What advice can a severed head really offer you? It’s not like he can go anywhere. I guess this is just the sort of thing you do when you don’t have libraries or the internet.

We talked about Odin and Mimir and war between the Aesir and Vanir last friday. This comic was supposed to be up this Tuesday when all of that was a little bit fresher in your minds, but I had to go out to Boston for my very last appearance at school ever to make sure that I get to graduate. Turns out I do! Hooray!

If you’ve forgotten about last Friday’s blog post, refresh your memory over here.

Mimir’s head, while a little grisly to us, is a powerful symbol (though it is one among many) representing the hidden knowledge that Odin was said to possess. The head, stuck somewhere between the world of the living and the world of the dead, was able to access information from both realms of existence, a valuable tool for a god that prized knowledge and cunning over brute force. There is a great deal of this sort of thing to be found in the character of Odin. He is a figure that straddles the line between life and death, a figure steeped in secrets and riddles and magic known only to him. Stories like the tales of Mimir and of Kvasir serve to really drive that point home.

Odin was not like other Norse gods.

Though all of these deities enjoyed respect and regards in the Norse mind, Odin seems to be a little bit apart, perhaps even a little bit foreign. Respected and worshiped, but rarely loved the way some of the other gods are. Baldur, Thor, Freyja, and even Loki all seem to enjoy a little more closeness in the heart of the Norse. Odin was one to be respected but also feared.

You can’t really blame anyone for being a little scared of a dude that carries around (and talks to) a severed head, who hung himself from a tree as a sacrifice to himself, and who rides around on a coal black horse with eight legs.

There’s just something a little creepy going on there.

It’s really a wonder that anyone talked to him at all!

Anyway, we’ll get away from Mimir’s head next week, I promise!

Odin, the wise one, the cunning one, knew how to give the head of his friend the power of speech and to preserve it forever. What he, apparently, had not thought of was the kind of trauma Mimir would experience being brought back to life as only a severed head. Woops! Maybe he should have thought that one through.

Or maybe he should have at least given him some aspirin.

Today’s comic has some paraphrased text from Kevin Crossley Holland’s The Norse Myths, a really great collection of better-known (and frankly, more important) tales from Norse mythology. He manages to capture the style and flow of Norse poetry while making the stories engaging for modern readers. It’s a great book with great notes at the end and I highly recommend it as a good place to start.

Today’s comic comes from a story about the war between two factions of deities, the Aesir and the Vanir and has its roots in several fragmented tales from Norse Myth. The story begins with the coming of Gullveig, a powerful Vanir witch, to the halls of the Aesir (the group headed by Odin) where she speaks to the gods there of gold and greed. Her speech is so distasteful to Odin and the others that they throw her into the fire and pierce her body with spears. Each time they throw her into the flames she rises again, whole and unharmed and eventually she leaves the Aesir and returns to her homeland. Appalled by the treatment of one of their own, the Vanir gods ready for war with the Aesir.

Nothing escapes the wise and cunning Odin, however. He gathers the Aesir together and they too sharpen their spears and polish their shields, ready for war and blood. The factions meet on the field of battle and cause great destruction to the countryside and to each other. Seeing the devastation, the leaders of each side come together and agree to the exchange of hostages and an end to the war. The Vanir give up two of their greatest members as a show of respect to their rivals. The beautiful Freyja, goddess of beauty and fertility, joins the ranks of the Aesir as does her brother Freyr. Freyja teaches the Aesir her magic and is beloved by all.

Odin, always cunning, sends Hoenir and wise Mimir to his enemies as hostages. Hoenir, at first, appears to be an intelligent and courageous leader but it quickly becomes apparent that without the whispered words of Mimir, he cannot make important decisions on his own, always deferring to the judgments of others. It becomes clear to the Vanir that they have been tricked and have received an unfair trade. Furious, they behead Mimir and send it back to Odin who uses his charms and spells to preserve it and give it back the power of speech. He talks to Mimir, seeks his council frequently, and reaps the benefits of his knowledge.

And of course, looks extra creepy talking to a severed head.

And now some notes: this story is cobbled together from a few sources including Sturlson’s Prose Edda and the Ynglinga Saga as well as the Poetic Edda (specifically the Voluspa). There are some different concepts thrown around in each of them that, when examined, make a more complete story. For example, in the Prose Edda, the gods make their truce by spitting into a jar one after the other. Instead of throwing it out when the truce is made, they use the spit to create a man called Kvasir, a wise man and a product of the peace between the factions. Later, Kvasir is killed and his blood is used to make the mead of Poetry, a major source of inspiration. In the version of the story I’ve used for the comic, Kvasir (a wise god, but not one created by the process outlined above) is sent as a hostage to the Aesir with Freyr and Freyja and it is Mimir’s severed head that acts as a source of inspiration and secret knowledge rather than the blood of Kvasir (who now plays almost no role whatsoever). Interesting stuff!

There are now happle tea buttons and high quality prints available in the store! How exciting!

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Have you been to Reddit? That place is like 90% cat related content. If Bastet wanted to revive her cult, it’s the obvious choice for a starting point. They’re practically her worshipers already! Combine that with bad puns and ancient memes that 4chan gave up on forever ago and you’ve got yourself one hell of a popular submission!

But I kid the Reddits!

Also, what is this the third Bastet strip so far? I really need to give some other gods a little face time, eh?

Ever since I did this strip a while back, I’ve been meaning to do some more comics where Lil K tries to help ancient deities find their way in a modern world. I’d actually had an idea to do a more story based comic to that effect a long time ago, but Happle Tea ended up being so much fun that I never got around to it. Thankfully, HT provides a flexible format to mess around with that concept whenever I want!

It’s kind of funny to think about these powerful divinities being revered in ancient times and now, suddenly bereft of worshipers and surrounded by technologies and concepts they don’t entirely understand, trying to regain some of their old popularity. It’s like a bit like a man going through a mid life crisis and trying to relive the glory days of his high school football career. It’s never going to be the same. The best these gods are going to get is shoe on head memes and valueless karma points on an internet website.

I guess that’s still better than what that Chinese river dragon got for his job placement in that old comic…

Anyway, I think we’re all pretty familiar with Bastet by now and for those of you not familiar with Reddit, by all means check it out. Like all places on the internet it has its faults, but overall, it’s a fun place to visit. If you’d like to know a little more about our feline friend, check out the blog posts for her previous two comics here and here!

There are now happle tea buttons and high quality prints available in the store! How exciting!

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The Spanish were so horrified by the religiously inspired human sacrifices of the Aztecs that they sought to stamp it out for all time…by slaughtering as many Aztecs as they could.

A brilliant strategy, 100% free of any irony.

Okay, so I’m exaggerating a little bit, but the weird mental disconnect it takes to be horrified by human sacrifice on the one hand, and pro murdering people with swords for political reasons is absolutely real. The Spanish certainly didn’t come to the Americas with the sole intent of liberating the Aztec people from the threat of human sacrifice. There were clear political motivations and the desire to grab as much land for the empire, even if there were people already living there. Their reactions to the practice, however, match the comic pretty accurately. There are reports of Cortes and the religious men he brought with him (missionaries and soldiers) being disgusted by what they saw as barbarism on display during their initial forays in the country. Cortes himself banned the practice after seizing power in the country then almost immediately started murdering people in the sacred city of Cholula.

There are accounts that tell us that after seeing just how many corpses Cortes himself was willing to make, some of the Aztec leaders were more than ready to meet whatever demands he wanted.

It takes a special kind of cognitive dissonance to be disgusted by human sacrifice and then almost immediately put people to the sword for having different beliefs than yourself, but I guess that’s always been the way of the world. Most nations vilify murder and glorify the act of war.

Wasting human life seems stupid, no matter the purpose, from where I’m standing, but hey, that’s me.

Say what you want about human sacrifice, but at least the Aztec worldview made sense. They never had a commandment that said “thou shalt not kill” and then went around murdering people. I guess what I’m getting at here is that if you’re going to be pro killing people, at least have a little consistency.

Kill all the people, all the time.

I kid, obviously.

Thankfully, we don’t have to worry much about human sacrifice today. We know that whether the crops get enough rain or not is up to the random and faceless forces of nature (or the continued maintenance of our irrigation systems), rather than how much blood we sacrifice to angry deities. We know that there are no 52 year cycles that just might end with our complete annihilation if we don’t take lives for our imaginary friends.

No, nowadays we just kill each other for resources, for having slightly different political beliefs, for being born with different skin tones, for not liking each others’ religions, and for not wearing the right colors on a particular side of town.

That’s progress, baby!

As the late great Bob Marley once said, “Every little thing’s gonna be alright.”

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I think it says something about the Aztecs that even the goddess associated with butterflies ended up being a terrifying monster. Namely, that they were pretty badass.

If you’re looking for cute deities in Aztec mythology, you’re looking in the wrong place entirely. While it’s true that not all of them were bloodthirsty monsters, most of them had at least one aspect that was…shall we say, less than pleasant. The butterfly goddess, Itzpapalotl, depicted in today’s comic, was a skeletal war goddess, known as the “clawed butterfly” or the “obsidian winged butterfly” amongst the Aztec. There are early tales about her seducing men only to tear them open and devour them. She was also thought to rule over one of the various paradise realms that human souls are lead to after death. I don’t know about you, but no paradise, no matter how beautiful, would seem pleasant with that sort of creature watching over you.

Like many cultures throughout history, the Aztec were consumed by the idea of understanding the transitory nature of life on planet earth. The duality of life and death, of suffering and pleasure, were major talking points in their philosophical discussions. Their mythology (though somewhat lifted from the cultural groups that came before their empire) ended up reflecting their philosophical ideas. Many of the gods and goddesses that made up their pantheon came in multiple flavors. For instance, Huitzilopochtli, the patron god of the mighty city of Tenochtitlan, was a devastatingly powerful war god and lover of human sacrifice. However, he was also associated heavily with the sun, the source of all life on planet earth. There is a sense, throughout the Aztec mythology, that death is life and vice versa.

As in all cultures, particularly in more advanced civilizations with codified philosophies like the Aztecs, nothing is ever as simple as it may first appear. While blood sacrifices are clearly a terrific waste of human life in the eyes of modern humans, it was the interconnected nature of life and death in the eyes of the Aztecs that compelled them to perform such grisly acts. In their culture, it was an honor to be offered up as a sacrifice to the many gods that ruled over human and earthly activities and, without blood, the essence of human life, the gods would turn their backs on humanity forever. By taking that most precious of gifts and giving it to these deities, the priests and priestesses of the Aztec religion hoped to bring a chaotic and terrifying world into order. Simply offering animal or plant sacrifices was not enough for most gods (though the mighty Quetzalcoatl was said to despise human sacrifice) to take notice.

In a system that hoped to gain favor for humans, only human life seemed a significant enough sacrifice to the Aztecs. As strange as it may seem, to the Aztecs, only killing and offering the life and blood of sacrificial victims could secure life from chaos for the rest of their civilization, a concept that has also been seen in many other parts of the world at one time or another.

Unfortunately for them, these sacrifices didn’t stop the coming of the Spanish conquistadors in the early 1500′s.

Guess the gods must have been on vacation then.

Woops!

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The way politics work today, it can be hard to tell who is being used by outside influences. At least if you vote for Pinocchio, you KNOW you’re getting a puppet.

It’s probably obvious by now, but I’m not a big fan of politics, specifically the people that star in the dog and pony show we call United States government: politicians. I’m sure there are a few decent folks in the celebrated halls of the Senate and the House, but the majority of people that get voted into office seem to be disingenuous at best. These are the sorts of people that consistently shout about equal rights for homosexuals being a problem and who then have secret gay sex. These are the people that talk about looking out for the poor and the disenfranchised while slashing public safety nets and giving tax cuts to the super wealthy.

There’s something about people that have to lie for a living that makes me decidedly uncomfortable. People may laugh and make jokes about lawyers, but it’s really the politicians that embody the very definition of deceit in MY mind. Between pandering to their audiences about how patriotic they are and making unrealistic promises, it’s hard to imagine that our leaders have time to tell the truth at all.

I suppose it isn’t really their fault, when it comes down to it. After all, most people prefer a comforting lie to an uncomfortable truth. Many people in this country ALLOW politicians to turn equal rights into a debate issue when they should be laughed out of office for even having the audacity to suggest something so ridiculous. Sure, it’s pretty scummy to lie and cheat and take kickbacks on shady backroom deals, but most people don’t bother voting them out of office.

It’s not as if there aren’t people running for office out there and promoting intelligent legislation, pushing for campaign finance reform, and generally being decent human beings. The problem is that they get drowned out of the conversation by media coverage of sex scandals and by audience participation in the circus that is US Politics. It’s a bit like the cartoons and sitcoms where the smart nerdy kid runs for class president offering smart choices on the budget and suggesting a reasonable amount of change only to be completely ignored in favor of the loudmouth that claims all vending machines in the school will be free to use if he’s elected.

How do you compete with that? It seems like most either join them or don’t bother getting involved in the first place.

While it’s true that the system isn’t completely broken, it sure as hell isn’t perfect.

It would be nice if we could have a government full of Pinocchios. With each lie, their noses would grow bit by bit, a visual indication of the subtle deceits they weave.

Alas! If only life were as simple as fairy tales and Disney movies!

Speaking of being in it for the paycheck, there are now happle tea buttons and high quality prints available in the store! How exciting!

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Happy three year anniversary, Happle Tea! Now it’s just time to sit back and collect those fat paychecks! Yeah!

Okay, so technically the site is three years old in June, but the comic formerly known as Sacrilicious finished its metamorphosis from grubby caterpillar into slightly less grubby caterpillar in April, around the time of Anime Boston, three years ago. What’s Sacrilicious, you ask? Well let’s fill you in on some of the history of the comic!

Several years back, I had been trying to come up with a fun and interesting premise for a web comic with a friend of mine, a fellow by the name of Dustin. We had hit on this idea of irreverent comics, mostly about religion and politics, featuring cute chibi versions of ourselves called Sacrilicious. Like many comics, it did the goofy character paired with the more straight laced one and the two would get into ridiculous situations that would have no continuity whatsover. Unfortunately, Dustin and I never really got many comics done and it became clear after a short time that it wasn’t really meant to be. We stopped working on it and the idea slipped away.

A year or so after that, I started doing something similar with much less effort put into the artwork. You can see my first solo effort at a Sacrilicious comic here on the site: the very first strip where Lil K talks to God. The whole idea was that Lil K was supposed to be my inner child and God was this ridiculous version of the man upstairs that no true believer would ever like or identify with. I wanted to do something goofy and fun and not really worry about offending people. After a few strips, it became difficult to write on my own and I enlisted the help of my good friend Vic Balbian. Together, we wrote some truly weird comics (the one about pierogies was the first we did together, if I’m not mistaken) and things were good for a little while. It took us a lot of time to write strips, we had a lot of scheduling conflicts, and overall, the tone of the comic wasn’t entirely working for me. We eventually ceased to write together and the comic, once again, fell by the wayside.

It wasn’t until a few months before Anime Boston three years ago that I started writing comics about Lil K on my own again. I did a weird strip about him wanting to get coffee and finding a Sasquatch in the kitchen that I brought with me to the convention and received many positive responses from people there. I realized that I’d accidentally stumbled upon something that worked for an audience and for myself. People didn’t want to read strips that were intentionally offensive or mean, they didn’t want a character that they couldn’t really identify with and that had no personality whatsoever. They wanted Sasquatches.

I’d had more fun drawing the early Happle Tea comics (some of which aren’t up on the site because they aren’t very good) than I’d had drawing anything else in my entire life. Writing by myself was extremely hard work but I felt like everything had more personality that way. With the help of some friends, I managed to get the first version of the site up and I settled into writing and drawing two strips every week from then on. Happle Tea was finally on its way.

Nowadays, I look back and I’m really happy with the progress I’ve made. I’ve had a lot of support from friends and readers. The comic is still growing and changing, just like me. I’ve always worked hard at creating the strips, even when they may not look it. I appreciate the time everyone takes to stop by and read the comic and the blog and I want to make that time worthwhile. I feel like I go into every strip with the same spirit I did three years ago, but with more consideration for the art and writing than I had back then. I hope you feel that way too.

Thanks for making it a wonderful three years, everyone. <3

Special thanks to William, Coestar, and Matt for all helping me so much in the early years and thanks to Liz for helping me to write strips when I’m having a tough time every week! You guys are awesome!

I guess when you’re thinking up ways to really screw an entire culture over, it can be difficult to make them all chart toppers. It’s not like this was even the first time the Big Guy had to work on this kind of thing. Here’s a trick they taught us in art school: it’s all about volume; the more you produce, the more likely you are to land some hits.

Clearly Yahweh is passionate about his art, specifically the art of making people miserable.

It’s Passover week! Wooo! Throw out your leavened bread and bust out your Haggadah, it’s time to get funky!

…with some tales from Jewish mythology…

Hooray.

Passover is the celebration of the deliverance of the Children of Israel from Egypt where they were slaves. It begins with the story of the birth of Moses, a newborn baby Israelite, at a time when the Pharaoh had ordered all newborn Hebrew babes be thrown into the Nile. Moses’ mother, rather than drown the child, sets him adrift in a basket. After somehow avoiding being devoured by crocodiles, overturned, or crushed by hippos, the baby Moses floats peacefully along until he is found by the Pharoah’s daughter, who raises the child and names him. Eventually, the young lad grows up, speaks to a burning bush, learns the name of the god that will be the salvation of the Israelites, and becomes a prophet of this god and a leader in his community. At this point, Moses becomes a real menace to the establishment in Egypt. He demands the Jews be set free but, not wanting to give up a good thing, Pharaoh is dead set against this. This is where things get interesting.

The god of the Israelites, Yahweh, working through his prophet, commands ten plagues to fall upon the people of Egypt to demonstrate his power and to display to the world the covenant between the Hebrews and Himself. After each plague, Moses visits the Pharaoh and demands the release of his people. Each time, the Pharaoh agrees so long as the curse is lifted, but then he “hardens his heart” and refuses to let the people of Israel leave. Some of the plagues are, as demonstrated by the strip, quite destructive. Others…well, you be the judge.

The first plague is the plague of blood. All the water throughout the kingdom of Egypt turns to blood, killing off fish and generally being pretty disturbing. That’s some Stephen King level horror right there, clearly Yahweh means business. Following that up is the plague of frogs wherein frogs rain from the sky. That’s more cartoon villain douchebaggery, in my book. Third comes the plague of gnats and lice, annoying but not really horrific. Frogs that remained behind from the previous plague were probably extremely pleased. Fourth is the plague of flies or wild animals. Why flies OR wild animals you ask? There are different accounts, though I’m not quite sure how one would get those two things mixed up. Fifth, a plague of pestilence falls on the land, killing livestock. That’s pretty brutal and clearly makes cooking dinner a difficult prospect. After that, there’s a plague of boils, causing many Egyptians to erupt in unhealable sores. That one’s just gross. The plague of hail and fire comes after that, clearly designed to irritate the boils. God really outdid himself with that combo. After that, locusts swarm Egypt, devouring what little food remains. Luckily tor the Egyptians, the plague of darkness descends and they no longer have to look at their wasteland of a kingdom or their hideously pockmarked faces and weeping sores. The whole ordeal finally culminates in the death of the firstborn of Egypt, a truly dastardly plague indeed.

After the final plague, Pharaoh finally allows the Hebrews to go. Moses leads them toward the promised land, away from slavery and captivity. Hooray!

To any of my Jewish readers, I hope you have a lovely Passover! Don’t mind my poking a little fun at the story!

There is no doubt in my mind that there is a hidden power in the human brain. A power that most humans aren’t even aware they possess, a trait so powerful that it shapes entire lives…

I’m talking of course about the power of self deception. You’d have to be delusional to believe you have psychic powers…unless of course, you’re Lil K. That kid is obviously psychic. Look at him go! His head is definitely big enough to have hidden abilities locked away inside it! I sure as shit hope he got some special psychic talent to make up for what amounts to a hideous physical deformity.

Maybe some day he can use his powers to reshape his giant square head…that would be pretty useful!

For thousands of years, humans of all cultures have claimed to possess powers beyond the everyday. Whether it is the ability to commune with the deceased, the power to see into the future, or any number of seemingly paranormal attributes, you can bet someone somewhere has tried to convince others they and they alone are able to assist their fellow man with it…for a small fee of course. These individuals have offered innumerable explanations for such amazing abilities, from the religious (God or gods have given them this gift) to the secular, (something biological they possess) to the really weird (aliens!).

The problem with all this is that science has never been able to prove any of it, not even with fat rewards like the one offered by James Randi, a world renowned skeptic of all things paranormal. Even with one million dollars on the lines, nobody has ever been able to pass the preliminary tests the JREF has created to assess these claims of psychic power. That seems a little strange right? There are tons of psychics out there! There are the big ones that get on TV like John Edwards the fellow that communicates with the dead. There are lesser known, but still fairly popular individuals that write books and give seminars on the subject of psychic powers. There are those little small town psychics that you see in middle America, working out of their homes. There are even phone psychics that can tell you the future for just a few dollars a minute! Remember Miss Cleo? That chick HAD to be psychic, right?

As it turns out, not so much. None of these people have ever been able to prove anything they claim in the lab, if they’ve even tried. Most of the successful psychics out there even give themselves away through the legal documentation they’re forced to provide for themselves. That John Edwards guy even has an NDA that all audience members are forced to sign before they can enter the staging area! Phone psychics are forced to tell you that their services are for “entertainment only” and that they should not be taken seriously. That’s not exactly a glowing recommendation of their own product now, is it?

So what’s the deal? How can these people become so successful without ever proving themselves to the scientific community? How have some humans made a living off of others by way of psychic abilities for thousands of years? The answer is simple: delusion. People want comfort about the future. They want to know what’s around the corner, they want to feel comforted by the thought that someone somewhere has the answers and that those answers are simple. Unfortunately, the universe we live in isn’t a simple one, our lives and the lives of all living things are incalculably complex.

While the thought of an ever changing, complex, and difficult universe may frighten and scare some people, there is solace in the idea that everything changes. As long as we can embrace change, we can continue to grow as individuals. No rut, no bad luck is ever permanent. There is always a path to better things.

Everything changes.

Why not embrace it?

EDIT: Since there seems to be some confusion, this post is not about religious experiences nor is it about ceremonial or ritual magic. It is specifically about claims of being able to perform paranormal phenomena and even more specifically about using those claims for money or to mislead others.

Oh, God, you silly naïve deity! How could you not know that would fail miserably?

I guess it doesn’t really matter. If people didn’t fight over their different skin colors, they’d fight over something else. Like religion, perhaps?

Oh wait, with this lovely world we live in, we get to fight about BOTH of those things! God’s plan sure was thorough!

Have you noticed that there are two versions of God in the comic? I can’t say it was ever intentional to get to this point where we have the traditional Yahweh and the more ridiculous Cat-God, but I’m happy with how it turned out. I like to think of them as one in the same, albeit Cat-God is the jaded, angry version of God that has just got so fed up that he has chosen to torment a young boy day after day.

Many people that believe in God, and especially those who don’t, find the character of Yahweh to be a little confusing. Some folks assume he’s an angry fellow, others that he WAS angry, but calmed down a bit in his old age, and still others believe it’s all just a little bit ridiculous and that there’s no real sense in worrying about it. Personally, I’m the last category, but I always liked to think of God as more bumbling (but kind-hearted) buffoon, than dead-beat dad or angry big brother. It’s like, yeah his heart is in the right place, he has just completely underestimated the idiocy of his own creations.

You can’t really blame the poor guy!

Of course, it’s all just silly conjecture. Nobody knows the true nature of God if there is one. It’s just sort of fun to reflect on what he’d be like. I like to think that our own conceptions of God say more about ourselves than him. Most of the folks I know that think of Him as being wrathful or angry, tend to be pretty wrathful and angry themselves, even if they don’t display it to everyone.

I guess that means I think of myself as a little clumsy, short sighted, and too willing to believe the best about people! Hah!

No matter what God’s plan was or is for humanity, I just hope folks will stop hating on each other for such silly things as skin color. If you’re going to hate people, at least hate on them for the things they choose to do, not the way they were born! Ideally, we just wouldn’t have to hate on each other for anything, but that’s probably a little too much to hope for right now.

I really think we’re all on a steady path toward acceptance and understanding, but it’s a tough road and a slow one. If the Civil Rights movement in America taught us anything it’s that there is hope.

For now, I imagine God looking down on his creations and shaking his head sadly wondering just how he could possibly be so short sighted.

He just wanted to make things a little more exciting! A little more interesting!

Mission accomplished.