My Journey into Hellenistic Paganism

Note: This is an entry written by one of our members. We hope to share more in the future

I went to some really Christian schools all through my pre-high school career (Baptist, Assembly of God) as well as attending Presbyterian and Methodist Churches on Sundays. I attended schools varying from staunch to evangelical to tent-pole revivalists. This exposed me early on to a variety of traditions.

But in fourth grade, I moved to Louisiana and attended public school for the first time. I was an amazing reader, but when I got to the new school the teachers didn't have any way to measure that so I was placed in the "Turtle" Reading group, instead of the Dolphins, where I should have been. I lusted after being in the fast reader group. Then when I ascended to 5th grade, the Dolphin book was the slow one and the Gators got the new book (Foiled again!).

I wanted to catch up, so during the first 2 weeks I devoured that book like a well, a gator. About 25 % of the way in was a first person story from Poseidon who told how he thought Zeus was foolish for picking an empty sky. The story was as if Poseidon was giddy and sharing an intimate secret. He told how he picked the ocean because he knew all the secrets that people told and talked about when they were near water. He was proud of his choice. He was a bit of an ass.  He told of how fortunes and treasures slowly filled his kingdom, both the living catches and the lost and sunken ones. Poseidon talked about how Hades had the most depressing realm. In the End, all of that secret keeping and cheeriness resonated with me, the nosy busybody.

That was my first hook to paganism.

My father was an oil executive making 50K+ in the early 80s, so my childhood was filled with weekends on boats and vacations by planes. I have flown multiple planes and driven many boats. I have read maps better than my tracker and scout friends in the military. I once even did a cartography course backwards by accident and still came out in the top 30%. I have been trained to be in the Navy.

My real-life name means “of the sea”. My whole name means either fish egg, caviar or as I used to tell my Sunday school teacher, Genesis 1:1 “because there is nothing in the beginning but me and the waters.” My ego was massive. I have known how to swim since pre-memory. Same for reading. I had read the Bible from cover to cover in Bible-verse-memorization 1.8 times by the 8th grade. To be fair, Song of Solomon was one of the officially omitted ones due to the racy subject matter.

In sixth and seventh grade, I was at an Assembly of God school that tried to teach me “how to receive the gifts of the Spirit.” That is like saying you are going to teach me how to manifest gifts from your grandma even when she didn’t buy anything. I was rude to my teachers about it. I can be a bit of an ass.

But my paganism is a relationship with Poseidon that just wouldn’t end for some reason. That nagging spiritual tickle in the back of the mind continued to itch.

Now when I say I am partial to Poseidon, you may imagine I have an impressive breath capacity from years of practice, but I have an upper-level of average breath capacity from those years. I’m not into cthulhu tentacle monsters either. That just isn’t my sway. I also have a fear of drowning. To this day, that is my number one fear and is the dream I have most often at monthly. I once had an open-eyed dream as I entered the waking world that my futon on the second floor was just underwater. It took my mother several minutes to convince me that my bed clothes were dry. Water has been my power and my fear.

I got really into witchcraft during my first semester in college. I was leading a double life. My outward persona was as a member of the on-campus “Jesus Freaks” a name we chose from a Christian rap tune. I was doing that to hang out with girls and because I knew the right words to say to seem impressive to the Inner Circle because of the religious education.

But at night, I was runing the lengths of candles. At night, I made a flimsy wand from a piece of wood I found in the quad and peeled. It wasn’t straight, but the undertones of the wood were a silvery note, which met my conditions. I remember doing a lot of really inappropriate magic without mentorship so I was the equivalent of a 5 year old with a magic grenade. I was having a magickal war with one of the roommates of a good friend, who was a hereditary witch.

I once was in a foul mood one March day and being a horse’s patootie, I used a lot of energy and a fair amount of spite and made it snow around breakfast. This is not that impressive in Ohio, but it was a huge shift int he weather patterns on that specific day. Sometime around late lunch, I received good news that some pretty girls had invited me to a party and one of my sociology tests had been suspiciously easy (I was just really good at introductory sociology, not so much later levels). My spite was forgotten and the March clouds parted so warmly that the frisbees were flying in the Quad by shorts and tank topped skaters sometime around 4-5pm. I was happy and ran with joy.

Did I get a payback? Yes, my focus on spite got supremely in my way of doing my studying and I exited college after my freshman year. It was one of the three long-lasting failures in my life.

So I dropped magic and knowledge for the military. The Navy was closed when I applied and the Marines fresh-from-Parris and blocking the doors were telling REALLY inappropriate jokes, so when I checked with the Army, that recruiter couldn’t have invited me in faster. He didn’t even care that I had flat feet.

My forays into metaphysics were put aside for about three years until I moved to Germany where I met a burgeoning wiccan who was still in their freshman years. My sophomoric belief that I knew everything (That is what sophomore means in Greek) led me to inappropriately chastise and hinder their growth and closet it like I had done with mine. They much later pulled me aside after doing reading that I was too timid to learn and brought me back into sway. I am thankful to them now for opening my eyes. I would have hung out with them more, but I was deeply busy being my Captain’s driver as the only enlisted not terrified of officers.

But I never lost Poseidon. That is easy when you are on a 27-foot boat every other weekend in the middle of the Houston bay, but when your father feels discouraged and the engine always needs maintenance and your mother hates it, the relationship gets harder. It was easy when we lived in the Gulf of Mexico states, it was more difficult when I was surrounded by Iowa corn in the middle of the land. But I had landed next to Lake Rathbun, which is the world’s largest artificial freshwater lake (Midwesterners love their specific record breakers) so I still had Poseidon waters to ply. My Christmas was sledding down the dam next to the torrential drainage port. I was worried I had lost Poseidon’s connection when I moved to Ohio, but that summer was the summer I spent at Cedar Point, a roller coaster park in Lake Erie. My connection was strengthened by the beach in the Great Lake.

For the years from my 24th year to about my 42/43rd, I was Poseidon’s servant and willingly waited at his beckon call.

But Morgan, you say, I see a problem coming up. You do.. You are right, A mariner god in the land of Sand is a recent 10-year old problem. I went through huge amounts of depression when we moved here to Phoenix. I was cut off from my source of energy. I experienced a terrible mood and was put on pills.

After a few years, something happened. My Best Man, living in Houston, and closest friend for 30+ years missed me. So his wife, who is not one of my Fans, paid to fly me out to visit them for a month whim. It was a complete surprise for my homey.

We hung out but I just wasn’t feeling the joy I had experienced in Houston. It wasn’t my buddy. He was enraptured to get the gang back together for game nights and such. It wasn’t his wife, she and I were getting along gloriously which I promise was a first. I just was missing my anima…until the third to last day.

We were in Galveston and parked on the beach, which we were not supposed to do, and I had been jammed in the back under their Great Dane, which I was severely loathing was a common occurrence and everyone got out of the car. I was left by myself and the proverbial “stick up my craw.” There is a portion of the game God of War where the gods know you are a problem so they trick you into investing all of your health/mana(You can’t play the game at absolute max health for game balance issues). Like the main character, I stumbled in pain to the waves, and stumbled over the sand. I reached the portion of the beach called the Swash Zone which is the technical term for the part of the beach where the tide goes back and forth. It is also the hardest part of the beach and is where most beach scene runners like to travel because it isn’t always wet, but not trudging through sand. The Swash Zone is my very favorite part of the beach. I could feel the energy flow to me, but I descended onward to my least favorite portion, The early channel. When you say the Surf, people tend to assume the portion where people hang ten and ride boards, but the surf goes all the way up to the portion where the waves pulls back furthest, that portion is called the early channel or post-crest. I was wearing shorts at the time so I couldn’t dive, but I wandered knees deep bent over with my butt to the car. I blessed myself, Baptist style with a drench on the head. It was wonderful. It was what I needed. My hair hung in seaweed scattering. I was ready, but I wasn’t ready for the ocean. I was ready for what I had left behind, just behind, at the swash zone. Poseidon was freeing me to go to the swash zone and do what every runner does there, Run. 

I ran, but my running wasn’t what I was enjoying. I was enjoying the travel, the movement, the pieces all came together, Poseidon wasn’t the attraction in the book, the snarkiness was the piece I gravitated. All those times I was an ass, that was a different god calling. The travel of planes and boats and even the commander’s driving….none of that is Poseidon. My love of just going on long car trips and my excitement at the highway, that is a different god offering interest. My time at Cedar Point was exciting because of the rollercoasters going fast, not Poseidon. I was an acolyte of Hermes all this time.

It made sense. My brushes with the law. My time in jails, the longest for a traffic warrant. My friends on both sides of the courtroom, my jobs, my love of just…going My ability to lockpick better than average. All of this is Hermes related!

Another way Hermes manifested in my younger life was that I was our unit's Guidon Bearer for two years. A guidon is a ceremonial spear with your company flag on it, along with the platoon flags, the ribbons you have won, your ceremonial eagle atop, and it is carried with you in parades and “Dress and Ceremony.” All that weight starts to add up very incrementally. During ceremonial Physical Training, Battalion and Brigade officers will get it in their heads that we should run a distance together as a team-building activity and all the platoons and companies and battalions and brigades all bring their guidons for identification and pride…oh but it gets better, as part of the esprit-de-corps, it is traditional for the fastest, snarkiest member of any unit to (be told to) break formation and semi-sprint all the way up the long line of running soldiers to the front on the left, yell something permissible but arrogant (I thought we were running?!), dash down the right side all the way to the back and then fly back up the left side to your group and never look tired or beaten during the entire procedure. I was the chosen snarky runner to bear the guidon for all but two runs in my time in Europe. I was the 2nd fastest runner in my Company. Hermes has blessed me with skill to move past my flat feet. He gave me the power to survive a 50lb 12.5 mile ruck march and was the only person that day not to drink their water weight out of their rucksack so I passed.

Including the obvious joke, how does it take so long to find Hermes?