[wwpw-blog]

my spiritual life right now

[wwpw-blog]

yes hello i finally have time again for my personal spirituality hurray

[serpentine-sorceror-deactivated]

This reading list reflects my religious path, and those who might be interested in knowing about said path can learn something from this list. IT doesn’t include everything I’ve ever read in my time and experience in polytheist and occult communities, but I consider these...

[obsessedwithskulls]

Art by Perrin, who apparently lives a stone’s throw from OWS. http://madebyperrin.com/

[fallere]

Natasha Newton

[objekt-a]

[bayoread-deactivated20200607]

Death and Funeral Rites in Ancient Greece

The Greeks believed that at the moment of death the psyche, or spirit of the dead, left the body as a little breath or puff of wind. The deceased was then prepared for burial according to the time-honoured rituals. Ancient literary sources emphasize the necessity of a proper burial and refer to the omission of burial rites as an insult to human dignity (Iliad).

Relatives of the deceased, primarily women, conducted the elaborate burial rituals that were customarily of three parts: the prothesis (laying out of the body), the ekphora (funeral procession), and the interment of the body or cremated remains of the deceased. 

After being washed and anointed with oil, the body was dressed and placed on a high bed within the house. During the prothesis, relatives and friends came to mourn and pay their respects. The mouth was sometimes sealed with a token or talisman, referred to as “Charon’s obol” if a coin was used, and explained as payment for the ferryman of the dead to convey the soul from the world of the living to the world of the dead. Lamentations were also used and mainly women would unbind their hair and mourn loudly for the deceased, tearing at their faces and breasts and wearing dirty, ragged clothing.

Lamentation of the dead is featured in early Greek art at least as early as the Geometric period, when vases were decorated with scenes portraying the deceased surrounded by mourners. Following the prothesis, the deceased was brought to the cemetery in a procession, the ekphora, which usually took place just before dawn. Very few objects were actually placed in the grave, but monumental earth mounds, rectangular built tombs, and elaborate marble stelai and statues were often erected to mark the grave and to ensure that the deceased would not be forgotten. Immortality lay in the continued remembrance of the dead by the living. From depictions on white-ground lekythoi, we know that the women of Classical Athens made regular visits to the grave with offerings that included small cakes and libations. 

At the time of the funeral, offerings were made to the deceased by only a relative. The choai, or libation, and the haimacouria, or blood propitiation were two types of offerings. The mourner first dedicated a lock of hair, along with choai, which were libations of honey, milk, water, wine, perfumes, and oils mixed in varying amounts. A prayer then followed these libations. Then came the enagismata, which were offerings to the dead that included milk, honey, water, wine, celery, pelanon (a mixture of meal, honey, and oil) and kollyba (the first fruits of the crops and dried fresh fruits). Once the burial was complete, the house and household objects were thoroughly cleansed with seawater and hyssop, and the women most closely related to the dead took part in the ritual washing in clean water. Afterwards, there was a funeral feast called the perideipnon. The dead man was the host, and this feast was a sign of gratitude towards those who took part in burying him.

'The gods are approached by the pure, in festival attire and with a garland in the hair; the graves are approached by the defiled, without any garland and the hair untied. Burial, and then the cult of the dead and hero cult are all attended by weeping and lamentation, while at a sacrifice to the gods, the euphemia (good-speak)must never be broken by any sound of lamentation.’  - Greek Religion, Walter Burkert.

[cuntlobotomy]

John Collier - A Priestess of Bacchus (1889)

[outofcontextbobsburgerscaps]

[evilsupplyco]

Gulp mightily the night air and know the pleasure of starlight inside your mortal flesh.

[iopanosiris-deactivated20210713]

The Horned God of the witches, variously identified with Cernunnos, Pan, Janus, Dianus, Herne and Puck, was popularly known as the Dark Satyr or Man in Black in the medieval witches’ sabbath. He is linked with Sutekh-Set, with the Yezidic Shaitan, with the Islamic lord of the djinns Eblis or Iblis, the Greek Lucifer and the Hebrew Azazel. The Horned One of the Sabbatic Craft is the Great Serpent of Light who guides his disciples to the gnosis of the Supreme Awakening and the ultimate goal of unity with the Godhead.

Nigel Jackson and Michael Howard, The Pillars of Tubal-Cain, p.150 (via iopanosiris)

[dumbledorathexplora]

monster

[cephilopod-deactivated20160628]

"I can’t do that because of my religion" Aight

"You can’t do that because of my religion" Stop

[tombagshaw]

'First Born' - A little Orphic egg piece that i will be giving away when i finally release all my IG portrait series- seems like its taking forever but hopefully- in a couple of months all will be done! -

[clockodile-deactivated20220313]

Thoth, god of knowledge. So I opted to try out a robe of parchment.

[igamuinacra]

oohh~ that must be spells! :D

[emilyfundis]

Seraphim, 2014

[baringtheaegis]

I was reading up on your 2013 post about Anthesteria in preparation for tomorrow night when I came to the bit about covering your altars to prevent miasma. My main altar is in my bedroom. Should I be covering it every time my husband and I have sex? Have I been polluting my altar for years?

The post in question can be found here. In it, I talk about covering your main household shrine as a sort of tribute to the fact that for the final two days of the Anthesteria, all temples were closed besides the one of Dionysos. Seeing as this festival is partially an underworld festival, it carries miasma. It is a practice I have adopted for anything underworld-related; I also do it when someone close to me dies, for example, until I can purify myself.

Sex in Hellenismos is…. complicated. Hellenic society was complicated when it came to sex; the ancients saw sex as completely natural and—unlike many today—had no inhibitions and very few taboos when it came to straight up heterosexual sex. Anything else had societal stigma’s attached to it. They did however have many thoughts and rules surrounding ritual cleanliness—miasma and katharmos.

The ancient Hellenes viewed sex differently than we do today. In general, they accepted lust for sex as a disease—as madness that needed to be given in to on occasion to preserve sanity. It was the result of a disturbance of the healthy equilibrium between body and mind. Sexual desire made one loose mastery of their intellect—which was a huge ideal in ancient time. Women shouldn’t be encouraged to give into that madness too often, but husbands did have the legal obligation to relieve this need in their wives at regular intervals so as to prevent them from becoming dangerous.

Mikalson in ‘Ancient Greek Religion’ mentions that intercourse led to miasma and that a bath was required before entering a temple after intercourse as a form of katharmos. He, however, does not give a source, and I don’t know one either. It is a reoccurring idea, though, mostly centred on the male’s excretions during the activity. The Hellenic religious organization ‘Labrys' echoes the sentiment, but also without sourcing.

I keep my altar in my bedroom as well—as we live in a one bedroom apartment and we have sliding doors to corner off the bedroom during the night. During the day the space is part of our living room. What I do have is curtains to shut off  the bed from the room beyond and thus creating a temporary barrier between the bed and the altar. When I make love to my girlfriend, I’m mindful to keep these curtains closed. Honestly, I mostly do it because otherwise I feel like there are Gods watching with popcorn, but hey, miasma is an issue too.

We all incur miasma, every single day of our lives. It has nothing to do with sin, shame or guilt. Miasma is a consequence of living. We breath, make decisions, come in contact with others, and along the way, we become too human—for lack of a better term—to petition the Gods. The divide between the purity and cleanliness of the Theoi and our human mortality and imperfection, keeps us away from Them. Miasma is not about being physically dirty, although that is a part of it, and katharmos is not about becoming physically clean, although that is a part of it as well.

After a lot of research into the workings of miasma, I have come to the conclusion that miasma is linked to distraction. Anything that takes your mind off of the Gods during ritual can be considered miasmic. For example, murder causes miasma (when not committed as part of a war, soldiers were not tainted with miasma for killing their enemies), but only once other people became aware of the fact that you had committed an act of murder. As such, if you were exiled and you travelled to another town where no one knew what you had done, in essence, you were not miamic to the rites and people around you. If you can keep your head in the game the morning after and you have taken the proper steps to clean both yourself and the space, then by all means, do the rites. If you can’t, well, then it doesn’t matter where the shrine is located, now does it? If you mind is still on last night’s events, you have no business petitioning the Gods anyway.

Real talk: we don’t live in ancient Hellas anymore and while I am a huge stickler for practicing Traditional Hellenismos, not all of us have a huge altar in our garden that we can perform sacrifices at twice a day. Most of us don’t have a wood stove or some such to offer at. We live in the now, and as such, we are forced to take certain liberties and deal with the consequences. As such, I would encourage a barrier, but if you don’t have one and you have sex next to your household altar, make sure you and the space are clean when you give sacrifice. Sprinkle khernips, take a bath, change the sheets, make sure your mind is entirely on the ritual and not last night’s marathon session. Give the Theoi their due in an area that is clean and tidy. Compartmentalize.

So no, I don’t think you need to cover your altar whenever you have sex (although I would encourage some sort of barrier between your altar and the bed out of respect). I do think you need to do much more extensive cleaning of the space if you have your altar in your bedroom and you’ve just had sex. The sight of crumpled sheets and your sleeping lover would undoubtedly bring distraction, and that I would warn against. As a final note: enjoy each other. Share love. These things are far too important to hold off on. Your worship matters but it can be adapted to suite the needs of the entire household—and at its core, that is the main focus of Hellenismos: providing a healthy relationships with the Gods to our family so they in turn may bless us and guard our household.