While “Zionist” may be an insult to Markos’ friends in the r/dionysus forum, I regard it as a compliment considering the company it puts one in, namely the circle of the Emperor Julian who fought for the restoration and preservation of all traditional faiths, not just his own Hellēnismos:
Julian sent for some of the chiefs of the Jewish people and exhorted them to return to the observance of the laws of Moses and the customs of their fathers. On their replying that because the temple in Jerusalem was overturned, it was neither lawful nor ancestral to do this in another place than the metropolis out of which they had been cast, he gave them public money, commanded them to rebuild the temple, and to practice the cult similar to that of their ancestors, by sacrificing after the ancient way. The Jews entered upon the undertaking, seeking the most skillful artisans, collected materials, cleared the ground, and entered so earnestly upon the task that even the women carried heaps of earth, and brought their necklaces and other female ornaments towards defraying the expense. The Emperor, the other Pagans, and all the Jews, regarded every other undertaking as secondary in importance to this. (Sozomen, Historia Ecclesiastica 5.22.1-2)
May his memory be a blessing.
The House of Vines 
Ave Divus Julianus!
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Question: Do you have a cultus for Julian?
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I venerate all of the Pagan Roman emperors for which we have evidence of cultus (both in and outside of Rome). It’s my understanding that, while Julian was never officially deified, followers sacrificed to Julian in the same manner as other deified emperors and that these sacrifices were deemed successful (implying that Julian is now among the Gods).
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Thanks. Do you have a particular month for Julian? or time?
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I usually just do offerings on dates relevant to Him (birthday, death day, etc). Not too different from the other emperors
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a minor one — I include him in prayer to our saints and martyrs.
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Yes that’s a perfectly good time to honor Him.
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Side note: I love how all of them are completely ignoring the oddity of someone they are claiming to be a nazi also being a zionist (according to them). Is anyone addressing that? I’m just shocked that everyone seems to think that’s somehow a natural thing to expect.
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Or that Zionist is an insult. I want everyone to live with peace, prosperity and possibility on the land which contains the bones of their dead. In fact, the more that we reject modernity and live according to the ancient ways the better in my opinion.
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Today, anti-zionism is just a thin gloss for hatred of Jewish people. I consider the Kefiyyah basically the modern equivalent of a fucking swastika.
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The amount of Jew-hatred that has bubbled to the surface, and is so nakedly, brazenly on display is sickening. And enraging. And terrifying. And then enraging all over again.
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when I wake up, I scroll through the news, then instagram and there are so many cases of Jewish people just doing their thing being harassed. it’s terrifying, enraging, and morally evil. It is an ancient evil and I’m ashamed of the students who have fallen prey to it. I’m disgusted by adults who think being anti-zionist is some sort of collective good. They’re standing up for genocide, for rape, for theft of children, for torture, and Islamist hated. It sickens me to my soul.
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Yeah. I’m a Zionist because I’ve read history books. The Jews deserve to live in a place where they don’t have to worry about the next massacre or pogrom or expulsion. And so does every other people, for that matter.
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I love that most of these folks don’t even wear the keffiyeh of Palestine. This convinces me that they care so much about the Middle East and it’s not just some stupid shit they were brainwashed into supporting by TikTok. I look convinced, don’t I?
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Sure. I agree. But I still am curious as to how they’re justifying both labels. Correct me if I am wrong but it’s always been my understanding that nazis don’t want Jewish people to reside anywhere. Never mind their ancestral land.
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Oh man, that poster is gonna be so embarrassed when they realize what they’ve said… and everyone else, who saw that comment and gave tacit approval by not speaking up.
I’m kidding, I’m kidding. They’re not capable of shame.
Take me out of the picture; that’s an incredibly offensive thing to say about Jews, most of whom have family that were massacred by those Nazi fucks.
I just can’t square that circle and make it make sense.
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I’d been trying to wrap my brain around it for a while, but finally remembered that these people believe logic and reason are nothing but tools of oppression. The fact their stances are utterly inconsistent and irrational may be a feature not a bug for them…
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I was pondering things.
I picked up on in the exchange and elsewhere is that people have WOKE and Progressive politics as a religion. Their political religion is expressed through how they see various Gods and various humans in the Polytheist-sphere. What I have noticed while watching both Steve Bannon of MAGA and reading Patheos Pagan is that the WOKE religion is dying. These people are facing extinction as more young men become Orthodox converts or strict Roman Catholics. More people are gravitating towards more traditional forms of religion, and less away from the “Progressive” sense. In other words, the more things change, the more the Dionysos Woke people feel threatened. They are after all facing a collapse of their beliefs – the Arc of Justice and all that bother.
What I read in the exchange is the sense that Dionysos is a Progressive Woke entity. He may be many things, but that is the only aspect they see. What is a hoot is how they are doing “purity” of reading which is an orthodox approach to religion through politics. And the other hoot – the guy trying to promote his books as Big Man On Polytheism.
In short, they are being Orthodox about a Heterodox God and religion.
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Yeah. And one of the books that they recommend — Dionysus & Politics literally makes the opposite point, that Dionysos is either beyond human divisions, and ancient Dionysians were all over the political spectrum, which was all put aside when it was time to celebrate the God. Weirdly, that’s the exact point I’ve been making since I got online back in 1998 or so. But the contributors to that volume have really impressive degrees and positions at prestigious universities so I would have thought they’d at least give the argument a fresh glance since leftists love the argumentum ad verecundiam fallacy the way cats love catnip.
(The guy who promoted his own books — which he does every fucking chance he gets — is who I meant when I said one of the mods copies my work constantly. My book on the Starry Bull festival cycle is called Revelry: A Journey Through the Dionysian Year. Wanna guess what the name of his book on Dionysian festivals is called? Annoying as this shit is, I’m just glad that more people are writing about Dionysos. And if they’re stealing from me, at least I know it’s going to be good.)
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Interesting. Is the guy anybody in their world or does he just shill books ad nauseam? There are copyright laws – intellectual property – if you want pursue them. Of course, you can blow their dear little pointed heads by pointing out that the guy copied you!
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He used to credit me about 1 out of 5 times, usually with some sort of caveat. I guess now he’s pretending I don’t exist? (Unless he’s saving it for their private Discord.) We had to talk to a copyright lawyer recently because someone ripped off Galina (and her mother, natch!) Even though the lawyer said she had an iron-clad case, it would have been difficult and expensive to bring it to trial. And she’d have been unlikely to collect considering the widespread poverty in pagandom, though best case scenario the publisher would have dropped the book. In his case he’s self-publishing so there’s nothing to win. And there’d be fewer books on Dionysos out there, and that’d be a real shame. The way I see it, if they copy me they’ve made themselves a vector for the virus-like transmission of my ideas. Now that is something valuable!
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I’ve been plagiarized twice. The most egregious example is Lea Svendson’s “Loki and Sigyn” which steals quite a bit of my “Sigyn: Our Lady of the Staying Power,” including the bowl meditation *my mother invented* and the earlier one was ‘Honoring Your ancestors” by Mallory Valdoise. I believe she took my ancestor workshop and then a year or so later published. It’s so close to my own previously published book (Honoring THE ancestors) that I almost took her to court but I kind of felt like Sannion did: let the dead be honored and people will read her who won’t read me, AND she veers into a very different direction for the last third of the book. It’s interesting both are Llewellyn books though. I think they have a reputation for not checking plagiarism.
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and yes, from here on out, I’m naming names.
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Evil thrives in silence and indifference. I’m glad you’ve adopted that policy.
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Last comment: I noticed on the redit discussions that it seems um very fanboy – juvenile. I guess I am used to the more deeper conversations at John Michael Greer’s blog about Pagan things. I saw no depth in the redit discussions. I guess that is why the mods think of themselves a big fish. I am not sure how people move from giggly fanboy to more mature reverence. I know that they do, and the fanboy phase is needed to get your toe into Polytheism. But how is it done?
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Yeah, that forum is definitely not the comments section of JMG’s blog. Nor is it even on the level of Patheos. What’s really fucked up is that for all the critiques I could level against them (and boy do I have a bundle) they are still better than a lot of communities on Reddit, Tumblr, TikTok, etc. This is where they’re getting the majority of their information — not books, or thoughtful blogs, formal classes, or conversation with elders, let alone the real world stuff that is impossible to get from staring at a screen.
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