The sexy has been brought

There are a couple more pieces I was going to try and finish before tonight and the end of “Sexy Sextilis,” but there’s no reason why I can’t post them later or keep them in reserve for something else. (The super secret project I hinted at a couple posts back, for instance.) This is a [...]

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Remorse

While Hermes nervously glances over his shoulder, eager to get underway, Zeus continues to look down upon the slumbering face of the child he cradles in his hands. They are big, strong hands – hands that have slain giants and made the earth shudder with their might. His rule is supreme: he steers the course [...]

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Chthonic

A mound of candles, incense and offerings heaped beneath a crude mask of leaves and twigs that hangs from a stalactite formed by water slowly dripping down the side of a cave carved out of the earth by the flow of molten rock thousands of years before the first men settled this land. The air [...]

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Supporting the arts

Over the last month while I’ve been madly posting about Dionysos, I’ve had several people come forward and say that they really appreciate what I’m doing and would like to know if there is some way that they could help out. I am terribly conflicted about this. On the one hand, yeah there is. I’ve [...]

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The queerness of Dionysos

Dionysos is a queer god. It’s certainly not all that there is to him – in fact, when I think about Dionysos it’s usually stuff like his wildness, his connection to the earth, the dead, animals, masks, dancing, drunkenness, madness, spiritual intoxication, liberation, transformation, fertility and sensuality that comes to mind. But queerness is a [...]

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Foxes in the vineyard

Within the bestiary of Dionysos the fox is perhaps the animal most likely to be overlooked. When we think of Dionysos and his animal companions most people instantly flash to the bull and the snake, the goat and the fawn, all the different types of big cats, and perhaps if they are familiar with Hellenistic [...]

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After

Pretend no more, my child, for you are free now. You have drowned your cares in wine and felt the madness of the god take hold of you. Having experienced what you’ve experienced, how could you ever go back to the way things were – a life half-lived and dreams unfulfilled? You crave what only [...]

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Experiencing Greco-Egyptian Dionysos

I’ve talked a lot about the Greco-Egyptian face of Dionysos over the last year or so, but I haven’t necessarily talked about why that has become the dominant form for me. Sure, it’s great that he unifies my dual interests in Greece and Egypt, and there’s all the cultural, artistic, literary, historical and mythological elements [...]

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Sotadean verse

What marvelous children Dionysos had: Wine-face and Grape, Intoxication and Initiation, Madness and Luxury – but the dearest of them all would have to be old Lampascene Priapos. The others went on to become kings over great lands, agriculturists beyond compare, daimones honored in the holy rites of their father. But everyone, mystic or not, [...]

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Speaking about the unspeakable

I’m just going to come out and say this: the old mysteries are dead and it’s pointless to even try and reconstruct them. It’s not because we’re completely ignorant of what happened during them. Actually, we’ve got a lot more evidence than most people realize, especially for the mysteries celebrated outside Eleusis. Even there we’re [...]

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Tokens

I’ve got three tokens of my Dionysian priesthood. They’re rather simple things and though I’ve usually got them on me – and can never take one of them off – I doubt that most people even notice or could guess at their significance. I wear a lot more flashy and obviously Dionysian stuff. There are [...]

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Dionysian music videos

Remember the good old days when MTV actually, you know, played music videos instead of mindless reality tv? Here’s my top 13 Dionysian videos. Note that video is the important part here. Not all of these are songs that I’ve got on my assorted Dionysos playlists, but how could I resist visuals such as these? [...]

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Dionysos around the blogosphere

While it’s been Dionysos month here at The House of Vines, he’s been showing up on a lot of different blogs I read as well. Here are some of my favorite posts and news items that I’ve collected during August. The top of the list would have to be my partner’s post called The King [...]

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Althaía

His lips taste of wine as they kiss in a room gone dark. How long have they been doing this? The lamps were still going when his hand touched hers while reaching for the pitcher. Everything is a blurred memory before now, before the warmth of his body pressed against hers. It’s a strange body, [...]

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I have found the perfect Dionysos movie

It’s a Brazilian film called Manoushe: A Gypsy Love Story. Here’s how Netflix describes it: At the funeral of a Gypsy (Breno Moroni), his widow (Drica Moraes) recalls their life together in this Felliniesque fantasy from Brazil. Packed with imagery reminiscent of the Brothers Grimm, medieval European forest legends, carnivals and peyote hallucinations, this tale [...]

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DA-PU-RI-TO-JO PO-TI-NI-JA

She bit the grape with her sharp teeth and smiled as its sweet blood spilled out over her lips. The sun was warm on her skin as she lay with her head in his lap and he stroked her dark hair fondly, absently, watching the blue-green waves beneath and the spiraling gulls overhead, as they [...]

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Epiphany

He comes! Great Lord Sabazios comes, howling madly as he dances through the dark forest wearing snakes for bracelets and bull’s horns as his crown. He tosses his long-haired head about, graceful as the deer whose blood stains his beard. He gnashes his savage teeth and stomps his boot-clad feet to make the sky thunder [...]

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Finding Dionysos

Every so often I’ll get an e-mail from someone who says that they’re really attracted to Dionysos but no matter what they do they can’t seem to feel his presence. Doesn’t matter how much they drink, what type of music they listen to, whether they perform elaborate rituals or something spontaneous and on the fly. [...]

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The Beginning

This is sort of a big anniversary for me, and since Dionysos plays an important role in it I’m going to go ahead and include my account as part of “Sexy Sextilis.” You see, 10 years ago today I met the woman that I am still madly, passionately in love with. Back then she ran [...]

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Dionysos mainómenos

We say it so frequently, with such casualness, that we don’t really pause to consider the full implications of it. And maybe it’s better that way. Not just a god who makes people mad, mind you, but a god – a god – who is himself a madman. We smile and think of poets caught [...]

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