ANSTICE

He/Him • 20 • Divination Follower of Apollo, Aphrodite, and Hermes. -Kind of an Online Scrapbook-

[orphic-ambrosia]

INTRODUCTION

Hello! I figured I’d make one of these to pin :)

-

My name is Anstice and my pronouns are he/him.

Due to where I grew up, I kind of had to learn the religion myself without the help of others and with what I could find when researching. Because of that, I’ve found that some of the terms or ways of worship I use are a bit different to what is found on here. I thought that I would share anyways since I’m a big believer in that everyone’s relationship with religion is different! I also know how hard it can be to learn something entirely new on your own and if I can help even just one person a little bit, then that’s all I need. :)

-

•I’m a college student going towards a doctorate.

•I haven’t used Tumblr in years, so I’m very much still getting the hang of things :)

•I am an omniest.

•My patron is Apollo and my patroness is Aphrodite.

I also work with and worship Hermes.

Other deities that I frequently communicate with: Dionysus.

•I mainly work in divination and acting like a messenger.

For me, this means if a deity needs to give someone a message and they can’t reach the person the message is for, I act as the bridge and either let them know the message or that the deity is trying to reach them.

An analogy that was used for me before is the secretary answering phone calls. Frequently offering up my energy to help as much as possible.

•I mainly work with the Greek Pantheon, but I also have experience in communicating with the Norse Pantheon, the Celtic Pantheon, and the Egyptian Pantheon. I work to one day increase this to be able to help as many people as possible.

•An act of worship for me is helping others as much as I can with anything regarding information and/or communication.

^ So don’t be shy to send an ask about anything haha :)

If I don’t have an answer, I do my best to research it. And if I still don’t feel confident in the knowledge, I give what I can and explain that knowledge is not the strongest in that area. I think honestly in those situations is the best.

•I like making digital scrapbook type stuff, so there will probably be a lot of that!

-

That’s all I can’t think of to add atm, but I’m sure I’m forgetting something.

If you have any questions, let me know!

[orphic-ambrosia]

You know you are actually the FIRST person I have seen that has said they have a patron AND patroness. Some people of course have several gods they commune with yet I find it interesting that you chose the two you did. Could you share what made you choose the gods you did for those prominent parts of your spirituality please?

Yeah no worries!

When I began my practice with doing research on my own the way I had learned about it all was that patrons and patronesses are those that actually choose you from birth or for another reason (like what your field of work is). And that you can have multiple of these, but they aren’t really things you can choose. I had learned it as these deities are the ones that if you accept them, they will be the main ones to guide you through your life and be main influences to your afterlife. In contrast to deities you work with having something to teach you and once you learn that lesson, you may no longer end up working with them. You could still worship them or later have something to learn, but at that moment in time you’ve learned all you could. I had also learned that sometimes you’re chosen from birth due to your ancestors worshiping a certain deity and them watching your bloodline or sometimes different situations! And that can be why there’s so many interactions with bigger deities because so many people’s ancestors worshipped or worked with them and also gave energy to them.

So when it comes to my patron and patroness, I never honestly expected to work with Them.

I started my practice with honoring and worshipping Artemis, Hades, Persephone, and Hypnos. They were deities that growing up I found super cool and so when I was first starting it made sense to give offerings to them.

When I started learning divination and researching more and learning about the gods and goddesses, I absentmindedly found myself drawn to Apollo and researching Him more. I began to realize how many things I had in my past and in common that were symbolic of him. A surprising amount of things to the point I couldn’t chalk it up as coincidence (which was important to me because I was a bit of a skeptic lol). I then started having dreams about Him and things related to Him and constantly felt this warm energy around me. It was as if my own realization had opened up some sort of door allowing Him to enter. I kind of broke and just asked if it was actually real for Him to send me as many signs as possible and to make it incredibly obvious because, again, I was skeptical. And yep He really did haha. It was like being smacked in the face, though not necessarily in a bad way. Through learning more and more divination and learning more and more, I eventually was told that He was a patron of mine. It’s plausible that that simply means just from what I had learned the definition of patron as and not necessarily what a lot of others see it as. The more I worked with Him, the more humor I found in how much of His domain and influence ends up overlapping with what I do in life and plan to go into.

Since then He has been a constant in my life and I still find myself surrounded by signs and symbols of Him that are so insanely obvious. It’s like He’s poking me and saying ‘Here you go. Can’t deny this. I’m still here. :)’ It’s really nice. I have lots of religious trauma from growing up and find myself anxiously questioning myself a lot, so the reminders ground me. I thank Him for that a lot.

My patroness was a whole other story. She was later in my practice and I never in a million years expected it. I’m not exactly huge in the romantic field, I’m asexual, and my past regarding relationships at the time wasn’t great. She reached out to me and I was confused, but thought She simply just had a message or something similar since I had an old friend who worshipped her. I was honestly quite terrified of Her. She’s this gorgeous goddess both inside and out, very powerful, and over domains that in my personal life frankly scare me. She kind of just spoke with me and left it at that. It confused me, but I didn’t want to question it too much. I began to research Her more in my confusion and She began popping up in my divination and life more and more. I began offering to Her small things since She was around a lot and She ended up expressing wanting to work with me on my own self-love. I was confused again since I didn’t realize that love isn’t just romantic and so I hesitantly asked the same thing I had to Apollo. If She could send me signs. Hers weren’t as smacked in the face in a short time, but drawn out and very obviously Her. Every time I sat in confusion at how a goddess like Her could want anything to do with me and I would swear I could hear or feel something like a fond chuckle, fond huff, or playful roll of the eyes in the back of my mind. I began working with Her for months before She expressed being a patroness. She’s always one to leave me in shock it seems haha. Again, it could all be simply Them just using the definitions of words that I had used since it’s what I knew, but She hasn’t left my side since. I’m thankful for that.

Overall, I was very shocked also when it came to my deities and who reached out once I expressed interest in wanting to learn. I appreciate Their patience with me and Them being willing to watch me learn.

Again, I’m learning a lot of new stuff from the pagans and polytheists on here and that excites me a lot. I’ve learned a lot of how I learned things is very different from what I’ve seen on here. To me, it’s kinda exciting because I can learn new things. It’s also fascinating because I know when it comes to religion everyone worships very differently and has their own experiences so it’s exciting to learn.

I hope this all makes sense. I do tend to ramble when I write, so my apologies for that!

And I hope that my explanation of how I had learned terms and things makes sense!

Thanks again for the question! :)

[verybisexualcoffeebean]

And from the blood of the wound

a flower sprang, lilylike, more brilliant

than the purples of Tyre.

Then the god wept: his vital grief

flooded the earth.

-Louise Glück, Hyacinth

Hyacinth Changed Into a Flower by Nicolas Rene Jollain

[orphic-ambrosia]

🪶 Hermes Playlist Shuffle: Day 5 🪶

[orphic-ambrosia]

☀️ Apollo Playlist Shuffle: Day 5 ☀️

[orphic-ambrosia]

🕊 Aphrodite Playlist Shuffle: Day 5 🕊

[orphic-ambrosia]

🍇 Dionysus Playlist Shuffle: Day 5 🍇

[windvexer]

Y'all ever get the vibes that we're out here seriously over-complicating witch shit

A while back I was in a bit of a pickle. I didn't know how to approach the situation from a magical perspective. A friend of mind said, "hey, not to be pedantic - but have you tried just asking?"

I did just that. I went out and had myself a little prayer asking for help, and the situation was resolved.

Just the other day a friend of mine had an unwanted spirit in her house. She asked for help on banishing it.

"Not to be pedantic," I said. "But have you tried asking it to leave?"

She did just that and it left immediately.

I think we can forget how simple magic and witchcraft can be.

Perhaps, breaking out the candles and chanting over fancy incense is not supposed to be the first step.

I've been practicing magic for nearly 9 years; not too long, but enough to learn a thing or two. I saw a post last month: "y'all are over-complicating cleansing, just blow on it and brush it off."

Bullshit, I said. If that worked, why am I over here with my damn chants and saltwater.

I tried it, and it worked. No visualization, no incantations, no charmed saltwater.

It's come into my awareness since I recreated my blog in January that the kinds of things I like to discuss and create content on is not beginner level/101 magic.

I think the kind of stuff I'm into is step 3 or 4, well beyond asking the spirit to leave, and well beyond pulling out the first candle to speak a charm over.

I think at that point, it's alright for things to get technical and complex.

But do you guys ever feel like....

Candle spells aren't supposed to be that complicated.

Cultivating power isn't supposed to be that complicated.

Talking to spirits isn't supposed to be that complicated.

Maintaining spiritual hygiene isn't supposed to be that complicated.

Do you all ever get the vibes that we're out here going nuclear on ourselves and everything around us when we're not supposed to be?

I think maybe I'm a part of that culture. I do label stuff as 101 that I shouldn't be. I think that because my goal is to break stuff down to where anyone regardless of experience level can understand it, I somehow think it's basic, everyday, or beginner level.

When it ain't.

I wonder how many people out here think they're magically weak or incapable because they're doing "simple, basic, beginner" energy work exercises and are actually raising huge amounts of energy - and exhausting themselves.

I wonder how many people think magic is fake or have given up hope because they started with a "basic, beginner" candle spell "anyone can do" calling for 2 candles, 7 herbs, and the intermediate-level instruction to "visualize and set intent."

I wonder how many people have given up on finding their spirit guides, or been scared away from it, because of discussions on how many skills you need to start.

I know it can get complex, and at a certain level it's very wise to have certain skills before you progress...

I just can't help but feel that not all of it is supposed to be hard, most of it should be easy, and the things that help people commonly everyday should be easiest of all.

[thaliasthunder]

OH FUCK SHE'S COMING

[the-evil-clergyman]

The Kiss of the Siren by Gustav Wertheimer (1882)

[darkacademiaestheticx]

-Oscar Wilde, The picture of Dorian Gray

[caughtinorbit]

[doesephs]

‘perhaps it is the greatest grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone’

[the-evil-clergyman]

Rococo Aphrodite by W. Russell Flint (1960)

[happyheidi]

Statue of the goddess Aphrodite (Venus) bathing in the garden of the Royal Palace: Caserta, Italy.

(via)

[le-chevalier-au-lion]

Listen, this is a very specific topic to be iffy about, but for your knowledge, the Roman gods are not the Greek gods.

The Romans were big on syncretism (the combination of different forms of belief or intellectual thought) and the adoption of foreign gods. The Greek deities were known since very early periods via the Etruscan culture, which was heavily influenced by Greece since the middle of the 8th century BC because of trade routes as well as the Greek cultural potential and would come to be completely engulfed around the third century BC with the Roman-Etruscan wars, but just like you’d see the Romans claiming the Germanic tribes worshipped their own gods under different names (the Germania by Roman historian Tacitus, written around 98 AD), the same happened here, and the fusion wasn’t 100% accurate.

While in the case of Zeus and Jupiter, for example, it worked well, Venus is far more motherly and political than Aphrodite (as Mars is the Father of Rome via the myth of Romulus and Remus, Venus is Venus Genetrix, Venus the Mother, and the only time you’ll see Aphrodite being motherly is in… the Aeneid, a distinctively Roman piece), Mars is an agricultural god as well as the god of war and has way more political connotations than Ares (he was a member of the archaic Capitoline Triad), Mercury is far more linked with commerce than the more pastoral Hermes, and the list goes on. Apollo was imported directly and very early (a temple for him, the Temple of Apollo Sosianus, was erected in the city of Rome as early as 431 BC), thus keeping the name but undergoing a very distinct Romanization of his attributes and worship. Janus, Quirinus and Terminus were very important Roman gods which had no Greek equivalent.

Isis, for example, was worshipped as herself, equated with a number of deities in both the Greek and the Roman worlds and some of her methods of worship and symbolism were associated with the Virgin Mary. It’s a far more complicated scenario, babes, especially when you consider Alexander’s conquests and the expansion of Hellenistic culture as well as its contact with many other cultures.

Syncretism is way more complicated than “the Romans just stole the Greek gods and gave them different names, the uncreative fucks”. The traditional date for Rome’s foundation is 753 BC and the Western Roman Empire would last until 436 AD. That’s over a thousand years of conquest, trade and growing and shrinking territories, and none of these factors are likely to leave a religion unaltered.

Besides, the practice of religious syncretism is way older and more common than you’d expect. The Akkadians did it to Summerian deities a few thousand years before this especially after the conquest of Sargon of Akkad in 2340 BC (“Mesopotamia: the Sumerians”. Washington State University). The Greeks were doing much the same with the Roman pantheon itself (Dionysus of Halicarnassus and Plutarch use Greek names for Roman cult), with the Egyptian pantheon and with the Scythian pantheon (Herodotus in both cases, though the associations would outlive him, such as the case of Zeus/Amon).

So, no the Roman gods aren’t the plagiarized versions of the Greek gods, and I could defend this in front of a jury.

[purgawhatory]

the unofficial official art for tsoa

By Alice Blake