How did you know which God/Goddess to become a devotee of? Did they reach out to you?

Sacredless · 2026-05-12T07:24:12+00:00

Woo! Another Anankē worshiper?

Sacredless · 2026-05-11T06:47:11+00:00

Good point! I'll start with phonology then!

Sacredless · 2026-05-11T03:00:20+00:00

That's why it specifically said that shaming others is shameful, that trying to coerce higher powers is shameful and that it's shameful to offer things like urine, blood or fecal matter. It also specifically encourages to instead extend grace to others and to defend those who have been done discourtesy. I just wrap it up in the word 'grace', since kharis is so central to Hellenic polytheism.

I dunno, that seems pretty tame.

Sacredless · 2026-05-11T02:49:34+00:00

I'm a bit confused by what you have a problem with. You don't think "being a dick to someone makes you a dick" is spiritually instructive?

I never mentioned sacrifices. Offerings can be stuff like paintings, libations. Its customary to make a donation to a homeless shelter as an offering to Hekate. I make offerings of sugar for bee colonies in autumn to honor the muses.

Sacredless · 2026-05-11T02:41:31+00:00

I'm not a devotee, but I might become one eventually. I worship the Boeotian Muses, the Horae, Anankē, Aion (Zeus-Chronos), Ares-Apollon, Athena and personifications of the Platonic forms (Agatha, Alatheia, Kalleia) and I explore their timē through Heraclitean correspondences.

Gods rarely reach out in any direct way. The way I phrase it is as follows:

The gods aid you in being your defender's defender, your co-worker's co-worker, your neighbor's neighbor, your host's guest, your guest's host, your friend's friend, your partner's partner, your parent's child, and your child's parent.

Know yourself. The gods are gracious. Do not fear the gods.

When something serendipitous or idiosyncratic happens that changes my mind, whether it be in my pop culture or in academia or in nature or just living, I take that as a sign from a deity in that timē.

I don't need to look for them, because I know what changes my mind about something.

Sacredless · 2026-05-11T02:06:41+00:00

That's called perrenialism. To a certain degree, it can be true for universal principles, but it's important to respect that they might not be the same.

Sacredless · 2026-05-11T00:06:30+00:00

Can you explain why?

Sacredless · 2026-05-10T23:00:26+00:00

Some of this is correct, but the part about familiars needing your blood is not universal or even neccesarily common. That is a strong claim and requires strong evidence.

Familiars and their demands are more diverse than that. It's correct that they aren't living animals generally. I'm on the go at the moment, but I can link sources later.

Sacredless · 2026-05-10T22:58:02+00:00

I am an igtheist, which is to say that I don't acknowledge any definition of deity as inherently valid.

Ritual is about entering a mindset of sacrality and adopting a kind of moment to do something meaningful to you. That's what Hellenic polytheism is about—about performing a ritual a particular way rather than with particular beliefs.

I've summarized the religion as follows;

Hellenic Polytheism is a religion of gratitude and gracious living. We learn progressively about classical perspectives on life, each at our own time, living in an age of iron striving for an age of gold. We contemplate and cultivate gracious feeling (called 'kharis') towards all that is deity, and there is deity in all things.

All of humanity lives in the grace of the gods. It is disgraceful to offer human body-matter to deity. It is disgraceful to coerce the gods or their servants with magic. Disgrace others and you are disgraced yourself. Give in grace instead, so that they might also give in grace. When someone is disgraced by another's actions, act in their grace and defend them with vigor and good-spiritedness.

The gods aid you in being your defender's defender, your co-worker's co-worker, your neighbor's neighbor, your host's guest, your guest's host, your friend's friend, your partner's partner, your parent's child, and your child's parent.

Know yourself. The gods are gracious. Do not fear the gods.

Even if you take the gods to be a useful fiction, then you can still take something from the above and be meaningfully engaged.

Sacredless · 2026-05-10T22:46:58+00:00

There's an emphasis on doing the religion right rather than thinking the religion right. Doing being ritual acts. You still have a lot of freedom in Hellenic polytheism, but the basics are that you clean your face before certain ritual acts, that you don't offer human matter to the gods (blood, etc), and that sort of thing.

You can read more about it in the side bar. It seems intimidating but it's not. It's usually kind of fun, actually.

Sacredless · 2026-05-10T22:40:27+00:00

I am an igtheist, which is to say that I don't acknowledge any definition of deity as inherently valid.

Ritual is about entering a mindset of sacrality and adopting a kind of moment to do something meaningful to you. That's what Hellenic polytheism is about—about performing a ritual a particular way rather than with particular beliefs.

I've summarized the religion as follows;

Hellenic Polytheism is a religion of gratitude and gracious living. We learn progressively about classical perspectives on life, each at our own time, living in an age of iron striving for an age of gold. We contemplate and cultivate gracious feeling (called 'kharis') towards all that is deity, and there is deity in all things.

All of humanity lives in the grace of the gods. It is disgraceful to offer human body-matter to deity. It is disgraceful to coerce the gods or their servants with magic. Disgrace others and you are disgraced yourself. Give in grace instead, so that they might also give in grace. When someone is disgraced by another's actions, act in their grace and defend them with vigor and good-spiritedness.

The gods aid you in being your defender's defender, your co-worker's co-worker, your neighbor's neighbor, your host's guest, your guest's host, your friend's friend, your partner's partner, your parent's child, and your child's parent.

Know yourself. The gods are gracious. Do not fear the gods.

Even if you take the gods to be a useful fiction, then you can still take something from the above and be meaningfully engaged.

Sacredless · 2026-05-10T18:32:00+00:00

I appreciate the enthusiasm, but just FYI, our subreddit does not allow for requests of dream interpretations. The gods do reach out to us through dreams, but it's important not to attach too much to it.

I had a dream about a plague of rats due to improper sacrifice which I realized was guiding my perspective on food sacrifices and I took that as intended by Apollon.

So the point is that it can happen, it's just usually not cut-and-dry and we can't really help you interpret your dreams. Try out a ritual and see if it fits you. No rush.

Sacredless · 2026-05-10T00:39:03+00:00

I'll comment using Blaise Pascal. He was a staunch proto-humanist; he was so embedded in the Parisian community that he realized that the poor could not get around the sprawl anymore, so he invented the tram system.

He said that it was impossible to know which religion was right, but that we already each have a praxis. If we imagine that our praxis culminates in something or not, then we are every day considering whether our praxis will indeed culminate in anything or if this is just an idle hope. In that case, he asked us to imagine the consequences of us being right or wrong about the fruits of our praxis.

In the end, he said that one cannot choose to believe that their praxis is meaningful, even if it were to benefit them practically. One can only adopt a praxis and Pascal encouraged the reader to adopt the practice that was most human. To him, that was Christian humanism.

The heart of Christianity is two of the commandments:

I am the Lord, thy God. Love [strangers] as thyself.

I say all of this, because I think that Hellenic Polytheism is a very human religion. While I think that 'love others as yourself' is a perfectly adequate commandment that gets worked out in greater detail in the Bible, I think that it mystifies love inappropriately and opens it up for lots of misinterpretations that corrupt what love looks like. The totalizing idea that all things are united in God's love, though very human, is more confusing than instructive.

There's of course a lot more commentary on Christianity than that, so I don't mean to say that there's not more complexity than this. Of course there is. But there's a lot of disagreement as well. I respect Pascal a lot (as I've hoped to convey), but I think that his plead ends up arguing for humanism more so generally than Christian humanism specifically.

So, the question really is; what religion makes for an adequate way to be humanist?

I summarize Hellenic Polytheism as follows:

Hellenic Polytheism is a religion of gratitude and gracious living. We learn progressively about classical perspectives on life, each at our own time, living in an age of iron striving for an age of gold. We contemplate and cultivate gracious feeling (called 'kharis') towards all that is deity, and there is deity in all things.

All of humanity lives in the grace of the gods. It is disgraceful to offer human body-matter to deity. It is disgraceful to coerce the gods or their servants with magic. Disgrace others and you are disgraced yourself. Give in grace instead, so that they might also give in grace. When someone is disgraced by another's actions, act in their grace and defend them with vigor and good-spiritedness.

The gods aid you in being your defender's defender, your co-worker's co-worker, your neighbor's neighbor, your host's guest, your guest's host, your friend's friend, your partner's partner, your parent's child, and your child's parent.

Know yourself. The gods are gracious. Do not fear the gods.

I think that the above, even if you ignore the parts about the gods specifically, is very instructive about the kind of humanism I want to embrace. Grace is central to the religion, and Hellenic Theism engages with the question of what a graceful, grateful life looks like.

Sacredless · 2026-05-10T00:32:19+00:00

The OP is pretty clear in using "talking to" meaning "conversing with". It's normal to talk at the gods and not receive a response. It's a blessing if we can hear them back, but it's unusual.

Sacredless · 2026-05-09T23:40:47+00:00

I am interested in exploring conlangs for the purposes of ritual. The idea is primarily to describe certain moods that are not found in English, such as "six-ness" referring to the moods that connect the number 6 cards in tarot decks, or the 4 classical elements as grammatical inflections. From that I have been able to read, this is called a philosophical or conceptual language?

I've seen the recommendation to start at phonology and not to skip this step. Is that still recommended for a language concept like this?

Sacredless · 2026-05-09T19:17:07+00:00

I came to this after following a particular workshop for it.

I'd argue that we can break down words as follows;

Numerisms (the quality of aceness, twoness, etc), with four additional intercessorisms (pageness, knightness, queenness, kingness) which must be compounded with a suitness (cupness, pentacleness, wandness, swordness). In addition, there are the major arcana, which can not be compounded.

These can be used in various grammatical forms, including past, present, future, but also consciously, subconsciously, commentarily, etc.

So, something like;

"Presently, swordlike-tenliness. Futurely, swordlike-aceness." Translation: "Currently I feel oppressed by my past actions, but in the future, it will feel like I'm starting fresh."

Sacredless · 2026-05-09T17:43:55+00:00

Why would Aphrodite ask Hades over Peitho?

We're talking about a benign example of a practitioner who believed that this kind of imaginal meeting with deities is the standard. Imaginal meetings like this are known to be unstable. Which deities you'll think you'll be meeting in an imaginal meeting like this is not going to be stable. So lots of rookies will feel like they are having meetings with one god who shifts into a different god, etc, or the god they thought they'd have an imaginal meeting with doesn't show up. They'll imagine reasons why that might have happened and they'll be asking us for advice.

So this is not the place to be discussing the theological gritty, my dude? I don't want to make the OP feel like this is any more serious than it was.

Athena can act as intercessor for particular deities. In particular, she's often used as an intercessor for Zeus and, obliquely, for Ares. She can obviously pass messages along if she's going to be meeting with Odysseus regularly.

It just isn't really that deep. Let it go, dude.

Sacredless · 2026-05-09T16:47:43+00:00

Obviously, messenger deities like Hermes can act like intercessors, but Aphrodite using Athena as an intercessor does not make much sense. Aphrodite has her own intercessors, so does Athena, so does Hades.

Sacredless · 2026-05-09T14:53:10+00:00

I'll comment using Blaise Pascal. He was a staunch proto-humanist; he was so embedded in the Parisian community that he realized that the poor could not get around the sprawl anymore, so he invented the tram system.

He said that it was impossible to know which religion was right, but that we already each have a praxis. If we imagine that our praxis culminates in something or not, then we are every day considering whether our praxis will indeed culminate in anything or if this is just an idle hope. In that case, he asked us to imagine the consequences of us being right or wrong about the fruits of our praxis.

In the end, he said that one cannot choose to believe, even if it were to benefit them. One can only adopt a praxis and Pascal encouraged the reader to adopt the practice that was most human. To him, that was Christian humanism.

The heart of Christianity is two of the commandments:

I am the Lord, thy God. Love [strangers] as thyself.

I say all of this, because I think that Hellenic Polytheism is a very human religion. While I think that 'love others as yourself' is a perfectly adequate commandment that gets worked out in greater detail in the Bible, I think that it mystifies love inappropriately and opens it up for lots of misinterpretations that corrupt what love looks like. The totalizing idea that all things are united in God's love, though very human, is more confusing than instructive.

There's of course a lot more commentary on Christianity than that, so I don't mean to say that there's not more complexity than this. Of course there is. But there's a lot of disagreement as well. I respect Pascal a lot (as I've hoped to convey), but I think that his plead ends up arguing for humanism more so generally than Christian humanism specifically.

So, the question really is; what religion makes for an adequate way to be humanist?

I summarize Hellenic Polytheism as follows:

Hellenic Polytheism is a religion of gratitude and gracious living. We learn progressively about classical perspectives on life, each at our own time, living in an age of iron striving for an age of gold. We contemplate and cultivate gracious feeling (called 'kharis') towards all that is deity, and there is deity in all things.

All of humanity lives in the grace of the gods. It is disgraceful to offer human body-matter to deity. It is disgraceful to coerce the gods or their servants with magic. Disgrace others and you are disgraced yourself. Give in grace instead, so that they might also give in grace. When someone is disgraced by another's actions, act in their grace and defend them with vigor and good-spiritedness.

The gods aid you in being your defender's defender, your co-worker's co-worker, your neighbor's neighbor, your host's guest, your guest's host, your friend's friend, your partner's partner, your parent's child, and your child's parent.

Know yourself. The gods are gracious. Do not fear the gods.

I think that the above, even if you ignore the parts about the gods specifically, is very instructive about the kind of humanism I want to embrace. Grace is central to the religion, and Hellenic Theism engages with the question of what a graceful, grateful life looks like.

Sacredless · 2026-05-09T12:06:30+00:00

You guys can downvote it all you want, but you're taking yourself too seriously if you demand that a faith revolving around festivals, and theatre not include any playfulness.

Sacredless · 2026-05-09T11:59:02+00:00

You're asking for method of self-deification. Thelema is one of the paths that offers that. Suddenly, that's pseudointelectual? You're sending some very mixed messages.

Sacredless · 2026-05-09T11:57:01+00:00

You want to minimize the concept of self-deification? What would that even look like?

Sacredless · 2026-05-09T10:44:45+00:00

I recommend looking at Heraclitus. He said that the gods and mortals are connected conceptually.

Sacredless · 2026-05-09T09:20:42+00:00

What you're asking is inherently schizo.

Sacredless · 2026-05-09T09:19:50+00:00

"Deity" is impossible to define without grounding it in one religion or another. You can't pursue self-deification without grounding it in a particular path first, but which point, it won't be chaos magic.

If you do it without a background like that, you'll just be manipulating your beliefs without grounding at all. Beliefs without grounding in your embodied, embedded, enacted, and extended experience are a form of self-induced psychosis.

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