
祝日 / Permanent Vacation
Not today Justin

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blake kathryn
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
Xuebing Du
occasionally subtle

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trying on a metaphor
Cosimo Galluzzi

izzy's playlists!

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Sade Olutola
almost home

@theartofmadeline
Aqua Utopia|海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
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Peter Solarz
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shark vs the universe

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@mechaniotatos
Just as you found this post, may you find money flowing effortlessly into your life from henceforward.
Blessed are you who read this. Manifest the receiving an abundance of money now. As the universe has been good to you, be good to another. Bless a friend and bless a stranger.
Reblog to cast and pass the blessing!
Blanca Bitchcraft
you don’t have to change your life overnight, but try to add good things to it each day.
I mean I want to respect people's religions but tbh as a greek I don't think I can ever take hellenic polytheists on tumblr seriously. I'm sorry but it just feels so foreign to me, like they have just read a bunch of books of the subject. They might be "fans" of ancient greece but what they supposedly worship lacks the soul of what our ancestors religion has. There is just nothing "greek" about it. (I hope I don't sound too much like an nationalist there, I hate nationalism)
No, look, I understand. Obviously you and I are for freedom of religion and expression. But not all religions have to make sense to you in order to support them or the people in them. Also, this particular religion is part of our heritage so I believe we can speak on it a little bit. It’s understandable to see a part of your heritage being used by foreigners in ways you don’t recognize. And it’s a strange feeling indeed because the religion originated and sculpted by the Greeks (with influences of course!).
I suppose that you, as I, agree that anyone can have any religion. Nothing stops me from becoming a Buddhist and nothing stops a person from the US to become a Hellenic Polytheist. However, I cannot just declare I am a Buddhist and have a prayers and a statue and be done with it. It goes deeper than that. It’s a new philosophy and a way of life I must accept, a way of recognizing the divine differently than before. I have to study and I have to study how Buddhism came to be and what cultures shaped it and follow on their footsteps. Maybe I should also learn a little bit of their language to understand the deeper meaning of hymns and worship.
I see of the worshipers studying a lot to immitate that sense of Greek culture but also keep their own culture (which is good!). Many of the modern worshipers call themselves reconstructionists because they don’t practise the ancient religion (because we don’t have enough info and because it’s the 21st century) but they try to get close to it by studying.
I can say it’s a personal pet peeve of mine as a Greek that they focus only on the ancient Greece and therefore they “miss” the last 1.500-2.000 years of our cultural development. I understand they cannot study everything about Greece. A person cannot know everything. However, personally, I am a little bothered that there are Hellenic Polytheists who can recite classic texts and analyze them for hours but if you ask them ANYTHING about Greek culture after 100 AD they won’t know a single thing about it. There are worshipers who know every single minor Greek deity yet they have never seen a picture of Greek people and they have no idea about our cultural identity, how we view life and how we have evolved the language and the customs of our ancestors.
No wonder you feel the modern practices foreign, even when you are a Greek. It’s because even the most well-read Hellenic Polytheists base their religion solely on a veeeery distant part of our culture. And, in the meantime, the Greek spirit of the ancient faith is kinda lost.
Even Greek Hellenic Polytheists will never fully worship the way their ancestors did. It’s because we are in a different point in history and our society raises us with certain values, which differ from those of our ancients.
But I can get behind Hellenic Polytheists who put in the work to actually study a foreign religion and try to bring it back to life as accuratelly as possible. I may have pet peeves but that doesn’t mean I condemn the way they worship. Plus even in the Hellenic Polytheism community different worshipers have different opinions on the matter of worship. I understand that those people do the best for their faith.
On the other hand, on Tumblr many people are not in a good cultural level yet. They take the religion very superficially. I have seen some Hellenic Polytheist blogs where the owners call some gods EVIL and bash Zeus, the FATHER of the gods!! There is probably lots of reading that needs to be done on their part to understand the basic concepts. Some even try to shape the religion (!!!) after 1.500 years after its “death” (aka its super dramatic decline) by making posts about “secret” myths that predate the Greek ones and try to pass them as canon. Can we forget the time Tumblr created a Greek goddess (Mesperyan)?? Of course you won’t find the smallest mention of Greek customs in these blogs.
Thankfully, I have seen a few blogs that at least talk about the customs of our antiquity and help Hellenic Polytheists learn new customs. I hope the community on this site takes examples from them and continues to mature.
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It’s a huge answer because I felt the subject needed analysis. Let me repeat, we don’t gatekeep anyone from the faith and we don’t accuse the Hellenic Polytheist community of anything! We just discuss how an important part of our ancient culture is revived and what it means to us. How we feel connected and not connected to it. I am sorry if that was hurtful to anyone but, as Greeks, we need to talk about these issues. If we don’t discuss them who will?
Feel free to discuss and add opinions. Please read the whole post before commenting!
I agree with a lot of this. I would add that on Tumblr at least, it may seem like a lot of people just picked up Percy Jackson or a Mythology 101 book, thought it was neat, and started calling themselves Hellenic polytheists - because in a lot of cases, they did. Statistically, Tumblr’s age group is young, and many of the people whose worship seems superficial really are newbies, teenagers and young adults who are just getting into the religion. (And how do you think the majority discovered it, if not through pop culture or history lessons?) Of course their posts are going to lack depth, and knowledge of Greek culture both ancient and modern. It doesn’t help that once a post is out there, it’s out there forever, and we all know Tumblr is terrible with timestamps. Some of the things that circulate may very well have been written five years ago by an enthusiastic 15-year-old fresh out of a high school history class, and who knows better now.
Either way, Tumblr’s nature really doesn’t make it the best showcase for Hellenic polytheism. This isn’t to say that everyone on here acts like a “fan” rather than a follower of the religion - I’ve interacted with a whole lot of lovely, serious people, and I know of many more. But the most well-established voices are found on other platforms, like Facebook groups, where many Hellenic polytheists are older, have been practising for a decade or more, and are very well-versed in Greek culture.
Speaking of which, I do very much agree that Hellenic polytheists - and anyone who studies Ancient Greece academically - should make an effort to understand and respect modern Greek people and culture. It’s important to recognise that Greece is not dead, and that the descendants of the ancient civilisation are very much still alive. This does not mean you have to know everything about everything, but you should at least be aware that Greek history does not end with the Roman conquest, and that the arrival of Christianity did not simply Thanos-snap Greek traditions - including religious ones - out of existence. In short, learning about Hellenic polytheism is less like digging up an abandoned cemetery, and more like telling someone “I think your great-grandfather had some cool ideas, mind if I study his memoirs?”.
If it’s okay, I’d like to mention something as a modern polytheist who works with the Greek Pantheon but is not Greek.
Learning more about modern Greece (the history, customs/culture), visiting Greece, academically studying ancient Greece, learning the modern Greek Language and just interacting with modern Greeks in general has helped me learn so much more about my religion than Tumblr alone ever could and I think it’s because even though there is a lot of history that happened between the Romans and our current year, the customs and culture still have traces of ancient customs like the act of bringing a gift to a Greek home you are visiting or the kind hospitality modern Greek customs teach.
Thank you for your appreciation and for continuing learning! I wish you enrich your faith even more! I wrote some things you might know but I think they would interest you!
1) The art style of Christian Orthodox agiographies is based on the ancient Greek art (the style close to the coming of Christianity in the country)
2) In Christmas or in Carnival (depending on the area) men smugde their face with coal to imitate bad spirts (or to chase them away). They drink A LOT, dance and have fun, like more tame satyrs - the Church doesn’t approve :P This custom has Dionysiac roots. Speaking of festivals, the ancient celebration of Phallophoria has been revived in Athens the last few years.
3) We have Protomaya (the first of May, which we celebrate by making wreaths from flowers). Ιt’s an ancient tradition, marking the beginning of spring.
4) Greeks never stopped believing in creatures of the forest, spirts and elves (we have our own elves, Kalikantzaroi). What was naiades are now “neraides” and nymphs are still… “nymphs”. There are also re-enactments of stories which include those creatures or other darker ones. People are dressed up as demons or ghosts, wearing pelts and bones on them (something tells me that didn’t come from the Christian faith :P)
5) We decorate the Epitaphios (the tomb of Christ which is set up every Easter) with flowers and the process kinda seems like the adornment of old ancient statues (I remember there was the ancient celebration of Plintiria where people washed and adorned the statues of the gods with flowers). Plus, each traditional house has a section with images of the saints and candles, like a small shrine.
6) In ancient years people we leaving a gold or marble piece with the ailment engraved in the temples of Asclepios or other gods in order to be healed. Those pieces had carved on them the body parts that they want healed. This tradition holds till our days in Christian churches.
7) In our recent tradition we refer to Death as Charon and the Afterlife/Place after death as Hades.
8) Many Christian religious sites are sites which were connected to the ancient gods. Unfortunatelly I have only learned that by word of mouth and I haven’t done more research on it.
9) We have more pagan stuff like hiding coins in our Christmas pies, woshipping bones or whole skeletons of saints. Some of them are said (or “proven” to produce myrrh). We also keep holy oil from the church or small pieces of the cross of Christ. I don’t know if all of those trends were happening in ancient Greece but certainly not all of them were created by Christianity.
10) In funerals we still have “offerings” of wine to graves (we straight up pour wine into the hole. We also eat koliva, which is an ancient recipe. Another ancient recipe is melomakarona which were served in ancient funerals but are now a Christmas dessert.
11) We believe in the Evil Eye, which was present in ancient Greece as it’s evident from ancient vessels. It was an orange and black eye then but today we have it as blue and white (as some middle eastern cultures).
12) Greeks are in general close to their ancient past since there are ancient sites and archeological museums everywhere. It’s very hard to avoid history. For example, I spent most of my summers next to mt Olympus, in Pieria. And yes, half of shops or brands in the area were named after the old gods or Olympus. I also grew up next to Pella and I grew up singing “Macedonia the Great, the land of Alexander” in school. Others might have grown up in Sparta, in Amfissa, next to Delphi, or close to the Acheron river.
There are probably some other small pieces of ancient culture that I have forgotten.. But that’s all for now! If you know more ancient stuff continuing in Greece today feel free to add them to the list!
@alatismeni-theitsa oh my goodness!!! THANK YOU!!!! I’ve screenshot the latest information! This is amazing and obviously I will be looking into these and looking for more connections as I continue to learn more about the rich Greek culture (both ancient and modern!)
This was so wonderful to read!!!
Would it be too much of a bother to ask if anyone has any book suggestions to read for this? I’m trying to take my religious beliefs much more seriously, and I would like to more about this so I can better understand/more appropriate participate in this.
@rosegoldtunic I am very happy you found this information interesting! :D @mysteriouskod You mean books on modern Greek traditions and their connection to antiquity? Or something else? Maybe I’ll be able to help.
Yeah!! Or honestly any books talking about the religion (sorry my wording is weird, I’m v tired) cause I honestly never know where to start with books cause I never know what’s credible and what’s not. I know that’s broad and vague but in essence, any books you could suggest would be great!💜💜💜 (sorry for kinda rambling, I’m v tired it’s been a long week 😅)
For the religion:
“Greek Gods: Myths and Sanctuaries” by Dimitris Ananiades (Χ)
“Greek Mythology” and “Greek Mythology: Cosmogony, Gods - Heroes and their Worship, the Trojan War, the Odyssey” by Elisavet Spathari (Χ) (X)
I also made a post about why using the word “Hellenismos” to describe Hellenic Polytheism is probably not a good idea. (X)
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“A Concise history of Greece” by Richard Clogg might help
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You also may want to take a look at modern Greek traditions and that’s why I leave those links here.
http://www.greektraditions.org/
https://www.greeka.com/greece-culture/traditions/
https://www.xpatathens.com/living-in-athens/survival-guide/greek-traditions
https://theculturetrip.com/europe/greece/articles/traditions-only-greeks-can-understand/
https://www.discovergreece.com/en/culture/tradition-ethnic
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Anyone who has more suggestions, please comment!
I’m so glad this post exists.
i don't believe that you become a witch. it was within and around you all along.
every time you'd collect rocks as a child, or spoke to the moon when you needed comfort, or even when that warm, tingling sensation would hit you while walking in the woods. it was always the little things that didn't quite make sense.
it was calling to you, remember that. you're no less just because you figured it out later.
i've always been interested in depictions of pets in ancient greece and rome but i think i've found the best possible one, that being this vase of a woman juggling to entertain her pet goose
he takes what is offered
An emissary of Serqet calls forth healing from the dry desert sands…
Serqet (Serket, Selket) is an Ancient Egyptian goddess associated with medicine, magic, and healing venomous stings and bites, as Her name can translate to “(She who) causes the throat to breathe.“ Here, one of Her sacred animals (the scorpion) sits in a bowl of caraway plants. Caraway seeds were used medicinally in Ancient Egypt, and are a wonderful addition to bread as well. Prints available here.
cishets are so funny "ok but how likely is it that EVERYONE in a friend group is gay/trans" it is in fact extremely likely because y'all are unbearable to hang out with
Something we tend to forget is that recovering from a mental illness is a full time job. You are constantly working internally and externally to fight off this thing and try to distinguish yourself from the skewed thoughts. So if you start to feel guilty for “being lazy”, or not feeling like you’re accomplishing anything, please remember that you are.Every single minute of the day that you’re working at recovery, you are in the midst of doing one of the greatest possible things you can do for yourself.
Dragons in architecture
concept: a mini-sphinx that sits on your counter and asks you riddles any time you try to get by her, and if you get the answer wrong she knocks a bunch of shit off the counter
Engraving from Millan’s Universal Register 1751
I liked this post, scrolled for like another minute before I went “SHIT FUCK SHIT” and scrolled back to reblog it