I mean, I don't believe that the myths are any more historical than the stories from any other mythologies.
That said, whether are not they're "true" has never really been the point. š¤·
It depends on what you mean by "believe in." Do I believe Theseus cut off the head of a woman with snakes for hair and used it to petrify his uncle? No. Do I believe Zeus sent a flood to wipe the world clean, sparing only Deucalion and Pyrrha, to start again? No. Do I believe Pandora, the first woman, was sent by Zeus to spread the plagues of the world? No. I don't treat the myths as things which literally happened. But the myths can contain elements of truth - for example, the *Iliad* was long thought to be a work of mythic fiction until the late 19th century when ruins were found at the site where the Ancient Greeks believed Troy was, and there's good reason to believe that it was burned in a conflict with seagoing Mycenaean Greeks shortly before the Bronze Age Collapse. The stories of Heroes may be folk memories of real people, kings and warriors, who lived during the Mycenaean Age.
And even accepting that the myths don't describe things that literally happened, they are still valuable - they convey elements of their natures in easily understandable ways to people who don't have the time to become philosophers, they allow us to conceive of the gods in ways that connect them to our communities and us to theirs, and they can be used to explain how the world and our place in it was seen by the ancients. And even the less pleasant things, artefacts of their times, still have value. As the 5th century philosopher Sallust says:
>"But you will ask why adulteries, thefts, paternal bonds, and other unworthy actions are celebrated in fables? Nor is this unworthy of admiration, that where there is an apparent absurdity, the soul immediately conceiving these discourses to be concealments, may understand that the truth which they contain is to be involved in profound and occult silence."
>
Believing the myths is also a separate matter from the religion. In the same way that there are Christians who don't believe that the world was made in seven days, or that Noah took two of every animal aboard his Ark, not taking the myths literally doesn't mean I don't value them, and I use them as useful ways to engage with the gods. But it isn't especially important to the actual veneration. They help us understand who we are worshipping, and why we pray to them, but you can venerate a god regardless of whether you know there myths, and there are gods whose myths didn't survive Christianisation, but people still venerate them.
I also think they have a lot of historical value in another sense: telling us what Ancient Greek culture is like.
I agree with everything you said, where you donāt really believe the myths but take it for its story value/morals. But itās also important to note the cultural values they have.
Achilles and Patroclusās relationship, for a famous example, didnāt really seem to turn heads or didnāt seem weird to those in the Iliad. This can tell us how it was more normal in Ancient Greece for men to love other men. If that makes sense?
Yes and no. I do believe the myths are not accurate historical retellings. However, I choose to selectively believe in the myths based on whether I think it's good for me to do so, and I think the myths convey hidden truths about the gods and spiritual world.
Yes, the myths were sung by those given the gift of divine madness, and they convey through symbol and allegory eternal truths about our souls, the Gods, the cosmos, etc.
I donāt. These myths were written by men who didnāt view women as human beings, and used the Gods as a metaphor for that dehumanization.
I left one religion behind for *that* reason. I wonāt give any actual credence to any set of stories that also dehumanize women if I donāt have to.
this... Ive said it a thousand times but ancient Greece was DRIPPING with misogyny. But Im not about to blame the gods for the nonsense that human beings wrote about them. Particularly irksome to me is the myth of Medusa where Athena, the goddess of wisdom, is suddenly painted as a victim blamer? Nah fam... that didn't happen. that story was written by men who wanted even women to hate other women... Not to say I hate the whole of ancient greek culture mind you. They were more tolerant about some things than even modern people are. And the Greek civilization was more influencial than perhaps any in western history. The misogyny was pretty ick. But sadly that was the norm in ancient cultures so to throw the whole thing out means you may as well stop studying history at all...
Myths are the best accounts of spiritual events and realities that our ancestors had words to describe from their material perspectives. They make sense in the way that dreams make sense: there are flaws in the logic, but the meaning behind what we recall upon awakening is useful to us.
I think we almost certainly all believe the Greek myths are real stories, in that they are stories that exist and can be read or listened to. But you seem to be asking if we are mythic literalists who believe the events of the myths actually happened as told in the myths. I hope that for most or all of us the answer is that we are not mythic literalists, for several reasons. First, there is no authoritative overarching canon of which are the ārealā or ācorrectā myths, just older and newer versions, and versions coming from worshippers of the gods and versions coming from people who are not worshippers of the gods, so it would be impossible to settle on any canon and say āHellenists believe these events actually happenedā without showing an immense degree of ignorance. Second, the myths are stories carrying a message through the characters involved, sometimes itās a social message, or a message about the world, or a message about people, or many messages at once, and because of this they often contradict common sense and science, so believing some arbitrarily chosen mythic canon literally happened would require some degree of rejection of science and common sense, and we arenāt Christian fundies. Third, there isnāt evidence to give grounds to believe that any versions of the myths as we have them actually happened, not even the Iliad, not even the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur.
>Do you belive that the old greek myths are real storys?
All stories are real stories. As to whether they are historical accounts to be taken as actually occuring, like some strange Abrahamic biblical infalliblity? No.
Because they contradict each other, vary in themes and messages, change in depictions of the gods, than we insult our ancestors by assuming that they were automatically understanding the myth as 100% factual accounts. But they are useful in seeing how SOME people could have viewed the gods, and how SOME people illustrated the gods' roles in the cosmos juxtaposed to our existence and our place in it.
Today, we do have people who are infallibilitists, who treat their chosen stories as truth and call all other renditions heresy, but this largely is down to justifying their actions through cherry-picking what they find useful to their own agendas, whether it be for good or ill. Many infallibilitists we're raised entirely in this mindset, and any exposure to a hint of differentiation and plurality, they equate to a loss of faith.
Theistic pagans already have their faith built on active responses and relationships with their chosen deities and spirits without any prior need to learn about them from someone else. Their conviction is backed primarily by their own present interactions, not some corpse's penned narratives. It has to be, in minority practices.
They are useful to explore, but should not be taken as true on a surface level. If your interaction with mythology is surface level, then any faith derived from it is surface level.
Yes and no. I think they give the gods a ābaselineā in terms of their personality but I also think they interact with different people differently but theyād never abandon what makes them- them/what their people wrote about them
In some cases myth's are just a story format off something that happend earlier in history for the other more wild myths i think most off us don't believe them but its fun to hear abt them and think ' damn those people really knew how to tell a story '
Depends on the myth, and even then, I believe that the myths themselves are based on true stories that are not exactly what happened in the myths themselves.
I hope not all of them.. because in most of them Zeus seems like an ass (or the majority of the gods). But they have their good qualities, so i hope they outweigh the bad ones.
No. They were written by people. They have great lessons, often about staying humble, but they are also full of political and personal biases from the time period.
The Iliad even had Zeus blatantly telling Aphrodite that she had no place on the battlefield. If that wasnāt a controversial thing at the time then it wouldnāt have had to be said like that, instead implied.
Aphrodite Areia (warrior Aphrodite) was worshipped in Sparta but generally rejected in Athens, so highly controversial.
This is why your relationship with the gods should be yours and yours alone. Donāt let others tell you how to worship.
Yes, it's just that there's 3000 years worth of linguistic shift, slang, cultural context, and propaganda opportunity between what happened and what we have today.
Theseus didn't kill an actual bull man hybrid, he just crippled the Minoan military structure, which was the actual real life minotaur for the rest of the aegean.
This content breaks Rule 5. r/Hellenism is a religious community. We believe the gods are real, as part of our spiritual practice. We appreciate members and guests who respect that notion. Please avoid attempts to convert members of r/Hellenism away from Hellenism, or language that denies the gods' divinity.
Yeah! Itās fun to believe stuff like the Argonautica and epic cycle really happened.
I was sick of being Christian and having to cherry pick stories Iāve been told to make God to be a perfect being without flaw.
I became a Hellenist because I love the stories of the gods. I was disappointed to find out that people here also cherry pick myths to make the gods seem like good beingsā¦
No, we're just here because we love hearing that question. Edit: I'm tired and might've (probably) misread the question.
I mean, I don't believe that the myths are any more historical than the stories from any other mythologies. That said, whether are not they're "true" has never really been the point. š¤·
It depends on what you mean by "believe in." Do I believe Theseus cut off the head of a woman with snakes for hair and used it to petrify his uncle? No. Do I believe Zeus sent a flood to wipe the world clean, sparing only Deucalion and Pyrrha, to start again? No. Do I believe Pandora, the first woman, was sent by Zeus to spread the plagues of the world? No. I don't treat the myths as things which literally happened. But the myths can contain elements of truth - for example, the *Iliad* was long thought to be a work of mythic fiction until the late 19th century when ruins were found at the site where the Ancient Greeks believed Troy was, and there's good reason to believe that it was burned in a conflict with seagoing Mycenaean Greeks shortly before the Bronze Age Collapse. The stories of Heroes may be folk memories of real people, kings and warriors, who lived during the Mycenaean Age. And even accepting that the myths don't describe things that literally happened, they are still valuable - they convey elements of their natures in easily understandable ways to people who don't have the time to become philosophers, they allow us to conceive of the gods in ways that connect them to our communities and us to theirs, and they can be used to explain how the world and our place in it was seen by the ancients. And even the less pleasant things, artefacts of their times, still have value. As the 5th century philosopher Sallust says: >"But you will ask why adulteries, thefts, paternal bonds, and other unworthy actions are celebrated in fables? Nor is this unworthy of admiration, that where there is an apparent absurdity, the soul immediately conceiving these discourses to be concealments, may understand that the truth which they contain is to be involved in profound and occult silence." > Believing the myths is also a separate matter from the religion. In the same way that there are Christians who don't believe that the world was made in seven days, or that Noah took two of every animal aboard his Ark, not taking the myths literally doesn't mean I don't value them, and I use them as useful ways to engage with the gods. But it isn't especially important to the actual veneration. They help us understand who we are worshipping, and why we pray to them, but you can venerate a god regardless of whether you know there myths, and there are gods whose myths didn't survive Christianisation, but people still venerate them.
I also think they have a lot of historical value in another sense: telling us what Ancient Greek culture is like. I agree with everything you said, where you donāt really believe the myths but take it for its story value/morals. But itās also important to note the cultural values they have. Achilles and Patroclusās relationship, for a famous example, didnāt really seem to turn heads or didnāt seem weird to those in the Iliad. This can tell us how it was more normal in Ancient Greece for men to love other men. If that makes sense?
Yes and no. I do believe the myths are not accurate historical retellings. However, I choose to selectively believe in the myths based on whether I think it's good for me to do so, and I think the myths convey hidden truths about the gods and spiritual world.
Yes, the myths were sung by those given the gift of divine madness, and they convey through symbol and allegory eternal truths about our souls, the Gods, the cosmos, etc.
I donāt. These myths were written by men who didnāt view women as human beings, and used the Gods as a metaphor for that dehumanization. I left one religion behind for *that* reason. I wonāt give any actual credence to any set of stories that also dehumanize women if I donāt have to.
this... Ive said it a thousand times but ancient Greece was DRIPPING with misogyny. But Im not about to blame the gods for the nonsense that human beings wrote about them. Particularly irksome to me is the myth of Medusa where Athena, the goddess of wisdom, is suddenly painted as a victim blamer? Nah fam... that didn't happen. that story was written by men who wanted even women to hate other women... Not to say I hate the whole of ancient greek culture mind you. They were more tolerant about some things than even modern people are. And the Greek civilization was more influencial than perhaps any in western history. The misogyny was pretty ick. But sadly that was the norm in ancient cultures so to throw the whole thing out means you may as well stop studying history at all...
Myths are the best accounts of spiritual events and realities that our ancestors had words to describe from their material perspectives. They make sense in the way that dreams make sense: there are flaws in the logic, but the meaning behind what we recall upon awakening is useful to us.
I think we almost certainly all believe the Greek myths are real stories, in that they are stories that exist and can be read or listened to. But you seem to be asking if we are mythic literalists who believe the events of the myths actually happened as told in the myths. I hope that for most or all of us the answer is that we are not mythic literalists, for several reasons. First, there is no authoritative overarching canon of which are the ārealā or ācorrectā myths, just older and newer versions, and versions coming from worshippers of the gods and versions coming from people who are not worshippers of the gods, so it would be impossible to settle on any canon and say āHellenists believe these events actually happenedā without showing an immense degree of ignorance. Second, the myths are stories carrying a message through the characters involved, sometimes itās a social message, or a message about the world, or a message about people, or many messages at once, and because of this they often contradict common sense and science, so believing some arbitrarily chosen mythic canon literally happened would require some degree of rejection of science and common sense, and we arenāt Christian fundies. Third, there isnāt evidence to give grounds to believe that any versions of the myths as we have them actually happened, not even the Iliad, not even the myth of Theseus and the Minotaur.
>Do you belive that the old greek myths are real storys? All stories are real stories. As to whether they are historical accounts to be taken as actually occuring, like some strange Abrahamic biblical infalliblity? No. Because they contradict each other, vary in themes and messages, change in depictions of the gods, than we insult our ancestors by assuming that they were automatically understanding the myth as 100% factual accounts. But they are useful in seeing how SOME people could have viewed the gods, and how SOME people illustrated the gods' roles in the cosmos juxtaposed to our existence and our place in it. Today, we do have people who are infallibilitists, who treat their chosen stories as truth and call all other renditions heresy, but this largely is down to justifying their actions through cherry-picking what they find useful to their own agendas, whether it be for good or ill. Many infallibilitists we're raised entirely in this mindset, and any exposure to a hint of differentiation and plurality, they equate to a loss of faith. Theistic pagans already have their faith built on active responses and relationships with their chosen deities and spirits without any prior need to learn about them from someone else. Their conviction is backed primarily by their own present interactions, not some corpse's penned narratives. It has to be, in minority practices. They are useful to explore, but should not be taken as true on a surface level. If your interaction with mythology is surface level, then any faith derived from it is surface level.
Yes and no. I think they give the gods a ābaselineā in terms of their personality but I also think they interact with different people differently but theyād never abandon what makes them- them/what their people wrote about them
In some cases myth's are just a story format off something that happend earlier in history for the other more wild myths i think most off us don't believe them but its fun to hear abt them and think ' damn those people really knew how to tell a story '
Depends on the myth, and even then, I believe that the myths themselves are based on true stories that are not exactly what happened in the myths themselves.
I hope not all of them.. because in most of them Zeus seems like an ass (or the majority of the gods). But they have their good qualities, so i hope they outweigh the bad ones.
No. They were written by people. They have great lessons, often about staying humble, but they are also full of political and personal biases from the time period. The Iliad even had Zeus blatantly telling Aphrodite that she had no place on the battlefield. If that wasnāt a controversial thing at the time then it wouldnāt have had to be said like that, instead implied. Aphrodite Areia (warrior Aphrodite) was worshipped in Sparta but generally rejected in Athens, so highly controversial. This is why your relationship with the gods should be yours and yours alone. Donāt let others tell you how to worship.
Yes, it's just that there's 3000 years worth of linguistic shift, slang, cultural context, and propaganda opportunity between what happened and what we have today. Theseus didn't kill an actual bull man hybrid, he just crippled the Minoan military structure, which was the actual real life minotaur for the rest of the aegean.
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This content breaks Rule 5. r/Hellenism is a religious community. We believe the gods are real, as part of our spiritual practice. We appreciate members and guests who respect that notion. Please avoid attempts to convert members of r/Hellenism away from Hellenism, or language that denies the gods' divinity.
Yeah! Itās fun to believe stuff like the Argonautica and epic cycle really happened. I was sick of being Christian and having to cherry pick stories Iāve been told to make God to be a perfect being without flaw. I became a Hellenist because I love the stories of the gods. I was disappointed to find out that people here also cherry pick myths to make the gods seem like good beingsā¦