Wednesday, August 26, 2015

The Daemon speaks to the Eidolon

There is this idea out there, foreign to me, that true love will never break your heart.

But I would have you know -- true love will break your heart many times, and every time.

How could it not be so?

Do you think you could step fully into the glory of it, and not be utterly transformed? And in the transforming and tempering, not be torn apart, if only to be remade into a better vessel? Love is an act of courage. Yet you must become unarmed - strip away the armor that you might have gotten so used to that you thought it was your skin. It will hurt. It will be messy. And it will be ongoing.

The secret is, if you would be open to this sort of Love, then you must also love the breaking.

Saturday, August 22, 2015

She pauses for an immeasurable moment, then as if returning from a deep abyss, she speaks...




"You don't understand yet, but maybe someday you will. That this life...all of this... is just a story. A story that is sometimes a myth. And in those rare moments that you step off the normal narratives into the mythic one, it is no longer about you, me, or him. It is about Them. In the sublime light of divinity cast across the web of time, when we can see this pattern unobscured by our own fears and limitations, all questions dissolve. You see that the whole universe dances on the turn of a 'yes', and always has. A yes that you've been saying all along even while you fought tooth, nail and heart against reflections. Thinking you were alone. Doubting the meaning behind it all.

"Yes... Dionysos loves Ariadne.

"Do you doubt this?"




Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Help the Bakcheion



I am getting more and more excited about Many Gods West!  Can it be true, that in just a few short weeks, I actually get to MEET these people?  Those who have inspired me and those I have been privileged to conspire with?  It's hard to put into words how much this means to me.  It feels like it will be a culmination of all the trials and work of the last 2 years. And perhaps the beginning of a whole new phase.  All I know is that two years ago today I didn't even think I'd still be here.  But I am.  Life is crazy, my friends.

The community effort towards putting on an epic Dionysian ritual at the conference are still underway, but there's just 20 days left.  You can help!  Donate if you can, or if you can't donate money, then please spread the word!  We're still under 25% of the funds needed.  Funds go to the cost of getting the organizing members there and for ritual supplies and offerings.  There's some pretty nice perks as well.  (The one I'm contributing is a special blend of anointing oil.)  The fundraising page is here.

We've been ambitious in our vision.  But I have faith.  This needs to happen.  And it will be deep and cathartic and reverberating for many.

Thank you for anything you can do.  Really, truly, thank you.  


Friday, June 5, 2015

As I write, thunder shakes my house

Do the gods know our thoughts?
If not, they must know our hearts.
     .....

When on the verge of tears--
I must be doing something right
For beauty overwhelms,
I chase it like receding, teasing waves
     like the tide,
Yet it catches me by surprise.

Once you see your past for its perfection,
You may wrap all faith around your future.

But beware of daydreams--
     The gods live in those too.
          And yes, they will remind you.
               Oh yes, they will remind you.



                   


Thursday, May 14, 2015

Meaningless measurements of time

An anniversary of an event seems like a pale and silly thing, in light of you and your LIGHT--the person you are and have been, which pervaded and transformed everything. And certainly all that I am. Not an event, just you. You who lived in such beauty and intention, I would not dishonor you by focusing on the unintentional. No, I wrap myself about all the other times, and the timeless... How do you make an anniversary of an eternity, anyway? (And so many exquisite eternities we shared.) Short answer... you do not. You just love, and remember, always. 

 There is not a single moment that I do not



Thursday, May 7, 2015

Klexos



"Maybe we should think of memory itself as a work of art--and a work of art is never finished, only abandoned."

From The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows

I'm relating to so much of these that it makes me wonder how neurotic I really am.  Such as:

exulansis

n. the tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it—whether through envy or pity or simple foreignness—which allows it to drift away from the rest of your life story, until the memory itself feels out of place, almost mythical, wandering restlessly in the fog, no longer even looking for a place to land.

Check it out... it's a rabbit hole.  I support whole-heartedly the effort of naming the minor melancholies that we all feel but don't often have the proper poetry to give voice to...



Sunday, May 3, 2015

Maiuma 2015

On the night of the Maiuma, a festival to commemorate the joining of Dionysos and Aphrodite… A night of love, passion, revelry and baptism...

I shouldn’t be surprised… that one of my favorite bands are playing the same night.

I shouldn’t be surprised… that the singer of the band tells me that she thinks of my husband often, even though she only met him twice, and we speak in depth of love and death.

I shouldn’t be surprised.... that a total stranger asks me to talk about sexuality and the nature of unconditional love as I’m sipping strawberry beer.

I shouldn’t be surprised… that being the only person dancing on the dance floor is still worth it.

I shouldn’t be surprised… that another stranger tells me my dancing made the night even better for him.

I shouldn’t be surprised… that the band ends up playing 2 ½ sets because the other two bands cancel at the last minute.

I shouldn’t be surprised… that the night smells like rain and nostalgia.

I shouldn’t be surprised… that my mom remembered to buy me strawberries so I could make something special for a feast.

I shouldn’t be surprised… that wine and cider make a lovely combination.

I shouldn’t be surprised… that hot baths still make my heart pound.

I shouldn’t be surprised… that I have tears left to cry, though they are not happy or sad, but something else.

I shouldn’t be surprised… that the three red candles on the altar haven’t burnt out yet.

...

I shouldn’t be surprised… that I can still be surprised at all.  But I hope I never stop.








Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Many Gods West!

I'll be attending the Many Gods West conference in Olympia this year, for those who may not have heard!  The conference has a really amazing lineup of rituals, panels and presenters.  I've joined the planning group that is putting together an ecstatic ritual to honor Dionysos.  Having the opportunity to participate in something this big for the gods and to be able to worship side by side with friends I've only spoken to online is... well, words cannot say, but I'm beyond thrilled.

There's a few different fundraising things going on for this, for both supplies and costs of getting people there, including clothing you can buy on Cafepress with 2 different designs created by Markos Gage.  One is a thyrsos with a snake in a triangle, which form the first three Greek letters of Dionysos' name, the second is a Starry Bull design. If you're attending, it would be great to wear at the conference. If you're not, it's still a good a way to support the Dionysian ritual we'll be doing and simultaneously add something devotional and snazzy to your wardrobe.

Sannion is offering a few different services that you should definitely take advantage of, if you can.  Also, if you donate $50 or more your name will be included as a blessed benefactor in a small booklet we'll be creating to hand out at the ritual, which will have some devotional prose, art and information about the Bacchic Orphic tradition.

Another divination offering to help with this community effort, is here at Joyous Madness.

I plan to craft some very special pieces to help raise money, as well.  More info about that soon!!


Tuesday, April 21, 2015

An old poem I wrote, for my beautiful desert

I've lived in one place my whole life--a desert valley in Arizona.  Being a native is somewhat unusual, especially in this region.  I'm used to people denigrating the desert as ugly and harsh. People move here for one reason or another and complain, loudly and frequently...  About the heat of course, and things like "there are no seasons" or "there are no trees".  Neither of which are true, of course. They just don't take the time to see.  Which I can understand, if you're used to soft greenery... and if you're homesick.  The desert accentuates homesickness even when you're not sure what you're homesick for, and not many are comfortable with that.

I relate to my home.  I relate to having a disposition which is blunt and sometimes aloof... with a prickly history, which takes time to understand.  Always longing for something, always leaning towards extremes.  My husband, who was also born here, showed me the art of paying attention to the subtleties of the desert.  When the ocotillo blooms, when the toads emerge, how you can tell the season by the scent of the night.  It's not a coincidence that this was also when I learned more about myself than I ever have.  

Natural Psychology

Twilight, and the orphan desert
is thick with remembrance.
The secret wail is born in grey spaces--
the growing shade beneath stunted trees,
the desperate angle of a canyon wall,
All aching for what once formed it.
In the eons behind our eyes,
We never forget our ocean mother.

Rebel child, resentfully creates
things with armor and spines,
things that thirst but survive.
Even the wise were once abandoned ones,
left to elemental weathering.

As each weary stone rests between incarnations,
the night creatures mourn...
"We can do this alone, we can do this alone."


The monsoon rages at the realization--
the most defiant art is still imitation.
Valleys like immense dry seashells will sing
for a searing, sonorous wind,
while serpents contemplate old reflections.
Among venom, thorns, tears and bitter blood,
A pilgrim on his knees prophesies:
We may embody Her graceful evolution.

The rain carries with it such divine stillness.

Sunrise, and on a current of longing,
Two hawks fly swiftly towards the always-sun.



 

Tuesday, April 14, 2015

Hunt Festival

Last Monday and Tuesday was the Hunt Festival for the Thiasos of the Starry Bull.  It’s a brand new festival for our emerging tradition this year, and we came up with some ideas for celebrating based on where it fell in our calendar, since it’s unfixed and, like our month names, based upon divination.  This year, it’s in the springtime right on the tail of Easter in the month of Dionysion (he of Mount Nysa), so an Orphic egg hunt seemed appropriate!


I had been having nudges the week prior to go visit my mountains.  One of these nudges came in the form of a deja vu-like intrusion upon my thoughts while I was at work, which I’d never quite experienced before from the spirits of a place.  Not words or even images exactly, but the total feel of those particular cliffs and skies just washed over me.


The weather in the city and the valley has been getting very warm, so I didn’t quite expect how chilly it would still be up there.  I even found a bank of snow on the winding road up to the rim.  At the top, it was very windy but beautiful.  I went not to the most sacred of places where Ariadne’s festival and my wedding took place, but to the adjacent place where I went on my husband’s birthday after his death… I think of it as a place of turning points for me, and that seemed appropriate on this day.  

I hugged the trees and greeted the Mountain Mother.


The location I ended up choosing for a shrine was inside a little grove of baby pine trees.  They reminded me of a small labyrinth because of their meandering configuration.  It also seemed 5-10 degrees warmer there, which seemed like a good sign as well.


From the ground I gathered some moss, pinecones, a piece of blackened wood, shed bark from a pine tree, pine needles, small flowers (there were only a few tiny ones), and some tufts of mullein.  On the piece of wood I placed 2 raw eggs into its natural grooves. The rest I arranged around it into a rough likeness of a bearded image.


There was a precise moment, as I finished setting up the shrine and getting the last supplies, where a felt a shift and the forest was suddenly full of presence. It actually stopped me in my tracks for a moment.





I began by intoning Dionysos’ name.  Over and over.  


DEE OH NU SOS. DEE OH NU SOS. DEE OH NU SOS.


Then called to him in spontaneous words, heart-driven and flowing, sometime shouting.  As it tends to happen with those bursts of inspiration, I cannot remember them all now but I wish I could.   On the other hand, I feel like their surrender are an offering as much as the wine poured on the ground.  I called on the Mountain Mother next, then offered smoke and libations and toasts of wine to all the gods and spirits of the Starry Bull.  And then to Spider, because one of her children had crawled into my drum as I did this and had to be gently evicted so I could use it to drum up some energy.


Using the dice I consulted the Oracle of Dionysos Bakcheios - I started with 12 slips of paper, one line of oracle for each egg, then once that was completed I felt compelled to do another set so each egg could have 2.  I also created an extra slip of paper that just said “Dionysos”. My thought at the time was that it would add a special significance to that answer and question.


My overturned drum became the vessel from which I could draw the folded slips of paper and distribute them.  Then it was my basket for the eggs themselves.  I smoked some diviner’s sage.




As I hid the eggs, I stayed in a close radius to the shrine and hid them in such a way that they would be in plain sight from the right angle. But I didn’t think too much about this and was definitely in an altered state as I did it.  Back at the shrine, I blew the bull's horn three times. I wrote down a question, asked it aloud, then spun around in a circle and went the direction of whichever way I was facing to search for the answer, choosing the egg I saw first.  Then I would come back to the shrine, open the egg and write down the answer and do it all over again.  But I hid them from myself better than I thought.  It took a really long time to find the 10th egg, and when I did it was the one with Dionysos, so that seemed like a good indication to stop -- especially since the sun was beginning to go down at that point.  


Some of the answers were clear, some were less clear for now but even those had definite significance.  The last 2 eggs are still up there somewhere... their answers apparently meant for another time or person.


Before I closed the ritual, I took an extra raw egg I’d brought and rubbed it over my body as I prayed for cleansing, release and healing.  It didn’t start as a chant but it built up into one… until I was shouting and then with one forceful movement broke the egg against the base of the shrine.


I took a picture of the darkening sky before I left.  




I regretted not staying to see all the stars come out, but I hadn’t brought warm clothes as it was and the temperature was dropping quickly.  But spring has barely begun, and I’m sure I will be drawn back before too long.


Tuesday, March 10, 2015

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.


Sunday, February 22, 2015

Katharsios


Night-Reveler, Heart-Revealer
When I slip between the warm blackness
of life-at-large and life's own solipsis,
you dance with me.
you dance
without me even knowing.
you're gathering me all about you.
piecemeal, with tender violence.
i smile, i grimace,
black and white ribbons
alternating through your fingers.
my graceful Savior
you're making mosaics from the shards of all my failures.
my despair you place into negative spaces--
two, for each eye, and they seem to see
deeper and deeper.
i'm still hanging onto you, this vine,
this song, every beat of this chest drum,
repeating by moments, fractaling outward,
fruiting for each time I've loved
and i think, in spite of my greenness
it's all so much--dark purple streaks of desire,
glittered with tears,
alchemical blood... oh my lover! I know not what I'm becoming,
yet You, you balk at nothing of mine, nothing I am,
Bright Bull, Starry Artist of my Undoing,
our interactions frame all of this in evergreens
so that, at the End (which is and is not) you might ask--
"Now, my dear one, would you like to gaze upon your own mask?"



(A response to Sannion's challenge, and to Dionysos and life in general, after an emotional evening.)