So I’m trying to find groups that use a Greek pantheon in their practice, but that don’t require you to try to reconstruct — WITH GREATEST HISTORICAL ACCURACY — ancient rituals. I am much more interested in how the gods affect my life in the here and now. I see the value in learning the history –more than most, perhaps — and I see the value in knowing the stories of one’s chosen gods in the context of their larger mythology. I just don’t think it is necessary to try to limit one’s practice to reconstructing rituals and daily practices from a completely different time and place, with different values and different societal constructs. I find value in a living tradition that pays homage to its ancient roots — honors them and knows them — but that connects with the here and now. Why do these people have to be so dualistic? Why can’t you have both? Would the gods really want to be stagnated in roles that are over 2000 years old? Do they want to hear the same old rituals, the same old hymns? The gods don’t value originality and relevance? And why do reconstructionists have to be so crappy and demeaning in the process of defining themselves as “not Wiccan”?

This is the first time I’ve ranted here about reconstructionists. I’ve held my tongue to date, through many years of working through the snide remarks and half-assed lies about Wiccans in the Celtic Reconstructionist communities. Live and let live. If an academic, intellectual approach to spirituality works for you, go to it. But today, with the accusation of Wiccans being mentally unbalanced coming from another Pagan group, I’m not shutting up anymore. That a person would have to be so militant, that they cannot consider another form of worship — they have a word for that, and it’s not reconstructionist. It’s fundamentalist. You think your interepretation of deity and worship is the only right one? You think you are somehow better in your practice because you spent hours and hours trying to reconstruct a ritual instead of speaking from the heart in your own words, inspired by your experience of the Gods? You think Gods come from a book? Then I have a place for you. It’s called my ignore file. You are now in the company of Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson and George W. If you like preaching to the choir, you are in the right place. If you wanted to actually have active dialogue in the larger Pagan community, so sorry, but it’s now too late.

Ugh — why must I always wade through elitist academic EGO to find the good stuff? Normally I don’t mind, but today I am just TIRED of shoveling the pedantic snobbish bullshit.