. MacCulloch.

That all out of the way, let's explore the being known as the Changeling.

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An important concept to come to terms with when dealing with folk belief is this; It is far easier to believe there is a reason behind tragedy than that nature is without reason. Folklore gives an explanation for the unexplainable.

This does not mean our forefathers or contemporaries are or were less intelligent than we are today. We in the 21st century are not the peak of human development, one brief trip around any social media platform will show you we are not above fabrication for the sake of comfort.

For those already familiar with the concept of a Changeling, you may have found it odd that I use the word comfort here. Is it not comforting, though? To have something to blame for what was often seen as a misfortune?

Many of us live today in societies where assistance and support is given for the care and wellbeing of children and adults with disabilities. As a neurodivergent woman in the UK, I am afforded certain aids and accommodations in order to support my place in society. This did not exist in the past.

While not as wholly absent as is often portrayed in popular media, medicine as we understand it was a very different field, even just a little over 100 years ago.

The first x-ray under clinical conditions took place in Birmingham on the 11th of January 1896. The first neuroimaging technique used to look at the ventricular system in the brain was in America in 1918 where filtered air was injected into the lateral ventricles of the brain. The first use of neuroimaging to look at blood vessels within the brain was in Portugal in 1927. The first commercial ultrasound machine was not produced until 1963. The first not invasive CAT scan did not come about until 1973.

Dissection of deceased persons could be used to examine the body, but while the patient was living, medicine was almost entirely blind.

What does all this talk of medicine have to do with Changelings?

"In societies where the belief in fairies was strong, it was held that they could steal human babies and substitute one of their own race; the latter would never thrive, remaining small, wizened, mentally abnormal, and ill-tempered. A baby whose defects were not obvious at birth but appeared in the first year or two could thus be explained as not truly human."

Wilson and Round. A Dictionary of English Folklore. 2016

A Changeling was an individual, more often a child but not always, who was though to be an imposter, a fairy sneaked in and swapped for the human. While often associated with Gaelic regions today due to their strong tradition of fairy folklore, stories of Changelings can be found right across Europe, though their exact supposed parentage shifts from region to region.

A Changeling child (or adult) would be sickly, weak, often paralysed, fuss and cry incessantly, display erratic emotions, either refuse food or never cease from eating, be 'mentally and (or) physically deformed'.

The method for dealing with this 'imposter' individual is often to torment them into fleeing and returning the 'stolen' human. The recorded incidents of this range from the purely cruel to the absolutely horrific.

Warning the extracts below are not pleasant reading, you have been warned.

Briggs. A Dictionary of Fairies: Hobgoblins... 1976

Exposing in the above circumstance means to leave the child outside alone, either overnight, or for longer stretches of time until they perished, or in this circumstance the human baby was returned.

MacCulloch. Changling. 1908.

I hope I am stating the obvious here when I say that these children were not in any way shape or form anything but human children.

Some may have been suffering from infantile diseases and conditions such as infantile paralysis, some might have had Down's Syndrome, or been on the non-verbal part of the Autism Spectrum, or Epileptic, or suffered from a hearing impairment. The list of conditions and causes of what might have been seen as 'Changeling' behaviour could fill pages upon pages of text.

I believe at this point it is important to restate my initial point:

It is far easier to believe there is a reason behind tragedy than that nature is without reason. Folklore gives an explanation for the unexplainable.

These children were supposedly born 'normal' before 'changing'. When you remove all ability to examine what is happening within the human body, when you also remove the ability for individuals to communicate and share information quickly and easily over great distances, when you live in a time and place where there is no support at all for children and adults with additional needs, you are confronted with a set of pressures and desperations utterly unfamiliar to a large proportion of the readership of this post.

I am not in any way shape or form condoning what was done to these children. I aim only to give context, and describe circumstances surrounding these practices.

For more information I would like to direct you to the three sources mentioned above, as well as 'A History Of Intelligence And Intellectual Disability The Shaping Of Psychology In Early Modern Europe' by C.F. Goodey which can also be found on the Internet Archive here:

A History Of Intelligence And Intellectual Disability The Shaping Of Psychology In Early Modern Europe

I hope that proved informative, if not overly pleasant.

This is definitely not a google drive full of the sleep stuff from the Headspace app, including sleepcasts, music, and wind down meditation, that normally costs 17.99 a month, no siree and you definitely shouldnt share this with people

Source

This entire article is worth the read. Fuck Gilead