Posted on 08/18/2004 5:15:34 PM PDT by SJackson
How modern pagans are reviving the polytheistic religions of the ancient Greeks, Druids, Egyptians, and other civilizations.
This year, Andrea Berman will watch the Olympics for the first time in her life. But she doesn't care who will jump the highest, run the farthest or swim the fastest. She'll be watching the games—being held this year in Greece, their ancestral home—for any mention of Zeus, Athena or Apollo.
"I will watch it to see if anything even remotely resembles anything I would know as an ancient ritual and tradition," Berman said. "But I kind of have mixed feelings. On one hand it will be great to see ancient traditions represented. But on the other hand, I know what the country of Greece thinks of our religion and people there who want to do this do not have the religious freedom to do it."
"This" is worship the Greek gods. Berman is a Hellenic reconstructionist–a practitioner of the religion of ancient Greece. A spare bedroom in her Boston area apartment is decorated as a temple room with statues of Apollo, Pan, Artemis, Dionysus and Eros. And like all Hellenic reconstructionists, she knows the original Olympics were not just a massive sportsfest, but a religious rite central to the worship of Zeus, chief among the Greek gods.
Reconstructionists are a group of neo-pagans–people who look to pre-Christian cultures for their faith–different branches of which worship the gods of ancient Norse, Roman, Egyptian, and Druid peoples. And while scholars say their numbers are only a fraction of the neo-pagan community, they also say they are a vibrant illustration of the rejection of traditional religion in the United States. And, in a curious boomerang effect, they are part of a movement away from the more eclectic forms of neo-paganism, like Wicca, taken up by pagan pioneers in the 1960s and 1970s.
"Reconstructionist groups seem to be kind of in the middle," said Sean McCloud a professor of religion and modern culture at the University of North Carolina in Charlotte. "On the one hand they want to embrace a coherent religion where they are not making things up. On the other hand, it is not the religion of their parents."
That is certainly true of Berman, a 26-year-old web developer who was raised in a non-religious home by a Jewish father and a Catholic mother. As a young teenager, she practiced Wicca. By college, she was into Celtic spirituality, but moved to the Greek gods literally overnight when, she recalled, a god appeared to her in a dream and said, "I am Apollo. You belong to me."
On a Saturday afternoon in July, Berman, known in her faith as Kyrene Ariadne, dressed in a long silky skirt of blue roses to join three likeminded worshippers and a guest to mark the Bouphonia, or Greek new year. The two men and three women assembled in the hall outside the temple room and chanted together from a prepared script:
"Hestia, tender of the hearth, first among gods, you sit at the center; steadily burns your flame."
In solemn single file, they moved into the room to form a circle about a center altar draped with a black cloth and set with a candle and brass bowl of burning frankincense. They poured water into a bowl to wash their hands and faces, then raised their palms to the sides of the their faces as they continued to chant hymns to Pan, Artemis and Zeus:
"I shall sing of Zeus, the best and the greatest of Gods, Far-seeing, mighty, fulfiller of designs who confides His tight-knit schemes to Themis and she sits leaning upon Him.
Have mercy, far-seeing Kronides, most glorious and great."
After the ceremony, which included the ritual disemboweling of a loaf of bread representing a sacrificial bull, the group shared a meal of hummus, pita, dolmatas and rice pudding around Berman's dining room table.
Berman, who wears a sun pendant as a symbol of Apollo, said venerating the Greek gods brings her a sense of peace and connection she has found nowhere else.
"I don't know how to describe it except to say that I felt like I was coming home," she said. "I know it is where I want to be."
No one knows exactly how many neo-pagan reconstructionists there are. There is no formal membership, no centralized authority like a church or a seminary, though several groups run clergy training programs. But Helen Berger, a religion sociologist and author of "Voices from the Pagan Census: A National Survey of Witches and Neo-Pagans in the United States" (University of South Carolina Press, 2003), estimates there are between 200,000 and 400,000 neo-pagans in this country. Reconstructionists, she said, are a sliver of the whole picture.
Because their numbers are so small, the majority of reconstructionists are "sole practitioners," conducting rituals, ceremonies and study on their own. Because of their isolation, and because many are young enough to have been raised with computers, the internet serves as a pipeline to the broader reconstructionist community. There are numerous websites and chatrooms devoted to each of the reconstructionist faiths, outlining the customary worship of the various gods, the origins of festivals, and the proper preparation of rituals.
Jennifer Guimaraes, a 22-year-old Las Vegas homemaker and mother, says the internet is vital to her worship of the Greek gods. She and her boyfriend, also a Hellenic reconstructionist, founded Thiasos Dionysos, an online discussion group dedicated to the Greek god of wine and agriculture with about 60 regular participants. Members exchange information online, but worship on their own.
Guimaraes, who came to the Greek gods after a period practicing Wicca, says tapping into the ancient rituals of the past brings a sense of authenticity she has not found in other religions.
"Even though a lot of people consider it a dead religion, reconstructionists approach it in a way that it is not dead. It is personal. If you crave some sort of tradition, this is where people are going to look for it."
It isn't just the Greek gods that are enjoying revived interest. There are Egyptian, Norse, Roman, Celtic and Druidic reconstructionists as well, with small groups of six to thirty people meeting in places as varied as Texas, California, Florida and Illinois.
Paula Ashton is a 35-year-old executive assistant in Chicago and a member of the Kemetic Orthodox faith, a group that worships the Egyptian gods. Kemetic Orthodox recently made the leap from online community to a physical one with the opening of a temple in Joliet, Ill.
"It seems to me like I have personal relationship to my god," Ashton said of what draws her to her faith and the goddess known as Aset, or Isis. "She is looking out for me. Then I look at strangers and they, too, have a personal connection with their god, be it Jesus or whoever, and we are all connected. We are all part of this. It helps me understand strangers better. It helps me understand humanity better. It helps me get in touch with the rest of the world, it helps me be more compassionate."
In Walnut Creek, Calif. Stefn [CQ] Thorsman is "steersman," or chief executive, for the Troth, an organization of affiliated "kindreds," or small groups, and solo practitioners of Asatru, a form of Norse reconstructionism. Thorsman, a stand-up comedian, said one of the appeals of Norse polytheism is that it reveres the divine in all things, living and inanimate, male or female.
"Our gods and goddesses are closer to us," he said. "We don't grovel before them. We stand before them. We don't look to them for perfection. Just as there is male and female in all of nature there, there is male and female in the spirit world. Having a male, all-seeing, all-perfect, very angry and vindictive God just did not call to me."
In meetings, Asatruars study and discuss the gods of the Norse pantheon–Thor, Freya, Frigg and Odin among them. They celebrate a number of festivals, including the "freyfaxi," a harvest festival, and the "einherjar," a celebration of those killed in battle.
Offline reconstructionist groups are rare, though their numbers appear to be growing. Berman's group, called Hellenion, made the leap from cyberspace to temple space in 2001 when they founded as a religious non-profit and began holding monthly worship services. By the end of that year they numbered three "demoi," or congregations, though the largest was Berman's with seven members. There are now nine Hellenion groups in places as far away from Athens, Greece as Jackson, Miss., Lancaster, Penn, northeastern Ohio and Dallas, Tex.
Like most reconstructionists, Hellenion's members want to reproduce the ancient rituals as closely as possible. But this is a problem when it comes to animal sacrifice, which the Greeks performed routinely. At the ancient Olympics, 100 bulls were sacrificed to Zeus. But at July's Bouphonia, Hellenion members decorated a hollowed-out loaf of bread with two small brown cones inserted in one end to represent horns. The crusty loaf had been hollowed out and filled with barley to represent blood.
During the ceremony, Tim Anderson, a 19-year-old college student studying for the Hellenion clergy, lifted the bread over his head and pierced it with a knife. The barley fell into a bowl that he then raised over his head and presented to the gods as an offering and left on the altar as sacred to Demeter and Persephone. He then handed the gutted bread to Kyrene Ariadne and asked if she would "scry for divinations."
"For obvious reasons, we don't want to sacrifice a bull," Berman said later. "We have lots of arguments in our community about the purity of ritual, but this is one thing that people generally agree on–that doing animal sacrifice is outdated and has lost any original meaning it once had."
Berger, the religion sociologist, says this is where the reconstructionists, so dedicated to the past, are actually doing something quite original. While most say they are dedicated to the past, they are, like most neo-pagans, innovative and creative when it comes to the actual practice.
"It is more or less like post-modern architecture," said Berger, who once attended a reconstructionist ceremony in which a pineapple was sacrificed. "They are taking bits and pieces of things from different places and making something that is really contemporary."
Peering into the gutted "bull," Berman reported to the group that she saw the Greek letter lambda, and books on the temple room's shelves revealed it meant a sinister thing or event may be a blessing in disguise. Berman sees this as a positive sign. She expects interest in Hellenic reconstructionism to rise after the Olympics, as it did after this year's television broadcast of "The Odyssey" and the release of the movie "Troy," when the number of hits to Hellenion's website spiked.
That's fine with Berman, who hopes others will find their way to the Greek gods.
"Doing group worship is so much different than doing it alone," she said. "I feel like I am in touch with something. I feel like I am not the only one."
I was bemoaning the pagan associations and rituals of the olympics. I just mentioned in passing Hitler's use of the olympic flame relay from Olympia to Berlin. > your groundless ideals
Wow, do you actually believe that? How sad.
I consider every non-Theistic moralist to be an irrational hypocrite. In the absence of an Objectively True G-d all that exists are personal subjective moral hang-ups. What gives any human being the right to define the morality of others by his own subjective hang-ups? No matter how many people share such a hang-up (eg, against murder) in the absence of a Creator it remains a mere subjective hang-up. Strange how people who object to legislating G-d's standards have no objections to legislating those of human beings who have no right or authority to define anything as right or wrong, just or unjust, desirable or undesirable.
Free Republic is a conservative forum. I am opposed to Communism and leftism primarily not because they are totalitarian, economically socialist, or because they have murdered millions of people, but primarily simply because it they are non-Theistic moral systems and therefore inherently groundless. And I classify all non-Theistically based moral systems together, regardless of how "benign" they may be. Thomas Jefferson, Karl Marx--what's the difference?
I'll be you enjoyed the opening ceremonies celebrating the "evolution of man as a rational being." Though what the big whoop is about evolving into anything in a meaningless universe is beyond me.
You deny the Creator yet presume to be competent to create a moral code of some sort (which you probably believe others "should" adopt for themselves)? How ridiculous.
> I just mentioned in passing Hitler's use of the olympic flame relay from Olympia to Berlin.
And I drive a Volkswagen. Does that make me an SS death camp guard?
> I consider every non-Theistic moralist to be an irrational hypocrite.
How sad and ill-informed.
> In the absence of an Objectively True G-d all that exists are personal subjective moral hang-ups.
Fortunately for society, people like you don't determine these things. It's generally best left to those with a sense of morals and ethics and reason.
> I'll be you enjoyed the opening ceremonies celebrating the "evolution of man as a rational being."
A bet you'd lose, as I didn't watch it, or any other part of the Olympics. BOOOOORING.
> You deny the Creator yet presume to be competent to create a moral code of some sort
You claim to be competant to create a moral code AND invent a Creator... one more level of ridiculousness.
LL always could be a crotchety old buzzard. But good with a gun.
I consider every non-Theistic moralist to be an irrational hypocrite.
How sad and ill-informed.
How can I be ill informed about my own opinion?
But all kidding aside, if the world is merely a meaningless coincidence then all morality is either subjective personal hang-up or else a mere subjective utilitarian social convention. Where did non-Theists ever get their silly idea that the non-existence of G-d (chas vechalilah!) would only abolish sexual taboos and leave everything else standing? No G-d--no morality. There's only some human beings forcing their hang-ups onto other human beings, which is pretty silly.
In the absence of an Objectively True G-d all that exists are personal subjective moral hang-ups.
Fortunately for society, people like you don't determine these things. It's generally best left to those with a sense of morals and ethics and reason.
Why should any human being determine anything for another human being? Doesn't each human being have the "right" to come up with his own "values system," whether or not it agrees with yours? Oh, I see. You do believe that some human beings have the right to legislate for others. You just oh so modestly place yourself in the category of those "rational" enough to do the legislating. So what's the difference between my objective reality and yours so far as forcing it on other people is concerned other than mine rests on a sound theoretical foundation, whereas yours does not?
You claim to be competant to create a moral code AND invent a Creator... one more level of ridiculousness.
That's funny. I don't recall writing the Torah. I didn't know I was that old! (Though it could explain the way I've been feeling lately.) But I certainly didn't know Hebrew back then (I've only been reading it going on twenty years). Did I write it in English and have somebody translate it for me?
Correction: my study of Biblical Hebrew began nineteen, not twenty, years ago. My apologies for the error.
The people in the article certainly appear to genuinely believe what they're practicing.
> if the world is merely a meaningless coincidence
Life is only meaningless for theists who need to have someone give them meaning.
> No G-d--no morality.
In a word (and appologies to the tender-eared)... that's utter bullshit. You are vastly ignorant of the real world, and I doubt highly that reason woudl reach you. Your bigotry is beyond such things.
> mine rests on a sound theoretical foundation...
A foundation of primitive goat-herd superstition is NOT terribly sound.
And is this meaning "self-evident" to all "rational" people? What happens when "rationalists" disagree among themselves as to what the "meaning" is? What is your argument against other atheists who are Marxist-Leninists? How can you say that their values are objectively "wrong" (and how can they prove the same about yours)?
There is Divine decree and there is utter subjectivism which the strong force on the weak. There is no middle ground.
I knew you were an atheist but I didn't know you were an anti-Semite as well.
Is this Voltaire???
Judaism/Noachism rests on an objective foundation that no other religion ever has had or ever will have.
> Judaism/Noachism rests on an objective foundation that no other religion ever has had or ever will have.
Well, of course not. But then, The Moonies can say the same.
> I knew you were an atheist
Then, as with so many other things, you are wrong again.
"God" is spelled with an "o" in the middle. It's a word easy enough to look up in a dictionary, and basically everybody knows hwo to spell it. Pointing out that you keep mispelling it is not anti-semitism; your bleating that it is simply points out how weak your arguement is.
> And is this meaning "self-evident" to all "rational" people?
To many it is. The fact that you have no meaning in your life apart from what you read in a book does not negate the fact that others do.
> What is your argument against other atheists...
Poor grammar.
>... who are Marxist-Leninists?
What is your arguement against other Jews who are Marxist-Leninists?
Judaism/Noachism rests on an objective foundation that no other religion ever has had or ever will have.
Well, of course not[sic]. But then, The Moonies can say the same.
There you go again.
I told you, I go to the trouble to spell the word that way out of reverence. I'm not compelling you to do the same, so what is bothering you?
To many it is.
To many, but that is just their subjective opinion. Apart from an objective Creator there is no objective truth with any meaning. Even if the world were the product of chance and randomness it wouldn't mean anything, and there certainly wouldn't be a moral obligation to know this "truth" or to believe it. Apart from the Creator, even truth has no moral authority.
The fact that you have no meaning in your life apart from what you read in a book does not negate the fact that others do.
I don't doubt that you can come up with some silly short term thing to give your life "meaning," but this "meaning" is purely subjective . . . unless you're referring to your satisfying your physical requirements, which would give your life all the meaning of a hive of bees.
What is your arguement against other Jews who are Marxist-Leninists?
Um, I'm a Noachide, remember? And I could invoke HaShem and the Torah. You'd just be butting heads with subjectivists who disagree about what the "meaning" is that some people should force on everyone else.
I was wondering who was going to be the first to figure out where those quotes came from.
Good job!!
> I told you, I go to the trouble to spell the word that way
...
And when did you tell me that?
> Apart from an objective Creator there is no objective truth with any meaning.
Says you.
> Um, I'm a Noachide, remember?
No. Why shoudl I rmember soemthign I've neither heard before nor take any meaning from?
> And I could invoke HaShem and the Torah.
And I could invole Hathor and the Stargate SG-1 Writer's Bible, and probably do just about as well.
> Remember this?
Nope.
Yes, really. The Moonies can say that they rest on an objective foundation that no other religion ever has had or ever will have.
The Hari Krishnas, Catholics, Wiccans and whoever else can all say the same. You are unique, just like everybody else.
Apart from an objective Creator there is no objective truth with any meaning.
Says you.
Boy, that's a cogent argument. You forgot to say "nyah-nyah."
For the zillionth time, you may be able to create a "meaning" that suits you personally, but a Creator is necessary for any such meaning to be universal and objective.
Remember this?
Nope.
Yeah, that was intelligent. What's the matter, don't you know any html? Do you know what a hyper-link is?
Yes, really. The Moonies can say that they rest on an objective foundation that no other religion ever has had or ever will have.
The Hari Krishnas, Catholics, Wiccans and whoever else can all say the same. You are unique, just like everybody else.
Did you refuse to read the article I referenced out of ignorance as to what a hyper-link is or because you were afraid its logic would cut the ground out from under your position?
I honestly don't understand why I have infuriated you so. This whole thing started with my reference to the pagan connotations of the olympic flame and you act as if I had insulted your mother.
Why don't you relax? If you really believe that the world is random and meaningless then why don't you start acting like it??? FCOL, if you've got some crazy idea that I'm ever gonna come knockin' at your door with a sword to put at your neck to force you to my way of thinking, then you're wrong (I simply believe that the True Religion must inevitably triumph in the end). In fact, seems to me that you're trying every bit as hard to convert me to your way of thinking! Now I can understand why a "religious fanatic" like myself would be a "missionary," but what is your excuse?
Now calm down, Sunshine! And while you're at it, learn some html like the rest of us have had to do. Let that be your "phony reason for living" for the day.
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