#eclectic polytheism

[figs-and-flies]

this is your reminder that you are no less of a demonolator if you experience fear or anxiety around your work and relationships with the Infernal Divine

religious trauma can take years to be deconstructed and healed. you're doing good, take a breath and just keep going.

p.s. don't forget that your fear or the process of overcoming it works as an excellent offering!

[aphandgflover]

Happy Spring Equinox to everyone!

Happy New Moon holidays to the Hellenics, praises to Hekate , the Agathos Daimon and all the household gods!

Happy Quinquatria to the Romans, praises and happy birthday to Minerva !

Happy Earrach to the Irish, may spring bring you joy and luck!

Happy Uisonnalitus, Conderga, Giamouretîmâ, Lohitik or Litu Uesonnae to the Gaulish who celebrate any of these, happy spring if you don't! Praises to Sirona, Nehallenia, Mars Sutugius, and any other god your celebrate!

Happy equinox to the Baltics, praises to Perkūnas and Vėlinas!

Happy Komoyeditsa to the Slavics, respectful partings to Morena!

And if I missed anyone, happy holiday to you too and may spring grow the seeds of your happiness! <3

[devoutbutterfly]

English & Español

[sag-dab-sar]

Thinking Deeply?

In a recent post I mentioned how eclecticism can easily lead to unrestrained personalization. This causes things to get added to a practice but get stripped down, misunderstood, out of context, or culturally appropriated because "my intentions" and "its incredibly personal."

We have to avoid grabbing onto The Thing because its shiny and cool and we want it. Instead we should think deeply about them before adding it into our practices.

But it's not just self identified "eclectic pagans" and "eclectic polytheists", everyone can be prone to those mishaps. As someone with a mixed practice of 2 pantheons and an entirely separate practice I'm eclectic in some sense of the word.

But I was thinking how do we avoid that stripping down effect? What is "thinking deeply"? Because thats rather vague.

The W questions. The W questions are so ridiculously helpful. And they can seem like really simple one sentence answers, but that doesn't have to be the case. Here is an example.

Topic: Apollo

When

Well attested 800BCE onwards. Archaic Greece, Classical Greece, Hellenistic, Roman Empire

Potentially origins "respectively, match Apollo’s association with the bow and arrow and with plagues in the Iliad. Regardless of his particular ancestry, it is likely that there was a widespread cult in the Bronze Age Eastern Mediterranean of a god known to the Greeks by the Luwian-derived epithet “Apollo.” link

In this question each of the time lines can then be looked into further.

Where

Greece, eventually spread into Ancient Near East during Hellenistic era, and throughout Roman Empire (at some point). Each of these can be looked into more.

List major cult centers ex Delphi. You can draw up a long list of cult centers and work on studying each of them.

Who

Deity, Theoi, God, Divine

Apollo. Twin of Artemis. Son of Leto and Zeus. Father of (lots of people). Can explore his various connections to all the other beings in Greek cosmologies.

This can also include a lot of his mythology since that is who he is as a 'character'

Or look up his possible "equivalents" and syncretisms

Apaliunas in Hittite Wilusa (possibly). Nabû in Mesopotamia, Apulu in Etruscan Religion. Apollo-Helios, Apollo-Hermes, .... apparently "Apollo-Mithras-Helios-Hermes" in the ancient Greco-Iranian Kingdom Commagene in Anatolia Link

What

Music, Art, Healing, Plague, Oracle, Divination, Archery, Hunting, and so on

Could also add epithets and look into each of those (although that could also be under who).

What were his cults like? what offerings were given? and then those answers could be different for all the different cults or time periods we mentioned in previous questions.

Why

And this is where things get intense.

Why did the ancient people of the time periods researched above worship him? Why did the ancient people of all the locations researched above worship him? Why did they pray, what were they seeking?

and then the scariest question of all

Why do I want to worship him, pray to him, give offerings?

---

Each of these questions could be multiple essays individually, and then the area of knowledge only gets larger as you add all the info from all of those essays together and look at it as a complete picture. This can be for gods or spirits, but also concepts and practices. Not all 5 questions will make sense to answer but chuck the questions at it anyways and see what happens. I'm not saying you have to legitimately write the essays, just that this is the way you can think things through.

Make what you add to your practice a bit of a quiz or a puzzle to be figured out, so you can learn its nooks and crannies, it can even help avoid overlooking things because you simply "didn't think about it" because all these questions can be domino effect in research exploration and lead to things you didn't expect.

(Anyways this was a random thought)

[dionysusfanboy]

I need to research definitions further but I may stop identifying as a hellenic polytheist and start identifying as an eclectic polytheist. I won't stop believing anything I already believe in, and I won't stop doing what I can to honour the hellenic Gods as respectfully of the traditional way as I can manage.

However, I've realized that:

I do some stuff in a not very traditional way (like praying with a japamala), that may "unqualify" me as strictly hellenic polytheist

I'm pretty sure I believe in many different Gods, it's just that I worship the hellenic ones

I kinda want to start worshipping some non hellenic Gods alongside them

And all of this together makes me think a different label might suit me better. However my practice won't change (except probably to include more Gods but that was going to happen anyway).

(Also the content of this blog likely won't change as I still have the same interests and want to stay close to helpol)

However it kind of feels like a cop-out, to "follow my own path" instead of striving for being traditional? Idk...

Any thoughts?

[systemdoesoccultstuff]

Despite my limited interactions with him, Set is someone I am developing a level of personal respect for. While I've been researching Kemetism, he's made it a point to remind me of the flexibility of these practices in the modern age while also stressing the importance of understanding where everything comes from, which I understood before but it's still nice to be reassured on everything. I feel like he can tell that I have a tendency to feel the need to conform beyond what I'm capable of to these practices despite the fact that I'm not even Kemetic let alone a reconstructionist Kemetist. So far he's thanked me for maintaining Ma'at by fulfilling the obligations on my end of things.

idk what this was but I figured it'd be cool to note down

[mint-in-the-moonlight]

Day 4 - 31 Days of [Eclectic] Polytheism

introduction and explanation of the challenge here

───── ⋆⋅☆⋅⋆ ─────

Day 4: Are there any deities you don’t currently worship but want to learn about?

I always have a list of deities I want to learn more about because I love researching (though I don't always have time for it).

On my current list, I have for example Lorkhan from The Elder Scrolls Pantheon. This one is hard to look into because while we have an abundance of myths, they all kinds of contradict themselves and give different accounts of what happened and why. I find Lorkhan fascinating and once I finally get to do some proper study of him I will probably DIY a lot of stuff as I always do, but he is a particularly daunting deity due to the reasons listed before.

Since I've been getting more into Roman polytheism I also want to do research into deities on that end such as Janus, Venus etc., but that will probably also take a while since I'm still doing pretty introductory research now.

[holy-ring]

How's the exploration of Kemetism going?

i think the best term i can grant it is comforting. it's been wonderful to learn about it, and after much internal debate, i've decided to include the deities in who i worship, centering on sutekh-re. in my research, i've had a lot of dreams additionally where i've gotten to (sort of) introduce myself to other deities. while i haven't met sutekh-re specifically in a dream, i have met anpu, sutekh, heru, and bast. it's been a huge path of self-discovery on my end, by meeting these beautiful, wonderful deities, and realising they have a much-loved place in my life. additionally, this couldn't have come at a better time - things have been incredibly difficult as of late, and once more, the divine (be it hellenic, infernal, kemetic) have come to help. i can't thank them enough for it. it's been a very involved process, but i believe in myself and can only hope to do it with as much respect to kemetism and the people who practice kemetism as possible.