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.

Pithoigia

Leading up to Anthesteria I was very emotional and filled with uneasy anticipation.

After setting up the festival altar and doing some opening ritual, I head back to the mountains I visited on Lenaia, drinking wine as I hike.  It could not have been a more beautiful day.  Cool but not yet warm, with a slight breeze, clear skies.  It is not yet the riot of flowers I was hoping for, but there are hints here and there.  So small and unassuming, you might not notice them at all if you were weren’t looking.

I see a patch of wildflowers that have yet to bloom, the sunlight hitting them in a particularly glowing way.  I wonder at the force which brings them up from underground, and I hear, “I will bring you up from underground, too.”  My eyes fill with tears. I drink more wine.

Shouldn’t things seem more real, out here, outdoors in the sun and in nature?  Things seem slightly out of focus, slightly unreal, even if I stop and take a moment, the feeling intensifies. I’ve noticed this before, but never quite verbalized it to myself.  It’s as if the whole scene, from the details of the tiniest weed to the stretch of mountains before me, is a shimmering mask.   I’m reminded of my birthday in 2011 where everything was so incredibly real and unreal at the same time (the vibration beneath things, as I phrased it then), although I’ve had little wine at this point and nothing else mind-altering.  If I let it, this realization could be a bit terrifying, in a whole “If this isn’t real then what is?” sort of way.  I suppose I’m used to it, but I wonder if this is a common experience… (Maybe my Khoes experience from tomorrow is echoing backwards.  That happens sometimes.)

I gather creosote while I’m out, and once I’m home I scatter all the branches onto the festival shrine, and it all smells like rain and loveliness...

Continuing my tradition of creative endeavors on Pithoigia, but deviating from the usual mask-making, I did some painting with cheap acrylics.  Nothing special, but I had fun doing them while drinking and listening to music.

Lovingly titled, respectively, “The God with Marigold Eyes” and “Fuck, There’s a Flower in My Snake Garden”.

I should mention, that I actually FOR ONCE got my playlists in order before festival hit. So that was nice (and when it came to Khoes, absolutely essential to that experience).

I love feast day food.  I had gone to the farmers’ market and gotten organic produce, homemade bread and hummus, even edible flowers!  The only time I make lamb is on Anthesteria, and so that was also part of the feast, slow cooked in wine and honey with root vegetables and fresh herbs.

In the late evening I watched an Eddie Izzard DVD I’d never seen before, and laughed quite a lot.

I forgot to take a picture of all my wine bottles before they were spent, but here’s a picture of what it looked like later…  Two were local ones (Page Springs and Tombstone), one was from Greece and had flowers on the label, and one was called Cult.  Yeah, I just liked the name.  Also this is the order I drank them in, because I’m weird and that seems important.