Polytheist Quotes

One of the projects dear to me is in re-building a devotional practice to our Gods. Devotions are the very backbone of religious praxis and experience. There was a meme circulating a while ago stating: “What they won’t teach you about the founders of western science, math, medicine and philosophy is that they believed in the ancient Gods.” This is sadly in most cases very true.

I’ve decided to start a new project, pulling authentic quotes and prayers to share across social media as a reminder that these great minds were Polytheists, that they themselves would have engaged in devotional practices. They weren’t afraid of theophany, direct experience with the Gods. They recognized it for the blessing it is. If you care to contribute your own favorite quotes feel free to share them in the comments below. These graphics are meant to be shared, so please do share them.

The images will be housed and updated over in a photo album on my official Facebook author page. This album will be added to as time and opportunity permits.

The first couple are below.

Αἰσχύλο (also known as Aiskhylos, or Aeschylus) was born circa 525/524, and passed away circa 456/455 BC. He was an ancient Greek playwright, sometimes colloquially called the father of tragedies. Only a few of his estimated 70 plus plays have survived, among them is his trilogy of plays in The Oresteia (comprised of Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, and The Eumenides) represents the only complete trilogy of Greek plays by any playwright still extant, and it has been theorized that he was the first playwright to create stories told in trilogies. He also seems to have introduced to the theater more complex character interactions and more characters into his works then what had been standard before then. His plays won him first prize in the coveted Great Dionysia (a great festival dedicated to Dionysos) on more than one occasion.

In this direct quote from Aiskhylos, we see an understanding in why we engage in devotional practices and veneration to the Gods.

It’s done! *Whew*

I just returned home today and it’s done. I successfully defended my thesis “Less is More: Eunuchs, Self-Castration, Spiritual Eunuchism, and Mystical Castration from Tertullian to Cassian,” one hundred and ten pages of philological exegesis about the cultural poetics of the eunuch in early Christian culture and theology. As of about 12:30 today I have a Masters Degree in Medieval Studies. This is my second Masters, my first is in Religious Studies. Now it’s onward and upward to PhD work in the fall. Thanks to an awesome department, advisor, and reader for amazing support. Now I’m going to get a glass of wine. ^_^

It’s the 10th Anniversary of Sigyn: Our Lady of the Staying Power🎉

Bookversary today!!! 🎉🎉🎉

Time has flown, and it’s so hard to believe it’s been 10 years since this devotional first published. My mutti was deeply devoted to this goddess, and this Goddess has been part of so many blessings that have filled my life. Long may Sigyn be Hailed and Honored. 💖

 

Sigyn, the Norse goddess of constancy and compassion, is the second wife of the Trickster God Loki. She gathers broken things, and people, to her breast to heal. In this book, Galina Krasskova reveals the beauty of this little-known Goddess whose name means Victory Woman. With prayers, poetry, personal and group rituals, this is a manual for all those who would offer to devotion to this gentlest of divine figures.
Amazon: https://amzn.to/32nTZCA

 

What do you do for your devotions to Sigyn?

QOTD

“Just because the Gods aren’t directly present to you, doesn’t mean they are scarce to others.”          —H. Jeremiah Lewis 

The Basics BEFORE the Basics

 

A (civil) discussion on twitter today got me thinking about our various traditions and one of the key things necessary in making them sustainable and inter-generational: namely, marrying other polytheists and raising your children as polytheists too — and I don’t think it matters which polytheism because that is a very particular lens through which to view the world and one’s relationships to the Powers and there are commonalities there in ways that there simply aren’t with monotheisms.

I’m always surprised at the push back I get on the idea that we should marry within our communities. Granted, now our communities are small but they will grow, with our cultivation. I should point out that early Christians had no trouble requiring their prospective spouses to convert…and while I don’t support proselytizing, I do support this. I’ve seen far too many people who find themselves in households where they have to hide, limit, or downplay their practices. I would at the very, very least have a marriage contract in place that stipulates to the religious upbringing of any and all children. Let me add that getting rid of an impious spouse who demands one hide one’s polytheism is, as a friend of mine would say, “addition by subtraction.” Christians have a term “unequally yoked” that I think applies here. It’s when the two partners are not on the same spiritual journey, are not of the same religion and thus cannot support each other in building a spiritually nourishing household effectively. It’s a terrible thing to be unequally yoked.

Even more push back comes at the thought of raising children in the faith. Why would you not do this? THIS even more than marrying other polytheists is so key, so fundamental to the future of our traditions that it just boggles my mind why someone would even consider doing otherwise. If you don’t love your Gods and you don’t want to see Their traditions grow, why are you here?

Of course, the argument always raised is ‘I don’t want to force my religion on my child’ but this is no argument at all.  Firstly, it is a parent’s duty to provide spiritual education. That is part and parcel of raising a healthy child just as one would instill proper virtue and understanding. Secondly, there are plenty of ways to raise a child in one’s faith without being abusive about it. Why not – and I mean this in all seriousness, because this is where I think the real issues lie—deal with the damage and wounds from your own religious upbringing instead of denying both your children and your Gods the blessing of a tradition? It should be unthinkable to raise our children any other way. If we do, we’re cutting off our traditions at their knees. Each generation has to retread ground those before them already walked (and we do this anyway by our disrespect toward the elders in our communities, by ignoring or pissing on their work, and by attempting to write them out of their own traditions’ histories).

Standards are not oppressive. I’m going to say that again for those of you in the back: standards are not oppressive, at least not if you want to accomplish something worthwhile. Moreover, we can in fact choose whom we love and with whom we spend the rest of our lives. It’s important to make good choices here. It’s not enough to love someone in the moment. One must consider making a life with that person and having children (if one wants children), and what one is willing to compromise upon and what one isn’t. Hopefully commitment to the Gods and Their traditions form an absolute hard line, a sine qua non in that equation.

Someone complained today that this separates groups into “us” vs. “them” and yes, it does. This does not mean that “they” are bad, just other, different, outside the community of faith and practice, and as lovely as they might be, potential dead weight in a relationship founded first and foremost in shared piety and love. One’s relationship with the Gods is always personal and needs to be nourished regularly but as religious people we are not separate from a community, hopefully one that is coalescing into a tradition. One of the greatest challenges facing us today as polytheists is how to ensure that our traditions are sustainable and we can work hard and do all we want as individuals but eventually unless we’re raising our children in the faith, we’re never going to get past the place that we’re at now. Only through inter-generational transmission of the tradition and love for the Gods is any community truly sustainable.

I’ve seen people talk about personal sovereignty, free will and such being important and they are. We have the free will to make good decisions, decisions that further our traditions, decisions that honor our Gods. Why is it so damned hard to put something other than ourselves first?

I’m only going to say this once

Ok, people. I think it’s time to lay something out for y’all. 

I’ve spent close to thirty years dealing with Heathen bullshit: people with their panties in a twist because they can’t accept that the Gods actually can impact our lives, actually can claim people, that devotion is important, that piety is more than just being able to read the lore, etc. etc. I’ve had people send threats (usually misspelled and with terrible grammar), make up stories (really creative ones in some cases, in others just sad), and lately some tumblristas have been spreading outright lies. I’ve had people who can’t stand the fact that a woman has opinions and won’t be swayed from them. I’ve had people who can’t stand the fact of my devotion to Odin and people who simply don’t like that I know their background and the lies they tell about themselves publicly. Lately I’ve been doxed several times. 

Now my husband and I are dealing with the same bullshit from the Hellenic community. Y’all are latecomers to the game. 

Here’s the thing though and here’s what none of you seem to grasp: you are irrelevant to us. There is literally nothing that you can possibly do that will keep us from our work. You and your opinions do not matter to us. We are building a tradition and doing the work the Gods have set for us to do and THAT is the only thing that matters: serving our Gods well. How seriously are we to take someone or something who tries to interfere with that? Y’all are trifling. 

And that, I think is the real reason that we get so much bullshit thrown our way: we will not be bullied or cowed into submission. We aren’t going to change our views or what we teach or how we venerate our Gods because any other living person has a problem with it. We aren’t going to pretend history didn’t happen. We aren’t going to elevate human opinions over right relationship with our Gods. EVER. 

So you have two choices: you can ignore us and stop obsessing over our blogs or you can keep at your bullshit knowing it’s about as effective as pissing in the wind. 

our new book is available

Our household prayer book is now available on amazon for those who might be interested. 🙂 

Folks can order here. 

Serving Odin

I recently came across something I’d written awhile back, after a discussion about Odin. At the time, I was surprised at the response. It’s always interesting to see your relationship and your primary Deity through someone else’s eyes! A friend of mine, who has known me for over a decade,  made what i think is a particularly powerful comment, one that moved me deeply, and I think it might also allow me to segue into some important things about my work with Odin that I’d like to discuss. For that reason,  I want to quote the whole comment here. My friend F.B. said during the course of the discussion:

“I have felt, over more than a decade as your friend and colleague (albeit on a very different religious path) that your way (Odin’s way, to which you are obligated) was just so hard and painful. Most often, my thought has been, “Better you than me!” (Which, of course, makes it obvious why Odin chose you and not me.) I have felt sorry for you. You claim joy but I must take it on faith (and on my respect for you as an honest person) because, from the outside looking in (and from a drastically different faith tradition) your way seems all pain and no joy. But I know you don’t feel that way about it, so I simply accept that this is one of those things I’ll never understand. Thanks for trying to translate!”

I was really given pause by this comment. Certainly my life has been hard, brutally so at some points, but not because of Odin or my service to my Gods. They bring (sometimes vexation yes, but more often) joy. They have poured blessings into my hands. Sometimes life is just *hard* for reasons that have nothing to do with the Gods. So, I was really pondering upon reading this comment how it could possibly seem so grim. Has the work Odin has set me to do caused me pain? Yes, sometimes but that is an expected consequence of this work, both the internal work that I must do to keep my devotional relationships fit, the external ordeal that is sometimes asked, and the public work, which can be very irritating at times. The pain or difficulties are largely irrelevant. They don’t matter. They’re the terrain one must cross to get anything done. 

I suppose I look at it much as I looked at the physical pain I endured when I was a ballet dancer (and a ballet career involves a brutal level of physical pain as an ongoing norm): it’s irrelevant. I loved to dance. it was my goal in life to do so professionally (which I did for a brief time), and to do it well. I knew going in that in order to reach that goal, I’d have to endure a certain level of discomfort and pain as a daily thing. It was the ground I would have to walk across for what I wanted to achieve and that end goal was one of beauty and joy. I kept that goal always in mind through the daily grind. The discipline of honing and shaping and sometimes wrenching myself into the proper shape and form necessary to achieve that goal was often grim, but it was not the point and in view of reaching that ultimate goal it faded largely away. It simply was a necessary byproduct. I think on some level I approach the challenges inherent in my relationship with Odin (and the other Gods I venerate) in much the same way. 

Odin is a God that will challenge (as I think all Gods do in some way). He favors hard work and discipline and doing those things involves courage. C.S. Lewis wrote once that courage was the most necessary virtue–it was necessary to do all the others (my paraphrase)! He could have had Odin in mind when he wrote that. Because discipline and duty are not bad things for me — in fact, i find them very positive things and find that I tend to thrive under such strictures–I often write about them. I suppose were my personality different I could focus on other aspects of my devotional relationships but I don’t like to discuss the very personal things (they’re *personal* and I have very old-school notions of privacy), and I don’t like to discuss the blessings I’ve been given (that seems too much like bragging). What I like to talk about is the work. It defines me, not only in my relationship to Him but as a person and a human being. It is what makes me a full adult to my mind. This is a corollary to the utilitarian outlook Odin tends to hone in some of His people: we tend to define ourselves by our work. If i am not useful, I have no reason to *be.* Of course i’ve learned over the years that even the word ‘duty’ can be triggering to some. 

When I was still dean of an Interfaith Seminary, all of the instructors were required to assist with an end of the year retreat for the students. Lasting for three days, it was an intensive weekend of workshops, seminars, and ritual work designed to help the students prepare for their eventual ordination. It was quite enjoyable for the most part. During one of the workshops – this one student-led—the participants/audience were asked to call out words that defined their spirituality,  and what was important therein. I said “duty.” When I uttered that word you could feel the pall descend over the sweet little new agers. They were so intensely disturbed by the word that no one wanted to write it down (it carries all those nasty connotations don’t you know, like responsibility, maturity, focus, and discipline). Finally the student leading the workshop said ‘Joyful duty.’ It was my turn to be perplexed: what does emotion have to do with it? That is completely and utterly irrelevant. It does not matter if one’s duty is joyful or not, what matters is doing it. If we only did those things that brought us joy, what an insipid world this would be. It really highlighted for me the gulf between me and so many people that I meet. This is also why I dislike definitions of a Deity as “love” or of piety as ‘love.’ What happens when you’re not feeling the joy, does your practice go out the window? One would hope not. Duty is the torch that can guide one through those periods of darkness. To prioritize our emotions in the course of doing what is right is to make the process all about us and not what is right. I find little merit in doing this. 

That being said, I experience great joy and satisfaction in serving Odin. I would serve Him even were that not the case. Like pain, the joy is a byproduct, this time one of His presence. The public side of my work involves many challenges, but that is to be expected when we are restoring a broken tradition. First we must restore ourselves so that we can take up those threads and neither of those things is a painless process. Sometimes I write about that aspect of the work because others need to see that one can get through such a process; sometimes because like many others, I am still finding my way in this thing called devotion. Challenge, hard work, discipline, duty, and the expected level of courage that Odin demands are good things to me. They help immeasurably with that process and in fact, I believe are crucial. Odin is a war-god, something that I try never to forget and it is through the gifts of a warrior’s mindset that one can thrive in His service. There are other ways too, but this is the way to which He has called me. 

So what is the joy? I’ll lay it out in brief, broad strokes, just this once. There is having a purpose, being of use, furthering His agenda. Those things in themselves are tremendously satisfying and joyful. I don’t think I can explain how much so to someone for whom that is not a motivating factor! Then over and above everything else, there is Him, His presence, His wod (auto correct kept correcting this to ‘wood.’ No, auto-correct, not ‘wood’…that would go into that privacy place I was talking about earlier! lol). His presence is one of overwhelming terror-joy, true awe in the ancient sense, and at times pure ecstatic bliss. It drives, it hones, it motivates. Then there is the knowledge that He brings. He certainly knew what carrot to use to lure me in: teach me things, show me things, grant me knowledge. There is what He allows me to know and what He allows me to see but over and above it all, there is Him and that would in itself be blessing enough. We’re well matched, and regardless of how hard aspects of my service to Him may be, in the power of His presence, those difficulties are forgotten. 

QOTD

“The problem with Marxism is that it is built on toxic precepts. It is anti-religion, anti-tradition and anti-faith. It is going to be difficult to reconcile Polytheism or any spiritual tradition with a philosophy which can only see religion as the opiate of the masses. Saying “once you get past that it has some useful pointers” is like asking Jackie Kennedy “so other than the parade, what did you think of Dallas?”

                                          —K. Filan                     

QOTD

Eat and carouse with Bacchus, or munch dry bread with Jesus, but don’t sit down without one of the Gods.

                                       – D.H. Lawrence