The ancient Greeks recognized many goddesses associated with concepts that we might today simply label “justice”. Amongst these, Dike and Themis tend to be the best known, ruling over mundane law and divine law, respectively. Though that is a gross oversimplification, it’s about as close as our modern worldview can grasp quickly, i.e.- without delving a whole separate academic paper.

This is, of course, because our civilization has for hundreds of years insisted on one, single form of justice- the letter of manmade law, judged by men, and enforced by men. We blinded our “Justice”- to suggest impartiality. Yet a recurrent critique of our system is its lack of self-awareness, self-critique, and self-improvement. In other words, our justice system is not blind to privilege, wealth, and power as it should be, but rather to its own biases, shortcomings, and failures.

To be sure, this is not universally true of everyone in the justice system. Even so, there is an increasing sense amongst the body politic that our justice system has become a perverse inversion of itself and its intended function.

Thanks to Edward Butler, I found this blog post by Sheena McGrath that triggered something in me. I realized that my understanding of Nemesis had been woefully incomplete. While I recognize that this is true of every deity given my limitations, in this case I felt a sudden inrush that palpably discovered a preexisting emptiness.

Which led me to realize how civilization-wide this emptiness is.

How many times have you heard someone throw around the concept of karma? For example, this quote attributed to the author Jessica Brody:

“Karma comes after everyone eventually. You can’t get away with screwing people over your whole life, I don’t care who you are. What goes around comes around. That’s how it works. Sooner or later the universe will serve you the revenge that you deserve.”

Of course, that’s a vast oversimplification of the religious concept of karma, but at least according to some ancient Greek and Roman sources- it is one of the things Nemesis actively does. In the ancient Classical worldview, Someone always stood ready to correct or punish wrongdoing, inequity, and even excessive good fortune lacking in proper humility and charity.

Indeed, when we explore the ancient Greek understanding of many-faceted justice and the many deities associated therewith, we see a much richer and more complete understanding of human interaction with concepts like right-relation and fairness.

Of course, that’s not to say the Greeks got everything right- pederasty, misogyny, and slavery were just three of their many societal failings.

However, they did understand that healthy human societies require not just courthouses and written laws, but belief in a deeper, more fundamental form of fairness. Modern philosophers and psychologists like to call this the “Just World Fallacy” and label it a cognitive bias that clouds our rationality.

Yet, in the absence of a just world (or at least a world trying to be more just), all moral systems disintegrate. The proof of this is all around us as wealth and power flow towards cruelty and crude cunning instead of towards benevolence and wisdom.

The rise of both far-right and far-left violent extremism have their roots in a desire to institute what (in their misguided eyes) would constitute a “just” world.

As I mentioned in my post about Ares, “Oh, HELL no!” and “Over my dead body!” are amongst His gifts to humanity in time of need. In these particular cases, what we are seeing is those healthy impulses corrupted by the lack of a broader framework of justice and piety.

His daughter, Adrestia, goddess of vengeance and justified rebellion, likely takes Her name from one of Nemesis’ epithets- “Inescapable”. Her mysteries are another form of justice the Greeks once recognized. Today we denigrate this as “vigilante justice”, a laughably thin ruse to prop up our failing justice system’s willful ignorance of the importance of honor, equity, and humanity.

Obviously, I’m not suggesting that we all need to dust off our muskets and rebel or sharpen our knives to get back at our enemies.

What I’m saying is that part of our society’s ills flow from our crippled and intentionally limited understanding of what constitutes justice- i.e., right-relation and fairness.

It is right, I think, that the Greeks classed Nemesis as a Primordial. I’ve made no secret of my belief that our universe is caught in a struggle between two inimical and omnipotent (in their own times) poles and that our existence is made possible only through the intervention of The Gods (of many pantheons and others still unknown to us).

The Gods’ order makes life itself possible.

Nemesis makes intelligent life possible, by standing firm between the “In me only is there justice” of the Devourer and the Divider’s “Justice does not exist”.

She reminds us that while a totally just world does not exist and might never exist, there is at least one fundamental and exceedingly ancient Power striving to make it so. Without this middle ground in which causality is at least sometimes understandable, we would most certainly destroy ourselves in fits of anxious rage or through hopeless apathy.

She reminds us that justice, fairness, equity, and right-relation are not derived from human sources. Yet, by embracing Nemesis and the broader Classical concepts of justice and the divinities Who champion them, we can contribute to them. Through this we find that humans have a place in Their plan.

A place for us that is meaningful and beautiful.

-In Deos Confidimus