Devotions to Ariadne

I've been a bit negligent on observing devotional days and I've been trying to change that this month.  I realized that part of my problem is that I feel as if I should be able to devote a whole *day* to each one, and so when that seemed impossible, I would try to move it around, but inevitably other obstacles, and you know, life, gets in the way.  So I'm telling myself that "the day is the day is the day".  Whole days set aside for festivals are wonderful, but there's no need to be separating the spiritual from the mundane completely all the time, and in fact probably a lot of arguments FOR blending them.  I've revised my lists of possible activities for each devotional day, to include small activities as well as more time consuming ones.  And most importantly, just keeping the god/dess in mind during the day, and being present, paying attention... which doesn't take any time, simply effort!  This small change in perspective seems to be working well for me this month.

When I first started observing devotional days, the 4th was for Aphrodite.  I had a small shrine for Her as well.  Though I never had any direct experiences with Her, I felt like I couldn't NOT honor the blessings of love in my life somehow.  Aphrodite is a grand and complex goddess, with plenty of association with Dionysos.  And while I didn't feel like my offerings and prayers fell flat exactly, something just didn't click. 

Something had stuck with me that I had read in Otto's Dionysos: Myth and Cult, which was that on Cyprus Ariadne was worshipped as Ariadne Aphrodite (which to me brings to mind Ariadne as deified by Dionysos).  So with this in mind, I made some changes to my shrine intending to focus on this syncretized aspect.  I used red and black cloths, I added a snake goddess statue I'd acquired many years ago, and a round mirror for Ariadne's lunar aspects.  Admittedly now I've just come to think of it as "Ariadne's shrine", for I feel she's more complex than this particular aspect  (and likely was a Minoan deity in her own right). So I hope Aphrodite takes no offense... But it feels less as if I'm "changing deities" than that I am adjusting my practice to reflect the goddess that my heart was already resonating with, if that makes sense.  I'm not sure why I was hesitant to do this in the first place... but my experience with Ariadne has been a bit like the labyrinth itself.  She actually led me to Dionysos to begin with, in Her roundabout way, and since then I danced around Her for a quite a while before getting to this point.

I wasn't sure at first where to place a devotional day for Her... The full moon seemed appropriate considering Her lunar aspects, although it falls awful close to Dionysos', so I settled on keeping it on the 4th for now.  I realized when the day came that this is when the waxing moon looks very much like bull horns!

All that being said!  I spent some time communing with Ariadne on Her devotional day.  Offered up milk and honey, and some white wine, as well as some lotus-scented incense.  I put on some music, and sat down with pen and paper hoping to gel together some of my haphazard ideas for an Ariadne festival into something more concrete and organized.  And indeed, I wrote out a very long invocation for her and everything fell into place for the festival, which is both encouraging and exciting.  I've feel that this will be one of two yearly festivals for her.  (This one in midsummer, the second in the fall.)  But since this is my first attempt at creating a new festival, we shall see how it all turns out!  At the time of posting this, the festival is actually tomorrow! Or today after I've slept, however you wish to look at it.)

One last thing to note -- dreams have been something I've been thinking about off and on lately (including dream incubation, lucid dream states, how one might induce oracular dreams, that sort of thing).  It was not something I was thinking about while I was brainstorming for Ariadne's festival, but nevertheless, the message came through suddenly that She could be a dream guide.  And I thought, Lady of the Labyrinth, holder of the thread... well that makes sense!  I'll blog more about this as it develops.