Bulk exposition upon paganism

There's plenty of Orphic and Neo-platonic material still around. There's probably enough written records of Roman civic practice that combined with the iguvine tablets and the balls to do something about it you could reconstruct that practice in a meaningful way.

Most pagans are pretty focused on finding reasons you can't do things. It's an understandable backlash against the tide of utter shit published for an entirely uncritical audience from the 60s-90s but it means if you want to find anything that will motivate you to go instead of stop you need to turn to primary and academic sources rather than the "pagan community".

Sorry, don't know how coherent or useful this will be to you.

We have the mythology, a context for viewing the world, we have descriptions and an example of ritual instructions.

Considering how paganism operates I don't know what more could be asked than an example of specific ritual instructions. Especially when it's derived from the native agrarian religion (rather than a third hand description of Italians attempting Greek ritual).

You aren't ever going to get a holy book saying -this is the one immutable and correct way to do religion-. I know there are people who think saying paganism is nature worship is a simplification, but at it's core it is about mans religious response to his environment.

I think it is possible to understand the Greeks if you read broadly enough. I think the most important is understanding the local cults but reading about the Orphic and Neoplatonic conceptions of religion are useful to get an idea how wide the outer limits of "acceptable" understanding were.

On the Italian side a little reading on Etrusca Disciplina and the myth of Numa Pompilius is I think instructive.

The main advantage we have over previous generations is our ability to access basicly all the information man has collected, even if none of these things are gone into in depth they illustrate in their difference the futility of finding the indisputably correct way to think about or practice paganism.

All we can do is learn as much as we can so when we speak on the gods and attempt to interpret their signs we aren't coming from a place of ignorance.

As to the Egyptians, unfortunately they are outside of my wheelhouse (though I am fascinated by the Greco Egyptian magical papyri). I can't help but feel that the focus of Egyptian religion on the afterlife makes it in some way materially different from classical paganisms.

Would Hermeticism also fall into the realm of Greco-Egyptian mythology or is that too far removed?

A Greco-Egyptian mythology would be the wrong term to use. The papyri are a drawing together of Egyptian, Greek, Jewish and Gnostic sources, though they are part of the same milieu that gave birth to the Hermeticism. So I guess you could speak of a Greco-Egyptian metaphysics (though solely in relation to the performance of the kind of magic found in the papyri).

At best there are hints to possible linkages (Hermes the god turning up often, though not as the thrice great as far as I'm aware). If you are interested I recommend Betz's Greek magical papyri in Translation (which if you have access to a university library should be available there, though it is just texts of the papyri themselves and not much in the way of commentary) and Skinner's Techniques of Greco-Egyptian Magic which is the only comprehensive academic text *I am aware of that deals with the papyri at this time.

My current working definition is

That which has power over man, and man is powerless to overturn.

Sometimes I'll say forces, sometimes entities, sometimes the ability to command devotion comes into it

Though I use devotion in place of a word I don't think exists what would cover the concepts of worship, devotion and submission, without being any of them... a word I imagine philosophers would hate and wrestle into something more specific, if it existed.

Maybe "capable of causing rapture" would be a better marker that talking about worship or devotion. I think the important thing about gods, why they matter to humans, is their ability to *incite religious rapture, ecstasy or terror.

So I guess I'd say

Gods are forces or entities more powerful than man, unable to be overturned by man, that *incite religious rapture.

I don't think the gods are all one kind of entity, one class of being, if that is what you were asking, even for the classical pagans. Especially at the level of local cult which is where the Olympian pantheon eventually arose from.

Rites of Artemis don't require a belief that Athena is the same kind of thing... except at the level of being an inescapable power.

Take it for what it's worth. Clearly I'm still puzzling it out. I'm painfully aware that I'm early on *in my path.

I guess it's a question of gods and lesser beings, or Gods and gods (and once you get below the level of inescapable power that incites rapture, I think it becomes more coherent to talk of "beings" as a generalisation).

There are a lot of angles to attack this from so forgive me if it's not structured optimality.

The most obvious way (it seems to me) that something that humans could destroy could be a god, is to view it through the lens of (a pseudo) platonic idealism. Once a concept exists, once a metaphor exists, then it exists and even if you destroy the object or situation that gave rise to it, it can still be employed conceptually or metaphoricly, it can still occupy a place in the collective unconsciousness (if you find that a useful concept).

An example I sometimes consider is the idea of a "god of the breaking rock". A god whose material existence/manifestation lasts only between the moment the rock is shattered and the time it takes the pieces to come to rest. but the concept of the god of the breaking rock exists as long as it's in someone's head... and possibly as long as there is a being capable of being effected by the breaking rock.

My problem with treating every potential god, or every god the ancients paid tribute to as on par with divinity/deity of the Olympian gods (as a convenient example) is that there are some things that are clearly not gods.

Systems of government for example, the gods smiled and frowned equally on democracies, oligarchies and dictatorships.

So if not everything is a god this leaves us with 3 options (or at least 3 interpretations that I think work) when dealing with the (ancient) deification of things that man can (on the face of it) overcome.

The first is magic. Which I think interlinks (at least at the point where the rubber meets the road) with your idea of "finding of the sacred". Someone with spiritual authority (The "mana" of the New Zealand Maori, charisma, wisdom, the madness of being touched by the gods, or in some other way marked as special) "finds the sacred" in a place or thing, perceives it's spiritual power that in some way allows it to affect the fate of people in the community beyond what it's appearance/ material conditions would suggest. There are a million ways this could manifest itself. It's magic.

The next is hope/hopelessness, just a feeling of having no control. A god of plumbing makes sense if you have no ability (or limited ability) to fix the pipes. If the inescapable powers of the sea, or war, or love, can be placated by correct offerings or ritual actions, then if you deify plumbing it becomes possible to placate it through ritual action. Deification for the purpose of instrumentalisation.

A third possibility is Numina, the idea that a place or thing has been touched, or nodded at, by a god and this imbues it with divinity.

I really like Edward Anwyl mythopoetic explanation for the origin of animism:

Prehistoric man... Knowing from the experience of dreams that he himself seemed able to wander away from himself, he thought in course of time that other living things were somehow double, and the world around him came to be occupied, not merely with things that were alive, but with other selves of these things, that could remain in them or leave them at will. - Celtic Religion in Pre-Christian Times

Maybe in this there is another way to attack the problem.

As an aside I'd see Athena as a goddess of civilisation or society, something that cannot help but arise when a certain amount of humans congregate for an extended period. Her benevolent character in the classical period I think is a product of the constant warfare between citystates (which made civilisation, society, the city, absolutely necessary for survival) and the development of the useful arts and technology's the citystate gave rise to. In the modern world she is no longer so unambiguous a figure.

Notes on workplace spirituality

PS hey guys I know I'm johnny-come-lately to last page's discussion but like, a big chunk of what we celebrate and find amusing here is basically these absurd things that were created by capitalist interests trying very hard to get people to buy and consume products by tickling our brains just right.  the stuff that is really interesting to me personally is the degenerate sort of creations that are the product of failures in this endeavor, like bubsy or bizarre pirate pokemon games or whatever that inspire uncanny fascination rather than consumer impulse.  thecatamites aptly has described these things as cargo cult projects, efforts to ape the qualities of financially successful franchizes by imitating or outright stealing some of their signifiers and mashing them together into something grotesque.  but this inherent grotesqueness can be found in anything from those eras that tried hard enough to be taken seriously as a saleable commodity, but fundamentally failed somehow; it is the mutagenic quality of memes manifested in the corners of consumer culture.

it's intriguing because this phenomenon is by its nature ethically and artistically bankrupt, and yet the effort to capitalize on it is somehow repugnant.  I think it's because we sort of got this weirdness despite the intentions of salesmen, not because of them. this aesthetic was almost anti-commodity, but now some salesmen are trying to make it into a regular consumer product, and I guess I can't help but find that kinda gross. -neuopath

RE: Capitalist cultural backwash.

I have an interest in the "workplace spirituality" movement, which evolved as a distinct entity in the 20's, basicly a spiritual justification for capitalist myths as it jettisoned it's protestant nursemaid. Mostly taking the form of little catch phrases promoting "just world" idealism, positive thinking and the virtues of hard work. Things like "The man who is hauling the oars has no time to rock the boat" "weather you think you can or think you can't, you're right" etc.

The other form early manifestations of it took (based on old corporate diaries I've studied) Is long winded missives on things like salesmanship, the details of warehousing, how people should go about their jobs etc. that are filled with unspoken assumptions culled from the "business wisdom" in the form of these proverbs they've accrued.

It's growth paralleled the growth of the "self-help" genre, (the lasting impact of the popularity and influence of the 1849 book "Self Help" in Japan would be interesting to investigate).

In the 70's it started mixing with the "human potential" movement, which is basicly the love-child of scientology and the new age movement. You can become highly effective, nay, superhuman... and what better way to use your superhuman powers but to climb to the top of the bussiness world and reap mad profit. EST is a good early example of this.

As an aside that will probably interest people here the precursor to team building exercises was something called the "new games" movement, a project to create "games" with no winners or losers that had it's genesis inthe late 60's.

Somewhere in this mix "workplace spirituality" like other subcultures and spiritual movements became commodified (not that it was ever something good or worthy but I'd argue it began as a genuine effort amongst the ownership and management classes to come up with a metaphysical justification for capitalism, through the amassing of anecdotes and just so sayings). The interesting thing about this (as opposed to the commodification of say, punk, or buddhism in the west) is that there is absolutely nothing in workplace spirituality that resists this commodification, since it's entire essence is in dealing with how the universe justifies capitalism.

This is allowed it to grow into a truly aestheticly repugnant monstrosity, hollow to it's core, doing everything possible to present a smiling attractive face that appeals to "everyone" (presents nothing disagreeable to the mainstream, doing whatever it thinks will ingratiate you and offering you the carrot of success within mainstream society if you earnestly adopt it's precepts.) that it's managed to create something that no one actually wants in a way that nothing else parallels in the west (though it's easy to imagine creations similarly lacking in appeal springing up through the process of soviet bureaucracy).

My interest in the topic was sprung when I went into a McDonalds and found the wall covered in motivational quotes, flatscreen TVs playing bland top 20 pop videos, an environment so morally antiseptic, so devoid of the controversial,  there could arise no objection, no nagging doubt, about getting your kid that happy meal with the transformers toy.