Sometimes, i have the nerve to be surprised…

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You know, for as popular as some deities are with eclectic pagans, you’d think a little more research would actually be conducted on Them. This kind of makes me realise how relatively “lucky” I am, not only in that i value education, and have learned the tools for a good self-education, but because my exposure to eclectic paganism has been relatively limited, because I didn’t come to traditional Hellenism from that community, I came to it after a three year hiatus from LaVeyan Satanism. While I dabbled in paganism in high school, I didn’t really do more than that, because I found factual errors in the first couple Llewellyn books I borrowed from a friend, and immediately distrusted the methodology in favour of reconstruction —a methodology I didn’t return to for almost a decade.

I’m lucky, and a lot of my information, most of which is easily available to just about anybody with Internet access (often even freely), well, I just take it all for granted.

  • Patch

    Here here!

  • http://kallisti.writingkaye.com/ Kaye

    Agreed. It’s hard to remember sometimes that the attention to differentiating historical precedent from UPG that we have is not a general community ethic in Neopaganisms. :(

    • http://omo.peacockfairy.com/ Ruadhán J McElroy

      Just seems counter-intuitive to me, you know? I mean, this is kind of how I’ve always operated: If I want to know about something, I don’t just go for the “truthiness factor”, I make every effort to actually learn; I read up, compare sources, grade the trustability of the sources (like, some-one with a BA in ancient religions is going to rank higher than some-one who knows how to exploit SEO). Maybe it was ingrained in me from childhood (my mother and grandparents, while very working-class, were also very academic-minded because we believe that education will always help better your situation, even if only socially; I was also in this weekend “day camp”-styled program for gifted children, hosted by the local university), but it’s just how i approach the things I’m interested in. Which is why I can give absurd amounts of detail about my favourite bands and filmmakers and authors; I find knowing what creative people came from and what inspires them gives a greater understanding of their work –and I apply no less of the same principle to deities.