The “Gods” and Google Alerts: Turn Up the Signal, Wipe Out the Noise

Quotation marks had solved my problem for good. No longer did I have posts by Christians decrying stuff that had nothing to do with polytheism. No longer did I have very many insipid news articles by people reviewing diets or praising sports heroes. The dialogue on Google Alerts these past few weeks has been enlightening. Here’s what I learned:

Christians and atheists discuss our Gods more often than polytheists of any stripe. Perhaps this is because both parties outnumber us (at least in the English-speaking world). Christians generally talk about the Greek gods when they want to back up Paul’s policy of preaching to and converting Gentiles. Atheists mention the Greek gods when they compare the barbarous, illogical Hellenic myths to the genocide-promoting, illogical Christian Bible, or Jesus’s demigod colleagues in the menagerie of Mediterranean beliefs, or (mostly) when they are trying to prove that religion is meaningless now that we know how things happen with the power of super science.

Samples from this category:

“Dual interpretation of Netziv Melach, from Ovid” — This writer has decided that Ovid’s Philemon and Baucis tale comments on the Biblical narrative of the destruction of Sodom. I don’t think so, but at least people are reading Ovid.

A Post from the Christian Forums — Someone decides they don’t know anything about the “Pagan Faith” and decides that the Christian Forums are the best venue to learn about them. From Pagans.

“Back to the Good Ol’ Days of Paganism?” — “Oh, yes. Let’s imagine a world without the Judeo-Christian command to love one’s neighbor. Let’s imagine a world in which every individual is not made in the image and likeness of God. Let’s imagine a world in which the gods can be even more capricious and wicked than their own worshipers. Let’s imagine a world in which wars were neither just nor unjust, but instead just a fact of life.” Yet another Christian mistakenly believes that, without Biblical guidance, the world will sink into an evil cesspool of moral relativism. The post they linked to, “Unhappy Thoughts on Religon,” was kind of awesome because the writer wished everyone a happy Thesmophoria.

Hype surrounding the Percy Jackson film will make your semi-daily Google Alerts E-mail explode with mostly-irrelevant information. I’m not going to go into this movie, mostly because I saw the trailer and facepalmed about fifteen times. This film will probably create an influx of preteens who insist that they’re Artemis’s daughter because they saw a deer and it didn’t try to run away. I am also dreading it because it looks like a superhero flick and I actually really dislike it when people turn our deities into superheroes. I would rather see the film industry create short films of the Homeric Hymns or invest money in a Rome-esque television drama. (Twenty-four books is at least enough for two seasons, not to mention all of the satellite stories.)

Information on the Gods takes a back seat to explanations of the Gods’ myths, really creative plays, and art exhibition announcements. However, at least people are motivated by the Gods to create things of beauty and to transmit their myths to the wayward souls of the Internet.

Seriously, check it out:

“Apollo and Hyacinthus” — This is both an explanation of the myth and a collection of images from various historical periods. The writer, the Pandorian, has also included a video of Mozart’s version of their story.

“Review: This Dionysus has rock-star flair” — Euripides meets modern rock and roll.

Overall, I’m pleased with how the search change worked out and the amount of information I can glimpse at without needing to sift through all of the news articles about anti-polytheism laws in Islam (shirk) and Christians talking about YHVH. Most of what exists on the Internet, however, is not very favorable to Hellenic Polytheism. People treat it as primitive. They emphasize how wayward the Ancient Greeks were before they found Jesus, or how grateful they are to have Biblical morality because Biblical morality is somehow better than the polytheistic equivalent.

The gems, though, are things Google Alerts gives me that focus on polytheism and my Gods without tiptoeing around: archeology, theater, art, mythology, and polytheistic commentary. It doesn’t happen as often as I would like, but this way I actually recognize it as precious, deriving more meaning from it even though the noise threatens to drown out the signal.