the sun

your local elf | he/they | eclectic + helpol — ✧hades✧ — apollo, gaia, hypnos, more — sideblog of hiyyihsun —

[solarvv]

intro; pinned 📍 will probably update.

Call me Baz :) He/They. 21 y/o. 🇸🇪🇨🇦

Primarily Hellenic Polytheist; I dabble in Celtic and occasionally Norse and others. However most of my spirituality is not focused around deities! Details below the cut ! -

Practicing since 13 y/o. | My main deities are Hades, Apollo, Gaia, Dionysus and Hypnos.

I am more witchcraft than religion. I'm not huge on traditional (/typical/popular) forms of worship; I don't do rituals or offerings or prayers often at all, and I don't feel the need to show my devotion outwardly for the gods to understand. It is enough for me to simply believe and feel.

I am a hard polytheist, I see all Gods as separate, including similar ones of separate pantheons.

I love the different Entities and the Fae - I see 'Fae' as a wide umbrella term for many different types of beings, spanning from pixies, elves and gnomes to the scarier entities you may imagine hiding in your closet. My main focus in this area are elves, which I ID with highly.

I believe* in many things, such as past lives, "soulmates", aspects of astrology, other planes of existence and possibly communication between them, etc. I occasionally practice forms of divination and dream work.

[adistraughtjester]

I am hoping that this is some sort of exaggeration or oversimplification because this is just blatant erasure of a major element of Greek culture and replaced by a more Christian version and I want to bang my head into a wall. That’s not what xenia is, and you just erased a major part of the Odyssey.

[adistraughtjester]

@watchanddream Sure! This got a bit lengthier than I intended, but I wanted to try and be thorough.

Put far too simply, xenia is the practice of hospitality, but it's also a ritual and in a sense a contract between guest and host. When a stranger arrives at your doorstep, you're expected to feed them and give them a gift as the host. Typically, you're not even supposed to ask them their name until they've finished their meal. Once you've done this as the host, the guest is now expected to share stories and information about themselves, and not burden you or your household. Typically, people focus on how hosts violate xenia, but guests can also violate xenia.

This is called a guest-friendship, and once it's established, you are expected to offer the same to your host should they ever visit. It's a ritual of hospitality, yes, but it's also used to establish alliances and can be passed down through generations. For example, in the Iliad, when Glaucus and Diomedes discover that their grandparents were guest-friends, they decide not to fight, but rather exchange armor.

Theoxeny is a common story you see in myth where a god (typically Zeus) disguises themselves as a mortal and requests to be hosted by someone. Should the host follow the rules of xenia, they'll be rewarded, but if they fail, they'll be punished or killed.

This is important to the Odyssey, as it comes up multiple times, but in particular, the cyclops, and the suitors. In both these instances, Odysseus arrives disguised and gives a false name, the practices of xenia are failed, and Odysseus reveals himself and punishes the one that failed to follow xenia. The suitors in particular fail xenia, as they both fail as hosts, AND as guests, for burdening Odysseus's household.

Xenia being treated as the golden rule comes across to me like a Christian reinterpretation, as while many Greek philosophers did have something similar to the golden rule, those were philosophers, and the idea that it's a religious command from a god seems much more in line with a Christian idea of where the rule comes from. (Note, I'm aware that other religions had something similar, even as a command from a god, but I highly doubt Nolan is drawing inspiration from those instances)

[wayfind-er]

Not everyone knows about my GDrive with 100+ PDFs about ancient Greek Religion, but now you do. I hope it's helpful!

[solarvv]

being pagan/witchy with a history of 'weird' mental illness makes it rlly hard for people to believe that the two arent connected

[fernthewhimsical]

Pride Protection Sigil

I've been thinking of making an updated, transparent version of my original Pride Protection Sigil for a while now, so I figured Pride Month was a perfect moment for it! I remade the shapes I could in photoshop, copied the thorny vines from the original, and then made a bunch of different community ones (see more under the cut).

I've designed this sigil as a protection for the entire rainbow community. You can print it out or redraw it yourself. Place a candle over it, use it as a base of a crystal grid, place it on your altar and meditate, make it the centre of a (digital) moodboard, whatever feels right for you.

The centre of the sigil is the Progress Pride flag, symbolizing our community (you can redraw the sigil and place a different flag inside, if you wish to focus on a specific part of the community). Around it is a black circle (protection, community) which is made by five stickfigures holding hands (people, community). Around them is a square (protection) and then a ring of intertwined briar branches with the thorns pointing outwards (again, protection). On the right side I also snuck the rune Thurisaz (briar, protection) into the ring of briar branches. The pentacle in the centre stands for magic as well as, surprise, protection. Customize this for whatever you need, the pentacle is optional, place more stickfigures, change the flag, whatever makes it work for you.

Here are some more different versions:

9-stripe pride flag

1978 pride flag

Philadelphia pride flag

Progress flag (from the top)

Rainbow pride flag

Trans pride flag

[morganathewitch]

Broken rock, 5th April 2026.

[apollophanes]

I've seen this saying being passed around a few times. Not sure where it is from, but I love it:

If you don't know who to pray to, then pray to Hermes. Even if he cannot help you, he knows someone who can.

[meadowmousey]

The amount of ai art I see when trying to search for art of deities, Cernunnos specifically, is extremely disheartening. Like, why would you be using AI for a god of the wild? You are literally destroying him every time you use ai. Barf gross boo tomato tomato

[khaire-traveler]

If you are collecting seashells, please remember to keep the shortage of shells for hermit crabs in mind!

It's a massive issue that the over-collection of seashells has led to. While efforts are being made to attempt to combat the problem, those of us who live near coasts and hermit crab populated areas can help our crabby friends by keeping our hands off the shells that hermit crabs use as homes!

You may be wondering, "Stag, what does this have to do with Hellenic Polytheism?" Many worshippers and devotees of ocean-related deities like to collect seashells and give them as offerings, so this is somewhat of a PSA to maybe think twice before picking up certain shells.

Hermit crab seashells can look like the following:

If you're dead set on collecting a seashell, please focus on flat ones. They're far less likely to be used as hermit crab homes. And as always, if you happen to see trash on beaches or in hermit crab populated areas, please throw it away, even if it isn't yours. You could be saving a crabby - or another animal - life!

[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.

[creature-wizard]

Red flag behaviors to watch out for in witchcraft and pagan communities

Someone tries to dictate your beliefs and/or practice based on their personal experiences (aka UPG, or unverified personal gnosis).

They claim the gods will punish you if you don't go along with them.

They appeal to conspiracy theories to justify their beliefs. (See also Is the spiritual person a conspiracy theorist? A list of red flags.)

They make big, dramatic predictions (like claiming aliens will arrive on a certain date, or that the ancient gods will return and overthrow the government soon).

They claim to have a big, important role in the grand cosmic drama (like claiming they're the Archangel Michael and they're going to fight Satan, which will lead to the fall of the government).

They are extremely opposed to skepticism, critical thinking, and/or academia. Not merely critical where it's actually appropriate, but treating it like it's all pure evil.

They encourage you to cut off people who don't believe or criticize what they teach.

They are absolutely certain they can use mystical means (like astrology or tarot) to determine whether someone is a good or bad person.

They are absolutely certain they can just sense whether someone is good or bad.

They are absolutely certain they can use mystical means to find out what another person is thinking or doing.

They claim you were connected to them in a past life.

They pressure you into uncomfortable or dangerous practices.

[swissshard]

Relief of Hades and Persephone with a table of pomegranates from Hierapolis Archaeological Museum.

[solarvv]

[sylviaplathreincarnate]

[amorphousbl0b]

[loveletters2myself]

source? it was revealed during my nature walk.

[carbon-heart]

citing the muddy sprites that live in the riverbed et al.

[twunkish-cleric]

Hellenic Pagans when they're trying to do actual research on their deities but they just keep getting stuff for Lore Olympus, Hades game, Epic the Musical, etc:

Theistic Satanists, Luciferians and other people who work with demons when they're trying to do actual research on their guides but keep getting stuff for Helluva Boss:

Norse Pagans and Heathens when they have to sift through 5 different layers of Nazi bullshit just to find a single credible source that isn't bigoted:

Celtic Pagans who are trying to research their deities but keep just finding repackaged Wiccan traditions that aren't historical at fucking all:

Kemetic Pagans trying to find actual quality historically accurate information about Ancient Egyptian Religion but just keep running into stuff that Victorian "scholars" just made the fuck up:

Roman Pagans watching people treat their religion like it's basically just Hellenic Polytheism but slightly to the left when it's so much more complex than that:

Slavic Pagans trying to find a single fucking credible source on their religion and find another person who also practices it:

I'm sure there's way more things like this but I can't think of them rn. We should all kiss about this btw