myrtles-and-blood

[myrtles-and-blood]

Lord Lucifer is beauty itself; but he's more than just aesthetic beauty. He is the beauty of knowledge. He is the beauty of finding an answer that has oftentimes eluded you. He is the beauty of intuition ringing true. He is the very definition of knowledge will set you free.

There is something so sublime about him; that he is willing to be defamed and defrauded by countless others all to break our chains. To allow us to see that we are not immune from propaganda. We are not immune to have our feelings manipulated; only when you accept that can you truly begin to see.

Lord Lucifer is a black flame; though his beauty is certainly angelic he is also ruler of Hell. Fire can cleanse and fire can purify...but it can also reduce you to cinders. I know that while Lord Lucifer may not mince his words at times that he truly loves me and believes in what I'm capable of even when I don't. He believes in all of us, especially when we have no belief left for ourselves.

[myrtles-and-blood]

Had a lovely conversation with Lucifer just now after a period of not talking at all. I think my practice with him will be slightly different, but for the better. I am glad I got to meet him.

I won't be getting in the details since I want to keep it personal, just wanted to be thankful for his presence and his advice.

[myrtles-and-blood]

praise lord poseidon! we thank thee for your protection. great earth-shaker, master of the seas, dark-haired and trident wielding god! your generosity knows no bounds. we are thankful to be surrounded by your lustrous ocean.

(i was in the tsunami warning area last night and luckily our islands weren’t too affected)

[myrtles-and-blood]

The waxing and waning of spiritual feelings

I'd like to address an experience that is widespread in polytheism (and probably other spiritual traditions) yet isn't talked about very often; the experience of oscillating between periods intense religious fervor then switching to having almost no religious feelings at all.

When this first happened to me years ago at the beginning of my practice I thought I must be doing something wrong. Have the gods abandoned me? Am I unworthy? Were my previous feelings all just a delusion and now it's wearing off? It was vexing and I wasn't sure what to make of it.

Now that I've been doing this for a few years I know what it is and can set aside my worries; I'm not doing anything wrong, the gods haven't abandoned me, the simple fact is that religious feelings wax and wane in intensity just like the seasons or the cycles of the moon.

I'll have a month or two where I can't stop thinking about the gods. I'm listening to religious music, I'm reading religious books and in all of my rituals I feel a deep connection to the divine, then suddenly it's like the total opposite; I'm not thinking about it at all and I feel like I have to force myself to do the bare minimum in my rituals.

For me it seems to be highly correlated to the changing of the seasons; I tend to feel much more religiously enthusiastic when spring is changing to summer, when the leaves first fall or when winter is setting in, then I get my spiritual lows at the peak of summer and winter. It makes sense to me that times of change inspire feelings of religious devotion in me, I can see the action of the gods more clearly in these times of year.

If you've experienced this I only have this advice: don't be hard on yourself, try to just do your basic rituals as a matter of habit even if you aren't feeling it and rest assured that your feelings will return, the gods haven't gone anywhere. Before too long you'll be able to feel them again.

From speaking to other polytheists I've gathered that this is a common if not ubiquitous experience.

[myrtles-and-blood]

Zeus

[myrtles-and-blood]

Directory

Welcome! These are posts I made that I consider kinda cool, so I made a little place to have 'em.

This will continue to be edited with time.

Aphrodite

ESP — Plegarias a Afrodita

ESP/ENG — Prayer to Aphrodite

ENG — Offering for Aphrodite Aphrogeneia

ENG — Collage offering for Aphrodite

Ares

ENG — Offering for Ares

ENG — Offering for Ares

ESP/ENG — Prayer to Ares

Lucifer

ENG — Offering for Lucifer

ESP/ENG — Prayer to Lord Lucifer

ENG — Offering for Lucifer

ENG — Offering for Lucifer

ENG — Message Lucifer gave me once

Beelzebub

ENG — Offering for Beelzebub

ENG — Offering for Beelzebub

Other deities

ENG — PT.2 of deities doing mundane things (PT.1 is attached to it)

ENG — Offering for Apollon

ENG — Offering for Athena

ENG — Offering for Hermes

Other things

ENG — How do I communicate with my deities?

ENG — About Deity Worship/Work

[myrtles-and-blood]

Whilst it’s important to have a foundation which relies on the old practices of the ancients, the gods too understand that this is a new era, thus modernization is inescapable.

[myrtles-and-blood]

I lowkey think that we need to write more myths, not to erase the ones that we have and pass them off as ancient, but to continue using storytelling to show our interpretations of the gods and to spark discourse, out in a sociopolitical context and a religious one. The purpose of myth nowadays can not really be the same as it was in the Ancient World since our religion is no longer mainstream, but I think that gives us more leeway to use myth and poetry as a means to create useful discourse among modern polytheists

Note 1: if you’re going to write a myth, please learn about how the gods were perceived in the Ancient world to avoid falling into easy stereotypes and modern flanderisation. Be respectful. Myth is not just fanfiction

Note 2: please do not pass off any of the myths you write as ancient. I know some people will unfortunately try to do so

Note 3: this post is definitely not an excuse for me to eventually post my narrative hymns here, yeah, definitely not…

[myrtles-and-blood]

O sweet-lipped Aphrodite, mother of desire, foam-born Goddess. You wrought a lovely net of gossamer and gold, Where I lay with the ones I love. O Mother most precious, O most beautiful Deity. I beseech you - may winged Love visit me in His many forms. May my incense and words find thee, rising to the skies above.

português:

Ó dulcilábia Afrodite, mãe do desejo, espuma-gênita Deusa. Tu fiaste amável teia d'ouro iridescente. Onde descanso com aqueles que amo, reluzente. Ó Mãe mais preciosa, Ó mais bela Deidade. Busco-te - possa o Amor alado visitar-me em sua forma miríade. Possa meu incenso e prece achar-te, partindo do céu à abobade.

[myrtles-and-blood]

Apollo

God of light, sun, poetry, music, knowledge, healing, prophecy, plague, beauty, agriculture, order and archery

Offerings :

Bay leaf

Honey

Coffee

Lemon

Sunflowers

Marigolds

Cake

Pure water

Irises

Yellow candles

White candles

Gold candles

Sun water

Sun imagery

Dolphin imagery

Wolf imagery

Lion imagery

Musical instruments

Any form of divination

Statues of him

Statues of his sacred animals

Yellow saphire

Sunstone

Amber

Tigers eye

Bows and arrows

Bandaids

Gold jewellery

Devotional acts :

Learn first aid

Read

Listen to music

Go to a concert

Support lgbtq+

Make art of any form

Watch the sun rise

Practice divination

Self care / skincare

Sing or dance

Go for a walk

Learn archery

REMINDER you don't need to do any of these things to worship a deity, these are just suggestions, remember that if you don't want to or can't do any of this that it's totally ok !!

[myrtles-and-blood]

today's devotional collage for Apollon💛

[myrtles-and-blood]

hellenic polytheism: good resource posts from tumblr

tumblr should not be a one stop shop for information about hellenic polytheism! however, these are some amazing posts i've found that come with a wealth resources from across the site.

hellenic witch and magic reading list

ancient greek religion and hellenic polytheism: a reading guide

hellenism resources

hermes google drive

hellenic polytheism - free (and reliable) resources

added:

hellenic polytheism - free (and reliable) resources: updated

hellenic polytheism grimoire

would love to see if others have posts they suggest as well.

[myrtles-and-blood]

☤ For Hermes & Peitho ⚚

( based on Frank Dicksee's painting of Romeo & Juliet )

Made a painting for Lord Hermes & his wife Lady Peitho ( the goddess of Persuasion & Seduction , daughter of Ate ) , I've been thinking about them quite a bit lately and I wanted to give them something in return of sorts .

( Also sidenote I know the greenery looks really bad and the clothing folds are most likely very inaccurate but I tried and I hope that they like it :'] I did a good job with the wing I think )

( me & the five other people who know Lady Peitho are cheering rn /j/lh )

[myrtles-and-blood]

Lord Hermes

God of herds, travel, communication, language, luck, wealth, and thieves.

Epithets

Promakhos ~ The Champion

Hermeneutes ~ The Interpreter, The Translator

Trikephalos ~ Of Roads and Intersections (literally; "The Three Headed")

Propylaios ~ Of the Gateway

Pompaios ~ The Guide

Mechaniotes ~ The Trickster

Poneomenos ~ The Busy One

Oiopolos ~ The Shepard

Kharidotes ~ The Giver of Joy

Eriounes ~ The Luck Bringer

Dotor Eaon ~ The Giver of Good Things

Associations

Animals

Cattle, sheep, and other herd animals

Tortoise

Hares and rabbits

Snakes

Hawks

Roosters

Colors

Brown

Green

Gold

Orange

Yellow

Black

Plants

Crocus flowers

Strawberry trees

Snowdrop flowers

Offerings and Devotional Acts

Dice and playing cards

Feathers

Model ships, trains, and cars

Books

Keys

Maps and atlases

Tokens of luck (rabbits feet, four leaf clovers, coins, horseshoes, etc.)

Coins and other currency

Alcohol

Bull symbolism

Candles and incense

Learning a new language

Journaling

Traveling

Helping and being kind to strangers

Learning about other cultures

Playing strategy games (chess, checkers, go, etc.)

(credit to vibeswithrenai for the Hermes themed dividers!)

[myrtles-and-blood]

Hermes; God of herds, trade, thievery, athletics, messengers, travellers, diplomacy, language, astronomy and astrology. the personal messenger of Zeus and guide of the dead.

please enjoy the turtle i think hes cute, ive named him dave

[myrtles-and-blood]

honestly i think witchcraft online being so heavily politicised (specifically like, towards the left) online has lead to the very wild experience of pagan and witchcraft online (tiktok, tumblr, and reddit primarily (but pinterest and instagram too)) being such a vastly different experience than it is in real life

i very much straddle both online and offline spaces within pagan communities, and it is abundantly obvious in pagan circles when you meet someone who's absorbed all the information from aesthetic posts and tumblr memes and correspondence lists, because you ask them to examine their beliefs further and they just... can't.

like i had a convo with a witch friend once and they were talking about doing a spell sachet for calming, and mentioned they used lavender, and i went "oh that's cool! why did you pick that herb?" and the answer was "idk, google told me".

and this then bleeds into the political sphere, of young pagans and witches FULLY assume that everyone in these spaces is also left-wing (they're not), because that's somehow a pre-requisite to getting into the occult club.

like, there are anti-climate change witches, trump voter pagans, herbalists who believe in traditional family dynamics. there are so many nazis. witchcraft, and paganism, and everything vaguely in this area has such a diverse group of beliefs and people, and if you're not prepared for that it'll rock you.

it isn't only christians who fear-monger, and convert, and manipulate, and pressure people sexually, and that idea seems really pervasive in online spaces.

and if you're not aware that all those ideologies (and some extreme leftwing ones too) bleed into tumblr posts and people's opinions, that's how you accidentally end up on the pipeline to somewhere funky, because we abandoned critical thinking and discernment in favour of the aesthetic or whatever.

[myrtles-and-blood]

I didn't realize this needed to be said, but uhh

If you are a Nazi, you have no place in paganism.

(Or anywhere, actually 🙂)

And to clarify (since ya'll need that, apparently), that includes people who are transphobic, homophobic, pro-eugenics (i.e. social darwinism anti-vaxxer people), anti-immigrant, racist, etc.

Ya'll don't belong here, paganism is not a safe place for you, and I don't want you interacting with my blog.

No TERFS, no conservatives, none of it. Freedom and equality for all.