Posts Tagged ‘nymphai’
A very Fey Bacchanalia
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dionysos, music, nymphai on 06/02/2012 | 1 Comment »
The value of being nameless
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged christianity, egypt, gods, heathenry, local focus polytheism, nymphai, pagan values blogging month, paganism, philosophy, religious practice on 06/02/2012 | 11 Comments »
Here is my first contribution for Pagan Values Blogging Month 2012. You know why there is such conflict over the Pagan label? It’s because it’s unnatural and was imposed on us by a people with very different notions of what constitutes being religious. Look at traditional cultures the world over – they don’t name what [...]
To the Hyades
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dionysos, nymphai, zeus on 06/02/2012 | 1 Comment »
Hail to you maidens of moist fertility, sprung from the body of eternal Ouranos, you who nurtured plump Bacchus in dark caverns that echo with the song of bees after he was saved from the womb of his mother consumed in the flames of thundering Zeus’ boundless love. You, his first nurses, care-givers and so [...]
The more things change, the more they stay the same
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged christianity, dionysos, italy, nymphai on 05/26/2012 | 2 Comments »
Once they carried the fennel-stalk crowned by a pinecone and wreathed with braids of dark ivy torn from the earth by the hands of ecstatic women called from their homes in the dark of night to race up Kithairon’s slopes, free as a pack of wolves that hunt the speckled doe. These sacred maniacs, under [...]
There’s an app for that
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged holy fool, local focus polytheism, magic, mythology, nymphai, religious practice on 05/25/2012 | 8 Comments »
I live in the modern world with everybody else, but I don’t really belong to it. I mean, I’m on the computer all the time but ask me how any of it works and I’ll just shrug my shoulders and mumble incomprehensibly. If you told me that there were little goblins inside the box, whose [...]
A wonderful dithyramb of the land below
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged ariadne, christianity, dionysos, harlequin, hermes, heroes, holy fool, italy, jim morrison, magic, nymphai, persephone, pinocchio, poseidon, spider on 05/25/2012 | 3 Comments »
Drunk on the poetry of the one who promised the new wine, you asked for the gifts of Dionysos and the grace to receive them. It was given to you, an exchange of a life for a life, yours for him ever after. And you invited them in. Now he hunts in the night with [...]
South Italian santeria
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aphrodite, christianity, dionysos, gods, heroes, holy fool, italy, magic, nymphai, paganism, spider on 05/25/2012 | 13 Comments »
Can you really call what I do Pagan anymore, with all of these weird Catholic elements that have crept in? They’re superficial additions, I admit, like grotesque and absurd marginalia suddenly come to life – but they express something essential that lurks deep in my soul, something dark and Dionysian in a way that is [...]
Great poetry becomes myth
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dionysos, hermes, holy fool, nymphai, religious practice, spider on 05/25/2012 | 1 Comment »
Great poetry becomes myth. You know you’re doing it right when random street graffiti starts making sense, showing signs from the gods like distorted images in a mirror. This is my world: burying a bull’s head in the back yard, running in the woods possessed by dead kings, dancing with depressed spiders and headless saints, [...]
Beautiful
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged music, nymphai, paganism on 05/12/2012 | 6 Comments »
More on the folk traditions of Abruzzi
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged christianity, italy, magic, nymphai on 05/11/2012 | 2 Comments »
Here’s a selection of passages from Through the Apennines and the Lands of the Abruzzi: Landscape and Peasant Life Described and Drawn by Estella Canziani 1928. I love this image so much and will never hear clock bells the same way again: It is unlucky to hear a clock strike and a bell toll at [...]
Concerning fairies and the customs of death
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged christianity, heroes, italy, nymphai, religious practice on 05/11/2012 | Leave a Comment »
I’m going to be transcribing some passages from a wonderful book I picked up on South Italian culture and folklore. This is mostly for my own reference, but I figure you guys might enjoy some of this too so I’m posting them here. It was getting late, and we went on by the river bed [...]
My partner’s new book is out
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged apollon, dionysos, hellenismos, hermes, local focus polytheism, magic, nymphai, paganism, writing on 05/07/2012 | 1 Comment »
Dwelling on the Threshold: Reflections of a Spirit-Worker and Devotional Polytheist by Sarah Kate Istra Winter Within the myriad traditions of modern polytheism, some are called to a deeper and more consuming level of engagement with the gods, spirits, and otherworlds. These mystics, devotees, shamans, god-spouses, seers, spirit-workers and others often must craft a unique [...]
O Muse of Sicily
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aphrodite, ariadne, dionysos, greece, hephaistos, heroes, italy, mousai, mythology, nymphai, persephone, spider, zeus on 05/02/2012 | 2 Comments »
O Muse of Sicily with strong Doric voice sing to me a song of the land of my people, the thrice-holy island of the maid who weaves an image of the world as she waits for the embrace of her serpent-tongued father, the land which saw the gentle one-eyed shepherd go mad for love of [...]
Γαλάτεια
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged italy, mythology, nymphai on 05/02/2012 | 6 Comments »
The Fool’s new attire
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged dionysos, harlequin, hermes, heroes, holy fool, magic, nymphai, philosophy, religious practice on 04/30/2012 | 5 Comments »
Imagine the sort of man so given over to the divine that even his fashion sense is dictated by religion. A man whom holiness clothes like an actor putting on a costume that tells a fanciful story to remind the people that the strange god is among them. A man whose bible is high-heeled leather [...]
The Triple Temptation of the Mother of Life
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged christianity, dionysos, heroes, italy, janus, nymphai, spider on 04/30/2012 | 1 Comment »
Thou who with cleaving fiery lances The stream of my soul from its ice dost free, Till with a rush and a roar it advances To enter with glorious hoping the sea: Brighter to see and purer ever, Free in the bonds of thy sweet constraint, So it praises thy wondrous en deavour, January, thou [...]
Vino nuovo in otre nuovo
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged christianity, dionysos, hermes, heroes, holy fool, italy, magic, nymphai, oracles, oregon, ptolemies, spider, writing on 04/30/2012 | Leave a Comment »
The verse which the taranta-kissed dominus Bacchus of liberty whispers in my ear is orgiastic, triumphal columns of letters marching with elephants, jugglers, actors, mobile shrines, wine-pouring statues and sixty foot phalloi through the city streets. Once you open the door and let them in the poetry runs around wild in your head like Lydian [...]
The Eleventh Dithyramb of Oenomaus of Syracuse
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged alexander the great, apollon, dionysos, greece, italy, mythology, nymphai on 04/27/2012 | Leave a Comment »
Rain falls like fingers tapping a staccato rhythm on tympanoms and the fox seeks his burrow beneath the earth amid the roots and rocks and mushrooms where the web-weaving spiders dwell. Above dance the madwomen, tossing their wet heads in the frenzy of the winegod, laughing as lightning splits the sky and illuminates their orgies [...]
Dérive
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged gods, heroes, local focus polytheism, nymphai on 04/27/2012 | 3 Comments »
I do not inhabit the same world as the men of this modern age. I am surrounded by echoes of myth and eternal recurrences of the heroic past. Drunk on the poetry of the nymphs, a walk through my city at night is for me like the wanderings of brave Ulysses through strange, distant lands [...]
Have you ever had the realization
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged aphrodite, ariadne, dionysos, gods, hermes, heroes, holy fool, local focus polytheism, nymphai, ptolemies, spider on 04/27/2012 | 6 Comments »
Have you ever had the realization that your religion kind of creeps you out – and that’s why you like it. I mean, consider this: a god who was murdered as a baby and came back as a king bleeding wine prophetic spiders headless saints a vagrant magician who invents his own languages a whore [...]
