Hades and Persephone

Persephone usually stays home. While he’s at work, she busies herself with tending to the house and their lives. During the spring and summer months, she visits her mother every day. Her mother’s garden could hold a regulation football game easily. But the two of them make quick and easy work of the many sections of vegetables, fruits, herbs, and wildflowers. Persephone especially enjoys the flowers. She sometimes laments at the fragility of them, how they cannot last much out of the ground and they get so little time during the year to bloom their brightest. “Well,” her mother says every time, “it’s your own damn fault for that. Now, hand me that shovel. This bastard has some deep roots.” She enjoys her time with her mother immensely. The rest of the year, she stays home. The fall is a great and beautiful time with leaves the color of fire. She stays home, and keeps the house looking beautiful. From her weekly trips to the farmer’s markets, their pantry is stocked with grains and canned everything for the winter. But she loves the winter still. The shorter days means he gets home earlier, and they have a few extra hours together each night.

Hades works hard. He sits on his judge’s stand and hears the arguments out. Sometimes they go on and on, sometimes they turn into screaming matches he has to break up. But eventually, it’s all resolved. Some people leave him to go home and be with their loved ones, settlement checks, or just a fresh breath of free air. While the rest must be carted along back to their cells, or to new prisons for a while. He doesn’t like giving out those sentences. If he can, he’ll commit them to community service, or some minor spout in the county jail. Hell, even some minor offenses he lets them off with a warning and a promise to keep. But, he has to sigh and give the orders that end in “years” instead of “days”. It’s those days that weigh on him the most as he gets home by sunset. But when he walks in that door, he knows he’s home. The fresh smells of steaming vegetables, or simmering stews, or all sorts of filling meals are as warm as the embrace she gives him. He kisses her forehead and says, “it all looks beautiful, babe.” When she takes him to the markets, he pretends to be exasperated. Jokes about all the masculine things he could be doing. But when she is beaming over a fresh cart of pumpkins, or the baskets of apples, he sneaks off and buys her a dozen roses. He takes the first week off each season and they don’t emerge from their bedroom for most of it. Through the countless years, he loves every single winter the most.

Hera and Zeus

Hera is an interior designer. Her makeup and hair is always *perfect* and her dresses seem to shimmer with her favorite shades of blue, green, purple, and gold. She knows everything there is to know about making a home beautiful. When it comes to her newly wedded or childless clients, she always suggests a nursery layout for the smallest bedroom. But when she is refused, she takes it in stride and instead suggests a room for the the partners to share together - an office or entertainment room perhaps. And when her time touring homes, arranging swatches, and laying out plans is over, she returns to her own home. It’s immaculate, as she’d never tolerate anything less. She kicks off her high heels when she gets in the door and fall on the soft, stylish couch. Her husband comes over with a glass of wine so he can talk about her day with her.

Zeus is a large man. Often mistake for a biker or a Viking, he is the epitome of masculinity. He pilots planes for most major airlines. All around the world, he has been to most airports at least once but has rarely left the large buildings. Each take off and landing, the plane will shake and bump with small pockets of turbulence. But the planes make it down without a hitch and he returns everyone home in one piece. When he is home, he is a master at household chores. He has taken a number of cooking courses and watches YouTube videos on how to make nice, simple, and hearty recipes. Always wanting to be a good host, especially for his tired wife, he makes sure the needs of the house are met. She has made it a beautiful piece of art, and he maintains that artwork like a priest in a temple. Dusting and sweeping, mopping and washing, everything is just right for when his wife comes in the door. Something delicious is always in the air. As is beautiful queen slumps on the couch, he brings over a large glass of her favorite red or white wine. “Dinner will be ready in about ten minutes,” he says. “But how was your day, hun?”

*inspired by: @normal-horoscopes

Olympianism

Be, and be merry.

That’s it. Yep.

Here’s one of our engagement photos.

My fiancé is amazing. Almost immediately after we proposed and put on our rings, I asked if we could honor Hera (/the Gods) with our wedding stuff. Without any hesitation, they said yes (again) and gave me time to think of what I wanted. So, as my practice is more symbolic and dedicative, we decided on getting a pair of peacock brooches to wear in our engagement photos. They ended up putting their’s on a necklace and teased me for my overly large one. And we discovered our dog is MUCH more photogenic than we are

I truly pray to Hera, Aphrodite, and all of the Gods for guiding me to this amazing, loving, and just ridiculous person. Even when things aren’t perfect in our lives, we’re here together and I don’t think that would have happened without the Gods looking out for us. I’ll continue to love my soon to be wife until the day I die. And if the Gods see it fit, I’ll hold her hand while we walk through Hades together.

Glory to the Gods. Em, I Love You

Cheers

-D

To the Gods, I give worship

To my ancestors, I give gratitude

To my family, I give forgiveness

To my love, I give myself

To my familiars, I give my respect

To my teachers, I give my honor

To my past, I give apology

To my self, I give focus

To my future, I give hope

To all things, I give my peace and love, now and always

Cheers,

-D

Hey! So I’ve been writing a lot and I recently finished a short story about Prometheus. Let me know what you think!

It’s a bit of a horror style, so warning for disturbing imagery and horror.

Cheers!

-D

Prometheus | Darren Almgren

Hey! New video about the Delphic Maxims.

It’s a loaded one and hopefully I did it justice.

Cheers!

-D

Hey! I started making videos.

I’m starting to adopt the now traditional Wiccan calendar into my hellenic practice. So I thought I’d share my ideas for how I’ll celebrate each holiday:

Moon Cycle Holidays :33

Samhain - Winter/Autumn Cross

Prayer to Persephone/Hades/aesir/ancestors

Halloween! (Eating out for dinner in costume)

Watching Halloween movies

(maybe party?)

First hot cocoa of the season

Apple cider

Oatmeal

Decorating for thanksgiving (Nov 1)

Themed candles/scents

Getting next years calendar

Colors: orange, black, purple, green, yellow, brown, red

Pie making

Birch wood

Oatmeal

Candy

Yule - Winter Solstice

Prayer to Hestia/aesir/ancestors

Decorating for Christmas (d.a. thanksgiving)

Crimmas

Spend evening with family (if applicable)

Christmas movies

Home cooked meal

Presents

Yule goat

Baking cookies

Themed candles/scents

Colors: white, red, green, gold, dark blue

Birch wood/pine/holly

Candy

Imbolc - Winter/Spring Cross

Prayer to Aphrodite/Demeter

/Poseidon/Zeus/Apollo

Birds

Valentine’s Day decorating

Roses

Candles(!!!)/fresh scents

Love themed shit

Colors: white, red, pink

Cake baking

Ostara - Spring Equinox

Prayer to Persephone/Demeter/Artemis/Hera

Easter themed shit

Easter brunch**

Spring flowers

Easter baskets

Egg decorating (before)

Candles/themed scents

Lemonade/mimosas

Colors: white, pink/pastels, purple, gold/yellow, blue, green

Cookie baking

Seasonal fruits

Beltane - Spring/Summer Cross

Prayer to Demeter/Persephone/Poseidon/Zeus/Dionysus

Spring cleaning

Summer themed decorating

Candles/themed scents

Lemonade/sangria/soda

Colors: white, pastels, blue, yellow/gold, green

Seasonal fruits

GAY SHIT BEECH

Litha - Summer Solstice

Prayer to Apollo/Titans

Summer themed shit

Going swimming/water park

Going camping***

Lemonade/sangria/soda

Picnics

Candles/themed scents

Colors: gold/yellow, blue, green, white

Seasonal fruits/melons

Lughnasso - Summer/Autumn Cross

Prayer to Apollo/Demeter/Zeus/Poseidon

Summer flowers (kinda mixed with fall stuff)

Last lemonade of year/cider

Picnics

Candles/themed scents

Colors: blue, white, yellow, brown, orange, green

Bread making

Mabon - Autumn Equinox

Prayer to Demeter/Persephone/Apollo

Starting to plan Halloween costume

Fall themed flowers/flora

Halloween decorating

Apple cider/pumpkin spice shit

Oatmeal

Jack-o-lanterns/fake pumpkin decorating

Candles/themed scents

Donations/charity stuff

Autumn cleaning

Colors: orange, red, yellow, black, brown

Bread making

Apples/berries/seasonal fruits

French toast

Potluck with friends**

Cheers!

-D

*when you haven’t touched your altar physically in over a year*

I set this up the day I got all my things unpacked. Been inactive with my worship until this month, but I finally got the energy to clean it and make it organized again.

Anyway

Cheers!

-D

After my grandfather died, I’ve been thinking a lot about the afterlife.

We’ve all heard of several afterlives, I’m sure. Some say it’s a dichotomy of burning and eternal torment opposite peace and harp playing with loved ones. Some have said it’s like a giant party with fighting and singing and laughing forever. And some have said that the soul just wanders around, memory-less and unknowing of suffering or happiness.

But now, I’ve been leaning towards the notion of the lingering soul. A soul of a loved one that stays just a little with the ones they left behind.

It could be in the way my mom smells her grandfather’s cologne when she is in a troubling situation. Or how my family believes that children can sense their passed relatives as they’re closer to “the veil” than anyone else - like how my newborn niece looks like she’s having intense and loving conversations in her sleep. And in the way my grandma briefly saw her husband in the kitchen when we were all sitting around talking about him.

Call it guardian angels, purgatory, or just a gut feeling or pattern recognition. But I truly do believe we’ve got souls around us. The true Elysian for me, if being able to watch your loved ones live on, grow, and laugh.

Cheers

-D

I got covid at christmas dinner with my fam, how’s that. Anyways, because of it i have connected more with Apollo because of his health aspect and after researching a bit for adding to my grimoire I read many posts saying how they couldn’t worship their deities properly because they saw everyone doing it in a certain way so that made them compare themselves with that certain everyone and made them insecure about their practice…

Which is a mood tbh.

And I feel I have said so many times the same thing on my posts but I will dedicate one just for this, do what it feels right for you and remember social media is fake. So, first, with the social media thing, some of your favorite bloggers or whatever you follow regarding your worship most of the times won’t tell you when they fuck up. I personally don’t sit everyday and say “oh this last month I didn’t move a finger for my worship because of x and x reason” because I don’t feel the need of sharing it, and I know many others who feel the same. 

Imagine this hypothetical scenario. Your mom asks you how you’re doing at school, work, college, whatever and you’re doing really bad because of x reason. The probability you will open up and be honest is very low, we all probably want to say “i’m doing great, achieving all my goals, etc” so when we are not we just rather avoid it. The same happens with worship. There will be exceptions of posts in which we say we fucked up in certains ways, but that wont be constant because the human race has been known for not accepting their mistakes, who would be proud of them tbh.

This leads me to my next point which is don’t be scared to fuck up, the fact that you don’t see everyone messing up doesn’t mean it’s not common to do so… I’m pretty sure everyone has had their downs when it comes to worshipping, the important part is to be able to recover and do something about it. Find a way of worship you feel comfortable with, not a way of worship someone else feels comfortable with.

If there’s something I really like about Hellenism and Paganism in general is how personal the practice can be, there is not a book full of rules to follow, they are just some ground rules and from that you can create your own beautiful practice that fits into your lifestyle and way of living your religious aspect of life. 

So please, don’t compare yourself to people on social media and the way they practice, that’s their personal way that fits into their lifestyle not yours. 

Really short post but im sick so i would rather go to sleep, goodnight and trust your gut. 

i knew that this was going to happen sooner or later so i’m just going to rant here and let it all out. i know that the type of people i will be ranting about isn’t decent enough to understand no matter how much proof i show them so i’m not even going to waste my time on that. however, i’m tired of this. 

i was on tiktok and there was a video of this guy talking about how a trend was disrespecting Hindu Gods. since he is a Hindu, he definitely has the right to talk about his feelings, etc. most people agreed, i did too, but of course there were negative comments too. non-Hindus were like ‘yeah but they might not know, it’s just a trend, just for fun’ see, if we make a trend about their God, we’d be lynched. and that’s not the only thing.

internet is a big place. you can learn shit ton of stuff from it. the fact that the most popular people didn’t know how they did mudras and namastes doesn’t make any sense, at least to me. 

i read this rude comment, they were obviously defending the people on the video. i told them that it was rude, and that it wasn’t their place to talk. we then started arguing. they told me that i believed in marvel characters, loki, and shit once i refered how i worshipped multiple gods and got called ‘extremely religious’. now, i’m not even a follower of Loki, nor do i believe in marvel characters. they also said that Loki gave kids bone cancer up in the sky and i just–

i’m sorry but they were contradicting with themselves. now, i’m not even talking about christian witches, this is about my religion. what i believe in. and i don’t like it. how the fuck is it possible to blame shit on other people’s gods when you don’t even believe they exist in the first place. now, i don’t believe in the christian god and, when something bad happens to me, i don’t say “omg it’s probably the christian god who did this, not the ones i believe in” see that makes no fucking sense. 

anyways, thank you for reading. 

My style of clothes is hardcore alternative, the only color I’d wear was green and black. Since I’ve started worshipping aphrodite I’ve been buying so much pink stuff??? And like I’ve painted my nails pink, I didnt even know I owned pink nail polish. But I found it in my room and it just felt GOOD. Idk man this is wilddd

aynrandslashfiction:

“Dionysus is a god who takes human form, a powerful male who looks soft and feminine, a native of Thebes who dresses as a foreigner. His parentage is mixed between divine and human; he is and is not a citizen of Thebes; his power has both feminine and masculine aspects. He does not merely cross boundaries, he blurs and confounds them, makes nonsense of the lines between Greek and foreign, between female and male, between powerful and weak, between savage and civilized. He is the god of both tragedy and comedy, and in his presence the distinction between them falls away, as both comedy and tragedy…”

—

Paul Woodruff, 

The Bacchae (Translated and Annotated) - Euripides

(viacontradictionaddiction)

If you’re a witch or a pagan, pls reblog or reply with your favorite books. I need more books!

forthegothicheroine:

I’m not a classicist, but I suspect one of the reasons so many of the Greek gods are portrayed so unflatteringly was less because they were seen as villains than because they represented their domains.  Of course Zeus sometimes misuses his power, that’s what a king does.  Of course Artemis’s wrath is wild and painful, that’s what nature can be.  Of course Hades snatched away a young girl from her mother’s arms, that’s what death does.  This is one of the reasons callout posts for some gods comparing them negatively to ‘nicer’ gods are kind of missing the point.

I am no classicist either, but I’ll elaborate on this and touch on some other things we often ignore when reading Greek mythology. Most of us treat it as if Greek Gods and Greek mythology are one and the same, but the connection itself is not that simple.

What are the sources?

We push every written piece roughly from 800 BCE to 500 CE under the umbrella of “Greek Mythology”.

And I mean, every single piece.

It’s a huge chunk of time (1300 years!), with different cultural and political situations. We don’t think the same as folks from 1920s, why do we assume people from the 5th century CE would have the same views and values as people from the 8th century BCE.

Not only this, but we start to judge Gods on comedies, on satires, on tragedies, on all kinds of pieces of fiction. Yes, some of these were written by actual practitioners of Greek religion (who knew what their Gods were and were not), but somewhere on the way we all got very unlucky and the most popularized versions of myths turned out to be by a Roman guy who just wanted to cash out on lewd (and sometimes very gross)stories.

Also, people usually read (or watch) summaries. And here’s the thing. Summaries are mostly based on that Roman guy’s versions.

Moreover, there is this another guy, who had enough confidence to write “Read only my retellings of myths”. Guess what? We do! I’ve seen tons of summaries of his versions and they’re treated like the only versions in existence.

If you read his versions of myths side by side with earlier sources, you’ll quickly start to guess what he wrote in the other myth retelling.

Theoi website is very good for this since they have a lot of sources and fragments sorted by a specific theme and divine figure.

Villains vs Antagonist

Greek Gods were never villains in mythology, but antagonists. (Well, maybe except for Typhon). There’s the whole Hero-God antagonism, to the point of a hero looking very similar to the God they’re antagonistic with. Like Achilles and Apollo, Odysseus and Athena, Pentheus and Dionysus, etc.

So, in modern terms, they were partially just a plot device to make a “human” into an actual Hero. And, of course, into a cult hero, because they were worshipped, even though not on the same level as actual Gods. And often they were worshipped alongside the God/dess they were antagonistic with. We wouldn’t expect this if one party was a villain, right?

Even our perception of Hera as a jealous wife, who had to deal with her husband’s affairs, crumbles, when we think about her actions as a making of a Hero. We wouldn’t have so many heroes if it wasn’t for her. And heroes were a major part of Ancient Greek culture. I dare to say, without heroes Greece as we know it wouldn’t be the same. Heroes were kings and queens, skilled warriors, initiates of mystic cults, founders of nations. But would’ve they become as great if they had all the glory from the beginning? Or it’s thanks to Hera they overcame their obstacles and became Heroes?

Symbolism

We, as most of us are not Ancient Greek speakers, missing a lot of symbolism.

There’s a very common theme of making everything catastrophically wrongin myth, so we, as practitioners of religion in Ancient Greece (or modern practitioners now), would do everything right in real life. Every word and every action was so carefully chosen to reflect a mystic ritual, or even a common religious or social practice, without spelling out that it is, in fact, a ritual. While we treat it like stories, that thanks to these extreme metaphors and analogies can get really weird, a practitioner, especially initiated in a mystery cult, would treat it like a secret code. Why they did it this way? I don’t think we’ll ever find out!

Homeric Hymn 2 to Demeter, the one with the actual story about Demeter, Persephone, and Hades, is an example of it. It was a part of their mystery cult (Still is, if we assume the cult was operating without being public throughout the centuries, which is a possibility, and people reconstruct it in modern times, too). When we start looking for the meanings in it, we can easily see that it’s such a multidimensional story.

It’s cultural, as a marriage of a girl was often tied with death and lament. It also can be viewed as a mother’s attempt to deal with the sudden loss of their child. It can be interpreted as agricultural seasonal change, even though we tend to forget that actual seasons also exist in this pantheon. And it can be viewed as a romantic story, because love, especially the tragic one, is such a common theme in ancient Greek literature.

It can be extremely empowering, both from Demeter’s pov (as a mother who fights back for the right to see her daughter after she got married. Again, cultural thing), and Persephone’s pov (as a woman who turns a questionable or bad situation to her benefit).

We can interpret this story as the worst possible thing happening, or as the best story ever. Just don’t forget to give the same treatment to other myths as well, okay? It’s really not cool when people choose the best version of the myth (or even invent one) for one God, because it fits their interests, but then decide to choose the worst versions of myth for another God, just because.

Another thing to add here is that this particular myth centers around Demeter. Her feelings, her stress, her wanderings, her love for her daughter. Not around Hades, not around Persephone, or at least not to a degree in which we can sweep Demeter away as some background character that stands in a way of true love. Well, we can, but should we really?

I can’t stress enough that we treat the myths as literal most of the time, ignoring the fact that Gods are not… Physically humans? They’re not corporeal. Which is a hard concept to grasp since they are personified in myths.

But there’s this myth, for example, where Olympian Gods carry twenty (or twelve) daughters of Asopos away from him and “marry” them. But… Asopos presided over two huge rivers both called after him, and technically he was a literal river, a geographic place, not a human. His daughters are the smaller rivers that stem from him. And the whole act of “marriage” is just people founding cities in the banks of these rivers with certain Gods as their patrons. In one of the myths surrounding this, Zeus specifically throws a lightning bolt into Asopos who tries to get one of his daughters back. Is this a king misusing his power or a God of order taking action against something that tries to prevent an establishment of a city? Is it a description of natural phenomena, in which a river was averted from its unintended course by a bolt of lightning?

Should we call out a God for literally being a patron of a city? I doubt it.

From this perspective, it’s okay for us, in general, to not get it.When we read a myth for the first time there is no way we would know what it refers to, what its hidden meaning is, or who those people in the myth actually are. Especially, when the most obvious meaning for us reading the translations is not the one that was intended in Ancient Greek.

Butit’s not okay to attack Greek Gods and especially their followers based on myths, the meaning of which we, as individuals, might not understand completely.

Gods’ domains

Greek Gods are multidimensional and not just cookie cutters of their domains. In fact, no Olympian has strict one-domain boundaries. (I can’t say all Greek Gods, because there’s too many of them and I bet some actually have more or less strict boundaries)

So it’s really hard to say Artemis is wild and ruthless because of this one domain she rules over. Apart from nature, she’s also the Goddess of childbirth, of all things related to womanhood (except the lewd stuff).

But she can be angry and ruthless nevertheless, because she, even as a goddess, has feelings and consciousness. (Depending on your religious views, this still holds true both to Ancient Greek literature and to religion itself)

Compare her to Pan, a God more closely identified with nature and often described as wild and panic-inducing, but in 90% of myth he’s… Kind of just there, playing on his pipes or flute (and chilling with Ekho). Shouldn’t this difference show us that Artemis’ wrath in myth is there for a reason that we need to figure out? Sure, some stories may be cautionary tales of not going too far into the woods, but we can’t expect every single story about Artemis’ wrath to be about nature’s destructive powers.

Another problem is when we constantly dilute Artemis to a wee lesbian, Apollo to a femboy who writes bad poetry, Dionysus to a drunk party animal, Aphrodite to a vain beauty, Hades to a sad soft goth boy, and so on. We then get exceptionally surprised to find myths where they show not only their wrath but just any sort of emotion or action that doesn’t fit this box we put them into.

(Next point is kind of reaching, but it’s fun to think about)

The timeline

If we chose to judge Gods on myths (because that’s what we, as casual people, have access to) we’re also missing an important aspect of the timeline. We can argue that it doesn’t exist, but it’s there for us to decipher.

There are two major points that people are missing when talking specifically about how awful Zeus is, but they also concern other Gods in general.

Firstly,yeah he doesn’t do the baby-making thing anymore. Moreover, Gods stopped falling for mortals altogether for a reason. Aphrodite along with Eros used to make every God and Goddess fall for mortals, but there’s a myth in which she finally fell in love with a mortal herself. Why? Because Zeus had enough of this whole falling-in-love thing. Yeah, the same Zeus people love to hate on for being “too affectionate”. Thanks to this, Aphrodite realized that it’s really not fun to fall in love with a mortal so she promised to stop making Gods and Goddesses fall for humans. (Hint: it happened before the Trojan war) (It’s from Homeric Hymn 5 to Aphrodite. Very beautiful stuff and interesting to read too)

So, it’s really up to us to decide how to treat the myths about Gods’ mortal lovers after the Trojan war happened. Were they just made up so a person can look cooler as a king? (Looking at you, Alexander the Great) And if they weren’t, what about Aphrodite’s promise? We all know that nothing good happens when a God or a mortal breaks their oath. Is there maybe a deeper symbolism for this that we don’t notice because we read these texts as literal?

Secondly,there’s this goddess called Ate. She’s a personification of delusion, error, rash decisions. In Illiad, it is said that she is a daughter of Zeus, while Hesiod calls her the daughter of Eris, no father mentioned.

She had the power to lead both men and Gods down the path of ruin. When she tricked Zeus into making an oath that screwed Herakles’ future, he realized what is she capable of and banished her from Olympus. Do you know what that means? Illiad spells it out. Olympians used to be rash and making mistakes, but not anymore (or at least not to a catastrophic degree). And since this was mentioned in Illiad, we can place Ate’s banishing somewhere before the Trojan War, and after the birth of Herakles. So all the rash things and bad decisions happening during and after this were either caused by us, humans, because Ate is now with us, or we had much less catastrophic things happening with Gods, because, again, they still have their own interests and desires as conscious beings.

Conclusion

Greek Gods can be whatever we want them in myth and retellings because we write them. So wouldn’t it make more sense to say “This Roman guy sucks because he wrote such and such” instead of “This God/dess as a whole is bad (because of a few popular pieces that were written about them)”?

Judging a divine figure only by their domain or by the stories written about them without a full understanding of the purpose of these stories, and without consideration of historical and cultural influences on them, has little to no sense.

Even across Greek Mythology as a whole, there are sources that portray Gods and Goddesses with generally bad domains, as forces of justice, punishing those, who were indulging in the things they preside of. (Like a vase painting of Hybris, the goddess of insolence and excessive pride, where she was portrayed dressed as a Maenad, and described as an avenging spirit driving Dionysus to punish the hubris of men: https://www.theoi.com/Gallery/N21.1.html)

Update on the altars!

Cleaned and ready for the new month! ✨

Once I finish my recent set of Theoi drawings I’ll print them and put instead of the pics I have now. So they all will be in one style and size ⭐

The chthonic altar is on the other side of the table: