Hello! I saw your post about not considering yourself a reconstructionist, and the point you made was that your practice had to be modernized specifically due to being disabled, and I wanted to sort of share what reconstruction means to me as someone who considers themself a reconstructionist who is also disabled and has a very modern practice! I will say I am Irish polytheist and not Hellenic polytheist, just for a little bit of context :)
For me, reconstruction is all about the intensity of incorporation of what we currently understand whatever religion is being practiced to be. This is going to look a lot clearer for our Hellenic polytheist friends than for those of us that practice religions rife with holes and misinformation. Reconstruction is also about how one would approach the UPG of others and communities. When it comes to historical record, reconstructions start there and seldom branch off. They’re looking for information from a time period (not necessarily a small time period, especially if you don’t have a lot to look at, but a specific time period nonetheless) and have some general sense of a cut off. For Irish polytheist reconstructionist, this doesn’t include all the Celtomania Victorian age stuff. How this source material is used is going to be entirely up to the practitioner, but in general the goal I think of most all practitioners both recon and revival is to craft a practice that is doable and reasonable for the modern day. The difference is revival is more open to thoughts and ideas from other people, both present and past, outside of that specific time period. This isn’t to say reconstructionists don’t ever incorporate the UPG of others into their craft, they just tend to try and line it up a lot more with original source material if possible.
I hope this makes sense, basically it’s totally possible to be both disabled and reconstructionist! You didn’t say that directly, but I know for some it can see like reconstructionism is very letter of the law when in reality we, too, have to rely heavily on modernizing the spirit. I know I sure as hell am not worried about acquiring cattle every year to drive them between two large bonfires (with bones!) just for a fire festival! Anyways, nothing but love and support to my Hellenic polytheist pals <3
I didn't mean to say one can't be reconstructionist and disabled (I'd say most on tumblr are some variety actually) but for me I'm in bed almost 23 hours a day and don't leave my room except with help to doctors appointments. I might get two-four hours up if lucky (when I tend to do festival rituals if I can). Thats why I said "modified for my disability because I can't do the methods" 😅 and without some of the methods I don't really feel comfortable calling myself recon as far as Helpol specifically is concerned. I've been disabled almost my entire life and it would have been possible in the past, just not at my current level. I also personally don't reconstruct anything as far as the Helpol sphere (not that a person has to it would just be what I prefer). Same can't be said for Sumerian for that I have to reconstruct things myself 99% of the time, so while I don't use their methods I'm still building them as best I can. So if I was going to call myself Recon it would probably be for Sumerian not Hellenic, but I don't at the moment.
That being said I think a lot of us kind of have a spectrum(?) of views on whats recon vs revive. Its not a huge spectrum but its why I felt the need to put my definition of difference at the beginning of the post. And why I knew a lot would disagree with that difference.
But again, I did not mean to say one cannot be disabled and recon, people absolutely can.
