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.

Khoes & Aiora (A True Story In Poetry)

I weave in silence.

Purple string and sticks for the Hanging Girl,

Her sorrow is mine. God, it hurts so… the whole hopeless stretch,

one tragedy after the next, knots and hopes like crushed fruit,

screams to the heavens in the weary winding circle,

around and around, fiber to finger to form,

a head and a torso, a lasso and a name,

Oh Erigone, I never knew, I never knew.

We swing with particular passion, we graveyard girls…

Always towards the moon,

except on the downturn.

I enter the labyrinth again, wine on my lips.

It’s a choice, you see, one path or no--

You walk or you don’t.

My heart skips--

I’m already remembering the future, when I trip

on a snake...

Memory in the lake,

My yearning meets your ache.

In the ivy, oh in the ivy!

we conjure shimmering syllables, coming together

in Your cavernous name.

I am a cup overpouring, wine and blood and tears,

What all Art hopes to hint at, I stare straight in the face.

There are layers in your mask, whiskers on my cheeks,

How pantherine...

petals dilate, my eyes bloom.

You laugh.  I weep.

The music plays for keeps, landscapes and leaps.

I am the metronome of this piece.

The god in the shed. I remember my death.

In these games we play, he lets me win,

just by a breath.

Silly maenad, dear...

You’ve given away your heart to a God beyond time,

Even in your most quiet moments, you are lightning-lost

Even in your motionless moments, you

are already terribly vine-tangling mad,

suckling the sacred at your teat,

blood on your flowering honeypetal hands,

the shadows of the deepest wood in your cradlegrave eyes,

wildness in your wishes, lullabies in your limbs,

all of this, never in stillness,

both heart and heartless.

(you are my favorite braveness.)

My love, you asked for this epiphany.

I did?

This is the work of Memory.

I do.

This is the Truth.

For you.

My life is a single bloom.

I’m back to walking the labyrinth again, the circuits turn at each star,

Of course Ariadne hanged herself -- of course she did!

Surrender. Choice. Surrender. Choice.

To the tree,

to your fate,

and to all its terrible gravity,

You must choose to surrender--

Sorrow is just another sort of ecstasy.

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ETA notes scribbled down in ekstasis:

"I need you to trust that your suffering is important and it's all for a reason."

"I let you see it sometimes - the whole picture. So you remember to dance, so you remember to laugh."

We are amplifying the Gods.

Like a dream

I rediscovered this the night after my husband died... this poem that he had hand-written on a loose piece of paper, tucked away in a notebook by the bed. I didn't remember until now, that he had written it this last Anthesteria on Khoes.  


it is like a dream
you and I
when we are awake
when we are not speaking
when we are just loving
when you come just moments
    from my face
when we line up in arc
and in breaths
when i can hear your dress
kissing the gravel
when I want to climb back
     on the swing with you

Anthesteria 2012

Here is my account and pictures of this year's Anthesteria.  I realize this is over a month late, but I'm posting it anyway mostly for my own record of things. 

Day 1: Pithoigia.  Our Anthesteria altar was even more lovely this year than it was last year.

And we had a lot of wonderful wine (though not quite enough, she notes for next year). Among them were 3 Greek wines.  Hermes Naoussa Red Dry Wine 2006, Agiorgitiko Erasmios Red Dry Wine 2007, and Dionysos Merlot 2009.  The others were ones I thought looked good, including a shiraz (Misterio 2010) that had a mask on the label.
 

After doing a simple ceremony to begin our Anthesteria celebration, we took a walk along the river wash, bringing with us wine and water.  Although it had been getting warmer in the prior weeks, the weather turned suddenly cold this particular day, as if winter was having one last hurrah.  Of course, "cold" is subjective for us desert-rats. It means a beautiful day where we could wear an extra layer outside.

There is something about taking a walk with an intent or spiritual purpose in mind.  It sharpens your senses and makes everything just a little bit shinier.  Or is that the wine?  Nahhh...  But I was amazed at just how much our little edge of the desert had changed - bursting into bloom and color - seemingly overnight!  Logically, I know this was not the case, I had just not been there recently to witness it, but it still seemed that way.  It was the epitome of spring in our little corner of the world.  Here are some pictures:

I could smell the orange blossoms, which is one of my favorite scents synonymous with spring.  We explored a creosote "grove" nearby, and were startled with the size of some of them.  Some of them are big Grandmother creosote, reaching over 12 feet high.  (Creosote or chaparral is a favorite plant of ours.  The scent of the resin of its leaves is what, to a person who lives in the desert, smells exactly like a rainy day.  It blooms tiny yellow flowers in spring, and Native Americans used it for its detoxifying properties.  The branches are distinctively light colored, like moonlight, and the wood is extremely hardy.)  It was from one of the Grandmother creosote that my husband found a very large, partially fallen branch to make a stang.  We collected a lot of wildflowers as well.  And we were extremely surprised to stumble across (and recognize) a sacred datura plant, with it's big white trumpet flowers!

Later, we had a large feast and watched The Doors movie (my first time seeing it, believe it or not, but I loved it.) 

Day 2: Khoes.  We observed silence during the day.  My husband finished shaving the bark from his creosote stang, and I made a Dionysos mask that I'm very happy with.  The mask face is very feminine in structure, but I painted it dark green and glued ivy, grapes and moss to it... the whole effect seems powerful and androgynous.  We listened to music, drank wine, celebrated our own creativity and each other.

Next year I plan to do a few things differently particularly with Khoes.  Set aside time for solo ritual and devotion.  Ideally, use an entheogen other than or in addition to wine.  Also, let people know that I will be unavailable in advance.  A family member wanting to reach you by phone to tell you something when you're observing a day of silence is problematic, if unavoidable at times.  My suspicions on what this news was was confirmed the next day -- my grandmother who has had cancer had taken a turn for the worse.  (And at the time of me posting this, has since passed on.)  

Day 3: Khutroi.  I made a very simple panspermia from pearl barley, goats milk and local honey.  We left some out on our patio for the wandering spirits and took some with us to leave at the cemetery.  

At the cemetery, we brought a digital recorder and did an EVP session.  Which might sound silly to some, but with the associations of the day it seemed to us to be appropriate.  Why not give the spirits a chance to speak?  And even if they choose not to, then we have still given them our respectful attention and acknowledgement.  My husband also said an impromptu prayer to Hermes that was lovely, and I am glad we have that recorded as well.  (To date, we still haven't listened to the session, but we will.)  It was strange and sobering being at the cemetery knowing that I would be returning soon, in a matter of days, to bury a family member, even though I am not close to her.  

After the sun went down, we tracked down a park with swings.  This was one big thing we did differently this year, doing the swinging on Khutroi instead of Khoes.   (Can't say I have a preference yet.)  The swings we found were in terrible need of being oiled, and they screeched horribly when we tried to swing on them.  But we found that if we swung sideways or in circles, that we could avoid the worst of it.  That turned out to be more fun and appropriate-seeming anyhow, as we made large circles sometimes almost colliding with each other and sometimes making figure eights.  We often looked up at the stars as we swung and I told my husband the story of Erigone, and spoke aloud for the first time my intent to create a festival for Ariadne.  After we finished we walked the perimeter of the park and swung our yarn dolls up into the branches of a tree.

Later, at home, we banished the keres by smudging and sweeping.  I also replaced our old creosote sprigs that had been hung over the doors from last Anthesteria with new ones.

Khoes & Aiora - Anthesteria Day 2

After waking and showering, I did my opening ritual and meditation in silence.  I was feeling rather anxious and apprehensive about the whole day - not only the prospect of not speaking until my night ritual, but also about the night ritual itself. 

 

Using yarn and some twigs I had gathered the day before, I made 3 little yarn dolls in honor of Erigone -- one black, one red, one white.  Each one turned out quite different.  I would have liked to have made more, but I wanted to get to the park before sundown. 

My partner came with me to the park to go swinging.  I chose to go to the park next to the house where I grew up.  Though only a half hour or so from my current home, it had been a while since I'd been to the area and it always feels odd to see the things that have changed and the things that have stayed the same.  I was happy to see all the familiar trees in the park, and sad to see that all the trees I'd known at the house I grew up were gone. 

When we first got there, there was a large flock of birds swooping around the western sky.  There were a couple groups of teenagers in the park but none on the swings.  We put on some flying ointment and spent some time swinging.  The sky was overcast and although we felt a drop or two of rain, it never rained outright.  I had a hard time focusing, so I just tried to pay attention to the sensation of swinging, particularly with my eyes closed.  I smoked a clove cigarette and we passed the wine back and forth a couple times.  Not speaking started making me feel like I was occupying a slightly different space than everyone else.

We walked around the park so I could look for trees to hang the red and black dolls.  (The white one I kept and later hung in the tree outside my apartment.)  I had left a long string of yarn on each, which came in handy because I wanted to get them to branches above arm's reach.  I had to literally swing them back and forth to get enough momentum to get them over the branch.  This took a few tries for each.  At one point, I dropped one and as a reached down I saw that it had fallen next to a dead bird which I hadn't seen until that point, which was a little disconcerting. 

I wasn't quite ready to leave yet, so we sat in the middle of a field (what felt like "center" to me) and faced west where the last of the sunlight was fading.  We spent some time quietly sensing the energy of each other and the earth beneath us.  I wouldn't have been surprised to see ghosts walking around in the fading light.

Later that evening after dinner, I made preparations for my ritual.  I sequestered myself, I stared into the eyes of the mask I had made, used my voice for the first time that day to call forth the god, and performed my version the hieros gamos.  And without going into more detail or trying to describe or what should only be described in poetry, if anything, for now I'll just say...

Holy fuck.

I was in a daze for a little while afterwards, time and memory playing tricks on me, and even though it was only around midnight, I ended up laying down for about 3 hours of sleep, and then suddenly waking up very alert.  I played a computer game for a while, read and recovered, then went back to sleep at 9:30 or so.  I journaled some notes for myself at some point, too, thank goodness, because even glancing back now it's amazing how easily those truer moments slip away.