r/Hellenism

So I haven't really mentioned this here, but I'm autistic. Which means that I usually take things very literally, and much more serious than I usually need to. This, in turn, has made committing to Hellenism a constant maze of questions and a need to ensure I'm doing things correctly.

It also doesn't help that I was raised in a Christian style upbringing with school assemblies having prayers, doing Scouts in a local church, reciting hymns during my childhood, the "Scout Church Parade" we did often, and trips to the local churches with my classes. So it's been difficult to break out of what I was taught as a child. This is why I'm always second guessing myself when it comes to Hellenism

"Am I doing this right?"

"Will this offend the gods?"

"Am I following the teachings correctly?"

"Did I just piss off Hades?"

"Will this result in miasma?"

"Did I just screw up the offering?"

"What happens if I stammer during a prayer?"

This is what makes it difficult for me to really stick to Hellenism because I'm always questioning my actions. I mean, sure I do prayers to Hades in the cemetery whenever I visit my mother's grave, and I always ensure I bring a libation offering (usually because the cemetery doesn't allow food near the graves, as it brings unwelcome wildlife). But it's also the home worship too. I'm just so anxious about doing it vocally that I usually leave the prayers until I actually go to the cemetery, where it feels much less awkward, especially with my dad who STILL doesn't understand Hellenism.

It's why, as many users have seen from me, I'm always asking questions that seem silly. I just want to ensure what I do isn't offensive, as it would be to the Christian religion I was basically raised around. I have tried to make it a routine, but it's just been difficult as I've tried to plan EVERY SINGLE DETAIL properly, to ensure my worship of the gods is as in line as it can be.

Hi everyone,

I was wondering if any of you has ever been to a Hellenic pagan wedding? Or maybe was it your wedding?

If so, how was it? What ceremonies did you see/partake in?

I know that pagan weddings happen, but every time I see one, it's always based on Nordic or Celtic traditions, I feel like I've never seen a Hellenic one (:

Thank you ^^

Even though i’m aware that we are open about the fact that there are different ways to practice and perceive the Gods, and I lean more towards eclectic practices, I do wonder sometimes about how often I see others asking things from the Gods. As in, “give offering -> ask for favour ->transaction completed”

I’m not here to tell anyone their spirituality is wrong, as I do agree it’s something that can feel quite personal to each individual. But how many of you practice through gratitude and embodying the things you want in life?

What I mean is, I also sometimes ask for blessings, guidance, and protection. But personally, a big part of my religious practice involves acknowledging the blessings I already have and being thankful for them. Like thanking Aphrodite for my beauty and the love I have in my life, Apollo for my health and inspiration, Hestia for my home, Zeus for protection and order, Demeter for food, etc.

As well as embodiment, if you want to pray to Aphrodite for beauty and love then make sure you take care of your body and appearance, make sure you keep your heart open. Trying to live in the example of the gods.

I wonder if the lack of these types of religious practices comes from the esoteric side of Hellenism that has grown quite popular lately, which is very human centric. But let’s not forget that the gods are forces of nature themselves, they’re not a fairy godmother, they’re part of life, nature, the world. Let’s be grateful for the roles they’ve already played in our lives, and let’s make sure that we try to become the things we ask from them.

I don’t know exactly why I wanted to write this post, I guess it’s because sometimes I see people getting a lot of anxiety in their beliefs, expecting immediate results which only leads to frustration. Even beyond the spiritual/religious aspect, I believe practicing gratitude is only healthy even on a psychological aspect.

So I figured that I’d just share this experience, I don’t want any interpretation just wanted to share something that was and still is really important to me.

So when I first started my journey I wasn’t sure if I was just imagining things or not. I didn’t want to invest a bunch of time into something that didn’t even feel real so in my first prayers I asked for a sign that I couldn’t deny. In about the same week (or maybe the next one I can’t remember anymore) I got a dream in which I saw Apollon. I don’t remember the details of what happened or the conversation we had but I remember feeling comforted and relieved.

One thing that I do remember (and I’ve never really seen or heard of) is that he was wearing a dear skull mask (something that I would’ve associated with Artemis instead of Apollon).

Anyways I just wanted to share this because that was one of the reasons I really started believing and continued with my practice.

And also because I’ve not yet found a representation of Apollon with a dear skull mask and need to learn how to draw at some point just to see that.

- my ethnicity is not Greek nor is my nationality, they have a word for it too (hellenismos), is it an issue? i don’t want to appropriate but im always excited to expand my learning.

-i’ve been an agnostic (basically atheist) all my life, i also have a hard time believing in deities/religion of any kind , but possibly might believe in the personification of nature which are what the deities basically are (from my understanding), what’s y’all’s opinion on this?

- i’ve always been attuned to ‘pre-christian’ idealogies, like the celtics, druids, hellenes, etc… and want to help keep them alive.

-also if there’s any native europeans i’d like to hear what you think of these?

- where do i start? i was planning to buy the delphic maxims, im going at this at the ancient level…

-i’m kind of just discovering and exploring the deeper levels of this and want to know other peoples opinions/stories

- i’d say i got a good grasp on the mythos and the history and the interactions with abrahamic religions throughout history, i also am a supporter of YSEE.

Recently I started worshipping Queen Hera, how do I know if she accepts working with me? It’s my first time worshipping a deity. When I was still considering it, I dreamt of her and got her on one of those tiktoks “Your birthday - your Goddess”, I know a lot of people say signs don’t exist, but this got me to finally go for it. I collected some things for her, set up an Altar after doing my research and have been praying and offering some things so far. How do I know if she’s accepted?

story time: i live in a Christian household and on Easter we have to go light up a candle and walk around the church. I went to the church but didn't take a candle,but i was there. Is that technically wrong? Could've i possibly made Aphrodite mad and what should i do for forgiveness? Help!!

Is it wrong to worship Apollo in relation to the sun and Selene as the moon? I understand Helios is the personification of the Sun, but he feels quite distant to me. Likewise, I know Artemis is associated with the Moon, but she feels more connected to the wildlife and archery parts than to her lunar aspect to me personally.

I feel Apollo’s presence when I pray for anything to do with the sun, same with Selene and the moon.

If you've been around witchcraft and paganism, you may have been exposed to the phrase 'unverified personal gnosis'. Personal gnosis is often seen as kind of woo-ey, since it is often seen as something people just sort of make up for themselves. However, I think I've settled upon a more useful structure for how we can see the development of personal gnosis and what the precursors are.

I'll mostly be discussing personal gnosis in terms of deity associations, but personal gnosis can also refer to personal takes on herb or mineral symbolism. Just keep this in mind.

Can we reconstruct the gnosis of the ancients?

I'll share a couple of instructive quotes:

>"For most of our 300,000-year history, we humans have had an intimate relationship with the rest of the living world. We know that people in early human societies were likely to be able to describe the names, properties and personalities of hundreds if not thousands of plants, insects, animals, rivers, mountains and soils, in much the same way people today know the most recondite facts about actors, celebrities, politicians and product brands. Aware that their existence depended on the well-being of other living systems around them, they paid close attention to how those systems worked."

—Jason Hickel, Less Is More

>"Even if you could climb into Aristotle’s head, as Kuhn was fond of recommending, how would you know how to navigate inside it? And if you somehow really succeed in thinking and talking just like Aristotle and his contemporaries, how would you come back and tell the rest of us what you have learned? If you could truly attain this ideal of historiography, you would be Aristotle, and we would need other historians to decipher for the rest of us what you are saying. The completely faithful history, if one could achieve it, might just be the past itself, like Borges’s perfect map that is just the terrain itself, and therefore completely useless."

—Hasok Chang, Presentist History for Pluralist Science, Journal for General Philosophy of Science (2021) 52:97–114

From this we can synthesize something that is probably pretty obvious, but needs to be understood. Historical attitudes can only be approximated. People had very different cognitive relationships with the natural world than we do today.

All of this makes it very challenging to crawl into the heads of the ancients and figure out when they sincerely thought they were simply using figures of speech, when they were using deity literalism, when they did so in a continuum and what the consequences on theologies were.

Prior to UPG: The Metonymy to Gnosis Pipeline

There's a way where we talk about certain concepts under a name that we think of as representing something bigger. We do this with 'Silicon Valley', for example, where the phrase stands in for a larger, difficult to delineate phenomenon in society. We also do this with 'The Earth' or 'Lady Justice' or 'Lady Liberty', the latter two being more explicitly goddesses. This is called 'metonymy', where a figure of speech to describe a phenomenon is spoken of as if a character unto themselves. It is even likely that the concept of deity was so continuous with the natural world that figures of speech are always assumed to be describing some form of numinal entity. My witchcraft teacher likes to say that witchcraft is weaponized aesthetics and metonymy is a part of that arsenal. Cultpunk calls this engagement with as if imagery 'deep play'.

https://cultpunk.art/2026/01/25/mythopoetic-ritual-as-deep-play/

This feeds into UPG. UPG is when discussing something as if becomes a more sincere commitment.

For example, when is a syncretism a ritual convention and when is a syncretism gnosis? If there's a couple of entities that we could appeal to for a particular thing in a ritual context, we can metonymize them into a syncretic entity. Within a modern context, that might be 'firearms safety'. For the purpose of this firearms safety ritual, we might call upon a metonymy of 'Zeus-Ares-Hephaestos', and we ascribe certain features to this metonymy:

>Plausible justification: Zeus reshaped the world through violent, generative action, very much like the invention of fire-arms did. Hephaestos makes complicated objects with metal and fire. Ares is associated with temperamental objects of war.

Note that simply by calling upon 'Zeus-Ares-Hephaestos' in this metonymic way, we are not necessarily committing ourselves to a UPG of Zeus-Ares-Hephaestos syncretism. Rather, we're calling upon a metonymy that stands in place of whatever numinal entity has firearms safety in their domain that obviously isn't found in literature, or even stands in the place of fire safety itself in more mythopoetic language.

It becomes a UPG when the metonymy or other association become stable enough that you gain an intuition of its temperaments and, for lack of a better word, personality. A lightning-strike moment can happen where something suddenly makes sense with a particular piece of historical insight. I do think that a modicum of historical insight is indispensable, but only indispensable and not a hard requirement. If there is history that you can call upon, you should use it, but if history yields no obvious answers (as it often does not) then we obviously have to make do.

Personal examples

This is where my UPG about Melete, Mneme and Aoide comes from. I had been using the metonymy of Diligence, Reflection and Openness as dimensions of love in various iterations for a long time and when I came across Melete, Mneme and Aoide, I had a lightning bolt moment where I stood up from my couch and said 'that's them!'.

It isn't yet verified, though. Melete, Mneme and Aoide are actually Practice, Memory and Melody, but they are close enough that within a particular neo-platonic framework, I feel a strong personal connection to these three as representing Diligence, Reflection and Openness as dimensions of love. What started as a more metonymic figure of speech kind of contemplation became a sincere commitment.

In another example, there's a common phrase in protest which goes 'No Justice, No Peace'. Those are two of the three Horae (the last one being 'Normalcy', which is also often discussed) and I had another lightning strike moment that these three well known metonymies are highly active in the world right now and so may as well be deity. The domain is not a UPG, but their activity and influence in the world could be seen as UPG or possibly even SPG (Shared Personal Gnosis) based on how active the metonymies have been.

Capital J 'Justice' and capital P 'Peace' are very top of mind metonyms that we don't usually think of as metonyms. Is the connection drawn in the sign here a form of shared gnosis about the relatedness of justice and peace?

I personally also look towards pop culture. Are there particular metonymies or dramatic characters in active use that correspond to particular deities? If one person adopts these metonymies or dramatic characters as representative of their specific deities, then that would be a UPG and if multiple people adopt these metonymies or dramatic characters as representative of their specific deities with historical backing, then there might be an argument for it being SPG.

These are obviously only my opinions, but I hope that they are useful.