Lenaia 2014

So I had been chatting with a friend the day before the Lenaia, and mentioned working on some last minute preparations. She said something to the effect of being glad that it was work I was up to doing. It hadn't occurred to me in this context (as being optional) and I said so.  I was running a fever every day of the Anthesteria last year and I was still drinking, gathering flowers outside, trying to do devotional craft work, ritualizing, feasting, drinking more.  She said that was remarkable, but I told her, simply, that I love my god.  And like when you are in love with someone, it's never "enough" at any point, it's an ongoing process of expression and becoming. 

I've had friends and family commend me for doing things, in spite of my grief -- for attending concerts, going dancing, seeing plays, traveling, celebrating festivals -- and it's been a really difficult thing to verbalize a response to.  My emotional response might translate to a strangled yell of "how can I not??"  It's not easy, granted, but everything I love demands it. Dionysos demands it. My love for my husband demands it. But not in a demanding way, it's just... these are the things that hold me to this world, that create moments that make life worth it, that put me in touch with who I am and remind me of all that I love and have loved.  I have come across more than one unique complication of being a grieving Dionysian; that's one of them.  There is no luxury of disengagement.  

Onto the festival itself...  I love to see plays on the Lenaia; it seems particularly appropriate to this festival.  Although I didn't begin ritually until Monday, I went Sunday night to my favorite local theater, and it was a nice way to ease into the festival.  The play was "Take Me Out" performed by Nearly Naked Theatre.  I'm quite glad I saw it in spite of it being about baseball (I have no interest in sports whatsoever), but it was appropriate in other ways, with its themes of queerness and identity, not to mention a lot of male nudity. I didn't expect the actual showers of water to come falling from above the stage onto the actors during the shower scene -- pretty cool for such a small production!

In the interest of recording my success AND failures, I'll share that Sunday night I tried to get some confirmation via divination on how to proceed with the festival. I had certain activities and ideas in mind, but timing-wise, I wasn't sure about the order.  I tried a couple different decks, re-framed the questions a couple ways, but was unable to get any remotely clear answers. I even threw the dice a couple times to try and get something clearer... nope.  I'm decent at giving readings for friends, but I've never been particularly good at divining on my own behalf. I was still disappointed, as I had hoped a clear purpose and question would have yielded some hints.  I could think of 3 reasons that it didn't. 1) I suck. (Lack of skill or fumbled the session somehow.) 2) The god did not have a preference. 3)  The god wanted me to use my intuition instead.  Whatever the reason, I just went with my intuition and hoped for the best, which in the end seemed fine.

I ought to mention, too, that a few months ago I acquired a new phallos for Dionysos' shrine and ritual use.  The old one was clay, but I had been wanting to find a wood one for some time.  (I also want to hand-carve one of fig wood, but that will be a project for when I encounter a generous and suitable fig tree.)  This one I found on Etsy and knew it was perfect...  It is absolutely stunning. It's made from rowan wood found by the sea.  I have been anointing it and preparing it since before but especially during the Rural Dionysia.

Day 1:  

I felt drawn to honor Semele and the nymphs with more emphasis this year.  A major aspect of the Lenaia, for me, is about the love, reciprocity and mystery in the relationships that Dionysos has with women.  So the very first thing I did after setting up the festival altar was give an offering to Semele (benzoin incense), read her a hymn, and ask for her presence.  Then I made a mindful procession to a park a mile away, listening to Daemonia Nymphe the whole time, which definitely put me in an other-ish mindset.  For whatever reason I went to the park to the east instead of the west, which was a longer walk but had me walking towards the moon. When I got to the park I meditated for a bit, poured out milk and honey and burned incense for the nymphs, and read them a hymn.  The sun was setting while I was there.  Perhaps this liminal time added to the strange otherness I was feeling. In spite of the natural setting I had a hard time grounding myself.

Back at home, I prepared for the main ritual and bathed.  I rubbed myself with flying ointment, had some lotus tincture (which subtly intensifies and compliments the effects of wine). The ritual outline itself was very similar to last year's, but the tone was different this year. The raising of energy over the Liknon was more pronounced, more sensual. After the water and wine flowed, I stared longer into the mask... into the space beyond the mask, into the god's presence and non-presence.  I remember speaking to the mask, although I don't remember everything I said.  The music (like last year, on shuffle) was more bizarre, maybe less light-hearted, still meaningful -- it went hand in hand with the sort of emotional roller-coaster I went through staring into that mask.  There was an important message there that I experienced, although I'm not sure how much I can verbalize it.  (A poem, yes, a poem is needed.)  I danced.  I wept heart-wrenchingly one moment, smiled the next.  I danced more.  Later I jotted down, "absyrdity, absurdity, absurdity, life, life, life".

I feasted afterwards, in a daze of drunkenness and post-ritual giddiness, on a variety of locally made and grown foods.  I wound down by watching a comedy routine by Bo Burnham that Sannion recommended on his blog -- I recommend it as well!

Day 2:

The same club that I was lamenting had closed last Lenaia recently re-opened under new management and tentatively reinstated a similar, goth-friendly-themed night with my favorite local DJ.  So a night of devotional dancing was the main order of the evening.  I set my intention that it was all for Him, to stir and arouse Him.  The night was a blur, my body translating music to movement without thought.  If there were dance-floor epiphanies, I don't remember them.  I do remember a moment of gratitude in my abilities, in the time I had taken over the years to hone, through observation and practice, a style of dance that has become very ecstatic, that now flows very easily.  (She can't divine worth a quince, but she can dance at least!)

I almost feel sorry for the people who try to engage me in conversation when I take a breather. No, I'm not new to the scene.  No, I shall not remember your names or faces. I come not for the people. I come for the Dance. 

Day 3:

Where I live now, I don't have a natural, semi-wild place in walking distance like I used to.  (Oh river wash, I miss you.)  But I do live only about 10 miles away from the westernmost mountains in the valley, which are the White Tanks.  These are the mountains I can see from my bedroom window. 

It proved not very busy on a weekday, and it was not difficult to find a little-used trail and then a place not too far off the trail where I could sit in privacy.  I was surprised at how green things are getting already.  There is the barest carpet of grass that has started to come up on the desert floor, perhaps because we actually had several days of decent rain last month.  The only plants starting to bud any flowers were the jojoba bushes.  Otherwise, no hint yet of the riot of wildflowers we'll get in another month or two.

I nestled myself between a palo verde tree and a cozy mesquite tree with a lattice of branches arching to the ground.  I prepared for some impromptu ritual and more offerings.  My main intention was a challenge that had come to me suddenly, at some point during the festival -- to bring out the liknon basket and phallos from the indoor shrine to the outdoors, in view of the mountains, and to sing to it.  This was a challenge for me for several reasons.  I don't sing, and with the exception of dancing I'm not particularly off-the-cuff spontaneous.  But I did and I was, and if I remember the song I wouldn't tell because some things are best left to mystery.  Here are some pics I took afterwards walking back up the trail.

I am still, a week later, feeling a bit raw, still letting everything sink in.  I suspect the feeling will last through Anthesteria.  

My heart hurts. 

And yet.

The god I love still loves me.

I am full of doubts, because I am human. Yet in the midst of those moments when Dionysos comes there is no room for doubt. 

Here are some songs:  

The lyrics of this first one, especially, really got to me.

Dionysos in the Woods

 

It was the 30th anniversary of my birth, a new moon, and a solar eclipse (albeit not visible in this part of the world) all in one day.  It seemed like an auspicious time to follow an oracle from Dionysos to "go to the forest."

 

I went alone, to an area whose energy is dear and familiar to me, though finding a place where I might have some solitude without hiking too much was difficult.  I had precious little daylight to work with by the time I reached the place, since this was only a day trip.  I settled on a place not far from the road but out of sight, with a steep hill next to a creek.  Offerings in tow, I hiked down, over the water and then up.  My plan was to get over the hill or to the top of the hill, but this proved impossible.  It was steeper than I thought, and my step was still unsteady from my still-healing foot.  

 

 

 

A little more than halfway up the hill I had to stop.  Left with little choice, I picked the oldest, most impressive looking pine tree in the immediate vicinity and sat with my back to it and the creek so I would not slide down.  The sun and I were in just the right position for me to see all the normally invisible, now illuminated, strands of spider webbing in the trees and brush before me.  On the rising ground in front of me I fashioned an altar from a piece of tree trunk and put forth the various offerings I had been told to bring: eggs, a phallos, wine, flowers. And for my head, a crown that I fashioned of floral lights and ivy for an Ariadne costume a couple years ago, that has since had a permanent place on my shrine.  The sensation of gravity pushing me into the support of the old tree, with the sharply rising ground and the setting sun in front of me, was a strange one.  But I felt secure and secluded.

 

 

 

I called on Dionysos.  I immediately felt the fullness of this place--just how much is going on both visible and invisibly, in constant vibration.  I poured out wine to Him, drank wine, shared wine.  Later that night, I wrote about my experience:

 

Dionysos is the god of nowness, the god of this moment. Nature itself is vibrating, breathing, exploding, ecstatic with energy all the time. He is not just the next time you drink wine or the next time you dance, he is the intense and tragic-wonderful experience of being alive NOW that is simply waiting for your awareness. What is your greatest joy and your greatest sorrow right now?  He is in both.

 

I smoked a little leaf of diviner's sage.  I sensed the vastness behind the nature I knew, the death behind the life.  There was a glimmer of fear, but only a glimmer reserved for the unknown, for the overwhelming idea of "void".  But that only pushed me more into a feeling of deep love.  Somewhere around this time, I realized that I'd been digging my fingers into the soft soil and squeezing it through my fingers, over and over and over, with all this love and sorrow pouring through me.

 

Myself as a priestess of now, of the present moment. Overwhelming love for this earth, its physicality, its dimension and sensations and beauty. This is why I am a Dionysian, why I would be a Bodhisattva -- I would wish always to return to this. 

 

Dionysos' associations with nymphs, with nature, and with death all coalesced into this sudden, half-drunk idea that some nymphs are simply maenads who wished to remain forever connected with the wild places they love, who were granted this by the god they love.  

 

 

 

 

 

I stayed as long as I could, until it started getting dark and shivering cold.  I ate at a raw food restaurant in town to ground myself before heading home.

Worth mentioning is that while I was there, I also had this intuitive tickle that there's something I need to explore more deeply in the future regarding the relationship between Ariadne and Dionysos and their complementary roles.  (I don't like that last phrase but I'm having a hard time putting it better.)  Synchronistically, earlier in the day I had stopped very briefly at a new age shop before heading farther north, picked up a single pagan book, and randomly flipped it open to a section on Ariadne.  I have also recently changed my Aphrodite shrine to be a shrine to Ariadne-Aphrodite--but more on that later.

 

[My thanks to Sannion for being the vessel for the oracle that prompted this trip.]

 

 

 

Anthesterion

Looking ahead, this is going to be a busy month!!  On top of my regular devotional days, there's two 3 day blocks of events.

 

The first... this week over the Noumenia, I'm taking a camping trip with my two dearest and most spiritual friends.  We have no specific rituals planned, but simply being out in nature for a while will be nice.  For certain, I would like to build a shrine to the nymphs and try to commune with them.  Other than that, and ringing in the Noumenia and reaffirming commitments, I just planning on being open to any spontaneous experiences or encounters.  If we have time we may drive more northward to search for amanitas.  

 

Then there's the Anthesteria... I'm working on the actual dates, so I'm pushing my celebration of those three days back to the full moon and the day before and after.  I haven't really attempted something like this before.  The idea is both exciting and intimidating. 

 

I'm still planning what I'd like to do for Anthesteria - but after reading Otto's Dionysos, I'm suddenly rather taken with the idea of both making a mask for the god and integrating that into my rituals. 

 

The Aiora (swinging festival) really intrigues me.  Even as an adult I would readily admit that I enjoy going swinging.  There was a night perhaps a year and a half ago, where a solo walk ended up with me spontaneously swinging in an empty park.  My life was on the threshold of a lot of change at the time, and the act of it felt very significant, though I didn't know why.  I just remember swinging, looking at the moon, and both crying and feeling inexplicably joyful at the same time.  That people might have once approached the act in a spiritual sense never even occurred to me before, but makes sense.  I'm looking forward to this.

 

So, so far, it looks like the first day will be creative (mask making) and celebratory (flowers and feasting).  Second day, the more intense work including the Aiora and some form of the sacred rite in the evening (trance and mind-altering substances likely).  Third day, offerings to the dead and hymns to Hermes, perhaps a trip to the cemetery.  Smudging and cleansing at the end of the day seems appropriate.

 

I'm working on Valentine's Day, but maybe I'll still try to fit in something extra with Aphrodite.  I know a lot of people who dislike the holiday.  Myself, I've loved ALL holidays since I was a kid.  And one that's dedicated to love?  How can that be bad?  In my opinion, if you let yourself get bogged down by the commercialism then you have no one but yourself to blame.  It's not the responsibility of commercial industries to keep the sacred in our holy days, it's our own.  (End rant.)  I'm sure my parents were an influence here too.  I never saw Valentine's Day as solely for romantic love, partly because they always got my siblings and I our own individual cards (and candy, naturally) expressing their love for each of us as individuals.   

 

There's other projects and miscellany and goals, but those are the big ones!