It's All Greek to Me!

The first in a mini-series on ancient religions, let's start with Ancient Hellenism, also known as Greek Paganism. There's a lot to Greek mythology, but the lives of the people who brought us these legends often get swept under the rug. We're here to dig up the dirt on the cults that changed the world be sharing their stories of the gods, and why they were important to the Greeks of millennia past.

The gods behind the drama of Percy Jackson are a lot of fun to explore, but not half as fun as the parties hosted by the cult of Dionysus. Some of the old gods came from the island of Crete, others are amalgamated figures. Some gods carried their own torch into Rome, while others were replaced.

If you liked Disney's Hercules as a kid.... Well, we're here to blow it out of the water for you. Find out what the ancient Greeks believed in, the problem with Zeus, and about Hellenic Revivalism on this episode of the Holy Watermelon Podcast.

All this and more....

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Katie Dooley  00:12

Katie feels like it's been a minute since we've been here for our listeners. It's just been two weeks. But

Preston Meyer  00:17

right time, what a trip time.

Katie Dooley  00:21

That weird week between Christmas and New Years where all you do is eat cheese.

Preston Meyer  00:25

Right? Oh. All right. So are you saying that a good suggestion is that maybe we shouldn't be exercising? What we listen to our podcast?

Katie Dooley  00:36

No, I definitely think that would make you sound a lot like breath. you're happier.

Preston Meyer  00:42

No, no, not while I'm while I'm recording. Oh, it would be terrible when I'm listening to

Katie Dooley  00:46

the podcast. And work out love it will help you achieve your New Year's resolutions on the

Preston Meyer  00:55

holy watermelon podcast. Speaking of time, we're

Katie Dooley  00:59

looking way back on the Wayback Machine.

Preston Meyer  01:04

We're gonna look at what is generally called the ancient Greek religion. But I mean, there's some serious problems with that label.

Katie Dooley  01:12

And it has some other names as well, which we'll get into but we are starting, I guess, like a little little series of dead religions.

Preston Meyer  01:23

Yeah, most of them have been revived in interesting ways. Because they, but they did solidly, fully die disappear.

Katie Dooley  01:34

Yes, because people there's definitely Neo revival of these. But But yes, they were definitely put to rest almost completely at one point or another.

Preston Meyer  01:49

I think broadly, we can call this this whole series for the these ancient religions as the victims of Christianity. Oh, actually,

Katie Dooley  01:59

I like that

Preston Meyer  02:00

there's a couple of exceptions, or at least at least one looking forward in my memory. But broadly speaking, they're the victims of Christianity.

Katie Dooley  02:10

And we will we're going to do a full wrap up episode on what constitutes a dead religion. Why religion science? So we'll get more into that in a few, I guess, a few months time, because I think we're covering about six of these, something

Preston Meyer  02:22

like that. Yeah. So we do plan ahead. Plan ahead,

Katie Dooley  02:28

even though sometimes it doesn't.

Preston Meyer  02:34

Yeah, so we talked about how Shinto was kind of a weird case where it wasn't really looked at as a religion, but just kind of a folk tradition.

Katie Dooley  02:46

It's kind of what it means to be Japanese for a very specific period of time, right, less so recently, as we've kind of globalized, but it was centuries where that's just what it was to be a

Preston Meyer  02:59

nice kind of the same thing with being Greek. polytheism lends itself well to this sort of issue where it's just how you exist in the community. It's kind of weird.

Katie Dooley  03:14

I also think it's, we see this in Shintoism, when you have deities for very specific reasons. It makes it I guess, easier to explain or justify, which is sort of this thing we see with the Abrahamic God where, you know, people, we see the argument all the time, where we say, He's a loving God, but then how did the Holocaust happen? Or, you know, this is God's will, but how, you know, why are there dead babies like, and that gets hard to explain. But when you have a polytheistic model, you can say, well, this is this one's fault, because they are one of the God of War, chaos or death. And in this transaction, they whatever they want, right,

Preston Meyer  03:59

yeah, that the most common solution for that problem in polytheism, is that Gods are almost never seen as almighty, it's just kind of, they can influence certain things. And sometimes they get to do their thing unchecked. It's kind of nifty and interesting stuff.

Katie Dooley  04:20

Again, similar to Shintoism. There's no there was no overarching body governing this religion, which is kind of part of the reason it doesn't. I mean, still falls under religion, by our definition, but not like a religion we see today. And no real texts

Preston Meyer  04:38

at all. Yeah, there was no the pope of all of the Greeks that wasn't a thing. And there was no holy book. Not really no, you had a lot of traditions, and some of which obviously got repeated more than others for being stories that were either better told or more relatable or more useful for a particular scenario. But there was no Oh, scriptural canon at all, really. If

Katie Dooley  05:04

you've taken the classics in university, you would have Devon dove divided into Devon Read, read, you want to read? Yeah, Odyssey and the Iliad by Homer, which is kind of as close as we get to analyze texts as. But I think most people know that we're writing down stories, pretty much are writing down this oral tradition,

Preston Meyer  05:28

a lot of what we have in, let's say, the Hebrew Bible, for example, is canonized, simply because they were really popular texts. And they became part of the cultural literary canon, kind of like Charles Dickens for English people. Homer is exactly that. And very useful when looking at the traditions around the gods, because that's what he was talking about an awful lot of the time. It's kind of nifty. Yeah. All

Katie Dooley  05:56

right, words, die. Words, fella.

Preston Meyer  06:01

Which word are you looking at? helenus mo so in this most Yeah, it's basically just a fancy word for Hellenistic paganism. Hellenism. And Helene, basically meaning Greek, Greece. Why we call them Greek and English, is just really weird. It's like India. It's like why do we call Germany German when that's not what they call themselves? Yeah. It's a weird thing. That's where it goes. So very often, when people talk about the Olympians, and everything that surrounds that worldview, Hellenism Hellenist. Most is the word that gets used.

Katie Dooley  06:48

And just a note on the Hellenistic paganism. This is not sort of the witchy paganism that we associated this just means not Christian. The paganism, yes, paganism, the term Hellenistic paganism, it just means not Christian,

Preston Meyer  07:05

or Hellenistic paganism does specifically mean Greek flavor, right?

Katie Dooley  07:09

I just don't mean the witchy version of veganism that we've sort of adopted. Yeah. Clarifying. I'm doing Perfect. All right, I think I'm with you're with me, okay. Are you with me listener?

Preston Meyer  07:26

All right, the interesting thing that we really have to emphasize, and we'll probably say it a few times, there is nothing monolithic about the Hellenic traditions. There's, it's not one organized religion. That's not the reality at all. It's a whole bunch of traditions of a whole bunch of subgroups that happen to fit together in a semi cohesive fashion. That was reinforced by the state for peace reasons.

Katie Dooley  08:00

And it's all centered around family bush. Yeah,

Preston Meyer  08:03

what a bush.

Katie Dooley  08:06

Which we'll get into. That's what you mean, semi cohesive, right, where you're like, they're all inbred.

Preston Meyer  08:14

I mean, inbreeding helps with cohesion a little bit.

Katie Dooley  08:18

Really makes the solid family unit with Uncle Grandpa.

Preston Meyer  08:25

My old grandma got old Zeus. Nothing's good about Zeus. So

Katie Dooley  08:33

we could do actually, we should do an entire episode on Zeus. We could, there's a lot to talk about, which we will not cover all today. But I

Preston Meyer  08:43

mean, if you want a very brief overview, Wikipedia will scratch that edge. So you don't have to let him Zeus is all about his own satisfaction, and not so worried about consent. Yeah. Also, not strictly limited to humans. This dude was all over the place. He had an itch to scratch and he led everything scratch we're getting.

Katie Dooley  09:14

Let's get back to this cult tradition.

Preston Meyer  09:20

And then we'll get so each of the gods that we're going to focus on all of the Olympian 12, and even 12 is a problematic detail. Each of these Olympian 12, had a position as the focus of at least one smaller occult tradition. Before they were lumped into the Olympian pantheon. Some of them had multiple cults, some of them it's kind of weird to look at them as having a distinct cult, but there was a cultic reverence for them and

Katie Dooley  09:59

I just want to clarify danger called just a small grassroots religious.

Preston Meyer  10:04

Yeah, yeah, we've, we've talked about cults before. And this is a good time to emphasize because the word is going to be used a lot when you if you were to go reading into scholarly articles on this cult is the word that is used to describe the group of people who are organized, worshipping a figure. And, yeah, so this is the way we look at these gods, the primordial deities of Hellenism, we don't actually see a lot of cults built up around them. But we see a lot around the Olympian 12,

Katie Dooley  10:42

which we'll dive right into. Yeah. And of course, the Greek religion, spread beyond the borders to Greece, and then stay put to some of the neighboring islands. And of course, it spread to Italy. Yeah, which we will talk about in next episode, I believe is our roman one. And there are tons of parallels, which we'll talk more about next week. There are numerous gods and goddesses. Oh, my hands are

Preston Meyer  11:13

so many

Katie Dooley  11:14

so many. And like we said before, these gods are mortal, but they're not necessarily all powerful or benevolent. Again, I mean, obviously, there's contradictions to this in the Abrahamic faith, but generally it is assume that God is all loving, forgiving. A benevolent God, not the case, right? With rapey Zeus, or there's some others too, but

Preston Meyer  11:40

there was a wonderful fun film put out by Disney feels like forever ago. Like, I think it was the mid 90s. Yeah, Hercules. Yeah. And there's one figure in the whole movie that lines up with the way they ought to have been, according to the mythology that's existed for these people for millennia. Is it the Saturn is Phil. Phil is the only one who's reasonable. And actually, he's not even that close because you never see Phil's Wang.

Katie Dooley  12:21

They have to censor some stuff, narcissists.

Preston Meyer  12:23

narcissist was pretty much what you would expect him to be. Everything else is either missing important defining characteristics, or is fully the opposite of who they really are.

Katie Dooley  12:41

And I guess sort of to that point, Gods can interact and meet with humans. A perfect example is Herrick Lee's or Hercules?

Preston Meyer  12:50

Yeah, Harry pleases the Greek one. Hercules is the Latin name. So having Hercules is the son of Zeus and Hera is fully wrong. But Zeus had a son named Herrick Lise, who was not Harrahs son. This is an important part of that figures story. I actually love it. The name Herrick Lee's was given to him it's the name means calls on Hara. So it's supposed to appease a very angry Hara, who is constantly suffering because her husband is constantly cheating on her in very aggressive fashion. I

Katie Dooley  13:34

mean, we're gonna get this, but I think that's what you get when you marry your brother.

Preston Meyer  13:40

It's, it shouldn't be a risk, but I get it.

Katie Dooley  13:44

It should be a risk when you marry your brother because what Brother wants to marry his sister, of course, it's gonna sleep around.

Preston Meyer  13:52

I mean, is a situation where he was forced to marry your sister because his sister wanted to marry your brother. Oh, that part of the story is a little fuzzy.

Katie Dooley  14:07

This is like a soap opera, and we just keep getting sucked into their love life.

Preston Meyer  14:11

I mean, there's so much literature on these people because people feel exactly that way.

Katie Dooley  14:17

So let us back up the boat and talk about who these Olympians are, where the name comes from, why we care about them and who the 12 are and then we'll get into some of their dirt. There are 12 asterisk, kind of 13 Olympian gods and they're named thus because they reside on Mount Olympus. And this is sort of the I won't say the one but this is kind of core across this religion is that's kind of all agreed upon. Everything else kind of I won't say I will change depending on your culture or tradition or location or story you heard, but the fact that these 12 Asterix first Do you live on Mount Olympus? And are a little family bushes? Generally? Tan? Yeah,

Preston Meyer  15:08

it looks like the Olympic union of this set of Gods is mostly a product of people deliberately trying to keep a nation unified, which I think is really interesting. The king of the gods, the all father, as he is often called, is just an absolute pervert. He is the God of the sky and of thunder. He's the God of law and order. I thought it was really interesting

Katie Dooley  15:43

to do so you haven't said Zeus yet? You just started talking? Oh, yeah, I

Preston Meyer  15:49

thought I said. Okay, so Zeus is actually mentioned in the Hindu Rig Veda, Oh, yeah. Zeus is called Deus pita. Which, if you're really into Latin and Roman mythology, more than Greek, it should sound like Jupiter. And that's not an accident. The name is derived from the generic word Dios meaning God, and the specific Latin. Jupiter makes this combination, and it becomes sky Daddy. Yes. pedo. Being father, as you see in most of proto indo European languages, it's kind of nifty. So Zeus is the sky daddy.

Katie Dooley  16:36

Yeah, he is. And he likes to be called Daddy to Yes.

Preston Meyer  16:41

Like, he's the father. Even if you're not a natural descendant of Zeus, it is expected that you refer to him as father. This, you see this through all the old classical literature that they all the gods referred to him as father, even when that's not

Katie Dooley  16:58

the case. Call me daddy. Yeah.

Preston Meyer  17:02

He is one of the original Mycenaean gods, originally from the island of Crete, which I thought was kind of nifty. There. Is talking some old sources of him having a tomb on the island of Crete.

Katie Dooley  17:16

Oh, interesting. Yeah, I would be really curious about that. Because we talked about this a long time ago that a lot of gods and deities are based off of real people. Yeah. So I wonder if there was Zeus. That yeah, that's into this. I'd be concerned with there was. All these stories are horrible. But yeah,

Preston Meyer  17:37

I'm curious how many of them are outright fiction and how many are based on real people?

Katie Dooley  17:42

No more fiction. I hope. Number two of the 12 is here. She's the goddess of marriage, women and childbirth. She is this his wife, and sister. And like Preston said, contrary to see what to what you see in Disney, she's not the mother of Hercules. Heracles Hercules Hercules, Hercules is so so named to make Hara love the child

Preston Meyer  18:15

didn't work out didn't work out.

Katie Dooley  18:16

Hara may have been the first of the Greek gods to receive a covered temple and seems to be the first of the Olympian gods to receive such a structure on Mount Olympus. Yeah,

Preston Meyer  18:27

I thought that was kind of cool. That's a thing I don't have a lot more information on. And as I was kind of rushed to put hair together in my notes, but I thought that was kind of nifty.

Katie Dooley  18:39

I think it's great.

Preston Meyer  18:42

Poseidon is really interesting. of the big three that people like to talk about. In Greek mythology. Poseidon is the big wet brother have to do. He is the God of the seas and earthquakes and storms and horses. He's Zeus, his brother, he's the middle brother. Hades was the the oldest brother, but after being ripped out of Cronus his guts are being puked out. Hades became the youngest but besides straight up all across the board the middle brother awesome.

Katie Dooley  19:19

The least loved brother. Maybe Yeah, likes the middle.

Preston Meyer  19:25

I don't know what the relationships were with their mother but their father hated all the children so well.

Katie Dooley  19:30

We'll get to that

Preston Meyer  19:32

you could have lost out worse. I I still feel weird about Poseidon being called an Olympian. Being more of a ocean fellow he

Katie Dooley  19:42

does definitely doesn't resign. Because I lived in the water. I've

Preston Meyer  19:46

never thought of him being a resident of Olympus. But Dionysus is also not really a resident of Olympus, but he's an Olympian kind of. It's weird. But Poseidon rules the sea just like Zeus rules the air and Hades rules the underground to the Earth is the common ground between all of them. So they're all welcome on Olympus unless there's unless they're specifically exiled from it. Hades not usually welcome even though he's not a bad guy, anyway, discussion for another time. Or at least later on in the episode. So I thought it was really interesting that Poseidon was one of the major Peloponnesian gods before he joined the Olympians interesting. And some versions of the story have him as a horse. That makes

Katie Dooley  20:41

sense. I the images in my brain is him riding a horse in the waves? Yeah. Yeah, image. Yeah. But I liked that he is an actual horse. Yeah.

Preston Meyer  20:54

may in fact, in Arcadia, there's a tradition that he and Demeter are a married pair of horses. And that's, that's kind of nifty. Oh, yeah. That's cute, right.

Katie Dooley  21:07

Which brings us to Demeter, who is the goddess of harvest fertility, nature and the seasons. She has a secret cult festival called decimal foria. And only women are allowed to participate. No Boys Allowed to sign up on the door. So

Preston Meyer  21:25

much of a secret anymore, but when it was happening on the regular, it was pretty top secret.

Katie Dooley  21:30

She was one of the Mycenaean goddess initiated tradition and Eleusis focused on the story of Hades and Persephone. Which Persephone doesn't even fall under these 12 She's

Preston Meyer  21:41

one of them. No, she's one of the minor.

Katie Dooley  21:43

I know. But I'm just there's so many names. I'm not going to get to Yeah. And in the Arcadia story that Preston was referring to Demeter has a mean of snakes kind of like Medusa.

Preston Meyer  21:54

Yeah, scary horse, you would not want to try and jump on the back of this horse. Yeah, what a really interesting set of gods. Next on our list, we have Athena, the goddess of wisdom and warfare. And naturally, the patron Goddess of Athens. Most traditions have ever been born from Zeus is forehead without sex, which is extremely weird for the extremely rapey Zeus. hessayon says that her mother is metus and that meet us actually gave birth to Athena inside Zeus. And that's how she popped out of Zeus forehead. It's a mess. It sounds super growth.

Katie Dooley  22:43

I wish you could see the face. I'm giving precedent.

Preston Meyer  22:49

Yeah, the Greeks had some really interesting stories. In fact, if there's anything that you could say is universally Greek, it's the telling of epic stories. Yes, that's true. Everything else is a lot less universal.

Katie Dooley  23:04

Great food.

Preston Meyer  23:06

fair. That's fair. Okay, there's there's probably a few things that are broadly. So Athena is the perpetual version. This is actually really helpful as a symbol of a protected city, because she is originally an Aegean Palace Goddess, and existed in identical forms in different cities under different names. Until the name Athena one out with the rise of Athenian power and the spread of the Attic dialect. That's interesting. A badass absolutely, I

Katie Dooley  23:40

actually will say, like, in more modern and I mean, particularly the Abrahamic tradition that can be quite misogynistic. There's definitely an equal, if not more female. Gods and they're all badass. Yeah. What really, really interested 12 rather, yeah, obviously, I'm sure if you get down to the nitty gritty, I don't know what the statistics are male to female, but of the 12 Olympians, I think it's pretty much

Preston Meyer  24:11

pretty close to balanced. And Athena being a goddess of warfare. She actually specializes in military strategy, which differentiates her from the next guy on our list. Well, I feel like that falls into the wisdom piece. Yeah, it does.

Katie Dooley  24:30

Aries is our next guy, the god of war, bloodshed, and manly virtue,

Preston Meyer  24:36

strength and courage, but muscles, but issues.

Katie Dooley  24:42

So he is the son of Zeus and Hera. And instead of the military strategy, which is a Theano, as Preston mentioned, areas is rough and brutal. He is a common personification of the strength of war, but At this specific version originates in the Mycenean despite the raw power that he is meant to represent most stories leave him embarrassed.

Preston Meyer  25:10

Yeah, think back to him being on the Troy side, the Trojan side of the Trojan War. Yeah, things actually very seldom go well for areas when he's part of the story. Even though he's, you know, say the more recent stories like in DC Comics, for example, where he is a truly epic and powerful dude. I mean, yeah, he's powerful, but he always gets his butt kicked by a non God you

Katie Dooley  25:46

most sacrifices to areas were offered after victorious battles through a practice of young men sacrificing dogs.

Preston Meyer  25:52

Yeah, it's a little gross and sad. Before a

Katie Dooley  25:57

man hood fight was adopted from the cult of an alias. Did I say it right? And cults, two areas were not that common unless you were a military group. But they did exist. Making the neighbors uncomfortable Preston would think so. Now just want people sacrificing dogs and having manly man Fight Club fights in your neighborhood. Well, even just I assume it's like Fight Club. Just imagine

Preston Meyer  26:28

knowing that just just knowing that your neighbor worshipped Ares, the god of war. Wouldn't that make you feel a little bit weird about that neighbor?

Katie Dooley  26:39

In present day? Yes. I don't know about past day. But yeah, probably we saw weird like nationalist truck on our irons. Sounds like this makes me uncomfortable. So yeah, exactly. Yeah,

Preston Meyer  26:52

it's that guy. Like it's, it's perfectly fine to recognize that Oh, in a nation that is very often at war. Having reverence for Aries is perfectly valid. But belonging to a cult specifically dedicated to them is a little bit different.

Katie Dooley  27:13

It's different. It goes beyond just the sacrifice before a battle. It's like a different level. It is creepy. Yeah. Fair enough.

Preston Meyer  27:20

Next journalists, we have Apollo, the god of light truth art's the son, manly beauty medicine, and honestly, a terribly long list of other things. Anything that's good. Apollo is connected to it in some way. Really.

Katie Dooley  27:38

He's a good guy, good guy, Apollo.

Preston Meyer  27:41

Yeah, basically, he is the son of Zeus and Leto. And he actually wasn't fully completed with this, like didn't become a son. God wasn't completed with Helios until very late in history, which I thought was interesting. Apollo's cult is most interested in prophecy, you'll hear a little bit about Delphic Oracle is when you dive into Greek mythology. And this is tightly attached to Apollo. He's also one of the oldest gods in the pantheon, and may have even been part of the cultic traditions of the pre Hellenic people before they were divided into groups more familiar to us. As you know, humans spread out further west into Europe, which I thought was really interesting. He has also called the most Greek for a few reasons. He is the ideal of manliness. And so this is definitely informing this choice a little bit. He is also recognized throughout the Hellenic territory by more or less the same name, give or take, you know, accent and a linguistic evolution. But yeah, it's like some vowel shifts here and there, but broadly speaking, more or less the same name for a really long time backwards in history, which I thought was really nifty. And so he is the patron of two rival cults, both fully established before any religious history was recorded in the area, which I thought was also

Katie Dooley  29:12

Artemis. Did you know Artemis is my favorite? No.

Preston Meyer  29:17

Why is Artemis your favorite?

Katie Dooley  29:19

I don't know. I just like liked her as a kid when we did Greek and I think it was grade six, like cuz she was the moon, and the hunt and archery.

Preston Meyer  29:27

So I think her being associated with the moon is a deliberate parallel to Apollo and the sun. Celine is generally the moon if I'm recalling correctly, and not mixing up my mythologies. And when Apollo became conflated with Helios, Artemis was at more or less the same time connected to the moon. Yes, and

Katie Dooley  29:53

that is because she is the twin sister of Apollo. Same parents, Zeus and Leto Artemis was the protector of forests throughout Greece and like little hippie Katie really like that. And she had several local cults and was very important Sparta specifically. Her first club was likely established on the island of Delos. And her temple in Ephesus is one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

Preston Meyer  30:22

So kudos for Artemis.

Katie Dooley  30:25

Oddly enough, she is the per Artemis is a perpetual virgin but also associated with childbirth.

Preston Meyer  30:32

Yes, I thought that was kind of a she's like a situation.

Katie Dooley  30:35

Yes.

Preston Meyer  30:36

That's there's a story that she helped with the delivery of her twin brother. I feel like I've heard that. And mechanically that sounds like literally, totally fantastic. But there's also I'm looking to a parallel in the Hebrew Scriptures where there was twin brothers and the younger brother came out with his hand wrapped around the ankle of his older brother. And so it just kind of pulled out. And that actually makes it kind of easy to believe that this story could have been based on a baby girl who pulled who would just happened to be holding brother's ankle on the way out conceal and ended up baby brother came out right after with that tug around the ankle. Who knows?

Katie Dooley  31:24

I'm not an obstetrician. No, me neither.

Preston Meyer  31:30

But it it as much as it sounds weird in the basic story of Baby help deliver a baby there are other stories. Yeah, there's, there's weirder stories,

Katie Dooley  31:41

weird stories like a whole virgin birth,

Preston Meyer  31:45

which we have talked about pretty recently. After Aphrodite is next on our list, so she's the goddess of love, pleasure, protection, last sex. And also motherhood is on that list in a lot of places too.

Katie Dooley  32:02

And she's the one coming up the clamshell Renaissance painting. Yes, girl.

Preston Meyer  32:08

Wasn't that Venus? Oh, it

Katie Dooley  32:10

was but they're the same. I mean

Preston Meyer  32:12

to a lot of people they are exactly. According to Homer, she Aphrodite is the daughter of Zeus and the Titan Diani

Katie Dooley  32:22

said sex with exam.

Preston Meyer  32:26

Yeah, I mean, Zeus had sex with almost everybody that he could. There's not a lot of stories of him having sex with men. That you know what, now that I'm saying that, I probably need to go back and look. Probably then there's there's probably I'm thinking of the list of all the people he's had sex with who there was a child that made the story noteworthy. There's there's probably a separate list that I just didn't look

Katie Dooley  32:57

at just as conquest. Right. And not just in his bed frame.

Preston Meyer  33:01

Exactly. Because homosexuality was not an issue in Greece. That was the problem. It was day to day life for the average person. Just casual sex all the time.

Katie Dooley  33:13

Plato's the sexes actually places homosexual men is like, the apex because they've chosen to give up family. So if you were to like rank people, it was like homosexual men, heterosexual and then lesbians. Yeah,

Preston Meyer  33:34

interesting.

Katie Dooley  33:36

Lesbians are the worst. I'm kidding. I know personally, that's what the sexist says. We have no problem with lesbians here at enthusiasts, we cannot

Preston Meyer  33:54

go for it. But I saw the pause and knew you wanted me to say it and I wasn't ready, but here we are, anyway.

Katie Dooley  34:01

Oh, see if that makes sense. So tell me about your anus.

Preston Meyer  34:07

Oh, yeah. So according to Homer, Zeus and Gianni are the parents of Aphrodite. But according to hesed, Aphrodite was formed from the foam that leaked into the sea from Uranus is severed genitals after he was castrated by Cronus. Wow. So we have very different origin stories. And we can't say that one of them is more authoritative than the other. Because we still have the vast majority of humanity saying this is fiction anyway. But what a weird story castrates your NS throws this junk out into the Mediterranean Sea as far as we can expect.

Katie Dooley  34:55

You can see what I'm doing

Preston Meyer  34:59

and The White foamy juice that comes out of those nuts. seafoam This is how we get Aphrodite.

Katie Dooley  35:12

This is how we get an explicit rating.

Preston Meyer  35:18

That's the way it goes. So Aphrodite is cult was primarily a synchronisation of very similar cults to other mother Goddesses from further east. And it actually looks like Aphrodite basically is the same figure as Ishtar as evolution brought it further east or further west rather face this

Katie Dooley  35:39

is and this is what I actually haven't heard of like we have these two we'll get to that are kind of like they get swapped in and out. But I've never heard of a faceless so anyway. Here's the god of fire the forge, blacksmiths and volcanoes have faced is the sun up here. And the cuckold husband of Aphrodite. Homer says they have faced this was thrown down from Olympus for defending his mother from Zeus is sexual advantage the advances kind of like our boy Ganesha from the Hindu tradition. basis, a basis is crippled after a poorly executed superhero land. So that was superhero pose that we see everyone do. Yeah, maybe

Preston Meyer  36:26

poor guy could not handle that kind of toss.

Katie Dooley  36:31

You in another version of Asus is born crippled. And that's why he's thrown down from Olympus. His identity as a crippled Smith is commonly attributed to the ancient memory of millworkers, who suffered from arsenic poisoning due to working with cheap bronze.

Preston Meyer  36:46

Gross.

Katie Dooley  36:49

History really has like crippled a whole bunch of people. Yeah. It's weird, not knowing what you're working with. Right?

Preston Meyer  36:58

It's kind of interesting, looking back through history that there is this kind of, it looks like just a narrative trope that the blacksmith is a cripple in some way or another. But it actually makes sense that if you look at the work they do, and the things they're dealing with arsenic will straight up give you cancer. And there's loads of opportunity to hurt yourself when you're messing around with hot metal light.

Katie Dooley  37:23

Yeah. So there isn't much for calls for her face notice more of general reference from metal workers, blacksmith and trying to him we're typically attached to other trends or to Hermes

Preston Meyer  37:39

is next on our list, and the last of the Olympians that everyone agrees Yes, he's an Olympian

Katie Dooley  37:46

1112 is debated. Yes,

Preston Meyer  37:50

there's issues. We'll deal with that in a minute. So Hermes is the messenger of the gods. He's the God of communication, travel, diplomacy, games, all kinds of stuff. He is the son of Zeus and the plaid, Maya, cuz Zeus begetting around. He's a trickster, which I thought was interesting. But we don't usually actually emphasize that detail of his character. But he's a prankster and messes around with things. And his visits are not very often good visits. So occasionally, he'll come in to bring you news, like Gabriel or whatever. But he also leads the souls of the dead to the underworld, which sounds like a problem when you know, he's a trickster.

Katie Dooley  38:40

Oops, JK.

Preston Meyer  38:41

Right. Here's a practical joke. It went wrong guess you're going down to Haiti? Problem. Yeah, things could go pretty rough. For anybody who meets Hermes, you never really know. Hermes is also incredibly old predating the Hellenic tradition. Some scholars see him as coming from further east with Aphrodite, and that he was specifically her messenger. But of course, things evolve and change as we tell more and more stories about things. His cults were mostly in small rural communities. You didn't see a lot of cults to Hermes in the city until later on in history. And he is now thought to be a variant of pan. The good old Seder God. Of course, when I say good, I mean, fun and interesting, not righteous and just

Katie Dooley  39:38

say they're so not known for that. No. So we come to our first there's a word that I don't have, but it's undisputed. Yeah, that's a good way to come to our first disputed Yeah, god of the Olympians,

Preston Meyer  39:53

there's, everyone seems to agree that there's there's 12 Olympians, but depending on who you Talk to you get different lists.

Katie Dooley  40:01

And literally just like these two that we're about to talk about gets swapped out. Yeah. That's it. So easy enough to know. Yeah. So nobody like doubts that Aphrodite is part of this. It's literally these two. Yeah. So the first one's Hestia, the goddess of health and domesticity. She is a virgin goddess, which is surprising because she's Zeus, his sister, we know how much he likes his sisters, right? That is impressive. She doesn't have much of an individual cult, but she was respected anywhere a fire would burn. There are two known temples attributed to Hestia. And they don't bear any depiction of her.

Preston Meyer  40:39

Yes, I thought was really interesting that you will almost always find great paintings or some sort of iconography, saying this is who you're looking at and dealing with, whether it's a carvings are full on sculptures, or just something. And that's not the case with Hestia. You see writing and whatnot. But there's no faces in the two temples that we know over her

Katie Dooley  41:09

sacrifices, and we'll get more into sacrifices as a practice a little bit later on. were offered primarily in the home by mothers or in public buildings offered by civil authorities. And one of the ones I read his pet, you just like, give some of your dinner, test it to make sure that which makes sense, right, domesticity and health that give her a scoop of your potato salad? I assume the potato salad in ancient Greece? Probably not. I don't think Mayo was the thing.

Preston Meyer  41:38

Does that mean you can have a different kind of potato? Potatoes? I mean, my experience with potatoes with Greek food is fully limited to the restaurant experience.

Katie Dooley  41:50

That's true. Is it dinnertime at our house probably you give her whatever your skill your and that's your offering to her so I can see that being kind of a daily or weekly practice

Preston Meyer  42:07

absolutely daily several times a day any sacrifice was being offered, whether it was to Zeus or Poseidon or Hermes, or what if you're offering to any god, it is proper form to offer first to Hestia testing that and she's the only one who gets to eat before Zeus.

Katie Dooley  42:28

She was the older sister then. I don't know. But But um, the only thing I

Preston Meyer  42:31

can deduce was the baby. He was the last of all of Cronus has children. And Hades I think was the oldest and but they all came out in reverse order when Cronus spewed them back out again after eating them. Okay,

Katie Dooley  42:47

really good. We'll get to that. Who's our number 13

Preston Meyer  42:54

Dennis, good old Dionysus or Stanley Tucci, as we've pointed out before, cuz some of our audience I'm sure is fully aware of Percy Jackson and his family situation with the Olympians and get old Dionysus was played by Stanley Tucci, and Stanley Tucci.

Katie Dooley  43:16

Stanley Tucci. If you're listening when you please be a guest.

Preston Meyer  43:20

Yeah, it would be wonderful.

Katie Dooley  43:23

They haven't come back yet. But they will one day one

Preston Meyer  43:24

day. Yeah. So Dionysus is the god of wine, fertility and frivolity. Because he is the god of Epiphany, especially, especially opioid epiphanies. He is often called an outsider and a foreigner. Though history shows him being one of the oldest gods in the area he is he's not really an outsider, but he brings us outside knowledge in a format very different from her.

Katie Dooley  43:54

Yes, and I can see why people might be wary of that,

Preston Meyer  43:59

right. I mean, a lot of these gods actually do have strong connections with the poppy. And definitely that means opium in at least some of the situations. And that is the case with Dionysus. He actually isn't the God of drunkenness with wine. They're the cult of Dionysus always encourage moderation when it comes to drunkenness. But definitely also love to hand out opium.

Katie Dooley  44:28

So you take a sip of your wine, chase it with your opium Exactly. As you take your opium and chase it with your wine isn't sure I don't drink enough.

Preston Meyer  44:39

I'm not part of the drinking culture.

Katie Dooley  44:43

That's an episode one.

Preston Meyer  44:44

Sure. Dennis, I like I love calling him Dennis. Just because that's that is the English form of the name Dionysus. Dionysus has

Katie Dooley  44:56

Dennis. The Menace. Yes. Oh, Oh,

Preston Meyer  45:02

he has several calls, all of whom hosted fantastic festivals. And according to a bunch of scholars that I've been reading lately, the modern theatre is credited as developing from their practices. Cool. Yeah. Love that.

Katie Dooley  45:19

So this dispute. So Hestia is admitted in favor of Dionysus by people who don't think has the counts as a goddess.

Preston Meyer  45:28

Yeah, it's kind of sketchy. But that's the deal, I guess, when she's the only one who gets to eat or drink before Zeus. That's a bold claim, bold

Katie Dooley  45:38

claim. And then Dionysus is emitted and appear Hestia by people who count on ISIS as a foreign wandering God, which

Preston Meyer  45:48

is a position that's easier to defend, but is tricky. I think I put it in my notes later on, actually, that there is some talk that Dionysus is actually not, not his main persona, that Dionysus is actually Hades. Oh. So I thought that was kind of interesting. Well,

Katie Dooley  46:17

let's jump to Hades and come back to that point, because Hadees is actually a big omission. I think you did a Family Feud of name, mainly. Olympians.

Preston Meyer  46:31

A lot of people would say Haiti, even though he's technically not on the list,

Katie Dooley  46:35

he's not awful.

Preston Meyer  46:36

I think he should be. And if you say that he is diagnosis, and the diagnosis belongs on the list, then bam, Hades

Katie Dooley  46:46

very roundabout way of getting someone into a club, right? Let's talk about he's because he is, again, he's not one of the 12 Olympians, even in our disputed categories, not one of them. But he's a big player, brother of Zeus.

Preston Meyer  47:03

Yeah. And it's weird that he is usually treated as an outcast. He's the King of the Underworld, and God of the dead, not to be confused with the god of death. That is Thanatos. But Europe it is. One of the old classic writers actually disagrees and says that Fana toasts and Hades are the same figure. But he's wrong. And he's dead and he can suck it. Wow,

Katie Dooley  47:34

hot takes on Preston.

Preston Meyer  47:38

So myth tells us that He is the oldest son of Cronus. And which made him the last to be thrown up. As we mentioned, twice or three times now at this point, is kind of a big deal for the mythology is where these people came from. Hades is not the bad guy. Everything, everything you learned from Disney's Hercules is wrong. Everything Hadees is a good guy. For the most part at the worst, he's cold and just kind of distant. Compared with all of the other gods of Olympus. The Hadees, illustrated in myth is the best fit for a Christian or secular idea of morality and justice. So kind of turns the way we look at things all on its head, Zeus, who in the Disney version is more or less, kind of forced to transform into the Judeo Christian God ends up being painted like Trump and gross spray tan Orange is the worst version of a role model. Hate to use is actually much better. A lot of people try to avoid saying the name of Hades, because you don't want to attract the attention of the dude associated with death. So you get all kinds of nicknames given to him, which was really a very popular tradition. anciently across a lot of tradition, a lot across a lot of cultures. So because precious minerals come from under the ground, Hades was called pluton, which basically just means rich, which became a very popular name, and used instead of his proper name. And actually, is the source of the name Pluto that we have for the same figure more or less in the Roman tradition. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. So offerings that were made to Hades weren't typically burned on an altar the way you see a lot of other gods offerings being received. Instead, they were dropped to and dropped into a hole in the ground, which is oddly more familiar in Mesoamerica. Right. Yeah. But offerings to the underworld obviously need to go under the ground. But now you always got to be looking away because you don't want to look at them. Right? That would be bad. Sure, I mean death comes to those who see Hades or has already come to those who see Hades. So you got to be looking away, which means this whole isn't just a little hole in the ground, because you don't want to miss when you're looking

Katie Dooley  50:22

to keep doing it over and over again,

Preston Meyer  50:24

you've been wasting a lot of food, a lot of food and wine. But I thought that was really interesting. And that some scholars will say that he is Dionysus. And that's how he kind of sneaks into an Olympian status sometimes. Good. That is where I had the note. And the orphic cult, which is also tightly tied to done it, Dionysus actually flips that and says no, Hades is actually another persona of the Zeus, that they're kind of coexisting in two different aspects. The Orphan cult is a pretty good example of how you can see that the Greek tradition is not homogenous, it's not monolithic. It's a whole bunch of different traditions that kind of just loosely fit together.

Katie Dooley  51:22

Like Christianity.

Preston Meyer  51:26

Christianity has become pretty well organized.

Katie Dooley  51:28

Yes, but if you look from denomination to denomination beliefs vary widely, wildly. Yes,

Preston Meyer  51:33

they do. In fact, that's mostly why they are different groups is arguments about details.

Katie Dooley  51:41

So before we move on to what I guess the day to day ritual, religious practice looks like I just want to talk about the Olympians because Zeus is not the first God. He's not a creator god like we have in the other. In other religions. The Olympians are actually third and fourth generation immortals. So how the hell did third and fourth generation mortals become top dogs?

Preston Meyer  52:10

By killing everyone who came before them? Yeah, that

Katie Dooley  52:18

word is not shouted as tight, no tied to no Mackie. Tight I just I feel like our listener Huhtamaki. By just shouting it may not have been as clear which the myth is that it was a 10 year God war in Thessaly. And the Olympians fought with the Titans and the Olympians won. So the Titans would be the previous generations, which I just want to say make sealed Olympic Games that look fucking cooler than sorry, if you're an Olympic athlete. Let's be real shot. But

Preston Meyer  52:57

I mean, if you're imagining the shot, put ball, the shot that you are putting, as, say, the head of a Titan. It's pretty now it was a little imagination. It

Katie Dooley  53:09

does get pretty epic. I'm gonna watch the Olympics through a whole new lens when they want to bring on new sports. If I can't see how it would fit into a titan omake eyes I'm mixing it. I mean, because they wanted to get rid of judo, which is like the OG Olympic sport and very useful in a 10 year God war, right?

Preston Meyer  53:29

Whereas men's ribbon gymnastics. Men's Women's Gymnastics is a real thing. Thank you. And if you're using it as a celebration after the battle, that makes more sense. When you're just messing around with the entrails of a disemboweled Titan. It's looking kind of gross, but here we are.

Katie Dooley  53:58

I like it. Synchronized swimming. How does that one work? And I've got four. We've derailed. We have so funny to explain synchronized swimming and awkward to me.

Preston Meyer  54:09

Oh, well, there, there was a titan of the sea that Poseidon was definitely very useful.

Katie Dooley  54:14

So it's like a war drill.

Preston Meyer  54:16

I just gotta be perfect.

Katie Dooley  54:18

It can stay. Yeah, I will call the Olympic commission and there is a sort of to our point about Zeus being really rapey and like three and four generations of immortals. There is a very good but very confusing family bush on Wikipedia.

Preston Meyer  54:35

Yeah. And I found that on Wikipedia after I saw it, you posted it in our notes, and I've found a less exhaustive but easier to follow family trees all over the country. Yeah, it's a bush. There's so much intertwining, honestly because Zeus has sex with about a quarter of all of the People in the tree. There's a lot of crossing of lines. It's a mess. But it is actually pretty nifty to see how all of this is connected. And we'll talk a little bit more on what that might actually mean towards the end of the episode. Does this mean Zeus did it with Poseidon? No, no, that's listing them as brothers. Oh, no, you're

Katie Dooley  55:24

right. I don't see here. Okay, so let's see Zeus and Demeter Zeus and Leto, Zeus and Hera, Zeus and Manuel Mizzou. Many medicine do and

Preston Meyer  55:43

so, so many, so want

Katie Dooley  55:48

to be a practitioner air quotes, because this was just day to day life of the ancient Greek religion, which we also know is a misnomer.

Preston Meyer  55:56

Yeah, there wasn't one really well, using the word religion just feels weird. Honestly, it probably looks like your average person today, apart from the nature of their employment, farmers would go out work in the farms, and they'd make the occasional sacrifice, just like the UK, the average farmer will go to church on Sunday. Yeah, it's not wildly different, really. Which is kind of nice. Humanity is really pretty much the same all the time. We,

Katie Dooley  56:29

I mean, we definitely haven't changed a lot in the last 1000 years, like our how our brains are made, right? Like we haven't changed at all, which is kind of scary. But the Greek religion was focused much more on practices and rituals than beliefs. So if you could walk the walk, nobody really cared much. If you believed in it, there was none of this come to Christ moment. Right? Born Again, Christian stuff. These are just, this is just what you do. It's your how you brush your teeth, you give a sacrifice to your God, it's what you do to get through your day.

Preston Meyer  57:06

Yeah, there were altars and temples erected both in the home, and larger temples like the Parthenon. And you were meant to leave offerings to the god or goddess of your choice. If you are traveling abroad, it was the correct thing to do to make an offering to the God of the place you were visiting. And in a polytheistic system, where you recognize that there are more gods and the one you worship, that's not even weird. No, you just do it. Which is why people were so pissed off at the Christians who refuse to do it.

Katie Dooley  57:41

It's also an we'll get more into this in our episode, wrap up in a couple months, but it's also outside, but that's one of the reasons that it died out because they were happy to accept on their end another guy. Okay. But that obviously wasn't reciprocated. So it's really easy for them to start believing in an Abrahamic God. And but then also very easy to, for them for Christians to start stripping them of their other

Preston Meyer  58:08

gods. Yeah, it's a little messy.

Katie Dooley  58:13

So this is just kind of classic worship stuff. You leave a sacrifice for your God, they'll do something for you in return. Sacrifices libation was very popular. So you pour wine, or going out for the homies or one out for the homies, one for you, one for me raise the class. We're recording this on the day of Betty White's death

Preston Meyer  58:32

ban. I will raise I was very disappointed to read that this morning.

Katie Dooley  58:35

Yep. So she'll get a libation tonight. Exactly that honey and milk. Also commonly Batian. It can be a separate sacrifice could be something small, like you said, a portion of your dinnertime meal to Hestia. Or it can be something large, like a cow or a person.

Preston Meyer  58:51

Yeah, human sacrifice was never common in Greece. There are a few old writers who talk about it as a thing that was more common anciently like before the time of the old old writers that we're reading now. And even then it's starting to look like that's probably not the case read a

Katie Dooley  59:16

little bit about scapegoats was mean, which is a term we still have today. Yeah, that they'd have some sort of outsider and they'd like put all this bad juju on them, and then they would sacrifice them or stone them to death. But again, I even in my readings, it didn't sound like it was as common as some people would think. Yeah. heathens don't sacrifice humans nearly as much do you think we do, right? We definitely do, but not nearly as much.

Preston Meyer  59:48

I feel pretty confident that a lot of the throwing folks into volcanoes was probably more capital punishment than sacrifice. Do you Oh,

Katie Dooley  1:00:00

well I just can't. Like I can't I can't see it because we have examples like North Korea, were scaring someone into compliance.

Preston Meyer  1:00:08

I mean works.

Katie Dooley  1:00:11

But the origin of religion was to organize a society that can function so if you have people living in fear that they're going to be the next scapegoat, my work but I'm actually saying it might not like long term it's not it's not constructing exactly so sure the occasional Why not but it's not nearly as we should look as taxing because that because that's a big belief without texting because that they in my hands they would be head and play soccer with your skull. I don't know if that's on our list. But that's when that also gets a big throwing virgins into volcanoes wrap

Preston Meyer  1:00:50

a few like using a skull for their sports would actually have made life so much easier. Because they're playing with those really heavy medicine balls, right? Like a scholar so much lighter. That would have been actually okay.

Katie Dooley  1:01:06

I think I we're we're digressing a bit but the especially the Central American religions, I bet a lot of that is just pure racism.

Preston Meyer  1:01:17

Oh, there was definitely a lot of

Katie Dooley  1:01:21

talk about voodoo being this big. It's not a scary religion. It's just people villainize it because they're anti black. So I bet if we dug into the Central American religions,

Preston Meyer  1:01:33

they're not Christian. So they're terrible. Baby. Yeah, yay, for all of the things. There's so much wrong with the way people talk about other people historically, right.

Katie Dooley  1:01:49

Back to the Greek stuff. Sin is not a thing, particularly really, it's not. And if you read about Pompeii, or Herculaneum, there were two cities. And I know Pompeii wasn't I think it's Herculaneum. They were just like the Las Vegas so their time Sex, drugs and rock'n'roll. So morals in ancient Greece. I wouldn't say they're bad. They were just really loved. hedonistic, let's call it hedonism

Preston Meyer  1:02:17

was definitely more or less the way things were operated. There was kind of a universal law of moderation. But that's kind of it there were there were some places where failure to be moderate was actually punished, but not really a lot in most places. If you

Katie Dooley  1:02:43

I'm pretty sure Turkey millennium. I'm pretty sure if you go Herculaneum, there's like, runes with dicks.

Preston Meyer  1:02:48

I mean, that's pretty much humans everywhere.

Katie Dooley  1:02:52

Everywhere through all time, they do ancient decks on the wall.

Preston Meyer  1:02:56

Once we got civilized enough to not be worried about our survival from week to week, we predict something. Yeah, it's, I don't know why.

Katie Dooley  1:03:09

I definitely have a dick. But on my fridge now, thanks to Preston. Yeah.

Preston Meyer  1:03:18

Because we talked about it. One thing that I think is really nifty though, okay. One thing I think is really nifty, is that there is one I want to call it the deadly sin from this should be a familiar idea in the English speaking world, is hubris. This is more than just the sin of pride. This is the extreme height of pride. This is what brought Icarus to fly too close to the Sun kind of level of pride. And that's the only reason that Gods would smack down people other than for their own entertainment, which was also a real life problem. But yeah, hubris, big, bad thing.

Katie Dooley  1:04:01

Basically, they don't want you thinking you're on par with them. Right?

Preston Meyer  1:04:04

Gods will occasionally elevate people, especially heroes, but for you to say, I'm like the gods bad time is coming your way.

Katie Dooley  1:04:17

Zeus is gonna turn into a goose and

Preston Meyer  1:04:20

have his way make his way up inside you.

Katie Dooley  1:04:25

Which is written facts. There are stories.

Preston Meyer  1:04:28

Yeah, there's it's a historical start literary detail. Yeah, what a mess, right. A few of the gods especially Hara and Demeter are associated with the poppy. And we already talked about how Dionysus is really into the poppy. There's no shortage of scholars who are very confident that of opium was very popular. Each of the gods had things that they would bless people for doing some of these acts might offend another god, though, there is no unity among the gods of Olympus, or of all of the gods of the Greeks. And that's just kind of the deal. As I mentioned before, the the greatest tradition of Greece is storytelling. And I mean, this kind of a big deal around the world. And the Greeks have a story for everything. Spiders are awful. There's a story for that. They exist because of a curse put on a girl who would weave better than the goddess of weaving. So bam, now you're a spider. Now we have spiders. Wow. Yeah, I like the Pleiades look real pretty in the night sky. There's a story for that. They're the children of the Titan Atlas and the nymph planning story suite. It's kind of nifty. And there's stories for literally everything in the world. And what's

Katie Dooley  1:06:00

their story for Canadians?

Preston Meyer  1:06:04

Oh, that's easy. History took care of that. I'm pretty sure that it's not in their elementary school curriculum. Okay. But history takes care of that.

Katie Dooley  1:06:17

I just want to hear the ancient Greek story you said for everything. I'm just being sassy. Get your like.

Preston Meyer  1:06:28

Clearly wasn't that good? Canada isn't ancient. So there's no ancient Greek story for Canada?

Katie Dooley  1:06:37

Do you want to do the Hellenic afterlife? Do I want to do the Hellenic afterlife? Of course. So generally, there's a single place for dead spirits. In the Greek tradition, unlike in the Abrahamic faiths, where you go up or down, and this is underground, which makes perfect sense because we, for the most part barrier did. Eventually a few cults start exploring the reality that when men die, they are not equal in virtue. So the truly awful you segregate to the darkest corners of the realm of Hades called Tartarus. Men of greater virtue were said to live the noble life in the fields of Elysium, especially those who were a family of gods and heroes.

Preston Meyer  1:07:19

Makes sense, I guess, pretty easy to get on board with

Katie Dooley  1:07:24

the aisles of the blessed were conceptually identical to Elysium. And so they had quickly become conflated. Those islands are to the far west of Europe, so potentially the America Yeah, we're

Preston Meyer  1:07:36

living in heaven. Canada is now recovered.

Katie Dooley  1:07:43

Descriptions of legally seen fields vary with every classic author, but it's traditionally admitted that each resident might see differently as they might lead to different lives they're doing as they please. I feel like the leasing fields were mentioning Gladiator. Absolutely, they were. So I watched gladiator when I was foreign to you and watch Gladiator. And it disturbed me because it was so gory, and I've never watched it.

Preston Meyer  1:08:05

Yeah, you're gonna want to go back

Katie Dooley  1:08:09

and go back. It's really I remember being very gory. There was Tico, in particular, to like this day, and I saw it, probably 20 years ago. So it's

Preston Meyer  1:08:21

a classic, but it's not required for being a cultured human being. Back, sorry,

Katie Dooley  1:08:27

back to the Hellenic afterlife. Usually, the talk of the dead was about embodied spirits. But there are a few stories that all heroes have been taken to their immortal home in their flesh suits.

Preston Meyer  1:08:41

It sounds alright,

Katie Dooley  1:08:43

I know I can keep up my flesh suit.

Preston Meyer  1:08:45

Yeah, there's not a lot of discussion of physical resurrection in Greek literature classically. But there are a few that actually talked about reincarnation as well, though, that's not actually a popular theory back then. But it was a thing that some classic Greek writers were talking about,

Katie Dooley  1:09:05

well, they better hold on to their hats because they're about to get a resurrection story that's gonna blow their minds right.

Preston Meyer  1:09:14

And ruin their religion and

Katie Dooley  1:09:15

ruin basically everything Oh.

Preston Meyer  1:09:21

But because we're talking about a polytheistic world, all these cults that we talked about earlier, live together in the same cities. They accepted each other's practices. When they traveled. Like I said, they offer sacrifices to local gods and each other's Gods without complaining about their own God not being respected in any particular temple. The idea of one true God as is very commonly understood in the world today because monotheistic religions are the vast majority of people's faiths in the world. The all of this was completely full Until these people, it just wouldn't even wouldn't have even made sense.

Katie Dooley  1:10:04

How could one person do all of this? I don't get it, right. So we mentioned earlier that this is a series on air quotes, dead religions. But all of these religions have been revived because people of course, we could debate on how much people believe just like we talked about Jedi ism versus this is just something cool to be a part of. But there are active Hellenic revivalist groups, mostly in Greece. So the reign of Constantine the second in the fourth century is where most historians point to the sharp decline of Hellenistic paganism. Though I'm sure for centuries afterwards, you could find the odd person,

Preston Meyer  1:10:54

definitely more likely in rural areas in cities, there would have been a lot more force to hey, you're gonna be a

Katie Dooley  1:11:01

Christian and we need force. Yeah, Christian. Yeah. So basically, it died out, the Supreme Council of ethnic boy helenus was established in 1997. And they have revived these practices, they do perform sacrifice, as we, you know, food and in wine and milk, for the most part, I have not heard any cases of human sacrifice.

Preston Meyer  1:11:31

Because that's a cry. That's correct.

Katie Dooley  1:11:35

And they sing hymns to their preferred gods, an advice video that I watched, they actually had a lot of problems, because the Greek government didn't actually recognize it as a religion until just 2017. So just four years ago, five years ago, so they couldn't actually like worship properly, because all of these temples are like, tourist sites. And it's still actually a bit of a point of contention. No kidding. Because you can't just like be pouring milk on a tourist attraction. Hi, Stonehenge, the male.

Preston Meyer  1:12:14

Yeah, that might be probably

Katie Dooley  1:12:16

are like petitioning to, like, hold stuff at the Parthenon. And they're like, No, you really can't do that. But they spoke in this little vise, you can find this face, many, you know, there many documentaries, they talked to the Minister of religion, he's like, as long as you're not everyone, you can do whatever you want. But we also have to protect our historic landmark. So there is obviously freedom of religion in Greece. There are other groups around the world. But again, it's predominantly Greek. In Greece, and there's just like before, there's no central body. And many of these practices and traditions come from the study of what happened historically. There are other groups, in addition to the Supreme Council of ethnic boy helenus. That's just one of many. And one point I found really interesting in the documentary was that in smart of them is, well, on the surface, it seems nationalistic, they are very much separating themselves from right wing nationals that every country seems to have a problem with. So it's not it is not that and I just want to be clear about that. So while it is very, like Greek centric, obviously a Greek religion, it is not that it's

Preston Meyer  1:13:37

not the problem,

Katie Dooley  1:13:38

not the problem. It's people literally dressing in togas and singing songs about their favorite God, or goddess, which sounds pretty all right, right. I love a good toga, right. It's like a moo, moo, like,

Preston Meyer  1:13:53

but more flattering. Depending on your personal body type. I want to talk a little bit about you hammer ism before we close out, wrap up this demo. So you have Maurice was this fella who was basically at this way, way back, talked about how some of the gods were actually real people. And so you hammer ism is the study of mythology from a historical approach,

Katie Dooley  1:14:30

which was anthropological where you're trying to

Preston Meyer  1:14:34

almost solve it. Yeah, it's, it's kind of tricky, like, a lot of the gods we know are just personification of natural phenomena. Apollo, yeah. But some of the gods throughout history across various cultures. Some of them were people. And so the trick is figuring out which ones actually were and the tomb of Zeus on Crete. is one of those things that is kind of the backup for the argument that maybe Zeus actually was a real person that he was a Minoan and that maybe his name, or at least he is called commonly in this area volcanoes, which is kind of interesting. And honestly, I think the the whole idea of you hammer ism is fascinating. Unfortunately, there is a severe shortage of historical records to really support any of the fun hypotheses was Oosa king who deposed another king and conquered the hearts and minds of Greece, or maybe not, who knows, or maybe the story of Zeus killing Cronus is an allegory for the cult of Zeus supplanting the cult of Cronus. We don't have a cult of Cronus we don't actually have any evidence that there was a cult of Cronus. But because of the story that we have, that might be an allegorical representation of a cultural movement.

Katie Dooley  1:16:03

Well, and then we also get into I forget his name, but from hermeticism, where you're an amalgamation of like Hermes Trismegistus, Hermes Trismegistus, where you are an amalgamation of I mean, Hermes, tres, Manish this was an amalgamation of deities, but you could potentially use this as an argument for Jesus as well, or you're an amalgamation of people who were real, smushed together. So now you're fictitious, but you're based, in fact. So there's also that which I'm sure falls into this as well.

Preston Meyer  1:16:37

It's definitely connected studies. Yeah, it's all really complicated. And really interesting.

Katie Dooley  1:16:44

I mean, as an atheist, I think it's a really good explanation to how a lot of this developed or didn't think at all, this has gone way, way back to our episode on why people believe what they believe, but even just wanting to be part of something bigger, and if you can rally around someone and make them bigger and better. based in truth, maybe not that they did. That's been something that's kind of easy to rally behind. Sure. This is interesting. I feel like maybe we do a whole episode on this too.

Preston Meyer  1:17:19

I think we definitely could, we should.

Katie Dooley  1:17:23

Yeah, before we forget.

Preston Meyer  1:17:26

Well, that's more or less what we can fit in the time.

Katie Dooley  1:17:33

But as always, feel free to pop onto our social media or a discord with recommendations or suggestions for episodes. Do you want to hear more about Apollo? We'll do a whole episode on polar for you, you let us know. So that is Instagram, Facebook and discord.

Preston Meyer  1:17:50

And, and Patreon. Don't forget Patreon. We would love to get a little extra support. If we got enough support, we could put out a new episode every week. That'd be fantastic. And if subscriptions aren't really your thing, maybe we could sell you a shirt or a tote. We got so many options on Spreadshirt and so many options to just be our friend and give us money. Join a community

Katie Dooley  1:18:21

ask questions learn more. Everything's on our website. Now.

Preston Meyer  1:18:24

Man, we're getting organized and we

Katie Dooley  1:18:28

are moving on up in this world. So yeah, but your support means everything to us. By the late Middle Ages