Aidonian's blog

All religions have purification rituals. Those rituals are designed to purify the person undergoing the ritual. Before praying, before entering communion with the Divine, one must purify themselves. Those rituals are easy. You can say an prayer to Apollon to be purified for whatever miasma ails you.

Old Stones, New temples has a purification ritual outline which is rather easy to follow. The ritual outline is more for whenever you feel like you suffer from a miasma. But purification rituals are more than just that.

There are also blood and fire rituals that can be used as a kind of purification. I want to talk about another purification ritual: fasting.

Christians, Jews and Muslims have their own fasting. Muslims have entire month of fasting. Christians and especially orthodox Christians have their own fasting where they swear off certain foods, beverages and sex. For Muslims it is not drinking, eating, smoking, or whatever. They claim it was spiritual experience. I have looked it up that fasting than be benefiting on a physical level.

For long time i had not thought about doing a fast. Until recently, i started to think about doing a fast within the context of polytheistic religion. I want to dedicate my fast to the Gods and that I will purify myself. I don’t like the feeling of being hungry. I think most people don’t like that feeling. For me it will be a huge challenge. I don’t know how it will go. I will try to.

There are various types of fasting. Abstaining from food except water. This implies that the person will not eat unless he or she feels she has no other choice than to eat. This is something i will try. The other type is abstaining from food from morning to evening and eat only during mornings and evenings like muslims do during ramadan. The second part if also hard, since it can last several days where the first type of fast can only last 2 days because more than that it could become dangerous for ones health. The second part could be harder when you do it like for a week and you go about your normal routine like work, training and whatnot. I do want to explore it out of religious reasons and as a way to connect with the divine through fasting. I’m curious what it will bring me?