Πυριστεφης @piristephes - Tumblr Blog

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Piristephes’ Masterpost

Hello, friends! Welcome to my masterpost. If you wanna read about me, please click here.

Please follow my portuguese hellenic Blog / Sigam meu blog Helênico em português -> @hermeneutas

Now a list of my original posts, may you find some of them useful and whatnot.

On Divination

- Gods and Divination

- Prayer to Apollon for Divination

- About divination and oracles in Hellenic Polytheism

- Hellenic Divination: Ornithomancy

Nymph cult info

- How to connect with nymphai and nature spirits (PT and EN)

- Honouring the Nymphai, the Maidens of Nature

Monthly observances and household worship (Based on Hesiod’s Works and Days, and other sources)

- Noumenia: The New Moon festival

- The Agathos Daimon

- Yet another Agathos Daimon post

- Honouring Athene (and Ares) on Tritogeneia

- Honouring Hermes on Ermou Tetras

- Making an Herma for Hermes

- The 5th lunar day, to the Eumenides/Kindly Ones

- The 6th and 7th lunar day, to Artemis and Apollon

- Devotional act suggestion for Artemis

- Honouring and approaching Apollon

- You don’t always need to do big rituals (a post for Apollon)

- Dikhomenia, the Full Moon festival to Selene

- Prayer to Selene, Artemis and Hekate on Dikhomenia

- Deipnon, the Dark Moon festival to Hekate

- Mesomedes of Crete’s “Hymn to the Sun”

General worship tips, suggestions for rituals and personal experiences.

- Basic greek for worship

- General tips and where to go to after initial research

- Suggestions for Haloa

- Suggestions for Olympeia

“Song of Mounykhia” to Artemis

- Honouring the demigods before exercises

- On the nature of blessings

- Quote: Pillars to Apollon

- Hermes, the Ram-Bearer

- Ares, a warrior

- The time Hera helped me

- Quote: Circe and Cheese

- Quote: Ares, a God of Women

- When I was robbed and thanked Hermes

- Honouring Apollon, Artemis and Leto

- A personal rant about Apollon and Helios

That time when Hermes made me come out of the polytheist closet

The Apotheosis of Diomedes

Posts from @hermeneutas in English, originally in Portuguese.

Blog introduction

Books and recommendations

Differentiating Hellenismos, Hellenic Polytheism and some other stuff

Why you shouldn’t just mix folklore and polytheism

The plurality and the polytheism

Regarding deceased pets

Altars and cult spaces

How do I know if my offering has been accepted or denied?

Worshipping Tips - The Delphic Maxims

About divination on Hellenic Polytheism

The monthly cycle of the household cult

What should I do with the offering after it spoils on my altar?

The afterlife and the Underworld

Regarding the matter of Magic in Hellenic Polytheism

Do you think all gods are just different manifestations of the same energy?

Regarding hero worship

Regarding priesthood in modern times

Food offerings

Where to start with altars

Regarding patron-Gods

Hellenic values

Ethics and morals in a polytheist religion

Regarding daimones

Do not take myths literally

Offerings: Pankarpia and Panspermia

Gods and their epithets series

INDEX

About the Primordials

INDEX

Devotional art and poetry

Devotional texts

Poems

Art in general

Hymns

My minor hymns series

*turns the mic on*

TERFs are not allowed here nor in hellenic polytheism as a whole, as they are in direct opposition to Xenia. Bigotry has no place here. Consider taking your time reading the Xenia Declaration too!

I hope this list was helpful!

Errosthe!

#helpol #hellenic polytheism #masterpost

morphic-mythos

The Greek for “divine possession” is enthusiasmos—enthusiasm. To be enthused or enthusiastic is to be “engodded,” to be divinely inspired.

—Stephen Fry, Mythos

Uggh fixing my spelling mistakes

Invoking her/Invocando-a

I wield the flame of the candle, the whisper of the dark My knees touch the soil, garlic and myrrh in the altar. Her name I call in the crossroad, Her might I invoke from afar Guide of spirits, mother in witchery, protectress and dreadful - I call thy guidance near and hear hounds around, My smile coils as a snake, for Hekate's shades abound.

português:

Porto a chama da vela, o sussurro da treva Meus joelhos alcançam o solo, alho e mirra no altar. Teu nome chamo na encruzilhada, Teu poder invoco de longe Guia dos espíritos, mãe no sortilégio, protetora e temível - Rogo tua orientação perto e ouço cães ao redor, Meu sorriso enrodilha como serpente, pois sombras de Hécate cercam-me.

#hellenic polytheism #prayer #devotional text #helpol #hecate #hekate

what-even-is-thiss

The amount of slavery in Ancient Rome was legitimately terrifying tbh

what-even-is-thiss

Y’all know that I’m into ancient Roman history and I do a lot of research on it but even though I should be used to it by now sometimes I read an anecdote about how an individual slave was treated and I’m hit with the realization that like a third of the population was living like that and I just need to put my head in my hands for a second

what-even-is-thiss

Emperor Hadrian randomly stabbed a slave in the eye in a fit of rage and he was supposedly unusually sympathetic to slaves.

There’s other instances of people randomly punching slaves that they didn’t even know because they got in their way or something. This was just normal behavior.

And slaves didn’t rebel en masse because if even one slave committed an act of violent rebellion it was common practice to kill every slave and former slave in the household.

People only took notice for posterity when these mass executions got into the hundreds of people. One of the few recorded for the history books is of over 400 people being killed because one guy stabbed his enslaver.

Like how many people throughout history were beaten to death because some rich asshole was angry and there was no legal or social consequences for doing so? We don’t know.

what-even-is-thiss

When you study ancient history you’re reminded that slavery has never once been kind or justified. It just takes on different forms of evil in every time and place that it infects.

qskeppy

Isis-Hecate, mistress of magic, riding a dog. Terracotta, 1–2 Century AD

From the Houston Museum of Natural Science

#Isis #Hecate #Hekate #art

the-puffinry

Engraved Scaraboid with Aphrodite Riding a Goose, about 400 B.C.E.

Aphrodite riding on a goose. Terracotta from Locri, Calabria, Italy. Made in Boeotia c. 470 – 460 BC. [this actually looks like a swan to me; look at the upper beak?].

Aphrodite on a goose, 2nd-1st Century B.C.E.

Aphrodite riding on a goose, 380 BCE, Taranto.

Relief of Aphrodite on a goose, 50 BCE-100 CE, Italy.

Terracotta figurine of Aphrodite seated on a goose, 3rd to 2nd century BCE, Cyprus.

#aphrodite #art

whats-the-word-again

Gracious Hekate, roamer of the streets, protector of laypeople, I pray to you. Cast your gaze upon those in need And guard them, With all of your wonderous might. Goddess of witchcraft, I implore you, If ever I've spoken good of your name, To aid and watch over those Who cannot do so themselves. Bless them with the touch of your hand And let your light be a guide to them. You, Hekate, who sees the stars in the shadows, See us now.

#hekate #hecate #prayer

callmealioness

I just finished reading ‘Athtart: The Transmission and Transformation of a Goddess in the Late Bronze Age’ by Aren M. Wilson-Wright, a book about, as the title indicates, the famous goddess Astarte across the centuries in the Bronze Age. I want to share some bits that stood out to me, and that I think that more people should know:

- Most people “know” Astarte as a goddess of love and war, usually framed as the Near Eastern blueprint for Aphrodite, whose war aspect was supposedly scrubbed out when she reached Greece because of misogyny. (And by “most people,” I mostly mean Overly Sarcastic Productions and their viewers.)

The problem is that this isn’t actually true.

First of all, the neat Ishtar → Astarte → Aphrodite lineage is heavily disputed. I’m planning to read Stephanie Lynn Budin’s The Origin of Aphrodite to get even deeper into the scholarship, but even at a basic level, the comparison starts to fall apart once you look at who Astarte actually was. She doesn’t line up very well with Aphrodite at all.

More importantly, Astarte was not a goddess of sex, love, marriage, or reproduction in the way Aphrodite was. As Rüdiger Schmitt puts it, she was “not a fertility goddess, but rather a goddess of war, apotropaic magic, and kingship” (p. 10 of Athtart). Treating her as a flattened “love-and-war Aphrodite prototype” does a disservice to both goddesses, and seriously distorts the ancient evidence.

- Should we even call her Astarte? Her Ugaritic name was Athtart, and in Phoenicia it was Ashtart; Astarte is simply the romanized version of her name. In recent years, translators have largely abandoned the custom of using Roman names for Greek gods. I remember reading the Iliad, Oedipus Rex, Antigone, and similar works in high school and having to buy editions that referred to Jupiter, Minerva, and Ulysses—a practice that has thankfully fallen out of use. So why don’t we extend the same courtesy to Canaanite gods?

- In a complete shift of tone, here’s my favorite art of her:

- Her relationship with her sister Anat is genuinely fascinating. They’re siblings (daughters of El in Ugaritic religion, Ptah in Egyptian), and their bond is oddly beautiful. Despite both being war goddesses, they’re not teaming up for carnage—instead they’re healing poisonous bites, curing their dad’s hangover, and hyping up Baal. Soft, supportive lethal sisters 🫂

- Is Baal her husband? At least in the bronze age, the author argues that no, we have no reason to believe that Astarte was considered Baal’s consort. We have a text where Astart is hunting on a steppe and Baal seems to desire her (KTU 1.92), Astart has the epithets ‘of the temple of Baal’ and ‘name of Baal’, and in the Baal Cycle she helps him defeat Yamm (though she’s not his biggest supporter, that would be Anat) — however, none of those texts indicate that they are man and wife. They only proof for that kind of connection comes “from a neo-Punic building inscription from Mididi in Tunisia: "The sanctuary built for Ashtart, wife of Baal; the citizens of Mididi built (it)"” (p. 137). My personal conclusion is that it’s best to describe Baal and Astart’s bond as a situationship 🫣

#quote #astarte #Aphrodite

satyrmagos

Hekatean prayer beads with twenty-nine beads of bone, four brass rattlesnake vertebrae, eight volcanic stone beads, twelve garnet beads, and a brass central medallion, flower bell, and antique key.

Each piece is hand made with unique variations. No two keys, flowers, vertebrae, or beads are identical, and the hand casting techniques that produce the Hekatae talisman (the same two-sided Hekate talisman I sell individually) likewise produce unique results.

These talismans are not consecrated. That task is yours, in accordance with the instructions provided by your gods and familiar spirits.

Each piece comes with a box to store the talisman in while it is sleeping.

https://sorcerersworkbench.etsy.com/listing/898084093/hekataeon-hekates-ladder-rosary-talisman

#that's metal #I use a consecrated antique key mostly #as a necklace

catcher-in-the-reeds

Achilles (ܐܟܠܘܣ) with a lyre on the right and Patroclus (ܦܛܪܩܠܣ) on the left, scene from book 9 of the Iliad

Mosaic with Syriac Aramaic inscriptions from Edessa, kingdom of Osroene, 3rd century CE

#patroclus #achilles #the iliad #art

broomsick

The sea is a temple. The woods are a temple. Your own bedroom is a temple. The world is imbued with the spiritual. Worship is an act, not a place, and it can happen spontaneously, in reaction to the beauty of a moment.

temperamentalgreen

Work In Progress!🌙

I'm currently working on a banner for Selene's page on the Epithet Database, a website created by @ace-angelicpagan that collects the epithets of the Theoi.

A database of all the epithets for the greek gods!

At the moment, I'm colouring over an Attic red-figure kylix from around 490–480 BC depicting Selene. It's been a lot of fun, but one of the trickier parts has been trying to adapt details from the original vase painting, especially the horse leads. I'm trying to reinterpret them so they make sense with the anatomy and movement of the horses in my version, and it's something I'm still working through.