About Me - Eclectic

"French Masked Ball 1894" by Granger

I have been asked to share a little about myself – to be honest this is not something I am altogether comfortable with, for I am intensely private. I love the anonymity of the internet; it is like a virtual masked ball where one can reveal and conceal as much of oneself as one likes. Consider this post like a short walk down a darkened alley where I will expose a little more of myself than usual, only to clutch my mask and cloak and go running back to the main festivities and lose myself in the crowd.

Devotional Practice – Meditation

Sometimes when we feel a strong pull towards a particular deity we may be unsure as to how to connect with that God or Goddess – making suitable offerings is obviously the first thing we can and should do. If we want to do more, and we are inspired by devotional practices common within the most well established polytheistic religions of our own time (Hinduism and Buddhism), we might consider meditating on the deity for whom we feel a particular pull. We can do this by resting the mind lightly and mindfully on an object, image or place associated with the God or Goddess with whom we wish to connect.

Greco-Roman Pagan Tattoos

A little while ago I was at a pub and noticed an amazing tattoo of the Egypto-Roman Goddess Isis underneath the shirt of the man across from me – I was super impressed and we got talking … turned out he got the tattoo because he just thought it was a cool design; wasn’t a Pagan at all. Although, strangely, he did claim to have been a gigolo when he was younger. I have no idea if this was true but I did later hear a story (apparently true) that he fell in love with a woman who lived overseas and he packed a suitcase full of lube, condoms and Viagra when he went to visit her – an old trick of the trade perhaps?

That story is a diversion, but it was his tattoo that got me thinking about Pagan tattoos and how cool they can (potentially) be. There are some awesome tattoos dealing with the Greco-Roman pantheon out there – here are some of the best that I was able to find online (note that some of them were perhaps not originally intended to pertain to a particular deity but I think are evocative of certain Gods nonetheless).

Apollo
Apollo is the God of light and the sun, healing (and disease), music, poetry, archery and prophecy.

Source: tattoopaulski.com

Tacitus on Indigenous Germanic Religion

Statue of the prophetess Veleda by Bucker (20th century) 

Source: nationalheldinnen.de

Tactius’ Germania is perhaps one of the most important texts we have concerning the religious practices (inter alia) of the Germanic tribes in the 1st century CE. While we should read Tacitus with caution, because he was not Germanic himself and because we cannot be certain that he ever travelled to the Germanic lands (in which case he would have assembled the work based on the descriptions of others including, perhaps, traders, Roman soldiers who had fought in those lands, or manned German border outposts, and possibly Germanic mercenaries and those serving in the auxilia who had moved to Roman territory), what is exciting about his account is that he was not a Christian, unlike many later writers who were to record aspects of indigenous Germanic religion. His bias was more along the lines of occasionally seeming to idealise the Germanic peoples in such a way as to suggest the comparative decadence of contemporary (Pagan) Romans. He emphasised that these Germanic tribes were almost universally composed of people who were warlike, brave, loyal and hardened by their climate – in short they were formidable enemies for whom Tacitus seems to feel admiration on the one hand and a kind of disgust or horror (at their “barbarism”, eg, because they practiced human sacrifice and had a supposed tendency towards drunkenness and violence) on the other.

Vulcan – Ferocious Fire

"Apollo in the forge of Vulcan" by Velazquez (1630)

If you want to understand the Roman attitude to deified fire, understanding Roman ideas about the nature of Vulcan (or Vulcanus, as the Romans knew him) is essential. Vulcan is the fertile, creative and yet potentially ugly and destructive side of fire. On the one hand he is propitiated – for his scorching fires, which threaten to burn and destroy forests, homes and harvests, are feared. On the other hand, he is honoured as a master metalworker who creates the finest armour, weapons and any other object forged in fire. Thus Vulcan is the God of fire and of metalworking, and one of the major Gods in the Roman pantheon.

The antiquity of Vulcan’s cult in Rome

Not only was Vulcan one of the Dii Consentes (one of the 12 major Gods of ancient Rome), he was also one of only 15 Gods to have a State appointed priest (flamen) and he is known to have had a shrine in the Roman Forum since at least the 6th century BCE – the Volcanal, which appears to have consisted of:

Vesta – Fire in the Home

Detail from "Vesta and Apollo" by Vincent (late 18th century)

Vesta was one of the most vitally important Goddesses in the State religion of ancient Rome. Despite her importance scholars tend to have more to say about Vestal priestesses than the Goddess herself.* Vesta is generally described as a Goddess of the sacred hearth fire, guardian of the home, and as a virgin Goddess who is inviolable and pure.** Perhaps the best contemporary description I have come across comes from Shelton, who writes:

“Vesta was the deity of the hearth fire. Fire for cooking and heating was a necessity of life, and the Romans were therefore conscientious in their worship of Vesta. In private homes of early Rome, where the hearth was a central element, all family members [which included slaves] gathered … for a sacrifice to Vesta [the sacrificial items were usually salt and flour]. In a sense, then, every private home was a temple of Vesta [J Shelton, As the Romans Did at 385].”

Roman Gods, Indian Gods

Fire ritual in honour of Agni, God of fire. Source: balu on Wikimedia 
(image is cropped). Agni is cognate with the Latin "ignis" (literally "fire")

I recently spent time trying to discover how the interpretatio Romana could be applied to the Indian pantheon. I discovered that it is not easily applied and that Indian polytheism is almost unbelievably complex. The first thing to know is that Hinduism is the sum total of numerous polytheistic belief systems emanating from the huge geographic region that is south Asia and linked by “various common elements such as Vedic tradition, the caste system, religious and moral law, epics and myths, and reverence for spiritual teachers” (Dallapiccola, Hindu: Visions of the Sacred). The second thing to know is that polytheism as experienced and understood by Hindus today is not the same as south Asian polytheism in ancient times. These days it appears that the majority of Hindus believe that most, if not all, Gods and Goddesses are manifestations of other more major Gods and many Hindus believe all deities are aspects of Brahman (or Shiva or Vishnu) – the ultimate reality and deity, which is a concept not dissimilar to Neoplatonic ideas about “the One”. The major Gods of Hinduism today are Brahma, the creator; Vishnu, the preserver and Shiva/Siva, the destroyer, as well as Devi/Shakti, the great Goddess – these Gods do not really have direct parallels in the Roman (or Greek) pantheon, which is not to say that the Indian equivalent to Roman Gods cannot be discovered but it makes the process difficult and uncertain. The Vedic pantheon of ancient India certainly seems more recognisable to one who is familiar with Roman Gods (and Vedic Brahmin priests appear to have been even more obsessed with the correct practice of ritual than the patrician priests of ancient Rome) but many Vedic Gods are no longer widely revered or they have been subsumed into other, more accessible, deities such as Vishnu or Shiva (Vedic Gods may be considered less accessible because traditionally only Brahmin priests can perform sacrifices to Vedic Gods).

Household Shrine and Ritual

Lararium fresco from a tavern in Pompeii - on either side of the Lares is
2020Mercury on the left and Bacchus on the right. Sacred snakes appear below.

Over three and a half years after I first set up my household shrine a few things have changed – one of the biggest changes is that after years of wariness of statues I now have a carefully chosen statue of Mercury on my shrine, for he is a God I particularly revere. Initially I held the notion that the household shrine, or lararium, should, to be consistent with the religious practices of ancient Romans, only honour household deities, but I have since come to realise that ancient Romans did not necessarily hold that view. Mary Beard writes:

Interpreting the Lares

What the scholars say

Bronze statuette of Lar holding a rhyton and a patera,
 1st century CE (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, UK)

In many ways the heart of the Roman way to the Gods can be said to lay with the household shrine and the deities worshipped thereon. The Lares familiares/Lares domestici (Lares of the household/familia – which includes family members, slaves, servants and perhaps animals) are prominent among these but I have struggled to understand their nature – are they guardians of place (where the household resides) or, as some have suggested, ancestor guardians of the family? Respected scholars M Beard et al describe them as follows: 

“Lares, protecting spirits of place, were worshipped in various contexts: in the house, at the crossroads, in the city (as guardians of the state). The Lares 'familiares' (gods of the house and its members) are the best known of these - receiving offerings, sacrifices and prayers within the household, and commonly appealed to as the protectors of its safety and prosperity. But no mythological stories attached to them; nor were they defined as individual personalities [Beard, North and Price, Religions of Rome: Volume 2 at 2.2a].”