Interlude

My love, sometimes the train stops unexpectedly.

You move at a steady pace for a while. You get used to the rhythm, the noise, the velocity. But even the most stable and well-adjusted trains end up stopping. 

And as all the cargo of your past comes crashing from behind you and the momentum of your expectations freeze to the needle’s eye view of the present with all its attending sharpness, you wonder if it was just a spacial illusion anyway.  You could have been standing still the whole time.  Maybe it was the world outside that was moving all along.

Was that what it was like for you sometimes?  So much progress feeling like so little?

I’ve been organizing. Metaphorically. Literally.  Found myself having plans for the future, a set and sense of possibilities for the next year, even farther on… and even more than that, talking about them with hope and expectation.  Then cleaning off my desk, sorting through old papers that have been stacking up for the last year and a half.  

I stumbled across and reread the autopsy report again.  With different eyes (because they are so, so different than the ones you used to look into) I read how they made a stranger take you all apart.  You and I knew each other so intimately, and now… now I know how much your organs weighed, what they found when they cut you up. Measurements and pronouncements, but not the answers I wanted. Not really.  The grotesque knowledge of the weight of your heart weighs on mine.

It’s so strange what puts us over the edge. Never what you expect.  

For me it wasn’t the report, it was the receipts.  Hundreds of receipts I’d hoarded that were suddenly not financial records, but proof of our days – more substantial in my hands than my memories – all the stupid and beautiful details. Things I bought to make us dinner. Receipts from our last vacation. Movie and concert tickets.  Doctor’s office receipts.  Receipts from a middle of the night trip. Silly things we splurged on.  Dates printed in fading ink, handfuls upon handfuls of them like brittle leaves from a long dead tree.  And I think, “I had this.”  Not the things we bought, not the pieces of paper, but those days – we had those. Such short and precious time.  

I remember, even during the most mundane of errands, and every car ride, you would hold my hand.

I dreamed of you last week.  I couldn’t reconcile the way it felt like so long since we had seen each other, spent time together.  I tried to express this indefinable hurt , my needs, in my eyes.  You pulled me aside from the dream nonsense and said, “Don’t you know how much you mean to me?”   I said, “No.”  Because I wanted to hear you tell me.

Even things I think are distractions have become secret agents.  Or am I just less capable of being distracted?  I feel that I’m being more and more stripped down, more vulnerable, more capable of seeing connections.  Or maybe I’m subconsciously choosing these distractions-that-aren’t, that actually turn into deeper engagement.  It hurts like hell.  I cry so easily, at all sorts of things.  I’m Alice in the hallway of locked doors waiting to see where the river of tears is going to take me.

The monument of your death has gotten no smaller.  I’ve just gotten more used to waking up to it every day and learning to live in the shade of it.  A permanent part of my landscape.  And the more its presence changes me, the less I am able to hate it.

But still, my love, sometimes the train stops.  And my overabundance of perspective caves in on itself.  

Yet… not even Orpheus could save Eurydice.  

Whatever good becomes of me is because of you.

Arachneia the First: Plants, Dreams, Stars

[The Arachneia is a festival in the Bacchic Orphic tradition I am involved with called The Thiasos of the Starry Bull.  The festival celebrates the weaver Arachne, who is considered a Dionysian heroine, and her transformation into a spider.  You might notice this cross-posted at The Boukoloen, which you should definitely check out for more about the tradition, our deities, and writings from others!]

On Friday night before the Arachneia (being our devotional day for the Dionysian Heroines), I braided/wove some purple yarn into a long bracelet while saying an impromptu prayer to Arachne under the stars. I had initially planned to hang this in a tree once I finished, but instead I was compelled to wear it as a bracelet as a reminder of her throughout the weekend.

Saturday was a bit of a wash.  I got very little sleep that morning in order to transition from my usual graveyard schedule.  I needed to be able to manage a 3 hour drive very early on Sunday morning to attend an herbal festival up north.  I don't know if that's why I ended up dreaming so vividly.  Is it better to dream at night, to receive messages from spirits and gods?  I had honestly never thought of this until now, but I've been doing the better part of my sleeping and dreaming during the day for the last ten years.  For the first time, I'm seriously considering the ramifications of this.  On the flip side, always being awake at night may be a boon for ritual/divinatory work and cultivating altered states of consciousness.  Regardless, on Saturday night, I had a very significant, vivid and lucid dream, which I shall type up just as I journaled it that day:

Dream of [my husband]. Heard him talking and his voice was so resonant and beautiful and familiar that it snapped me into being lucid in the dream. And when I knew, he knew that I knew. I reached for him, touched him, took him all in. I wanted to absorb every bit of him to fill in all the deepest holes of my grief, but the moment was both timeless and exquisitely not-enough at the same time. He was SO present, SO vivid, impossibly so!  How is it that it could be so hard to conjure his image, laugh and voice in waking moments, but here he was perfect?  I can’t remember everything we said, as I write this later in the day and after additional sleep, but if I’d woken right after I think I would have remembered every word. I know that he apologized, and without thinking, I told him it was okay, it’s all okay. I was desperate to reassure him so he could reassure me. (And how could it not be okay in THAT moment? It's the moments without him that are not.) I asked him, “You’re okay, right?” It seemed a silly question (self-evident) as I asked it, but then his lack of answer made it seem more ominous. “Please tell me you’re okay.”  I can’t possibly describe everything in his expression, the way his eyes looked away for the briefest instant as if trying to insinuate a thousand things he wanted to say but could not, a soft desperation and compassion mixed with peaceful resolve.  Yet I knew without being told that I didn’t have to worry about the dream disappearing within seconds (as my lucid dreams usually do.) I knew that this time was given to us. I know he said more, I know we had some time together, maybe even a kiss, but the details are lost -- there’s only the sense of a space of time and basking in his presence. Too soon, he was standing to leave. I asked him to stay, to do something more with me, and he made as if to do so, but then he said he could not - with a strain as if he was being physically pulled elsewhere. I walked with him only a few steps, and I realized as the distance between us grew that he followed two guides whom I hadn’t noticed before. Even in that moment I was grateful for our time but it could never be enough. I called after him, “I will see you again, right? Please tell me I will see you again!” This plea, like the other, went unanswered, and I realized with a pang that as much as this moment was a gift it was probably also a goodbye. 

In my next dream, I looked into a sink and saw what I thought were baby king snakes, although they were too thick and too short. I picked one up to show someone, wondering if it would bite. I looked down and saw a spider crawling on my hand, then fall to the ground and walk away.  The snake bit my finger, but I kept holding it even though it hurt, and starting walking down a flight of stairs...

As you might imagine, the first dream especially colored my entire day and added a bittersweet quality to my solitude.  (The round-trip was a good six hours of driving with only myself and my ipod for company.)  Yet, if someone had offered to go with me I probably would have declined their company.  The bone tablet words which I have been least familiar with seemed an appropriate phrase to focus on today.  "Peace. War. Truth. Lie. Dionysos."  To me, this one is the most stark, because it includes words that we tend to classify as negative - war and lie.  And since I use them as mantras of sorts, a part of me cringes at the inclusion of these words. But I started exploring it anyway.

The Native Herb Festival I attended was nice. It was all held outdoors, and the weather was very pleasant in the shade, unlike the 110 degree weather we've had at home.  The first class I attended was about incense-making.  Much was not new to me, but I did take some inspiration out of it, especially regarding making kyphi.  I used to think of this as overly difficult, but when she made a simple version on the spot, I felt inspired, and had an idea of making a version with wine soaked figs instead of wine soaked raisins (or both) with some pine resin and honey.  And also, using creosote (chaparral) for incense.  As much as I've used that plant for other sacred purposes, and recognized its resinous leaves, I don't know why I haven't done this yet.

The 2nd class was on kitchen witchery. There was less witchery involved, and more about mixing about what we think of us spices versus medicinal herbs in the kitchen.  I took some notes about herbal-infused honeys and simple syrups.  The 3rd class had caught my eye because it mentioned connecting with our ancestors, and it involved a sort of weaving.  It was a workshop for making rope and cord out of yucca leaves, the way that native peoples in this region would have.  It was completely hands on. We started by pounding out a yucca leaf (that had been soaked for several days) with a large smooth rock until all the fibers started to separate, then separating the fibers by hand, and then we were taught a basic weave and how to splice more fibers in so you could make it as long as you like.  It was a lot of work, but at the same time simple and remarkable that we could all end up with at least one strand of cord -- which was insanely strong, by the way!  I'm still delighted by acquiring this random bit of knowledge.  A few people I've mentioned it to have asked if I plan to use this and what for.  Honestly, I have no idea, but I'll figure out something.  It's a scratchy fiber, not unlike hemp, but a friend of mine suggested treating it with beeswax and I think that's a great idea.

At the festival there were a handful of vendors, and the arboretum itself was selling native plants in pots.  I went a little nuts and bought 6.  These were: coyote tobacco (nicotania attenuata), sacred datura, comfrey, Canyon grape (Vitus Arizonica), New Mexico Vervain (verbena mcdougalli), fringed sagebrush (artemesia frigida).

I had no idea there was an Arizona grape, or that you could cultivate datura (usually I see them die off every season in the desert). And how could I resist a nicotania that is named after Coyote?  I fully admit that my patio is getting a bit ridiculous at this point, with all the cactuses and plants.  Everything is in pots because I don't want to plant in the yard of the rental house I'm in.

On my way home, I stopped in Sedona to have dinner. I really wanted to see the stars while I was there, so I killed some time before sunset and then found a good spot to lay some blankets out on a slope, meditate and enjoy the view of Cathedral Rock.  The spot I picked had a spider web next to it, so I figured that was a good sign.  There is also a dead tree there -- a good hanging tree, I think.  I smoked an herbal cigarette and drank a kombucha beer (an actual 7% alcohol kombucha -- brilliant), pouring out a good portion for libations, of course. The edginess I had felt all day had brought me here, to an edge, literally.  In this quiet, numinous place-time, I could let it come to a head. 

A hyperreal state settled in, the sort where my mind rebels at the absurdity of life (absurd! absurd! absurd!) like a knock on the door, one that the things on the periphery start answering to with restless movements.

The stars are slow in their reveal.  But the first sense I make of them is the corona borealis directly overhead.  I had had trouble spotting it this last year, but there it was.  I remember how when I had planned my own version of an Ariadne festival that this was my one confirming marker for placing Her festival sometime just after midsummer, because that is when the crown was highest.  I still feel that Her energy is the strongest in the summer - specifically, the height of summer and the descent into the autumn.

As it got darker, I heard a pack of coyotes yipping in the distance.  I realize my state is a bit more altered than I thought, when I feel that instead of having a sky suspended above me, that I am myself suspended above the sky.  Strapped to the earth for now, I hang, but when the earth lets me go I will fall into the heavens like a pool of water.  I see a shooting star just below the corona, and it seems to last forever.

Peace. War. Truth. Lie. Dionysos.  Eirene. Polemos. Aletheia. Pseudos. Dionysos.  εἰρήνη. πόλεμος. ἀλήθεια. ψεῦδος. Διόνυσος.  In Greek, all strung together, you'll find it actually sounds harmonious.

I had an epiphany a couple months back, and I think I was reading Rhyd Wildermuth's blog at the time, where I realized that even though during much of the last year I have prayed for peace, I am actually not even sure if that's what I want.  I find myself bouncing back and forth between extremes, peaceful and emotional wreck, grounded and then ecstatic, depressed and then inexplicably happy.  Do I want peace?  No, not always.  In the thrill of these extremes, and in-between them, as difficult as the transition can be, is where I find myself, and the god...

The god who is the tension between opposites, the god who is behind the mask and is the mask.

When I eventually go to leave, I almost forget but then remember, to take off the purple bracelet and hang in on a tree with whispered thanks.  I don’t know if my dreams are true, and I still don’t know Arachne too well, and it’s a long drive home alone.  But there are innumerable stars for company.

The Dark Night: Grief, Trauma and Loss of Faith

Like anyone with something precious to lose, I used to sometimes think, What would happen if the worst happened? What would happen if the person I love most suddenly died?  How would I react?  

I could never think about it for long--it seemed too morbid, too frightening, too taboo to consider.  Even in intimate conversations with my husband, we would feign assurances and promises that we would die together, that way neither would leave the other behind.  I say “feign” because we ultimately knew we had no control over this, of course, and we actually had a very vivid, near-constant awareness (and subsequent gratitude) for every precious moment together, an awareness which seems rare when I look around at other couples.  Still, we knew that dealing with the death of the other would be too much to bear.  (Indeed, I’ve barely survived his death, and for all his strengths I doubt he could have survived mine.)  But I did assume that, should the worst happen, I would fall back on my faith and religious practices pretty hard, because that is what was most important, comforting and meaningful to me.

The stark reality was a little different, or at least not so simple, and I've only recently begun to sort out enough of that process to begin to discuss it.

Before my husband’s death, I thought I had a decent grasp on death, even a (sort of vague) theory of what happens to the soul, and what the point of this life and death cycle is.  But afterwards, when I tried to grasp any of that when I needed it, I couldn’t.  After my husband’s death, nothing was a “given” anymore.  All the work I thought I’d done had unraveled.

You hear a lot of people say that, after the death of a loved one, that they no longer believe in a god who would “let” something so horrible happen.  I was not so naive as this.  Not even angry, really.  But I was still spiritually floored.  Up was no longer up, down was no longer down, and most importantly…I was no longer me.  

I will say that again, because it is very important, and literal in a primal, emotional sense.  In an instant, my identity had changed.  So too had my “place” in the universe as I knew it, as if I’d been picked up from the path I knew, and put unceremoniously into the middle of the woods, where a new pathway would have to be cleared.  I've ended up mourning not only his loss, but the loss of the person I was as well.  

What did this mean?  It meant re-evaluating EVERYTHING from my new place and personhood.  My thought-process at this time was not so clear, however, just this profound sense of disorientation and confusion along with the shock and pain and terror of grief--and subsequent self-criticism that the well which had once been full was now empty.  If I was angry at anything, it was at how little I really KNEW, how little resources I had, and how little modern paganism deals with death in any real way. We’re supposed to be a path that acknowledges the shadow side of things, that doesn’t flinch at death, and yet… what has that given us?  The metaphorical, poetic Death-that’s-just-a-new-beginning à la the tarot? Or the seasonal death of a vegetative deity? Or the vague and slightly childish concept of the Summerlands (you know, like heaven but groovier!)?  Or reincarnation? (Not exactly a comfort to think that a loved one’s soul would be immediately reborn in a way that would forget you entirely.) This all seemed so aggravatingly meaningless in the face of finding the corpse of the person who was, only the day before, your most intimate and beloved companion.  What was his spirit going through in the hours and days after his death?  How could I help him, ritually or otherwise?  At what point does he “cross over”, and what does that really mean?  And, being in a faith that interacts with gods and other spirits, how can we still interact with our beloved dead?  Shouldn't we be able to?  I wanted real and practical, not pretty and polite metaphor.  I felt like I had to assure my husband’s well-being before I could even BEGIN to tackle my own. I suppose that’s just instinct, which does not die as easily as flesh does.

Even now, I want to say, “What the fuck, paganism?” when it comes to these topics.  It isn’t enough to wave our spooky fingers and say that no one knows for sure, or that it’s highly personal.  If our religion cannot handle these topics, then is it really fulfilling its purpose?  I find it hard to believe I’m the only one who’s had these thoughts.  Seriously, correct me if I’m wrong, but the only book out there about death and paganism is Starhawk’s The Pagan Book of Living and Dying.  And it wasn’t just the questions about death itself that were difficult, but my grief felt unique by virtue of my faith, in a way that I wasn’t able to completely discuss with a typical counselor.

And then there’s the really hard questions that I didn’t even want to admit I was having…

Did this happen to me because I worship Dionysos, because he wishes to challenge me in this way?  

Did this happen because my husband was himself Dionysian in nature?

Had I done something to offend the gods?  

In the immediate days after my husband’s death, I felt like I could not approach the shrines of my gods.  Something repelled me, and I felt guilty over it, like something was wrong with me.  It wasn’t until later that I considered the miasma I would have naturally had, and that my instincts were probably correct, but it was still difficult at the time.  I couldn’t even drink wine..  (Yes this was significant, for me. I’m still not sure if it was an intuitive sense of wrongness at the thought of using something so sacred to my god as an escape, or if I knew it would just take me down even darker avenues of my psyche. Maybe both.)

I did rituals for him, because there was no one else I trusted to do them...and I did them alone because somehow they felt too intimate to share. Whether or not this was ideal, given my state at the time, I can’t really say. I did a ritual the night before he was supposed to be cremated, to assure that his spirit was completely released from his body.  Later, I did a more in-depth funerary rite, with petitions to the gods and a large amount of offerings.  This was a trial in every way possible, including physically, as I walked at least a mile into the desert at night with a very heavy suitcase of ritual accoutrements.  (I think I was half-hoping to get bitten by a rattlesnake.)  During that rite I was mostly looking down into the pit where my offerings were placed, or through my tears into the darkness, but when I finally raised my head and whispered my final thanks to the gods I saw a shooting star.  The way it responded to my words and actions at just the right moment made it a very moving omen.  Lastly, for his public life celebration (memorial), I had help from a couple other friends but I still wrote and put together the ritual aspects myself.

The couple months after that are a blur now but were excruciating at the time. I thought of suicide a lot. My husband’s birthday came around in August and for some reason, I did the hardest thing I could think of.  I went camping alone, which I had never done before, in the same place we had exchanged our private vows.  It was a significant turning point… the first time I did any Dionysian ritual since my husband’s death.  There, I found what I can now see was an incredible omen, a single pantherina mushroom.  Later that night, I imbibed entheogens, and literally walked to the edge of the cliff and thought for a long time about the shadowed crossroads in front of me.  Then I turned around, built a fire, stripped off my clothes and did what mad maenads do in the woods.

But in all honesty, every apparent turning point or decision in grief has need at least an extra couple months to really integrate.  In fact, I’ve spent the better part of a year being scared.  Me, who considered herself a Dionysian.  I used to be scared of death.  But now I welcomed it, and I was scared of everything else… the future especially.  Sometimes the only words I could manage to offer to Dionysos, in shame and desperation, were… “I’m so scared. I’m terrified of life.”

I don’t think I got any spiritual bearings (or sense of the gods) again, truly, until the Lenaia.  (Eight months, if you’re counting.)  And then Anthesteria.

It’s getting better.  I’ve realized even in the last couple weeks that I’ve been calling myself “a wreck” as a sort of defense mechanism, but in reality, I am not a wreck any longer.  I’m coping, even though it hurts to admit it sometimes. I’m having a hard time letting go of the idea that coping somehow diminishes the depth of my loss and my love.

I’m still not where I want to be, as far as finding answers to all my questions. Deep down I am desperate to gain enough clarity and skill to find those answers.  Unfortunately, desperation tends to be more of a wall than a window.  But I HAVE begun putting together what I believe, which has been a work of intuition and prayer as well as research and simple choice.  It’s easy to have faith when it’s easy, when you feel blessed.  When life kicks you in the ass… well, then faith takes on a new definition entirely.  There are times you have to take it on faith that you have faith because you can only feel pain.

Other than simply sharing my story, my most important point about a Dark Night is this:  Forgive yourself. You have not lost your faith, or the gods, although it feels that way some days. You have lost your Self to a new Self, and she must find her footing, first, and then find her own way forward.  (Not back, because we can never go back, can we?)  It’s hard because you have all the same memories, and it seems like it should all work the same… but it doesn’t, not exactly.  Luckily, the gods always know where to find us, and seem more than willing to meet us halfway no matter which way we walk.  But walk halfway, we must, even if it feels at first like we are simply going through the motions.  This is about making space for the sacred again.  You can’t renew your closeness to the gods if you don’t make time to sit at your shrines, pray, visit a sacred place, or otherwise turn your attention outwards again.  (It will feel different in some ways, keep at it.)  Within a month after his death, I had a shrine for my husband - it took me a little longer to cultivate a daily practice with it, but that has become essential to my equilibrium.  I believe, too, that omens appear when we are too numb for subtleties, although the full import of one may not sink in until later.

Another important point, reach out to spiritually like-minded friends, or acquaintances.  There was a very scant handful of such people that I was able to talk to in the hardest weeks and months that followed, and I cannot emphasize enough how critical that was for me.  You will have questions, doubts, concerns, may need help with divination or ritual.  Or even for simple reassurance. I have found that, in those dark times, even those things that you are pretty sure you “know”, you still need to hear out loud, from other people.  That the person you love is okay, and that the gods have not abandoned you, among other things.  It’s a cruel irony that in such times, the more you need comfort, the more grief-sick you are, the more difficult it will be for you to feel the comforting presences that you wish to feel.  Even if you’re usually psychically sensitive, you’ll probably need to outsource for a while.  Reach out.  (And if you’re reading this and you don’t have anyone, drop me a line.)

Grief is messy.  And it doesn’t take “time” so much as it takes a lot of work. A lot of exhausting, soul-wrenching, sanity-testing work. With the physical presence of my soul-mate, my life took on this glowing meaning, this greater purpose in the unconditional love of this remarkable person, embodying a shining example of what was possible.  Now, in his absence, I have to contend with the idea that life has some other purpose for me.  A counselor told me, “You either get better, or you get bitter.”  I don’t really like the phrase “get better”, because I’ll never “get better” in the sense of some end-goal or state-of-being.  I can’t be better without him.  But in the qualitative sense of improving, strengthening, becoming more accepting of life and who I am in the face of loss, it is absolutely true.

Elevation & Rumination

I wanted to write a little bit about the elevation ritual I performed for my husband between Feb 1st and 9th. I wanted it to be during a waxing moon which is one reason it nestled up so close to Anthesteria and I haven't had a chance to write about it until now.

This is just one of the things I learned about while taking Galina Krasskova's course on ancestor work.  The lessons were a big help for me in getting started honoring the dead and I highly recommend the class if that is something you are interested in. Ancestor elevation is something you can do if you think a particular soul is troubled or distressed, but can also just be done to send them love and energy for peace and well-being. 

My desire to do this came after my birthday in November, when I'd had an incredibly vivid, lucid dream of my husband telling me, among other things, that he was sad and lonely. Whether this was a projection of my fears or not, I felt compelled to do this for him. At best, it would help his soul heal. At worst, it would just be an big showy display of how much I care about him, and there's certainly no harm in that.
 
Because the altar needed to be left out on the floor for 9 days in a row I actually set it up in a walk-in closet.  My brother's cat has been an absolute terror lately and I didn't trust him to not desecrate it.  Although this was done for practical reasons, I rather liked "opening the door" at the start of each night's ritual. Sitting on one side of a doorway and having his altar be on the "other side" later struck me as very symbolic.  This is what it looked like:

 

I can't really describe how soothing it was to me to look at this altar with all the white and the flowers.  I hope he found it as comforting as I did.  More than once, I would open that door and sit down to perform the ritual and I felt a very profound timelessness, a feeling as if I had been doing this same ritual not just for a few days, but for months... or always.

I said prayers to Dionysos, Ariadne and Arianrhod, each ending this prayer with "I entreat you to open the ways of blessings between myself and my beloved... Protect Him and keep him in your realm, and if he becomes lost or sorrowful, remind him of your mysteries, and your love, and the love of those who still remember him." I modified the prayers for the elevation very slightly, and called to spirits, ancestors and guardians who were special to him or watched over him, both particular ones I knew and any in general who wished to help.

I also added a prayer that was a blend of several of the prayers and instructions in the Orphic gold tablets.  (I've been reading a book about them - Ritual Texts for the Afterlife by Fritz Graf & Sarah Iles Johnston -- and I find them to be powerful and beautiful.)

Every day I tried to have a special food or drink offering.  The first night it was a specialty beer that I'd bought before he died and wanted to share with him.  Another night it was special chocolates I'd found, one with honeycomb and the other with mushrooms.  On another it would be a donut and Dr. Pepper (favorites of his).  Twice, it was a full meal.

Another offering, perhaps the most significant, was music.  I played all the records of our favorite band.  And yes, actual records, most of which are rare and were painstakingly acquired by us during the time we were together. This act of offering the music was actually really really hard for me.  We used to lay down together and just bask in these songs, and even in those most exquisite moments, the beauty of it would threaten to overwhelm us.  In fact it is so personal, so deeply and achingly *resonant* to the beauty of our relationship, that I almost don't even wish to share the name of the band.  Like I wrote during Anthesteria, music is a pathway, and this pathway happens to wind through the most intimate and precious parts of my soul and memory.  That we both adored this music, could find the eternity in it, was a metaphor for our love of each other, for the miraculousness of finding one another.

Each day I did the ritual it felt a little different.  Some days were more emotional than others. I can't say there was exactly a progression that I felt.  In fact, if I had to make such a judgment, I'd say that things sort of culminated somewhere in the middle -- at a point where I could actually feel myself being a conduit of the blessings bestowed by the spirits around me.  The energy flowed into me and then through my heart chakra and towards my husband, or at least my focal point on the altar for him.

Although I didn't consciously plan for it to happen this way, the urn that I had had custom painted for him arrived on the 6th or 7th day. So as part of the last night's ritual I transferred his ashes into the urn. I was glad to have this gift for him.

I had asked for certain specifications with the urn but how it turned out was a total surprise.  I burst into tears when I first saw it because it was so perfect.

Some footnotes to this... There have been a lot of things before and since the elevation ritual that have been significant to my grief process and mourning.  I don't know if I could possibly list them all.  Major ones include getting a couple tattoos with his ashes last month, which didn't involve as much physical pain as I feared and hoped for.  Anthesteria was somehow both a blessing and a trial.  There were loud and clear messages of hope from Dionysos, but I felt my husband's absence more than ever.  I put my whole heart into the festival, and my heart felt the stress of it.  A friend's divination told me it's time to come out of mourning, so of course I rebelled and fell into another pit of despair, or a "spiritual temper tantrum" as I've taken to calling them (since I know better than to despair and it's really just the same emotional riffs to the key of I can't/I won't/I don't want/I will never...)  But I came out of that dark place quicker than usual. I found a book I was obviously meant to find that put things into perspective while at the same time one of my best friends had a vision that reiterated the same perspective/message for me.


In short, I have to move forward.  That was another thing given to me during the Aiora, while walking the labyrinth.  We have this idea in life of an infinite number of paths to take and sometimes that freezes us into a state of panic and indecision.  But there's only one choice of action in the labyrinth.  You walk or you stand still.  The path is already there, whether you perceive the pattern or not, whether you have faith in it or not.  And I think that's truer to life than we know.

Lenaia 2014

So I had been chatting with a friend the day before the Lenaia, and mentioned working on some last minute preparations. She said something to the effect of being glad that it was work I was up to doing. It hadn't occurred to me in this context (as being optional) and I said so.  I was running a fever every day of the Anthesteria last year and I was still drinking, gathering flowers outside, trying to do devotional craft work, ritualizing, feasting, drinking more.  She said that was remarkable, but I told her, simply, that I love my god.  And like when you are in love with someone, it's never "enough" at any point, it's an ongoing process of expression and becoming. 

I've had friends and family commend me for doing things, in spite of my grief -- for attending concerts, going dancing, seeing plays, traveling, celebrating festivals -- and it's been a really difficult thing to verbalize a response to.  My emotional response might translate to a strangled yell of "how can I not??"  It's not easy, granted, but everything I love demands it. Dionysos demands it. My love for my husband demands it. But not in a demanding way, it's just... these are the things that hold me to this world, that create moments that make life worth it, that put me in touch with who I am and remind me of all that I love and have loved.  I have come across more than one unique complication of being a grieving Dionysian; that's one of them.  There is no luxury of disengagement.  

Onto the festival itself...  I love to see plays on the Lenaia; it seems particularly appropriate to this festival.  Although I didn't begin ritually until Monday, I went Sunday night to my favorite local theater, and it was a nice way to ease into the festival.  The play was "Take Me Out" performed by Nearly Naked Theatre.  I'm quite glad I saw it in spite of it being about baseball (I have no interest in sports whatsoever), but it was appropriate in other ways, with its themes of queerness and identity, not to mention a lot of male nudity. I didn't expect the actual showers of water to come falling from above the stage onto the actors during the shower scene -- pretty cool for such a small production!

In the interest of recording my success AND failures, I'll share that Sunday night I tried to get some confirmation via divination on how to proceed with the festival. I had certain activities and ideas in mind, but timing-wise, I wasn't sure about the order.  I tried a couple different decks, re-framed the questions a couple ways, but was unable to get any remotely clear answers. I even threw the dice a couple times to try and get something clearer... nope.  I'm decent at giving readings for friends, but I've never been particularly good at divining on my own behalf. I was still disappointed, as I had hoped a clear purpose and question would have yielded some hints.  I could think of 3 reasons that it didn't. 1) I suck. (Lack of skill or fumbled the session somehow.) 2) The god did not have a preference. 3)  The god wanted me to use my intuition instead.  Whatever the reason, I just went with my intuition and hoped for the best, which in the end seemed fine.

I ought to mention, too, that a few months ago I acquired a new phallos for Dionysos' shrine and ritual use.  The old one was clay, but I had been wanting to find a wood one for some time.  (I also want to hand-carve one of fig wood, but that will be a project for when I encounter a generous and suitable fig tree.)  This one I found on Etsy and knew it was perfect...  It is absolutely stunning. It's made from rowan wood found by the sea.  I have been anointing it and preparing it since before but especially during the Rural Dionysia.

Day 1:  

I felt drawn to honor Semele and the nymphs with more emphasis this year.  A major aspect of the Lenaia, for me, is about the love, reciprocity and mystery in the relationships that Dionysos has with women.  So the very first thing I did after setting up the festival altar was give an offering to Semele (benzoin incense), read her a hymn, and ask for her presence.  Then I made a mindful procession to a park a mile away, listening to Daemonia Nymphe the whole time, which definitely put me in an other-ish mindset.  For whatever reason I went to the park to the east instead of the west, which was a longer walk but had me walking towards the moon. When I got to the park I meditated for a bit, poured out milk and honey and burned incense for the nymphs, and read them a hymn.  The sun was setting while I was there.  Perhaps this liminal time added to the strange otherness I was feeling. In spite of the natural setting I had a hard time grounding myself.

Back at home, I prepared for the main ritual and bathed.  I rubbed myself with flying ointment, had some lotus tincture (which subtly intensifies and compliments the effects of wine). The ritual outline itself was very similar to last year's, but the tone was different this year. The raising of energy over the Liknon was more pronounced, more sensual. After the water and wine flowed, I stared longer into the mask... into the space beyond the mask, into the god's presence and non-presence.  I remember speaking to the mask, although I don't remember everything I said.  The music (like last year, on shuffle) was more bizarre, maybe less light-hearted, still meaningful -- it went hand in hand with the sort of emotional roller-coaster I went through staring into that mask.  There was an important message there that I experienced, although I'm not sure how much I can verbalize it.  (A poem, yes, a poem is needed.)  I danced.  I wept heart-wrenchingly one moment, smiled the next.  I danced more.  Later I jotted down, "absyrdity, absurdity, absurdity, life, life, life".

I feasted afterwards, in a daze of drunkenness and post-ritual giddiness, on a variety of locally made and grown foods.  I wound down by watching a comedy routine by Bo Burnham that Sannion recommended on his blog -- I recommend it as well!

Day 2:

The same club that I was lamenting had closed last Lenaia recently re-opened under new management and tentatively reinstated a similar, goth-friendly-themed night with my favorite local DJ.  So a night of devotional dancing was the main order of the evening.  I set my intention that it was all for Him, to stir and arouse Him.  The night was a blur, my body translating music to movement without thought.  If there were dance-floor epiphanies, I don't remember them.  I do remember a moment of gratitude in my abilities, in the time I had taken over the years to hone, through observation and practice, a style of dance that has become very ecstatic, that now flows very easily.  (She can't divine worth a quince, but she can dance at least!)

I almost feel sorry for the people who try to engage me in conversation when I take a breather. No, I'm not new to the scene.  No, I shall not remember your names or faces. I come not for the people. I come for the Dance. 

Day 3:

Where I live now, I don't have a natural, semi-wild place in walking distance like I used to.  (Oh river wash, I miss you.)  But I do live only about 10 miles away from the westernmost mountains in the valley, which are the White Tanks.  These are the mountains I can see from my bedroom window. 

It proved not very busy on a weekday, and it was not difficult to find a little-used trail and then a place not too far off the trail where I could sit in privacy.  I was surprised at how green things are getting already.  There is the barest carpet of grass that has started to come up on the desert floor, perhaps because we actually had several days of decent rain last month.  The only plants starting to bud any flowers were the jojoba bushes.  Otherwise, no hint yet of the riot of wildflowers we'll get in another month or two.

I nestled myself between a palo verde tree and a cozy mesquite tree with a lattice of branches arching to the ground.  I prepared for some impromptu ritual and more offerings.  My main intention was a challenge that had come to me suddenly, at some point during the festival -- to bring out the liknon basket and phallos from the indoor shrine to the outdoors, in view of the mountains, and to sing to it.  This was a challenge for me for several reasons.  I don't sing, and with the exception of dancing I'm not particularly off-the-cuff spontaneous.  But I did and I was, and if I remember the song I wouldn't tell because some things are best left to mystery.  Here are some pics I took afterwards walking back up the trail.

I am still, a week later, feeling a bit raw, still letting everything sink in.  I suspect the feeling will last through Anthesteria.  

My heart hurts. 

And yet.

The god I love still loves me.

I am full of doubts, because I am human. Yet in the midst of those moments when Dionysos comes there is no room for doubt. 

Here are some songs:  

The lyrics of this first one, especially, really got to me.