A review by faeriekit
Kharis: Hellenic Polytheism Explored by Sarah Kate Istra Winter

informative inspiring lighthearted mysterious reflective fast-paced

5.0

I deeply appreciated this book. The author calls herself a modern reconstructionist, but I would have used the term “revivalist” or “revitalist” for her work. This book strikes a good balance between recognizing the thoughts and mindsets of the worshipers of the theoi in ancient Greece and recognizing that and that people have different needs than the ancient Greeks. The information used has been carefully researched to prune out more ‘modern’ misinterpretations of what worship of the theoi looked like, or who the theoi are and what they represent, by focusing almost entirely on anthropological and other scholarly resources. This clears up a lot of "pagans quoting pagans" problems that often pop up in more recent resources. The resources at the back were soo exciting; on top of a really recent survey of the author's local Hellenic Polytheist population, it’s a really solidly thought-out list of necessary vocabulary and spelling that answers 99.99% of the answers anyone could possibly have while reading the book.

An entire basic sketch of what a personal practice is laid out, a possible yearly calendar, the groups of spirits in Hellenic polytheism that are not the gods, the Greek language, valuable terms... This book really is well researched and provides anything a beginner in the more traditional aspects might need. If you were working with the theoi and wanted to know more about them, I highly recommend this book. I think I first heard of this book from <a href=" https://bookshop.org/shop/teawiththegods ">TeaWiththeGods</a>‘s bookshop page, so it had to be good, but I asked my library to purchase it for me so that others could read it too. Am I glad I did! I really hope this gets into a lot of people’s hands. I learned a lot, I took a lot of pictures of the vocab in the back, and learned a lil' something else about Greek Polytheists. Apparently, the survey found that 30% of Hellenic Polytheists are bisexual. You go, bisexuals.