All 3 days included preparations in the afternoon, and outing that crossed over into twilight and sunset, and then further activities in the evening. I work a graveyard shift and keep my hours the same on my days off, so this was logical. But even aside from that, it seemed very appropriate to be out in the twilight each day, for a festival that includes light and dark and haunting elements. Also, it has always been my favorite time for its beauty and surreal in-betweenness.
I set up a two-tiered temporary altar for the festival. I do not have a Dionysos statue yet, so I printed out several images. One of Dionysos framed on the altar, and another 2 Anthesteria-themed images taped in front -- one of the Aiora with a man pushing a woman on a swing, and another of the procession of Dionysos' ship pulled on wheels. All the wine was on the floor along the bottom. Most of the time there were white, black and red candles burning as well as the oil lamp flame.
My partner joined me for most of the festival, which was wonderful. Though not a devotee of Dionysos, per se, he certainly has much respect and appreciation for him. That I can share personal aspects of my spiritual life with him is one of the reasons I love him so much.
The opening invocation was spontaneous, and much more powerful than I anticipated. Impromptu ritual often makes me nervous, sometimes even when alone. But that was, if anything, a reason that I challenged myself to do it. I can't even remember all of what I said, but the god's presence was strong throughout. But after the invocation itself, I thanked him for blessings in the past year, I asked him to bless the wine and poured the first portion out to him, and read a couple hymns aloud.
With bottles of water and wine, we then went walking in the area around my apartment complex. Despite the freeway being close by, there is a river wash and a large bridge recently built over it. A park area and ramada are all in the process of being built there, too, and I'd been wanting to explore it all. We gathered some wildflowers on the way and ran into several groups of quail. (Birds were a theme throughout the whole festival.)
One of my goals was to collect some creosote branches. Buckthorn, though traditional to Anthesteria, is not something I expected to find easily in the Southwest desert. But in thinking of the land and plants I WAS familiar with, it occurred to me that Creosote (also called Chapparal) also has medicinal associations of being cleansing and detoxifying. (Interestingly, a ring of creosote in the Mojave desert is said to be one of the oldest living organisms on earth. It is a formidable plant!) It is significant to the desert seasons, too, because of the familiar scent it releases during the rains, and I've always loved it for that reason. Rain and the smell of rain are rare pleasures here.
I had faith we'd run into some eventually. Amusingly, my partner could smell it nearby before we could see it. This time of year the creosote is greener than usual but not budding just yet. We poured out some wine to the plant while I collected some green sprigs and my partner picked out some larger, fallen branches to see if they would lend themselves to wand-making.
It got dark quickly, but there was moonlight and streetlights along and underneath the bridge. I can't really explain why I love the bridge so much. It's just... bridgey! It's a very modern construction, but it's so *between*. You could walk across it OR underneath it, and particularly underneath you get a very sudden sense of *other*. Visually, the whole little area is an interesting collision of city and desert that seems it would be a good area for magic-working. I forgot to get pictures there, but I will sometime in the future.
The mood was both fun and reverent. We kept the wine flowing, and later in the evening we feasted on assorted fruits and foods, including a leg of lamb that I had cooked in the slow cooker. Yum! We then settled down to our "crafts" for the evening while listening to music. My partner worked on his creosote wand, while I began making my Dionysos mask.
While camping earlier in the month, I had found a tree that was shedding large pieces of bark, and I had taken a couple of these with the intent of making a mask. It wasn't one I was intending to wear, so the weight of it was not a concern. But I really liked the idea of a piece of tree becoming the face of the god. Otto's Dionysos: Myth and Cult was a huge inspiration here, not only in my understanding of masks (and trees) in the cult of the god, but I also used one of the vase images in the book for the design. I wanted it to be more abstract than life-like, so it worked perfectly, though I may make a life-like one eventually. I painted the inner side with black and gold acrylic paint. Technically if you held it up to your face, the face of the god would be touching your face and the bark of the tree would be facing out. I was very happy with the final result.
While we were crafting, we also drank a special bottle of local wine we'd gotten from Jerome (on a devotional day in December when we'd gone wine tasting). Before passing out, we ended the evening by watching Eddie Izzard. I had forgotten how many jokes he makes about Greek mythology!
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