Hellenismos
Minerva/Athena
The Greeks themselves did not actually have a word that meant "Religion." Hellenismos itself is a word coined by a Roman Emperor, not by the Greeks themselves, and even then the religion of the Greeks had already undergone great changes due to influence and suppression by Christian zealots, not to mention the centuries of influence from the great amount of cultural exchange that took place during the Hellenistic age that followed the death of Alexander.
The term we use today, Religion, speaks of a concept that is both foreign and yet intimately tied to the ancient Greek psyche. Religion, you see, was not a separate concept to the Greeks from their culture. In fact, it has never truly been a separate thing in any culture, not even our own, where religion to this day continues to plague us as we desperately struggle against the ideals of one religion being forced upon all of us.
Modern people often make a clear distinction between say Spirituality and Religion, because we have decided that one is good while the other too often leads to war and dispute rather than unity.
So, Spirituality is the inner sense of connection with something greater than ourselves, Be it a divine spirit or something else, it is a guiding principle that is inherent to all of us. It is the inner self, the inner turmoil and emotion that is part of every single one of us every single day.
Religion, however, is external. Religion is the passing on of ideals, philosophies, and beliefs from one person to the other, sometimes based on culture, sometimes on books, sometimes simply on the word of another. And religion is also practice.
Because Hellenismos is such a strongly orthopraxic (focusing on the proper forms of ritual) rather than orthodoxic (focusing on proper belief) it actually correct to call Hellenismos a "religion" because a great deal of our practice is based on external input.
My personal concepts of religion can vary a bit, but in general I tend to conflate spirituality and religion into a single concept. No spirituality is ever purely internal, and no religion is ever purely external, so my religion is a combination of these things. The internal sensations and reactions to the world and what I learn from religious and philosophical texts, of which there are many in Hellenismos, including some that could not really, in all honesty, be classified as religious texts at all.
Religion, to me, is that feeling of not being alone in the presence of the Gods in tandem with the act of lighting my Hestia candle every morning. They cannot be separated anymore than my heart can be separated from my chest.
The term we use today, Religion, speaks of a concept that is both foreign and yet intimately tied to the ancient Greek psyche. Religion, you see, was not a separate concept to the Greeks from their culture. In fact, it has never truly been a separate thing in any culture, not even our own, where religion to this day continues to plague us as we desperately struggle against the ideals of one religion being forced upon all of us.
Modern people often make a clear distinction between say Spirituality and Religion, because we have decided that one is good while the other too often leads to war and dispute rather than unity.
So, Spirituality is the inner sense of connection with something greater than ourselves, Be it a divine spirit or something else, it is a guiding principle that is inherent to all of us. It is the inner self, the inner turmoil and emotion that is part of every single one of us every single day.
Religion, however, is external. Religion is the passing on of ideals, philosophies, and beliefs from one person to the other, sometimes based on culture, sometimes on books, sometimes simply on the word of another. And religion is also practice.
Because Hellenismos is such a strongly orthopraxic (focusing on the proper forms of ritual) rather than orthodoxic (focusing on proper belief) it actually correct to call Hellenismos a "religion" because a great deal of our practice is based on external input.
My personal concepts of religion can vary a bit, but in general I tend to conflate spirituality and religion into a single concept. No spirituality is ever purely internal, and no religion is ever purely external, so my religion is a combination of these things. The internal sensations and reactions to the world and what I learn from religious and philosophical texts, of which there are many in Hellenismos, including some that could not really, in all honesty, be classified as religious texts at all.
Religion, to me, is that feeling of not being alone in the presence of the Gods in tandem with the act of lighting my Hestia candle every morning. They cannot be separated anymore than my heart can be separated from my chest.
♨
♨ Polytheism
The worship of many Gods rather than a singular one is to this day the majority way in which humans worship Gods. Even when covered in the trappings of "monotheism", it remains the true religion of man.
Go to Polytheism
Go to Polytheism
♨ Pantheonic Polytheism
The worship of Gods in "Pantheons", which literally means "all gods" is natural, as man has always sought to impose order on all things.
Pantheonic Polytheism
Pantheonic Polytheism
♨ Bios and Zöe
♨ History of Hellenismos
♨ Cultus
♨ Ritual Practice
All religion include ritual. It seems to be part of how we are built as human beings, that we need it, so what is it and how does it work in our religion?
Ritual
Ritual
♨ Religious Experience
It is one thing to think about a religion, about the Gods, it is another to actually experience it or them. I am not talking about sitting to tea with the Gods, but about having felt their presence in my life.
Experience
Experience
♨ Orthopraxy
Our religion is often said to be orthopraxic, meaning that it is more important to act properly than to believe properly.
Orthopraxy
Orthopraxy
♨ Orthodoxy
Orthodoxy is the bane of a spiritual life. It is an imposition of belief upon the heart, the mind, and the soul. It can crush the soul and the creative spirit that is part of it's very essence.
Orthodoxy
Orthodoxy
♨ The Inner Self
♨ Myth
No religion has ever come to be without the existence of its stories, its tales, its legends. The myths that make it great, that engender love and which put in the heart of its followers a sense of aspiration, of wonder, and of glee.
Myth
Myth
♨ Philosophy
One thing the Hellenic system of culture and religion did was encourage the pursuit of knowledge. Philosophy was the child of this system, and in itself, the love of wisdom became the legacy that the Greek religion and culture would leave behind to encourage Europe for millennia to come. Let us not let the current culture of ignorance destroy that.
Philosophy
Philosophy
♨ The Minoans
Before the Greeks, on an island in the Aegean/Mediterranean, there flourished a culture that created exquisite beauty and left behind wondrous mysteries for us to find. We cll them Minoans after the legendary king Greek Myth named on that island. It is from them that Greeks got their first writing system, one based on syllables, and from their cousins the Phoenicians from whom they would get their later system, which we call an alphabet today.
Little is known about them, save that they may have been a Semitic people, like the Egyptians and Phoenicians, but we owe them much, these mystery people.
The Minoans
Little is known about them, save that they may have been a Semitic people, like the Egyptians and Phoenicians, but we owe them much, these mystery people.
The Minoans
♨ The Mycenaeans
The people we would one day call Hellenes, or Greeks, had their start here in the record of mankind. With the diminishing of the Minoans after calamity weakened their civilization, the aggressive tribes of the Mycenaeans, called thus for the great palace site of Mycenae, would dominate the land we call Greece for centuries until their civilization too came crashing down. But unlike the Minoans, who would vanish under the pressure of Greek dominance, the Greeks were too aggressive to simply vanish, and eventually the Golden Age of Greece would rise from its ashes.
The Mycenaeans
The Mycenaeans
♨ The Hellenistic Era
Greek Civilization reached its golden era, and as it began to wane, Alexander of Macedonia swept through it like a wild fire, leaving in his wake a new kind of Greece, a more united Greece. The age of the Greek City State had, for all intents and purposes, come to an end, and in its place the embryonic stage of the nation state, but with the fall of Alexander came a new danger, not from the East, where the great traditional enemies if the Greeks had been defeated, but from the West, where Rome was growing in power and influence on its way to becoming the conqueror of the whole Mediterranean and the lands that bordered it. This age, between the death of Alexander and the conquests of Rome is known as the Hellenistic Age.
The Hellenistic Era
The Hellenistic Era
♨ Neo-Paganism
Millennia would pass between the fall of Greece and the rise of a new system of beliefs which would allow for the rising of new of the old Gods and their religion.
Neo-Paganism
Neo-Paganism
I would love to hear from you if you have some information you think I would benefit from. I would especially like to hear from you if you have some interesting experiences with the Gods.