Thank You for the Mystai

November 19, 2013 by P. Sufenas Virius Lupus

Continued from Page 1

Finally, I'd like to recognize one individual that has proven more important and influential in my own practice over the last two years than perhaps any other, and who is not only someone I count as a friend, colleague, and co-religionist, and who is also a Lupercus in the Ekklesía Antínoou (as are many Mystai and individuals with whom we've done Communalia), but who is also the head of House Thyrsatrae and thus my sworn tribal ally through Communalia: Anomalous Thracian, whom I often refer to in passing as "my Thracian colleague," and which we've joked should be appended as initials after his name, to wit, "Th.C." I wish him well, and my thoughts and prayers are always with him, and I only regret that I cannot do more for him at present than he has for me over the years. But one thing that I have learned with him is that having a debt to another person is not necessarily a bad thing: to wish to re-pay a debt and then have it erased is to wish that the relationship created by such debts did not exist.

It is just such an understanding of "debt" that lies behind the reciprocity inherent in relationships between deities and their human devotees, and thus it is a kind of debt that is good and positive to accrue for polytheists. This is something that our modern world, with its synonymizing of "debt" to "financial difficulties" and all of the abuses and corruption inherent in the financial sectors of government and society, does not currently have the capacity to understand remotely, which is all the more unfortunate.

This is a variety of debt that should not be the cause of guilt or remorse, but instead a source of gratefulness and a reason to magnify one's thankfulness all the more.

So, to all of these, and to many more, I am eternally grateful, I am especially thankful, and I am in their debts in ways that I never intend to see erased from the records—just as I am to all of my deities, the spirits of the land where I live and was raised, the heroes, Sancta/e/i, and ancestors, and especially to the god and hero Antinous.

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Queer I Stand

Community

Gratitude

Polytheism

Ritual

Thanksgiving

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About P. Sufenas Virius Lupus

P. Sufenas Virius Lupus is a metagender and a founding member of the Ekklesía Antínoou (a queer, Graeco-Roman-Egyptian syncretist reconstructionist polytheist religious group dedicated to Antinous, the deified lover of the Roman Emperor Hadrian and other related gods and divine figures). E is a contributing member of Neos Alexandria and a Celtic Reconstructionist pagan in the filidecht and gentlidecht traditions. Follow Lupus' work on the Aedicula Antinoi blog.

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