For the Love of the Gods: The History and Modern Practice of Theurgy - Brandy Williams 2016

The Story Yet to Be Written
The Living Tradition

A woman sits on a bench in the cool of the temple and reads the account of Eunapius on the life of Sosipatra. She is black and considers herself a daughter of Neitokrity, who she learned about in school.

A white man enters the temple to make an offering, picking his way among the shrines of the loa, the place spirits, the many Celtic and Roman deities, until he comes to the Greek section, to the shrine of Athena. He lays a single flower at the feet of the statue and closes his eyes to pray.

The temple guardian, watching unobtrusively from a shaded balcony, looks at them both and smiles. This one considers themself gender fluid, male or female, neither or both as the occasion warrants. They carry DNA from Africa, Europe, and Asia, a true citizen of the world, fully welcomed and fully represented in the temple.

These three people will be taught as children that the gods have always walked among us. Some people have never forgotten this even though they were commanded to do so; they remained faithful until the gods and their people could meet openly again, in city and in country, in caves and on mountaintops, on house altars and in glorious newly built temples housing hundreds of shrines.

These three are our spiritual children, as yet unborn. They can pray out loud in public because of the work we do today. It is our responsibility to tell the stories of our teachers and pass them on. Then when they light the ancestor candle, we will be included in that act, and their gratitude will flow to us.

We call on those who are yet to come,

Rise!