« Rethinking Aphrodite as a Goddess at Work », (original) (raw)

On the Nature of the Gods: Methodological Suggestions for the study of Greek Divinities

History of Religions, 2018

The paper argues for a novel method for understanding Greek gods, building on the approach of J.-P. Vernant, but adding a new dimension to it. Vernant attempted to read the Greek pantheon as a system of classification and to see the multifarious attributes and functions of the gods as parts of a meaningful structure, in this way allowing modern readers to understand the gods instead of seeing them an incongruous assemblage of various historically contingent traits. While considering this type of approach as fruitful, I argue that Vernant has overstressed the systematic side of the gods, downplaying their anomalous and chaotic aspects – not in the sense of their heterogeneous qualities that arise as a result of contingent historical development (as runs the usual criticism by historians of Greek religion) but much more importantly in the sense of their transgressive and antistructural features which are an integral part of their personalities. These result from the fact that while the gods help to establish and guard various ideal categories of the human world, they do so from without and are not constrained by them themselves. In this way the gods are able to support the system while balancing out some of its inevitable limitations, mediating its internal contradictions and introducing flexibility into its static categories. I subsequently draw methodological consequences from this general conception. When studying a god I suggest to pay attention to the boundaries this god both protects and transcends, i.e. to focus on both the normative and the transgressive of the god in question, on the ability to unite various conflicting principles in the god’s personality, and on the transitions the god allows his or her worshippers to make. In this way I hope to convey to the modern reader not just the meaningfulness of the gods but also their indispensability for the correct functioning of the Greek cultural system.

The Polytheism of the Epicureans

The Polytheism of the Epicureans, 2016

Epicureans have been branded atheists since antiquity, but although they might have held unorthodox beliefs about divinity, they did nevertheless believe in gods, however unorthodox their beliefs about them were. They did not believe in the Olympians that Hesiod and Homer had depicted, but anthropomorphic yet bizarre gods: although these were compounds of atoms, they were immortal, unlike any other compound in the Epicurean universe, and there was quite possibly an infinite host of such deities, all alike and all nameless. These gods were not considered figments of the imagination by the Epicureans, but as real, living entities that actually existed, remotely, somewhere out there in the cosmos, doing very little aside from maintaining their supremely peaceful, painless, and tranquil dispositions. And these gods needed to be considered real in order to be genuine, ethical models for mankind to follow, which was their main function within the Epicurean world-view. The atoms of these gods, like everything in existence, were held to be perpetually in motion, constantly being emitted from their bodies as images that then travelled directly to the minds of mankind and thereby presented a true depiction of divinity, of peacefulness, and above all, of happiness, which would then be examples for individual Epicureans to follow on their individual journeys towards ἀταραξία, tranquillity.

Hellenic Polytheism - Vlassis RASSIAS

What do Hellenes mean when we say "Gods"? What is it that we worship? A very good answer is the one our greatest modern exegetes gives down below. Worth the long read. "1. The need for explanations and definitions. Whoever concerns oneself with such things, can easily understand that as much as those who oppose the Ethnic Hellenic Religion, as well as others who are not but pretend to be active participants in it, avoid systematically to explain what it is afterall that they either oppose or supposedly honor. In other words, they avoid explaining what are the Gods. This avoidance of course can be explained both logically and easily, since neither aforementioned group is fond of clarity which in turn favors only the truthful and those of good intentions.

The Gods at Play: Polytheism Rehabilitated

A partly tongue-in-cheek explication and defense of polytheism as playful religion and as a religion of play: of gods and godesses with specialized responsibilities and interests, who do not always agree on how to run the world.

Essays on the Metaphysics of Polytheism in Proclus

The essays in this book provide the principal theoretical foundation for the "henadological" approach to theology in the polytheistic philosophy of religion, while in a wider perspective constituting the first stage in recovering the sense and significance of henology, the discourse concerning unity, in classical metaphysics. Includes the previously published articles "Polytheism and Individuality in the Henadic Manifold" (2005), "The Gods and Being in Proclus" (2008), "The Intelligible Gods in the Platonic Theology of Proclus" (2008), "The Second Intelligible Triad and the Intelligible-Intellective Gods" (2010), and "The Third Intelligible Triad and the Intellective Gods" (2012), as well as two previously unpublished bonus essays.