Working with two pantheons

In a little section called “Spiritual Overinsurance,” Jonathan Kirsch (God Against the Gods) writes:

“Thus, for example, a pagan might be a devotee of the stately old gods of Rome and Greece whom Homer calls ‘the Olympians’ -- Apollo and Zeus, Aphrodite and Athena -- and at the very same time, a worshipper of the Syrian goddess known as the Great Mother, the Persian god called Mithra or the newfangled cult that conjoined the Egyptian goddess Isis and a freshly minted god called Serapis, a conflation of two older Eygptian deities. One famous pagan called Praetextatus, a contemporary of both Constantine and Julian, is described on his epitaph as a proud collector of pagan priesthoods and initiations of all kinds: ‘high priest of Vesta, high priest of the sun, a priest of Hercules, an initiate of the mysteries of Dionysos and Eleusis, priest and temple guardian in the mystery of Cybele, and Father in the mystery of Mithras.’ It says as much about paganism, as about Praetextatus that he used to joke with the pople that ‘he might be tempted to become a Christian by the prospect of being Bishop of Rome.’

“So welcoming was polytheism that even the holiest figures of monotheism were recruited into Greco-Roman paganism. One emperor . . . adorned his private chapel with ‘statues of Abraham, of Orpheus, of Apollonius, and of Christ,’ writes Edward Gibbon of Alexander Severus (208-235) . . . .

“Even Yahweh, regarded by strict monotheists who wrote the bible as the one and only god, was made over into the deity called Iao and given a place among the many gods and goddesses of paganism. . . . [T]hey wanted to make sure that they did not forfeit the blessing of the right god by making sure to worship all gods -- a practice that historian Robin Lane Fox describes as “spiritual over-insurance. . . .

“’Whilst all nations and kingdoms honor their respective god, the Romans respect the gods of all the others, just as their power and authority have reached the compass of the whole world,’ boasts the pagan orator Caecillus. ‘They search out everywhere these foreign gods, and adopt them for their own; nay, they even erected altars to unknown gods.”

Normally, I enjoy Jonathan Kirsch, but God Against the Gods is really just a popular history of the transition from paganism to Christianity in the Roman empire. I read it in an evening, and didn’t see anything that I didn’t already know, or that any reasonably well-informed lay person wouldn’t already know. I’d recommend it primarily to people who already know that the triumph of Christianity was largely the result of politics, but who are bit fuzzy on the details.

The passage quoted above caught my eye for a very personal reason. I’m becoming increasingly annoyed by pagans and neopagans both who talk about “working with more than one pantheon.” I didn’t mind at first, but after a year of hearing it everywhere, it’s like a kind of water torture.

Who thought up this silliness, anyway? It sounds like Llewellyn Press nonsense to me. First, I don’t like the implicit idea that being a pagan involves working with a pantheon. It sounds like something from wicca and magic circles. I don’t work with my gods; I fulfill my duty by according them appropriate honor. Secondly, I’m not particularly fond of the implicit assumption that the gods can be neatly divided into discrete cultural packages. I guess some people suppose that gods are a consumer package like any other commodity -- you do a bit of comparison shopping, then choose the style you want (but be careful that they go with the 9-piece living room suite from Sears, and make sure you can afford the payments).

The older I get, the more I go back to the core set of beliefs I already had when I was 14, and the more I’m prepared to ignore all the fluff I’ve learned to tolerate since then. I think of myself as a polytheist. I have my own set of preferred personal and family gods, who happen to be Norse. But I don’t deny the existence of the others. In fact, I think a good case can be made that the Christian god and the Greek and Roman gods are the appropriate civic and cultural gods of America. If I occasionally offer a pinch of cornmeal to Tonantzin as Queen of the Americas, or a pinch of incense to Hermes as a patron of lawyers (and thieves), I don’t see that I’ve given offense to my family gods, and I certainly don’t think of myself as “working with more than one pantheon.”

In fine, it seems to me that all the hand-wringing on this subject is really only possible among people who aren’t polytheists in the traditional sense of the word, people who have some kind of new-agey “all the gods are one” philosophy. If you accept, as I do, the proposition that each of the gods is a distinct being, it’s only a short step to “spiritual over-insurance.”

Founding Rome

Royal Roman ruins go back to age of myth

Newfound palace dates back to city’s legendary origin

ROME - Legend has it that Rome was founded in 753 B.C. by Romulus and Remus, the twin sons of Mars, the god of war, who were suckled as infants by a she-wolf in the woods. Now, archaeologists believe they have found evidence that at least the time frame for that tale may be true: Traces of a royal palace discovered in the Roman Forum have been dated to roughly the period of the eternal city’s legendary foundation.

https://www.msn.com/

By coincidence, tomorrow is the Quirinalia, a Roman festival honoring Quirinus, a Sabine god who came to be identified with Romulus.

Progress is a pipe dream

I saved this piece for myself but now I don't remember where I found it, or if indeed the text here is quoted from Richard Reese.

Only poets can save us now

by Richard Reese

The story of progress - that each generation is better than the one before it is about 200 years old. These 200 years have been the most tumultuous and destructive years in the history of the planet. In fact, the history of civilization is not a story of progress, but a story of continuous decline.

The Christian tradition begins in the Garden of Eden of the hunters and gatherers. The Fall symbolizes the dawn of civilization. Yahweh, a Semitic storm god, could see that farming was destroying Creation. For much of the Old Testament, he urges his Chosen People to destroy the hideous cities of the defilers of the Earth. But the farmers beat the nomads, and the Christian prophets tell us that we are now sitting in the shadows of an onrushing Armageddon.

In the Norse myths, it’s the same cycle. The human gods conquer the powerful forces of nature, rule for a while, then are destroyed by the revenge of nature at the battle of Ragnarok. The ancient Greeks saw human decline as a series of historic ages. Hesiod writes of the Golden Age: “They lived like gods, free from worry and fatigue; old age did not afflict them; they rejoiced in continual festivity.” This was followed by the Silver Age, a matriarchal era of agriculture, when men obeyed their mothers. This was followed by the Bronze Age, a patriarchal era of war : “Their pitiless hearts were as hard as steel; their might was untamable, their arms invincible.” This was followed by the Iron Age, a time “when men respect neither their vows, nor justice, nor virtue.”

Compare Here

Oct. 20, 2019: I find online a composition with the same title and apparently written by the same author, but the content is very different.

• Richard Adrian Reese, Only the Poets can Save us Now (n.d.), in Aisling No. 25 (Bealtaine 1999), at Aislingmagazine.com.