i love you green. i love you forests. i love you smell of damp earth. i love you feeling before the storm breaks. i love you moss. i love you rivers. i love you streams. i love you thunderstorms. i love you sunlight shining through leaves.
Picked some magnolia petals and discovered as they started to wilt at creases they turned a beautiful warm brown color. Then got the idea to use a silverpoint stylus to scratch a magnolia drawing into the petal~ smells divine
reading about the participation of children in rituals as a form of play in ancient greece and came across an incredibly charming story from julius pollux's onomasticon where a flood prevented the adults from reaching a sanctuary to sacrifice a ram to heracles, and the children solved the problem by....sticking a bunch of sticks in an apple to give it "legs" and "horns" and offering it as a sacrifice instead. it's such a charming thought and i can perfectly picture kids these days also pretending at sacrificing an apple "goat" at recess
something that I've noticed in neo-pagan/polytheist spaces is this focus on one or a few deities. while this is a valid approach and seems to be working amazingly for many people, i wanted to write a short defence of a different form of polytheism that, while maybe less visible on social media, is equally viable.
the poly in polytheism necessitates the belief in multiple gods however modern forms of worship take many different forms on top of that. from my years being in pagan spaces on social media I have noticed that to many, being a polytheist means worshipping one or a handful of gods and having very close relationships with them. which deities someone chooses to have this kind of relationship with stems from multiple possible sources, for example, personal interest, the deity's domain being somehow related to a person's life or an inexplicable draw to them.
to me, this seems to be the dominant view on social media of the form that neo-paganism takes, however, after years of exploring my spirituality and practice, I have come to the conclusion that this is not how I want to worship. I am writing this post for more people like me, who are interested in exploring this often less mainstream approach.
an ancient template
reading about Ancient Greek and Roman civilisations I was always struck by the number of minor deities with hyper-specific domains and associations. as a modern pagan, I could not understand the appeal of worshipping such a deity, ie. using so much time and resources to build a relationship for only a handful of niche issues that you could approach them with.
but as I kept reading and exploring, I realised that I was approaching polytheism completely differently than the ancients did. they truly did live in a world full of gods and they did not require a relationship built over days, if not weeks or more, to approach a deity and ask for their aid.
as long as you followed the rules of reciprocity, you could approach any deity that was relevant to your situation because they were the best equipped to help you with your problem. now this is not true for all of the population all the time, there were definitely also for example, people devoted to one deity, but from my understanding, this seemed to be the general form that polytheism took in those ancient civilisations.
the influence of monotheism
I think another feature of online neo-paganism is this expansion of the major deities' domains which then removes the need to worship the smaller deities. now, don't get me wrong, I'm all for expanding the domains of deities, especially if this is done from a revivalist perspective in order to modernise them for the contemporary worshipper. but sometimes I feel like completely unrelated domains are added for the sake of convenience more than anything else, ie. so that someone can keep worshipping the same deity(ies) without approaching others.
this, in my opinion, goes against one of the core aspects of polytheism which is the idea that different gods rule over different domains and have power over them. following this idea, it would make very little sense to pray to Neptune during air travel as he has no influence over the skies. yet, I sometimes see the deities be treated more like monotheistic gods which are all-powerful and can influence anything in the world.
if this is your view of how the gods work, that's fine, but I feel like sometimes people accept it without questioning it much or thinking about their view of theology at all. after mulling this idea over for some time, I realised it made much more sense to approach those specific deities, even if they are much less known or minor because this fits into my beliefs about polytheism much better.
a poly-practice
so, how would a poly-polytheistic practice look like in the modern day? well, there are many ways to go about it but I will just share bits from my own experience.
what I have ended up doing is focusing on different deities as they become relevant in my life - I focused on worshipping Janus at the beginning of the year while also taking the time to pray to Fortuna in moment when I needed her aid. I then did some extra reading on Jupiter, but didn't forget to thank Mars every time I went to the gym. I no longer felt the pressure to have some sort of special "connection" to every deity or "feel their presence", just trusting that they are there and then catching glimpses of divinity in my daily life.
looking into which Roman festivals I wanted to celebrate also opened my perspectives to more deities I would not have otherwise worshipped on my own. like this, I feel like I am building an arsenal of deities I can turn to when I need and of course, it is also vital to remember that I can call on multiple ones at the same time, just like the Romans saw the gods aiding one another in their tasks.
I only have one altar, which is practical and thus quite minimalistic, but there is space for my prayer notebook as well as other supplies that I need for my rituals.
conclusion
of course, this kind of practice results in a much more "impersonal" relationship with the gods, but I never really felt the need to communicate with them directly or things like that, so it fits me well. I find comfort in imagining a world full of gods, who may only know me in passing but who look out for me nevertheless.
in the end, the goal of this post is not to change anyone's mind about how they worship, but to present an alternate perspective which you can learn from but also completely disregard. in the end I am just happy that you were interested enough to reach until the end of this post. thank you for reading!!
The god of dirt
came up to me many times and said
so many wise and delectable things; I lay
on the grass listening
to his dog voice,
crow voice,
frog voice; now
he said, and now,
and never once mentioned forever.
— Mary Oliver, from “One or Two Things” in The God of Dirt: Mary Oliver and the Other Book of God by Thomas Wingate Mann · 2004 (via Alive on All Channels)
I was thinking about controversial it is, even in pagan settings, to worship tricksters like Loki and Sutekh, and I think that I described it pretty well with
"Tricksters are inherently transgressive figures who literally embody what it's like to live in a socially unacceptable or taboo way, which is why members of marginalized communities flock to them while more privileged people find them distasteful. They are the personifications of chaos and social unrest, which includes how much strife surrounds people who are deemed socially unacceptable; they are literally the gods of minorities and people who suffer under bigoted unjust systems.
When tricksters do something bad in a myth, marginalized groups see a complex rebellious figure with their own motives while privileged people see a bad person doing bad things. And when tricksters are punished, privileged people just see a bad guy getting their comeuppence while marginalized groups see the harsh realities of living as a socially unacceptable person.
It's no wonder then that queer people, the mentally ill and other minorities have flocked to Loki's side, since he embodies the realities of their lives, even when others can't understand it."
i made the mistake of trying to read this out loud and absolutely lost it at every single line and absolutely my neighbours just heard my sputter laugh for a solid two minutes
“If someone comes to you and asks your help, you shall not turn him off with pious words, saying, “Have faith and take your troubles to God!” You shall act as if there were no God, as if there were only one person in all the world who could help this man–only yourself.”
—
Rabbi Moshe Leib of Sassov (via shiraglassman)
You don’t expect to hear a rabbi say “act as if there were no God” and mean not “do whatever you feel like doing” but “recognize that the ultimate responsibility for doing good in the world lies with you.” I kind of love this. (via animatedamerican)
#religion #… I mean if anyone were going to say ‘act as if there were no god’ to mean ‘it’s all on you mate’ #it would be a rabbi (via thetrollingchaos)
“Pray as if everything depended on God, and act as if everything depended on yourself.”
or as my mom says, “God has no hands but ours.” (via libhobn)
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