Practicing Hittite Paganism Today

As mentioned on the overview page, I'm not a scholar or anything, this is just something I'm doing essentially for fun. I think it's interesting to think about how somebody might go about practicing a reconstructed Hittite religion.

My sources are going to be the ones listed on the overview discussing historical Hittite culture and religion and the book Deep Ancestors: Practicing the Religion of the Proto-Indo-Europeans by Ceisiwr Serith.

I've never seen anybody practicing Hittite paganism, either as an eclectic/wiccan or as a reconstructionist, but they're probably out there. If they somehow come across this page, email me! It'll take me a billion years to get to it, but I'd love to know how you do things. My rationale for using Deep Ancestors is that the Hittites were an Indo-European society and his work might be able to fill in the gaps. My personal background is as a reconstructionist pagan, just to explain my frame of reference going into this.

This will likely be updated in the future, I have some books lined up that I haven't read yet.

Values

I think values are a pretty good place to start when discussing any religion. I skimmed some sources to see if I could reasonably infer anything about their values as a society and all I came up with was "fairness", since they differed from their neighbors regarding the death penalty (ie theft often was punished by death, but they just made the theif pay back what they stole). For this section, I will be heavily referencing Deep Ancestors.

Of course, some of these may not be weighed as heavily by the Hittites as they were other Indo-European cultures, but some of the one's Serith listed are as follows:

• Truth
• Justice
• Hospitality
• Courage
• Loyalty
• Tempreance
• Excellence, similar to the Greek "Arete"
• Duty
• Piety
• Knowledge

What any of this means in practice is culturally determined. Somebody in India might understand hospitality differently than I (American) do and would go about implementing this differently than I would. It's more important to behave appropriately/in line with your morals and ethics as it pertains to the modern day than to accurately reconstruct societal expectations from thousands of years ago.

Ritual

As I mentioned in the overview, my research (subject to change, of course) brought up no specific ritual structure. Large scale rituals required the presence of the king and they did have priests, so it's safe to assume that priests led smaller rituals, but other than that, I haven't dug up anything. That being said, modern pagans have been around for quiet a while (a little over a century, if I'm recalling correctly) and we've written a lot. Of course, I will also be referencing Deep Ancestors.

Many rituals in many cultures begin rituals with purification. Personally, I wash my hands every time I do anything at our altars. I feel that clean hands is the bare minimum. Showering or taking a bath could be a good thing to do prior to a more formal ritual. Hittites used roasted and ground barley, along with salt, for purification, according to Serith (will fact check at a later date). The barley was sprinkled on the livestock they were offering, but I think it could also be sprinkled on offerings or in the space being used instead.

Salt is a very common item worldwide for purification, as is water. Smoke produced from specific herbs and incense as well.

Hittite rituals involved reenactments of their myths. They also had offering pits in the ground, to get close to the cthonic deities of the earth and underworld.

As for timing, Hittites seemed to do rituals when they felt appropriate, either to mark a specific occasion or in response to hardship (ie famine, war). The pros of this is that you can hold rituals whenever they're most convenient for you, but the cons are that it's easy to just end up never doing any because there isn't a specific time they're expected.

Household Worship

Since there is very little, if any, information about historical private worship of the gods, this section will be pretty familiar to anybody who is familiar with pagan practices.

An altar is very important for offerings and prayer. It, however, does not need to be big or permanent. Just having a space designated as your "sacred space" during an offering is fine. It could be a windowsill or your dining room table or whatever you have. The important thing here is how you intend to use that space as any particular time. Before I lived on my own, I either used the top of my bookshelf where I would put a plate from the kitchen and a cheap incense burner, my nightstand or this little box where I kept a picture of Apollo I printed out and a little tealight. Altars are necessary, but can be whatever you can manage with what you have.

If you plan on having a "proper" altar (temporary or permanent, but with items explicitly meant for pagan practice), there's some pretty standard things people recommend:

• Visual representation of the deity/spirit/et cetera. This can be anything. A statue, a nice rock, a printed out picture, any item that reminds you of them. I haven't seen many visual prepresentations of Hittite deities, so you might have to get a little creative with this. The act of creating a visual representation of your god(s) can be a fulfilling act of devotion in and of itself.
• Space for offerings. It can be literally anything that is safe to hold food and/or liquid. I've used plates and cups from the kitchen to temporarily hold offerings I was giving and I also have some bowls and other various vessels that I purchased specifically for the altar(s). As long as it can hold whatever you're giving.
• Candles. Pagans love candles and I am certainly no exception to that, that's usually the first thing I get when I'm setting up something. These are by no means essential, but they are great for mindset and lighting them can be a small, simple act of devotion in their own right. Especially good if you're somebody who is very busy or often physically unable to do many things. It's also something that's incredibly affordable, if you avoid buying specialty ones. Candles are mostly a modern thing, as far as paganism is concerned.
• Incense burners and incense. Like candles, pagans love incense and incense, while not necessary, is great for "setting the scene". Burning herbs and resins is also something that has been done for hell of a long time and is attested in many ancient societies. Incense burners and incense tend to be easy to find and relatively inexpesive as well. Lighting incense is also an easy way to give an offering to the gods.
• Altar cloth. It serves a practical purpose. Keeps wax and incense dust off of your tables and shelves. Can be anything. One of our altars has a rabbit pelt on it and another has some fabric we cut to an appropriate size. Not strictly necessary, but certainly nice to have.

I did write about daily devotions a while ago and this basic advise would still apply. We live in a totally different society and we have to adapt to our circumstances.

Many people center at least some of their practice around the deities associated with the household and family. Hittites also had a staggering number of local deities and resisted syncretism. As far as household and family deities might go for Hittite religion, Zilipari, Sulinkatte, and Hasameli might be good deities to look into. Otherwise, people tend to focus on deities associated with their lifestyle in some way (ie textile workers might want to worship Athena, due to her connection to weaving.)

Offerings and Devotion

A lot of pagan practice revolves around building relationships with deities (ie gods, spirits, your ancestors, et cetera) and that typically involves giving offerings or performing acts of devotion. An offering can be given either as part of a larger ritual, or relatively spontanously with just a prayer/declaration of intention of some sort. Whatever you choose to give or do depends on the deities you're worshiping.

Here's some ideas for offerings

• Bread (historically attested). Incredibly common and found in many cultures.
• Libations (historically attested)...though, I haven't seen sources be very specific.
• Livestock (historically attested)...I'd substitute the animal sacrifice with offerings of meat (as part of a specific dish or on its own).
• Water. Underrated. Do you know how incredible it is that so many people have access to water that just comes directly to their homes? It's also valuable to us and literally keeps us alive. I can't think of a better offering.
• Alcohol. Given the part of the world, I'd give beer a try. Some deities might like something else, but that's something you'd have to find out through trial and error.
• Homecooked meals. Again, deities have preferences, but most would probably appreciate the thought. It's nice to share meals!
• Artwork
• Incense
• Items you think they'd like. ie crystals, cool rocks, trinkets. My partner found a pocket knife at an antique store that they offered to Athena, for example.
• ...Whatever feels appropriate! Try divination if you're unsure if they liked something.

And here's some ideas for devotional acts

• Learning their myths
• Donations to charities related to them (ie wolf sanctuaries/wildlife fund for Skadi)
• Learning about things related to them (ie reading about wars/warefare for Ares)
• Wearing jewelry you've devoted to them (ie I have a bracelet I "gave" to Ares)
• Chores, especially as devotion to household deities (ie Frigg, Brighid, Hestia)
• Learning an instrument for a deity associated with music
• Learning a new skill related to them (ie first aid for Dian Cecht)
• Arts and crafts
• Making them a playlist
• Working out
• ...basically anything! As long as the intention is there and it makes sense to you.

Festivals

As previously stated, the Hittites don't seem to have had any particular festivals. This can prove...problematic...for people who are used to marking dates and seasons with festivals and celebrations even in secular life. Reconstructionists would likely prefer to just run with it and go "okay, I'll just perform rituals when something really good or really bad is happening" -- which is what I would be inclined to do...but for those who prefer more structure, I think I have a few solutions for you.

First suggestion is to use rituals to mark anniversaries of significant events. Maybe have a ritual to celebrate your marriage anniversary, or somebody's birthday, or something culturally significant to you (ie legalization of same sex marriage, I suppose). That way, you know it's coming up and can plan instead of being like "wow, this would've been a good time to hold a ritual." If you know something is coming up, like a high school or college graduation for example, that could also be a time to hold a ritual. Negative things tend to be more spontaneous, but if they're ongoing (ie a war or genocide...just random examples, of course) you could probably hold the rituals at any point you'd like.

Second suggestion is to mark specific points of the year. Hold rituals at the start of each season and/or during the equinoxes and solstices. Definitely not historically attested in that region, but it is something people do in the modern day (as well as historically in different regions). It's consistent and easy to plan out.

Deities

I listed the main deities on the overview. It would be redundant to put them here again, but I'll use this section to discuss something else...how do you pick your deities? This is something I want to address in more detail later, but I'd suggest starting with any deity that feels "correct" to you. Usually that will be a deity related to your life somehow (ie Hera if you're married, Hephaestus if you're a craftsman of some sort -- sorry for using Greek deities for so many examples). Since there doesn't seem to be any explicit household deities, it kind of leaves the "who?" of all of this pretty open ended.

More information about deities will be located here.

⬅ Go Back