The Gods

Typically for a beginner Hellenic Polytheist, the myths present a unique challenge. These gods whom we love and worship, who give us so much love in return, are depicted deplorably in the mythos. The myths are full of jealous and petty goddesses, serial sexual predators, and gods that bring mortals suffering and misery for their own amusement. They are quick to anger and punish unfairly. Indeed, it seems that the gods in myth have little affection for mortals at all. Why then, are these gods so beloved by their worshipers?

It is essential to understand that these myths aren't and were never meant to be taken literally, even by the Ancient Greeks. They are not like the Bible. They are stories written by mortals for mortals and are representative of the society that created them. Ancient Greece was a patriarchy, women were considered property, and so you see that behavior reflected in the stories they created about their gods. It was considered acceptable for Zeus to be a serial adulterer because it was acceptable for mortal men to be, and what better way to illustrate a creator god than having him create heroes. It was acceptable for Haides to kidnap Persephone because he had legal permission from Zeus, therefore following the marriage customs for the time. Hera is depicted as the nagging wife and Aphrodite as the petty seductress. There are, unfortunately, countless examples.

This is not to say we should excuse this type of behavior. Most Hellenic Polytheists will easily agree that the gods as they are portrayed in myth are horrible and wouldn't worship those gods. These surface themes can be difficult for new worshipers to understand and can get in the way of their kharis with the gods, can lead to disgust or distaste of the gods, or even hate and fear. Plato famously advocated against teaching children the myths at all out of concern for them internalizing superstitions based on the myths. Today, there are modern worshipers who refuse to acknowledge Zeus because of how he treats women in myth, worshipers who think they can't worship Aphrodite and Persephone together on an altar because they had a love rivalry over Adonis in the mythos, or judge the gods based on their portrayals in pop-culture. There are worshipers who fear they'll be punished for giving the gods the wrong offering or doing the wrong thing. These perceptions, like Plato warned, are built on a misunderstanding of the purpose of myth.

 "The universe can be called a myth; the outer shell veils the inner realities.
Still, why are the myths so strange?
Surely it is in order that man may regard the stories as mere cloaks
wrapped round the secret truth."

-  Sallustius, Concerning the Gods and the Universe

Many of the myths we have surviving today were created for glory and entertainment at festivals where poets competed to see who could compose the best rendition and were therefore  expected to be malleable and susceptible to creative invention. The myths were an art form in honor of the gods, a devotional work. Myths are inspired by the Muses, but it was famously said that the Muses tell truth as well as lies. Beauty and truth are woven between the metaphors, but they are not and never have been considered complete and literal truth. Different city-states or time periods favored different iterations of the same myths emphasizing or reimagining aspects of the gods they found valuable to their locale, and popularized by the bards who sang them. This is why we have so many variations of the same stories. According to Hesiod, Aphrodite is a Titan born from Ouranos, but in Homer, she is Zeus' daughter.

The myths and the roles the gods play in them are often symbolic. Haides steals young women as Death, Artemis destroys cities as Nature, Kronos devours his children because Time devours All. Zeus, like a character in a play, plays the tyrannical king as political commentary on mortal kings. The myths might instead be establishing or explaining practices and beliefs (many times the myth coming long after the established practice), such as Apollo's pursuit of Daphne merely explaining the importance of the laurel to his cult, or The Hymn to Demeter explaining the seasons and founding The Eleusinian Mysteries. The myths were also a way to maintain cultural memory. They included songs honoring the dead, or myths preserving mythic lineage, such as with Theseus in Athens. In Sparta, learning these cultural songs and dances was a rite of passage. Sometimes a myth is even attempting to preserve history, as may be the case with the Trojan War, granted wrapped up in hundreds of years of fantastical fabrication.

This is the nature of myth. There is not one universal canon that is truer than another, and often to get at the real truth of a myth you will need to learn to read between the lines. Treat the myths as literature and interpret and analyze. Most of the time the gods are filling metaphorical or allegorical roles. Dig deep for the spiritual and philosophical truths within, the "cloaks wrapped round the secret", but don't allow a problematic myth to get in the way of your relationship with the gods.