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Friday, December 11, 2015

Question Collections post 32

I get a lot of questions from readers, and most of the time, the answers are fairly short. When I feel the question or the reply would be valuable to others as well, I make a post with a collection of them and post them in one go. Today is one of those posts.


"This is a rather personal question but does your girlfriend participate in your festivals ans libations?"

My girlfriend doesn't believe in the existence of any Gods. She supports my worship but she does not understand it, nor does she join in. If I ask her to do something simple like touch something to cleanse her of miasma, she will, but that is about where her involvement ends :)

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"Is it appropriate to do nighttime daily rituals standing up next to the main household altar? Or have they got a more chthonic character?"

'Khthonic', when it comes to ritual and worship in general, has to do with the Gods being worshipped, not the time of day. Yes, the Khthonic Gods frequently received nighttime worship but not all nighttime worship is khthonic. As such, what you should look at are the Gods. Are they ouranic? Then the ritual should be ouranic in nature as well. Khthonic? Then a Khthonic rite. Khthonic rites should not take place on or even near the household altar, but household worship for ouranic deities performed at night is perfectly suited for the household altar.

I always do my nighttime rites to Selene, Hypnos, Morpheus, etc. before I go to bed, so at night, at my household altar. It is an ouranic rite. I invoke Hestia.

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"In this time of the year, when I generally come home after sunset, I can still hold the daily ritual to the Ouranic Gods, which I do at daytime in other months?"

Well, sort of. The ancient Hellenes started the new day at dusk--so once it started getting dark. My nighttime rituals are my first rituals of the day, followed by my morning rituals. Technically, your nighttime rituals 'count' for the day after. If you would like to transition to this system now you come home after dark, do them twice on a day you are off, once in the daylight hours for that day and then once in the nighttime hours for the day after. Then you're caught up :)
 
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"Hello I was wondering if Dionysus and Persephone count as Kthonic TheoĆ­? If so in their festivals and libations should one worship and honour them in a kthonik way or a uranic way? Thank you."
 
Both Dionysos and Persephone are Ouranic deities with Kthonic epithets. An epithet is an attachment to the name of a God or Goddess, used to indicate either a specific domain of the Deity, a specific origin myth or region from which the Deity came, or an entirely different entity, through either domain or origin. Their worship, on the whole, is Ouranic, but in very, very speciffic cases, it can be Kthonic. Overall, you can safely assume that any God that has access to Mount Olypos in mythology is Ouranic and should be worshipped that way, unless the rite involves the underworld or the dead.
 
 
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"Hello! Do you have any elaborate ritual to Athena and/or Apollo? :)"
 
I have a couple!
 
Apollon:
 
Athena:
 
For all currently avaialble rituals by Elaion, go here.
 
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"Is it possible to be a hellenic polytheist and worship norse gods as well!? I've been going back and again between the two for almost 5 years and i feel a strong conection with the Theoi and hellenic way of life as well as with Yggdrasil and the norse gods. Is there any historical evidence of greeks adopting northern gods or vice versa? Thank you!"
 
Yes, it is. Pure Recon on either might be troublesome, but it's possible to worship two pantheons and perform their worship in a traditional manner.  As for adoption of either by other side, I have not found any. The problem seems to be in the timeline. The Germanic people who were tied to the ancient Norse Gods rose to greatness about 200 BC, a lot later than the Hellenic age. Ceasar reached that territory during his (Roman age) campaign but I don't have any evidence at hand that the ancient Hellenes made contact with the Germanic people at all.

1 comment:

  1. Concerning that last question, the beauty of polytheism is that it isn't exclusivist like Christianity or Islam are. It is perfectly fine to worship Gods not traditionally part of a pantheon, and even to worship two pantheons. You may find that keeping their worship relatively separated at first might work, but that gradually over time, as your experiences with the deities will increase, these experiences may guide you to make certain identifications of Germanic and Hellenic deities, or to at least combine their worship somewhat. You could also look at syncretisms made by the Romans, and then extrapolate this to Hellenic polytheism, though personally I wouldn't trust this too much. Trust in your own experiences with the Gods as they arise during your worship.

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