Hellenic-Polytheism is the meat and bones of that prior sentence, as it is the actual religion. Essentially it means that I worship the Gods of ancient Greek past, Hellenic meaning ancient Greece and Polytheism meaning multiple gods. However, like I said prior this is a Neo-Pagan religion, so it’s not as if I act like someone from the 700 B.C. That means so sacrifices, so before anyone asks, no that is still very much looked down upon– something I will touch more upon later actually. 

Everything worshipped is interpreted, and heavily up to the worshiper. My religion doesn’t have an equivalent of the Bible or Qur’an, all we have are old myths created from the view of people of the past. The way I view it is they are all stories written in a different time, and while they can showcase something true, there is always an element of time-bias and exaggerated events. So while I can learn of my gods from their respective myths and it is a great way to honor them, there is a great distinction between the stories and my reality. 

I think the most notable thing about being a hellenic-polythesist is the way we pray. I’ve found a lot of people find this particularly fascinating. Typically, one prays in front of an altar, one full of candles, offerings, statues, and various decorations to show off the deity it is focused towards. I personally have two of these, one for Lord Apollo and one for Lady Aphrodite. These altars don’t need to be particularly fancy though, I’ve seen people make them with something as small as a tissue box and a two-dollar candle, it’s more important that you actually try rather than buy a bunch of pretty and meaningless things. 

However, you don’t even need an altar to pray. It’s hard to describe, but a single altar can be dedicated to multiple gods or you can just informally pray. That is perfectly okay too. The most important thing is that you must be clean of the daily miasma. It isn’t anything bad, and nothing we can really control, but it is technically impure. The gods are pure beings, so we have to make sure when we commune with them, we try to be as pure as possible. Different things give different amounts of miasma, but one thing that will always give plenty is being in contact with death. Remember what I said about sacrifices being really looked down upon in a religious context? This is why.