Neo-Hephaestean statement of belief

Well I have been looking for some kind of statement of belief from the original worshippers of my patron deity and I have come up dry. So it looks like I have to make one for today’s followers, based on my biases. That’s part of the problem when the original religion was a secret society that passed knowledge as an oral tradition.

First is the only thing required to follow Hephaestus is the desire to make things. All the things from all the materials are sanctified provided they are made with the proper attitude. Even making meals is sanctified if for no other reason than continuing your existence.

Second there are no races/ethnicities better than any other races/ethnicities. If you make things you can follow Hephaestus. All are brothers and sisters at the forge.

Third you must strive to make things that improve the human condition, at least part of the time. Weapons are allowed for defensive purposes and as an art form. Weapons training resembles dance in many ways. Making weapons one must be sure to make them only as deadly as required for the purpose, followers should never make WMD.

Fourth if you have a choice between making something and making something beautiful that serves the same purpose, make it beautiful, but if your choices are ugly but serviceable or nothing at all make something serviceable. Work on your skills until you can make the thing beautiful the next time you need to make it.

Fifth Hephaestus did not require sexual fidelity from his wife, so we should not bind our partners to us so that we deny them the company of others. Love is not a chain to bind us but a thread to guide us back together when we are ready. Love grows best when it doesn’t bind. Also celebrate your partner’s(s’) accomplishments, recognize what they do even when it’s not about you. They are separate individuals with separate needs and desires. Celebrate when you can be together but do not mourn if you are apart.

Sixth plagiarizes another religious statement, Love your brothers and sisters as you would yourself, everything else is just commentary.

Go in peace, and make something wonderful.

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OK now I’m pissed

Short post today while I’m not playing with my RPG group, which I bowed out from because I was supposed to work with the Wendy Davis campaign to GOTV, but the event was cancelled at the last minute without telling the workers. I don’t know why.

Something that is really chapping my butt is my daughter took out student loans that my father cosigned because my credit rating did not exist as I have been on the cash-only economy for almost 20 years now. Now that the people that took over Sallie Mae finally noticed that my dad is dead (we sent a death certificate right after dad died but that was to Sallie Mae…) they want their money NOW. Now as in they are filing collection actions against ME, who didn’t take out the loans or cosign any of them. But they are demanding that I pay the loans in full in 30 days any way…

And tonight is Death High Court held by the Arms of Verity at my church, a kind of Day of the Dead celebration, using one of the 6 archetypes revered by Verity. Those archetypes are Builder, Nurturer, Healer, Trickster, Death, and Destroyer. I’m still trying to decide if I’m going tonight, but my neck is telling me it isn’t very likely.

Speaking of my neck, I think it’s a good time to go ahead and end this post, because my neck is killing me…

Billed @€0.02, Opus the unkillable badass Poet

Patron selection at SJFUU on Wreck-Free Sunday

I just got back from the Patron Selection Gala Extravaganza at Sacred Journey Fellowship. As an active ritualist and as the nominator I had to present Hephaestus as my nominee. Heph and I have some things in common, a gimpy left leg among them. We are both heavy into fire and metalworking, but our love lives are polar opposites, Heph is Monogamous married to a Polyamorous goddess (Aphrodite) that accepts him for what he is and he her. I’m… not. Both of us are all about access, me for bikes in the streets, Heph for the handicapped as his level of gimpyness sometimes extends to having to use the wheelchair (hand-chariot) he invented. I suspect we both like to beat on metal as a form of stress release. Heph is all about making things, I spend more time planning because I don’t have the resources of a deity to get the raw stock I need to build stuff. Even when I have the money to buy the stock I can’t get it to where I build stuff. But that’s a subject for a different post.

The event tonight pitted Hephaestus and me, against Ganesha and the church President, and Hecate and the leader of the Faith Development Committee. There was a procession in with trinkets or candy distributed by the person representing the Deity with theme music (I used Sammy Hagar’s Heavy Metal) then three rounds of questions about how the Deity we represented would help the church and how the Deity wished the church to serve him, her, or it. As Heph is not known as a speaker my answers were short and to the point (we were supposed to aspect the Deity as much as possible). My “bribes” to elicit more votes from the crowd were in the form of chocolate coins that I threw into the crowd like a rapper at a strip club making it rain. I processed in carrying an engineer’s hammer and ball peen hammer in one hand and an anvil in the other (real hammers and anvils), then grabbed the candy from a basket I had placed next to my “throne” at the front of the crowd and proceeded with the “make it rain” effect. I could not see how the persons representing the other deities did their thing because we were hidden by a curtain at the back of the church until we made our entrances. I know that the person representing Ganesha used a rap song about the Deity, but I couldn’t hear what song Hecate used.

Then we went through three rounds of questioning and answers with voting in the form of canned goods in the first round, money in the second round, and rocks that were distributed to each member of the audience. I placed a distant second in the first round, a close second in the second round and won the third round, but as I finished second to the same Deity in both the first two rounds with Ganesha finishing third each time, Hephaestus did not win the event and cannot be nominated next year, ditto Ganesha. Our Patroness for the coming church year will be Hecate.

And that’s the way it is folks.

PSA, Opus