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This evening, a friend who's a former theology grad student and in the process of converting to Reform Judaism asked me "Do you actually believe in the Hellenic gods or just like the tradition?"
I thought the answer I gave him was worth posting here, since it's a more-complete explanation of this bit of my theology than I've managed to get written down in a long time.
My understanding of gods (small-g intentional; this doesn't apply to the "creator of the universe" sort monotheists tend to like) is that they're...emanations from the collective sapience of humans. They didn't exist before we did, and won't continue after us, and their power is limited to places where humans are or maybe have been.
They're basically...anthropomorphizations of things that are important to us. They don't depend on our believing in them in a Terry Pratchett / Discworld sense. They do depend on us caring about the things they represent.
So...there are gods of cities, of civilization, of the hearth, and so on because people collectively have conceptions of and strong feelings about these things. Of course, people's conceptions of them vary, especially between societies, and especially over time, and so the gods do, too. I certainly don't think that the entity I pray to as "Athena" is the same as the entity that an ancient Greek would have prayed to. It also probably isn't quite the same as the entity that a Hellenic pagan in modern-day Greece, who was raised Greek Orthodox, would be praying to.
But, thanks to several thousand years of Western (mostly Christian, but also Jewish and Deist and so on) writers using the Greek gods symbolically even though they don't believe in them, I think the Greek gods's names and symbols and rituals are a good latching-on point for the gods that map to the conceptions of the world that matter to me.
When I pray to Athena, I'm praying to a warrior maiden and patron of cities and civilization, and so on...but one whose current existence is tied to a modern (and American and liberal) understanding of those things. Which, it seems clear to me, can't be quite the same as the one who presided over the cities of a slave society like Classical Greece.
They Greek gods are certainly not the only latching-on point for these entities. Other religions' gods work, too, and I'm quite fine with sacrificing to the Morrigan and the Bridgid beside my friends who are devoted to them, for example. And there's a reason I use the Catholic saints for this purpose, too: they're a set of latching-on points for the gods that have developed alongside the society I'm part of for a long time.
There may have been a historic Martin of Tours--I don't know if that's something historians agree on--but when I pray to "St. Martin of Tours," I don't think the entity I'm praying to has any connection to the historic person other than a shared name and symbolism. The name and story of St. Martin, whether based on a historical person or not, have become a sort of latching-on point for approaching a portion of the divine that they're associated with.
Anyway, I hope this interests some of you all. And doesn't make me auto-fail Hellenion (the Hellenic pagan group I'm in's) basic adult education class when I get around to taking it.
I thought the answer I gave him was worth posting here, since it's a more-complete explanation of this bit of my theology than I've managed to get written down in a long time.
My understanding of gods (small-g intentional; this doesn't apply to the "creator of the universe" sort monotheists tend to like) is that they're...emanations from the collective sapience of humans. They didn't exist before we did, and won't continue after us, and their power is limited to places where humans are or maybe have been.
They're basically...anthropomorphizations of things that are important to us. They don't depend on our believing in them in a Terry Pratchett / Discworld sense. They do depend on us caring about the things they represent.
So...there are gods of cities, of civilization, of the hearth, and so on because people collectively have conceptions of and strong feelings about these things. Of course, people's conceptions of them vary, especially between societies, and especially over time, and so the gods do, too. I certainly don't think that the entity I pray to as "Athena" is the same as the entity that an ancient Greek would have prayed to. It also probably isn't quite the same as the entity that a Hellenic pagan in modern-day Greece, who was raised Greek Orthodox, would be praying to.
But, thanks to several thousand years of Western (mostly Christian, but also Jewish and Deist and so on) writers using the Greek gods symbolically even though they don't believe in them, I think the Greek gods's names and symbols and rituals are a good latching-on point for the gods that map to the conceptions of the world that matter to me.
When I pray to Athena, I'm praying to a warrior maiden and patron of cities and civilization, and so on...but one whose current existence is tied to a modern (and American and liberal) understanding of those things. Which, it seems clear to me, can't be quite the same as the one who presided over the cities of a slave society like Classical Greece.
They Greek gods are certainly not the only latching-on point for these entities. Other religions' gods work, too, and I'm quite fine with sacrificing to the Morrigan and the Bridgid beside my friends who are devoted to them, for example. And there's a reason I use the Catholic saints for this purpose, too: they're a set of latching-on points for the gods that have developed alongside the society I'm part of for a long time.
There may have been a historic Martin of Tours--I don't know if that's something historians agree on--but when I pray to "St. Martin of Tours," I don't think the entity I'm praying to has any connection to the historic person other than a shared name and symbolism. The name and story of St. Martin, whether based on a historical person or not, have become a sort of latching-on point for approaching a portion of the divine that they're associated with.
Anyway, I hope this interests some of you all. And doesn't make me auto-fail Hellenion (the Hellenic pagan group I'm in's) basic adult education class when I get around to taking it.
