page of wands

crow/jack - 24 - he/they || header: triumph of ariadne, hans marart || follows from @crying--crow || radfems and terfs fuck off

[arkefthos]

intro post! still in progress :>

hi! you can call me jack or crow. this is my religious sideblog for hellenic recon and revival. im 24, and live in the uk - currently in wales, but i move around a lot. i identify as queer and proudly transmasculine, and use he/they pronouns. you can find more about my queer identity in the boyfemme tag on my main blog, crying--crow, which is where my follows and comments will come from! but i do want to stress that my religion comes from an explicitly queer space.

DEVOTION + VENERATION.

i devote myself primarily to apollo, but also venerate hermes, athena, hekate, hestia and hypnos. my heroes include sappho, medea and hyakinthos. i am leaning towards the idea of dedicating my sobriety to dionysos. if you would like to talk to me privately about it, please dm me! my ask box is always open within the parameters of my dni list. i have signed the xenia declaration - please consider also doing so if you haven't already!

AREAS OF RESEARCH.

please consider this section an open invitation to talk to me about any of this stuff! i'd always love to learn more and have discussions about these topics. of course, within the parameters of my dni list, my ask box is always open, + i would be delighted to hear from you.

-copper and bronze age iberian religion

-orphism / orphic + dionysian mysteries

-nymphs and nature spirits

-ancient greek magic, and if i can syncretise with my upbringing in traditional scottish witchcraft

DNI LIST.

i would like to respectfully ask that people under 16 do not interact. my resources are all free use and i won't block anyone for being a minor, but i am not comfortable giving active advice about the faith or any personal matters in that dynamic. this blog will not contain explicit or graphic sexuality, but i still consider it nsfw.

additionally, please do not interact if you are any of the following;

terf, swerf, radfem, or exclu

right-wing/conservative/trad

folkish, hindutva, or ethnonationalist

english monarchist

rp blog

wiccans

someone who I used to know irl and really ought to know better

this blog is not a safe space for you, and i'll block you immediately! objectively the most boring option for both of us, so do us a favour and don't bother.

PDF FOLDER AND TAG DIRECTORY.

here is my google docs folder full of academic texts relating to hellenic polytheism. there's 54 books in there + counting! i'm working on an index to add to the folder; they are organised alphabetically, not by subject, so you might want to put your screen in landscape mode if you're on mobile. the only non-hellenism book in there is a copy of the viridarium umbris, which i downloaded because i couldn't help myself, and am happy to share because i know it's a pain to get hold of. incidentally, if anyone has a copy of jack grayle's hekataeon...

please check under the cut for a directory of all the tags that i use! it's roughly split into tags i used before + after this blog was primarily hellenic, and therefore there is info on modern neopagan and wiccan-leaning stuff.

HELLENISMOS.

basics, xenia, books, the epics, prayers

temples, pottery, statues, art (- a non-specific tag)

apollo general, quotes

hestia general, quotes

dionysos general, quotes

hekate general, quotes

aphrodite general, quotes

athena general

[hillbillybubbeleh]

Fuck Your Magic Antisemitism: A Lesser Key to the Appropriation of Jewish Magic & Mysticism

I am once again asking practitioners of magic, mysticism, and occultism to defer to Jewish voices and Jewish practitioners about the history and real-life impacts of appropriation of and theft from Judaism and Jewish mysticism instead of deferring to the opinions of non-Jewish occultists. I am also asking you to use discernment when engaging with revisionist history perpetuated by non-Jewish practitioners who profit or benefit from said revisionist history, such as claims that Jewish practitioners willingly "shared" or "gave" our practices with/to other communities, the refusal to acknowledge Jewish authorship, or the speaking over Jewish voices/attempts made by non-Jewish practitioners to speak for Jewish practitioners.

Now, I understand this can be overwhelming and many may not know where or how to begin, so I want to drop a recommendation. Fuck Your "Magic" Antisemitism: A Lesser Key to the Appropriation of Jewish Magic & Mysticism by Ezra Rose is an excellent place to start. This zine, which you can download for free (please leave a donation to support the author if you are able, and please share their work), is a wonderful treasure trove of history and resources. Per the author's description of the zine: FYMA is 'a guide to understanding the history and results of antisemitism in western occult and esoteric movements,  from the origins of "Solomonic" magic in medieval and Renaissance ceremonial grimoires, through the late 19th & early 20th century occult revival's "Qabalistic" ritual,  to ongoing appropriation and demonization in the 21st century.  A labor of love & spite, the zine is both a personal and academic look at a widely ignored topic.'

I have recommended this zine several times and have said that I think it should be required reading in witchcraft and witchcraft adjacent communities, and I stand by that. It's very, very good, and it is absolutely packed with thoroughly researched, cited, useful information.

[Follow and support Ezra Rose, the author: @sheydgarden on tumblr / @/sheydgarden on instagram.]

[catcatalpa]

The design of Dionysus and some old art

[thecollectibles]

Artemis Leading the Hunt — MTG Style by Ivana Abbate

[enchantedbook]

From Andrew Lang’s The Red Fairy Book, 1890. Illustration by Henry Justice Ford for the Norwegian tale "Kari Woodengown".

[eirene]

St. Mary’s Basilica in Krakow, 1905 Józef Rapacki

[moving-without-travel]

The Tower

[sixofclovers]

been thinking about my baby bro

[mogielnik]

i found love in the labirynth….

[mystischklee]

Ἀλεξίκακος Ἀπόλλων, Apollon the averter of evil 𓂃 ོ☼𓂃

[jeannereames]

Thinking about Religion: Greek and Macedonian Belief Systems

In this, I talk about more than just Greek and Macedonian religion. Included at the beginning is a mini-discussion of more inclusive ways to talk about religious systems more broadly, after teaching classes for or related to religious studies for 30+ years now.

If religious studies is your jam, you might enjoy this one, albeit it’s longer than I generally try for.

[27thfirefly]

the bacchae in translation, pt 3/?

euripides, c. 405 b.c.

michael wodhull, 1809

henry hart milman, 1865

t.a. buckley, 1892

alexander kerr, 1899

gilbert murray, 1906

arthur s. way, 1912

william arrowsmith, 1959

[kyleesarthell]

Androgeus

[brimo5]

I tend to believe that most of the Orphic myths we know today have Egyptian roots. One reason is that Orfeo made Demeter/Aphrodite (essentially Isis) Dionysus' consort and overlooked Ariadne. Interestingly, according to Plutarch, after her death, Ariadne share a special connection with Aphrodite on Delos and Cyprus. The worship of Isis was certainly present in both places, though I can't recall any source that directly connects Ariadne to Isis herself. Some indirect connections:

The Origins of the Goddess Ariadne: III. Delos, Cyprus, and Argos

Un'iconografia dionisiaca nell'Iseum et Serapeum del Campo Marzio?

Altar für Isis, Serapis, Liber und Libera

Comparing Ariadne with the goddesses (Dionysiaca 47. 265–313)

[s-c-r-ee-ch]

Apollo Citharoedus

Roman copy of a Greek original from the 5th century BC.

Chiaramonti Museum - Braccio Nuovo, Vatican

[chthonic-cassandra]

“If charis was grounded in a psychological phenomenon - the disposition to react when confronted with pleasure of a personal, social nature - and if it belonged to a social process, it necessarily entailed a feeling that was prolonged, that was retained over time. It did not denote instant gratification that would be forgotten. Hera will keep her charis-pleasure alive in her memory. But the converse was true also. If the charis-convention was ignored, the memory would register and retain the full effects of the offense. The aggrieved party would burn with anger until the situation was corrected, until reparation for the omission was made. Social bonds created by charis exposed the vulnerability of the human condition. A charis-event, provoked by moral or aesthetic beauty, was disarming: It broke down the barriers that confined the self, and it demanded that the beneficiary reach out to another. If this did not happen, the party who was responsible for conferring the pleasure was left exposed and vulnerable. This was cause for alarm.”

— Bonnie MacLachlan, The Age of Grace: Charis in Early Greek Poetry

[gingermintpepper]

I know everyone knows the story of Actaeon and how he met a terrible fate by stumbling upon Artemis bathing in her forest but did you know that Actaeon was Apollo's grandson? That his father was Aristaeus, lord of the bees and the rustic arts and his mother was Autonoe, daughter of Cadmus and princess of Thebes?

Did you know he was trained by Chiron? That he was considered a hunter so skilled his talent was considered divine, that he was his parents' only child and that he was loved?

Did you know the grief that consumed the household when word of Actaeon's fate reached them? That Cadmus cut his hair, that Harmonia wept and was disconsolate and that his parents... well, Autonoe walked the length of the forest, keeping a sharp eye out for her son, but all she saw were the scattered bones of a fawn. Aristaeus too, had heard his son was torn apart and so fruitlessly, foolishly searched for the bones of a man. (There was none to be found)

Did you know that it was Actaeon's ghost, unhappy and unburied, trapped on the earth, who leaned over his sleeping father and told him of his fate? "You will not find me as you knew me, gather me as a stag." And Aristaeus immediately woke his wife and told her the truth, and together they grieved all the night long.

(Did you know that this is why Aristaeus abandons Boeotia? He could not stand the sight of it and so he went to Ceos. And there he slayed the dog-star. And there he became a healing wind. All in the name of his only son, that foolish, beloved Actaeon.)

[victusinveritas]

Caption from Magnum Photos:

Throughout the 1980s and '90s, Cristina García Rodero documented Spain’s overlooked rituals and hidden customs. From rural Galicia to Madrid, she created an encyclopedic study of religious festivals that transformed her vision of her home country. “I discovered a world that was for me so rich, so strange, so mysterious, so happy, so absurd, so ridiculous, so great, so creative, so violent,” she says.

While a selection of black-and-white photographs were published in her 1989 book, España Oculta, her lesser-known color images created at the same time reveal another layer of the events to which she bore witness across towns and villages in the country.

In the push for modernity following Francisco Franco's death in 1975, Rodero sought to preserve these symbolic traditions. “We were all very conscious that we were privileged witnesses, that the Spain we were in and that we were seeing was about to change.”