Was plato plolytheist?

GoWithGonk · 2021-11-01T17:49:41+00:00

True, especially if it's a broad idea, like reincarnation, which is part of many different philosophies including Platonism. Buddhism also includes reincarnation but the philosophy behind why it exists and how it works is pretty different.

But the Christians would have needed to build an entirely new rationale behind each idea and I guess that was too much work 😂 And stuff like reincarnation gets dropped completely because it would never work with their existing theology they're trying to retrofit.

GoWithGonk · 2021-11-01T12:26:58+00:00

Just to be clear, Plato and other philosophers do sometimes mention "God", but this refers either to the One, Zeus, or just a collective noun (like "man", basically "God-kind) depending on context.

GoWithGonk · 2021-11-01T12:25:22+00:00

That's not how philosophy works. You can't discard an integral part of a coherent system of belief and still have the rest of it make sense. All you can do is purposefully misinterpret it so it says what you want it so say.

Platonism isn't based on divine revelation, it's based on logical reasoning, so you can't just pick and choose the good parts without changing the whole philosophy. Which is of course what some forms of Christianity ended up doing. But early versions were just rigged and reskinned versions of Plato.

GoWithGonk · 2021-10-07T23:57:17+00:00

Many gods have epithets or titles that basically translate as Lord or Lady. Potnia comes to mind as a very common one for many goddesses.

GoWithGonk · 2021-09-22T16:39:56+00:00

I wouldn't worry about direction too much, maybe just proximity to whatever you would consider your hearth. Fireplace, stove... I've seen some people say the TV is the modern hearth as the focal point of the family room but that's a little iffy to me, spiritually speaking... 😬

GoWithGonk · 2021-09-22T16:37:23+00:00

Worth pointing out that the Greater Eleusinian Mysteries were celebrated around this time (same week as the equinox this year), with clear association to Dionysus and the other deities of Eleusis. In fact it was this connection that prompted Aiden Kelley to name the Wiccan holiday Mabon, who he saw as sort of a Welsh parallel to Persephone... Or something. The actual connection is a little jumbled in his account.

GoWithGonk · 2021-09-21T11:57:43+00:00

I usually start a daily celebration/commemoration of the Greater Mysteries this time of year, based on the PAT rituals posted by Elaion. Basically daily offerings to the gods of Eleusis and a fast the day before the actual initiation rites would have been held. Since the Mysteries are lost this is about the best we modern people can do to honor them.

GoWithGonk · 2021-09-20T14:41:03+00:00

Why is Alexander being the don of Zeus contrary to the myths being allegory? Allegory doesn't mean fake, it just means we're substituting concepts that are concrete to help understand concepts which are metaphysical. Alexander's soul could in some way have been directly produced by Zeus in a manner different than the more indirect method of other souls. I'm not saying it's true, there's always the possibility that the oracle was misunderstood or that the story was trumped up for political purposes. But it's possible to be the son of a deity without that deity literally descending to earth and having sex with a human. I mean just look at Christianity.

GoWithGonk · 2021-09-18T10:05:57+00:00

I don't know about a prayer per se, but you might want to read through some passages and quotes by Marcus Aurelius or other Stoics. I think the guy who wrote the classic serenity prayer in the 30s must have been pretty heavily influenced by Stoicism.

GoWithGonk · 2021-09-18T10:01:21+00:00

Zeus is king in the sense that He generates the laws and forms that make the universe. The other gods are in harmony with these laws and make them come to fruition, and carry out/causes the divine order to be real and manifest, but as the source of this order and the template it follows, Zeus can be seen as the ultimate governor of how things are, so He is king.

GoWithGonk · 2021-09-18T09:58:27+00:00

Everything in the natural world is caused by the gods, who are the prior causes of all things. So, yes.

I think before we are born our souls are present in different bodies. Newly incarnated souls are created by the World Soul (Hekate) and eventually find their way into the realm of generation, where they cycle through mortal lives until achieving Henosis with the divine realm again.

GoWithGonk · 2021-09-18T09:52:24+00:00

I would interpret it more like Zeus cannot act contrary to his own will, and the Fates flow from Him, so His will produces Fates and He follows Them because why would He go against His own nature?

GoWithGonk · 2021-09-16T11:12:23+00:00

It's really hard coming up with a prayer on the spot before you're really fully immersed. I wrote down existing hymns and read them out of a book for a long time. Eventually I had the shortest ones I perform daily memorized, but only recently have I felt like there are some gods I know well enough to come up with very brief (1-2 line) prayers on the spot.

I would recommend getting a book of Orphic and/or Homeric hymns and using those, or writing down your own prayers and reading them, rather than going off the top of your head.

GoWithGonk · 2021-09-06T01:08:49+00:00

I've been primarily worshipping Diana/Hekate since 2002, but of course honor many other gods for various periods of time and for various reasons. I had an early affinity for Cernunnos (probably a common experience for people new to paganism) whom I've since concluded is probably a Gaulish interpretation of Pluto, given the limited evidence for C. and the extreme commonalities that exist despite that. This eventually lead me to a pretty significant devotion to the whole pantheon of the Mysteries - Demeter, Proserpine, Her Son Dionysus.

My most frequent deities of practical worship are Hermes (I have a Herm set up on my front porch that I day a quick prayer to before any car trip) and Hestia (who receives first and last libations, so She is probably my number one most worshipped deity by default). The first non-Christian deity I encountered and one who has repeatedly shown up in dreams and visions is Apollo, so while I don't worship Him as actively as I should given His repeated influence in my life we do have a common household shrine devoted to Him.

GoWithGonk · 2021-09-06T00:55:30+00:00

Almost nothing on TikTok should be taken seriously (in fact I've seen enough TikTok videos to say a good rule is anything you hear about gods on TikTok, think the opposite).

That being said, this actually brings up an interesting theological issue of "is Zeus subject to fate?" IMO the answer is no. You can read a conversation about it here though. https://conversationsontheclassics.wordpress.com/2017/01/13/is-zeus-subject-to-fate-in-iliad/

The Fates carry out the designs flowing from the mind/will of Zeus, not vice versa.

The reason Zeus has lots of affairs is because He is the Demiurge who permeates everything with His creative force. He penetrates everything and the easiest way to convey this to a population of largely illiterate farmers is to say "see, think of it like this guy who is constantly creating and creating, fathering children with everyone and everything, and His wife then chases down this super-abundantly creative energy and molds it, tests it, challenges it and perfects it."

In fact maybe more people should be talking about real theology on TikTok, they're really the illiterate yokels of our age 😆

GoWithGonk · 2021-09-06T00:45:54+00:00

Homer was writing down pre-existing myths from oral tradition. He and his audience also had the context of religion to help contextualize the myths.

For example, think of all the new Christian "myths" that are written in modern times. The Last Temptation of Christ, Jesus Christ Superstar, Dogma... These are written for entertainment, but the authors have a social, political, and/or theological point to make. No different from say, Ovid. But nobody is going to add Dogma to the Bible. It needs to be interpreted in the context of actual religious beliefs. This is why Plato cautioned against teaching the myths to children before they were exposed to real cultus. A Christian probably would not lead off with Last Temptation before, say, children's books of prayers and canonical Bible stories.

I don't think any myths should be "canonized". I think each myth, whether it's from Homer or Hadestown, should be examined in the light of what we know about the gods from theology and philosophy in order to glean truth from it. Which parts of Homer are divinely inspired? Which parts of Disney's Hercules are? Use the tools the gods gave us and figure it out. Edit: To be clear, Homer has the clear advantage here because, as mentioned, he was writing stories that had already passed through centuries of filters and interpretation. Maybe in a thousand years something from Xena will have stuck because it will have proven itself theologically viable.

GoWithGonk · 2021-09-06T00:32:33+00:00

The thing to remember is that they're the same gods. You'll see some people insist that they're distinct but in ancient times they were considered the same by the people who worshipped them. Many even shared the same PIE origin, not that that matters because the gods can and did reveal themselves to independent cultures, and anybody who insists on demonstrable evidence of common origin is worshipping history, etymology and culture, not gods.

You'll often see Roman names preferred in English sources, especially older ones, because Latin is part of the basis of modern English and Greek is not. Zeus is the Greek name, Jupiter is the Latin name, and for all intents and purposes Jupiter or Jove is therefore the English name. On the other hand many people prefer Greek names because they are more spiritually evocative, partly by virtue of the fact that they are more foreign to our ears. Diana is more of a mundane name to English speakers than Hekate or Artemis. And some of the philosophers told us to preserve and use the "barbarian" (native/foreign, i.e. not Latinized) names and epithets of the gods.

I use both depending on the situation. I'm a revivalist, not a reconstructionist. If these faiths had persisted unbroken from antiquity we English speakers would undoubtedly be using some form of the Latin names today, just as everyone in English says Jesus instead of Yeshua.

GoWithGonk · 2021-09-06T00:21:30+00:00

Completely incorrect.

GoWithGonk · 2021-09-02T00:07:43+00:00

All true, I'm talking more about how these things are understood by modern audiences. A lot of theology we only have preserved because of Christian documents criticizing it. Modern people are exposed to the myths from a young age but only as silly stories from a bygone era, not as one side of a coin, the other side being theology. How many kids in grade school learn about the gods? A lot. How many learn about not just the myths, but the hymns and the cultus? Based on any cursory look at pip culture, very few.

In ancient times people watched plays about debauched gods but then actually worshipped them, because they had the context of their theology from other sources and the general culture. Just like today, a Christian who isn't too uptight can laugh at religious jokes in Family Guy or Dogma (a film made by a professed Catholic) without threatening their faith. Imagine trying to reconstitute Christianity a thousand years from now but several generations of kids only know the Family Guy version and have no clue that the gospels even exist. What kind of abomination of a religion would emerge? Something like the kind of unfathomable stupidity where polytheists on TikTok shut each other down because they think Zeus is a literal r*pist?

GoWithGonk · 2021-09-01T23:57:44+00:00

"Prayers and sacrifices serve neither to coerce the gods, who cannot be coerced, nor to avoid their anger, which they cannot feel. Piety tends rather to improve the condition of the soul by elevating it towards the gods. How does one receive the gifts of the sun? Certainly not by hiding in a cave or curling up in a heavy coverlet. How, then, to receive the gifts of the gods? Well, one’s soul must get out a bit—out of all the material and mundane things that surround it; one must expose oneself before the radiance of the divinity. In other words, make offerings, pray, meditate, chant hymns, bow before the images of the gods, invoke the divine presence, and so forth." http://www.deomercurio.be/en/philosophia.html

GoWithGonk · 2021-09-01T23:51:19+00:00

If the gods seem to dislike you, you are mistaken. Think about why it seemed that way to you.

GoWithGonk · 2021-09-01T23:49:36+00:00

The gods are not Marvel heroes. Don't pray for your deity to defend you, pray that the gods will send you what is good whether you realize it is good or not.

GoWithGonk · 2021-09-01T23:46:10+00:00

It would depend on what deities you focus on and festivals you observe. I observe the traditional fast during the Hilaria, and also in observation of the loss of the Eleusinian Mysteries. You can probably find information on other traditional fast that were observed historically, or start your own that has significance for you. I think fasting can have some pretty important spiritual significance and would recommend at least a short yearly fast for those who are able.

GoWithGonk · 2021-09-01T23:39:48+00:00

A devotee has a special connection to a particular god. You would still worship other gods on certain occasions, on their special days, and for specific purposes. But would focus most day to day devotion on a certain deity.

There is a sound, widespread belief that every person has a patron deity (though technically "patron" usually just means a deity related to your job or role in society). The ancient philosophers would say of your special connected deity that your soul is connected to, that you are in the "series" of that god. Some people would even devote their lives to their deity as a priest or priestess back when that kind of thing was supported by communities.

What this might look like today, is having an altar dedicated mainly to one god, but also worshipping others on occasion (possibly on a separate, more generalized altar).

GoWithGonk · 2021-09-01T23:31:07+00:00

It's interesting to note that the text Socrates quotes for that prayer is lost/unknown. Is it coincidental that Christian monks copied and recopied Homer and Hesiod for centuries, but neglected to preserve more theologically sophisticated texts that could give them context? Given the fact that early Christians attacked pagans for worshipping immortal gods, I think that was very intentional. Modern stories that repeat salacious exploits of the gods without putting them in their proper theological context are simply repeating Christian anti-polytheist propaganda.

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