To Poseidon (The Waters)

Rain rain, from above.
Gathered into streams.
Streams streams, ever flowing.
Gathered into mighty rivers.
Rivers rivers, gouging the earth.
Gathered into oceans.
Oceans oceans, broadly encircling.
Gathered around the Earth.
Mist mist, rising skyward.
Gathered into clouds.
Clouds clouds, moving Eastward.
Gathered into storms.
Storms storms, violently raging.
Gathered into rain.
Rain rain, from above.

The Trident: Creator

Unlike Judaeo Christian creationism, Graeco-Roman creationism is actually fairly complex and laced with symbolism which, when examined with an open mind, can be related to modern theories of both cosmology and evolution. In the Hellenic mythic cycle, the most well known forms of which come from Hesiod, Homer, and some Roman writers such as Ovid, the creation of the world and the creation of humanity are two distinct and different things.

According to these myths, the acts of creation at a cosmological level are manifestations of a divine reality. The primordial Gods are said to emerge from Chaos, a word which means gap, or perhaps even void (a gap is a void in a continuum, after all), and then proceed to multiply. But unlike us, their coming forth or reproducing is also manifest in the physical aspects of the Gods themselves. When Ge emerges, we also speak of solid matter (Earth, for example) emerging. When Ouranos is born, we speak of the starry sky, when the Pontus is born, we speak of the waters of the sea. It is through such symbolic language that we express the reality of nature as being not only a physical thing, but a manifestation of divinity. Turned around, we also relate nature to the Gods themselves, referring to the Earth as Gaea and the Sea as Poseidon, etc.

But what does creation mean? Did the Gods purposely create the cosmos and all that is within or outside it?

The answer appears to be both yes and no. All of nature is a manifestation of the greater reality of divinity, but unlike divinity, it is temporary. It is mortal. But our physical world is also separate, even if stemming from, the divine world, and while the basic foundation and influences of the world may be of divine origin, the universe and all life within it fallows its own path within the construct of universal reality. life is influenced by divinity, but it evolves and changes in accord with its environment. Thought and emotion may spawn from a divine paradigm, but they manifest and are altered by the life that manifest them into reality.

But if we are to look at Poseidon as a creator God, we must conclude that his was a great portion indeed, for all life, from the lowliest to the most advanced partakes of the element of water, which is his. Poseidon imbues us both with the water that is his element and the fluid nature of reality, that ability that is not simply change, but change from one into another along a continuum, along a medium.

As Sea God, Poseidon is creator of all sea life, but as all life evolved from sea life, he must also be the father of all life, or, it should be said, just one of the fathers of life, for life is not like you and me, it did not have one father and one mother, but several fathers and a mother.

Ge is the mother, of course, but the fathers are Eros, the facilitator. Poseidon, the medium of creation. Zeus, the air and spark. And finally, Hades, who ends the cycle.

The Trident: Sea God: The All-Surrounding

Poseidon as sea God is also a God that surrounds. He surrounds the Earth. Embraces it. Even holds it up, by ancient ideas about how the world was formed. The sea was itself like an enormous basin of water on which the land rested, thus the water surrounded it in all directions.

This all encompassing aspect was seen as one of the primal deities that are called Titans in Greek mythos. His name in that aspect was Okeanos, which becomes the root word for the word Ocean. In our times, of course, we know that the Ocean does indeed encompass the whole of the land masses of the Earth, but unlike our ancient ancestors we also know that the Earth itself is that upon which the ocean sits.

Still, the image of the Sea God as the all-encompassing power, the power that surrounds all things upon the Earth, is one that offers a kind of reassuring strength to his worshippers. He is a power that is strength through patronage, which like a father, reassures with a hug.

It is difficult to see Poseidon this way sometimes, because he is indeed a God who is most often quite severe and even prone to rash punishments, but in this sense he is also like a father, who is often feared by his children. Not in a dark evil way, but in a strict way that many fathers have of imposing their rules and the rules of society on their unruly children.

Is that, perhaps, how he sees us?

The Trident: Sea God: The Medium of Life

The aspect of the god Poseidon as a medium for life, or its creation, is not one that we see in ancient times. At lest not explicitly. In ancient myth Poseidon is a father of a multitude of children, just like Zeus is, which implies an aspect of "creator" to those of us who pay attention to myth as a medium for the passing on of divine wisdom. As a creator, Poseidon's role is much more clear to us than it was to the ancients.

The sea, we know today, was the home to primordial life on Earth. All of the elements of the Earth itself, including the waters of the oceans and gasses of the atmosphere, mix and mingle to create elements conducive to life. All that is needed is a spark, and that is provided handily by the Sky God.

Our mythos, however, tells us that the primordial sea was called Pontus, son of Ge, and that another son of Ge, Ouranos, was the first explicit Sky God, though I suppose one could claim that Erebus (the darkness of the primal unformed world) could be seen as the first and most primal Sky God.

Here, then, the aspect of the Sea God, who we call Poseidon, as a medium for the creation of life must most accurately be called Pontus (or if we follow the idea of naming Gods by name and aspect, Poseidon Pontus.) I, however, tend to always refer to the Gods by their Olympian Names. (Olympian here refers to the Olympian Age)

Thus, Poseidon is the name I use.

In our modern world, however, we can relate the sea as symbol to something very near to ourselves, and that is the water of the womb. Human beings are birthed from a womb full of fluid that one can imagine is similar in many ways to what that primordial sea must have been like. Imagine, if you will, the ocean itself as the womb, the amniotic fluid that nurtures and protects life as it is being formed from the very elements of the universe. A universe very much like our own right now, but an Earth so vastly different that we can hardly imagine it.

Imagine, a God, the God who sees and protects that which is forming in the primal sea and allows it to flourish, grow, and evolve into something grand, and here you have him, Poseidon, the medium for the creation of life.

The Trident: Poseidon, Lord of the Sea

The second prong of the trident, for this discussion, represents the Sea. This is the aspect of the God which at first glance the most obvious. Poseidon is, after all, the Great Sea God, the Sea Father, the Great god of the Sea Storms, and in some myths, father of the life of the sea itself.

To us, in the modern technological world, the Sea hardly seems to hold any wonder. We know what it is, we have a decent idea of its vastness, and we understand with much more clarity than did our ancient forefathers what it is that causes the great storms of the sea. But even with such knowledge taking away the magic of the sea, it is still somewhat awe inspiring to stand beside it as it undulates, flows, and rests there like an immense power untapped save at the most basic levels.

The Sea is immensely fertile, though the ancients did call it barren and fruitless, and as a result, we must come to terms with the sea as life sustaining force. It feeds us, though its waters cannot sustain us without being purified. It is as if it were itself the womb that once nurtured us. The womb to which we cannot return, no matter how hard life gets.

If we think of the Earth as a singular entity, as a single organism, then the Sea may well be that womb. That part of her that births life. But the Sea is ruled by the Sea God, something that seems, at first, to contradict this analogy. But when we look at some of the myths, the Earth Goddesses are said to mate with Sea Gods to produce progeny, sometimes that progeny is wondrous, as we see in the birth of Pegasus from that Earth being Medusa, with whom Poseidon had an affair, and others were wild and monstrous creatures which were a kin to the wild storms of the Sea and the power of the Sea itself.

If we look closely at what the Sea is, however, we see that its primal element, water, is not in and of itself a life giver, but rather a medium for the mixing of the many elements of the Earth, all of which dissolve in the primordial sea. Add to that the spark of electricity, the elemental representation of Zeus, the Sky Father, and you have organic matter, the first step to life.

Earth, Sky, and Sea come together, one as the maker of elements, one as the medium, and one as the spark that causes metamorphosis. As the medium, Poseidon is true to himself. The Sea stands between the Greek mainland and the Ionian coast, yet as such it becomes the medium by which the Greeks would travel and transport their culture onto that land in the darkness of prehistory. It is a medium for communication and exchange between the many cultures of this region, and it becomes a barrier offering a measure of protection.

So it is we start our discussion, which implies I’m not the only one talking I guess, but hell, discussion sounds good, on the nature of the God as the medium and barrier to civilization.

The Trident: Poseidon as Earth God, continued...

So, as the God that flows in transitory states, God of the shore, where earth and water meet and where one is absorbed by the other, where one dissolves into the other, Poseidon, who holds up the Earth, is also the God of transitions. The transition, as Earth God, is different, in my opinion, from the same transition as Sea God. If life emerged from the seas, then life made the transition from Sea to Earth along that boundary where the Sea hugs the Earth to its mighty bosom. The Earth, as embodied by both the Earth Goddesss (In this case the primordial Ge) and the Sea God (The primordial Pontus) and the mighty Sky God (the primordial Ouranos) together give birth to what we call life.

But all of these, the Earth Goddess, the Sea God, and the Sky God have strong Chthonic aspects. Aspects that transcend the boundaries between life and death. Between the inert and the self motivated. As an Earth God, Poseidon is the power that allows life to flow, to metamorphose and be born from the inert matter of the cosmos. As Earth God, Poseidon is giver and sustainer of life, and the fact that life itself cannot survive without water, his signature element, points to this.

So, the first prong of the Trident, as a form used to symbolize three aspects of the God, points to life. Not as a simple abstraction or a symbol, but as a living force. A force that Poseidon is part of at the very core.

The Trident: Poseidon as Earth God, continued...

But just what is an Earth God?

There are many strains of religious belief that categorize themselves as "Pagan." Among these there seem to be some commonalities in categorization of divinity. Terms like Sky God, Sea God, Earth God, etc. are common because these apparently represent something particular. The Sky Father, whether you call him Zeus or Alom (Mayan) is considered such because he is a God of the heights, the stormy skies, the king of heaven. But if you think about the Earth God, you get images like Dionysos, the dying God, and Hermes, the guide of souls, or Hades, the king of the dead because the Earth is the Chthonic realm, and it represents mortality and the cycle of life.

But as I have already said, Poseidon, to me at least, your opinion may differ, is the God of Fluidity. He is the God of fluid states between one and the other, between life and death, between solid and gaseous, between the physical and the metaphysical. Here we come to an interesting transition between the God as a manifest aspect of our universe, meaning the Sea, and the transcendent deity who flows through the universe, granting the ability of metamorphosis to all things.

Think about that for a second.

The Trident: Poseidon as Earth God

Poseidon is known as the Earth Shaker. In this aspect, the God is said to be responsible for the shaking of the Earth in earthquakes, which are fairly common in Greece. When water sprang from the Earth, especially salt water springs as might be found near the sea in the rocky landscape of Greece, it was said to be his doing. One myth tells that s part of his battle for the city of Athens, Poseidon produced a salt water spring.

One would think such a thing to be rather useless, since springs are most useful as sources of drinking water, but as a miracle, a salt water spring must be seen to represent much to the Athenians, who went on to build the greatest navy in Greece without which the Greek mainland would have fallen to the Persians.

One thing we can take away from this aspect of the God is that he is capable of great anger, and of expressing that anger through physical manipulation of the world. But I have to wonder what many of you out there take away from that statement. Do you think the God will shake the Earth ad perhaps destroy entire cities if you anger him? If you do, I will assume you are rather a self centered person. But if you believe the God may show such displeasure at the actions of our race as a whole, perhaps there I will agree with you.

The problem, of course, is deciphering what is a natural earthquake and what is the anger of Poseidon. When is an Earthquake due to natural shifting of the tectonic system, and when is it more than that? Are all Earthquakes to be taken as signs of some kind? And if so, do we risk starting to sound like Christians who say God punished New Orleans with Katrina?

It's hard to take anyone seriously when they say, seriously, that the Gods are wiping out a city or a people out of some spite over some moral trespass, but I sometimes wonder if there isn't such a thing as a God taking out his rage on the actions of our species on a population.

Some of this comes as a result of recently watching The Happening. A serviceable movie with an interesting twist to the whole disaster movie theme, but which in the end proved to be far too anti-climactic for me to want to see it again. (shame, as I really loved Shyamalan's first three movies The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable, and Signs) But the movie poses an interesting question, what if at some point our threat to other forms of life on our world becomes so strong that that life is left with no evolutionary recourse but to adapt a way to destroy that threat, meaning us. What if we, as a species, become such a threat to the balance of the world that the Gods are forced to act to eliminate that threat, or at least, destroy our civilization and throw us back into a state to start over and maybe learn from our mistakes.

I wonder which Gods are most likely to take such action, and Poseidon comes up on the list of Gods who may just do that, with Demeter and Dionysos being the others.

The God as Earth Shaker must be an angry God, but he may also be a God of mercy, warning us rather than destroying us.

The Trident

Poseidon's Trident, it is one of the many symbols of the God, and not an ambiguous one. Everywhere that trident is seen as his symbol. A fishing apparatus, a weapon, a symbol of power akin to a scepter, the three pronged trident represents far more than just these things, and as human beings, we must seek to understand what the trident represents on a religious level, those of us who include many Gods in our religion often have to come to terms with the symbols and metaphors with which the Gods communicate their will to mankind.

The pomegranate of Persephone, the dove of Aphrodite, the helm of Hades, Athena's owl, Helios' chariot. All of these represent different things, not just from each other, but different things in different contexts as well.

To the end of trying to explain what it means to me, I will assign three distinct representations to the Trident, one for each prong. Earth, for Poseidon is shaker of the Earth. Sea, because Poseidon is God of the sea, and in many ways, is the sea itself. And last but certainly not least, creator, for like Zeus, Poseidon is a creator God, bringing into the world much of what it is made of.

I will try to explore these in the next few posts.

The pumpkin in the patch, continued

This time of year triggers memories. This is always welcome for me. It carries with it a feeling of well being that other times of the year do not. Poseidon's gift to me, that fluid memory that has so often been a detriment to me, forces me to try to hold on to some of the most innocent of memories. Like trick or treating in Puerto Rico and Connecticut as a child. The joy of picking out a costume, though we could only ever afford the cheapest ones, and dressing up and letting loose in that special way that only children really do.

I hold on to these because like Poseidon, I am a bit too prim for my own good. A bit too unwilling to let loose and dance the night away, and in these memories, i find the joy that I lack in my adulthood. As I search through what Poseidon means to me, the sea and all that implies becomes less important and the very fluid nature of the God brings its power to bear on me. He tells me that although he appreciates the way I comport myself, I must also be flexible and go with the flow, or break under the torrent of the flood.

Somewhere along the line, I broke, and for many years, the Gods and I have walked together along a path to put me back together again, and here at last, I am reaching a point in my life where I have all the pieces that were me ready at hand and I have to decide, do I put humpty dumpty back into the shape of an egg, or is he better off as a bouquet of flowers? Fluid, you see, we are all fluid, and I can either try to freeze myself into a familiar and comfortable shape, or risk flowing into new and dangerous forms with every passing day.

having some issues with this new blog

having some issues with this new blog, as it is a synching blog system, and until I get all my post re-posted here (blogger has a 50 post per day limit) I will have to take a breather.

The pumpkin in the patch

This time of year is always very special for me, and in trying to understand Poseidon, I am also coming to terms with something in my own life that bothers me, but which I have dealt with for such a long time that I often take it for granted. I suffer from a severe fluidity in my memory, and I choose to use the term fluidity because I am relating it to Poseidon here, but in essence, I have dealt with a rather severe problem with my memory for many, many years, and that is a problem with relating proper nouns to their objects. This stems from an incident in my late teens early twenties, which is not really important.

This issue causes a problem in remembering my own life, not that I don't remember the things that happen to me, but the names of the people who were important in it. The names become fluid, a Carlos or a Tony can easily become a Mark or an Antonio, and in the end, the fluidity of those nouns in relation to who they should be connected causes many problems for me.

Understanding this, I make it a point to speak people's names when conversing with them, and referring to them by name rather than pronouns, when I remember those names, and often when I make prayers to the Gods, and I try to name them all, I forget the actual names. This bothers me, because such a lapse in memory seems disrespectful to me.

But there is actually a good that often comes from this fluidity in my memory.

I was raised to see people differently. Blacks were a certain ways, Cubans another, Whites another still, and in the end, it was leading to a person who would see people in stereotypes. But the fluidity of my memory meant that I couldn't really tell the difference between Carlos and Antoin, David or Stanislav. After all, if the names could be so interchangeable, why not the other traits, the stereotypes? And if that is the case, then doesn't that make them all essentially the same? All essentially equal in the eyes of whatever God did this to me?

We can learn from our mistakes, our issues, our losses, and even our infirmities, and Poseidon is a tutelary deity. Legend has him as a teacher of men. Teaching us to take from the sea where the land is not capable of supporting us, and perhaps taking from our faults where our blessings are not capable of informing us.

Letter to Poseidon

Dear Poseidon;

I have come to you to ask you a few questions, and to tell you that I love you. Sure, that phrase really does pop out of our mouths just a little too easily these days, but it is still a perfectly genuine feeling on my part.

When I am near you, I both fear you and want to be near you. It is like making love to a truly masculine, nay, ultra-masculine man, who is so in touch with his own animal nature that he brings you with him into the power of his being, into the depths of his soul. You have always been a fountain of strength to mankind, and a powerful ally, but also a vicious enemy when enraged. So, if I may ask, why are you so angry?

Do we human beings really tick you off so much? Do you disapprove of us, and if so, why? Would you tell us what it is we are doing beyond the obvious to anger you so?

But, and this is my most important question, do you love us? Is the anger you feel toward us like the anger of a father who sees his children heading down a dark path? Is it like the rage of a father who, having been the center of his children’s life, now finds himself only a peripheral figure? Or is it something deeper and more unknowable than that?

I wish there were some easy way to ask you these things, or to be more clear, some easy way to know our answer, but I will just meditate on your presence some more and hope that you will give me some more insight into you. If for no other reason than I love you, and want to know you better.

Yours, now and forever.
Hector

Capricious Fluidity

Fate is capricious. It is random, chaotic, and all together unfathomable. By fate I am not talking about predestination, that is something I do not believe in, but about the randomness of the things life throws at you and how from time to time those events happen one right after the other, all in a single week or month, and it often causes us to think that the heavens have it in for us.

In my last post I implied that maybe the storms and such that have been causing havoc in the last few years were being brought down upon us by the Gods. This is not an idle implication, in our mythos and ancient literature, such things are to be believed as true, yet in my personal beliefs, this is not to be seen too literally, even when I say it.

Poseidon, as Lord of fluidity, of things that change in the flowing rather than standing still or even being in constant motion (there is a distinct difference between the flowing motion of Poseidon and the perennial motion of Athena, for example)is also a lord of Fate if described as the flowing of time and the flow of events that we see as time. This is not to say that he is the actual Lord of Time, but rather that his power is instrumental in how it flows. It is not a coincidence that time is so often said to flow like water. Even if this is largely a perceptual issue, as some believe.

But, I have to put that aside for a bit and move on to what I really wanted to blog about. The coincidences of life are many. Our very individual existence is largely coincidental, yet in each of our lives things happen that we often wonder about. Earlier this year I had a month, May it was, in which I was hurt by allergies, by asthma, and by a sudden pneumonia and blockage of my lungs by fluids not related to the pneumonia or asthma. I then ended up in the hospital again after suffering bad vertigo, which I apparently will continue to suffer from for some time. It is benign, but can be troublesome, especially since I do not drive, choosing to bicycle instead.

All of that happened in the space of four weeks. This week, I find myself at odds with things electronic. From failing hard drives, to answering machines that stop working, computers that suddenly develop booting issues and a DSL modem that stops working, forcing me to buy a new one, it seems I am turning into Harry Dresden.

I am not sure I understand why this happens to me from time to time, but it always seems to happen in clusters. And it is no exageration that I can almost feel it coming. One electronic thing dies in my home, I start to expect several others to do so as well, and usuall it happens.

Are the Gods out to get me? Is Hermes playing practical jokes on me? Or is it simply that the fluidity of time, of fate, comes in waves, nd sometimes the waves just clash in a perfect storm of shit.

You know, many years ago, things like this would drive me to suicidal rages, but thanks to Hellenismos and the faith I have found in my Gods, these things bother me in very subtle and understandable ways, and so I can deal with them and not worry about it. Time moves on, flows forth, and so do I.

Storms and Such

So, it is probably common knowledge at this point that the storms that hit the gulf states a couple of weeks ago also wreaked havoc on the Midwest. From the Gulf of Mexico all the way up into Canada, the storm which bore names like Ike, left a swath of destruction as they held a great deal of their hurricane like form and force as they swept up onto the continent.

These storms left enormous areas all over Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, etc., without power and damage to property which will cost the already struggling economies of these areas more than they may be able to bear. As always with us who believe in the immanent nature of divinity (as well as the transcendent) we turn to looking at the reasons for such things. Why, for example, has Poseidon taken to such awesome examples of his power at this time? Are such things even the workings of the Gods in a concerted effort to communicate something to us, or are they simply the aftermath of their very presence? Are we humans so hubristic a species that we think all such things are meant for us?

Well, I suppose the answer to all of those is yes.

You see, turbulent weather, all weather actually, is the result of cause and effect. Sure, a system like weather is so vastly complex that it would be impossible for us to ever fully categorizes all the little causes hat lead to all the little effects that lead to all the bigger causes and effects, but they are, none the less, cause and effect, and as a result, all such things must be viewed as sign posts to other things.

If the storms we are witnessing are far more powerful now than they have been in recent decades, we must assume that there is something triggering that increase in power. It is too easy to say it is divine anger, though in the case of Poseidon, not too big a leap. If the Gods are immanent as well as transcendent, then it means that we as a species are, in essence, defiling the very fabric of their beings as we destroy our world. We are, in essence, shitting on them, and I have no doubt that is not something the Gods are all that willing to allow.

Contemplating at a time like this the nature of Poseidon brings to mind the story of the Phaeacians, who return Odysseus to his home Ithaca and are then punished for that kindness when Poseidon complains to Zeus that if they are not punished he will lose face with the other Gods and mortals alike. In essence, the order of life must be maintained, and he must now act to preserve that order by doing what we would think of as way too harsh a punishment, he destroys the kingdom of the Phaeacians utterly, their home sinking into the sea itself. Why does it remind me of this?

Well, like the Phaecians, we are not looking at the big picture here, and while they acted out of innocence, we act out of arrogance and willful disregard. How long before the Gods strike us down as a ntion, as a civilization, and just let another take our place. They are, after all, eternal, and patient beyond measure.

An Aside...

Over the last two weeks, I have undertaken a few days of fasting, and today I start another three day fast in commemoration of the Mysteries of Demeter, which I celebrate in conjunction with the onset of Autumn.

I will not be undertaking any special event this year, except to remember the two goddesses especially on the first day of Autumn with offerings, but am hoping my fasts will be a sacrifice, as well as a benefit to my health in the long run.

Impressions of the God

Poseidon, lord of the sea, earth ruler, shaker of the foundations of the earth is a backward God. Don't misunderstand when I say that, it is not an insult, but rather a comment about the God as a kind of "conservative" element in the Olympian Pantheon.

Not particularly versed in his cult, I do get the impression that the cults of Poseidon were much more "old world" than those of say Athena, or Zeus. It is as if the cults of the God found a proper grounding in archaic forms, which again is not a negative, just a different outlook, than those of the Gods who seemed to flow into philosophy and high religion. A term, which I admit, is rife with a kind of arrogant representation of the more philosophical religious movements as inherently better than the older, more nature based religious cults and movements of the time.

Poseidon, as a God who seems almost stodgy as compared to Apollo for example, is a god who brings a different balance to Hellenismos. Where most of the other Gods seem to travel well into the many forms that Hellenismos takes in the modern world, including the more hippy/neo-witchy strains, Poseidon seems to ground himself so that even in the more eccentric and eclectic cults, he seems to stand as a force for considering, if not following, old ways.

When approached, Poseidon feels immensely old. This is not to say this feeling is a proper representation in the sense of linear time, after all, Gods are eternal, but as a representation of something old in ourselves that is immediately touched by the presence of this God. When we approach him, a part of us that still recalls living in the sea is touched. That part of us that us still the single celled organism floating in the primordial sea is made to stir. That part of us that somehow remember being in the amniotic fluids of the womb is touched and made to emote something primal, something powerful, something all together unknowable in a rational way, but emotionally.

So, in trying to find Poseidon, whether by the river, or by contemplating the river from my bike as I ride by it or along its banks, I am forced to find him a bit off putting in a strange way. Not that I lack respect, but that I am often at odds with myself in relation to my own liberal versus conservative streaks.

For most of us, there is a balance in such things. Very few people really are 100% conservative or 100% liberal in a political and social sense, and in many ways, I am quite a mix of both, but taking the liberal stance where the rights of people as individuals are concerned.

But when I reach out to Poseidon, I feel that he demands that I examine my more conservative aspects and do so not with my usual liberal attitude, but in a very serious manner. It is as if Poseidon himself is telling me, check yourself young man, and don't be so sure of your every opinion.

Contact

So, now that I have explored, on a more intellectual level, some of the aspects that I consider important to me in Poseidon. I must try to move on to the creation of a more emotional, more core level connection with the God. Knowing who or what Poseidon is pales in the end to the feeling he inspires deep within. If a God is there in the river, how do I find a connection to him or her or it, so that when I sit by that river, I can feel its presence?

I will be taking some time this weekend to making the attempt. To sit by the river, some soft music in my ears, and try to feel him there. Feel his power flow through the waters, and feel his essence.

Problems with themes...

Currently, I am trying to work out some bugs in my theme. Photos that were once in the blog have disappeared, and they may not load properly if you can manage to see them at all, in Firefox. I have managed to get the pages working in the archive, and am considering just using flickr or photobucket to host the images and just use links.

They won't really change the blog, but I do make reference to missing images from time to time. I hope you can bear with me.

Poseidon and eternal fluidity

It is difficult for us, or maybe I should say many of you, to understand what I mean by fluid eternity. We human beings, when we try to conceptualize eternity, tend to conceptualize something that is immovable, unchanging, forever the same, yet eternity does not, by its nature really imply a perpetual state, it implies timelessness, and more importantly, boundlessness with regard to time. In other words, the eternal is defined most especially by the fact that it has no beginning and no end.

Poseidon, the eternal God, has no beginning and has no end. He was never actually born, and he will never actually die. Many infer a monotheistic influence in me. The influence of Catholic or Protestant theology with which I was raised, yet we know for a fact that many philosophers, including that most famous of Hellenic philosophers, Plato, believed in the concept of eternal Gods.

Aristotle tended to categorize “Gods” as being of two or more types. The Celestial, and eternal, type who lived in a blessed state that was rather separate from our own world. These were transcendent beings. The other type that I remember is the immanent type which is capable, or willing, to manifest in the world. These Gods manifest as wind, in bodies, as spirit forms, and in myriad other forms.

As I have often thought of this, both of these “types” of Gods are actually present in each of the Gods, just as we see the celestial and chthonic in all the Gods. Each deity partakes of the four essential qualities of the divine being. They are immanent, transcendent, fluid, and moving. That they are eternal is a given, just as the fact that we are mortal is a given.

So, Poseidon.

Poseidon as a God is best known among us as the Sea God. Because of this he is known as an elder God, tempestuous, strong, and with a temper that shakes the earth itself. We attribute to him the qualities we see in the sea itself, but as the Lord of fluidity, he is something far more than this. He is the God whose power causes all things to change shape.

This may seem strange, but fluidity implies a constant state of flux. If the Gods are beings of constant motion, then they owe that ability to do this in our universe to Poseidon, who lends the universe that capacity to allow this kind of constant fluctuation. In fact, this ability of the universe to constantly change and remold itself is necessary. Without it, we would not be able to exist the way we do, if we were not capable of fluid movement, fluid change, and growth. That we grow from children to adults, changing, metamorphosing, is due to that very power of fluidity.

So, when the Gods manifest in our cosmos in a more condensed state, meaning in forms we can perceive clearly, they do so by taking advantage of that power of fluidity that Poseidon grants. In this case, Poseidon allows their eternal motion to be stilled, their vast forms to grow smaller, and their vast, and perhaps hurtful, voices to be heard by beings such as us. What effect, for example, might the presence of a God in all its power, all its glory, have on the earth as a planet?

Eternity and Eternals, continued...

So, now that i have given you a slight glimpse of my conception of an eternal being, which I will define here again in brief as a being whose essential nature is made manifest in a fragmentary form within the context of a religion, I must also try to come to terms with eternity itself and what it is, what it means, etc.

Eternity, at least my understanding of it, is not the same thing as infinity. The Gods are eternal, but they are not infinite. Nothing is. The gods are nigh omnipotent, but that does not mean they can simply snap their metaphorical fingers and make it so like Q in Star Trek or Samantha Stephen on Bewitched.

The universe exists as a set formula. It is balanced and beautiful in its complexity, and as such, the changes a god may make to it reverberate through all of existence. It is why there aren’t many true miracles. To act in such a way, the Gods must not just make a snap call on giving this person this or that person that, they must do so knowing that by doing so they change all of reality.

Eternity is all that is. Timeless!

But, and here I run into something of a rub, because while Eternity is timeless, it is not changeless. In fact, it is rather fluid. The cosmos itself exists within it, and the cosmos is a dynamic thing. Within it, potential and actuality are merged into a chaotic mixture we call reality, and while one may see eternity as being outside the cosmos, it is not, it is in fact part and parcel of the universe just as the atmosphere is part and parcel of the Earth itself.

Because I see Eternity as fluid, I must also admit to seeing Poseidon as a God who can represent, or who is responsible for, the fluid nature of eternity, and perhaps, responsible for the fluid nature of all things, even the Gods themselves.

Next time, I hope to go into that aspect of the god. Not just the fluid aspect, which i have already talked about, but that same fluidity in relation to all the cosmos, from eternity to emotional fluidity to the fluidity of wisdom.

Eternity and Eternals, continued...

So, picturing an eternal being is not easy. We humans have mathematical and linguistic concepts of eternity, but we do not really have an actual physical experience of it. We can conceptualize it, imagine it in many ways, but we can never truly know it, so, what is my conception of an eternal being and how it interacts with the cosmos?

Choosing an image for this is not so easy as it may seem, as I want to relate it to the mundane world in which all of our experiences are based, so I have to find an image that we can all relate to. For us, the idea of nationhood, culture, and language are ubiquitous, so I will go with the paradigm of civilization.

A civilization is like a God. It encompasses a great many languages, cultures, even religions, while its tendrils find their way into every aspect of life for the people. A civilization encompasses things like linguistic relation, moral uniqueness, mindset, political forms, religious forms (Christianity is an offshoot of Hellenism, for example) and, and this one is important, a philosophical mindset. All of these things tend to run as a kind of commonality within a civilization, even when there are differences in religion and language in that civilization.

A God is like a civilization. It’s power and influence run throughout the cosmic sphere, from the highest order of magnitude to the lowest, and in so doing he binds things together. In its totality, a God is like Chinese or European civilization, each of which is composed of many languages that are related in some way, and yet there is commonality between these languages and cultures that make up the whole. A God and its many different aspects all make up a whole, but like the cultures within a civilization, each of the aspects has its own contextual uniqueness with which the people connect.

Does that make any sense?

Think of it this way. The French are part of European civilization, a civilization that can be said to have been sparked by the Hellenic influence. The French are unique, and they relate to each other within a French context, a context that makes up their culture and linguistic uniqueness. Yet a French man can travel to Germany or America or Portugal and find that while he is uniquely different from that general culture, he is also bound to that culture by the similarities, the threads of civilization, that run through all of the European cultures.

Some ascribe this to the common religious thread that is Christianity, but that is a false assumption because even before Christianity, the philosophical and religious context of the Hellenes, Romans, Germanics, and Celts was tied together by commonalities that the Romans often saw in the ritual and beliefs of the people they encountered in Europe, commonalities that were not as evident to them with regard to the Egyptians or Semites of the Levant.

When we see a God this way, we begin to see that religious contexts are very important to the understanding of a God, because within each religion, the power of a God is made felt in the ways that that culture interprets it and allows it to flourish. This means that if you try to understand Poseidon by studying some of his Hellenic aspects in conjunction with his Egyptian, Celtic, and Chinese aspects, you may end up with a jumble that does not properly represent him.

This is not to say that you should ignore other religions and their history, this would be a mistake, it is that when contemplating an aspect of a deity it is important to try to understand not only that aspect, but how that aspect interacts with the rest of the religion in which it exists.

I mean, what if you read the story of the battle between Athena and Poseidon for control of the Athenian Acropolis and left out Athena? Would the story make as much sense?

So, an eternal being is a force that encompasses all of the many aspects representing it which we are capable of experiencing, but which different cultures see, yet interpret, in different ways, ways that are relevant only within the context that spawns them. Poseidon becomes irrelevant to Shinto, where Susano-O no Mikoto behaves in different ways, yet ways that we might find familiar at times because it is still the same essential spirit, the same eternal being.

To be continued...

Eternity and the Eternals

What is an eternal? How does one make a distinction between immortal and eternal? Why?

Well, the answers are essentially simple, but at the same time difficult because we humans have always had trouble with the concept of eternity and the eternals. So much so that even in religions where the concept of an eternal being has come into common acceptance, that same eternal being is surrounded by beings who are not essentially eternal, and it is these beings who actually receive most of the worship. Islam and Judaism appear to be exceptions to this, but even in those religions there are angels, demons, etc. which by virtue of being created by “God” are not themselves eternal.

Eternity is boundless time. It has no beginning, no boundaries, no means of origin or end. An eternal being, then, is one that has no origin and no end. It exists, plain and simple, and has always done so. Infinity, by contrast, is boundless space. Something that has no end to its area or quantity. The Gods, by my definition, are eternal, but their aspects are not.

Myth gives us these aspects. From Athena of the Greeks to YHWH of the Jews and Zoroaster of the Persians, these aspects of divine beings all have origins in our myth and they change and alter in number and story over time. The Hindu concept of The Brahmin, in my opinion, is more a kin to a representation of a place than a being. Like the Greek conception of Chaos as a “gap” or the Ginnungagap of the Northern people.

So, the aspects of the Gods, like their avatars, are mortal in that they have an origin in our cultural myths, often as titles or epithets that serve as descriptions of an action taken by a deity. And while these aspects all represent a deity, or sometimes multiple deities, they are not, technically, the deity itself. Therefore, Athena, as a name and title, represents the deity we call Wisdom, movement, a structural creative force that the Jewish and Coptic texts describe as moving over the waters.

The eternal nature of the Gods means that they have had an infinite number of aspects, with infinite being an exaggeration. But when dealing with such beings, it is necessary that we human beings divide them into a multitude of titles because it allows us to understand them by bits. We simply do not have the capacity to understand them, each of them, in their entirety.

But if the Gods are such, why does it matter which religion we follow? Why does it matter what form of them we choose to honor? My answer to that is context, because it is within these contexts, cultural and religious, that the aspects come into being and within which they can be understood.

These contexts also allow us to understand divine interaction. Catholics I have known used to say, “Pray hard to God, but throw a prayer to St Anthony (or whoever) for good measure” and this is because within Catholicism there is an entire hierarchy, which comes from Biblical and other mythological sources, that give them an understanding of divine interactions that they, because of the strictures of their religion, cannot acknowledge as being Gods. But call them what you like, the Gods make themselves felt in all religious contexts.

So, the Gods being eternal, and the names we use to define them being of human origin, who are the Gods themselves, and within the context of the current conversation, who is Poseidon?

The Gods are essentially unknowable in their totality. We do not, cannot, know their names, or if they even have names. But if we were to try to name them in the tradition of mankind, meaning by titles, we would come up with names like Father Sky (Father God), Mother Earth (Mother Goddess), Sea God(dess), God(dess) of Light, Moon God(dess), etc. But these are forms that are nebulous, perhaps indicating the inability of man to grasp them, and as such tend to be rather unsatisfying.

Thus, the Sea God becomes Poseidon to the Greeks, and it is their experience of his power that then colors how they title him. And it is their experience of his interaction with the other deities that give him his place in their cosmology and theogony. Thus Poseidon is their Earth Shaker, their Sea King, their giver of life, a punisher of “sins”, and so forth.

To me, however, Poseidon is also a lord of the fluid nature of life, of nature itself, and as such he is a God who is everywhere, from the fluid nature of our cultures and languages to the fluid nature of sexuality, an aspect of the God that is not very much explored by people who see the Sea God and nothing more.

Poseidon is also a “father Deity” and myth gives us tales of him fathering many multitudes of children, from sea nymphs to the life of the sea itself. In this aspect, he is also a stern deity who demands respect, like fathers do in their homes, and who also demands a certain conservative streak from those who follow him closely. Not, perhaps, the kind of prudish conservatism of America, but a kind of almost humorless nature, that does not allow him to laugh at the inappropriate behavior of Aphrodite and Ares, preferring instead to seek a solution to the embarrassing situation.

To Be Continued...

The boundless sea...

Our Lord Poseidon, King of the Wine-dark Sea, is the lord of the boundless sea. To the Greeks, the sea they knew was the Mediterranean, of which the Aegean and Ionian are part, and it is with this sea that they associated his power and temper.

The sea, as they knew it, was frightening. It was tamable, of course, but it was to be feared and respected, first and foremost. To the sea they offered prayers, sacrifice, and to it they also entrusted their very lives, holding on to dear life on their boats as they sought to bring in the bounty it offered to a land that was often too barren to farm.

The great Lord of the Boundless Sea was a figure much respected throughout the coast of Greece, and a land with so many islands, this was almost everywhere.

There is another interpretation to this, for me, and that is that in this aspect as Lord of the Boundless Sea we are also meant to see the God as eternal. Boundless.

I want to try to explore this aspect of divinity the next few posts.

Fluidity and Change

Life is a big fluid mess. It is always in motion, in flux, and all things, from the waves of the sea to the minglings of cultures share this very real, and scientifically observed, behavior. All things, it seems, are fluid in their natures, even if they are stuck for long periods in particular forms.

I often refer to Poseidon as the God of Fluidity, but that does that mean, really?

In the last couple of weeks I have been giving bits of thought here and there to Poseidon and what he means. To the idea of a “Sea God” and what that means. To the idea of fluidity, or chaotic change, as a natural force under his dominion, and what that might mean.

A recent post on one of the Hellenic lists made me think about it in a clearer way, because as with so much else, I do try to think of the Gods as cosmic, and as a result I often tend to forget that while we may see the cosmos, our experience of it is at a terrestrial level and on a human level of consciousness and understanding.

I won’t repost the post here, as it is essentially irrelevant to Poseidon himself, but my response to a post about the enormous levels to which people, religions, cultures, etc. are all influenced by each other was to say that all such things are fantastically fluid, and how awesome that is.

It was like, at that moment, when that idea burst into my head, that Poseidon was there and he reminded me that he is the fluidity I was referring to.

You see, when you think about Poseidon, and by extension his epiphany on earth, the sea, you have to take into account some of the more basic functions of the sea, and these are as a means of sustenance, communication through travel, and as an erosive force on the land.

The sea, like rivers, rain, wind, etc, causes a great deal of change in the very shape of the land man occupies. It forces the land itself to alter, to be fluid in its shape and, in many ways, in granting man access to its shores. Through man’s ability to access the sea for sustenance, it caused a great change in man, allowing him to grow as a species, making survival easier. It was transformative. As a means of communication and influence between peoples, the sea was also instrumental in making the ideas of cultures, for good and ill, travel from one culture to another. It allowed the Greeks to learn writing from the Minoans and Phoenicians. It allowed religious and cultic ideas to travel back and forth between the Greeks and the peoples of the lands around them.

In the Hellenic world, the level of religious variance was enormous. From Eastern forms of religious expression entering Greece through the cults of Dionysos and Aphrodite to older forms of religious expression from the Minoan and forms of religious belief that made their way into Greece from Egypt and Italy, the sea always allowed man to share ideas. And the ideas did not just flow in to Greece, but from Greece they made their way all over the Mediterranean. Phoenician art and architecture were, for example, influenced by Hellenic forms, and the Romans fell so in love with the achievements of Hellenic culture that they almost became Hellenes themselves.

The God of Fluidity, who makes all things change, often in unexpected ways, works in all aspects of the universe. From the smallest particle to the largest of galactic super clusters, fluidity and change are universal. Is Poseidon the god of change? Not really, change is an effect of his power, however, and as a result of this, he is also a God who often is forced into the periphery in our polytheistic system because other deities, like Athena, enforce a kind of order on the cosmos that attempts to stem the forces of change.

Interestingly enough, Poseidon is often presented in myth as an almost conservative figure. He demands respect like an elder demands it of children, because the way of society demands children respect their elders, but in doing so, he betrays his very nature as a deity who is fluid and powerful and who, even as he seems to advocate for the old guard, is slowly disarming it and replacing it with the new, because if there is one thng about the sea that is and always will be true, that is that it is always in motion. Always changing. Never exactly the same way twice.