Barefoot you amble through wilds Well-crowned with mists of the evergreen. Flowers raise their petals in joy as you pass. Beasts bow their heads in humility. “Our Lady has come!” Announce the birds chirping proudly. “She’s come!” Accompany the whispers of the treetops And the rustle of the woods chants your holy name.
Hello it’s me again with a post I was meant to put online three weeks ago! I’ve done several of these: Artemis-Demeter - I also made one for Hermes during my 30 days challenge but I’ve just realized it’s quite short so I will be making a new one again at some point in the future.
What are devotional acts?
Devotional acts, or devotional activities/practices are things one can do in order to honor a deity, just like one would do with physical offerings or prayer. In short, instead of giving, say, wine, you will offer time and energy (the mundane one). You would typically look at a deity’s domains and pick some things related to them.
So here is a list of things you might do, in the hope that it would spark some ideas. Of course the list in non-exhaustive !
☀️Study academic fields (sciences or humanities) - dedicating your studies to him can be one of the easiest devotional act you can do. Can be for school/uni/work or simply your research related to the hellenic path. He’s all about the pursuit of knowledge so no matter the field, you can dedicate this time to him. It’s a side of him that is a bit forgotten as people will think of Athena first, but it is completely in line with his domains as a god of Knowledge and Education.
☀️ Art and Music making and appreciation - he is the god of music and all the fine arts so you can dedicate the practice of these things to him and call upon his aid to develop your skills and sensibilities. The mastery of Arts requires the combination of technical skills, emotional sensibility, the capacity to break down things mentally, and the creativity to bring out solutions, things that are his domains as a god of Reason and Expression. If you don’t make art, you can simply dedicate some time to your appreciation of those fields by going to an exhibition or a concert.
☀️Honoring the Muses - his epithet Musagetesmeans leader of the muses and is meant to connect him to the Arts, as previously mentioned. However, you could also take that more litteraly and devote your time forming a relationship with the Muses to him.
☀️Write and appreciate poetry - made this a separate entry for how important this was to the Ancients. Without judging yourself, write your thoughts and feelings freely and see it as an expression of your mind and soul. Alternatively, lose yourself into the writings of others.
☀️ Working around health - Apollo is the god who inflicts but also relieves plagues, and the father of Asclepios. He is thus linked to the medical field and any practice related to that would be a great idea. One of his epithets, Acestor, means healer.
☀️Philosophy- Apollo is the patron of those who seek truth and wisdom, so not only would studying philosophies and religions be a neat idea, the most important would be to adopt that mindset and make sure you reflect on your values, the meaning of your life, your place in society, etc… The delphic maxims can be a good place to start, not to use them as dogmas but rather to stimulate your own thoughts and spark questions. When I think of Apollo I think of a god who wants us to keep questioning the world and ourself and push us to a better understanding of things and to build our own sense of ethics.
☀️Introspection - As an extension of that, practising a form of introspection as a way to shed light on the most unknown parts of yourself and seeking understanding of your whole self. Keep an journal to write down your introspection sessions can be a great devotional act and would draw his good influence upon you.
☀️Pursue the best version of yourself (with kindness) - to some extent all gods want to see you become the best version of yourself, but I don’t know why, maybe it’s a bit of an UPG, but I see Apollo as the one who thrives for perfection the most and works hard for that. Just be careful that this doesn’t become unhealthy and that you are always doing this with kindness and love for yourself.
☀️Celebrate the blessings the light and the warmth of the sun gives us - he isn’t the Sun himself (that is Helios) but he is undeniably linked to the Sun and its light so he is the one I go to when I want to celebrate the bright season and its blessings. Personally I intend to celebrate the summer solstice with him.
☀️Practice methods of divination - he is the god of prophecy and oracles and one you can go to to improve your ability to divine. He isn’t the only god whose domain is of one form of divination (Hermes has ornithomancy and astragyromancy, and Zeus had oracles), but he was the one who spoke through the Pythia so you can dedicate the development of your psychic senses to him. Also, Tarot is a relatively modern invention but I link it to him due to the fact that it’s an elaborated system through which spontaneous insight arises.
☀️Teaching- giving a drawing or music class, or just anything really. The idea of transferring your knowledge and allowing someone else to become more skilled at something. Especially great with the youth since Apollo is one of its protectors.
☀️Crafting things for your altar - maybe you want to make a laurel wreath (his sacred plant) to DIY your altar, or what about a scented candle containing solar plants, you could also use clay to shape little elements that you will paint later as a decoration. The possibilities are endless!
☀️Note on donations: an alternative to practising the activities I previously mentioned, you could also give your money to those causes and domains. For example: by supporting local artists or health-workers.
Why people hating on Zeus equals to hating on a whole ancient society and… it’s kinda dumb
If you have been in the part of social media that discusses ancient religions or ancient mythology you might know Zeus is hated badly. If you worship Zeus like I do I’m pretty sure you are aware of how many people actually waste times of their live doing bad jokes of how every woman on ancient Greece was pregnant with Zeus’s kid or another type of bullshit, and I’m tired of that. There are already like 100 posts on other Zeus worshippers giving their take on this topic but you know what? I want to be the 101 so here I am. I’f you hate Zeus I ask you nicely to grab your coffee, water, tea, whatever, sit and read this post.
this post is written with a target audience of people who do not have much knowledge aside from the myths and what social media say, I’ll be including the very basic theological and cultural aspects of Ancient Greece in this post so let’s consider this a baby course into epithets and the human kind changing their ethic code through time.
Before we officially start I’m sure some Zeus haters already have arguments to throw at me as soon as they finish reading this post so let me tell you, as a MUN delegate who’s obsessed with debate, some argument starters I won’t even read if you start a sentence with them:
“I believe or I think” I’m sorry but I don’t care about your personal biases I want facts.
“X media thing portrays” x media or x author is not a reliable source of information, unless it’s a historian with good background resources or reliable sources I won’t even take it in mind
“In other religions…” this is hellenism not other religions
“But in x myth” myths are not literal
“But x deity” all deities are different
Anyways, let’s start with what’s a myth, the merriam webster dictionary says a myth is “a usually traditional story of ostensibly historical events that serves to unfold part of the world view of a people or explain a practice, belief, or natural”. My religion teacher back on catholic school also added to this definition a “moral code or cultural reflection religions implied into their followers”, and it’s accurate.
In baby words, myths explain things our society can’t explain while also reflecting our culture and behaviours.
Clear? Clear.
History has shown us that many religions don’t take their myths completely literally, most times they take them as metaphors or teachings to follow or simply they use them as propaganda to increase certains individual power, and this includes Ancient Greeks. If a king wanted to increase his power to scare people that may want to rebel he could easily say he was the child of Zeus, which is an explanation to why so many kings and heroes were kids of the all-mighty deity. Ancient Greeks also had to find a way to explain different phenomenons, and as many cultures before and after them, myths were a perfect way of doing so. To finish with myths and their uses, as many religions did and still do, the ancient Greeks needed a way to spread lessons to their people without the need of sitting them down and literally teaching them. Instead of doing this they preferred giving examples of things not to do. What makes Hellenism so different to actual modern religions is that the practice was and is more important that the actually texts, that can be a base but at the end of the day they are not the structure of the religion.
Now, a huge mistake many people commit is thinking the myths we nowadays read are the original myths. That’s a mistake. Ingrid Holmberg says in her essay titled as The Creation of the Ancient Greek Epic Cycle “Their research (addressing Milman Parry and Albert Lord.) and the research of their followers has revealed that the Greek epic oral tradition formed a huge, interconnected, and variegated web of legendary and mythical narratives that comprised the corpus of the epic cycle(…).” Harvard university also addresses this topic by saying “Basically, the “question” came down to this: were the Homeric poems composed with or without the aid of writing? Parry’s project, the comparing of Homeric poetry with the living oral traditions of South Slavic heroic poetry, led him to conclude that the Homeric texts were indeed the products of oral composition.”
So tell me, years of investigation affirms that the myths were told from mouth to mouth, the poets did not write their original work down but after many years later someone did… the version written is a version passed generation from generation by someone who heard them from their parents who heard them from their grandparents that might have edited and changed the original version for hundreds of years. Knowing all this areyou’re still going to judge a culture and a religion through myths? Really? Because that’s plainly dumb.
Let me give you an example, I write you a message and then pass it through google translator 20 times, and send it. And actually did! The message I’ll translate 20 times is “Hello dear readers of the internet, this is an experiment with google translator to explain how dumb is to literally judge a myth that has been changed hundreds of times. Not only that, a myth that reflected a society with different a ethic code, in some hundreds of years if society still exists they are going to judge some things we do… so em don’t waste your time on that”. After passing that message through 20 different languages in google translator this is how it ended up: Hello, dear internet reader, you will be judged not only by this, but also by some of the hundreds of years that we have done with the growth of social networks … so don’t waste time. Don’t waste.
I’m not trying to say that historians and their translations are as bad as google translator, I know this people have studied years to do what they do, I’m just saying that the original stories were told so many times that we have hundreds of adaptations and changes. Here’s an example, if you read a copy of the iliad written by x guy and then grab another copy written by another guy… you’ll find many differences in the translation.
Now that we got the translation clear thing you’ll probably still say “yeah anyways still myths say Zeus is a pr3d4tor who cheated on his wife muuultiple times”. And to that I’ll laugh ten minutes because yeah but no. Look at my beautiful hazel and eyes and tell me, do you think Ancient Greek men cared about women? And how they were treated? and how they were portrayed in the moment of explaining things?
If you say yes I beg you to go study some history.
If you say no, bingo.
A year a go I went down the rabbit whole of homosexuality in the ancient world, wrote an essay on it, and I found out men repeled women and they saw them as baby machines (i mean, some still do) so some societies had this idea that the closest relationship to love you could have with someone was with another man. So, understand that the ancient world didn’t give a damn about women. Most myths shows them as trophies, that’s no surprise for anyone at this point. So of course, they saw women as baby machines and as myths are reflections of society, do you really expect the Ancient Greeks to portray them as something else aside baby creators? Nooo!!!! Ofc they were not going to do that, they needed mothers to give an explanation to the hundreds of kings saying they were Zeus’s kids, and they found them.
Okay now, some of you may ask why did he “cheat” on Hera… more cultural aspects being reflected. Here’s what Jennifer Larson the writer of Ancient Greek cults has to say:
Now that we closed the marriage ethic issue The Zeus has many child joke or insult is even dumber because kids were so important for the social status in that era that they stablished the social status. During all Human’s story, money establishes your place in the social status: the more you have the higher you are. This also applied in the Ancient Greece. By having more kids it meant you had more to offer and to sustain your family, basically more kids = more money = more power = higher rank.
Studying children and childhood is of great importance because it provides insight into social norms and social life in ancient Greece. Children were important for the parents, the home, and city. Not having children led to inability to pass on the property and wealth of the father.
If Zeus, the KING of the gods and mortals, father of humanity, doesn't have a lot of children then what do you think it would do to how Ancient Greeks perceived him huh. If they measured by kids ofc their higher deity had to have a lot because that gave him power, please, it’s pure logic. The fact that he has multiple kids is a perfect reflection of how the Ancient Greece society acted, do you really want to sit down and complain about it? Why don’t you instead start thinking of a way of changing that capitalist mindset that still rules our society instead of bullying an old civilization and their cults.
—End of the cultural rant—
Okay cultural part has finished, let’s dive into my favorite topic ever: epithets. And I actually did like 3 polls on this, both on my twitter and my instagram, asking if my followers knew what an epithet was. I always had this thought that one of the reasons many people hate on deities is because they only see one side of their multiple-side self… and ofc the answer was no, they did not:
And epithets are soooo important to understand a deity, So assuming some people might not know what epithets are here is a brief summary extracted from a previous post of mine addressing epithets and their importance: Literal definition of epithet: an adjective or phrase expressing a quality or attribute regarded as characteristic of the person or thing mentioned.Let me give you an example: A friend of yours loves reading, they love it so freaking much, so one of your teachers is like “oh pepito the reader”, it’s obvious that pepito is a reader.Now examples with deities. Demeter Chthonia (of the Earth). WHAT DO WE ASSUME KIDS?! That Demeter is an Earth deity. Duh. And like that with all the deities.
Epithets basically tell us how deities were perceived when worshipped, and many of the people who love judging Zeus have ignoring epithets as their favorite hobby so here I am, giving you a list of my favorite ones to take in mind:
AGO′NIUS (Agônios), a surname or epithet of several gods. Aeschylus (Agam. 513) and Sophocles (Trach. 26) use it of Apollo and Zeus, and apparently in the sense of helpers in struggles and contests.
AGORAEUS and AGORAEA (Agoraia and Agoraios), are epithets given to several divinities who were considered as the protectors of the assemblies of the people in the agora, such as Zeus
ALASTOR (Alastôr). an epithet of Zeus, describing him as the avenger of evil deeds.
EVA′NEMUS (Euanemos), the giver of favourable wind
HETAEREIUS (Hetaireios), the protector of companies or associations of friends
HY′PATUS (Hupatos), the most high
LECHEA′TES (Lecheatês) i.e. the protector of childbed
NOMOS (Nomos), a personification of law, described as the ruler of gods and men.
PANHELLE′NIUS (Panellênios), i.e. the god common to, or worshipped by all the Hellenes or Greeks
PHY′XIUS (Phuzios), i. e., the god who protects fugitives
POLIEUS (Polieus), “the protector of the city;”
SOTER (Sôtêr), i. e. “the Saviour”
Theos Agathos - The Good God
MEILIKHIOS (Milichius) Gracious, Merciful
After reading all this epithets I want to ask one last time, do you still think Zeus is a jerk? When he has the literal epithet of being a Good God? A merciful one? A protector? THE PERSONIFICATION OF LAW?
A fact aspect I want to mention is how people love to completely erase the good sides of Zeus portrayed in many myths. In the Iliad Zeus loves one of his most loved sons, he wants to go and revenge him because he’s an amazing dad but he knows that if he does that he would be impartial and injustice to the other deities who have lost children but haven’t been able to do anything about it. Instead he mourns in silence just to refrain from making other deities feel less privileged, this happens in the freaking Iliad and I’m sorry but I think that is a perfect example of how good Zeus is even if myths are not literal.
IZeus is more than the character modern media converted him into, he’s way more than that. He’s a deity, with multiple aspects and multiple stories that have adapted to fit into into ancient societies idea of what was a higher deity. All the arguments people have against him show that they do not understand how myths work and they do not understand that ancient times came with ancient ideals.
So please, research and form your own criteria before hating on something you don’t actually know about. Give yourself the opportunity to listen all sides of the story and then after that you can say whatever you want. Most importantly, give yourself the opportunity to learn.
Hopefully this is my last post regarding this matter, if I quite changed your mind in any type of way then that’s great, if I didn’t that’s on you. That’s all I have to say and thank you for reading the post complete!
LampetiaandPhaethusa were the two nymph-daughters of the sun-god Helios, who pastured the sacred herds of their father on the mythical island of Thrinakie. Lampetia shepherded seven flocks of fifty sheep with a silver crock, while Phaethousa tended seven herds of fifty cattle with a copper staff.
Odysseus and his crew arrived at Thrinakie after passing Scylla and Charybdis. When his crew begged to be allowed to land to prepare supper, Odysseus grudgingly agrees on condition that the they swear that if they come upon a herd of cattle or a great flock of sheep, no one will kill any of them. Eurylochus though convinces the crew to drive off the best of the cattle of Helios and sacrifice them to the gods. Lampetia tells Helios that Odysseus’ men have slain his cattle. In turn, Helios orders the gods to take vengeance on Odysseus’ men. After they set sail again, Zeus kept his word and the ship is destroyed by lightning during a storm and all of his men die. Odysseus escapes by swimming to Calypso’s island.
Eros was the mischievous god of love, a minion and constant companion of the goddess Aphrodite. He was the one who lit the flame of love in the hearts of the gods and men, armed with either a bow and arrows or a flaming torch.
The poet Hesiod first represents him as a primordial deity who emerges self-born at the beginning of time to spur procreation. The same poet later describes two love-gods, Eros and Himeros (Desire), accompanying Aphrodite at the time of her birth from the sea-foam. In later accounts he is described as one of the children of Aphrodite and Ares and, with some of his siblings, was one of the Erotes, a group of winged love gods.
He married Psyche, goddess of the soul, and she becomes immortal to live alongside her husband. Together they had a daughter, Hedone, goddess of pleasure.
LampetiaandPhaethusa were the two nymph-daughters of the sun-god Helios, who pastured the sacred herds of their father on the mythical island of Thrinakie. Lampetia shepherded seven flocks of fifty sheep with a silver crock, while Phaethousa tended seven herds of fifty cattle with a copper staff.
Odysseus and his crew arrived at Thrinakie after passing Scylla and Charybdis. When his crew begged to be allowed to land to prepare supper, Odysseus grudgingly agrees on condition that the they swear that if they come upon a herd of cattle or a great flock of sheep, no one will kill any of them. Eurylochus though convinces the crew to drive off the best of the cattle of Helios and sacrifice them to the gods. Lampetia tells Helios that Odysseus’ men have slain his cattle. In turn, Helios orders the gods to take vengeance on Odysseus’ men. After they set sail again, Zeus kept his word and the ship is destroyed by lightning during a storm and all of his men die. Odysseus escapes by swimming to Calypso’s island.
Ianthewas the Okeanis of “violet flowers” or the colour “violet”. She may have been a Nephele (cloud-nymph) of the violet tinged clouds of dawn, or an Anthousa (flower-nymph) of violets.
Pontos was the primordial god of the sea. He was the sea itself, not merely its resident deity, who was born from earth at the dawn of creation. Pontos and Gaia were parents of the ancient sea gods Nereus, Keto, Phorkys, Thaumas and Eurybia. By Thalassa, his watery female counterpart, he was the father of fish and other sea creatures. Poseidon, king of the sea, wed Pontos’ eldest granddaughter Amphitrite.
Amphitrite was the goddess-queen of the sea, wife of Poseidon, and eldest of the fifty Nereides. She was the female personification of the sea and mother of fish, seals and dolphins. When Poseidon first sought Amphitrite’s hand in marriage, she fled his advances, and hid herself away near Atlas in the Ocean stream at the far ends of the earth. The dolphin-god Delphin eventually tracked her down and persuaded her to return to wed the sea-king. Amphitrite was depicted as a young woman usually riding beside her husband in a chariot drawn by fish-tailed horses or hippocamps.
Dionysoswas the Olympian god of wine, vegetation, pleasure, festivity, madness and wild frenzy. His attributes included the thyrsos (a pine-cone tipped staff), a drinking cup and a crown of ivy. He was usually accompanied by a troop of Satyrs and Mainades (wild female devotees). Dionysos was a son of Zeus and the princess Semele of Thebes.
Styxwas the goddess of the underworld River Styx and the eldest of the Okeanides, a daughter of Oceanus and Tethys. She was also the personification of hatred. Styx was a firm ally of Zeus in the Titan Wars, who brought her children Nike (Victory), Zelos (Rivalry), Bia (Force) and Kratos (Strength) to stand beside the god in battle. Zeus rewarded her by making her stream the agent of oaths which bound the gods.
