Saying good bye to Hermes.

I am lost. I will be honest. Hermes has been difficult for me. I have been lost since I started focussing on him in my life, partly because unlike my other focusses to date, I have had trouble pinning him down.

 

The Historical aspects of Hermes are easy enough to figure out, information is available all over the internet, but they seem to me to be very different from what the God brings to bear in my life as I try to contemplate him. Even just checking theoi.com, you come up with many important aspects of the God.

 

Hermes is God of

• Animal Husbandry
• Heralds
• Birds of Omen
• Trickery
• Trade
• Merchants
• Thieves (not theft)
• Language
• Craftiness
• Roads
• Travel
• Hospitality
• Feasts and Banquets
• Protector of the Home
• Guide of the Dead
• Dreams of Omen
• Rustic Divination
• Contests
• Gymnasiums
• "The Games"
• Astronomy
• Calendars
• Rustic Music, Poetry, and Animal Fables

By just looking at that list, I can see the problem. There is so much Hermes represents, historically, that seems so far from my daily experience of life tat I have a hard time exploring him in a way that would give me the kind of meditative benefits I need.

 

But, it seems, Hermes is also a God who is part of your life on a daily basis. You travel every day, you look up at the stars all the time, you feast to celebrate your family and friends, no? So maybe I need to look back and seek to understand how Hermes affects the way I look at my entire relationship with the Gods. After all, as a God of communication, does he not also serve as the God who facilitates prayer?

 

So rather than trying to see him by himself, perhaps I need to move on and acknowledge him in my daily interactions with the world,  with my loved ones, with the Gods themselves. And so I must bid my time with Hermes adieu and move to the next point in the star to another God I will no doubt have great problems with, Hephaestos. Wish me luck!

 

A few Recommendations...

Just a few books some might find interesting.

 

Pindar The Complete Odes

 

Ancient Greek Athletics

 

Kharis: Hellenic Polytheism Explored

 

Arete: Greek Sports from Ancient Sources

 

Greek Mysteries: The Archaeology of Ancient Greek Secret Cults

 

 

Eleusinia

In celebration of the Eleusinia this year, I made it my project to post daily, almost, tweets at my HellenicPrayer twitter feed . Ten tweets in total, and here they are collected.

For Eleusinia ta Megala 2010

Gone! Gone, she is! The bright light of Springtime. The joy of her mother's heart. Deep in which the horror builds, and Winter now stirs.

Bereft of light. Bereft of love. Bereft, her heart, of the laughter of youth that once made her smile. Blessed Demeter, we share your pain.

She will travel the land, she will search on the beaches, she will long for her darling daughter, and be made sad. The world will suffer.

Above, the mother searches. Below, the daughter weeps in darkness. She who will be called destroyer of light yet hungers for its presence.

The world will wither and die, and men will pray for aid, and deep beneath the child turned bride will hunger and not take nourishment.

And when the world was dying, the Great Father called her to his court, and before her rage did tremble. Her child she would have returned.

With man's woeful prayers, and the Mother's anger before him, dispatch the holy messenger did he, Father of Gods and Men, to Hades below.

But the young daughter was even then hungering, and the Lord of the Manor did offer her the seeds of a pomegranate to eat, sealing her fate.

With him, dread Hades, would she spend her Winter, and with her mother, great Demeter, the Summer heat, and the beauty of Spring all hers.

And so when the Autumn chill does your heart make to shiver, remember the daughter of the Tempest and the fertile Earth, Persephone below.

Gone.

Gone, she is.

The sweet light of Springtime.

The bright joy of Demeter's divine heart.

 

Gone she is.

Who men fear to name.

And the shades of death serve down below.

 

Gone, is she.

To the world of her husband, who rules over death.

And brandished the wealth of the Earth.

 

Gone, is she.

And soon we will all know it.

As a mother's lonely heart turns cold, and with it the world itself.

To reiterate

It occurs to me that I have not explained the point of this particular blog in a while, so...

 

Several years ago, I was attempting to meditate. I made the mistake many Westerners probably make, thinking there is some kind of magical mind emptying required to achieve meditation, and as I came to realize that that is not the case, I saw something in the chaos of my mind and allowed it to simply develop and show itself to me.

 

What I mean by this is that by not trying to force my mind to go blank, which is not the point of meditation, I allowed whatever was percolating in my brain to show itself along with the all the other chaos that would normally, maybe, only show itself in dreams. What I saw was a star.

 

Not an astronomical star, but a twelve pointed contiguous star and at each point a deity. It was three fold, one above, one below, and one at the plane as I looked at it, at the center was a flame, and the flame connected all the stars.

 

What I realized as I looked at it was that the star was made of one contiguous line, or twelve lines connected at the points, but in the end, the same thing, because if it was large enough to walk along I could start at 12 o'clock and walk to all of the other points before ending up back at 12.

 

So, I assigned a deity to each point based on what I could remember of the star and it looks like this.

 

 

 

I now use this in a program that forces me to focus my attentions, in meditation, in thought, on a particular deity at a time in my life. It doesn't mean I ignore the others, or only pray to that deity, but rather that as I go, I try to focus my thoughts and reactions in life on what it means in relation to that deity, so I started with Hestia, which then took me to Apollo then Hera then Poseidon then Aphrodite, and now, currently, Hermes.

 

It has been a couple of years now since I started on this path, and must say that it has made of me a new person. Not completely, and I am barely half through, and who knows how long till I finish, if I ever actually do, but it has definitely changed the way I look at the world.

 

In this blog I try to express some of the things I may be learning, or at least which come to mind as I meditate and focus on the Gods, so that you might, perhaps, get an idea how you may also benefit from this system.

 

You will learn your own lessons, not mine, and I hope you will give it a shot.

Smith Island, Maryland

Like I said in my last post, and I'm sorry I am not doing more of these these days, I went on a short vacation to Maryland. I'd been through Maryland before, but never to Maryland, and I found myself rather a bit enchanted by the place.

 

I admit, I half expected Baltimore to look like a bomb hit it, and I am sure there are parts that do, just as there are right here in Dayton, in NY, in LA. But what I did see of Baltimore, I was more than a little pleased with. Sitting, almost majestically, on the water, it was wonderful, made more so by the lively people who were making very very good use of the waterfront.

 

The next day, we went to Annapolis in the morning, a town that reminded me of some of the older places in New England. Those of you who, like me, came of age in Connecticut, Rhode Island, or Massachusetts know the look and feel I mean. It's that combination of new and old mixed with the sights and sounds of the sea being almost everywhere. It is a feeling that immediately embraces you, as the immensity of the power of the sea also sits there, quietly reminding you that one of the great forces of divinity lies right there at your feet, nurturing life yet dangerous to it.

 

We eventually head out toward the Eastern Shore, and South toward my friend's home on Smith Island. Understand something, the difference between Smith Island and Baltimore is like the difference between an anti hill and Dubai. The shift is almost immediate. Once you cross over to the Eastern Shore you are in a different world. A world that seem familiar to me, having lived in Ohio now for over a decade. It is a quieter place separated from the bustle of the Western Shore by the Bay's waters. The Scenery is almost breathtaking in parts, and then it becomes less like the sea side and more like the farmlands of Ohio that i have become accustomed to, that is, until you get to Salisbury, and are therefore near the point at which you will eventually head over to the Island from Crisfield.

 

Obviously, the waters here are calmer than they are on the actual Ocean shore. They are almost tempting, but I am assured that this time of year, the Jellyfish would make that an uncomfortable situation. Of course, I am not a swimmer, but the waters were inviting, almost as if Poseidon himself were calling to me.

 

And then, after a forty minute ride on a clunky, yet utterly charming boat captained by a man who, well, looked like he should be captaining that boat, we arrived at a world I had hoped I would see when I got there.

 

You see, there is NOTHING to do on Smith Island except breath and run from the mosquitos. Sure, if you live there there are the necessities of life to take care of, but if you're visiting, there really is nothing to do, nothing to see that can't be seen in 20 minutes, and then you just do nothing.

 

Nothing.

 

And you know what? That is exactly why you go there. That is exactly why you make your way there and leave the world behind you, and the great god Hermes lead me there for a reason, to remind me of a simpler life, and the magnificence of silence. But, I was with my friend, Steve, who for several years now has lived there, sometimes part time, but for a few years now, has made it his home. I was inspired to see him go about life. He does,  he creates, he fixes, and he makes himself useful to the people of the island, and in so doing he is able to  pay for those things he must, and by recycling the things others no longer want, or which are no longer needed, he lives and is made happy.

 

This was the lesson Hermes meant for me, I know it is, that I have been looking for a nebulous happiness that means nothing in the end, that it is possible to find happiness in simple things, in the beauty of a small boat plying the water, in the smile of a lonely woman seeking friendship, or in the strangely musical accent of a local woman as she speaks, happily, quickly, and with passion about her air conditioning unit.

 

That I, like so many of us, have been seeking happiness in things, and have forgotten that there are smaller things, simpler things, and things that we take for granted on a daily basis that can bring me that happiness I have been longing for, and all I have to do is figure out how to reach for it without fear and leave the complexity of this life behind me once and for all.

On my merry way

Tomorrow morning I am taking off to visit my friend Steve in Maryland. I have never actually been to Maryland, that I am aware of, except maybe through it on an AmTrak train. And I am very much looking forward to it. Baltimore, Annapolis, and then a trip south to Isle de Smith in the Chesapeake Bay where he lives.

 

This, of course, brings my mind back to Hermes, who I am currently trying my best to meditate on, but, as one might expect, he is a slippery one. Always in motion, kinda like Athena, but unlike her always in a kind of motion that doesn't always make sense.

 

As someone who did a fair amount of traveling for pleasure when I was younger, and crazier, I have to wonder if maybe I might be coming back around to that part of me that was much more adventurous, much more willing to explore. Is this what Hermes has been trying to teach me all along? Is he trying to push me to step out of myself now and into myself then in more than just a thoughtful or philosophical way?

 

Of course, the real question is, is this something I really need to do right now because I have become far too ensconced in my ways? I think the answer to that is yes. I am at a point in my life now where I am starting to notice myself  act old, and I don't like it. So, maybe what I do indeed need is to reconnect with the me that took off to Europe all alone. Of course, I had more money then, and less of a burden, but if I can't do something as grand as walking the Ramblas to clear my head, maybe I just need to look a little closer to home.

Rage and Injustice?

 

In my attempts to understand the influences of Hermes in my life as I make my way through his time in my life, I am having a tough time. Hermes is hard to pin down, always in motion, always changing, and, it seems, always pushing me in ways that I don't like. Ways that make me crazy and force me to recall the times in my own life when I was rather unstable, crazy, and unable to really handle even the smallest amounts of stress.

 

See, I am not usually superstitious. I don't really believe the Gods throw things at me, over cook my pot roast, make my bicycle tires flat, or anything like that. I just don't believe myself so important that the Gods are busy playing tricks on me. I do, however, have to admit that when it comes to Hermes, I do wonder if it isn't him behind some of it.

 

Last weekend, last Sunday, to be exact, I had a day that will seem rather a bit unbelievable to you. I woke to no internet and a leaking coffee maker. As I write this, my internet is down again, but the coffee maker seems to have healed itself. My iPod had somehow managed to corrupt its database, something easy enough to fix, but time consuming. And when I decided to take a bike ride to ease my building tensions, I discovered the front tire was flat.

 

Well, OK, I decided to play a game, I am not much of a gamer, but I do like Sim City, a game I have played on and off for years, and so I put the CD in the DVD on my Windows machine. Well, it spins up and then I hear a very loud bang and the DVD drive stops. I try to open it, fail. I then open the computer up and remove the DVD drive. The CD had disintegrated in the drive, and spinning at such speeds, it had literally destroyed a great many parts of the drive. The drive was dead, and I had replaced that drive only about three weeks before.

 

All this, and it was yet morning. I am speaking of these things rather calmly here, but I assure you, my inner self was in a rage. I was torn to pieces wondering just WTF was going on. And, to be honest, it occurs to me that this is exactly what Hermes wanted. He wanted me to fall to pieces. He wanted me enraged. He wants me to learn something from this, and perhaps it is to help me learn to better deal with these things, to avoid the whole tantrum experience that comes with rage, but I can't be sure of that.

 

Why? Because it occurs to me that I am also a bit stuck in my ways. A bit complacent to the world around me. Maybe Hermes is trying to enrage me to remind me of the way I used to be so that I can learn to use these chaotic emotions to make a difference in the world. Maybe I need to take a more active role in the pushing of the charities I support and the things I find important. Maybe Hermes is pushing me to be more angry toward injustice.

 

Of course, trying to divine the will of a god is not exactly a science, and I do not buy into the divinatory arts (is divinatory even a word?) and I have spoken at length in previous postings about my reactions to things like tarot, auguries, psychics, etc. I simply do not believe in them because, quite honestly, they seem like hokum.

 

But one does have to sometimes wonder, even when one is so incredulous, if perhaps those things do not simply give one a focus so as to be able to search one's own soul in search for the meanings of things. If so, I can certainly see nothing wrong with that. So do I flip a coin and abide by the answer? The god is simply reminding me of what I was so I can be aware that it still lies inside me, or the god is forcing me to experience all this in order to push me to be more aggressive and proactive with the full backing of my emotional states behind me?

So Far...

Blah blah blah. I turn the TV on on a Sunday morning and I am greeted, as always, by advertisements for great new films on the On Demand service of my cable system. Truth? I barely even notice what the movies are, but I can almost guarantee that very few of them are any good. By now I can already smell the incense burning in the iron urn that holds dirt. It’s a sweet scent. Sometimes Nag Champa, sometime Ganesha Incense, sometimes other stuff not so readily recognizable as a brand name. But it always smells sweet.

 

It burns, as always, as an offering to the Virgins, and on an altar that is a non-functional fireplace. The decorations are simple, I am not a wealthy man, but they are reminders of the powers I am hoping to evoke in my life. Powers of wisdom, strength, security, and that essence of wildness that we often call our animal nature. Above all, however, I want to evoke in myself a sense of purity. Purity of intent and purity of action.

 

This is not a purity based in the puritanical ideals of Christianity or Islam, but one based in the idea that any action that does not harm another, and which is taken with a pure heart and desire in mind, is pure. That a man can engage in a vast sexual orgy, hunt, drink, or even commit an act of violence in defense of another, and if his motivations are pure, his intent to be of service as much as serving his own needs, he is acting with a pure heart. It is this purity, it is this sense of “virginity” that I seek out when I call these powers into my life.

 

When we think of such powers, of course, we think of Virgin Goddesses, and in Hellenismos this means Hestia, Athena, and Artemis, the Olympian Virgins. And it is these three goddesses that I invoke as I say my morning prayer each day, and particularly today, when I sat in front of that altar, it’s statues, flowers, small gong, and candles all reminding me of what it is I seek, that I was also reminded that I was ignoring a very important part of who I am in these moments.

 

What am I? I am a man, and in manhood I have to also find what it means to be a pure man. If I were a Christian or a Moslem, these things would be proscribed for me. I would have things like chastity and honesty and sexual abstinence rammed down my throat by preachers of all types, but I am not a Christian. I am a Hellenistos, and in so being I have to explore what it means to be a vital, sexually active, single gay man in the context of this religion, but more importantly how I should live my life with purity of purpose, intent, and action as my guides.

 

I am currently in my Hermes phase in my meditations, and as I work my way through what Hermes means to me, I am reminded of an aspect of Hermes that is very prevalent in art, but not often discussed among us Hellenistoi, that of a youth. Youths are young men full of energy, vital spirit, and let’s face it, lots of cum. Young men tend to make big mistakes, and hopefully learn from them, and so this Hermes, who is making himself felt in my life is one that I now have to get in touch with, but also has made me aware of something. I am still very much a child inside, a youth.

 

This may well mean that I never grew up. That the traumas and viciousness of my youth caused me to delay this “growing up” until I could better deal with it, but at 43, I feel like I am way too old for this to be the case now. Why am I to be forced to face this sense of youthful ferocity now, when I should be enjoying my experience in life.

 

I can actually answer that, strangely, yet the fact that I can answer it does not seem to matter. Common thought about what psychology is would lead us to think that realizing the problem is the way to cure it, but if we really look at it, realizing it can also be a problem in and of itself, because the problems, once articulated, can become self fulfilling prophecies.

 

And so it is that I find myself seeking out purity in the Olympian Virgins, yet finding that I may be looking at it the wrong way, because the virginity of the Olympian Virgins is very much tied to their power as feminine divinities, while the purity I seek is one based in masculine divinity. Hermes, to me, speaks most loudly to this, and he does so most loudly in this youthful aspect. (Apollo does too, but I can try and get back to that later)

 

Men, in general, do not value “virginity” in themselves in the sexual sense. Men want to fuck, it is in our natures, and we want to fuck a lot, but as I already said, the “virginity” I am seeking is not that kind. It is way too late, and I enjoy sex too much, and am much too good at it to give it up now. Aphrodite and Eros have been good friends to me, and I am not about to turn my back on them. But the idea of this “virginity” being more linked to a purity of heart than sexual virginity is an important one, because men do value this very much. Living an honest life. Living with some measure of honor. Living with the idea that dealing with others with pure intent, honesty, and a knowledge that they are worthy of your respect is part and parcel of being a true man, and something most men want to be thought of as, but many fail to live up to.

 

Do I fail?

 

Mostly, I like to think that I am an honorable man. I keep my promises, and thinking I might not, I do not make them. I try to always be honest, though I know honesty sometimes hurts, and I am sure that there are times when I lie or keep the truth to myself because of circumstances I feel require it, but I do try to be honest in my life. So much so that in my circles, in chat rooms, even on this site, I often share too much. TMI is not my friend.

 

So, getting back to the whole purity thing, I need to find a way to define this purity for myself in ways that are not vague. It’s one thing to say I want to be pure of heart, but another to really grasp it as a concept and define what it is it means to be pure of heart.

 

My definition will always come down to honesty, but not just being honest, but being honest with yourself, with your feelings, and being able to accept what it is you feel and incorporate it into your life, and here is where I am running into trouble. While I am an honest person, I am sometimes unwilling to speak up for myself. Sure, it is easier here, online, in a blog or on an email list, but in person I often simply let things happen and pass me by whereas I should be more willing to express my feelings on things so as to assure I am not caught up in things I am not sure I want to be involved in.

 

Thus I ask Hermes to guide me, and he does so in the strangest ways, by giving me weird days where absolutely everything stops working, or breaks, or explodes (not kidding) and by doing so I am forced to deal with my own anger, rage, and the impurity of my own thought processes as I turn inward, hurting myself from the inside out and then being forced to calm myself down and ask myself some very important questions. So I have to meditate further on this and hope that as I explore my inner child I also learn from him enough to give myself a break and stop taking so much of what happens to me at random in this universe as a direct attack, or a curse.

 

Erinyes/Eumenides

When your heart has been broken
And the hurt is too deep

You call
WE ANSWER

We are this spirit of vengeance

When you are dearly betrayed
And the words are hard to muster

You call
WE ANSWER

We are the spirit of justice

When you feel heartily defenseless
And fear to reach out

You call
WE ANSWER

We are the daughters of the Earth

When vengeance is what you need
And peace of mind is what you want

You call
WE ANSWER

We are the vicious avengers of woman's pain

When at last you are willing
And your time has come

You call
WE ANSWER

We are the kindly bringers of wisdom

the daemonic

Something recently came up in one of the Hellenic lists that made me aware of something these little meditations of mine were meant to point out all along. That we each have to seek to “channel” the Gods into our lives in various ways.

In the myths, the Gods are said to act as “daemons.” That is to say that they whisper in our ears, they can become almost a part of us if we allow them to. To the early Christian Church, and to many modern evangelicals, the word daemon becomes demon, the malevolent spirits that cause so much mischief in the world according to their own religious philosophy, but it also means something else, the demonizing of any religious ideas and philosophies that do not agree with their own.

The word daemon is one we pagans of all stripes need to reclaim from the warping philosophy that seeks to make itself the only true faith. And it is one we Hellenistoi need to claim for our own and make clear. The daemones are the gods, they are that aspect of a god or goddess that you can bring into your heart to give you strength, courage, and desire for justice. In psychiatric terms, these aspects of the Gods are called archetypes, and often people are said to hold within them all of these archetypes, and that we can make use of them by training our minds to behave in accordance with these archetypical characteristics when necessary.

It is, I think, important especially in light of where I am right now along my star path to recognize the daemonic, because Hermes, especially, has very real and long remembered angelic/daemonic aspects, and he seems to currently be tugging at my heart so as to push me to further accept the daemonic aspects of the Gods into my life.

This past week was one that almost drove me over the edge, and it occurs to me that if I could better channel the daemonic, those voices in my head that are from them, that I could have better dealt with my world. That instead of a nervous breakdown, I could have gotten into a place of peace and steely reserve to deal with all the stress and incompetence that dealt me such a harsh blow.

Hermes is asking that I open myself up more to these things, and now I am asking myself if I will listen...

Lady Athena

English:

Lady Athena!
Lady of Wisdom.
Lady of Battle.
Always in motion.
Come into this home, you are always welcome here!

Greek:

Κυρία Αθηνά!
Παναγία της Σοφίας.
Κυρίας της μάχης.
Πάντα εν κινήσει.
Ελάτε σε αυτό το σπίτι, είστε πάντα ευπρόσδεκτοι εδώ!


Spanish:

¡Señora Atenea!
Señora de la Sabiduría.
Señora de la Batalla.
Siempre en movimiento.
Entre en esta casa, que siempre es bienvenida aquí!


Portuguese:

Senhora Athena!
Senhora da Sabedoria.
Senhora da Batalha.
Sempre em movimento.
Venha para esta casa, você é sempre bem-vinda aqui!

Daughters of the Evening

Daughters of evening.
Watchers of the tree.
Of the golden apples that Mother Ge gave to the Queen.
Maidens of the West.
Where the gates of the Sun’s Western palace lay.
And the dances of golden skinned maidens make his last sight a pleasure.
Guard them well, those golden treasures.
And make your father proud who holds the sky on his back.
Daughters of Atlas.
Named like an eagle, the evening, or the blinding light of sunset.
Sing songs to the Goddess, your matron.
Virgin Guardians of the Evening.
Defenders of the fruits of emotion.
Witnesses to the Hero’s Labor.
Dance and be merry, sing and be honored.
Greet and welcome great Nyx, and father Erebus.

The dark aspects

So, Hermes, as a guide, has proven both elusive and instructive. It is part of his charm. But he is also now pointing me into a new direction, one which most are fearful to think too hard on, after all, who likes to ponder their own deaths too much, except maybe some goof ball emo with too much time on their hands and a mommy who pampered him too much.

But this isn’t about wallowing in self pity or indulging in thoughts of death to be cool, this is about coming to a true realization of one’s own mortality and then facing the possibility that it may be coming rather a bit sooner than one might hope. It is about finding yourself feeling sick, or feeling your body do things that you can’t explain and which remind you that there comes an age when things just start to go downhill.

I am taking this part of it as a warning rather than a simple reminder, but I am also taking it as a chance to ponder the concept of non-existence.

That is not as easy a thing to ponder as you might think. We exist, so we have no clue what it means not to. Truly conceptualizing such a thing is really rather impossible unless you can catch small little glimpses of it as you try, but then, as you grasp it, it disappears because once you do you are no longer pondering actual a lack of existence, but a a non-existence based on the thought of non-existence, which in itself is not non-existence.

I say this because I do not actually believe in an afterlife. My meditations on the nature of the universe and the Gods have convinced me of this, and so, once I sit and ponder my ultimate death, I must try to conceptualize, to truly bring to mind, an idea that dying means a total and ultimate lack of awareness. That once you die all things you were simply cease and are gone. That I will have no sense of being, no sense of perception, nothing.

It is difficult.

Yet to ponder Hermes is also to ponder all the potential that is in us as living creatures.

Hermes seems to be saying that we can transcend, not to become Gods, but that as we live, we can transcend and in this life leave behind a legacy that makes others feel and understand things that they might not otherwise have understood. That while we, the people who live, may die our impact on the universe remains and reverberates through it in small and large ways that only the Gods can predict into the future, and even then, that future is unwritten and therefore unpredictable.

Every choice I make affects the future, even if it only alters the flow a little, it does so, and me today affects tomorrow, and even after I am gone, my presence will have affected the flow of time and, along with all of us, will have set up the tapestry of the past on which the future always depends, and the present, well, the present is that beautiful place where all the potential and probability collide and the hands of the Fates set the threads into place.

Hermes, and his darker aspect as Psychopompos, is one that may seem to lead some to believe in an afterlife, but to me, it is a reminder that our time is limited, and maybe sitting on my ass and watching life go by is not a good idea. So, I should go, make love, dance, sing, explore new music, new people, new places and by doing so make my little section of the great tapestry more beautiful.

The Soldier

You fight in lands that are not your own.
You sweat and bleed for your brothers in arms.
You miss your family.
You miss your son.
The one you've yet to meet.

You fight for reasons not your own.
You fight for honor.
You fight to save your fellow man.
You fight for freedom's hopeful return.
The freedom so many seek to deny you, even at home.

You are the warrior who defends his state.
You are the soldier who cries in silence.
You are the one who sees them fall.
You mourn them all and continue to fight.
As politicians dine like kings.

You are remembered upon your death.
You are made hero to your own.
Your son will visit you and flowers leave.
You are celebrated by Gods and Men.
As Ares weeps for your loss to the world.

To Helios

Rising in glory you bring light to the land
And the warmth of your countenance brings joy
As the breezes of morning make way for the hot day to come
Fighting hard to cool to air in the Summer

Racing toward midday your chariot gleams
And your immortal steeds strain to pull you
As the minds of man are turned to the fruits of the Earth
Feeding the soul and body

Heading toward the horizon you see the gates
And you smile and look down upon us all
As the toils of man approach their end, and the evening's revelry awaits
Searching for meaning in the dance

Setting in hues of red and orange and violet you rest
And your day's work is ending
As your bright white fire is hidden from the view of man
Sleeping and traveling in the eternal land of dreams

Lampontas and Adonaia

Every Year, at the turn of the season from Spring to Summer, I celebrate Lampontas, a holiday of my making celebrating the Sun God Helios at the height of his arc on his annual journey across our skies. His mighty travel across the day time skies will be shorter from now on, and his visit in the land below longer.

This celebration has, of late, taken on an additional component to me that is of special relevance to me, because in Ohio, the Columbus Gay Pride March and Festival is held every year on the same weekend as the Solstice (Generally, that is, as the Solstice moves along the week as all other dates do) and as a result, it is a time of celebration and festivity that, for me, is very appropriate to a celebration of the warmth of Summer and the joy of life, and, you know, if there is one thing we gays know how to do, it’s throw a party.

But this Summer I was also met with a special reminder, a blessing from the Gods, and that is a reminder of the power of friendship and the love people so willingly share with one another in the name of that friendship.

The Gay Pride Festival, and my personal reminders to myself with regard to Helios, brought me into a focus about certain things which I too often ignore in my life, friendship and family, and how friendship is often the family we want, while the family we were given is distant. That the love we feel for our parents and siblings, a love so deep it knows no measuring, can be opened up to include people who share no blood, except that which we all share, the blood of humanity.

___

I have been doing some reading on Adonis lately, and today I received a Facebook invitation to join a group dedicated to the celebration of a Festival in his honor. I found myself longing to know more, and I am going to look for more info, not on the myth, which I have read many many times, but on his cult and the deep felt sorrow and the expression of that sorrow that made his cult so popular.

An antecedent to the cult of Jesus, another dying Hero/God figure probably manifesting the same core deity, Adonis’ death was mourned by women, big pots with small gardens in them were grown on roof tops and at the time of his mourning were thrown from the rooftop, a symbol of his dying and the dying of nature (we would likely celebrate such an event in Winter, but in the Middle East and in many parts of Greece, this would likely have been in the horrid heat of Summer, when the growing of things was made so difficult by the lack of rain and the oppressive heat. The women wore clothing that were either dirty or reminiscent of the dead, they shore or yanked out their hair, and beat their breasts in mourning, and the wailing of their mourning could be heard throughout.

I am certain that the cathartic nature of this ritual of mourning could do many of us good, releasing all that inner anger, hurt, pain, and sadness to the dying god, and in so doing becoming better able to deal with the world around us.

The Culture of Shame

As I was pondering Hermes a bit today, and thinking about our religion in general, is struck me, and not for the first time, that one thing our religion has that the monotheistic religions do not, is a lack of enforced shame.

What do I mean by that?

I mean that while our religion does give us some strictures, so moral and ethical guidelines by which to live through myth, philosophy, and the often fragmentary maxims and fables that enforce an idea of place and propriety to mankind, these do not seek to ever make us feel shame for being ourselves. Your race, gender, sexual identity, sexual orientation, even your personal religious beliefs are almost irrelevant to the religion/philosophy as a whole, and I say religion/philosophy, because I am beginning to think of Hellenismos as more of a philosophy than a religion, and Hermes, in many ways, is central to this subtle but monumental shift in how I see both this path and myself.

I suppose one has to think of Hellenismos as a religion because the term has come to mean a system of beliefs that orbiting a central set of theological ideals or centered on the writings or philosophy of a particular “holy man”. Because Hellenismos is focussed on the Gods, it must be a religion, yet the Greeks themselves never had a word, until Christianity forced it on them, for what we call religion. To the Greeks, life, religion, philosophy, and ritual, which is part of both religion and culture, were all just part of being Greek. They didn’t distinguish between religion and daily life, because the two were inseparable.

The cultural rituals of life, the rites of passage, the rituals for birth and death, they were all mixed together both with the Gods and how they were seen by the people, and with the culture in general. And Hermes, that God that links all things together, that travels the paths between all things, is there at the heart of this, something which our current culture struggles with as it attempts to separate religion and state craft.

I am not suggesting that state and religion should, in our times, be once again united, I think we are all seeing how disastrous that can be as the religious right tries to merge their fundamentalist, often times radical and even tyrannical, ideals into politics and government, but certainly we need to acknowledge as a people that religion was never meant to be separated from our daily lives, only from how government behaves, what laws are passed, and whether or not our government should have a right to enforce a particular set of religious beliefs on the population.

To this end, I think acknowledging too that religion and philosophy are not really separate things is very important.

A philosophy is a set of beliefs, but one that is not really dictated to the adherent that he may never question, but taught that he may explore and conclude from as he is capable and willing to do. All religions, from the most polytheistic and free form to the most dogmatic and monotheistically stringent, are also philosophies, but the difference, I think, lies in whether a man can come to his own conclusions about it without fear of reprisal from other adherents, and in this respect, “Pagan” religious philosophies, including Hindu and Buddhist systems of philosophical exploration, have the Judaeo-Islamist-Christian world beat, because none of these try to dictate a single path that can only be followed one way. Some of these, like Buddhism and Daoism, have even become almost exclusively philosophical, allowing their adherents to apply what they learn from their explorations to whatever theological system they may have been acculturated into.

Hermes can cross those paths. Hermes can teach us that it is OK to learn from other people, other philosophies, other systems without losing ourselves in the process, and he can teach us that it is OK to explore, to be a man, a woman, a fag, a dyke, a queen, a lumberjack, a liberal commie, or a conservative capitalist pig, and still explore beyond that into the world around you so that you might be at ease with yourself and therefore at peace with the world around you. You don’t have to become a zealot to be loved by the Gods, and perhaps, in zealotry you may lose yourself so much that the Gods no longer find you interesting.

The culture of shame that is so promulgated by the strict religious systems, like Christianity and Islam, is a detriment. It is not ok to be so ashamed of something as natural as sex, sexual attraction, etc. Nor is it ok to shame your children into living lies their whole lives in order to fit into the slave mentality of a people bowing down before their god like dogs before a master.

Hermes, as a force of nature, is free, constantly in motion, and does not allow boundaries to stand in his way while at the same time setting those boundaries so that we may challenge ourselves and learn what we are and are not capable of. How much happier might we be if we allowed ourselves to love anyone, without fear that loving the wrong person would shame us in front of others. How much happier might we be if we set aside all the detritus of the culture of shame brought to us by the God of the desert, and instead embraced the freedom to be fully alive and mortal.

Let Hermes guide you in this, and you may be surprised.

On the mystery that is Hermes.

I am not a scholar, that should be obvious from my writings, but I like to think that I am sharing an experience of something here that helps others, not be like me, but maybe establish their own connection to a greater reality, a greater experience of life and the divine, which I do not insist must be one way or the other, except I am fully convinced it is not monotheistic in nature, but essentially polytheistic.

When I speak of the mystery of Hermes, I am taking about the mystery of his being in relation to his mythos.

Why would a god, a being of such utter pervasiveness and sublime beauty, be a messenger? Why would a God, Zeus, need a messenger? Why do the Gods of Myth always seem to fall into a very familiar pattern derived from human social norms?

The answer to that last question is easy enough, we human beings interpret the world around us by relating it to our own nature, so we envision the Gods as human-like, and we imagine their behavior to be like our own. We also envision the Gods to fit into a hierarchy that fits into our conception of a hierarchy, in the case of Hellenismos, a patriarchal monarchy. A kingdom ruled by Zeus, who is father or sibling to most of his court.

Hermes, often represented as youthful, young even, is then at the bottom of that hierarchy, still a prince of the realm, but a bit far in line for the throne of heaven. Surely this is human interpretation, at least in its details, but what about in its more subtle implications? What mystery lies beneath the truth of this hierarchy, and should it really matter?

In these many years I have come to my own conclusions, they are likely worthless to most of you, as they are simply my own personal gnosis, my own personal interpretation of what I perceive around me, but they are as follows.

The Gods are eternal, I have said this before, and the Gods exist as both part of and transcendent to the universe as we know it. But each god is, essentially, sovereign. The God we call Zeus does not really rule the other Gods, not in reality, but in relation to interaction with mortal life, and in our current age, he does rule in a sense, because his power, his influence on the cosmos, gives him the responsibility to mediate what the other Gods are doing in order to maintain a balance that keeps the universe going.

In this we then see something of a need, a need for a figure to take on a responsibility of fully transcending all that is and, at the same time, immersing himself, consciously, into an full on interaction with all the various realms of reality and with mortal life as well. This being, who we call Hermes, is not so much a messenger as he is a conduit. A conduit between mortal life, physical reality, and the eternal realm that is the ultimate dimension, that which encompasses everything.

The mystery to me is why? Why must such a being provide such a conduit if Gods can accomplish anything?

The answer becomes this. The Gods are not capable of doing everything at all times. Within the reality of their eternal existence, within that eternal realm of infinite possibilities, they can do anything, but our universe is limited, and like a painter with a very limited pallet of colors to paint with, they have to make due with what they have available to them in our realm of existence and work on this canvas with only the colors available to them here.

I imagine that some Gods have such an intense effect on our plane of existence that something, or someone, has to mediate it in order to prevent damaging it, and as such, Zeus and Hermes form that mediating force in the cosmos, Zeus by being the “Lord” that allows such interaction, and is thus the “King” and Hermes, who establishes the routes to be taken, the means by which they can interact with the cosmos, is the messenger that allows that which the King allows to be disseminated into this limited dimension of space and time.

But, in the end, does this really matter to us as people?

In some ways, it does not, but in others it does, because that which happens above, in the eternal realms, is always somehow reflected in our world as well. As above so below, as I have heard said somewhere, and just as the mighty cosmic forces of nature, like gravity, chaos, and repulsion, find manifestation in the behaviors of life forms, so too the divine forces of the universe find manifestation in us as well, and as such, we can learn from what myth and the exploration of it through philosophical exploration of its themes has to teach us so that we can better understand each other and the ways we behave in the world. Just as an exploration of the cosmos and its forces helps us to advance as technological beings, so too does an exploration of the divine cosmos, the divine reality, whatever way we may be capable of understanding it, provide us with a way to improve as spiritual beings.

From my perspective

From my perspective, Hermes is a tremendous God, one who is too often taken for granted or seen as small because of the way myth describes him. This can, of course, be said of all the Gods, because myth, as beautiful as it can be, is also but a tiny fraction of what the ancient religion was. In many ways, Myth even helped destroy the religion of the ancients, as it allowed the Christian oppressors to point to them and ask “How can you worship gods that do this and that?”

But anyone who opens themselves up to the Gods, be they in a Hellenic Context, or any of the myriad others, knows that a god is always so much more than a simple, and often simplistic, story about his birth, life, deeds, and death. In fact, Gods do not die, so therein lies a clue to one of the realities of myth, that they are not strictly true things, but rather the shadows of things that are true in some abstract way, but which can only be conveyed in our reality as these imperfect stories.

In my mind, Hermes is the God that best corresponds with one of the fundamental realities of my personal faith, that the universe of Einstein and Newton is not in conflict with the universe of Nyx, Eros, and Ge. That the universe is indeed composed of several “worlds”, be they called Olympus, Hades, and Tartarus, or Asgard, Midgard, and Hel, or the dimensions of space time. And Hermes, for me, exemplifies the reality of a universe which is whole and entire, yet perceptually divided. That the three dimensions of space, time, and the myriad other dimensions curled up inside of, around, and sideways of our own are all tied together by these beings who are part and parcel of all of them and who inspire in this great totality, life and its aspiration to become something more.

Hermes transcends, and transcendence in the divine sense is different from what you or I might consider transcendence, or what we might be capable of transcending to, but it doesn’t matter, because this inspiration to become something more than we are today is all that life is about. It is evolution, it is civilization, it is philosophy and religion and all the aspirations of every human being alive.

Keep moving ahead, he seems to whisper to us all, and we would be stupid not to take him up on the invitation.
 Greek Death Gods: Hades, Hermes, Tartarus, Charon, Thanatos

Three Greek gods in Egypt: The cults of Aphrodite, Artemis, and Hermes in Greco-Roman Egypt according to the documents and literary notices ([Theses for ... of Master of Arts - University of Hawaii)

Seeing

I recently posted a short prayer on Twitter and Facebook which read like this:

Hear me as I pray, Hermes of the winged feet, and allow me a respite
to feel and enjoy that which might otherwise pass me by.

This wasn’t an idle prayer, I really mean it. It occurs to me, and not for the first time, that I am letting way too much of my own life pass me by. I work, I come home, I watch TV, I chat online, and then go to bed and do it all over again the next day. This ain’t good. I am asking Hermes, of course, because life is a kind of journey, and, because I am hoping to get back to doing something soon that I once loved, and that’s travel and see new places.

I don’t need to travel and spend thousands of dollars, I am fairly content sitting in a cafe with a cup of coffee or tea and observing the different ways people live, or going to a museum and staring at a painting, but, I want to do it in new places. I want to go back to Spain and France and Portugal and see how things have changed since I was there all those many years ago, but, foremost, to find new and economical spots to visit that will nourish my soul.

I also ask the Gods, because I need to get myself out of the economic mess that illnesses have put me in, and again, Hermes seems to be my guide in this.

To Hermes, the Traveller

In a place I once knew

Among people I knew once

I am bereft of feeling

Guide me to find those feelings again, O Hermes

In a place that seems familiar

Among familiar people who seem strange

I am confused

Guide me to understand, O Hermes

On this journey I have come to show my affection

On this journey to feel their affection in return

On this journey to meet the newest member of my clan

I seek your aid and guidance, O Hermes, and thank you for your gifts.

Facing Reality

So, since I have been pondering my sexuality and all those wonderful things that often make us who we are on these defining levels, I may as well touch on a couple of other things, things that most of us don't really communicate to each other out of fear or shame.

I am a an angry person.

I try not to communicate that too much, but I know it comes off, and others misinterpret it as bitterness or general negativity, which to be honest are manifestations of that anger, but they are the anger that resides in me. It is an anger built up over decades of tamping it down and sublimating it. N anger born of abuse and, as a child, an inability to understand that abuse. It is something that I have worked hard on these past ten years or so, and it is something which I now have a quandary about, because while I now recognize this anger in me, I also have to now figure out what to do with it.

I suppose a psychologist would tell me I need to confront the source, to get answers and face the people responsible, but I wonder if doing that, if bringing that kind of shame and pain into their life now will actually do anything to help me in mine.

Forgiveness isn't an issue, I am not sure I am strong enough a man to actually forgive where forgiveness is needed. Forgiving my mother is easy, I love her dearly, but forgiving my father? How do I do that when I barely feel anything for hm, except this odd dull anger that is really more general than acutely directed at him. I also have to ask myself if my anger toward him is not disproportional, misdirected, as a way to allow the anger to express itself but without placing more of a burden for it on my mother.

Hermes may be pushing me not only to face my sexuality, but all of these things as well, because they are all part of communicating. All of these things that are part of who we are on the inside, that form the mental paradigms that make us who we are, require expression, and that is my problem. That I can write this and know what I sort of need to do but not be able to fully express it in a verbal emotional way is something that must vex the God of Communication, and which is now vexing me as I try to proceed on this path of self discovery.

So I sit here and do what I always do, I self medicate with food, being a dick, perhaps keeping myself from ever having to experience real love by making it hard for others to want to be near me. It is hard to think about these things, because it does seem like it is all so obvious, and I should be able to just get over myself and let go, but saying you need to let go and actually doing it are two very different things, and they are not at all even comparable, because this logical and written confession of my failings in this matter is very unemotional and detached from m reality, and the actual doing will require something from me I am not even sure I possess. True inner strength and confidence.

But...

But it would be disingenuous of me to claim that I can simply change what I am, what I have been acculturated into being, and what I have made myself into simply because it seems as if hermes is telling me it’s ok. My gender and sexual identity are far too complex and profound a p[art of me for me to say that I could do that. Yes, both men and women have their charms, but I know in my heart that it is men that draw me, excite me, arouse me, and all together make me feel as if I am truly alive.

Women are a part of my life that is different from what mainstream thought says they should be, they are friends, intellectual equals, sisters, and above all, my fellow human beings, and while I do find many women beautiful and maybe even attractive on a visceral sexual level, that never seems to translate to arousal or true desire in my heart and mind.

So, maybe the labels aren’t really so much bullshit as they are not to be applied too strictly and forever.