for just one yesterday @stellarium-greenhouse - Tumblr Blog

Introduction and tags!

Hi! My name is Ezra

I'm a beginner polytheist pagan from SE Asia! I'll be using this blog as a devotion for my deities and to journal online.

-i worship a variety of gods, mostly anpu, apollo and occasionally loki and djehuty, as well as chinese folk religion from the chinese diaspora

-i like drawing and making moodboards

art tag is #stellar-art

and my journalling tag is #ramblerumble

#im still learning so please dont hesitate to talk if i'm making mistakes #some of my moods are tagged with certain keywords and they're personal hehe

starlight-sage

ꕥ ᴅɪᴏɴʏsᴜs • ɢᴏᴅ ᴏғ ᴡɪɴᴇ, ᴠᴇɢᴇᴛᴀᴛɪᴏɴ, ғᴇʀᴛɪʟɪᴛʏ, ғᴇsᴛɪᴠɪᴛʏ, ʀɪᴛᴜᴀʟ ᴍᴀᴅɴᴇss, ʀᴇʟɪɢɪᴏᴜs ᴇᴄsᴛᴀsʏ, ᴍᴇɴᴛᴀʟ ʜᴇᴀʟᴛʜ ᴀɴᴅ ᴛʜᴇᴀᴛᴇʀ ꕥ

#dionysus!!#theoi

erinmorgenstern

Night Circus tea is now available from Old Growth Alchemy! This blend has apple & candied ginger & cinnamon & clove & more, it's a little bit sweet & a little bit smoky & perfectly magical 🖤

#pretty #aesthetic #thinking of nyx when i see it

ymutate

Morris Graves

American, 1910–2001. Cat with Red Cabbage, 1935

#the unearthed

star-spangled-bastard

It's been a while, but I have a new sticker design of Set up on redbubble!

#dua set!#set #sutekh

proteesiukkonen

Oh, my love, how you have learned to shun the head you carry

#wolfmother #werewolf #wolf

satanasaeternus

“The Vision of Irene” - Agostino Arrivabene

#wolfmother #i think

likefolksongs

my top 25 songs of 2022

4. expert in a dying field by the beths (x)

#oooh?

artifacts-and-arthropods

Prehistoric Figurine of a Harp Player, from the Cyclades (Greece), c. 2700-2300 BCE: this figurine was shaped from a block of solid marble and then slowly sanded into form using pumice and emery

The figurine depicts a musician with a frame harp, an instrument that originated in the Near East and then later spread to the peoples of the Aegean. A sound box forms the section along the base of the instrument, and a small protrusion can be seen near the top of the harp's frame; some experts have argued that this protrusion might represent an ornamental carving of a waterfowl's head, while others argue that it represents a musical extension that facilitates the projection of sound (a feature that often appears on the stringed instruments of the ancient Near East).

This piece measures 35.8cm (about 14 inches) tall.

Musical performances like this are rarely depicted in Cycladic artwork. Depictions of male characters are similarly rare, representing only 5% of the Cycladic sculptures that are known to exist. When male figures are depicted, however, they are frequently shown playing musical instruments, as seen here.

Figurine of a Harpist, c. 2800-2700 BCE: a similar example of a Cycladic sculpture that features a musician with a frame harp

The Museum of Cycladic Art provides a more detailed explanation of the process by which these figures were created:

As we can deduce from the few unfinished figurines that have been discovered so far, the first step in the process was to roughly shape the raw piece of marble into a figure by the impact of a mallet. Emery powder was then used to abrade the surface until it obtained the desired shape and size. Once the desired shape was achieved, the surface was smoothed carefully before the fine work of carving the details started. At the end, the figurine was polished to a high degree that is still amazing.

And according to The Met:

Many of these figures, especially those of the Spedos type, display a remarkable consistency in form and proportion that suggests they were planned with a compass. Scientific analysis has shown that the surface of the marble was painted with mineral-based pigments—azurite for blue and iron ores, or cinnabar for red.

The Cycladic Islands (also known as the Cyclades) are a group of about 30 separate islands in the Southwest Aegean, off the coast of mainland Greece. These islands contain a wealth of natural resources, including marble, emery, pumice, obsidian, and an assortment of precious metals. The prehistoric peoples of the Cyclades made use of these resources for many different purposes, but the marble figurines/sculptures that they crafted during the Bronze Age are perhaps their most famous creation.

The vast majority of these figurines are stylized depictions of the female form. The cultural significance of the sculptures remains unclear; they may have simply been created as decorative pieces/artwork, without any additional function, or they may have been used as fetishes, totems, religious idols, grave goods, or votive offerings.

Sources & More Info:

The Getty Museum: Figurine of a Harp Player

The Met: Cycladic Harp Player

The Met: Early Cycladic Art and Culture

The Museum of Cycladic Art: Techniques

gemsofgreece

Just clarifying the Cyclades islands are around 220 and about 33 of them are the currently inhabited ones.

#ancient history #archaeology #Greek history

cerleansky

The legacies people leave behind in you.

My handwriting is the same style as the teacher’s who I had when I was nine. I’m now twenty one and he’s been dead eight years but my i’s still curve the same way as his.

I watched the last season of a TV show recently but I started it with my friend in high school. We haven’t spoken in four years.

I make lentil soup through the recipe my gran gave me.

I curl my hair the way my best friend showed me.

I learned to love books because my father loved them first.

How terrifying, how excruciatingly painful to acknowledge this. That I am a jigsaw puzzle of everyone I have briefly known and loved. I carry them on with me even if I don’t know it. How beautiful.

speaklavenderthoughts-deactivat

absolutely obsessed with these tags

aresmarked

[Content ID:

Tag screenshot of ‘insomniac-arrest’s tags that read, ‘going insane over this # people are cups who overflow again and again into other lifetimes # what do you mean you’re not immortal?’

End ID/]

#yeahh #dust

lifeinpoetry

— Brenda Hillman, from "Escape & Logic," In a Few Minutes Before Later

#yearning

screeching-0wl

Hello! I don't know if anybody already asked, but do you have some books/pdf/resources recommendations for Hellenic polytheism? Thanks in advance! ✨

Hi there!

I recommended a few things here: LINK

Some books & pdf:

Ancient Greek Cults by Jennifer Larson

Greek Heroine Cults by Jennifer Larson

Understanding Greek Religion by Jennifer Larson

Greek Cult of Deified Abstractions by Emma J. Stafford

Miasma: Pollution and Purification in Early Greek Religion by Robert Parker

Greek Religion by Walter Burkert

Hellenic Polytheism: Household Worship by Christos Panopoulos

Greek Mythology: An Introduction by Fritz Graf

Apollo by Fritz Graf

Hermes by Arlene Allan

Athena by Susan Deacy

War and the Warrior: Functions of Ares in Literature and Cult by Alexander T. Millington

Prayer in Greek Religion by Simon Pulleyn

Underworld Gods in Ancient Greek Religion by Ellie Mackin Roberts

Those are just the ones I could think of now. If anything else comes to my mind I'll write the title and the author in the comments. Maybe I could try to make a better, general reading list in a separate post if anyone's interested?

Other than that, I sometimes use jstor.org and academia.edu - the websites can be quite useful.

Also, if anyone here happens to speak Polish maybe I could recommend a few Polish resources as well, just DM me.

#resource #helpol

evilios

Do you have any recommended texts on the Hellenic religion, myths or the ancient cults?

Hi! 🌞

A lot, most of them are something I used in my posts. There's not going to be any order in this list and a lot of it might be focused on Apollo as He's the focus of my research.

First, I strongly recommend reading Greek legends, stories, and myths as well as Greek classics. No one knows their religion better than the people who created it. So, just follow the school/college curriculum, there's too much to note. I personally read most of the classical Greek literature in college. I am sure the Iliad and Odyssey & major plays will give you a good boost! Drop Theogony in and I think you're good for starters.

Second, I'd recommend big encyclopedias of myths and legends, such as:

Myths and Legends of Ancient Greece by Nikolay Kun (I personally grew up with it)

Ancient Greek Cults by Jennifer Larson

A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities by William Smith

Slightly more "complicated" general books:

The Concepts of the Divine in the Greek Magical Papyri by Eleni Pachoumi

The 'Orphic' Gold Tablets and Greek Religion: Further Along the Path by Radcliffe G. Edmonds (ed.)

Ancient Divination and Experience by Lindsay G. Driediger-Murphy (ed.), Esther Eidinow (ed.)

Apollo by Fritz Graf

Η μαγεια στην Αρχαια Ελλαδα by Ελένη Γραμμαηκοπούλου (ed.) (I have a pdf in Greek for this book, I don't know if it was ever translated and how)

Hymns! Perseus.edu has most of them translated and commented on.

Some notable studies by people researching into different areas I am personally curious about (randomly):

The Bee Maidens of the Homeric Hymn to Hermes by Susan Scheinberg

Divination at Archaic Branchidai-Didyma: A Critical Review by Alan M. Greaves

The Ancient Greek Pharmakos Rituals by Esther Eidinow

You DON'T have to read super specific books I link! I am very obsessed with Apollonian cults so it's mostly that :)

I have a #resources tag for anything more specific, and my linked posts (in the pinned) all have respective specific sources linked, too, if you're curious!

#resource #apollo #helpol

micromeria-deactivated20231118

New additions to the open library- June update

This month we got all these new additions to the library, you are more than welcome to check them out:

Rethinking Aphrodite as a Goddess at Work (Pironti, 2010)

Theseus and the stone. The iconographic and ritual contexts of a Greek votive relief in the Louvre (Ekroth, 2010)

Aphrodite The Goddess of Appearances (Kenaan, 2010)

The Interiors of Greek Temples (Miles, 2016)

Multifaceted Aphrodite. Cult and Iconography in Athens (Machaira, 2018)

The sacrificial rituals of Greek hero-cults in the Archaic to the Hellenistic periods (Ekroth, 2002)

Inventing Iphigeneia? On Euripides and the cultic construction of Brauron (Ekroth, 2003)

Cult in Context - The Ritual Significance of Miniature Pottery in Ancient Greek Sanctuaries from the Archaic to the Hellenistic period (Barfoed, 2015)

Bathing in the Sanctuaries of Asklepios and Apollo Maleatas at Epidauros (Truemper, 2014)

#resource #helpol

sag-dab-sar

Finding Information on Deities

Here is a very small list of how to find information on a deity (or discover new ones).

🌿Greek🌿

Theoi Project - by Aaron J. Atsma (with help from University of Aukland & Leiden University)

Household Worship - Labrys Organization in Greece of Modern Hellenic Polytheism

Perseus Project - Tufts University

"Main" Olympian Gods (14 listed) - University of Victoria

Greek Gods & Goddesses - Edited Michael Taft; Brittanica Publishing**

🌿Mesopotamian🌿

Mesopotamian Gods & Goddess Project - Openly Richly Annotated Cuneiform Corpus, aka Oracc

Illustrated Dictionary of Gods Demons & Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia - by Jeremy Black & Antony Green Dictionary. Link 1* , Link 2**

Dictionary of Ancient Near Eastern Mythology - by Gwendolyn Leick Dictionary. Link 1** , Link 2

Please do not use wikipedia for ANE religion its horrendous, usually I'm a defender of wikipedia but it is that bad on ANE religion.

Almost always information on ANE Gods contradict each other; which is why I have found using multiple sources to come to a conclusion is the best approach.

___

*PDF of books sometimes disappear and give you a not found error. It happened with my PDF on Leick's dictionary so this is just a warning.

**These links go to the Internet Archive and thus they might disappear one day. But while its still up you can create a free account and borrow any books for free an hour at a time.

#resource #helpol