Please Like/reblog If You Save!

Witchcraft Exercises

Just a quick compilation of the posts I've made about exercises to help improve your craft. These can be used as journaling prompts, inspiration for activities, or as methods for pulling yourself out of a slump and recharging your witchy inspiration.

Witchcraft Exercise - Quantifying Your Craft

Witchcraft Exercise - Dig Through The Ditches

Witchcraft Exercise - The Book of Lessons

Witchcraft Exercise - Home Brews

Prompt - Music to Witch By

Most of these are also available in the May 2021 bonus episode of Hex Positive (check your favorite podcatcher).

Happy Witching!

Devotion for Crackheads

Some fun and totally harmless ways to worship some of the gods!

Zeus:

Climb a tree and screech like an eagle

Throw a stick at someone you hate

Drink milk from the gallon you coward

Hera:

Point out how your life is going better than that nosy aunt's marriage

Wear ridiculously vibrant dresses and thick eyeliner and only speak in peacock

Make fun of the neighborhood Karen

Poseidon:

Make someone step in water with socks on

Step in water with socks on

There are many benefits to being a marine biologist

Æügh

Hades:

It's time you went through an emo phase

Train your local dogs to bark at the neighborhood Karen

Lose your 50/50 to Qiqi

Hestia:

Cosplay as Guoba

Arson

Eat your teacher's apple, it's probably plastic but eat it anyway

Demeter:

Stalk the vegan teacher

Stalk vegan booty

Learn about the chemical properties of green onions

Athena:

Make Kokomi crit

Arson (2)

Spend money on Ovid's book. Then burn it.

Ares:

Arson (3)

Learn about the properties and history of battle axes

Make Kokomi crit (2)

Artemis:

Buy a shirt saying "MILF, Man I Love Fishing"

Cosplay the Lorax

Become the Lorax

Apollo:

Learn how to use a shotgun, though you probably already know that if you're a white American

Make friends with crows

Become a crow

Hephaestus:

Socialise

Learn how to build a tank

Build a tank

Aphrodite:

Shove sea water down Karen's throat

Be gay do crime

Arson (4)

Dionysus:

Be gay do crime (2)

Get drunk on vodka

Blast Cult of Dionysus on four big speakers at the middle of the night

Hermes:

Commit tax fraud

Commit theft

Be gay do crime (3)

Helios:

Chug a questionable amount of monster down

Stare directly into the sun

Arson (5)

Selene:

Be gay do crime (4)

Sing Bohemian Rhapsody at the top of your lungs every full moon at the middle of the night

So the fandango

Hecate:

Arson (6)

Adopt a dog despite your parents saying no

Adopt a weasel

King Hades, 

Lord of the dead, protector and saviour of the lost, the broken and those who are hurting,

Great King, Great Protector, 

Wrap you smokey love around me, help me through my struggles and hurts, hold me close. 

I sing your praise and hold you with me 

I worship you, and give you my heart. 

Hear my praise 💗

How to pray to the chthonic gods 🪦 🌒

Position

When praying to underworld deities, we should direct our prayers downwards. An example of this is seen in the ninth scroll of the Iliad when Althaea prays to Haides and dread Persephone by kneeling and beating her hands on the ground. Whereas women wore their hair up or covered for ouranic rituals, they wore their hair down in chthonic rituals. The prayer should be murmured.

Offerings

Chthonic Theoi received special nighttime offerings of black animals, unmixed wine and special libations of milk and honey. Animal sacrifice was always done in a holókaustos--a sacrifice where the entire animal was burned and none of the meat was saved for human consumptions.

Homer in the Odyssey writes Circe advising Odysseus how to perform a libation to the dead:

"Draw near then, as I bid you, hero, and dig a trench two feet square, then pour a libation all around to the dead, first of milk and honey, then of sweet wine, thirdly of water, sprinkled with white barley meal."

Prayer format

The format is the same as when praying to any other theoi: Invoke the god, introduce yourself, make an argument as to why they should listen to you, and make a request .

Who are the underworld deities?

- Haides, King of the underworld

- Persephone, Queen of the underworld

- Hecate, Goddess of magic

- Thanatos, God of death

- Hermes Athanatus Diactorus, the chtonic aspect of Hermes in which he guides souls to the underworld

- Nyx, primordial Goddess of the night

- Hypnos, God of sleep

- Charon, ferryman of the dead

- Cerberus, guardian of the underworld

- The Furies, goddesses of vengeance and retribution

Sources:

- http://hadesandtheafterlife.weebly.com/respecting-hades.html

- http://baringtheaegis.blogspot.com/2015/03/how-to-pray-to-khthonic-gods.html?m=1

- https://homericist.tumblr.com/post/677291374969815040/there-are-three-main-parts-to-prayer-in-ancient

🌿the myth of minthe

Hades: Babe, babe, do the thing!

Persephone: *smiles*

Hades, breathless: oh my god.

A list of lovely moments and feelings

Slow dances to your favorite tune alone or with someone you love

Random and unexpected hugs

Handwritten letters

The smell of books and the sound of turning pages

Hearing the phrase "I love you"

Compliments from strangers

Returned smiles

Someone playing with your hair

Sunrises and sunsets

Handwritten notes found in old books

Cardigans, big sweaters and knitted socks

The taste of food after a long, tiring day

When you finish reading a great book and you feel like you've lost a good friend forever

Feeling the cold wind caressing you skin and hair

When you're at the beach and you close your eyes to listen to the sounds of ocean waves crushing against the shore

Playing with children and hearing them laugh

Making lists

Long, meaningful discussions with someone who means a lot to you

Slow kisses

Being brave enough to do the right thing

Hearing "this made me think of you" and "I miss you"

Playing with animals on the street

Visiting your grandparents

Long peaceful baths

unexpected car trips

No homework

The excitement of new beginnings

Waking up after remembering a nice dream

Okay so Hades contacted me, and i have no idea where to start. i've been cruising the Hades tags and there is virtually nothing useful. I've read most (if not all) of his stories, and the ones that include him. Any tips? it came from left field to be ones, always thought it would have been Poseidon.

Omg, hello and welcome to the club!!! :D Personally this makes me very happy, because I know how rewarding a relationship with Hades can be! I will add, also, that you may have a relationship with both Hades and Poseidon if you wish. :)

If you’re interested in strengthening this relationship with Hades, here are some devotional acts you can do:

Money and stones are greatly symbolic of Hades, especially dark, jagged stones (think obsidian, smoky quartz and onyx)

As with all chthonic deities, offerings are usually poured down instead of rising up. This means incense is a less common offering, as you want to offer things that are poured down into the earth, where Hades symbolically resides. I usually offer oils and teas (you may offer wine and juice as well), and pour the physical remains into the earth after ritual.

Also, I know it’s common with heavenly deities to take a sip of the drink before offering it. With chthonic deities, DON’T DO THAT. Offer the entire drink to Them. (I got such a death glare from Hades when I didn’t do this correctly pun intended).

Cleaning up cemeteries and tending to old graves are GREAT versions of philanthropic worship!

If you believe in the Hellenistic underworld, you may want to offer money to the spirits of the dead to let them pass on

You may make an altar to Hades easily. Black/grey candles, stones, money, any bones (or representations of bones) you have, and items passed down in your family (a form of ancestral worship) work well on the altar!

You may create an altar to spirits of the dead or your ancestors too if you wish!

Mint and pomegranate are sacred to Hades :)

Remember that the element of earth is sacred to Hades as well. Using dirt, herbs and any other earth elemental magic works in devotion to Him.

If you communicate to spirits, treat them kindly and help them move on

And finally, but most importantly, talk to Him. Talk to Him silently, out loud in front of an altar, or write to Him in a journal (which I do all the time). Hades will respond to you again when He believes the time is right.

If you have any other questions, please don’t hesitate to ask! I’m so excited for you that I’m literally having trouble typing because my fingers are trembling. Have a blessed path, lovely!

Types of “restless” dead, relatively active ghosts likely to manifest themselves (and convenient for magical exploitation):

1. Aoroi (from αωροσ, untimely): “those dead before their time.” Those cheated of their full stint of life bitterly stayed back to haunt the land of the living of which they had been deprived. In theory anyone who died of anything other than of natural causes in old age could generate a ghost restless qua aoros, although as a class aoroi tended to be conceptualized primarily as the ghosts of children or babies. 2. Bi(ai)othanatoi (from βιαιος and θανατος, violent and death): “those dead by violence.” The battle-dead and executed criminals, although murder victims and suicides provide the bitterest ghosts in this class. 3. Agamoi (from αγαμος, unmarried): “those dead before marriage.” Both male and female ghosts could be assigned this category, although the female ones were regarded as particularly bitter, insofar as marriage and the motherhood consequent upon it were a woman’s defining rights in antiquity. 4. Ataphoi (from αταφος, unburied): “those deprived of burial.” Whatever the circumstances of death, a ghost could not achieve rest without the due funeral rights. These were importantly distinct from the mere insertion of the corpse into a hole in the ground, and indeed the concealment of a dead body in precisely this way is often presented as the chief obstacle to the peace of its soul.

[Daniel Ogden, Magic, Witchcraft, and Ghosts in the Greek and Roman Worlds]

Did Persephone willingly walk into the Underworld?

There is no story in Greek mythology about Persephone leaving her mother in which Hades was not part of the story. 

There is no story in Greek mythology in which Persephone willingly walked into the Underworld out of compassion for the souls of the dead. 

There is no  “pre-Hellenic original” version of any myth, and that includes myths about Persephone.

However, there is a modern story claiming to be a “pre-Hellenic” myth about Persephone. It was written by Charlene Spretnak around 1978 and it’s found in her book Lost Goddesses of Ancient Greece: A Collection of Pre-Hellenic Myths. (Google preview here, e-book available here) 

Charlene Spretnak’s M.A. is in English and American literature. In her introduction to Lost Goddesses, she records that she re-imagined some myths for her young daughter because didn’t think the versions by Homer and Hesiod were appropriate to read to a 4-year-old. Her stories are feminist-inspired fiction based on mythology that she presented as rediscovered “pre-Hellenic” myths.

Marjorie Graham retold and created splendid illustrations of Spretnak’s version of the myth in The Archetypal Myth of Demeter & Persephone: A Story for Mother & Daughter Celebrations. An addendum in recent copies of the book credits Spretnak’s inspiration.

No one knows for certain what stories pre-Hellenic peoples told, or the specifics things they believed about their deities, because there was no written language in Greece at that time. The earliest Greek script yet deciphered is Linear B, a Mycenaean language that dates to around 1450 BCE and was used mainly to record commodities and transactions. Greek literature - and “literature” means  “written works” - began in the 7th century BCE. The  Homeric Hymn to Demeter (X and X) was  composed in the late 7th or early 6th century BCE. It is the earliest version known of the myth of Demeter, Persephone, and Hades. 

There is a difference between a myth told long ago, and a modern work of fiction based on myth. The former distills cultural and religious beliefs of an ancient society, and the latter contains the creative imaginings and values of an individual from a modern culture, with 2000 years or so of monotheist and secularist bias filtering the original myth, its culture, and its religion.

I’m not here to enforce religious orthodoxy. If the story told by Spretnak and Graham resonates with you, that’s okay with me. If you want to base your practice on it, that’s fine, too. If you want to call that practice “Hellenic  polytheism”, we will disagree, because HP is based on ancient religious beliefs, not on modern fiction. 

I’m going to take this one step farther.

There is no ancient version of the myth of Persephone and Hades in which Persephone was kidnapped and sexually assaulted. This is a false impression created by translation of the ancient word for “to be carried away” as the word meaning “sexual assault”.

The story of Persephone reflects ancient Greek marriage customs. Marriages were arranged with the father of the bride, often when the woman was a teenager, usually without consulting her. After a ceremony at her home, the bride was carried off in the groom’s chariot to live at his home. The Homeric Hymn to Demeter confirms that this was the case with Persephone: “… cloud-gathering Zeus… gave her to Hades, her father’s brother, to be called his buxom wife.”

In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Hades is shown to treat Persephone with great respect. He tells her: 

“Go now, Persephone, to your dark-robed mother, go, and feel kindly in your heart towards me: be not so exceedingly cast down; for I shall be no unfitting husband for you among the deathless gods, that am own brother to father Zeus. And while you are here, you shall rule all that lives and moves and shall have the greatest rights among the deathless gods: those who defraud you and do not appease your power with offerings, reverently performing rites and paying fit gifts, shall be punished for evermore.” 

In fact, their marriage was regarded as an ideal model for human marriages among the Greeks in southern Italy.

Please don’t take my word for this. If you’re interested in learning more, read Spretnak’s book and consult the academic resources - a list of some of those can be found here.

Please love Persephone enough to separate the modern fiction about her from ancient belief.

EDIT: To read my reply to comments on this post by @metvmorqhoses, who avers the existence of a myth in which Persephone entered the Underworld willingly  please click here:  https://honorthegods.tumblr.com/post/188435396046/did-persephone-willingly-walk-into-the-underworld