What Have Modern Polytheists’ Reactions Been to the Netflix/BBC Series Troy: Fall of a City?

As is so often the case, I am way behind on many things, and watching particular films and television series is no exception. I think I might have heard of this show when it came out in 2018, but did not have a chance to see it (it’s only eight episodes, each about an hour long) until the last several days.

I may be discussing it in-depth here, so if you’re one of these people who reads some version of a review of narrative media and is mad if it talks about it in particular details, I’ll just say that since this is based on stories that have existed for the better part of the last three millennia, and there’s not too much novel in it, then get over it.

To summarize before I even truly begin: I liked it! If I didn’t like it, I would not have continued with it, and I watched the first episode thinking I might just try it and then sleep on it and maybe watch another the next day…but no, I ended up watching the first three episodes that night before I went to bed.

I have only read a few reviews and reactions to the series, and almost all of them had me pissed off for a variety of reasons. To address some of the “big” issues people had with it that I think are pretty ridiculous:

–Some have said the show is too “racy” with its nudity warnings and such. There are various women’s breasts shown; there is an arse or two. No genitals of anyone are ever shown, even in statuary. About the only full nudity that occurs are a few bath scenes, but even there, most of the lower halves of people are concealed by the bath and/or the water, so I wouldn’t really count that. There are sex scenes, but there’s always clothing or coverings involved so you don’t really see anything other than people writhing on top of or against one another. Big fuckin’ deal…get over it, prudes!

–Was it “historically accurate”? As the events of the Trojan War are not reflective of what we can verify as actual history at any point, and even Homer’s version of the tale was therefore set in what would have been his own (and “Homer” probably wasn’t a historical person, either!) contemporary cultural and technological setting, any discussion of a media portrayal of the story that tries to make itself sound like it is concerned with these things is barking up the wrong tree. Most of the versions of the story that people have known in the European world have not been Homer’s version since the end of late antiquity, and we have no small number of versions that show the Greeks as medieval armor-clad knights, and there’s even the Irish version known as Togail Troi that sets the tale as one of the medieval Irish genres of “Destructions” (of cities or buildings), and in my own position as both a scholar of premodern narratives and someone who understands the personal and cultural functions of myth, this is as it should be! The story of Troy is always more illustrative of what is going on when it is told than anything actually historical–it’s a mirror into the people and culture that tells it. So, there’s stirrups on the horses; there’s an ostrich in it for a few seconds; the ships’ prows look a bit more like Viking ships than any period of Greek ships…and any number of other such “anachronisms.” I don’t think it really matters that much, honestly. The only one I would really dispute is Helen making reference to the story of “Actaeon and Diana” rather than “Aktaion and Artemis,” especially since Artemis is then later referenced (and portrayed directly!) in the show with the incident of Agamemnon’s sacrifice of Iphigenia, on which more later.

–One of the other biggest gripes, and sadly not surprising, is that there are many major characters who are portrayed by Black actors: Pandarus (who has an interesting role in this in comparison to Troilus and Cressida, for example), Nestor, Aeneas, the Deities Zeus, Athena and Artemis, and most significantly for the story and overall screen time, Achilles and Patroclus (I’m going to use their spelling/pronunciation of this, rather than my usual “Achilleus” to distinguish the Greek Hero from Achilles the Trophimos of Herodes Attikos). This is another occurrence in a long line of British casting choices where race blindness is in operation, and I think there’s nothing wrong with it. (In the Royal Shakespeare Company production of Troilus and Cressida that I saw when I was in Oxford, Paris was portrayed by a Black man, and yet all of the other sons of Priam were played by white actors…and so what?) Again, people trying to argue that it is “non-historical” to have Black actors in these roles, or playing these characters “realistically,” is a bunch of bullshit since there is nothing historical about the story in the first place. Yes, it would have been nice if Memnon were in this version (he has yet to appear in modern media outside of fiction, alas), but perhaps they attempted to at least allude to him in the way they portrayed Aeneas as the cousin of the Trojan princes “from the south,” perhaps thus referring to Egypt/Ethiopia rather than the Dardanian provenance of Aeneas’ father Anchises (which is to the north of Troy traditionally).

–Some have said the acting was bad, the characters unlikable, and the pace was way too slow. I would disagree on all three: only eight hours to tell the whole saga of Troy is too little, in my view, and a 10-12-part series would have been better, but still probably not enough. They decided to focus on particular moments, and more on interpersonal matters than on large epic combats (which, whether they are done with hundreds of extras and cavalry and so forth, or are computer-generated, are very expensive, so I understand why there was so little of that in this), which is what I personally prefer. I didn’t feel that any of the characters were portrayed “inaccurately” to what we have about them in earlier literatures, and thought the actors did a fine job with what they were given. Agamemnon is cruel but conflicted and then vindictive; Menelaus is inept and overly prideful; Odysseus is deceitful though occasionally merciful, only to have his own feelings overridden by his duties to his superiors. We get some backstory on several characters in detail, and as this is a telling that is more sympathetic to and focused upon the Trojans rather than the Greeks, we get a lot on Paris’ background, which though not exactly as it was in the original literatures, is closer than anything we have seen on a screen before (e.g. he was abandoned after birth due to a prophecy that he would ruin Troy by his presence, though the circumstances and details in the series are slightly different than the established literature). That Zeus chooses Paris to judge between the three Goddesses because of his impartiality in an earlier competition with Ares is not mentioned, though they do work Hermes (who escorted Paris to Mt. Ida for the judgement) into the scene of the judgement, though He is nowhere else portrayed in the film. Some have said that Achilles was not portrayed “emotionally enough,” perhaps, and was just indifferent, moody and angry…but to my knowledge, this is how he is portrayed in the Iliad itself, so I don’t see any problems there!

–Though as part of pacing, there is the fact that time is elapsed but also not shown as being long enough in certain respects. The war is said to last “years,” and traditionally it was ten years, but no one seems to age, including a child (Evander!) that ends up surviving and going with Aeneas, still appearing as roughly .7-9 years old from when the war started until it ends. Further, the judgement of Paris took place just after the wedding of Thetis and Peleus, which means Achilles would not have been born yet at that point…and yet it seems that this judgement occurs and then a month or two later, he’s meeting Helen in Sparta and they elope soon after, the Greeks follow, and Achilles is a full-grown adult already. While the actual chronology on this is not entirely clear in the originals (I imagine Paris would have had to have been a late teen when the judgement occurred, then a good deal of time would have passed before he met Helen, and then Achilles would have been a mid-to-late teen when he joined the war), the narrative order of events is indisputable, so at least they got that correct.

–In comparison to the 2004 Troy film, for a whole host of reasons, this one is far superior. There is no reference to atheism (as I’ve written about on my old blog, which so often happens with other Greek/Roman myth/history retellings on film and television these past two decades, e.g. Troy, Immortals, Clash of the Titans, Spartacus: Blood and Sand), Deities make regular appearances in the series (as opposed to only Thetis in the 2004 film…and sadly, She does not appear in this series, though She is referred to–not by name–several times, and alluded to pretty clearly by Achilles at one point when he muses, “What does the Sea think of all this?”) and the Deities’ favor or disfavor follows directly on characters’ actions–and everyone acknowledges it!–and though the portrayal of time has some problems in this series, it at least looks like it took longer than the 2004 film, which makes the whole Trojan campaign appear to have been a matter of weeks or months rather than years. While the series does mistake “belief” as being a major issue in religious matters (a common creedal monotheist-normative cultural mistake when examining other religions), no one questions the reality of the Deities at any point, and that is a major step forward. One of the things that made the 2004 film so objectionable on that point was that Thetis’ appearance near the beginning of the film puts all of those sorts of questions entirely to the “moot” category, and thus Hector’s apparent private atheism is essentially either a modern intrusion on the skeptical author’s or producer’s part/s, or it shows how very weak and hypocritical the character was, when in fact Hector is almost inevitably portrayed as “the best of men,” as he was to a large extent in the film, and as he is in this series as well.

So, enough with the answers to some critical comments that others have made. What about the rest?

As a character study, one thing I found of great interest is the contrast that is made between Priam and Hecuba’s rulership of Troy and their approach to prophecy and religious piety, versus that of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra (who is never mentioned to be the sister of Helen, though Agamemnon’s winning of Helen for Menelaus is a matter of scorn throughout the series…though it is novel in this telling; on other discrepancies of lineage and such, I will have more to say below).

Priam and Hecuba literally share a throne in Troy, and a point is made of the relative equality of station and opinion that the women of Troy enjoy with their husbands, including co-rulership and co-decision-making. Thus, both Priam and Hecuba are equally to blame for the casting out of Paris, which is as the prophecies related to him suggested, but then likewise receive him back happily when the time comes, though they are aware that it may result in their doom ultimately, and they and their family are given many reminders that it will be so along the way. They are shown to be exemplary and in many ways idealized, concerned for their people, compassionate, and fair…and when the Greeks meet them, they are degraded as being degenerate “Asiatics.”

Agamemnon, though, is an interesting contrast to them. When he learns that Artemis requires the sacrifice of Iphigenia to allow their voyage to Troy to commence–and the Goddess’ non-speaking appearance to the priest as he divines on this shows Her to be upset, or perhaps even conflicted, over it, which is quite interesting–Agamemnon is understandably upset, but readily assents to it, and to deceiving both his wife and daughter over it. Clytemnestra only appears in this scene, and is totally unaware of what is to come, and then when she realizes what is going on, she is beside herself with grief and anger, understandably! Agamemnon is upset that it must be done, but he goes through with it, and after an initial horrified reaction on Iphigenia’s part, she then resigns herself to her fate and stops and says “Let it be without struggle” that she be sacrificed. This was a moving scene, above the obvious emotionality of it and the difficulty of the situation, because she is clearly pious and knows how sacrifice should be offered in her religious context.

But, what I find interesting here is how this is shown as the contrast to the sharing of decision-making, even where prophecies and divine injunctions are concerned, on the part of Priam and Hecuba. Hecuba and Priam discuss almost everything, whereas Agamemnon makes the decision himself, and thus demonstrates that his culture has little regard for women as anything other than pawns and prizes. This decision, of course, gets him killed in the aftermath of the series (whether the audience knows it or not!), and it is a brutal following of the requirements of piety and prophecy; but as his side is the ultimate “winner” in the war, it sets up an interesting counterpoint to the Trojans, who are aware of the dangers involved in going against the prophecies given to them related to Paris, and yet they do as the interests of family cohesion and compassion would direct all the same, though it results in their ruin ultimately. I wonder what the writers and producers of the show wished to communicate in this, even though it is something that is present in the original texts (though without the aftermath of the further ruin of the House of Atreus, the larger point might be lost somewhat).

While we hear that Achilles is the son of a Goddess (unnamed), we never hear that Helen is the daughter of Zeus, nor of her brothers the Dioskouroi, nor that Aeneas is the son of Aphrodite (though She appears more frequently than any other Deity in the series), nor that various other people on each side are the children of Deities (and most others don’t even appear as characters). Apollon (as “Apollo”) is mentioned a great deal, especially on the Trojan side, but is never seen directly appearing at any point, though prophecies and prodigies are relayed and interpreted by His priests frequently. That Thetis is not in the series at all is especially lamentable to me, not only because of my own connection with Her, but because Achilles is Black, and thus it makes me wonder if Thetis would have been portrayed by a Black actress as well. (Since Artemis and Athena were both portrayed by Black actresses, whereas the only other two Goddesses in the series are Hera and Aphrodite–portrayed by White actresses–I suppose it is 50/50!) If so, that would have really been amazing for me, because that is exactly how Thetis appeared to me in my first major experience with Her last year, and thus it would have been very intriguing to see that coincidence since I was not aware of this series’ content when all of that occurred in May of 2020.

One other thing that I have to praise this series for is that Achilles and Patroclus are, in fact, portrayed both as loving each other, and as essentially bisexual, as there is a bit of a threesome in the show between Briseis (who is portrayed pretty accurately, though where she comes from is not the same as traditionally in the earlier literature), Achilles, and Patroclus, and then the demand of Agamemnon for Briseis in recompense for Chryseis follows this relatively quickly, which sets up Achilles’ refusal to fight and so forth. That this was done correctly here is fantastic, since there was nothing but “cousinly affection” shown between Achilles and Patroclus in the 2004 film, and it all seemed to be more about Achilles’ attachment to Briseis, ultimately, than about Paris and Helen in that awful, awful movie. So, on this–and on a few brief bits in which Penthesileia expresses her love for women and aversion for men–the series gets much higher marks, though they make it sound as if homoeroticism is not as common as it was amongst the canonical characters of the story (including the Deities…let’s not forget that Ganymede happened before Troy and in many ways is backstory to it, not to mention Poseidon and Pelops being in the backstory of the House of Atreus!).

What about the Deities and the other characters? I would have liked to have seen Apollon appear rather than just being present through priests and prophecies and prodigies (nice alliteration there!); I also would have liked to see Athena appear around Odysseus and inspire him more, as She did not have as large a part as She deserves in all of this (Hera seems to move in that direction for a split second at one point, which is an interesting thing). Aphrodite’s appearances are pretty consistent with the established lore, though she goes even further with Paris at one stage, which I’ll let you see for yourself, as it is an interesting and rather “modern” and perhaps even directly Buffy the Vampire Slayer-esque touch at one stage! And, as I’ve indicated above, I would have loved to have seen Thetis intercede with Zeus, appear to Her son, and to have lamented Him, and likewise for Eos to have done so with Memnon (and for Memnon to appear at all!), since that combat was even more important in sealing Achilles’ fate than has ever been shown in any screen version of Troy that has ever occurred thus far.

I also have to say: the Trojan horse’s appearance and explanation in this version was far more satisfying than any I have seen before in its rationalization. It’s very modern, yes, but also very appropriate, and makes of the Trojans rather opportunistic and impious people, which brings about their downfall at the moment they believe they have actually won, which is a very intriguing touch.

So, what I’m interested in knowing is: how many modern polytheists have seen this, and what did you think of it? Did you like or hate particular parts of it, or all of it? What was done well and what got in your way of enjoying it? Were you able to immerse yourself in its story and portrayals, or did some of its novelties and oddities distract you too much to appreciate what merits it may have had in its narrative choices? I am curious to know! Have at it in the comments, therefore! 😉

Human-Divine Marriages: What’s That All About?

It’s been quite a while since I have written here…and I should qualify that by saying “have been able to write here,” as my time has been taken up by a variety of activities that are both positive, negative, and necessities in order to deal with some of the nonsense on the negative side that has also been occurring. It’s a long and complicated, and needless to say annoying, story, but let me leave it at that for the moment.

The topic of human/divine marriages, Deity Marriages, God-Spouses, and whatever other terms one may use to describe these types of relationships, is an interesting one, but also a fraught one, and it is or has been fraught for people including myself in the past, and to the present. However, as is so often the case with these kinds of things where Deities are concerned, my own doubts and reservations on the matter have almost ended up functioning like a “dare” to the Deities to challenge, push, and prod me until I come to an understanding of the matter that is not merely intellectual, but experiential…whatever I wasn’t sure about, and sometimes haven’t even been sure if it can truly exist, ends up being something that I become in time. As someone who once strongly identified as a neo-agnostic, the “I won’t believe it until I see/hear/feel it” streak is pretty strong in me, even now when I operate primarily from a non-creedal viewpoint in my religious engagements. But, that’s also the beauty of such non-creedal engagements: belief isn’t necessary, but good practice is, and genuine experience is, and in the latter case, one does not transition from non-belief to belief, but instead from lack of experience to having particular experiences.

I cannot claim to be an expert at this topic, I can only share what I have experienced personally. I am not sure if this general topic is one that is generalizable to others to any great extent, other than that we use similar terms to broadly label or categorize these types of relationship. But, the characteristics and particularities of each such relationship–like the Deities Themselves and the many ways to approach and be devoted to Them–are superlatively varied. So, what can I say in regards to my own experiences on these matters?

I have been in a relationship, characterized from moments after I realized it was occurring/had occurred as a “divine marriage,” with the Hellenic Goddess Thetis since May 30th of 2020. I have alluded to this here, and have outright stated it here, though few seem to have noticed; I have discussed it with a number of people more directly on several occasions as well.

I am in the midst of a series of rituals that will solidify this divine marriage, and the fifth of the six such rituals took place this past Sunday, August 15th; the final one will take place on Sunday, October 10th. The dates of each of these rituals will remain important holy days in my own personal calendar for the foreseeable future, and some of them may also be things that are reckoned more widely in years to come, especially if what results from them becomes more well-known and widespread than only with myself and those closest to me.

We often say in religious studies (and elsewhere!) that most religions begin with the individual experiences of particular people, and the same can certainly be said about many polytheistic cultus, it’s just that generally we don’t know the details of these things. Major Roman festivals for particular Deities were often on the dates that Their temples were founded, and it was individual humans who did so, often as a result of fulfilling a particular vow to the Deity-in-question…but unfortunately, that’s about as close as we can get to these things in most cases of polytheist antiquity in the Mediterranean worlds. (Aretalogies are a little more direct, but they don’t often give dates in most cases, and tend to not be identified with particular individuals either, sadly!) As I began the observances on Sunday, I commented on this with those present, and for the first time that day, there were more people present than myself and one other person (the same person for the second through fourth rituals, who was also there for the fifth; the first ritual also had one other person besides myself present, but she has not been available since then because she now has a child of her own…on which more in a moment!). We do not have records on how certain sorts of ritual took place, even though such rituals undoubtedly did take place, and that is a great shame, and thus many of us modern polytheists find ourselves in the position of having to reinvent the wheel without knowing at all how the wheel-in-question was invented in the first place…we may know something about geometry, to stretch this metaphor to its breaking point, but we don’t even know if we’re using materials suitable to making a wheel at all or if we have any of the right tools to shape such a thing, and yet if it rolls by the time we’re done and can be attached to a vehicle to help it move, then we must call it a success, no matter how much others may object to how it was made in this innovative fashion!

Others have addressed this matter before myself, but I must echo it here: when we think of “marriage,” we think of things that are pretty thoroughly modern, and in many cases post-Christian, when that term is used. In some societies, both traditionally and in the past, and down to the present, “marriage” has little to do with romantic relationships, love, or anything like what our popular Western culture associates with it, though they can have something and in fact everything to do with reproduction and thus sexuality to various extents. Getting into that mindset is something that may be nearly impossible for even some of the most culturally-adjusted-in-appropriate-manners polytheists of the modern period. Certainly, I am far more devoted to Thetis now than I have been in the past, and I would say there is a certain amount of what could be considered “love” in the relationship, at least on my part, and more in the meanings of that term that are platonic and even familial rather than “romantic” and what most people associate with the term when relationships and marriage are concerned these days. But, the entire reason that I think Thetis decided–very much against Her own customs and stated preferences–to give this a try with me is because She had specific designs on what would result. She needed someone to assist in an earthly fashion with what Her own particular designs were, and I am somewhat eminently qualified for the needs She had, since I already have experience with helping to give birth to new Deities successfully in the modern world with the Tetrad++. Thus, in classical understandings of marriage, producing children was essentially the prime matter in question, and that is a large part of what has gone on with Thetis and myself.

So, the ritual on Sunday, August 15th, was one in which the birth of our son, Echidnos, occurred officially (his conception date of November 15th is also to be marked in the future). Not unlike his older brother Achilleus, he will have an interesting fate, which will be revealed more widely on or around October 10th (I already know what it is after post-ritual divinations which divulged it quite unexpectedly!). While I have some images and symbols of him that I am to use in the shrine I am putting together for him, Thetis, Achilleus, Euphorion (Whose current shrines will be transferred to this new one), a future child of Thetis with another parent, and the six children of Thetis and Peleus that did not survive Thetis’ attempts to immortalize them, there are two others on the way, which are based on the following image that will be 3D printed in various ways.

It was fairly soon revealed after our initial relationship began last year that these particular ends were what She had in mind, and some interesting things resulted from it that began to reveal the emerging themes of the myths that would surround these figures. When particular ritual requirements needed to be met in our first ritual in mid-July of last year, the friend who helped me do this soon after became pregnant, which was highly unexpected for both of us, and just gave birth to her child in early May not long after my good friend Mick died. Birth and death are themes that are occurring together with increasing rapidity, and will continue to do so with what is to follow regarding Echidnos, I assure you!

This has been a humbling experience in so many ways, not only because it is a great honor to be a part of something like this, but also because in so many ways “it’s not about me,” it’s about what I am and have been able to do for and with other Deities, and which Thetis wanted to do as well once again…and not because I’m anything special in terms of looks, or other qualities, or virtues of any sort, but simply because of what my track record is of previous divine service and functioning, I was best equipped for the task at hand. It’s not about me in any intrinsic or identity-based or qualitative way, it’s about what I could do. I remember my first girlfriend berating me (incorrectly!), saying that I don’t love her, I only like what she could do for me, and as she was also one of the first other pagans I met and was taking it upon herself to teach me the ways of non-Christian spirituality, it is interesting that she didn’t realize that this functionalism–no matter how foreign it might seem to our culture–is actually much more honest and authentic to what occurred in the past, for good or ill. (And we can accept the parts of it that are bad in the past without recapitulating them, I think…though I must also clarify and qualify that in the relationship with my first girlfriend to which I’m making reference, I did love her for herself, and it was eventually what she did to me which made me break up with her…but that’s an unpleasant topic, so let’s leave it off there, eh?)

In fairness, though, this has probably been in the works for around thirty years. Antinous and Thetis first occurred in my life at almost the exact same moment, during a Joseph Campbell lecture I was watching, though I didn’t know what I was looking at in Antinous’ case until almost a decade later. I quipped to my friends on Sunday, “Thanks to Antinous, Who introduced me to Thetis, and to Thetis, Who introduced me to Antinous,” and that feels about right!

Let me also mention at this stage that the ways in which Thetis is treated in the extant ancient literature, and in scholarship about it, is highly varied. There are some who think She is little more than a Nymph Who got elevated to the status of a Goddess (with the evidence of the folkloric elements of the story of Her wooing by Peleus as why this is the case), but there is also evidence to indicate that She was not simply a Goddess, but was one of the Primordial Deities, the Protogenoi, and was the Creatrix of the cosmos in some places, including in Sparta based on a highly fragmentary poem that exists only in tiny excerpts in a severely fractured initial section of a commentary on said poem that was found at Oxyrhynchus. Though I know that these natures are both a part of Her, the Nymph matter is a relevant one to mention here because that is one area for which we most certainly have ancient precedent in the “nympholepts” who went to live in caves as the husbands of Nymphs in the Greek sphere. Thus, in that regard, there is a record of this, and Thetis is One Who would qualify as potentially someone with Whom to engage in such a relationship!

So, this divine marriage is one part of the many ways in which I have a devotion to a variety of Deities, and is one part of my overall role in relation to Them as both a polytheist, a metagender person, and so much else, including what I have come to understand as my larger place and purpose in this current life, for which I am both grateful and often feel that I am not fulfilling as well as I could. It is hard to know what this is supposed to “look like” when concrete examples are lacking from history, and we do not have elders and very many other community members who are doing these same sorts of things. But, we stumble on, hoping that as these things unfold, we learn how best to do them in the midst of doing them. Divination not only helps, it’s been utterly essential in determining so much of this and if what I am doing is actually on-track or is simply something that “sounds cool” rather than actually being what any given Deity wants to occur in the circumstances given.

Let me end with a triad, then, and say that Divination, Discernment, and Discipline are the Three Things Required of Those Who Wish to Be in a Divine Marriage…and in any devotional relationship, most likely! In this and so many other respects, those of us who do have these type of devotional arrangements with our Deities should remember that we are not any better (or worse!) or more special (or less!) than anyone else, and that all sorts of devotional relationship are good and important to have and to maintain for those who do them, and I would argue more widely. It is this which sustains the cosmos, in my view…so never let that thought leave your minds when you wonder if what you’re doing, without the benefit of human guidance or community support or wider recognition, is “worth it”!

New Year, New Regime…?!?

I assure you, dear readers, the above is meant only in terms of the regimented procedures here on this blog, and has absolutely no meanings–double, hidden, or otherwise!–about anything going on politically in the United States anywhere else. (Though I may have something to say on some of that in the near future!)

Instead, what I am talking about with that subject line is that after a year of record-low blog posts (other than the years I was not posting anything at all!), I have decided to re-evaluate a few things and seek Antinous’ advice on it, as I do on nearly all things, and especially those connected to His devotion and the devotion I have to all of the Deities, as is only right.

So, with Antinous’ blessing and permission, I am writing this to lay out what I hope to do for 2021 and further into the future.

The “P.S.V.L.’s Theological Questions” thing has been fun, and if people ask questions in the future, I will certainly answer them. (I have one that is still in draft form from March of 2020 that I hope to finish off before the end of January 2021, and perhaps one or two more that were sent to me a long while back, too.) However, the trickle of those questions was minimal over the years, and even when I tried to solicit more, it didn’t really work very well.

On the other hand, there are a lot of things that just enter my mind and might be useful to write about in a blog, somewhat like the old days at the old blog, but wth a few twists. I don’t want to respond to the latest “drama” amongst pagans or polytheists, which is usually some argument on the internet in some forum or on some blog or other…that is not something that I especially like, and even though those posts were often the ones that had the most page views on my old blog, large numbers of page views is not the intention for this endeavor. I want to bring useful information to people, help to educate about Antinous and the other Deities, my practices, history, theology, important questions of structure and ethics and community…but not the most recent argument or insults or factionalism that is going on because someone criticized someone else’s posts, or didn’t like their ideas, or wrote an opinion piece on a comic book, television show, film, or song.

So, with that in mind, what I hope to do is at least four posts a month here, whether those are weekly or (as may happen this month!) are clustered largely over a few days or a couple of weeks. These will be on relevant topics to these devotional purposes, my own practices, publication announcements, news in archaeology or history that has an impact on polytheistic practice (especially my own!), and other things of this sort.

I’ll round out this post by sharing a few reflections on what 2020 brought me in relation to many of these things. Yes, for many people this was an absolutely shit year in myriad ways, and for me it was certainly not great in many ways, either. Devotionally and in certain other ways, though, it was a landmark year, and one of those things happened specifically because of the pandemic…which is great, but I would not say that “it was all worth it” in the face of the fact that millions worldwide and more than three-hundred-thousand people died because of that, and one cannot trivialize all of those deaths (many of them in the U.S. utterly needless) by ignoring them in favor of what ways one personally may have benefited or made lemonade from this shit-pile.

My practice this year has really solidified, and I think the general shape fit is going to be like this for a while, at least. From the Sacred Nights of Antinous this year in October until just a few days ago, I have been embracing the idea of “Sacred Nights” even more, and my observances of many major festivals have not taken place until around 11 PM on the night-in-question. Night-time rituals have always appealed to me, and as there has not been any outdoor rituals or things that otherwise rely much on daylight for their success (especially since I celebrate the majority of them in my Shrine at home), that makes sense…but also, as I honor Nyx more and more, that also seems extremely appropriate.

A good deal of devotional poetry has been written this year, which I generally share on my Patreon–if you’re interested in becoming a patron, go to this link! I hope that publishing some of those things in the form of books of various sorts will be coming forth in greater numbers in 2021!

The biggest and most unexpected development in my devotional life from 2020, though, was my Deity Marriage to Thetis…while it is not entirely “unexpected” in certain ways since my first introduction to Her was coincidental with my first possible introduction to Antinous (though She was named specifically) twenty-nine years ago, and She has been circling about my devotional activities for a while, and particularly since 2010, when it actually happened and become known to me properly on May 30th, I was rather surprised, needless to say! The first of the proper rituals to actualize this marriage more in the world took place in mid-July, and five more will follow, with the second of the six total taking place (if all goes well) this coming Sunday, January 3rd. The next will probably be in the early Spring (so, perhaps late March/early April), and the fourth will be in the Summer, I suspect. The other two may round out the year, depending on a variety of factors that will be established with Thetis, Antinous, and some of the other Deities and Hero/ines involved. (Euphorion was a very unexpected element in the mid-July ritual, and came from nowhere nearly in that…and Achilleus’ six other siblings–yes, he had them!–are going to matter in what follows from what I understand!) While I hope and plan to get other tattoos in the future, the third of the rituals in March will have a tattoo to mark it, and that will be my second one ever, so that is something to look forward to as well…

The most unexpected development of 2020, however, was something that was not initially devotional, or at least specifically, but has become devotional as well as so much else as it has developed since late May (and in fact, it started before Thetis made Her epiphany to me!). This is going to require a bit of a story, so here goes…

When I went away to college in the Fall of 1994, I planned to get a B.F.A. in fiction writing. There were several roadblocks in the way of that, and by the end of my first semester, I was highly disillusioned with that prospect, but hoped that the next semester with a different professor (which, thankfully, was one of the roadblocks–I had hoped to be in a year-long course with one professor, and was initially, but then he moved me from it to the one-semester class basically without my permission) would be better…and while it was, what I learned was that what I wanted to write was not really en vogue nor appreciated in that particular collegiate context, because it was long-form (literary) genre fiction (mythological high fantasy) rather than über-realistic short stories or magical realism/surrealism of a shorter length. My second-semester fiction professor asked to see my poetry because she said my fiction was more poetic than prosaic, and so she was interested to see if I wrote actual poetry, and then she encouraged me to do poetry courses in the future because she said there was an energy and a promise there that would fit better with what my college could offer, whereas I would be dissatisfied with the fiction offerings and the lack of positive reception I would likely continue to get there. I appreciated her honesty, and turned to poetry thereafter. I do not regret that, but it ended up putting me off fiction for more than a decade after the Spring semester of 1995.

Poetry continued, but I kept the notes and drafts and such that I had been amassing since the ninth grade for the future novel I wanted to write, and hoped to return to at some future point. As I began to write more and more devotional poetry from 2002 onwards, I did not write any sort of fiction of any length until 2008, when I wrote my first piece of devotional fiction, “Reunion,” for the Bibliotheca Alexandrina anthology The Scribing Ibis. I wrote devotional fiction occasionally after that, and got a few more things published in anthologies, some of which got positively reviewed in the occasional reviews of the collections concerned. In 2015 (if I remember correctly), my devotional challenge for the year was to write a short piece of devotional fiction for each of the major festivals that year, and I was successful in doing that! I plan to collect those together and published the Antinoan ones in one book, and the ones for other Deities in another (though the Celtic Reconstructionist-relatd ones may appear in the volume I am preparing on that specific set of topics).

Now, cut to May of 2020, and back up slightly to about 2014 as a prelude.

I was introduced to a fantastic website/service called HeroForge that makes custom 3D-printed miniatures for tabletop roleplaying games. Back in 2014, they not only made the “traditional” 28mm scale figures, but they also could make up to 6″ tall figures, which were a bit expensive, though comparable in price to commissioned devotional statuary (and much faster to produce!). No, full customization and stylization was not possible with HeroForge, but one could get fairly close with certain things, and as I was seeking to make designs of divine beings that don’t necessarily have recognized or established iconography, it was rather ideal. That is where I got my statue of Lucius Marius Vitalis that is in my Shrine to this very day, and I remain quite happy with it!

In 2019, when I started to play Dungeons & Dragons again, I got on HeroForge and designed a few miniatures for my player characters, and ordered them, and then had fun making those characters’ extended network of friends, allies, and family that might come into the game in the future. I was sad that they didn’t have options for the six inch figures any longer, but as they continued to get new outfits, weapons, and other things, the possibilities for further devotional usage also increased. I made some designs for Antinous, some of the Divae/i and the Sancta/e/i, the Tetrad++, and others. Then, in late 2019, HeroForge ran a Kickstarter for HeroForge 2.0, which would allow them to print the miniatures in color, which would then save time painting, not to mention further expense in getting brushes, paints, and so forth, or (as would have to be the case with me) paying other people to paint the miniatures. I supported it, and it was highly successful–they wanted to raise $40,000, and did that in seconds, and by the end of their month-long campaign, raised over $2,000,000! I was due two color-printed miniatures as my perk, and eagerly awaited the availability of their color design tools and processes to give it a try.

Then, the pandemic happened.

In late March, they sent out notifications that their beta color printing tests had begun, and we could start designing in color. Because I had my hands full with lots of other stuff at the time, I didn’t jump on this, particularly since the likelihood of in-person gaming again (and, as it happened in our group’s case, virtual or any other sort of gaming) anytime soon was remote at best.

About two days before my birthday in May of 2020, I decided I deserved a bit of a treat, and went over to HeroForge to try out the color tools, and was immediately impressed! I made color versions of my two main player characters and ordered them immediately, and then continued to make designs for the other characters I had saved, including Antinous and the Tetrad++ and others. As I was discussing this with some of my gaming friends on my birthday, I said I’d send them some photos of the various characters with some explanations of who they all were and their relationships to the main characters, as one could screen capture images of the figures one had designed for use in other contexts. As I was assembling this, I decided I would write it as a little “chronicle” rather than just a series of photos with some extended captions.

Then, because the mind and heart will do what they do without regard for anything else, and because I was feeling especially lonely and longing for physical companionship of sorts that would be impossible to get, I instead started designing “sexy” versions of the characters (I had done that with a few of them the year before already), and began writing about them in the story that was developing out of the bare-bones chronicle. Once the basic members of the family and some others were accounted for, I saw there were holes in the roster, and wanted to fill them with a diverse group of further characters, and just let my mind go where it would, and soon more characters were added, including ones of various non-binary genders. I then decided to make designs for some of the characters from my old teenage novel–I had miniatures for a few of them (since they started out in a gaming context and eventually became more than that…in fact, research for those mythic high fantasy fiction pursuits back then was what lead me to both Celtic Studies and polytheism!), but others I didn’t have exactly perfect matches for, and so I got to design them, and alternate outfits for them, etc. I then wrote a more “mature” story about the main ones, and it was really the kind of story I had wanted to write back then but didn’t know how because of my lack of many experiences. I then started applying this to the main player characters I had more recently developed, and saw where that went…and planned to make the two stories “meet” in an interesting and unexpected way…

And then, one night in late May, I decided I wanted to write about those two main more recent PCs discussing their many polyamorous and pansexual lovers together, but before they got into treating each individually, they first had a heart-to-heart about some of their own most deep wounds that were impacting their relationship, and it got far more intensely psychological than I had ever anticipated it would become. Some issues analogous to my own, and others besides, emerged, and I was writing up a storm about them. In that night, I had planned to write for two hours about all of this, and only got through their specific issues before talking about their other lovers, and in that two hours wrote over 4,000 words…and over the eight hours after that, with only two breaks for the bathroom, more water and a quick snack because of a low blood sugar, I had written more than 20,000 words total! In the last nine days of May, I wrote in the neighborhood of 60,000 words…

Skip ahead to early September, and I was thinking of doing that age-old fanfic writer’s thing of “filing off the serial numbers” and rather than setting the whole thing in a D&D universe of one sort or another, I decided to put it in the Otherworld on the Earth with an alternate history, with the different event being that the Emperor Julian the Philosopher never died in war with the Persians, but instead survived, fully restored polytheism to the Roman Empire (and as a result preserved it in places outside the Empire!), rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem, and thus made Christianity irrelevant and it only remained as a minor cult (as it had developed up until then, but with more Gnostic groups and such in operation), and then Islam never emerged at all. So, I decided to write the whole set of stories over again–recycling what I could from what I had already written–and tell it from the beginning of the two main characters’ birth.

I had expected the first of perhaps three novels to be comprised of what I thought of as the “start” of the saga, but as of one chapter that I had hoped would comprise about fifty years of their lives just summarized briefly, things changed entirely with the entry on the scene of an unexpected character: a High Priest leading a group that is this story’s equivalent of the Irish Fíanna. He conducted the ceremony of induction of the two main characters, and basically took the story over and that was the focus of the rest of the book, through to their release and re-integrating into their society again after fifty years in the institution. (As they are immortals, they’re still “young” when they emerge, at around 100-120 years of age.) I was getting the chance to explore in fiction what might have been possible in my academic and practical imaginings of how such groups might function ritually, and was also getting to explore Insular Celtic cultures’ religious practice from the viewpoint of the regular “People of the Otherworld,” Who more and more I think are not exactly “Deities” as we have often insisted They are (or have at least hoped they are…usually because academics have suggested they are so with little to no proof that such is the case). If these are people who are mistaken for Deities by mortals because of their immortality, but also know there are actual Deities and interact with them on occasion, what would that be like?

While that may seem devotional enough in certain ways, it was about this time that Antinous also stepped in and set His mark on the proceedings. He will end up being a direct character in the final book, but the groundwork is laid for His appearance especially in the second book…

Before the end of September of 2020, I had the first draft of the first book of what is now planned to be a pentalogy finished, which is currently at 164,000 words. On December 3rd of 2020, I finished the first draft of the second book, which is 204,000 words. The other three are outlined, and if all goes well, I hope to have them done by the end of 2021, and while I will be revising/editing and having beta readers and critiques in the meantime, I want them all to be done before the first one is out so that there is consistency across the series with all relevant matters. Then, a great deal of time will be spent marketing them and building my author platform, which I hope to start doing in the near future as well in certain ways. I will not be seeking a commercial publisher for these–they’re genre-breaking, have too many “confusing” names, and in other ways I do not wish to cede any creative control on these to anyone, so I have been watching and researching a lot on how to make it as a successful self-published fiction author, and hope to implement much of what I’ve learned in the year and more to come.

The idea here is not to become well-known or to make money, though I’d appreciate both very much indeed! (If I could write devotionally, fiction, and academic stuff full-time, with private teaching and presenting as well, and stop teaching college, I would love that, especially as our ignorance profit system that passes itself off as “education” has shown its weaknesses under the strain of this pandemic even more than it was doing before that, which was quite a lot!) It’s also not exclusively a matter of devotion, though it is that more and more, and in strange ways “completes” the journey I started that got me to academia, polytheism, and much else besides. It’s not just a matter of this being exceptionally psychologically useful in integrating and getting catharsis for many things, though my counselor has encouraged me to do this as much as possible not only because it has kept me sane and happy and not suicidal all the time during the pandemic, but also because it is an ideal self-care activity that is creative and productive as well in ways that a million bubble baths will never be. It’s also not just a matter of having rediscovered what I love most in creative pursuits: namely, telling stories and exercising my knowledge and skill in pursuit of this art. And, though I would be lying if I failed to include this matter otherwise, it is also not just fulfilling some fantasies of my own desires in terms of relationships and sex with an interesting and attractive group of characters…though I admit that is a huge part of its enjoyment at many stages for me. (And, likely, for others–one person has heard the first ten chapters of the first book read aloud thus far, which ends with the main characters having their first sexual encounter together, and she said she wished that she had it to read alone! This is someone I’ve known since middle school, who was there with a front-row seat to when all this started when I was a teenager, and she’s commented that I have not sounded this energetic about something since that time…and she became a polytheist this year as well with a bit of help from me, and now has an Antinous shrine in her house!) It’s all of these things equally and integrally, and the things in my life that bring as many areas together as possible–religiosity, creativity, knowledge, and sexuality–have been the most consistently fun and rewarding for me. What has my experience with Antinous, and increasingly with Thetis, been other than exactly all of those things as well, and the blog you’re currently reading is one example of that?

So, that is something that happened in 2020 that I am very thankful for having occurred, and this little tale of its origins shows how anything and everything–from sexual fancies to enjoying role-playing games!–can be used by Deities to enter into our lives and stimulate devotion to Them…and long may it be so!

I will end this account, and this post, there for now, and wish all of you an excellent beginning of 2021, with the blessings of all your Deities for health, strength, protection, safety, prosperity, and happiness in the coming year!