Activities for Lenaia

Lenaia falls on January 25-28th this year.  It will be my 11th year observing!  Here’s some ideas for celebrating and observing that I came up with for my students.

• Watch Dionysian-themed movies and plays 

• Mix wine with water for both drinking and offering (You could do this throughout the festival, although typically I only do it during my formal rites on the last day)

• Set up a mask on a pillar to represent Dionysos - decorate with draping cloth, lights, ivy, etc - put an offering bowl in front of it to pour libations into

• Say prayers to the nymphs, nurses, and Lenai/Maenads

• Say prayers to Persephone and Semele who birthed Dionysos

• Have a procession through nature and/or through your city - pour out offerings of wine onto the earth to find their way to the Underworld

• Connect with the land spirits - ask for the their permission and help in calling forth Dionysos’ blessings to the land, and in preparing for Anthesteria

• Visit a vineyard so that you can taste how Dionysos manifests in the grapes of your region - whisper prayers to the dormant grape vines while you're there

• Make feast foods - give portions to the gods and spirits 

• Play music

• Ask Dionysos to speak to you through music and put your music on shuffle - dance to whatever comes up

• Dance like you're seducing the god 

• Dance like the spring depends on it

• Rattle, blow a bull horn, swing a bull-roarer, ring bells, play drums

• Call on Dionysos as "Iacchos" and "Son of Semele"

• Get a wicker basket (Liknon), place symbols of fertility within it, and leave it veiled until the last day of the festival or your final rites

• Stare into the eyes of the mask until you think you're going mad

• Scry into a bowl of wine and water that’s been blessed

• Make a mask

• Make a thyrsos

• Make devotional art

• Weave an ivy crown to wear during the festival

• Burn herbs, especially evergreens and resins and aromatics (pine, rosemary, copal, frankincense, myrrh, mint, juniper, citrus peel, sage)

• Pay attention to omens and messages in nature, music, everyday life

• Draw the Greek delta symbol (a triangle) in snow, in chalk, in the earth, etc as a gateway through which Dionysos will emerge come Anthesteria (borrowed from Sannion)