🌞🍇🌃

Hear me radiant Lord Apollon Phuzios

Strong yet gentle all the same- guardian over fugitives.

Son of Leto and brother to the spirited Lady Artemis

Raise your bow Lord Apollon,

Avert the evil permeating the U.S.,

Help us end this plague of hate against our brothers and sisters.

Kind and resistant Lord Apollon Theoxenios

Watch over and safeguard our immigrants

Blind ICE to the locations of the vulnerable yet unbreakable victims of hate.

God of foreigners, rain your arrows on the fascist nazis.

Punish their evil, and fill their souls with endless guilt

Gallant and loving Lord Apollon,

Please aid our vulnerable and see our rage

Warm the victims with your light.

Loving Apollon Theoxenios,

I offer my love and devotion.

A libation poured in your honor,

Alongside incense burned so the scent and smoke may find you.

And I urge my fellow community of your worshippers to honor you as well.

Give offerings in love to you and the vulnerable you shall protect

Shoot your arrows Apollon Apotropaios,

Phuzios - The God Who Protects Fugitives (source)

Theoxenios - The God of Foreigners (source)

Bless me with your touch

Please heal me of the pain that aches in my bones and muscles

Even if just for a day, beautiful god of healing

Shine your light into my soul

Allow me to feel the warmth of your strength

And admire your mastery of easing the suffering of the chronically ill

Praise be to the tenderhearted Apollo

For those celebrating, I hope you have a wonderful time! For those who are unfamiliar with the festival, here are some informative posts and the like:

~ 🍇 ~

Information:

On Antheaterion - @kallisto-aglaia

Anthesteria - @thegodsaremyhome

Anthesteria - @dionysusmybeloved

Ancient Greece's Biggest Festival: The Anthesteria - @margaretkart

Anthesteria - The First Day, Pithoigia - @aceofcupsbiggestfan

Anthesteria - The Second Day, Kheos - @aceofcupsbiggestfan

Anthesteria - The Third Day, Khytrai - @aceofcupsbiggestfan

Rethinking The Anthesteria - @thegrapeandthefig

Celebrating Anthesteria Without Alcohol - @thegrapeandthefig

Anthesteria - Hellenion.org (I do not personally endorse Hellenion, based on things I've heard about them, but they can still be a helpful resource)

Anthesteria - Britannica.org

The Anthesteria - World History Encyclopedia.org

Devotion:

Anthesteria Dionysus Invocation - @beatingdrumspouringwine

Protrygaios Hymn/Poem - @beatingdrumspouringwine

Orphic Hymn 46 to Dionysus - @dionysusmybeloved

Hermes Chthonios Hymn/Poem - @sanguinebutch

Anthesteria, Khytrai Lyre Melody - @princesmeadow

Anthesteria - @nyxshadowhawk (found on @dionysia-ta-astika )

Personal Dionysian Ritual, First Day - @beatingdrumspouringwine

Flower Poem For Bacchus/Poema-florido Pra Baco - @piristephes

Anthesteria Playlist - @nyxshadowhawk

Orphic Hymn 30 to Dionysus - @kallisto-aglaia

Celebration Ideas For Anthesteria - @khaire-traveler (me)

~ 🍇 ~

Have a lovely Anthesteria, everyone, and remember to put up protections to prevent any wandering spirits from sticking around ~~~

Lately I been trying to improve my Rune/Charm/Bone casting by using some kind of cloth with quadrants but the ones I saw online were just… not my thing, they are usually too simple and is like they always need a little something. So, since I’m a “make your own shit but make it cheap” kind of witch, I made a template that’s a bit more complex. And of course, I share with everyone, in case someone find it useful.

Disclaimer: Complex. I will explain EVERYTHING, so this will not be a small post. Yet I will not explain super basic things like “what represent the moon”. That’s your job!

So, here is the idea:

Is made in a A4 very thick rough paper, which allow the runes and charms (I use both at the same time) to slide to their designated parties and don’t bounce back like can happen with cloths. This template is made in a way that you can interpret the different questions in different ways without need an entire new design.

Sections:

The Pentacle is affected by 3 circles. The inner one is the inner self, the desires, the very much core of the person/problem (I will say “topic” from now on), the main issue, the very most important thing. The one that pass between the tips of the pentacle are the closely related things that affect directly the topic. The outside circle is the context, these external things that maybe affect indirectly. Out of it, whatever that barely affect the topic, the societal and cultural aspect sort to speak, the rumors.

The page is divided by 4 pointed vertically and horizontally lines in the middle, making the Left and Right, the Up and Down sides. The Left is affected by the Moon and all what implies, specially as the “not evident stuffs affecting the topic”, as the Right is affected by the Sun and its characteristics as the “at plain sight issues”. That’s why the two suns and moons on the corners.

The Up and Down sides are to represent what’s “closer” to the person who made the question or cast the Runes (It depend on what you prefer). The down part is usually closer to me because I’m seeing that page as how this looks. It also can be used to yes/no questions, being the “special item” tossed and answering depending if is up or down the line, or if is closer to you.

The four sides of the paper represent the 4 Elements and their corresponding Cardinal Point, separated by these sword-like lines between the moon/sun and the pentacle. My Elements are related to geological cardinal points by my particular location, so let’s say that North is Fire in my case, so, they look like this (yours should and can look different by the layout of your elements/cardinal points):

So anything that falls into each one of these quadrants, will be affected by the correspondent element. So a Rune on Water, will be more linked to emotions; and an economic charm on Earth will be a great sign of good cash! The center can be affected by these or it can represent the spirit aspect, as you prefer. Each quadrant will be touching 2 other quadrants. So in my case, Fire can be touching Earth and Water, so anything that stand right in the line between them, is a conjunction of both.

Now, as you can see, each element is also separated on 3. Past, Present and Future to each Element. A charm or item that represent a Block, for example, in Past Water, can hint about emotional issues that still affect the topic now, like traumas. And an item that represent luck on Future Air, can represent an exam with a good grade.

These conjunctions can be interpreted as 4 “time mix”. In this case, you have 4 Past/Future (Which Element will affect which other should change accordingly the position of your elements). This “time mix” are exactly the line that separate each element, and can indicate effects or direct consequences. For example, in a self-cast I made, a stone (that represent blocks) and a shell (water symbol of hidden things and slow progress) fall together like a pair on the Past Water – Future Fire. This is easy to read: The consequences of your mental health and past emotions will affect directly your future passion and actions (Plot twist, I have chronic depression and my future plans are non-existing).

Disclaimer: This last text and image was fixed because I made a mistake yesterday, was 1:40 am, brain can't brain XD

For the rest, you can add or take whatever you need. Like, you can choose if the elements also affect inside the circles of the pentacle itself, or not.

If you want, you can also use the template as a tarot spread, using the Past/Present/Future Elements, the Up/Down, the Right/Left and the Pentacle like answers of a question.

Decorate it as much as you want! Mine is ultra simple or my ADHD head will get distracted with the drawings. I can suggest you make it on a perfectly squared paper/cloth, but if you make it in a A4 paper like me, if you use a ruler and pick the exact center, then the 4 quadrants will be quite the same (they look different because they are elongated in different ways, but the content is pretty much the same).

understanding a calendar is an essential thing for the followers of any ancient religion. getting the hang of it is very useful to adapt the festivities to our calendar and sometimes even necessary if you want to truly know what some holidays are about. lunar calendars can be a bit difficult to grasp for the most obvious reason: they are far more irregular than a solar calendar.

the Hellenic calendar was in force for almost a millennium, and it worked quite similarly to the Gaulish one –and by ‘Gaulish calendar’ I mean the Coligny calendar, not that one with trees as month names. that one has little to no historical evidence and is believed to be an invention of author Robert Graves for his book The White Goddess–. 

because it isn’t really given too much attention on here, and it might be difficult for any starter of the Hellenic polytheist faith, I’m trying my best to explain it all. I’ll be breaking this post into two halves, the first one explaning the year, the seasons and the months; and the second with the day, the monthly celebrations, and the major holidays.

first of all, the Hellenic calendar is a lunisolar type of calendar, which means it tries to reconcile the solar and lunar phases together and it has been reconstructed putting together several historical testimonials such as Hesiod’s. it also wasn’t the same in all of the Ancient Greek polis, there is a Theban, a Corinthian, a Thessalian, and an Attic calendar, among others. the one I’ll be explaining here is the Attic, that is, the one used in Athens, because it’s the most popular and documented of them all.

the year

the Hellenic year has 12 lunar months, starting on July and ending on June. following the lunar cycle, every year had 354 days, meaning each year would have 11 days less than the latter. eventually, an alteration was made and an additional month of 30 days was added, every three years. pretty similar to our leap-year system, this cycle is called ‘trieretic’ and the special year ‘embolistic’.

furthermore, Greeks used the term ‘Olympiad’ as a way to count time too. an Olympiad equals 4 years, and on the fourth of July we’re entering the 3rd year of the 699th Olympiad. this upcoming year is not embolistic though, the next one will be.

the seasons

-summer: July – September

-fall: October – December

-[[embolistic month]]

-winter: January – March

-spring: April – June

the month

the Hellenic months always started on a new moon and ended on the Night of Hekate Suppers –or Hekate Deipnon–, its axis was the full moon. 29-day and 30-day months were intercalated and, likewise, they divided their months into three sections, referring to the moon’s phases:

-the first decade, μηνὸς ἱσταμένου /menos histamenou/, running from the 1st to the 10th day.

-the second decade, μηνὸς μεσοῦντος /menos mesountos/, running from the 11th to the 20th day.

-the third decade, μηνὸς φθίνοντος  /menos phthinontos/, running from the 21st to the 29th or 30th day.

the months were also named after religious festivities, that explains the heavy grasp religion had on the Hellas’ society. the names go as listed:

-Hekatombeon, Ἑκατομϐαιών, equals approximately July-early August

-Metageitnion, Μεταγειτνιών, August-early September

-Boedromion, Βοηδρομιών, September-early October

-Pyanepsion, Πυανεψιών, October-early November

-Maimakterion, Μαιμακτηριών, November-early December

-Poseideon, Ποσειδεών, December-early January

-Gamelion, Γαμηλιών, January-early February

-Anthesterion, Ἀνθεστηριών, February-early March

-Elaphebolion, Ἑλαφηβολιών, March-early April

-Mounichion, Μουνιχιών, April-early May

-Thargelion, Θαργηλιών, May-early June

-Skirophorion, Σκιροφοριών, June-early July

-the Ancient Greeks didn’t go all creative on their embolistic month, and just called it ‘Poseideon II’. As you can guess, it did go after Poseideon. the holidays on this month repeated themselves one more time.

this is the end of this post because I feel like it would have gotten way too long, I’ll have the next part uploaded in few days, explaining the duration of the day, the special names of some days, as well as the monthly and major celebrations.

much love ♡

Disclaimer - While I do not personally agree with using someone else’s specific holiday to worship  different gods (Lughnasadh is for the gaelic god Lugh and *to me* it would be rude to take a lugh festival verbatim, with actions specifically for him and just replacing the god honored etc) However, there are very similar festivals, with similar actions and aligning them to the wheel might be handy (maybe the only other pagan friend you have irl celebrates the wheel and you want to be able to do things together) Or maybe melding the two different traditions is just how you roll. You do you, I’m not here to judge. This is a question i see brought up frequently but seldom answered, how to adapt the wheel of the year to the worship of hellenic gods. So we’re going to be looking at the time points and the concepts that are imbibed in the wheel of the year and try to match their concepts with the appropriate gods OR, align them with similar fesitvals that were held around the same time. Ok, that said, lets go… Wheel Holiday - Imbolc. Feburary 1-2 This is one of the four quater gaelic holidays, typically the goddess Brigid is revered on imbolc. Associations - rebrith, renewal, The promise of coming spring, divinations Hellenic holiday - Lenaia or Anthesteria Lenaia was a Dionysian festival celebrating the aspect of his rebirth after being torn apart by titans. This was held in the month of gamelion which was roughly January/February so you could certainly celebrate this on Feb 1st if you so choose. Historically it was celebrated with theatrical contests. Movie marathon or improv parties would be a great idea here. Anthesteria was also a Dionysian festival (Seeing the theme here?)  It celebrated the beginning of spring, particularly the maturing of the wine stored at the previous vintage. Social order was cast aside for feasts and revelry as wine casks were opened. Everyone joined in the feasts and libations were given to the dead ancestors. There was a solomn aspect to this festival in that regard where after the reverly, respects would be paid to the dead and to Hermes as the guider of souls. offerings of fruit were popular. Hellenic gods -  Dionysus, Hermes  Wheel Holiday - Ostara/ The spring equinox - March 20th Typically associated with the germanic goddess Eostre. Associations - fertiity, new growth, balance, the first of spring Hellenic holiday - Anthesphoria Anthesphoria is a celebration of spring, a festival of flowers. it marked Persephone returning to the land of the living, being returned to her mother Demeter. Flowers are gathered and woven into crowns. Aphrodite and Hera were also honored. It was a celebration of the beauty of spring.  Hellenic gods - Persephone, Demeter, Aphrodite, Hera Wheel Holiday - Beltane/May day - May 1st Another gaelic quarter day, a celebration of the aos sidhe and the sun god Bel Associations - Fertility, the first of summer, fruitfulness, sexuality Hellenic holiday - Thargelia Thargelia was typically celebrated on may 6th or 7th. It was a celebration of  the birth of Apollo and Artemis, largely an agricultural festival. The first fruits of the season were offered to Artemis and Apollo for a bountiful and mild summer. Offerings were given to Demeter as well as the seeds were sew. olive branches, wrapped in wool were hung over doors for prosperity and to ward off evil. Festivals and singing were held to honor the gods. historically sacrifices were made on thargelia. In modern times I feel this would be a good time to cast the darkest part of you (symboloically) into a fire, pick something about yourself you want to change or cast away, write it out and cast it to the fire to cleanse yourself of it.  Bonfires are a Beltane staple so honoring Hestia and Hephaestus would also be appropriate. A fertility day, dancing and fruit could also be offered to Pan, dionysus and the nymphs of the land.  Considering the fertility aspect of may day along with it being close to the northern american celebration of Mothers day, I would argue that Leto would also be good to honor. Hellenic gods - Artemis, Apollo, Demeter, Hestia, Hephaestus, Pan, Dionysus, Leto nymphs and spirits of the land.

Fthinóporo - The Autumn Equinox

09.22.2025

Were the ancients then aware of the connection? When they spoke of Hestia, did they do so aware of the (at least) dual meaning of the name? When they would say things like, “Make sure you leave an offering by the hearth,” would they know that to mean that the hearth is a physical manifestation of Hestia in the home? Or at the very least a between the hearth and Hestia, like a portal-type situation?

Or would there have been a different way of saying the name to signify whether you meant the Goddess Hestia as opposed to the mundane hearth that everyone had in their home? 

As far as I know, there was no difference between the way the hearth and Hestia were pronounced. The spelling is exactly the same, so I’d say the pronunciation was too. You could tell the difference by saying ἡ ἑστία for “the hearth” and Ἑστία for “Hearth” (i.e. Hestia) but really, it didn’t matter.

When we try to separate the hearth from Hestia, death from Thanatos, the sun from Helios and so on, we’re making a modern person’s distinction. In ancient times, the thing was the God. Our monotheistic culture has influenced our idea of what a God is supposed to be, but in many polytheisms, a God is just something greater than you - maybe all-powerful, maybe not. The logic goes that if it’s greater than you, you want it on your side, hence you appease it through worship. That’s why the sun, Helios, is a God. He’s powerful, he gives us light and warmth, but we are at his mercy because he can vanish anytime and leave us to die. To prevent that, to keep ourselves on his good side, we honour him as he deserves.

The same goes for Thanatos - scary, could kill us any moment - and Nyx - dark, mysterious, steals our senses - and Ouranos - above us, changing and seemingly infinite - and yes, Hestia too. She is fire, one of the most destructive elements of our planet, tamed and contained in a neat space, and used to benefit us. Isn’t that amazing? Isn’t that godlike?

And that’s one of the things that I love the most about Hellenic polytheism. The Gods aren’t distant beings that govern tangible things. Nyx isn’t a voice that whispers in the night. She is the night. The only difference that you could imagine between Nyx and the night, or Hestia and the hearth, is that the latter is just this one right here - this hearth, this night - whereas the former refers to all of them - Night, Hearth in their absolute sense. Hence each object or concept would be both divine in its own right and a manifestation of something greater at once.

I’d like to take a paragraph or two to address the question of the Olympian Gods and their names. Like hellenismnow said, their names aren’t literal descriptions of what they govern - but that doesn’t mean they aren’t meaningful. The reason you don’t hear Apollon and immediately think “oh, Archer” or “oh, Destroyer” or “oh, Musician” as you would with, say, Hypnos, is because the word is so ancient that even the Ancients didn’t know what it meant. Apollon is attested in a Hittite treaty from the Late Bronze Age as Apalunias, and Artemis is written in Linear B inscriptions from the same period as A-te-mi-to. For millennia, people have guessed at the origin of the names, and any encyclopedia page about the Gods will be full of possible etymologies. But nobody knows which one is correct.

What we do know is what those Gods govern over. Artemis, for example, is mistress of everything wild and untamed, from the hunt to little children to virginity. Hermes is the one without boundaries - he travels above, on and below Earth, he speaks and lies, he accumulates wealth both honestly and dishonestly. Think about each of the Gods for a while and try to guess what’s at their essence. That’s what they’re God of, just like Selene is Goddess of the moon. They may not rule over something as tangible or well-defined, but does everything need to be? Love and sleep aren’t well-defined, and yet we experience them, we know they’re powerful, and so they’re Gods. Likewise, many of the Olympian Gods govern - and are - abstract concepts.

(There’s also the issue of syncretism, in which a foreign God is equated with a Hellenic God and makes the Hellenic God’s essence harder to define, but that’s a whole other subject.)

Libations, the outpouring of liquid in sacrifice to the gods, is one of the most common sacred acts in hellenic polytheism. Libations were so common in every day life that they were often offered whenever wine was drunk, at every meal, and at symposia and dinner-parties. At symposia specifically there was an established order for libations - to Zeus Olympia and the Olympian gods, to the heroes, and to Zeus again (commonly Soter or Teleios, or Agathos Daimon). [1]

[…] Heralds at once poured water over their hands, and the young men filled the mixing-bowls to the brim with wine and went round the whole company, pouring some into each cup for a libation to [Zeus]. When they had poured their libations and drunk as much as they wished, the envoys set out […] Iliad 9.170-80

A libation is an offering and a sacrifice of wastefulness - what is spilled onto the earth cannot be brought back. The most common libations are:

wine

water

oil

honey

In the Odyssey 10.518-26, Odysseus pours three libations when beseeching the dead - one of honey and milk, then wine, then water.

There were two ways to make libations, depending on who the offering is for:

sponde - ouranic, made from a hand-held jug or bowl and a controlled partial pour (often shared)

choe - khthonic, a larger vessel held or which stands on the ground, poured out in its entirety

While the choe is specifically khthonic, the sponde is common and easy to offer, and could be performed at any time - this is a distinction which can be up to the individual worshipper.

To simulate the outpouring of a libation onto the earth during an indoor ritual, pouring the libation from a cup into a dish or bowl would easily suffice. The offering could then later be poured outside or disposed of in another fitting matter. (Please be considerate when pouring libations outside.)

Interestingly, the word spondai also means armistice or peace treaty. Interesting, because war is blood spilled - a libation of sorts, too.

You're on the right track, anon. That the arrows of Artemis and Apollo symbolise diseases and sudden deaths has actually been pointed out by at least one scholiast.

In the Iliad, you'll come across multiple instances where a particular man/boy was said to have been killed by Apollo, but no reason is given as to why. Such instances are a metaphorical way of saying that the person died a sudden death due to some health issues. And if it was a woman/girl dying a sudden death, it was attributed to Artemis. Even stories like the death of Niobe's children were rationalised in this way. If you ask me, the death of Coronis at the hand of either Apollo or Artemis is also symbolic of a pregnant woman dying due to health complications during pregnancy or labor.

[The Gods Descending to Battle, from The Story of the Iliad. A.J. Church, 1892.]

wordpress link

Before I even get started here, let me be clear that this post isn’t meant to shame anyone for their anxieties involving the divine. There are plenty of reasons why someone might be worried about these sorts of things, and in my opinion it’s far more productive to talk these things out instead of point and laugh. So, truly, I hope that I manage to get across the point that hey, you’re really not doing so bad when you think about it.

There are two cases I won’t be touching on here: literally physically harming a god (such as Diomedes injuring Aphrodite) and disobeying the natural order (such as Asklepios bringing back the dead), just because the likelihood of any average human managing either of those things seems pretty slim. Now let’s get on to the good stuff.

Breaking the Rules of Sacred Precincts/Temples

Each temple and temenos had its own specific set of rules for conduct, depending on the locality as well as the god to which the place was dedicated. Generally, the consequences for breaking these laws were carried out by other mortals, but quite a few folks in myth received divine comeuppance as well. Some examples of this include having sex in a temple, assaulting a priestess, or desecrating a sacred image. This one is another unlikely modern case, mostly due to the scarcity of modern temples and sacred places of the theoi, so I won’t dwell on it much.

Breaking Oaths/Disobeying Direct Orders

Despite common advice against swearing oaths, plenty of folks still do it. Hell, some of the strongest arguments against swearing frivolous oaths come from people who have sworn an oath to a god. They’re really not to be taken lightly. But anyways, what’s important here is your follow-through.

One of the most succinct descriptions of oaths to a god that I’ve read was to consider them a “conditional self-curse.” There’s an entire daimon out there who specifically punishes oath-breakers and perjurers, and Hesiod takes no care to sugarcoat how serious he is. He describes Horkos as “[He] who most troubles men upon earth when anyone willfully swears a false oath.” Zeus also presides over the swearing of oaths with the epithet Horkios, and I shouldn’t need to explain to you why you shouldn’t want to get on the bad side of Zeus.

Take the story of Minos of Krete. To prove that he held divine favor, Minos prayed for Poseidon to bring forth a bull from the sea, and he promised he would sacrifice it when he received it. Poseidon answered the prayer and sent him a bull, but then Minos tried sacrificing a different bull to Poseidon instead. Angry at this broken promise, Poseidon not only turned the gifted bull wild so that Minos could not keep it, but he cursed Minos’ wife Pasiphaë with lust for the bull.

Aside from oaths in particular, sometimes a god would give out a direct order to a mortal which would later be ignored. Take Athene, for example, forbidding Aglauros, Pandrosos, and Herse from looking inside the chest that contained the infant Erikhthonios. Pandrosos obeyed this order, but Aglauros and Herse opened the chest and were driven mad.

Failing to Show Proper Hospitality

There have been plenty of posts written about the sheer importance of xenia in hellenic polytheism that I won’t bother to give you another lecture on it, but it cannot be overstated that xenia is important in contact between both mortals and gods. Again, there are several gods with the epithets Xenios or Xenia who preside over this exact thing. There are many stories of the consequences of not practicing hospitality, from Odysseus’ retribution against Penelope’s suitors to Apollo and Artemis bringing a plague down on Aigialea when its inhabitants turned them away. General rule of thumb, just don’t be a dick, especially when someone is coming to you for help.

Claiming to be Better Than the Gods

Mortals in myth sure did love to just say shit, huh. There are so many examples of this that I won’t even focus on a specific one. You’ve got Niobe claiming to be better than Leto, Arachne and Athene, Agamemnon and Artemis, the list goes on and on. Basically, just don’t say that you’re better than the gods at something.

Mortals who insulted the gods were also often met with divine retribution. In modern times, though, there is still an abundance of people who like to talk smack about the gods. Gods like Zeus or Hera or Demeter, who tend to get some of the worst treatment in modern media depicting the gods, would be spending a lot of time and energy doling out punishments if they cared about every case of this. I think one of the defining differences here is that most of these folks doing the talking don’t believe in the gods in the first place. Rather, they’re treated as fictional characters to be picked apart. If a person doesn’t believe in them, what lesson would they learn from a punishment from one of them?

Intentionally Scorning a God’s Rites

Big emphasis on intentionally here. The Lemnian women intentionally scorned Aphrodite’s worship. Pentheus intentionally banned the worship of Dionysos. They consciously disobeyed what was expected of them at the time and faced the consequences for it, and these commitments were not trivial.

There are some cases of careless mistakes in this realm too, such as Admetus neglecting to include Artemis in his matrimonial sacrifices. In cases such as this one, I think it is important to remember that these practices were very much solidified in ancient society, unlike how we try to reconstruct them now. These things were just What They Did, and due to the prevalence of these practices, Admetus should’ve known better and taken more care.

Main Takeaways

It should be pretty evident by now that none of these cases of divine punishment are trivial issues, and most of them are very much intentional. Though the gods can get mad, the bar for getting a god mad at you is pretty damn high. Some of the things I’ve mentioned above don’t even translate to modern worship at all, and others have a lot more nuance in practice than in myth. Honest mistakes, genuinely not knowing better, uncommon offerings, or going slightly off-the-beaten-path in your practice are unlikely to get anyone angry with you.

As I’ve said in the past, the gods probably don’t enjoy seeing their worshipers stumble and fall. They’re not ignorant of our situations and struggles as mortals that might prevent us from worshiping in ways that we’d like to. And if you’re truly concerned about something you did, you can talk it out with them.

❤️ A Hymn by Willow Greenleaf ❤️

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

Great Goddess Eleos, Goddess of Mercy and Compassion; born from your father Erebos, God of darkness, and your mother Nyx, most ancient and heeded Goddess of the Night. Oh Eleos, Goddess of compassion, I sing of you Misericordia, your divine grace shining over all, no matter who they may be. It was you, Goddess Eleos, who answered Adrastos’s prayers and swayed the Athenians to fight in defense of the dead and it was also you oh Great Eleos, who heard the cries of Herakles’s sons and secured them refuge with the Athenians, Great Goddess. Hear us Clementia, hear our cries and grant us mercy, let us sway your heart and win your favor so that we may also be granted mercy in our darkest moments. Oh, great Eleos, mother of mercy, granter of compassion, advocate to all, we praise you and we will forever uplift your Holy Name.

· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·

Works Cited:

Atsma, Aaron J. “EREBUS (Erebos) - Greek Primordial God of Darkness.” Theoi.com, 2017, www.theoi.com/Protogenos/Erebos.html.

“ELEOS - Greek Goddess or Spirit of Mercy & Compassion (Roman Misericordia).” Www.theoi.com, www.theoi.com/Daimon/Eleos.html.

Theoi. “NYX - Greek Primordial Goddess of the Night (Roman Nox).” Theoi.com, 2017, www.theoi.com/Protogenos/Nyx.html.

With closed traditions, you are COMPLETELY 100% ALLOWED to:

Think about them

Talk about them in conversation

Learn about their history

Follow and talk to members

Ask questions about it in good faith

Think it's very interesting and cool

Find aspects of it relatable to your own philosophy

Accept willing gifts from members, or buy what they are willingly selling

Attend events if you're invited, or events open to the public

Eat or cook traditional food

Listen to traditional music