Practical Theurgy -pt 12

The Divine Epithets - What’s In A Name? The Many Faces of The Greek Gods.

My loves,

Our lives are complicated affairs. They shouldn’t be, but for one, the gods have given us a very mutable, free will (mistake number one) and secondly, we have to share this existence with a whole bunch of other free wills, from pets to flies that find themselves inside your mouth, as you jog down a green path (mistake number two).

So naturally, we wake up each day, with a whole different set of problems.

One day we wake up and our business is struggling, because Stacey felt disrespected that the water temperature in her room was two degrees lower than it should, so she went online and left a scathing review.

Another day someone we love is ill, or worse, we set our foot down first thing in the morning, and everything, from our toes to our atlas, reminds us how old we are—not how old we feel…

Perhaps, we are about to go on a trip, or our marriage—another usual trainwreck—is going through one of those delightful periods when the question is not “how we get through this,” but “what do I do with the body?”

In the odd chance that you are content with your life —what is wrong with you?—you may want to simply thank the gods that they have allowed you to cruise through, unscathed.

So naturally, like a good and pious practitioner, you decide to pray.

You light your incense, stand before the altar and say:

“Oh Zeus! Eternal Father, King of Gods and Men, hear me!”

Luckily for you, you’re doing this in private, and not in front of a Greek crowd, because there would have been at least one, who would have tapped you on the shoulder, and asked you a rather annoyingly pedantic, follow-up question:

“Which Zeus?”

Zeus Ktesios, who guards the possessions and prosperity of the household?

Zeus Xenions, who presides over the sacred relationship between host and stranger?

Zeus Horkios, guardian of oaths?

Zeus Ombrios, bringer of rain?

Zeus Soter, the savior and protector?

Or maybe, you meant to invoke Zeus Meilichios, approached in rites with a rather different atmosphere from those surrounding the thunderbolt-wielding Olympian father king that springs to mind each time you think about the word “Zeus?”

All of the above, are Zeus.

And yet, simply saying that there should be no difference because they are all “Zeus” somehow misses entirely what the Greeks actually mean and do when it comes to their religion.

Because the same problem appears everywhere, once you begin looking seriously through the texts, myths and the sacred geography of our world, dotted with temples that carry very specific and varied names.

Athena can be Polias, Ergane, Nike, and Promachos.

Apollo can be Pythias, Agyieus, or Paian.

Artemis can be Agrotera, Loch, Brauronia.

Poseidon, despite his popular designation as Master and Lord of the Waters can also be…Hippios (of the horses).

Not to mention your curvaceous Aphrodite who suddenly jumps at you as Areia—“Warlike.”

So much for those correspondence tables that matched each god to a specific domain and a symbol, right?

The “problem” with the Greek gods, much like the Greeks themselves, stubbornly refuse to remain inside their assigned boxes.

And that is precisely the point we will addressing here today, because in the Hellenic context, an epithet is not just an ornamental, honorific surname attached to a god. Nor is it “necessary” another god altogether. But it does still identify a deity under a particular description, within a particular place, relationship, function, tradition, or ritual situation.

In our previous article, we looked at offerings as recognitions of the gods and their presence through the world, in physical form. Maybe then, it can be argued, that perhaps the epithets that we attach to them are also, a kind of recognition given a a particular name.