
When Monks Went Undercover to Steal Relics - onychomys
https://daily.jstor.org/when-monks-went-undercover-to-steal-relics/
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hosh
I heard of similar intrigues among the Tibetans. Metal from meteorite were
considered to have special properties sought after by both Tibetan Buddhist
practitioners and sorcerors. They made the meteorite metals into a number of
ritual implements. Some of them are considered to take on the very beings they
subdued and sealed, and thus were prized by both the ruling Buddhists and the
sorcerers for the power it carried.

The last bit was interesting:

"... the most important explanation is a theological one. Because relics were
infused with the living presence of a saint, capable of working miracles, they
were perfectly able to stop a thief. Any relic that didn’t wish to be moved
could simply become too heavy to lift, or cause all the doors of the church to
spontaneously lock. By this logic, if a relic was stolen, it wanted to be."

It reminds me of the stories Buddhist relics (not necessarily Tibetan) that
was similar. Though in those cases, they involved thieves bent on stealing it
for personal gain and somehow would get into a series of coincidences that
lead to its recovery.

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ehnto
I've been revisiting the game Age of Empires with my friends while keeping at
home. Today I learned that even that part of the game mechanic stems from some
research!

It's a great game for an online social event, because you have to commit to
the 2+ hours it is going to take to play. A lot of online games nowadays are
optimized from dropping in and out amongst a pool of random people, but AoE
makes you do the work to get people involved and stick to that commitment.

~~~
glouwbug
Check out the Resonance bot on the steam workshop. It makes playing the AI so
much more enjoyable

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ggm
I suspect the inherent sin involved was rapidly forgiven. Given the percentage
of monkish enterprise dedicated to creating fragments of the true cross, there
was a lot of sin to go around.

(I like the Umberto Eco comment in "the name of the rose" about the head of
John The Baptist as a child being on display at another church)

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otikik
... And they managed to do it while only breaking 3 of the 10 commandments!
(2, 8 and 10)

Unless they kept stealing during a Sabbath. That would make a still impressive
4/10.

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readthenotes
My preciousssss <gollum>

