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so I've had this idea kicking around for a few days and am thinking more and more of details of how to approach it and I think I'm starting to zero in a bit more on what to do.

Basically, I've been considering my fascination with random, usually fairly obscure deities who have little to no mythology and sometimes not more than a few cursory mentioned in ancient texts. I see a name, a few lines of information, and I want to know more but...there is no more, so I sometimes ponder what their mythology may be like and what stories there might be.

So...that's the project. Writing about what their stories might have been. Speculative Mythology is the term that's formulated in my brain.

For this and a couple of other things, I think I'm going to start a second blog, to keep Pain and Light a devotional blog for Apollo.

Watch this space for details.

Speaking of which, I have a new post over at http://painandlight.wordpress.com
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(I've only been trying for a year and a half to write one to him.)

I begin to sing of manic, roaring Dionysus who holds Delphi in The Shining One's Hyperborean absence.

In the cold winter months, you come bringing your wine and wild abandon. You inspire your followers, by night, to give themselves over to liberation in the hands of intoxication. The aged nectar of your sweet grapes drives them to raging in forests, fields and hillsides to touch unspeakable mysteries which none but you can reveal.

You break the bounds between mortality and immortality: torn to pieces by the Titans, you have crossed the threshold at the end to return again to the beginning. Shattering more boundaries, you ventured to the dead in search of Semele, slain by the true face of Zeus and brought her back to Olympus: Thyone, your mother, immortalized.

Clad in skins and bearing torches, your worshipers dance in whirling frenzy. The reveling horde gains momentum and spurs itself on through the night with you at its core, a spectacle of madness in orbit around the lord of ecstasy.

Hail to you, god of freedom! I pray that you be generous with your blessings!
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I will sing of the earth-shaking Poseidon, son of Cronus, brother of Thundering Zeus. Dark-haired mighty land-rumbler, your quakes cause the mountains to be born, their jagged new peaks thrusting towards the sky while old ones shatter and fall. Great Lord of the sea which dashes against rocky cliffs and laps the sandy shore, your strength can crush a ship to splinters or cradle it upon your rolling waves.

It is in your honor that voyagers make sacrifice, that you may protect them as they cross your vast expanses and with your blessings, colonists sent forth by the Far-Shooter may reach new lands unharmed.

Hail to you, Poseidon, who rules the harsh and gentle seas! I pray that you will grant honor to my song.



Just wrote this one today. It's been a while since I wrote one of these. I've got a decent start on one for Dionysus too I think.
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So I'm working on a ritual that we're going to be holding at the grove at the end of the month for a festival invented by [livejournal.com profile] erl_queen, Theoxenia Delphinia, which is in honor of all of the deities historically associated with Delphi.

So at the moment, I'm trying to learn more about the deities that I'm not as familiar with...Pan, the Korykian Nymphs, Trophonios, Athena, Poseidon, Gaia, and Zeus. For the moment at least, I'm reading about Zeus.

I will never have the same sort of relationships with these deities that I do with Apollo, and probably never even so much as I do with Dionysus and Hermes, but branching out and learning more is good, eh?

I am excited to be doing a group Hellenic ritual again. It has been too long.
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Someone posted this question on a forum that I frequent. when I first saw it, I ignored it because well, unless you're working in a system with some measurable benchmarks (degrees in Traditional Wicca, for example) there's no way of reasonably answering this. Then after a while, the thought of terms of "advancement" and not "being advanced" came t mind, along with yet more thinking about the last year, and how so much has changed for me spiritually. It definitely didn't come cheap and easy. This was my answer:

Let me just state, first off, that I have no idea what "advanced" really is. I have found that my religious practice and views are not particularly similar to a vast majority of other pagans that I've encountered (referring now to my strictly personal religious practice, not my group affiliation with ADF) and I seem to hold some rather unusual views and experiences of my gods, so that narrows down more there, so there's not much to compare to, even if I were interested in comparing. As a result, in my little world, "advanced" is entirely self-referential, I am farther along now than I was a month ago or a year ago. It's advancement, not being advanced.

In the last year, I would say that I've advanced much. Shortly after the fall equinox last year, a lot of things started changing drastically for me. I was introduced much more closely- and dramatically- to a couple of gods. I gained a completely new view of Apollo, to whom I've been devoted for some time now, not a view that I'd never known before, but one with which I was previously only aware of on a strictly intellectual basis, I gained a very sudden, up close, personal and traumatic familiarity with that view, with that, my life changed rather drastically in a few months time.

A year later, my life is far better in many ways. I'm living in a much better place. I'm involved in a romantic relationship with elements that I never believed in before it happened to me. I'm so much happier overall. While I was never particularly unhealthy, I know that I am healthier than I was, physically and mentally.

All it cost me was a chunk of my self-identity, my "place" (Where I thought I was, what I thought I was doing, I was beginning ADF's Clergy Training Program after about eight years of being called to serve as clergy and then taking the steps to train as such, then realize I was doing the wrong thing), my sense of belonging to my grove, where I had been involved heavily for three years, a bout of depression and mourning, a large chunk of what had been my social life, and for a time, my happiness. I felt lost and aimless for months.

I have a difficult time relating to a lot of people in many ways. Not because OMG Im sooooo speshul, but because I think I'm coming from a very different place than a lot of people. I can't think of too many people who would be at all interested in living my life. Basically, my religion is the primary thing in my life. (That includes my relationship with my girlfriend One of the first things that we determined at the beginning of the relationship was that religion came before anything else fpr each of us, including each other. This probably sounds crazy to a lot of folks, possibly even harsh or cruel, but it works out for both of us, and is a condition that rarely needs to be invoked.) Sometime in the middle of last winter, I realized with a bit of a start one day that were I Christian with the sort of devotion I hold, I would very possibly be strongly considering becoming a nun. Knowing that no similar option is available to me, and growing more and more discontent with my job and some of the things that were happening there, that threw me into a period of time where everything was wrong, nothing was right and well, as I said, I was just lost.

This wasn't the first time I've had to deal with complete and drastic change like that brought on by religious/spiritual things. The cost was rather heavy, involved a lot of stress and upheaval. After a while, certain things fell into place, other things came up, they got all crazy and then they calmed down again. The last two months have been very low-stress and happy, but I'm not expecting that to last forever, I know the process is going to repeat and I'm going to have to deal with more of it on the way to wherever I'm going.

So...at what cost? For me, it was just about everything that's important to me, some of it on a temporary basis, some of it permanently.

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