Religio ... Americana?

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Postby Anonymous on Tue Jan 07, 2003 4:22 pm

Salve,

Yes, from lurking on mailing lists and reading the online journals of those involved, I can definately say the Hellenic organizations are too steeped in ceremonial magick and mysticism for my tastes. However, I think that has more to do with the personalities of the leaders than with any official doctrine.

Still, it annoys me. Some of those people still have one foot in the door of Wicca, the Golden Dawn, and other occult groups, and I don't think it reflects well on Reconstructionism.

Vale!
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Postby Horatius Piscinus on Tue Jan 07, 2003 10:25 pm

Salve Urse

What today would be considered occult or Hermetic sciences can be (wrongly) traced back to the Hellenist sciences. They are really drawn more from the Renaissance, where Greeks texts fueled a renewed interest is such things. It is disappointing to see when some wiccans take more interest in occult than in pagan traditions. On the other side though, I find reconstructionists trying to deny the elements of magic, what we today would call magic, that were incorporated into the old pagan culti. I have discussed before that the Religio Romana did have magical elements, although different from the kind found in later Hellenism. Hellenists have a richer textual tradition to draw on than we devoted to the Religio Romana. It is disappointing to see them not drawing on Greek philosophy and theology, especially as this course is intended for instructing a priesthood. It raises the question though, what would we consider essential reading for developing a priesthood of the Religio Romana?

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Priesthood Reading

Postby Anonymous on Tue Jan 07, 2003 11:00 pm

Salve Moravi Piscine,

You asked what should be essential reading to develop a priesthood of the Religio Romana here. In response to that, I must say that I find myself at a loss. The best I could say is that we really couldn't make out what would be essential, but perhaps what is recommended. Say, for instance, one wanted to be a priest of a god which there is little known about. If it is decided that such a candidate must read Text A, Text B, and Text C, but none of these texts have to do with the worship of their particular diety, or something that would assist in better serving their particular diety, how does that help the priest-candidate? True, it gives them insight onto other things, but if one of the duties of a priest is to serve their diety, and their required reading is of a different diety, how may they then help others serve that diety as well?

I guess what I'm really saying is that perhaps we should not have a required reading list, rather we should look at the listing of what each candidate has read, and compare the material therein to how such a candidate may assist others in the worship of their diety by using that material. I'm a Cicero, so I must ask: Does this make any sense?

Optime Vale in Pace Deorum,

M. Tullius Cicero,

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Vestal Virgins

Postby Anonymous on Wed Jan 08, 2003 2:54 am

Salvete,

I agree with Moravius Piscinus, many of the functions of the Vestals are obsolete today like guarding the Sacred Relics (since we are not 100% sure what became of them), throwing the Argei into the Tiber, and watching over the wills of VIPs, et al. The Virgines Vestales would have to be given a new mandate and new traditions would have to be started.

In my understanding, the State Hearth represented the Spirit of Rome. Wouldn't the Religio Americana also have a State Hearth?

Vesta is the hearthfire itself, which translates into the electricity that powers our civilization and the vehicles that we use to transport. Without fire modern, technology would not be available.

Vesta is crucial to the survival of our race.

I think it is important to include the honor of her in the Religio Americana in more than just domestic rituals.

Valete

Gegania

P.S. T. Cato Worsfeld's "The History of the Vestal Virgins of Rome" is a good resource on the Vestals.
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Re: Priesthood Reading

Postby Horatius Piscinus on Wed Jan 08, 2003 10:17 pm

Salve Tulli

Marcus Tullius Cicero wrote:True, it gives them insight onto other things, but if one of the duties of a priest is to serve their diety, and their required reading is of a different diety, how may they then help others serve that diety as well?


I agree that if you were to provide a program of instruction it should be directed towards what duties and roles you wish your priesthood to perform. On the one hand the priests serve the gods, but on the other they are dealing with people. I will tell you from personal experience that if you pose yourself as a priest you will become involved with having to counsel people. After all, in some cases you will be performing marriages or funerals. In some states you are required to meet certain requirements for a license, and you are required to give prenuptial counselling before consenting to perform a marriage. With a funeral you will be expected to provide comfort to the relatives of the deceased. There are also other legal issues involved, different from state. If you are operating a facility of worship, or even just as an individual providing religious services, you are operating a business and come under a variety of laws. Your priesthood should be able to instruct others; in some cases dealing with children, which can require professional training depending on what is involved. There is more involved in being a legally recognized and licensed member of the clergy than just a superficial knowledge of a religious tradition. I would be concerned with that since your clergy would represent the Religio Romana, not only to practitioners of the religio but to non-practitioners as well and to legal authorities.

Legal issues vary from state to state. You would have to provide your trainees with some guidance on where to look or who to contact to see what their state requirements are. Usually the clerk of courts at the county level will have that information. I would prefer that some general training in theology, ethics, and counselling be made part of any instructional program. Then you would also have to provide instruction on the Religio Romana in general. Some of that would be technical. Then depending on the particular priesthood, the individual candidate would need to research in a specialization as you suggest.

I would say that what you have outlined would fit the role of a flamen. Licensing would not necessarily be a consideration in that case. A sacredotus operating a religious facility would require more. A Vestal Virgin fills different roles, in part as a flaminca for Vesta, but also performing public rites for a variety of deities as would a sacerdotus, and instructing individuals in the religio, and performing other duties unique to the Vestales. In order to establish sanctified shrines properly would require augures whose discipline I think would require practical experience along with indepth research. Pontifices fill a role of pronouncing their opinions on religious law, that I think requires more intense research, and also a necessity for establishing oneself as a religious authority. The quindecemviri in ancient times did more than just interpret the Sibylline books. They were the ones who held real authority outside of Rome, more or less imposing Roman orthodoxy in Italy. Exactly what priesthoods you would establish depends on the organization you envision, each priesthood being given specific duties to perform and perhaps lines of authority in their interrelationships.

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Re: Vestal Virgins

Postby Horatius Piscinus on Wed Jan 08, 2003 10:46 pm

Salva sis Gegania

Gegania wrote:Salvete,

The Virgines Vestales would have to be given a new mandate and new traditions would have to be started.

P.S. T. Cato Worsfeld's "The His
tory of the Vestal Virgins of Rome" is a good resource on the Vestals.


In general the Vestales Virgines oversaw the public wellbeing. True their cultus centered around Vesta and all that She meant for the wellbeing of Rome. Also look at their role in the rites of the Bona Dea. They also safeguarded the Sacred Relics as you mention. See Livy V.40.7-8 as one example. Properly they should be the ones producing mola salsa used for any public rites. They have some responsibility in overseeing ritual purifications. A Vestal Virgin must be above suspicion. The Lex Perpetua required a praetor to give an annual pledge that he would not require a Vestal Virgin or the flamen Dialis to swear an oath. Religious prohibitions on the flamen Dialis prevented him from making oaths, and the purity assumed of a Vestal Virgin, even in her testamony, could not be questioned. That is why the Vestal Virgins were entrusted with wills. Forget any modern notions of virginity or chastity being set as requirements of Vestal Virgins, but they must be exceptionally honest. A Vestal Virgin is sacrosanct. The mere presence of a Vestal Virgin at a ritual extends her ritual purity to the rite itself.

In what we are discussing I would think there is a role for Vestal Virgins at each local congregation. Their primary duty in a local temple should be in regard to overseeing purification, whether you are speaking about places used for ritual, ritual implements and sacred objects, or items prepared for ritual use such as mola salsa or libum. Their other historical role as witnesses of public rites or at confarreationes was in this same regard of preserving ritual purification. In this they would act in the same way as did public augures who oversaw, assisted, and guided those who perfromed the auspices. Vesta is their patron deity, and any proper public ritual would invoke Vesta, so they would have special rites to perform on Her behalf.

Worsfeld's book I have not read, but it will now go on my list of what to look for. Gratias.

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Re: Priesthood Reading

Postby Anonymous on Wed Jan 08, 2003 11:54 pm

M Moravius Horatius Piscinus wrote:On the one hand the priests serve the gods, but on the other they are dealing with people. I will tell you from personal experience that if you pose yourself as a priest you will become involved with having to counsel people. After all, in some cases you will be performing marriages or funerals. In some states you are required to meet certain requirements for a license, and you are required to give prenuptial counselling before consenting to perform a marriage. With a funeral you will be expected to provide comfort to the relatives of the deceased. There are also other legal issues involved, different from state. If you are operating a facility of worship, or even just as an individual providing religious services, you are operating a business and come under a variety of laws. Your priesthood should be able to instruct others; in some cases dealing with children, which can require professional training depending on what is involved. There is more involved in being a legally recognized and licensed member of the clergy than just a superficial knowledge of a religious tradition. I would be concerned with that since your clergy would represent the Religio Romana, not only to practitioners of the religio but to non-practitioners as well and to legal authorities.


Agreed. And my only addition is that a lot of this depends on how far we go with our pontifices, augures, sacerdotes, et al. If we keep them solely within the scope of the SVR, then I would think that we wouldn't be bound by such laws. But if we take this outside the scope of the SVR, then, yes, we will have to face these laws, and in that case, we must take these laws under consideration, and act accordingly (i.e., seeing to the professional training of our clergy, or simply be sure to allow only those who have such training into the clergy. Can we agree to that?

M. Moravius Horatius Piscinus wrote:Legal issues vary from state to state. You would have to provide your trainees with some guidance on where to look or who to contact to see what their state requirements are. Usually the clerk of courts at the county level will have that information. I would prefer that some general training in theology, ethics, and counselling be made part of any instructional program. Then you would also have to provide instruction on the Religio Romana in general. Some of that would be technical. Then depending on the particular priesthood, the individual candidate would need to research in a specialization as you suggest.


Perhaps some willing members of the Collegium would be willing to research this, and find some reputable institutions for receiving such training. Then, those who want to be of the clergy could at least have a starting point for their training.

M. Moravius Horatius Piscinus wrote:Exactly what priesthoods you would establish depends on the organization you envision, each priesthood being given specific duties to perform and perhaps lines of authority in their interrelationships.


Again agreed, with no further comments.

Optime Vale,

Cicero
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Re: Priesthood Reading

Postby Horatius Piscinus on Thu Jan 09, 2003 5:56 am

Salve Tulli

Marcus Tullius Cicero wrote:Agreed. And my only addition is that a lot of this depends on how far we go with our pontifices, augures, sacerdotes, et al. If we keep them solely within the scope of the SVR, then I would think that we wouldn't be bound by such laws. But if we take this outside the scope of the SVR, then, yes, we will have to face these laws, and in that case, we must take these laws under consideration, and act accordingly (i.e., seeing to the professional training of our clergy, or simply be sure to allow only those who have such training into the clergy. Can we agree to that?


I definitely agree with that. The nature of what Ursus was proposing is different from what SVR is or is capable of doing. SVR can act as an educational group. It can encourage and assist in some ways with those who would want to establish legally recognized temples of the Religio Romana in their own locations. I do not think SVR is capable at this time to really organize a legally recognized religious organization.

The other thing you bring up, a role for a priesthood in SVR, has never really been discussed. It has been brought up before but not fully discussed. That is my fault perhaps, because I am more interested in seeing legally recognized religious groups forming.and have tended to dampen the idea of establishing priesthoods for SVR. It may be just a matter of my thinking of priesthoods in different terms. So I would be interested to know what role you see for priesthoods in SVR.

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Postby Anonymous on Fri Jan 10, 2003 4:06 am

The other thing you bring up, a role for a priesthood in SVR, has never really been discussed. It has been brought up before but not fully discussed. That is my fault perhaps, because I am more interested in seeing legally recognized religious groups forming.and have tended to dampen the idea of establishing priesthoods for SVR. It may be just a matter of my thinking of priesthoods in different terms. So I would be interested to know what role you see for priesthoods in SVR.


Well here is one possible list.

* to be repositories of knowledge and education on the Religio above and beyond the already comparitively high standards of scholarship expected of a lay person of a reconstructionist religion

* To establish and conduct rituals in group worship

* To be the spokesperson for a legally recognized congregation, its titular leader, its organizer, and its public relations officer

* To provide general counseling to those in the local congregations who ask of it

* To perform legal rites such as marriage and funerals to those who ask for them

* To be a representative of their titular deity to the local congregation and inspire meaningful ways those in said congregation can serve the deity.

I suppose I see a priesthood in terms of educators, ritual leaders, and spokespeople for local sects of the religio.
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religio america

Postby Anonymous on Sat Jan 11, 2003 4:32 pm

i^m not american so i don't want to speak too much about this topic but i belive in the Greeks'Gods who are alos Roma'sGod by the way
so we don't can rebuilt Rom or Athens or Sparta ans so on but if we worship sincerly our god we may ot arbitrarly change the dates of their festivals (the same ifwe shoud become hindouist or bouddhist or muslim) for the civic festivals the problem is well knomn I suppose. in the ancient times they have no training between gods'worshipping and polis or republica to speak latin so all festivals were civic and religious (remeer that: religion is impossible to translate in greek or latin languages - greek eusebia meant reverence to the gods, pietas and religio is not religion) so what are we goihng to do: create religious worship in modern civic days (like christian mass in some countries at the national day) or celebrate old civic days? I think the one in the best - for example the Athenians had a festival called "demokratalia" who celebrate the end of the so called pisistratian Tirany: as american you may say the 4th of july is our demokratalia or the 14th of july for french and so on
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Postby Horatius Piscinus on Sat Jan 11, 2003 8:05 pm

Salve Phillippe

Welcome. Although this thread is titled "Religio Americana" it has grown to consider other things related to all of SVR.

A calendar of festivals, for modern use, based in which calendar system I suppose would be a question to ask. I do not find the Gregorian calendar suitable for the Religio Romana, and the Greek calendar was different from both the Gregorian and Julian. While certain dates were standard throughout the empire, not all Roman festivals were of fixed dates. Those of a seasonal nature, like the semintalia, differed in different climes, and local festivals were adopted by Romans where they lived. The original Roman calendar was set according to the lunar cycle, and as Ursus has suggested, it would seem to me a good idea to adopt something similar for our own private practices. National holidays may be adopted by any local group, and would differ from country to country as you suggest.

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Re: Priesthood Reading

Postby Horatius Piscinus on Sat Jan 11, 2003 8:08 pm

Salvete
Marcus Tullius Cicero wrote:
I guess what I'm really saying is that perhaps we should not have a required reading list, rather we should look at the listing of what each candidate has read, and compare the material therein to how such a candidate may assist others in the worship of their diety by using that material. I'm a Cicero, so I must ask: Does this make any sense?


Well, yes, at this point there is no one person, or any group among us, who could really devise a required reading list. It would be more a matter of consensus among the collegae as to what books our members should read and include in their individual researches. There was already begun a topic on books in this forum when someone asked what books the collegae would recommend on the Religio Romana . I gave a long list of books in my personal library, to which I could now add. Other collegae as well can post on what books they have or are currently reading. By everyone posting we can then see which books are commonly being used among us.

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Postby Horatius Piscinus on Sat Jan 11, 2003 8:24 pm

Salvete collegae

Looking at the various posts I think we have diverged into two different threads. Ursus' original post dealt with establishing legally recognized religious groups for the Religio Romana in the US. It is far easier to establish religious groups in the US and have them recognized by the legal authorities than in other countries. Already the courts of three states, I believe, have recognized the Religio Romana as a religion, and one group in California has been recognized as a legal religious group by the federal authorities. That should make it easier to establish similar groups in other states, and eventually it may benefit those in other countries as well if we can establish the legitimacy of our faith in the US.

What Cicero posed I think relates more to what we can develop in SVR as an international web community. That is certainly a topic the Collegium Religionis should take up if we wish to pursue it as well. I think we should address that in a separate thread, or forum topic. What priesthoods exactly, and what requirements would SVR set for accepting members as priests and priestesses, and what roles would they fulfill in SVR? So Cicero, or Orcus, who brought up the subject in the past, if you would care to, please begin a new topic and lay out your ideas for priesthoods in SVR.

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priesthood

Postby Quintus Aurelius Orcus on Sat Jan 11, 2003 8:40 pm

Salve Piscine
I think i brought it up in the past but isn't that something that the pontifices need to discuss? Not that there is anything wrong with discussing it here. But it also depends on how many people would be interested in a priesthood.
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Postby Horatius Piscinus on Sun Jan 12, 2003 4:28 pm

Salvete Orce et omnes

My view is that we are talking about two different things, thus I would like to separate them into two topics. In order to form legally recognized clergy and temples, and especially in the USA, we would have to work at the local level where laws can differ. There would be legal and financial issues involved with that, that I do not think SVR can involve itself in at this time. Individual members of SVR, working in support of one another may.

It is a different matter when forming priesthoods in SVR for the SVR community. Yes, the pontifices will have to discuss this and form a proposal to place before the collegae, and then too once a measure would pass in the collegium it would have to be accepted by the Senate. In the meantime though I think the isue should be discussed by the collegium as a whole, to see what its members think, and thus give us a basis for writing a proposal.

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Postby Quintus Aurelius Orcus on Sun Jan 12, 2003 5:00 pm

Salve Piscine
Well once again your arguments are very good. As i'm discussing this with Ursus on the priesthood discussion, i feel that there is a need for guidelines, a mission statement that says what the priesthood is all about and what it isn't. We need first discuss this with the members only if the other pontifices agree with this. If it is first to be discussed with the members which i think it will, than the pontifices can discuss privatly before any proposal is submitted to the collegium and the senate.
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Postby Horatius Piscinus on Tue Jan 14, 2003 11:07 am

Salvete collegae

If you all agree with me that we are discussing two different priesthoods, then maybe I can throw out an idea here for further developing Ursus' idea of establishing a priesthood that is legally recognized in the US. The Regula Fundamentalis allows sodales of SVR to form a provincia based on geographical location. We have only formed one provincia so far, and that in Belgium. But about half of our sodales are from the US. I would have to check where in the US and how close we may be, but if the American members of SVR wanted to form a provincia they could, for any reason, and developing legally recognized temples and a priesthood of the Religio Romana could be one of its goals.

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Postby Xantippe Helia Allegra on Tue Jan 14, 2003 10:22 pm

Salve Piscine,

I think Urse's idea is a wonderful one. I am in favor of establishing a provincia with realizing the goal of a legally recognized priesthood and temples as a top priority.

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Postby Anonymous on Wed Jan 15, 2003 12:19 am

Salvete Piscine et Omnes,

I live in southwestern PA, effectively the middle of nowhere. But perhaps on special occasions I might be able to drive a few hours to a larger area where there would theoretically be more practicioners. Shorty I may even have to move to said urban areas to find a job.

Anyone else in the Mid Atlantic to form a provincia?
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A mid-atlantic provincia?

Postby Xantippe Helia Allegra on Wed Jan 15, 2003 12:51 am

Salve Urse,


Depending on where you reside in PA, we are probably not very far from each other(We will probably be in PA for snowboarding within the nextt month). My husband, Leonidas Helios Phoenix, although not very active virtually, would be more likely to contribute in provincial meetings. One reason I strongly favor your idea of an active priesthood is so that our son, Isidorus Helios Phoenix, will be raised within the religio (as much as possible). With a few more members in our region who would also like to establish a provincia, it could happen.


Any takers?


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