badstar

http://forum.hellenistai.com

newdance recently decided to put together a Hellenic web forum because there are so few of them. The Cauldron and Mystic Wicks have Hellenic Sub-forums. The Cauldron's is pretty good, though it's not very big and the one on Mystic Wicks, despite being an extremely active forum overall (I think it's actually the largest pagan forum that I know of- it has over 26,000 members) is extremely slow and for a while there, discussions were getting largely dominated by a few people. Other than that, there's one forum that's mostly Greek-language and one English-language forum that sends most people running- either of their own accord or because they've been banned- very quickly.

And he made me moderator. (Be afraid, be very afraid.)

So for anyone who is interested in Hellenic religion (strict reconstruction, Hellenic neopaganism, syncretism, etc, there are several different sub-forums as well as a whole list of sub-forums for specific deities) come on and check it out. Religion is the main focus, but there are also sub-forums for philosophy, culture, language and history. Come check it out.

If you haven't caught this yet, according to this professor, Concerning Hellenic pagans, it's just "pagan-lite" without blood sacrifices.

http://timesonline.typepad.com/dons_life/2007/01/paganism_withou.html

(I don't claim to be attempting to completely recreate the Ancient Hellenic religion. However, I don't think that the fact that I'm not performing animal sacrifice means that my belief in the gods is somehow diluted.

For the record, I am not opposed to animal sacrifice. I also do not believe that anyone who thinks it's okay to eat meat should be opposed to animal sacrifice. No, I'm not talking about the senseless torture and killings of people's cats and various other animals that crop up especially at Halloween time. )


( Edited again to add this response from Oinokhoe )

This weekend was long, but went by very quickly.

On Friday night I stopped by Borders and picked up a new dayplanner. It's a small one, with a green, gold and bronze mosaic pattern and magnetic closure. After that, wet home and packed clothes and stuff for the weekend, ad when Jesse came home we went to Caryn and Will's (With a stop on the way at Barnes & Noble, since my Callimachus book came in.) Friday night we watched a videotaped interview of Isaac Bonewits from the mid-90's, and had some assorted dinnerthings and wine (Finally opened the bottle of Jazz that's been sitting around since I got back from Christmas...it was just as good as last year. AND there's still just a bit less than half the bottle left!)

Saturday morning we made it to VA just in time, though it didn't matter much because Isaac apparently decided that he needed to stop and make photocopies at the last minute, and we were well over an hour late in starting. There was plenty of time for socializing with folks in the meantime. Once Isaac go there and started talking, I tried to take notes, but I just can't transcribe that fast- thankfully, Jack took copious notes, as did Caryn.

The first day ended up being amost entirely about magic- and more specifically, spellcasting, which is't realy something I do. Some of his theories and thoughts were interesting, especially his little forrays into the realm of quantum physics (and by little, I do mean little, but quantum physics fascinate me, so any mention of the subject is going to get my attention.)

My only problem on Saturday was that I attempted to ask a question at one point, and before I could even get to the question, he interrupted me and started answering to what I can only guess he thought I was asking/saying/criticizing, which was a bit frustrating because I tried to explain that what I was leading in with wasn't what I was actually trying to ask, and I finally blurted out "Are you trying to make me forget my question, because if you are, it worked." I still haven't remembered the question.

Sunday was more interesting to me, in that it was mostly talking about religion, though a lot of it seemed to be devoted to jabbing at monotheistic religions and the dangers of dualism. Granted, I can see a lot of problems with dualism, because the world exists in shades of grey, not in absolute black and white. But oddly enough, his entire discussion seemed to be a dualism of dualism vs. pluralism. First of all, I don't feel the need to be constantly jabbing at other religions just because I don't agree with them, don't like them and wish certain segments of them would just go away. Second of all...the entire argument was modeled on the very thing that he was arguing against. Dualism vs. Pluralism. One or the other. It's like using a word to define itself. And when I asked about the segments of monotheists that don't believe that they are the only way, and don't try to throw everyone into the Us. vs Them laundry piles, his answer was that those folks are with "Us", the pluralists (Though he didn't actually say "us"). None of this really made sense to me because all day, he was saying either "the monotheists...." or "the neopagans..." which is a fairly clearly specified division. But, he did admit to being very biased- I appreciate when people acknowledge these thigns in themselves.

Overall, it was very interesting to attend this workshop, and meeting Isaac was fun. (As I've commented before, how many people actually get the opportunity to meet the founder of their religion? lol...) There was a little Cedarlight-style heckling. Much to our confusion, Nicole and I were both invited to join Mannaheim's listserv. (Mannaheim is a primarily Heathen/Asatru group with a fairly tribal mentality) But the people that we met were all really cool, and meeting new and interesting people is always a good thing.

Instead of driving from Baltimore both days, we stayed at Caryn and Will's for the weekend. Yesterday it started snowig in the afternoon, and by the time we were leaving, roads were kinda slippery, so we drove back to Glen Burnie from Springfield VA doing mostly no more than 25-30 MPH. This took us about 2 hours but we kept ourselves amused.

Today after work, I'm going to that bellydance class, I need to calland find out if its ok if I do the first class in street clothes- I forgot to bring stuff with me. I could do it in what I'm wearing, my clothng is very comfortable and easy to move in. If not, I'll have to run home and grab some stuff. Thankfully the studio is just over on Howard street. After that, I'm going to go home and watch Heroes and 24 with the roommates. And then sleep.

For now, I'm approaching lunch.

On my various pagan wanderings, there have been two traditions that I have examined and had the opportunity to study with folks in that tradition- but rejected. The first was Stregheria, Italian Witchcraft. The second was Corellian Wicca.

I don't know when it was taken down, but the Correlians used to have a tradition listing at http://www.witchvox.com stating, among other things, that they emphasised education and learning, with spells and magic being less of a focus. That was what interested me about them. And then they started their witch school- It's been in the news lately, but it's been aorund for a while. They either bought or were going to buy a building a while back, but the residents of the particular location were particularly hostile, so it remained an online venture for a while...Way back, shortly after it first started online, I checked out the school website. I decided not to do it because even if the classes were free, I had no money to buy books or anything like that.

...now they've bought another building and are opening a school. Some pagans think that this is a really great thing, and it's going to make pagan religions more mainstream, or more respected...I can't find reason to agree

( Check out this essay written by Juliaki )

Reading this essay, and a discussion on one of the ADF lists has prompted me to go and look at the website again.

Here's what I turned up:

1. They can't decide how to spell "magic". Pages with multiple occurences of the word show it spelled both "magic" and "magick". can't even mis/spell consistently?? A bit of a red flag.
examples found all over this page

2. Their FAQ: you can't read more than one line from any of the answers (type a "%" to bring up all questions/answers)

3. Want to teach a course? There's not much to it really, Here's the page asking for teachers. Note how there's nothing mentioned about teachers' credentials. They talk about reviewing material for grammer, spelling atc...but not for content ("Any suggested changes of a substantive nature will be sent to you for review and will not be put up on the site without your approval." *might* refer to content...but it is followed with another statement about spelling that leads me to believe that it's strictly a language refernce.)

4. They call themselves "Correllian Nativist Wicca" but have a look herefirst they say that "Correllian Nativism" was established in 1897, which would predate Wicca by about 70 years. Then it goes on to say that it's debateable as to whether it's actually Wicca or not, but that's just "a matter of semantics anyway". According to the page, it started as "Nativism" until 1992, when they changed it to "Correllian Nativism". There NO explaination as to when or where Wicca comes into the picture. Googling the terms "Nativism High Correll" (without the quotes) returns 61 results- some of them not related. The results contain only information that is parotted from the link above. There is also this claim:

Lady Orpheis’ Nativism was a highly political and deeply synchretic form of Pagan universalism, which stressed the need for the world’s Native (Pagan) religions to unite in the face of colonial Christianity.

If they were so political, then why when I google "orpheis nativism" do I find only two pages of results- one of which the search engine says is duplicate information, and again all repeating the same information on the Correllian website- several of them word for word?

(This has nothing to do with the school...but has given me a headache looking over the website: They have their own special calendar. If you read the history page- linked above- you'll notice that they keep giving dates like this: September 4, 1479 Pisces (1879 AD). Why not just say "CE" instead of "AD" if you have such a problem with that designation? But here's a link to information about the calender: http://www.correllian.com/correllcal.htm)