Courage

“Courage isn’t having the strength to go on, but going on when you no longer have the strength.” –Winston Churchill

A new variant of COVID was discovered in South Africa a few days ago, and I read about it for the first time during Thanksgiving afternoon. Ice went through my veins. I am three weeks from reuniting with my partner on American soil for the first time in two years. Travel bans kept us separated for 19 months from 2020-2021, until I was able to catch a flight to the EU when they finally lifted their restrictions on us.

The U.S. has already banned travel from South Africa. Israel has shut its borders. With the first cases spreading through Belgium, Germany, and Czechia, I am terrified we are going to close our borders again.

I cannot describe the pain of not knowing when you will see someone you love again. The political grandstanding and security theater of the last two years was an absolute nightmare. The despair, fatigue, and slow grinding misery of it. I wonder if that’s what Penelope felt like, waiting for Odysseus? There were periods of the last two years where the days quite literally felt like I was serving a prison sentence before death.

What happened to me sucked, but I saw worse on social media. People whose partners died before they could see them again. Babies born who grew into toddlers without seeing their fathers. The desperation and sadness of people parted from their families. I couldn’t help but wonder, is this what the iron curtain felt like to people in the 1980s?

I pray, to all the gods, above and below, that another travel ban does not come. That this purgatorial hell of ours is ended, and we can move on with our lives. That with vaccinating, testing, and social distancing we can resume some form of society–because civilization cannot exist like this in perpetuity. I also worry about the creeping loss of civil freedoms and human rights as governments seize “emergency powers”, which somehow they manage to never relinquish long after said emergency has ended. Worldwide it seems like we move more and more towards an autocratic form of government, and while that threat is less immediate than the ongoing pandemic, the inexorable creep is deeply concerning to me. Mainly because governmental shifts like that are almost always like a frog in a pot of water. Except right now, the frog’s sitting in a pot of heating water, but can only pay attention to someone clanging a spoon against the pot lid immediately overhead (aka the fear of dying of COVID).

Being with your partner and family is a human right. I pray we do not become prisoners in our own countries again.

Music and being genuine

First, the happy part, some music in honor Ares. I enjoyed it a lot.

Now onto more personal stuff.

I resurrected this blog in a way, I suppose, to have a safe space to talk about my faith and my love for my gods, primarily Hermes and Ares. Hermes has always been my professional god (I work as a writer, and I’ve worked in politics, for governments, for non-profits, in some interesting and occasionally shady situations.) Lord of communications, the In-Between, the hidden, of the subtle undercurrents that shape the world and control the stories people tell. I make no presumptions about being influential like that, by the way–but in my line of work I have always paid homage to him. And you know what? I’ve always been gainfully employed, working as a writer of some ilk, using everything I learned getting my history degree, through the Great Recession, through the pandemic, all throughout the last decade. I think I owe him thanks for that, and I hope to never stop thanking him for that.

Ares, meanwhile, as been the god of my heart and my innermost life. The god who protected me when my soul was beaten down to that last shade of myself, after years of living in a situation where nothing about me mattered. That tiny whisper in my soul of No when I held a gun to my head. No, you belong to me. And those who belong to me do not give up like this. That urge that you keep fighting, when there is nothing left to fight, when there is nothing you are fighting for–that courage is not the strength to go on, but going on when you no longer have the strength. And if your fight is a second at a time, so be it. You. Do. Not. Stop.

I recently re-entered therapy, and it was a difficult decision, both personally and financially. The last therapist I had had a penchant for crying during our sessions, which I did not appreciate. Like, yes, this isn’t a fun story, but if I can hold it together, give me the courtesy of keeping it together too. After the incident where we stopped therapy to talk to tree spirits, I “broke up” with him. (No offense to the tree spirits, but it was just too whackadoodle for me. Maybe I’m narrow-minded. Probably. The one pagan on earth who believes in gods and prayer but not magic.)

The therapist asked me if I had any religious beliefs in our first session. And for once, instead of lying and saying I was an atheist, or non-religious, I told the truth. I told him about my faith in Ares and Hermes. I also told him the second part of the truth–that I am so deeply closeted a polytheist, even my ex did not know about my faith. Not really. I prayed when he was asleep or not at home. And I don’t know why. Maybe because it feels so incredibly vulnerable and personal to me, that I don’t want people to see this part of me–my faith. My utter faith in these gods who have always looked after me, on way or another. These gods whom I love.

The therapist made an obersvation that it didn’t seem like I was living a very authentic, genuine life. And you know what? He’s right. For so many years, I have hidden who or what I am, or my thoughts and beliefs and values, either for my own safety, or perceived fear or mistrust of those around me. Never able to trust those around me, I eventually lost the ability to trust myself. Telling this man where I stood in a space enclosed by the protections of HIPAA felt like a small, but good, start. If people can yell about Jesus or Allah, why can I not quietly breathe my faith through my words, and my life? Maybe I should. Maybe the gods, who have never turned away from me for reasons unbeknownst to me, deserve that.

I tell their stories, whenever I can. I tell the story of Ares, Alkippe, and the Areopagus quite often. I told the story of Persephone’s abduction over dinner on All Hallows’ Eve to my dinner guests. The story of Hermes stealing Apollo’s cattle is another favorite one. (I legit sometimes wonder if those with celiac are low key cursed by Demeter, though. I wonder. If there was a curse made by her, it seems like celiac disease would fit the bill.)

Hail the deathless ones, dread in might and glory. May your songs be sung, and may you shed down on our life a gentle light of peace.

Saying no to cynicism

I’ve been thinking about this question a lot lately. Does suffering bring wisdom?

Does wisdom bring happiness? Is wisdom what we should strive towards?

I don’t know. I will say, I don’t think intelligence and intuition bring a lot of joy. Sober-eyed assessments of the world around you, but very rarely, joy. Or peace. I think if you look at the world with eyes open wide enough and really watch, there is not much opporunity for peace. This can give way to cynicism. (I gave way to cynicism.) And cynicism is anathema to feeling alive. Being alive. Living, even.

So how does one avoid the bitter bite of cynicism? How does one wake up to the experience of life lived, and have faith? Or hope? Outside of an absurdist “fuck you” to the void?

The only salve for that I’ve found is prayer, and the occasional blessing of feeling Ares’ presence in my life. (I will say here my UPG is that Mars and Ares are roughly the same god who changed through time and across geography through interaction with their resident culture and society). This is a thing which is inexplicable, and goes against everything my mind thinks is correct. (I don’t believe in magic. A pagan who doesn’t believe in magic. Go figure.)

This morning I walked outside and saw a woodpecker flitting around my porch, quite a rare sight, and I felt his presence. Ares is a god of soldiers, a god of oaths, of divine order. He is a god alive and well in the United States because we are a war-like nation with an industrialized military complex. But I think also very much he is a god of the fathers of daughters. (Did he not murder to protect Alkippe after she was violated–and had this deemed just by his fellow deathless ones?) And it is in this aspect I have always felt Ares very strongly–Ares the god of strong women, Ares whom the women feast, Ares the nurturer of women against malign forces in the world. Ares has always felt like he loves his women.

When I look very hard at my life, there has been not a single sincere deeply felt prayer unanswered, nor a single trial or deep need unmet. It’s the only way I could have survived the bizarre circus of the last three years. Domestic violence, divorce, death, illness, loss, financial hardship, insanity, despair. Somehow, I came through. There was a lot of teeth-gritting on my part, and I’m not sure I made it through whole, or sane, but there was always that last sliver of strength at the very end when I needed it the most. A new job when I desperately needed one that paid better, at a place where I do work for veterans and soldiers among others. The gift of a man named for the god. And I am so thankful for that. Thankful to be alive, and to be here.

So maybe that’s the antidote to cynicism–gratitude.

Seven years later

That’s how long it’s been since this blog was a part of my life. How long it’s been since I’ve been public about my faith. How long since I’ve been confident I even had faith.

The amount of time, distance, and things that have happened are almost unspeakable. So many things are different. I am very different. So many things, and people, have changed, or died. I have sometimes gone years at a time without praying. But still, I pray.

If you hold them in your heart, the gods will not leave you. I may not have had them front and center in my life at all times, but always, the gods have repaid faith with looking after me, one way or another. I am grateful for all that I was given to learn these last years. I am grateful beyond measure that I survived.

But I did survive, and life has returned to something approaching a full cup again, even if underpinned by the aching shadow of loss. I have some measure of years before I pay the ferryman and cross the black river into the endless twilight forest, and I intend to make the most I can of them.

This blog will never be an instructional. I am not a priestess. I am a polytheist who does no magic–and honestly, doesn’t much believe in magic. But I want a place to explore and record my personal, probably idiosyncratic relationship with the gods I worship.

So let this serve as warning and disclaimer: I am not a holy woman, or a priestess, or a witch, or a magician. I am not especially wise or skilled. I hold no place in any hierarchy, and I belong to no pagan organizations. I was not “chosen”, and I am not held up by anybody, deity or otherwise. I read, and I pray. My way isn’t the best way or the worst way–it’s just “a” way. And if there are rules, I don’t know all of them and will probably break some. So be it.

Ares in Chains

This, this, THIS.

Aspis of Ares

One of the things that I think is important to discuss in the onus of the recent sexual abuse allegations within the pagan community is the theological importance we levy to our gods. Sannion touched on this briefly, but I wanted to expound on the myth of Ares’ trial for the retributive murder of Hallirhothios and the story’s theological and instructive value to both the polytheist community and pagans who assert archetypal philosophies.

The myth is summed up as follows: Hallirhothios, a son of Poseidon, rapes (and this time in the myth, rape definitely means “sexually assaults”) Ares’ daughter Alkippe. Upon learning of the assault, Ares kills Hallirhothios. Poseidon, of course, is pissed, and so brings Ares to trial. Assembled before the rest of the gods, Ares and Poseidon give their cases, and the gods acquit Ares of wrongdoing; the place of the trial is renamed the Areopagus and becomes a…

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Good article–why I am a devotional polytheist

Why am I a polytheist? I have been searching for answers to this, though in my heart, the answer is “this is simply what I think.” But as the unexamined life is not worth living, I ask why? Why hard polytheism and not soft? Why Ares and Ukko and not God? If we can pick and choose who we worship, it’d sure be a lot more convenient to be part of a mainstream religion. Or even a larger pagan sect, like Wicca, who I keep telling myself aren’t all bad… maybe… outside of the state I live in, perhaps.

This article summed it up nicely.

I am a devotional polytheist because I have experienced Gods who are real, distinct, and individual.

Beautiful… the epitaph of a polytheist wife to her husband

The splendor of my kinship granted me

no greater gift than this: that I seemed fit

to be your wife. For in my husband’s name,

Agorius, I find my light and grace.

You, created from proud seed, have shone

on fatherland, on senate, and on spouse

with rightness of conduct, of learning, and of mind.

You won the crown of virtue in this way.

Whatever has been penned in either tongue

by sages free to enter heaven’s door

(whether poetry composed in expert lines,

or prose that’s uttered with a looser voice),

you’ve read, and left it better than you found.

Yet these are little things. You piously

in mind’s most secret parts had hid away

the Mysteries you learned of Sacred rites.

The many-faceted numen of the Gods

you knew to worship; and your faithful spouse

you bound to you as colleague in the rites,

now sharing what you knew of Gods and Men.

Why speak of earthly powers, public praise,

and joys men seek with sighs? You called

them fleeting, counted them as small,

while you won glory in the priestly garb.

The goodness of your teaching, husband, freed

me from death’s lot; you took me, pure,

to temples, made me servant to the Gods,

stood by while I was steeped in Mystery.

Devoted consort, you honored me with blood

of bull, baptized me priestess of Cybele

and Attis; readied me for Grecian Ceres’ rites;

and taught me Hecate’s dark secrets three.

On your account, all praise me as devout;

because you spread my name throughout the world,

I, once unknown, am recognized by all.

How could my husband’s spouse not win applause?

Rome’s matrons look to me as paradigm,

and if their sons resemble yours they think

them handsome. Women and men alike

now long to be upon the honor roll

which you, as Master, introduced of old.

Now all these things are gone, and I, your wife,

am wasting in my grief. I had been blest

if Gods had granted me the sooner grave.

But, husband, even so I’m blest: for yours

I am, and was, and after death will be.

 

Trans. Peter Donnelly

Source: http://zeitmauer.com/blog/epitaph-of-vettius-agorius-praetextatus

The Gods Are Not Self-Help Mechanisms

I’ve noticed a troubling trend in the online polytheist community. People, more than ever, are coming out of the woodwork and being vocally devoted to this god or that god. However, when reading through an online shrine to a god this week, I noticed one question where someone asked why people had become a devotee of this particular god. There were several answers all along the usual lines, but the ones that bugged me were ones that went roughly like this: “I became drawn to/a devotee of [such-and-such God] because they really help me get in touch with my [X] side, develop my [X] skills, and give me [X]. [Such-and-such God] really teaches [X] to me.”

Now, don’t get me wrong. A certain amount of self-improvement in the name of the gods is all well and good. We should all strive to be worthy servants. But what’s wrong with the statement above? Do you notice that there’s a lot of the words–me and my. I’ve noticed a disturbing trend among some practitioners to confuse devotion for a god and a real spiritual worship practice with instead using the god as a figurehead for self-help and self-actualization. I’ve seen people do the same thing with Oprah, for fuck’s sake. Frankly, not only is doing this profane, it’s downright selfish. The gods are not here to help us become the best version of ourselves–not directly, anyway, in my opinion. They are not here to be used as coping mechanisms.

If you are a hard polytheist, then you at least profess to acknowledge that the gods are legitimate, independent beings with existences and purposes of their own, outside of human machinations. That means the gods have their own purposes and agendas, of which we may or may not play a part. (And I’d argue such things are largely out of our reach, anyway. Remember Semele standing in Zeus’s fully divine uncloaked presence? Torched to a crisp. There’s so much about the nature of a god that we, as humans, just cannot understand). That’s not to say we shouldn’t strive to embody the best qualities of our gods, but you have to be mindful that there’s a line between doing or acting a certain way to honor your god, and using a god’s named attributes to worship yourself. I may write runo and sing to honor Ukko, but I do not profess to be a mighty creator or a great master, as he is called in the songs. (And to directly quote from Runo IX, “In my mouth, if there be sweetness, It has come from my Creator;/If my bands are filled with beauty,/All the beauty comes from Ukko.”) I may worship Ares, but I do not worship him because he puts me in touch with my ‘inner warrior’ (which is a whole other kettle of fish, about what constitutes a warrior and what doesn’t, and frankly, I am not a warrior and at this point in my life will probably never be). I worship him because he is a mighty and terrible god worthy of reverence, who called me into his service.

Strive for self improvement. Strive for becoming the best person you can be. But do not let your ego carry you away so that you confuse that with actual worship and due reverence to the gods. They are two separate things, and the gods are in themselves great without your inner personal development as a barometer, and due worship just for being what they are.

Why Ares is a delightful god for a woman to worship

Ares has many epithets. Father of Tears. Slayer of Men. The Blood-Stained. The Helper of Themis.

But I think my favorite, and the one most poignant to me at this particular point in my practice, is the Gynaikothoinas, he who is feasted by the women. The title commemorates a battle between the hoplites of Sparta and the women of Tegea, where the women ambushed the hoplites and decidedly won the battle. They created a feast after that which they celebrated alone, sans men. While I am no great feminist and generally against gendered-only things in modern society, this is an exception for me. There is something special about the relationship between Ares and his female devotees, I think. Maybe it echoes something of his relationship with Aphrodite. I do not know. But more women should open themselves to worshiping this god. Ares has a frank delight in women, I think, and challenges to them overcome society’s tendency to coddle us into a sense of entitlement. Most of all in my time worshiping him, Ares has challenged me to get the fuck over myself. And that’s something the world could use a whole lot more of.

That’s all for now.

Prayer to Ares part III

Fear not my tread, daughter,

for I am the father of slaughter

Mine is the wailing of the enemy dead

and the tears of the women

and the shining light of justice