Good day JMG. My deepest condolences on your wife's passing.
1. Are a deity's English-language epithets effective enough for invoking vs. using the original names? Basically, I'm wondering if it's possible to invoke and venerate the gods in one's own mother tongue? (Mine being Modern English). I once invoked "Thunder" and got what I interpreted to be powerful results. Also, I know some original Roman god and goddess names have effectively been naturalized into English quite a long time ago, particularly the names we use for the planets. But a lot of others are more distant and alien to my own present-day cultural reality. As an "intellectual polytheist," one big hangup I've had trying to get into paganism is that trying to worship the gods just like the ancients did feels like the worship of ashes, as opposed to a living, breathing, dynamic spirituality. Worse, when calling on a god or goddess referring to stories from some long-dead culture that isn't my culture, it feels to me like LARPing and thus something that's totally inauthentic. I suspect this is one (among many others) reason why the Neopagan movement is currently on its way to the grave.
2. Sort of related to the above: is it possible to worship the gods without referring to ancient mythological content associated with them? I believe you've said a few times before that people looking to get into polytheism should shop around and try out different mythologies and see which ones resonates best. But what if none do? For me personally, I greatly enjoy reading myths as stories, but they do nothing for me as far as spiritual feeling is concerned. I do realize there's mysteries about the gods embedded in these stories, and I can gain a lot from studying them in that manner. But most of these myths simply feel to me like dead artifacts of a bygone era. And another big problem is that old myths contain themes that really don't square with the morality and general consciousness of our cultural zeitgeist. On this, I recently came across this quote from Cicero and it makes a ton of sense to me:
"Do you see how far from a true and valuable philosophy of nature this imaginary has evolved into a fanciful pantheon? The perversion has been a fruitful source of false beliefs, crazy errors and superstitions hardly above the level of old wives' tales. We know what the gods look like and how old they are, their dress and their equipment, and their genealogies, marriages and relationships, and all about them is distorted into the likeness of human frailty.
They are represented as liable to passions and emotions; we hear of their being in love, sorrowful, angry; according to the myths they even engage in wars and battles. These stories and these beliefs are foolish; they are stuffed with nonsense and absurdity. By repudiating these myths with contempt, we shall be able to understand the nature of the deities that pervades the substance of the elements, Ceres permeates earth, Neptune the sea, and so on; it is our duty to revere and worship these gods under the names which custom has bestowed upon them, and the best and also the purest, holiest and most pious way of worshipping the gods is to venerate them with purity, sincerity and innocence both of thought and of speech.
Religion has been distinguished from superstition not only by philosophers but by our ancestors. Persons who spent whole days in prayer and sacrifice to ensure that their children might outlive them were termed ‘superstitious’ (from superstes, a survivor), and the word later acquired a wider application. Those on the other hand who carefully reviewed and retraced all the lore of ritual were called ‘religious’ from relegere (to retrace or re-read), like ‘elegant’ from eligere (to select), ‘diligent’ from diligere (to care for), ‘intelligent’ from intelligere (to understand); for all these words contain the same sense of ‘picking out’ (legere) that is present in ‘religious.’ Hence ‘superstitions’ and ‘religious’ came to be terms of censure and approval respectively."
It seems that by Cicero's time many of these myths had gone stale (the Age of Aries had just recently wrapped up); at least among the intellectual classes of the Greco-Roman world. Not long after his time, the urban masses started flocking to new religions like Proselyte Judaism, Christianity, Manichaeism, and Magianized/Oriental versions of older mystery cults.
3. Should I really just be writing my own hymns and prayers to the gods in a way that makes sense to me? I've had religious experiences convincing me that many gods do indeed exist. I also learned that they're going to manifest how they chose to manifest, and that's not necessarily going to be a way that in which ancient stories depicted them.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2024-02-26 10:45 pm (UTC)1. Are a deity's English-language epithets effective enough for invoking vs. using the original names? Basically, I'm wondering if it's possible to invoke and venerate the gods in one's own mother tongue? (Mine being Modern English). I once invoked "Thunder" and got what I interpreted to be powerful results. Also, I know some original Roman god and goddess names have effectively been naturalized into English quite a long time ago, particularly the names we use for the planets. But a lot of others are more distant and alien to my own present-day cultural reality. As an "intellectual polytheist," one big hangup I've had trying to get into paganism is that trying to worship the gods just like the ancients did feels like the worship of ashes, as opposed to a living, breathing, dynamic spirituality. Worse, when calling on a god or goddess referring to stories from some long-dead culture that isn't my culture, it feels to me like LARPing and thus something that's totally inauthentic. I suspect this is one (among many others) reason why the Neopagan movement is currently on its way to the grave.
2. Sort of related to the above: is it possible to worship the gods without referring to ancient mythological content associated with them? I believe you've said a few times before that people looking to get into polytheism should shop around and try out different mythologies and see which ones resonates best. But what if none do? For me personally, I greatly enjoy reading myths as stories, but they do nothing for me as far as spiritual feeling is concerned. I do realize there's mysteries about the gods embedded in these stories, and I can gain a lot from studying them in that manner. But most of these myths simply feel to me like dead artifacts of a bygone era. And another big problem is that old myths contain themes that really don't square with the morality and general consciousness of our cultural zeitgeist. On this, I recently came across this quote from Cicero and it makes a ton of sense to me:
"Do you see how far from a true and valuable philosophy of nature this imaginary has evolved into a fanciful pantheon? The perversion has been a fruitful source of false beliefs, crazy errors and superstitions hardly above the level of old wives' tales. We know what the gods look like and how old they are, their dress and their equipment, and their genealogies, marriages and relationships, and all about them is distorted into the likeness of human frailty.
They are represented as liable to passions and emotions; we hear of their being in love, sorrowful, angry; according to the myths they even engage in wars and battles. These stories and these beliefs are foolish; they are stuffed with nonsense and absurdity. By repudiating these myths with contempt, we shall be able to understand the nature of the deities that pervades the substance of the elements, Ceres permeates earth, Neptune the sea, and so on; it is our duty to revere and worship these gods under the names which custom has bestowed upon them, and the best and also the purest, holiest and most pious way of worshipping the gods is to venerate them with purity, sincerity and innocence both of thought and of speech.
Religion has been distinguished from superstition not only by philosophers but by our ancestors. Persons who spent whole days in prayer and sacrifice to ensure that their children might outlive them were termed ‘superstitious’ (from superstes, a survivor), and the word later acquired a wider application. Those on the other hand who carefully reviewed and retraced all the lore of ritual were called ‘religious’ from relegere (to retrace or re-read), like ‘elegant’ from eligere (to select), ‘diligent’ from diligere (to care for), ‘intelligent’ from intelligere (to understand); for all these words contain the same sense of ‘picking out’ (legere) that is present in ‘religious.’ Hence ‘superstitions’ and ‘religious’ came to be terms of censure and approval respectively."
It seems that by Cicero's time many of these myths had gone stale (the Age of Aries had just recently wrapped up); at least among the intellectual classes of the Greco-Roman world. Not long after his time, the urban masses started flocking to new religions like Proselyte Judaism, Christianity, Manichaeism, and Magianized/Oriental versions of older mystery cults.
3. Should I really just be writing my own hymns and prayers to the gods in a way that makes sense to me? I've had religious experiences convincing me that many gods do indeed exist. I also learned that they're going to manifest how they chose to manifest, and that's not necessarily going to be a way that in which ancient stories depicted them.