Roman Pagan Beliefs

Fresco of Diana (image by Mentnafunangann)

The massive historical and cultural imprint that Rome has on Europe means that Roman history and culture is familiar to most Westerners and so the Roman way to the Gods is a language that is easily understood. Often it is said that Roman polytheism is based on what you do, and not on what you believe, but obviously no-one would practice unless they were at least open-minded as to certain beliefs. In Roman polytheism there are no commandments prescribing the morals by which you must live, there is no holy text in which you must believe, and there is no institution that can claim to represent the Roman Gods. Rather, Roman polytheists work towards a state of Pax Deorum (peace with the Gods), meaning a harmonious relationship with the Gods and the universe at large. Certain perspectives tend to be associated with Roman polytheism, including:

• Appreciating that ancient Romans had a completely different conception of the cosmos (by which I mean the earth, the sun and the stars) which necessarily influenced their spiritual ideas. Many ancient Romans believed that space was composed of aether where Gods lived, and that Earth was fundamentally lower in the hierarchy of the cosmos. This lent itself to ideas about the inferiority of the material realm and a spiritual orientation that was vertical. For more on this see Greco-Roman Cosmos.

Major Roman Deities

Bust of Antinous (image by Nguyen)

A more complete list is available at A Long List of Deities.

Aesculapius

The domain of Aesculapius is that of healing medicine. Suitable offerings likely include replicas of the part of the body healed, incense and wine. For more see Aesculapius – God of Medicine.

Antinous

The domain of Antinous is that of youthful masculine beauty and sexual allure. Suitable offerings include incense and wine, and wearing white may be optimal. For more see Antinous.

Apollo

The domain of Apollo is light, healing (and disease), music (especially stringed instruments), poetry, archery and prophecy. Suitable offerings include laurel, traditional Roman cakes / pastries (especially in nines), incense and wine. For more see Apollo – God of Healing, Music and the Sun and The Hyperboreans and Apollo.

The Other Website is Gone Now

I've managed to get myself locked out of the sister website I set up at romanpagan.wordpress.com. After nearly a week of trying to get back in it looks unlikely that I will be able to restore my access, so I asked the WordPress team to make the site private (this is the most control they would allow me to exercise) in light of the some of the content there being personal in nature. While that site mostly just copied and repackaged content from this blog, some of the content did not appear here. I have copies of most of that material on my computer and will turn them into posts on this blog very soon. 

So if you are wondering what happened to that website this is the story.

The advantage of the WordPress site was it had great drop-down menus to enable quick navigation of content. Please check out the Labels / Index of this Blog on the left-hand side of the screen if you want to navigate through content in a similarly thematic manner.

'The Three Fates' by Rothaug (circa 1910)

Written by M' Sentia Figula (aka Freki), find me at neo polytheist

The Teenage Years of a Gen Z Male

A picture of my young cat

I just really needed to get this off my chest …

First year of high school

Hoping to keep my son (let’s pretend his name is Rasmus) amongst friends in the local area I went against my better instincts and enrolled him in the local government high school when the time came. Had my husband (Rasmus’ father) still been alive I think he would have made a better decision, but he was dead, we were grieving, and I wanted as little upheaval in Rasmus’ life as possible. This is one of my greatest regrets in life. The first year seemed to be fine. Though his grades were average, Rasmus had plenty of friends and the school was close by. I remember on his first day of school a very tall, somewhat overweight, Aboriginal girl looking at him with moonlit eyes. Later Rasmus told me she walked home from school with him every day – even though it was not on her way.

Blood-brothers

In the second year of high school everything started to go wrong. Rasmus’ grades dropped, he started wagging, some of his teachers told me they thought he was very bright but that he didn’t apply himself. He had a new best friend, another boy who, like him, had lost a parent and was part Scandinavian, part Brit – let’s pretend his name was Erik. Erik and Rasmus became like brothers for a few years. I liked Erik very much, and obviously I sympathised with him deeply. He had a low level rage about him that channeled itself in rebelliousness. I always had the feeling he would be the most normal boy in the world if he could just get a hug from his mum, but she was dead, and so the low level rage smouldered. One day he was pulled into the principal’s office and apparently he slammed the door in her face. She wasn’t injured, but she was a very short feminist and so she interpreted this as an act of violence. Erik was an overgrown child, he was well built for his age, he didn’t know his own strength yet (because it was so newly acquired), but the short feminist didn’t care about that. Personally, I never experienced any behaviour problems with Erik, but he knew I was on his side. I’m sure he could sense not only my goodwill but also my affection. He got none of that from the principal. She kicked him out of the school and Erik was never able to go to a normal school again. He spent the next few years in a school for boys with behavioural issues because no other school would take him. Erik’s dad moved to the other side of Sydney around this time and so this tight friendship gradually loosened and Rasmus lost his greatest ally at school.

Hell in Buddhism

Hell Courtesan by Kawanabe (1870s)

In Buddhism the lowest and most miserable form of existence is hell (naraka). Most living beings are susceptible to repeated visits to hell, unless they are ascendant Buddhists who have attained the state of non-regression (avaivartika).

Getting to Hell

In Theravada / Nikaya Buddhism it is taught that beings experience hell as a karmic consequence of wrong conduct, which have their origin in wrong views:

“Just as, when a seed of neem, bitter cucumber, or bitter gourd is planted in moist soil, it transforms any nutrient it obtains from the soil and the water into a fruit with a bitter, harsh and disagreeable taste, even so is it for a person of wrong view. For what reason? Because the view is bad [Bodhi at 214-15].”

Views that are particularly wrong include not believing in karma, not believing in rebirth, and not believing there are good and virtuous people “who have themselves realised by direct knowledge and declare this world and the other world” (Bodhi at 158).

What is Enlightenment?

Drawing on a Bodhi Tree Leaf (18th century)

When I first embraced Buddhism I, like many Westerners, read a bunch of books which were mostly of the Theravada tradition. After years of dipping my toe in that tradition (and finding I really didn’t like mindfulness meditation terribly much) I gradually moved over to Mahayana Buddhism. It was the practices of Mahayana that drew me in (chanting mantras), and then the community which I found myself pulled into. I read Mahayana literature as I transitioned but I did not entirely understand how fundamentally different the Theravada and Mahayana perspective on enlightenment was until relatively recently. Still less so did I understand the differing views amongst the Mahayana schools. I had an idea in my head that Mahayana Buddhists essentially have the same view of nirvana as the Theravada, with the difference being that Mahayana Buddhists seek to delay their own enlightenment so they can bring other beings to enlightenment, ie, to be a Bodhisattva. My understanding was not wrong, but it was shallow and confused.

Bodhisattva literally means “enlightened being”. It is the ninth realm within the context of the ten realms of reality.* It is a state characterised by compassion but I have found that the goal of living compassionately can be a little frustrating. Compassion for compassion’s sake lacks focus, and for an introvert such as myself it does not come easy. I need a loftier goal, or a purpose around which compassion can orient itself. That goal is Buddhahood – the tenth and ultimate state.

Buddhahood is a state in which the true aspect of all phenomena, or the true nature of life, is realised. Reality is perceived, ultimate truth is understood.

Gluten Free Restaurants and Cafes in Sydney

I've been tracking gluten free restaurants in Sydney for years and the list on my phone is now so long I thought I may as well publish it online. 

A Rainbow Lorikeet (by Sardaka)

Sydney, Inner City

Wholegreen Bakery Cafe (Australian)

257 Clarence Street, Sydney 
Mon-Sat: 8am-3pm; Sun: closed (totally GF)

The Rocks Cafe (Australian)

99 George St, The Rocks

Mon-Sat: 7.30am-9pm; Sun: 7.30am-5pm

Loftus Lane Cafe (Australian)

Shop 3, 38-42 Bridge St, Circular Quay

Mon-Fri: 6.30am-3pm; Sat-Sun: 8am-3pm

Eastbank Cafe (Australian)

61-69 Macquarie St, Circular Quay

Mon-Sun: 11am until late

Opera Bar (Australian)

Sydney Opera House, Lower Concourse, Sydney

Sun-Thurs: 11am-12am; Fri-Sat: 11am-12.30am

My Christian Larp

A sculpture outside St James' King Street, Sydney

In 2024 I developed an interest in Christianity (which I wrote about here). I read the Gospels three times. I read the rest of the New Testament once. I listened to a bunch of podcasts. I studied a bunch of websites. I read a couple of books. I bought some icons (of St Mary and St Olga) and tried praying in front of them. By 2025, after visiting a bunch of Orthodox churches and finding each of them focused strongly on specific cultural groups (Russian, Greek, Assyrian, etc), I developed the view that I should look into Anglo-Catholicism, which is a movement within the Anglican communion which emphasises a return to catholic practices and theology sans the Pope. The main draw card was ethno-cultural. It seemed to me that most churches revolve around ethnic identity so Anglicanism looked like a good fit. The experiment didn’t go well and perhaps I really should have known better, not least because when my interest in Anglo-Catholicism started I had a highly unusual dream wherein the Virgin Mary spoke to me and she said just one thing: “the Anglican church is a desert”.

Visiting Anglo-Catholic Churches in Sydney

Sydney has half a dozen or so churches that align with Anglo-Catholicism (at least that is my understanding). I visited most of them and my experiences were as follows:

The Logos According to the Gospels

A page from a medieval Bible: Johnbod

Until not long ago I thought I knew Christianity and had thoughtfully rejected it, then my podcast addiction led me to bump into information that suggested I knew nothing but shadows on a wall when it came to this important and complex religion. Because I regard myself as a truth seeker, and truly open-minded, for some months now I have been trying to unlearn my prior suppositions and learn what this religion actually is. An obvious starting point is the Gospels. I have relied on two translations, one is the New King James Version (NKJV) and the other is the Eastern Orthodox Bible (EOB). They are each translated from slightly different original manuscripts – the NKJV mostly derives from Greek manuscripts that were available in north-western Europe in the early 16th century, whereas the EOB is translated from different Greek manuscripts held in libraries in south-eastern Europe. In this post all of the quotes are from the text of the EOB.

The transitory world of men versus eternal life

A prominent theme in the Gospels is the juxtaposition between the everchanging worldly realm of men, of which death is an aspect, and that of God’s (Matt 16:23), which is associated with eternal life. The earthly realm is transitory (Luke 21:33), full of many distractions that are both pleasurable and unpleasurable (Luke 21:34), and it contains much evil (John 7:7). Whereas the realm of God has “many mansions” (John 14:2) but it “is not of this world” (John 18:36), even though it “is within you”, but it cannot be seen (Luke 17:21). Jesus explains (after exorcising a man) that it “is by the spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (Matt 12:28), which suggests the kingdom is a state of being that can be experienced in this life. This experience starts as something small (like a mustard seed) but if the seed grows within the fertile soil of a human heart it (allegorically) “becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air can come and find shelter in its branches” (Matt 13:32).

Note that “kingdom of God” is not a literal translation from the original Greek. According to the EOB a more literal translation is “rule of God”, “ruling power of God” or “reign of God” (at xvi). This connotes an experience of God’s power, whereas “kingdom” is more suggestive of a physical place that is elsewhere.