Hail Freya, it's Friday!
For today's #FridayPaganPoll, put on your thinking caps! I'm asking one of the oldest theological questions in Paganism:

Do the Gods need our worship in order to exist?

My beloved Athena
Goddess of all Wisdom
How might I honor you?
How would you have me worship you?

O Goddess
I pray and ask that you hear me
I pray that you help me enlighten them
They who do not know wisdom
Only the words of demagogues
And empty-headed preachers
For whom nothing matters but their own wealth

Guide my hand that I may write well
Guide my mind that I may bring forth persuasive thoughts
Guide my heart that I not fall victim to the same hubris

#Paganism #pagan #hellenismos #polytheism #athena

Is it just me or have we been seeing a lot of Dionysus lately? Sometimes these things happen where modern media picks up an old god and then suddenly new followers are popping up everywhere. I myself just started worshiping him in the past year or so. We also saw a similar thing happen with Loki and Thor after the Marvel movies.

I always wonder if it's like the ‘chicken or the egg’ scenario. Are there more followers because the media happened to depict the god, or did the media depict the god because the god was gathering more followers?

The gods.

It is what our religion is actually about. The gods and the relationship we have with them as mortal beings. It is easy to read the myths and assign those attributes to the gods, but that is a mistake. Why? Because the myths are just a fraction of what the gods are and it is connected directly to how we interact with and think of them.

It is, perhaps, better to think of the gods as forces. As fundamental aspects of nature that are ever present and underlie everything around us so that even things like physics are essentially describing an aspect of them while the more physical manifestations of them, the ones we think of as the gods in all their mythic glory, are essentially emergent properties of their divinity. Emergences in nature, including human nature, that we can relate to as anthropomorphic or animistic.

This means that the gods are not localized or limited in their scope or reach by what we think, but are given form, their emergent forms, by the way we relate to them. That is to say that when people pray and seek guidance or blessings, it is those interactions they lay down into myth and fable. It is those interactions and their results that become the basis for the attributes we give the gods.

Athena is Wisdom, but it is her interactions with people who seek wisdom that give us the character we see in myth. People seek wisdom in a great many things from lighting a fire to waging war, and so she is perceived with a measure of all those things she is sought for. Demeter isn’t just the goddess of the harvest, she is the harvest. She is the natural order that allows for it, so the character we see in myth reflects the natural forces that make the harvest work.

This, in my opinion, is why we do not seek to belittle or insult the gods of others, a lesson I am trying to incorporate into my life and which I still sometimes fail to do. The gods this isn’t. The gods are. They are just not always the way you think they are, they can be what others need just as they can be what you need.

Be blessed and be kind!

#pagan #paganism #polytheism #gods

Blessings of the Feast of Grapes to you all! Feast of Grapes is the celebration of the grape harvest and the honoring of Dionysus's death with the harvest. It's part of the Ariadne's Tribe sacred calendar in our celebration of inclusive Minoan spirituality. My family is enjoying a small harvest from our muscadine vine, and later in the day, there will be some of last year's muscadine wine to be enjoyed with dinner and to use for scrying.

Welcome to the Temple of Dionysus!
Where Art inspires Compassion,
And Compassion inspires Change.

Connecting Hellenists together since 2012!
https://www.templeofdionysus.org/

Embrace the Madness.

@templeofdionysus #templeofdionysus #dionysus #dionysos #bacchus #hellenic #polytheism #pagan #all-inclusive #nonprofitorganization #helpol

Anyone read the new book* of Greek paganism by George Lizos?

For how vocal YSEE (the author is ordained as a priest by that organization) is, I did not expect such a New Age-/Wicca-mingled interpretation of modern Greek polytheistic practice. I'd love to hear others' reactions or interpretations.

*This one: https://search.worldcat.org/title/1401053445

FediOccult Book Club—September's Book Announcement and Introduction

I'm excited to announce that the Book Club will be reading "UTOPIAN WITCH: Solarpunk Magick to Fight Climate Change and Save the World" by Justine Norton-Kertson for September 2024.

To participate in the Book Club, just pick up a copy of September's book and live-post about it between September 1 and September 30.

Be sure to tag all relevant posts with the *official* hashtag: #FediOccultBookClub so we can find all of your reviews, prompts, questions, essays, and more.

Book Club Introductions

In the replies of this post, feel free to introduce yourself to the other Book Club participants! Tell us about yourself and let us know your initial impressions of UTOPIAN WITCH!

No one told me that Kaos (the new Netflix show with Jeff Goldblum as Zeus) is about Orpheus and Eurydice and takes place in the Underworld, and I'm even more on board now! Can't wait to do a media analysis using an Orphic lens~