Studying is accomplishing something beside filling my mind with knowledge. It's helping me to sort out things and figure out what I want and where I'm going. I still struggle to read the Norse myths. In fact, I haven't been able to finish one yet. I tried reading the sagas but got bored quickly. After reading up on Odin/Woden, I can't say I'm a fan. And yet there are aspects of the Northern religion that do appeal to me more than the Greeks.
Which brings me to the title: why do I need to look through this from that perspective? Mostly because it's what the cards told me to do. To see things in their simplicity and view them as I did when I was 9. So I've been doing a lot of thinking about that time frame.
When I was 9, I was devouring Edith Hamilton's book on Mythology. I would check it out several times a year. I also was reading anything I could find in the adult section concerning Greece or Rome...anything to read more about the Greek gods. Because I had been taught that they never existed, but were only false gods, I remember wishing they really did exist so I could worship them. Of course, the fear of everlasting hellfire would have kept me from that option even if I thought they had existed (which they really did, of course.) So my perspective at that age would have been to worship them without any real notion of how to do it "correctly." I know that many Hellenic polytheists teach that the Greek path is one of orthopraxy, rather than orthodoxy. So they would have disagreed with 9 year-old me about just how to do it. I think I would have lit candles, prayed to their statues and offered up food items or drink or something along those lines. I wouldn't have worried so much about the correct way to hold my arms or whether I was spiffy clean or not. Purification wouldn't have meant anything to me at all. I was 9, for pete's sake.
Also, if I found something in another pantheon, I would have just added it to my group of gods to worship. I wouldn't have thought I had to keep everything separate and in its own practice. If I thought witchcraft was something I needed to do, I would have just started doing it; reading up on it, of course, but I would have just added that to my list of things that made me who I am. Instead of now when I worry over which thing is the most "correct" and which things would be in conflict.
I think that's what the cards meant. Just throw out everything that tells me I can't do something and do it anyway. Just like a 9 year-old would. Study, of course, and learn but don't let the rules obstruct me. Who made up the rules anyway? Just other humans. Like me.
And since I was looking at it from a 9 year old, I realized that I "like" the Greeks better than the Norse/Anglo Saxon gods. I love their mythologies better. But there are aspects of the Norse/Anglo Saxon culture that I like better. And a few of the gods are pretty cool there while a few of the Greeks I have a hard time with. I like the witchcraft of the Norse/Anglo Saxon path. And the Nature focus of the Druids.
So I think having it all is the right path for me. Or having those parts of it that work for me, at least.
I was on the right track after all.
Which brings me to the title: why do I need to look through this from that perspective? Mostly because it's what the cards told me to do. To see things in their simplicity and view them as I did when I was 9. So I've been doing a lot of thinking about that time frame.
When I was 9, I was devouring Edith Hamilton's book on Mythology. I would check it out several times a year. I also was reading anything I could find in the adult section concerning Greece or Rome...anything to read more about the Greek gods. Because I had been taught that they never existed, but were only false gods, I remember wishing they really did exist so I could worship them. Of course, the fear of everlasting hellfire would have kept me from that option even if I thought they had existed (which they really did, of course.) So my perspective at that age would have been to worship them without any real notion of how to do it "correctly." I know that many Hellenic polytheists teach that the Greek path is one of orthopraxy, rather than orthodoxy. So they would have disagreed with 9 year-old me about just how to do it. I think I would have lit candles, prayed to their statues and offered up food items or drink or something along those lines. I wouldn't have worried so much about the correct way to hold my arms or whether I was spiffy clean or not. Purification wouldn't have meant anything to me at all. I was 9, for pete's sake.
Also, if I found something in another pantheon, I would have just added it to my group of gods to worship. I wouldn't have thought I had to keep everything separate and in its own practice. If I thought witchcraft was something I needed to do, I would have just started doing it; reading up on it, of course, but I would have just added that to my list of things that made me who I am. Instead of now when I worry over which thing is the most "correct" and which things would be in conflict.
I think that's what the cards meant. Just throw out everything that tells me I can't do something and do it anyway. Just like a 9 year-old would. Study, of course, and learn but don't let the rules obstruct me. Who made up the rules anyway? Just other humans. Like me.
And since I was looking at it from a 9 year old, I realized that I "like" the Greeks better than the Norse/Anglo Saxon gods. I love their mythologies better. But there are aspects of the Norse/Anglo Saxon culture that I like better. And a few of the gods are pretty cool there while a few of the Greeks I have a hard time with. I like the witchcraft of the Norse/Anglo Saxon path. And the Nature focus of the Druids.
So I think having it all is the right path for me. Or having those parts of it that work for me, at least.
I was on the right track after all.
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