A special blessing

https://thehouseofvines.com/2019/12/15/the-essence-of-our-religion-is-beauty/?page_id=44017

I agree with this to a degree…beauty, devotion, sacrifice.

I have a fellowship at my university, the Jewish studies fellowship, and one of the things I learned this year is that it’s considered a special blessing to do your required action, use / wear your required items but *make them beautiful.* I forget what this is called in Hebrew, but to make religious things beautiful instead of just functional adds to the blessing.

Yesterday, I was listening to a lecture on St. Francis (he’s very, very popular amongst my students, even non-Catholic ones!) and while Francis reverenced his “lady Poverty,” he said that, to quote the lecture, “Poverty stops at the altar.” Religious items should be as lush and beautiful as we can make them.

As a Heathen, I also hold this to be particularly sacred. Even if one doesn’t have a lot of money or any disposable income, beauty can take many forms. This doesn’t mean spending a lot of money. It means taking care with one’s shrine, with prayer, with religious garb, with anything we do for our Gods. It’s a Platonic ideal that beauty elevates the soul to the Gods and I believe that 100%. When I see ugliness being elevated as popular or “good” in media, in our culture, I know that there evil moves in many forms. I know to be vigilant; and I know to turn to tradition and the beautiful all the more.

#Art #BacchicStuff #beauty #Community #devotion #Heathenry #HellenicStuff #houseOfVines #Interfaith #LivedPolytheism #NorthernTradition #Polytheism #reverence #Sannion #theology