You were there, in the labyrinth...

Stumbled across this song while stoned on my first batch of bhang that I made using cannabis leaves that my partner and I grew this year.  (For some reason that seems like an important detail.)  Although the song is called "You With Air", and that is the phrase being sampled, all I hear is "You were there, in the labyrinth..."  I'm going with it. 

The music video is very trippy. Esoptron/mirror vibes. 

Holy Dread

I can’t recall this topic being written about elsewhere, but I’m really curious if others have experienced this phenomenon. As far as I know, I made up the term “holy dread”, but given my poor memory I could be wrong - so I hope someone will correct me if I’m mistaken, or let me know if there’s already another term for this out there! 

Holy dread is something that I first remember experiencing in 2014, although it’s possible it happened before that and it just wasn’t as dramatically on my radar. I had gone up to my sacred mountains, the Mogollon Rim in Arizona, to perform a ritual for Ariadne, Dionysos and the Mountain Mother. I wrote about the experience here, and back then I described feeling… “a temptation to distract myself with something innocuous, and underlying that… a bubbling up of something terrifying.” 

At the time, I wrote it off as a sort of grief-fueled existential crisis. But I just journaled about it and went ahead with the ritual as planned. 

The next year I went up again to repeat the observance, as I felt it had been quite powerful, especially doing it in the summer with the Corona Borealis overhead. I added to it a bit, and decided to invite the spirit of my husband to join in. (I also did some other work to connect with him before the main ritual.) 

 This time, the feeling of dread was SO strong leading up to it, that I remember recording a video of myself on my phone “just in case” I didn’t make it through to the other side of the ritual. I knew it was a silly thought, but I couldn’t shake it. That ritual turned out to be incredibly powerful - what I feel was an initiation and blessing from the gods upon me and my husband both. 

I will also usually feel holy dread during Anthesteria before my Khoes rites, and sometimes during other festivals like Lenaia. 

So how would I describe holy dread? It’s like a weighted sense of impending and inexplicable doom that directly precedes an important ritual, trial or spiritual work. The level of holy dread can sometimes be correlated with how powerful the ritual turns out to be, but not necessarily. The weight is lifted at some point once the ritual is started. (Or I would assume, if you chose to not go through with it- although I’ve never done that.) 

I’ve experienced holy dread for rituals both indoor in controlled circumstances and outdoors in nature. But it’s only ever been before rituals that have a strong ecstatic element and involve entheogens or altered states of consciousness. However, I don’t think it’s just the knowledge that I’ll be partaking of entheogens that causes the dread. The feeling is distinct from the sort of nervous butterflies or trepidation I’ve experienced before using psychedelics recreationally. It could be something to do with the ecstatic element - the knowing that I will be giving up some measure of control and putting myself in the hands of the gods and spirits.  

When I experienced it most recently a couple weeks ago, I was by now very acquainted with the feeling, but it STILL completely bowled me over. It was so pronounced, that I was genuinely concerned for my well-being.  That’s how intense it was. I kept thinking, what if this was actual intuition this time, warning me to stop? What if this was in fact a bad idea? Were the gods trying to tell me to stop before I even started? 

So of course, discernment comes in really handy here. In this case, I performed some divination and got the green light. I also recorded a video of myself on my phone again, which is weirdly soothing. It puts a light/mirror to your own fears, and it pacifies the thinking-mind to say things out loud and put it “on record”. 

Note: When I googled “holy dread”, I re-discovered that it’s a phrase in Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan”. It’s a poem I’ve been familiar with since my teenage years so perhaps that’s where my subconscious mind grabbed it from. Apparently it's also the title of an appropriately atmospheric track from The Fountain soundtrack (one of my favorite films) - so I figured I’ll share that here:

2022 Festival Calendar

Historically I've not been great at sticking to a festival calendar, with the exception of Lenaia and Anthesteria (those I've been observing consistently for over 10 years). It's helped in the past when a festival calendar has been shared with a community, but lately I've been wanting to settle on a calendar that only includes things that feel more personally meaningful. And indeed, some of these are ONLY meaningful to me. We'll see how this sticks, but now that I'm currently finishing up the last bit of work to complete my clinical herbalist program, I'm looking forward to having more time and energy for devotional work.

Having mirror festivals in October was based on a conversation with a friend/co-religionist in my tradition. We observed the parallels of Anthesteria with observances like Samhain, and they mentioned the idea of having another festival that mirrors Lenaia. I love this idea, and I'm thinking it might blend well into an Oschophoria-type observance. We'll see... this is not fully fleshed out yet. I suspect I'll be figuring it out as I go along.

2022 Festival Calendar

Jan 14 (sunset) - Jan 18th (sunset) - Lenaia

Feb 11 (sunset) - Feb 14th (sunset) - Anthesteria

March 12 (sunset) - March 20th (sunset) - City Dionysia

• March 20th - Spring equinox: Bacchic Orphic Egg Hunt?

April 28-May 2nd (solar) - Floralia

May 4th - Alice Day

May 6-14th - Elevation Ceremony/Days of Remembrance for Anthony

June 2nd - Khariteia: Festival of the Graces

July 3rd - Dies Mortis of Jim Morrison

Near Full moon in July (13th) - Festival of Ariadne & the Mountain Mothers

Aug 8 - Day of the Beloved Trickster

Sept 21-23 - Festival of Orpheus: Poetry, prophecy, music, and honoring tradition

Oct 3-5 - Oschophoria / Mirror Lenaia:  Fire mysteries, honoring the last harvest, sacrifice, beginning the underworld descent

Oct 31-Nov 2 - Days of the Dead / Mirror Anthesteria

Nov 4th - Looking Glass Day

Nov 24th - Lampteria 

Dec 21st - Winter Solstice/Yule

Dec 22 - 31st - Festival of the Toys

Jan 1st - Kalends

I'm also assigning each month to some deeper work with each of the Toys of Dionysos, with my birth month reserved for the Agathos Daimon and December honoring all the Toys. Funny how Esoptron very naturally falls in October.

Jan: Sphaira

Feb: Astragaloi

Mar: Trochos

Apr: Rhombos

May: Strobilos

Jun: Krotala

Jul: Paignia

Aug: Pokos

Sep: Mela

Oct: Esoptron

Nov: The Agathos Daimon

Dec: All the Toys