The gods are real and they send you dreams...

Things have been a bit hectic, but not uneventful!  First of all, my epithet project of sorts was very illuminating.  Even though it didn't quite come out to one epithet per day.  One of our cats got very sick (but pulled through, thank Bast!), not to mention that sometimes I simply felt I needed more time with one.  Even then, such a short time devoted to an epithet is by no means enough to explore all the sources, significance, aspects and nuances for each one.  I mainly trusted on the tarot card and what chanced to comes up in the resources available to me as far as what focus to take.  It was almost eerie how well some of the cards related to the epithets, even if it didn't seem that way at first glance.  I enjoyed it, and expect I'll be doing it again sometime.

In the midst of that devotional project, something else significant happened.

 

Somewhere between Dionysos Agrios and Dionysos Bromios, my husband and I were talking of gods, tricksters, archetypes, god consciousness... At the same time, he's drawing tarot cards as I work on blogging about epithets.  He draws the 7 of Cups as I'm trying to research it, so we share thoughts about it.  He mentions being an incidental Dionysian, which makes me smile.  The topic changes and meanders.

 

That night we both woke up at the same time from dreams that seemed very significant, and became all the more significant when we shared the similarities later that morning.  In mine, I was in a dry creek bed at night.  There was a lot of foliage, and the sense that we were staying there, my husband and I.  We were planning and preparing for a Dionysian ritual.  But when I tried to speak to him, there was an emotional distance between us, the kind that I was uncertain how to breach.  A group of women charged through the foliage, to join us perhaps.  I remember thinking I would rather it would be just the two of us.

 

In his dream, I was putting on and starring in a Dionysian play.  He was there with me the whole time, but not a part of the play itself, and felt distant and sad that he was not included... yet he wasn't sure how to ask since it was my "thing".  Dionysos himself was present as the play was going on, weaving among and watching the performers.

 

After thinking about the two dreams, I asked, hesitantly, "Do you think its a message that we should be doing things together, spiritually, as far as Dionysos goes?"

 

This question was even hard for me to say.  I'm not sure why, exactly.  I think part of it is that I feel so damn lucky to have this person who I love so much, who loves me in return, share a spiritual belief system with me, that I would never presume that he would want to worship the same god.  It is such a personal thing, after all.  Which is another reason, I suppose... It is so close to my heart, that I'm a bit self-conscious about it sometimes.  (Not for any good reason, just stupidly so.)  

 

But when I asked, he agreed, and admitted that he has wanted to but did not wish to intrude.

 

So it seems we got a couple gentle smacks upside the head from the god for something we have both wanted but were afraid to ask each other.

 

The idea is still so novel, though, that I still feel baffled.  I told my husband, I really don't know what I'm doing most of the time, so I'm not sure where to start trying to cultivate a concurrent practice...

 

And a deep part of me is still scared, even when all evidence points to the contrary, that he is just doing this for my benefit.  Although I don't know why that's so frightening, because that isn't a BAD thing, even though it isn't something I'd want or expect.  It's really hit me, consciously anyway, that my relationship to Dionysos feels intimate.  Talking about him, specifically how I feel about him, or my experiences with him is as difficult (if not more difficult) than talking about how I orgasm or what I like during sex.  Intimacy equals vulnerability.  Which follows that my deepest, irrational fear is that if I let someone in to those experiences, then they can, hypothetically, try to discredit what is meaningful to me.

 

I have a specific memory of the first time I opened Otto's book, Dionysos: Myth and Cult.  I was intrepidly, shyly beginning to explore Dionysos and my attraction to him.  The prospect was new and a little scary, and my life was not quite ready for it (which is to say it needed it.)  I mentioned a section in the book to the person I was with at the time, now my ex, wanting to share something that intrigued me, that seemed mysterious and promising, to see if we could have a discussion about it.  But instead, he said something critical and dismissive.  (Though that was often his way of "discussing", he loved to argue for the sake of argument.  He was also a very cerebral couch-pagan, who occasionally practiced, seemingly for my sake.)  But I just shut down and moved on.  For whatever reasons at the time, I put down the book and didn't pick it up again for a couple years.

 

My husband has only ever been sensitive, interested, open-minded, and on the same page as me regarding the spiritual and mystical.  So my hang-ups are all my own.  And to some extent, it's also just hard to speak of what's hard to put into words.  But I must work on unsticking my tongue, releasing old fears, and opening myself up to whatever the god and the future has in store for us.  It's not an entirely new concept - he celebrated Anthesteria with me last year and the occasional devotional day - but now it feels as if it will be more together, hand in hand.

 

 

 

For the Haloa, we did a simple feast in honor of Demeter and Dionysos.  We got local produce and locally made foods from a nearby farmer's market, as well as a bottle of sparkling blackberry mead and a bottle of "Dionysos" wine.  The beverages were from Total Wine - the Dionysos wine was even from Greece.  It was very good!  I expect to be getting it again for devotional activities. (The same label also has a "Hermes" wine that I want to try.)  The food was all wonderful, although the carrot and acorn squash soup I made was a little spicy!  We shared the food with the gods on a temporary altar... Dionysos was represented with the statue usually on my shrine, Demeter with some sheafs of wheat.  We played a variety of music, including some of the early (especially otherworldly) songs by múm, and selections from Stereolab's Not Music and Wisp's We Miss You .  It was quite lovely.

 

I have so more to blog about, including a devotional day to Dionysos we had last week, the dream I had last night, the Lenaia that we're celebrating tomorrow... not to mention other things I've been meaning to talk about, including ecstatic postures and Ariadne.  Things are buzzing...