Counterfeit and Weird devotees #3

This article is a continuation of part two

Salad Chefs

The final category consists of people who combine 2 or more of the above. Usually priests who have created their own tradition which they call eclectic or Hekatean or traditional witchcraft and they don’t read ancient texts but only modern books. Satanists have created their own mythology, in which unfortunately, a Goddess they call Hekate, plays a main role. Those people are usually passionate. They base their views, religious beliefs and practices on books with black covers, red letters, high prices, maybe leather bound and UPG, thus things that can’t be confirmed, aren’t written anywhere or they are written on books or tradition’s documents, shared in a temple, but those are too UPG from the founder or oracles or priests’ teachings. In a normal conversations with those people you will see that they actually believe that they worship Hekate, they do like their practical work, but they fail to provide their sources, so they tell you that they base their practice on UPG. If you suggest them to read an ancient writer, they deny that, as they believe that Gods have changed and that ancients weren’t better than us on the religious subjects. They also support that today, we have more knowledge revealed and thus their methods are more effective. Important religious texts of Hekate’s cult, like the Chaldean Oracles, are out of their interests, as well as ancient theology. The same persons who deny antiquity, they advertise themselves as traditional witches. Who is that witch that is older than Orpheus, Pythagoras, Nikomachos, Iamblichos, Maximos and Proclos?

Satanists

We can meet someone who is a Satanist, suggesting a book to a beginner. The man who suggests the book doesn’t say anything about Satanism. He even denies it in the conversation, so that the beginner would buy it! In the same conversation, another Satanist comes in to say that he is a friend of the writer and that this book isn’t satanic. He even calls Phanes as Lucifer, the deity. The truth is that this book is a satanic book, presenting Hekate as a Goddess living in Christian Hell, being among demons of the Goetia, princes of Hell, and things like that. The writer of the book has confused the underworld of ancient Hellas with hell of Christianity. Well Hades, the place has nothing to do with Hell. Hades was the habitation of all dead people who were buried. There is no Hell in ancient Hellenic religion. In the book “Religion and the Greeks”, by professor Robert Garland, we read: “the concept of paradise and hell do not exist in the Hellenic eschatology”. In the ancient Hellenic religion, Hades is divided into five places: the court where the judges await for the soul to arrive. The purgatory, where the soul is cleansed. Tartaros where the soul is punished if it was unfair. The Elysian Fields where the soul rests if it was judged as fair and good. The fifth place was the habitations of the Gods. A writer told me that Tartar/Tartaros equals Hell, but that’s not the case. Hell is a Christian terminology and theory. We cannot speak of an ancient Goddess using modern theories or theories from other religious dogmas like Catholicism. Moreover, the soul doesn’t stay forever in Tartaros as it happens with hell. For example, killers stayed for a year and they could be released if the souls of the dead were compassionate to them. Lastly, Hekate isn’t a Goddess of revenge to live in Hell. Neither we can ignore that Persephone, Pluto, Thanatos, and the Judges are missing but we have Fates and Kerberos in Hell, according to that book. The writer has created a tradition of choosing some things he liked from ancient Hellenic mythology and some others aren't apparent. And certainly, we cannot have a person who accepts Hekate as the Cosmic Soul, to believe that Hekate is the Hell queen, that Lucifer is the ruler of Hell, under the dominion of Hekate, etc. Neither to believe that the Goddess subdivided Herself one day. Those are completely imaginative, new mythology, and have nothing to do with ancient mythology or theology. If those things were ancient teachings, we would have read on them somewhere during the thousands of years and not the last century. For the Hellenic religion, a great punishment was to leave the dead unburied, something that isn’t examined by modern traditions, which use ancient deities as columns to support their validity.

Another example that we see among devotees is their support of a deity called Lucifer to be the son of Hekate. They deny providing sources for that story and they get angry if you say the truth, that their beliefs are baseless. First of all, Hekate is a virgin Goddess according to the ancient texts. Not to mention that according to one teaching of Plato, the virgin Artemis is Hekate. That virgin side is immaculate. An ancient oracle binds Her with virginity too. According to the texts, She never had a son. But they say that She has, in order to create a new story, bringing confusion to the modern cult. Others say that Lucifer is Hekate’s husband! They are the same persons who call the Egyptian Seth as Lucifer or the Orphic Phanes as Lucifer. Hekate was never related to those forces, not to mention that Phanes is an opposite deity to Seth. And of course, Hekate is the opposite deity with Seth. They also belong to different panthea.

At this point, a story from ancient Hellenic mythology is suitable. Ippolytos, a good hunter was a devotee of Artemis. He lived a life according to Her virtues. So, he remained a virgin. No woman could ever seduce him, even the most beautiful, Phaedra. So, when he died, the Goddess honored him eternally. For the ancients, pleasures of the body weren’t the reason to stay alive neither the goal of life.

People who advertise satanic books say that they contain genuine (sic) traditional witchcraft and ceremonial magick. In fact, in a community forum of Hekate, a torchbearer makes that kind of promotion on satanic books. When we speak on torches, their meaning is they illuminate darkness, providing not only hope but also guidance, help, and the truth. Hell is a dark place. If Hekate lived in Hell and She hold torches, then why Hell should be dark? What kind of hope and guidance She would provide? Mr. torchbearer/priest have you quenched the torch?

The connection between witchcraft and Hell’s princes isn’t right. In Hellas today, magick has been associated with Satanism because of criminal acts of Satanists, and that is NOT COOL. Modern pagans should hide themselves and often and high level of hate against Christianity, because they feel oppression. If we see modern satanic books, which strangely, they mix Hekate with all kinds of things; we will notice the promise of power, transformation, gain, a new life etc. based on magick through devil worshipping. According to a new tradition’s book, the practitioner should evoke the powerful demon Belial, who is interconnected with Lucifer and is controlled by Hekate. This demon is called the Witch God and he is going to teach the practitioner or devotee of Hekate, witchcraft or the art of witchcraft. Other demons are also evoked for teaching the practitioner.

My commentary here is that we don’t meet those names in ancient Hellas. They have no connection with Hellas. Hekate, who actually has, isn’t the same Goddess as they describe. And to prevent some thoughts, Gods do not change. Also, the Witch God isn’t the one the book describes. If you read books on Witchcraft and Magick, you will never going to meet those names or practices, except if you are reading Grimoire Magick and thank Goddess, there are good writers on that tradition today. If we read Golden Dawn Kabbalah, we are going to meet Beelzebub’s name on the evil chiefs of Qlippoth. And of course, he is Belial. If you ask a devotee of Hekate he will tell you that this isn’t the kind of magick he practices and for sure not even the majority knows that kind of practice. And why again the torchbearer promotes that particular kinds of books? He is interested in the Goddess or something else? He lives according to virtue, tries to unify himself with the Ultimate God, or he is thirsty for power, money, gain, sex, desires, and pleasures? Now, did we have that kind of priest in antiquity? Certainly not in Hellas neither in Egypt.

Hekate cannot be an evil Goddess. There are no evil Gods in ancient Hellas. This may be sound shocking for many people, but it is well documented in the Platonic dialogues, the books of Aristotle and Theophrastus, the Stoic fragments and books, the Neoplatonic books, and in many other earlier and later Hellenic schools of philosophy and theology. A devotee cannot see the Goddess Hekate as a helper to his curses. That is insane and very disrespectful, so much, that divine Plato believes that those people bring bad luck to the city, due to their ideas. Piety was a serious thing in ancient Hellas and the duty of the lawmaker was to make the citizens be respectful to the Gods.

At that point, I should explain that someone can be a good person following the left-hand path. That has nothing to do with our article. The main objection is that you cannot practice black magick and say that you are a devotee of any ancient Hellenic Goddess or God. This is not the way ancients saw the Gods, at least, that was not the official theology, but more like household-private ideas.

Aradia

Aradia is also a modern book, co-authored (chapters 6, 11 – 15) by folklorist Charles Godfrey Leland and published by him in 1899 with the title Aradia The Gospel of Witches. Practitioners and followers of Wicca read this book as well as the studies of Margaret Murray, Robert Grave’s book on the White Goddess, and Gerald Gardner’s Witchcraft Today, at the beginning of their journey. Though it has some good elements, it presents mythology of Diana or Artemis far different than the one that existed in the Hellenic and later Roman world.

It presents Diana, having a daughter called Aradia and a brother and a son called Lucifer. Lucifer fell from heaven, because he was too beautiful, according to the book. As I wrote in the previous section, that can’t be possible according to ancient theology.

Diana tells to her daughter that the Father, meaning the Father God of Holy Trinity and Maria, meaning the Mother of Christ and the Son, meaning the Christ are three devils! We see the Holy Trinity of Christianity, presented as devils (sic) and the fallen angel is the beloved brother of Diana/Artemis. This is a fictional modern story. It contradicts ancient texts, in which we see Artemis being a virgin Goddess. She even killed a hunter who had the bad luck hunting in a lake She was taking a bath. How this Artemis had a brother and a son, the same person?

In the third chapter we read that Lucifer got angry, but Artemis sang for him and the he calmed down. What kind of mythology or theology is that? We also read that she used magick to seduce him! Those things could be nothing more than a poetic myth, not a symbolic, not a theological. If we believe that this was written in the 19th century, we cannot see it beyond the field of literature and certainly, this literature cannot be compared with any ancient Hellenic literature, thousands years before.

New “traditions” eventually derived from the modern “myth”. In another point, we read for example, that Artemis was created before all, which isn’t possible as in ancient theology of Hellas we see too many other deities created by the One God, before Artemis. For example, a basic most acceptable lineage is described by Plato: Gaia and Uranus give Oceanus and Tethys. Those give birth to Forkys, Kronos and Rhea. From the last two, we have Zeus and Hera. You know the rest…

The same “myth”, in Aradia, names Her brother Dianus, when the name of the God is Apollo. Maybe the writer wanted to name him, Ianus or Janus?

The Goddess came to earth to teach humans, magick, as the real story is that Hekate was and remains the Goddess of Magick, not Artemis. In Aradia, we also read that Aradia, the daughter was sent to teach humans Witchcraft.

It is clear that this myth uses the names of ancient Hellenes Gods to describe a modern story, just like Ellen Cannon Reed emphasizes as a phenomenon, in her great book, The Heart of Wicca. So, why devotees of Hekate, take the name Lucifer from that book, do not associate him with the fallen angel, but with any other ancient God, and create a new myth? This book isn’t ancient at all and it is largely opposite with ancient theology and real oracles of the past.

And though there are modern writers who contributed to the pagan community by providing proofs that Hekate isn’t a Crone, but a young Goddess, or that Hekate isn’t from Egypt but from Hellas, or that Hekate is the Goddess transitions and not a Goddess of revenge, those same writers support modern “myths” even though they contradict their own writings. Why do people have a need of acceptance from everyone? I see that Hekate is worshipped today all over the civilized world and people from different spiritual backgrounds or not spiritual backgrounds are drawn to Hekate and Her cult. That’s fine, great, and amazing. But those devotees search the story of the Goddess and try to connect with Her. One safe way is to know what you are doing, to have the knowledge, to learn, read and study the available material. As there is good material, both ancient and modern, both studies from academics and magickians, there is bad material also. And not all writers are good or right just because they are famous or because they wrote a book or because they have many followers. Ancient poet Homer was the greatest of all poets and till today he is the most important writer of all humans, but his theology wasn’t perfect. Ancient writers had written against his theological views although many people followed his theological ideas, but not everyone. Philosophers helped a lot to the growth of theology and piety, the science of honoring the Gods and Goddesses. If we want to ask for a job, we should know to do the job. If we want to ask a favor, we should know the person we are asking that favor. If we want to knock a door we should know the person who will respond to our knock and we should also know that he also knows who we are. The same thing happens with the divine communication. If you draw evil energies those will respond to your call. If you draw good energies, they will respond back. If you want to be specific and actually become a devotee of the Goddess Hekate, do your homework, else don’t expect everything to roll normally, as some writers will say to you. It’s your life, your choice. No one is going to take responsibility for your choices and if something is easy, it usually doesn’t worth much In fact that is one of the basic things that Witchcraft teach us. Taking responsibility for our actions.

The last thing I want to write about is to use the three virtues of Hekate as those are presented in the Chaldean Oracles and the Neoplatonic teachings. Have faith in the Goddess. She knows better than you. Trust the divine providence. Surrender yourself to the divine light. (That’s Neoplatonic.) Educate yourself with the truth. Try to learn the true nature of things. Love the Goddess, love your practice, love the higher beings and things they represent. With those three virtues: faith, truth, and love, we have the ability to connect with the Goddess.  Lastly, to those who will tell you that the Goddess is evil, respond to them with a devotee of Hekate, the headmaster of Academia of Plato and one of the greatest theurgists of all times, my favorite, master Proclos: “those are irrelevant to the platonic science and far from the truth and they deflect to barbaric dementia”.

Images: In all three parts we see the great rhetor Demosthenes, from the Arcaeological Museum of Athens. Another exhibit in part one from the same museum. The third image comes from the famous tv show Constantinos and Helen written by the talented Chares Romas and Anna Chatzisophia. In the second part, we see clay statuettes from the same museum and a free image of Victor Hugo. In the third part, we see ancient philosophers who are considered very important to us. The images we used come from Wikipedia and other sources with no copyright. We cut them to form that image. The last image is from ancient Agora of Athens taken by Constantinos in February of 2018

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Theurgy and Philosophy are two different methods which lead to the union with God.

 

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