Women Writers: Nossis’s Epigrams

Women writers from Ancient Greece survive in fragments. Ancient women were Pythagorean philosophers, lyricists, sexual treatise writers, and poets. The destruction of libraries during wartime, Christian imperialism, and the selective recopying of the Dark Ages monks all contributed to their loss.

I keep hoping that someone will uncover a non-Christian version of the Nag Hammadi library. If polytheists buried sacred statues instead of submitting them to Christian inquisitors, how do we know they didn’t bury texts as well? How do we know that someone didn’t save Sappho or Hypatia?

I'm reading Nossis’s epigrams right now. If you haven’t seen her beautiful poetry, you can find all twelve of her epigrams online. Here’s a taste:

Holy Hera, you who often descend from the heavens
visit your Lacinian sanctuary sweet-scented with incense,
accept the byssus cloak which Teofilis, daughter of Kleochas,
wove for you with Nossis, her noble daughter.

No? What about this:

Nothing is sweeter than Love; and every other joy
is second to it: even the honey I spit out of my mouth.
Thus Nossis says: and who didn't love Kypris,
doesn't know what sort of roses her flowers are.

Women’s poetry is so tasteful and modest, isn’t it?

4,000 Hecatombs, Animal Rights Activists, and a Certain Hindu Goddess

Other blogs (The Wild Hunt, A Heathen’s Day) have already commented on this, but as I figure that few in the English-speaking world take a pro-sacrifice stance, I thought I’d add my voice.

If you haven’t heard, a HUGE sacrifice is happening in Nepal. Between 200,000 and 400,000 animals will be sacrificed to the Goddess of Power, or a projected 2,000 to 4,000 hecatombs. That is a lot of meat.

The demand for the festival has actually gone up in recent years because some adjacent Hindu states have banned animal sacrifice. Conformity to Western (Christian) notions of propriety and animal cruelty have dealt a significant blow to some religious devotees in the region. Binaj Gurubacharya at The Huffington Post comments that “[p]articipants believe that animal sacrifices for the Hindu goddess Gadhimai will end evil and bring prosperity. Many join the festival from the state of Bihar in India, where animal sacrifices have been banned in some areas.”

I don’t support laws against animal sacrifice. Whether it’s because of the current issues with Santería in the United States or because it makes me think of anti-Pagan edicts of the Christian Roman Empire is up for debate.

Animals sacrificed to a deity aren’t, as many Americans seem to think, tortured on an altar for several hours and mutilated in strange ways. They are killed quickly and almost always consumed by ritual participants or sold by sacrificial meat vendors (an exception in pre-Reconstructed Hellenismos would be those animals sacrificed to ancestors/heroes or Chthonic deities because you don’t share meals with those in the Underworld). The situation in Nepal seems to conform to this:

[The festival] begins with the sacrifice of two wild rats, a rooster, a pig, a goat and a lamb before the temple's statue of Gadhimai.

Devotees can then bring their animals into the temple for ritual purification before taking them into the grounds where they will have their throats slit. The meat is distributed and eaten. (“Animal activists protest sacrifice festival,” The Daily Telegraph)

In fact, animal sacrifice in polytheism is more like Kosher slaughtering or the sacrifices done in Eastern Orthodox ceremonies around Easter.*

Animal rights activists need to stop projecting Christian notions of acceptability onto other cultures. Perhaps their great success in curbing commercial slaughterhouse atrocities has made them move on to the next target. Obviously, everyone in the West has already transitioned to a vegetarian diet, and all of us belong to PETA.

Certainly, people within religions that offer animal sacrifice sometimes have moral issues with it. Pythagoras believed that consuming any animal meant cannibalizing one’s spiritual kin, as souls transition among various species on the planet. Orpheus, according to Linda Johnsen’s Lost Masters, substituted wine and bread for the old blood sacrifice. You may recognize this. Christians incorporated some Orphic symbolism into their fictionalizations of Jesus’s life in order to attract converts and Hellenize their teachings. In Nepal, a young man named Ram Bahadur Bamjan has joined the animal rights activists in a crusade against blood sacrifice.

I will stand up for animal sacrifice because I believe in the traditions of my spiritual ancestors and I support the freedom of other religions to kill animals in sacred ritual. Because honestly, if you had to choose, would you pick a slaughterhouse that delights in terror or a shrine that makes the victim sacred?

*Greek-American Assemblyman Michael Gianaris (D-Queens), you are in my thoughts as I make this statement. I was disgusted by your condemnation of Daniel Halloran's comments about animal sacrifice, but maybe you don’t actually know the history of your own faith. Please note that I am a member of the Democratic party and a strong Socialist.

Captivated by Fury

I’m working through Kerényi’s Gods of the Greeks right now during my daily commute. The powerful narrative is an amazing window into the connections among our Theoi. The trinities of goddesses Kerényi illuminates are amazing, and a perfect research opportunity for me to work these powerful divinities into my worship.

More specifically, I’m thinking of developing a small shrine to the Eumenides and the Charites due to the following passage:

In the region where [the tale of Orestes] was told, in the neighbourhood of Megalopolis in Arcadia, sacrifices were made to the Eumenides and the Charites simultaneously. The other name of the Erinyes, the Eumenides, means “the Benevolent”—whether it was that they really became benevolent, or simply that people wished they would do so. (The Gods of the Greeks, 47)

Something about these vengeful goddesses has always enticed me. Perhaps it began when I read the Oresteia and read the beautiful, fury-charged verse Aeschylus made them speak. Some say that Persephone is their mother, and  others that they, like the Charties, are the daughters of Eurynome. I have a weakness for goddesses who stand apart from Zeus as a sort of counterbalance to my weakness for the scions of the Thunder-Pouring Theos.

In the coming weeks, I may write more about this project. Very soon, I am moving into another room to accommodate a sister who is moving in. My entire shrine will be relocated, and this will provide an excellent opportunity to create something for them.

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.

The “Gods” and Google Alerts: Significant Quotation Marks

Many months ago (all right, more like a year ago), I signed up for Google Alerts on several topics so I could feature interesting things here without having to use Google News and/or Google Search every time I felt like making a post. Quite honestly, news breaks most often when one is not working on their blog, and the service promised to keep me up to date on current events.

I chose two keywords when I began, “hellenic polytheism” and “greek gods.” “Hellenic polytheism” seldom gives me anything, and frequently it pings me with materials from my blog or the Hellenic blogs I am subscribed to. “Greek gods,” on the other hand, began a long ordeal over meaning.

Sometimes, news search materials with “greek gods” return stories about fitness (“everyone can look like a Greek god on x diet”), Christianity/Islam (“the sin of polytheism and whoring after false gods made the Greeks and Romans do x, y, or z”), or information about Greek Gods yogurt. Mostly, though, I got things that had nothing to do with the Gods of Hellas, but everything to do with Greek Orthodoxy.

My ire rose steadily month after month as I tried fruitlessly to make Google Alerts give me what I wanted: discourse from people on news sites and blogs about the real Greek Gods—not yogurt, not Christianity, and certainly not hubristic comparisons between dieters/athletes and actual Greek Gods (hubristic mostly because I doubt most of the people on those diets have an understanding of arete or piety). Finally, I attempted one last thing: adding quotation marks around “gods” to see if Google would recognize that the quotation marks meant I didn’t want singulars.

So, yes. If you write “Greek ‘gods’” with “gods” in quotation marks, everything relevant comes up. While nice, this doesn’t feel right for several reasons:

• It means that Google, as opposed to knowing that I want the plural form of the word, thinks that singular and plurals are indistinguishable—or, in terms of my actual Alerts query, that the difference between God and Gods doesn’t matter. (Addendum: the most troubling thing, however, is that searches don’t differentiate “God’s” from “Gods” — this means that Google expects that people won’t know the difference between possessive and plural. I find this TERRIFYING.)
• Quotation marks make the Gods seem less genuine. As many know, quotation marks are commonly used in English to denote irony, falsehood, or imprecision. This is why, when we are sarcastically commenting on someone’s insincerity or doublespeak, we sometimes make quotation mark gestures with our hands. Since finding The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks, I have tried to be very careful about my usage.

Both of these points have counterarguments: if I type “cats” into a search engine, I do want it to ping for the word “cat”; quotation marks, according to some, don’t matter as much now because usage has changed. (I disagree—just click on that link to the blog. It sends me into fits of hysterical laughter every time I read it.) These things matter in more subtle ways, like subliminal messages.

I am not about to stop using the tool because I dislike the message it gives me, though—listening in on the dialogue surrounding our Gods is more important. The change meant creating new filters and typing new keywords into my mail, but the content remained the same—or did it? To learn more, you’ll have to wait for Part Two.

Religious Freedom and Theocracy

Check out this great post on freedom and Hellenic theology over at Evritos’s ΕΛΕΥΘΕΡΙΑ. Here's an enticing excerpt:

For us, Creation (THESIS) and Nature (PHYSIS), two of many primeval forces/deities (PROTOGENOI) present at the beginning of the KOSMOS in (one version of) our creation myth, are themselves expressions of the highest spiritual imperative. For us, this means that everything in the KOSMOS is inherently sacred, which of course includes all of humanity. Logical consistency demands, then, that there are no exceptions to this idea.

I think it expresses the frustrations about theocracy and religious extremism quite well. Religious intolerance and the conversion mentality do not only aggravate community violence in countries like India*, but they also make war on thought. Choice becomes heresy. Hypothesis becomes thoughtcrime. Diversity becomes the enemy.

If any of the terminology Evritos uses mystifies you, download this English translation of Hellenic theological terms. Make sure you have Adobe Reader or an equivalent program installed.

* Christians desecrate sacred statues and call worldview-foreign gods “demons” (or whatever the new buzzword is). Children are sucked into the religion without their parents’ consent and are taught religious intolerance for the “infidels,” creating divides within families. Practitioners of traditional Hindu religions get fed up with this and retaliate. The cycle of violence continues. Here’s a Christian’s account of the issue, if needed.

Marriage Equality (AKA Kayleigh's Fury of Political Righteousness)

At some point, I may have commented that I would voice my thoughts on homosexuality and marriage in a more public place than I have used in the past, and now seems an appropriate time. Maine has just voted against extending marriage to same-sex couples, and while I am not a citizen of Maine, I despise seeing others force religious teachings into laws.

A Brief Detour

YSEE and the Societas Hellenica Antiquariorum (organizations in Greece) both have policies against homosexuality. The Societas Hellenica Antiquariorum prohibits people of alternative sexualities from being religious officials and marriage ceremonies because homosexuality is a “physical defect.” YSEE doesn’t support marriage equality because, back in the good old days of arranged Athenian marriages, it just wasn’t done. I am unsure whether YSEE is publicly coming out against marriage equality because they feel politically intimidated by the Orthodox Church or if they sincerely think marriage equality will destroy Hellenic tradition as we know it.

People debated those organizations’ stances several months ago. I don’t want to focus on them, mostly because I don’t want the comments to turn into a flamefest. (Consider this a moratorium.) Rather, I will focus on the United States.

Polytheism and Marriage Equality

Polytheists who don’t support marriage equality have very little to base it on. In the ancient world, arranged marriages generally prevented people from making any choice at all. Only in the modern Western world do we see the emphasis on love as a necessary factor. In Disney movies, weddings always happen, no matter what the social differences between the two may be: Cinderella and Prince Charming, Aladdin and Jasmine, Shrek and Fiona. Arranged marriages, the common Western wisdom says, only happen in third-world countries where women are treated like chattel.

“Arguments” Against

If love is now necessary in the West for community approval of a marriage, how is love between two men or two women any different from love between a man and a woman? Of course children cannot be produced in the same way, but how many married straight couples use adoption? How many don’t have children at all? With a population exceeding humanity’s carrying capacity (see: third world starvation), we cannot afford to believe that fertility is most important in a marriage. Indeed, overpopulation is killing humanity!

The immorality argument about homosexuality, along with the belief that civil marriage is against religious freedom, are both false. Think about all of the faiths that do have liturgy for same-sex unions. Unitarian Universalism. Wicca. Evangelical Lutheranism. United Church of Christ. What about their religious freedom to perform same-sex unions? What about atheists, who have no religious prohibitions against any behavior at all? In the West, the immorality argument comes from Judeo-Christian thought and the Book of Leviticus. (Christians who take Leviticus literally, when is the last time you had a mold-infested garment looked at by your priest?)

What about marrying cows or young children? How is “gay marriage” any different? These things cannot happen because marriage is restricted to sentient adults (and some teenagers with their parents’ permission). A cow cannot offer consent. A four-year-old girl cannot offer consent. A human of any age with a severe mental disability cannot, in most cases, offer consent. Spock’s father could. Chewbacca (oh, mental images!) could.

Reality Reloaded

Legislation against marriage equality is invalid, even if backed by popular vote, because the arguments against it are religious. Religion does not belong in American legislation, no matter how much the closet Dominionists want it to. Anti-equality laws are no more constitutional than those declaring one state or another Christian (one of which was passed in Missouri, where I lived for two-thirds of my childhood). The slope between legislation like this and legislation requiring [an equally unconstitutional] religious litmus test for public office is slippery (or even between this and religious indoctrination in public schools). Incidentally—and yes, slightly off-topic—religious favoritism is also why creationism or intelligent design should NEVER be taught in science classrooms.

The Place of Hellenic Polytheism

So, with that said, what do I think about marriage equality and Hellenic Polytheism? I think that religious ceremonies should exist for those in places where marriage equality is allowed, simply because this covers all bases.

What about tradition? I’m not talking about changing the marriage ritual for heterosexual couples, or even making same-sex couples use it. I’m talking about supplementing what exists now with something done in the Hellenic spirit, or at least admitting that such a thing is possible. We have done this before. Heliogenna, a Hellenic Winter Solstice celebration, is a response to Christmas and Yule. Dedicated people translated the spirit of the season into Hellenic terms and ended up with something meaningful.

There is a difference between reconstruction as a cage and reconstruction as a road. The road takes you places, some scary, some comforting. A cage leads nowhere but death.

Image credit: “Athena god statue” by mpalis on iStockPhoto.