Taking stock...

So, I have been at this point in the star for some time, and part of me wants to move on, but, I still am not sure I get it. Yes, Hephaestus has shown me things about me, things about how I react to stresses, ideas, and to the environment that surrounds me. Hephaestus has given me a different, though not pleasant, perspective on work, and he has given me a glimpse into the fiery depths of his being.

 

But in forcing me to essentially take stock of myself, I have also been forced to take stock in them, the Gods, and what it is I need from them, want from them, can expect from them, and how all of these actually manifest in my reality.

 

For one thing, Hephaestus has shown me, I think, more clearly than ever, that the Gods are not manifest solely in a single place and in a single form. The Gods manifest throughout the world and throughout history in a great many ways. We know this. We see it in the mythos of the Greeks as surely as we do in that of the Romans, Hindus, Chinese, Japanese, and even the Christians. The divine sphere does not make for an easy and simple translation, ever.

 

But to me, it means that Hephaestus has shown me that it is OK to see him in a God of the Hindus if a Hindu meditation is what I need to quiet my mind. That it is OK to see him in a Chinese form if the prayers of an ancient Chinese philosopher seem apropos to my dilemmas today.

 

Not that I am becoming eclectic or anything, mind you, I still believe, and I think Hephaestus has helped me to deepen this belief, that the context of a mythic and religious system is at least as important as the myths and philosophies themselves.

 

That I am more willing to listen to and be enlightened by Hindu or Buddhist philosophy today than I might have been five years ago is, I think, something Hephaestus has guided me to and helped me to realize in my life. That I am more willing to listen, to hear, and to digest that which another has felt and made manifest in his own life is something he has guided me too as well. But also, how to be strong within my own convictions even as I continue to evolve.

 

That is to say,  to keep the fires of the forge burning, and the embers steady, even as I busy myself forging the iron that is my soul into a new and more pleasing form.

My New Babies

My new budgerigar. Haven't named her yet. She's a bit quiet, and I think she needs a friend, but that will have to wait a few weeks. She's very bright of color, so I am thinking of calling her Venus.

My new Cocatiel. She is a bit aged, but healthy, and is a bit on the quiet side. She still has no name, but I am thinking Juno.

And here's the male, noisy little bugger, younger, and cheerful. This little bugger actually sings. I don't mean he sings like birds do, you know, calls in the morning, chirps. I mean he sings, like listening to a person hum. Sometimes I put on music, which they all seem to like as I sometimes catch them swaying to it, but he sometimes starts to sing. Not along with the actual tune of the song, mind you, but it does sounds sometimes like he's trying to mimic it. It is the cutest thing.

I think he will be Jove, but I have not really decided yet, because his singing makes me think Phoebus or something like that. Still, if he is in the cage with Juno, he should be Jove, no?

They Love Each Other

True to his own heart

True to her own desires

True to their own feelings

 

 

They love each other

Aphrodite binds them

Hera sanctifies them

 

 

True to her own emotions

True to her own needs

True to their own passion

 

 

They love each other

Aphrodite draws them together

Hera hallows their union

 

 

True to his own lusts

True to his own longings

True to their own honor

 

 

They love each other

Aphrodite ensorcels them

Hera makes consecrates them

 

 

Athens

Athens is, perhaps, the one city everyone thinks of when they think of ancient Greece. To a Greek, this is not necessarily so, as they are aware of the vast richness of ancient Greek architecture, art, and literature that originated in many places all over the land we call Greece. To those of us who are not Greek, however, Athens is the shining glory that was ancient Greece.

 

It is in ancient Athens that we see the ideals come to flowering that we hold dear in the West. It is in Athens that we see the flowering of philosophy, democracy, and the ideal of equality. Oh, we are not blind, of course, we know that women, slaves, and non-Athenian born free men did not have the same rights as the citizens, and that Athens had a strong and powerful aristocratic class that often made a mockery of the democratic process, but the truth is that we recognize in that society something very much a kin to our own.

 

When the United States were founded, it was with an ideal that would need centuries to come to a greater flowering. The founders of our nation saw in Athens and the systems they set up as ideal, and they sought to write into our constitution a system that would grow and change while retaining that unique characteristic we call democracy. That they needed to use the Republican system to make it workable is understandable. Like Rome, the United States would prove too large, even in colonial times, to rule with a truly democratic system, but where the Athenians had lead the way, and the Romans had tried to follow, America wanted to continue.

Like Athens, we had an imperfect system. We had women who could not bring their voices to bear on government, slaves who were counted, but only as cattle might be, and other people who, while free, were not to be given the same rights as the citizen class. A class which, at first, was very aristocratic in nature. The founding of our nation was, in almost all ways, a reflection of the Athenians who had lit the light of democracy so long ago.

 

For many of us who worship the Gods of Olympus, it is ideals such as democracy and liberty, the love of art and architecture, the desire to know as embodied in the Greek arts of philosophy and science, that drew us. We were drawn to the Gods who had presided over the birth of these ideals, and would seek to worship them again in an effort to once again allow their influence into the world.

 

The glory that was Athens, with its art, its architecture, its science and philosophy would call to us and lead us to the very Gods who once fought over her land so as to claim it. The same Gods who would inspire them to achieve, in sometimes miraculously short amounts of time, such incredible things that to this day man kind has not met their challenge.

 

We who wish to see the influence of the Gods once more alive in the world, however, must not allow ourselves to be stopped from bringing it to light. We must not allow our conflicts, and the influences of the Abrahamic faiths and nationalistic endeavors to stop us from embracing the truth. The truth that the Gods live, and in large portions of the world, man has become blind to their presence. That the Christian and Moslem faiths, with their hate promoting zealotry must not be allowed to kill off the power that lies in the realization that the Gods, in all their names, in all their glory, can lead us to live in peace while embracing our diversity, not by destroying it.

 

That as the Athenians learned to build a system that gave a greater voice to its citizens, flawed system though it was, we can learn to create a system that will give the Gods a voice in the world that will bless us all with that same spirit of freedom and liberty we have often aspired to in our nation. A system in which all men and women, no matter their race, their religion, their sexual orientations can have a voice that sings in pride to the blessed Gods who dwell in splendor.