Then send your offerings (poems, prayers, anecdotes, pictures, whatever you feel moved to share) to sannion@gmail.com before Friday, January 27 in order to be part of the Eugene Boubastia.

Charlemagne Palestine’s A Sweet Quasimodo Between Black Vampire Butterflies (Part II):

Gavin Bryars and Tom Waits’ Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet:

Mondo Cane:

Mike Patton´s Ore D´Amore:

Björk’s Triumph of a Heart:

Sufjan Stevens’ You are the blood:

Tristan Allen & Amanda Palmer’s János vs Wonderland:

Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit:

Enjoy!

http://eternalbacchus.wordpress.com/

However, in the spirit of the festival I wanted to share this video:

My lovely and talented partner has a bunch of new pieces in her shop. Check them out.

From Out of the Drink, Into the Wild comes this awesome prayer to Dionysos:

Lord of Madness!
and Bringer of Liberty!
Neither thought nor reason comprehend You
when near You logic grows dizzy
and none may know Your attributes
lest they feel You!
lest they dance with You!
lest they become your sparagmos

And speaking of adoration, I had to substantially update the list. Keep ‘em coming, folks!

Here’s some gorgeous Dionysian art by Ophiokhos.

Roger Pearse warns that Google’s personalized searches render the tool practically useless.

The Romano Britain website has been resurrected.

P. Sufenas Virius Lupus ponders Cee Lo, Truth and Consequences:

Cee Lo Green has come under fire recently for having changed the lyrics in John Lennon’s song “Imagine” to reflect, in his words, “peace and love and unity”; he did this by changing the line “And no religion, too” to “And all religions true.” This kind of light monism is the staple of a great deal of interfaith understanding: the idea that the great diversity and difference in the world’s religious traditions are really separate languages of discussing the same underlying reality, and that those who truly understand will see that there is no real difference between them. I’ve written before that I’m not an advocate of this notion, personally, and I’d like to continue to explore why that is, using Cee Lo’s lyrics as a jumping-off point.

Columbine handles a messy issue:

I’ve been a solitary witch for, um… all of my practice, so I’ll freely admit to being out of the loop on a lot of things. But… when exactly did witch altars become the go to place for the storage and collection of random magical knick-knacks? I like to put pretty things on my altar, too, but in order for them to be there, they must serve a purpose which is directly related to Working.

Ruadhan examines a number of controversial topics including mysticism, shamanism, oracles and godspouses:

I make no attempts to hide the fact that I have a more mystical spiritual life than many “Big-R Recons” would be comfortable with —but at the same time, I’m not terribly eager to share much of that publicly. While I admit that there’s a small fear of being mocked mercilessly on the Internet, that really takes a back-burner to the belief that doing so will not only further complicate the more personal aspect of certain mysteries, but will also lead to unneeded indulgences in my own Ego, and being a Leo, I have a hard enough time with that, already. Following that, I also have a legitimate fear for my sanity, as all mystics really should at least be aware of that possibility; fear of other people making fun of me doesn’t even factor in directly after that.

Galina discusses ancestor worship as part of the Pagan Blog Project:

So important was honoring the ancestors that some traditions even today assert that honoring the dead should be done before honoring the Gods. Some would go so far as to say that it is more important than honoring the Gods. I don’t believe this, as I think the two need to be done equally in tandem, but it does give an indication of the high importance placed on ancestor veneration.

You can find more about the Pagan Blog Project here.

Siegfried Goodfellow tackles the inevitable:

The grimness, in the end, is just a shield, like the ice that keeps the greening earth intact in winter’s grip. There is great warmth beneath the surface. There is an awesome party raging in Hel : hear the horns clink and the sounds of baritone laughter, and the honey of the dwarf’s yeast upon rhythmic lips and wooed, wondering ears.

Here’s a collection of pictures of Haitian carnival.

Here are pictures of various types of ritual.

Apuleius posts an excerpt from Michael Psellos’ Encomium:

The speech is valuable in other ways as well. It provides some glimpses into what the experience of the late-classical paideia was like, at least for a precocious Byzantine schoolboy like the young Michael Psellos. It also provides some glimpses into Byzantine family life, and, perhaps most importantly, it gives us a rare portrait of the life of a highly intelligent, intellectually ambitious Byzantine woman from outside the imperial family, or for that matter below the upper ranks of the Constantinopolitan aristocracy. As Psellos tells us, his mother — her name was Theodota — came from a respectable but completely undistinguished family (2), while his father’s family “had once been raised to senatorial rank, but had not prospered after that” (4). In a letter Psellos says “I cannot put on airs, and must treat silversmiths as equals.”[8] Apparently the family had fallen from its former patrician rank to the social level of guild craftsmen, or what might be called the Constantinopolitan bourgeoisie. The story of Theodota, then, is at least in part the story of what happens to an intellectually gifted Byzantine woman in such circumstances: she is not permitted to go to school, but she educates herself; and the only kind of learning that a woman in her position may pursue without attracting blame is religious learning. This, abetted by an emotional crisis at the death of her daughter, leads her into an extreme asceticism — derived, most probably, from Symeon the New Theologian, who had at that time become the object of a cult[9] — and that asceticism, eventually, brings her to what looks like death by anorexia. (It is this Symeonesque asceticism in particular that Psellos wishes to portray as an “apostasy.”) Theodota may look to us like a “Shakespeare’s Sister” kind of figure, though she is hardly as passive a victim as that. Notably, Psellos says that she taught him the intellectual equality of women with men (25)

Also from Apuleius comes this reminder that things aren’t looking too good in Egypt and Hungary.

In case you’re curious about just how bad things are in other parts of the world thanks to religious fundamentalists you should check out People of Shambhala. Every morning brings something new to be depressed about!

Here’s a movie from 1971 that some consider to be the “American Wicker Man” though I rarely hear Pagans talking about it.

Retrospace shares an article from a 1957 issue of People that questions the morality of ‘going steady’:

Catholic theologians regard the practice as an almost inevitable cause of sin. They contend that a boy and girl who are going steady (without planning to marry within a few months) can be compared to a would-be-reformed alcoholic who gets a job as a bartender. In Lynn, Mass., the Right Rev. Monsignor Joseph McGlinchey banned going steady for students of coed St. Mary’s Parochial High school with this comment: “Going steady is a menace to the purity of our youth.”

Kauko talks about celebrating Yule Finnish style and links to a lovely holiday song:

With regret I’ve begun to take down all of my decorations today. There’s a bare spot where my tree was and it makes me a little sad. That’s right, I do indeed keep my decorations up until mid-January. Most people seem to rush to take down their holiday decorations the moment the new year arrives (which is funny to me, since technically, Christmas is a 12 day period, lasting until January 5th or so. I guess these days, though the Christmas season has more to do with when retail can milk the most money out of people).

Now you can get punished the ancient Greek way!

rogueclassicism reports that a temple of Zeus in Sicily is not for sale:

The mayor of the Sicilian city of Agrigento said Thursday that he would not sell one of Italy’s prime archaeological treasures even for 40 billion euros after it reportedly attracted the interest of Russian industrialist Mikhail Prokhorov.

Gordon of Rune Soup makes a pilgrimage to the grave of J. R. R. Tolkein.

Castus talks about the imperial cult and other forms of veneration:

Antonius Pius, Marcus Aurelius, Julian Pius, all these great men. They deserve worship, and I just can’t deny them that.

An ad meant to warn young adults about the links between heavy drinking and rape has been pulled by Pennsylvania’s Liquor Control Board.

Here’s a list of the 5 greatest things accomplished while high.

Personally, I think this should be added to the list:

And we’ll close on a serious note.

Ruadhan is in a pretty tough spot and needs some financial assistance. Towards that end he is doing a creative writing fundraiser and selling some custom made badges. Definitely check it out.

How surreal. I particularly liked this quote:

It’s a bit surprising when some of the characters you thought you made up suddenly seem to escape into ordinary reality.

You should read the article and watch the footage – there’s a lot of really good stuff in there, including Alan pointing out the irony of WB making loads of money off of his anarchist icon and a brief discussion of the spiritual and magical themes he incorporates into his work which distinguishes it from the more traditional American Superhero comic.

I know you guys come here for your regular Dionysos fix but I just wanted to turn you on to some of the other great writing that people have been doing for and about him recently.

Ariadne in Exile, for instance, has started a series of posts exploring his various epithets and these are really quite profound and insightful. She begins with a powerfully beautiful account of an experience with Dionysos in the woods and then moves on to Dionysos in the swamp, in the night and then crowns him with ivy. Great stuff all of it and I’m definitely looking forward to more!

Also here are a couple choice posts from my third favorite blog Out of the Drink, Into the Wild. In case you were wondering, which does one of the best jobs I’ve ever seen of conveying what an experience of Dionysos is actually like and his musings on Dionysus Dikerotes. There is a lot more stuff worth reading there (including great art, random quotes and other expressions of radiance and wisdom) but these are the two pieces that I most wanted to highlight.

Also, a while back Roger Pearse posted an excerpt from John the Lydian’s De Mensibus covering December which has a lot of interesting and important material on Dionysos.

Here’s a good discussion of Satyr Plays by Andy Gavin.

From the April 4th, 1969 issue of Life comes a review of a production of Euripides’ Bakchai that would go on to gain a great deal of notoriety as it was filmed by Brian De Palma. (The review begins on page 32 – though much of the issue seems dedicated to contemporary theater.)

And lastly here’s an anthology of wine in sacred poetry.

Pagans appreciating one of their elders

From Chas Clifton comes this notice about a survey regarding attitudes in the various Pagan communities towards elders. Definitely worth contributing to.

A fascinating and lushly poetic piece of propaganda. Kind of reminds me of the Aghori.

Literary mysteries.

So, Dionysos is hypersyncretic because he’s the god of acting, right? Well, that got me thinking.

For instance he dresses up like Herakles in Aristophanes’ The Frogs so that he can descend into the underworld. This katabasis scene can’t help but invoke that enigmatic passage from Herakleitos:

… they roam together – the night-walkers, the magicians, the Bakchai, the Lenai, the participants in mysteries full of unholy rites. Their processions and phallic hymns would be disgraceful exhibitions if it wasn’t for the fact that they are done in honor of Dionysos – that Dionysos who is the same as Haides; it is in his honor that they rave madly and hold their revels.

Which, itself, is interesting since Herakles began his adventures in a fit of madness (resulting in the deaths of his children according to Seneca’s Hercules Furens.) That trauma drove him on like a stinging gadfly (the old ὁ μύωψ) to do great deeds that echo through the corridors of memory. Deeds such as the slaying of the Λέων της Νεμέας and the descent into Haides to drag up the dog of souls.

And another aside: Kleopatra and Marcus Antonius were related, making their union incestuous as that of Arsinoë and Philadelphos. I mean beyond the fact that Antony was the New Dionysos and the Ptolemies claimed descent through Dionysos, by way of Althaía.

No, there was also the fact that the family of Antony was descended from Herakles by way of his son Anton. The Ptolemies, too, were Ἡρακλεῖδαι. (For this consult Plutarch’s Life of Antony.)

Which brings us back to Deïaneira, to whom we always return – at least if the goat song is any good.

Enough of scholar-speak.

It’s funny the myths one is attracted to. From where comes that intense gravitational force? Synchronous, such a thought, isn’t it?

Increasingly I am coming to feel that there are only three types of pagan: those for whom paganism is an escape from all authority (the less said about them the better) those for whom it is primarily social, institutional and recreational and lastly those for whom it is all about honoring the holy powers (encompassing gods, spirits, ancestors, divinized mortals, eternal concepts, etc.) Most of the divisions and acrimony we see in our respective communities comes about as a clash between these different (and ultimately irreconcilable) character traits. On the other hand, those with harmonious dispositions tend to get along much better. Thus, despite all the myriad variations in what we actually do or believe, I as a Dionysian would infinitely prefer to spend time with someone who is just as passionately devoted to Odin, Siva, Papa Ghede or whoever than someone who may more superficially resemble my stuff but is mostly in it just to hang out with other people. Truth be told I suspect I’d even prefer the company of a devout Christian to that of a lukewarm Hellenist – if only I could find such a thing as a truly devout Christian. And I suspect that the feeling is mutual. Someone who gets wet panties every time that a television show so much as mentions the P-word probably isn’t going to find my company terribly congenial. Ah well. Manus digiti coaequales non sunt, omnes tamen usui as they say.

* Antinous

* Anubis

* Ares

* Athene

* Bragi

* Elada

* Eros

* Hadrian

* Hathor

* Hekate

* Hephaistos

* Hera

* Hermes

* Julius Caesar

* Mani

* Odin

* Persephone

* Sekhmet

* Sigyn

* Zeus

I’ve heard of several others but haven’t found a link to them yet. It’s fascinating how these things develop a life of their own and it especially pleases me to see this outpouring of devotion for the gods.

So I figured I’d give it a shot. The closest book to me at the moment (as I happen to be reading it) is a collection of sources from the Italian Renaissance compiled by Werner L. Gundersheimer. Page 45 is part of an excerpt from Vespasiano Da Bisticci’s Vite di uomini illustri del Secolo XV and the first new sentence is:

Thus Florence found itself, in this golden age, full of learned men.