Ancient paganism in a land of orthodoxy.

Athena and Poseidon fight to be Athens's patron deity.
Lynne Cantwell | Athens, May 2026

I'm back from my refreshing two-week break. Folks who follow me on Facebook already know that I spent most of it gallivanting on a ten-day bus tour of Greece (although "land tour via motor coach" sounds classier). Unlike the European river cruises I've been on, this one was sparse on churches, partly because the country is mostly Greek Orthodox (their churches don't seem to feature the ostentatious wealth of European cathedrals that Americans like to goggle at) and partly because the country is rife with ancient pre-Christian ruins.

We toured a lot of those ancient ruins. Like, a lot of them. It seems like you can't dig anywhere in Greece without hitting the remains of an old Greek temple or Roman villa or something from an even older culture. But at every site we visited, there has been an effort to save at least a semblance of a temple to a god or goddess. Clearly the gods were important to the ancient Greeks.

Which is why I was shocked when our guide at Olympia, the site of the original Olympics, baldly stated that nobody in ancient Greece ever believed in the Greek gods. She said that the gods embodied the virtues that each person was supposed to aspire to, but people didn't actually believe they existed.

Seriously? Then why go to the trouble of building all this?

The Parthenon in Athens, dedicated to Athena. Other temples on the 
Acropolis are dedicated to other gods.
Lynne Cantwell | May 2026

The temple of Hera at Olympia.
Lynne Cantwell | May 2026

The temple of Zeus at Olympia. Hera's temple was built first.
Lynne Cantwell | May 2026

Info about the temple of Athena at Sparta. There's not much of the temple left.
Lynne Cantwell | May 2026

Temple of Apollo at Corinth, one of two structures the Romans didn't destroy.
Lynne Cantwell | May 2026

These people went to so much trouble to carve, shift and stack thousands upon thousands of tons of limestone and marble to honor beings they didn't think were real? Are you crazy?

At first I thought maybe what our guide was implying was that the ancients were misguided and only the Christian god is real. But now I think she was coming from a Christian-centric view not of the gods' existence, but of the nature of religion.

John Beckett has said many times that in its broadest sense, religion is about what you do, who you are, and whose you are. Christians have their Bible, Jews their Hebrew bible, Muslims their Koran; those books lay out the official tenets of their religions. The ancient Greeks didn't have anything like that. For them, moral authority came not from a religious text but from artworks, stories, and plays about their gods. 

The photo at the top of this post is of a sculpture that once adorned the Parthenon. It tells the story of how Athens got its patron: Athena, the goddess of wisdom, strategy, and crafts, and Poseidon, the god of the sea, storms, and earthquakes, vied for the job. Poseidon brought up a spring of salt water, which the citizens deemed useless -- it wasn't like they could drink it. Then Athena caused to grow an olive tree. The citizens were thrilled -- they could eat the olives, use their oil for all manner of things, and use the wood for homes and tools -- so they adopted Athena as their goddess and named their city Athens. Using John's definition of religion, residents of the city were Athenians (who they are). Athena was their patron deity (whose they are), and so they honored her (what they do). They didn't need a bible to lay all that out; instead, they had things like this sculpture on the Parthenon. 

And they had theater. Although of the 1,000 or so plays written by Greek and Roman authors, only 83 survive, 46 of them Greek. Some we know about only because another author mentions them. 

Modern Pagans don't have a bible, either. What we have is what's left of the ancients' stories and plays about whichever gods and goddesses we follow. Like the ancient Greeks, we're not obsessed with what we need to do to get to heaven; instead, we're focused on doing the best we can in this world, right now.

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I am a Pagan polytheist and animist. I follow and honor gods and goddesses from several pantheons: Mokosh, the Slavic goddess of the earth and of weaving and spinning; Brigid, the Irish goddess of weaving, smithcraft and poetry; Lugh, the Irish god of light; Morrigan, the Irish goddess of sovereignty and war; Perun, the Slavic god of thunder and justice; Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom and strategy; and Luna, the Roman goddess of the moon. 

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The only Greek god I follow is Athena. But I poured a little offering of water at each temple we visited anyway. It felt like the right thing to do. And I think the gods appreciated knowing that some folks still honor them.

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Three observations before I wrap up: 

1) I found it interesting that Athens, the ancient city-state that prized democracy and the arts, is now a metropolis of three million people, while Sparta, the ancient city-state that prized military order, has a population of only about 20,000 people today. The modern city is built atop the old one, and what remains of ancient Sparta is not well preserved; the Bronze Age site of Messene is better developed, and extensive excavations only began there in 2007. It almost seemed to me like the Greeks don't care to emphasize Sparta's violent past.

2) While touring all these ancient sites and seeing so many big chunks of temples in pieces, I thought of all the home-improvement TV shows in which some guy screws something to something else and says, "That's not going anywhere." I could almost hear the ancient Greek stone masons, echoing down the ages, saying the same thing. (In the case of the Acropolis, it didn't help matters that the occupying Ottomans were using the place to store gunpowder; the attacking Venetians lobbed a mortar shell into the building in 1687, blowing out pillars on one side and destroying the structures inside.)

3) The Acropolis Museum in Athens is worth a stop on its own. Of course, the topic of the Elgin marbles came up during our tour. In the early 1800s, the seventh Earl of Elgin "acquired" from the occupying Ottomans a bunch of statuary from Greece, including a haul from the Parthenon. He eventually sold everything to the British government, which put it on display in the British Museum. Our guide in Athens was confident that the marbles would eventually be returned. Negotiations over an elaborate swap of the marbles for other Greek antiquities have been ongoing since 2021, but the sticking point is that the Brits say they were legally acquired, while the Greeks say they were looted. Personally, I think the Brits are stalling.

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These moments of opinionated Greek tourism have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. C'mon, England, give that stuff back to Greece already.

Another near miss for Trump; and a shower lighting dilemma.

Gods ding it, he's done it again. I had a nice, breezy little post planned for this week, and then Trump sucked all the air out of the room again by showing up at the White House Correspondents' Dinner and maybe attracting a shooter. So I will address that first, and then I'll add a shortish version of my breezy little post at the end. 

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I feel like the best thing I can do right now, when so little is known -- and when, let's be honest, we don't know how much to believe of what either the administration or the pundits are saying -- is to answer some of the conspiratorial questions I've seen online today.

• How did the alleged gunman (hereinafter AGM) get his weapons to DC from California? He took Amtrak. Security is just not as crazy on passenger trains as it is on flights. I don't recall ever having to step through a magnetometer before boarding an Amtrak train. (But you can bet your ass that will change now. Thanks a lot, AGM.)
• Okay, but how did the AGM get his weapons past security at the hotel? He was a hotel guest. Think back to the last time you checked into a hotel. Did you have to pass through a magnetometer at the door? No? Neither did I. If the AGM checked in sufficiently ahead of the event -- say, sometime Friday -- the security checkpoint for the dinner probably wasn't even set up yet. And he wouldn't have had to get past that until Saturday night. Plus which, guys, it's a hotel. They host a lot of big events, not to mention guests who have nothing to do with any of the scheduled events. Setting up a security perimeter at the hotel entrance would be a massive inconvenience to everybody with business there that has nothing to do with the correspondents' dinner. Now, I've seen reports that they have in fact done this in the past. If so, why didn't they do it this year? I have no idea.
• All that said, how did the shooter get so close to Trump? He didn't. The International Ballroom at the Washington Hilton is two floors below the main hotel entrance. The hotel's website has a fun interactive map that allows you to fly around their event space; click the Explore 360 Tour button on this page. It's been a few decades since I attended an event there (the Congressional Correspondents' Dinner used to be held there until it got too big), but I think I recall taking the escalator down to the ballroom. From what I've seen online, the security checkpoint was on the Terrace level, which is between the main floor and the Concourse level. Plus, y'all, the International Ballroom is huge. It seats more than 2,500 people, according to the hotel's website, and the dais is on the opposite side of the room from the doors that attendees come through. So the AGM would have had to get past the magnetometers on the Terrace level, down the escalator, past more agents who were no doubt stationed in the Concourse foyer outside the ballroom, and then past all the journalists at all the guest tables to get to the dais where Trump was seated. He was tackled outside of the magnetometers on the Terrace level. That doesn't seem that close to me.
• Was the whole thing staged? It's possible. It would have required TFGA's handlers to find a willing patsy, suggest he take Amtrak and stay at the Hilton, and do it all without bringing Trump in until the last minute so he didn't give the game away. Reportedly, it wouldn't have been the first time that Trump was kept out of the loop on an important issue.
• If it was staged, why? I doubt it would have been all about Trump's White House ballroom plans; he talks about them at the drop of a hat anyway. As a pivot from the Iran war and the Epstein files, and as an effort to bolster his historically lousy approval ratings, sure. As a commercial for his ballroom? Nah.

That's enough for now. Let's move on to my breezy little post.

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I went ahead this week and bought ceramic tile for the shower walls! I brought it home and loaded it into my storage closet yesterday. 

Lynne Cantwell 2026

I've also bought porcelain mosaic tile for the shower floor. I've been wanting to use the star-and-cross pattern on something for ages. Each of these little tile is 2"x2". (Note that this sample came chipped and cracked; I've checked the actual tiles, which were packaged much better, and they seem okay.)

Lynne Cantwell 2026

So anyway, yeah, the wall tile is dark, so the shower is going to be dark -- like a cave, almost, once the shower curtain is closed. Not that I ever want to be on trend, but maybe I am. (Go here and scroll down to number 5.) But it means lighting is a concern. A lot of people have can lights put in so that their shower is daylight bright. (Others do a sun tunnel, but guaranteed that my upstairs neighbor would not be amused.) But I want to preserve the moodiness.

The only light in the shower right now is this battery-operated light, plus whatever filters in above the shower curtain. It would be fun to have a starry sky, and you can get kits that allow you to make one by sticking fiber-optic lines through a suspended ceiling; alas, they require a projector concealed somewhere that's not wet. Another solution I've seen is to have an LED light strip installed at the top of the tile. That looks like my best option, but it would require hiring an electrician. So I may just stick with my battery-powered light.

If y'all have any other suggestions, let me know. I've yet to begin shopping for a contractor, so I have lots of time.

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Heads up that I'll be out of pocket for the next two weeks. See y'all back here on May 17th.

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These moments of bifurcated blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

In which Clarence Thomas has it in for progressivism.

"Hmm," I thought a few minutes ago. "It's Sunday. I owe everybody a blog post. What should I write about? I could write about Pagans and Earth Day if I'd gone to the event I was aiming for yesterday, but instead I slept in...

"Maybe I could rant about the annoying trend of long, long Facebook posts that people are resorting to because Facebook will throttle the reach of any post with an off-Facebook link in it. Except I think a lot of folks saw my Facebook post about it yesterday. Why beat a dead horse?

"Wait. When was the last time I did a current events post?" <checks post history> "Holy cats, not since March 1st? And that was only a glancing blow! And there's so much there to talk about -- the Iran war that Trump has declared he won too many times to count, Trump's whining about his ballroom, Trump and Vance picking a fight with the pope over Catholic doctrine, of all things...

"I know! I'll write about Clarence Thomas!"

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Why yes, those scales are tilted to the right.
quarta | Deposit Photos

You may have missed it, what with all the usual noise coming from the general direction of the White House. But this week, Justice Thomas gave an address at the University of Texas at Austin Law School. He started out talking about the Declaration of Independence, this being the 250th anniversary of its signing and all. But then he went off on this weird diatribe about how progressivism is going to doom the United States to failure. No, really. The New Republic quoted him: 

Clarence Thomas alone is devoted to the Declaration's principles in Washington, says Clarence Thomas, and the problem is only getting worse. "As we meet today, it is unclear whether these principles will endure," the justice warned. "At the beginning of the twentieth century, a new set of first principles of government was introduced into the American mainstream. The proponents of this new set of first principles, most prominently among them the twenty-eighth president, Woodrow Wilson, called it progressivism.

"Since Wilson's presidency, progressivism has made many inroads in our system of government and our way of life," Thomas continued. "It has coexisted uneasily with the principles of the Declaration. Because it is opposed to those principles, it is not possible for the two to coexist forever."

Wilson is not the most famous president to be associated with progressivism; that would be Teddy Roosevelt. But Wilson was an academic, which automatically makes him a target of those who love the poorly educated. Wilson oversaw the creation of the Federal Reserve system, the Federal Trade Commission, stronger antitrust laws, and a ban on child labor -- none of which made him popular with the rich. 

Wilson was president during the nation's first Gilded Age, when rich industrialists were remaking the country to suit themselves. (As former Labor Secretary Robert Reich observes, we are in the nation's second Gilded Age today. It wasn't a good thing for the working class then, and it isn't today, either.)

Thomas went on to draw a line from progressive policies in Germany, which Wilson supposedly based American progressivism on, to -- wait for it -- the rise of Hitler. It gets wackier from there; I recommend the New Republic article I linked to above, if you're interested. 

What interested me more than Justice Thomas's rewriting of history was that at the beginning of his speech, he greeted one of the attendees: Harlan Crow. Yup, that Harlan Crow: the GOP megadonor who has showered Thomas and his wife with vacations and gifts, including buying from Thomas in 2014 the house where Thomas's mother lived in Savannah, GA, and spending tens of thousands of dollars to renovate the property -- a transaction that Thomas somehow forgot to list on his mandatory financial disclosure form.

People are prone to telling themselves all sorts of myths to justify their actions and to maintain their lifestyles. In that respect, the rich are no different.

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These moments of self-serving blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Tax the rich, already!

In which I go for Baroque.

Sorry. I had to.

I know some of y'all already thought I was weird because I like opera. It gets worse: I love early music, from the very earliest monophonic stuff like Gregorian chant to the Baroque composers Bach and Handel. And yesterday I got a chance to expand my experience in that playground by attending a concert here in Santa Fe featuring songs from Spanish Baroque composers. 

First, let's set the time frame. If you've ever heard anything by Bach or any part of Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, you're already familiar with the biggest musical names of the period. The Baroque period ran from 1600 to 1760, give or take, or about the time when North America was being settled by Europeans. The Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776, to give you another benchmark. Here in New Mexico, settlers had begun to come up the Camino Real from Mexico City and make a new life for themselves on the Spanish (later Mexican) frontier; the Pueblo Revolt, when the local Native Americans had enough of Spanish rule and kicked them all the way back to El Paso, happened in 1680, smack dab in the middle of this period.

Back in Spain, Diego Velázquez painted this in Madrid in 1656: 

Lynne Cantwell 2026

The painting is called Las Meninas o La familia de Felipe IV. ("Meninas" are ladies-in-waiting.) It's a little tattered around the edges because it's actually a 3D "postcard" that I picked up when I was at the Prado in Madrid: you flip it over, fold it along the creases, and look through the little portholes to get the 3D effect. The little blond girl at the center is the Infanta Margaret Theresa, who was five years old at the time. The artist depicts himself at his easel on the left; the mirror on the back wall shows the images of the Infanta's parents, King Philip IV and his queen, Mariana of Austria; and in the doorway on the right stands the queen's chamberlain, to whom the artist may have been related. In short, it's a fun painting with a lot going on.

Which is a pretty good description of Baroque music, too. Just listen to one of Bach's fugues. (Start the video at 2:47 if you want to skip the tocatta at the start.)

Anyway, this concert featured songs by a bunch of composers I'd never heard of before. One of them is Sebastian de Murcia. This piece wasn't on yesterday's program, but it gives you a flavor for the sound, anyway. (The instrument being played in the video is a Baroque guitar. It's smaller and fancier than a modern acoustic guitar and has nine strings instead of six. I found a guy on YouTube who gives more information on the Baroque guitar. If you're as nerdy as I am about ancient music, you may find it as fascinating as I did.)

If we were playing the "which historical era would you want to live in" game, the Baroque would be pretty high on my list. Anyone want to join me?

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These moments of ornate blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!