For Glory

As eventful as writing this story can be, more times than not weeks will pass before there is really anything worth recounting. This is not the telling of a tale that is based on a singular experience or muse. It didn't happen "one day" or even over the course of a few months. It's been going on now for years.

But, in all of that time, I have never hesitated or lost the motivation to keep going. It's become part of normal, everyday life. Ingrained into everything from work to play. Always there, always happening bit by bit.

It has made life more interesting and colorful. No where near common, never dull, never mundane, hardly meaningless. There is suffering, hardships, wounds and scars. There is the outcastishness that comes with the part. Stories for blogs and private journals. Never really fitting for idol conversation over coffee. Entertaining in one light I suppose. The Journeybook interactive page where the video series is primarily presented remains active enough. The video collection for this very story alone contains nearly 90 entries with viewers daily. They read, they watch, they remain silent.

It is a rare thing in the pagan community to see stories such as this. The ever growing number of people who lay claim to a connection with old gods. Most of them lost, confused, alone. Searching for some sign of hope in a darkening grey world. Sad, shallow, half-hearted efforts - no stories to tell.

The Spring rains have come, slowing things to a crawl, reminding me of how exhausted I am. The kind of exhaustion that only the path can bring. A kind that sleep will never resolve. A long road traveled, the end still far away. The exhaustion comes from that knowing. A constant testing - the gods asking how deep your faith goes, how boldly you might back your claims on them. Many fail the test.

They comes into this with all of the energy and passion of a renewed soul. They burn out quickly. They don't have it in them to endure, to remain focused, to stay driven. They still make there claims but there is no longer effort there. No more rituals, no more energy, nothing left to say, no will left to search. They fall silent, apathetic, forgotten.

Daily - the candles are lit, oils and incense burned, new votives offered, weapons sharpened and polished, stones carved, maps studied, pieces written, photos taken, video edited and presented to the eyes of the world. Every day, year after year, tale after tale even when there is no tale to tell. Amidst it all - time capsules, most made by and for whatever community I might find myself in. I travel to them, add in tokens, letters, pieces of this same story that will not be seen by mortal eyes again for another 200 years. Long after I am dead and gone, long after this very recounting and the video documentations cease to exist less it be recreated over and over again by the hands and voices of someone else.  But the stones were carved, tantalizing pieces locked away. Luring, enticing, full of questions and wonder. An investment into the curiosities of men. A thought that what we do today will be the myths and archeological quests of the future.

A farm boy who became a pagan king. A king who defied a God for the love of a Goddess. A journey spanning thousands of miles full of beasts, magic, mystery, unexplainable manifestations, mortal wounds, and epic victory.

Classic. Timeless. Immortal.

A life well spent. 

Even as I am writing this hundreds of new photos from this story have been sent out into the world in different places and left to the imaginations of whomever might lay eyes on them. From there they will spread out. Copied, shared, renewed over and over again with no further effort on my part. an advantage of the technological age. easy today to scatter the pieces like leaves on the wind until they encircle the entire world.

And then there is you, dear reader, who happened upon this be either chance or destiny and have read this far from whatever distant land you are in. I will show you things you have never seen before and never will again. You've discovered a tale that will never have an ending even if I were to die today. I've already traveled too far. Death would only deepen the tale.

Bound in mortality and  life, by year's end I will still hold lightning in my hands and the event will echo like thunder. I will have turned rain into wine and drink of storms from my cup. I will have put my pagan crown up against the might and will of Zeus and I will have defeated him. I will do all of this in front of a live audience who will witness and be a part of each step in the journey. I will present it to the eyes of the world in every medium. I will be filled with pride in the accomplishment.

And then, I will still have to go back to doing dishes, laundry, cleaning my house, and pretending to be a normal guy... as best I can.

Winter will come again. The months of questing over for a time. And in those dark winter months I will grow restless and begin to dream of adventures once more. This is the path and the life it brings.

Endless. Everlasting. Renewed like the seasons themselves.

A beautiful, glorious life. Too rich not to share.

The 22 Votives of Hera

(NOTE: The 22 Chapter adventure chronicling the placement of the 22 Hera Votives in both picture and videos can be viewed HERE)

Hidden within the proverbial pages of The Journeybook Adventures is a somewhat hidden secret that has only been mentioned in one of the chapters thus far.
Among the items taken on each adventure is a single hand carved stone votive (22 votives in all). With each adventure one votive is left behind, hidden somewhere in the landscape at the far edge of the journey.

Each of the stone votives are unique and each depicts the Goddess Hera, one or more of her personal icons, and (always) her name.

This semi-secret mission hidden within each chapter of the ongoing adventure makes each of the stories into an untold evolutionary ritual that includes multifaceted levels of sacrifice and hardship ending with this simple tribute to a very specific Goddess. The ongoing ritual is a proving of worth and devotion for yet another hidden purpose.

Included with the 22 votives of each chapter and trial are many other creations and stories. Such as the trial of the 7 mile altar stone, the rebuilding of the altar room, the procession to the river for a ritualized bathing of the Altar Statue, the writings, videos, and other tributes, the scholarly studies, meditations, and more. All smaller pieces of a much larger story that now spans years.

It is a hard path of many body bending, soul torchering challenges that breaks many boundaries and preconceived limits. It is the art of sacrifice and tribute, the path of devotion with many pains, the practice of going beyond all reason and doubt.


22 stone votives, 22 chapters in story of passing the tests and placing them.

When the 22 trails, adventures, and tributes are completed they hidden stones will form a pattern over the map of the land that extends over 30 miles in every direction with the altar room and my home at the center of it all. Here, where the largest of all stone votives to Hera within this story is held - the 7 mile altar stone itself.

The Journeybook has been a wonderful experience for me and I hope that it has come to be the enjoyment of the many who subscribe and watch the story unfold. This is simply a glimpse of the story within the story. The somewhat hidden, the somewhat mysterious, the absolutely pagan.

Into the Wild

The impact of the Panhellenic mind set and Homeric reconstructions of the Iliad has nearly completely crystallized the modern view of Hera into a figure the ancients never really considered. Her life was far different from that of the modern interpretation which is often based in Homeric poem rather than actual thought and practice.

The Panhellenic social mind set was based in subordination that needed a general metaphoric patriarchy which a retheologized Olympic family could offer. In doing so, the Panhellenic myths were the first step in setting Zeus upon his throne and, in turn, the male as the head of household.

Before Hera was retheologized near Argeia to better fit into her new mythic position we can look to the temples in both Samos and the Delian Heraion where admittedly very little of the mythological lore still exists, however many of the votive offerings to the temples do. Of which are figures of wild animals including: sphinxes, lions, griffins, birds and others that stand in contrast to something befitting the newly cased Olympian Queen and lends more to her original role as a nature goddess and mistress of wild animals as she was in the Mycenaean past.

Athena would later be gifted another of Hera’s original roles as the goddess of the shield and citadel. Most likely a new Athenian sphere of influence due to her Iliadic functioning as Hera’s agent and Hera’s battle Goddess in Argolic myth that transferred over into the Panhellenic myths. Since Athena was the daughter of Zeus the new position subordinated the sphere of influence over war to her father, increasing his own influence and supporting the masculine drive of mortal society.

However the reconstructions may have developed the Mycenaean view of Hera still persisted in many areas and held her as the goddess of untamed animal life, war, and the house, as well as a Spring Goddess of general fertility still worshiped at her tree and bathing in the river, who had the power of life and death over “heroes” - those who won fame from Hera.

Still, as time went on and people began to sway to the new theology, Hera began to lose her power bit by bit. The time when this really began to take hold in Greek consciousness is still shrouded in mystery. Slowly Hera’s connection with the natural world, her sovereignty over life, her influence in war, and her association with tree and river cults began to diminish as she was forced into the suppressive role as a goddess of domestication, subservient to her would be husband. A mortal theme that would last for thousands of years in western culture and is sadly still purported by the majority of writings regarding Hera today.

All of the evidence suggest that Hera was once the dominant Goddess of the pre-Olympian age. Her Hekatombaia that was celebrated in the Archaic Heraion was a New Year’s festival that presented her as the Goddess of Spring and new life, mistress of wild animals, and tamer of the untamed come winter and death; offering context to her non-Homeric description: teleia - “fulfiller”. There is no real evidence beyond the Iliad that suggest Hera as the subservient wife of Zeus or that the two figures had any connection what so ever within the mortal social sphere or in worship.

The sin of the Homeric patriarchy is that it has empowered one sex at the expense of the other. In order for the male to take the role of dominance all of the feminine influences had to be suppressed. Which, above all others, included Hera because she was the dominate feminine with an unprecedented power over her male counterpart in the Pre-Panhellenic world.

Hera was Queen long before Zeus was King. That fact could not be allowed to hold if men were to take full control over hearth and home. It’s a theme that has lasted to the modern age. Even the theology of Christianity has dominant male themes and “tames” the power of women.

Yet, in spite of the mortal habit of reflecting their social whims upon the Gods as a way of justifying their animalistic behavior, Hera remains untamed. She did not yield to servitude or suppression even in the Iliadic myths or in the light of her most often portrayed personification.

In the eyes of mortals Hera may not be commonly viewed as the seasonal mistress of wild animals, the bringer of new life, a goddess of the shield (war) and citadel, or the protector of the home. But the truth will forever outshine their confabulations and misrepresentations that serve only their petty whims. Whims that are easily cast aside once one travels a little deeper into the murk.

Feast of Dreams

“Philotheros [lover of the wild], I desire to feast, not in the city, but at Hera’s shrine, enjoying gusts of the west wind. A linen pallet on the ground beneath my body is enough for me—a bed close by a native tree (promalos), and a willow (lugos), ancient wreathing (stephos) of the Carians. Let wine be brought and the Muses’ charming lyre, that, drinking to our hearts content, we may sing of glorious Hera, mistress of our isle.” (Nikainetos quoted by Athenaeus 15.637b-c Kaibel 1890)

Nikainetos was a poet who lived in Samos in the 3rd century B.C., around 290 B.C. and is often included as one an Abderite, a student of a pre-Socratic school of thought that was founded between 440-430 B.C. The fragment above helps to illuminate a more fragrant view of the sociology surrounding the Temple of Hera and how is was likely a common practice to lounge about the Temple feasting in merriment until lulled off to sleep on a convenient pallet, bed, or couch there on the grounds, to dream dreams and have divine visions of the Mother Goddess while resting there.

One can’t imagine that the noise, smells, and hustle and bustle of city life offered much by way of peace and divine dreaming. Before all Hera was a nature Goddess with rituals founded for river gods and votives proper for a deity of both protection and fertility, the latter extending to crops and the renewal of life from death as a Goddess of Spring. She was also held as a mistress of wild animals that included griffins, oxen, horses, lions, and several birds. And in as many as twenty separate cult houses, throughout time, there is solid evidence that Hera was the Goddess of hearth and home. We may also allude to Hera’s Rite of Spring and the conclusion of the cycle in the autumn with The Harvest of Hera; a seasonal pattern that illustrates the notion that the giver of life (The Earth Goddess) also takes life away. The same notion can be seen in the mythos of “hero”, (Hero/Hera – Those glorified through Hera) who almost always died a young death.

Hera was the most influential and honored at one point in time while Zeus, who many attempt to place above her, can be viewed as a paranoid degenerate whose life and actions only served to back that point of view. His mortal gifted esteem and position was granted primarily by the sexist feminine suppression and social upheaval of Homeric times. Where Zeus was all force and chaos Hera was nurture and serenity; attributes typical of a mother goddess. And so, it is to the Temple of Hera where one ventures to find peace and simplified comforts of life.

It does not take a stretch of the imagination to see a clear vision of what a common Temple visit would have been like. A visit based in relaxation and merriment honoring Hera until one is mused to curl up on a soft pallet and be lulled into dreamful sleep in the arms of the Goddess herself with a belly full of food and drink that only serves to allow Sleep to visit more easily and dreams to become much more vivid.

How many visions came to the minds of mortals in such a manner? How many hidden, subtle blessings to the minds of men; to muse and encourage a much more rustic existence than anything we may experience in the modern world, still with all of its grit and grime. It’s so easy to slip between silken threads to touch the divine, so easy to find the sense of peace to the depths of the soul…and so easy to deny it all in the here and now. Perhaps we have forgotten what is important.

So, we come to the Temple of Hera to feast, sleep, and dream on a common day with common foods. What we might find there are things such as: arugulas, cucumbers, artichokes, cress, fennel, radishes, squash, grapes, olives, figs, pears, plums, apples, pomegranates, peas, lentils, sardines, an array of sea foods, goat, goose, boar, chicken, deer, rabbit, lamb, a variety of breads, and the fragrant bergamot oranges that, today, the essence of which is commonly used in the making of Earl Grey tea. All such foods may be seasons with things such as pepper, dill, salt, thyme, saffron, coriander, mint, and oregano.

Bread was a staple in ancient times with the inclusion of a small amount of vegetables, olives, and wine incorporated into everyday consumption. All of which was eaten by hand rather than with utensils. Raw fruits and olives were common as side dishes with any regular meal and often that meal was not a “fancy feast” but a feast of simplicity. It was perhaps an unrealized effort to take something really good and not screw it up.

All of this there in the cool shades of Hera’s Temple, a wide open space beyond highlighted by pools of golden sunlight. The soft caress of the west wind mixing and mingling the scents of the foods and the Temple together into a new form of ether unique only to that moment. A ghostly, fluid, lubricant that allowed one to slip from mortal form and into something more, however briefly. A simplistic feast set in the divine, an afternoon nap in the lap of a Goddess…a slow, steady, nurturing, and stress free life full of magic, mystery, and wonder known only to those who, with bellies full, dream.

How quickly mortals forget.