I just saw Nosferatu and literally like 99% of the occult shit was not only accurate but accurate to the period. I recognized pages of Athanasius Kirchner on a character’s wall.
Hi, everybody! I’d love to post more of my content on occultism, but this is technically a gothic art blog, and it feels a little unfocused. So I’m moving my posts about occultism, paganism, and witchcraft over to @bookofforbiddenknowledge! Come and check out my content over there!
Occult secrets should be available to anyone who wants to seek them. If you’re here, you’re an Initiate.
I see a lot of the same questions asked on r/Hellenism and other pagan spaces online, so here’s my answers to them:
Is [god] mad at me for [thing]?
No.
Versions of this question are asked almost every day, about all kinds of situations, and the answer is always no. Your gods are not mad at you. Contrary to popular belief, gods do not anger easily. I think there are two main reasons why people assume this: The first is that the Greek gods are often perceived as being quick-tempered, petty, and vindictive in mythology, but this isn’t an accurate or fair perception (see below). The other is that a majority of new converts are ex-Christians, and in many sects of Christianity, God is constantly breathing down your neck to catch you in a sin. If you grew up in that kind of culture, it can be very difficult to break out of that mindset.
In truth, Greek gods are kind and very forgiving, and it’s nearly impossible to offend them by accident. You’d have to actively try to piss them off, and even then, you’re more likely to get an “I’m very disappointed in you” than a show of divine wrath. Even in mythology, the things that anger them tend to be big things like kinslaying (murdering your family), desecration (intentional — as in not accidental — destruction of temples and holy objects), crimes against their worshippers, and disruption of the natural order. You can’t do any of that by accident. Gods also aren’t constantly looking over your shoulder for reasons to punish you. Believe me, they’ve got better things to do, and they don’t have any reason to alienate their own worshippers over petty shit.
Can I worship multiple gods?
Yes! This is a polytheistic religion. Worshipping multiple gods is kind of the point. Gods do not get jealous of each other or possessive of their worshippers. Even if you have a patron deity, it is not going to prevent you from branching out to other gods. There’s technically no limit to the number of gods you can worship; you’re only limited by the amount of time and resources you have to devote to each one. Historically, people often had a handful of gods associated with their city, their profession, their local natural features, etc. that they worshipped regularly. They would cycle through the other ones as-needed or on their respective sacred days.
You also don’t have to worry about putting different gods on separate altars, asking permission before working with a new god, or whether the gods you’re working with will like each other or not. They expect to be worshipped alongside each other.
Can I mix Hellenism with Christianity or another religion?
Yes! Mixing religions is called “syncretism,” and it’s normal. It’s how religion is supposed to work. All pagan religions are intercompatible to some extent; Ancient Greeks interpreted everyone else’s gods as versions of their own with different names. (This is called interpretatio graeca.) There’s lots of weird Greco-Egyptian hybrid gods, like Hermes Trismegistus (Hermes + Thoth), Hermanubis, Harpocrates, Isis-Aphrodite, Osiris-Dionysus, Zeus Ammon, and Serapis (Zeus + Hades + Dionysus + Apis + Osiris). There’s lots of other examples of syncretism within and around Greece, and the Romans made syncretism their whole thing. Again, gods will not get mad if you choose to syncretize. But it is a good idea to be mindful of cultural appropriation when approaching syncretism.
Why do gods do such bad things in the myths? / How should I interpret the myths?
The majority of modern Hellenists don’t take myths literally. We definitely don’t treat them like the Bible. It’s important to remember that Greek myths are at least two thousand years old! Nothing ages well after that long. Ancient Greeks had a very different value set from people today. So, for example, Zeus has disturbing SA myths because he’s portrayed as an Ancient Greek king, and that’s how Ancient Greek kings were expected to behave. Anyone who worships Zeus can tell you that Zeus, the entity, is not like that at all! He’s very gentle and fatherly. What’s actually important in those ancient myths is that Zeus is supposed to be the ultimate embodiment of power, and in those days, that was one way of showing how powerful and virile Zeus is. It’s important to read between the lines and see what myths are actually trying to say, instead of taking them at face value. It takes time to learn how to interpret myths, but they can teach us a lot about the gods in this symbolic, indirect way if we know how to look at them.
Exactly how Ancient Greeks interpreted myths is a whole other discussion that I don’t have space for here. The short version is that they didn’t treat them like we treat the Bible or modern media. Myths are not literal or allegorical, it’s a secret third thing. Myth straight-up didn’t play the same role in society that our stories do today. So, until you learn more about that, I recommend taking the myths with a grain of salt. Enjoy them as stories, learn whatever you can from them, but please don’t base your opinions about who the gods are as entities purely on myths. See below for other kinds of sources!
Do I need to pray every day?
Nope. Don’t drive yourself crazy thinking you have to maintain a regular practice forever. That’s asking a lot of yourself. Life gets in the way, and you don’t always have the time, energy, or emotional bandwidth to practice. (I tried to do regular rituals in August. I lasted about five days out of what was supposed to be a week-long series of rituals.) It’s important to remember that, in Ancient Greece, religious activity was just built into people’s routines. That’s no longer the case — we have to go out of our way to do even the most basic devotional activities, and that makes practicing much harder than it’s supposed to be. The gods understand that we’re human, and they understand the limitations of the way our lives are structured. Regular practice is, frankly, unrealistic.
Do I need to wait for a god to reach out to me before I worship/work with them?
Nope. This is a common misconception based on the way modern paganism is often presented. It’s perfectly okay to seek the gods out based on what you need from them, and you don’t need permission to begin working with a new one. (Gods want your worship the way corporations want your money. They’re not going to turn you away.) It’s possible that a god might “reach out” to you, but you can’t control whether that happens or not, and you don’t need to wait around for that to happen.
Do I need a patron deity? / How do I tell who my patron deity is?
You do not need a patron deity. Historically, your patron deity was the god that rules your profession. (So, the patron of doctors was Apollo, of merchants was Hermes, of agricultural workers was Demeter, of artisans was Athena, of politicians was Zeus, etc.) Nowadays, a patron deity is a god that takes a personal interest in you and your spiritual development, and whom you have a special connection to. I’m lucky enough to have one, but not everyone does, and you don’t need a patron in order to practice or to have close relationships with gods. If you do have one, you don’t need to only worship that one god.
If you have a patron deity, you will know. Chances are, it will not be subtle about getting your attention. I knew my patron deity because I became inexplicably obsessed with him more than once, and when I started doing research into him, everything about him resonated. Please do not ask if random symbols you’re seeing are signs, or which god a tarot spread is pointing to. Part of what makes a sign a sign is that you think of the god when you see it! If you want gods to reach out through signs, I recommend familiarizing yourself with their iconography (symbols and attributes). Tarot doesn’t have a one-to-one relationship with any group of gods, so it’s unlikely that tarot will point you towards any specific god, unless you’re already really familiar with the gods and your cards.
How do I talk to gods?
That’s what divination is for. There’s lots of divination methods: tarot and oracle cards, dice, pendulums, scrying, etc. Personally, I’m partial to automatic writing, which is writing a question, and then writing whatever comes to mind as the answer. I get answers in full sentences. (No, I don’t know for sure that I’m talking to gods and not just to myself, but I recognize the gods’ “voices,” and I experience very intense waves of emotion and insight when I speak to them.) If you’re a more visual person, scrying is also a great tool to receive messages from gods in the form of images. Simply meditating is also a good way to interact with gods, and something you should probably practice anyway.
Divination takes time to master. If you’re not getting clear answers right away, take some time to familiarize yourself with your tool. Try using it to ask about your life, not just to talk to gods. Don’t take it too seriously. Some methods are more reliable than others, and you may be better suited to some than others. I advise against yes/no divination, because it tends to be too vague and can be easily influenced by what you want to hear.
And please, for the love of Zeus, do not use candle flames! I know candle divination is the trendy thing on TikTok right now, but it’s almost completely ineffective, because candle flames are easily affected by external factors: the length of the wick, the quality of the wax, the humidity of the air, drafts, you breathing on it wrong, etc. And any answers you might get from a candle flame will be vague, anyway! 90% of the time, it’s not a message from a god, it’s just the way fire works. Please don’t read into it.
What can I give as offerings?
Standard offerings for all gods include bread, meat, milk, honey, cakes, olive oil, barley meal, flowers, fruit, wine, and incense. Some gods have more specific offerings consistent with their domains or personalities (like, for example, offering sun water or bay leaves to Apollo). You can also offer creative works like songs, poems, dances, art, etc., and devotional activities. Gods will appreciate almost anything you do for them.
As for how to dispose of offerings, I usually just eat them if its food. I don’t give food offerings often, because I’m uncomfortable with “wasting” food, so I’m not really the right person to ask about that.
Which historical texts should I read?
We usually recommend that you start with the Homeric epics (The Iliad and Odyssey) and Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days. But mythology is not the only resource we have to learn about the gods! There’s the Homeric and Orphic Hymns, poems dedicated to the gods that you can recite for them at their altars. There’s texts on theology like De Natura Deorum by Cicero, On the Gods and the World by Sallustius, and On Images by Porphyry. There’s also Description of Greece by Pausanias, a travel guide (of a sort) that describes the everyday religious life of ordinary Ancient Greeks. Reading Plato is a tall order for some, but I recommend familiarizing yourself with his ideas at least a little bit. Most of these are available on theoi.com or perseus.tufts.edu, and the Internet Classics Archive.
If you’re interested in magic, definitely take a look at the Greek Magical Papyri (PGM) as well.
Can I be a Hellenist and a witch?
Yes, but keep in mind, paganism and witchcraft are not interchangeable. You do not have to practice witchcraft to be a pagan, and vice-versa. Modern witchcraft is (long story short) an outgrowth of the popularity of Wicca, a neopagan religion founded in 1951. It doesn’t bear much resemblance to ancient pagan religions, and most of the modern witchcraft content that you see on the internet isn’t directly relevant to Hellenism (even if it concerns Greek gods). Witchcraft did exist in Ancient Greek religion, but it’s different from the modern stuff. You can definitely combine modern witchcraft or Wicca with Hellenism, but I recommend studying them separately. Treat it like any other kind of syncretism.
Okay, that’s all for now! Let me know if there’s anything I missed or should add.
Neuschwanstein Concept Drawing by the stage designer (!!) Christian Jank (1869).
There exist in architecture clear precedents to the McMansion that have nothing to do with suburban real estate. This is because “McMansionry” (let’s say) has many transferable properties. Among them can be included: 1) a diabolical amount of wealth that must be communicated architecturally in the most frivolous way possible, 2) a penchant for historical LARPing primarily informed by media (e.g. the American “Tuscan kitchen”) and 3) the execution of historical styles using contemporary building materials resulting in an aesthetic affect that can be described as uncanny or cheap-looking. By these metrics, we can absolutely call Neuschwanstein Castle, built by the architect Eduard Riedel for King Ludwig II of Bavaria, a McMansion.
Constructed from 1869 through 1886 – the year of Ludwig’s alleged suicide after having been ousted and declared insane – the castle cost the coffers of the Bavarian state and Ludwig himself no fewer than 6.2 million German gold marks. (That’s an estimated 47 million euros today.) The castle’s story is rife with well-known scandal. I’m sure any passing Swan Enthusiast is already familiar with Ludwig’s financial capriciousness, his called-off marriage and repressed homosexuality, his parasocial obsession with Richard Wagner, his complete and total inability to run his country, and his alleged “madness,” as they used to call it. All of these combine to make Neuschwanstein inescapable from the man who commissioned it – and the artist who inspired it. Say what you like about Ludwig and his building projects, but he is definitely remembered because of them, which is what most monarchs want. Be careful what you wish for.
Neuschwanstein gatehouse.
How should one describe Neuschwanstein architecturally? You’d need an additional blog. Its interiors alone (the subject of the next essay) range from Neo-Baroque to Neo-Byzantine to Neo-Gothic. There are many terms that can loosely define the palace’s overall style: eclecticism, medieval revivalism, historicism, chateauesque, sclerotic monarchycore, etc. However, the the most specific would be what was called “castle Romanticism” (Burgenromantik). The Germans are nothing if not literal. Whatever word you want to use, Neuschwanstein is such a Sistine Chapel of pure sentimentality and sugary kitsch that theme park architecture – most famously, Disney’s Cinderella’s castle itself – owes many of its medieval iterations to the palace’s towering silhouette.
There is some truth to the term Burgenromantik. Neuschwanstein’s exterior is a completely fabricated 19th century storybook fantasy of the Middle Ages whose precedents lie more truthfully in art for the stage. As a castle without fortification and a palace with no space for governance, Neuschwanstein’s own program is indecisive about what it should be, which makes it a pretty good reflection of Ludwig II himself. To me, however, it is the last gasp of a monarchy whose power will be totally extinguished by that same industrial modernity responsible for the materials and techniques of Neuschwanstein’s own, ironic construction.
In order to understand Neuschwanstein, however, we must go into two subjects that are equally a great time for me: 19th century medievalism - the subject of this essay - and the opera Lohengrin by Richard Wagner, the subject of the next. (1)
Part I: Medievalisms Progressive and Reactionary
The Middle Ages were inescapable in 19th century Europe. Design, music, visual art, theater, literature, and yes, architecture were all besotted with the stuff of knights and castles, old sagas, and courtly literature. From arch-conservative nationalism to pro-labor socialism, medievalism’s popularity spanned the entire political spectrum. This is because it owes its existence to a number of developments that affected the whole of society.
In Ludwig’s time, the world was changing in profound, almost inconceivable ways. The first and second industrial revolutions with their socioeconomic upheavals and new technologies of transport, manufacturing, and mass communication, all completely unmade and remade how people lived and worked. This was as true of the average person as it was of the princes and nobles who were beginning to be undermined by something called “the petit bourgeoisie.”
Sustenance farming dwindled and wage labor eclipsed all other forms of working. Millions of people no longer able to make a living on piecemeal and agricultural work flocked to the cities and into the great Molochs of factories, mills, stockyards, and mines. Families and other kinship bonds were eroded or severed by the acceleration of capitalist production, large wars, and new means of transportation, especially the railroad. People became not only alienated from each other and from their labor in the classical Marxist sense but also from the results of that labor, too. No longer were chairs made by craftsmen or clothes by the single tailor – unless you could afford the bespoke. Everything from shirtwaists to wrought iron lamps was increasingly mass produced - under wretched conditions, too. Things – including buildings – that were once built to last a lifetime became cheap, disposable, and subject to the whimsy of fashion, sold via this new thing called “the catalog.”
William Morris’ painting Le Belle Iseult (1868).
Unsurprisingly, this new way of living and working caused not a little discontent. This was the climate in which Karl Marx wrote Capital and Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol. More specific to our interests, however, is a different dissenter and one of the most interesting practitioners of medievalism, the English polymath William Morris.
A lover of Arthurian legend and an admirer of the architect and design reformer John Ruskin, Morris was first trained in the office of architect G. E. Street, himself a die-hard Gothic Revivalist. From the very beginning, the Middle Ages can be found everywhere in Morris’ work, from the rough-hewn qualities of the furniture he helped design to the floral elements and compositions of the art nouveau textiles and graphics he’s most famous for – which, it should be said, are reminiscent of 15th century English tapestries. In addition to his design endeavors, Morris was also a gifted writer and poet. His was a profound love for medieval literature, especially Norse sagas from Iceland. Some of these he even translated including the Volsunga Saga – also a preoccupation of Wagner’s. Few among us earn the title of polymath, but Morris’ claim to it is undeniable. Aside from music, there really wasn’t any area of creative life he didn’t touch.
However, Morris’ predilection for the medieval was not just a personal and aesthetic fascination. It was also an expression of his political rejection of the capitalist mode of production. As one of the founders of the English Arts & Crafts Movement, Morris called for a rejection of piecemeal machine labor, a return to handicraft, and overall to things made well and made with dignity. While this was and remains a largely middle class argument, one that usually leads down the road of ethical consumption, Morris was right that capitalism’s failing of design and architecture did not just lie with the depreciated quality of goods, but the depreciated quality of life. His was the utopian call to respect both the object and the laborer who produced it. To quote from his 1888 essay called “The Revival of Architecture,” Morris dreamed of a society that “will produce to live and not live to produce, as we do.” Indeed, in our current era of AI Slop, there remains much to like about the Factory Slop-era call to take back time from the foreman’s clock and once more make labor an act of enjoyable and unalienated creativity. Only now it’s about things like writing an essay.
I bother to describe Morris at length here for a number of reasons. The first is to reiterate that medievalism’s popularity was largely a response to socioeconomic changes. Additionally, since traditionalism - in Ludwig’s time and in ours - still gets weaponized by right-wing losers, it’s worth pointing out that not all practitioners of medievalism were politically reactionary in nature. However – and I will return to this later – medievalism, reactionary or not, remains inescapably nostalgic. Morris is no exception. While a total rejection of mass produced goods may seem quixotic to us now, when Morris was working, the era before mass industrialization remained at the fringes of living memory. Hence the nostalgia is perhaps to be expected. Unfortunately for him and for us, the only way out of capitalism is through it.
To return again to the big picture: whether one liked it or not, the old feudal world was done. Only its necrotic leftovers, namely a hereditary nobility whose power would run out of road in WWI, remained. For Ludwig purposes, it was a fraught political time in Bavaria as well. Bavaria, weird duck that it was, remained relatively autonomous within the new German Reich. Despite the title of king, Ludwig, much to his chagrin - hence the pathetic Middle Ages fantasizing - did not rule absolutely. His was a constitutional monarchy, and an embattled one at that. During the building of Neuschwanstein, the king found himself wedged between the Franco-Prussian War and the political coup masterminded by Otto von Bismarck that would put Europe on the fast track to a global conflict many saw as the atavistic culmination of all that already violent modernity. No wonder he wanted to hide with his Schwans up in the hills of Schwangau.
The very notion of a unified German Reich (or an independent Kingdom of Bavaria) was itself indicative of another development. Regardless if one was liberal or conservative, a king, an artist or a shoe peddler, the 19th century was plagued by the rise of modern nationalism. Bolstered by new ideas in “medical” “science,” this was also a racialized nationalism. A lot of emotional, political, and artistic investment was put into the idea that there existed a fundamentally German volk, a German soil, a German soul. This, however, was a universalizing statement in need of a citation, with lots of political power on the line. Hence, in order to add historical credence to these new conceptions of one’s heritage, people turned to the old sources.
This is a fantastic essay. It’s an excellent examination of nineteenth-century medieval nostalgia, and the comments on the castle are as funny as ever!
A side effect of this nostalgia (and nationalism) was idolization of rural life, in particular, the idea of the peasantry being living fossils, practicing “ancient pagan” rituals. Most of those rituals (like, for example, English hobby horses and morris dances) dated from the eighteenth century. But all the scholars of the day (like James Frazer) waltzed up to peasants and instructed them on how to perform their own rituals “correctly,” i.e. with “pagan” mystical meanings that they’d never actually had. Our modern ideas of paganism being “nature-based” fertility cults has its roots in this shitty scholarship.
And yeah, we’re still correcting a lot of that now.
Bravo also to Robert Eggers for probably the least bad depiction of Transylvania in Western vampire cinematic history:
1. Having actual Romanian actors doing the dialogue in Romanian. You’d think this is a low bar to clear but nope.
2. High quality costume design that looks pretty accurate to 19th century Romanian and Roma peasantry, even down to specific braided hairstyles from the Transylvanian region.
3. Depiction of Roma people but refrains from having them as some typical Hollywood exoticizing role like a magical fortune teller etc. They’re in like half a scene, just chilling and playing music in front of an inn.
4. Use of the word “strigoi” which are actual spirits in Romanian folklore, unlike the term “vampire” which didn’t exist in Romania.
5. Sorry to the Nosferatu moustache haters, but a Romanian nobleman would have had that exact facial hair.
6. Depiction of religion (nuns, churches) that actually looks like Eastern Orthodoxy and not some vaguely spooky goth Christianity.
On point 2, if you’re not familiar with his earlier work, the director commentary on his debut film The Witch is hilarious. Most of it is him complaining about the historical inaccuracies he had to leave in for budget or practical reasons.
IIRC, he goes ‘our goats are incorrect’ and then elaborates that the period accurate goat breed doesn’t exist anymore, the closest simulacra is only raised on a single farm in New Zealand, and they didn’t have the budget to get one.
The level of attention to detail that gets regionally accurate hair braids is something of a mark of his work, and his films are better for it.
Gotta love Eggers and his attentiveness to historical accuracy, and good rep!
Also, I can’t believe people are complaining about the mustache. DRACULA HAS A MUSTACHE! IT’S IN THE BOOK! This was maybe the most book-accurate depiction of (old) Dracula that I’ve ever seen, and it’s not even Dracula.
