Category Archives: Hellenic Polytheist Community

[review] The Urban Primitive by Raven Kaldera and Tannin Schwartzstein

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Title: The Urban Primitive: Paganism in the Concrete Jungle

Authorship: Raven Kaldera & Tanin Schwartzstein
Publisher: Llewellyn International
Year Published: 2002, First Edition
ISBN: 0738702595

I first want to say that I scrapped my first draft of this review because, as odd as this may sound, I thought it was unintentionally mean, well beyond anything this book, which is full of problems, deserves. I also got really self-conscious that some might interpret it as a personal attack against one of its authors, Raven Kaldera, who I honestly want to like (he’s one of the few people amongst the FTM spectrum on FetLife who is seriously realistic about TS/TG issues, even if some of the things he’s written for the public about the TS/TG community and his own transition may seem problematic, especially out of context or if one is making a habit of projecting), and so I really wanted to like one of the few books published (only three, ever, that I’m aware of) about urban pagan and polytheist spirituality —as odd as I find it that some-one who proudly runs a rural homestead would get involved in a book about urban spirituality, I was optimistic, at first, and still believe that even the most awful parts were included with the best intentions.

Tanin Schwartzstein’s introduction is wonderful and very welcoming to those whose spirituality is urban-centred —dare I say, I even saw bits of my own experiences in the recollection and lamentation of a pagan community that dismisses the city as “cold” and spiritually “dead”, especially as one whose experiences are of anything but. I’m also convinced that she’s responsible for some of the best parts of the book that follows (though I assign equal blame for the worst parts, cos if either of them knew better, one of them should have caught it and revised).

I love that this book is written for those with limited income in mind, and offers detailed suggestions on the arts of dumpster diving, thrift store combing, and frugal resources that are not only kind to one’s wallet, but also the environment. There are several helpful lists in this book for herbs, incenses, stones, even colours, and their uses in different purposes. One of the best parts is even an entire chapter dedicated to common plants found in most cities in North America, and their purposes and meanings. Another list is even specifically for suggestions on budget-minded substitutions for scented oils, and suggestions on budget-conscious or scavenged items to use in rituals, like a piece of broken glass for rituals that need a blade and you don’t have a blade, or using stumps of candles rather than tea lights in travel kits for altars or shrines. Let me tell you, after years of looking through “pagan 101″ books in the mid-1990s that made it seem like one needs a middle-class income to even start out as a Pop Wicca nub, it’s refreshing to see that, barely more than a year into the Twenty-First Century, there was finally a book that made it indisputably clear that ritual tools could be scavenged or otherwise obtained with little or no expense, and one needn’t be financially comfortable to practise pagan religions —sure, nothing beats what the ritual recommends, nobody is arguing that, but if you think burning herbs is “too expensive”, it’s really only cos you don’t know enough about where you live, and this book offers an adequate primer for that knowledge.

It’s also nice that this book is written for not just those who thrive in cities, but for those who live in the city out of necessity. I may not personally understand the appeal of rural life, but I understand the necessity on a fundamental level, and I at least understand that, for some reason barbaros to myself, there are those who prefer a pastoral lifestyle and may only be living in the city’s walls for the work, or school, or family obligations, so adequate coping mechanisms seem like a fair inclusion.

On the other hand, most of the lists are too similar to other lists I’ve seen in “Pop Wicca 101″ sorts of books. While it’s nice that Kaldera has added bits to this book to make it seem useful to those whose spirituality is rural-centred but who live in urban lands due to necessity, a lot of this really does come off as a bias, making urban spirituality seem dangerous to the soul, and the city an inferior place to live; it’s really hard to get through a chapter without somehow getting a potentially subtle or downright blatant guilt-trip for living in the city, or some kind of nonsense “warning” about dangers only vaguely alluded to, with practically nothing to back up most claims about the alleged physical risks (aside from crime rates, which is easily searchable on-line) and some of the more obvious pollution risks, and let me tell you, not even the developed countryside is without its pollution and risks to the environment —do a search on The Dust Bowl, kids, it wasn’t a gridiron game, and over eighty years later, it’s still affecting the central United States. While the introduction is wonderful, even describing experiences similar to my own, the book that follows it flip-flops between celebrating the Urban Divine and blaming all cities everywhere for everything wrong with the world.

This book also suffers from its constant use of vague claims, and almost never giving much, if anything, in the way of specifics to make for ease of fact-checking. The index is present, but not quite as comprehensive as I usually hope for a book of this length, and a proper bibliography of sources is practically nonexistent, so aside from the rare mention of other books and references in the text, there’s no real way to check whatever sources may have been utilised. Sorry, kids, but a “Recommended Reading” list (largely of books from the same publisher —curious, non?) is not the same as a Bibliography. Some quotes also seem like they might have been taken from an e-mail list or Usenet group or something, something I’ve discerned from the fact that the quoted person is unsearchable in a pagan context, and there’s a mention of an Internet group in the book acknowledgements, so confirming the backgrounds of the people quoted isn’t easy, sometimes even impossible —sometimes, that’s important, but to be fair, gven the context of many quotes in the book that fall in this potential category, it’s really not necessary. When it is necessary, on the other hand it’s something that really bothers me, and appears to be a trait of Llewellyn books that seems far too common, contributing to the negative reputation of the publisher amongst religious reconstructionists and academic pagans. And speaking of, I had hoped, knowing Kaldera’s background and that he’s also collaborated with Kenaz Filan, who I completely respect, that this wouldn’t be much of a problem, but I guess that’s what I get for hoping. That said, one of the best and most quoted people in the book is credited as “Beth Harper, Nashville witch”; I was incredibly disappointed to find her practically impossible to find on the Internet.

And this book makes a lot of really dumb factual errors that could have been avoided with a modicum of research. The one that really stands out for me, to the point that it just seems like a prime example of “making shit up in hopes of sounding smart” is conflating the Horai (Goddesses of time and seasons) and the Khorea (or “Hora”; a group of traditional circular dances from the Mediterranean and Near East) and attempting to link both to “sacred [prostitution]” (they use the word “harlots”), and explaining that it’s an etymology of “whore” and thus strip tease and erotic dance, as a profession, is directly descended from goddess worship (Chapter 5, page 50). Trying to decide where to begin on how much is wrong with that little “etymology lesson” kind of gives me a headache, because there is just so much wrong with it. Just to give you a taste of how wrong that claim is, there is no clear or even muddy etymological link between the Horai, or even Khorea, and “whore” —the word “whore” is descended from the Old Norse hora, meaning “adulteress”; considering that Kaldera is best known amongst pagan circles for his “Northern tradition”, I’m just floored at the fact that his understanding of his traditions’ languages is so sparse that he either didn’t catch that preposterous fallacy or, may the gods forbid, he desired to include it.

Of course, whether some Hellenists utilising religious reconstruction care to admit it or not, not only was there magic practised in ancient Hellas, but a lot of the “spells” and other rituals mentioned in this book bare a similarity to ancient Hellenic practises that are somehow “not magic” by the circular logic employed by some Hellenic circles, and can be easily adjusted to fit the standard ritual script of Hellenic practise. In the chapter on Protection Spells, the recommendation of drawing eyes, with oil, on windows and over the threshold of doors, even on the stairs, is not a far cry from the ancient Greeks putting apotropaic eyes on drinking vessels and heads of Gorgons at the threshold, this is just a modern, and argueably stealth adaptation of an ancient practise. Granted, you really need a good background in Hellenic practises to catch that sort of thing, but if this is your first time hearing of such a thing, don’t take my word for it, go check out apotropaic eyes in ancient Greece, and it’s clear that this simple little protection ritual is adaptable to Hellenic practises.

One of the complaints about this book that I see a lot from people on Amazon is the “Urban Triple Deities”. Now, obviously, I don’t acknowledge these “deities” in my practise, and I am sort of sceptical that something so basic as what’s described here is even a whole deity, and honestly, I really hate the illustrations for these six epithets, but who’s to say that these aspects don’t exist in existing deities? Knowing that Kaldera is a polytheist, I’m sure there’s intention that these simplistic figures can be aspects of existing deities, and knowing that Schwartzstein describes her religion on Teh FarceBorg as simply “pagan spiritualist”, there’s room to regard these as complete deities, if one so chooses. I can easily see traits of Hestia in Squat, “goddess of Parking Spaces”, whether it be your car or your bed, Skor, the scavenger goddess, strikes me as an epithet of Demetre or possible Tykhe, and Skram, Who warns you away from potential dangers, is a clear face of Hekate; Slick, the silver-tongued, works as an aspect of Hermes (something the book even suggests), Screw seems a simplistic, Neizchean aspect of Dionysos, and Sarge seems a sort of superficial Zeus or perhaps Ares. I also don’t see how most of these aspects of deity are specifically urban; having gone to high school in a rural area, I can assure you, rural people are no stranger to needing spaces, needing motivation, an anonymous lay, being in danger (I’m sure “Skram” might’ve been just as useful in Laramie, Wyoming, which has a smaller population than Adrian, MI, the latter being indisputably rural), or even scavenging (hello? gleaning, anybody?), but if this is a device that can open some-one’s eyes to these aspects and relevance to the city, then awesome.

In the previous chapter, though, ancient deities are addressed. Again, I have mixed feelings about this. I understand the space constraints the authors were working with, and to their credit, they acknowledged that the deities mentioned were described in overly simplistic manners and further research is best. On the other hand, there is no shortage of statements made that even a casual, but genuine relationship with a deity could easily prove false. I’m sick of people assuming Apollon only digs classical music, and saying “[He's] not interested in rock or rap or hip hop … [play] classical music, or He’ll frown” just after suggesting propitiating Him in a record store (Chapter 5, page 49), is more than a bit contradictory —seriously, people, if He’s the God of music, why limit music for Him to a single genre? In my experiences, Apollon really loves Nick Cave. I doubt that Thoth is simply “the Egyptian god of writing” (in fact, Wikipedia suggests I’m right about that). Zeus and Odin? Not the same deity. I really have to argue against the notion that Athene is the primary Hellenic goddess associated with science museums —not only is the name of the Moisai in the word “museum”, Ourania is specifically associated with astronomy, and Kleio’s domain of “history” can logically extend to natural history and evolutionary sciences. Saturn has nothing to do with “karma”, and I had to raise an eyebrow at the suggested association with the IRS —at the very least, an explanation of the logic employed would have been nifty.

One of the other problems with this book is the regular language that seems awfully Americentric, as if the whole world of Llewellyn Worldwide begins and ends with the United States. Not only is this book available at regionally domestic pricing in Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia, my own copy came from a UK seller via eBay (but it’s also a US copy), and Schwartzstein’s FaceBook profile states that it’s been translated into Russian. I wonder how well the suggestion that those who live along “the West Coast” fault line should worship Poseidon as a bringer of earthquakes translates to readers from Moscow? Or in Australia, where it’s the North Coast that gets more earthquakes?

Why can’t we see his hands? Gods above, why can’t we see Morrissey’s hands??

What’s so wrong with simply saying “anyone in a city near a fault line should supplicate Poseidon”, especially considering that those along the North American West Coast tend to get a higher ratio of reminders of their fault line than most other people? Why force the rest of the Worldwide readers to have to mentally adjust what they’re reading? In the immortal words of a Double-Double fucker named Steve1, “America is not the world”.

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Oh wow…. I had no idea.

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People have actually been using the calendar? I got, like, three incoming hits from that old archival thread in the last two days. I feel totally awful about failing to update the calendar for 2012. I won’t let that happen again, since, I guess now I know people are actually using it.

I’m also really impressed that people caught why I added the 5th day of the lunar month to honour the Moisai. :-) It just made sense, you know?

The Feast of Eros is NOT St. Valentine’s Day!

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While I acknowledge that people are going to do what they’re going to do anyway, and there’s little I can do to stop them from doing whatever goofy shit they want to do, no matter how wrong it is, I still feel the need to speak up on occasion when something that people are doing has no historical validity — if they still choose to Do Hellenismos Wrong(!), then who am I to stand in their way? Regardless of what one chooses after learning better, I know I’ve said my piece, and that’s good enough for me.

First off:

What is St. Valentine’s Day?

Most people in this day and age, even the good Catholics amongst them, drop the “Saint” prefix nowadays. The Catholic Encyclopaedia mentions three saints under the name Valentine, and Wikipedia notes as many as fourteen(!!!), but traditionally, two are most accepted to be the St. Valentine honoured on 14 February; Valentine of Rome and Valentine of Terni. In 1969, St. Valentine’s Day was removed from the Catholic lexicon of holy feasts on the grounds that almost nothing is known of any of the Sts. Valentine, other than names, and (in at least two cases) where they were buried. Still, other Christian calendars honour St. Valentine’s Day, including the Church of England, and plenty of Catholics do still have a religious celebration of the various legends of St. Valentine —and aunt of mine one gave me a gorgeous ornate greeting card from a Catholic bookstore that re-told one of these legends, of how Valentinus of Rome was sentenced to execution for attempting directly to convert the Emperor Claudius II, and just as he was being taken out by the executioner, his jailer’s blind daughter regained her sight after Valentinus taught her about Jesus. From there, she fell in love with Valentinus, now dead (ew), and honoured his death by planting a tree of almond blossoms.

Regardless, the St. Valentine’s Day endorsed by the manufacturers of sweeties, greeting cards, and sellers of amputated plant genitalia bares little resemblance to a the more subdued event traditionally endorsed by churches.

What Happened?

Prior to Geoffery Chaucer, in Parlement of Foules, there was no widespread association between the feast of any Saint and romantic love —or so sayeth the overwhelming amount of leaders in relevant fields. There is, though, reason to associate mid-February’s Christian Saints’ Day with ancient pre-Christian festivals of the Mediterranean:

As per the Attic calendar, the month of Gamelion corresponds with a span of roughly mid-January to mid-February of the Gregorian calendar, and Gamelion is when the wedding of Zeus and Hera is celebrated annually. The corresponding Boeotian month of Hermaios hosts the Daidala festival, which is essentially identical to Gamelia, in intent and mythos; the Daidala festival for this year happens to fall on 19 February.

Then there’s the Roman Lupercalia, a festival that spans 13-15 February, and is a fertility festival to honour the she-wolf who suckled Romulus and Remus.

Obviously, fertility symbols mingled, symbols of love mingled, and after Chaucer’s mention of love-birds (For this was Saint Valentine’s Day, when every bird cometh there to choose his mate,) things just seemed to stick.

What is the Feast of Eros?

While little is known concretely of the Feast of Eros, one this is: It is a springtime occasion. Looking far back enough on HMEPA will confirm that this has consistently been a celebration consistently held after the vernal equinox. Not in February or an equivalent month, not any time in winter.

Eros position in the Hellenic pantheon as a fertility deity certainly means it will share some symbolism with Lupercalia; His associations with romantic love will share some symbols with Daidala; modern celebrants of St. Valentine’s Day certainly have no issue of using “His” image (or rather, that of Cupid; often assumed to be a Roman equivalent, but I have my own opinion on that), even if there is never any intent to honour Him in name.

This does not make ANY of those holidays at all equivalent with the Feast of Eros.

The fact that the Feast of Eros is a springtime festival probably places it more in line to have syncretic imagery with Easter than to be celebrated as a swap for Valentine’s Day. The date is something rather important here; it signifies the Feast of Eros as one of renewal, youth, beauty, re-birth….

…not to say the winter landscape lacks beauty, and certainly some plants actually need that period of frost to properly germinate, but as a trickster, Eros is a deity who’s in that in-between —like an Equinox— and rather blunt. There’s certainly a beauty to winter, but it’s the beauty of Nyx, His Mother, the beauty unseen by the average person, a short-reigning beauty that will bow out gracefully when it is time for the dazzling Eros to come forth.

So, what say ye, Ruadhán?

This said, I see nothing inherently wrong with honouring Eros on 14 February, as His secular guise is certainly everywhere on that day, and His work certainly afoot. But is it the Feast of Eros? History tells me no. Basic logic tells me no. Most importantly: My instincts tell me no.

There are all sorts of reasons to celebrate different deities, and some have several days in a year to do so, even by ancient calendars. If going by Hesiod, then the fourth of every lunar month is sacred to Eros (in addition to Aphrodite, Hermes, and Herakles), so clearly one can celebrate a deity more than once a year. But certain holidays have certain meanings, and the meanings for St. Valentine’s Day don’t line up with what is known of the Feast of Eros in date, nor in symbolism of their respective dates in particular, so clearly there is little, and that’s assuming there is any logical reason to syncretise the two holidays.

Again, I acknowledge that people are going to do what they wish, regardless of what things actually mean and what nonsense what they’re doing makes, but if anybody wants my opinion on it, I cannot, in good conscience, recommend syncretising St. Valentine’s Day with the Feast of Eros. They are two completely different holidays, set at two completely different dates, and thus two two completely different sets of symbolism.

Being “Out” Is Not a Privilege

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So, there was this interesting post on the Patheos Pagan Portal asking people to ponder some things, and generally pointing out that there are still relatively a lot of pagans and polytheists who aren’t “out” about their religion to friends and family. That post sparked another post by an on-line friend, and of course, people had to comment. And I commented too, and I’ll basically say a lot of the same stuff here, but in part so that I can have a handy reference point for later — cos I’m anal like that.

First off, I want to make it quite clear that I don’t ultimately fault people who aren’t “out” about their paganness (or queerness, but that’s not what I’m discussing here) because of situations where one may be at a very great risk of losing their job, their home, custody of their children, or a healthy relationship with family members they still want to maintain a healthy, active, and generally friendly relationship with, for whatever reason — no, I don’t blame the pagans/polytheists in those situations because it’s not the pagans who created the very real situations they face. Those situations were created by the society that ultimately favours Christianity, by zealous Christians who’ve made those people’s situations so precarious, and by a judicial system that has a history of only paying lip-service to “separation of church and state” while ultimately favouring Christianity by a very wide margin. I do not blame the many pagans and polytheists who face those situations and are thus reluctant to “come out” — I may not completely understand, and some of those reasons why I will explain in a mo’, but I don’t blame (BIG difference).

That said, there are still many pagans and polytheists who are “out” as such, and doing pretty OK in spite of that. Still, I’d say only maybe a handful of these “out” pagans and polytheists, at best, are rendered “safe” due to relative pre-existing socio-political privilege — most who are “out” about their religions are living below an annual household income of US$35K, many are in poverty, and many are queer. The least-represented out pagans and polytheists in pagan media are non-white, but this does not stop many such pagans from being active in the pagan community on-line and off. Furthermore, in a society that favours people with high-paying jobs, families (including children of one’s own), and lots of friends, ANY pagan or polytheist who “comes out”, just like any GBLT person who does so, even in 2011, is putting themself at risk of losing all of that in addition to facing other discriminations one is not necessarily protected from, in spite of the United $tates and other countries protecting “freedom of religion”.

Outing oneself is not an act of privilege — it is an act of defiance. The primary reason to remain closeted is to protect what relative amount of privilege one may have by doing so: One will save their job, retain custody of children, preserve ties to a family whose love is apparently only conditional, and one absolutely will not put themselves, their family, or their property at risk of death threats, violence, or destruction.

…and yet there are still at least a handful of pagans and polytheists who will kvetsch and whinge about us “privileged” people who have some great luxury by being “out” about our religion. They poo-poo the out and proud and in-your-face about how love for one’s family is about sacrifice and doing things outside of one’s ordinary routine — and apparently they’re the only members of their own family who believe this, because they’re the only ones hiding, sometimes even lying “for love”. In a society that clearly favours those with families, remaining closeted is clearly an act of maintaining the airs of privilege to protect status. If the love of one’s family is so conditional as to be withheld over a difference of religion, I have to admit that while I don’t fault some-one for caving in to the charade, I don’t see the appeal.

In my own life, I’ve always had this aura of “weird kid” that everybody could see. Even when I spend a year and some absolutely going out of my way to look “normal”, I was never treated that way, and eventually just gave up and went back to what I’d been doing before — it’s not only familiar, but it felt true (the fact that it gave everybody else a more obviously weird kid to point at was merely a side-effect). My family was dirt-poor working class, I’m effete and gay, of TS history, five feet tall in a society that favours tall men, fat in a society that favours thin people, an artist of my own design, completely cut off from my family (and not completely by choice, but ultimately for personal survival), I have both visible and invisible disabilities as defined for the purposes of collecting allowance, and (the least of my worries) am possessing of a fashion sense that has been variously described as “vintage”, “art rock”, “gothic”, “classic glam”, “vaguely punk”, and so on. At some point, it just made more sense to be “out” about having an “alternative religion”, as well, cos really now, when I’ve already got that much against me, what’s one more thing? It’s not like suddenly the crazy Jesus-freaks at the bus stop will be all “but at least you’re Christian, right?” Not likely; not likely at all. I’m already far enough down on most people’s ladders that maintaining airs of “possibly at least Christian, for whatever that’s worth” really won’t amount to a hill of beans. A literal hill of beans might actually have a higher socio-political status than I do.

“Privilege” is playing no part in my decision to be “out” as a polytheist — no, more my lack of privilege. I figure the only way I could have less privilege is to be a Native American trans woman and asexual lesbian (or at least be Black or Latino1).

In the grand scheme of things, there are very few pagans and polytheists who can actually make significant money off of writing, even popular pagan authors often struggle to make a regular income off of writing, and writing alone is seldom their only source of income. Most pagan bloggers I’ve come across are pretty open about struggling to make ends meet, and a disproportionately high number of pagan bloggers (when compared to general statistics) also are openly GBLT. Just looking at these facts alone, I’m already seeing a reduction in relative privilege, so how being out about being part of a disfavoured religion is somehow “a privilege” just boggles my mind.

In the GBLT communities, “coming out” has never been an act of privilege; it has always been an act of defiance. While many people have always maintained many reasons, but founded and unfounded, for remaining closeted, and those with integrity fault the society that makes closeting oneself favourable to living out, the act of coming out itself is not a privilege.

With living out, there are always risks. Those risks are kind of proof that this is not a privileged act, for if it was so, there WOULDN’T be any risk, and everybody would be out! While it’s argueably a “privilege” to live in a city with considerably lesser apparent risk than a tiny, closed-minded town, there is still a risk, still the potential that one’s safety will be endangered simply for living their life openly and honestly, and the fact that that risk exists at all should put to rest any assumptions that coming out is a “privilege”. Hell, simply by being out, certain doors become instantly closed, and will stay that way, without a struggle.

My heart goes out to those who’ve weighed their situations against coming out, and chose the security of a closet; hopefully, we’ll see a reduction in this in our lifetimes, and you wonderful people won’t have to live in fear forever. I put the blame for your situation on the bigots who created it — which is where it belongs.

1: As an aside, when I lived in Los Angeles, I used to get asked pretty often if I was Latino cos of my naturally dark hair for being as pale as I am and in spite of possessing the surname “McElroy”. This is where I came into familiarity with the reclaimed slur of “green bean”, which amuses me — in part cos I first heard it from one-one who’s father was second-generation Mexicano and mother was from Cork (and who she fluent in Mexican dialect Spanish, and with her Irish accent intact). Also, it just now occurred to me that I never had a good come-back then, but I do now. So, to the question of “Are you / is your family Latin?” which is usually how it was phrased, I now say “Not since Boudicca burned Londinium.”

30 Day Paganism Meme: Day 18 ~ Community

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Community was important to the religious practises of ancient Hellas. Temples were big social gathering places where the presence of the Theoi was felt. Community was how traditions were fostered and gave people a sense of shared experience.

That said, I do still think that community is important, nay, necessary to Hellenismos — but the problem is clearly other people.

I don’t think the individuals are to blame, here. I think part of it is this Abrahamic-superior society that just about all of us have come from is a big part of it, and I think at least a tiny part of it has to do with the fact that humans, by nature, just tend to form little “tribes”. I also think that another fairly large factor is that, especially in the United $tates, “the cult of the lone wolf”1, is exalted to the point that a disturbing number of people really do believe that real community, where people often depend on each-other and help each-other out of a sense of social duty, and not because one is getting any “fringe benefits” from doing so, is treated as a weakness, and only those who are under the false impression that they “got one’s success purely on one’s own” are considered truly strong or heroic. The fallacy in this assumption is that even modern folk heroes are portrayed as acting for the greater good, or civic duty, and that is what makes them heroic: A hero is not one who does what one wants to do for one’s own ego, but one who does what must be done for the betterment of those around him. For these most apparent reasons, any potential for a large and diverse modern Hellenic community is easily led astray by selfishness, physical distance, “othering” tactics from both the Abrahamic majority outside Hellenismos and from Hellenistai ourselves, and by man’s own tendencies to need smaller, closer groups of people to function best.

That’s not to say that there is no chance of ever returning society to a point where polytheism is free to thrive and easily accessible to others who seek its wisdom, but no amount of community can be gained by the regular back-biting, in-fighting, and personality cults I’ve noticed in the last five years in the on-line Hellenismos community. If Hellenists can learn nothing else from the Popular Wicca community, I think it would be great if we could learn that there are some things more important than “orthopraxy”, being right, or just loudly proclaiming our own separatenesses. Ecclectic Pagans, at least in the Anglosphere, seem (at least as an outsider) to have reached a point where they acknowledge that they aren’t going to get along 100% of the time, and that differences in theology and details of a ritual are going to happen — but that if any true sense of community is to happen, then differences must be temporarily put aside and compromises have to happen. That’s not saying that those called to Attic traditions and those to Spartan tradition and those to Boeotian tradition, and that Platonists and Epicureans and Cynics and Pythagoreans must now all be “Pan-Hellenes”, quite the contrary; we can all be and remain our own things, but if we expect community to actually grow, then it can only work if, outside our oikos practise, we concentrate on what brings us together than what makes us different. Then, and only then, can a worldwide community of Hellenes thrive.

It’s also all-too-often and all-too-quickly forgotten that the face of the ancient religion has no one “true” face: It was many faces, over thirty tribes, each which could easily be argued to practise a different localised sect or religion. The only times most of them came together pre-Alexander was for the Olympian games (before and after which, they returned to calling each-other “barbaros”, foreigners), and the only way Alexander could “unite” these tribes was, all too often, by sword: He had Thebes (in Boeotia) burned in his quest for “Hellenic unity” — sure, they were Thebans, but as any good Thespian would say, in a truly just world, only Thespians get to mess with Thebans.

Maybe I’m romanticising the ancient world a bit? I guess we’re all guilty of doing so, at least every now and again. It’s nice to think that there was a “golden age” of humanity, where people respected each-other a little more, or were at least generally nicer to each-other than we now are. Too bad it’s not true, even if the real, historical face of the ancient religion is a far better model for how it should look today than the uniform Platonic Attik religion that a certain contingent of idealistic “super-recons” like to fantasise about having.

Still, I think there is some truth here that all Hellenes need to absorb, at least those of us who wish to see some real, off-line community. My advice to those who do share this wish:

  • Don’t dwell on your differences of theology, philosophy, or practise. We don’t have the luxury of living in 400BCE, where if we don’t like how the Thessalians are doing it, we can go back home to Thespiai and to “how it’s supposed to be done”. The ancient Olympics would not have been possible without some agreement to compromise here and there, if only cos everybody knew it was only for a few days once every four years.
  • Work together and be courteous. In the grand scheme of things, we only have to put up with each-other for short periods of time. Our own oikos practises should be getting far more energy, anyway, so while community building is important, it should be clear that dealing with those outside our families and households need to see our best faces, more often than not.
  • Stop debating terminology. This is seriously one of the most ridiculous memes I’ve seen in the on-line Hellenismos community, and I’m ashamed to say that I used to get sucked into this adolescent debate more than once or twice. While I can’t deny that words have power, and that they mean things for a reason, at the end of the day, you are more your actions than you are your vocabulary, so it ultimately seems mighty childish to bicker back-and-forth about who should or should not be “allowed” to call themselves “Hellenes” — especially amongst those of us who don’t speak the Hellenic language, and tenfold so if you2 have been caught claiming that you are actually against people learning Hellenic3. As best as I can tell, the ancient definition of “Hellene” was “one who speaks the Hellenic language”; by that definition, very few of us who speak English as a first language may qualify.
  • Get out of your house, apartment, bedroom, attic, or basement and MEET PEOPLE! Outreach! Maybe you’ll have more luck meeting others who are or would be interested in the Hellenic religion in the Classics department of your local university — or maybe you’d have better luck with outreach in the local Pagan & Polytheist community — or, just maybe, at a local Greek heritage festival. You don’t have to buy a tent or aim for being a community organiser, but Hellenion has printable pamphlets and Neokoroi is still doing their newsletter, which most Pagan/Occult/Metaphysical or otherwise “alternative” independent bookstores tend to allow people to leave copies of in a designated area.

Some people are living by this, already, and out there, working toward community. The adage of “if you build it, they will come” seems most true: If you’re interested in community, and are simply out there and making it known what you’re about, then community will form. You probably won’t happen upon the perfect ritual group right away, I doubt *anybody* has ever found even a “good” ritual group for their practises in even the first few months. It takes time, but it’ll happen. Even if you’re out there for years, making yourself available, and all that happens is you get a few little deity cult groups going, that’s fine.

Personally, what’s most important to me is the Theoi. If I never achieve the “perfect” group of Boeotian religionists utilising the recon method, but simply a “cozy” little local cult to Apollon and local cult to Eros I get along with, I’ll bet confidant that the Theoi will acknowledge that I’ve done my best. Even if it’s just a local Kybele-Gaia cult, I’ll have that confidence, even if I’ll be personally disappointed in myself.

1: a.k.a. “Bootstrapism”
2: And by “you” I mean “Pope No-Life”
3: Quadruply so if your reason “against” it is cos it means people can now gain a better understanding of primary sources and potentially produce better translations — no, this paraphrase is no joke, and I REALLY need to screen-cap that quote from Hellenic_Recons

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