crazycatsiren:

Things I have learned as a Hellenic Pagan

Religion should be a source of comfort and security. If it isn’t, then there’s something wrong with it.

Prayers aren’t just for times of needs. The gods are always around and willing to listen.

If you ask a god for help, be prepared for surprises. The gods don’t operate on the same level as mortals. They have their own ideas for what’s appropriate and suitable for dealing with things. It makes sense to them, even though we might not understand.

It’s cool to incorporate modern interpretations and retellings, but in my opinion, those are more for fun than anything else. There’s nothing wrong with being a fan of the Percy Jackson universe, but don’t base your perceptions of the gods that have been around for millennia off of a 21st century young adult fantasy series. If you’re actually interested in being a Hellenic Pagan, at least read some Hesiod and Homer.

A Pagan religion can work hand in hand with a witchcraft practice, or it can be completely separate from one. You certainly don’t have to have both. For me, being a Hellenic Pagan fits in with being a witch beautifully. But this doesn’t apply to everybody.

You don’t have to know everything. You won’t know everything. You never will. There are people who devote lifetimes to studying this stuff. You don’t have to wait till you know “enough” to start being a Hellenic Pagan and worshipping the gods. Pick your favorite god(s), and start with them. Pick a myth or two and start reading them.

You don’t have to follow all the ancient calendars and celebrate all the ancient holidays.

You don’t have to be devoted to one god, or choose a patron deity. Being a devotee can take a bit more time and commitment, and if you’re not up for it, that’s ok!

Don’t pigeonhole the gods. There are many different sides to them. Artemis is a virgin goddess, a wild goddess, and a midwife goddess. Apollo is a music god, a shepherd god, and a medicine god.

The modern day Hellenic priests and priestesses and their ancient Greek counterparts aren’t exactly alike.

You can ask gods to adopt you, even the ones who have never sired children of their own. It is perfectly acceptable to view the gods as divine parental figures.

Your practice is your own. Your relationship with the gods is personal. Don’t let anybody tell you how to be a Hellenic Pagan, and don’t let anybody tell you how to worship a god.

(Picture ©ArtbyLadyViktoria)

headspace-hotel:

Last night I finally found some poems that save my life a little bit

They were written by the Brazilian catholic archbishop Hélder Câmara, and very religious and spiritual in a beautiful way.

I think some people’s religion calls them to live in a state of compassion and wonder that I find to be very profound

I don’t know what I think about faith anymore but I think this guy understood something.

“Do not condemn us to be alone when together. Allow us to be together when alone.”

fourfishermen:

““Down the centuries,” Hart writes in an essay collected in Theological Territories, “Christian culture has largely ignored the social provocation of the early church’s organization,” which cultivated a “seditious … attitude toward the inviolable sanctity of property.” And, paraphrasing John Chrysostom: “All we possess actually belongs to everyone, and no Christian should ever utter the words yours and mine.” Though many theologians and clergymen assure the faithful that Christian scripture condemns only the abuse of wealth, “not a single verse … confirms this claim”; on the contrary, “the New Testament’s condemnations of private wealth are fairly unremitting and remarkably stark.” James 5:1: “Go to now, ye rich men, weep and howl for your miseries that shall come upon you.””

—“Against Damnation: Is hell Christian?”

Can a robot pray? Does an automaton have a soul? AI and theology meet – Ed Simon | Aeon Essays

“If it’s true that automata can then be as funny, romantic, loving and sexy as the best of us, it could also be assumed that they’d be capable of piety, reverence and faith. When it’s possible to make not just a wind-up clock monk, but a computer that’s actually capable of prayer, how then will faith respond?

This, I contend, will be the central cultural conflict for religion in this century.”

…in the meanwhile the connected network of billions of data gathering and analysing, albeit stupid, processors are embedding our lives and form a higher being we all put our faith into. Humans as well as robots.

Gott, testest du mich? Testest du eine Ungläubige, um zu sehen ob ich es ohne dich schaffe? 

Ja ich bin dir und deiner Religion so weit entfernt, wie der Nordpol dem Südpol,… und ich werde kämpfen,…ohne zu fragen was ich tun soll.

eternal-echoes:

Marcia Segelstein: How has moral relativism come to be so predominant?

Hadley Arkes: I think the erosion of natural law and the tendency toward moral relativism go back to ancient times with ancient skeptics making the argument for relativism. You can see the arguments surfacing in Plato’s Protagoras. In the Anglo-American law, it was getting accelerated from the early part of the twentieth century. It was bound up with historicism and the notion taking hold in Germany that we could know things only within their historical context, i.e., that certain things will be made clear only as history unfolds.

My late professor, Leo Strauss of the University of Chicago, wrote his critical book, Natural Right and History, in 1953. That was mid-century and he was already standing against the currents of relativism. Already they were deeply at work. Here was a country established on the Declaration of Independence—on truths grounded in nature, objective moral truths, self-evident truths—and yet falling into the wave of relativism. Strauss spoke about the effect of German philosophy on America—and here I’m paraphrasing—that it would not be the first time that a country defeated on the battlefield imposed on the victor the yoke of its own thought. Here we defeated the Germans, and yet German philosophy in its worst forms was taking hold in this country.

In the course I teach at Amherst that became the basis for the book First Things, I tell my students the biblical story of God instructing Elijah to journey to Damascus. Ultimately it is Elisha who fulfills this directive, traveling there to tell Hazael that “the Lord has shown me that you are to be king over Syria,” and that the current king, Ben-Hadad, “shall certainly die.” One commentator thought that this story, dating to the sixth century B.C., was a sign of how early the Jews were committed to monotheism. I ask the students what the connection is with moral relativism.

The answer is that a God who could tell a prophet to cross the lines of one jurisdiction to cashier a leader in another place was obviously not one of those local gods known to antiquity. This was evidently a God with universal jurisdiction. After all, I ask, did the same God who authored a universal law of physics author separate morals for Zanzibar and Jersey City? And what were the Ten Commandments? Were they municipal regulations, meant only to govern the immediate environs of Mt. Sinai?

-Courage and Conversion: An Interview with Hadley Arkes

acatholicrose: