Take back the Temples

[fr.novumorganum]

Zeus worshippers demand access to temple

DEREK GATOPOULOS, Associated Press Writer Fri Jan 19, 1:07 PM ET


ATHENS, Greece - After all these centuries, Zeus may have a few thunderbolts left. A tiny group of worshippers plans a rare ceremony Sunday to honor the ancient Greek gods, at Athens' 1,800-year-old Temple of Olympian Zeus. Greece's Culture Ministry has declared the central Athens site off-limits, but worshippers say they will defy the decision.
"These are our temples and they should be used by followers of our religion," said Doreta Peppa, head of the Athens-based Ellinais, a group campaigning to revive the ancient religion.
"Of course we will go ahead with the event ... we will enter the site legally," said Peppa, who calls herself a high priestess of the revived faith. "We will issue a call for peace, who can be opposed to that?"
Peppa said the ceremony will be held in honor of Zeus, king of the ancient gods, but did not give other details. The daily Ethnos newspaper, citing the group's application to the Culture Ministry to use the site, said the 90-minute event would include hymns, dancers, torchbearers, and worshippers in ancient costumes.
Greece's archaic religion is believed to have several hundred official followers, mainly middle-aged and elderly academics, lawyers and other professionals. They typically share a keen interest in ancient history and a dislike for the Greek Orthodox Church.
Ancient rituals are re-enacted every two years at Olympia, in southern Greece, where the flame lighting ceremony is held for the summer and winter Olympic games. But the event is not regarded as a religious ceremony and actresses are used to pose as high priestesses.
Last year, the Culture Ministry, fearing damage to monuments, blocked an initiative to hold an international track meet at Olympia. A panel of ministry experts ruled against Sunday's ancient ceremony at the ruins of the Temple of Zeus on similar grounds.
"Ancient sites are not available for this kind of event," ministry official Eliza Kyrtsoglou said. It was not clear whether the government had plans to block the worshippers.
Peppa's group, dedicated to reviving worship of the 12 ancient gods, was founded last year and won a court battle for official state recognition of the ancient Greek religion.
Those who seek to revive the ancient Greek religion are split into rival organizations which trade insults over the Internet. Peppa's group is at odds with ultra-nationalists who view a revival as a way to protect Greek identity from foreign influences.
They can't even agree on a name for the religion: One camp calls it Ancient-Religion, another Hellenic Religion.
The worshippers also face another obstacle: Greece's powerful Orthodox Church.
About 97 percent of native born Greeks are baptized Orthodox Christian, and the church regards ancient religious practices as pagan. Representatives of the church in the past have not attended flame ceremonies at Olympia because reference is made to Apollo, the ancient god of music and light.
Christianity took hold in Greece in the 4th century after Roman Emperor Constantine's conversion. Emperor Theodosius wiped out the last vestige of the Olympian gods when he abolished the Olympic Games (http://search.news.yahoo.com/search/news/?p=Olympic+Games) in 394 A.D. The modern revival of the Olympiad maintains a slender link to ancient ceremonies.
"Christianity did not prevail without bloodshed," said Peppa, a novelist and historical writer. "After 16 centuries of negativity toward us, we've gotten something in our favor."
Ellinais is demanding government approval for its downtown offices to be registered as a place of worship — a move that could allow the group to perform weddings and other ceremonies. They threaten further court action unless that permission is granted.
"There should be respect for people who want to express their religious feelings in a different way, that is not the typical Orthodox or Christian way," Peppa said. "We should not be stopped or denied our rights."

found this on yahoo today. I think it raises some interesting questions. I've never visited any of the old temples, but if anyone has, can you say if there is a sense of connection there? I'd love to invoke in one of those babies

[Naomi]

Heh, I've been watching those guys for like two years now. It's a very interesting movement. I learned about it from a guy on another board who lives in Greece. I asked him about how Grecians view the old religion.

He said that there was graffiti on walls over there which said "Return to the way of the twelve gods".

So that was when I became aware that Greece hadn't really ever forgotten completely....and there are always torchbearers...even if they have to come from outerspace like m1thr0s.

So yeah, interesting and notable.

[Ci Celli Ddu]

WorldWide Religious News (http://www.wwrn.org/article.php?idd=21213&sec=73&cont=5)

Ellinais was formed last October by 23 Greeks but in its annual report on religious freedom, the US State Department estimates that some 2,000 people worship the 12 ancient gods in Greece.

Sources said Ellinais will seek permission from the Culture Ministry to establish places of worship and to be allowed to worship at ancient temples such as the Parthenon and the Temple of Poseidon in Sounion.

[m1thr0s]

Here's a quickie cheat-sheet on...

The Olympians... (http://www.hol.gr/greece/olymp.htm)

m1thr0s

[Okazaki Castle]

found this on yahoo today. I think it raises some interesting questions. I've never visited any of the old temples, but if anyone has, can you say if there is a sense of connection there? I'd love to invoke in one of those babies

Heck yes! Powerful gates. In fact, all the ancient sites were specifically designed and constructed to be gates. From their placing on nodal points on the Earth's energy grids to their own architectural layout to, especially importantly where the greek stuff is concerned, how the sites relate to each other geometrically.

The Sanctuary of The Great Gods on Samothraki is the most powerful of the sites in practice I found. However, Delphi is strong also and in Athens, by the Acropolis, you've got the Theatre of Dionysus which is fairly pulsating. Some more powerful sites also exist unmarked. They can be derived by mapping the 'built on' sites and then deducing from there the missing nodal points in their grid structure. A couple of examples of this are the Meteora site which Christianity later picked up on, and The Devil's Gorge in Ancient Troizona, where Theseus was from. Personally, I find Ikaria especially powerful for Pan and Dionysus stuff, but I haven't figured out how it connects to the wider grid picture yet.

Now the slightly surprising stuff. Greece is in fact still controlled politically by the Olympian God followers. This is not done publicly nor acknowledged to the mainstream. But, within Greece, most people have heard of the mystical organisation known as 'Epsilon en Delphis'. They publish a magazine, books and have a minor cable TV channel. However, that side of things they keep fairly low key, just enough to maintain something of a public presence. On the web you won't find much about them, this was about the only page I pulled up which mentioned them:

Link (http://www.alexanderthegreatmountain.com/press/media-exposure/index.html)

But... the head of Epsilon is also The Head of Greece's Masonic community. They partly have him there simply to keep the police in their pocket. The Mystery Keeper for all the Masonic Lodges worldwide, and especially strongly connected to those of the Scottish Rite also happens to be someone called Tassos Rallis, a half-Greek half-Cypriot former war hero who is also a mystic on the San Mat path this lifetime and was, in his last lifetime on Earth, the Mystery Keeper in Delphi. He's the one who tells people like Prince Phillip what the inner masonic mysteries mean, decodes Rosslyn chapel, Rennes-le-Chateu, stuff like that. Now, he's Epsilon's main representative in Cyprus and his son is the guy I did a lot of my early mystical work with and lots of the martial arts practice also. Funnily enough, his son's teacher in martial arts, a pleasing chinese fellow who I know by the name of Sifu Wong, came second in the Chinese National Wu-Shu opens in one of the years when Jet Li came first. Thing is, he was trained by his sifu, who was at those opens too. His Sifu happens to be known as 'The Mongolian Tiger' and looked remarkably similar to Toshitsugu Takamatsu, who was supposed to be dead at this time having had his funeral in 1972, and was also called 'the Mongolian Tiger'...

So, basically, whilst you've got the head of the Masonic Order's Mystery Tradition next door, me and his son are sitting there, having been taught various things (a lot of them more covertly) by Takamatsu's latest pupil, checking out what his Father's involved in and doing using third eye techniques and meditative enquiry. Plus talking and socialising with him it's true... no need to always be covert after all...

Now, one thing I noticed when I was doing the dramatic stuff back in Greece towards the beginning of last year was that Karamanlis, the Greek President, would defer to some short guy with piercing eyes on nearly every topic. That short guy was third-in-command of Epsilon...

Now. Most of the power brokers in Greece are all involved with Epsilon stuff, or at least move on their outskirts. Not all, to be sure, but a sizeable proportion. Including the premier families who run the country. They also keep their country in a place where mindgrid is very flexible, gives you a lot of freedom. Far more so than most countries where things are tightly, tightly locked. This has tangible results in terms of esoteric or martial work: for example, in Greece I could really push things in terms of what I brought into the system, and so was able to do some quite amazing feats like huge leaps, massive strength surges and weirder stuff like portals. Whereas in England, where I went next in the process while still in that 'spiralling out' period, the mindgrid is locked down real tight and that, in turn, allows for little freedom of thought and movement outside of the set, proscribed patterns. Hence, the siddhis and things you can fetch thru are far less... and there, as soon as you start to, mindgrid targets you anyway (or used to at least, think I've got that sorted out now).

As to why they keep the public image and presence of Orthodox Christianity: well, they feel the public needs that face and it is indeed attached to it. So they simply stay behind the scenes and leave a whole load of sufficiently blatant and easily to follow leads for any who'd like to align or join with them, or is of the old religions. And, in practice, the 12 goders in Greece are not ever harassed or detained by the police or judicial authorities. They do control things there, completely pretty much, and they do look after their kind...

There's a neat bookstore in Athens by the base of Kolonaki hill which has most of Epsilon's publications and is run by an older guy who is very knowledgable on their mathematical geomancy stuff. He's good for links to the wider organsiational hierarchies and structure if you should be interested in investigating those. Thru them, some of the more secret sites can be identified for you. They are all there in plain site though, with easy, open public access (at most you'll have to climb over a fence). Unlike in Egypt, for example, where they lock up their most powerful sites and put them under military jurisdiction. The book 'Travels in Greece' by Pausanias does in fact list most of the sites in a slightly elliptical way: you have to connect the dots regarding what he's saying about distances between sites and how he says it to make sense of the 'hidden information' he's presenting there...

all the best,
Oazaki.

[Okazaki Castle]

Now, more generally, I'd like to state my overt and forceful support for and agreement with this thread's title and sentiment. The Ancient Sites should be taken back and activated again thru regular, public ceremony. It doesn't matter what the geomancy says, if you ain't powering up the nodes you're cruising and degrading on old power....

Warm Regards,
Okazaki Kyoshiru.

[Kuroyagi]

More power to the greek Gods!!

I just was fondly reminded of when Athena (!) praised Odysseus by saying: in lying and deceit you are even nearly an equal to us, the Gods, my friend!

I love that pantheon!

[fr.novumorganum]

I love the interplay between human and divine, how really imaginary that line was in greek mythos.

http://www.pmcguire.demon.co.uk/godslovewill.gif

found this neat chart, too!

[Anibis]

I like it.
-Ibisis

[Ci Celli Ddu]

That's a really cool chart. English speakers may not be aware of this, but just as the Anglo-Saxon gods live on through the names of days of the week, so do the Greek gods -via their Roman imitations- in the Romance and Celtic languages:

Spanish /Welsh /Roman /Greek
Lunes /Llun /Luna /Selene
Martes /Mawrth /Mars /Ares
Miercoles /Mercher /Mercury /Hermes
Jueves /Iau /Jove /Zeus
Viernes /Gwener /Venus /Aphrodite
(Sabado) /Sadwrn /Saturn /Kronos
(Domingo) /Sul /Sol /Helios

I also noticed while in Spain that instead of Friday the 13th (the day, not the movie) they have Tuesday the 13th, Tuesday (Martes) being the day of Mars (Ares).