{"id":90,"date":"2004-01-03T19:32:00","date_gmt":"2004-01-03T19:32:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=90"},"modified":"2012-01-07T13:56:37","modified_gmt":"2012-01-07T20:56:37","slug":"90","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=90","title":{"rendered":"Practical Polytheism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Practical Polytheism<\/strong><\/p>\n

\"\"I am currently reading Devoted to You: Honoring Deity in Wiccan Practice<\/em><\/a>. The title is a bit of a misnomer, as one contributor, Maureen Reddington-Wilde, could be more properly described as a Greek Reconstructionist. Since I was recently blogging about Aphrodite<\/a>, I’m starting with Reddington-Wilde’s chapter on Her.<\/p>\n

Editor Judy Harrow contributes a section on Gaia; other constributors are Alexei Kondratiev (Brigit) and Geoffrey W. Miller (Anubis).<\/p>\n

Harrow writes, “We are four Pagan henotheists, each of whom has a long-standing devotion to the Deity he or she has written about here. We are devoted. We respect and admire one another’s devotion. . . . Since modern Paganism is a high-choice relgion, we have a wide range of choices in our basic approach to religion itself. So another thing that I would hope is that this book will show you something of the range of options available to you and help you find your own comfortable place within that range.”<\/p>\n

Vodou souls<\/strong><\/p>\n

“The Quick and the Dead: The Souls of Man in Vodou Thought” is an essay<\/a> by the Berkeley, California, musicologist Richard Hodges, who writes, “In nineteenth century France, the Nancy school of hypnotism discovered a way of producing states of abandonment of the body by the personality as profound as in traditional ritual possession. This only became a minor chapter in the history of Western medical psychology. There is a deep-seated prejudice in the West against loss of control. There is such a high evaluation of the individual and his personality that it is very difficult to conceive of the possibility for the ego to relax its grip and to accept to be displaced by something higher and finer. Such relaxation is one of the fundamental states of the human psyche. The absence in the West of cultural institutions for the socialization and development of this state is one of the signs of the loss of genuine psycho-spiritual knowledge in modern times. “<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Practical Polytheism I am currently reading Devoted to You: Honoring Deity in Wiccan Practice. The title is a bit of a misnomer, as one contributor, Maureen Reddington-Wilde, could be more properly described as a Greek Reconstructionist. Since I was recently blogging about Aphrodite, I’m starting with Reddington-Wilde’s chapter on Her. Editor Judy Harrow contributes a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[27,40],"class_list":["post-90","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-aphrodite","tag-polytheism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s6xQTg-90","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1058,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1058","url_meta":{"origin":90,"position":0},"title":"Review: Written in Wine","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 5, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Dionysos, writes Sannion of the Library of Neos Alexandria, \"is a maddeningly complex god to figure out.\" And so he gets an anthology: poetry, fiction, hymns, essays, ritual from a group of Hellenic revivalist Pagans: Written in Wine: A Devotional Anthology for DionysosI like that approach for several reasons.For one,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1057,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1057","url_meta":{"origin":90,"position":1},"title":"Polytheism and Punctuation","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 4, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Have you seen the new ads for Gillette's Venus-brand razors? Do you think some copywriter once read some classic of pop-psychological polytheism, such as Goddesses in Everywoman: Powerful Archetypes in Women's Lives?Or perhaps more amazingly, what if someone read Pagan Meditations: The Worlds of Aphrodite, Artemis, and Hestia?Gods below! Polytheistic\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"polytheism\"","block_context":{"text":"polytheism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=polytheism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":984,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=984","url_meta":{"origin":90,"position":2},"title":"Seizing Symbols of Love","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"February 12, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"The Valentine's Day card that I bought for M. would be illegal to Saudi Arabia's Wahabi Muslims.It would be an acknowledgment that women are more than a necessary evil, household appliances in veils. Maybe it's an incitement to polytheism too. Who knows?In fact \"red items\" are a problem.So if I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Islam\"","block_context":{"text":"Islam","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=islam"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10181,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=10181","url_meta":{"origin":90,"position":3},"title":"Pentagram Pizza with Milky Devotion and Unlikely Polytheism","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 24, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"\u2022 Is this a case of misplaced devotional offerings? The Tamil Nadu Milk Dealers Association says yes. \u2022 The Live Science news site is not the place where you expect tor read about Norse (or any other) polytheism, but this article strikes a reasonable note. \u2022 Icelandic elves again, this\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"elves\"","block_context":{"text":"elves","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=elves"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/01\/pentagrampizza.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1003,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1003","url_meta":{"origin":90,"position":4},"title":"The God with Many Eyes","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 6, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"The new issue of The Entheogen Review carries a piece by David Luke on cross-cultural encounters with a godlike being covered with a multitude of eyes. (Yes, Ezekiel's cherubim are one of the references.)His article, \"Disembodied Eyes Revisited: An Investigation into the Ontology of Entheogenic Entity Encounters,\" describes such encounters\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"entheogens\"","block_context":{"text":"entheogens","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=entheogens"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1071,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1071","url_meta":{"origin":90,"position":5},"title":"Gallimaufry with Advanced Fashion Sense","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 10, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"\u00b6 Aphrodite Pandemos thumps Allah again. But watch out for Allah's exploding devotees.\u00b6 An interview with Sarah Kate Istra Winter, author of Kharis: Hellenic Polytheism Explored.\u00b6 Adeona is a open-source program that helps you find a lost or stolen laptop computer. It's named after a Roman goddess.¶: It's not too\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=chascli-20&l=as2&o=1&a=143823192X","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=90"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3693,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions\/3693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=90"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=90"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=90"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}