Attention Hellenic Polytheists and Artemis Worshipers Alike!

Some of you may already know about the planned rebuilding of a Temple of Artemis in Selçuk, Turkey. There is now an interesting development: it's in the media. The Turkish Daily News has reported on the developments:

With support from Austrian scientists, İleri had Swiss architects prepare a plan for the reconstruction of the temple. İleri, who has dreamed of reconstructing the temple for 10 years, said: “When completed, the temple will not be a copy or an imitation of the original Artemis but the Artemis itself. And its sisters of the past will set their eyes on it with pride and emulation.”

Like the Parthenon in Tennessee, USA, the primary intention in this would likely be to increase international tourism in the region. Also like the American Parthenon, it will also likely draw pilgrims searching for contacts with deities. The planned expenses for this project are $150 million. We'll see if this thing actually happens.

Rockin' the Interfaith

This weekend, parents came to campus (mostly those of first-, second-, and third-year students) to live vicariously through their children's experiences on Family Weekend. As an active member of the religious community, I helped brainstorm ideas for one quaint feature of this weekend's festivities: the interfaith service. The three Abrahamic faiths had a good deal of representation there, and I went to represent . . . other things.

I read Aesop's fable “The Shipwrecked Man” for the congregation, and some people actually laughed at the appropriate point (a very good sign). While deciding on what to bring from my religion, as none of the Wiccans in the pagan group I co-run could think of (or indeed have?---correct me if I'm wrong) stories, I realized how thankful I am to belong to a polytheism that has fables.

Hellenic Polytheism has enough surviving literature that we can find stories and tales to address many facets of life. The choice of “The Shipwrecked Man” came about fifteen minutes before one of our interfaith service planning meetings. I had found myself stumped on locating a story that could inspire personal responsibility not because they don't exist, but because I had to locate one that was accessible to people who don't know about Hellenic ethics. Aesop seemed the most accessible, so I flipped to random selections until this one jumped out at me.

“The Shipwrecked Man” shows a man, his ship destroyed, praying to Athene for his life. Another man from the same ship swims by him and says, “You can offer prayers and the promise of sacrifice all you want, but she can't help you if you don't start swimming.” Gods help us out, surely, but we cannot expect them to do everything for us. It takes give and take to establish a relationship, and no one likes a freeloader.

I'm happy that the people at the service liked it, and I hope that Athene did, too.

:)

Funday: Orphic Hymn to Hermes in 1337

Translated from the English version by Apostolos N. Athanassakis into the great and mighty Internet slang of l33tsp33k:

j0, h3rm35, 1mr 0f Z00s, M414's s0n,
j00r H34l7h p01n7z r l3g3nd4rj, 1337m4570r 0f t3h d34d 4nd m0d.
G3n7l3 4nd l33t, 0 4rgu5-5l4j3r, j00 4r3 4 gu1d3 wh00z s4nd4lz flj,
4nd j00 wh0 l0v3s h00m4nz r3v34l t3h c0d3z t0 m0r74lz.
j00 4r3 v1g0r0us 4nd j00 d3l1gh7 1n c0mp1l1ng 4nd 1n c0d1ng 7r1ck3r135.
M4570r 0f 4ll b4535, j00 4r3 7h3 h1dd3n pr0c3ss3s 7h47 fr33 us fr0m c4r3z,
4nd wh0 h0ldz 1n h1z h4ndz t3h bl4m3l355 t3rm1n4l 0f p34c3.
L0rd 0f K0rjk05, luckj, h3lpful 4nd 5k1ll3d 1n w0rdz, j00 455157 1n w0rk,
j00 4r3 4 fr13nd 0f m0r74l5 1n n33d,
4nd j00 w31ld 73h dr34d3d 4nd r35p3c73d w34p0n 0f t3h k3y20rdz.
H34r mj pr4j3r 4nd gr4n7 4 g00d 3nd t0 4 l1f3 0f d3t3rm1n4710n, s0l1d c0d1ng, 4nd m1ndf00ln355.

Versions of the Orphic Hymn to Hermes in English can be found in various places on the Interwebs:

Apostolos N. Athanassakis - 28. To Hermes
Virginia Stewart-Avalon, M.Ed - To Hermes

Kharis ∝ Reciprocity: A Relationship of Possibilities

Say that someone told me in advance that there would be a gunfight, and that in this crossfire a bullet would aim for my chest; also suppose that the same individual said that, should I put a book beneath my coat that day, the shot would not even break my skin. For me, this book would be the OED (Oxford English Dictionary, for those of you who do not know its greatness) – a dictionary that presents English in its beauty, from the origin of words all the way up to the present, with many examples of the distinctions between similar words. Not only is this book utile when explicating poems or reading eighteenth-century women’s literature, but for understanding why translators and classicists choose to use certain words over others in their works. As an English major, I know our language can get brutal, and the OED heals most damage. It is so powerful, in fact, that by merely mentioning its name you have already provided a full citation.

It may seem odd to begin a discussion of the term kharis by discussing the OED, but I can assure you that this is relevant. Just as our language has nuances, the various forms of Greek do, too, and the following (long) explanation of the term shows just that:

A word is needed here about vocabulary. Kharis, we saw, is the word central to our subject, and most of the Homeric passages cited so far have contained a word from the khar- root. Kharis words are in fact applied to both sides of the relationship. Mortals seek to bring gifts or sacrifices which are kharienta or kekharismena to the gods, and request a return which itself is khariessa; in later texts the relation can be presented quite explicitly as one in which kharites are exchanged. Two interconnected points need to be made here. On the one hand, the primary meaning of kharis is ‘charm, delight’, or that which causes it. In attempting to bring the gods kekharismena mortals are trying to bring them things in which they take delight, and speakers sometimes explicitly urge deities to ‘rejoice in’ (khairein) the offerings they make them. On the other, a strong social sense existed that ‘it is always kharis that begets kharis or, as English says, ‘one good turn deserves another’.¹

In the above passage, we do notice that the word kharis does have a literal definition, that of “good turn.” However, its relationship with other words in Ancient Greeks cannot be translated along with the direct meaning. No innate connection exists between the words gift, sacrifice, and good turn or delight exists in the English etymologies of these words. So it is that many profound statements (such as the endless puns on l’amour and la mort in French, two words that have the exact same pronunciation) lose their meanings when translated into another language.

[. . .] ideas of reciprocity and repayment are associated with khari- words, but not in a direct semantic way. One gift or act endowed with kharis, power to please, will call forth another, which will in turn evoke yet another; but a kharis even when given in return for a kharis is not in meaning a recompense, however much it may be so in function. The English expressions ‘favour’ and ‘good turn’ work in a similar way: good turns and favours should be repaid in kind, but the words themselves express the sense not of recompense but of benefit.²

If we look closely at the passage above, we can begin to distinguish some more accessible analogies to the function and situational place of kharis. While it doesn’t directly mean that actions of piety towards the Gods balance out like the Egyptians’ feather and heart, convention makes it so that it is good form to do so. It is correct to say that kharis cannot denote a recompense, as the meaning of recompense in the OED is (1) “[r]eparation or restitution made to another for some wrong done to him; atonement or satisfaction for some misdeed or offense”; (2) “[c]ompensation (received or desired) for some loss or injury sustained”; or (3) “[r]eturn or repayment for something given or received.” The Gods do not pay someone for making a libation of oil every dawn, or declare that a hecatomb of cows will buy someone an extra year of life (unless, of course, they want to, which I am not ruling out).

Rather, the relationship between us and the Gods follows more elusive and complicated rules. We do not have an economic consumer-producer relationship. Gods tend not to sell their services to mortals, nor do they increase or decrease the effectiveness of offerings based on inflation or supply and demand. The Gods are elusive friends, keeping their secrets while at the same time interacting with us and deciding to know what and how we think. Sometimes our actions offend them; other times, little things we do will make them smile and decide to assist us in some endeavor. Regardless, we have a reciprocal relationship. Here is the first definition of reciprocal from the mouth of the OED: “[t]he state or condition of being reciprocal; a state or relationship in which there is mutual action, influence, giving and taking, correspondence, etc., between two parties or things.”

For a relationship to be reciprocal, the exchange of gifts or sacrifices on our part does not need to precisely equal any return we receive from the Gods. All it requires is that they act somehow in response to it, be it to turn their heads from our activities or actively come down to aid us. In English, the idea of this reciprocal relationship relates closely to what the term kharis implies—hence why Reciprocity in Ancient Greece devotes space to a discussion of kharis in a religious context. In mathematical terms, we would say that

kharis ∝ reciprocity

The relationship may be any of the following solutions or any other solutions that maintain the direct proportionality of the terms:

kharis² = reciprocity

√(kharis) = reciprocity

kharis + k = reciprocity (where k is any constant).

However, the two cannot share an inverse relationship, as that would imply that the reciprocal relationship between Gods and humans decreases as kharis increases—implausible, as kharis in a religious sense requires that mutual action (and here inaction counts as an action, providing that the deity chose not to act in response to a prayer) take place. I tend to like the second one involving the square root because the resulting function would be a curve that always approaches, but never reaches, some number—there must be some point after which giving more offerings is completely useless and the relationship between you and a deity cannot become any more awesome.

Saying that kharis and reciprocity are equal to each other is simplistic, but considering the complexity surrounding the term, it is a sufficient enough definition to begin a person’s thought process about how to honor the Hellenic Gods properly. The lazy or academically uninterested may stop here and not develop their understanding between the specific term and the generalized situational translation, but most will hopefully start to explore the context for these Hellenic words and not take any English translation, be it good turn, reciprocity, or even delight, at face value.

One final note: The point of this is not to defend or debunk any definitions. Anyone can point at a book and recite a definition, but even when you’re looking at the OED, other interpretations (i.e., modern slang) will not be included. Understanding what a word means requires digging deep into experience, both of yourself and others, and that’s not something we can do for you.

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1Gill, Christopher, Norman Postlethwaite, and Richard Seaford, Reciprocity in Ancient Greece, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998, 108-109.

2Ibid., 109.

Nymphs and Gods

Nymphs deserve offerings just as the Theoi do, but these divinities have a slightly different character. For one, they are not mortal, but are not considered the “same” as the Deathless Gods who dwell on Mount Olympos. For another, Death will at times destroy them. However, I have always considered the Nymphs as divinities who dwell in the natural world, not the artificial surroundings we place ourselves in.

A new face in the Hellenic Polytheist blogosphere has shared his opinions on this subject, arguing that urban areas can have their own type of Nymph. I can certainly see the possibility for their existence within cities; if you want to get technical, nothing artificial exists on this planet because the beings (humans) who created the artificial environment are still a part of nature. However, I have not experienced their urban presence firsthand. The post on Urban Hellenistos has certainly sparked my curiosity, so this may change soon!

KHARIS and He Epistole

A while ago, I reviewed a book called KHARIS: Hellenic Polytheism Explored.¹ You may have seen other reactions on the blogosphere or on Amazon.com. This Monday, Rebecca Buchanan at Sequential Tart published an interview with the author of KHARIS, Sarah Kate Istra Winter. It's pretty decent, and I recommend that you check it out. Ms. Winter discusses the research that went into its creation, the reasons behind including certain topics, and some other modern resources in the Hellenic Polytheist community.

One such resource that she mentions is a newsletter called He Epistole published by an organization called Neokoroi. You can view .pdf files of back issues on their web site. Anyone can submit articles to the newsletter, and it is published seasonally. Members of the Hellenic Polytheist community are generally very spread out and communicate predominantly through online media such as Yahoo! Groups, so a newsletter that can be distributed in dead tree format is a very exciting sign of progress for us.

1The evolving concept of kharis in this book stems from and is consistent with the interpretation of kharis given by Christopher Gill, Norman Postlethwaite, and Richard Seaford in their scholarly work, Reciprocity in Ancient Greece (see pages 108 – 114).

Puanepsion 6, 696:4 - Day for Artemis

After classes today, I went back to my dorm room and picked up the Homeric Hymns so I could do some routine worship of Artemis. According to Hesiod’s outline of monthly worship, Artemis is honored on the sixth day of the Hellenic month. In our Western calendar, the sixth day began on the evening of 5 October and will last until sunset today (6 October); this changes from month to month.¹

Small things we can do for deities include libations (any consumable liquid), hymns/recitations, offerings of barley, modern candles, etc. Today, I decided to offer Artemis a blue candle that I will gradually burn down for her over the months.² In addition to offering fire, I decided to read Homeric Hymns IX and XXVII. The candle was offered to the Goddess before I began to read the hymns, and I read XXVII before IX. The hymns I read are Daryl Hine’s translation (University of Chicago Press), which lend themselves rhythmically to both recitation and extemporaneous song.

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1 For more on Hellenic holidays or just Hellenic calendars, please reference the following sites:

HMEPA – Synthesizes the Athenian and Western calendars to arrive at a hybrid, relative to the Athenian month.

Ancient Greece: Measurements, Part 2 – Compares several of the Hellenic calendars with one another.

2 This is a compromise; I would burn the entire candle at once if my house did not have a “three-minute burn time” on top of “candles are against the housing policy.” As smokers are allowed to smoke twenty feet from a building, I have decided that this rule also works for candles and incense—I do any religious things that call for such things during the day in a sparsely-trafficked part of campus.

Maxims of Delphi

In a Hellenic Polytheist’s life, there are some pretty interesting decisions that we must make in order to be most effective at our religion. In my opinion, which moral code to follow is among the decisions that each of us must make at some point. The code that I choose to follow is the Delphic Maxims, a collection of 147 sayings of the Seven Sages that are said to come from the mouth of Apollon. While the number of maxims can at times seem overwhelming, it is important to remember that other religions such as Judaism have entire books (Leviticus) that detail correct and incorrect behavior, and that these are often more far-reaching and specific than the ones given to us by Apollon.

My reasons for choosing the Delphic Maxims as opposed to the Golden Verses of Pythagoras or the Tenets of Solon are not inherently complicated. Among the deities who form my extended cultus,¹ Apollon presides over creative arts and divination. Some names of this God include Apollon Delphinius (dolphins were my favorite sea animals growing up), Apollon Musagetes (my voice has literally incited mania in the past—please don’t ask), Apollon Thearius (I apparently have a gift for divination), and Apollon Theoxenius (I have often been a stranger to others in the past).² With this in mind, a moral code that relies on what Apollon said through an Oracle makes more sense to me than something from Solon or Pythagoras. It is another way to honor him in my life. In addition, some codes like the Golden Verses of Pythagoras require vegetarianism, which seems counterintuitive to me because I don’t separate animals from other living beings (plants, fungi, bacteria). I believe that these maxims can help me strive for excellence and live with better moral integrity.

Be overcome by justice. Control yourself. Exercise nobility of character. Listen to everyone. Despise a slanderer. Make just judgments. Do not depend on strength. Venture into danger prudently.³

These are only a few of the Delphic Maxims, but you get the idea. They call on an individual to evaluate the world with a reasoned approach, to minimize the quick-tongued things we say when the blood is hot and the mind is slack. Morality should function to make us more civilized, and it should enhance our ability to arrive at solutions diplomatically. It also provides guidelines for what to do when social situations break down, and guidelines for how to behave as leaders.

Most importantly, though, the ethical and moral system of the Delphic Maxims teaches us to honor the Gods and daemons. It teaches us to think as mortals—to know that, as human beings, we are imperfect and therefore cannot and will not always be right. This is why we must listen to what others say.

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1 As opposed to conventional worship, which encompasses all of the Olympian Gods at their proper times according to the calendar set by Hesiod—all Gods must receive proper respect.

2 Hermes Logios (of speech), Hermes Mekhaniotes (trickster), Hermes Eriounios (luck-bringer), Athene Sophia (of wisdom), and Mnemosyne/the Muses are other Deities who preside more closely over my activities than the other Gods.

3 Hellenotamiai, “Maxims of Delphi.”