Tea at Trianon: First Pagan Greek Temple in 1,700 Years

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, March 26, 2025

First Pagan Greek Temple in 1,700 Years

From The Greek Reporter:

After 1,700 years the first ancient Greek temple opened in Arcadia, Peloponnese over the weekend. Hundreds of people attended the inauguration ceremony of the temple which was built for liturgical purposes and not as a museum.

The construction of the temple is an initiative of the doctor Manolis Heliotis, who allocated a privately owned area near the village of Kalliani for its construction. Its architecture is based on the golden ratio and includes features of ancient Greek temple architecture, such as friezes and pediments, while marble from various regions of Greece has been used.

Evangelos Bexis, the site manager and organizer of the event, told newsbomb.gr, “After 1,700 years, such a building is being built, with marble cladding on the walls and ceiling. There are tens of thousands of people in Greece and abroad who believe in their ancestral gods and do not have a place to worship. An injustice of centuries is being corrected.” (Read more.)