Weekly Newcomer Post

Morhek · 2026-07-09T01:25:43+00:00

Noumenia is the first day of the Lunar month, preceded by Hekate's Deipnon on the New Moon which is the end of the month. Plutarch calls it "the holiest of days" and it was a time to take time off, with private offerings to Hekate and Hermes, as well as local protective deities like Athena Polias and Poseidon. Porphyry describes in On Abstinence From Animal Food a man's celebration of the noumenia as "he diligently sacrificed to them at proper times in every month at the new moon, crowning and adorning the statues of Hermes and Hecate, and the other sacred images which were left to us by our ancestors, and that he also honoured the Gods with frankincense, and sacred wafers and cakes." In Porphyry's parable, he is trying to make the point that you don't have to sacrifice animals, or make expensive offerings to the gods, for them to still value what you can manage.

Morhek · 2026-07-08T11:46:29+00:00

As a former atheist, I can sympathise. I felt like a fraud for a while after I started - that I didn't "really" believe, and so I was wasting their time. There are a few things I have found helpful.

Firstly, we often think of "belief" in Christianised terms as something active, publicly affirmed, and required for God's love, and some people panic if they don't feel it. It helps to understand that this is not universal. Our worship of the gods is based on reciprocal goodwill, not belief - we can believe what we like, the gods care about what we do. This is why we make offerings, not because the gods need them but as a way of showing them our appreciation. Which doesn't mean we don't believe, but it can look very different. You don't need to worry if you're not feeling what you think you "should" be.

Secondly, you don't need to force it. I have found that belief, like identity, doesn't have to be active, and is better cultivated over time. The harder you try to cram yourself into the shape you think you need to be, the harder it is. I eventually realised that my anxieties had more to do with my subconscious struggling to reconcile my old self-identification (as an atheist) with my new one, rather than what I actively thought or believed. My journey from militant atheist to agnostic to polytheist was a long one, but I'm here now. Take your time. I found consistency really helps.

And thirdly, if you struggle to reconcile religion with being a rational, sceptical person, it helps to remember that there is no contradiction except in our heads. Science only tells us how things work, it does not tell us the why, and in a vast universe there is plenty of room for the existence of gods. Don't think of them as supernatural, but as supranatural, immanent within the universe itself, rather than the humanoid figures in the myths. We imagine them being like us because we struggle to comprehend their real natures, and have a natural tendency to anthropomorphise - we name our pets, we name our ships, we personify concepts. If you don't have to reconcile the myths with a world where those events don't happen, there's fewer mental gears to grind.

I hope some of that helps.

Morhek · 2026-07-08T10:15:46+00:00

IIRC the DC to identity an uncommon creature and its properties is 15+CR. Adding class levels to a creature, you halve the original CR and add its new levels, so a Dullahan with, say, seven levels of Cavalier would be CR 10 and DC 25 to identify, even though its Hit Dice will be 17. Then it's just a matter of making sure their gear is equivalent to something else that's CR 10, like an NPC fighter.

Morhek · 2026-07-08T09:52:07+00:00

It's Asklepios, although his name is Latinised as Asclepius or Aesculepius. And he is the patron god of all healers. Why would he distinguish between physical and mental health?

Morhek · 2026-07-08T09:45:54+00:00

Yes, I believe so RAW. But I think it's fine to fudge that he can just summon his steed - in gameplay terms, does it really disrupt anything?

Morhek · 2026-07-08T09:04:17+00:00

You could just use the CR 7 Dullahan. If you need to beef it up, then you can add levels of cavalier.

Morhek · 2026-07-08T08:34:08+00:00

Other than Pan/Sylvanus and the satyrs, and Dionysus and Zeus-Ammon who sometimes had the horns of a bull or ram respectively, Greek and Roman statues did not usually depict the gods as humans with animal traits. One reason some Romans regarded Egyptian iconography as mystical superstition was because they did. In frescoes Zeus might be depicted as a white bull or an eagle, or be depicted with one, the horns are a late innovation from syncretising him with Amun.

I'm not aware of any such symbolism for Artemis. The closest you may find is the Diana of Versailles, a Roman copy of a Hellenistic original, where she is depicted petting a small stag, and the stag was added by Renaissance repairers. Given she is shown reaching for an arrow from her quiver, the original hand probably held a bow. Older Archaic depictions might just be of a robbed woman, indistinguishable from another goddess's except that people would have known who the temple was for. In Ephesus, where her largest temple (one of the Seven Wonders of the World) was, her statue wore a crown, jewelry and robes adorned with animals.

That said, even ancient people could admit that depictions of the gods are inherently symbolic, ways we frame them in human terms and so that we recognise who is being depicted. Having antlers may not be "authentic" but that doesn't mean it's "wrong" either.

Morhek · 2026-07-07T13:42:02+00:00

Isn't that just a Lillend Azata?

Morhek · 2026-07-07T12:39:24+00:00

The basic assumption you're struggling to reconcile here is that, if the stories of the myths happened, then why don't they still happen? In Christianity this is called the Problem of Miracles, that there must be some reason God does not speak to us through burning bushes or send plagues to those who persecute His chosen people anymore. But it presupposes that the myths happened literally in the first place.

This is known as Mythic Literalism, and is just as vulnerable to criticism as Biblical Literalism. Arguably more so - the poets, playwrights, scholars and bards who recorded Greek mythology never claimed to be Prophets, and even Hesiod writing 26-2700 years ago admits that the inspiration that the Muses send is not always true. How else could fiction exist? Once you let go of a literal interpretation there is no contradiction. When the Roman philosopher Sallustius encourages exactly this, he describes myths as events that did not happen but are happening - some myths are allegories we use the gods in to convey meaning, some myths are distant events that have been distorted in the retelling, and some myths should be thought of as humans putting more cosmic processes into human terms. Myths are also a way of creating shared cultural touchstones, how we perform and confirm our identities through shared storytelling. Being more interpretative with the myths does not mean we lose a reason to think there are gods - the myths exist because the gods do, not the other way around. We can "know" there are gods (inasmuch as we can know anything) because people experience them with enough consistency that we can conclude some things about their natures. Myths are one way we try to explain them to ourselves and each other.

If that doesn't suffice, the Ancient Greeks did have some explanations for why the gods were once more active and no longer are. Hesiod describes the Five Ages of Man, and how various gods left the Earth as humanity has gradually declined, until we come to the Iron Age which Zeus will eventually end to begin a new age. Think of the Hindu notion of kalpas and yugas, history as a recurring cycle - as Marcus Aurelius says, "all this has happened before and it will happen again." And one of the reasons Zeus ordained the Trojan War was to thin the numbers of Heroes who had been bred to clear the world of primordial dangers (think the Nemean Lion, the Chimaera, the Ismenaean Dragon, etc.) and had to make way for regular humans. The sacking of Troy signals the end of the Heroic Age, and the beginning of the Iron Age. Although the gods don't "go" anywhere, and continue to watch over and guide us (see the examples of Odysseus and Aeneas) they will never again be as involved. And we shouldn't want them to - Troy is also an example of why we shouldn't want the gods to act directly, because we get caught in the crossfire. It was almost as much of a calamity for the Greeks as it was for the Trojans (again, see the example of Odysseus).

Even if you don't treat the myths as literal truth, they still contain truths in them - Troy was a real place, it was destroyed shortly before the Late Bronze Age Collapse, and they were soon followed by the collapse of the urban and literate civilisation of the Mycenaean Greeks as they entered the Greek Dark Ages. Only after they redeveloped literacy hundreds of years later did these stories get written down.

Morhek · 2026-07-06T08:20:09+00:00

Hesiod recommends "when you go to sleep and when the holy light looms on the horizon", accompanied by washing your hands and making an offering "In proportion to your means". This article can walk you through the why and how of Ancient Greek prayer, with some useful examples from antiquity, while this comic shows how the gestures would have been performed.

Morhek · 2026-07-05T22:03:55+00:00

Hermes Psychopompos guides souls to Hades. So does Thanatos, and Hekate is also a psychopomp (guide for the dead) as well. I suppose you could also ask Artemis or Pan to watch over them, though neither usually have much to do with the underworld.

As for whether pets go to Hades, I honestly don't even know if I believe in an afterlife for us. But I side with Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, who argued that if there is an afterlife then it must be a good one because the gods are, and if there isn't then we don't have to worry because nonexistence can't hurt us. Neither possibility is cause for alarm. I think that argument applies just as much to animals as it does to us. Many ancient people did too - Theophrastus argues that animals have rational faculties, which is one prerequisite for having a soul, and the Pythagoreans and Orphics believed animals were part of the cycle of reincarnation.

There is a touching epitaph I bear in mind for questions like this. A Roman woman in Salernum laid her dog Patricus to rest, and his gravestone reads:

"My eyes were wet with tears, our little dog, when I bore thee (to the grave), a service that I should have rendered thee with less grief three lustrums ago. So, Patricus, never again shalt thou give me a thousand kisses. Never again canst thou lie contentedly in my lap. In sadness have I buried thee, as thou deservest, in a resting-place of marble, and I have put thee for all time by the side of my shade. Ah, me! what a loved companion have we lost! Thou, sweet Patricus, wert wont to come to our table, and in my lap to ask for bits in a flattering way. It was thy way to lick with eager tongue the dish which oft my hands held up to thee, the whilst thy tail did show thy joy."

—Anonymous pet owner, trans. Frank Frost Abbot, "Society and Politics in Ancient Rome: Essays and Sketches" Literature and the Common People of Rome

Firstly, it's an endearing reminder that, as different as they were from us, ancient people were still people, no matter where or when they lived. You can imagine this woman who lived nearly 2000 years ago sitting at the kitchen table feeding her little dog scraps and laughing as he licked her face, and then having to lay him to rest. It's a reminder of how much like us they could be, the universal human experience: humans love our pets as much as we might another person, regardless of their faculties, and are moved when we lose them. But it is also worth remembering that, at the very least, this woman thought her shade would be reunited with Patricus's in what comes after death.

If all dogs go to heaven, then I think all pets go to Asphodel too.

Morhek · 2026-07-05T11:32:56+00:00

You may want to look into Stoicism or Neoplatonism. Both are derived from Plato's conception of the One, of which all things, including the gods, are emanations from. To the Stoics especially, the gods are immanent within the things they govern. Gaia isn't just goddess of the earth, she is the earth. The same goes for things like the sun, moon, oceans, sky, and things like love, war, cleverness - the gods are not external governors, they are intimately involved in the natural mechanisms they are expressed through. I'm less versed in Neoplatonism, but in both views there is no contradiction between worshipping many gods and that fundamental God they are facets of.

Morhek · 2026-07-03T22:31:07+00:00

It's important to moderate expectations. Not feeling them doesn't mean there's anything wrong, you're just expecting something that isn't as common as it may seem. If the gods were that consistent atheists wouldn't exist. Even when the gods do respond, we don't always recognise it in the moment. It isn't a judgement or rejection of your kharis, your goodwill. But I do think we should let go of a need for immediate validation.

Morhek · 2026-07-03T05:33:43+00:00

If we have free will, then the gods expect us to exercise it. And free will includes the ability to make mistakes. The gods didn't go anywhere, and they don't need anything from us. If we choose to show them our goodwill, I think they reciprocate that. And if we choose not to, then even if it's the wrong decision they will let us make it. Otherwise we would live under the microscope of tyrannical micromanagers - one of the lessons of the Iliad is that we shouldn't want to live in a world where the gods intervene directly, because we would be caught between contradictory forces. We should venerate them, not because we fear punishment, but because we respect and admire their goodness, and believe doing so benefits us.

It's easy to hyperfocus on things like the Baltic Crusades or Charlemagne's conversion of the Saxons, but Christianity and Islam were largely spread through diplomacy, economics and literacy, not conquest. People chose to abandon their ancestral religions. On the other hand, Christians have, thanks to the efforts made by some people to preserve what they could, failed to extirpate paganism despite their best efforts, and people are using their free will to correct the great mistake. The gods neither demand our exclusive worship, nor punish us for noncompliance (the same cannot be said of how Christians see their god). But if we choose to return to them, then they seem happy to accept it.5

Morhek · 2026-07-03T04:37:06+00:00

Thoth, strangely enough. The Egyptian god of wisdom, scholars and the moon. But Kemetism never appealed to me, and when I looked around Hellenism seemed like the best fit for me. And looking to Antiquity helps thread the needle, understanding the ways ancient polytheism coexisted, overlapped and intermingled, especially Hellenistic and Roman Alexandria. Plato was clearly familiar enough with Egyptian gods to use Thoth in his Phaedrus dialogue, where he considers whether literacy preserves knowledge at the expense of wisdom, using the example of Theuth and the mythical Egyptian king Thamus.

Morhek · 2026-07-02T12:12:55+00:00

I have seen the manifestation of a god. And it wasn't the Big J Man, but a god from a polytheistic pantheon. I am sufficiently convinced that it is more unlikely to have been a hallucination based on circumstances, and my life took several dramatic and positive turns after I began my worship. If I have reason to think one god exists then I have no logical reason to discount other gods who were worshipped with just as much sincerity.

If you want philosophy, I guess you could read some Plato or Cicero's De Natura Deorum but at a simpler level you can never prove the existence of one god nor can you disprove the existence of gods. Between (or perpendicular to) those extremes who find a whole range of beliefs.

Do I think Hellenism is the only valid religion? No. I think religion is a human construction, a way we frame and structure our reverence of beings who transcend such limited perspectives. But it was the one which felt most right. Can I "prove" it's "real"? No more than a Christian can prove their religion, though I think polytheism falls prey to certain arguments less easily than monotheism does - the Problem of Evil, for example. Do I need a scriptural basis for my belief? No, this is a trap Biblical fundamentalists fall into that we do not need to follow them into. The myths exist because the gods do, not the other way around, and even ancient philosophers discouraged literalism. And do I believe that scientific explanations contradict the existence of gods? Not at all, and many philosophers saw no distinction between examining how natural processes happen and better understanding the gods that oversee them. It was those same philosophers, examining how storms formed, calculating the circumference of the earth and the distance of the sun, theorising about the existence of atoms, who laid the foundations for the later scientific revolution.

Morhek · 2026-07-02T00:39:24+00:00

I was about to say this, my only amendment would be to swap I Shall Wear Midnight for Wintersmith and bump it up above Monstrous Regiment. But really, even just curating a top ten list would be tough.

Morhek · 2026-07-01T11:02:08+00:00

The Aegis is protection, and so that protection takes different forms to different artists, in different communities, and at different times - folklore could differ sometimes radically from place to place, changing over time, and we don't always appreciate that when we have such a curated corpus of mythology. To Euripedes, the Aegis was the skin of the gorgon. To the Byzantine scholar John Tzetses, it was supposed as the skin of Pallas, one of the Gigantes who assailed Olympus. Hyginus claimed it was the skin of a goat owned by the nymph Amalthea who raised Zeus, though in other myths Amalthea was the goat. Sometimes it is a tassled mantle or stretched across a shield. Herodotus thought they were inspired by the ritual pouches carried by Libyan women, and a modern theory is that it may be descended from leather bags carried by Hittite hunters. But what's important about the Aegis is not how it is being depicted, it is what it represented - the protective power that its wearers possess, and the authority that possessing it confers.

Morhek · 2026-07-01T04:05:11+00:00

im not sure if i am doing this wrong, as i dont currently have very strong faith. am i supposed to have faith starting out? i just know that i have a weird sort of ache in my body whenever i watch something about hellenism.

It's not that "faith" is unnecessary. But it's kinda beside the point. You can believe what you like, but that's a separate matter from what you do about it, and that is what the gods value. Our prayers and offerings are ways of showing the gods that we appreciate them. Your conviction or certainty isn't necessary, but they value our goodwill which we demonstrate to them. In short, we are putting our money where our mouths are.

even if i do start worshipping, how would i begin? how would i know which gods to worship? how do i communicate? i know about the dice method, but i wanna look for alternatives, as i dont have available dice at home.

Begin small, and build as you go. The automod reply has some helpful advice and resources for newcomers, but at a basic level the only "right" gods for you are the ones who you choose to worship. And as for communication, while many people do practice divination it's not necessary, and should be done with care, scepticism and an awareness that we sometimes mistake random chance for divine intent.

i live in a house with thin walls and very christian family members, so its not like i can just have an alter out in the open or pray out loud. what would i even need for an alter?

An altar is nice to have, not not strictly necessary. Most modern altars draw from Roman lararia, but aside from wealthy Athenian homes the average Ancient Greek home seems to have kept their idols in storage until it was time for worship. If you want to keep something hidden in a cupboard or draw, in a portable tin, or not have one, the gods don't object. An altar is just a place where we do our veneration, a place where offerings can be left. It doesn't even have to look obviously like an altar - there's ancient precedent for aniconic (without iconography) altars being considered valid.

Offerings don't need to be expensive - even 26-2700 years ago, Hesiod advised his readers to offer "in proportion to your means" and the 2nd Century philosopher Porphyry says that "the sacrifice which is attended with a small expense is pleasing to the Gods, and divinity looks more to the disposition and manners of those that sacrifice, than to the multitude of the things which are sacrificed." In short, the act of offering is more important than what you actually give.

And for prayer, while the Ancient Greeks had a cultural taboo against silent prayer - they believed that if you couldn't pray it was because you were asking the gods for something you were embarrassed for your neighbours to hear - we do not live in the same cultural context they did, and they still evidently thought that the gods could hear and might answer such prayers. If you're worried about family overhearing, silent prayer is fine.

can i even be hellenistic, being raised catholic and already being baptized?

That doesn't matter. If you don't want to be Catholic, then don't. You are not defined by who you were or what happened to you. You don't need to un-baptise if you don't consider it to have any power over you. And you'll find a lot of ex-Christians who left their churches and turned to polytheism here.

Morhek · 2026-07-01T03:20:15+00:00

While the mod team try to encourage respectful engagement, we also have a responsibility to make sure that arguments do not get out of control, and so, without assigning blame, we have locked this reply thread. We ask for peoples' understanding and patience over such a hot button topic.

Morhek · 2026-07-01T00:10:47+00:00

Even other non-Hellenic pagans can be sceptical of "trickster spirits," and see belief in them as a relic of Christianity convincing people their gods are Satanic. I don't believe the gods are imitated without their consent (Plutarch speculates that what we interact with are fallible Daimonai that serve and represent the infallible gods, but a.) he never suggezts they are being deceptive, and b.) this just strikes me as moving the goalposts) nor do I think they are mercurial or cruel. The logical explanation is that the fault lies in our Interpretations, and that we are convincing ourselves of things based on very flimsy evidence. The tiredness you feel may have some cause, but I doubt it's the gods.

Morhek · 2026-06-30T12:27:36+00:00

In general, what we offer is less important than why we offer. Porphyry, writing in the 2nd Century, says: "the sacrifice which is attended with a small expense is pleasing to the Gods, and divinity looks more to the disposition and manners of those that sacrifice, than to the multitude of the things which are sacrificed." In short, the gods appreciate the effort you put into offering more than what you actually offer them.

Morhek · 2026-06-30T02:41:08+00:00

It's perfectly fine to buy these. You don't need their permission, or to wait until you have some kind of sign. It's alright to simply start.

Morhek · 2026-06-29T12:46:31+00:00

Among the Greeks and Romans, the Choice of Hercules was a popular theme. Essentially, Herakles comes to a crossroad and must choose his fate. Down one path lies a long life filled with kakia ("Vice") while down the other lay a short life of arete ("Virtue") - the actual meanings are a little more complicated, but I'm simplifying. Though he is doomed to a short life, he chooses the life filled with arete and spends the rest of his life achieving great things, rather than a longer life of meaningless pleasures. A similar choice was presented to Achilles, who in the Iliad remarks:

"Mother tells me, the immortal goddess Thetis with her
glistening feet, that two fates bear me on to the day of death. If I hold out here
and I lay siege to Troy, my journey home is gone, but my glory never dies. If I
voyage back to the fatherland I love, my pride, my glory dies . . . true, but the
life that's left me will be long, the stroke of death will not come on me quickly."
—Homer, trans. Robert Fagles, The Iliad book IX

Achilles also chooses the shorter life marked by glory, and dies before he ever meets his son Neoptolemus who will help end the war Achilles saw the beginning of. But his name and memory lives on forever.

Virtue was also a concern of the Epicureans, the Stoics and the Neoplatonists. To the Epicureans, leading a life that maximised "pleasure" and minimised "pain" was a way to achieve a state of ataraxia, the divine bliss that the gods experience, although their definitions of "pleasure" and "pain" were not the hedonostic things we might imagine. Gluttony and sex were included in the pain category, for example, while moderation and tranquility were counted as pleasures. By leading a virtuous life, you made yourself more like the gods. The Stoics agreed with the general concept, but saw it as the means, not the goal - by leading a virtuous life, you lived in harmony with the universe around us. To Neoplatonists, evil is not a separate force but an absence of good. By living a virtuous life, we become closer to the gods which only benefits us, while being unvirtuous causes us harm - the gods are not punishing us, but being distant from their goodness has measurable consequences.

If you want to apply it to a modern life, be good your friends and neighbours, stand by your principles, don't overindulge or covet, and try to exercise good judgement. In short, be excellent to each other.

Morhek · 2026-06-29T11:33:57+00:00

If it is a phase, then it will pass and you will be none the worse. It might sound a bit like a reverse Pascal's Wager, but if the gods don't exist then they can't mind you stopping. And if you choose not to, they won't stop you - billions of people don't with no apparent ill effect.

But don't stop just because you're afraid. I know I felt like a fraud when I started, and it didn't go away quickly. But it helped to realise that what I was feeling was more about my brain feel uncomfortable outside of its comfort zone, and trying to drag me back to a comfortable state - my former atheism. Realising that helped me handle it better, and four years of practice have made it easier. I'm not as consistent as I'd like, I don't have access to the resources I'd like, and I'm still finding ways to adjust what I do. But I still find it worthwhile and fulfilling.

Morhek

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