An actual good real world example of washing away sacredness also comes from Judaism, specifically involving the Torah scroll. Since the Torah is considered the divine inspired law of the Jewish people, and is the closest thing Jews have to the Ark of the Covenant, it is sometimes believed to have mystical powers. Because of this, in some circles, people who participate in the reading the Torah during services wash their hands afterwards, as it is believed that the Torah has power that can be transmitted via touch, which is dangerous to people who are pregnant or menstruating. There is also a part of the liturgy where the Torah is parades around the sanctuary of the Synagogue, and people kiss it as an act of respect, but since they can’t touch it directly, people will touch other things to it and kiss that, like the spine of a prayerbook or the hem of their Tallis (prayer shawl).
I thought it came from the fact that we avoid touching the parchment itself with the hand when it's unfurled to avoid damaging it, and it just concatenated to in include even when the parchment is wrapped up and protected in a case/cloth cover?
Ooh, that sounds good! What would they look like? Would they have sails? Would they have a crew or be self-driving? What kind of cargo would they carry?
Alexander Korol (imagining a proa sail-wagon skipping over rough, boulder-ridden moraines) I think they would rely on sails, since I think kites mostly just pull downwind and can crash even when the person is standing still. But the mechanics are a bit different on land. Wheels might work like keels, since they also restrain the movement of the vessel “pushed” by the wind to move along direction they are pointing (even if that line goes partially upwind) rather than letting the whole thing drift straight downwind. OTOH, the keel also has the dense medium of water to push against in a way that counterbalances the wind pushing on the top of the boat; without that the carts could be overturned easily. It’s possible the carts would have to be very wide and the masts kept short to keep from getting pushed over like this, but who says the sail has to be on the top? What if a set of mast and boom were drooped diagonally off the windward side of the cart, going all the way to the ground and resting on their own wheel? With the right angles it could push the wind behind the vehicle and move it forward, or even get a little lift to help the wheels run over difficult terrain (though it’d still be a bumpy ride without any suspension...
Mambo Jambo there’s also the possibility they use literal “wind-power.” As in they have a wind turbine that mechanically powers the wheels. It could be a moving windmill! When they set up their temporary camps, the traveling mill might be turned to power other machines, like to pumping wells dug by previous nomad caravans, or spinning the wool they shear from their sheep. It could mill wild cereals the nomads gathered along the way or traded from the windless zone peoples (or maybe stole as raiders, if they’re the outlaw types). They could even make it a giant hurdy-gurdy and play music whenever they want!
A cable car or trolley system would be easier to organize over longer distances. With a fixed power station running a pulley that the cars latch onto to be dragged to their destination where they detach or loop back around to the next stop
I remember when I first showed up to this channel, my first video was you making mushrooms for the first island shown. It has been so fun for me to watch you grow as a channel, thanks so much for introducing me to this cool new hobby of mine!
If the Nomads ever go to war with the Wind-Free people, the Wind-Frees would be in serious danger since the Nomads could just pick off the people holding their breaths, chop down the towers, and work their way inward as the Wind-Free Zone shrank further and further. If these two groups went to war, I could easily see the Wind-Frees posting guards around the towers of the people holding their breath. If the war lasts a long time, these guards might be viewed as being almost as sacred as the people holding their breath.
I think we can be certain the many windless zone people now project a vision of romantic pastoralism onto the nomadic herders, adhering strongly to a sort of “noble savage” trope. To the windless zone people, the nomads clad in sacred wool are of an ancestral culture, always facing the full breath of Nature but free from the problematic trappings of civilization such as economic disparity or war (Ewa hasn’t mentioned it in a while but she said some time ago that city-states of windless zone peoples often warred amongst each other).
About the origin of the idea of the uncleanliness of pigs in judaism: most likely the Semites originally worshipped a pantheon of now mostly lost gods some of which only survived as angels or demon in Jewish Kabbalah traditions and pigs were the sacred animals of one or multiple of these deities (similar to cows in Hinduism). But when this pantheon was being phased out by the newly emergent Judaism people were still didn't want to eat pigs even though they were converted, because nobody in their family had ever eaten pigs before and it just didn't seem right. So the Jewish priests simply changed the reasoning behind why pigs shouldn't be eaten and thus managed to maintain public appeal while still distancing themselves from the old gods. It was just a brilliant PR move.
The bit about holy animals becoming taboo works the other way around too. The Gauls ate pigs, but wild boars were sacred animals to them. Yet, 2000 years later, when you ask French people "What did the Gauls loved to eat?" they will invariably answer "Boars, of course." Because they are falsely depicted as such in the popular comic Astérix the Gaul.
In other words there were wild animals which domestication “polluted” in the eyes of the Gauls, then. Just goes to show humanity has always seen itself as the holiest and most polluted of creatures, I guess.
@@alsatusmd1A13 Your misanthropic bias gets the better of you. Gauls had the same positive domestic relationship with pigs that you can see nowadays in Melanesian and Papuans. Pigs were not considered like "corrupted" boars, but rather the gift of Cernunnos, the forest God, that Gauls had the right to raise and eat. In contrast, the wild boar, fierce and independent, was the sacred animal of Camulos, the god of war, that Gauls displayed on their war insigna, musical instruments and coins.
captivating and beautiful as always. Could the story grow darker, if the breathholders' sacred breathholding were to be reinterpreted as a soiled and undesirable task because of its sacredness ?
It's already the case, but I didn't want to get into it in this video. But it's one of the reasons why families send their slaves and servants to do the breath holding, they don't want to get soiled with the sacredness themselves. With the other reason being the fact that it's very boring and tedious work that takes a person away from ordinary life for a period of time.
@Worldbuilding Notes {8C I hope not all the windless zone peoples are like that, keeping slaves and negging the sacred duty and whatnot. You said earlier the windless zones clustered around city-states that warred with each other, so I hope there is some diversity of cultural mores...
well, i see people giving you suggestion, so i have 2 that you mind think off. a spelljammer type world (but instead of high magic or technology, its more of a natural phenomenon of the world and the people) and a underwater civilization.
@@alexanderkorol677 it can be what ever it want. people with gill, liquid oxygen for atmosphere, a submerge world that the sky is a ice sheet. Something new or use the old tropes and flip it on his head. I think she can ace that.
@@erroldrommond9149 > liquid oxygen for atmosphere How cold would it have to be for that to happen? > a submerge world that the sky is a ice sheet So something similar to Europa?
This makes me want to create a society in a setting (which I will use the name 'godlovers' for, since I like the sound of it, even though I originally thought of it for something completely unrelated), who subvert the idea of treating the sacred and the polluted in a parallel way. So, in the godlovers' society, every person is presumably trying to fill their life with as much holiness as possible, searching for sources of holiness, sharing them with their loved ones, inventing new ways to introduce holiness into your life, etc. A question I'm not sure how to answer, though, is what other characteristics should holiness have, other than 'desirable'? What sort of things would it be interesting to have a society that is almost slavishly devoted to creating and experiencing more of?
I don't know for your world but in mine, since every color represents a different magic so, things like bismuth or toned metals become very holy and used for many rituals. If someone melts it so it's gray again it loses its power. This causes people to try to get specific colors for power in thier color. For your world just pick something arbitrary like I did and just go with it.
I think this was a driving question in The Symposium: “what is good?” I could see these godlovers turning toward hedonism and even prosperity gospel: they could begin equating godliness with materialism, of all things! Others might seek ephemeral experiences, valuing visits to awe-inspiring sights both natural and man-made, but even they would choose to retrieve and share objects of beauty rather than leave them to be sought by others. They’d want to find ways to make these things easily shareable and consumable, without considering if they might drain or mar the “holiness” of the thing in the first place. On the apophatic flip-side, they could become fanatically obsessed with purity of objects and purifying experiences. They would embrace austerity and mortification of the flesh, but elevate all essential things to the point that slaking one’s physical and spiritual thirsts are o e and the same. Either way, they are tying transcendental experience to sensual things (which I wouldn’t say is inherently wrong, but it can go wrong very quickly) and human consumption of The Sacred rather than allowing things to possess transcendental value regardless of human’s being around to experience it.
!!!!! Aaaaa i love this!!! there's this series that i think you would really enjoy, it seems like your type of thing It's called See, I really like the worldbuilding, though the story is very lacking.
Who is it made by? (and is it on youtube?) Because "see" is a very common word, thus searching for something called "see" gets a sea of unrelated results. (hehe, pun intended)
After watching your 1st video about this world, I made 1 of my own, which is also very windy and has windbreaker people, with 4 branches of magic. In my world, (Let's call it blow berg) one in three people are born with a magical power, determined by the shape of a birthmark. The marks, (And therefore also magic) are hereditary. There are also two main groups of people, but my windless zone farmers are generally aggressive, and hostile to the nomads. This is because the farmers consider all animals (other than worms) to be evil, and the nomads subsist entirely off of animal products. Unfortunately, one of the 4 branches of magic is the carnomancy (AKA, flesh \ animal magic.) Because of this, people in the windless zones often kill babies who have the wrong birthmark. Even when a mark of Carnomancy is hidden, people with the mark are always killed, or banished when they are discovered. Sometimes, very loving mothers who have a child with the wrong birthmark, will do a magical ritual, and leave the child outside of the windless zone, in hopes that the child might be discovered by a passing pack of wolves, who will raise the child as their own.
What are the specifics of carnomancy? Can they rip out other creature's blood, turn them inside out, or something similar to that? Are there any limitations to this magic? What are the other three branches? Why are worms sacred?
@@alexanderkorol677 it's late at night where i live, so i will give a simple explanation now, and a detailed one tomorrow. Carnomancy has many levels. Low level Carnomancers can only share feelings and emotions with animals, but mid level Carnomancers can talk to all animals, and control simpler animals. A high level Carnomancer can control all but the wisest of animals, as well as make human animal Hybrids, through strange magic rituals, like having a 15 year old male virgin sit on an egg at midnight during the first full moon of spring while he drinks the mixed blood and milk of a white goat. the other three branches of magic are wind-breaking, infernomancy, and herbomancy. Worms are sacred because they are good for the plants.
@@1lobster So is herbomancy another term for Plant and Fungus Manipulation? How did they figure out that worms are beneficial to plants? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that was a relatively recent discovery.
@@alexanderkorol677 herbomancy is the manipulation of, and communication with, plants and fungi, yes. And as for the worm thing, we only discovered why worms are good for plants recently, but even the medieval people of earth were smart enough to observe how plants grew better in soil with worms.
@@1lobster Interesting...And what specific things can be done with this power? Can it cause mold and mushrooms to erupt from a victim's body? Can it create giant, multi-coloured flowers and carnivorous plants to attack them?
so there are three kinds of communities: the windless zones farmer, that are the most numerous the wagon herders , that have the monpoly over horse meat and wool and the canyon hunters , that are irrelevant in this area , but what about other areas ? what if they developed a way to use seasonal winds in order to gather their power , what if they developed a way to dig for metals , they are in amountain, and use the winds to fuel hot fire in order to make iron and when the conditions are right steel ... they would be able to dig their hown caves and make semi complex mechanical machinary that works on wind power ... they would become the cave smith .
0:37 that doesn't seem like something someone randomly do on hunting trip 4 people holding their breath in a rectangle I guess it could be possible if the winds can by suffocating( maybe I'm forgetting what people do in the situation been a while since I had experience) or is it a game or challenge. Secondly since the people participating still feel the effects of wind unless body parts not in the shape do experience this example sticking arms or legs. Or half your body experiencing the zone. If they don't experience the zone that mean set them to gain awareness of it can either have to have someone present in the shape to notice. Or notice that things in the shape I no longer affected by the wind. two questions first type of wind flection is this does it redirect the wind what does make a space where Winds ignored and the currents continues like there's no Zone in the first place. What happens when a Pole comes obsolete as on your map show several points in the center that serve no purpose for wind blocking because the outer poles already cover everything. If they're out of function what is the purpose of them territory marking? If so does that mean people have to stand on them for tradition even if there's no practical purpose doing so. That would mean the further the center goes from a important Monument to a giant territory marker. Just my thoughts.
@@alexanderkorol677 I figured as most of my writings like this but currently it is too late and I'm not sure I'm up to fixing it. Sorry it's does not make sense.
