Check out Greater Greece. 

Hellenismos, roughly meaning “the way of the Greeks”, developed during the Hellenistic and early Roman periods as a result of deep and sustained contact between Hellenes and other populations in the wake of Alexander’s conquests. It was a combination of linguistic, religious, political and cultural strands of identity that helped set them apart as a distinct ethnos or nation. Despite all of the many ways they may have historically differed the Greeks felt they still had more in common with each other than they did with barbarians. The seeds of this Pan-Hellenic spirit had been sowed by the Eleusinian mysteries and the Olympic, Pythian and Isthmian games and brought to fruition by the Persian Wars when the mainland Hellenes had to unite in order to defend their country from expansionist aggression by the Orient. Unsurprisingly Athens came to dominate the movement.

Koine, a heavily Atticized language of trade, edged out other dialectical forms and Athenian orators, historians, artists and playwrights became the standard models everyone else imitated. Local customs and religious institutions spread, often with accompanying Athenian-style democratic institutions. And their spiritual and intellectual hegemony was ensured by the Romans who saw Athens as the pinnacle of Greek achievement and not only copied them but expanded their influence throughout the ever-increasing territory of the imperium. The Second Sophistic was basically an attempt to replicate Classical Athens in the Greek East. Anyone who was adequately educated and culturally refined was considered a proper Hellene, regardless of their ethnic origins. It was in this sense that the term Hellenismos was originally coined by Jewish authors writing in Greek and later was refined to emphasize its religious connotations by the Emperor Julian, who sought to create a Neoplatonic polytheist rival to Christianity.

Consciously or not, this is what a lot of contemporary Hellenic polytheists draw upon in their reconstruction of ancient Greek religion, which is perhaps not terribly surprising since Athens has dominated most of the readily available scholarship over the last couple centuries. Most of the information on festivals and religious practice you find online have a heavy Attic slant or else people pick and choose from a variety of regions and time periods without much thought for context.

Now there’s nothing inherently wrong with this approach and it clearly works well for a lot of people. I’d go so far as to say that it meets the need many have for a simple, coherent system to order their lives by. It’s like the picture one forms of Greek mythology after reading Edith Hamilton or Thomas Bullfinch – all the rough edges and inconsistencies are ground down and smoothed over by the imposition of an overarching narrative structure – and that structure is Hellenismos. Consciously exploited as such it could become a strong rallying point for contemporary Hellenic polytheists who want a shared practice and culture but for the most part it is just taken for granted as the default expression within the community.

Either way I have very little interest in it.

My religious tradition is Magna Graecian. From the eighth to the fifth century BCE a number of poleis from different parts of mainland Greece sent out parties of colonists who took up residence in sparsely populated areas along the coasts of Southern Italy and Sicily. Sometimes they established harmonious relations with the indigenous populations and sometimes there were intense conflicts, with a couple colonies even being entirely wiped out. Those who thrived tended to have stronger ties to the metropolis or “mother city” which sent them out, relying on this for economic and military support until they grew strong enough to stand on their own. Some even became powerful enough to establish their own colonies, as Taras did with Herakleia and Thourioi.

During these early periods of dependence the colonists made a concerted effort to maintain their ancestral customs and so built temples and performed festivals primarily in honor of the major deities of their homeland. (Apollon, Poseidon, Hera and Athena in particular.) They also carried over ancient rivalries so that the Doric colonies tended to be in conflict with the Ionian or Aeolian and vice versa. (These wars were often orchestrated by the metropoleis who used the colonists as pawns in covert games of realpolitik comparable to the treatment of Korea, Vietnam and Latin America by the United States and the Soviet Union in the latter half of the last century.)

Over time there was a shift away from these Pan-Hellenic relations. The colonies began having less to do with their metropoleis and forged stronger local ties, among both their fellow Greeks and the various indigenous populations. One expression of this was the Italiote Federation which gave both the Carthaginians and the Romans a run for their money before inevitably splitting apart at the seams and another expression of it was the chthonification of their religion. There had always been strains of this, but over time you see a rise to prominence of cults of Demeter, Persephone, Aphrodite and Dionysos as well as a stronger interest in heroes and daimones – even the Gods of the state develop a more pronounced interest in fertility and the underworld on Italian soil. A complex and interconnected mythology develops among the colonies of Magna Graecia, often differing in substantial ways from the stories told abroad – a process that continues through Roman and Christian domination.

The Mezzogiorno is and has always been a land apart and out of step – dark and earthy and slow and sensual and dangerous and violent and superstitious. It is where you go to experience the ecstatic release from remorse.

And that is something fundamentally different from Hellenismos – in either its ancient or modern manifestations.

I consider non-practicing Dionysians to be those who don’t, well, engage in the worship of Dionysos. Since there’s no set worship routine that’s a fairly subjective metric and I prefer not to concern myself overly much with what others do or don’t do. After all their relationship with Dionysos is necessarily going to differ from mine. They may only feel the need to pray and make offerings to him every couple of months and never have an element of ekstasis and enthousiasmos as part of their worship. Others still may feel that writing and talking about him is all the “worship” that’s necessary for them. I disagree, obviously, and feel that you get out of any relationship – divine or mortal – in direct proportion to what you put into it, so I’m always trying to find ways to deepen my connection with him and honor him. But ultimately I think such matters are best left between the individual and their deity. If Dionysos wants more from a person he’s quite capable of asking for it!

To answer the second part of your question – yeah, there are plenty of folks in the Hellenic and other polytheist communities whose opinions and actions I disagree with and who I feel do not, under any circumstances, speak for me. Even so I do not contest their right to claim such an identity for themselves. There’s no litmus test to belong to these religions, no office of the holy inquisition going around policing people’s thought and making sure that they conduct their rites in the proper manner – and we can thank the blessed Gods for that! While it’s annoying to see some megalomaniacal buffoon spouting off about “this is what True Hellenes do and believe” I don’t worry that outsiders are going to lump me in with them because it’s usually abundantly clear that we’ve got nothing in common. Most of them are ignorant of the primary sources our tradition is based on, just aping the arguments they’ve heard others make and too busy participating in endless online flame-wars to bother actually worshiping the Gods and celebrating their festivals. Quality shines through in the end, so I consider such people of no account and instead concern myself with my own practice. When I stand before Dionysos after my Journey West he’s not going to ask me, “Why didn’t you wag your finger at more people Sannion? You didn’t argue nearly enough.” He’s going to say, “You were fearless and creative, you danced and drank, sang my praises and lived every moment that was given you to the fullest – well done my son!” At least he’s going to say that if I’ve done my job well.

How many of you plan to follow the Bakcheion 2019 e.v. festival calendar in some form or another?

Well, to be perfectly honest with you I wouldn’t. Either someone is naturally drawn to this kind of thing, in which case it’ll happen regardless, or else they’re not and it could prove harmful to their psyche (at the very least) if they tried to force it, you know what I mean? Even for those with a certain predisposition toward ecstasy and trance states it can be difficult dealing with the demands this stuff make on us physically, mentally and spiritually—especially the coming down process and its aftermath.

Probably the thing that helps the most is being familiar with other methods of altering consciousness, whether those are physically, mentally, or chemically induced. Things like dance, yoga, exercise, fasting, austerities and ordeals, sex, meditation, creative expression, drugs and alcohol—all of these and numerous other things help broaden our horizons and make these spiritual states easier to accommodate. It’s better to gradually stretch something out instead of forcing your way through it all at once, and in my experience all of these and their related techniques help the process along. They aren’t a substitute for spiritual possession and trance, but they can teach you what it’s like, how to ride it out, so that you’re better prepared for the actual experience when it happens.

I haven’t, and neither has any other male because only women can be mainades and only certain women at that. Of course, mainades aren’t the only ecstatic votaries of Dionysos—in antiquity or today—and I’ve definitely experienced his mad blessings myself.

The first couple of times it came upon me spontaneously and I wasn’t really prepared to deal with it. You can read all of the ancient accounts of Dionysiac ritual madness and survey similar phenomena from other traditions—Tarantism, Shamanism, Sufism, charismatic Christianity, and Vodoun—but none of that really prepares you for what it’s like when it’s actually happening to you!

Somehow with the grace of the God I not only managed to survive my first brushes with ekstasis and trance-possession but discovered that I actually have some aptitude for entering these altered states, and now I actively cultivate them every chance I get. They range from light inspiration where the world seems strange and cinematic, shapes dancing on the periphery of my vision and whispered voices filling my head, on up to full possession where I’m not there any longer and Dionysos has complete use of my body. It’s rare for it to be at quite that level (I can think of only a handful of times over the last two decades) as it’s usually more of a cooperative effort. He’s taken over, manipulating my words and actions but I’m still conscious and can direct things if need be. It’s kind of like putting on a mask and acting a part, only the mask is a living thing itself. I’m not sure who’s the mask or the mask-wearer in this analogy however—maybe both of us at different times!

Dionysos is a God of many masks. So while he is unquestionably the wine-God—meaning not only the giver of wine, but one whose spirit is in every glass we drink—that doesn’t even begin to exhaust the totality of his being. He is the God of the dramatic arts, lord of healing, prophecy, and poetry, the bringer of fertility and abundant life for all plants and animals; he presides over kingship, rules a portion of the dead, guides youths into adulthood, and blurs all gender and social distinctions.

There are a great many other things that fall under his dominion, none of which need involve alcohol and other intoxicating substances. In fact, one of his supreme roles is as the Liberator who helps us break the bonds that hold us back from living a free and authentic existence. Addiction is the complete antithesis of freedom so I think that Dionysos has a lot to offer those in recovery and his methods could prove a lot more successful than conventional treatments, which mostly deal with the symptoms but leave the root cause of the ailment untouched.

Discipline, moderation, and respect for these substances as inherently holy things are as much a part of Dionysos’ gifts to humanity as license and glorious excess. After all it was Dionysos who first taught us to water our wine and drink in a civilized, symposiatic fashion, eschewing the dangerous consequences of overindulgence. And some Orphics were complete teetotalers except on special ritual occasions so no, one does not have to be a hard drinker to be a Dionysian.

They must have respect for his gifts and I would recommend offering a token amount of wine even if the person never tastes it since wine is sacred to him and sacrifice is about offering what is pleasing to the Gods, irrespective of our own preferences. But if a person felt that that was too much and might endanger their hard-won sobriety they could always substitute grape juice or make offerings of other appropriate fruits, foods, smelly things, art, music, and the like.

I suspect I need to explain something.

This cycle of daily hymns for Freyja (like the one I did for Dionysos, and will be doing for Hermes, Loki and other of the Starry Bear Gods) is based on the planetary system which passed from the Ancient Near East to Greece, Rome and thence throughout much of Northern Europe and the New World, ascribing each day of the week to a different God or Goddess.

Each hymn, then, represents the focal deity in the guise of, manifesting as or reflected through the image of the deity who owns that day. So, for instance, this hymn is Freyja as we see her on the day of Zeus, Overseer of the Home and Protector of the Pantry, thus emphasizing the Golden Goddess’ woefully underrepresented domestic aspects, especially in light of the archaeological record; likewise, many of the allusions will make sense if you recall that this is the hymn for Saturday, which belongs to Kronos, particularly as his cult was found in North and Central Italy. (There is added resonance if you factor in who “Kronos” tends to be in the interpretatio Norrœna and the persona this divinity has so often adopted.)

This is functional or associative syncretism, where the attributes, powers and iconography of one God are borrowed from another without fundamentally affecting their distinct and autonomous identities – as we find, for instance, in the Isis aretalogies, Aphrodite lending Hera her magical girdle to seduce Zeus in the Iliad or when Freyja temporarily gifts Loki her falcon cloak so he can retrieve Iðunn from Jötunheimr in the Þrymskviða. By doing so more of the deity’s unique complexity may be unfolded. It’s basically applied henadology. 

A little less opaque? Good. Now on to Tuesday – hail Ares and hail Týr, and hail Freyja through them!

Just do it! I know that may sound a little trite but it’s really the only thing that works with him. Don’t let your fear and insecurities get the better of you. Don’t wait around until the time feels right, until you’ve figured everything out, until you’ve memorized all of the prayers and hymns, mastered the ceremonial procedures, accumulated all of the pretty tools and built up the perfect shrine for him. Because you know what? That’s never going to happen! Perfection is an ideal we should aim for knowing full well that we can never truly attain it. And if you wait around until then to start you’re going to miss out on a lot of wonderful things and precious opportunities along the way. Besides which you’ll deprive yourself of the valuable lessons that can only be learned by monumentally screwing things up.

So my advice to people is this: make mistakes—and lots of them! Pay attention while you’re doing it, figure out why certain things don’t work in certain situations, and try to determine why that is and what you can do to improve on that next time around. And make sure there is a next time, even if you totally screwed the pooch or you’re not feeling it or getting anything out of it. Fake it till you make it. Experiment with different spiritual techniques and worship styles to see what works best for you and gets the strongest response from Dionysos. He’s not going to smite you for flubbing a line or missing a step, but he will be disappointed if you never get around to trying. There are definitely some things that don’t work—and he’ll be sure to let you know!—but unless you persist in doing these even after he’s made his preferences clear, you’re not likely to incur his wrath for doing some bad ritual.

Some additional pointers I’d offer those starting out in Dionysos worship: don’t limit what you do to only what can be done in front of your home shrine. Dionysos is best worshiped outdoors in the wild places of nature, even if that means just pouring out a libation on a mountaintop or whispering a prayer to him as you stroll through a wooded park. Also leave plenty of room for spontaneous, free-flowing, emotional encounters with him. Don’t spend all of your time reading off a script. Sincere, heartfelt words of praise are a thousand times better than even the most beautiful verses of Homer or Orpheus. If you can’t think of anything then just string together a bunch of his standard epithets or create some of your own, commemorating past experiences with him or utilizing imagery that is meaningful for you.

And above all else, you must worship the God with your whole body. Gesture, dance, sacred movement, even running around and yelling his name at the top of your lungs—this kind of physical “prayer” is what he likes best. Don’t worry about being skilled and graceful or avoiding looking foolish—just throw yourself into it completely and let his spirit carry you away. Also, there should always be music in his worship. Prerecorded stuff played during ritual is fine but it’s much better to have music that you make yourself. Drums, rattles, pipes, a bull-roarer or even clapping your hands and stomping your feet will suffice. Where music is he is, so make a joyful noise unto the Lord!

I know that some people find it problematic to equate the Greek and Roman deities but there’s absolutely no basis for distinguishing between Bacchus and Dionysos. First off there isn’t even a difference in names since Bacchus is just the Latinized form of the Greek Bakchos, which itself is thought to derive from the Lydian Baki, which we find designating both the God and his ecstatic worshipers. This means that the name goes back to the 7th century B.C.E. and is found in all sorts of words for intoxication and ritual madness well before the Classical period.

Secondly, and most significantly, the identification of the two isn’t a case of casual interpretatio graeca whereby an indigenous and originally distinct deity is recognized as possessing similar traits and therefore is claimed to be the same God just with a locally appropriate form. That process may have happened with Liber Pater, Fufluns, and related Italian deities but there was never an indigenous Bacchus. All of the sources from Livy on down—including inscriptions and the archaeological record—make it perfectly clear that he was a foreign import brought from the Hellenic mainland to Rome by way of Magna Graecia and Etruria.

Even once he had gained wide popular acceptance, Bacchus continued to be worshiped according to the ritus Graecus or with Hellenic ceremonial elements intact. In fact this was a big part of what contributed to the Senate’s antipathy for the Bacchanalia—fear of corruption and invasion, that the devotees of the God were setting up their own miniature religious “nation” in the heart of Rome itself. (And of course all that homosexuality and cross-dressing it encouraged.) They outlawed his worship and the keeping of his festivals except in the case of certain hereditary priesthoods and persecuted the Bacchic devotees, which resulted in the deaths of thousands.

This was the first and most widespread form of religious persecution in the ancient world until the Christians came on the scene, and it wasn’t until Julius Caesar repealed the tyrannical legislation that they were free to worship their God openly once more. Of course even during that time Bacchic and Dionysiac cults were plentiful in Italy and Rome, as we can see from things like the records of cult associations, the Villa of the Mysteries at Pompeii, the preponderance of funerary and symposiatic art reflecting his motifs, and the abundance of literary and poetic references to him. They just had to get permission from the Senate and maintain a polite and civilized façade. Caesar’s repeal of the legislation merely ended the appearance and pretense of illicitness surrounding these cults, which nevertheless earns him a special place in my affections.

But really if one has any doubt concerning the identity of Bacchus and Dionysos they need only consult the Latin poets and historians of that period, all of whom were quite certain that they were dealing with the same God—and who are we to argue with them? Or go a little further back and you’ll find Sophokles praising Dionysos as the “Lord of all Italy” and Plato talking about the famous Dionysian festivals celebrated in Magna Graecia. His cult flourished especially in the Apulian countryside, and Southern Italy and Sicily more generally, which is interesting because those regions are exactly where you find Tarantism and related ecstatic cults nearly a thousand years after the fall of the Western Roman Empire, with only a thin and transparently artificial Christian veneer on them. Clearly once he was established there the roots of this God have run deep in the Italian soil and consciousness.

I am totally opposed to the institution of Sharia law because it is totally opposed to me in its condemnation of my Gods, their worship and many of the things associated with them such as sex, alcohol, dance and music. In fact Islam represents everything that is antithetical to the Dionysian way of life. If a Moslem wishes to adhere to that system of belief and law himself it is no concern of mine, but I’ll fight to the bloody end if he gets it in his head to try and coerce me into doing likewise.

Now the burka is a different matter entirely. As an advocate of absolute individual freedom – liberty, after all, comes from the Latin name of my God, Liber Pater – I believe that a Moslem woman has every right to dress in whatever way she finds most suitable. If she chooses to wear the burka as an expression of modesty, fidelity to her husband and respect for her God and her people’s traditions then she has my full blessing. I may find it ugly, repressive and extremely uncomfortable to wear but that’s why you’ll never find me wearing one! If she feels differently, why should I care? So, on those grounds I am totally opposed to the recent efforts in France and other European nations to ban the wearing of this garment, which I consider hypocritical, tyrannical and just plain idiotic since it plays into the Jihadis hands. However I’m well aware that in many parts of the world the wearing of the burka isn’t a choice the woman gets to make herself. Or rather she does get to choose – between covering herself from head to toe in heavy, hot fabric or face insults, ostracism, abuse, rape and sometimes even murder.

I find that extremely reprehensible, surpassed only by the infantile excuses the men use to justify their barbaric and disgusting treatment of women. “They must dress this way to ensure men are not inflamed with lust.” Well, where’s your decency and self-control, you weak hypocrites!?! The truly temperate and pious man ought to be able to pass a naked woman in the street without a single carnal thought entering his mind and distracting him from loving communion with his God. “It’s against Allah’s wishes!” If Allah is the creator of all that is then certainly he is responsible for feminine beauty and sexual longing. Why should he have given women clitorises if he didn’t want them to be used? Why create things like flowers and rainbows and pretty faces if beauty wasn’t meant to be appreciated for its own sake? “But the wife belongs to her husband!” No human is a commodity to be bought, sold and owned outright. She is a human, not a precious vase or a camel! And so on and so forth.

Well, that depends. I won’t participate in an observance that I feel brings about ritual impurity or which requires the espousal of beliefs that are contrary to mine or which I find deeply offensive. I will not, as an example, deny the existence of my Gods, seek atonement for sins I don’t believe in, permit others to pray for me or attempt to spiritually “heal” or “deliver” me – nor do I feel the need to participate in any kind of vague, watered down, ecumenical service. But on the other hand I’ve proudly stood by others as they offered sacrifice to their Gods even though they weren’t my Gods, I’ve marched in a Catholic procession through the streets at night, and been witness to many beautiful and touching displays of religious sentiment. I think that we can learn a lot about what makes good ritual by exposing ourselves to the practices of others, since it is fundamentally an art form whose essential components cut across cultural and ideological divides. And as a polytheist I affirm the reality of all divinities and believe they are worthy of our respect and worship, even if I tend to limit my cultic activity to only a handful of them. My Gods are not jealous and have no problem with me honoring the rest of their compatriots.

Oh Gods no, I hate the spotlight and having attention focused on me! I think anyone doing public ritual should have at least some familiarity with theater to learn how to navigate space, carry themselves, project and emote, etc but I do much better behind the curtain.

The ancients were not psychotic bullies who believed that you had to bribe or threaten people into loving the Gods. The Gods simply were and those who acknowledged them reaped the benefits of communion with the divine while those who didn’t deprived themselves of such blessings.

While the soul is judged after death in both Greek and Egyptian thought, with our good and evil deeds weighed in a balance, “belief” doesn’t really enter into the equation. There is punishment for our wickedness, but it is commensurate with our actions – not an excruciating torment from which there is no hope of escape.

Once we have atoned for our wrongdoing we either go on to our posthumous abode – Haides for most, the Isles of the Blest for a few or Tartaros for an even smaller number – or else, according to the Orphics and Pythagoreans at least, we are born again on earth in order to improve our future lot. But you have to be exceptionally evil to end up in Tartaros – Sisyphos, Tantalos, or Lykourgos level evil. Or in terms most will understand: Hitler, Dahmer or Phelps.

Religion is the primary focus of my life, to the point where scarcely any part of who I am, what I do or how I think about things remains untouched by it. I can’t take a stroll through a park without feeling the presence of the Nymphai and other nature-spirits. I can’t watch a movie or listen to music without my mind being flooded by religious imagery and thoughts. When I hear about contemporary events I flash back to what I’ve read of history and how the ancients dealt with similar matters. I strive to have my every act reflect the greater glory of my Gods and conduct myself with piety, righteousness, gentleness and consciousness of the delicate balance that preserves all life on this planet.

On the other hand I believe that intelligence is a divinely given faculty and that we honor the Gods most when we use our brains to the best of our ability. So while I consider the traditional teachings of Classical antiquity to be a sound guide through the confusing and dangerous labyrinth of life, I have no problem parting ways with them when I feel that our ancestors were in error or a situation requires a more nuanced approach.

As an example, slavery was widely practiced in the ancient world, and though some intellectuals (especially among the Stoics) abhorred it they never got around to abolishing the institution entirely and probably couldn’t have with their level of technological advancement. (We moderns only succeeded in doing so after the industrial revolution was well underway.) I have no problem condemning slavery and saying that we’re much better off now without it. Ditto the misogyny and xenophobia that one all-too-frequently encounters in ancient writings.

So, if you want my take on these issues as a contemporary Dionysian, here they are: it is my adamant conviction that there ought to be plenty of abortion and gay marriage for those who want it and none for those who don’t.

Oh, he definitely has that function and I think one of the reasons may be that he is partly human himself and so may understand us a little better than his fellow Gods—what makes us tick, what gets our attention—allowing him to slip through our defenses and awaken us to the wider world around us. Or maybe not. What do I know?

I know he is a very generous God who loves his family; his myths are filled with accounts of him coming to the aid of other Olympians, raising mortals up to divine status, building temples, introducing cults and serving other Gods in a priestly capacity. That’s a pretty extraordinary thing when you think about it; most Greek Gods are eager to elevate their own dignity and thus are not inclined to humble themselves in the service of others.

So really what a lot of people recount today—Dionysos coming into their lives merely to turn them over to another deity—is sort of an extension of that ancient tradition.

Plus, well, Dionysos is sexy, exciting, mysterious, dangerous, etc. so it’s not a huge surprise that he’s great at getting our attention.