I'm sick so I'm sorry if this doesn't make sense, but I've been thinking about the nature of myths recently as I've been exploring hellenic polytheism.
For context: I'm ex-Mormon. I was raised in the church and, because of that, was taught biblical literalism but in, like, a more subtle way than most? I was raised believing that Adam & Eve and Noah's Ark, etc., were literally true, but that the story of Job specifically was not; I also always knew evolution and the Big Bang to be correct, despite there being a verse in the Doctrine & Covenants (a Mormon-specific religious book) where God apparently told Joseph Smith that the world is 6,000 years old- a passage I didn't know existed until my senior year of high school. I didn't realize I had believed in biblical literalism until I'd left the church, actually.
Now that I'm aware of it, it's a mindset I'm actively trying to combat while I explore Hellenic polytheism. It's definitely been a task to separate the nature of the Gods from their myths, as brutal as they often are. And it's something I've noticed within the community, too, which I think is interesting. It makes sense: Christianity, at least, has had a chokehold on much of the world for a long time, and so many of us have experienced literalism as our first interaction with any sort of holy text (though, of course, Greek myths as a whole aren't that) alongside our first experience with divinity as a wrathful God whose flaws are waved away, or ignored, or twisted into positive attributes. This also means that I'm trying to re-approach several deities with an open mind (Zeus, Hera, and Ares in particular, but many of them to some extent) while also trying to un-condition myself. I was already in the process of doing this, of course, but trying to figure out how to interact with a completely different pantheon has made that especially clear.
It extends to things like prayer and offerings, too. Prayers were very formulaic growing up, even though most of the time there wasn't a strict script to follow. There was always something you ask as part of the prayer, even if it's just 'please help me do better tomorrow' (alongside giving thanks, of course), so trying to craft a prayer without adding *everything* I'm used to including in makes it feel incomplete and, therefore, disrespectful. And daily prayer is something I'm resistant to because of prior experiences with it. I don't want to offend any of the gods by asking for something or asking for too much, especially so early on, and there's always a promised offering the few times I *have* asked. Add worries about exact obedience on top of that and it's proving to be a difficult thing to untangle. And I know that the gods are difficult to offend, figuring out how to do this takes trial & error and that's okay, it'll get better the more I do it, etc., etc.; this is more an issue with my own overthinking than anything else (hooray for ✨ mental health issues ✨). I'm not really asking for advice here, necessarily, just thinking out loud because I'm not comfortable talking to people in meat space about it yet.
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what’s your lock screen, last song you listened to, last picture taken, and last movie you watched?
thank you for the tag @visceravalentines !!! :D
(my lock screen is actually a video but I just showed it as a screenshot LMAO)
I shall tag ☝️
@elderwisp @circusjuney @butteredfrogs @venriliz
@flovoid @living-undead @dazetrait @landgraabbed
@dejasenti99 @smoknparade @acuar-io @birdietrait
@minimooberry @locustsend AND @orbitsuns (and anyone else who wants to do this!)
feel free to ignore if you've already done it or don't wanna do this :)c
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god im so sorry about the situation with your sonic and tails art its always so scary when your content gets shared around and repurposed for something bad or gross. your art is fantastic! i hope your stress thins out soon
i was really freaked out when i saw it and still kind of am but thankfully it could have been much worse considering all the reposters apologized and took it down without me having to fight too hard about it (though theyre still weird as hell for doing that in the first place dont get me wrong. why are you treating my normal platonic art of brothers hugging as romantic. why are you viewing their relationship that way at all. gross).. hopefully it wont happen again
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