Lights of the Hearth

She is attested by various names: the tribal name Epalea, the founder of her temple Aleos, and the name of the festival Aleaia. In the Classical period, a transition can be seen in literature and cult from Alea, to Alea Athena, to Athena Alea. Xenophon calls her Alea, while Herodotus, Menander, and Strabo, among others, call her Alea Athena. But the transition is not instantaneous, as Athena Alea, used by Pausanias, is attested before Alea Athena disappears.⁴

The earliest known cultic activity at Tegea is in the late tenth century. Pottery, animal bones, both burnt and unburnt, and terracotta figures & wreaths were found in the sacred pit (bothros).⁵

In the Geometric period, activity expanded: architectural evidence of 2 apsidal temples and a metal workshop was found. There was also an increase of votives found at the site, such as animal & human figures, jewelry, and shields.

Figure 1. Bronze votive pins from the sanctuary of Athena Alea (Kladouri and Orfanou 4)

The Archaic temple, most likely built around 625-600 BCE, became the first monumental building at Tegea, and stood until it burnt down. An abundance of votives were found once again: bronze & lead jewelry, statuettes, terracotta figurines, and miniature vessels. We don't know when Alea and Athena became equated, but a 6th century votive figurine of an armed Athena could be seen as a representation of this syncretism.⁵

Figure 2. An archaic bronze figurine of an armed Athena (Dugas 359)

When the Archaic temple burnt down, the famous marble temple, whose remains can still be seen today, was built.

In the temple, there was a statue of Athena Alea. Originally an ivory statue stood, but it was carried away to Rome by Augustus. A new statue was made and later flanked by a statue of Asklepios and a statue of Hygeia on either side. Pausanias writes that the statue was originally surnamed Hippeia, but the locals continued to call her Alea.⁶

There were also representations of the Calydonian boar hunt, as Atalanta was Arkadian, and another local hero, Telephos, fighting Achilles. The tusks of the boar were said to be present in the temple until Augustus removed them. Present still in the temple in the days of Pausanias was the rotted hide of the Calydonian Boar.⁷ He also lists other votives: a couch dedicated to the goddess and a portrait of Auge, a priestess of her's.

Also in the sanctuary were representations of Rheia, local nymphai, the mousai, and Mnemosyne.⁸

Figure 3. The remains of the temple of Athena Alea at Tegea (Hagedorn)

We don't know a lot about Alea herself. She was clearly a goddess of refuge, granting safety to various people. She also seemed to have a martial aspect even before she became associated with Athena, which explains why she was syncretized with Athena to begin with. A connection could be made both to horses, via Hippeia, and boars/pigs, via the Calydonian Boar.

Pausanias also describes a peplos woven for the goddess as an offering, so weaving could also be an attribute of her's.⁹ Though, of course, these can all be argued as just examples of the syncretism with Athena. The metal workshop could attest to a connection with smithery.

Erik Øtsby suggests that she is a fertility goddess with a connection to water in some way, citing Madeleine Jost, who also discusses a possible solar aspect.¹⁰ Her sanctuary was located near a natural spring, and in the early periods was located within a loop of a river.

So, all in all: Alea was a goddess of protection and refuge, a fertility goddess with a connection to water and a martial aspect even prior to her association with Athena. She was often offered jewelry, attesting to a large female cult. These were likely dedications related to puberty and/or marriage. The tusks and hide of the Calydonian Boar were held in her sanctuary, and like a lot of Arkadian deities she was associated with nymphai.

I think she's a very interesting study of how Panhellenic deities absorbed local deities and took on new characteristics.

Yes I spent 3 hours writing this for about ~7 people to see. No I don't regret it.

Sources:

[1] Homer, Iliad 2.607-609

[2] Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.9.6; 8.23.1; 8.4.8

[3] Pausanias, Description of Greece 3.5.6

[4] Madeleine Jost, 2007, “The Religious System in Arkadia” in A Companion to Greek Religion

[5] Mary E. Voyatzis, The Cult of Athena Alea at Tegea and its transformation over time

[6] Pausanias 8.41.1

[7] Pausanias 8.47.2

[8] Pausanias 8. 45. 4-47. 4

[9] Pausanias 8.5.3

Open and Closed Practices: Oops! All Performative!

The latter of those aforementioned binaries, the concept of there being "closed" and "open" practices, is a very new development within internet politics that is practically unique to the spiritual sphere. And for good reason: it's bullshit. "What?!" I know, I'm sorry, I realize this is the axiom of wokeness around which many of us have built our conduct within the community - me too, when I first joined. But there's a reason that this doesn't exist anywhere outside of our community. It was made up in an attempt to radically simplify avoiding appropriation, but in the process has instead done severe damage by being deeply reductive, and even xenophobic! 

Like we discussed in the last post, a core feature of white supremacy is the reduction of all culture into a binary of "white culture" and "not white culture." This idea is often unintentionally perpetuated by the open/closed dichotomy. Any culture that is associated with white people or whiteness is considered "open," which goes on to then imply that any culture associated with not-whiteness is closed. This is the definition of racialization, and engaging in it primes your mind to apply the same principle in other contexts as well. It makes non-whiteness register to the beholder as foreign.

This turns into xenophobia quickly, and goes on to do further harm. The severity with which we now treat the concept of a "closed practice" has resulted in the severe othering of its practitioners, to the point where they often feel silenced and dismissed, rather than respected. Out of fear of doing something wrong or being accused of appropriation or being complicit in it, "closed practices" have become deeply taboo. Not to be spoken of or posted about except in the context of condemning their appropriation. When there is a space for practitioners of closed practices to speak or post, it's often a single channel locked behind a special role, or some such. The practitioners and their practices are treated as one monolith with no nuance, and hidden away in a small section where they cannot share with the rest of the community, as though just hearing about a practice one can't engage in is dangerous. The way we treat closed practices in the community does not uplift its practitioners nor represent them, it others and excludes them in the name of protection that nobody asked for. 

Further, the entire principle operates on an assumption of entitlement, or a right to ownership. There is an implied dividing line, somewhere in this linear narrative, where you cross from "this I can have," into "this I can't have." Or alternatively, "this I can use," into "this I can't use." But in reality, like we covered in part one, culture is not a matter of ownership or consumption. It's a matter of identity, experience and interaction. Cultures are not linear, nor static, nor do they exist in isolation. They are always changing, along an infinite number of axes, and so are their relationships to other cultures and systems in the world. It is easy and comfortable to condense your world down into binaries, but it teaches you nothing about culture as a concept nor about individual cultures, and that is a problem in a community oriented around engaging with intangible cultural heritage (religions and their praxes).

And there lies another glaring problem with the closed/open dichotomy. It doesn't teach you what appropriation is, because our treatment of appropriation is oriented around convenience over commitment. Rather than learning how your behavior perpetuates harm, rather than deconstructing the mindsets you came up in, you're provided with easy outs. The open/closed dichotomy gives you an opportunity to perform cultural competence without actually learning it. The truth is that if you aren't able to recognize appropriation on your own, you are not sufficiently equipped to engage with cultural heritage. If you need to ask somebody else "is it appropriation to..." the answer is, definitionally, yes. Because you are demonstrating a desire to consume something before gaining the cultural competency needed to understand your relationship with it.

These labels can't accurately represent the cultural dynamics around appropriation, already having resulted in terms like "semi-closed" to try to bridge the gap. Because, realistically, who wants their culture, the thing that makes them and their people who they are, deemed "open" for anybody to do with what they will irregardless of familiarity and respect? And on the other hand, who wants their culture completely shunned?

Objectivity and the Burden of Education

Another notable flaw of the current popular understanding of appropriation is the delusion of objectivity. 'Objectivity' has infiltrated the western mind on a very large scale, and nowadays many people live their lives under the assumption that there is an objective truth contained within the world, largely as a result of flawed education and misconceptions about science. But science does not presume itself objective, and 'objectivity' as a concept itself is entirely subjective. Paradoxical, I know, but here's the important thing to remember: cultural appropriation is not a matter of fact and falsity. There is no objectively correct, final answer on what is or is not appropriation - ever. 

That includes an attempted final answer from an individual from the culture itself that you have selected to answer this question. The value of cultural consensus cannot be overstated, and it is unequivocally true that the final authority on a culture is that culture itself. There is nothing morally wrong with asking the opinion of people within a given culture to inform your opinion, in fact it is highly respectable and something we should all do in the pursuit of decentering whiteness. That said, there is a persistent habit within the community of using single individuals who associate with a given culture as the final authority on that culture - and all questions about what is and is not permissible are directed at that person.

This isn't always nonconsensual: some people willingly take on this role in their community. But culture is not contained within a single person, and there are significant risks associated with this method. For one, making one person the final authority on their culture is tokenizing them and their culture. It diminishes the variable, experiential and interpersonal nature of culture, disregards the fact that it is something far bigger than one person by nature, and chooses one person to represent all of it for the sake of convenience. Whether or not the person you are directing your questions or desire for education at is taking up that role willingly, it is definitionally reductive. Further, this method of seeking answers places a burden upon the broader culture where members of it cannot afford to be uneducated about these ethics or unprepared to answer these questions, lest one person's lack of education or preparation becomes the source of further harm to the greater group. 

This presents in other ways, too, like the "(BI)POC friend" who is treated as the supreme arbiter of what is and is not racist by a group of their white friends. Again, sometimes consensual, sometimes not, but in either case: racist and reductive. In the case of delegating all of your educational needs to 'POC' at large, there is another, larger issue too. Aside from the laziness displayed in this behavior - putting the burden of education and social justice on those already suffering under these systems for convenience's sake, without ever doing one's own research or actively criticizing one's own patterns - there is the matter of stereotyping. While it is certainly true that POC and indigenous people generally know far more about systemic oppression than white(-passing) people, it is still racist to place the burden of educating you on people other than yourself purely based on their skin color. Assigning a trait, positive or negative, to somebody based on their race, is engaging in racism. In assuming a 'POC' has these traits to benefit you - educatedness, the ability and/or desire to pass on that education, 'correctness' in general - you are assigning traits to somebody based on their (perceived) race with no room for nuance.

Of course, people who take it upon themselves to educate others on their culture deserve our utmost gratitude, and to be taken seriously. You must continue seeking out the experiences and opinions of those more heavily affected than you, and strive to most amplify their voices. But there should always be an acknowledgment on the part of any speaker that their experience is not representative of everyone's, and conversely, the people questioning them should not use that person as a one-stop-shop for all their answers on racism and appropriation purely because of their skin color.

Instead, you should view cultural appropriation as an ongoing conversation. Cultural dynamics and boundaries are constantly changing, and as a result, so does the way we can interact with culture. What is and is not helpful is always changing, and independently of that, so is what is and is not seen as acceptable. Further, the general movement towards liberation for all is always changing its approach based on the most recent research or education. I feel very confident in saying that how the movement is currently organized will be subject to extreme criticism in the future, possibly the near future - and that's a good thing! It means we are improving. But it also means that liberation and decolonization don't end. It goes on forever, and so does the process of learning. Not just for white people, but for everyone dedicated to improving the world.

But, when accepting that there is no objectivity in ethics, it can be tempting to then disregard the notion of appropriation altogether, to devalue the opinions of people more affected than you, or conversely, it can make it a lot more difficult to argue against appropriation and culture theft because you cannot make claims of objective correctness. How do you educate people, yourself included, about appropriation and coloniality when you can't make claims of objective moral superiority? A big part of answering that question is understanding why culture and identity is important to begin with.

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In the next part of this series I'll aim to illustrate why culture is important and should have a right to exist, and attempt to describe a potential balance between objectivism and relativity in the moral side of this issue. After that I hope to then move on to elaborately cover what appropriation is and can be, and how to eliminate and combat it. My goal will not be to prescribe people views so much as to dismantle ones that are already widely held, as it has been, and offer potential replacements or handlebars for their own deconstructive process.

Further reading:

Looking Through Whiteness: Objectivity, Racism, Method, and Responsibility - Philip Mack

Moral Anti-Realism in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Archive

Racism is a Moral Issue - Tim Soutphommasane

Race and Moral Psychology - Robin Zheng in the Oxford Handbook of Moral Psychology

Racism, Moralism, and Social Criticism - Tommie Shelby

The Black/White Binary Paradigm of Race: The "Normal Science" of American Racial Thought - Juan F. Perea

Latino/As, Asian Americans, and the Black-White Binary - Linda Martín Alcoff

Xenophobia and Racism - David Haekwon Kim and Ronald R. Sundstrom

Cultural Tariffing: Appropriation and the Right to Cross Cultural Boundaries - Abraham Oshotse et al.

Tokenism and Its Long-Term Consequences: Evidence from the Literary Field - Clayton Childress et al.

Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism - Matthias Gardell

These aren't all equally relevant to the exact point I am making here, presumably because there isn't much literature on this specific intersection to begin with. I'm extremely open (begging, one might say) to suggestions and submissions, but these are still very worthwhile and relevant reads.

I say “academic language” in quotes, because it’s this idea that formal codified language can only be obtained through participation in academia that I want to reject. It is, in every sense, not true. These are skills that can and should be self-taught if you are someone with an interest in debate, philosophy and communication-based activism. Everyone has the capacity to expand their vocabulary, to google words they’ve never seen before, to fact check the words they’re already using against institutionalized definitions to make sure that other people who are reading them will take away what they actually intended to say. But, simultaneously, our relationship with academia needs to become less polarized. Interest in the actual mechanisms of academic discussion – developing rhetorical skills, learning to recognize common logic errors, understand statistical information in context, and so on – is, while not necessary for every given person, hugely beneficial if you intend to try to debate and educate.

A common argument I see, on top of the idea that this language and logic use is locked behind class boundaries, is that academic language and discussion techniques should be rejected solely on the grounds of the bias often held in these fields. But everything contains bias. Every source, every language choice, every argument contains bias. It’s self-destructive and unhelpful to throw out a very useful toolkit wholesale on the grounds that the history of that toolkit is heavily problematic. Of course it is. Language is not a wholly neutral force. But literacy, communication and rhetoric will always be a key cornerstone of organization and progress, as it always has been. To deny yourself competency in those fields is, however unintentionally it may be, to feed into systems that do not want us to be able to communicate productively.

In order to be in actual organization with one another and be able to have good faith discussions that further intracommunity ideals we need to broadly be using precise, codified language in agreed-upon manners.

In order to critique systems, we need to call them as they call themselves, use their words, and engage with their ideas head on – not our colloquialized approximations of them.

To preserve the import, context, severity and integrity of our discussions about certain kinds of suffering, we need to maintain the specificity of those words and not engage in semantic broadening that promotes the weakening and generalization of them.  

If you want to push back against fascism, emphasizing collective literacy is the answer. Setting aside the desire to call highly specific language pretentious, is the answer. No longer implying that one must physically go through the process of academia to have access to the tools codified by it is the answer.

Because, and this is really the crux of my point, you too can utilize precise and ‘academic’ language and rhetoric.

It, like everything else in life, is just a skill that can be learned. It’s a skill that can be self-taught, which I will always recommend as something incredibly empowering in the most literal sense to do, but it’s also something we can teach each other – both passively and actively.

You can read academic journals and understand them. You can learn to navigate databases. You can look up and search out precise words to convey the points you’re trying to make. You can learn and internalize the intended definitions of existing words, and push back against the colloquial desire to broaden them when engaging in serious discussion.

It isn’t pretentious, it is no longer locked behind boundaries of economics in the digital age, and it isn’t something we’re incapable of engaging in and learning from each other.