I really wanted to be like, “Oh, what era do you take your practice from? Do you sacrifice a lot of bulls then? Ooh, and what area do you take your practice from?”
The Greek myths themselves changed over time and so did the religion. Not to mention it was done differently in each village and city. Not even an entire city state would necessarily do things the same. Each city and village had their own “most important” deities and festivals, and some areas would give different offerings then others. Also, guess what? We only have extensive knowledge of how things were done in a few areas, and we don’t have a ton of knowledge about how individual people practiced their faith on their own homes. Do we have a better idea of how the Greeks did things then say, the Celts? Yeah, we do. But we get most of the nitty gritty details from individual authors. And ever notice they often do things completely different? Also, the Greeks often sacrificed animals to the Gods, if you do things “by the book” you’d have to as well. Also, if a god, say Demeter, comes to you, says straight to you face that she wants you to do something that there’s no documentation of the Greeks ever doing, would you say “No Demeter, I can’t do that because I don’t do any of that modernized made up crap, I do things strictly by the book”.
I’m sorry but “holier than thou” attitudes piss me off to no end. There are many gaps in what we know of the Ancient Greek religion, particularly of areas other than Athens. And seriously, did you know many ancients practiced a mix of two religions? For example, after Alexander the Great conquered Egypt, Greaco-Egyptian spirituality was fairly common? This is because as the ancients conquered other lands, they didn’t replace religions. For the most part religions coexisted rather peacefully, mixing and mingling. So to say that anyone practicing differently than you is practicing “made up crap” is ridiculous. This is the exact attitude that made me walk away from reconstructionism. I am a history student. I specialize in 2 areas: Ancient Greece and Tudor England. Reconstructionists who act like the Greek religion was practiced exactly the same throughout Greece and never changed a bit over time make me want to rip my hair out.