The Empress

I am the stillness of the night, when your heart beats loudly in your heart.
When the tension in your body has built to a crescendo.
I am your longing for companionship and friendship.
When the terrors of life lay claim to your spirit.

I am the stirring of the breese, when its very touch leaves you panting.
When your skin burns with the power of your emotion.
I am your desires, large and small, made manifest within you.
When your blood rushes loudly to your cock in your lusting for passion.

I am the light of the crescent moon, when it shines its light on your lover.
When the very sight of him incites spark and flame in your loins.
I am your intention made real as you approach him.
When your thoughts become rabid and bestial in heat.

I am the rising of the sun which, like love, has blinded you with its light.
When you have been bound to him, heart and soul.
I am the Empress and Goddess of desire, smelling of rose petals.
When in the end you realise you are now and forever mine.

Emotion

I will not attempt to explain emotion at a rational level. I would be hopelessly ill equipped to do so. We can try to rationalize emotion as the firing synapses, or the wash of chemicals as they are produced and reabsorbed in the brain, but that would be a wholly inadequate explanation. The randomness of emotion and thought cannot fully be explained, at least not to the satisfaction of so many who believe that there is more to life than simple bio-chemistry (that sounds odd coming from me, even to me) because the randomness of it is not really so random at all, rather it is what makes us us. It forms the very basis of what and who we are.

Those emotional and rational impulses that simply come, not hindered or provoked by anything in particular except that they come from us is where Aphrodite holds her seat of power. It is a seat of power far smaller and yet far more all encompassing than anything in the cosmos because in the end it is in all of us. Not just us thinking evolved creatures, but all creatures, great and small.

At this level, Aphrodite is at her most basic aspect. That aspect that is simply a spark. That initial spark that grows and becomes something so vastly complicated that only a goddess could actually understand it, but which we, mere mortals, can but feel and be swept away by it.

Beginning my time with Aphrodite

I have to admit that this blog is running all over the place. The idea of it is, of course, self discovery and because of that I promised myself that wherever my ramblings took me I would just go with it. That was the whole point, that by trying to focus my thoughts on a particular god, I could cause whatever it was in me that resonated with that god to come to the fore.

Sometimes that meant that some gods, like Poseidon, seemed to only resonate on a single or limited level in me. Only some small part of me that reached out for that deity and its influence, but in some, like Hestia, I found myself discovering that I lacked a connection with the place I lived because my heart was still in that place I left behind. That while I had made this place my physical home, I had yet to make it my spiritual home. It was a discovery worth making because it is slowly forcing me to establish deeper roots here, deeper relationships here, and a deeper understanding of this place, even if not always for the better.

Aphrodite, however, is going to prove especially challenging. I am a gay/bisexual man. By that I mean that I am gay, exclusively, but have bisexual tendencies. I consider women attractive, sexy, but do not feel that emotional, visceral connection with them that would make me want them further than as friends. Often good friends.

Being a man, and a gay man at that, means that I owe a great deal of my being, my personality, to this deity. The deity of sexuality, of lust and love, of the raw physical force that is sexual desire. We men, for the most part, think about sex all the time. You women out there may think that odd, but you may also think that when we say that, or when studies show that, that we are just staring at you, or other men, and picturing our cocks sliding in, but that’s not really it. Sometimes it is a kiss, or the feel of your skin, or the warmth of your breath on our necks.

Sex isn’t always so vulgar (not necessarily a bad thing) sometimes thoughts of a sexual nature are sweet and powerfully emotional, and they make us feel things all the time.

We men are highly emotional creatures, we just don’t express it the same way women do, and expecting us to do so is, I think, one of the faults women have because we accept the way you express emotion, it is only fair that you accept the way we do too.

But, this is about Aphrodite, and she is a goddess of immense importance and power in human existence. From day one, even before we were sapient creatures, we were sentient (feeling) and that is where Aphrodite lives. In emotion.

In you (to Aphrodite)

I am at your feet.
Basking in your beauty.
But I am bereft.

In you I have sought the wrong things.
In you I have sought release.
In you I have forgotten myself.

I am at your feet.
Trembling from desire.
But I am sad.

In you I have lusted after many.
In you I have many had.
In you I have climbed to the heights of ecstasy.

I am at your feet.
Crying in realization.
But I am relieved.

In you I have the ability to love.
In you I can seek it out.
In you I have hope.

Preparing for Aphrodite

Aphrodite is a biggie. Hers is a sphere of influence in the human world that is all pervasive. We acknowledge her power in our every day lives. All religions, no matter their source, see love and its many influential aspects, as the core of religious life.

We who are modern followers of the Hellenic Gods must acknowledge the sheer power of Aphrodite and its all pervasive influence on everything from our interactions with each other to our deepest desires. All based in this strange little emotion called Love.

Before I dive in to this amazing Goddess, to explore her, I must make a few clarifications. Eros, which the Greeks name as being there at the beginning, is a power different from Aphrodite. I see him as a power of gravitic proportions. A power that causes things to be drawn to one another, not necessarily with emotion.

To Aphrodite too is attributed a power that draws things together, but in a form different from Eros. It is an emotional power, and one that has its own Eros, its own erotic influence. Aphrodite is attributed with mothering Eros, who is the lesser eros, the little angelic figure that is erotic feeling, initial lust, love at first sight. This is an aspect of the great power that is love, but not an aspect of the primordial Eros.

So, having clarified that (I hope) I will move forward and seek her out.

Poseidon: In closing...

I have to admit that my exploration of Poseidon on my long road here is a bit lacking. I feel like I have been hit over the head with a specific aspect of Poseidon and no matter where I tried to move it always seemed to come back to that. His intrinsic fluidity.

This road I am on is not closed, however, and there is no reason I can’t come back to explore new aspects of Poseidon and the realm he inhabits in the cosmos.



Moving ahead means moving again across the lines of the star, and from Hera to Poseidon then places my next target as Aphrodite, a Goddess with whom I have had much congress (perhaps even too much) and it should be interesting exploring what it means to love and lust on the heels of exploring the concept of essential fluidity.

Poseidon, Lord of the Second Cosmic Domain... continued

...Like the fluid nature of Poseidon himself, the universe is fluid. It is always changing. Perpetually flowing, like time, from one state to the next, never to repeat. Every point in the cosmos is unique. This is not so much to do with fluidity, but to a simple aspect of the universe’s eternal nature (Yes, another contradiction, but I will try to remember to go into it later) the fluidity brought to the universe by the power of Poseidon is in the ability of a point in the universe to move. The universe itself is flowing, moving, morphing into whatever it is it will be once it has passed from divine view.

Life, that is us, partakes of the fluid nature of the cosmos in an immediate way. We are short lived things, we living creatures. Even the most long lived organisms on Earth exist for only a blink of an eye in the eyes of the Gods. Yet we are also privy to the fundamental and divine forces at work around us because of that short life. We take notice of the constant changes around us because, from a cosmic perspective, the happen so quickly, suddenly, and sometimes painfully.

Poseidon’s ultimate gift to man kind is the very fluidity that he also imparts to all things. That we can change, at the drop of a hat sometimes, is a gift beyond price. That we can learn something and change ourselves. That we can experience something new, and delve into it to enjoy the essence of it, is simply too powerful a gift to ignore. And, if Poseidon has taught me anything these last weeks, it is that I am not set in stone, because even the stone changes. Because no matter how well I think I know myself, I may be and feel very differently tomorrow, and I should not fear that, rather I should rejoice in that.

The water domain is simply fluid, and we are as well. Our mental processes, our emotions, our sexualities, our perceptions, and even our very genes are fluid. No two human beings, even identical twins, are identical, and yet we all flow and change to be more alike, to share, and to connect.

Poseidon, Lord of the Second Cosmic Domain

My essential theology is based on the idea that the universe, while a single cohesive thing, is also divided into domains. There are the Cosmic domains, which are ruled over by the primordial aspects of the Gods, which means the Gods as creators or molders of nature. These are essentially transcendent domains. Then there are the immanent domains, ruled over by the “Olympian” aspects of the Gods.

All the Gods have primordial and Olympian aspects (as well as Titanic, but that we will have to go into later, if I remember) and they each take on a domain of nature, and in so doing, they permeate that domain with their essence, their being, their very nature. These are not domains that are locked away one from the other, but rather they overlap, they form a whole, and in so doing they give the universe something of an onion look. One layer, or dimension, over another, each partaking of the nature of the others, yet seemingly limited by our perception, by our perspective.

I see the Cosmic domains as further divided into four great domains, the domains of the Sky, the Sea, the Earth, and the Underworld. These equate to many different traditional interpretations, such as the elemental interpretation of Air, Water, Earth, and Fire or Birth, Growth, Decay, and Death. These four fundamental domains give the universe its essential character. It begins, it grows, eventually grows cold, and then dies. It is mortal.

The primordial aspect of Poseidon, call it Pontus, is Lord of the Second Domain, the domain of the Sea. This is the domain of growth and change (the third domain is also a domain of change, but not of growth in the essential sense, but of decay, but that too we will have to leave to another discussion) and in this, it is fluid and ever changing yet always the same. This contradiction comes from the idea that the sea while always changing, always flowing, is also always there. Its essential nature remains, and it is that essential nature that causes the change and flow I identify with Poseidon and his fluid nature.

To be continued...

The Trident: Creator, continued

Creation is an ongoing process in nature, not a fait accompli. The power of the sea in all of worldly creation is paramount. The very nature of the Earth and the life that inhabits it are tied so closely to it that we cannot separate ourselves. Weather, land erosion, tsunamis, all are part of every day life. We accept that the sea, with it’s immense store of energy, drives the fundamental forces of the world in ways that are both apart from us and part of us at the same time.

Poseidon, the Lord of the Sea, of its fluid power for both creation and destruction, is in all ways the architect of the natural world as we know it. All things change, he is master of fluidity. All living things require water, he is master of the oceans. The Earth is ever changing, and he molds it little by little. The cyclones churn and release energy, and his trident stirs the waters.

Poseidon as creator, however, is not just a matter of creationism and natural science, but of spirituality. All the Gods have a creative aspect. This cannot be denied, for whether tied to the fertility of the earth, of the animals that roam its wilds, or of humanity, they all have some boon to grant. This creative aspect, however, must be examined as a source of spiritual awareness and spiritual power.

The soul is something I define differently from most people. The soul is that spark of life that is the gift to life from the primordial gods, especially the sky father. But with that said, the gods all contribute to what we call the soul because we have come to identify the soul with our personalities. With the core of us that is a spontaneous generator of thoughts and feelings. One thing that is true of those spontaneous thoughts and feelings is that they are malleable and ever changing.

In other words, fluid.

So, if the foundation of life lies in the particles of the earth, the medium of the sea, and the spark of the sky, then that which we so often refer to as the soul must also partake of these three natures. Poseidon, then, must be present in all explorations of the soul (the inner self) because understanding how malleability affects you is to begin to understand that you are not a being of singular form, but an ever changing process. Always becoming something new. Always flowing.

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.