I am a little bit late on the draw, it seems, when it comes to authenticating the legitimacey of my new avatar, insofar as it being a valid representation of my path of what I like to call, Hellenic Wicca. The term for my path is probably as valid as the avatar, in other words, not very. Of course, I never utilized this term out of a desire to be deceptive about my beliefs. What would be the point? It just seemed easier, far less complicated, to refer to myself as a Hellenic Wiccan, than to explain that I follow a modern version of Hellenic Paganism that has a heavy Wiccan influence. Thus Hellenic Wicca, which isn’t perfectly accurrate, but it sounds good, and close enough. I also like to at times refer to my religion as Hellenism, which historicaly, and accurrately, is the culture of ancient Hellenic Greece, the ancient Greek religions of which are only one part, though an important an integral one.
In reality, culturally I am at best a diamond in the rough, and it seems to be getting rougher every day, these days. Yet, I do definitely try to keep abreast of cultural news, including discoveries in the field of archaeology. Alas, I am a lazy blogger, and an even lazier researcher, and so, even though I have the URL for a very good archaeology site on the sidebar of this blog, which I urge you to check out, I myself have been lax at keeping up on it, and so missed this little bit of information.
The “snake goddess” that I have chosen as my avatar, suppossedly an ancient artifact that was dug up on the island of Crete, was believed at one time to have been an ancient religious artifact( possibly a votary, depicting either a goddess or a priestess, a snake in each upward stretched arm), from the Minoan Period, and thus predating not only ancient Classical Greek, or Achaean, culture, but even Mychaenaean civilization as well.
Alas, come to find out, it, like a good many other artifacts, was a fraud. Not only were they circulated in response to a demand for Minoan artifacts at about the beginning of the last century, but it has been known for some time they were frauds. I felt a degree of sadness upon learning this, and not a little embarrassment.
On te other hand, the good news is, even though these artifacts were themselves frauds, they were in fact based on legitimate artifacts that were in fact discovered and authenticated. So yes,
And so, whether mine is the fake or the genuine article, I have elected to keep her. I have grown quite fond of her, after all, and moreover, when all is said and done, when it comes to the realms of religion, magic, and mythology, who is to say what is real, what is fake, what is symbolic, and what is just wishful thinking.
1 comment:
That's a fantastic post!
I've felt what you're expressing here so many times in the past few years. I no longer really consider myself to be practicing what I used to call "Hellenistic Paganism," having degenerated into "Pagan . . . -ish" instead. But that feeling of knowing you're connected to something valid and old and powerful . . . And yet, all too often, finding yourself feeling a tad ridiculous for having to piece together your faith from items that don't always have the odor of authenticity for very long!
I agree with your conclusion. In a realm of faith, the authenticity of your symbols can be about much more than their archaeological provenance and much more about the meaning they hold for each practitioner! I continue to hope that this religious soup will produce symbols that larger communities can eventually embrace and explicate clearly and where authenticity will rarely ever again be an issue.
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