Monthly Archives: January 2010

A great post I found from a member of the Hellenistai forum

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Well, I’d thought of going back to this blog’s theme of Urbanism, Modernism, and Polytheism and making a detailed and rather silly post about the band Army of Lovers and why Hellenes everywhere should love them, even if they aren’t a Hellenic band, but I’ve been getting very spacey and I’m putting that one on the back-burner for now to bring you something that makes a little more sense:

[link]

I haven’t been sleeping very well this last week, so it was starting to feel a little “too long, can’t read” maybe a quarter through it, but it’s definitely worth the read. In short, the general gist I got out of this one is that with a better translation of the Maxims of Delphi, “’Επαγγέλου μηδενί’, which was once ‘make promises to no-one’ becomes ‘renounce no-one’”. Mano has sourced his statements adequately and explains himself and his reasoning rather well.

[follow-up] Greys of Hellenic Religion

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Well, Internet, let me tell you — I’ve had a day of total unexpected popularity. First, I discover that Pope No-Life & His Talking Butt-Plugs are not only reading and praising this blog, but completely missing the point (thanks to a few people, actually, for the link, but especially to Laria, as she’s the only one who passed it along in a public area). Then, as luck would have it, I discovered that some apparently awesome TS/TG & Ally types were passing the Good Riddance to Mary Daly post all over Twitter. Apparently, I am just that awesome, even without boxing gloves or a luchadore mask (catch the reference and win the satisfaction of knowing what a nerd you are).

So, because my friends (and friends of friends) have encouraged it, I’m going to expand on a couple of the notions that I posted on 4 January in a sleep-deprived (yet astoundingly coherent) haze:

First off, because this was the point most blatantly missed a certain Tim Alexander who should really know better (but hey, at least it makes it even more blatant to those with reading comprehension skills that his primary interest is his own agenda), I want to get something off my chest about One True Way™ types.

As I’ve said in the past, though usually over AIM, I’ve come to Hellenismos through a means that some may describe as “mystical” in nature. At risk of being dismissed as a kook, I’m going to say it in no uncertain terms, once and for all: The Theoi talk to me — kind of in the same way that my own fictional characters do, but there’s this sort of “spark” to it that pretty much lets me know these are separate entities existing outside of myself and, further unlike my characters, existed long before even the McElroy clan was founded, much less my own time on this earth. This doesn’t bring me mental anguish and my therapist agrees that it’s pretty much “mental anguish” that lays the divide between “crazy” and what may possibly be Divine communiqué. Sometimes, it’s less “talking” and more of a “vibe” 7mdash; like when I get my annual winter bug-up-the-arse to bake bread, I feel Hestia and Demeter placing hands on my shoulder, guiding my fists as I punch dough, and for all I know, one of Them put that bug up my arse themselves.

But I’m not quick to talk about this. And I’ve been told by people who consider their angle on the religion “predominantly spiritual” that it’s a Bad Thing™ to somehow not be quick to freely discuss all the weird shit going on in my neurological synapses that may or may not be going off because of Divinity. In fact, these people have stated, in no uncertain terms, that I’m WRONG, WRONG, WRONG to seldom discuss this freely. Why is it “wrong”? Well, those persons tend to use far more convoluted speech, but the general airs can be boiled down to “it is not how [they] do things, therefore it is wrong”.

Keep in mind, me admitting to all of that above is in no way a sign that I have “seen my err” and am now going to make some awe-inspiring post about every little thing that goes down in the spiritual lobes of my grey matter. After encountering others who’ve had similar experiences, with the same and with different deities, I’ve just come to the conclusion that some people just get these experiences — and, at the same time, others simply don’t have these experiences. Neither having nor never having these experiences is “best”, nor should it automatically be taken as a sign that any individual or group of people is any more “beloved of the Gods” than any other. Trying to answer why some people have these experiences and others don’t is like asking why some people prefer orange juice over pineapple juice; it may just be one of those great mysteries of life that we really shouldn’t worry about.

So, in a nutshell: If you get these sorts of experiences, cool; if you don’t, still totally cool. If you think having these experiences makes a person closer to the Gods, then you should get off your high-horse. If you think not having these experiences makes you a better person, then how is that any different than what the other guy said? Most importantly, no matter who you are and your experiences of lack of, it is not your place to dictate how others “should” or “shouldn’t” talk about their spiritual lives.

Now with that out of the way, one point that I seem to have made a little less clear in the previous post is that most people in the wide and varied community of Hellenistai have some amount of “balance” between Intellectual Religion and Spiritual Religion. Those whose religious lives seem completely one or the other seem extremely few and far-between and, possibly as a result, seem especially unbalanced on personal levels. I’ll use the “Yin & Yang” model because most people in even the Western societies seem at least passingly familiar with the concept of two seemingly “oppositional” forces that each need a little bit of the other to maintain a state of harmony with themselves and the cosmos.

So basically, it seems that most (and the most stable) “spiritually driven” people (for lack of a better working term — feel free to throw suggestions at me so we can see which ones stick) temper this with a strong “intellectual side” (again, throw terminology at me) — and likewise, most of the “strongly intellectual” types I know are also deeply spiritual.

Or, as I said to my friend Gavin: “Many ‘intellectual types’ are also Inspired, and many ‘spiritual types’ are also Grounded”.

Basically, that part of my 4 January rant was less about fitting polytheistic reconstructionists (it seems that Kemetic, Keltic, and Germanic types have a lot of the same dramas — I only know about the Hellenic dramas first-hand) into these neat little “Black or White” boxes, and more about noticing that there are two primary angles that most people seem to come to this religion from, and that there is a wide spectrum of Greys in-between where people can strike a comfortable balance. Very few people are going to be “50/50 B/W”. It’s like taking nude photographs — female nudes tend to look best with just a few shadows to highlight the curves and call attention to the softer contours, while male nudes look best with lower lighting so that the shadows bring out more of the sharp musculature; but at the same time, a muscular woman’s features would be completely washed out by the same dramatic lights to photograph curvy girls, and men who don’t have well-defined muscles would drown in shadows if you don’t turn the lighting up a bit; and even considering all of this, you’re still almost never going to photograph two completely different people using the exact same light settings and arrangements, you’re going to still move things just slightly to bring out the best of each person’s body.

If we lay ourselves bare, spiritually, we’ll each find our own needs in certain areas. I can’t tell any other person where their needs need to be filled any more than they can tell me how to best serve my own. My own need for grounding comes from honouring the gods worshipped in Boeotia and the cities allied with her prominent cities. If I step too far from that grounding, well… the way I put it is “Eros then starts mind-fucking me, and when I say that, I mean He sticks His cock in my ear and doesn’t pull out until either He’s done or I yell my Safe Word”. I’ve been there in that “ungrounded place”, and when it’s a state I’ve sought, it’s a beautiful thing that ends with this …. assuring feeling; like taking a vacation and, as wonderful as the trip is, you’ll be glad when you get home to your own bed and your own shower and your cats (or dog, or parakeet) who love you. I’ve also been in that “ungrounded place” unintentionally, and if you don’t mean to go down that way, it can be very scary — like being left behind at the truck stop because you missed the reboard call from the Greyhound driver.

I’ve found the most flattering shade of grey for my spirit. All polytheists —be they worshippers of the gods of Hellas or the Gauls; on a singular or syncretic path, on on whatever branch— should find their own grey. My grey may not be yours. Maybe mine is darker than Gavin’s but lighter than Jessi’s? Maybe it’s thousands of points lighter than Kyrene’s and only a single point darker than, thus almost indistinguishable from Laria’s? And maybe ten years from now, I’ll need a different shade? Find your grey that works best for now, and worry about new greys when you have to — but whatever you do, find your grey.

Well, colour me late-to-the-party…

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…but it seems the misandrist, gender-essentialist transphobe, Mary Daly has finally kicked it. At the risk of appearing in really bad taste, I have only one word to say:

Good.

Maybe now LBTQ Women’s spirituality can make some real progress now? Seriously now, the difference between Mary Daly and Valarie Solanas is, later in life, Solanas insisted that her apparently anti-man writings were never meant to be taken seriously while, as recently as 1999, Mary Daly consented to retirement after refusing to admit male students into her Women’s Studies course. Daly, in no uncertain terms, was always explicitly clear that she believed women superior to men.

She also has been cited by critics as “homogenising” women’s history, ignoring (and thereby marginalising) “women of colour”, and has been explicitly transphobic, stating “transsexualism” is a “male condition” and “Frankensteinian” and post-operative TS women live in a “contrived and artifactual condition”.

I will shed no tears for this woman’s death. Not only is one of my best friends a woman of transsexual history (as in, “male-to-female transsexual”), but her basic gender essentialism (which reduces all the psychological, neurological, and socially-encouraged aspects of gender down to what one’s genitals appear most like at birth) and dismissal of the TS experience as “a male condition” is one of the more ignorant forms of hate-speech as it outright denies the possibility of [female-to-male] transsexual men and renders the TS man’s experiences little more than non-existent. I would say “was” if not for the fact that this harmful gender-essentialism still permeates both feminist and pagan/polytheist discourse to an extent that is near-impossible to escape. (Follow this link for more boring crap!)

Now obviously the idea that how one “is supposed to” dress and behave and think because is what they have between the legs is at least as old as Hesiod, though most likely older, but saying that “it’s the right way to believe because it’s a traditional way to believe” is logically unsound. By that logic, well, it’s traditional to hold women as chattel so therefore we “should”.

The fact of the matter is, while undeniable that Mary Daly’s own thoughts on the subjects of ecofeminism and feminist spirituality helped bring these topics into discourse as we know it, she used this position as a pioneer to push her own essentialist and anti-male, anti-man, anti-masculine agenda, which many people now feel has no place in progressive discourse. She painted spirituality and gender in terms of black-and-white when what truly exists are varying greys and even colours. She was a casual racist who ignored the voices of non-”white” women — and a kook who truly believed that humanity’s, and indeed the entire planet Earth’s only true salvation was in phasing out the male sex.

Progress will not mourn Mary Daly, and Progress will eventually learn to pity her memory and those who cling to her now-useless and all-too-often counter-productive ideals. I’m convinced that her time and place was to be nothing more than the “squeaky wheel” that called attention to certain progresses by being an educated kook, and so once that spotlight shifted into position and lingered, her time had passed.

Edited to add:
I just wanted to add a link here to this awesome post on Daly and feminism from the Genderbitch blog on WordPress.com. She and those she quotes sum up the perspective of TS women on Mary Daly better than I could. Even a trans guy is quoted.

I’m also going to say that a lot of my Daly research is fairly recent; before this last few days, most of what i knew about her was second-hand from two TS women pagans I know who seem to hold Daly personally responsible for the gender essentialism that continues to permeate pagan and polytheist circles — and the “uterine supremacy” that seems to outright deny sacred masculine, sacred androgyny, or anything else in-between. Some of the most pious polytheists I know are TS/TG, genderqueer and/or “genderfucked” (I use both of these terms pretty loosely and broadly, for the sake of keeping this edit shorter), or completely devoid of any internal sense of gender identity. Many polytheistic recons I know are women especially devoted to masculine Deities or men especially devoted to feminine deities. Furthermore, Hellenic polytheism specifically has no shortage of “androgynous” deities (Athene is often considered “hard Butch” and Adonis is practically “bishounen” — just as two ready examples), and the ancient cults of Kybele, Hermaphroditos and, less well-known, Aphroditos (— or “The Bearded Aphrodite” who is “masculine above the waist and feminine below” [link to source later -- trust me, google is your friend]) have mythologies that rely heavily on a transformation from one apparent sex to another. Personally, I feel that gender-essentialist ideals such as those spouted by and inspired by the words of Mary Daly have no place within this beautiful religion.

The Two Primary Branches of Hellenic Religion

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I’ve come to the conclusion that the modern state of the Hellenismos/Hellenic polytheism/Hellenic religionist (HP, for short) community is like the current state of my laurel — or that old pussy willow tree that one of the neighbours had when I was a kid in Toledo:

Above the roots that are shared by the entirety of the community, there are two apparent “main branches” split above an almost-nonexistent trunk. Each of these two has several smaler branches, and some of those branches are populated by even smaller branches.

The two Main Branches of the HP community seem to be “intellectual religion” and “spiritual religion”. Some people have measures of both in their approach, but almost everybody with measures of both is ultimately more of one than the other. There’s nothing really wrong with either approach — different people have different needs and fulfil those needs in different ways.

I therefore hypothesis that a majority of the perceived in-fighting amongst the HP community is ultimately derived from the intolerance a lot of people have toward those not on their own “main branch”. Now, now, my co-religionists on the “spiritual branch” aren’t off the hook — I’ve seen just as much intolerant speech from people on the Spiritual Branch, and I think the worst of it was a claim that “[Hellenic religion] without [philosophical mysticism] versus religion with it is like the difference between being a quadruple amputee and having all of one’s limbs, plus wings” — if you don’t think that’s a voice of intolerance, then you’re probably the self-proclaimed “mystic” who said it.

The Spiritual Branch also shows its intolerance for those amongst itself who would rather keep a lot of their own spiritual / mystical works private, often berating those who need a more private mystical aspect of their religion with accusations of “embarrassment” — once, I was even told, “you’re not spiritual, you’re a recon”, as if there is absolutely no room for introspection, reconstructed practises, and intellectual exercise within the Spiritual Branch.

I’m focusing mostly on this because at this point, everybody knows about those on the Intellectual Branch who preach a One True Way, but the One True Spiritual Way is almost never called out.

The whole “one true way” idea is ridiculous. Of course, even moreso are those who seem relatively well-read, but still fancy the idea that somehow all ancient Hellenes were doing the same things or at least following the same patterns. I’m not going to fool myself into thinking that there was a universal tollerance toward the mystery cults, or alternative philosophies, etc, among the ancient Hellenes, but there seems to be a far greater preaching of tolerance than there is today amongst modern Hellenistai.

Believe me, I can understand the want that many modern Hellenistai have for community, I really do, but forcing community by imposing certain preferences and ideals really isn’t the way to bring community about. Successful communities are formed, mostly through “organic” means (though sometimes intentionally), through shared experiences and ideas and mutual tolerances for areas of difference. Of course, by that definition, there is no true “HP community”, but instead a lot of little communities united under the idea that they all, in some way or another, honour the Hellenic pantheon.