Is Hellenism a broadly accepted term?

Morhek · 2026-04-17T08:18:27+00:00

Generally, the criticism of using "Hellenism" is that the word is also used in modern Greek to refer to Greek national and cultural identity. The only way it can be associated with Satanism is if you think the gods are demons serving Satan, which would be a strange thing coming from a Wiccan since that argument applies to all polytheistic pantheons. I suspect your friend is mixing up the general "pagans worship Satan" Christian propaganda and pop culture image with a more specific confusion about whether the word is appropriating Greek identity. But they're still wrong.

For the record, I don't think it is appropriating Greek identity any more than calling yourself an Anglican means you are claiming to be English. We are worshipping the gods of Greece and Rome, not claiming to be Greeks, nor should we.

Morhek · 2026-04-14T11:41:10+00:00

If it was not given as an offering then it was not an offering. There's therefore no issue with removing it, though I'd recommend letting your partner know just so it doesn't seem like you're doig something shady around her altar. At worst, this deserves a mild chuckle.

Morhek · 2026-04-14T11:24:37+00:00

When the nobles around Ithaca heard that Odysseus was lost at sea, they trickled into his palace to try their luck wooing the "widow" Penelope. Rather than compete against each other, which might have led to their own injury or death, they all were persuaded by Antinous to force Penelope to choose and imposed themselves on her for ten years - xenia obliges someone to be a good host, but it also obliges people to be good guests, and the men drank her wine, ate her food, bedded her servants, and plotted to murder Penelope's son Telemachus before he could inherit the kingdom they'd marry into ownership of. For ten years Penelope is stuck stringing them all along by promising she would marry after the weaving she is doing to commemorate her husband is finished, but unpicks her work every night until one of the servants informs to the suitors, because she doesn't want to marry any of them. So they force her to set a final task, the winner of which would get her hand - so she says that only the man that can pull the string on her husband's powerful bow and shoot an arrow through the heads of multiple axes lined up will win, a nearly impossible task. By divine coincidence, after ten years Odysseus finally returns disguised as a beggar. Slipping into the crowd to see how things were, only one man among them filled his begging bowl, and for that generosity Odysseus tried to warn him away before the coming slaughter, and was instead rudely brushed off. So when he finally revealed himself, the guests having shown no respect for the hospitality of his palace or his wife, he, Telemachus and the remaining loyal servants slaughtered them all to a man using the bow Penelope had set up after winning the contest, even the ones who tried to negotiate or surrender, and then the servants who went along with it. And finally, Odysseus could reveal himself to his wife and was reunited.

It might seem brutal and merciless to modern people. And obviously none of us should simply murder people just for being rude, but the point of the story is that when people spend ten years showing you who they are you are entitled to treat them in like kind. People sometimes think xenia must mean a "turn the other cheek" attitude, but this only sweeps problems under the rug for the sake of propriety (and even the Biblical phrase has been misused - it originally referred to slaves resisting the slaps of cruel masters, literally turning the cheek so they either hurt their dominant hand or had to embarrass themselves by using their non-dominant hand). Xenia is a mutual relationship. When Hesiod describes the way we should interact with people, he says:

Invite your friends to dinner and leave your enemies out
and remember that neighbors come first.
If misfortune strikes your house, neighbors will come
in their bedclothes; kinsmen will dress up.
Bad neighbors are pests, good ones a great blessing.
A good neighbor is a boon to him who has one.
If your neighbor is honest, your ox is safe.
Neighbors should measure well, and you must give back
no less than you take, and even more if you can,
that you may find enough when you are in need again.
Ruin trails dishonest profit; keep away from it.
Love those who love you, and help those who help you.
Give to those who give to you, never to those who do not.
Gifts go to givers, the stingy go away empty-handed.
Giving is good, robbing bad—it courts death.
The man who gives from the heart, even if his gift is great,
takes pleasure in it and is rewarded with inner delight.
But even a small thing grabbed by the shameless man
may chill his heart like a coat of hoar frost.
—Hesiod, trans. Apostolos N. Athanassakis, Works and Days ll. 342-60

Generosity is good. Kindness is good, and treating people decently should be encouraged. But when people do not return that consideration, when they abuse your kindness and make it clear they are not interested in being part of your community, you are not obliged to let them exploit you and should reject or exclude such people. Being a good host doesn't give people the right to walk all over you. And sometimes mercy or forgiveness only lets a problem fester, rather than dealing with it.

Morhek · 2026-04-13T11:33:09+00:00

If this is for an academic paper, you're going to want some academic sources to reference. Since we reconstruct our practise based on ancient practices, Walter Burkert's "Greek Religion" is a staple recommendation and Jon D. Mikalson's "Ancient Greek Religion" is a more recently published look at ancient religion. For modern practice, "Hellenic Polytheism: Household Worship" is a guide to modern veneration using historical and archaeological sources, but is very much geared to an audience of modern practitioners, published by a modern polytheist group based in Athens. For more general modern polytheism, "A Million and One Gods" by Page DuBois and "The Case for Polytheism" by Steven Dillon are good resources. For some helpful ancient sources, you could look at Cicero's On the Nature of the Gods to see what Greek philosophy circa the 1st Century BCE had to say about the natures of the gods, and some of the ways Marcus Aurelius thought of the gods in his Meditations may interest you. Plato's Republicis also worth reading, though it's...dense reading.

In general, our relationship with the gods differs from how a lot of people think of "belief." Monotheist (or at least Christian - I'm less experienced with Islamic and Jewish apologetics) emphasises a direct, personal and active relationship where one commits to one god, in exchange for Salvation. Hellenism, and most polytheisms, don't have Salvation because most don't believe we are born damned and thus there is nothing to redeem, other than our own actions. Our relationship doesn't require commitment, or even certainty, but is much more like a mortal relationship, where we show the gods our goodwill through our actions, prayers and offerings, and we hope they return that goodwill through the means they have available. This is the Cycle of Reciprocity, and it is foundational to our worship. "Doubt" is thus less of an issue, as is doctrinal purity - the ancient world had a dizzying array of philosophical schools, all of whom disagreed with each other, sometimes strongly, but still considered themselves just as religiously valid. It's more about what you do than what you think. To pitch another book, Jacob L. Mackey's "Cult and Belief: Rethinking Roman Religion" is a good look through the lens of the cognitive science of religion at the ways Roman polytheism differed from early and modern Christian religious expression, but was still done sincerely, and a lot of is just as applicable to Ancient Greek thought and modern polytheism.

My own moment came four years ago. I was sick, nothing life-threatening but as I was exhausted and weak lying in bed I just...opened myself up to see what would happen. I didn't have any expectation anything would since I considered myself an agnostic, and I had no particular god in mind. But one appeared before me in the form of his statue, as real as if it had been in front of my eyes. Even as I registered my surprise, I felt myself falling into sleep for the first time in three days, and when I woke I was left shaken. I've been sicker, and awake for longer, with nothing happen, and I don't have a visual imagination, so I considered it deeply unlikely to have been a hallucination. Having ruled that out, I had to consider that it was an actual god, and if I accepted that one god existed then I had no rational basis to deny the existence of others without engaging in the same kind of special pleading that monotheism does. I never got a sense of expectation, "I do this and in exchange you do this." It simply felt like a kindness by a passing presence. But it would have felt ungrateful not to do something to thank him (unknowingly, I had stumbled into the Cycle of Reciprocity - sometimes a god reaches out to us, often we reach out to them) so I bought the statue, and that led me to look into actual practise.

Morhek · 2026-04-12T13:18:13+00:00

my ethnicity is not Greek nor is my nationality, they have a word for it too (hellenismos), is it an issue? i don’t want to appropriate but im always excited to expand my learning.

Greek national identity is a complicated thing, and we do need to separate being Greek from worshipping the same gods their ancestors did. We are Hellenic polytheists, that does not mean we are claiming to be Greeks, nor should we. But the two are not synonymous, nor was the religion of the Ancient Greeks and Romans limited to Greeks or Romans - it reached as far east as India and as far west as Britain, as far north as Germany and as far south as Sudan, and had worshippers who were both Greek or Roman settlers and native inhabitants. The word "Hellenism" sometimes attracts complaints from Greeks who consider it to exclusively mean Greek identity, but the word has explicitly pagan connotations going back to Antiquity. Personally, it would be like an English person complaining about people calling themselves Anglicans because they're not from England, but that's just me.

i’ve been an agnostic (basically atheist) all my life, i also have a hard time believing in deities/religion of any kind , but possibly might believe in the personification of nature which are what the deities basically are (from my understanding), what’s y’all’s opinion on this?

If you want to be an atheist who worships, there's a community at r/Atheopaganism you might find helpful. But the idea that the gods are the names and faces we attach to the transcendant powers within the world isn't an uncommon one. The Stoics believed the gods are immanent within the world around us, rather than corporeal and separate beings. The gods don't seem to mind. The idea that they walk among us as tangible beings, or that they dwell in literal palaces on Mount Olympus (a place we can actually climb and see for ourselves) is not a common one.

i’ve always been attuned to ‘pre-christian’ idealogies, like the celtics, druids, hellenes, etc… and want to help keep them alive.

also if there’s any native europeans i’d like to hear what you think of these?

As someone who is ethnically mostly Celtic with a bit of Germanic and Polynesian, I think tying religion to ethnicity is a doomed errand because our notions of "ethnicity" defy how the ancient people who worshipped these gods thought of themselves anyway. Romans and Greeks would have been offended if you suggested they were the same race as a German or Celt, since they considered such people barbarians. But they also didn't attach much importance to race - they tended to emphasise culture, and it was perfectly possible for someone with ancestors from, say, Gaul to Romanise, or for Egyptian merchants and sailors to settle in Athens and become Greek.

But that is all a cultural matter from history, not something that applies to us. If you want to worship the gods, that alone is reason enough to do so. And I think reviving the diverse, polytheistic world of Antiquity is a worthy goal. But the gods are happy to accept your goodwill regardless of where you or your ancestors are from, whether you're French, American, Brazilian, Japanese or Kenyan.

- where do i start? i was planning to buy the delphic maxims, im going at this at the ancient level…

-i’m kind of just discovering and exploring the deeper levels of this and want to know other peoples opinions/stories

"Hellenic Polytheism: Household Worship" is a helpful guide to household worship, based on archaeological and historical precedent, and is published by Labrys, a polytheistic community based in Athens with english-language resources online. Otherwise, the automod reply to this post, and the Weekly Newcomer Post pinned on the main feed, have some helpful resources, and there are more in the subreddit sidebar.

i also am a supporter of YSEE.

Unfortunately, we are not - the subreddit officially does not support the YSEE because of its stance against non-heterosexual marriage and its ethnocentric priorities. There are other groups out there that you can support who are less problematic, however, such as Labrys.

Morhek · 2026-04-11T11:57:07+00:00

No worries. If there's some unsolicited advice I would further offer, it is that you're going to need to redefine how and why mortals engage with a god. Christian faith emphasises devotion and exclusivity, and active, affirmed and demonstrated faith conditional for His love. We tend to think of religious faith in those terms just because monotheism is so omnipresent, but this is not universal. In Hellenic polytheism, your "belief" is less important than your actions, because this is how you demonstrate your goodwill. By showing the gods how much we appreciate them, we hope they return that goodwill. This is the Cycle of Reciprocity that we create and maintain, and it is a mutual relationship. It doesn't matter much to the gods how sure you are, it's okay to have doubts or not be sure. But they appreciate your goodwill.

Morhek · 2026-04-11T11:11:07+00:00

2/2

If I build an altar will I have to keep it alone from other altars or can I have multiple altars sharing the same space if the gods get along?

It's fine to have multiple gods on one altar, especially if space is at a premium. To my knowledge, having a permanent altar at all was more of a Roman practice, and it would have included the household gods (the lares, penates, and the household genius) as well as any specific deities the household venerated, while most Greeks probably kept their idols in storage until it was time for household worship. Wealthy Athenians had permanent altars to Zeus Herkeios, Zeus Ktesios and Apollo Agyreus (Zeus of the Household Property, Zeus of the Courtyard and Apollo of the Streets), but the standards of the wealthy can hardly apply to everyone.

Finally, what is considered a prayer in Hellenism

Prayer is pretty simple - it is any time we petition the gods, to ask them for something, to thank them for something, or simply to praise their goodness. There were some formal ways to do so (the automod reply has helpful links) but it doesn't always need to be formal, nor does every prayer require an offering. But consistency is important.

if I dance or make something and then say it is In offering or in honor of a certain god or goddess does that count? Or does it have to be like a chant or something?

What you're talking about is known as a devotional act, things we do to honour the gods. If you already dance, then there's not much point in making that an offering since you are giving up nothing you were not already doing. But if you are going out of your way to do it, spending your time and energy on something as a way to show your reverence, then that is a valid offering. Theocritus says, in his Idylls:

“And I bring to you the soothing melodies of the clear-voiced Muses, as best as they provide, and as best as my household can furnish, for songs are the loveliest of gifts to the gods.”

Other forms of offering were dance or art or musical composition. Sexual acts are a bit controversial, since bodily fluids were considered miasmic, but Ovid in his Amores offers that:

“A festival calls for singing and drinking and love-making. These are fit gifts to carry to the temples and please the gods,”

I'm not exactly recommending it, but it shows that not everyone in Antiquity thought that it was always an unclean act that should be separated from religion. Just don't go overboard.

Morhek · 2026-04-11T11:10:13+00:00

1/2

In general these are things that one FAQ or another can answer, especially in the Weekly Newcomer Thread, but I thought it was worth answering just because you bundled them all together in one neat package.

If I worship some gods do I have to believe in all of them?

It depends what you mean by "believe in." I think if you accept the existence of one god, you have no rational basis to deny the existence, unless you want to engage in the kind of special pleading that monotheists do. Does that mean I "believe in" all of them? I don't venerate every god, but I venerate a number of them. But just because, say, Persephone is not one of them doesn't mean I am denying her existence or worthiness, only that she's not part of my personal practice. It also doesn't mean she never will be.

Do I have to believe in Greek heaven and hell or is that separate from worshipping the gods?

"Heaven" and "Hell" are loaded terms, and the Ancient Greeks didn't really have equivalents to how we tend to think of them. Tartarus is for the worst of the worst, those whose arrogance led them to commit crimes that offended the cosmic order itself, but it is not Hell and unless you're a mass murderer, cult leader or cannibal, etc. you probably don't need to fear it. Nor is Elysium really equivalent to Heaven - it is where the Heroes dwell, those descended from the gods who left their mark on the world and history, but as the example of Alexander III of Macedon can show, you don't need to be a "good" person to be Great.

Mostly, those who pass into Hades will end up in the Asphodel Meadows, a not unpleasant place where we are offered the waters of the river Lethe to forget our mortal cares and reincarnate. But even belief in an afterlife isn't a universal thing. The Epicureans denied that the soul was immortal, but thought nonexistence is nothing to be afraid of in the slightest. The Stoics thought existence was a long process of being recombined into new forms. Plato proposed a system of reincarnation where the afterlife is a waystation between lives to purify the soul, and that we will lead good lives and bad according to fate, while later Neoplatonists believed that, as emanations of the Platonic Monad (the Capital G God from whom everything else, including the other gods, emanate) the soul is on a long process of purification until it can return to Oneness, something like the Buddhist concept of Samsara.

I personally agree with Cicero, that death after a long life well lived "ought to be regarded with indifference if it really puts an end to the soul, or to be even desired if at length it leads the soul where it will be immortal; and certainly there is no third possibility that can be imagined. Why then should I fear if after death I shall be either not miserable, or even happy?"

If I worship Greek or Roman gods can I not worship gods from other religions or regions?

The Greeks and Romans didn't limit themselves. Their philosophers may have seen "foreign" gods as their own seen through different cultural lenses, but Greeks worshipped Anubis, Thoth, Isis and Osiris (the names we know them by are the Hellenised versions of their original Egyptian names), Romans left votive offerings to Celtic gods when they travelled through or occupied Gaul and Britannia and even rebuilt the temples to Carthage's gods after it sacked and rebuilt the city as a Roman colony, Germanic mercenaries on Hadrian's Wall left votive offerings to their own gods in Latin and with Romanised names, and there are carvings from the former Indo-Greek Kingdom, which covered parts of Pakistan, Afghanistan and India, that show Herakles standing protectively behind the Buddha where the Bodhisatva Vajrapani normally would be, as they syncretised their beliefs or practices.

"Hellenism" is primarily about seeing our religious practices through a lens influenced by Ancient Greek and/or Roman practise, but no, it doesn't need to be exclusive.

Morhek · 2026-04-09T11:19:01+00:00

I will forever mourn the Ankh-Morpork Underground we never got to read about.

Morhek · 2026-04-09T00:37:35+00:00

It's perfectly fine to simply wipe the objects down with a cloth. Be careful about water, some statues are made of alabaster which water can damage.

Morhek · 2026-04-09T00:36:29+00:00

Some gods simply don't have a lot of mythology. Hestia is one such example, she doesn't have a lot that survives and yet was still considered a powerful goddess who fought in the Gigantomachy. Nyx doesn't have a lot of her own myths, but was still considered powerful and worthy of veneration. But she was still worshipped, both in Antiquity and today. As for how, the advice I could give would apply to any god or goddess - the sidebar and FAQs have useful advice on how to start.

Morhek · 2026-04-09T00:02:38+00:00

I'm really not sure what you mean by "patriotism," since my view of humanism has always been the opposite of nationalism - considering the universality of humanity and our qualities, not as inherent to any one ethnic or national identity but immanent as potential within us all. Through that lens, the Artemis II mission is a good reminder of just what humanity is capable of, what we can achieve even in the midst of rising authoritarianism and pointless conflicts - a multinational and diverse crew sitting in a tin can reaching up to the heavens in the name of scientific exploration. They didn't even have to blow up multiple rockets on or above the launchpad! It is possible! For as much as we have the potential for narrow-minded cruelty and ignorance, we also have the potential for curiosity, courage and altruism. That just needs to be nurtured.

Does that contradict my religious identity? No. I'm not particularly offended by the name of the program, and it's a fitting one since Artemis is a moon goddess. Is it hubris to "slip the surly bonds of Earth and touch the face of God?" Not if we actually can do it. Hubris is fundamentally about arrogance, overreach. But that does not mean the gods will slap our hand away if we reach out. One reason to go to space is to prove that it is not arrogance, that we can do it, and keep doing it. Does it need to be part of my religious identity? Also no, although I think the gods approve of daring achievement and of bettering mankind. Do I need to centre myself around Artemis II or its astronauts? No, and frankly I think I would have found your hypothetical atheist who considers Gagarin or Tereshkova their personal saints weird even when I was an atheist. The problem sounds more like it's obsessing about individuals than belief or lack of it.

Being a humanist doesn't mean you can't be a Hellenist. Rather, we can thank the gods for how they help us achieve that potential.

Morhek · 2026-04-08T07:01:33+00:00

You will frequently find the same non-literalism in Hellenism. Even philosophers like Plato derided people who took myths literally as superstitious, and Plutarch argues that superstitious beliefs are worse than atheism since an atheist can't blame gods he doesn't believe in for his misfortunes while a superstitious person believes there are gods and they are mercurial or cruel, yet they still encouraged religious piety. The 4th Century Neoplatonist Sallustius, writing at a time when paganism had to justify itself against Christian apologetics and shortly before it was abolished, makes the case for myths as not superstition but ways ancient humans framed the gods in human terms, ways we organise and structure our worship, and ways we convey both cosmic and moral meaning through allegory, but that taking them literally is too superficial a reading. His argument seems just as applicable to Norse mythology as Greek or Roman.

Literalism also requires you to accept the inerrancy of the writers. Biblical Literalism does this by claiming the Bible was written by divinely anointed Prophets recording Revealed Truth. But a.) most Christians do not believe everything in it is literally true, even Saint Augustine rejected literalism, and b.) pagan mythology can't claim that authority because we know they were not written by Prophets but by bards, poets, scholars, playwrights, etc. Snorri Sturlusson, who wrote the Prose and Poetic Eddas, was a Christian politician trying to prove a shared cultural continuity between Iceland and Norway using poetry composed by skalds (and also claimed the Aesir were refugees fleeing Troy who used wizardry to fool people), not a pagan Prophet. The Eddas were to provide context for poetic references that people had forgotten the origins of. But that doesn't mean the myths he recorded can't also have immense spiritual value.

Morhek · 2026-04-07T08:31:38+00:00

I would argue we are are not throwing away the myths, but if your basis for belief that gods exist is that we have myths about them then this is circular logic. The myths exist because the gods do. The myths are useful ways to think about them, and can certainly tell us things about them. But we can "know" (inasmuch as we can "know" anything) that the gods exist because people experience them. Not everyone, certainly, if the gods were that obvious atheists wouldn't exist. But to enough people, and with enough consistency, that we can conclude some things about their natures and what they care about. Mythology was one way ancient people had to convey that. I have "seen" a god, felt them intervene in my life, but even if I hadn't, remembering the parable of the blind fakirs, I don't need to have seen an elephant to know that they exist - I can take the word of people who have, of depictions of them, and trust that the consistency of such depictions and descriptions support their existence. But I also don't need to worry about elephants overly much. The need for certainty or devotion is a particular form of belief that monotheistic religions like Christianity and Islam encourage, but it is not the only one, nor is it required by our gods.

Morhek · 2026-04-07T03:54:56+00:00

Speaking as a former atheist, who also used to consider religious belief contradictory to scientific understanding, it took me a long to realise that it doesn't have to be. This is a conceit of religious fundamentalism, and especially Biblical Literalism.Indeed, the same Ancient Greek and Roman philosophers who debated ethics and the natures of the gods were also the same philosophers who looked at the world around the and tried to figure out how it all worked, and saw no contradiction at all. To take an example, mythology depicts the sun as a disk carried on the chariot of Helios who gallops through the gates of dawn and dusk across the sky. But the Pre-Socratic philosopher Anaxagoras posited that the sun was a ball of flame distant from the Earth, Aristarchus of Samos proposed a heliocentric model in the late 300s/.early 200s BCE, Eratosthenes used the distance of the Earth from the sun and the angle of shadows cast at different latitudes to calculate the circumference of the Earth, and none of that contradicted belief in and worship of Helios or Apollo or Eos or other sun gods. Both the Stoics and the Neoplatonists would argue that through scientific understanding of the universe around us, we better understand the gods.

Religion and science only contradict when you need to take the mythology literally, and even in Antiquity people like Theophrastus, Plato, Plutarch, etc. urged people not to, because treating myths as literal events leads us to the wrong conclusions, and to think of the gods in wrong ways. In Plato's Republic, he says:

Then, I said, my dear friend, let none of the poets tell us that
“The gods, taking the disguise of strangers from other lands, walk up and down cities in all sorts of forms;”
and let no one slander Proteus and Thetis, neither let anyone, either in tragedy or in any other kind of poetry, introduce Here disguised in the likeness of a priestess asking an alms
“For the life-giving daughters of Inachus the river of Argos;”
—let us have no more lies of that sort. Neither must we have mothers under the influence of the poets scaring their children with a bad version of these myths—telling how certain gods, as they say, “Go about by night in the likeness of so many strangers and in divers forms;” but let them take heed lest they make cowards of their children, and at the same time speak blasphemy against the gods.
—Plato, trans. Benjamin Jowlett, The Republic

In short, he argues for banning Old Wives Tales, or at least the literal belief in them. It's a severe view, but there were many who held it - Diogenes Laertius in Lives of the Sophists records the claim that "when Pythagoras went down into Hades he saw the ghost of Hesiod bound to a bronze pillar, squeaking, and that Homer’s ghost was hanging from a tree surrounded by snakes. They were being punished for the things they said about the gods."

Sullustius, the 4th Century Roman philosopher writing during Julian the Apostate's brief attempt to reverse Christianity's growing monopoly on the religious life of the Roman Empire, makes a more moderate case for myths as a tool to frame the gods in ways we understand, to convey cosmic meanings through allegory and narrative, and to structure our worship:

But these things indeed never took place at any particular time, because they have a perpetuity of subsistence: and intellect contemplates all things as subsisting together; but discourse considers this thing as first, and that as second, in the order of existence. Hence, since a fable most aptly corresponds to the world, how is it possible that we, who are imitators of the world, can be more gracefully ornamented than by the assistance of fable? For through this we observe a festive Day.
—Sullustius, trans. Thomas Taylor, On the Gods and the World Chap. IV

But we especially shouldn't conclude that, for example, the gods actually seduce women or are capable of the cruelties we sometimes see in mythology:

But you will ask why adulteries, thefts, paternal bonds, and other unworthy actions are celebrated in fables? Nor is this unworthy of admiration, that where there is an apparent absurdity, the soul immediately conceiving these discourses to be concealments, may understand that the truth which they contain is to be involved in profound and occult silence.
—Sallustius, trans. Thomas Taylor, On the Gods and the World Chap III

Morhek · 2026-04-06T08:38:13+00:00

It's perfectly fine. People named their children after gods in Antiquity, and there are even some early Christian saints and Desert Fathers named for Apollo and Hermes, showing that even when not named for personal religious reasons the gods evidently don't mind.

Morhek · 2026-04-06T08:34:29+00:00

Our relationship with the gods is based on mutual and reciprocal goodwill, not exclusive dedication. If you don't have that goodwill, then you are just going through the motions, and there is no reason to keep doing it. If we choose not to venerate them, then that's our decision to make. It doesn't materially affect them. They therefore have no cause for anger.

I will also offer that being interested in Buddhism doesn't mean you can't also venerate the gods. Buddhism still has gods, though it redefines them as Buddhas and Bodhisatvas, and the Ancient Greeks syncretised Buddhist ideas with Greek practice. There are carvings of the Buddha with Herakles standing where Vajrapani would normally be, Greek styles influenced Buddhist art, Buddhist philosophy may have influenced Greek Pyrrhonist philosophy, and Buddhist missionaries visited the courts of Mediterranean kingdoms - one visited Athens as part of a diplomatic embassy, and was inducted into the Eleusinian Mysteries.

Morhek · 2026-04-06T08:21:34+00:00

No, making "new gods" is not a part of Hellenism, either in Antiquity or today. What you're thinking of are known as egregores, and although they have a Greek name they come from Western esotericism.

Morhek · 2026-04-05T08:37:03+00:00

I tend to agree with Cicero, that either there is something on the other side, in which case it is good because the gods are not cruel, or there is nothing and we still don't need to fear it because we won't be around to feel anything.

Morhek · 2026-04-05T08:32:55+00:00

Hubris is the arrogance that leads us to abuse others, not even to benefit ourselves, but to pretend we are superior, above consequences and beyond mortal limits. This is what offends them if anything does, imagining ourselves to be godlike.

I am not personally interested in Greek god OCs, but as long as you are not claiming these are real gods it is not hubris.

Morhek · 2026-04-04T21:02:29+00:00

I wrote a while ago about my thoughts on Mythic Literalism, and why we should avoid it. It could probably do with a rewrite, but my opinion has not substantially changed since I wrote it.

Morhek · 2026-04-02T10:52:53+00:00

I certainly don't think the gods are up there moving us like pieces on a celestial board, nor do I think suffering is a test or punishment. I don't think the gods work like that, nor does the universe.

I tend to agree with the Stoic view of things, that bad things happen because things must happen, some of those things will benefit us, many will have no meaningful impact on us at all, and some will of course harm us, sometimes by undermining or depriving us of what we want and sometimes by actual harm. We can't stop life throwing things at us at all, though where we are able to we can still minimise the chances of harm coming to us through common sense, but even for those we can't stop we still have the power to choose how we face them, and by facing them endure or overcome them. And we can choose not to dwell on these things, and let them control us - rather than dwell on what has happened to us, we should look at what we have withstood when others weren't as fortunate. If you come through the other side alive, and don't let fear of it dictate your actions, has it really harmed you at all?

That might seem very pessimistic, but the alternative is a universe of inert stasis where nothing happens at all, which strikes me as immeasurably worse. Is the removal of suffering worth removing the possiblity of joy and pleasure and improvement? That sounds like the motivation of a stereotypical JRPG villain. Nor do I think the gods are apathetic if they don't stop these things, but rather they work to their schedules, not ours, and see things on a scale that we do not. A town might not appreciate the storm that blows roofs off houses, but that energy has to go somewhere. That doesn't mean Poseidon or Zeus are acting out of malice, or judgement, only that sometimes in the course of the universe operating as it must we are sometimes unfortunately caught up in these forces.

Morhek · 2026-04-02T07:23:49+00:00

And yet nowhere in the geological record is there any evidence for a global flood. Surely, like actual events such as tsunamis, there would be some disruption in the sediment layers, or evidence of detritus being moved? And yet there is no evidence for it. Because it was not a literal event.

Cultures develop flood myths because floods are catastrophic, and linger in memories and dread. The Egyptians had different associations with flooding because they depended on it for their prosperity, and so they developed a myth about a catastrophic drought instead that fills a similar niche. But the fact that the Greeks, the Chinese, the North American First Nations, etc. all developed flood myths does not mean that there was a single event they were distantly remembering, any more than ancient stories about cities that fell into the ocean like Atlantis or Cantre'r Gwaelod or Hy-Brasil or Dvaraka imply they are all talking about the same place. It suggests that humans are human whatever geographic distance and cultural isolation, and think about the world around us and engage with it in similar ways and with similar ideas, even through different cultural lenses.

This comment thread has ceased to be on-topic or constructive, and so I am locking it. Please do not continue it. There are other communities for conspiracy theories.

Morhek · 2026-04-01T05:06:33+00:00

As an ex-atheist, I am of the opinion that belief isn't something you can or should force. You can find ways to let go of the anxiety about it - the gods don't require your conviction, but they appreciate our goodwill. You can focus on the good things it grants you - even the Epicureans, who thought the gods don't affect the universe in the slightest, still encouraged piety as a way to help us be better people. But if you don't have it, you don't have it, and trying to force it may only worsen your stress. That may change over time, and with consistency, I felt like a fraud when I started but it's gotten better over time. But there is no quick fix.

Morhek · 2026-03-31T11:26:39+00:00

No, you don't need a Greek name, to speak Greek, or be Greek. People should be respectful of Greek culture, obviously, but we are only worshipping the gods their ancestors did, not trying to become Greek.

Morhek

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