child_of_the_air | Entries tagged with paganism

The issue of sacrifices and ritual offerings to the gods is something that I've been thinking about a lot recently from a pagan perspective. Partly this is due to wanting to have a better theological understanding of my own practice. However, I may also be somewhat self-interested, in that I've found it really hard to develop a regular and meaningful method of making offerings, and thus I'm motivated to develop an understanding that makes this less of a concern.

The expectation of making offerings to the gods seems to be near-universal among modern pagans. For traditional reconstructionists--people who attempt to follow the ritual practices of an ancient polytheistic religion as closely as possible--this is natural enough, since the traditions they are reconstructing generally heavily involved animal sacrifice. From their point of view, the question is really how to substitute for the fact that animal sacrifices are not really possible today for the vast majority of pagans.

However, non-reconstructionist modern pagan practices still seem to have a heavy focus on offerings. I suspect that this is due to two things: the fact that historically, most non-Abrahamic religions have required sacrifices, and the fact that Christianity and modern Judaism--the cultural contexts in which most modern pagans were raised--do not, and have often attacked them as "idolatry."

I definitely feel a pressure to make food offerings, both from Hellenic reconstructionists (my favorite Hellenic recon blogger regularly points out that worship without burnt offerings is meaningless in the Hellenic tradition) and from the pagan community in general. For the most part, I don't actually do so, though, both due to what I call the "offering disposal problem"--since I can't burn them or easily bury them, how do I dispose of offerings appropriately?--and due to the fact that I just don't have the time, energy, or executive function to maintain a daily practice that involves the complications of food offerings.

The few times I've made food offerings that have felt very meaningful and "effective" (to me at least; I hope the gods approved of them) have been in the context of group meals, where I've eaten with other pagans and we've set aside a portion for the gods. I first did this in grad school with

aliothsan on a couple of occasions: we cooked meals together and afterward ritually deposited the gods' portion on the ground outside. More recently, the ritual sharing of a small amount of food, with a portion for the gods deposited under a tree, has been part of the Imbolc and Spring Equinox rituals I participated in this year with the pagan-Jewish family I'm friends with locally.

There is a practical reality that disposing of food offerings outside is reasonable for an occasional group ritual, but not as part of regular daily practice (it would attract rats), but I think the real significance of the food here was as a shared meal. The idea that the gods need offerings for sustenance, or that receiving food is a primary reason they concern themselves with humans, strikes me as somewhat blasphemous, honestly.

On the other hand, the sharing of food and hospitality is a significant way of creating closeness, especially in traditional cultures where food was more valuable than it is today. It's certainly something that I feel helps me feel closer to my friends, and I think that in this symbolic context, food offerings as a way to make a connection to the gods make a lot of sense.

A related theological issue was--unintentionally and ironically--raised by a fundamentalist Christian acquaintance from high school, who for a while had an AOL Instant Messenger status that read "I will not offer to God that which costs me nothing." As much as I distrusted the source, this made a certain sense to me: if the gods are self-sufficient, the purpose of sacrificial offerings must be the sacrifice--what it costs the sacrificer--and a sacrifice has to be something of value to mean anything. Food satisfied this requirement in the past, when it was regularly scarce, but for most modern Americans, myself included, it really doesn't today.

The conclusion I've come to is probably partly influenced by what I've heard

ashnistrike and my partner Jan say about the Jewish concept of tikkun olam, in its more liberal understanding as completing creation by improving the world. Learning more about Jewish theology in this context probably makes a lot of sense, since ritual sacrifice has a very important role in Jewish scriptures, but modern Jewish practice lacks it and Reform and (I think) Conservative Judaism teach that these sacrifices will not be reestablished even when the Messiah comes.

Since I generally understand the gods as related to, and patrons of, particular aspects of the world and human endeavor, it makes sense that the most useful sacrifice I can offer them--both in terms of benefit to them, and in terms of it costing me something--is devoting my time and energy to causes that I believe to be important to them.

Since I worship Athena as a patron of cities and of learning, my efforts to write and teach people about urban planning and transit issues, and to push for improvements in these issues are an appropriate offering to her. Since I have come to understand Artemis as a patron of mental health issues, effort I put into helping my friends with their mental health issues, and hopefully helping people in general with them, are an appropriate offering to her. Since Hestia is a goddess of the hearth, I serve her by cooking for others, and organizing gatherings that help people build social ties. (Not that I have been putting as much effort into that as I should be, admittedly.)

I have no place to speak on the issue of whether the gods find this interpretation of things acceptable, and these sort of offerings sufficient, but I hope that they do, and that if I can feel less guilty about not making burnt offerings, or regular food offerings in general, I'll be able to form a healthier relationship with them and be able to serve them better.

As many of you have gathered, I am--among other things--a Hellenic pagan. However, I'm certainly not a Reconstructionist, though I do follow some of their blogs because their research is interesting. I tend to believe that the gods are basis sets constructed by the human mind out of the incomprehensibility of the Ocean and Fire, with the implication that the gods are partly culturally constructed.

Since the ancient Greek religion--and all historical pagan religions--was an inseparable component of a deeply problematic culture that, among other things, was horribly misogynistic, I can't accept it in its historical form. However, I do think there is merit to the myths and lore, and I've recently been thinking about alternate--largely queerer--interpretations of stories that present the goddesses in problematic ways. It turns out I can't even manage being a non-heretical pagan.

Athena, Hera, and the Judgement of Paris

Athena's and Hera's support of the Argives in the Trojan War is usually explained as their vengeance for being spurned by Paris, who chose to give the golden apple labeled "for the fairest" to Aphrodite in exchange for the love of (or right to abduct) Helen, the wife of the king of Sparta and most beautiful woman in the world.

However, we should keep in mind that, in selecting Aphrodite's offer, Paris rejected Hera's offer of kingship and Athena's of wisdom and martial prowess for a gift that offended both their basic natures.

Hera is the guardian of marriage and the family, and of royal authority. It is enough that she opposes Paris because he asked for a gift that would break a marriage, insult a king, and that he knew would bring all the Argives together in war against his father's kingdom. (Recall that all the Argive kings had sworn an oath to overthrow anyone who stole Helen away from whichever husband she chose.)

Athena is the guardian of the polis--the city, but also the community--as well as the patron of victory and martial skill. Paris's request for Helen knowingly brought war and destruction to the community that as prince he had a responsibility to protect. Furthermore, he is shown in the Iliad to be a physical coward, and unwilling to fight while his brother Hector coordinates the city's defenses against the enemy he provoked.

Given these crimes, it is self-evident that both goddesses would have to oppose Paris.

Athena and Zeus

Athena is often incorrectly described as having been born of Zeus alone, with no mother. In fact, she was born of Metis, who Zeus impregnated before learning--from Prometheus, who delayed telling him until he had impregnated her--that she was fated to bear a son greater than his father. Zeus devoured Metis whole--like his father Kronos, who had devoured his young to keep them from overthrowing him--but she gave birth to him inside his head, and Hephaestus had to break Zeus's head open to release her.

The fact that her birth involved the (temporary) decapitation of Zeus--Zeus's father and grandfather were deposed by decapitation and castration--as well as the fact that the Homeric hymn depicting her birth presents her as born fully armed, causing earthquakes, and causing all the gods, including Zeus, to shake where they stood, until she took off her armor, leads me to an interesting suspicion.

The common assumption is that Zeus got lucky and Metis's first and only child was a daughter, not the son who would overthrow his father. However, I suspect that Athena is intersex and non-binary and, in a patriarchal and binarist society, able to choose either gender role as it suits her. By taking off her armor, she announced an intent to live as a woman for now, posing no threat to Zeus and, in fact, becoming his favorite child. However, she holds over him the threat that she could choose to live as a man and depose him, as she is fated to do, if he oversteps acceptable behavior.

This, I think, explains Zeus's favoritism toward Athena, and his willingness to trust her with the Aegis. He knows that she alone among the gods can overthrow him, and so he wants to stay on her best side and doesn't need to fear her taking advantage of him: if she chooses to overthrow him it will be open rebellion, not deception and treason.

Athena and Hephaestus

Athena and Hephaestus have a complicated relationship in the Hellenic lore. The Greeks certainly recognized a parallelism between them: they were both seen as patrons of the practical arts, and while Athena was seen as Hephaestus's superior (partly for ableist) reasons, they were honored together at shared shrines and festivals in many cities, including Athens.

There are a couple of stories that are usually presented as Hephaestus attempting to rape Athena, however: they involve him ejaculating on her thigh when she resists him penetrating her, possibly after they have been married and are together in their marriage bed. The fact that the stories sometimes claim they had just been married, and the fact that she never seems to show any distrust or dislike for him in other myths, as might be expected if he was a rapist seems odd. Furthermore, unlike the other male gods, I've never heard of Hephaestus being presented as a rapist in any other context.

This, along with my previous conclusion that Athena is non-binary and probably intersex, leads me to suspect that Athena and Hephaestus's encounter was consensual, but broke off because she had a dysphoric breakdown. Athena is not a virgin because of an obsession with purity, but because her dysphoria is inconsistent with sex.

At the same time, this helps explain Hephaestus's rather odd marriage to Aphrodite--his proposal was "I work nights."--in which she seems to sleep with everyone but her husband, and he only objects once, when Ares makes fun of him in front of the other gods for being a cuckold and he sets a trap of an unbreakable net for the lovers so he can hold them up to be laughed at by the gods. But his objection seems to more be Ares' public scorn than Aphrodite's unfaithfulness.

My theory is that Athena and Hephaestus are a celibate romantic couple: they don't have sex because of body image and dysphoria issues, which makes their attempted marriage invalid in the eyes of the other gods. Hephaestus marries Aphrodite as a marriage of convenience: it allows him to appear married (and thus respectable) to the other gods, who tend to not take him seriously as a man because of his disability. And it provides Aphrodite cover as a "married woman" to have constant affairs without her husband minding. This only breaks down when Ares ridicules Hephaestus and forces him to do something to regain the other gods' respect.

Artemis

Artemis is also traditionally portrayed as a virgin goddess, but I think it's important to recognize that the Greeks probably wouldn't have understood sex that didn't involve putting a penis in someone. Given her association with woman followers who she insists remain virgins, I sort of suspect her of being a radical feminist lesbian. Her role as the goddess responsible for death in childbirth may relate to her disapproval of heterosexuality, while her role as a moon goddess suggests some potential connection to female sexuality.

That said, it is clear that Artemis doesn't hate men: she is a loving sister to Apollo, and I believe she is occasionally a patron to male heroes.

Hestia

Hestia is often not counted as an Olympian, and in some stories is said to have given up her seat at their meeting table for a place by the hearth. She is also--like the Vedic god Agni--portrayed as the personification of the ritual and sacrificial fire, and she traditionally received the first sacrifice when offerings were made. Though it is frequently forgotten, she is the second-oldest of the Olympians, as the oldest of Kronos's six children. (Aphrodite was born of the sea and Oranos's severed genitals when Kronos overthrew him.)

Hestia seems rather separate from the other gods, and from mortals as well: she cares deeply about her domain, the hearth and home. My reading of her is as an aromantic asexual who may also be autistic: she would rather sit on a soft cotton mat by the fire alone than participate in the gods' feuding and arguments. Meanwhile, she plays an essential role if anyone is paying attention: she keeps the essential, everyday functioning of the home and of Olympus running while the others are off having adventures and often being irresponsible.

Hera and Zeus

Hera's marriage to Zeus is definitely strange. They are virtually never portrayed as lovers, or even as particularly liking each other: instead, the most common stories about them involve Hera plotting to overthrow Zeus, or else Zeus taking lovers and Hera smiting them. This is particularly interesting given that Hera is the patron of marriage and order in the family: things which Zeus seems to constantly desecrate.

Why does Hera stay with Zeus? A traditional answer would be that she has no choice: a woman couldn't traditionally demand a divorce--especially as her father is dead, slain by Zeus--and besides, the patron of marriage wouldn't do that. My slightly modified reading is that she stays married to Zeus because he is such a horrible husband. Leaving him would, in a way, be letting him win. Instead, she takes an active role in enforcing his marriage vows, providing a check on the chief of the gods, and reminding others that there will be consequences for breaking them. (Though, unfortunately, her enforcement seems to mostly fall on the heads of his not-always-voluntary mortal partners.)

On Saturday, for Martinmas, I went to Mass at my local Catholic church (which turned out not to make any mention of St. Martin since it was the Sunday vigil service.), and then did a ritual to Hermes, who I associate with St. Martin of Tours. Both the Mass and my ritual--which involved reading the entirety of the nearly five-hundred-line Homeric Hymn to Hermes--went well.

One thing that particularly struck me during Mass was the second verse of one of the hymns we sung, "The Church's One Foundation," which went:

She is from every nation,

Yet one o’er all the earth;

Her charter of salvation,

One Lord, one faith, one birth;

One holy Name she blesses,

Partakes one Holy Food,

And to one Hope she presses,

With every grace endued.

Although the hymn was written by an Anglican, it certainly seems Catholic in spirit, with its focus on the universality of the Church and the centrality of the Eucharist as a unifying factor for all Christians. By eating the body and blood of their god in common, they are symbolically and perhaps literally united by the unity of this god.

I have never taken Communion, and never will--I am not a baptized Christian and do not intend to ever become so, given my deep theological differences with Christianity--but this image speaks to me strongly, and the absence of anything similar is, I think, one of the difficulties I have with many pagan theologies and practices.

How to implement something similar in my own theology and ritual practice is something I'm not quite certain of, but it's something I've been thinking about and would appreciate anyone's thoughts on. One thing I've been trying to focus on in both is the Ocean as an eternal and universal that links humanity. After all "everything alive come aout o' the water onct an' only needs a little change to go back agin" or, as I put it in my liturgy, "From broth we came, and to brine we shall return." Optimally, I might pray with one hand in seawater, but since that's not practical where I live, I decided to buy sea salt and dissolve it in tap water to produce reconstituted seawater for ritual purposes.

While I should have been sleeping, I came up with what I think is an interesting--but deeply heretical--interpretation of some bits of Catholic theology. The basic premise is that Mary, not Jesus, is the Messiah, but neither of them is God.

This interpretation begins with a significant reinterpretation of the nature of the Fall. Traditionally, the Fall is understood as solely a matter of sin and punishment: Adam and Eve disobeyed God, and so they were cast out of Eden, became mortal, and cursed to reproduce but have this sin and its consequences passed on to their offspring. At the same time, though, the nature of the universe seems to have been changed by the Fall: the post-Eden world is harsher, even for animals, than Eden was, and predation and other sources of pain enter the world universally.

My theory is that the Fall had two components, only one of which was punishment. As shouldn't surprise anyone familiar with my theological tastes, I have my doubts about a personal God being a universal creator. However, it is more reasonable to imagine him as the creator of humanity. God was constrained to act in--and created intelligent life in--a universe in which entropy and natural selection had already established that life would be a painful struggle. Eden can be understood as a sort of benevolent hallucination: a false consciousness God created to allow Adam and Eve to remain innocent of the pain of life.

When Adam and Eve ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, they did sin and that sin was heritable, but the appearance of mortality and a more painful universe were not punishment. Rather, they came to know the true nature of the universe in which they had been created, and could no longer be kept in the nursery of Eden. Their entry into the real world brought with it the consequences we associate with Original Sin, which may be thought of as a sort of adolescent rebellion, caused by a desire to return to the comfort of Eden without giving up their new freedom to exist within the real world.

This means that humanity's sinful nature was in part psychological damage that needed healing, but the fundamental impermanence and pain of life are not things God has the power to repeal, as they are part of the nature of a universe that predates God's creation, which we--and God--are powerless to completely eliminate.

Where does the New Testament drama come into this, then? In my interpretation, its fundamental event--its crux of history--is neither the Incarnation (which is denied) nor the Crucifixion (which is reinterpreted), but rather the Immaculate Conception. Mary was a human being, born of human parents, just like all of us. However, she was miraculously conceived without Original Sin; without the fundamental angst over the loss of Eden that humanity inherited from Adam and Eve.

Why does Mary's Immaculate Conception matter? Because she fills a role as a foster-mother for all of humanity, acting as a substitute for the corrupted inheritance of sin and an unresolvable sense of loss over an Eden we cannot return to that humanity inherited from Adam and Eve. Although she is fully human in nature, she is conceived without this inherent sin and sense of loss, but instead with an acceptance and understanding of the knowledge Adam and Eve gained from the fruit of the Tree inherent in her soul. By accepting her as their spiritual parent, all humans can receive this gift.

What role does Jesus and the virgin birth have, then? Jesus is not God any more than--and if anything, is less God than--Mary is. He is instead a prophet and a symbolic everyman figure. If Mary is humanity's spiritual foster-mother, then Jesus is a symbol of what we can be. Mary's parentage of humanity is adoptive and spiritual, not physical, thus her perpetual virginity. However, her miraculous conception and birth of Jesus allows him to be her descendant alone, and a representative of what humans can be if they accept her lineage in place of the corrupted lineage of Adam and Eve.

Jesus's life and teachings, then, are intended to be understood as a model of how humans should live under the new dispensation. The message of the Crucifixion is not a blood sacrifice, or a victory over death. Instead, it is a reminder and a warning that the world as it actually is is still a place of pain and, inevitably, death. Even a true son of Mary Immaculate must face and accept that he will die, and that the consequences of his efforts to live a good life may be an unpleasant and ignominious death.

This theology rejects the Ascension of Jesus into Heaven in favor of an Assumption in the manner of his mother's eventual Assumption. Both Mary and Jesus are human, and fated to die but, after their deaths, they are bodily Assumed into Heaven to be Queen and Prince of Heaven, that they may continue to serve as moral guides and sources of strength for humanity.

Naturally, this interpretation contradicts a number of things in the New Testament; the best explanation of this that I can give is that the New Testament was written by men entrenched in the Patriarchy and in their culture who misinterpreted much of what they were seeing and hearing.

I've been thinking a little about short discussion of the Aeonist gods, or some of them, on pages 191-192 of Winter Tide.

The most obviously notable---because Aphra ruminates on it, is Shub-Nigaroth, with her epithet of "Mother of Fear." Aphra says that she'd always assumed it was a joke when her Mother explained that "children are terrifying," but that seeing her Grandfather's grief at her mother's death helped her understand it more seriously. Given that the creation myth given on page 343 seems to particularly associate Shub-Nigaroth with the creation of the first life, I feel like the best interpretation of this epithet may be as a dark mirror of her as being the "Mother of Hope" as well. Because the two are tied: if she created life, and thus the hope of a future for living things, she also created fear of the loss of that future...

Cthulhu's epithets of "bringer of life and death" and "ever patient" seem worth thinking about in part because of Aphra's short description of Cthulhu as always listening and never promising. This seems to fit well with a concept that has found its way deep into my psyche, even if I don't have a clear place for it in my theology: the Universal Observer. Some property of the universe that simply observes everything, and by observing makes it real.

This role for Cthulhu, I think, might also explain why eir rising from the sea would drive humanity mad. Not because ey is destructive, or horrible to behold, or because ey eats souls, but because releasing the awareness of humanity's own memories would simply be too much for us. Our survival and sanity depends on our ability to forget, and to not know the horrors we ourselves have made. I am less sure what to make of the "bringer of life and death" title, other than in the sense that the universe exists because it is observed, and Cthulhu is there, sleeping and observing?'

It strikes me as odd that Aphra refers to Nyarlathotep, "herald of knowledge," as a psychopomp, given that Aeonists don't believe in an afterlife. I suppose she means it in a symbolic sense, if he guides souls to hidden knowledge? I would be interested to know more about him...