sang the tiger to her king

The nice thing about worshiping the Theoi is it’s a try your best situation. The annoying thing about worshiping the Theoi is…it’s a try your best situation.

Like…I get a hundred asks along the lines of “I can’t afford this offering” “I don’t know everything about Hellenismos” “I’m new and afraid I’ll fuck everything up” blah blah blah. And it’s all meaningless anxiety, not actual concerns anyone needs to waste time on.

On the other hand, I see plenty of people who CAN do better, but just won’t. Not out of lack of spoons, or poverty, or recent convert status. Just out of laziness, or willful ignorance, or just plain being a cheap asshole.

Arete is the goal. It is always the goal. It means we must strive to be the best us we can be. Not the best ever, just the best individual we are personally capable of being. So, “I am literally not capable of this because of disability/poverty/I don’t know how to do it and have literally no way of learning” is TOTALLY FINE.

The problem is when people pretend to themselves and others that “I don’t want to” is the same thing as “I can’t.”

Are you really incapable of finding time to research, or have you just assigned the gods a lower priority level than screwing around on Tumblr? Can you honestly not afford nicer offerings, or do you just not want to inconvenience yourself by cutting back on your recreational spending? Are you “too disabled” for formal reconstructionist ritual, or do you not feel like putting in the effort to do it right?

It’s even worse when people act like not only do they not have to try harder, but they have some sort of divine permission to blow it off. Is it really religiously optional to observe, say, miasma, or do you just not want to? Are the gods really okay with you disrespecting them, or are you just too much of an asshole to behave properly?

Anyway.

The point of this wasn’t to accuse you personally of being any of these things. It was a reminder that there’s nothing wrong with being young and stupid and still learning…as long as you are ACTIVELY AND HONESTLY TRYING TO BECOME BETTER.

The issue is, by its nature, it is super easy for people to let themselves off the hook. Nobody ever believes they’re being a lazy asshole. Everybody’s got an excuse. No matter how many times people ask themselves “is this really my best” there will always be some people who will shamelessly answer yes even when the answer should be no.

So here’s my tip to you. Don’t worry so much about being young, stupid, and still learning.

Instead, spend your energy honestly and sincerely questioning your motives.

Don’t try to be as good a worshiper as so and so, or as knowledgable as so and so, or as experienced as so and so. You’re new. You’re naturally not going to be able to achieve that right now. It’s not logically possible. How can you expect to be as expert in this religion as people who have been a part of it for years?

What you should be doing instead is always improving. And constantly asking yourself “can I do better than this?” And when the answer comes back no, asking yourself “okay, but is it, like, REALLY no, or do I just WANT it to be no so that I don’t have to work?”

One thing worshiping Ares has taught me is that the trappings of religion are nothing without the work and the dedication. Devotion isn’t a measure of aesthetic and edgy tumblr posts and how many books you own. It’s a measure of how hard you’re willing to try to do your best. Not anyone else’s best, not what you feel like calling your best. Your actual, honest, individual best.

I know that youve put, theres a difference between “i cant” and “i dont want to”, but disabled people, especially people with chronic pain and fatigue like myself, often miss the internal markers that signal weve crossed that boundary. We often end up doing something we technically cant, and shouldnt, and suffer for it massively over the next few days, weeks, however long, purely because there is that massive pressure to be doing your best. A lot havent quite learned what our own best looks like, and use an ablebodied idea of ‘best’ because we’ve got nothing else to go on. So its really important to be able to curate our experiences, even if it means that instead of cleaning the altar, we need to spend our spoons on the washing up and then take a break, even if that break is the rest of the day.

me: “I miss having a tumblr blog but I don’t miss the drama crap, that sounds exhausting, fuck that, maybe I’ll just like, talk about my practice and my worship or whatever”

me: “didn’t I quit talking about my religious practice because it leads to negative behavior patterns like attention-seeking religious decisions and an overeliance on aesthetic due to the replacement of personal gnosis by outside influences and false authority?”

is this the “right” way to practice my religion?? well I changed careers from manual labor into a WFH office job with a handpicked schedule and double the income and also my mental health is *chefs kiss* amazing, so I aint hearing no complaints from the Big Folks In Charge

maybe the real “Vital Spiritual Work Demanded By The Gods” was the “my own self interests and general wellbeing” we met along the way

I joke but also yes it’s what I’ve been saying all along, glitter is bullshit, glitter is useless, glitter is for the worshiper not the worshipee, real religious practice is the love under the glitter, fuck glitter edit: I wrote this like a bitch who pulled two allnighters playing videogames because I am a bitch who pulled two allnighters to play videogames so let me translate: after long thought and divination I have concluded that what the gods want is to be loved and acknowledged and included in our lives, and that the real sacrifice to be offered is just, yknow, caring about them as People who are important to you

Easter: “Let’s talk about how the Lamb was sacrificed so that God would save us from ourselves because we had faith, because maybe the real slavery was the sinning we did along the way”