Online Temple of Rhea-Kybele

The Temple of Rhea-Kybele has existed for a while, but I have finally fiddled with the CSS enough to make the E-temenos interesting.



I decided to use lions in the main banner theme because Rhea-Kybele is strongly associated with lions. The background is a stock photo image of incense sticks burning, and I tried to go for natural colors that reflect Rhea-Kybele's nature.

Unfortunately, the sanctuary image needs to be replaced. Very few decent images of Rhea-Kybele exist online, so I am creating my own.

Happy Pyanepsia, Everyone!

On this day, we celebrate Theseus's return from Crete with an offering to Apollon. Upon arriving back in Athens, Theseus boiled all remaining stores in a pot—mostly beans—in thanks for his safety.


While I won't be offering a bean stew to the god due to a wedding I am attending today, I will offer him (raw) beans and/or some kind of grain, depending on what we have in the storage cabinets. This festival has a “give what you have” feel to it, so I won't dwell too much on the difference.

For those with the time, here's a recipe for Greek bean stew from the Austerity Kitchen. Enjoy.

Image credit: stock.xchng

News Just In: The Taliban Suck, Look Forward to Extended Tartarian Stay

People in the blogosphere have gone a great job so far of highlighting a terrible occurrence in the world of the Kalash: Professor Athanasion Larounis, a Greek aid worker assisting them, has been kidnapped by the Taliban. The Taliban are asking the Kalash to pay them a huge ransom—half to two-thirds of the $2.5 million Professor Larounis has raised to assist the Kalash—and return three arrested Taliban leaders.

Alternatively, according to someone on Hellenic_Recons who has asked around in Greece, the Kalash can all convert to Islam and the Taliban will drop the ransom and return the professor unscathed.

If true, this is an outrage to polytheists and indigenous tribes all around the world. For those who don't know, the Kalash are one of the last polytheistic holdouts in the Muslim world. They worship an Indo-European pantheon with divine names similar to Greek and Hindu deities, and they claim that they descended from Alexander the Great's soldiers.


The Taliban, in pressuring the Kalash to change their faith and/or give the Taliban funding, have proven that they're not afraid of sinking to new depths of slime and pollution to fuel their agenda of hate.

If the Kalash pay the ransom and negotiate with the Taliban—yup, that's their brilliant plan right now—they are providing money to a terrorist organization that will be used to buy more bombs and weapons to hurt people. Paying up will also show the Taliban that they can count on abducting aid workers to the Kalash to raise their much-desired funds. THIS IS A REALLY BAD IDEA!

We need to be a lot louder about this, guys, if there's any hope of an alternative solution to securing Professor Larounis. If you haven't blogged about this yet, please say something.

To learn more:

Taliban targets descendants of Alexander the Great - Telegraph (UK)
Kalasha Peoples Call For Cultural Survival - Kalash

Image Credit: Kalashapeople.org - This comes from one of their recent protest images, showcasing the beautiful cultural dress of Kalasha women.

It's Not Just Sappho

The love god with his golden curls
puts a bright ball into my hand,
shows a girl in her fancy shoes,
and suggests that I take her.

Not that girl—she's the other kind,
one from Lesbos. Disdainfully,
nose turned up at my silver hair,
she makes eyes at the ladies.

— Anácreon of Teos, trans. Richmond Lattimore

Don't Look Back

Thanks to Autostraddle for pointing to this game in their latest post. “Don't Look Back” follows Orpheus's journey into the Underworld after the death of Eurydice. In the myth, Orpheus makes his way to the Spartan Gates and sings his wishes to Persephone and Hades:

Great god and goddess, appointed to govern in Hades,
into which every living creature relapses,
if it is rightful for me, if I am permitted
to shun all evasions, speaking the truth to you plainly,
know that I have not come down here to your kingdom
just for the view, or to chain up the three-headed Cerberus,
that monstrous child of Medusa, bristling with serpents;
my wife is the cause of my journey: she stepped on an adder
whose venom cut her life short as it spread through her body.
I won't deny that I wished to—and tried to—endure it,
but Love overcame me. Above, this god is quite famous;
whether he has the same status down here, I'm not certain,
but even so, I would think him to be as well known,
for unless that tale of long-ago rape was invented,
the selfsame deity joined the pair of you, also!
If that's the case, then I, by all of these frightening places,
by mighty Chaos and by this realm of the silent, I beg you
to weave once again Eurydice's fate, done too swiftly.

Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book X, ln. 26 - 43.

The King and Queen of the Dead are moved. The Furies weep. Orpheus receives Eurydice on one condition: he cannot look back at her until they have safely reached the world of the living.


“Don't Look Back” covers Orpheus's journey to the Underworld from Eurydice's grave. On the way, you fight hooded snakes and tentacled monsters that drop down from ceilings. There are also flying things (bats?) that will kill you and make you redo a scene. It looks fairly awesome, and as my gaming skills are somewhat below geek standard, someone else should get to the end so I can find out whether it ends exactly like the myth or not. I'm hoping that any scene between Orpheus and the rulers of the Underworld involves keypad-based Lute Hero.

The game was developed by Terry Cavanagh and is available through Kongregate.

From the Apollon Groupie With Love

In less than an hour, I will be outside in the balmy 46°F (8°C) weather hoping that my hands don't freeze as I try to light a charcoal burner and say a few prayers to Apollon.

Apollon and I have a special relationship in the sense that, if he were a rock star, I would be considered one of the groupies who has never missed a concert and has only once or twice missed downloading a new album the second it appeared on a digital music store for the sole purpose of listening before the express-ordered CD arrived at the house the following morning. Not everyone wants a dedicated relationship like that, and it would detract from the chill prime time drama quality that the current English-speaking Hellenic Polytheist community has.

Some may consider that relationship with Apollon a bit unorthodox. Devoting oneself to a specific God or Goddess requires careful consideration to make sure other Gods are given appropriate cultus. For the unorthodox bits, I find a lot of support in looking beyond the Hellenic community to podcasts such as Speaking of Faith.

The episode called “The Ecstatic Faith of Rumi” initially drew me in because the page has an amazing work of photoart. I had not heard of Rumi before, but he was an Islamic mystic and poet from the 13th century. Islamic poets like Rumi who express the divine so beautifully provide such a stark contrast with the exclusivist monotheism at the core of the Islamic tradition that it's a wonder the religions are the same.

In the program, Krista Tippett introduces concepts surrounding Rumi, saying that

Rumi imprinted that movement with a vividly sensual and poetic practice of spirituality that has been provocative and controversial across the ages. He crafted some of his most religious ideas in the form of erotically toned love poetry, which seems at once addressed to Allah or God and to an earthly beloved. Rumi inspired the practice of the whirling dervishes by spinning around a column as he recited his poems.

As a woman profoundly motivated by the experience of poetry and words—something that goes along with a devotion to Apollon—it makes sense to mingle erotic language with descriptions of the divine experience. Everyone can experience the bliss of knowing the Gods with the proper concentration and ritualistic trappings. We frame bliss in erotic language because it arouses similar feelings that sometimes confuse the body into physical desire.

I love reading spiritual love poetry. Good poets invoke those blissful states through physical and emotional sensations.

My poetry for Apollon sometimes aims at this, but I leave some of the more ecstatic pieces unposted/unpublished because I'm not sure of how they would be received. A poem about finding Apollon in literature for the first time is written as a night in his bedchamber. A poem exploring his role in plague becomes an examination of fever and exploitation.

Bliss isn't pretty. It sometimes doesn't take us where we want to go. Sometimes, we prepare for it and it doesn't show up at all.

Poetry can be a vehicle of bliss because it codes emotions and experience. It's one of Apollon's links to something that many may not consider rational—something that seems to fly in the face of what the God stands for.

However, Apollon also said that we must exercise moderation in all things. Maybe reason is one of them.

Image from stock.xchng.

Important update

As part of a movement towards professionalism, I have changed the URL for KALLISTI.

The URL was http://pandemoniumapple.blogspot.com.
It is now http://kallisti.writingkaye.com.

If you can't get to it, don't despair! Google will start redirecting you in a few days.

However, none of the boxes I have set up --- Charity: Water, AdSense, etc. --- will work. (Also, if you haven't done so already, head to my new URL and click on the Charity: Water button in the right column. Clickers have provided 320ish gallons of clean water for people who don't have it so far if I am reading the dial properly.)

My service is still based on Blogger. I will probably not switch to Wordpress.

Hiding Aphrodite

Once the Roman Empire adopted Christianity as its state religion, numerous laws designed to reduce the influence of polytheistic religion—and eventually ban it altogether—came into effect. Among these is the Theodosian Code, which says the following about freedom of practice and belief:

Theodosian Code XVI.1.2

It is our desire that all the various nation which are subject to our clemency and moderation, should continue to the profession of that religion which was delivered to the Romans by the divine Apostle Peter, as it has been preserved by faithful tradition and which is now professed by the Pontiff Damasus and by Peter, Bishop of Alexandria, a man of apostolic holiness. According to the apostolic teaching and the doctrine of the Gospel, let us believe in the one diety of the father, Son and Holy Spirit, in equal majesty and in a holy Trinity. We authorize the followers of this law to assume the title Catholic Christians; but as for the others, since in out judgment they are foolish madmen, we decree that the[y] shall be branded with the ignominious name of heretics, and shall not presume to give their conventicles the name of churches. They will suffer in the first place the chastisement of divine condemnation an the second the punishment of out authority, in accordance with the will of heaven shall decide to inflict. [source]

Many of us polytheists understand that the transition from polytheism to monotheism did not happen smoothly, but was aided by discrimination, coercion, and persecution. Pious Hellenic Polytheists resisted these orders both openly and covertly.

Archeology Daily News reveals that some polytheists even safeguarded divine images by burying them:

An ancient treasure comprising three figurines of Aphrodite, the goddess of love, which was buried underground for over 1,500 years, was uncovered during the tenth season of excavations that are carried out by researchers of the Zinman Institute of Archaeology at the University of Haifa, headed by Prof. Arthur Segal and Dr. Michael Eisenberg. “It is possible that during the fourth century A.D., when Christianity was gradually becoming the governing religion in the Roman Empire, there were still a number of inhabitants in Sussita who remained loyal to the goddess of love and therefore wished to hide and preserve these items,” suggests Prof. Segal.

The hidden figurines were discovered when the researchers exposed a shop in the southeastern corner of the forum district of Sussita, which is the central area of the Roman city that was built in the second century B.C., existed through the Roman and Byzantine periods and destroyed in the great earthquake of 749 A.D. According to the researchers, it was clear that the followers had wished to hide the figurines, as they were found complete. The clay pieces are 23 cm tall and represent the common model of the goddess of love known to the experts as Venus pudica, "the modest Venus." This name was given to the form due to its upright stature and the figure's covering her private parts with the palm of her hand—perhaps another reason for concealing them from the new religion that presided over the empire. [source]

This is wonderful news for polytheists because it provides the modern world with unharmed images of Aphrodite. Christians defaced so many of our sacred images during the persecutions in the first millennium C.E. that the discovery of intact figurines is heartening.

If our polytheistic predecessors truly hid these items to escape scrutiny, perhaps some ancient pagan somewhere hid our important texts. I, for one, would love it if archaeologists found the complete works of Sappho and several more plays by Aeschylus.

Practical Tolerance: Making Peace Without Backing Down

Something primal attracted each of us to Hellenic Polytheism—a belief in the Gods, perhaps, or the sense that those silent museum statues were saying something profound about the human experience. Polytheism captivates us because it is unlike what we know. It has a simple (but not primitive) system of morality. Hospitality, compassion, and courage are parts of our religion.

Religious tolerance exists within our tradition as well. As Solon advised, we should respect the Gods. One of the best arguments for religious tolerance based on Solon was provided by a secularist comparing the Ten Commandments of Moses to the Ten Commandments of Solon. He writes:

[W]e see how much more Solon's single religious commandment can be made to suit our society and our civic ideals: it does not have to restrict religious freedom, for it does not demand that we believe in anyone's god or follow anyone's religious rules. It remains in the appropriate plural. Solon asks us to give the plethora of gods the regard that they are due, and we can say that some gods are not due much--such as the racist gods and gods of hellfire. In the end, it is good to be respectful of the gods of others, which we can do even if we are criticizing them, even if we disbelieve in them.

One may argue (and quite validly) that Ancient Greek societies [read: Athens] were religiously conservative. Religious conservatism doesn’t mean that they couldn’t have respect for different traditions in other city-states and countries. In fact, it was considered taboo for armies to defile foreign sanctuaries. Just look at the consequences of Aias violating Cassandra in the Iliad.

However, polytheists have been a considerable minority in the West since the widespread murder (is it genocide if the people being killed are of the same ethnic background?) and forced conversion practiced wherever Christianity gained broad political backing. Look at The Passion of the Greeks, this YouTube video series, and YSEE’s list of atrocities for more information (note: I don't support YSEE because they don't support having some kind of religious ceremony for homosexual commitment ceremonies, but you're welcome to check them out because they provide good articles).

The most common religions in the West—Christianity, Islam, and (by extension) Judaism—have controlled it for ~1500 years. Our religion and freedom of thought are an anathema to their very dogma. Let me highlight one specific moment of “I can't believe someone actually said that!”:

Murder, rape, child molesting and genocide. These are all some of the appalling crimes which occur in our world today. Many would think that these are the worst possible offences [sic] which could be committed. But there is something which outweighs all of these crimes put together: It is the crime of shirk (associating partners with the sole Lord and Creator).

Some people may question this notion. But when viewed in a proper context, the fact that there is no crime worse then shirk, will become evident to every sincere person.

– From “Shirk (Polytheism): The Ultimate Crime,” Islaam.ca

Christianity also condemns polytheism as a sin against their deity: “The exclusivity of the Gospel is not merely a facet of the church's message. Indeed, a Gospel that does not affirm that salvation comes through faith in Jesus Christ alone is not the Gospel of Christ, but a false gospel. As Lisa Miller correctly recites, Jesus did say, "I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me." [John 14:6]” [source]

As this shows—and as many of us already realize—the problem of intolerance is rooted in religions that consider themselves the one universal way to salvation. I have trouble believing that a Jewish rabbi with a message for the Jewish people intended to start Christianity, mostly because I think that taking the Jewish religious narrative away from them trivializes their cultural identity by making their origins and rituals common to everyone.

Unfortunately, as polytheists we need to deal with people who want us to convert. Unlike a mystery religion, converting to monotheism requires giving up our freedom to think and choose who and how we want to worship. It means incorporating a different ritual language. Sacred offerings at shrines become swear words. Heinous acts of violence become martyrdom.

Monotheists have the right to pray in their closets and congregate on Fridays, Saturdays, or Sundays. They do not have the right to commit hate crimes against our minds. They do not have the right to view us as criminals. They do not have the right to Witness to others without consequence, no matter how much their Pauline faith or sacred text demands this, just as I don’t have the right to demand civic participation in sacrifice. Their behavior is unacceptable in decent society.

Besides, if their religions don’t teach them to honor other human beings’ beliefs, what is monotheism good for? If we all commit to mind our own business and not force others into our faith without their consent, the world will be a better place.

I'm interested in hearing how other polytheists deal with or avoid intolerant individuals and institutions. Where do you put the line between genuinely practicing religion and harming others? What do you do to ensure that our religious freedoms will be kept safe?

Giving Back to the Community

For those of you who don't use an RSS reader, you may have noticed that I have a new item in my sidebar. Recently, I heard about something called SocialVibe, which is an effort to raise money for charities through bloggers' sites, and decided to join.

Charity: Water is my nonprofit choice because it provides clean water to people who don't have it. Many wars in water-scarce regions—and many genocides—may be linked to long-term food and water shortages that create animosity between groups. I'm not sure that the sponsor assigned to me by SocialVibe adequately fits what my readership is interested in, but you can be the judge of that.

If you have a blog, I encourage you to join me. If you are looking for other ways to contribute to society, consider joining the Google Group Polytheist Charity, which provides resources for polytheists looking to positively impact the world. Polytheist Charity recently completed the Genocide Prevention Ritual Project, which raised awareness in our communities of genocide and associated human rights abuses.

Orpheus's Lyre and Aphrodite's Rock

Most readers likely know about the colossal statue of Apollon discovered in Turkey. According to Discovery News, the statue stood four meters tall—that's double the height of Darth Vader—and is currently divided into two fragments. No word yet on where the head and limbs have gone, or why (as some have stated on the Yahoo! lists) the photograph on Discovery News shows a figure that seems to have breasts.

You may recall this post, which highlighted an artist's attempt to modernize the Greek Gods by incorporating Apple technology into his sculptures. What next? Glad you asked. According to Archaeology Daily News, the Bulgarians have recreated Orpheus's lyre.

The instrument, which is 40 centimetres long, was made from cycamore [sic] tree and a turtle' s hollow. According to national media, although the original idea was to make the instrument from materials that were as close as possible to the authentic ones, it turned out that no animal species existed from which to get 45-centimetre-long horns.

Forty-five-centimeter-long horns. This makes me wonder ... did Orpheus have access to dinosaur horns? Some of those armored herbivores had horns that are within the length requirements. However, the Bulgarians may have had issues getting the materials from those hoarding paleontologists.

I think that a reconstruction of Orpheus's lyre is beyond cool. However, I would like to hear some audio tracks to assess their instrument's quality. Ahem.

Aphrodite is possibly the most popular goddess among people who disbelieve in or reject the Gods in favor of a secondary religious philosophy. It comes as no surprise, then, that Aphrodite's Rock—the birthplace of the Cyprian Goddess—is being damaged by graffiti. The lovestruck individuals who make pilgrimages to the rock, without a sense of the place's sacredness, find it incredibly romantic to deface anything large enough to fit “Jack ♥ Sherry.”

Bejay Browne from the Internet edition of Cyprus Mail reports that “[p]eoples’ names, telephone numbers and capital cities, have been written in mainly, English, Greek, Russian and Sri Lankan and some are carved into the rock.”

Local residents dislike the irreverence tourists have for the site, and many want perpetrators to face large fines. Marios Georghiou, a Kouklia resident, suggests that a structure be put up to accommodate love messages.

This idea, if carried out properly, would probably function as a sneaky shrine, allowing hundreds—if not thousands—of monotheists to worship our Gods without knowing it. It would also provide an appropriate outlet for polytheists to revere Aphrodite.

Coming Like Quicksilver with the Rising Sun

Hermes Eriounes has answered my prayers in very interesting ways. Firstly, as seems fitting with the God who presides over communication, things have evolved over the networking chain, and these opportunities fall under his purview.

I bought an entire box of Japanese incense for him (because, after a while of using it, Indian incense just seems too smoky), and I need to make some cakes. May he continue to bless me so I can perform my duties with enthusiasm and skill.

Today, I walked down the street to the bus station so thankful that he has presented me with something that uses my skills, something that will challenge me to develop as a professional. I have had so many doubts about where I'm headed that it's nice to see something finally happen.