ShangXian 2025-02-15 10:29:34

Thank you^^

I love working on different subjects.

ShangXian 2025-02-15 11:42:14

You are not the first one to compare my corvids to The Secret of NIMH and I am very honoured to hear that because Bluth's style is one of things that inspire me when it comes to Western-animation/drawing style. I agree non-human animals can be challenging if you are not used to them. I think a good start might be watching documentaries and see the animal basic behaviour, then using Disney/Don Bluth's works for the facial expressions and combine them with the expressions animals use when showing their emotions.

To me this has always been easy since I started drawing them at age 4. Teachers told my parents that I gave life to my drawings and because of that I was often called by other teachers to draw on the blackboard during their lessons when they wanted to show the class a specific topic (usually animals).

I remember all NGE angels, their names and even the sources where those names come from. Since I was 15 I began to study Kabbalah in order to have a deeper grasp of those symbolism. Hanno said in an interview he put those symbols (Kabbalah, Renaissance Christian Kabbalah and Western mysticism) because they were cool. That was a period of intense study of this topic, I learned about Sephirotic tree and I could even read some Kabbalist texts (notably Sepher Yetzirah and Sepher ha Zohar). That period allowed to study Hebrew mysticism as well and see it under the historic lens of its development. I was also able to attend seminars with my best friend irl held by a Jewish scholar of Kabbalah.

Don't worry about the "gem shaming", if you know the dice shaming trend, it was a funny and silly experience. It was basically based on some bad or silly acts done by the Crystal Gems during the series.

dice shaming: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=dice+shaming&iax=images&ia=images

another example of gem shaming: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2FNe5uAZValvnlhasL_XbLnU3xsqc_qlJc9CR-fw_aW0E.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3Dce27be686edc86e7d8061c456e13f2e0cbf3846d

"Staying on a platform that actively encourages abuse makes no sense. (Unless of course, you're really into abusing people. ;p )"

I fear some people might actually do it for this reason D:

ShangXian 2025-02-16 07:30:03

Thank you. I love those birds and I plan to post more art about them regardless it's about my OCs or just regular corvids for scientific purposes. I agree, and this is why NGE had me discover Jewish mysticism in more detail.

ShangXian 2025-02-16 07:47:33

Thank you! If I manage to find other old drawings, even those made when I was a kid I will do it again XD

ShangXian 2025-02-16 07:52:27

Yeah, I even posted it in an old blog: https://shangxian.newgrounds.com/news/post/1481196

It was the thread called "Draw a Face on Gengar": https://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1538631/1

Blue dragons? That's an interesting and unique way to see Robert Fludd's Utriusque cosmi maioris scilicet et minoris metaphysica, physica atque technica historia (1617) or like I shorten it "Utriusque cosmi historia". I like that and no, you are not stupid.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/51/8d/2b/518d2b65b95939ae9819ad8156ff5b9f.jpg

I have the pdf text and since I had occasion to study Latin in high school I can read the original text with the help of the dictionary.

ShangXian 2025-02-16 08:18:38

In the chart, those "wings" are the palm tree leaves. This is an inverted tree with the roots at the top, symbolizing the crown since Keter also means "crown" and the lower circle is the tenth Sephirah called Malkut which means "Kingdom" (all Western Semitic languages have this root) and it's semantically and symbolically very linked to the Crown at the top. The ten palm leaves that share Kingdom as their base have written upon them the ten angelic orders that are allotted on the Tree.

Fludd ascribes the nine orders of Christian angels to each of the Numbers from Crown to Foundation, Kingdom is ascribed Soul. And here we can clearly see his Christian interpretation over the Hebrew mysticism since Thrones, Dominations, Powers, Virtues, and Principaltities are not present in Hebrew angelology.

The Jewish angelic hierarchy is established in the Hebrew Bible, Talmud, Rabbinic literature, and traditional Jewish liturgy. They are categorized in different hierarchies proposed by various theologians. For example, Maimonides, in his Mishneh Torah or Yad ha-Chazakah: Yesodei ha-Torah, counts ten ranks of angels:

Chayot Ha Kodesh
Ophanim (they have began famous in internet with the biblically accurate angels meme)
Erelim
Hashmallim
Seraphim
Malakim (they are messengers, angels in sensu stricto)
Elohim
Bene Elohim
Cherubim
Ishim (manlike beings, it's very interesting since the Hebrew name for man and woman in Torah, Bereshit is Ish and Ishà)

Whereas if we want to see Christian angelic hierarchy and the source from which Fludd made that chart we must see De Coelesti Hierarchia (On the Celestial Hierarchy) written by Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite in the 5th or 6th century. Not only Pseudo-Dionysius but also Thomas Aquinas, in his Summa Theologiae, drew on passages from the New Testament, specifically Ephesians 1:21 and Colossians 1:16, to develop a schema of three Hierarchies, Spheres or Triads of angels, with each Hierarchy containing three Orders or Choirs.

As I said I like how other people can see differently works like that^^

ShangXian 2025-02-16 09:11:49

NGE is an amazing Anime and Manga, I love it to death, I even used it in an academic review about the scientific language used in English translated works on specialized languages.

I am fascinated by them too. NGE had me interested in Kabbalah since I was 15, I could even study some of its texts thanks to a Jewish scholar of Kabbalah with my irl best friend. The next years I started exploring Renaissance grimoires (i.e. Lemegeton Clavicula Salomonis discovered it thanks to Dictionnaire Infernal by by Jacques Collin de Plancy because many demons depicted there are taken from the Lemegeton). This passion of mine led me to build a personal tradition: October is the month where I read these grimoires because when I visited my grandma to keep her company, I brought my laptop and started reading them.

It's a shame your parents don't want you to know more about this world, maybe once you are independent from them you can start researching by yourself. Culture and knowledge shall always be promoted like my parents always did to me. They encouraged me to read and study. My mother told me "study is beautiful".
Of course I don't want to judge your parents' decisions about the topic, if you live with them you must abide by their rules as long as they don't jeopardize your personal growth as person.

ShangXian 2025-02-16 09:33:12

LOL, true

When it comes to search history I want to suggest you as starting browser Firefox, I think you likely already know and use it, but I mentioned it because it has a decent privacy policy and the fact that you can actively change parameters/values makes it a very favourable choice.

Follow these steps:

when it comes to Privacy and Security Section of the browser follow these steps:

- uncheck everything under "Firefox Data Collection and Use"
- check "Delete cookies and site data when Firefox is closed" and manually added exceptions for the websites I want to keep.
- check "Enable HTTPS-Only Mode in all windows" under HTTPS mode

Browser Add-ons I suggest:

-Ublock Origin
-HTTPS Everywhere
-Decentraleyes (alternatively LocalCDN which is a fork of Decentraleyes and it's active and updated regularly
-Canvas Blocker: It allows users to prevent websites from using some Javascript APIs to fingerprint them.
-Privacy Badger: Privacy Badger automatically learns to block invisible trackers.
-ClearURLs: Remove tracking elements from URLs

NOTE: You might have to enable/disable few things as per convenience. Sometimes the website break because of LocalCDN (very rare), so you might have to turn it off for that particular website.

If you want or need to clear your history every time you use Firefox, you can set it to happen automatically on exit, so you don’t forget (this is a very user-friendly method):

-click the menu button Fx89menuButton and select Settings
-select the Privacy & Security panel and go to the History section
-in the drop-down menu next to Firefox will, choose Use custom settings for history
-check the box for Clear history when Firefox closes
-to specify what types of history should be cleared, click the Settings button next to "Clear history when Firefox closes"
-in the Clear browsing data and cookies window, check the items that you want to have cleared automatically each time you quit Firefox
-then click on "Save changes" and voilà, Firefox will automatically clear your browsing history.

To clear browser history in Firefox, you can also use the keyboard shortcut "Ctrl + Shift + Delete" on Windows or "Command + Shift + Delete" on Mac.

MORE TECH-SAVVY PART (highly recommended but I won't force you to use it in case it's too much info for you know):

Then use the magic of about:config (just copy-paste in the Firefox's URL bar and hit ENTER). but I suggest this only if you feel comfortable to use this:

-geo.enabled: FALSE: This disables Firefox from sharing your location.

-dom.battery.enabled: FALSE: Another technique used by website operators to track you is to view your exact battery levels. This setting blocks this information.

-extensions.pocket.enabled: FALSE: This disables the proprietary Pocket service.

-dom.event.clipboardevents.enabled = false Disables that websites can get notifications if you copy, paste, or cut something from a web page, and it lets them know which part of the page had been selected.

-beacon.enabled = false Disables sending additional analytics to web servers.

These will help against fingerprinting:

-privacy.resistFingerprinting = True

-privacy.trackingprotection.fingerprinting.enabled = True

-privacy.trackingprotection.cryptomining.enabled = True

-privacy.trackingprotection.enabled = True

-browser.send_pings = False

-browser.urlbar.speculativeConnect.enabled = False

-network.IDN_show_punycode = True

-media.navigator.enabled = False

-webgl.disabled = True

-browser.sessionstore.privacy_level = 2

-network.dns.echconfig.enabled = True

-network.dns.use_https_rr_as_altsvc = True

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Now to answer your question about grimoires:

A grimoire is a textbook of magic, typically including instructions on how to create magical objects like talismans and amulets, how to perform magical spells, charms, and divination, and how to summon or invoke supernatural entities such as angels, spirits, deities, and demons.
Simply put, it's a book of magic.

p.s. sorry if I take some time to reply^^

ShangXian 2025-02-16 10:09:26 (Updated 2025-02-16 10:27:18)

That's cool, I may suggest you some texts that may give you some inspiration for your stories:

Black Pullet
Book of Enoch
Sworn Book of Honorius
Magical Treatise of Solomon aka Hygromanteia
Three Books of Occult Philosophy by Agrippa (it's a must if you want to gain basic knowledge of how magic worked at that time)
Pseudomonarchia Daemonum
Magia Naturalis by Giambattista Della Porta
The Grimoire of Pope Honorius
Grimoire of Pope Leo or Enchiridion of Pope Leo
Petit Albert
The Grand Albert

If I find something about Islamic tradition I will let you know because I recently started studying the topic^^

fun fact: the signature with the pentacle and the writing" SALUS" that appears in my drawings (most of them unless I forget to add it) was inspired by my reading of those texts. SALUS is a way to wish wealth, health, safety and happiness to those who look at my works.

ShangXian 2025-02-16 10:56:30

It's small especially that now I updated my signature a bit, but in this drawing you should be able to see it:

https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/shangxian/world-shorebird-day

bottom right corner of the drawing, zoom in to see it better.

https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/shangxian/ai-vist-lo-lop-lo-rainard-la-lebre

same here, bottom right corner, zoom in

while here it's very big since it's part of the composition (warning: blood and gore): https://www.newgrounds.com/art/view/shangxian/somewhere-in-nevada-madness-day-2024

ooooooooooohhhhh I had a skim-read and I already love them. I love the style, the pace and how they evolve during the explanation of how things work. Thank you for sharing it!