¶ Everything about Cleopatra. (The famous Cleopatra was actually the seventh ethnic Greek queen of Egypt of that name.)
¶ Everything about Alexander the Great.
¶ Those and more web directories at Isidore of Seville.
¶ Dianne Sylvan’s “list of things I don’t/do care about.” As one of the comments said, it would make a good poster. (Via Executive Pagan).
Everyone has their favorite vanished Pagan civilization, I suppose. The Minoan civilization is one of mine.
Tropaion links to a Discovery Channel video about the destruction of Atlantis. The basic idea — that “Atlantis” was Santorini (Thera) and Crete — is not new, but the computer recreations of their cities is excellent. (Bonus: Greek subtitles.)
The Egyptian material at the end is most interesting as well.
A volcanic eruption bigger than Krakatoa, tsunamis, and earthquakes. How well could we handle that combination?
Bonus: This Flash animation shows all the empires and nations of the Middle East. The Minoans don’t appear, but they would be contemporary with the Egyptian empire. (Via Hecate.)
Last month Classics scholar Mary Beard suggested that contemporary Hellenic Pagans were not quite authentic because they omitted the centerpiece of ancient Paganism: animal sacrifice. (I discussed her critique here, and she responded.)
Orthodox Christian blogger Rod Dreher’s recent post–and especially the comments–pretty well illustrate just how squeamish today’s population–even omnivores–are about the idea of animal sacrifice.
Other than followers of Afro-Diasporic religions (Santeria, Candomble, etc.), only a tiny number of contemporary Western Hemisphere Pagans perform animal sacrifice.
(Muslims typically perform animal sacrifice for the festival of Eid ul-Adha. Christians, as one of Dreher’s commenters points out, believe that Jesus’ death ended sacrifice. Jews would not agree, but having centralized their rituals at the Jerusalem Temple–which was then destroyed–they moved to a different religious model.)
• A federal judge won’t let the Veterans Administration wriggle out of the lawsuit over grave markers for Wiccan veterans.
• The Guardian, a British newspaper, covers the Greek Pagan renaissance.
For years, Orthodox clerics believed that they had defeated Greeks wishing to embrace the customs and beliefs of the ancient past. But increasingly the church, a bastion of conservatism and traditionalism, has been confronted by the spectre of polytheists making a comeback in the land of the gods. Last year, Peppa’s group, Ellinais, succeeded in gaining legal recognition as a cultural association in a country where all non-Christian religions, bar Islam and Judaism, are prohibited. As a result of the ruling, which devotees say paves the way for the Greek gods to be worshipped openly, the organisation hopes to win government approval for a temple in Athens where pagan baptisms, marriages and funerals could be performed. Taking the battle to archaeological sites deemed to be “sacred” is also part of an increasingly vociferous campaign.
The article mentions James O’Dell, who also appears in the documentary I Still Worship Zeus.
What happens in Greece first may happen next in the UK or elsewhere in Western Europe. A number of British Pagans have borrowed the rhetoric of American Indian activists about sacred sites and about ancestral remains stored in museums.
• After a couple of years, this blog seems to have been removed from BeliefNet’s “Blog Heaven” site, where it used to appear in the “Other Faiths” category at the very bottom of the page.
No one from BeliefNet informed me that my blog was given the boot; I just happened to notice.
When I asked what was going on, someone named Tim Hayne, editorial project manager, said that it was unintentional and tried to make it look like it was my fault for changing something at this end. (Don’t tech-support people always try to make problems look like the user’s fault?)
Ten days have gone by, but nothing has changed. You won’t find Letter From Hardscrabble Creek in Blog Heaven. (Maybe there is a Blog Limbo somewhere.)
But the URL of my site feed has not changed. So I have to wonder if someone at the supposedly interfaith BeliefNet site just cannot stomach an outspokenly Pagan blog.
It’s their site and they can run it the way that they want. But why can’t they be honest?
Mary Beard, noted Classics scholar from Cambridge University, writes that today’s Greek Pagans are not practicing exactly what their Hellenic ancestors did.
It isn’t entirely clear what this group (“Ellenais”) believes; but it is clear that, whatever they say, it bears very little relationship to ancient Greek religion. You can tell that already from the rather charming prayer to Zeus to bring about world peace. From an ancient point of view, whatever myths are peddled about the “Olympic Truce”, there could hardly be a less likely divine candidate for putting a stop to war in the world.
Her slightly patronizing tone aside, so what? Religions do change–even while their adherents insist on continuity with the past.
I have great respect for Beard as a Classics scholar–I own one or two of her books–but I suspect that she has not given much thought before to new religious movements until she decided to give her opinion on this new development in her blog.
Members of a Greek Pagan group were able to perform a ritual at the temple of Zeus in Athens yesterday.
One of its leaders, Doretta Peppa, a writer who calls herself a high priestess [sic], told the BBC the temples were built to respect the gods and now they were going to be put to their proper use.
Ms Peppa said she had been given official permission to use the temple, but there were fears that the culture ministry, which administers the site, might give way to pressure from the church.
According to the longer CNN report,
[The group] Ellinais was founded last year and has 34 official members, mainly academics, lawyers and other professionals. It won a court battle for state recognition of the ancient Greek religion and is demanding the government register its offices as a place of worship, a move that could allow the group to perform weddings and other rites.
After a long struggle and some victories in their quest for religious freedom, contemporary Greek Pagans continue to seek the right to worship the old gods in the temples that were built for them.
Now it is the turn of the Temple of Zeus in Athens.
“These are our temples and they should be used by followers of our religion,” said Doreta Peppa, head of the Athens-based Ellinais, a group campaigning to revive the ancient religion.
….
Peppa’s group, dedicated to reviving worship of the 12 ancient gods, was founded last year and won a court battle for official state recognition of the ancient Greek religion.
Those who seek to revive the ancient Greek religion are split into rival organizations which trade insults over the Internet. Peppa’s group is at odds with ultra-nationalists who view a revival as a way to protect Greek identity from foreign influences.
They can’t even agree on a name for the religion: One camp calls it Ancient-Religion, another Hellenic Religion..
Walking through the enormous book exhibition at the AAR-SBL, I stopped at the booth of Parmenides Publishing, publisher of Classical philosophy and literature.
In conjunction with Stanley Lombardo’s audio recordings of his translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey, they had the print edition
which I had not seen before.
The famous D-Day photograph and the word “Iliad.” It stopped me cold. What a brilliant juxtaposition of image and text. It was a Nietzschean moment of “tragic pessimism.” I suppose that I will have to buy that translation.
Give the designer an award.
UPDATE (23 Dec. 05): With the book now in hand, I see that the cover design is credited to Brian Rak and John Pershing. The photo, “Into the Jaws of Death,” is simply credited to the U.S. Coast Guard, as I already knew.
I Still Worship Zeus, a documentary film on Pagans in Greece that was filmed shortly before the Athens Olympics, is now available from National Film Network–handy for both individual and instutional buyers.
New features on the DVD include a trailer and slideshow of production stills. There is more information too at the director’s Web site.
Thanks to watching it last winter, I formulated Clifton’s Third Law of Religion: “All genuine religions include at least occasional torchlight processions.”
Contemporary followers of traditional Greek religion got some attention during the recent Athens Olympics, and a new documentary film (made before the games) should help more. (For my earlier posts, see also here and here.)
I Still Worship Zeus, a recently released feature-length documentary film directed by Jamil Said, includes footage of rituals, games, music, and interviews, including a funny “average Athenian in the street” segment in which Greeks are asked whether or not the ancient religion has survived into this century. (Their responses are all over the place.) The film seems to focus in particular on the web site offers clips and still photos. A copy of I Still Worship Zeus on DVD is US $20; send email to “istillworshipzeus@yahoo.com” for ordering information.
Buy yourself one for Candlemas, the festival of intellectual renewal.
