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| The thing that brings people to
Hellenismos is usually the gods. Sure, there’s the occassional person
who comes to the religion through a fascination with ancient Greek
history and culture, or because of their great admiration for her
literature (and who doesn’t feel their soul stir upon reading the
opening lines of the Iliad) but I rather suspect that these
individuals are in the minority. For most it is the gods who lead us
here – and who keep us around long after we find out what an
opinionated, argumentative, and cantankerous bunch Hellenists can be. And while there are those people who are drawn equally to the whole pantheon, and to the gods precisely as
a pantheon, again, I don’t think this is terribly common. Most people
when they describe what brought them to Hellenismos will cite a strong
attraction to a particular deity, or perhaps to a small group of them.
While this attraction may change over time, blossoming to include other
gods or passing from one deity to another, for many this attraction
holds a singular power in their life. They may feel especially devoted
to this divinity who inspires their greatest aspirations and most
praiseworthy efforts, and they often feel that in some respects the
divinity reciprocates by showing interest in their development and a
certain measure of protectiveness for them. This type of relationship
is usually called patronage, which borrows as its model the client
system of ancient Rome, and has precedent in the relationships between
Odysseus and Athene (Iliad 2.279), Aristeas and Apollon (Herodotos 4.20), Marcus Antonius and Dionysos (Plutarch’s Life of Antony), and perhaps most famous of all, Socrates and his daimonion (Plato’s Apology). Plato
has voiced what many in a patron relationship intuitively felt – namely
that every human soul is under the control and guidance of a particular
divinity: “The Demiurge divided the whole mixture into souls equal in
number to the stars, and assigned each soul to a star … and when he had
sown them, he committed to the younger gods the fashioning of their
mortal bodies.” (Timaeus 41-2) And in the Phaedrus he
adds, “He who follows in the train of any god honours him, and imitates
him as far as he is able; and this is his way of life and the manner of
his behaviour. Everyone chooses the object of his affections according
to his character.” (252c) This is, clearly, a very
important relationship. Even if one’s patron is not directly
responsible for the creation of their soul and body, our proximity to
the divinity will certainly have an effect on our life. This may be on
the subtlest of levels, for instance by influencing our thoughts,
whether that be simply by making us think about something in a totally
different light or by exerting a kind of gravitational force which
constantly draws us back to a particular network of associations,
images, and concepts. And yet, even this seemingly simple thing can
have a profound effect on our lives, for our thoughts, to a large
extent, shape who we are and how we react to the world around us. If we
are aligned to a particular world-view, which is under the domain of a
single deity and which exists in counter-distinction to other
divinities, we are going to make different decisions than if we were
aligned to the world-view of someone else. For instance, the Dionysian
world-view is one of freedom, and abundance, and the transgression of
boundaries resulting in an orgiastic loss of distinctions. How
different that is from the law and order and rational remoteness of
Athene’s world-view. (Of course it is important to remember that the
gods are not simply ideas or archetypes, but distinct beings, and
further, as true divinities they represent a totality which embraces
both a particular point as well as it’s polar opposite: thus, healing
gods also bring plague, rationality contains an element of ecstacy, and
there is a speck of light at the center of even the vastest darkness.) I
can personally attest that having this world-view, this cluster of
ideas in the back of my head, has caused me to make decisions I might
not have otherwise. Dionysos is always there inspiring me to boldly
take life by the throat, to experience things to their fullest, to be
aware of the sensual beauty which surrounds me, and to root out within
myself whatever threatens to hold me back or diminish my experiences of
the world. He is the enemy of fear, of stasis, of empty formality. I
have had to make hard choices, to give up things I thought important to
me because in the end they were really strangling me and keeping me
enslaved, and he is constantly urging me to open myself up to a deeper
awareness and acceptance of frightening and challenging ideas. The bios Dionusou
or Dionysian life is an unfolding process, and one that I am constantly
striving to live. Thus, I am who I am today largely because of my
devotion to this god. I suspect a follower of Demeter or Apollon or
Poseidon feels exactly the same way about their god and the impact that
that deity has had in their life. And that’s really the
point that I want to make. No matter how great a god is, no matter how
fully they may fulfill the desires of the individual devottee – no god
in a polytheistic system exhausts the totality of existence, nor claims
the whole of the world as theirs alone, nor monopolizes the ways of
being and worship. All of the gods exist in relationship to each other.
This may be through diametrical opposition or through a certain
affinity or even a similarity of essence. They are friends, enemies,
lovers, relatives, and more – a plurality of beings relating to each
other and creation in every conceivable manner, their relationships
forming a wonderful, complex tapestry which animates the cosmos and our
lives within it. This is the fundamental, beautiful truth of polytheism
– and unfortunately, there are times when the patron relationship can
endanger that. Because of my close identification with
Dionysos and his world-view other relationships have been closed off to
me. I have almost nothing to do with Athene, Apollon, and Artemis.
Sometimes this is a result of the decisions I have made in life,
sometimes it’s because there is a spiritual repulsion that takes effect
like when you place two magnets together and they push away from each
other, and much more commonly I am simply so preoccupied with Dionysos,
so conditioned to find his presence in the world, that I either don’t
think to look for the others or miss them entirely when they are
present. I don’t think that this is necessarily a bad thing, but it is
certainly limiting. There is so much out there that it would be a real
shame if I never had the opportunity to see and experience it.
Sometimes this intense focus can actually be harmful, in the way that
if you only eat one food, no matter how tastey it may be, you are
depriving yourself of complex nutrients that you can get only through a
diverse and well-balanced diet. Each of the gods have certain blessings
to bestow on us, lessons to teach us, experiences to share with us. If
we are locked into only one pattern there’s going to come a time when
that pattern leads us into conflict and pain. Dionysian exuberance and
abundance can easily become addiction and fatal excess. Just look at
Jim Morrison or Baudelaire if you have any doubt. These men led life to
its fullest – and burnt out in a very short span of time. That may make
for a Romantic ideal – it’s better to be consumed by fire than to fade
away – but realistically, they couldn’t sustain that level of
intensity, and their art, especially in the case of Morrison, suffered
for it. In the beginning, his work was brilliant and prophetic –
towards the end, sad, self-obsessed, and pathetic. Imagine if he had
acquired some Apollonian restraint and discipline, if he had learned to
temper his spirit just a bit, to curb his addictions, to find real
freedom instead of nihilistic renunciation. His craft could have gone
on for years, allowed to grow and mature and reach its full potential.
Perhaps he could have changed the world with his words – instead he
ended up a miserable, bloated drunk choking to death on his own vomit
in a bath-tub in Paris. My relationship with Dionysos
is unquestionably the most important in my life – the one constant in a
world of Protean transformation. No other god can hold a candle to
that, come close to the affections I have for him. And yet, sometimes
those secondary and tertiary relationships have radically altered the
course of my life. They have opened me up to new experiences and taught
me lessons Dionysos either couldn’t or felt needed to be done by
someone else in order to bring the point home more forcefully.
Sometimes those relationships have lasted for a long time. Hermes, for
instance, has been present in my life for a number of years. He has
refined my writing, encouraged me to undertake strange journeys,
revealed things about certain parts of my personality that didn’t fit
into the Dionysian mould, and nudged me to take on a more magical
practice. He has also been a doorway through which I was able to make
contact with other gods. As a consequence, I consider him to be a
second patron, only slightly below Dionysos in my own personal divine
hierarchy. But there are other gods who have come into my life for only
very brief periods, whose presence has focused on one particular area
or idea, and once that issue has been resolved, have passed back out of
my life. Horus came in seemingly only to inaugurate an interest in
Egyptian religion. After about a week or two of intense epiphanies I’ve
had very little to do with him since. Zeus came to teach me about power
and its responsibility. Aphrodite to lend beauty and refinement to my
life. Sobek to protect me during a difficult transition. Hekate made it
possible for me to attend Pantheacon in 2007. If I had turned my back
on them, refused to have anything to do with them because Dionysos is
my all and everything – think how much smaller my life would be as a
result of that. I’ve also noticed, unfortunately, that
some people feel inadequate spiritually because they do not have a
strong attachment to a single god. They feel like they aren’t good
enough, that they’re doing something wrong, that maybe this isn’t the
religion for them since everyone else has a patron and they don’t. This
is nonsense. The patron relationship is not the de facto form
in Greek religion. It is a unique experience, one that has special
benefits but also comes with heavy duty responsibilities, and which is
not the norm, now or back in antiquity. In ancient times the average
person tended to pray to a wide variety of gods. At different times in
their lives different gods would have had different levels of
importance to them. Artemis was said to watch over young girls, but
once they reached maturity and marriage she became remote until they
were pregnant and gave birth. Hestia or Demeter would likely have held
more sway over them while they were concerned with the domestic sphere.
If they were sailing, they may have made offerings to Poseidon, a god
they otherwise would have had no contact with unless they lived on the
coast. Others would have been prominent only at festival time or if
they entered a particular career, and so forth. Taken as a totality
over time, this created a possibility for an abundance of minor
relationships – which is by far the norm, both today and in antiquity,
however common the patron relationship may be. So people shouldn’t be
worried if they don’t have a patron – maybe they just haven’t found one
yet but the god is still out there waiting for them, or maybe they
don’t have one, and instead are meant to cultivate a number of these
lesser relationships. There is no one right way – the religious life of
each person is as unique and individual as a snow-flake to make use of
that insipid metaphor. Instead of trying to conform to the pattern of
someone else, they should be seeking what works the best for them. That
may involve recognizing the existence of a patron relationship – or
moving beyond the concept altogether. |
