"How could you possibly be a Hellenist? How can you believe in that fairytale stuff?", is a common line of questioning that many of us will encounter. When some will witness some of the odd behavior we've seen in our local Pagan community, this question seems to gain added urgency.

The short answer is that few Hellenists are fundamentalists, in a Christian sense. They do not think of the myths as being scripture. They are folklore, stories that speak of a people's experience of the gods, and if the material should seem a little naive, so was the era. One can not reasonably expect that the storyteller will step outside of his own viewpoint, with its pre-modern limitations, merely to suit the desires of a society that wasn't even a notion yet in his own time, any more than one of us could be expected to tell a story today in a manner that would meet with the approval of a 46th century AD audience. An experience is not merely that which affects one, but the impact it has on one, and so one's own point of view is an integral part of it. It is with this thought in mind that we approach the mythology, knowing better than to judge it anachronistically in terms of standards that the people of its own era were doing so much to help create.

The long answer for our group, as discussed in this article lies in the nature of the purpose of myth, which is dependent on certain theological views discussed elsewhere. This article lies in the discussion that accompanies our attempted approximate reconstruction of The Story of Aphrodite and Adonis, as it might have been told. (Let's remember that the myths are primarily known through references and allusions to them, not through extant narrative).

One point that should come out of the reconstruction mentioned above, is the importance of context, in the understanding of narrative. This point comes out more forcefully, in our discussion of how a shift in cultural assumptions, from the usual carelessly assumed Anglo-Saxon perspective on a decidely non-Anglo-Saxon mythos, to one that derived more from the old Hellenic one, can completely alter the significance of a myth. We will see this, as we discuss the myth of The Rape of Persephone. Even given that context, though, what can come out of a story can be decidedly disturbing, as we see in the very non-Hellenic Story of Ra and Aset (Ra and Isis), which appears on this site as part of our Review of the House of Netjer.

Be forewarned, these are relatively long articles, not recommended for cybercafe viewing. This page is located on the Almond Jar, the homepage of the Shrine of the Sleeping Gods.