Over the past few years, I’ve embraced what I’ve referred to in the past as “Ancient Mediterranean Spirituality.” It started with an interest in the deity Asklepios, after a series of dreams about him, during the depths of the COVID-19 pandemic. I’ve always found spirituality an interesting way to engage with reality, but had long since ‘graduated’ past Christianity (of the Gnostic variety) and Buddhism.(1)
Continuing this line of inquiry led me to start learning about my Sicilian Ancestry and exploring the history of the island from which my paternal ancestors migrated in the late 19th Century. The thing about Sicily is that everyone conquered it. The “original” residents (as far as anyone knows) were probably part of the pan-Mediterranean megalith culture exemplified by hypogea and stone structures. After that the island came under the sway, in varying degrees and in various localities, of the Phoenicians, the Greeks, the Carthaginians, the Romans, the Byzantines, the Arabs of North Africa, the Normans, the Vikings, the French, the Spanish, and eventually became part of Italy proper as part of Garibaldi’s unification movement. Granted, it’s possible that someone from Sicily doesn’t have all of this ancestry directly, but our family DNA tests have us going back at least as far as the Greeks (we also have North African roots somewhere in there, just like in Pulp Fiction!) (2).
With an renewed dedication to Animism (3) based on years of studying and interacting with wild plants, and mapping weirdnesses from around the world, I soon found that the myths and religious beliefs of the pre-Christian Greco-Sicilians were a fitting container for some of these new directions I’d been exploring. Demeter and Persephone, Calypso, Asklepios, Hera, Artemis, Athena, Hekate, Heracles… all of these have a connection to Sicily. The Greek myths I’d read as a kid in the pages of D’Aulaires Book of Greek Myths, the thread of this tradition that ran through the Athenian philosophers, the syncretic Greco-Egyptian magic of the Hellenistic era (exemplified in the Greek Magical Papyri, which borders Classical “Gnostic” thought)– not only were these my jam, but they were part of my personal story.
Let’s face it: so much of religion and spirituality is dullsville. Embracing something like Greek myth as a language through which to interact with reality is essentially believing in something fun. Why do we choose not to believe in things that are fun? (4)
Working with Greek deities (and sometimes Hellenistic North African traditions) has many advantages.
- The source material is interesting, universal, and entertaining. Many people know who Heracles is, or Athena.
- Interactions can be specific to concerns. For instance, if I’m sick I can make an offering to Asklepios or Apollon, who specifically help people who are sick. One time I had a flight that was delayed, so I poured a libation to Hermes in the airport water fountain, and the flight delay turned out to be a computer error– we left on time with no trouble at all.
- You don’t need anything you can’t find in your house or yard, but you can also choose to collect cool statues and have an altar and such.
For me it was almost a no-brainer to establish a little bookshelf altar and to begin bringing in statues and symbols of the Greek pantheon.
Then came the little voice whispering in the back of my head. It grew louder and louder until finally it became too loud to ignore:
“The Greek Gods are huge assholes.”
It’s true; Greek mythology is a collection of stories of murder, betrayal, petty jealousy, and (perhaps most distressing) rape and sexual assault. There’s no glossing over it; the thought that Zeus raped dozens of people (women and men), engaged in pederasty, and never suffered any consequences for it (on the surface) isn’t just an elephant in the room: it’s an elephant turd in the punchbowl. And Hera punished his victims. And all of the heroes died miserably, often taking their own lives over decisions the gods made that impacted them. And don’t get me started on the slavery….
How do you reconcile an appreciation for the language of Greek mythology with our modern appreciation for things like consent?
Sure, “it was a different time” and “their culture was massively misogynistic,” but that’s never been a good excuse. It’s kind of a cop-out, the same kind used by people who defend slavery in the United States by claiming that “everybody did it.” (5)
After much thought-thinking, I remembered that the problem with our popular understanding of myth in a modern context is that most Abrahamic religions consider their deities not only omnipotent, but also omnibenevolent (ultimately) and as participants in history. The Greek gods and heroes, on the other hand, are ahistorical. They exist within history only as phenomena that are intertwined with human experience as ahistorical causality. And they certainly weren’t all-powerful or all-good. They are descriptors of causality who can still act independently of humanity but are not necessarily anchored to literal timelines as we understand them.
Anybody who reads and appreciates Greek myths will tell you about the impossibility of figuring out whether Heracles killed Megara before or after his 12 labors, or how he could have killed Chiron during his Fourth Labor if Chiron raised Achilles prior to the Trojan War?
It is worth remembering that patriarchal assholes wrote the myths. Zeus was a predator not because anyone ever cared whether it was morally sound; he acted that way in the stories because that’s how rulers acted in the Ancient Mediterranean world (regardless of gender). He’s an archetype, used to explain causality. Why did Hades abduct Persephone? Because the underworld often steals our children away unexpectedly; it’s what the god of the underworld does. Why is Poseidon so random and fickle? Because Poseidon is the literal ocean.
Now we have different cultural mores. This is actually kind of cool because it means we can lift these entities out of their “historical” context and allow ourselves to experience these archetypes (6) differently in order to engage with them. If we want to participate in mythology in a modern context, we can do this by telling our own stories.
Zeus’ sphere of influence is power, stability, good governance, and, perhaps most importantly to me, hospitality (xennia). Zeus is not a rapist and philanderer. He’s a nice guy, a dad, someone who isn’t afraid to show his attraction but who understands consent. He’s not a politician or political “governor” because that’s historical. Instead, he direction he provides is within social, friendship, and familial structures. He understands the importance of hospitality, and making sure strangers and the marginalized are treated as well as relatives. He loves his children and cares that they are kind, but also that they won’t put up with bullshit. That, to me, is Power, and what Zeus represents.
He’s not without his flaws, as the old myths tell us. He made some mistakes in the past and didn’t treat people, especially women, the way he could have. He has since apologized and atoned for this by taking responsibility. He atoned for it by ceding the throne of Olympus to Dionysus.
Hera isn’t a caricature of a ridiculous sitcom “sarcastic mom who tolerates her husband’s wacky antics.” She’s powerful, loving, loyal, just, beautiful, and devoted, because my wife is all of these things and that’s what Hera is to me.
“Hope” was in Pandora’s Box because Hope is one of the evils Zeus placed in it.
Hades did “kidnap” Persephone, but that’s because Demeter is an overbearing Mom (see: Agriculture) so Kore (Persephone’s name before she was kidnapped) has to plot with Hades– who loves her immensely– to pretend to kidnap her. Persephone ate the pomegranate seeds on purpose, so she’d always have an excuse to visit her love.
Persephone is the only entity who can allow that which is dead to spring back to life. She’s the goddess of compost, mulch, and drip irrigation.
Oh, that’s right, Dionysus now occupies the biggest throne on Olympus. They’re a nonbinary deity who had always been next in line, ever since they were known as Zagreus. This is pretty much the entire point of the Orphic Mysteries (again, ahistorically, by my estimation). Dionysus came from the East, representing the marginalized, the refugee, the stranger. Dionysus isn’t the god of “wine,” you see– they’re the holy power of fermentation. Dionysus is the transgender god of microorganisms and fungi, the current ruler of Olympus, and extremely fun at parties.
Clearly this is incredibly incomplete and cursory. For you, Power, Family, Death, Health, Wisdom may take different forms or manifest as different entities. For my purposes, however, the point is that Zeus was NOT a rapist– his old stories were written by rapists so they made him into one.
These are just a few examples, but they’re enough, I hope, to illustrate the point. There’s a famous koan in Zen Buddhism: a goose is trapped in a glass bottle. How do you free the goose without breaking the glass? If you can answer this question correctly, you have an understanding of how to cultivate a Mythic Worldview. I’ll have more to say about this later, and I’d of course be interested in your thoughts too!
FOOTNOTES:
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- In a pluralistic society, spiritual and religious traditions are just like any other discipline: eventually it’s possible to reach the limit of what these traditions can do for us. Without going into too much detail, I came to understand that I’d solved the mysteries of these traditions for myself and was free to explore other worldviews that more closely aligned with my other interests.
- Later I’ll probably write more about Sicily and how incredible exploring this side of my past through history has been– how I’ve found the independent spirit of the Sicilian people so inspiring– but this is about Myth, not History. So it goes.
- “Animism” as a descriptor of a spiritual worldview is problematic, but “all things are people” is a far saner way to look at the universe than what we’ve been saddled with, so it’s worth claiming as a descriptor in the sense of the basis of Greek religion.
- As an aside, I should note that I don’t consider myself a “Hellenic Pagan,” or a “polytheist” or whatever, nor do I call myself a “witch” or any of that stuff. I don’t practice “Greek Religion.” I’m a guy who is into the Greek gods is all. I’m into the PGM, Radical Animism, magic and the occult as an artistic expression of engagement with reality, and other weird shit.
- The easiest way to prove that this is a rhetorical cop-out is to point out that no, everyone did not do it. The very fact that abolitionists existed illustrates that the violence of slavery was widely considered morally repugnant by many, many people who consciously chose to speak against it.
- I don’t really like the word “archetype” because of all of its connotations; these entities exist in a real sense, not just as abstract containers of meaning. You can be visited by them in dreams.
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