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#541 | |||||||||||
Elf Lord
Join Date: Jan 2007
Posts: 4,535
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1 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, 2 Speak unto Aaron, and unto his sons, and unto all the children of Israel, and say unto them; This is the thing which the LORD hath commanded, saying, 3 What man soever there be of the house of Israel, that killeth an ox, or lamb, or goat, in the camp, or that killeth it out of the camp, 4 And bringeth it not unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, to offer an offering unto the LORD before the tabernacle of the LORD; blood shall be imputed unto that man; he hath shed blood; and that man shall be cut off from among his people: Has your sandwich been to the tabernacle? 5 To the end that the children of Israel may bring their sacrifices, which they offer in the open field, even that they may bring them unto the LORD, unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, unto the priest, and offer them for peace offerings unto the LORD. 6 And the priest shall sprinkle the blood upon the altar of the LORD at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, and burn the fat for a sweet savour unto the LORD. Where is the fat burning in your sanctuary? 7 And they shall no more offer their sacrifices unto devils, after whom they have gone a whoring. This shall be a statute for ever unto them throughout their generations. 8 And thou shalt say unto them, Whatsoever man there be of the house of Israel, or of the strangers which sojourn among you, that offereth a burnt offering or sacrifice, 9 And bringeth it not unto the door of the tabernacle of the congregation, to offer it unto the LORD; even that man shall be cut off from among his people. 10 And whatsoever man there be of the house of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among you, that eateth any manner of blood; I will even set my face against that soul that eateth blood, and will cut him off from among his people. 11 For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls: for it is the blood that maketh an atonement for the soul. 12 Therefore I said unto the children of Israel, No soul of you shall eat blood, neither shall any stranger that sojourneth among you eat blood. 13 And whatsoever man there be of the children of Israel, or of the strangers that sojourn among you, which hunteth and catcheth any beast or fowl that may be eaten; he shall even pour out the blood thereof, and cover it with dust. 14 For it is the life of all flesh; the blood of it is for the life thereof: therefore I said unto the children of Israel, Ye shall eat the blood of no manner of flesh: for the life of all flesh is the blood thereof: whosoever eateth it shall be cut off. 15 And every soul that eateth that which died of itself, or that which was torn with beasts, whether it be one of your own country, or a stranger, he shall both wash his clothes, and bathe himself in water, and be unclean until the even: then shall he be clean. 16 But if he wash them not, nor bathe his flesh; then he shall bear his iniquity. What did you have for dinner? 19.19 Ye shall keep my statutes. Thou shalt not let thy cattle gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed: neither shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee. What is the fiber content of your shirt? 19.27 Ye shall not round the corners of your heads, neither shalt thou mar the corners of thy beard. Do you cut your hair or own a razor? 20.25 Ye shall therefore put difference between clean beasts and unclean, and between unclean fowls and clean: and ye shall not make your souls abominable by beast, or by fowl, or by any manner of living thing that creepeth on the ground, which I have separated from you as unclean. 26 And ye shall be holy unto me: for I the LORD am holy, and have severed you from other people, that ye should be mine. 27 A man also or woman that hath a familiar spirit, or that is a wizard, shall surely be put to death: they shall stone them with stones: their blood shall be upon them. Cast the first stone. I dare you. Jesus knew that it wasn't the 'government' enforcing these things. Quote:
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That would be the swirling vortex to another world. Cool. I want one. TMNT No, I'm not emo. I just have a really poor sense of direction. (Thanks to katya for this quote) This is the best news story EVER! http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26087293/ “Often my haste is a mistake, but I live with the consequences without complaint.”...John McCain "I shall go back. And I shall find that therapist. And I shall whack her upside her head with my blanket full of rocks." ...Louisa May |
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#542 |
the Shrike
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: San Francisco, CA <3
Posts: 10,647
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*smooches sis
I agree with everything you said. ![]()
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"Binary solo! 0000001! 00000011! 0000001! 00000011!" ~ The Humans are Dead, Flight of the Conchords |
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#543 | |||
Elf Lord
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: Fountain Valley, CA
Posts: 6,343
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During the Religious Wars, Catholics and Protestants fought each other hard enough that they became war weary. Religious freedom came from an environment of exhaustion and rapidly increasing secularism. Secularized governments felt less religious compulsion than their forbears, and so were less inclined to fight over religious unity. The parents of religious freedom were originally secularism and exhaustion. People wanted to get back to their normal lives, to live at peace. Peace came at the price of exchanging some of their old convictions about the function of the government for new ideas. Religious freedom was, in its turn, a parent for many more of the modern freedoms that were rejected by Medieval law and the Old Covenant Law. It all comes from secularizing roots, though, and from sources of thought that opposed traditional Catholicism. The Early Church Fathers, and the writers of the Epistles, had very bad things to say about heretics. They had no political power, but the first Christian emperor, Constantine, took the first action against heretics on religious grounds. He banished Arius from his kingdom. Other Christian emperors or rulers followed the same kinds of practice. From the beginning of Christian involvement in politics, this was practiced, and the Church felt that it was a good thing, so that orthodoxy might be complete. St. Augustine said the heretics should be banished. St. Thomas Aquinas agreed that force should be used against heretics. Many of the greatest church saints and popes agreed on this, and it was the normal Catholic viewpoint throughout Christian history, until the modern era. Prosecutions for heresy weren't all that necessary through much of the Medieval Ages, because very few people fell for it, and it therefore wasn't a severe threat. Often the Church simply excommunicated the heretic and left it at that. But in the late Medieval Ages, heresies became much more widespread and threatening, as they had been in the days of the Early Church. So the Church again worked with the secular monarchs to put it down with force as well as evangelism. The Church's practice, both at the beginning of the Christian era and at the end, was pretty consistent. On a purely legal basis, the Old Testament certainly tells a lot more than the New Testament does about how a government is to be run. Jesus talked more about how people should behave in their own lives, whereas Moses was very concerned with governing a nation. God gave Moses a national law, the practices of the government of God's kingdom, and Jesus gave humans a much more personal law, a law described in the New Testament as "written on your hearts." It governs our actions from within us, purifying us so that good earthly laws won't hurt us, simply because we obey them out of love for God and because of his goodness within us. But the Old Testament offers a lot more information than the New about just government practices. The New Testament is incomplete, on its own. It has to have the Old Testament to complement it. The Old Testament describes God's justice, principally (though certainly not exclusively), and the New Testament (again, principally) seems to describe his mercy. They complement one another. Law should be practiced with mercy, but it should also be just. Therefore, looking for justice of law in the Old Testament is a logical course of action for a government to engage in, even as they should note that they should practice the law with New Testament mercy. A number of things in the Old Testament Law, of course, were rituals, things that symbolically represented truths that would be given in their completeness with the New. So those rituals can be discarded, as Paul did when he eliminated the requirement that males be circumcised. Putting a ceremonially unclean person outside of the camp was likewise a symbolic gesture that represented the removal of sin from the soul. Other parts of the Old Testament Law were not merely about ritual. The treatment of witches in the Law could not have been merely a way of symbolically representing greater truth that would later be fulfilled. And when one looks at the way God actually supernaturally intervened to prevent Balaam from cursing the Israelites, it becomes apparent that this was something that the Old Testament presents as having real power. At least when it's not done by frauds ![]() There are a few times in the Old Testament where God brings judgments on people for witchcraft, and I the Book of Revelation also describes this. Like me, you still accept that some of the Old Testament Law is valid to establish in society. "Thou shalt not murder," and "thou shalt not steal," are pretty broadly accepted in today's society. The number of Old Testament laws that are accepted is shrinking rapidly, though, and it has been shrinking for centuries. This is because, as Christianity loses much of the power it had in the past, as a result of separation of church and state, and rulership by the people, for the people, among other things, Christian laws are being pulled away. Because many old Christian laws had their roots in the Old Testament, we get along with the general socially accepted position by consigning those laws to a place in the Old Testament, and saying that they do not belong in a New Testament society. I'm sorry for being so longwinded and rambling on this. I'm having trouble finding a way to concisely respond to your point. Quote:
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If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. ~Oscar Wilde, written from prison Oscar Wilde's last words: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." |
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#544 | ||||||
Elf Lord
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: Fountain Valley, CA
Posts: 6,343
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Take a law against murder, for instance. It's rooted primarily in the Old Testament. Jesus never says in the New Testament, to my recollection, that the government should practice this law. He gave the Ten Commandments to a man and said, "do this and you will live," but he didn't say, "the government should practice the Ten Commandments." Yet for Christians, this government law has its moral foundation in the Old Testament. People don't have the right to dish out judgment however they wish. "Judge not, or you shall be judged," does not mean that the courts should not pronounce any judgments, though. Humans shouldn't be the ones who make up the law, either. They should base it on what God told them is true, and on what God told them to do. Human judgment is so weak and fallible that to base our legal systems on it, rather than rooting law in the commands of God, is to my mind folly. Quote:
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I really feel malicious intent is too subjective to be a sufficient basis for judgment. That's my personal view, anyway, for what it's worth. Quote:
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Eyewitness testimony would of course be important. A witch might have friends or neighbors who have seen things from time to time. With modern tools, reliable evidence would be easier to assemble than it was in the past. However, the kinds of criteria that were often used in the 1450-1750 witchcraft trials were often very bad, in my view. The Catholic Church objected to many of those criteria also. A lot of what would commonly be today called "superstition" did get in, toward the end. I personally hate the word "superstition," because it is such an incredibly conceited word, but I do feel that many of the views that developed during that time period about the supernatural were eroneous. It is very sad.
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If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. ~Oscar Wilde, written from prison Oscar Wilde's last words: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." |
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#545 | ||||||||
Elf Lord
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: Fountain Valley, CA
Posts: 6,343
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Sis, the five questions you asked above and highlighted in red were symbolic rituals that were later fulfilled in Christ. Here's the response I gave above to Gwaimir about that:
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Exactly what books should be considered canonical was also not agreed on universally until around 400 AD. There were many debates back then, and the Church didn't fully resolved every one of them.
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If the world has indeed, as I have said, been built of sorrow, it has been built by the hands of love, because in no other way could the soul of man, for whom the world was made, reach the full stature of its perfection. ~Oscar Wilde, written from prison Oscar Wilde's last words: "Either the wallpaper goes, or I do." Last edited by Lief Erikson : 03-26-2008 at 05:40 AM. |
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#546 | |
The Ñoldóran
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Mishawaka, IN
Posts: 2,050
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Hmm. Satanic powers, eh? It's interesting that Christians accuse us of dealing in 'Satanic powers' when we don't even believe in Satan. ![]()
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Then Celegorm no more would stay, And Curufin smiled and turned away... ~The Lay of Leithian |
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#547 | |
Elf Lord
Join Date: Jan 2007
Posts: 4,535
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![]() I personally like the way CS Lewis sorted everything in Narnia. Tash knew who his guys were. ![]()
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That would be the swirling vortex to another world. Cool. I want one. TMNT No, I'm not emo. I just have a really poor sense of direction. (Thanks to katya for this quote) This is the best news story EVER! http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26087293/ “Often my haste is a mistake, but I live with the consequences without complaint.”...John McCain "I shall go back. And I shall find that therapist. And I shall whack her upside her head with my blanket full of rocks." ...Louisa May |
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#548 | |
The Ñoldóran
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Mishawaka, IN
Posts: 2,050
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![]() Oh, and don't forget the whole: 'Kill a commie for Christ' in the 1960's. Yep, that's Christianity and Christian love and kindness for you! Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not Christian, but I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with people who are and who practice Jesus's message truthfully. Good for you! It's a great message and an even better way to live your life. It's these people who use obscure parts of the bible to practice bigotry against people they disagree with that make me sick. ![]() Oh, and FYI, I'm a witch, and slowly backing away from the matches in this room... ![]()
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Then Celegorm no more would stay, And Curufin smiled and turned away... ~The Lay of Leithian |
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#549 |
Quasi Evil
Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: Maryland, US
Posts: 4,634
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so do you weigh as much as a duck then?
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"People's political beliefs don't stem from the factual information they've acquired. Far more the facts people choose to believe are the product of their political beliefs." "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." |
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#550 |
The Ñoldóran
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Mishawaka, IN
Posts: 2,050
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Can I plead the 5th?
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Then Celegorm no more would stay, And Curufin smiled and turned away... ~The Lay of Leithian |
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#551 |
Quasi Evil
Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: Maryland, US
Posts: 4,634
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You can but dont blame me if the rabble insist on making a bridge out of you.
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"People's political beliefs don't stem from the factual information they've acquired. Far more the facts people choose to believe are the product of their political beliefs." "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." |
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#552 |
The Ñoldóran
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Mishawaka, IN
Posts: 2,050
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Then Celegorm no more would stay, And Curufin smiled and turned away... ~The Lay of Leithian |
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#553 | |||||||
Dread Mothy Lord and Halfwitted Apprentice Loremaster
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Thomas Aquinas College, Santa Paula, CA
Posts: 10,820
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"Rev 21:1, Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and there was no longer any sea." "Romans 7:6, But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held;" Romans 6:14, For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace." etc.; you of all people know I could keep going on at great length! Since you mention that you are becoming a Catholic, I'll note that the Catholic Church opposes the use of the death penalty, except where it is necessary. I would also point out that many, many people who call themselves "witches" these days are nothing of the sort. They are usually just a rather bland sort of neo-pagan, whose "spells" are nothing more than prayers to Gardnerian gods. These are not the sort of people with whom Kramer and Sprenger concerned themselves.
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Crux fidelis, inter omnes arbor una nobilis. Nulla talem silva profert, fronde, flore, germine. Dulce lignum, dulce clavo, dulce pondus sustinens. 'With a melon?' - Eric Idle |
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#554 | |
The Ñoldóran
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Mishawaka, IN
Posts: 2,050
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Quote:
Personally, I don't think there's anything whatsoever 'bland' about my religion, as I'm sure you don't think there's anything 'bland' about yours.
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Then Celegorm no more would stay, And Curufin smiled and turned away... ~The Lay of Leithian |
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#555 |
Dread Mothy Lord and Halfwitted Apprentice Loremaster
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Thomas Aquinas College, Santa Paula, CA
Posts: 10,820
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I was referring specifically to Wicca; having essentially (as I understand it) two deities, the Goddess and the God, who seem to be sort of most conceptions of female and male deity (respectively, of course!
![]() Also, as a disclaimer, I was just trying to prevent you from suddenly finding yourself well-done. ![]() I believe that there are more kinds of religion that identify as "witches", but they are far less common. I would define neo-paganism as a set of religious beliefs of relatively modern origin, based on and/or inspired by ancient paganism. Spell and prayer are more difficult; I know it when I see it. ![]() EDIT: Hmm...way too many winkies in this post... ![]()
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Crux fidelis, inter omnes arbor una nobilis. Nulla talem silva profert, fronde, flore, germine. Dulce lignum, dulce clavo, dulce pondus sustinens. 'With a melon?' - Eric Idle Last edited by Gwaimir Windgem : 03-27-2008 at 02:13 PM. |
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#556 |
Elf Lord
Join Date: Jan 2007
Posts: 4,535
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Lief hasn't gotten the update that "Perfecti" are no longer part of the Catholic Church. Perhaps the elevation of a former Nazi gave him room for optimism on this point.
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That would be the swirling vortex to another world. Cool. I want one. TMNT No, I'm not emo. I just have a really poor sense of direction. (Thanks to katya for this quote) This is the best news story EVER! http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26087293/ “Often my haste is a mistake, but I live with the consequences without complaint.”...John McCain "I shall go back. And I shall find that therapist. And I shall whack her upside her head with my blanket full of rocks." ...Louisa May |
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#557 | ||
The Ñoldóran
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Mishawaka, IN
Posts: 2,050
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![]() ![]() Thanks for that. ![]() No, I'm not exactly Wicca, because I think it attracts too many annoying 'trendy' people. I'm my own combination of different 'pagan' beliefs, actually. ![]() Quote:
![]() Oh, and as for spells, I've never really done any. I pray to the God/Goddess for guidance (I don't really think that there are two seperate beings, but one that has both parts), and I do a lot of meditation, but not really spells. Oh, I've done one or two - one to help a friend who was deeply troubled at the time and had attempted suicide, and one to help me with an exam. But really, they're not anything more than the directing of my energy in a certain way. I can't conceive of anyone thinking they're evil or satanic!!
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Then Celegorm no more would stay, And Curufin smiled and turned away... ~The Lay of Leithian Last edited by Curufin : 03-27-2008 at 02:20 PM. |
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#558 |
Dread Mothy Lord and Halfwitted Apprentice Loremaster
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Thomas Aquinas College, Santa Paula, CA
Posts: 10,820
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Eh? My brain is scrambling, but all I can come up with is the "perfecti" of the Cathars, which doesn't seem to have much bearing on anything mentioned...
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Crux fidelis, inter omnes arbor una nobilis. Nulla talem silva profert, fronde, flore, germine. Dulce lignum, dulce clavo, dulce pondus sustinens. 'With a melon?' - Eric Idle |
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#559 |
Dread Mothy Lord and Halfwitted Apprentice Loremaster
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Thomas Aquinas College, Santa Paula, CA
Posts: 10,820
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I'm glad to hear that. A lot of the time, Wiccans can be pretty silly, from my experience.
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Crux fidelis, inter omnes arbor una nobilis. Nulla talem silva profert, fronde, flore, germine. Dulce lignum, dulce clavo, dulce pondus sustinens. 'With a melon?' - Eric Idle |
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#560 |
The Ñoldóran
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Mishawaka, IN
Posts: 2,050
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Oh, I agree completely.
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Then Celegorm no more would stay, And Curufin smiled and turned away... ~The Lay of Leithian |
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