After years of wandering through an agnostic, post-Christian wilderness, I became confirmed one night in the reality of divinities by way of a sign from Above.   Then, after a few more years of mucking about through the soul-sucking online ghettos that pass for pagan communities, I found ready employment with Neos Alexandria.   

I praise Neos Alexandria far and wide.    It is the most erudite and affable haven of polytheists I have yet to find.  Because of their propensity to lay abstract arguments on the wayside and concentrate on more practical pursuits, they have achieved a level of productivity that eclipses other organizations mired by egoistic posturing and banal strife.              

What really does Neos Alexandria mean?  We can worship within the solitude of our homes; what is it that collectively we can offer the world?    

For that I turn to our esteemed ancestors.  In this case, a papyrus from New Kingdom Egypt has something very interesting to say:  

      Man decays, his corpse is dust,
      All his kin have perished;
      But a book makes him remembered
      Through the mouth of its reciter.
      Better is a book than a well-built house,
      Than tomb-chapels in the west;
      Better than a solid mansion,
      Than a stela in the temple.  

The scribes who wrote this bit of poetry were extolling their own power to immortalize through the power of words.  While this may seem a bit of hubris, let's look at it another way.   

The Gods are immortal; they exist whether or not we know or care.   But we moderns would not know of the gods if our ancestors had not taken the pains to etch the names of divinity into papyrus, marble and stone.   The Greeks, Romans and Egyptians had literate upper classes who thankfully were skilled in both the literary and visual arts.  We modern polytheists reconstruct our religions on the remains they thoughtfully left us.   Those cultures that were less literate than ours have a tougher time of reconstructionism than we do, as one might imagine - so let us praise our ancestors for their wisdom and their toil.   

Immortality, properly speaking, is something reserved to gods.  But immortality of a lesser kind is something human beings can construct through the power of the word.   Indeed, after governments crumble, empires collapse, and entire populations perish, all that meaningfully remains of a culture are its words, and what they speak to us across the centuries.   

Taking then that lesson to heart, where does that leave us?  If words are what we will be remembered by, what does that say about the dozens of pointless arguments that transpire daily on e-lists and e-fora between armchair philosophers and pseudo-intellectuals who pose as pagans?  Will a future generation pouring over yahoo list archives find all that rot very inspiring? Probably not.  I'd be surprised if they didn't find us all insane and boorish, wondering why exactly we wasted our lives with flame wars, trolling and empty posturing.   

Whether Neos Alexandria is consciously aware of it or not, it has taken a higher road to the one usually offered by other pagan groups.   It has found a way to meld theory with practice, scholarship with inspiration, and intelligence with common sense.  It has, in so many words, become the temple of new scribes and artists for the gods, taking their glory into a new millennium. Our hymns, rituals, essays and devotional anthologies will be what inspire our contemporaries and commend us to posterity.    Our words will be the bricks on which future temples are lain.   Our sincere attempts at rekindling this faith will outlive us.     

In so doing we move our ancient religions into modern reality.  We gain a good name for ourselves for being the few who actually wrought something of use for the polytheist community.   To serve the gods and to die with a good name is really all that to which a mortal can aspire.  And its more than what a lot of groups are actually doing with themselves.   

Yes, I found a home in Neos Alexandria.  A home away from pointless internet arguments.  A home away from the wasted years of the online pagan desert.    I found a community of modern day scribes investing their erudition into practical writings for the gods that moved them.  In so doing I found a home that will live on, for as the scribes said of themselves: 

      They made heirs for themselves of books,
      Of Instructions they had composed. 

It is good to be home! 

[ passages cited above from "The Immortality of Writers" as translated by Mariam Lichtheim.  Ancient Egyptian Literature. Volume II: The New Kingdom.  University of California Press. Berkeley, California.  1976.