Urban Hellenistos is an effort of Hellenic polytheist Ruadhan J McElroy to write a manifesto and other articles for the urban Hellenic polytheist, for the aspiring urban Hellenic polytheist, about urban paganism (though illustrating his focus as Hellenic polytheism) and for any other interested parties who may or may not be urban-oriented and who may or may not be Hellenic polytheistic in religion. He has a dry sense of humour (and does not defeat the purpose of deadpan by inserting emoticons all over his writing, either), an extensive vocabulary, and has read more than five books about the polytheistic religion that originated in ancient Greece.
Urban Hellenistos began, initially, as a sub-set of the hellenismos.us blog, but was taken to its own site primarily because I did not like how the owner of that site posted the rougher “draft version” of the first part of my Urban Hellenistos manifesto before I re-categorised it from “draft” to “publish”.
I’m a member of both Hellenion and Neokoroi, but my activity in each group is low. Though I maintain some interest and participation in what is often referred to as either “the pagan community” or (more recently) “the pagan & polytheist community”, I don’t consider myself or my sect of Hellenic polytheism to be “pagan”; that said, surely, I welcome self-identified “pagans” to read this blog, but please respect the fact that I find the term completely useless in describing my religion and find its history to be a toxic one; I came to this conclusion after several days of blogging on “pagan” as a personal identifying word. While I may occasionally concede to the term for simplicity’s sake (blog memes, “Pagan values blogging month”, etc…) this is just that: A temporary concession for simplicity and because, really, I hold no animosity toward those who continue to self-identify with the word, just confusion at their (often vehement) attachment to an Abrahamic slur. I mean, hell, I’ve known plenty of non-whites who may refer to themselves or their ethnic group with all sorts of slurs, even if only in specific contexts, but that doesn’t necessarily give me that right.
