Talk:Hellenic polytheistic reconstructionism/Archive 2

What redirects here
I have created the following redirects leading to Hellenic polytheism:


 * Hellenismos (created by page move)
 * Hellênismos (formerly redirected to Hellenismos)
 * Hellenismos! (formerly redirected to Hellenismos)
 * Dodekatheism (merged page here)
 * Hellenic paganism
 * Hellenic traditionalism
 * Traditionalist Hellenismos
 * Hellenic recon (formerly redirected to Greek reconstructionism)
 * Greek recon (formerly redirected to Greek reconstructionism)
 * Hellenic polytheist
 * Hellenic Wicca
 * Christo-Hellenism
 * Olympianism (added 16 September 06)

The reason for creating these redirects is to try to lead potential editors on this topic to this page first, so they can see what we've managed to work out. Before Hellenic polytheism, there were three independently created articles (Greek reconstructionism, Hellenismos, and Dodekatheism/Dodekatheon), each addressing Hellenic polytheism from a different point of view. The idea behind Hellenic polytheism is to bring these points of view together so that people can read about all of them in context. Thanks! - AdelaMae (talk - contribs) 01:50, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

Hellenic traditionalism and fascism
I added a reference about anti-semitic  right-wing movements in main criticisms. I think that this bound isn't preposterous, since some fascist movements such as Nazism supported neopaganism.

But in the other face, people also perverted legitimate movements for their illegitimate objectives, for instance catholics perverted Christian message, sovietics perverted Marxism, etc

Also the main figure of the nazist neopaganism was the cult to the fürher, while  hellenic polytheism tries to restore the cult to the ancient gods --Atenea26 18:30, 23 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Nazism has precisely nothing to do with neo-Paganism. The 25 points of the NSDAP clearly spelled out that the National Socialist's supported what it termed "positive Christianity." This eventually manifested into the Gottgleiben (belief in God) German National Church. Hardly neo-pagan is it?? Please note also that several overt Asatruar Pagans were incarcerated in concentration camps by the Nazi's due to their pagan beliefs. The myth of Hitler being a pagan is simply not supported by the evidence full-stop.


 * Some Nazi's did hold to pagan opinions, but this was never the official policy of the NSDAP. Read "The Holy Reich" to get behind the story behind religion in Nazi Germany.-- Anonimous 01:38, 27 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Modern neopaganism is often linked to nazism (and I'm saying that as a pagan myself), but this seems to be constrained to "nordic" (Asatru/Odinism, Wotanism etc) and Slavic movements in particular. I certainly haven't heard of anything like that in context of Hellenic paganism. -- int19h 17:07, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

agreed, but for any pagan to adhere to NSDAP principals means that they are simply ignoring the fact that Germany during WW2 was an openly Christian nation, and that the Nazi Party considered itself a Christian movement. In contemporary times, I would think that for every Pagan Nazi there may well be 10 Fundamentalist Christian examples (ie. those in the Christian Identity Movement, National Alliance, Aryan Nations etc) This doesn't make Christianity National Socialist, and having a few right win adherents doesn't make Paganism a nazified religion either.

Hellenic polytheism and Christianity
I have removed this section because, after several months, I can find nothing to include that meets WP:V. The only group I can find that specifically combines Hellenic polytheism with Christianity is the one that maintains the Almond Jar website. The group does not state their name on the website. They are local to the north side of Chicago. They specifically state that they do not answer email. They suggest that people interested in the group start by participating on one of their mailing lists, neither of which are Christian or Hellenic in character, let alone both. Given this, I really feel that it is impossible to find verifiable information about this group, and I have not been able to locate any other groups or organizations with a Christian/Hellenic syncretic bent. If you have good, verifiable information about syncretic groups of substantial size or about a widespread Christian/Hellenic syncretic movement, I encourage you to put the section back. - AdelaMa e (talk - contribs) 21:14, 1 November 2006 (UTC)

The group that maintain the Almond Jar are known for their inventions of persecution and absolute belief in their own viewpoint. I would never use them as a source for Hellenism or even Christo-Hellenism (whatever that may be!!) I know for a fact that the story regarding the Honest Pagans email list on their site is an absolute and bare faced lie.

Article Overhaul
I'll be starting a major overhaul of this article; the article is currently quite disjointed, lacking details, displays some poor grammar, and is not wikified. I've started with a short re-buff of the introduction, which will be re-written later and wikified. It's simply a start. I realize that a few of the links may not re-direct exactly to the topic intended. I'll fix this later, though I intend to leave "Hellenism" as a redirect to the disambiguation page, as those articles themselves need to fleshed out and ordered a bit better.

A good place to start after a much more extensive introduction is written (and a more orderly re-organization of central topics) is with an overview and discussion of what constitutes historical Hellenic polytheism, written chronologically. Ideally, this would be a broad but extensive summary with cited sources, and links leading to main articles for ideas presented in the body of the discussion. Ancient greek religion and mythology on Wikipedia is horribly neglected, and this is a good page to start organizing ideas and creating stubs to be expanded upon.

The more extensive part of the article will obviously be a discussion of reconstructionist movements. In my opinion, this would primarily serve as an introduction and gateway to articles dealing with different reconstructionist groups, methodology, etcetera. However, community related aspects and a general overview of beliefs and practies both current and in the process of reconstruction could be discussed at length here, without much overlap with the specifics to be added in related pages linked to this one.

I'll be working on this over the next week or so; any help would be appreciated. I'm more than familiar with historical practice and current reconstruction efforts and groups, though I'm much more informed about Roman rather than Hellenic practices. Please use the discussion page to discuss major edits.

Kaelus 23:13, 23 November 2006 (UTC)


 * I added a bunch of stuff to the intro. Not all of it belongs in the lead section, but I think there's some good information for us to work with. I only put the "citation needed" tags in at places where I know there is a citation for the fact but I don't have time to look for it right now. I will work on putting the citations in later. - AdelaMae (talk - contribs) 21:38, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Hellenismos as Hellenism
Hellenismos was recently changed from a redirect to Hellenic polytheism to a redirect to Greek, a disambiguation page. I am reinstating the redirect to Hellenic polytheism, and here are my reasons for doing so. A quick Google survey shows that this word, when used in English, overwhelmingly refers to Hellenismos as traditional Greek religion. (Of the top 30 results, only one does not specifically refer to a modern revival of traditional Greek religion.) The "Greek" disambiguation page makes no reference to religion and does not link to Hellenic polytheism, and there is no reason why it should. "Greek" would not be a reasonable title for a page on this topic. The only Wikipedia article to use the word "Hellenismos" in a non-religious sense is Hellenism (neoclassicism) (which is not even directly linked from Greek). I do think that the use of "Hellenismos" to mean Hellenism of some kind, as it does in Greek, is quite reasonable; I think we can deal with this more effectively by putting a disambiguation notice at the top of this page, so I'm going to put one up. - AdelaMae (t - c - wpn) 03:38, 16 December 2006 (UTC)

Cleanup tag
There are a number of external links in the body of the article. These need to be removed. Only auto-numbered citations links are permitting the body of the article. Any other links should be listed in the external links section. Jefferson Anderson 17:29, 20 December 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree that the article could use a general clean-up, but I was unaware that we had a policy or guideline prohibiting external links in the body of an article. Some of the examples at WP:EL seem to clearly be cases of inline external links. I agree that most of the inline external links in this article should be converted to/exchanged for proper citations, I just want to be clear as to what the policy is so that I can make sure I am using external links appropriately. - AdelaMae (t - c - wpn) 07:34, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
 * It's in the Manual of Style, here, "You should not add a descriptive title to an embedded HTML link within an article. Instead, when giving an embedded link as a source within an article, simply enclose the URL in square brackets, like this. [1] However, you should add a descriptive title when an external link is offered in the References, Further reading, or External links section." HTH. Jefferson Anderson 16:25, 21 December 2006 (UTC)
 * To me, that's saying it's okay to have something in the article body like, "Adding descriptive titles to external links embedded in the body of the article violates the Wikipedia Manual of Style." However, it's not okay to have something like, "Adding descriptive titles to external links embedded in the body of the article violates the Wikipedia Manual of Style." I still think auto-numbered cites are highly preferable to external links, but there's nothing here explicitly prohibiting the use of external links as cites. My vote is that we make the article a little cleaner by converting the external links used as references to auto-numbered citations and removing the ones that are redundant with the External links section. That section could probably use a little trimming itself. And then there's the rest of the article... *sigh* - AdelaMae (t - c - wpn) 00:36, 24 December 2006 (UTC)

The Minoans
Please do not make claims about Minoan religion here. We do not know; short of inventing a time machine, we are unlikely ever to know; and conjectures differ wildly. In any case, this is not the place to discuss the question. That Greek religious goes back to the Mycenaeans is demonstrated; Zeus presumably goes back to the breakup of the Indo-European language, but we don't need to worry about that here. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 15:48, 21 June 2007 (UTC)

Useful link
This is another Greek wicca group whose pet article came up on AfD. I'm not sure how much here is useful, but it should be an external link, unless it already is. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 19:49, 21 June 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure how "authentic" this organization is. I am highly skeptical of the claims... especially (1) with so many verifiably public organizations in Greece, and (2) no Greek version of the website... plus, with the "Registered Covens" and "Membership" pages being under construction for more then a year, I suspect this is little more then the creation of one person's imagination. --141.151.27.49 14:52, 24 June 2007 (UTC)
 * Since there has been no additional discussion, I am removing the link for Greek Wicca because of the already stated reasons. I cite as precedence for this action Hellenic polytheism and Christianity (see discussion) where an entire section was removed because the information found on the source website was unverifiable and considered unreliable. --141.151.11.4 14:54, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
 * Why was the Greek Wicca link restored without discussion, especially when it so obvious does not meet a standard of verifiability? --151.197.56.67 (talk) 21:48, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Hellenic polytheism vs. Hellenic neopaganism
Hellenic polytheism and Hellenic neopaganism seem to be duplicate articles, not simply redirects to one or the other. Hellenic polytheism seems to be the more appropriate of the two since the articles are also talking about the ancient religion, not just the modern movements. I suggest turning Hellenic neopaganism into a redirect to Hellenic polytheism. --141.151.11.4 15:54, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I would reverse that; Hellenic polytheism should be, or redirect to, the religion of the Ancient Greeks; Hellenic neopaganism is the subject of this article. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 16:01, 30 July 2007 (UTC)
 * I would disagree that the main article should be Hellenic neopaganism for a number of reasons: (1) the main article had been Hellenic polytheism and was moved (without discussion) just little over a week ago, (2) many modern Hellenic worshipers do not accept, use, or self-identify as neopagan because of its close association to "public" Wicca, modern Druidry, and other New Age religions, and (3) almost 30% of the article talks specifically about Ancient Hellenic polytheism. --141.151.11.4 16:17, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Modern revivalist movements: Naming
I believe this section needs to be reworked. Hellenism and Hellenismos appear to be synonymously used to mean any religion that is a modern reconstruction of the ancient Greek religion (See Winter, Sarah Kate Istra (2004) KHARIS: Hellenic Polytheism Explored, Cafepress.com, p 37, Alexander, Timothy Jay (2007) Hellenismos Today, Lulu Press, ISBN 978-1-4303-1427-1, p 9-20; and Alexander (2007) A Beginner's Guide to Hellenismos, Lulu Press, ISBN 978-1-4303-2456-0, p 16-20.)

Within the first paragraph of this section, the idea that each organization having a different name for their tradition should be interpreted as not having a "standardized naming practice for this religion" is ludicrous in my opinion. Do we say that there is no standardized naming within Christianity because there are Catholics, Baptists, or Lutherans? I would put forth based on what has been placed in print, and what seems to be the opinion of the preponderance of websites (that one can easily Google) that Hellenism and Hellenismos covers all reconstructionist and traditional forms.

Where things get a little sketchy are with movements such as Hellenic Wicca or Hellenic Druidry, which most times have nothing to do with the ancient Greek religion other then the use of the names of the Greek Gods. This may also add to the "Hellenic polytheism vs. Hellenic Neopaganism" discussion because, in all actuality, "Hellenic neopaganism" is a hazy term, while Hellenic Polytheism (while not specifically recon) is more clearly defined. "Hellenic neopaganism" could be used as a disambiguation page with links to Hellenic polytheism, Hellenic Wicca, Hellenic Druidry, and any other movement. Hellenic Wicca, for example is more a form of Eclectic Wicca then it is Hellenic polytheism.

Also see
 * Talk:Hellenic_polytheism
 * Talk:Hellenic_polytheism
 * Talk:Hellenic_polytheism

--141.151.11.4 17:43, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

Merge template now on article
Don't merge with "Hellenistic religion", since the term Hellenistic religion generally doesn't go past late antiquity, while this article is mainly about modern revivals... AnonMoos 20:09, 4 September 2007 (UTC)

Number of Neopagans in Greece
Are there some kind of studies about the number of Neopagans in Greece? --Esimal 20:11, 14 November 2007 (UTC)