(This material is still being expanded and revised, please check back to see the fully edited version)

Usually when I get this question it’s often with the unspoken continuation of, “as opposed to other, more popular, pagan traditions”. Indeed, it’s a worthwhile question to explore. Admittedly when one thinks about modern neo-paganism and spiritual movements, the first ones to come to mind are practices like modern Wicca, Druidism, Santeria, Voodoo, etc. Hellenism and ancient Mediterranean religions and magickal practices are often not as prevalent or even shunned due to some of the darker sides that have been associated with them (see FAQ on dealing with the darker sides of the religion and practice). That said, there were many reasons that I made a conscious decision to center the temple around a loosely fitting framework of the ancient practices.

In order to compare and contrast, I’d like to offer an example of a current neo-pagan tradition, however, before I even start the next paragraph, I will beg my reader’s forgiveness and a certain amount of leeway in making a point quickly for the sake of illustration. For context only, I’m about to give a very condensed and incomplete example of some of the more modern practices and beliefs today. Please don’t be offended at my cursory look if you happen to attune with any of them.

A modern witch’s coven might look like the following example. A small group of people who may focus on a dual Goddess and God, or potentially even a swapping of the traditional Father figure in favor of the more loving and nurturing Mother figure. Quite often this kind of group actually or theoretically will align with the ideals of the true nature of the word pagan, in that they seek a connection to the countryside and nature. They will follow the traditional agrarian calendar and symbolic Wheel of the Year (CLICK HERE to learn more about this if you aren’t familiar). Many seek to practice healing, energy raising, and magickal workings, but usually the practices are a small subset of the practitioners daily life. Much of the first inspiration and sources for these groups is only about a hundred and fifty years old when such figures as Gerald Gardner and Doreen Valiente started popularizing various spiritual and pagan beliefs and practices. Finally, when I think of modern pagan practices in very general terms, I often think of very loose connections to the everyday world.

Over the years, I’ve had the great fortune of having religious and spiritual conversations with a lot of people from all walks of life, religious and spiritual backgrounds, and varying and diverse beliefs and opinions. The thing I’ve found consistent throughout many who follow some kind of spiritual path, is the feeling that their chosen path called to them. The feeling that they finally “came home”. So it was when I found Hellenism and ancient Mediterranean religions and practices. Here are a few of the things that struck me as feeling close to my heart, soul, and spiritual experience:

1. Although I think we all want and need a connection to nature and that ideal of the country pagan; for many of us, including myself, that is not our daily reality. The turning of the wheel is a fulfilling way to celebrate the natural cycles of life, but it is often devoid of some meaning in that we aren’t as reliant on the seasons and the agrarian cycles in our modern day-to-day lives. Hellenism and the closely related Mediterranean areas, were often much more “metropolitan” if you will, with Athens being more like our modern reality than that of the Celtic tribes for example. Athens also had a calendar that honored the changing season, but also honored concepts and ideas that we are quite familiar even today. There were festivals and celebrations of labor and trade (think Labor Day). There were festivals and rites to honor the city itself and democracy (think founders day events and things like the Fourth of July across America). The Attic calendar felt, to me, very familiar and very approachable, while at the same time being a framework also for my spiritual and magickal practice as well (there are festivals and celebrations honoring different mystery schools).
2. Growing up Catholic, I always felt that I was a spiritual person, but never saw my internal spirituality fully realized in the church I knew. As I started to seek and question and mature in my spirituality, one of the biggest conflicts in me was that of being told that we were made in His image, when I knew that the meaning of the church’s interpretation carried the heavy hand of man with it; both in a literal and figurative way. He was portrayed as a white male, and yet some of the closest people to me on my spiritual journey were neither. In an attempt to find that balance I found myself in groups that had traded the one male figurehead for a female figurehead, but, it seemed, with as much contempt for the other as had been expounded by the established religion. In finding Hellenism and ancient religion, I finally found a connection to a pantheon of Goddesses, Gods, Heroes, and daemons who spoke to the world as I saw it and experienced it. Not only did they represent the energies of male and female, but also the qualities of love, nurturing, nature, home and hearth, etc. Not only did they have these qualities that I’d been seeking, but there was no attempt to gloss over the fallibilities that were also a part of my experience. When I felt anger or jealousy, I didn’t need to be forgiven by a vengeful god, I just knew that I was not alone even amongst the Goddesses and Gods. It isn’t an excuse to hind behind but a way to confront it from a point of power instead of shame.
3. For some the solitary nature or more traditional practices is part of the reason for following them. For me, and others like me, there was always a certain sense of longing for the same community dynamic as the religions I’d grown up with. Greek religious tradition allowed for a very personal connection to the divine in the form of household religious observances, while at the same time providing a framework for coming together to celebrate and commune.
4. Walk into any bookstore (save for a Christian bookstore), and you will likely find an entire section on metaphysical and spiritual books. Many of these books are published within the last twenty years and many of those are drawing from sources that might only go back a hundred and fifty years to the inception of what we might consider modern witchcraft or neo-paganism. I don’t necessarily have a problem with the relatively young nature of the material written about modern spiritual practice. My personal beliefs are that the energies we try to attune with and the ideas we study are part of the universe like gravity. If they truly transcend then they are there to be discovered by any seeking person of any time and thus we do not need sources from the time of the Celtic tribes to truly know the truths that they also knew. That said, however, it has been fascinating to study source material that goes back thousands of years and tells of the myths, practices, and energies that they knew from those who were more contemporary to them.
5. When you think about the purest forms of paganism, you think about people who practiced magick as a daily necessity and not so much as an attempt at spiritual reality. Modern paganism, however, is by its very place in this world more a sideline to our lives, like a hobby, than a true lifestyle. Although much of the rituals and celebrations of modern practices are concerned with attempting to get closer to that ideal, few choose to live that lifestyle. Hellenism and the practice of ancient Mediterranean traditions by their very nature encompass full lifestyle considerations that we can actually incorporate into our lives and embrace from a position of modernity.

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