"Patron" and "Matron" Gods

When people first come to Hellenismos, they are often drawn here by their attraction to one God, in particular. And who can deny that initial pull, that first sense of affinity and intimacy with the divine?

Traditionally, such feelings of awe and joy were expressed in a myriad of ways, through prayer, festivals, song, dance, art and poetry. Hellenismos is an aesthetic religion. Where the modern world has bundled art into a little corner, we spread it over our lives as an added layer of meaning and significance. Even our private expressions of devotion have a strong aesthetic component to them. Consider the poetic simplicity of the libation – ‘sublime wastefulness’, as Walter Burkert calls it.

The modern world prefers a more compartmentalised perspective, where ‘fact’ and ‘value’ are kept separate for fear they might pollute one another. This poses some very real problems when attempting to understand, and take part in, Hellenic spirituality.

From a Hellenic perspective, it is natural that contemplation of the Gods should impart guidance to the devoted. The Gods are the highest realisation of our hopes and dreams. They are divine forms, with much to teach us about what lies beyond us, around us, and within us.

The modern perspective, which lacks any intrinsic relationship between art and religion, has a more Gnostic vocabulary. We seek direct cause-and-effect relationships. If we feel drawn to a God, then we are ‘called’. Whims become ‘messages’. Dreams become ‘visitations’. And the individual declares the God their ‘patron’.

The notion that a God might arbitrarily ‘select’ and ‘tutor’ one individual runs counter to our religion. It is, quite literally, hubristic, and something that would have been frowned upon even in Homer’s time. We are all affected and moved by the Gods, but this happens in a subtle way, and is sometimes only realized in retrospect.

It is not that the Gods and Heroes do not speak to us. Rather, the Hellenic view of divine intervention embraces a more nuanced and sophisticated spectrum then the ‘Gnostic’ paradigm of two-way communication. Thomas Harrison writes in his book "Divinity and History: the religion of Herodotus": "Fifth and fourth-century Athenians ... did not see gods popping up here and there." And neither should we.

The Greeks conceived of divine patronage as being a non-elective, group experience. For instance, Athena is the patron Goddess of Athens, Hephaistos is the patron God of blacksmiths, and Demeter is the patron Goddess of the priestly families of Eleusis. The individual neither 'selects', nor is 'selected'. The Hero is a Hero, not because a God has 'chosen' them, but because they are perceptive to the will of the Gods and willing to put it into action.

We come from a culture alien to polytheism, and often, it is a struggle to properly articulate the impact that the Gods have on our lives. Consideration of God is like viewing a work of art - we see a small aspect of something, but we intuit something much larger. That is an internal transformation that is larger than 'mysticism'.

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