*punches The Air* I Love Gods Of Complexity! *does A Kick Flip* I Love Gods That Don't Automatically

Dionysus and Ariadne (through the seasons)

Goddess of the harvest

"I'll be waiting for you somewhere near Limbo."

The Abduction of Proserpine (detail) by Alessandro Allori, 1570.

•

Follow: Instagram | Pinterest

And you should, as the core of it all, let go of expectations for your Deities. Let go of what you’ve consumed from the books, let go of authorities, let go of explanations, let go of the neatness - and embrace chaos. Embrace the wilderness which is in itself God, call a name and wait for an answer. What voice sounds like home?

Gods will come multifaceted, iridescent, impalpable. Gods will break rules and expand where a mind burdened by expectations can’t follow. A chimera of a myriad faces might not want to always show only one side. Gods will change. Gods will surprise.

If the nature is untamed, so are its Deities. The wilderness has many names for each of them, a prism to choose a side of. Feeling over explaining, embracing over conforming, preparing over expecting.

Detail of Lemminkäinen At The Fiery Lake, Sketch by Robert Wilhelm Ekman (1867)

Sword in God's Hand

I just feel like it's very important to talk about the bad shit, too.

That you might face difficulties on your path, that there will be hours-days-weeks-months of silence - or can be, at the very least - and that religion won't come as a panacea for every issue or as a magical pill. You might still feel lost, and hurt, and scared, and lonely; and you might still hold faith. Not that you should, it's up to you. But the point is, "having faith" is not a synonym to "never having anything bad happen, ever" while encountering issues of any degree is not necessarily a proof of an uncaring God.

In the vast smoothness of my brain, I just realized that I forgot to cross-post this commission of Persephone.

On the Edge - Aleks Stoller