It's ok if you are low on energy. Embers burn bright anyway, rest and you can relight your fire with the sparks when you are ready.

Hades as a protector of the city ⚔️🏛

In his book “Description of Greece”, the people of Elis stood out to Pausanias because:

1. They worshipped Hades under his real name, Hades’ name was feared and it was far more common to use alternatives such as Pluto, Klymenos (The renowned) and Chthonic Zeus (Zeus of the underworld) to refer to him

2. They worshipped him as the king of the dead, this in contrast to most cults devoted to Hades who worshipped his agricultural aspects and grouped him with Demeter, Kore or both

3. His temple was located in the city, most temples for agriculture deities were located outside the agora- This further reinforces that they were worshipping his chthonic aspect and not his agricultural one

I want to talk about the myth that the people of Elis used to explain their devotion to Hades. It goes like this: Heracles wanted to attacked Elis and was allied with Athena, Hades exits the underworld, allies himself with Poseidon and Hera, and leads an army to protect Elis. In battle, Heracles strikes him with an arrow and Hades has to go to Olympus to be healed by Apollo. Heracles wins the battle and while the Eleans were rebuilding their city they also constructed a temple for Hades.

It is remarkable how casual the Eleans are with Hades, they call him ‘their friend’ and use his name instead of the more formal options. They also named a mountain after Hades’ former lover, Minthe and had a river called Acheron after one of the rivers in the underworld.

I find this myth so appealing because it’s rare to see a god putting themselves on the frontlines to protect mortals. Hades has nothing to gain from defending Elis, but he does it anyway because they’re his followers. This myth represents Hades not only as a protector of the agora but as a friend of humanity- and the ending where he fails, gets injured and asks for help just makes him so much more like us

Sources: “Worshipping Hades: Myth and Cult in Elis and Triphylia” by Diana Burton, Stockholm University Library

https://www.theoi.com/Cult/HaidesCult.html

https://www.theoi.com/Ouranios/Paion.html

This is fascinating to read, though I am wary of Pausanias as a source as he’s writing during the 2nd century AD and his accounts may not be reflective of older, pre-Roman conquest religious practices in Elis. 

You’re right, there are many sources for this myth though, go to Hades’ page on Theoi and search “The Siege of Pylos” section. The only new information that Pausanias gives us is that the people of that land used that myth as the base of their devotion for Hades and Strabo, who was Greek, confirms this in his Geographica!!

I haven’t been able to find the full article “Worshipping Hades: Myth and Cult in Elis and Triphylla” free to read online, but here’s the abstract and a bibliography with some interesting-looking links: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/arege-2018-0013/pdf

Worshipping Hades: Myth and Cult in Elis and Triphylla by Diana Burton I’ll add, on the topic of Pausanias, him being irrelevant for anything prior to the 2nd century is only a valid concern if your personal focus is on the pre-roman period. For reconstruction purposes, and especially for more localized worship, the information he gave is essential. And usable should one’s worship be focused on the turn of the millennium instead of the classical era.

As appealing as the “you have always been a witch” narrative is, I think it does us all a little bit of a disservice. Yes, I think having an active imagination and being attached to spooky things made me witchcraft-inclined, but my choice to become a witch was just that: a choice. I made myself into a witch. I studied. I practiced. I made mistakes. I tried again. I think that the autonomy of claiming the work you put in is so much more to be proud of than the “potions” you made from mud in your backyard.

You are a witch because you made yourself into one. Isn’t that amazing? Aren’t you proud of the work you’ve done?

Fun Facts

Easter has NOTHING to do with:

Easter has EVERYTHING to do with:

Nobody stole our shit. Easter was never pagan to begin with. Rabbit was considered “fish” by the medieval Catholic Church so that people could eat it during the 40 days of Lent, and eggs laid during the Lenten fast were hardboiled for preservation and then eaten during the breaking of the fast on Easter Sunday. That’s why we have bunnies and eggs.

Stop conflating Easter with pagan holidays, and get the fuck out of here with that casual anti-semitism.

Thank you and good day.

All of this.

Oh look, it’s my legacy. 😁

Okay, but like Easter is about Easter…

The type of Seder that Jesus would have attended is in no way indicative of what a Passover Seder is to Jews because it was a different type of Judaism at the time.

I agree that Easter was not stolen from pagan traditions, but it is also not based on Jewish ones and it’s important not to conflate “Judeo-Christian” because we’re two separate entities. That’s why Christians holding a Seder is very wrong.

So even though we’re monotheistic, please don’t conflate the two. Especially when you’re discussing distinctions between holidays around the same time, because the resurrection of a savior has nothing to do with my people fleeing slavery.

Okay, I have been seeing this go around in the notes, and witchkeni does make a very important point. In the interest of transparency and also respect for all my Jewish friends and neighbors out there, please allow me to clarify.

The TIMING of Easter is related to Passover, as the Last Supper is widely believed to have been a Passover Seder. (Fully acknowledging that the Biblical canon is describing very different circumstances and traditions to what exists now.) The dates differ somewhat between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches because their holidays align to the Gregorian and Julian calendars respectively. (The shift from Julian to Gregorian affected the timing of certain other holidays as well, but I digress.)

Other than that, Passover and Easter are wholly separate and mean vastly different things to people of different Abrahamic faiths, and it IS very important not to conflate the two.

Deep. Cleansing. Breath.

All right. Since it’s Easter and this is going around again and people are getting spicy in the comments, I’m settling shit on this post once and for all. Cause I’m getting pretty damned sick of being called ignorant and antisemitic (and worse) for pointing out DOCUMENTED HISTORY AND LITURGICAL CANON like I had anything to do with its creation. I was going to make this its’ own post to avoid making this one obnoxiously long but yanno what? My jar of Fucks To Give is fucking empty.

You want the sauce? Here’s the sauce. And then I don’t want to hear another fucking word about it until next year when somebody inevitably digs this up again.

All right. First things first. The word “Easter” or “Ostern” or something like it is only found in English and German-derived languages. In Spanish, it is Pascua. In Italian and Catalan, Pasqua. In French, Pâques. In Greek, Pascha. In Portuguese, Páscoa. I could go on, but suffice it to say that nearly all Romance languages (and many of their derivatives) use some form of a word derived from the Latin Pascha, meaning of or having to do with Passover (Pesach). The two holidays are linguistically and temporally associated. This does not make them the same, but the association MATTERS, because it shows that right from the beginning Christians associated Easter with Passover and not with some random pagan solstice holiday.

“You mean Ostara?”

We’ll get to it.

As for timing, let us turn back the clock to 325 CE and the First Council of Nicaea. Up until this point, Christians had relied on the Jewish calendar to determine the date of Easter, since they associated the holiday with the same timing as Passover. Part of the council’s agenda was to designate a date for Easter which was not dependent on the Jewish calendar but still occurred around the same time. Subsequent councils eventually decided that Easter would take place on the first Sunday after the Paschal Moon, or the first full moon in April. Please note that the word “Paschal” appears in liturgical observances right up to the present day.

So that’s why the timing of Easter and Passover are connected in Church liturgy. Whether it is correct for the Church to associate Easter with Passover in this way according to Jewish religious canon and history is a separate issue. I did not make up this association out of thin air. It exists in history and in language, and if it’s inaccurate for the two to be associated in this way, y'all need to take it up with Rome.

And YES, when modern pagans ignore this in favor of saying Easter was straight-up sourced from pagan traditions and pagan traditions only, that erasure of the Jewish connection with the holiday IS FUCKING DISRESPECTFUL. THAT is where the casual antisemitism comes in, and we ought to be fucking aware of it.

Now as for Ostara….

When Bede wrote in the 8th century that “Eostermonath” must have been named for a Germanic goddess of spring, he was SPECULATING. We do not have sources for this supposition or evidence of the existence of a goddess called Eostre or Ostara before this, only his theory. And as we all know, given enough time, very old things are taken as gospel. So when Jacob Grimm quoted Bede in his own work, 19th-century occultists took it to be true and based their subsequent musings upon that single source.

These days, we have Wicca to thank for the presence of Ostara on the calendar. And it wasn’t even originally part of the Wheel of the Year. After deciding in 1958 that they wanted to celebrate the solstices and equinoxes as well as the quarter days, Gardner’s coven just marked the vernal equinox as the spring solstice and called it a day. Unfortunately, he was working from the now-debunked claims of Edward Williams (also known as Iolo Morganwg) who claimed that druids celebrated festivals on the solstices and equinoxes based on the belief that the druids had built Stonehenge and therefore marked these occasions as sacred. (More on this in Prof. Ronald Hutton’s article, “Modern Pagan Festivals.”)

Moving forward a few years, we come to the infamous Aidan Kelly. In 1974, he took is upon himself to create a new version of the Wheel of the Year with new “historical” names for several holidays. He took his information from Bede’s speculation as well and named the spring equinox festival Ostara. (This is also the point where we get Litha and Mabon, but I digress.) And even Aidan Kelly acknowledges, and I quote, “The Venerable Bede says that (the spring equinox] was sacred to a Saxon Goddess, Ostara or Eostre, from whom we get the name “Easter,” which, almost everywhere else, is called something like ‘Pasch,’ derived, of course, from Pesach.”

So Kelly’s new Wheel was adopted by the Wiccans and their broad influence spread it to the rest of the neopagan community and everyone just took it as gospel. It’s thanks to modern paganism’s penchant for conflating most of ancient European paganism and not doing their homework that we now get this idea of Ostara as an ancient spring celebration of the goddess Eostre, who, as you’ll recall, might not have even existed. And of course, because modern witches love to pick a fight and feed their persecution complexes, that translated directly into the idea that Easter and Ostara were the same holiday and that Christians must have “stolen” it.

And let’s address this “stolen” holiday idea. Yes, pagan peoples were converted, and their traditions were sometimes preserved and adapted to fit new ideas in order to ease the transition. This does NOT mean pagan holidays were just straight-up adopted into the Christian calendar. What even would be the point of saying Christianity was the “true religion” if they just went about like, “Hm, yes, this pagan holiday looks good, let’s just add that to the list like we consider it just as important as our own,” if they considered pagans to be ignorant heathens and their gods to be demons and devils? You can’t have it both ways, people.

If the Church had adopted pagan holidays, THERE WOULD BE RECORDS. We have records for just about every decision the Catholic Church has made with regard to the minutiae of their belief system, to say nothing of the construction of their calendar. Syncretism occurs when two or more cultures exist in the same place for a long enough period of time that their traditions begin to blend together. This has been happening FOREVER. It is not unique to Christianity or even Europe. Pagan cultures syncretized and shared and changed over time as well. The fact that Ostara as we know it today is not an ancient holiday does not make it any less valid or worthy of observance.

The Ishtar thing is a fucking meme and I’m not even going to dignify it with an argument.

In conclusion, and perhaps most goddamn importantly - You Can’t Fucking Steal A Holiday. You can ban it, you can suppress it, you can wipe it from the record, but you can’t steal it. Stealing implies that it’s a commodity or property which is gone and can never be used or observed by the original culture ever again. No one is stopping you from observing, learning about, or celebrating the thoroughly modern holiday of Ostara in whatever way you prefer.

So there it is. Enjoy the sources, enjoy the weather, enjoy your holidays. Now everybody get the fuck off my lawn.

Prayer to Hestia

Home-loving Hestia, fair maid who sits by the fire,

first-born of fearful Kronos and deep-souled Rhea,

goddess who is the beating heart of every home,

tender of the altar flame, guardian of the gate,

I pray to you this day, I ask your favor.

All who pass this threshold pass into your realm,

O goddess; may all who dwell within these walls be under your protection.

Hestia, eldest of the deathless gods,

I ask your blessing on my home and on my family.

May we live our lives in joy and love,

may our larder be full,

may we be sheltered from storms,

kept safe from all ill,

may only those who wish us well make their way to our door.

Be ever welcome in our home,

O Hestia; be ever present in our hearts.

I'm not as recently well-read into the specifics as I used to be, but one of the things you can blame the most when it comes to How Weird Wicca Is™️ is that the Wicca in the US was brought over just before or during the existing New Age era, basically resulting in the conflation of the two when it comes to public perception. White sage, incense during ritual? New Age. A weird preoccupation with Native Culture? New Age. There have always been problems with Wicca-- Gardener basically was a world-hopping little tourist and threw everything he saw in his travels into his hot new religion-- but a lot of the largely perceived problems come from 1) the secret worldwide witch cult theory (read up on who Margaret Murray is if you haven't) and 2) how and when Wicca was exported into British Ex-Colonies. Actually, consider British culture part of the problem. Remember when they like colonized like 1/3 of the earth?? Yeah, that's part of the problem right there.

The gender essentialism is kind of a tough topic though because even though there's a lot of examples as to how plants and metals and rocks and such are gendered to the max, Wicca has also been historically rather open to queer people; part of the traditional roles of the priest and the priestess in many circles have been to "gender swap" the priestess for the God and the Priest for the Goddess, because largely, you're supposed to have "both masculine and feminine" inside of you. There were certainly Wiccan handfastings between queer couples before there was nationalized gay marriage, although to be fair, nationalized gay marriage came pretty late in the game in the United States. In every circle and public Wiccan space I've been to, trans people have been welcomed and expected. Take that how you will.

And, of course, there is no Wiccan pope, which means you can do whatever you want! Great! A lot of people use this opportunity to deconstruct why white supremacy is bad and attempt to bring Wicca into the modern era of accessible information and cultural diffusion! On the other hand, that means that shitty people can also do what they want and say it's part of Wicca, and you can't stop them either, because there's no one to appeal to beyond public opinion! Boo! That also means that a huge majority of Wiccans are self taught through outside influences like popular books or social media or taught in a closed environment of their own Coven or circle. A self-taught Wiccan is often stuck with whatever beliefs their book authors carried; unfortunately, a lot of the most popular books are anywhere between thirty to fifty years old.

Wanna know what thrived 30-50 years ago?? I'll give you a hint!! It's bigotry!

Likewise, covens rarely have reason to deconstruct their beliefs since they're taught to a certain standard by other members. So deconstructing the entire culture around Wicca is slow going, because the latter group is largely providing media for the former group. It's a cycle. Changing culture takes forever and it's tough.

Uhhhhh am I missing anything...oh and there's still an impulse on the part of authors and multiple forms of media to call any sort of New Age witch a "Wiccan" or a theology only Wiccan a "Witch". Loose use of terms also complicates things.

The most important thing to do when confronting older sources on Wicca and the occult, as always, is to take a large magnifying glass and go "HMMM, IS THIS RACISM??" And if it's not racism, check again! It might be antisemetism! Read up on all those dogwhistles and cultural appropriation, and you might survive-- if the period-typical sexism doesn't get ya!

Anyway shitty people and normal people use the same word for the same religion, it's totally possible to deconstruct it's just that only some people do. The only way to find out if a group is Normal or Super Weird is to interview them or attend their events, so read up on a place before going to hit the local gossip before you do, xoxo stay safe out there drink water

Since I'm sitting on a lake right now, and this is a really good answer, I'm just gonna reblog it instead of trying to come up with my own.

‘A spotted flycatcher pair nesting in the palm of a statue’ (by Zsolt Semperger, original post here)

Look who's in my asks again

Look who showed up again - the Neo-Nazis in the guise of J*y of Satan. And, hey, they follow the gay pagan gods - as if that's some sort of pre-determined group.

So, here's the thing. If you get one of these asks, it comes directly from the J*y of Satan themselves. They aren't asking for your help in learning about the group. They are trying to get you to visit the site (notice they give the URL, not just the group name) and perhaps do some searching on the group (helps their google ranking. Long term, they want to recruit you.

They have no interest in your opinion on Satanism itself. They aren't Satanist. They are neo-nazis.

What they believe changes a bit depending on audience and popular current events. The asks will stress things they feel are important to you in order to begin the recruitment process.

Block them and delete the asks.

In this case, you don't have to "do your own research." They aren't nice people to read about.

These assholes change a few words on these asks but it is still always the same nazi bullshit.

what is a starseed and what are its terrible origins

Starseeds, also called star people, were introduced by a guy named Brad Steiger in his 1976 book Gods of Aquarius. It argues that certain people, mainly neurodivergent children, are alien-human hybrids who are partially possessed by the spirit of a psychic alien.

The term has a myriad of modern uses, with myriad definitions, but the original context is a stock standard new-age eugenicist narrative.

Doesnt "indigo children" have a similar backstory?

Nancy Ann Tappe's original description of Indigo Children wasn't as explicitly dehumanizing as Steiger's work, but it was still dehumanizing. Over time, the terms have sorts converged and are often used interchangeably.

Oh yes, I was called Indigo and Crystal Child in the 80s.

I was also called a crystal child by an elder witch. I hardcore believed in that for a while.

Luckily it's less common than it was back in the 70s and 80s but you for sure still see people using it in the original context. Most anti-medical sentiments from the New Age have largely migrated from neo-paganism and into the "alternative medicine"/antivax community. It's one of the biggest avenues for right-wing radicalization of women specifically.

@thebibliosphere iirc you have some insight on this

I'm still on hiatus but was made aware of this tag, and I felt it necessary enough to respond to.

The term indigo child was used to abuse me growing up and there’s a reason I’m so vehemently pro-science, pro-medical advocacy and anti-bullshit in my chronic illness work and why seeing new age definitions bleed into mental health topics and subjects of neurodivergence is extremely triggering for me.

Being labeled an indigo child was used to convince me I didn’t need medical care, both physical and mental. The premise of the thinking was that I wasn't chronically ill; I was special. I have vivid memories of being told I was put on this earth to be a healer; that's why I was always in chronic pain; I was absorbing the pain of others to make the world a better place.

I cannot begin to tell you the amount of psychological damage and trauma that occurred from being exposed to these sort of ideologies as a child/teen, but I can tell you at the age of 34 I’m still working in therapy to untangle it.

We know now I have multiple genetic disorders and disabilities, including Ehlers Danlos Syndrome a condition which causes a great deal of physical pain. Yet there are days when I wake up in agony and the thought still filters through my head: at least someone else is suffering less. It’s a work in progress.

Same with my neurodivergence. I wasn't mentally ill/struggling with school because of a learning disability (ADHD). I was struggling because I was a Pisces (yes, really) and academia wasnt ~spiritual~ enough for me, and I should be focusing my energy more on becoming a healer. I wasn’t struggling with emotional dysregulation, or executive dysfunction, I was just an empath and highly sensitive to the world around me. The person who set me on this path? A teacher who decided to take me under their wing and nurture my vulnerability. I wasn’t failing basic high school classes because I needed help. I was failing because I was meant to be “more than normal.”

I was an indigo child. A starseed. More than human. And thus, dehumanized, denied agency and gaslit into believing my suffering was what the world needed to be a better place.

(My parents were going through their own horrific stuff before anyone asks. My whole childhood is 13 types of trauma in a trench coat pretending to be normal.)

I was 16 years old. By the time I was 17 I was practicing holistic therapies on adults. Reiki, crystal therapy, energy work, angel therapy… and the thing is… I enjoyed it. It was new and stimulating and I enjoyed learning and having people to talk to who valued my presence. And it felt nice to be special and appreciated. I wasn’t just weird or awkward. I was special—that’s why I got on so much better with adults than my own peers. I was just too Spiritual to ever be a child.

Can we say red flags? 🚩🚩🚩

Fortunately there were adults in that social circle who realized I was being abused and stepped in to stop me being radicalized and act as a buffer. By the time I was in my 20s I had a healthier understanding of what holistic and alternative health therapies meant, and how they can be used in conjunction with medicine to help people cope with the trauma of illness. Some of which I implement in a healthy and safe way in my own care today. I also did a complete 180 and started reading proper medical journals and began trying to unravel my own health issues because unfortunately, the doctors I had access to then were as ableist as the people trying to indoctrinate me. Which is also why so many people fall prey to these types of predators*.

People who use these terms are not only perpetuating ideals founded in new age eugenics; they’re often hiding abuse, sometimes without even knowing it because that’s how they were abused too. They frame neglect or exploitation as enabling spiritual growth and it’s Terrifying to see their ideologies about reality and individual uniqueness and exceptionalism being perpetuated on social media. Especially in a lot of pagan and spiritual wellness circles. I can’t even go on certain apps without feeling bombarded by it and I’m truly concerned for the emotional and mental well-being of those being exposed to it.

I know some people still use the terms as self identifiers. And I don’t blame them. There’s usually a lot of trauma behind things like this, and not everyone has the means to break free from cult-like environments. I got lucky. But please, if anyone is coming across these terms for the first time and thinks it’s a good way to describe themselves, please know it’s rooted in ableism and new age eugenics made palatable by a sprinkling of fairy dust and wonder.

I’m going back on hiatus. Stay safe out there.

- - -

*Being desperate to feel in control of your life or to get help can drive you into the arms of the first kind person willing to listen. Multilevel marketing companies thrive off that shit. Poverty, medical instability and ideas of individual exceptionalism all play a factor in the rise of unethical companies like d*terra and y*ung living becoming as prevalent and insidious as they are. When I refer to them as cults, I am not being hyperbolic.

A friend sarcastically asked me “who is the goddess of Motivation To Get Off The Couch?”

I love these questions because no, really, Hellenism has a deity for everything.

I'm saying this from a place of genuine care: if you are seeing ghosts or shadows or having nightmares... and sageing, eggshells, Crystal's, and psychics arent cutting it..

Please.. please... check for things like gas leaks, water damage, vermin. I'm not saying your house isnt haunted, I'm just saying that carbon monoxide poisoning looks a LOT like being haunted.

I know that, you know that, but when it looks like supernatural things you look to supernatural solutions and you might not be thinking clearly.

I'm having a conversation with a pagan mom right now who thinks that dark forces are after her, so she's tried all the things that she knows... which apparently is not checking the hvac system for leaks.

Shes mad at me because I suggested getting an inspection because shes lived in the house for 14 years and she's always seen things like this and it's just gotten worse since she took over the house. Shes seeing entities, things are moving on their own, doors open and close on their own, people are being touched and scratched. 'Mold and gas dont do that!'

Drafty house. Uneven floors. Pressure changes.

Toxic mold syndrome can mimic depression and anxiety, cause listlessness. Guess what extreme anxiety can do. It can mess with your head. It can mess with your memory.

If you have scratches on you and you dont know where they came from, see a doctor. See a doctor. I dont know why you wont see a doctor. They can tell you if it comes from an animal. They can tell you if you're suffering from a mold allergy. They can tell you if you're experiencing side effects of gas exposure.

I wholeheartedly believe in ghosts. Absolutley not debating that ghosts and spirits and whatever you think you're seeing. I am posting this in a pagan facebook group. I 100% believe in ghosts.

I also believe in carbon monoxide.

Please check for gas leaks in your home. Please check for mold. Please check for critters. Like girl I believe you but please check these things.

She... got mad and deleted the post.

This is why we need to stress, and I mean really stress, that mundane explanations are just as important as superstitious ones, and why I genuinely worry about our echo chambers.

Yes, I know we all want to believe that the feelings of dread may be coming from an evil presence in the room, but also certain hvac systems hum at a frequency that causes confusion and anxiety.

Yes it seems reasonable that your doors open and close on their own because granmas ghost is still hanging around. But please consider that the foundation of your house might be shifting.

Yes, you might feel a sense that something bad is going to happen, but that can also be generalized anxiety or obsessive compulsive disorder.

And being in a circle that refuses to accept that mundane explanations for supernatural problems feeds and triggers delusions. The pagan/witchcraft community is extremely neuro diverse, and these delusions can trigger spirals and put people in very... very bad places.

Please accept mundane explanations.

You are not 'crazy' for seeing ghosts and your house is not dirty for needing an inspection.

If you get an inspection and it comes back clean, you can feel smug about being right. If you dont get an inspection and you're wrong you and your children could get sick and die.

Y'all I'm tired.

Do not weep for the temples are gone. Our faith was always a home one. Your home is your temple and you are its clergy. Your breath is your prayer. Your kind acts are your offerings. Your memory is your idol and your words are libation. You are enough in whatever you do. Grandiose was never our way. The glass of water left on the kitchen counter is equal to the lavish meal set out in their name. The Theoi love every little act, as long as it is meant with good intentions.

This is your regular reminder that it is 2022 and you should take "black magic" out of your vocabulary.

Faith can be a good thing, but it’s important to remember that faith is neither inherently good nor inherently moral. People can and do put faith in extremely harmful ideas and convince themselves that their faith gives them the moral high ground when all they’re doing is hurting people. This idea that it’s better to believe in “something” than “nothing at all” implies that it’s better to believe in a harmful ideology than to be a morally conscientious skeptic, which is utterly absurd. Having faith doesn’t make anyone a better person, and lacking it doesn’t make anyone worse. Our moral character is not defined by our willingness to believe in the unprovable, but in how well we treat each other.

Don’t EVER use the Gods to justify your hatred

Racism is not divine, and neither are you. May you rot with your beliefs and fester

Just a reminder that you don’t have to have a god reach out to you first to worship them.

I also would like to point out that there are things in our lives that can naturally pique our curiosity and lead us to them, but that isn’t always congruent with “reaching out” either. What you interpret as a sign is entirely up to you and can be extremely personal or unique; if you feel they’ve reached out to you, that’s all well and good. If you find something on your own time that leads you down that rabbit hole of discovery, that’s also fantastic. Sometimes it’s okay to admit it was coincidence or chance, and you aren’t required to have some life-altering event or revelation to feel called to a god.

You are absolutely allowed to just pick someone and worship because you want to. Your reasons are your own and you owe no one an explanation.

Adding to this if you don’t mind. At least in Hellenism a lot of relationships between humans and the Gods were transactional. You can hit up a god like “hey here’s an apple can you help me clean my house” and that is a totally legit way of interacting with them.

Excellent add-on! For anyone who is interested and might not know: this particular situation in Hellenic waters would be considered an act of Kharis, or giving to the Gods with the hope we might be able to receive something in return. And it’s encouraged to give again as a thanks for their help! It’s a wonderful cycle of reciprocity and a good way to build that relationship from the ground up.

to add on even further, if you don't mind, these don't have to be big grand gestures or offerings. Sometimes something as simple as a glass of pure water is a wonderful offering. The Theoi do not expect subservience and want us to give within our means (refer back to my post about the Oracle of Delphi, the beggar, and the rich man). If you want the help of a deity but don't have a historical offering available, give what you have instead. It's the act, not the object, that earns their favor (most of the time).

As a personal example, when I first discovered Hellenism I was a broke college student who could barely afford to feed myself. For a good 2 years my offerings solely consisted of flowers or other found objects in nature. Aphrodite and Persephone were delighted with the gifts - in fact when I stopped giving Persephone flowers in favor of "traditional" offerings She was rather upset with me - where did her pretty flowers go? So She still gets them 💜

Another quick story - I prayed to Asklepios for protection for my partner when he fell ill with COVID earlier in the year. It's the first and only time I have asked for a favor from this deity and we had the understanding that I could reach out to him whenever I needed to again but didn't need to include him in my regular worship.

Basically I just love how we each get to define our relationship with the deities we worship or occasionally work with. It's so beautiful.

Very good addition! Thank you!!