are you there gods it's me, ely?

25F // california // hellenic pagan (revival+eclectic)

[paganquestionmark]

sticky stickies

intro

tags

?journal : journal-esque entries, about prayer and rambles on the gods

ask meme : those long question things, but answered LiveJournal style

iread : my notes on pagan books, from the perspective of hellenic polytheist

hellenic festival : my masterposts on festivals I have/plan on celebrating

[dasht-ae-tanhai]

[crazycatsiren]

I got a misunderstood girlboss for y'all.

Mary Magdalene.

There. No need to appropriate from closed religions.

[czortofbaldmountain-deactivated]

Also: why not EVE? She literally ate the damn fruit and gave it to Adam, in consequence giving knowledge and understanding to humanity, being not only punished by God but reviled for it (in a very misogynistic way btw) for centuries in Christianity. Eve is not some submissive anthithesis to girlboss Lilith as some people depict her.

[hexfeathers-deactivated20241121]

Sex worker, saint, sinner.

Love me some Mary Magdalene. 

Rebel, temptress, mother.

Eve does not get the attention that she deserves.

[isquirtkerosine]

That elderly couple who volunteers at the soup kitchen after church on Sundays and attends every town hall meeting has done more community direct action than 99% of internet leftists 🤷🏽‍♀️

[isquirtkerosine]

#lol this post is stupid spup kitchens were created by the gov after they literally destroyed black radical organizers lives#and since when does going to a town hall meeting and working within the system help anybody in any significant way

100% agree homeless people should just starve and dumpster dive till le epic revolution happens!

and for sure local politics is so stupid it only handles dumb things like your schoolboard, judges, infrastructure, and rent laws! now tweets? Thats where the real work happens! 

[what-even-is-thiss]

Local activism stopped garbage collection from being privatized in my hometown and local activism is what defunds the police and keeps libraries and community gardens open and gets done most of the things people waiting around for a revolution claim they want. The weird former hippie suburban wine moms donating bags of quinoa chips and money to the food pantry I go to sometimes have done more for me materially then any defeatist political rant on tumblr ever has.

[caustic-light]

Something something that tweet that goes “while you’re tweeting about communism your sister isndoing the dishes.”

The online far left has this very interesting paralel to liberals where any change and positive action has to go through extremely specific channels to be valid, or else you will be denounced and called out for it.

Who gives a shit if a soup kitchen was started by the government? Look up if you have a local food not bombs or something if you wanna volunteer but that’s a dealbreaker for you, but don’t fucking act high and mighty over peole who are genuinely working to do better for the people around them.

There is no room for that stupid, self righteous cynicism here, do something, or don’t, but don’t shit on people who do what they can and act superior to them because you read theory.

Like it or not, but you will always have most of your opportinities for direct action and mutual aid in small actions that benefit just a few people, but that’s infinitely better than waiting for the rapture.

[philhelias-moved-deactivated202]

So many on here mistake discussion for participation and then wonder why they’re so miserable, lonely, and disconnected from their Deities. Discussing Gods with some random tumblr user isn’t an act of devotion, it’s a process of limited unrelated theorization. Equating such an exchange with devotional activity is, in my opinion, equal to demeaning Gods to concepts of Gods, which isn’t the same. 

It’s good to have a theological debate, but it isn’t equal to a direct act of devoting your time, space, and energy to connection with the Divine. Of course you feel bad after; you didn’t actually devote even if you thought you did. 

Gods will never be limited to what mortals can say of them. A conversation of the Divine has nothing to do with the talk directly with the Divine. Online circles are not equal to proper real life communities; they possess this inherent danger of the effect of faux participation. It’s when you don’t do anything, leech off a more proactive person via some parasocial tie, and then wonder why you aren’t getting the same result they did. It’s because you allowed yourself to be pulled into this unhealthy circle where lack of action of the masses is encouraged, even if unknowingly, through means of creation of cult figure, usually a highly proactive person who doesn’t root for equal activity in others but rather takes up almost priest-like responsibilities. 

This isn’t healthy. Devotion must be present in your life in some physical, practical sort of a way other than discussing it with someone more active - not always more knowleadgeable - online. Ancient people did not get where they ended up at by remaining inactive and reliant on others. I know that it’s very common to promote inactivity under the motto of “taking it easy”, I am myself an advocate of personal comfort; but devotion requires action, even if this action is small, and it can’t be an indirect exchange - it has to be coming from you. 

[mikeybooch]

The effeminate stranger Dionysus. Boisterous god of revelry and madness. 

Other Olympians in the series:

Aphrodite

Athene

Hades & Persephone

Demeter

[dvkev-alentino]

Statue of Athena - The Academy (Athens, Greece) picture by dukedevalentinois (flickr | instagram)

[smarmykemetic]

the occult implications of large parts of modern society being okay with "pleather" and "vegan leather" (plastics and micro plastics existing everywhere from placentas to the bottom of the ocean), rather than using the skins of animals who will ultimately die no matter what we do

[smarmykemetic]

a sizable amount of people are so unable to cope with the process of life and death, even that of a cow, that they'd knowingly poison their bodies and help poison the earth with fuckin' Forever Trash so they can feel like their hands are clean. wack

[godsofhumanity]

I've always though of weird is that Hestia is the goddess of the home and family when she's a maiden goddess. She would never have children of her own and yet she represents family, which to the greeks seemed to be pretty biological-oriented, with not a lot of foster or adoptive parenting.

Also, I bet being the child of Hestia would be amazing cause she's wonderful.

i'm pretty sure that Hestia is the goddess of home and family because her "residing place" is by the hearth,, and i think in most homes, the hearth was the central place-- like that's probably where they might have all gathered to eat, and talk, etc. (?**)... in a sense,, because Hestia isn't married and doesn't have kids of her own, she becomes a part of everyone's family. probably a bad explanation aha but that's my take on it.

**idk if that's true,, maybe u can search it up and check lol that's just what makes sense to me

[paganquestionmark]

I've read that it comes across as her being a daughter who doesn't leave home. Staying unmarried, she remains at the hearth of her family, rather than making one with a spouse. Married women also joined into their husband's ancestor cultus and their children would be raised in it. Being unmarried ties her closely to her born-family and the hearth of Olympos.

[crazycatsiren]

The Law of Attraction is bullshit.

I said what I said.

[instantsorcery]

honestly it's very attached to the "bad people get bad things" mentality that cults and cult-like groups often use. "you're chronically ill because you must have been a bad person," or, "you're in poverty because you're inherently evil". it's honestly terrifying, and this bullshit is where it all seems to start

[crazycatsiren]

It is about as ableist as it can get.

"You can manifest away your mental/physical illnesses if you would just try hard enough, because you get back what you put in and attract what you send out."

"You aren't cured yet because you're not manifesting hard enough/being positive enough/putting out enough good vibes."

"You don't need medications. All you need are your intention and will, and if you work at it, the universe will respond."

It is toxic to say the least, and dangerous to say the most.

[breelandwalker]

It's tangentially related to Prosperity Gospel, wherein people prosper financially if they are "good" and "worthy" and "favored by God," and people are only poor because they are "bad" and "lazy" and "sinful." And we all fully acknowledge how gross and nonsensical that is.

The Law of Attraction is the fullscreen version of this. It also plays into gatekeeping because newer witches are led to believe that their spells aren't working in grand and impossible ways because they're not TRYING hard enough, or their VIBES aren't right, or they're not doing X Magical Thing Du Jour. Y'know, rather than acknowledging that magic has limits and you have to put in the physical work to make the metaphysical work.

And it gets taught to witches under the same umbrella as the Threefold Law, because "Everything you do comes back times three" and "You attract and manifest what you think and feel, so you have to constantly police your thoughts and your energy" fit neatly into the bastardized version of karma that some sects of modern paganism like to pedal as part of the New Age package. It's usually right next to the chapter about how medicine is fake and essential oils can cure all your ills. (Also false.)

To me, it sounds remarkably like, "The entire reason things are going wrong in your life is because you're a dirty sinner and you need to REPENT."

It IS toxic. It IS dangerous. And it is definitely bullshit.

[stagkingswife]

I feel much the same way about “manifesting” to be honest. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been told by other practitioners that I’m “manifesting” my chronic pain and disability by being “negative” or or having “bad vibes”. Or conversely that I need to “manifest” my recovery.

Any practice that teaches that people are to blame for their misfortunes because they don’t think the right way, or have “the right vibes” is very ableist. And if it isn’t innately ableist it can be applied that way.

[traegorn]

It's because "the law of attraction" and "manifestation" are literally the same thing with different coats of paint.

[teawitch]

I've been bumping into versions of it since the 70s. There is always a very entitled aspect to it, where the poor "choose" to be poor. Which then shifts into a guilt aspect - if you aren't successful, it's your fault because you aren't manifesting prosperity. The mindset shows up these days in everything from entrepreneurship to cryptocurrency - just by different names.

[windvexer]

Manifesting is trickle-down good vibes

[neapolis-neapolis]

Afrodite (I sec.), dal Rione Terra di Pozzuoli, Museo Archeologico dei Campi Flegrei, Bacoli, Napoli.

[the-purvashadha]

I am gonna say it,

Appreciating aesthetics can be a good way to connect more with goddess Aphrodite, and all goddesses and deities that rule over beauty.

Beauty is sacred, and doing things or appreciating things just for their beauty can be a sacred act on its own, provided we appreciate beauty to connect more with the divine nature associated with it.

So yeah, doing things just for the ✨ aesthetic ✨ can be a devotional act for Aphrodite and the deities that rule over beauty.

[hearth-and-veil]

This, quite literally. Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy that originated in Ancient Greece. It had direct relation to the concept that beauty was a gift from the Gods, and that (at the time) beauty was seen as a moral virtue. Ie you are beautiful because you are good, so the Gods blessed you with beauty.

Plato is typically credited with explaining that beauty can be relative to a person, while Xenophon believed beauty to be related to function - people find something beautiful because it is useful or pleasing to them; it is not useful or pleasing because it is beautiful.

My personal stance on aesthetic philosophy is that all Gods, especially those of beauty, appear to each person in a form that they individually find beautiful.

It also relates to Queen Hera as individual aesthetics play an important role in relationships and marriage. It's how someone can love something about you that you hate about yourself.

[smarmykemetic]

the occult implications of large parts of modern society being okay with "pleather" and "vegan leather" (plastics and micro plastics existing everywhere from placentas to the bottom of the ocean), rather than using the skins of animals who will ultimately die no matter what we do

[smarmykemetic]

a sizable amount of people are so unable to cope with the process of life and death, even that of a cow, that they'd knowingly poison their bodies and help poison the earth with fuckin' Forever Trash so they can feel like their hands are clean. wack

[paganquestionmark]

iRead : Dionysos

Dionysos by Richard Seaford

I dropped out of uni and went to culinary school. Stuff with pages of footnotes is not my thing. I literally read this out loud to myself, so I could understand it. I copy/pasted choice quotes and then had to re-do my notes, bc I couldn’t understand what was being said. Each sentence has 3-7 extra words and academic phrasing. On several occasions, Dionysos is called imaginary, created, a social construct, and forgotten. 

Man, tho.

This was good.

The book connects Dionysos’ seemingly random traits and domains into a single cohesive deity, showing him in relation to a true huan need. Reading (and understanding) this was actually a mystical moment for me. I felt like I knew Dionysos suddenly. I wanted to worship him.

In order to save you the burden of reading this, I’ll provide the sparknotes.

DOMAINS

Transformation & the Stranger

Not a chapter in the book, but sprinkled throughout, and really the first point of Dionysos. He is the transformer (robots in disguise), the herald of change, and often violent transformation. He himself is not any end point, but the act of change itself. He isn’t X to Y, he is the to, the bridge between while holding all three states simultaneously. 

He (as well as his satyrs) sit on the nexus of three worlds : natural(animal) / mortal(human) / divine(gods). Humanity comes from nature and aspires to divinity. Dionysos, as the bridge, can bring humanity along in either direction.

Dionysos, in many ways, is the other. He is the foreigner (and the local), the opposite (and the original). The opposites he holds form a unity, while retaining their uniqueness as opposites. He evades definition and exists as paradox. He can share this paradox, by forcing a new perspective to become the unfamiliar opposition. 

Dionysos shows what each of us has in the stranger inside them.

It feels like a cop-out : oh, a god can be anything. Dionysos’ sheer point is a cohesive identity… in lack of identity. He is the Liberation, Liberator and Liberated. 

Nature (wine, vegetation, animals)

There are several nature-related gods, but Dionyos is the god of nature but make it dangerous. He is the tamer of the untamable. Wild animals pull his chariot. He, more than other Theoi, appear as wild beasts.

While he shares domain of “green stuff” with Demeter and Kore, he is the ripener of fruits, the act that changes flowers into food (again with change, and fertility).

Wine is the central symbol of this domain. The vine itself is wild, pure nature. Wine is transformed nature, by human labour, and still dangerous. In many appearances, Dionysos brings ever-flowing springs of wine — transformed wine, miraculous and divine.

Satyrs, like Dionysos, straddle the line between animal, human, and divine — but in an achievable way. In some celebrations, participants would dress up as satyrs. They’re beasts, who belong both in the company of the god and the heart of the civilized polis (“city”).

Communality

Phat word meaning unity but a lil to the left. The arrival of an outsider dispenses tension and unifies a group under a new focus. Any outsider, then, falls under Dionysos’ purview. In his festivals, slaves would celebrate as free men and prisoners would be released from jail. His days were also the days to announce freed slaves.

Myth: Return of Hephaistos

The craftsman god Hephaistos was hurled out of Olympos by his mother Hera for his deformity, and took revenge by sending her a throne with invisible fetters by which she was held fast. Only Hephaistos could release her, but he refused to return. But Dionysos made him drunk, set him on a mule, and brought him back to Olympos. In one version, a condition for Hephaistos’ return is his marriage with Aphrodite. In another, Dionysos is rewarded by being made one of the Olympian gods.

Maenads are a band of women, united by Dionysiac power. Religious initiation merges her soul into the whole, so they think and act as one. (The image of maenads running like a flock of birds taken flight is a great quote) It shows Dionysos doesn’t need wine or charm to unite people.

The traditional image of maenads as women in rags on a mountainside is traditional for a reason. In ancient Greek society, this was the other — a symbological reversal of the polis. The polis was constructed of male-led households, of solitary women — as the men joined the polis in civil and work duties. Dionysos’ great power was uniting these women with each other, then him, and the wilderness. 

Mystery-Cult

Unless you reconstruct from Orphic traditions, Dionysiac mystery-cults may not be super useful, but the historical context is gold.

Mystery-cults were politically powerful and religiously important, as secret societies. The purpose was to join a group of this life, and the afterlife. As death was the fundamental rupture of personal identity, the mystery-cults looked to prepare for it and control it. So, they destroyed each other’s identity in controlled ritual. They also performed rituals on behalf of the polis, on Dionysos’ festivals.

Rituals, almost always, harkon back to myths. Festivals center on several myths, in reenactments and celebrations to give them meaning.

Orphic Myth: Dismemberment by the Titans

Dionysos is the natural-born son of Persephone and Zeus, but is ripped apart by Kronos and the Titans. His blood flows free as wine. Athena cradles his heart and puts him back together, wherein he is reborn. Wine’s psychological wholeness is then Dionysos’ wholeness.

Death

Dionysos likes going down-under. Does it a lot. He travels there to retrieve his mother, the prideful Semele, who Zeus raises as a goddess. In some myths, “by his witness” (weird, unknowable phrasing), Ariadne dies and he begins their romance in the Underworld as he rescues her and raises her as his bride (Zeus, sighing: Alright, once more). Both these myths (and several others of his) involve death or destruction before divinity. 

Death, as the Orphics saw it, as the most fundamental and irreversible change to identity. Dionysos defies it. He raises once-mortals to Olympos. He charms the gloomy Underworld — notably, in art, making Cerberus a good doggo.

Dionysos is a god of united opposites, the center where they meet — nature/civilization/Olympos, animal/mortal/divine, fertility/death/immortality. His festivals celebrate the union of life and death — dominated, always, by life. He’s closer to mortals than many gods, by his actions (revelry, wine, dancing, frequent manifestations), but also by a crucial mythical act. Death. Dionysos is both born and killed.

Myth: Semele

Hera grows indignant as Zeus takes another lover and coerces Semele to ask her divine lover to see his true form. Semele tricks Zeus into an oath. Forlorn, he shows her his power — and she is promptly incinerated. Zeus sifts the ashes for the fetus Dionysos, who he sews into his flesh. In time, Dionysos regains strength and is born anew.

Ecstasy / Trance / Madness / Altered States

Dionysos’ madness was considered a cure for everyday madness — the worst kind. Dionysian madness was a temporary gateway, the storm before the calm. After the intensity of ritual and invoked state, there is the exhausting liberating calm of Dionysos himself. I compare this to a good workout — after exhaustion, the endorphins kick in. Caffeine, alcohol, lust, drugs — these intoxications all begin with extreme physical senses, before altering states.

This book talks less of “madness” and more of “trance”. Madness is a hard word to define. The book discusses “trance”, of a mind being influenced or united with something other than itself. Maenads sing of joining the soul-bird to the thaisos (band of maenads). The rituals pull on Dionysos’ dismemberment myth, seeing it not as his body but mind being broken apart and then reassembled through madness into calm. 

Think astral travel or controlled dissociation, disconnecting the consciousness from the body and latching it to a new whole — in part, connecting it to Dionysos as the bridge. As a god, he relieves powerlessness. Humans are subjugated to two main forms: remoteness of deity and human oppression. Through ecstatic communality with others (and himself), he relieves both. He remains intimately close to those who join with him. 

Theatre

Took us a while to get here, but do you see it?

Theatre was a happy accident of everything else that Dionysos is. It was created through other Dionysiac ritual. It combines the mystery-cults’ transformation of identity, ritual death, and costumes. Because the mystery-cult rituals were private, they opened up just enough. Hymns rewritten to new patterns. Ritual reenactments, interspaced with satyrs and maenads.

If you’ve ever been in a crowd at a concert or movie theatre or stage show, you probably know where I’m going. As an observer, you dissolve into the waves of shared emotion. You are both only an observer of the show, but part of a whole. The experience of a crowd is uniquely Dionysian — and explicitly how maenads join together.

Traditional tragedy follows a pattern in Dionysian myths: people resist his influence, they’re stricken into madness or kin-killing, they embrace him and establish a new regime. 

Comedy even comes from the word komodia (“a song sung at komos”, komos being a revelry common at Dionysian festival).

Why does Dionysos matter in the modern world?

God, one of the best chapter headings. I came back to Hellenism because, to me, it’s familiar religion. I like the meaning of sacrifice, of kharis, and ethics. I like the aesthetic.

This made it again about the gods.

Dionysos matters because we need him. We always have. In the modern post-capitalist dystopia, we need him more than ever. For all the times I’ve had to paraphrase this book, I’m actually gonna quote it because this slaps.

The psychological fragmentation and forced homogeneity of our consumerist culture creates an intense need for transcendence. … It cannot be fulfilled by institutionalized religion, because such religion is part of social control that tends to limit the moral and religious experiences. True liberation can be achieved only by adopting an outsider’s perspective from which to perceive the culture’s narrowness.

Consumer capitalism destroys the emotional wholeness of communality. The intense emotion of a gathering of people can seem strangely insignificant and powerless, in our society, for significance and power always seem to be elsewhere.

Myth: Midas

Midas captured Silenos, the wise companion of Dionysos, and asked him what is best for humankind. Silenos spoke of natural and ancient things of his lord. As a reward for releasing Silenos, Midas was offered by Dionysos the fulfilment of any wish, and chose the power to transform all things by his touch into gold. Midas’ own answer to his question is money. Midas’ touch is the reaction of the Greek mythical imagination to the astonishing power of precious metal as universal equivalent: everything can now be valued in money — but nothing of true worth.

As humanity grows more alienated, from individuals and each other, we’re left with a sense of loss, of absence. An absence implies a presence that had once been there. An absence and presence of a transcendent power that unites us with nature and humankind and the divine.

Dionysos.

[7wands-deactivated20220314]

Worship may get tricky sometimes, especially if you happen to have some sort of a mental illness or disability. I would like to use my own experience as a mentally ill, professionally diagnosed person as a way to help others find a healthier path into worshipping the Gods. We will start with Apollo as someone I have the most experience with and how to make worshipping him safe for people with psychosis as a disorder that might mainly get in the way when dealing with divination and interpretation of signs and prophecies. However, even though this post is mostly about Apollo as signs and prophecies are his field, it does not mean it is not applicable to other Gods. Disclaimer: This is just my personal experience as a psychotic person and this post is to aid people like me. Please, do NOT take it as any sort of medical or universal advice and only use it if you have the same experience as me. If you do not have this experience, this post is not for you and the advice given in it can actually harm you if misused - so please, be careful for your own sake.

Keep reading

[dionysus-is-my-dude]

May Hestia bless those threatened with eviction. May Zeus reign justice upon the landlords.

[siciliancunningcraft]

The sun was so beautiful as it hit Persephassa’s altar this morning.

S'abbinirica!