The Map Collector

Current Mood: cold
Current Location: House in the woods at the edge of town
Current Music: The Space Vixen Twitch stream

abwatt

Capricorn I "The Headless Body" begins on 21 December 2025 at 10:03 am EST. This is the moment that the Sun's apparent course across the sky arrives at its southernmost point — and brings the shortest day and longest night of the Northern Hemisphere. What healing are you trying to activate as the year ends? https://andrewbwatt.com/2025/12/20/capricorn-i-2025-the-headless-body/

Current Mood: hungry
Current Location: House in the woods at the edge of town
Current Music: Star Wars: The Old Republic

Current Mood: hungry
Current Location: House in the woods at the edge of town
Current Music: Tinderly Twitch stream

Current Mood: hungry
Current Location: House in the woods at the edge of town
Current Music: Star Wars: The Old Republic

Note: I am still unhappy with my posting methodology. In order to make things work the way that I think that they should work rather than how they are currently configured I will be trying different things make this happen (plan on some cursing)

OK: I do read a certain group of folks out there who blog and consider their work worthwhile and not completely nutso. But I am uncertain concerning just how many nickels I should drop into their cups for their writing.

You see, scribbling on the walls of the internet has become a career field. It is joined by the new and (at least to me) slightly nauseating cousin the Podcast. I tend to steer away from podcasts because I kind of tire of actually using my ears to sort out fact from fiction. It takes the written word for me to take something seriously, podcasts are roughly akin to cocktail party conversations, the emphasis seems to be on the person delivering the information rather than the information itself.

I have been blogging for almost twenty years now. At one time, I thought that I might actually make some nickels doing it, but upon mature reflection I decided that my thoughts or my literary output weren't all that particularly impressive and I wasn't made out for a career of starving artist type garret in the Rive Gauche. In light of this reality, I landed here on Dreamwidth writing a diary and having a few buddies to talk to about writing.

But there are some folks out there who write sufficiently well that I feel obliged due to my apparently embedded catholic guilt to throw some nickels their way. I am mentally compiling a list and will leave a little something in their stockings around Christmas. I am leaving JMG off this list because I feel that my ongoing purchases of his books (27 to date) give me a lifetime subscription to his online scribblings, of course, his opinion might differ.

I will consider this problem while sitting down and gazing out at the dull gray skies of Portlandia.

ecosophia

As I noted a little while back, I will be in New York City this coming weekend, and plan to meet readers and friend who happen to be nearby on the evening of Saturday, December 20. We've got a place lined up -- Walker's Bar in Tribeca, at 16 N Moore Street (website) -- and a time -- I'll be arriving there right around 6 pm on Saturday. I look forward to seeing people there!

Current Mood: cheerful
Current Music: Will Ackerman, "The Wall and the Wind"

Current Mood: busy
Current Location: House in the woods at the edge of town
Current Music: Rhaco_dactylus Twitch stream

I am definitely not feeling especially "Christmas-ey" this year. In honesty, the Christmas spirit has been vanishing for years now, but it is at the point where I start to wonder if the absence really bothers me.

The family is trying to tine down the greed component of the holiday this year. We finally achieved an agreement where the adults each only get a present through the "secret Santa" system and the newest (21 months) gets her presents from everyone.

I suppose that my feeling towards this particular holiday have been deteriorating for decades now. Even the heretic that I was in my youth, I did enjoy the rituals of midnight mass and dinners and family all in one place. But over time, the society/culture here in 'Murca transitioned from a religious holiday to a commercial one and I really can't say that I appreciate the change very much.

So right now I am struggling with deciding a gift for the exchange and trying to figure out what to buy a toddler who has everything (and more) that a toddler would want.

Current Mood: hungry
Current Location: House in the woods at the edge of town
Current Music: Tinderly Twitch stream

I suppose that if I were a nervous Nellie, right now I would be beside myself, but oddly enough, I can't really say that I am all that worried about things.

I am currently in the area of a flood watch. Since it has been bucketing down rain lately, the Willamette is pretty high and the creek that feeds into it (1/4 of a mile from my place) is as high as I have ever seen it, this would seem pretty normal to me. The folks here are treating it like the ass-covering by government officials that it is. There isn't a house that is threatened, the worse that could happen is that in a couple of places, folks might have to detour around some water on the road while on their way to the grocery store.

Look, the government should do exactly what they are doing...I really don't want to keep them from warning people that things are "different" for the moment. But like all things, such warnings should be tempered by the populace keeping their "twitterpating" over-reactions to a minimum. That seems impossible to a fair percentage of the population. So here in Stumptown (yet another Portland Nickname) there are folks demanding that the government "do something".

Nope, I have no fix. People will be people. Bad shit happens and sometimes folks get in the way of bad shit. Luckily for me, the whiners this time are a very small minority and I don't have to listen very much. But I just wanted to point out that this kind of thing happens at all levels and that you really have to look outside to see if the "crisis" that folks are whining about is real or just someone somewhere crying wolf.

[purple with bee.jpg]

ecosophia

We are now into the fifth year of these open posts. When I first posted a tentative hypothesis on the course of the Covid phenomenon, I had no idea that discussion on the subject would still be necessary all these years later, much less that it would turn into so lively, complex, and troubling a conversation. Still, here we are. Crude death rates and other measures of collapsing public health remain anomalously high in many countries, but nobody in authority wants to talk about the inadequately tested experimental Covid injections that are the most likely cause; ~~public health authorities~~ government shills for the pharmaceutical industry are still trying to push through laws that will allow them to force vaccinations on anyone they want; public trust in science is collapsing; new revelations are leaking out about just how bad the Covid vaccines are for human health; and the story continues to unfold.

So it's time for another open post. The rules are the same as before:

1. If you plan on parroting the party line of the medical industry and its paid shills, please go away. This is a place for people to talk openly, honestly, and freely about their concerns that the party line in question is dangerously flawed and that actions being pushed by the medical industry and its government enablers are causing injury and death on a massive scale. It is not a place for you to dismiss those concerns. Anyone who wants to hear the official story and the arguments in favor of it can find those on hundreds of thousands of websites.

2. If you plan on insisting that the current situation is the result of a deliberate plot by some villainous group of people or other, please go away. There are tens of thousands of websites currently rehashing various conspiracy theories about the Covid-19 outbreak and the vaccines. This is not one of them. What we're exploring is the likelihood that what's going on is the product of the same arrogance, incompetence, and corruption that the medical industry and its wholly owned politicians have displayed so abundantly in recent decades. That possibility deserves a space of its own for discussion, and that's what we're doing here.

3. If you plan on using rent-a-troll derailing or disruption tactics, please go away. I'm quite familiar with the standard tactics used by troll farms to disrupt online forums, and am ready, willing, and able -- and in fact quite eager -- to ban people permanently for engaging in them here. Oh, and I also lurk on other Covid-19 vaccine skeptic blogs, so I'm likely to notice when the same posts are showing up on more than one venue.

4. If you plan on making off topic comments, please go away. This is an open post for discussion of the Covid epidemic, the vaccines, drugs, policies, and other measures that supposedly treat it, and other topics directly relevant to those things. It is not a place for general discussion of unrelated topics. Nor is it a place to ask for medical advice; giving such advice, unless you're a licensed health care provider, legally counts as practicing medicine without a license and is a crime in the US. Don't even go there.

5. If you don't believe in treating people with common courtesy, please go away. I have, and enforce, a strict courtesy policy on my blogs and online forums, and this is no exception. The sort of schoolyard bullying that takes place on so many other internet forums will get you deleted and banned here. Also, please don't drag in current quarrels about sex, race, religions, etc. No, I don't care if you disagree with that: my journal, my rules.

6. Please don't just post bare links without explanation. A sentence or two telling readers what's on the other side of the link is a reasonable courtesy, and if you don't include it, your attempted post will be deleted.

7. Please don't post LLM ("AI") generated text. This is a place for human beings to talk to other human beings, not for the regurgitation of machine-generated text. Also, please don't discuss large language models (the technology popularly and inaccurately called "artificial intelligence" these days) except as they bear directly on the Covid phenomenon. Here again, my finger is hovering over the delete button.

Please also note that nothing posted here should be construed as medical advice, which neither I nor the commentariat (excepting those who are licensed medical providers) are qualified to give. Please take your medical questions to the licensed professional provider of your choice.

With that said, the floor is open for discussion.

Current Mood: groggy
Current Music: Mason Williams, "Classical Gas"

kimberlysteele

The hospital of the future starts out in a private home. Perhaps it is the practice of a nurse who goes rogue and quietly treats sprains, fractures, and broken bones out of her basement. Maybe it is a doula who brings babies into the world in her living room. Maybe it is a doctor, thrown out on his rear by establishment medicine for his anti-vaccine views, putting patients in sitz baths and administering poultices and quietly curing breast cancer. The workers in these proto-hospitals will be paid in cash and favors, trading their herbal remedies for your ability to frame a wall; their rehabilitation of your sick father for a year of childcare. These exercises in trust will be invisible and untaxable. They will be hated by decrepit, disintegrating governments who need you to stay as sick as possible for as long as possible in order to fund their corporate donors. They will also be the only way for the non-filthy-rich to access any reasonable form of healthcare.

The house always wins

The medical system of today does not heal. Going to any hospital, rehab center, doctor’s office, or nursing home to get healthy is like going to the casino to win money. Your belief in success does not affect the outcome. The house doles out some money and prizes every now and then to keep the gamblers placated. Overall, the casino does not want you to win and you do not win. They want you to spend as much as possible during your visit and they want you to return again and again. My husband used to work at a local casino and though he does his best to ignore woo woo things, he said the vibe was crushingly awful. Despair, panic, and hopelessness clung to the walls and floors of the overlarge, rambling, and cavernous gambling house. I went in there a couple of times. The psychic miasma of decay, desperation, and leaden melancholy of the casino was downright impressive. If I was more clairvoyant than clairsentient, I would have seen a dark and steaming husk of a structure weeping ghosts like pus out of open sores. The casino reminded me a great deal of the hospital. Same vibe, same odds of wealth recovery.

The hospital of the future will be the opposite of the casino-hospitals where my grandparents, aunt, and father died. First, the size will not be as large as the labyrinthine, Winchester mansion-style barracks that dot every medium to large sized American town. Instead, the hospital will be a former church, temple, or mosque staffed by monks, nuns, priests, and priestesses who live on or near the premises. Great care will go into the design and restoration of the hospital’s reclaimed buildings. No longer will they look like boxy carbuncles or Borg ships. They will be beautiful, symmetrical, and in harmony with the landscape. The arch, the strongest and most life-affirming shape in nature, will be repeated both outside and inside the lovely campus.

Hell: you are here

Right now, we are in the painful, frustrating pangs of a rough birth into a new age where we belatedly figure out how badly we have been had. Science has discarded its original goals of proof through honest experimentation and is currently a grab bag of favorable outcomes for cheaters and narcissists. Religion is no better. Its experts pound tables with great zeal, echoing their scientific “enemies”. Both scientist and preacher insists that we live in a dead world, and that we should show our hatred of nature by dominating every last bit of it. When some random witch has the gall to talk about herbs or of daily acts of humility such as cleaning your own toilets and floors, church ladies and men of science alike clutch their pearls in furious indignation. They see malefic witches everywhere, yet they are malefic witches themselves.

The old ways are dying hard at the moment, and that is why millions are still paying into the medical insurance grift that bleeds them dry and offers only suffering, debt, and ruin in return. One day, this will no longer be the case.

The hospital of the future is first and foremost a religious center. As the beating heart of its town, the hospital is more important than the train depot or the post office. Church services are offered 24/7 and the doors are always open to the repentant needy. Earnestness, not tithing, is its currency. In the hospital of the future, there is no question that all healing is spiritual work. Those unwilling to do spiritual work are turned away, no matter how fat their wallets or how generous their bribes. Before you walk in the door of the hospital of the future, you agree to take on the task of daily discursive meditation. You also agree to spend a good chunk of every day in prayer. When you are well enough, you will work in and around the hospital according to your skills and abilities. The first goal of the hospital for its patients is to court the Divine, and they are more than happy to help. They do not care what god or Gods are worshipped as long as patients prove themselves via the universal virtues of humility and diligence. Patients must amplify the gratitude and generosity within until those two kinds of magic become an overwhelming, healing force. It goes without saying that nobody is ever admitted to the hospital against their will. The hospital does not waste its resources trying to heal the unwilling.

People die in the hospital. Their poor, mortal bodies become too overwhelmed by age, injury, or infirmity. The hospital has dedicated staff to help people cross over who intimately understand the dynamics of the after-death soul process. They don’t have to guess about what happens when we die like today’s hospice workers and pastors; they actually know. The holy men and and women of the hospital act as lliasons as patients prepare to reunite with their deceased loved ones and pets. They sing hymns and prayers to call down angels. Death is a joyous experience at the hospital, but there is no rush to get there due to greed for a bed or efficiency quotas. The mindset of the hospital is that death is a natural consequence of life. Neither should death be forcefully hurried along nor should life be extended through ghastly experimentation. The spiritual illiteracy and fear of death is a thing of the past. Those who cross over at the hospital have blessed and smooth transitions, unlike the human warehouses/nursing homes of today. Instead of mini-hells of astral confusion and end of life horror, the hospital will respect dying patients and surround them with love. In our era, the newly dead are shuttled out of incarnation in ignorance and confusion; in theirs, there is knowledge and tranquility.

The hospital of the future is a fountain of etheric renewal unsullied by profit motives. Hospitals today are etheric deserts, with no beauty to replenish tired hearts and no flow of wealth that is not immediately gobbled up by greedy insurance reps and high-level administrators. In the hospital of the future, however, food is handcrafted in small batches, often using assistance from the patient’s own loved ones in the kitchen to add etheric power. There is no place in the hospital for cafeteria slop, and the private equity CEOs who lorded over the grotesque school-prison fare of our era will long since have been hung from underpasses by their necks. Cooks are trained in programs that combine etheric techniques from medieval treatises, Ayurveda, and traditional Chinese medicine. Some hospitals will be world-renowned for their cuisine, despite it being tailored to individual patients.

No hospital of the future will have televisions or electronic devices. When such devices are found on the premises, they will be immediately confiscated, if not destroyed.

The spirit of place

Like the days of old, hospitals will be situated on or near natural wonders such as hot springs whenever possible so patients can take the waters. Hospitals will be surrounded by fabulous gardens, functioning potagers, and lush copses of trees. Much of treatment will involve being outside, especially in fair or sunny weather. The supposedly-ignorant medics of yesteryear understood sunlight heals all. Remedies for acute inflammation, i.e. cancer, will not involve radioactive cocktails of poisonous chemicals. Instead, herbs will be incorporated into the patient’s food and drink. He will be taken outside daily, bathed at least once a day, and encouraged to laugh. When inside, he will be surrounded by indoor plants to improve the etheric force as well as the air inside his room. He will be counseled and encouraged by the hospital staff and he will take part in group prayers.

Healing is not all that complicated, but in our era of spiritual retardation and etheric starvation, it is almost impossible to attain. The hospital of the future will stick by a couple of utterances by Hippocrates: 1. Let food be thy medicine and let medicine be thy food and 2. First, do no harm. These sayings will be engraved in stone in the sanctuary, the recovery rooms, and the very threshold. Other revered sayings will come from the god Apollo: Everything in moderation and Know thyself.

We cannot conceive of the healing potency contained within the hospital of the future because we are a long way off from reclaiming that knowledge. Nevertheless, everyone has got to start somewhere, and every time we choose to work with nature and not against it, when we understand that death is not the end, and that prevention is the best cure in alignment with the Divine, we are on our way.

I am going to be taking a writing break and Ogham break until January 5. Thank you so much for understanding and have a happy Yuletide.

‘Keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down’ – Nato’s first Secretary General, Lord Ismay,

I come from a long line of soldiers. One of my ancestors died in a British POW camp during the war of 1812. Great-Grandfather was in the 15th Infantry when Teddy took all the credit. Grandfather was at Chateau Thierry with the 3rd Infantry. Dad waded ashore at Anzio.

So most of my family history in the military (I am the exception) was spent fighting the different flavors of the fractious Europe who were always trying above all to come out on top when trying to keep their feet on the neck of vassals. We tended to side with the effing Brits who were, in my humble opinion, the worst of the lot.

But my reading of history is that the Germans were pretty good at war. In my lifetime, they had decided that war was bad for business and the happiness of their people and for around seventy years trying to spend less on the military and spend more on the general welfare. I consider this a good thing.

But dumbshit Donny got to bitching about the US paying more than their fair share of the cost of defending Europe. He was right about that. But by being a stupid-ass American businessman who financialized everything without ever thinking about the reasons why things were done, he upset things and pulled the rug out from under a system where we didn't really pay all that much to keep the danger low.

Merz (who may be a stupid as Donny) has pointed out that America is in the process of pulling back to the Western Hemisphere. I can't say that he is wrong. But what that means is that Deutschland may very well begin to rearm and revert to the historic norm of being a warrior culture. I am not thrilled this, my family having fought a couple of wars with the Wehrmacht on the other side of the arena.

The wienies that are at the political top of the European military establishment are besuited morons that truly have been living in Olaf's garden for too long. They are talking about getting ready for a war in 2030. Germany is talking about a draft. I can't say that I like the way that this is heading.

I decided to save this video for next year.

Current Mood: busy
Current Location: House in the woods at the edge of town
Current Music: Tinderly Twitch stream

ecosophia

It's almost midnight and so it's time to launch a new Magic Monday. Ask me anything about occultism, and with certain exceptions noted below, any question received by midnight Monday Eastern time will get an answer. Please note: Any question or comment received after that point will not get an answer, and in fact will not be put through. If you're in a hurry, or suspect you may be the 341,928th person to ask a question, please check out the very rough version 1.3 of The Magic Monday FAQ here.

Also: I will not be putting through or answering any more questions about practicing magic around children. I've answered those in simple declarative sentences in the FAQ. If you read the FAQ and don't think your question has been answered, read it again. If that doesn't help, consider remedial reading classes; yes, it really is as simple and straightforward as the FAQ says. And further: I've decided that questions about getting goodies from spirits are also permanently off topic here. The point of occultism is to develop your own capacities, not to try to bully or wheedle other beings into doing things for you. I've discussed this in a post on my blog.

(The image? I've finished the sequence of my published books; while I decide what I want to do next, I have some memes to share.)

Buy Me A Coffee

Ko-Fi

I've had several people ask about tipping me for answers here, and though I certainly don't require that I won't turn it down. You can use either of the links above to access my online tip jar; Buymeacoffee is good for small tips, Ko-Fi is better for larger ones. (I used to use PayPal but they developed an allergy to free speech, so I've developed an allergy to them.) If you're interested in political and economic astrology, or simply prefer to use a subscription service to support your favorite authors, you can find my Patreon page here and my SubscribeStar page here.

I've also had quite a few people over the years ask me where they should buy my books, and here's the answer. Bookshop.org is an alternative online bookstore that supports local bookstores and authors, which a certain gargantuan corporation doesn't, and I have a shop there, which you can check out here. Please consider patronizing it if you'd like to purchase any of my books online.

And don't forget to look up your Pangalactic New Age Soul Signature at CosmicOom.com.

~~With that said, have at it!~~

***This Magic Monday is now closed, and no further comments will be put through. See you next week!***

Current Mood: determined
Current Music: R. Carlos Nakai, "The West"

I saved this image, used for the first version of the preview image for 'The Last of Us' wins Best Adaptation at The Game Awards, then decided to replace it with one I liked better.

Current Mood: cold
Current Location: House in the woods at the edge of town
Current Music: Potentialbliss Twitch stream

kimberlysteele

Fairbanks, Alaska

Hi Everyone,

I am on an Ogham and writing break until January 8. Thanks for understanding as I refresh the well of inspiration and celebrate Alban Arthuan/Yule/Christmas.

I recently bought a new car after my 20 year old Toyota Scion XA became too expensive to maintain. It was a very emotional and heart-rending experience. I was extremely attached to my old car, which I named Carla somewhere along the way. We never had an accident. She did have hail damage, dinged up hubcaps, and a busted mirror. I wrote several songs in Carla, including songs from my Dream of Flight album and Somewhere in Time, which I wrote driving by my local Target. She was more of a pet than a car, though when we started out in 2006, she was just a car. She did not change -- I simply learned that everything is alive over that 20 years and recognized her as a consciousness. Giving her up feels a great deal like losing a beloved pet.

Because I don't know all that much magic, I said goodbye to Carla by taking her to the forest preserve and doing the Sphere of Protection in the car -- obviously I could not move around but I did my best. I even burned incense in the confines of the car, windows open of course. I have shed many tears over her and I am deeply grateful for all of our years together. I wish I had the automotive expertise to repair her on my own. I tried hard to conceive of ways to keep her. Sadly I do not have the time or the space and I feel a great deal of guilt and sorrow over it, with worry that she might be frightened or sad even though "she" is a car. I traded her in for my new car, another small subcompact who I have named Asami.

May the gods bless Carla forever in whatever future form she takes.

This Open Post is open to anonymous commenters, but I do see the IP address of all commenters, so please keep that in mind. Like JMG's Ecosophia blogs, I'm not friendly to swear words worse than bitch unless it truly makes sense and belongs there. Also, I don't respond to what I perceive as trolling. Other than that, please have at it. I appreciate your comments and interactions.

methylethyl

If you've ever read the Old Testament you'll know there are a lot of seriously weird stories in there. Your Sunday School curricula skipped a lot. Not that I blame them. Remember that episode where Joseph's brothers are out moving their flocks, and some dudes from Shechem kidnap their sister Dinah (Leah's daughter, and apparently the only girl in the family). She's raped by the son of the local petty king, who then petitions Jacob her father to let his son marry her. Her brothers then trick the rapist and his whole household into getting circumcized, and while they're in pain, they storm the place, kill everybody, and rescue Dinah.

That one's tricky to tell to first-graders.

Anyway, another such story is that of Tamar. One of Joseph's other brothers, Judah, arranges a marriage between Tamar and his son Er. Er died without children, so Judah pushed Tamar onto his next son, Onan. The idea was, if Onan could father a son on Tamar, then that son would inherit Er's estate, just as though he had been Er's biological child (yay Levirate marriage). It was a way of preserving inheritance lines. Anyway, Onan refused to impregnate Tamar, probably because as long as Tamar remained childless, he was in line to inherit his dead brother's estate. Tamar, frustrated, takes matters into her own hands: she dresses up like a hooker, hangs out by the roadside waiting for her father-in-law Judah, propositions him, and gets pregnant with his child. She demands some of his personal possessions in payment (ring, necklace, and staff), and later produces them as proof that Judah is the father so she doesn't get burned alive (penalty for adultery).

The various explanations I've run across for the significance of this story, over the years, are... inadequate at best. Tamar is generally regarded as the heroine of this story. She was not afforded her rights as a widow, and she found a way to get them by subterfuge. IIRC she is in the bloodline of Christ, and one of the few women recorded therein, so the ancients must've thought it very important also. In the genealogies you have generation upon generation of man begat man begat man begat man, with the occasional Sarai, Rebecca, Leah, Rachel, and Tamar thrown in. They're not accidental. Nothing survives millenia in a narrative like this without a reason. It always felt like there was something very uncomfortably missing.

Recently, I ran across a mention of the Book of Jubilees, and read it. Thought to be written down maybe first or second century BC, and more importantly... seems to have been generally accessible to, and read by, the early Christians. It purports to be the account of one of The Watchers (an angel) given direct to Moses while he was up on the holy mountain. There are references to it in the New Testament. It is a fairly short read, it covers the same ground as Genesis and part of Exodus, from the Creation to Moses, but from an oddly different angle-- it skims over a lot of the details covered in the Bible version, and adds a lot of detail of its own, such as the names of wives and daughters, people's relative ages, a very detailed account of the death of Abraham, lots of stuff. And, interestingly, it holds up a lens under which quite a lot of weird-sounding things in the OT come into crisp focus: bloodlines. Is this a right and correct way to interpret the stories? Is the information accurate? I don't know. But early Christians seemed to take this additional account for granted. There are a lot of Bible-conspiracy-theory types who get really hung up on the very brief mentions of the Rephaim (giants) in here. That, IMO, is one of the least interesting things going on in the text.

In the Jubilees iteration of things, certain people (Lot, Esau, Canaan) are marked out, along with all their descendants, for destruction. They're all going to be rooted out of the earth like weeds, at some point in the future, and it's imperative that the people of God's Covenant, Jacob and his descendants, not intermarry with them. It's repeated over and over: don't marry Canaanite women! It doesn't seem to be a religious thing. There's still the insistence that worshiping idols is forbidden, but at the same time, Jacob marries Leah and Rachel, whose father Laban worships idols (we know this because Rachel steals them when the family leaves Laban's household: WTF Rachel?). But Leah** and Rachel are the right bloodline, so everything's fine. It's not even imperative that they marry inside the extended tribe-- Jacob married an Egyptian woman, Asenath (in Jubilees, she is Potiphar's daughter: but also Potiphar is a eunuch so I am confused about the definition of 'eunuch' here!*), and this seems to have been fine also.

But Caananites are marked out for destruction because Canaan appropriated land that was given to one of his uncles by Noah. This is taboo. Lot earned that curse by procreating with his daughters. Esau... well, all his wives were Canaanite women, so his family doesn't make the cut.

So what does this have to do with Tamar?

She's from an approved family background (from the daughters of Aram). But Er and Onan aren't. Out of Jacob's twelve sons, who are destined to be the founders of the twelve tribes of Israel (ok, not Reuben because he slept with his father's concubine), they all marry women from approved family lines except Judah and Simeon. Jubilees says these two married Canaanite women (gasp!). Simeon regrets this and then marries a proper wife. But that still leaves Judah, polluting the family tree. He has three sons with his Canaanite wife. By the logic of Jubilees, all his offspring are now marked out for destruction. There's no way his sons can become the Tribe of Judah. Er dies childless (he was wicked and the lord slew him), after rejecting Tamar (because he wants to marry a Canaanite woman from his mom's side of the family). Onan refuses because he wants his brother's stuff. Judah tells Tamar to live 'as a widow' in her father's house until the youngest son, Shelah grows up. But then, when Shelah grows up, Judah's Canaanite wife Bedsu'el refuses to let him marry Tamar. Then Bedsu'el dies. Judah is delaying for whatever reason. Tamar hears he's going to be in the area and pulls her roadside hooker stunt.

After the fact, it's declared absolutely wrong, and a capital offense, for a man to bed his daughter-in-law or mother-in-law. But, it is explained, until Tamar, there wasn't a rule about it. This is why rules get made. Nobody gets burned alive this time. But next time... don't even think about it. So Tamar gets out of being married off to her dead husband's kid brother, she gives birth to (twins?) Perez and Zerah right before the whole clan has to move to Egypt because of famine. Judah is deeply ashamed, repents, is forgiven by God. But the real upshot of this story is: "unto Judah we said that his two sons had not lain with her, and for this reason his seed was stablished for a second generation, and would not be rooted out." See what happened there? Tamar saved the family bloodline from Canaanite corruption. That's why she's the heroine of this story. Not because she got her own justice, not because incest is good actually, but because she was the instrument by which Judah's illicit marriage was remedied.

I am not, of course, commenting on good or bad here. Only that the Book of Jubilees version of this story makes sense, where the Genesis version... seems to be missing something. In this iteration, it is almost exclusively a story about bloodlines. And in that light it works: we can understand why this episode made it into the canon. The Old Testament is obsessed with bloodlines, genealogies, birthrights, and genetic covenants.

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*I seriously want to know the rest of the story now, concerning pharaoh's eunuchs. Did "eunuch" mean something other than "man with no testicles" in that context? If not, why does Potiphar, Pharaoh's eunuch, have a wife? I mean, that would explain why Potiphar's wife was so desperate to seduce Joseph, her husband's hot young household manager, but still... Asenath is supposed to be his daughter? So either eunuch has some other meaning, or the wife and daughter happened *before* he became a eunuch.

**I love that in the Jubilees version, Leah the unwanted wife of Jacob, gets a happy ending. Rachel of course dies untimely after giving birth to Benjamin. Leah remains. Jacob learns to appreciate and love her truly after all: when she dies, the book says: "for he was lamenting her for he loved her exceedingly after Rachel her sister died; for she was perfect and upright in all her ways and honoured Jacob, and all the days that she lived with him he did not hear from her mouth a harsh word, for she was gentle and peaceable and upright and honourable. And he remembered all her deeds which she had done during her life and he lamented her exceedingly; for he loved her with all his heart and with all his soul."