Mormon Hellenic Pagan: Do Such Creatures Really Exist?

I'm feeling a little hangdog tonight. My partner and stepson are out "occupying" the University of Oklahoma and I'm here at home alone licking my wounds from what was a real crap-e diem. It was very tempting to skip tonight's post, but I did make a commitment for National Blog Writing Month to post every day in October, so I decided to show up despite not having a whole lot to say--well, despite having a lot to say and not a whole lot of energy to say it.

Here is what has been weighing most heavily on my mind lately:

As per several of my previous posts, I am still having a major internal struggle between feeling like a Hellenic Pagan and also like a Mormon--feeling drawn to both paths simultaneously and having no idea how to begin reconciling them or even sorting out all the emotions this struggle is bringing up. Suggestions on how to proceed with this would be much appreciated as, at the moment, I am feeling very lost.

I go to bed each night and wake up each day thinking about this, wondering what my next step should be. I don't want to be a Mormon and forgo all the things I love in Hellenism. For example, how could I give up devotion to Hestia after her presence has been so alive in my home and heart for the past two years? On the other hand, I don't want to be a Hellene and have to renounce the things I have testimony of in Mormonism like eternal progression, achievable godhood and the personal bond and sealing to the Spirit of Truth I received at baptism that has been a constant guide, comforter and companion.

How can I feel so deeply connected with two paths apparently so removed from one another? What is going on in my soul that it would call me to two places at once? I don't know. I feel torn and have no idea how to begin the mending process.

May the good Gods and good people in my life help guide me toward an answer.

Blessed by the Mystery
(even when it doesn't feel like a blessing),
-M. Ashley

PS
The picture for this post is an original watercolor by yours truly. I painted it in my dorm room at Vanderbilt University right after a tornado hit downtown Nashville in 1998. I know it isn't Picasso, but even after all these years, I'm still pretty fond of it and I think it expresses the emotions of the night rather well.

Goddess Hestia: Love in Our Lives, Light in Our Hearts

It's a lovely, rainy day outside today. My partner and stepson are lazing on the couch--one on the computer, the other blissfully watching an action movie and munching on purple grapes. Our fifteen-year-old Siamese is keeping vigilant watch nestled into the cushions behind them while our younger tuxedo cat stalks and slinks through the boxes in the storage space under the stairs. On the floor at my stepson's feet are two dogs: One, red and hairy, rescued from the pound seven years ago, sprawls on his back contemplating the ceiling, while the other, black and white beagle mix, sits upright, adoring, secretly praying he may reap the juicy windfall of an errant grape. I am sitting in my soft, oversized chair, writing, with a tiny gray dog asleep and snoring on my left knee. Soon it will be time to make an autumn Sunday peasant feast--roast with potatoes, green beans and apple bread for dessert. 

This is our perfectly imperfect happy home. This is the foundation we walk upon. This is the love in our lives and the light in our hearts. This is the warmth of our hearth that radiates within and without. This is the spirit of the Great Goddess Hestia--she who is first and last among all the Gods.  

Invocation to Hestia

Hail Hestia,

Ancient hearth Mother

Goddess of the Spiritual Flame,
You who are first and last,

We thank you for your constant love and care.

We ask that you come and dwell here.

Make of our home your home.

Make of our hearth your hearth.

Make of our temple your temple.

Make of our hearts one heart, your heat.

Hail Hestia!

Blessed by the Mystery,

-M. Ashley

Reconciling the Wheel--The "Meat" of Our Creation

I am attracted to the Mother/Father sacred marriage cycle through the Wheel of the Year as is commonly known among witches, but have been thinking lately that I will have to adapt it a bit because, as it stands, it doesn’t entirely make sense to me. Why is it the God is the only one who truly goes through the cycle of death and rebirth? How does the Goddess go from Crone at Samhain, to Mother at Yule, to Maiden at Ostara, etc.?

I don’t know why I am so obsessed with figuring out our Wheel of the Year--that I feel compelled to deal with that before anything else. I think it is because that is the way I work creatively. I like to have a skeleton first on which to hang the “meat” of the creation. I wonder if it was like that for our Divine Parents?

Anyway, the Wheel of the Year gives us a structure for the time in our lives and it also gives us our basic mythology. I truly love the Eleusinian Wheel I created once, but it isn’t entirely representative of my/my family’s beliefs. There are other things mixed in and I was always especially uncomfortable with the male aspect being conspicuously absent from celebrating that way. When I stand outside I see the earth and I think of my Mother. I look at the heavens and the order of the stars and I see my Father. I feel the wind blow and I feel the love and presence of the rest of my Divine Family--Hermes in the wind, Hestia in the warmth of our home, Hecate at the crossroads and Hephaistos in my physical limitations and my greatest creative labor.

I think our Wheel of the Year should be the marriage cycle but with a bit of tweaking here and there because I don't believe all God/esses are an aspect of a single Mother and Father. I believe that just as we are children of our Mother Godess and Father God, so other children of theirs have ascended to become deities of their own, like Hermes, for example. Further, I don’t believe the Earth itself or the moon itself is Goddess, nor do I believe the Sun and Stars are God. I believe these are the things they have designed into our wonderful world to remind us of their presence, to teach us about the nature of our bodies and spirits and also to teach us that they too have gone through these cycles in their form of mortality. I do not believe the Goddess and God were born so. I believe they were born mortal, in separate times, and each went through the mortal cycle because these cycles are eternal. It is as if our Earth is set up so that the story of our Mother teaches us the cycles of our spirit and emotions, whereas the the story of our Father is more the lesson of the cycles of our physical presence--our actual existence and the existence of our souls.

All of that is to explain why the Mother Goddess does not die, nor does she age down or up in chronological order. She teaches us that at any given time in our journey, we are all Maiden, Mother and Crone, or Youth, Warrior and Sage. We cast on our different aspects depending on what is happening within us. I suppose that’s a good shorthand for what I was saying before. The story of our Mother teaches us the cycles of our within, whereas the story of our Father teaches us the cycles of our without. The God, however, represented in the sun and the active principles of growth, much more literally dies and is reborn throughout the course of the year thus, as I said, teaching us the cycles of our actual physical presence in any given plane of existence.

Blessed by the Mystery,
-M. Ashley