These people say worshiping ancient Greek gods is a route to modern happiness

healfromzero.com – A group of women come out from behind a banner placed in front of a small cave, dressed in white ceremonial robes. Men and women of varying ages are standing in a semi-circle while the women lead a small procession around the stone altar. One woman places a small statue of Athena, the ancient Greek goddess of wisdom, at the back of the altar as frankincense burns.

The scene feels like something out of Ancient Greece, but it’s not. This is a small but dedicated community of people in Athens who still worship the likes of Athena, Zeus, Dionysus and Poseidon — not as metaphor or purely out of cultural heritage, but as a genuine religious practice in 21st-century Greece. Today’s occasion is Plynteria, an ancient Athenian purification festival marking the ritual cleaning of Athena’s sacred statue.

And the group is Labrys, a modern Hellenistic or Greek Polytheism group that supports communal events and encourages home worship to honor the ancient gods we know best from classic works of art like “The Odyssey.” Christopher Nolan’s forthcoming summer blockbuster of Homer’s epic poem is yet another retelling of the classic myth, armed with an all-star cast from Matt Damon’s Odysseus to Zendaya’s Athena. But for some members of Labrys, named after the double-edged axe that was a sacred symbol in ancient Minoan and Greek culture, the film is further proof of how Hollywood and Western pop culture have separated modern Greeks from their ancient history. Labrys co-founder Christos Panopoulos, who adopted the religious name “Pandion” referencing two mythical kings of Athens, laments the lack of Greek representation in Nolan’s movie and other projects that draw heavily from their cultural touchstones.

“It’s an appropriation,” he explained earlier as Labrys members built an altar of stones for the ceremony. “You don’t have one Greek actor.” His frustration lies in the perception that a separation has been made by the outside world between modern and ancient Greece. The latter, he says, belongs to everyone without any say from Greeks on how these stories are told — something he suspects Hollywood wouldn’t dare do today in a depiction of ancient Indian stories, as an example.

For people like Panopoulos, it’s important to note that they are not historical re-enactors nor do they view their movement as a revival. Rather, it’s a continuation of religious practices that stretch throughout Greek history. Even Greek Orthodox Christianity, long the predominant religion in Greece since Emperor Theodosius I banned pagan sacrifices and closed temples near the end of the 4th Century CE, borrowed heavily from the ancient tradition.

Gods were refashioned into religious icons. Poseidon became Saint Nicholas, the patron of sailors. Why modern witches are making pilgrimages to an ancient temple in Turkey The frustration over modern interpretations of Greek myth is likely amplified by the fact that for people like Panopoulos, these ancient stories continue to inform their worldview.

Panopoulos came to Greek Polytheism after years of spiritual longing throughout his teenage years. “I saw that the system that suited me and most explained my established beliefs and experiences of the world was polytheism,” he explains. “Because I’m Greek, I happen to be born here, the closest thing is Greek polytheism.” He says with a soft, self-aware smile that there wasn’t a moment where Zeus came down and started giving him orders, perhaps acknowledging how non-believers might perceive modern followers of the Greek Pantheon.

For him, it was a feeling that developed over time of “getting in tune with something.” Greek Polytheism is the best way he can understand the world and how he operates within it. Panopoulos and his group might attribute something to Zeus or Apollo that others would to God, Allah, or another deity — if one at all. “The myths and the religious acts are like a symbolic language to do something, in order to achieve something,” he explained.

“And what we want to achieve is a connection with the divine. This is the point.” Just as more mainstream religions have different sects or groups, Labrys isn’t the only organization harboring a community for Greek Polytheists. In fact, they were born from a split with the Supreme Council of Ethnic Hellenes, or YSEE, in 2007 over what Panopoulos describes as an overt focus on politics over religious practice.

YSEE has long been accused of promoting a mix of aggressive anti-monotheism, far-right political ideology and homophobia. The group insists ancient Greek religion is not aligned with fascism and is open to anyone regardless of sexual identity, although it notes it does not perform same-sex marriages. Panopoulos says that Labrys welcomes anyone with a genuine religious interest in Greek Polytheism.

Travelers with either a spiritual or intellectual interest in these practices are welcome to observe public events, such as the Phallephoria — an ancient Greek festival honoring Dionysus, the god of wine, with parades and participants marching while carrying phalluses on poles as symbols of life, virility, and the regeneration of nature. And it’s at public-facing rituals, like Panopoulos, that prospective members are drawn into the group. That was certainly the case for Panagiotis Koutalos and Anna Sinan who first saw the group a couple of years earlier during a Phallephoria in Athens where they live.

Koutalos, an Athens-born English teacher, had been raised in a strictly Christian household that left him spiritually restless. He cycled through stints with Buddhism and a brief flirtation with dark occultism before stumbling on Labrys at the Phallephoria. Best Greek food: 24 of the tastiest selections “I’ve always had an inquisitive mind,” he says.

“What drew me to this path is that I can be spiritual without any deity judging me. In a monotheistic culture, your more human and animalistic sides are something to be shunned. In this path, nothing is judged.” A regular practitioner of meditation, he still considers himself a Buddhist Hellenist.

The two paths, he says, are not mutually exclusive. Sinan, originally from Brazil, came to the group via a more literal path. Besides seeing Labrys at Phallephoria, she recalls walking near the Heroon of Mousaios archaeological site in Athens — the very same venue for this Plynteria — when she saw Labrys performing a ritual.

Despite not speaking Greek at the time and having no particular prior connection to Hellenic tradition, she approached them. “As soon as I saw them, I knew it would be something I would like,” she says, having first taken an interest in polytheism back in Brazil. Her Christian family back in Brazil hasn’t objected — at least not directly.

“I post on my social media, I don’t censor. So far, nobody has said anything.” Sinan draws a line connecting the Phallephoria with the carnival she grew up with in Brazil. The parade in honor of Dionysus, she says, has the same energy but something carnival celebrations lost long ago.

“Here it’s a small community and it feels very special,” she explains. “It’s not just a party. Before and after, they actually do a prayer.

It didn’t lose its essence.” That essence is something Labrys takes seriously, doing their best to honor the traditions all the while evolving them for their modern practice. After all, many sources describing these events are lost — and Plynteria was not a public-facing event like the Olympic Games held in honor of Zeus. Panopoulos says there is trial and error in developing modern rituals, with new traditions build around essential parts from ancient practice that still have meaning today.

A group of tourists visiting the Heroon of Mousaios monument are drawn to the Labrys ritual once Panopoulos starts playing an aulos — a double-reed pipe that Aristotle wrote about for its emotional and even intoxicating effect on listeners. It certainly has some effect on the tourists who start taking out their phones to record while others cautiously approach to ask what’s going on. The Labrys community, now in a circle with their arms outstretched and palms open to the sky, recite from “Orphic Hymns” — a collection of hymns attributed to mythical Greek musician Orpheus — mixed with modern prayers.

Anna shared her interpretation of one of the closing prayers. “We say something like, ‘Make yours again, this city,’” she explained. “So at the same time that we are cleaning and taking care of the statue, I like to think we take care of the city of the goddess Athena.” At the end of the ritual, members embrace one another, saying Kai tou chronou — something like “until next year” — before taking turns pouring a portion of wine at the altar.

In both ancient times and today, it’s an offering to the deity. How Alexander the Great redrew the map of the world Nolan’s film is bound to rekindle an interest in these traditions, legends, and myths of Ancient Greece. But for Labrys and other Greek Polytheists, the gods aren’t merely characters in Homer’s epic poem or Matt Damon’s quest for Odysseus’ home island of Ithaca.

They’re as real and meaningful as the days thousands of years ago when temples to the Olympian Pantheon of gods were active throughout the country in pre-Christian Greece. “The modern world has lost the goal of reaching happiness through virtue,” Panopoulos says. “We have a different word — eudaimonia — which means that you are in that state permanently, despite what happens around you.” Greek philosophers taught that eudaimonia was the goal of every human and could be achieved through “the virtues,” Panopoulos explains.

The virtues are “the gifts of the gods to the people. Zeus’ justice, Athena’s wisdom. As a religious system, it brings forth those essential human things that are obviously missing from today’s world.”