the historicity of untying the gods from their genealogies

i did a bit of research tonight(edited)
which is encoraging me that i am on the right path
that there's not really much greek figurative pottery that pre-dates homer
PantaRhei - Today at 3:59 AM
How does that tie into what you're doing?
PantaRhei - Today at 4:00 AM
Pre-Homeric stuff is fascinating. I'm a lot more interested in the archaic, pre-Olympian, and tribal forms of greek religion than I am with the Olympians and Classical Greek religion
oblivion - Today at 4:02 AM
basically i'm looking at the historicity of untying the gods from their genealogies
which has been a long term research project... advancing in fits and starts
PantaRhei - Today at 4:02 AM
Untying the gods from their genealogies?
oblivion - Today at 4:03 AM
the whole construct of the olympian pantheon
where all the gods are a family and so this myth and that myth is needed, in an attempt to build a rationalised religion
moreover a family with a fixed relationship to each other
i'm not even convinced all the gods are the same kind of creature
just that they share a similar relationship to man
PantaRhei - Today at 4:06 AM
Yeah, I see
I think I broadly agree
This is why I find the archaic stuff that much more interesting, it isn't this neat rational religion
It's a big disgusting mess of familial spirits, household deities, tribal gods and localised custom
That was only later structuralised into a "civilised" religion of city-state and culture
oblivion - Today at 4:08 AM
i think Ernest Westlake felt it... which is why the order of woodcraft chivalry modelled their ideal of dionysian worship on Euripides...
PantaRhei - Today at 4:08 AM
When I talk about reviving the witch cult, it's reaching back to that archaic, even prehistorical past, to retrieve that messy, unpredictable, spontaneuous and living connection to the spirit world(edited)
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Once you've reduced your Gods down to moral principles or cultural archetypes or (god forbid) Qabalistic metaphors, you've lost your connection to the living world of spirit
Or at least, you've degraded it
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oblivion - Today at 4:12 AM
yeah... two of my principles are; 'paganism is man's spiritual response to his environment' and 'religion is man's duty to the sacred'

You feel something then respond to it
PantaRhei - Today at 4:14 AM
That makes sense to me. Religion is a loaded term, as is "paganism", religion because it conjures up ideas of organised worship and moralising, and paganism because it's essentially the language of the enemy, which I guess can be reclaimed, or abandoned, it doesn't matter
But paganism being defined as our immediate spiritual response to the environment we're in is good
oblivion - Today at 4:15 AM
expecting the gods to dictate morality seems like an easy way  to miss a lot of important aspects of their character...

Beyond America

We are living at the end of America, The end of American influence, The end of American hegemony.
I am an artist of my time, reaching toward the post-American future.
The pagan revival, for all it's ambiguity, for all the hostility with which it is met, for all it's lack of underlying sales pitch, represents and authentic yearning over which America has exerted no influence.
In the world of no future all futures are possible, they just require advocates to endure the embarrassment of asking for them.

existentialist polytheism and the gods thought.

Right but your thoughts about the light aren't the light

Just as your notions about what Apollo is are not Apollo

I have stolen your words and now they are mine

What are the limits of the imagination?

Humans have infinate potential for growth
Any limit you want to put on them someone will find a way to break

If we can sense it, it is in our senses, anything we imagine is sensed somewhat
But if you include the subconcious
The rules are changed
There are things we can't conciously sense

What is the border of imagination and reality?
Half the world is subjective, where is the border between the subjective and the material?

It's probably a hill

Or a stream

Or a green and burning tree

Maybe it is wrong to apply a name to such a thing

contemporary polythiestic devotion

Seems like a problem of metaphysics. You need a metaphysical framework that addresses the contemporary situation.
And it can be found within polytheism. Some things that the pre-christian faiths of Europe identified are vital, still live within the landscape, and the supplanting religions have failed to address them (and may be unable to address them due to the metaphysical foundations of these new religions).
Central to polytheism is that the gods exist.
Understanding how to approach them as a contemporary devotee can't be dealt with through treating the gods, or an amalgam of deities like the 'higher truth' in a 12 step program, some benign and characterless force that's there to be an object of strength for you you, or by the bland reconstruction of some arbitrary point in the history of whatever pagan tradition you are following, which is then the -one true way-. It requires an understanding of the gods, and how people understood them throughout history, from prehistory, the classical era, late antiquity, the renaissance, enlightenment, modernity, and now*.
The other part of the equation is the human. The nature of man hasn't changed, and millennium of attempting to impose upon him what is alien to him falls away so, so easily. Which is why we return to the gods. That said, our understanding what man -is- has changed, vastly. Things which the odd philosopher 2500 years ago only guessed at, that man came from animals, are now known to be true. Add dozens of other revelations about how man thinks, how our society is organised effects us, and all kinds of other stuff, and it calls for a certain iconoclasm against things like myths of origin that became cemented with the event of writing, for example.
But with all this said, there are metaphysical questions, which fall into the realm of religious mysteries, that exert a heavy influence on how a religion exists in the world. And since they are mysteries they are unanswerable by reason. So there will always be an array of answers presented. Things like the origins of the soul, and what happens after death, that can only be -finally- resolved by magical proofs. In practice they will be (most productively) shaped by the goals of the religion, or (less productively) stumbled into, and will be arrived at either personally, or by taking the word of some leader.
*yes, eras of various traditions vary, the order in the example applies specifically to the classical religions, i.e. Greek and Roman.