Category Archives: Dionysos

Dionysia at my place

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Party date: Friday, 20 January 2012
time: 7.30pm – whenever
dress: Smart casual or Informal, masks optional
menu: Mezze (provided — but you’re more than welcome to bring something, provided you confirm ahead of time)
drinks: wine, hot cider, ouzo, and soft drinks provided; beer and cocktails are BYOB
additional info: No children, house shared with three cats (allergy warning); parking info still being worked out. Invitees please include your number of guests with RSVP (max 3 guests per party — singles are afforded up to three guests, couples are afforded up to three guests)
RSVP by: 6 January 2012

Amongst my friends, I’m kind of known for planning parties “too far” in advance, but that’s not a bad thing, cos everybody who attends has a great time, and loves the food (even though sometimes my food themes can be very very wrong).

So, I was hoping to host a Boeotian New Year party at my place this December — until I re-checked this year’s calendar and was reminded that this year’s Boeotian New Year is just days before the Gregorian new year, and so this doesn’t make good party sense, since it’ll essentially be competing with other parties by people who’ve lived in the area longer than I have. So I immediately scrapped that idea for the Rural/Lesser Dionysia.

If you’re on FaceBook and local to me (or at least willing to drive to Lansing, MI), feel free to friend me for an invite — and message me, mentioning this post so that I know you’re not just another Friend Collector looking for the latest trading card.

I’m planning a table of fruits, punch, and finger-foods, wine, plenty of good music, silent cinema on the telly, and plenty of art around the place. An hour prior to party time, I’m also planning a libation to Dionysos, so that my non-HP friends will have plenty of time to avoid ritual they have no need for.

I’m going to stop taking RSVPs after 6 January 2012, so that I have plenty of time to make sure I have everything I need.

Balance

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One thing that has maintained my interest in the Hellenic religion, no matter how much some of my co-religionists may drive me nuts, is the Apollonian ideal of Moderation and Balance. In fact, this ideal seems to be held by some of the seemingly “saner” Pagan religions practised more widely in North Amerika than Hellenismos. I have to agree that, to the average Abrahamic religionist, Polytrheism may seem a little “unhinged”; I’ll agree that it’s not as common and so those who have it deeply ingrained in their thoughts and beliefs that Monotheism is “normal”, the belief in multiple Gods and Goddesses may seem “abnormal” and in this society “abnormal” often translates to being synonymous with “crazy”.

In my own personal practises, I balance out a lot of the “crazy” (not that I actually think anything I do makes me certifiable, in fact, my therapist even agrees that it doesn’t) with a lot of rationality. I examine my seemingly mystical experiences with logic, just to rule out perfectly rational explanations before jumping to the most fantastical and least probabl explanations, first. Most of the time, something can be explained with something utterly mundane, on rare occasion, it can’t.

Now, acceptance of the mundane does not necessitate disbelief in the fantastic; but the mundane and the fantastic do and should co-exist in balance with each-other. A friend of mine once explained the Apollonian / Dionysian paradigm as sort of a slightly more complex take on the Yin-Yang symbolism — a true Yin-Yang symbol contains a seed of the other within each half of the circle. Logic and Science may be within Apollon’s domain, but so are oracles and mysicism, something that has always been associated with those living outside the realms of “normalcy”. Ecstasy and “wildness” may be in Dionysos’ domains, but so is the ability to convincingly put on a mask, even for a short time, thus necessitating a need for some degree of control.

While Nietzsche painted Apollon and Dionysos in a sort of “yin and yang” fashion, he missed the part where balance is necessary for the two to be complete, and thus painted a picture not to two of the Theoi worshipped widely across ancient Hellas, but two 100% Black/White extremes. Nietzsche’s Apollon isn’t about “moderation in all things”, but about total control over oneself. His Dionysos is closer to the “Jimbo Morrison” in Oliver Stone’s highly fictionalised and exaggerated biopic, The Doors: a near-constant ecstatic, perpetually drunk, out of control. Ray Manzarek has since said that the fictional character based on Jim Morrison in the Stone film was very unlike the Jim he knew in real life — rather than the poet and philosopher he became friends with, the true Dionysos to Ray’s Apollon who, in Manzarek’s words, “[would] kiss and love through the connection made through [their] music”.

Though Dionysos is typically regarded as “rustic” to Apollon’s “urban”, Dionysos’s can be felt in the theatres of the cities, the nightclubs, the basement parties that nobody wants to admit were as planned out as they were. Likewise, Apollon does tend to venture out into the woods to commune with his Nymphai and cry out against the death of Hyakintos and other loves lost. It’s all done in perfect balance, perfect harmony. To let ecstasy overshadow reason or vice-versa is to invite total madness and spiritual impurity. Recognise when you need to reel in one for moderation and strive for the ability to recognise those moments.

Messenger Bag

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I was actually inspired to make this post after reading this post from the LJ community pimp_my_altarPimp My Altar. My messenger bag began life as, well, and ordinary messenger/Israeli paratrooper bag that I purchased at Harry’s Army Surplus before their Ann Arbor location went out-of-business (due largely to gentrification and the sudden raise in rent for businesses on that block):

Mine was purchased for under $10 on a 50% off clearance, and I also got a fishtail parka for just under $20, on a 75% off clearance, and an extra-tall “walking stick”-sized umbrella for about $10 even (the latter is no longer a usable umbrella, due in part to Chicago winds, and in part to living with three cats).

This is how mine looks today:

It wasn’t a huge task to transform the paratrooper symbol into a Caduceus, which has been historically used as a printer’s mark. Regardless, as a symbol of Hermes, it seems an entirely appropriate thing to paint onto a bag that I primarily use for carrying notebooks, my agenda, important papers, my chequebook (which has the simpler Caduceus [sans wings] painted on the front), and a few other things that I’m in the habit of carrying with me, including my lyrics book, sheet music, drawing pencils and sketch diary, mp3 player or Walkman, personal phone book, cigarette tin and lighter, and gum. It reminds me of one of my favourite quotes from Derek Jarman’s film Caravaggio: “It was through an act of theft that Mercury created the Arts.” I recall that quote not because of theft (though I am frequently reminded of how the push for gentrification has essentially robbed this poor town of its culture before it could truly come into its own, and how the closing of Harry’s and several other down-town stores really solidified Ann Arbor’s gentrification in my mind), but because of Hermes’ long-held associations with the Arts and how I carry in this bag my simplest means of creativity.

All the pin-back buttons on the bag (with the exception of “The Amino Acids – Warning: Tangy Reverb” one) are also one’s that I’ve created. I had a few more on there before I took these two photos just now, but they either fell off or were removed by me at some time or another. [Well, except for a Dionysos button that I'm pretty sure some kid on the Amtrak stole while I was in the on-train restroom; it's one of those things that I just know, even though I couldn't prove it. Of course, I didn't even notice it was gone until I had already reached Chicago. There was just something about the way that kid kept looking at the button when he and his mother boarded the bus, kept looking at me after I came back from the restroom, and the fact that his mother was dead-asleep before and after I went to the restroom.]

Here’s a close-up (albeit, a dark one) of the buttons. I took it without flash to eliminate glare that would have made them unviewable:


left-to-right are: Top – Satyr & Nymphe (from a Roman mosaic), Narkissos (19thC CE illustration)
Bottom – Apollon & Muse, Hyakinthos & Zephyros, Apollon & laurel branch
(gone missing or out-of-commission: Dionysos, Hermes, Adonis, Eros, Caravaggio’s Narcissus, Hermaphroditos, Neokoroi flame, Hellenion flame)

The Theoi of Mod

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As I am wont to say, I am a hopeless Mod, so as a post I’m making cos I really want to blog today but can’t think of anything really good to say, let me explain to the non-Mod Pagans and Polytheists and Hellenistai reading this (which is probably everybody but me) the Mod culture with different Theoi.

Apollon: I generally think of Apollon as the most-Mod of the Theoi. Many Hellenistai recognise Apollon as the Theos of Moderation (unlike Nietzscheans, who regard Him as the God of Abstinence — silly, silly, Nietzscheans…), and there is an old saying about Apollon, often presented in the form of an exchange between He and Artemis, wherein Apollon states, “Ah, but I advocate moderation of all things, including moderation itself!” Mods in the 1960s were ragarded as flamboyant dandies in comparison to their working-class backgrounds, but it can’t be denied that they were still considerably less flamboyant than Oscar Wilde, who came before, and the other youth cultures that came after. Mods are still very much like this. The music, which danceable, is hardly the rhythmic thumping of disco and its derivatives (which I regard as Dionysian). Even Mod jazz has some semblance of order amidst the syncopation, but just enough of that freeness to steer clear of that soulless and detestable “smooth jazz”.

Dionysos: Dionysos and Apollon are far from being polar opposites (as Nietzsche liked to portray); to continue that misconception is to underestimate both Theoi, and (in this blogger’s opinion) is very much “missing the mark” and tantamount to blasphemy — but enough about that. Dionysos, through throwing in an element of careful excess (as a Theos of the Theatre and concerts, I highly doubt He approved of Axl Rose’s temper tantrums, and I also find it hard to believe that the Theos of Wine appreciates getting drunk to the point of being sick all over everything, or driving into a tree, or using substances to commit rape) is a Theos perfectly worshipped in just about any nightclub. And really, if any of the Theoi truly appreciate Jazz, I would have to say that it’s Dionysos.

Hermes: Hermes is the Theos most commonly associated with innovation, novelty, and progress — in other words, Hermes is a modernist. Apollon, being among the most sophisticated of the Theoi, is naturally a Modernist (and a modernist) by default, but where Apollon is there to remind us that analogue sound is of superior quality, making the slight medium degeneration from even perfect use of vinyl worth its imperfections, Hermes is there to remind us that it’s perfectly OK to record our records onto mp3′s to not only prevent unnecessary degeneration of the sound recording medium, but because the iPod just looks so cool! A God of Transportation, it was both the desire for affordable transportation and ost WWII resourcefulness that both birthed the Motor Scooter and popularised it amongst British Mods.

Hyakintos: Though commonly regarded amongst mythology buffs and modern worshippers as a Hero, I think there is sufficient enough evidence that the Spartans regarded Him as either a Theos in his own right, or as Hemitheos (demigod) to some extent. That out of the way, let’s look at the most famous attributes of Hyakintos — Young, Male lover and beloved of Apollon, Athletic. Though, in recent years, Mod had been maintained by older generations, at its heart, it’s still a youth culture, meaning that young people are necessary to its growth in both size and spirit. There is also a joke amongst Mod that goes “What do you call a fat Mod? A Trad Skin” and in the book Mod: A Very British Phenomenon, it is stated that “there are no fat Mods”. As for the gay? Well, just check out the first two albums by the band Secret Affair, which my guitarist and I joke solidifies their position as the gayest band composed of all-heterosexual members; also, Pete Townshend has finally admitted that, though he has maintained a heterosexual identity since the 1980s, he “experimented with men” in the 1960s, and at this point, everybody should know that David Bowie was once a more obvious Mod (if you ask me, he never stopped being a Mod, but that’s another story for another time), so obviously sexual ambiguity is not something that Mods should have any sort of problem with (and, historically, is something that Mods typically don’t). By this revelation of Mod, Adonis should be well-suited to Mod worship, as well.

Hekate: I’m not leaving out Goddesses, ladies! A Goddess of gateways and crossroads and the underworld (all of which get mentioned frequently in old blues standards covered by The Yardbirds and The Rolling Stones), Hesiod regarded Her as a feminine counterpart to Hermes and the most powerful of all the Titans. She’s also probably the only Goddess, after Artemis, whom I can envision looking just as regal and Divine with either a bob or pixi haircut. I also biased because there’s a song by Makin’ Time called “Two Coins For the Ferryman”, which seems to contain many Hellenic mythological references including, possibly, Hekate — though I could just be inserting my own meaning there because it’s what I want to hear.

Urban Theoi

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One thing that I always loved about Hellenismos is that many of the Theoi (Gods and Goddesses) have both urban and rural aspects and many others are neither inclined toward one place or another; the few Theoi that may even seem “strictly rural” are still very important to urban life. Basically, Hellenismos is a religion that, unlike some other Pagan or Polytheistic religions, makes no pretenses about the alleged virtues of rustic live over city life; all directions of human living are spiritually valid on an equal playing field, so to speak.

Still, though, I like to think that the ancient Hellenistai had been quoted as saying “the Gods of Hellas are the Gods of civilization” for a reason. ;)

One of the most obvious Theoi “of civilization” would be Athene: The namesake for the very large and very ancient city of Athens. The legends behind the founding of Athens state that Athene and Posiedon were feuding over who the city belonged to, and Athene won this dispute with the creation of the olive tree. Also being the Theon of wisdom, Athene seems a natural comrade of large universities and museums, halls of learning and collected wisdom of generations passed and present.

Museums themselves are named for the Mousai, and statues of the Mousai graced the entrance to the Library of Alexandria — Alexandria being the largest city in the world, in the days of the ancient library. The Mousai are the companions to Apollon, a Theos whose domains include education, medicine, and the arts — all institutions that typically experience greater growth, development, and cultivation in large urban areas before such is experienced out in the countryside.

Hestia (and her Roman “equivalent”, Vesta), in ancient times, was believed the heart and hearth of not only every home, but every polis.

Lykia Poet has written a very interesting article in her own blog citing the presence of Aphrodite in every city by way of common doves (commonly known as pigeons). The Cult of Eros and the Cult of Aphrodite have been heavily entwined with each-other, in both ancient and modern times, and while more often pictured with hares on ancient pottery, doves are another animal commonly held sacred to Eros.

Hermes is traditionally associated with messengers, commerce, and living by one’s wits. Urban life is brimming with all of that — not so much in rustic areas. And while city folk depend on farmers and keepers of livestock (another one of Hermes’ domains being cowherds) for food, rural dwellers benefit greatly from the money brought in from the cities — Hermes is a sly one, isn’t He?

Dionysos was honoured both in the woods and in the theatre. Theatres are typically best off in large cities, packing an audience in from wall to bloody wall, bringing in just enough of a din to make the make-believe on stage (or even the screen at our modern cinemas) all the more lively.