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Scott Maybell

@haliphron.ink
179 followers 265 following 554 posts

Doctoral student working on the history of the demonological tradition, the social science of demonization, and the philosophy of the demonic. ⲁⲥϣⲱⲡⲉ ϩⲛⲛ ⲟⲩⲡⲗⲁⲥⲙⲁ ⲉⲥⲥⲁⲃⲧⲉ ϩⲛ̅ ⲧϭⲁⲙ· ϩⲛ̅ ⲟⲩⲙⲛ̅ⲧ ⲥⲁⲉⲓⲉ ⲛ̅ⲧϫⲃ̅ⲃⲓⲱ ⲛ̅ϯⲧⲙⲛ̅ⲧ

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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 06/10/2026
The reddit page for this game keeps records on a bunch of metrics, here is the world record for fewest command cycles:
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 06/10/2026
My first crack at the final puzzle in the main campaign. Realizing that I could almost triple the efficiency with well-timed rotations (building multiple compounds at once). I totally get why the community around this game has lasted a decade, always cheaper, faster, more compressed ways to build.
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 03/10/2026
Did a bit better with the poisonous lipstick; I love this game so so much.
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 03/10/2026
The null hypothesis that "Scott is average at this game" has been falsified.
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 03/10/2026
I had gotten stuck on the "Unstable Compound" puzzle in Opus Magnum, totally gave up and stopped playing for a year. Pulled the game up this afternoon to solve it with the ugliest machine I've ever made.
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 01/10/2026
I was fortunate to develop the work I did during my master's program and submit it as a chapter in this volume. The cover is so lovely ❤️🐟🛰️ www.bloomsbury.com/us/esoteric-...
Cover: The Esoteric Theology of Philip K. Dick. Edited by George J. Sieg & Michael C. Barros.
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 25/09/2026
Chisholm looking distinctly grumpy.
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 05/09/2026
"Oh no, Darkseid has started vibecoding."
Darkseid from DC Comics calculating the anti-life equation. "But it doesn't add up. I fear this: as long as the anti-life equation is unsolved,as long as a scrap of free will exists anywhere in the universe then Darkseid remains unfulfilled.
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 31/08/2026
Such a lovely and funny book cover.
Spinoza on a Zebra, from the cover of Sovereignty Disrupted by Gilah Kletenik.
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 18/08/2026
This is why my imagination is solely occupied by the Greendale Human Being.
The Greendale Human Being is the school mascot designed and created by Dean Pelton and Pierce Hawthorne. Dean Pelton wanted to create a new mascot for Greendale as he felt the old mascot, a Grizzly bear, was not politically correct enough. Pierce volunteers to help him, and they both set out to design the least offensive mascot possible. What they came up with was a mascot in a tight fitting grey unitard with the Greendale logo on its chest. It was wearing a faceless mask that had crudely drawn eyes and mouth. The mask itself was tight as well and did not allow the person wearing it to see or breathe well. It first appeared in the Season One episode "Football, Feminism and You" and it makes subsequent appearances throughout the series, both in mascot form and in images on various Greendale paraphernalia. The Human Being was first portrayed by William Love. He and a few other actors have worn the mascot suit since then. In the Community webisode series "Dean Pelton's Office Hours", the Human Being is portrayed by a female.
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 15/08/2026
My contribution to the reading group.
Two large aquatic mammals, a larger one with Hegel's face superimposed, a smaller one with Foucault's face superimposed.
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 15/08/2026
"The ancient Mediterranean world's vegetarianism was always about purity and asceticism, not about moral concern for Nonhuman Animals." Plutarch:
Humans have so
much natural shame at consuming the flesh of other
creatures that they disguise it by cooking and spicing it so
as to make it unrecognizable But nothing abashed us, not the flower-like tintingof the
flesh, not the persuasiveness of the harmonious voice, not the
cleanliness of their habits or the unusual intelligence thatmay
be found in the poor wretches. No, forthe sake of a little
flesh we deprive them of sun, of light, of the duration of life
to which they are entitled by birthand being. Then we go on
toassume thatwhen they uttercries and squeaks their speech
is inarticulate, thatthey do not, begging formercy, entreat-
ing, seeking justice, each of them say, "I do not ask tobe
spared incase of necessity; only spare me your arrogance!
Kill me to eat, but not to please your palate!" (Cherniss and
Helmbold 549-51)He notes, for example, that the eating of meat is unnatural and was forced upon man by crop failure when the earth was first forming. Such a lifestyle is no longer justified at a time when the earth produces an overabundance of edible plants.
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 01/08/2026
Going to refer to all my speculative claims as "heroic extrapolations" for now and all eternity. Hartmann, Betsy. "Rethinking Climate Refugees and Climate Conflict: Rhetoric, Reality and the Politics of Policy Discourse." Journal of International Development 22, no. 2 (2010): 233-46.
Nordas and Gleditsch, 2007). Now Myers claims there will be 200 million climate migrants
by 2050, a figure which is similarly making the rounds in policy documents even though
Myers himself acknowledges that the estimate is based on ‘heroic extrapolations’ (Brown,
2008, p. 8).
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 10/07/2026
One-boxer can open a new Sangha, thus quickening the achievement of the Bodhisattva's vow to end suffering for all sentient beings. Two-boxer is caught in an egoic illusion. link.springer.com/chapter/10.1...


    I teach only suffering and the end of suffering.

    The Buddha

    The ultimate end … is an existence exempt as far as possible from pain … secured to all mankind … and … to the whole sentient creation.

    J. S. Mill

    Woe to those who creep through the serpent-windings of Utilitarianism.

    Immanuel Kant
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 07/07/2026
!!! Javanese culture has such an incredible aesthetics of monstrosity and evil, psyched to check this out.
Cover for Indonesian Death Metal and Indonesian Society by Kieran E James
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 12/06/2026
This is actually so funny. I'm sorry, Christian Korean Nationalists, but when your equivalent groups in America tell the same sort of story, only two countries are included in this list. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
ABSTRACT

Despite the absence of a historical presence of a Jewish population in Korea, support for Israel among right-wing Korean evangelicals has escalated into a nationalist and imperialist initiative. This theo-political phenomenon is rooted in American missionary influence, Cold War anti-communism, and militarized Korean nation-building, and is intricately linked to U.S. empire-building. Through Emilie Townes’ concept of “fantastic hegemonic imagination,” this article critically examines Korean Christian Zionism, as manifested in its metanarrative of “chosen peoples nationalism.” This ideology fantastically frames South Korea, Israel, and the United States as God's elected nations for the divine end-time plan. By examining the contemporary Korean civil society and the church's solidarity with Palestine, the article also illuminates ordinary Koreans’ efforts to stand with globally disenfranchised people against imperialism.
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 09/06/2026
Plutarch's letter to Timoxena about their child dying is brutally sad.
[2] Only, my dear wife, at this sad moment, keep yourself, and me, calm. I know 
I can get the measure of what has happened; but if I see you grieving to excess, that 
will hurt me more than the loss. But I am no "child of oak or rock": you know that, 
you have shared with me the upbringing of all our children, all reared at home by 
ourselves, and you know that this child was beloved by me above all, because she 
was the daughter you wanted after four sons and she gave me the opportunity to give 
her your name. There is a special savor in our affection for children of that age; it 
lies in the purity of the pleasure they give, the freedom from any crossness or com- 
plaint. She herself too had great natural goodness and gentleness of temper: her 
response to affection and her generosity both gave pleasure and enabled us to per- 
ceive the human kindness in her nature. She would ask her nurse to feed not only 
other babies but the objects and toys that she liked playing with, and would gener- 
ously invite them, as it were, to her table, offering the good things she had and shar- 
ing her greatest pleasures with those who delighted her.
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 07/06/2026
Printing this off and putting it above my desk, I reckon the fish-men are a pretty good mix of horror and wonder 😅
Text reads: "We should write philosophy with a sense of urgency, a sense of survival, a sense of horror and wonder at the world." -Helen De Cruz

Background: Helen's illustration of Cavendish's Blazing World. Two fish people and the Empress are examining a shell.
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 05/06/2026
Call for papers for the Oxford Symposium of Occult Studies. I will be presenting on how scholarship about demonization in politics generates a sort of secularized grimoire, i.e. political theology is a way of binding or negotiating with the "demonic." philevents.org/event/show/1...
The Oxford Symposium of Occult Studies

On the Nature of Grimoires as Scholarship and 
of Scholarship as Grimoires
For Scholars of Magick, Daemons, and the Celestial Spheres

At the Collegium Sancti Johannis Baptistae in Oxford
That Very Same College where Robert Fludd studied the Two
Worlds of Micro and Macrocosm
19-20 of November 2026
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 03/06/2026
I just passed my final milestone before dissertation submission! Very excited to join the ranks of Verified Marx Understanders.
Marx's head in the sky, superimposed over the sun.
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 29/05/2026
Here's part of a prayer to deliver one from the Octopus Spirit, from an online deliverance ministry. I find it so funny and charming that the demon takes on so many actual octopodal traits, down to the ability to shoot ink.
In the name of Jesus, I speak to the Octopus Spirit
I renounce you from my life, from my brain, my gut, my body entirely, my soul, my spirit, my emotions.
Your grip is loose in the name of Jesus. Each arm you carry
will be cut at the root and will not be able to regrow.

You will not be able to shape shift into anything else to hide, you will be seen for what you are.

Your power to shoot ink will dry up and any ink that has been sprayed is cleansed by the fire of the Lord.
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 29/05/2026
Could Discovery or the History Channel please give me $8.2 million to make a documentary about finding Cronus' slumbering cell in the Isles of Scilly? From Plutarch's De defectu oraculorum.
Demetrius said that among the islands lying near Britain⁠ were many isolated, having few or no inhabitants, some of which bore the names of divinities or heroes. He himself, by the emperor's order, had made a voyage for inquiry and observation to the nearest of these islands which had only a few inhabitants, holy men who were all held inviolate by the Britons. Shortly after his arrival there occurred a great tumult in the air and many portents; violent winds suddenly swept down and lightning-flashes darted to earth. When these abated, the people of the island said that the passing of someone of the mightier souls had befallen. "For," said they, "as a lamp when it is being lighted has no terrors, but when it goes out is distressing to many,⁠ so the great souls have a kindling into life that is gentle and inoffensive, but their passing and dissolution often, as at the present moment, fosters tempests and storms, and often infects the air with pestilential properties." Moreover, they said that in this part of the world there is one island where Cronus is confined, guarded while he sleeps by Briareus; for his sleep has been devised as a bondage for him, and round about him are many demigods as attendants and servants.Scilly Isles: map by John Bartholomew (1874)Map of the isles relative to Southwest England.
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 24/05/2026
Parody of OP's post featuring the "Marxist Order of the Family" as a poorly designed umbrella. The top layer is "Gay Marriage" and is "Basically just regular marriage." The second layer is "Socialism" with "Social Housing," "Healthcare," and "Cool National Anthems." The third layer is "Dialectics" with "Sublation of Contradiction" and "Non-Dialethic Logics." The final layer is "Free Pre-K" with "Snacks" and "ABCs."
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 15/05/2026
I love that Spinoza took the time to express sympathy for Devils, even while thinking they don't exist. It makes me think of Zizek on how the counterfactuals we make explicit are an extension of and give shape to our norms, values, concepts, "the symbolic order," etc.
CHAPTER XXV
ON DEVILS
We shall now briefly say something about devils, whether
they exist or do not exist, and it is this :
If the Devil is a thing that is once for all opposed to God,
and has absolutely nothing from God, then he is precisely iden-
tical with Nothing, which we have already discussed before.
I
If, with some, we represent him as a thinking thing that
absolutely neither wills nor does any good, and so sets him-
self, once for all, in opposition to God, then surely he is to
very wretched, and, if prayers could help, then one ought
to pray for his conversion.
But let us just see whether such a wretched thing could
even exist for a single moment. And, if we do so, we shall
immediately find out that it cannot; for whatever duration
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 12/05/2026
When they posit that movement and change are absorbed into the immutability of the rational as forms of mere appearance.
William James with glowing red eyes
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 11/05/2026
Slavoj standing in a bathroom, holding a book with the YouTube logo superimposed on it
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 10/05/2026
You have more in common with a naive free will believer than with a philosopher who supposedly agrees with you ✊
Suppose, for example, that a philosopher believes in what is called free-will. That a common man alongside of him should also share that belief, possessing it by a sort of inborn intuition, does not endear the man to the philosopher at all—he may even be ashamed to be associated with such a man. What interests the philosopher is the particular premises on which the free-will he believes in is established, the sense in which it is taken, the objections it eludes, the difficulties it takes account of, in short the whole form and temper and manner and technical apparatus that goes with the belief in question. A philosopher across the way who should use the same technical apparatus, making the same distinctions, etc., but drawing opposite conclusions and denying free-will entirely, would fascinate the first philosopher far more than would the naïf co-believer. Their common technical interests would unite them more than their opposite conclusions separate them. Each would feel an essential consanguinity in the other, would think of him, write at him, care for his good opinion. The simple-minded believer in free-will would be disregarded by either. Neither as ally nor as opponent would his vote be counted.

William James, A Pluralistic Universe
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 10/05/2026
Must have been a pretty awesome bridge.
In the Greek epic poem Dionysiaca (circa 400 CE), the river is said to have been named after Orontes, an Indian military leader who killed himself and fell into the river after losing a single combat to Dionysus.[8] According to the Greek geographer Strabo (in Geographica, circa 20 CE), the river was originally named Typhon, because it was said that Zeus had struck the dragon Typhon down from the sky with thunder, and the river had formed where Typhon's body had fallen;[9] however, the river was later renamed Orontes when a man named Orontes built a bridge on it.[9][c]
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 09/05/2026
Plato's allegory of the cave but the shadows is the Canvas logo.
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 09/05/2026
This is the passage. "Strongly suggest" could be read as him saying that only the sources suggest it, but "let the real be what it sometimes is— rapturous" makes that a pretty strained reading. Is Kripal just inconsistent here, or am I misunderstanding?
ters is how the popular belief in such presumed levitations was disciplined,
controlled, and maintained by the Church and later constructed as sanc-
tity and as a saint.” Here is another doozy: “I do not care if the psychedelic
trip leads a person to an actual encounter or identity with the personal
Source or Ground of the universe. That does not matter. What matters are
the institutional and now medical structures built up around such a belief
and their social production of medicine and religion.”
Really? I want to pull my hair out in such moments (and I don’t have
much hair left). A super-pious Italian man ecstatically flies into a tree and
has to be retrieved with a ladder, or a raptured Spanish nun cannot keep
herself on the floor in front of some visiting noblewomen, and these phys-
ical events do not matter to you? Uh, excuse me, if either of those things
actually happened (and our historical records suggest strongly that they
did), such anomalous events change pretty much everything we thought we
knew about human consciousness and its relationship to physics, gravity,
and material reality. Either single event would fundamentally change our
entire order of knowledge. And you don’t care?
Don’t you find that disinterest just a little bit perverse? Just a little too
convenient? Don’t you smell your own ideology on the flat chessboard? I
do. You are piling on Teresa with the nuns, holding her down to avoid a
social scandal. Shame on you. Get off the levitating woman. Let her float.
Let her fly. Let the real be what it sometimes is— rapturous.
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 09/05/2026
This passage in Kripal's Superhumanities confused me. Here he claims scholars shouldn't take superhuman experiences "absolutely or literally," but elsewhere he seems to say Teresa de Avila levitated. How to reconcile?
Passage from the referenced text, pg. 171:

all are. If I might put it in a meme Hewitt does not use but I want to name
and invoke now: comparativism is compassion.
By this phrase, I point out that the comparativist takes every religious
experience and expression— no matter how troubling, disjunctive, or ex-
otic, even the Devil himself— as an important expression and sign of the
human psyche. But precisely because she must take every such experience
seriously, she cannot take any such experience absolutely or literally, as the
believer or patient might. That, after all, would make it impossible to take
everyone else’s experience seriously and humanely.
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 04/05/2026
Laycock's monograph is a lovely introduction to Satanism; it goes over the key historical moments and considerations well: Romanticism, LaVey, cops making up cabals, etc. I learned the animal shelter I used to work with in Salt Lake started as a Satanic splinter group. I had no clue, very funny.
Cover of Satanism by Joseph P. Laycock, a Cambridge Element on New Religious Movements
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 03/05/2026
without downloading anything new, where are you mentally?
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 01/05/2026
I did a quick search through my archive of Platonic materials and nothing came up either, though I did get this much less cutesy passage from the Laws (spoken by the Athenian stranger).
Quote from Plato's Laws, p. 226 in Jowett's translation in Volume 1 of the Dialogues of Plato by Cambridge University Press:

The sea is pleasant enough as a daily companion, but has also a bitter and brackish quality; filling the streets with merchants and shopkeepers, and begetting in the souls of men uncertain and unfaithful ways--making the state unfriendly and unfaithful both to her own citizens, and also to other nations.
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 01/05/2026
May Day ✊
Screenshot from Wikipedia: The slogan of video game retailer GameStop, "Power to the Players", is a variation of the "Power to the People" slogan.
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 29/04/2026
Early depictions of the Devilfish, the demonic and monstrous representation of octopuses, were almost always negative and used for political demonologies. One of my favorite exceptions is from Stalin's obituary for Lenin.
A newspaper written in Russian.A newspaper column written in Russian.
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 29/04/2026
When the Teams call ends without you embarrassing yourself.
A Metal Gear Solid 5 mission complete screen. It lists the score the player has earned for playtime, headshots, interrogations, not killing anyone, perfect stealth, etc. It gives a codename to the player, "Chick," with a picture of a chick and a rank S. At the top, superimposed over the image, is text that reads "MEETING COMPLETE."
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 27/04/2026
Humor about Mormonism is indiscernible between 1874 and today, this style of joke could be found today on r/Exmormon or in a Post-Mo meetup in Salt Lake.
Image of a newspaper text, which reads:
Answer—We have great pleasure in replying to this question. We have great faith in the Book of Mormon,  having studied Reformed Egyptian ever since we were babies. There is no real difficulty about the passage, anymore than there is about the one which says that Moroni made a rent in his garment and wrote words upon the rent (see page 334.) Writing upon a hole in a garment was quite easy in ancient days. People now can’t write easily upon a rent, although they can write very close up to it. But things were different then. So in regard to cutting of people's heads...
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 26/04/2026
William Jennings Bryan's 1900 presidential campaign represented corporate trusts as a Devilfish wrapping itself around key American industries, with Lady Democracy wielding an axe against it.
Democracy Herself, wielding an axe, swings it at the Trusts Devilfish, an octopus wrapping itself around the food, steel, and tobacco industries. The arms of the octopus end with the heads of serpents. Behind the Devilfish is the Declaration of Independence, a US flag, and a dollar coin.
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 25/04/2026
The Irish Devil-Fish is a recreation of Gilliatt's battle with the octopus in Victor Hugo's Toilers of the Sea. The Irish Land League becomes The Monster, Prime Minister William Gladstone becomes The Hero. Published in the magazine Punch, the image mimicked other representations of the book.
An octopus labeled as "The Irish Devil-Fish" and "Land League" fights a representation of Prime Minister William Gladstone. The octopus's arms are labeled with terms like "terrorism," "rebelling," and sedition." Gladstone is holding a knife to the octopus. At the bottom, the caption reads:

"'The creature is formidable, but there is a way of resisting it. * * * The Devil-fish, in fact, is only vulnerable through the head.'
Victor Hugo's Toilers of the Sea, Book IV, Ch iii"
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 24/04/2026
The earliest Russian Octopus was a direct update of the "threat of the Russian bear," with early records including Austro-Hungarian newspapers and this map most likely printed in Haarlem. The "tentacles" of the octopus threaten to subsume European nations, an expression of Tsarist power.
A map labeled "Humoristische-Oorlogskaart." Russia is portrayed as a massive octopus, wrapping its arms around Poland, Turkey, &. Other nations are portrayed as humans in alignment with their national identities or a stereotype of them.
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 23/04/2026
Exploring @publicdomainrev.bsky.social for pictures to promote this term's demonology reading/research group, this image of a witch feeding blood to her familiars is so adorable. publicdomainreview.org/essay/woodcu...
"Witch pictured feeding her familiars with blood, in A Rehearsall both Straung and True, of Hainous and Horrible Actes Committed by Elizabeth Stile (1579)"
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 23/04/2026
Paging Dr. Bataille!
A red book. The Accursed Share, Volume 1 by Georges Bataille (Translated by Robert Hurley).
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 03/04/2026
A sigil with jagged edges and the Coptic letters Alpha, Horeh, Beta, in the center.
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 03/04/2026
I pulled this tarot card to check on the war, is this good?
The Tower in the 1909 Rider–Waite tarot deck.
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 28/03/2026
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 20/03/2026
I don't think Johnston's book got much play outside the psychoanalytic/Zizekian sphere, but it's relevant here. I'd love to give it a second read soon to think through its demonological angle in more detail.
The cover of Adrian Johnston's "Infinite Greed," featuring a crowd of men at the base of an idol to Mammon.
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 07/02/2026
Most Satanist groups embrace principles like respect for bodily autonomy and nonviolence. The Satanic Temple has been attacked by the right wing in US and Russia. @dropsitenews.com should not perpetuate Satanic panic; those being critiqued are Christian and secular billionaires.
A screenshot of a Drop Site video featuring Jeremy Scahill. Description: 'Satanic-Soimunding' Emails from the Epstein Files will Take Time to Process
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 25/01/2026
Same!
Weakness

Despite his numerous forms and godlike power, Chaos has one consistent weakness: his brain [THIS TEXT IS HIGHLIGHTED]. This is a weak spot that, when hit, will cause Chaos' form to weaken and destabilize. He is also not well protected in most of his forms. Chaos is also noticeably slower than most other Sonic characters, even in his smallest form, Chaos 0.
Relationships
Tikal

Image: Chaos with Tikal and various Chao, from Sonic Adventure DX: Director's Cut.

Tikal was the only person that Chaos allowed to approach the Chao, as Chaos saw Tikal's caring nature towards them. When Pachacamac attacked the Chao and Tikal, Chaos attacked Pachacamac in revenge but became consumed by evil and rampaged across his empire. Tikal sealed him away until the Master Emerald shattered, causing Chaos
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Scott Maybell @haliphron.ink · 16/12/2025
Caption reads: "when ur a vegano-Bayesian"
Image: an astral projecting man transcending into the stars, what appears to be the golden ratio emerges from his heart as light
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