<''Godspousing'' in regards to the Hellenic gods and religion>

 

To make what essentially became from a tiktok video script to an essay on a certain subject matter, a logical person will do the appropriate research on that matter. So what is ‘’godspousing’’? To fully understand it, one has to look no further than the people who claim to be a part of it so by their definition, ‘’godspousing’’ and ‘’god-consorting’’ definitely differs from person to person, but the common denominator is being in an intimate, likely romantic, relationship with a deity. So there are clearly two types of ‘’godspouses’’: the ‘’nun-like’’ ones and the romantic and/or sexually related ones. 

Now, as you realize I have little to say regarding the first type: it’s absolutely wonderful seeing people love the gods so much that they reach that level of lifelong devotion (in this essay the discussion is focused solely on the Hellenic faith and gods). Regarding the second type, though it’s another case. Why? Let’s dissect it and the claims it made regarding its legitimacy. When you encounter this type of ‘’godspouse’’, the first thing they will bring up in their defense is the various instances in Hellenic myths of romantic and sexual relations between gods and mortals. Now, any rational person who is practicing Hellenic polytheism knows that mythology is not regarded as actual history, cause its stories written by misogynistic men with ‘’the excuse’’ of the ethics of that time. And even if someone believes that the gods walked among us or not that age is over (fact that is supported by one of the most important writings regarding the Hellenic faith, Hesiod’s Cosmogony: The Five Races. The fourth being the race of demigods, with us being the fifth one [The Iron Race], which is described as the race most distant from the gods, the race that has lost the value of ‘ethos’ [ήθος]). Then, they will start speaking about religious practices of the past, that were more often than not similar to the first type of ‘’godspousing’’. What they tend to omit, is that the people who assumed such roles were: 1) chosen by the local authorities (religious and not) and 2) in many cases had to be prepared for a long amount of time before they were deemed ready and in most cases for certain periods of their life such as the priestesses serving the cult of Athena Alea of Tegea, Artemis of Aigeira, Artemis Triklaria of Patrai, Artemis of Ephesus and Poseidon of Kalaureia who served only for a short time between that of reaching adulthood until their wedding. Even if ‘’godspousing’’ with its modern definition was practiced, my guess would be that it could be a religious practice of cults of certain gods on which we have no actual historical evidence as to what they included in their Mysteries (Ιερά Μυστήρια), but again that’s just a guess so even that is incorrect perhaps.

 So with all these said I want to use ‘’godspousing’’ to talk about a certain thing that not many people want to admit. When something is ‘’open’’ (and in this case Hellenic polytheism), people who don’t belong in that culture but partake in it, precisely because of its ‘’open nature’’, find the excuse to pick and choose things from it and often alter it to their preferences. They use it as a stepping ground to do and claim the most absurd things and many times with no actual or very vague and unclear Hellenic historical sources.  When I see a non-Greek practitioner that makes such hubristic claims, in my eyes they are no better than the Romans, who defiled the Greek cultural identity, twisted it, altered it and re-baptized it their own, because that’s my dear reader believe it or not a colonizer’s mindset. That’s the mindset of these people, especially when they silence the voices of those (but not limited to) whose culture they partake in.

 Lastly with all that with all this said, I don’t say that we us mortals don’t/can’t love our gods, as that would be a hubristic thing to say. I love my gods. I have cried, screamed and begged at Lord Apollon’s altar about the unfairness of such sacrilegious claims to his name. And I did that because of my love for him. Not romantic, platonic, friendly, sexual or even familial but devotional love. A type of sacred love that stems from my devotion to the gods, an Hieri Agape (Ιερή Αγάπη).

You can take this essay as an angry hate letter towards the second type of ’’godspouses’’, or you will perhaps understand what this essay truly is: the cries of a Greek Hellenic polytheist who daily has to deal with not only his own people’s mockery of their ancestral faith but also the blatant hubris and disrespect non-Greek practitioners have for a religion that’s not inherently theirs but they partake in and actively stain its name. I’m not going to take people by the hand like they are kids and explain things kindly to them because this approach doesn’t work with y’all, so in the words of us modern Greeks if you found this essay offensive or it bothered you in any level: Στα αρχίδια μου σε γράφω και κάνω το ζωγράφο. J