The first degree of prayer is the introductory, which leads to contact and acquaintance with the divine; the second is conjunctive, producing a union of sympathetic minds, and calling forth benefactions sent down by the Gods even before we express our requests, while achieving whole courses of action even before we think of them; the … Continue reading Quiet, But Still Praying
Category: polytheism
July 2021 “We Are Individuals in Communities” Divination
Obligatory context: In 2020, due to feeling a lot of social burnout, pessimism, and pain about our wider polytheistic communities, I started doing a divination reading every three months about the polytheistic communit[y/ies]. The point of this divination, like most divinations I do, is to highlight growth areas that we may be missing that prevent … Continue reading July 2021 “We Are Individuals in Communities” Divination
Sallust, On the Gods and the World, Chapter 2
That a God is immutable, without Generation, eternal, incorporeal, and has no Subsistence in Place.And such are the requisites for an auditor of the gods. But the necessary discourses proceed as follows: the essences of the gods are neither generated; for eternal natures are without generation; and those beings are eternal who possess a first … Continue reading Sallust, On the Gods and the World, Chapter 2
Looking at Sallust’s On the Gods and the World (Chapter 1)
This post begins with some personal background of why I want to look at Sallust. Its middle section is an exhortation to anyone who may be on the fence about worshipping a God to just try it out without pressure. The final section is a glance at Chapter 1 of Sallust’s On the Gods and … Continue reading Looking at Sallust’s On the Gods and the World (Chapter 1)
A Brief Post on Birthday Offerings
On my birthday every year, I give an offering to the Gods. It's often something small — until the pandemic, my birthday usually happened while I was at a library conference, so the most I could do was a quick prayer with my travel ritual tools (a small libation bowl) and images of the Gods … Continue reading A Brief Post on Birthday Offerings
Some Passages from Damascius’ Philosophical History
At the beginning of the month, I devoured the fragments of Damascius' Philosophical History, an out-of-print translation filled with interesting anecdotes about people in the polytheistic intellectual scene of Late Antiquity. The translator, Polymnia Athanassiadi, identifies many continuities between the world of Damascius and Mediterranean cultures today even while emphasizing the extreme cultural loss and … Continue reading Some Passages from Damascius’ Philosophical History
For Those Who Have Nourished Our Minds
There is a saying that our minds contain the sum of everything that we have encountered and read, a chaotic mixture that each of us must order through a process of sense-making, en-forming what is within us according to intention and necessity. Quite often, one of the ways we do that is through intentionally exposing … Continue reading For Those Who Have Nourished Our Minds
Prayers to All of the Gods
I have made some updates to the prayers to all of the Gods that I published on my blog earlier this year, including the downloadable PDFs, mobi, and ePub files available on Gumroad. Here are the links, with the estimated time they take to use in ritual. Note that the time does not include any … Continue reading Prayers to All of the Gods
When You Have a Bit of Time for the Gods
You don't have to be a mystic or super-religious to worship the Gods. A polytheistic mindset is one that affirms the existence of many Gods, whether you're a Platonist with a sophisticated sense of how the divine unfolds from the One or a Stoic with your Zeusizing cosmology (I'm not a Stoic so don't quote … Continue reading When You Have a Bit of Time for the Gods
