Anthesteria 2019

Pithoigia
The Opening of the Wine Jars

This was my 2nd Anthesteria away from my home state and my first Anthesteria in a New England climate. I was blessed to be able to spend some time outdoors each day. Although the weather was not ideal, it was not downright prohibitive or hostile, even though there have been days since then that could be described that way.

I began my Pithoigia just before sunset, at a small riverside park near my home. There’s a lot of snow on the ground still, although the day was unusually warmer (highly 30’s into the 40’s). It would have been smarter to have snowshoes, but I managed fairly well without.

At the riverside, I said some opening prayers and sounded my bullhorn a few times. I opened the first bottle of wine and shared it in libation on the frozen earth. There are no flowers yet, not even a hint of a sprout. But there is the dream of spring, the promise of it in the less-freezing weather, and certainly the desire for it. And of course, Dionysos can be found in every place and time. 

I walked and chanted, and suddenly remembered I had spontaneously altered a chant to Dionysos a couple years back specifically for this day. I can’t recall how that one went, be this one settled into:

“Come with the wine pots,
Come with the flower petals,
Come with the restless dead,
Dionysos, come!

“Come Anthesterios,
Come to us Bakcheios,
Come to us Lusios,
Dionysos, come!”

I did some tree-pulling at the top of a small hill -- something I’ve experimented with here and there, having found it depicted in Minoan art. We can only speculate on what it meant to the Minoans, but I’ve found it to be a nice way to commune with the land and trees, especially while dancing outdoors, but also in more quiet meditative moments. “Tree-pulling” is a weird term yet oddly descriptive. I usually grasp a smaller tree by its trunk and let the rest of my body fall back and sway back and forth, usually switching hands on the upswing. It’s especially thrilling if you do it near a cliff’s edge or on a hill. Tree-pulling is not unlike swinging but without a rope, expressing a natural rhythm that thrums under the surface. The practice invites your consciousness into tree-time, to notice things like the wind or the way the bare branches fractal against the cloudy sky. Old and elemental are these mysteries of the Mountain Mother.

As I walked back, I whispered to the trees (modern maenad to the Nymphae): “Dionysos is here!”

In a stroke of good fortune, I had acquired about $50 worth of fresh flowers for free from my work at the last minute, and it made my shrines at home quite beautiful.








A part of me always hopes to create something lovely on Anthesteria (it’s when I’ve made some treasured devotional pieces in the past). It doesn’t happen every year, though, and I found myself just needing to unwind and let go this time, so I honored that inclination. I played around with watercolors a little but mostly I just spent the evening listening to music and drinking an amazing bottle of Amarone wine I’d been saving for over a year.

My feast foods were wonderful. One of the reasons I got a later start in the day was that I spent time making mostly-homemade baklava (I bought the phyllo dough.) I made it because I adore it, but it’s also a perfectly symbolic dessert for Anthesteria. Layers of dough and chopped nuts akin to layers of the soil and gravel and earth. Then soaked in honey and a bit of rosewater to symbolize the flowers. I also added chopped figs, for even more of a Dionysos association. It’s the first time I made it and it turned out wonderfully; I think I can make it even better next time now that I understand the process better.



Aiora & Khoes
The Swing & the Wine Pitcher

Traditionally, I spend Khoes in silence until my ritual in the evening, so that my words are reserved to exclaim the epiphany of Dionysos. But it has other benefits, too. It releases the pressure of much mundane interaction, and allows me to keep my mind on what’s holy. Throughout the day it’s as if I’m gradually disengaging with the “normal” world and by the time night rolls around I’ve already got a solid foot in the spirit realm. It’s not a bad way to honor the hanging girls for the Aiora either, which is what I spend the first half of the day doing.

I made paper cut outs of the hanging girls this year instead of the stick and yarn figures I’ve made in the past. I also learned to tie a noose-knot with the rough craft twine. I was very happy with how they turned out, and putting them on paper allowed me to write on them, so I wrote poems as well.

Remember Erigone
Beloved of Dionysos
Grief-struck
She swung on the tree
by her graceful throat
suspended like a ripe fruit
between
earth and starry heaven

Remember Ariadne
Beloved wife of Dionysos
Keeper of holy mysteries
She surrendered her mortal body
to her immortal daemon
on the isle of Naxos
So she might wear a crown of stars

Remember Arachne
Beloved of Dionysos
Weaver who knew her worth
She pays penance web by web
The Spider Queen
of primal wisdom.

I went to a park I hadn’t been to before, nestled in a quiet neighborhood. It wasn’t exactly private but probably due to the chilly weather, I had the place to myself and no one bothered me. I poured out wine, listened to music I associate with the hanging girls while swinging between setting sun and rising moon. How is it that this always strikes me anew, every year... This feeling of being in the axis of a lunar/solar seesaw?

I took breaks to hang the girls, one by one, and place a daffodil in the snow at the base of their trees. A bit of sympathetic flower magic, if you will. Some red wine in the snow like spilled blood. I stayed until the bare trees took on that eerie quality of negative space, and the stars started peeking out through the spidery branches. By that time the moon seemed impossibly bright and I was fascinated by the way the moonlight was casting tree shadows on the snow -- not something I had experienced before.

















I prayed to the land spirits for a time, and then returned home to prepare myself for my Khoes ritual.

And what can I say of that, that could possibly do it justice? I am reminded that there is always more levels to ekstasis, and there is always more to surrender. There is the god of many masks, and then there is the god triumphant and manifest - without metaphor - who simply is and is right fucking here.

Alethia meets soma.

I am filled with awe.








Khutroi
The Pots

On my way to the graveyard, I couldn’t help but notice how the light seemed different. It seemed to glow a little brighter, as if I was seeing reality through a different filter.

The cemetery was a large and beautiful lakeside one. New England cemeteries are something else. Older, of course, and more atmospheric, with a lot of unique memorials. Unfortunately there was so much snow I couldn’t wander as freely amongst the tombstones as I normally would have, and it was colder than the previous two days so I didn’t linger overlong. But I did say a prayer to Hermes, poured out wine and left flowers in various places - and of course left the beans and grain panspermia I had cooked for the dead.















In the evening I went to a wine tasting party I had been invited to by a coworker. (Believe it or not, I nearly declined the invitation because I was going to be too busy observing a Dionysian festival… before realizing how ridiculous that was.) It was great fun. It was a group of 8-10 people coming together for the primary purpose of sharing a love of wine for a couple hours. And for me, there’s nothing quite like the giddy buzz you get from tasting a variety of wines. The most unusual was a 10 year old sparkling rosé that smelled like a sweet port but tasted like a dry champagne with strong notes of wild mushrooms!

Back at home I wrapped things up by burning some banishing herbs and bidding the keres to depart. And that was my Anthesteria.

Festivals that have been celebrated over many years tend to invite you reflect on the past and how things have shifted and evolved in life in general. But I've also found that they set the tone for what's to come. That being said, I'm very much looking forward to seeing what the rest of the year has in store.

Anthesteria 2015 Recap

Pithoigia

After setting up the festival shrine, I went walking in the river wash near where my husband and I used to live. I had remembered the last time Anthesteria fell late in the year like this it had been such a pretty explosion of flowers, seemingly overnight, in this wash.  But every year is different.  This year, many plants were popping up but not blooming yet.  Still, there was no shortage of blooms… there was the fiery orange flowers on the stalks of globe mallow, the yellow petaled flowers of the brittlebush, and the delicate folded creosote blossoms, as well as the sunny puffballs on the sweet acacia trees.  I also smelled the orange blossoms for the first time this year, which means it is officially spring (in my head).

Things were different in this place though.  Whole trees under the bridge where there had been no trees before.  Unfortunately that was the only pleasant change.  There was much more dirt bike tracks, some encroachment from nearby development, and more trash--more than I could put a dent in on my own.  And on another level, it just… wasn’t mine anymore.  I knew that intellectually, I think, but in coming back I suppose I needed to resolve something about that on a deeper emotional level.  (Like revisiting the park of my childhood on Anthesteria several years ago. Does Anthesteria bring forth the ghost of our past just as it does the ghosts of the dead?)  It did make my heart ache, just smelling the spring from there, though - it’s very particular, and of course particularly reminiscent of the best couple years of my life.  

There is perhaps something about this festival in regards to the intersections of time.  I remember thinking on Lenaia that the more deeply present you are in the moment, the more noticeable the shadow of death (any wonder that our death-fearing culture is all about distraction?)  To be fully present in the moment is to be the witness of the moment constantly dying and birthing the next - every hour, every minute, every second.  And nothing pulls me into the present moment quite like this festival, when everything seems particularly brighter and stranger somehow.

As I walked, I remembered a particular memory from a almost 2 years ago, that may be connected to some healing I’m trying to do now… which I will write about at a later time.  Nevertheless, it was illuminating and I was glad for it.

I found a spot that was nice enough to sit and spend some time in.  I said some impromptu prayers to Dionysos to begin the festival, blew on my bull horn, and poured out some white wine onto the desert floor.

I was happy to see bees were buzzing in the creosote bushes.

As the sun went down, I gathered some flower stalks and creosote branches and made my way home, where I adorned the shrine with these things and began the festival proper.  I put on music, and began working on some art.  In the past, I have made masks or painted.   With no particular art plans this year, I took out my acrylic paints from last year and started opening some books and looking online for any images that spoke to me.  I found one of Dionysos and Ariadne I liked, and although it seemed overly ambitious, I figured I’d give it a try…  I sketched in pencil then began with paints.  (All while drinking, of course.)  I was actually pleasantly surprised how it turned out.  I might do this in the future with other vase images.

(I had playlists of music that I had created last year for each day of the festival - a ready-made convenience which I expected to appreciate, but instead almost completely abandoned this year. For some reason putting things on shuffle seemed to work better.  I think, if anything, I’ll have to create a new set list each year because each Anthesteria has a distinctive feel to it.)

My feast this year was incredible.  I had gone a little nuts at the farmers market.  Cheese, zaatar bread, flat bread, tomatoes, tangerines, grapes, edible flowers, greens, olives, baba ganoush, pomegranate jelly, baklava…. AND goat.  This was the first time I’d tried goat, and I had slow cooked it all day in milk and honey with some fresh fennel tossed in.

I had splurged on a REALLY good bottle of wine this year.  It had been so long since I’d had a bottle like this -- in fact, I’m not sure I’d EVER had a bottle like this -- so complex and aged so well that it was velvety and sensual and it almost made me not want to eat any of the great food I had because I wanted to have that beautiful, unspoiled first taste on my tongue again and again and again...

I shared it in libation and felt grateful to be alive.  (A feeling which is itself a gift.)

 

Khoes

Some part of me was aware of it raining all morning as I slept.

As usual, I spent the day in total silence.

I did some divination because I wasn’t feeling sure about swinging. And indeed, the div was strongly against swinging, and i got the sense that I needed to focus more on the sacred role I would take on in the evening.  Feeling a little sorry I wouldn’t connect with Erigone like I did last year, I instead spent some time finishing my art from the day before, and walking the streets and parks of my neighborhood and communing with the energy of the land.  During my walk (which was very chilly, compared to the temperate weather on Pithoigia and Khutroi) I came across large puddles of water in the park and couldn’t help but be reminded of the marshes of Dionysos Limnaios, and ponder the significance of places where water meets earth.

All during the festival there were some really majestic, dramatic clouds, the three dimensional sort that seemed both far and close in such a way that lent a peculiar vastness to the sky. Sometimes they were like lumbering ships, and sometimes they seemed like distant mountains.

And then the night’s ritual… which can’t be spoken of, except in poetry.

 

Khutroi

Reflecting on Anthesteria now, I see an inversion in mood and energy compared to last year (and past years).  This year, Pithoigia had a sort of uncharacteristic somberness to it.   And where last year Khoes had been busy and full of heart-wrenching and revitalizing epiphany, this year it was calmer and focused and yet left me totally exhausted.  And the usually miasma-filled Khutroi ended up being… well, uplifting.  

A friend had done some divination for me before Anthesteria that indicated I should change how I observe Khutroi, and explore more deeply my feelings for the dead.  

I took some flowers and leftover feast day foods to the cemetery and had a picnic in my favorite spot where the hedges give a bit of privacy.  I took off my shoes so I could feel the cool earth with my toes.  It was peaceful and pleasant and comforting.  I then started making some flower crowns from the flowers I had brought.  A friend sent me a message to check up on me, and I told him what I was doing.  He said something (sincerely) about it being romantic.  And that made me smile, because it was romantic - being present and surrounded by the bones of the dead and the spirits who had joined me, while sharing food and weaving flowers and enjoying the spring day.  I felt much more at home than I had at the river wash on Pithoigia.

I wove a flower crown for myself and one for the dead.  The one for the dead I tossed up unto a tree branch -- throwing it perfectly on my first try, which seemed like a good omen!  

I visited my grandmother’s grave before I left too. We were never close, and I’m not even sure how she felt about me, but I find it easy and natural to send her love now.  I put some of the last flowers and creosote sprigs on her gravestone, along with a strawberry and some wine.

At home, I spent some quality time at my husband’s shrine.  I put on a record of some of ‘our’ music and I shared the remainder of the *really* good bottle of wine with him. And then i did an exercise that my godmother had given me to do several months ago but I hadn’t been able to bring myself to do until now - I did some journaling/automatic writing in the form of a conversation with my husband.  The goal being to open myself up to both him-in-memory and hopefully (eventually?) him-in-spirit.

It seems like the simplest thing.  But emotionally, it was one of the hardest fucking things ever.  It was an act which tapped into a huge tangled ball of fear in my chest, with threads like “But what will it say about me, or him, if it doesn’t work at all?”, “But how can I even trust myself….”, “This isn’t enough, isn’t enough, isn’t enough….I need to really hear him and not pretend to hear him...” and “What if I’ll know this is a big joke and he really isn’t okay, or there, at all?”  And other even less rational things that can’t be put into words.

The whole time I cried, a torrent of tears that couldn’t be stopped.  But the words came too.  And even his voice came, in my head, with very little coaxing.  It wasn’t easy, and it hurt so much that I wanted to run away even while I was transfixed.  But it also made me smile a little, and the ball untangled a bit.  I promised I would do this again.

I opened his urn.  Looked at his ashes-that-used-to-be-him.  Put a pinch in the very last of the excellent wine, and drank it down.  

I have a project I’m working on that I’ve been calling “devotional performance art” that will involve the dead and theatrics and fortune telling all at once.  I had realized about halfway through Anthesteria that Khutroi would be a good day to well and truly begin, to try and summon that persona and bless it.  So I did my first version of her in makeup.  She isn’t completely coming through yet, but it is a beginning and it felt right to have begun.

So with my own face made into a mask that would have even the goth kids looking askance.... I said to the dead, “So do you want to go dancing?”  And so we did.

I was aware of them all around me as I danced.  I remember that awareness more than anything, because otherwise I tranced the fuck out.

I stopped at the swings on my way home.  I sat on the swings for a moment, but it still didn’t feel right.  So I walked the labyrinth instead, then went home, smudged and spirit-swept out the Keres, and collapsed.  

Hermes subsequently did not get his panspermia until the next morning.  I’m hoping the dear trickster didn’t mind too much.

*

I have a deeper understanding of how this festival allows me to put myself into accord with the seasonal shift.  In the weeks preceding it, my mood had been lagging behind, in a lull of grief more suitable for winter -- so much so, that I felt resistant to seeing some of the first flowers the week before Anthesteria.... That thrust of life, of warming up and speeding up, of moving forward-ness, of involvement and engagement, it can be jarring.   Anthesteria is the crossroads where past meets future, life meets death, spring meets winter, and where we learn how to say yes to all of it at once.

Khutroi

When I wake up, I dress in black and make some food for the dead…

I cooked up 8 different grains and beans that were in my pantry, and added some raw milk and raw honey.

I meditated for a bit, opened my last bottle of wine, and headed for the cemetery.  While driving there, my thoughts were going in circles, revisiting the night before, the past and the future, what I know and what I don’t know and all the sore spots in between, and I brought myself to tears several times before I even got there.  

I left my crown of creosote that I’d made the day before in the central tree of the cemetery, then made a wide circuit, pouring out wine and water as I went, murmuring soft greetings to the graves I passed.  A small detail struck me more than usual this trip -- the way that people buy joint gravestones or plaques and have their names on there but leave the year of their death blank in the meantime.  How strange this seems to me, these blank spots, just waiting for the person’s number to come up.  Practical, yes. Still, absurd.

The weather from Pithoigia to Khoes got suddenly warm (go figure!) and the weather today was also very nice -- as in, no jacket needed and I was quite comfortable in sandals.  I stumbled upon one rather curious bench that was not dedicated to any particular person, but simply to love.

After pouring out the porridge beneath a hedgerow, I burned and sprinkled tobacco, and burned incense.  I did another EVP session, as my husband and I had done on Khutroi two years ago.  I listened to it straightaway, but didn’t pick up anything.  I really have no idea if only those who haven’t crossed over yet can communicate in such a way. My husband and I would wonder about this, but besides him I’ve never met any pagan paranormal enthusiasts who could debate this topic with me. (I also wonder, can you theoretically capture EVPs of other spirits? Gods?)  If nothing else, the session got me talking out loud and into a receptive state.

I said a couple hymns to Hermes, left some coins at a hedge boundary.  I felt a sudden fondness for Hermes, perhaps because His trickster nature reminds me so much of my husband. (Which would come up later, too.)

I continued my circuit of the cemetery after that, picked up debris and poured out more offerings.  The sunset was very pretty and by that time I had the whole place to myself.  But it hit me as I looked around from the center of the cemetery to the hundred and hundreds of graves spreading around me, most with their own bunches of imitation flowers… No, I didn’t have the place to myself.

On my way home I stopped at my dad’s band rehearsal.  I had declined the invitation initially, because of Anthesteria, but suddenly I knew I needed the company and the experience.  I love that my dad is in a band.  Playing in a band is how he met my mom, back in the day.  Also, that’s where I get my excellent taste in music, in case you were wondering.  I had a really nice time, and felt much inspired to pick up my own musical pursuits again.  (Did I mention they did a Doors’ song too?  Yeah, they rocked.)

Back at home, I sat at my Anthesteria shrine again, and did one more thing… I listened to that EVP session from two years ago.

I had never listened to it before.

We had always meant to.  It just never happened.  And then he died, and I didn’t feel like I could. Hell, I wasn’t even sure I was going to make it up to and through Anthesteria… but if I did, I knew that this would probably be a good time to listen to it.  

And, it was okay.  No spirit voices, unless you count my husband’s coming back to me through the years.  It was nice to hear his voice. Not as painful as I expected, just nice.  He had said this spontaneous prayer to Hermes, and while I was listening to it, it just hit home… how devout and spiritual he was. And I don’t think many people saw that side of him, because of how intensely personal it was to him.  But we were lucky enough to share that with each other.  And listening to him, I thought, surely the gods and his guides would take care of this soul! This soul who loved them and just plain fucking LOVED so much.

I transcribed it, word for word, this part of the that session that turned into an impromptu praise of Hermes:

“Hermes Khthonios, I give praise and honor to you today.

Remember us.

Remember us remembering you, and our praise of you,

And our praise is Love.

I've recognized your work in my life,

I've been the receiver of your casual gifts.

You've changed the way I look at things.

I've always appreciated your luck,

I've always appreciated you gambling on me, and with me.

Anyone with a mind that is of the gambler's mind,

they know that they deal with ill fortune just as much as they do good fortune--

it comes with the territory.

Thank you for all the small things that have reminded me

that luck is a two sided coin

and pain doesn't last forever.

Praise be to Hermes!”
 

Well I got through the session without weeping, but not writing about it without weeping. Oh my beautiful poet.

And how strange to hear his voice say that death will come to all of us soon enough, as he talked to the dead.

Then this girl with the still-beating heart banished the Keres and hung up creosote branches in the doorways.  And now I’m going to go take a cleansing bath.

Just love, little flowers, just love.