One of the reasons that I drew up a detailed list of the core pantheon is that I want to adapt this divination system that I recently stumbled upon again. (I used a version of it back in my old Greco-Egyptian days.)

Method of 29 letters for receiving an omen, PGM XXIVa.1-25:
“Great is the Lady Isis!” Copy of a holy book found in the Archives of Hermes: The method is that concerning the 29 letters [of the Coptic alphabet], through which letters Hermes and Isis, who was seeking Osiris, her brother and husband, found him. Call upon Helios and all the gods in the Deep concerning those things for which you want to receive an omen. Take 29 leaves of a male date palm and write on each of the eaves the names of the gods. Pray and then pick them up two by two. Read the last remaining leaf and you will find your omen, how things are, and you will be answered clearly.

Taking out the redundant “Dionysian dead” the list I came up with numbers 59, meaning that the same divinatory mechanics should apply. I see all sorts of diagnostic applications for this, particularly with regard to poinê and sacrifices.

I’m also considering doing a version with all of the divinities mentioned in the various Orphic cosmogonies, which would have a wider application but could end up being too wide.

Seneca, Hercules Furens 569 ff
Orpheus had power to bend the ruthless Lords of the Shades by song and suppliant prayer, when he sought back his Eurydice. The art which had drawn the trees and birds and rocks, which had stayed the course of rivers, at whose sound the beasts had stopped to listen, soothes the underworld with unaccustomed strains, and rings out clearer in those unhearing realms.

[...]

Eurydice the Thracian brides bewail; even the gods, whom no tears can move, bewail her; and the Erinyes who with awful brows investigate men’s crimes and sift out ancient wrongs, as they sit in judgment bewail Eurydice.

Diogenes Laertios, selections from book seven of the Lives of the Eminent Philosophers

59. Satyros quotes this same Gorgias as saying that he himself was present when Empedokles performed magical feats. Nay more: he contends that Empedokles in his poems lays claim to this power and to much besides when he says:

And thou shalt learn all the drugs that are a defence to ward off ills and old age, since for thee alone shall I accomplish all this. Thou shalt arrest the violence of the unwearied winds that arise and sweep the earth, laying waste the cornfields with their blasts; and again, if thou so will, thou shalt call back winds in requital. Thou shalt make after the dark rain a seasonable drought for men, and again after the summer drought thou shalt cause tree-nourishing streams to pour from the sky. Thou shalt bring back from Hades a dead man’s strength.

60. Timaios also in the eighteenth book of his Histories remarks that Empedokles has been admired on many grounds. For instance, when the etesian winds once began to blow violently and to damage the crops, he ordered asses to be flayed and bags to be made of their skin. These he stretched out here and there on the hills and headlands to catch the wind and, because this checked the wind, he was called the “wind-stayer.” Heraklides in his book On Diseases says that he furnished Pausanias with the facts about the woman in a trance. This Pausanias, according to Aristippos and Satyros, was his bosom-friend, to whom he dedicated his poem On Nature thus:

Give ear, Pausanias, thou son of Anchitos the wise!

61. Moreover he wrote an epigram upon him:

The physician Pausanias, rightly so named, son of Anchitos, descendant of Asklepios, was born and bred at Gela. Many a wight pining in fell torments did he bring back from Persephone’s inmost shrine.

At all events Heraklides testifies that the case of the woman in a trance was such that for thirty days he kept her body without pulsation though she never breathed; and for that reason Heraklides called him not merely a physician but a diviner as well, deriving the titles from the following lines also:

My friends, who dwell in the great city sloping down to yellow Akragas, hard by the citadel, busied with goodly works, all hail! I go about among you an immortal god, no more a mortal, so honoured of all, as is meet, crowned with fillets and flowery garlands. Straightway as soon as I enter with these, men and women, into flourishing towns, I am reverenced and tens of thousands follow, to learn where is the path which leads to welfare, some desirous of oracles, others suffering from all kinds of diseases, desiring to hear a message of healing.

73. Moreover, from his abundant means he bestowed dowries upon many of the maidens of the city who had no dowry. No doubt it was the same means that enabled him to don a purple robe and over it a golden girdle, as Favorinus relates in his Memorabilia, and again slippers of bronze and a Delphic laurel-wreath. He had thick hair, and a train of boy attendants. He himself was always grave, and kept this gravity of demeanour unshaken. In such sort would he appear in public; when the citizens met him, they recognized in this demeanour the stamp, as it were, of royalty.

I couldn’t sleep so I decided to put together the festival calendar of the thiasos of the Starry Bull for the year to come.

2014

March 8: Pannychis of Ariadne

An all-night vigil in honor of the apotheosis of Ariadne and the placement of her crown in the heavens.

March 17: Liberalia

Phallic processions to bring fertility and protection to the fields; also honors the nymphs, nurses and companions of Dionysos.

April 12: Anthesphoria

Commemorates the abduction of Kore while gathering flowers and her transformation into Persephone, Queen of the Underworld.

May 2: Maiuma

Celebrates the union of Dionysos and Aphrodite with baptism and drunken revelry.

June 28-29: Arachneia

The transformation of Arachne into a spider is commemorated through dance.

July 3: Feast of the Dionysian Prophets

A time for ecstatic worship and divination.

August 1: Feast of the Dionysian Kings

The triumphant procession of the New Dionysoi.

August 13: Hekatesia

A festival for Hekate.

September 9: Melinoeia

Commemorates the birth of Melinoë.

September 23: Praxidikaia

Sacrifices on behalf of the ancestors are made to the Erinyes and underworld powers.

October 7: Feast of the Dionysian Martyrs

All those who suffered for Dionysos are remembered.

October 27: Katabasia

Commemorates Dionysos’ descent at Lerna to bring up Semele and the phallos as a pledge to the deceased.

November 4: Hermaia

Honors Hermes as guide of souls and lord of dream and magic.

November 24: Agrionia

A festival of wild revelry celebrating Melampos’ cure of the Proitides’ madness through dance.

December 8: Feast of the Dionysian Artists

Honors Dionysos as god of creative inspiration and all of those who have served him through their art.

2015

January 1: Kalends

Ringing in the new year with masks, drunkenness, divination and obscene songs and dances.

January 5-6: Epiphany

Wine miracles and baptism.

January 9: Agonalia

Celebrates Orpheus’ destruction of the bees of Aristaios in punishment for his role in the death of Eurydike.

February 1: Lenaia

The priestesses of the winepress call Dionysos up from the underworld with their songs and dances.

March 1-3: Anthesteria

A feast of flowers, wine, sex and death.

Note that they do not list the triclinium maius of Dionysos because only initiates know the way there.

As is appropriate for a tradition rooted in the soil of Southern Italy:

The city of Tarentum offers sacrifices of oxen and holds public banquets nearly every month. The mass of common people is always busy with parties and drinking-bouts. And the Tarentines have a saying of some such purport as this, that whereas the rest of the world, in their devotion to work and their preoccupation with various forms of industry, are always preparing to live, they themselves, with their parties and their pleasures, do not put off living, but live already. (Theopompos, fragment 233, quoted by Athenaios, Deipnosophistai 4.166 e-f)

We have a great many festivals in the thiasos of the Starry Bull. I intend to write more detailed accounts of each of them, but for now I would like to convey something of their nature through a selection of quotes.

Agonalia (January 9)
Some believe that the day is called Agonal because the sheep do not come to the altar but are driven (agantur). Others think the ancients called this festival Agnalia, ‘Of the lambs’, dropping a letter from its usual place. Or because the victim fears the knife mirrored in the water, the day might be so called from the creature’s agony? It may also be that the day has a Greek name from the games (agones) that were held in former times. Though the meaning is uncertain, the king of the rites, must appease the gods with the mate of a woolly ewe. It’s called the victim because a victorious hand fells it: and hostia, sacrifice, from hostile conquered foes. Cornmeal, and glittering grains of pure salt, were once the means for men to placate the gods. [...] The altar was happy to fume with Sabine juniper, and the laurel burned with a loud crackling. He was rich, whoever could add violets to garlands woven from meadow flowers. The knife that bares the entrails of the stricken bull, had no role to perform in the sacred rites. [...] You should have spared the vine-shoots, he-goat. Watching a goat nibbling a vine someone once Vented their indignation in these words: ‘Gnaw the vine, goat! But when you stand at the altar there’ll be something from it to sprinkle on your horns.’ Truth followed: Bacchus, your enemy is given you to punish, and sprinkled wine flows over its horns. The sow suffered for her crime, and the goat for hers, but what were you guilty of you sheep and oxen? Aristaeus wept because he saw his bees destroyed, and the hives they had begun left abandoned. His azure mother, Cyrene, could barely calm his grief, but added these final words to what she said: ‘Son, cease your tears! Proteus will allay your loss, and show you how to recover what has perished. But lest he still deceives you by changing shape, entangle both his hands with strong fastenings.’ The youth approached the seer, who was fast asleep, and bound the arms of that Old Man of the Sea. He by his art altered his shape and transformed his face, but soon reverted to his true form, tamed by the ropes. Then raising his dripping head, and sea-green beard, he said: ‘Do you ask how to recover your bees? Kill a heifer and bury its carcase in the earth, buried it will produce what you ask of me.’ (Ovid, Fasti Book One: January 9th)

Compare Virgil, Georgics 4.419-558.

Agrionia (November 24)
Proitos had daughters, Lysippe, Iphinoe, and Iphianassa, by Stheneboea. When these damsels were grown up, they went mad, according to Hesiod, because they would not accept the rites of Dionysos, but according to Akusilaos, because they disparaged the wooden image of Hera. In their madness they roamed over the whole Argive land, and afterwards, passing through Arcadia and the Peloponnese, they ran through the desert in the most disorderly fashion. But Melampos, son of Amythaon by Idomene, daughter of Abas, being a seer and the first to devise the cure by means of drugs and purifications, promised to cure the maidens if he should receive the third part of the sovereignty. When Proitos refused to pay so high a fee for the cure, the maidens raved more than ever, and besides that, the other women raved with them; for they also abandoned their houses, destroyed their own children, and flocked to the desert. Not until the evil had reached a very high pitch did Proitos consent to pay the stipulated fee, and Melampos promised to effect a cure whenever his brother Bias should receive just so much land as himself. Fearing that, if the cure were delayed, yet more would be demanded of him, Proitos agreed to let the physician proceed on these terms. So Melampos, taking with him the most stalwart of the young men, chased the women in a bevy from the mountains to Sicyon with shouts and a sort of frenzied dance. In the pursuit Iphinoe, the eldest of the daughters, expired; but the others were lucky enough to be purified and so to recover their wits. Proitos gave them in marriage to Melampos and Bias, and afterwards begat a son, Megapenthes. (Apollodoros, Bibliotheka 2.2-3.1)

Anthesphoria (April 12)
In Sicily in the district called Enna there is said to be a cave, around which is an abundance of flowers at every season of the year, and particularly that a vast space is filled with violets, which fill the neighbourhood with sweet scent, so that hunters cannot chase hares, because the dogs are overcome by the scent. Through this cave there is an invisible underground passage, by means of which Pluto is said to have made the rape of Kore. They say that wheat is found in this place unlike the local grain, which they use, and unlike any that is imported, but having great peculiarities. They say that this was the first place in which wheat appeared among them. They also claim Demeter, saying that the goddess was born among them. ([Aristotle], de Mirabilibus Auscultationibus 82)

Anthesteria (11-12 Anthesterion)
Nor did the morn of the Broaching of the Jars pass unheeded, nor that whereon the Pitchers of Orestes bring a white day for slaves. And when he kept the yearly festival of Ikarios’ child, thy day, Erigone, lady most sorrowful of Attic women, he invited to a banquet his familiars, and among them a stranger who was newly visiting Egypt, whither he had come on some private business. (Kallimachos, Aitia 1.1)

Arachneia (June 28-29)
The families of the tarantati hire the musicians, to whom many gifts are given and a great deal of drink is offered in addition to the daily compensation agreed upon, so that they may take some refreshment and thus play the musical instruments with greater vigor. It follows that a man of modest conditions, who laboriously earns a living with the diligent fatigue of his arms, in order to be cured of this illness, is often forced to pawn or sell objects of fundamental necessity, even if his household furnishings are shabby, in order to pay the aforementioned payment. It must be considered that no one would want to expose himself to this misfortune if he could combat the poison in another way, or if he did not feel compelled to dance from the bottom of his heart. I will spare the details of the many other aids and expedients the poison victims use to raise and cheer their melancholy spirits during the dance, items also needed for one reason or another. For instance there are artificial springs of limpid water constructed in such a way that the water is gathered and always returns to flow anew; these springs are covered and surrounded by green fronds, flowers and trees. Further, lasses dressed in sumptuous wedding gowns have the task of dancing with the tarantati, festively singing and playing the same melody with them during the dance; then there are the weapons and the multicolored drapery hung on the walls. All of these, and many others, cannot be procured without payment. (Ludovico Valletta, De Phalangio Apulo 92)

Epiphany (January 5-6)
It is accredited by the Mucianus who was three times consul that the water flowing from a spring in the temple of Liber Pater on the island of Andros always has the flavor of wine on the fifth of January: the day is called the god’s gift day and if the jars are carried out of sight of the temple the taste turns back to that of water. (Pliny, Natural History 2.106; 31.16)

On the following day Jesus was baptized and both his divine father and helper-spirit were present for it.

Furthermore, the tradition that Dionysos was born twice of Zeus arises from the belief that these fruits also perished in common with all other plants in the flood at the time of Deukalion, and that when they sprang up again after the deluge it was as if there had been a second epiphany of the god among men, and so the myth was created that the god had been born again from the thigh of Zeus. However this may be, those who explain the name Dionysos as signifying the use and importance of the discovery of wine recount such a myth regarding him. (Diodoros Sikeliotes, Library of History 3.62.10)

Feast of the Dionysian Artists (December 8)
We should enlist them into bands of perceivers to tour the Labyrinth during their mysterious nocturnal appearances. The Lords have secret entrances, and they know disguises. But they give themselves away in minor ways. Too much glint of light in the eye. A wrong gesture. Too long and curious a glance. The Lords appease us with images. They give us books, concerts, galleries, shows, cinemas. Especially the cinemas. Through art they confuse us and blind us to our enslavement. Art adorns our prison walls, keeps us silent and diverted and indifferent. (Jim Morrison)

Feast of the Dionysian Kings (August 1)
During this night, it is said, about the middle of it, while the city was quiet and depressed through fear and expectation of what was coming, suddenly certain harmonious sounds from all sorts of instruments were heard, and the shouting of a throng which none could see, accompanied by cries of Bacchic revelry and satyric leapings, as if a troop of revelers, making a great tumult, were going forth from the city; and their course seemed to lie about through the middle of it toward the outer gate which faced the enemy, at which point the tumult became loudest and then dashed out. (Plutarch, Life of Antony 75)

Feast of the Dionysian Martyrs (October 7)
But so great were the numbers that fled from the city, that the praetors Titus Maenius and Marcus Licinius were obliged to adjourn their courts for thirty days, until the inquiries should be finished by the consuls. Since the law-courts were closed and those who had charges brought against them often had fled, the consuls were forced to make a circuit of the country towns where they made their inquisitions and held the trials. Those for whom the only crime was initiation were left in prison while those that they could prove had committed a host unspeakable crimes were punished with death. A greater number were executed than thrown into prison; indeed, the multitude of men and women who suffered in both ways was very considerable. The consuls delivered the women, who were condemned, to their relations, or to those under whose guardianship they were, that they might inflict the punishment in private; if there did not appear any proper person of the kind to execute the sentence, the punishment was inflicted in public. A charge was then given to demolish all the places where the Bacchanalians had held their meetings; first in Rome, and then throughout all Italy; excepting those wherein should be found some ancient altar or consecrated statue. (Livy, History of Rome 34:18)

Feast of the Dionysian Prophets (July 3)
Yoga powers. To make oneself invisible or small. To become gigantic and reach to the farthest things. To change the course of nature. To place oneself anywhere in space or time. To summon the dead. To exalt senses and perceive inaccessible images, of events on other worlds, in one’s deepest inner mind, or in the minds of others. (Jim Morrison)

Hekatesia (August 13)
After I came to the enclosures and the sacred place, I dug a three-sided pit in some flat ground. I quickly brought some trunks of juniper, dry cedar, prickly boxthorn and weeping black poplars, and in the pit I made a pyre of them. Skilled Medea brought to me many drugs, taking them from the innermost part of a chest smelling of incense. At once, I fashioned certain images from barley-meal [the text is corrupt here]. I threw them onto the pyre, and as a sacrifice to honor the dead, I killed three black puppies. I mixed with their blood copper sulfate, soapwort, a sprig of safflower, and in addition odorless fleawort, red alkanet, and bronze-plant. After this, I filled the bellies of the puppies with this mixture and placed them on the wood. Then I mixed the bowels with water and poured the mixture around the pit. Dressed in a black mantle, I sounded bronze cymbals and made my prayer to the Furies. They heard me quickly, and breaking forth from the caverns of the gloomy abyss, Tisiphone, Allecto, and divine Megaira arrived, brandishing the light of death in their dry pine torches. Suddenly the pit blazed up, and the deadly fire crackled, and the unclean flame sent high its smoke. At once, on the far side of the fire, the terrible, fearful, savage goddesses arose. One had a body of iron. The dead call her Pandora. With her came one who takes on various shapes, having three heads, a deadly monster you do not wish to know: Hecate of Tartarus. From her left shoulder leapt a horse with a long mane. On her right should there could be seen a dog with a maddened face. The middle head had the shape of a lion [or snake] of wild form. In her hand she held a well-hilted sword. Pandora and Hecate circled the pit, moving this way and that, and the Furies leapt with them. Suddenly the wooden guardian statue of Artemis dropped its torches from its hands and raised its eyes to heaven. Her canine companions fawned. The bolts of the silver bars were loosened, and the beautiful gates of the thick walls opened; and the sacred grove within came into view. I crossed the threshold. (Orphic Argonautika 122ff)

Hermaia (November 4)
Chorus of Evocators: We, the race that lives around the lake, do honor to Hermes our ancestor … Come now, guest-friend, take up your stance on the grassy sacred enclosure of the fearful lake. Slash the gullet of the neck, and let the blood of this sacrificial victim flow into the murky depths of the reeds as a drink offering for the lifeless. Call upon primeval Earth and chthonic Hermes, escort of the dead, and ask chthonic Zeus to send up the swarm of night-wanderers from the mouth of this melancholy river, unfit for washing hands, sent up by Stygian springs. (Aischylos, Psuchahogoi fragment 273)

Kalends (January 1)
What wickedness takes place during this feast; fortune-tellings, divinations, deceptions and feigned madnesses. On this day, having been seized up by the furies of their bacchant-like ravings and having been inflamed by the fires of diabolical instigation, they flock together to the church and profane the house of god with vain and foolish rhythmic poetry in which sin is not wanting but by all means present, and with evil sayings, laughing and cacophony they disrupt the priest and the whole congregation applauds for the people love these things. (Richard of St.-Victor, Sermones centum 177.1036)

Katabasia (October 27)
Phalloi are consecrated to Dionysos, and this is the origin of those phalloi. Dionysos was anxious to descend into Haides, but did not know the way. Thereupon a certain man, Prosymnos by name, promises to tell him; though not without reward. The reward was not a seemly one, though to Dionysos it was seemly enough. It was a favour of lust, this reward which Dionysos was asked for. The god is willing to grant the request; and so he promises, in the event of his return, to fulfil the wish of Prosymnos, confirming the promise with an oath. Having learnt the way he set out, and came back again. He does not find Prosymnos, for he was dead. In fulfilment of the vow to his lover Dionysos hastens to the tomb and indulges his unnatural lust. Cutting off a branch from a fig-tree which was at hand, he shaped it into the likeness of a phallos, and then made a show of fulfilling his promise to the dead man. As a mystic memorial of this passion phalloi are set up to Dionysos in cities. ‘For if it were not to Dionysos that they held solemn procession and sang the phallic hymn, they would be acting most shamefully,’ says Herakleitos. (Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Greeks 2.30)

Lenaia (12 Gamelion)
Hear, O blessed son of Zeus and of two mothers, Bacchos of the vintage, unforgettable seed, many-named and redeeming demon, holy offspring of the gods born in secrecy, reveling Bacchos, plump giver of the many joys of fruits which grow well. Mighty and many-shaped god, from the earth you burst forth to reach the wine-press, and there become a remedy for man’s pain, O sacred blossom! A sorrow-hating joy to mortals, O lovely-haired Epaphian, you are a redeemer and a reveler whose thyrsus drive to frenzy, and who is kind hearted to all, gods and mortals, who see his light. I call upon you now to come, a sweet bringer of fruit. (Orphic Hymn 50. To Lysios-Lenaios)

Liberalia (March 17)
Now as to the rites of Liber, whom they have set over liquid seeds, and therefore not only over the liquors of fruits, among which wine holds, so to speak, the primacy, but also over the seeds of animals:— as to these rites, I am unwilling to undertake to show to what excess of turpitude they had reached, because that would entail a lengthened discourse, though I am not unwilling to do so as a demonstration of the proud stupidity of those who practice them. Varro says that certain rites of Liber were celebrated in Italy which were of such unrestrained wickedness that the shameful parts of the male were worshipped at crossroads in his honour. Nor was this abomination transacted in secret that some regard at least might be paid to modesty, but was openly and wantonly displayed. For during the festival of Liber this obscene member, placed on a little trolley, was first exhibited with great honour at the crossroads in the countryside, and then conveyed into the city itself. But in the town of Lavinium a whole month was devoted to Liber alone, during the days of which all the people gave themselves up to the must dissolute conversation, until that member had been carried through the forum and brought to rest in its own place; on which unseemly member it was necessary that the most honorable matron should place a wreath in the presence of all the people. Thus, forsooth, was the god Liber to be appeased in order for the growth of seeds. Thus was enchantment (fascinatio) to be driven away from fields, even by a matron’s being compelled to do in public what not even a harlot ought to be permitted to do in a theatre, if there were matrons among the spectators. (Augustine, De Civitate Dei 7.21)

Maiuma (May 2)
But those who have gone up to Daphne in pagan fashion have had no regard for the truth, which is so terrible and on account of which everything moves and trembles. But in the dark moments of the night they even lit lamps of wax in the stadium and added incense, stealthily bringing about their own destruction; and it was certain strangers, take good note, who informed me of this while trembling and crying. Do you not see the nets of the Calumnator, and his hidden traps, which on the one hand have as a pretext the joy and pleasure at first sight and lead on the other hand to idolatry and the celebration of festivals in some ways criminal and harmful? And are you not ashamed, when we call ourselves Christians, we who were born on high for the purification which comes from the water and the Spirit and call ourselves children of God, to run equally to the solemnities of Satan, which we have renounced by divine baptism? For whenever you change your clothing and afterwards go up to the spactacle, dressed in a tiny linen tunic, which hides the arms but not the hands, waving about a wooden stick and with all skin shaved with a razor, so to speak – look, is it not quite clear that you have made the procession and participated in the celebration? (Severus of Antioch, Homily 95)

Melinoeia (September 9)
I call upon Melinoë, saffron-cloaked nymph of the earth, to whom august Persephone gave birth by the mouth of the Kokytos, upon the sacred bed of Kronian Zeus he lied to Plouton and through treachery mated with Persephone, whose skin when she was pregnant he mangled in anger. She drives mortals to madness with her airy phantoms, as she appears in weird shapes and forms, now plain to the eye, now shadowy, now shining in the darkness, and all this in hostile encounters in the gloom of night. But, goddess and queen of those below, I beseech you, to banish the soul’s frenzy to the ends of the earth, and show a kindly and holy face to the initiates. (Orphic Hymn 71 to Melinoë)

Pannychis of Ariadne (March 8)
There are many other stories about these matters, and also about Ariadne, but they do not agree at all. Some say that she hung herself because she was abandoned by Theseus; others that she was conveyed to Naxos by sailors and there lived with Oinaros the priest of Dionysos, and that she was abandoned by Theseus because he loved another woman. [...] A very peculiar account of these matters is published by Paion the Amathusian. He says that Theseus, driven out of his course by a storm to Kypros, and having with him Ariadne, who was big with child and in sore sickness and distress from the tossing of the sea, set her on shore alone, but that he himself, while trying to succour the ship, was borne out to sea again. The women of the island, accordingly, took Ariadne into their care, and tried to comfort her in the discouragement caused by her loneliness, brought her forged letters purporting to have been written to her by Theseus, ministered to her aid during the pangs of travail, and gave her burial when she died before her child was born. Paion says further that Theseus came back, and was greatly afflicted, and left a sum of money with the people of the island, enjoining them to sacrifice to Ariadne, and caused two little statuettes to be set up in her honor, one of silver, and one of bronze. He says also that at the sacrifice in her honor on the second day of the month Gorpiaeus, one of their young men lies down and imitates the cries and gestures of women in travail; and that they call the grove in which they show her tomb, the grove of Ariadne Aphrodite. Some of the Naxians also have a story of their own, that there were two Minoses and two Ariadnes, one of whom, they say, was married to Dionysos in Naxos and bore him Staphylos and his brother, and the other, of a later time, having been carried off by Theseus and then abandoned by him, came to Naxos, accompanied by a nurse named Korkyne, whose tomb they show; and that this Ariadne also died there, and has honors paid her unlike those of the former, for the festival of the first Ariadne is celebrated with mirth and revels, but the sacrifices performed in honor of the second are attended with sorrow and mourning. (Plutarch, Life of Theseus 20.1-5)

Praxidikaia (September 23)
But the most astounding of all these arguments concerns what they have to say about the gods and virtue. They say that the gods, too, assign misfortune and a bad life to many good people, and the opposite fate to their opposites. Begging priests and prophets frequent the doors of the rich and persuade them that they possess a god-given power founded on sacrifices and incantations. If the rich person or any of his ancestors has committed an injustice, they can fix it with pleasant things and feasts. Moreover, if he wishes to injure some enemy, then, at little expense, he’ll be able to harm just and unjust alike, for by means of spells and enchantments they can persuade the gods to serve them. And they present a hubbub of books by Musaeus and Orpheus, offspring as they say of Selene and the Muses, according to which they arrange their rites, convincing not only individuals but also cities that liberation and purification from injustice is possible, both during life and after death, by means of sacrifices and enjoyable games to the deceased which free us from the evils of the beyond, whereas something horrible awaits those who have not celebrated sacrifices. (Plato, Republic 2.364a–365b)

A couple of folks have asked how they could show support or reimburse me for the divination and other spiritual services I’ve performed for them if they didn’t have the money to contribute to the fund-raiser I’m doing to get Julian Betkowski to the Polytheist Leadership Conference.

Well, I’ve got a bunch of different projects I’m working on and not enough hours in the day and I could use some methodical research assistants. So if you’re interested in helping out contact me at sannion@gmail.com.

We had a wonderful show with guest Rev. Tamara Siuda, Nisut of the Kemetic Orthodox religion, which you can listen to here:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/witchschool/2014/03/06/ptrn-presents-circle-talkwyrd-ways-live-pagan-music-project

Starts about an hour in and you’ll be riveted until the end!

Theoinophilus has written a lovely introductory ritual for our tradition that I am proud to share with you here.

A Simple Desate Rite

On a large plate on the floor in front of the shrine, or on an altar the following must be arranged:

An offering bowl
An ewer or bottle of wine
A very small cup for the akousmatikos
An 18-20″ length of green yarn, only wool
An ivy crown
Image of the God as a child or Bull
One lighting candle to be placed in a holder, five other candles to represent Dionysos.
A censer
A vessel of storax
Flower offering
Fruit offering, preferably figs
Khernips vessel

Arrange the plate and shrine and, after bathing, done a pure white robe or wear a clean loing cloth.

Pour water into the khernips bowl, then light either a laurel leaf or rosemary twig from the candle using your own words of purification or the following:

“The pure are purified by the pure and made pure.”

The akousmatikos then washes their hands up to their elbows, their face and then sprinkles water over the offerings and objects saying the same as the above. They then make an offering of incense, lighting the five candles saying:

“I come pure from the pure, O Pure Queen of the earthly ones, Eukles, Eubouleus, and You other Immortal Gods: Persephone, called ε-ε-ό-η; Ariadne, called ε-ε-ό-η; Aphrodite, called ἀ-ο-ί-η; Hermes, called ἑ-ῆ; Hekate, called ἑ-ά-η; male and female heroes and heroines, nymphs and satyrs, and Twice-Born Dionysos, Zagraeus called ι-ό-ῡ-ε! I too claim to be of your blessed race, but Fate and other Immortal Gods conquered me, the star-smiting thunder. Please attend this sacred rite, for I come hear having heard of the Starry Bull and seek to be bound to the True Vine.”

The akousmatikos places the crown of ivy on their head saying:

“I am dry with thirst and am perishing, O Immortal Gods, take what little I have here to offer that I may be worthy to behold the starry Bull.”

The akousmatikos sprinkles water from the khernips onto the image of the God saying:

“Io, Io, Io, Io, Io eoue! The foreigner has arrived into this home, you have entered into our home a stranger, I will greet you as a king.”

If the image is water-proof, they may wash the head, hands and feet of the image. If it is a picture they may make the same gestures on the picture or painting.

The akousmatikos then bows profoundly before the image and in his or her own words makes conversation to the deity. Next they make an offering of flowers and incense, smelling each first and then offering them to the image of the god saying:

“Of all the springing herbs with which mortals have to do on the earth, none has an unchanging destiny laid upon it, but all must go full circles, and it is not lawful to stop any part, but each bough holds to just a share of the course, even as it began it.”

They then take the food offering, and place it to the mouth of the image saying:

“Receive good fortune, receive good health, which we bring from the gods have commanded from of old.”

The akousmatikos may take a single bite of one of the pieces of fruit, placing the bitten piece to the side in remembrance of their ancestors. At this point they may abide in devotion to the god, talking with him and other divine beings present.

After this communion, the akousmatikos smells the wine and pours it in the offering bowl saying:

“There is truth only in wine; all else is dream.”

The akousmatikos then pours their own cup and makes conversation with the the god and other divine beings present.

“I sing praise of Zagraeus, child of Zeus, born of Persephone. He is called Dimetor, of two mothers, born of one father, born the dread of all the powers divine. His is the thread, made like a snake, into which he transformed while being pursued by the crafty powers which had yet to be overcome. His body fell, bruised and battered like the grapes of harvest and he was twice born and immortal.”

At the point where the akousmatikos says, “His body fell” they drop the green thread into the wine in the offering bowl. After the hymn, they sit in absolute silence, drawing on the sorrowful death of Zagraeus. Here they may sing in mournful tones, “Io eoue!”. After some time has passed, the akousmatikos takes the thread from the wine saying:

“Life. Death. Life. Truth. Zagreus. Dionysos.”

They then take the thread, making three knots in the center saying, the same as above. Next, they wrap the string three times around their right wrist and tie the final end together saying:

” Dionysos. Truth. Body. Soul.”

The akousmatikos may abide in mediation on the thread or may close the ceremony saying:

“Akousei! I have heard the beating of the Starry Bull and now, like a calf, I am bound to the beating of its heart! I praise you, all gods! I praise you Persephone, called ε-ε-ό-η; I praise you, Ariadne, called ε-ε-ό-η; I praise you, Aphrodite, called ἀ-ο-ί-η; I praise you, Hermes, called ἑ-ῆ; I praise you, Hekate, called ἑ-ά-η; I praise you all you male and female heroes and heroines, I praise you all you nymphs and satyrs, and I praise you Twice-Born Dionysos, Zagraeus called ι-ό-ῡ-ε! I too claim to be of your blessed race, but Fate and other Immortal Gods conquered me, the star-smiting thunder, yet I am in your care. Akousei! Akousei! Akousei!”

BWK 108
C. Antonius Apellas from Blaundos [Dionysopolis], having been punished by the god often and many times because, although he had been called, he did not want to come and be present at the mysteries …

CIG 6206
Here I lie, Aurelius Antonios, who was priest of all the gods, first of Bona Dea, then of the Mother of the Gods and Dionysos the Leader. I always performed the mysteries for these deities in a reverent manner. Now I left behind the revered, sweet, holy light of the sun. From now on, initiates and friends of every way of life, seize the revered mysteries of life immediately. For no one is able to unwind the thread of the Fates. For I, Antonius this revered one, lived seven years and twelve days.

Demosthenes, Against Neaira 74-78
These sacred and holy rites for the celebration of which your ancestors provided so well and so magnificently, it is your duty, men of Athens, to maintain with devotion, and likewise to punish those who insolently defy your laws and have been guilty of shameless impiety toward the gods; and this for two reasons: first, that they may pay the penalty for their crimes; and, secondly, that others may take warning, and may fear to commit any sin against the gods and against the state. I wish now to call before you the sacred herald who waits upon the wife of the king, when she administers the oath to the Venerable Priestesses as they carry their baskets in front of the altar before they touch the victims, in order that you may hear the oath and the words that are pronounced, at least as far as it is permitted you to hear them; and that you may understand how august and holy and ancient the rites are. I live a holy life and am pure and unstained by all else that pollutes and by commerce with man and I will celebrate the feast of the wine god and the Iobacchic feast in honor of Dionysos in accordance with custom and at the appointed times.

Demosthenes, On the Crown 259-60
On attaining manhood, you abetted your mother in her initiations and the other rituals, and read aloud from the cultic writings. At night, you mixed the libations, purified the initiates, and dressed them in fawnskins. You cleansed them off with clay and cornhusks, and raising them up from the purification, you led the chant, ‘The evil I flee, the better I find.’ And it was your pride that no one ever emitted that holy ululation so powerfully as yourself. I can well believe it! When you hear the stentorian tones of the orator, can you doubt that the ejaculations of the acolyte were simply magnificent? In the daylight, you led the fine thiasos through the streets, wearing their garlands of fennel and white poplar. You rubbed the fat-cheeked snakes and swung them above your head crying ‘Euoi Saboi’ and dancing to the tune of hues attes, attes hues. Old women hailed you ‘Leader’, ‘mysteries instructor’, ‘ivy-bearer’, ‘liknon carrier’, and the like.

Cassius Dio, Roman History LXXII 4
And those called the Boukoloi created a revolt in Egypt and joined with the other Egyptians led by the priest Isidoros. First, in the cloaks of women, they tricked the centurion since they appeared to be the women of the Boukoloi approaching to give him money for their men, and they struck him down. His companion they sacrificed swearing an oath on his entrails and then eating them. Of these men Isidoros was the bravest. Then, when they defeated the Romans in battle, they advanced towards Alexandria and would have reached there had not Cassius been sent against them from Syria and contrived to upset their unity and divide them from each other, for they were too many and too desperate for him to dare to come against them all together. And so he subdued them when they grew divided.

Euripides, The Bakchai 170-249
Tieresias: [shouting] Where’s the servant on the door? You in there, tell Kadmos to get himself out of the house, Agenor’s lad, who came here from Sidon, then put up the towers of this Theban town. Go tell him Tiresias is waiting for him. He knows well enough why I’ve come for him. I’m an old man, and he’s even older, but we’ve agreed make ourselves a thyrsos, to put on fawn skins and crown our heads with garlands of these ivy branches.

[Enter Kadmos from the palace, a very old man, also dressed in clothing appropriate for the Dionysian ritual]

Kadmos: My dearest friend, I was inside the house. I heard your voice. I recognized it—the voice of a man truly wise. So I’ve come equipped with all this god stuff. We must sing his praise, as much as we can, for this Dionysus, well, he’s my daughter’s child. Now he’s revealed himself a god to men. Where must I go and dance? Where do I get to move my feet and shake my old gray head? You must guide me, Tiresias, one old man leading another, for you’re the expert here. Oh, I’ll never tire of waving this thyrsos, day and night, striking the ground. What rapture! Now we can forget that we’re old men.

Tieresias: You feel the same way I do, then. For I’m young and going to try the dancing.

Kadmos: Shall we go up the mountain in a chariot?

Tieresias: The god would not then get complete respect.

Kadmos: So I’ll be your nursemaid—one old man will take charge of another one?

Tieresias: The god himself will get us to the place without our efforts.

Kadmos: Of all the city are we the only ones who’ll dance to honour Bakchos?

Tieresias: Yes, indeed, for we’re the only ones whose minds are clear. As for the others, well, their thinking’s wrong.

Euripides, The Bakchai 315
Dionysos does not, I admit, compel a woman to be chaste. Always and in every case it is her character and her nature that keeps a woman chaste. But even in the rites of Dionysos the chaste woman will not be corrupted.

HSCP 82:148
Bakchai of the City say ‘Farewell you holy priestess.’ This is what a good woman deserves. She led you to the mountain and carried all the sacred objects and implements, marching in procession before the whole city. Should some stranger ask for her name: Alcmeonis, daughter of Rhodius, who knew her share of the blessings.

IGUR 1228
To the gods of the underworld. Not yet having tasted youth, I slipped into the realm of Hades, leaving behind tears and groans to my parents for my short time. Nor was I meant to reach the life span of mortals. I lived only seven years and two months, of which three years I accomplished and spoke the rites for Dionysos. Now my father and revered mother called me Herophilos. Oh passerby, you now know who I was. I was not even brought into being.

IKlaudiop 83
You are looking down at me, a dead person who died young. I was called Saturninus, a Bacchic dancer who pleased great cities. Now I lie in the dirt of my homeland, having sailed through twelve years twice and unable to reach out my hands to my parents.

Livy, History of Rome 39.13
Then Hispala gave an account of the origin of these rites. At first they were confined to women; no male was admitted, and they had three stated days in the year on which persons were initiated during the daytime, and matrons were chosen to act as priestesses. Paculla Annia, a Campanian, when she was priestess, made a complete change, as though by divine monition, for she was the first to admit men, and she initiated her own sons, Minius Cerinnius and Herennius Cerinnius.

Lucian, On Slander 16
A very effective form of slander is the one that is based on opposition to the hearer’s tastes. For instance, in the court of the Ptolemy who was called Dionysos there was once a man who accused Demetrios, the Platonic philosopher, of drinking nothing but water and of being the only person who did not wear women’s clothes at the Dionysia. He was summoned next morning, and had to drink in public, dress up in gauze, clash and dance to the cymbals, or he would have been put to death for disapproving the King’s life, and setting up for a critic of his luxurious ways.

Plato, Laws 2.666b-d
Athenian: But when a man has reached the age of forty, he may join in the convivial gatherings and invoke Dionysos, above all other gods, inviting his presence at the rite (which is also the recreation) of the elders, which he bestowed on mankind as a medicine potent against the crabbedness of old age, that thereby we men may renew our youth, and that, through forgetfulness of care, the temper of our souls may lose its hardness and become softer and more ductile, even as iron when it has been forged in the fire.   Will not this softer disposition, in the first place, render each one of them more ready and less ashamed to sing chants and incantations, in the presence, not of a large company of strangers, but of a small number of intimate friends?

Clinias: Yes!  much more ready.

Athenian: So then, for the purpose of inducing them to take a share in our singing, this plan would not be altogether unseemly.

Clinias: By no means.

Athenian: What manner of song will the men raise?  Will it not, evidently, be one that suits their own condition in every case?

Clinias: Of course.

Athenian: What song, then, would suit godlike men?  Would a choric song?

Clinias: At any rate, Stranger, we and our friends here would be unable to sing any other song than that which we learnt by practice in choruses.

Plato, Republic 2.364a–365b
But the most astounding of all these arguments concerns what they have to say about the gods and virtue. They say that the gods, too, assign misfortune and a bad life to many good people, and the opposite fate to their opposites. Begging priests and prophets frequent the doors of the rich and persuade them that they possess a god-given power founded on sacrifices and incantations. If the rich person or any of his ancestors has committed an injustice, they can fix it with pleasant things and feasts. Moreover, if he wishes to injure some enemy, then, at little expense, he’ll be able to harm just and unjust alike, for by means of spells and enchantments they can persuade the gods to serve them. And they present a hubbub of books by Musaeus and Orpheus, offspring as they say of Selene and the Muses, according to which they arrange their rites, convincing not only individuals but also cities that liberation and purification from injustice is possible, both during life and after death, by means of sacrifices and enjoyable games to the deceased which free us from the evils of the beyond, whereas something horrible awaits those who have not celebrated sacrifices.

Plutarch, On the Bravery of Women 13
When the despots in Phocis had seized Delphi, and the Thebans were waging war against them in what has been called the Sacred War, the women devotees of Dionysos, to whom they give the name Thyiades, in Bacchic frenzy wandering at night unwittingly arrived at Amphissa. As they were tired out, and sober reason had not yet returned to them, they flung themselves down in the marketplace, and were lying asleep, some here, some there. The wives of the men of Amphissa, fearing, because their city had become allied with the Phocians, and numerous soldiers of the despots were present there, that the Thyiades might be treated with indignity, all ran out into the marketplace, and, taking their stand round about in silence, did not go up to them while they were sleeping, but when they arose from their slumber, one devoted herself to one of the strangers and another to another, bestowing attentions on them and offering them food. Finally, the women of Amphissa, after winning the consent of their husbands, accompanied the strangers, who were safely escorted as far as the frontier.

Plutarch, Consolation to his wife
Yet neither was I born “from oak or rock” – you know this yourself, you who have reared so many children in partnership with me, all of them brought up at home under our own care. And I know what great satisfaction lay in this that after four sons the longed-for daughter was born to you, and that she made it possible for me to call her by your name. Our affection for children so young has, furthermore, a poignancy all its own: the delight it gives is quite pure and free from all anger or reproach. She had herself, moreover, a surprising gift of mildness and good temper, and her way of responding to friendship and of bestowing favours gave us pleasure while it afforded an insight into her kindness. For she would invite the nurse to offer the breast and feed with it not only other infants, but even the inanimate objects and playthings she took pleasure in, as though serving them at her own table, dispensing in her kindness what bounty she had and sharing her greatest pleasures with whatever gave her delight [...] Furthermore, I know that you are kept from believing the statements of that other set, who win many to their way of thinking when they say that nothing is in any way evil or painful to “what has undergone dissolution,” by the teaching of our fathers and by the mystic formulas of Dionysiac rites, the knowledge of which we who are participants share with each other [...] It is rather in our ancestral and ancient usages and laws that the truth of these matters is to be seen; for our people do not bring libations to those of their children who die in infancy, nor do they observe in their case any of the other rites that the living are expected to perform for the dead, as such children have no part in earth or earthly things; nor yet do they tarry where the burial is celebrated, at the graves, or at the laying out of the dead, and sit by the bodies. For the laws forbid us to mourn for infants, holding it impiety to mourn for those who have departed to a dispensation and a region too that is better and more divine. And since this is harder to disbelieve than to believe, let us keep our outward conduct as the laws command, and keep ourselves within yet freer from pollution and purer and more temperate.

Plutarch, Life of Alexander 2.5-6
All the women of these parts were addicted to the Orphic rites and the orgies of Dionysos from very ancient times (being called Klodones and Mimallones), and imitated in many ways the practices of the Edonian women and the Thracian women about Mount Haemus, from whom, as it would seem, the word threskeuein came to be applied to the celebration of extravagant and superstitious ceremonies. Now Olympias, who affected these divine possessions more zealously than other women, and carried out these divine inspirations in wilder fashion, used to provide the revelling companies with great tame serpents, which would often lift their heads from out the ivy and the mystic winnowing baskets, or coil themselves about the wands and garlands of the women, thus terrifying the men.

Plutarch, Life of Marcus Antonius 29
But Kleopatra, distributing her flattery, not into the four forms of which Plato speaks, but into many, and ever contributing some fresh delight and charm to Antony’s hours of seriousness or mirth, kept him in constant tutelage, and released him neither night nor day. She played at dice with him, drank with him, hunted with him, and watched him as he exercised himself in arms; and when by night he would station himself at the doors or windows of the common folk and scoff at those within, she would go with him on his round of mad follies, wearing the garb of a serving maiden. For Antony also would try to array himself like a servant. Therefore he always reaped a harvest of abuse, and often of blows, before coming back home; though most people suspected who he was. However, the Alexandrians took delight in their graceful and cultivated way; they liked him, and said that he used the tragic mask with the Romans, but the comic mask with them.

Plutarch, Life of Demetrius
Demetrios, the surviving son, had not the height of his father, though he was a tall man, but he had features of rare and astonishing beauty, so that no painter or sculptor ever achieved a likeness of him. They had at once grace and strength, dignity and beauty, and there was blended with their youthful eagerness a certain heroic look and a kingly majesty that were hard to imitate. And in like manner his disposition also was fitted to inspire in men both fear and favour. For while he was a most agreeable companion, and most dainty of princes in the leisure devoted to drinking and luxurious ways of living, on the other hand he had a most energetic and eager persistency and efficiency in action. Wherefore he used to make Dionysos his pattern, more than any other deity, since this god was most terrible in waging war, and on the other hand most skilful, when war was over, in making peace minister to joy and pleasure.

Suidas s.v. Sarapio
For Isidore said that never in fact could he persuade him to meet another man, especially because when he grew old he no longer came out frequently from his own house; he lived alone in a truly small dwelling, having embraced the solitary life, employing some of the neighbors only for the most necessary things. He said that Sarapio was exceptionally prayerful, and visited the holy places in the dress of an ordinary man, where the rule of the feast led him. For the most part he lived all day in his house, not the life of a man, but to speak simply, the life of a god, continually uttering prayers and miracle-stories to himself or to the divinity, or rather meditating on them in silence. Being a seeker of truth and by nature contemplative, he did not deign to spend time on the more technical aspects of philosophy, but absorbed himself in the more profound and inspired thoughts. For this reason Orpheus was almost the only book he possessed and read, in each of the questions which came to him always asking Isidore, who had achieved the summit of understanding in theology. He recognized Isidore alone as an intimate friend and received him in his house. And Isidore seemed to observe in him the Kronian life of mythology. For that man continued doing and saying nothing else but recollecting himself and raising himself, as far as he could, towards the inward and indivisible life. He despised money so much that he possessed nothing whatever but only two or three books (among these was the poetry of Orpheus); and he despised the pleasures of the body so much that straightway from the beginning he offered to the body only what is necessary and alone brings benefit, but of sexual activity he was pure throughout his life. And he was so little concerned about honor from men that not even his name was known in the city. He would not have been known subsequently, if some one of the gods had not wished to make him an example for mankind of the Kronian life. He used Isidore as an heir, having no heir from his family, nor supposing that anyone else was worthy of his property, I mean the two or three books.

TAM V 477
I, who did not experience Kypris and was an enemy of wickedness, was taken as a companion (hetairos) by Bromios together with the Fates. Bromios has me as a fellow-initiate in his own dances. My name is Julianus, and I lived 18 years. My father was Julianus and my mother was Apphia. Having died, they honored me with the tomb and this inscribed monument. His step-father Asklepiades, his aunt Juliane, his maternal uncle Dionysios, Ammianos, and Stratoneikos honored him. Year 325 of the Sullan era, 12th of the month of Peritios.

When I was coming up with the list of festivals for the thiasos of the Starry Bull I put a lot of thought into their dates. Lenaia and Anthesteria were kept on the lunar system, as this is both traditional and an integral component of them (especially in the case of Anthesteria) whereas most of the others were given according to the more familiar solar, Gregorian calendar. These dates were not random.

The Feast of the Dionysian Martyrs (though it commemorates all those who have given up their lives for the god) is when the Senatus Consultum de Bacchanalibus was declared, resulting in the death, torture or enslavement of thousands. The Feast of the Dionysian Artists and the Feast of the Dionysian Prophets (though again intended to honor all who fall within those categories) are the anniversaries of the birth and death of Jim Morrison respectively. August 13th was chosen for the Hekatesia since a lot of this goddess’ contemporary devotees already honor her on this day. In a couple instances (Agrionia and Hermaia) I took a previously lunar festival and gave them a solar anchor. In the case of Anthesphoria I combined elements of a festival observed by the Greeks in Sicily and Southern Italy with a Roman festival for Ceres and Proserpina described by Ovid in his Fasti, giving it the latter date since our sources are vague on when the Anthesphoria was observed. Ovid was likewise the basis for the Agonalia (with some influence from Virgil) and the Liberalia and the Pannychis of Ariadne:

As soon as night falls you will see the Cretan Crown: through Theseus’ crime Ariadne was made a goddess. She’d already happily exchanged that faithless spouse for Bacchus, she who’d given the ungrateful man the thread to follow. Delighting in her wedded fate she said, ‘Why did I weep like a country-girl, his faithlessness has been my gain?’ [...] She spoke: Liber had been listening a long while to her complaint, since he chanced to follow closely. He embraced her, and dried her tears with kisses, and said: ‘Together, let us seek the depths of the sky! You’ll share my name just as you’ve shared my bed, since, transmuted, you will be called Libera and there’ll be a memory of your crown beside you, the crown Vulcan gave to Venus, and she to you.’ He did as he said, and changed the nine jewels to fire: now the golden Crown glitters with nine stars.

Though I intended to combine it with elements from the Cyprian festival described by Plutarch:

There are many other stories about these matters, and also about Ariadne, but they do not agree at all. Some say that she hung herself because she was abandoned by Theseus; others that she was conveyed to Naxos by sailors and there lived with Oinaros the priest of Dionysos, and that she was abandoned by Theseus because he loved another woman. [...] A very peculiar account of these matters is published by Paion the Amathusian. He says that Theseus, driven out of his course by a storm to Kypros, and having with him Ariadne, who was big with child and in sore sickness and distress from the tossing of the sea, set her on shore alone, but that he himself, while trying to succour the ship, was borne out to sea again. The women of the island, accordingly, took Ariadne into their care, and tried to comfort her in the discouragement caused by her loneliness, brought her forged letters purporting to have been written to her by Theseus, ministered to her aid during the pangs of travail, and gave her burial when she died before her child was born. Paion says further that Theseus came back, and was greatly afflicted, and left a sum of money with the people of the island, enjoining them to sacrifice to Ariadne, and caused two little statuettes to be set up in her honor, one of silver, and one of bronze. He says also that at the sacrifice in her honor on the second day of the month Gorpiaios, one of their young men lies down and imitates the cries and gestures of women in travail; and that they call the grove in which they show her tomb, the grove of Ariadne Aphrodite. Some of the Naxians also have a story of their own, that there were two Minoses and two Ariadnes, one of whom, they say, was married to Dionysos in Naxos and bore him Staphylos and his brother, and the other, of a later time, having been carried off by Theseus and then abandoned by him, came to Naxos, accompanied by a nurse named Korkyne, whose tomb they show; and that this Ariadne also died there, and has honors paid her unlike those of the former, for the festival of the first Ariadne is celebrated with mirth and revels, but the sacrifices performed in honor of the second are attended with sorrow and mourning. (Life of Theseus 20.1-5)

As well as incorporating elements from a Delian festival described by Plutarch:

On his voyage from Crete, Theseus put in at Delos, and having sacrificed to the god and dedicated in his temple the image of Aphrodite which he had received from Ariadne, he danced with his youths a dance which they say is still performed by the Delians, being an imitation of the circling passages in the Labyrinth, and consisting of certain rhythmic involutions and evolutions. This kind of dance, as Dicaearchus tells us, is called by the Delians The Crane, and Theseus danced it round the altar called Keraton, which is constructed of horns (kerata) taken entirely from the left side of the head. He says that he also instituted athletic contests in Delos, and that the custom was then begun by him of giving a palm to the victors.

And this passage by Quintus Smyrnaeus:

Two great silver bowls those which Euneus, Jason’s warrior son in sea-washed Lemnos to Achilles gave to ransom strong Lykaon from his hands. These had Hephaistos fashioned for his gift to glorious Dionysos, when he brought his bride divine to Olympos, Minos’ child far-famous, whom in sea-washed Dia’s isle Theseus unwitting left. Dionysos brimmed with nectar these, and gave them to his son; and Thoas at his death to Hypsipyle with great possessions left them. She bequeathed the bowls to her godlike son, who gave them up unto Achilles for Lykaon’s life. (Fall of Troy 4. 430 ff)

While I was putting together a rough outline for this festival I decided to go back and read the remainder of Ovid’s account which I omitted from the above quotation.

And it’s a good thing that I did, too, because I’m not really comfortable with the aition that he provides for this festival:

Meanwhile Bacchus had conquered the straight-haired Indians, and returned with his riches from the Eastern world. Among the captive girls, of outstanding beauty, one, the daughter of a king, pleased Bacchus intensely. His loving wife wept, and treading the curving shore with dishevelled hair, she spoke these words: ‘Behold, again, you waves, how you hear my complaint! Behold again you sands, how you receive my tears! I remember I used to say: “Perjured, faithless Theseus!” He abandoned me: now Bacchus commits the same crime. Now once more I’ll cry: “Woman, never trust in man!” My fate’s repeated, only his name has changed. O that my life had ended where it first began. So that I’d not have existed for this moment! Why did you save me, Liber, to die on these lonely sands? I might have ceased grieving at that moment. Bacchus, fickle, lighter than the leaves that wreathe your brow, Bacchus known to me in my weeping, how have you dared to trouble our harmonious bed by bringing another lover before my eyes? Alas, where is sworn faith? Where the pledges you once gave? Wretched me, how many times must I speak those words? You blamed Theseus and called him a deceiver: according to that judgement your own sin is worse. Let no one know of this, let me burn with silent pain, lest they think I deserved to be cheated so! Above all I wish it to be hid from Theseus, so he may not joy in you as a partner in crime. I suppose your fair lover is preferred to a dark, may fair be the colouring of my enemies! Yet what does that signify? She is dearer to you for that. What are you doing? She contaminates your embrace. Bacchus, be true, and do not prefer her to a wife’s love. I am one who would love my husband for ever. The horns of a gleaming bull captivated my mother. Yours, me: but this is a love to be praised, hers shameful. Let me not suffer, for loving: you yourself, Bacchus, never suffered for confessing your desire to me. No wonder you make me burn: they say you were born in fire, and were snatched from the flames by your father. I am she to whom you used to promise the heavens. Ah me, what a reward I suffer instead of heaven!’

While this is an important part of the mythological traditional it is not something I really want to emphasize as part of a festival intended to glorify the Mistress of the Labyrinth and Queen of the Bacchants so to avoid the association I’m moving the festival to the date cited by Plutarch, the second of Gorpiaios. This is a Makedonian month name which corresponds to the Attic Metageitnion or Briseusion on the Bacchic calendar I came up with for 2014 using divination.

That means that instead of March 8th we will now be observing the Pannychis of Ariadne on the evening of August 28th through the 29th this year.

The conclusion is that Italians are more often regarded as saints than others. We are led to ask ourselves why? In fact, we are in the presence of a phenomenon having to do with social perception. Italians are more often perceived as saints than say the French. But it is also necessary to ask ourselves by whom are they perceived as saints? The answer is by the Italians themselves. Italians are “programmed” more for perceiving sanctity than other populations. (Pierre Delooz, Sociologie et Canonisations page 179)

Which reminds me – I added a bunch of new quotes to the Smoky Words site, including a whole section on Magna Graecia, whose culture and religious traditions are a strong modifying influence on our form of Bacchic Orphism. There’s a lot of sources on chthonic stuff, nymph worship, music, dance and madness as spiritual cures and the virtue of τρυφἠ in this collection, as well as material on folk Catholicism demonstrating the continuity of our tradition from colonization up to the early modern era. If anyone was curious as to why Saint Paul and John the Baptist were included in the list of the thiasos of the Starry Bull’s heroes this will hopefully answer some of your questions.

One quote that I did not include because I want to keep it to primary sources as much as possible, but really like because it emphasizes some of the uniquely distinctive characteristics these figures took on in Southern Italy, is this:

 In her study of supernatural patrons in Sicilia, Gower reports that … patronal relationships can also be established with groups that are distinguished only by common behaviors, and these need not be behaviors that carry the approval of the Church. Thus in Palermo, San Pantaleone was the patron of those who played the lottery, while in the commune of Casteltermini, San Paolo (Saint Paul) was the patron of those who practiced cunnilingus. (Michael P. Carroll, Madonnas That Maim: Popular Catholicism in Italy Since the Fifteenth Century pg. 38)

So the next time you’re going down on a lady friend give thanks to our Bacchic Orphic hero, Saint Paul of Galatina!

A week or so ago I was watching some videos of Sadhus and noticed that they wore these cool threaded bracelets but didn’t think much about it beyond that. Then a couple days later while discussing magical crafts with Theoinophilus (author of the simple desate rite) he remarked:

Also, interestingly, I was instructed on making holy threads to wear during prayer which reminded me a lot of the kalava worn by pious Hindus on their wrists during prayer, that seemed to me to relate to the Dionysos and Ariadne narrative.

I told him that was a neat idea and he should pursue it, perhaps using the orphninos or red, black and white color scheme that’s present in Thracian and Orphic stuff and left it at that, though I was amused by the synchronicity.

Then the following morning out of the blue I received an e-mail from justme0486 asking:

Does a green string bracelet mean anything to you? I know this is random, however I just got a flash of a green string bracelet when I was thinking of the worry stone. I got the feeling I should tell you in case it means anything to you. It was a bright green string and I saw you making the bracelets. I didn’t get any more than that.

So of course I brought it up with Theoinophilus and he replied:

“Look at the shoot of the vine that is sprouting.”

These are the words that just popped in my head.

We talked about white, red, and black strings. What if the green thread is that of the Νεόφυτο – or akousmatikoi?

And I said:

Man, that is a fucking brilliant idea! Especially since blessings and protections could be woven into the bracelets during their manufacture, different ones depending on whether it’s for an akousmatikos (green) or boukolos (red-black-white).

Theoinophilus suggested I should make them for the group, but I have poor hand-eye coordination and a pathetically short attention span so I decided to find someone more suitably skilled in this regard.

Impressed by the work that Mad Gastronomer has been doing in honor of the Weaving Ones within our tradition I contacted her about being the official Klodone or thread-spinner of the thiasos of the Starry Bull and she accepted.

The akousmatikos bracelets will be made by hand out of hemp since it’s a fibrous plant similar to the vine, there is a prohibition on wool in various strains of Pythagoreanism, Orphism and certain Bacchic cults, as a way to honor the καπνοβαται and because this plant is a daughter of Dionysos. As they are being woven she will ensorcel them with blessings and protections through the chanting of mystic verse and then they will be dyed green to symbolize the freshness and vitality of this stage of one’s involvement with the thiasos. These bracelets will be sold for $10 plus $5 shipping and handling with all of the proceeds after manufacture and distribution going to support one of our own artisans.  You don’t have to have one to consider yourself an akousmatikos but it’s certainly a nice expression of status – plus they’re magic!

I also intend to have her make several orphninos bracelets, but these will only be handed out by me to individuals who have been trained to my satisfaction and confirmed as a boukolos within the thiasos of the Starry Bull.

The next festival on our calendar is the Roman Liberalia, which Senex Caecilius of Ancient Worlds describes as follows:

In rural areas, the Liberalia (March 17) was a festival that was connected to Liber Pater, the god responsible for protecting seed. (Over time this feast evolved to include his consort Libera.) The Roman rustics hung masks in trees and carried a large phallus across the fields to insure fertility and to ward off evil. The worshippers indulged loudly and openly in obscene songs and licentious gaiety, and when the procession halted, the most respectable of the matrons ceremoniously crowned the head of the phallus with a garland. These processions were finally suppressed by the Roman senate. In Rome, the Liberalia was the traditional day for boys who had come of age to take off the bulla and the toga praetexta of childhood and to don the toga virilis of manhood. (In imperial times, according to Platner, this ceremony took place in the Temple of Mars Ultor.) Liber had no temple of his own in Rome, but he was part of the Aventine Triad and shared a temple there with Ceres and Libera. His priestesses were typically older women. On the Liberalia, they made special cakes (libi) of oil and honey which passing devotees would have sacrificed on their behalf on portable altars. The funeral of Julius Caesar and his apotheosis as a god purportedly occured on the occasion of the Liberalia in 44 BC.

For those who would like to know more about how this festival was anciently observed, I recommend the following links:

Danuta Musial, Divinities of Roman Liberalia
William Smith, Bacchanalia from A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities
M. Moravius Piscinus Horatianus Quiritibus, On the Liberalia and Agonalia
Ovid, Fasti Book Three
Augustine, De Civitate Dei Book Seven
Wikipedia s.v. Liberalia
Nova Roma Wiki s.v. Liberalia

I’ve also written various things about it over the years:

An interesting coincidence
All hail Father Freedom!
A free verse hymn for Liberalia
Liber Mater
Buzz buzz buzz
Liber Pater
A timely passage

An aspect of this festival that is not normally prominent for me is the rite de passage whereby young freeborn Roman boys would trade in their bulla and toga praetexta for toga virilis thereby becoming free Roman citizens. I understood why this occurred under the auspices of our god who guides us through all of the transformations of life but being neither a young man myself nor having any I just never really focused on this part of the festival before.

But with so many starting off in the thiasos of the Starry Bull and feeling a need to formally introduce themselves to the gods and spirits of this tradition, I thought that the Liberalia would be a most suitable occasion for that and I may also perform initiations on this date in the future.

For now I’ve come up with a brief ritual sketch that people can use. In place of the Lares I have included the predecessors of our tradition, the Dionysian dead. In addition to the liba cakes that are traditionally offered at this time I would recommend the koulourakia recipe that was recently shared. I’m keeping this simple but fee free to adapt or flesh it out to your needs.

* Set up shrines to the Dionysian dead and to Liber Pater (Dionysos) and Liber Mater (Ariadne).
* Make offerings of cake, mead, oil and honey to the Dionysian dead, in particular to Prosymnos and Melampos.
* Cut off a lock of hair in offering to them. (Either burn it or place it on their shrine.)
* Ask their blessing and guidance on this path.
* Optional: you may perform the desate rite, the rite to the Dionysian dead or make a personal pledge to the gods and spirits of this tradition.
* Put on an ivy crown.
* Pour out a bowl of wine to Liber Pater and one to Liber Mater.
* Recite hymns – either ancient ones or some of your own devising.
* Make a phallos if you don’t have one. (And if you do make some other kind of phallic art.)
* Anoint the phallos with oil and then place it in a bowl of wine.
* While the phallos is soaking up the potency of the god, participants should share wine, tell lewd stories and jokes and sing obscene songs.
* Then when the phallos is ready it is to be carried around the home so that it may bring blessings of fertility, abundance and protection to all that it comes into contact with.
* At that point the procession may continue outdoors into the fields and streets or one may return to the shrine of Liber Pater and Liber Mater. The phallos is to be erected in their presence and crowned with the participants’ ivy-wreaths.

I’ve had a couple questions about religious prohibitions within the thiasos of the Starry Bull. At the akousmatikos stage there are none, except the general purity rules for shrine and temple work. As one goes deeper and finds their particular path as a boukolos specific requirements may be teased out and confirmed through divination and there are some special ones for mystai, but unless Dionysos comes along at some point and lays the law down himself none of this applies across the board.

However, one of the things that distinguished Bacchic Orphism from other cults in antiquity was its strong concern with purity, often making into a full-time lifestyle what in other contexts were only temporary purification requirements. A lot of the impetus for this came from Pythagoreans who tended to travel in the same circles as the Bacchic initiates in Southern Italy and often penned Orphic pseudeoepigraphica, so I’m going to include some material on them in this collection of sources, as well as material on related cults. This is very much a work in progress that I’ll be adding to over the next couple weeks as I research this topic more fully. Once it’s at an acceptable level of completion I’ll move it over to Smoky Words. If you’re aware of any sources I’ve omitted please chime in with suggestions!

And remember:

Nothing can be so firmly bound, neither by illness, nor by wrath or fortune, that cannot be released by Dionysos. (Aelius Aristides, Orationes)

Anonymous, Greek Anthology 7.10.1-3
The fair-haired daughters of Bistonia shed a thousand tears for Orpheus dead, the son of Kalliope and Oiagros; they stained their tattooed arms with blood and dyed their Thracian locks with black ashes.

Apuleius, Apologia 56
Could anyone who has any idea of religion still find it strange that a man initiated in so many divine mysteries should keep at home some tokens of recognition of the cults and should wrap them in linen cloth, the purest veil for sacred objects? For wool, the excrescence of an inert body extracted from a sheep, is already a profane garment in the prescriptions of Orpheus and Pythagoras.

Areios Didymos, Epitome of Stoic Ethics 3.604-3.662
The Stoics say that only the wise man can be a priest, while no worthless person can be one. For the priest needs to be experienced in the laws concerning sacrifices, prayers, purifications, foundations, and the like. In addition to this he needs ritual, piety, and experience in the service of the gods, and to be close to the divine nature. Not one of these things belongs to the worthless; hence, also all the stupid are impious. For impiety as a vice is ignorance of the service of the gods, while piety is knowledge of that divine service. Likewise they say that the worthless are not holy. For holiness is described as justice with respect to the gods. The worthless transgress many of the just customs pertaining to the gods, on account of which they are unholy, impure, unclean, defiled and barred from festive rites. For carrying out festive rites is, they say, the mark of a civilized man, since a festival is a time when one ought to be concerned with the divine for the sake of honor and appropriate celebration. So the person who carries out festive rites needs to have humbly entered with piety into this post.

Aristophanes, The Frogs 1030-33
For consider how useful our noble-minded poets have been from the beginning. Orpheus revealed to us the mysteries and abstinence from murder, Musaeus taught us cures from illnesses and oracles.

Athenaios, Deipnosophistai 8.11.334
The river is a shallow one, scarcely overpassing the ankles, but nevertheless so great a shoal of the fish arrives that the inhabitants round about can all of them lay up sufficient store of salt fish for their needs. And it is a wonderful fact that they never pass by the monument of Olynthos, son of Herakles and Bolbe. They say that formerly the people of Apollonia used to perform the accustomed rites to the dead in the month of Elaphebolion, but now they do them in Anthesterion, and that on this account the fish come up in those months only in which they are wont to do honour to the dead.

Demosthenes, Against Neaira 74-79
And they passed a law that his wife should be an Athenian who has never had intercourse with another man, but that he should marry a virgin, in order that according to ancestral custom she might offer the ineffably holy rites on behalf of the city, and that the customary observances might be done for the gods piously, and that nothing might be neglected or altered. They inscribed this law on a stele and set it beside the altar in the sanctuary of Dionysos En Limnais. This stele is still standing today, displaying the inscription in worn Attic letters. Thus the people bore witness about their own piety toward the god and left a testament for their successors that we require her who will be given to the god as his bride and will perform the sacred rites to be that kind of woman. For these reasons they set in the most ancient and holy temple of Dionysos in Limnai, so that most people could not see the inscription. For it is opened once each year, on the twelfth of the month Anthesterion. These sacred and holy rites for the celebration of which your ancestors provided so well and so magnificently, it is your duty, men of Athens, to maintain with devotion, and likewise to punish those who insolently defy your laws and have been guilty of shameless impiety toward the gods; and this for two reasons: first, that they may pay the penalty for their crimes; and, secondly, that others may take warning, and may fear to commit any sin against the gods and against the state. I wish now to call before you the sacred herald who waits upon the wife of the king, when she administers the oath to the venerable priestesses as they carry their baskets in front of the altar before they touch the victims, in order that you may hear the oath and the words that are pronounced, at least as far as it is permitted you to hear them; and that you may understand how august and holy and ancient the rites are. I live a holy life and am pure and unstained by all else that pollutes and by commerce with man and I will celebrate the feast of the wine god and the Iobacchic feast in honor of Dionysos in accordance with custom and at the appointed times. You have heard the oath and the accepted rites handed down by our fathers, as far as it is permitted to speak of them, and how this woman, whom Stephanos betrothed to Theogenes when the latter was king, as his own daughter, performed these rites, and administered the oath to the venerable priestesses; and you know that even the women who behold these rites are not permitted to speak of them to anyone else.

Demosthenes, On the Crown 259-60
On attaining manhood, you abetted your mother in her initiations and the other rituals, and read aloud from the cultic writings. At night, you mixed the libations, purified the initiates, and dressed them in fawnskins. You cleansed them off with clay and cornhusks, and raising them up from the purification, you led the chant, ‘The evil I flee, the better I find.’ … In the daylight, you led the fine thiasos through the streets, wearing their garlands of fennel and white poplar. You rubbed the fat-cheeked snakes and swung them above your head crying ‘Euoi Saboi’ and dancing to the tune of ‘hues attes, attes hues‘. Old women hailed you ‘Leader’, ‘mysteries instructor’, ‘ivy-bearer’, ‘liknon carrier’, and the like.

Diogenes Laertios, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 8.19-21; 23-24
Above all, he forbade as food red mullet and blacktail, and he enjoined abstinence from the hearts of animals and from beans, and sometimes, according to Aristotle, even from paunch and gurnard. Some say that he contented himself with just some honey or a honeycomb or bread, never touching wine in the daytime, and with greens boiled or raw for dainties, and fish but rarely. His robe was white and spotless, his quilts of white wool, for linen had not yet reached those parts. He was never known to over-eat, to behave loosely, or to be drunk. He would avoid laughter and all pandering to tastes such as insulting jests and vulgar tales. He would punish neither slave nor free man in anger. Admonition he used to call “setting right.” He used to practise divination by sounds or voices and by auguries, never by burnt-offerings, beyond frankincense. The offerings he made were always inanimate; though some say that he would offer cocks, sucking goats and porkers, as they are called, but lambs never. However, Aristoxenus has it that he consented to the eating of all other animals, and only abstained from ploughing oxen and rams. The same authority, as we have seen, asserts that Pythagoras took his doctrines from the Delphic priestess Themistoclea. Hieronymus, however, says that, when he had descended into Hades, he saw the soul of Hesiod bound fast to a brazen pillar and gibbering, and the soul of Homer hung on a tree with serpents writhing about it, this being their punishment for what they had said about the gods ; he also saw under torture those who would not remain faithful to their wives. This, says our authority, is why he was honoured by the people of Croton. Aristippos of Kyrene affirms in his work On the Physicists that he was named Pythagoras because he uttered the truth as infallibly as did the Pythian oracle. And he further bade them to honour gods before demi-gods, heroes before men, and first among men their parents ; and so to behave one to another as not to make friends into enemies, but to turn enemies into friends. To deem nothing their own. To support the law, to wage war on lawlessness. Never to kill or injure trees that are not wild, nor even any animal that does not injure man. That it is seemly and advisable neither to give way to unbridled laughter nor to wear sullen looks. To avoid excess of flesh, on a journey to let exertion and slackening alternate, to train the memory, in wrath to restrain hand and tongue, to respect all divination, to sing to the lyre and by hymns to show due gratitude to gods and to good men. To abstain from beans because they are flatulent and partake most of the breath of life ; and besides, it is better for the stomach if they are not taken, and this again will make our dreams in sleep smooth and untroubled.

Diogenes Laertios, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 8.33-35
Right has the force of an oath, and that is why Zeus is called the God of Oaths. Virtue is harmony, and so are health and all good and God himself; this is why they say that all things are constructed according to the laws of harmony. The love of friends is just concord and equality. We should not pay equal worship to gods and heroes, but to the gods always, with reverent silence, in white robes, and after purification, to the heroes only from midday onwards. Purification is by cleansing, baptism and lustration, and by keeping clean from all deaths and births and all pollution, and abstaining from meat and flesh of animals that have died, mullets, gurnards, eggs and egg-sprung animals, beans, and the other abstinences prescribed by those who perform mystic rites in the temples. According to Aristotle in his work On the Pythagoreans, Pythagoras counselled abstinence from beans either because they are like the genitals, or because they are like the gates of Hades . . . as being alone unjointed, or because they are injurious, or because they are like the form of the universe, or because they belong to oligarchy, since they are used in election by lot. He bade his disciples not to pick up fallen crumbs, either in order to accustom them not to eat immoderately, or because connected with a person’s death; nay, even, according to Aristophanes, crumbs belong to the heroes, for in his Heroes he says: Nor taste ye of what falls beneath the board! Another of his precepts was not to eat white cocks, as being sacred to the month and wearing suppliant garb–now supplication ranked with things good– sacred to the month because they announce the time of day ; and again white represents the nature of the good, black the nature of evil. Not to touch such fish as were sacred; for it is not right that gods and men should be allotted the same things, any more than free men and slaves. Not to break bread ; for once friends used to meet over one loaf, as the barbarians do even to this day ; and you should not divide bread which brings them together; some give as the explanation of this that it has reference to the judgement of the dead in Hades, others that bread makes cowards in war, others again that it is from it that the whole world begins.

Euripides, Cretans fragment 472
Son of the Phoenician princess, child of Tyrian Europa and great Zeus, ruler over hundred-fortressed Crete—here am I, come from the sanctity of temples roofed with cut beam of our native wood, its true joints of cypress welded together with Chalybean axe and cement from the bull. Pure has my life been since the day when I became an initiate of Idaean Zeus. Where midnight Zagreus roves, I rove; I have endured his thunder-cry; fulfilled his red and bleeding feasts; held the Great Mother’s mountain flame; I am set free and named by name a Bakchos of the Mailed Priests. Having all-white garments, I flee the birth of mortals and, not nearing the place of corpses, I guard myself against the eating of ensouled flesh.

Euripides, Hippolytos 948–957
Are you, then, the companion of the gods, as a man beyond the common? Are you the chaste one, untouched by evil? I will never be persuaded by your vauntings, never be so unintelligent as to impute folly to the gods. Continue then your confident boasting, take up a diet of greens and play the showman with your food, make Orpheus your lord and engage in mystic rites, holding the vaporings of many books in honor. For you have been found out. To all I give the warning: avoid men like this. For they make you their prey with their high-holy-sounding words while they contrive deeds of shame.

Herodotos, The Histories 2.81
The Egyptians wear linen tunics with fringes hanging about the legs, called ‘calasiris’ and loose white woolen mantles over these. But nothing of wool is brought into the temples, or buried with them; that is forbidden. In this they follow the same rules as the ritual called Orphic and Bacchic, but which is in truth Egyptian and Pythagorean; for neither may those initiated into these rites be buried in woolen wrappings. There is a sacred legend about this.

Horace, Ars Poetica 421-24
While men still lived in the woods, Orpheus, the gods’ sacred medium, prevented bloodshed and vile customs, hence it’s said that he tamed tigers and raging lions.

Hyginus, Astronomica 2.5
So then, when Liber came to that place and was about to descend, he left the crown, which he had received as a gift from Venus, at that place which in consequence is called Stephanus, for he was unwilling to take it with him for fear the immortal gift of the gods would be contaminated by contact with the dead. When he brought his mother back unharmed, he is said to have placed the crown in the stars as an everlasting memorial.

IDelos 5.2529.21
They are to enter the temple with pure hands and soul, with white clothing, barefooted, keeping pure from intercourse with a woman and from meat; and they are not to bring in … nor a key nor an iron ring nor a belt nor a purse nor weapons of war …

IGR 4.1581
Zosime Artema, while alive, prepared the vault and chamber tomb in it for herself and her children: Diogenes, Artema, and Alexander. But if anyone else forces his way into this vault or harms it, let him put money on deposit and give 2500 denarii to the temple of our god Dionysos, leader of the city.

IEph 1250
The hair cloth wearing initiates (sakēphoroi mystai) … (remainder illegible)

ILindos 108
You must abstain from the pleasures of sex, from beans, from heart. May you be holy in the temple: not cleansed with water but purified in spirit.

ISmyrna 2.1.728
The theophantes … son of Menandros dedicated this stele. All who enter the temenos and temples of Bromios: avoid for forty days after the exposure of a newborn child, so that divine wrath does not occur; after the miscarriage of a woman for the same amount of days. If he conceals the death and fate of a relative, keep away from the propylon for the third of a month. If impurity occurs from other houses, remain for three days after the departure of the dead. No one wearing black clothes may approach the altar of the king, nor lay hands on things not sacrificed from sacrificial animals, nor place an egg as food at the Bacchic feast, nor sacrifice a heart on the holy altars … keep away from the smell, which … the most hateful root of beans from seed … proclaim to the mystai of the Titans … and it is improper to rattle with reeds … on the days when the mystai sacrifice……, nor bring …

Jerome, Against Jovinianus 2.14
Eubulus who wrote the history of Mithras in many volumes, relates that among the Persians there are three kinds of Magi, the first of whom, those of greatest learning and eloquence, take no food except meal and vegetables. At Eleusis it is customary to abstain from fowls and fish and certain fruits. Euripides relates that the prophets of Jupiter in Crete abstained not only from flesh, but also from cooked food. Xenocrates the philosopher writes that at Athens out of all the laws of Triptolemus only three precepts remain in the temple of Ceres: respect to parents, reverence for the gods, and abstinence from flesh.

Jerome, Against Jovinianus 2.13
Chaeremon the Stoic, a man of great eloquence, has a treatise on the life of the ancient priests of Egypt who, he says, laid aside all worldly business and cares and were ever in the temple, studying nature and the regulating causes of the heavenly bodies; they never had intercourse with women; they never from the time they began to devote themselves to the divine service set eyes on their kindred and relations, nor even saw their children; they always abstained from flesh and wine, on account of the light-headedness and dizziness which a small quantity of food caused, and especially to avoid the stimulation of the lustful appetite engendered by this meat and drink. They seldom ate bread, that they might not load the stomach. And whenever they ate it, they mixed pounded hyssop with all that they took, so that the action of its warmth might diminish the weight of the heavier food. They used no oil except with vegetables, and then only in small quantities, to mitigate the unpalatable taste. What need, he says, to speak of birds, when they avoided even eggs and milk as flesh. The one, they said, was liquid flesh, the other was blood with the colour changed? Their bed was made of palm-leaves, called by them baiae: a sloping footstool laid upon the ground served for a pillow, and they could go without food for two or three days. The humours of the body which arise from sedentary habits were dried up by reducing their diet to an extreme point.

Lampridius, Vita Alexandri Severi 29
This was his manner of life: as soon as there was opportunity—that is, if he had not spent the night with his wife—he performed his devotions in the early morning hours in his lararium, in which he had statues of the divine princes and also a select number of the best men and the more holy spirits, among whom he had Apollonius of Tyana, and as a writer of his times says, Christ, Abraham, and Orpheus, and others similar, as well as statues of his ancestors.

LSCG 50
Do not wash anything in the spring, or swim in the spring, or throw into the spring manure or anything else. Penalty: 2 sacred drachmas.

Marinus of Samaria, The Life of Proclus 18-19
Proclus made use of the noble purificatory practices which woo us from evil, that is lustrations and all of the other processes of purification whether Orphic or Chaldean, such as dipping himself into the sea without hesitation every month, and sometimes even twice or thrice a month. He practiced this discipline, rude as it was, not only in his prime, but even also when he approached his life’s decline; and so he observed, without ever failing, these austere habits of which he had, so to speak, made himself a law … As to the necessary pleasures of food and drink, he made use of them with sobriety, for to him they were no more than a solace from his fatigues. He especially preached abstinence from animal food, but if a special ceremony compelled him to make use of it, he only tasted it, out of consideration and respect. Every month he sanctified himself according to the rites devoted to the Mother of the Gods by the Romans, and before them by the Phrygians; he observed the holy days observed among the Egyptians even more strictly than did they themselves; and especially he fasted on certain days, quite openly. During the first day of the lunar month he remained without food, without even having eaten the night before; and he likewise celebrated the New Moon in great solemnity, and with much sanctity. He regularly observed the great festivals of all peoples, so to speak, and the religious ceremonies peculiar to each people or country. Nor did he, like so many others, make this the pretext of a distraction, or of a debauch of food, but on the contrary they were occasions of prayer meetings that lasted all night, without sleep, with songs, hymns and similar devotions. Of this we see the proof in the composition of his hymns, which contain homage and praises not only of the gods adored among the Greeks, but where you also see worship of the god Marnas of Gaza, Asklepios Leontukhos of Askalon, Thyandrites who is much worshipped among the Arabs, the Isis who has a temple at Philae, and indeed all other divinities. It was a phrase he much used, and that was very familiar to him, that a philosopher should watch over the salvation of not only a city, nor over the national customs of a few people, but that he should be the hierophant of the whole world in common. Such were the holy and purificatory exercises he practiced, in his austere manner of life.

Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.39.5-14
When a man has made up his mind to descend to the oracle of Trophonios, he first lodges in a certain building for an appointed number of days, this being sacred to the Good Daimôn and to Good Fortune. While he lodges there, among other regulations for purity he abstains from hot baths, bathing only in the river Hercyna. Meat he has in plenty from the sacrifices, for he who descends sacrifices to Trophonios himself and to the children of Trophonios, to Apollo also and to Kronos, to Zeus with the epithet King, to Hera Charioteer [Hêniokhos], and to Demeter whom they name with the epithet Europa and say was the wetnurse of Trophonios. At each sacrifice a diviner is present, who looks into the entrails of the sacrificial victim, and after an inspection prophesies to the person descending whether Trophonios will give him a kind and gracious reception. The entrails of the other victims do not declare the mind of Trophonios so much as a ram, which each inquirer sacrifices over a pit on the night he descends, calling upon Agamedes. Even though the previous sacrifices have appeared propitious, no account is taken of them unless the entrails of this ram indicate the same; but if they agree, then the inquirer descends in good hope.

The procedure of the descent is this. First, during the night he is taken to the river Hercyna by two boys of the citizens about thirteen years old, named Hermae, who after taking him there anoint him with oil and wash him. It is these who wash the descender, and do all the other necessary services as his attendant boys. After this he is taken by the priests, not at once to the oracle, but to fountains of water very near to each other. Here he must drink water called the water of Forgetfulness that he may forget all that he has been thinking of hitherto, and afterwards he drinks of another water, the water of Memory which causes him to remember what he sees after his descent. After looking at the image which they say was made by Daedalus (it is not shown by the priests save to such as are going to visit Trophonios), having seen it, worshipped it and prayed, he proceeds to the oracle, dressed in a linen tunic, with ribbons girding it, and wearing the boots of the native locale. The oracle is on the mountain, beyond the grove. Round it is a circular basement of white marble, the circumference of which is about that of the smallest threshing floor, while its height is just short of two cubits. On the basement stand spikes, which, like the cross-bars holding them together, are of bronze, while through them has been made a double door.

Within the enclosure is a chasm in the earth, not natural, but artificially constructed after the most accurate masonry. The shape of this structure is like that of a bread-oven. Its breadth across the middle one might conjecture to be about four cubits, and its depth also could not be estimated to extend to more than eight cubits. They have made no way of descent to the bottom, but when a man comes to Trophonios, they bring him a narrow, light ladder. After going down he finds a hole between the floor and the structure. Its breadth appeared to be two spans, and its height one span. The descender lies with his back on the ground, holding barley-cakes (mazai) kneaded with honey, thrusts his feet into the hole and himself follows, trying hard to get his knees into the hole. After his knees the rest of his body is at once swiftly drawn in, just as the largest and most rapid river will catch a man in its eddy and carry him under. After this those who have entered the shrine learn the future, not in one and the same way in all cases, but by sight sometimes and at other times by hearing. The return upwards is by the same mouth, the feet darting out first.

They say that no one who has made the descent has been killed, save only one of the bodyguards of Demetrius. But they declare that he performed none of the usual rites in the sanctuary, and that he descended, not to consult the god but in the hope of stealing gold and silver from the shrine. It is said that the body of this man appeared in a different place, and was not cast out at the sacred mouth. Other tales are told about the man, but I have given the one most worthy of consideration.

After his ascent from Trophonios the inquirer is again taken in hand by the priests, who set him upon a chair called the Throne of Memory, which stands not far from the shrine, and they ask of him, when seated there, all he has seen or learned. After gaining this information they then entrust him to his relatives. These lift him, paralyzed with terror and unconscious both of himself and of his surroundings, and carry him to the building where he lodged before with Good Fortune and the Good Daimôn. Afterwards, however, he will recover all his faculties, and the power to laugh will return to him.

What I write is not hearsay; I have myself inquired of Trophonios and seen other inquirers.

Plato, Laws 6.782
Again, the practice of men sacrificing one another still exists among many nations; while, on the other hand, we hear of other human beings who did not even venture to taste the flesh of a cow and had no animal sacrifices, but only cakes and fruits dipped in honey, and similar pure offerings, but no flesh of animals; from these they abstained under the idea that they ought not to eat them, and might not stain the altars of the gods with blood. For in those days men are said to have lived a sort of Orphic life, having the use of all lifeless things, but abstaining from all living things.

Plato, Meno 81a ff
There were certain priests and priestesses who have studied so as to be able to give a reasoned account of their ministry; and Pindar also and many another poet of heavenly gifts. As to their words, they are these: mark now, if you judge them to be true. They say that the soul of man is immortal, and at one time comes to an end, which is called dying, and at another is born again, but never perishes. Consequently one ought to live all one’s life in the utmost holiness. `For from whomsoever Persephone shall accept requital for ancient wrong, the souls of these she restores in the ninth year to the upper sun again; from them arise glorious kings and men of splendid might and surpassing wisdom, and for all remaining time men call them sainted heroes.’

Plato, The Republic 364e
They adduce a hubbub of books by Musaeus and Orpheus, descendants, as they say, of the Moon and of the Muses, according to which they arrange their rites, convincing not only individuals but also cities that liberation and purification from injustice is possible, both during life and after death, by means of sacrifices and enjoyable games to the deceased which free us from the evils of the beyond, whereas something horrible awaits those who have not celebrated sacrifices.

Pliny the Elder, Natural History 7.196
The use of the spindle in the manufacture of woolen was invented by Closter son of Arachne, linen and nets by Arachne.

Plotinos, First Ennead 6.7
There we must ascend again towards the good, desired of every soul. Anyone who has seen this, knows what I intend when I say it is beautiful. Even the desire of it is to be desired as a good. To attain it is for those who will take the upward path, who will set all their forces towards it, who will divest themselves of all that we have put on in our descent:– so, to those who approach the holy celebrations of the mysteries, there are appointed purifications and the laying aside of the garments worn before, and the entry in nakedness– until, passing on the upward way, all that is other than the god, each in the solitude of oneself shall see that solitary-dwelling existence, the apart, the unmingled, the pure, that from which all things depend, for which all look and live and act and know, the source of life and of intellection and of being.

Plutarch, Aetia Graeca 12
The Delphians celebrate three festivals one after the other which occur every eight years, the first of which they call Septerion, the second Heroïs, and the third Charilla. The greater part of the Heroïs has a secret import which the Thyiads b know; but from the portions of the rites that are performed in public one might conjecture that it represents the evocation of Semele. The story of Charilla which they relate is somewhat as follows: A famine following a drought oppressed the Delphians, and they came to the palace of their king with their wives and children and made supplication. The king gave portions of barley and legumes to the more notable citizens, for there was not enough for all. But when an orphaned girl, who was still but a small child, approached him and importuned him, he struck her with his sandal and cast the sandal in her face. But, although the girl was poverty-stricken and without protectors, she was not ignoble in character; and when she had withdrawn, she took off her girdle and hanged herself. As the famine increased and diseases also were added thereto, the prophetic priestess gave an oracle to the king that he must appease Charilla, the maiden who had slain herself. Accordingly, when they had discovered with some difficulty that this was the name of the child who had been struck, they performed a certain sacrificial rite combined with purification, which even now they continue to perform every eight years. For the king sits in state and gives a portion of barley-meal and legumes to everyone, alien and citizen alike, and a doll-like image of Charilla is brought thither. When, accordingly, all have received a portion, the king strikes the image with his sandal. The leader of the Thyiads picks up the image and bears it to a certain place which is full of chasms; there they tie a rope round the neck of the image and bury it in the place where they buried Charilla after she had hanged herself.

Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris 358b
Of the parts of Osiris’s body the only one which Isis did not find was the male member, for the reason that this had been at once tossed into the river, and the lepidotus, the sea-bream, and the pike had fed upon it; and it is from these very fishes the Egyptians are most scrupulous in abstaining. But Isis made a replica of the member to take its place, and consecrated the phallos, in honour of which the Egyptians even at the present day celebrate a festival.

Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris 365a-b
To show that the Greeks regard Dionysos as the lord and master not only of wine, but of the nature of every sort of moisture, it is enough that Pindar be our witness, when he says

May gladsome Dionysos swell the fruit upon the trees,
The hallowed splendour of harvest time.

For this reason all who reverence the god are prohibited from destroying a cultivated tree or blocking up a spring of water.

Plutarch, Symposiacs 2.3
When upon a dream I had forborne eggs a long time, on purpose that in an egg (as in a Carian) I might make experiment of a notable vision that often troubled me; some at Sossius Senecio’s table suspected that I was tainted with Orpheus’s or Pythagoras’s opinions, and refused to eat an egg (as some do the heart and brain) imagining it to be the principle of generation. And Alexander the Epicurean ridiculingly repeated, —

To feed on beans and parents’ heads
Is equal sin;

as if the Pythagoreans covertly meant eggs by the word ϰύαμοι (beans), deriving it from ϰύω or ϰυέω (to conceive), and thought it as unlawful to feed on eggs as on the animals that lay them. Now to pretend a dream for the cause of my abstaining, to an Epicurean, had been a defence more irrational than the cause itself; and therefore I suffered jocose Alexander to enjoy his opinion, for he was a pleasant man and excellently learned. Soon after he proposed that perplexed question, that plague of the inquisitive, Which was first, the bird or the egg?

Porphyry, On Abstinence from Animal Foods 2.45
That is why even sorcerers have thought such advance protection and purification necessary; but it is not effective in all circumstances, for they stir up wicked daimones to gratify their lusts. So holiness is not for sorcerers, but for godly men who are wise about the gods, and it brings as a guard on all sides, for those who practice it, their attachment to the divine. If only sorcerers would practice it constantly, they would have no enthusiasm for sorcery, because holiness would exclude them from enjoyment of the things for the sake of which they commit impiety. But, being filled with passions, they abstain for a little from impure foods, yet are full of impurity and pay the penalty for their lawlessness towards the universe: some penalties are inflicted by the beings they themselves provoke, some by the justice which watches over all mortal concerns, both actions and thoughts. Holiness, both internal and external, belongs to a godly man, who strives to fast from the passions of the soul just as he fasts from those foods which arouse the passions, who feeds on wisdom about the gods and becomes like them by right thinking about the divine; a man sanctified by intellectual sacrifice, who approaches the god in white clothing, with a truly pure freedom from passion in the soul and with a body which is light and not weighted down with the alien juices of other creatures or with the passions of the soul.

Porphyry, On Abstinence from Animal Foods 2.50
Priests, diviners and all men who are wise in the ways of religion instruct us to stay clear of tombs, of sacrilegious men, menstruating women, sexual intercourse, any shameful or lamentable sight, anything heard which arouses emotion; for often even unseen impurity disturbs those officiating at the rites, and an improperly performed sacrifice brings more harm than good.

Porphyry, On Abstinence From Animal Food 4.16
In the Eleusinian mysteries, likewise, the initiated are ordered to abstain from domestic birds, from fishes and beans, pomegranates and apples, which fruits are as equally defiling to the touch as a woman recently delivered, and a dead body. But whoever is acquainted with the nature of divinely-luminous appearances knows also on what account it is requisite to abstain from all birds, and especially for him who hastens to be liberated from terrestrial concerns, and to be established with the celestial gods.

Porphyry, On Abstinence from Animal Foods 4.7
But they abstained from all the fish that was caught in Egypt, and from such quadrupeds as had solid, or many-fissured hoofs, and from such as were not horned; and likewise from all such birds as were carnivorous. Many of them, however, entirely abstained from all animals; and in purifications this abstinence was adopted by all of them, for then they did not even eat an egg. Moreover, they also rejected other things, without being calumniated for so doing. Thus, for instance, of oxen, they rejected the females, and also such of the males as were twins, or were speckled, or of a different colour, or alternately varied in their form, or which were now tamed, as having been already consecrated to labours, and resembled animals that are honoured, or which were the images of any thing that is divine, or those that had but one eye, or those that verged to a similitude of the human form. There are also innumerable other observations pertaining to the art of those who are called mosxofragistai, or who stamp calves with a seal, and of which books have been composed. But these observations are still more curious respecting birds; as, for instance, that a turtle should not be eaten; for it is said that a hawk frequently dismisses this bird after he has seized it, and preserves its life, as a reward for having had connexion with it. The Egyptian priests, therefore, that they might not ignorantly meddle with a turtle of this kind, avoided the whole species of those birds. And these indeed were certain common religious ceremonies; but there were different ceremonies, which varied according to the class of the priests that used them, and were adapted to the several divinities. But chastity and purifications were common to all the priests. When also the time arrived in which they were to perform something pertaining to the sacred rites of religion, they spent some days in preparatory ceremonies, some indeed forty-two, but others a greater, and others a less number of days; yet never less than seven days; and during this time they abstained from all animals, and likewise from all pot-herbs and leguminous substances, and, above all, from a venereal connexion with women; for they never at any time had connexion with males. They likewise washed themselves with cold water thrice every day; viz. when they rose from their bed, before dinner, and when they betook themselves to sleep. But if they happened to be polluted in their sleep by the emission of the seed, they immediately purified their body in a bath. They also used cold bathing at other times, but not so frequently as on the above occasion. Their bed was woven from the branches of the palm tree, which they call bais; and their bolster was a smooth semi-cylindric piece of wood. But they exercised themselves in the endurance of hunger and thirst, and were accustomed to paucity of food through the whole of their life.

SEG 15.718.7-19
The boule and the demos have resolved: The ehebes and the priest of the paides are to sing hymns every day at the opening of the temple of Dionysos, the leading god of the city. And at the opening and the closing of the temple of the god, the priest of Tiberius Caesar is to make libations, burn incense, and light lamps; (expenses are to be paid) from the sacred revenues of Dionysos; and the archons of the city are to always sacrifice at the beginning of each month on the seventh day, praying for the success of the city; but if any person offends any of these requirements, that person is asebes. And this decree is to be engraved in the sanctuary of Dionysos and it is to have the status of law.

SEG 28
… the form of Bromios and the … initiation rites of the god … so that … once you participate … in the sacred bath, you might know that being an initiate is the whole story of one’s whole life, knowing to keep silent about whatever is concealed and to shout whatever is customary to shout. Learning these rites, you may approach.

SEG 36.267
In the archonship of Theophemos, the fellow ephebes Pythagoras, Sosikrates, and Lysandros dedicated this stele to Pan and the Nymphs. The god forbids to carry in either colored garments or dyed garments or …

Strabo, Geography 6.1.5
Because the country round about Hipponion has luxuriant meadows abounding in flowers, people have believed that Kore used to come hither from Sicily to gather flowers; and consequently it has become the custom among the women of Hipponion to gather flowers and to weave them into garlands, so that on festival days it is disgraceful to wear bought garlands.

Suidas s.v. Ἀποτεθρίακεν
Meaning plucked, made smooth. But properly pruned fig-trees; for thria ["fig-leaves"] are the leaves of the fig-tree. Aristophanes writes, “which of the Odomanti has unpetalled his prick?” The Odomanti are a Thracian people. The Thracians used to pluck and smooth their genitals and had them circumcised. They say Judaeans are the same. Also attested is the participle ἀποτεθρυωμένοι ["they having gone to pieces"], meaning they having gone savage. This is said in a metaphor from rushes, tethrua, which are wild and sterile plants.

Suidas s.v. Hêraïskos
Hence his life also reached such a point that his soul always resided in hidden sanctuaries as he practiced not only his native rites in Egypt but also those of other nations, wherever there was something left of these. Heraiskos became a Bakchos, as a dream designated him and he traveled widely, receiving many initiations. Heraiskos actually had a natural talent for distinguishing between religious statues that were animated and those that were not. For as soon as he looked at one his heart was struck by a sensation of the divine and he gave a start in his body and his soul, as though seized by the god. If he was not moved in such a fashion then the statue was soulless and had no share of divine inspiration. In this way he distinguished the secret statue of Aion which the Alexandrians worshiped as being possessed by the god, who was both Osiris and Adonis at the same time according to some mystical union. There was also something in Heraiskos’ nature that rejected defilements of nature. For instance, if he heard any unclean woman speaking, no matter where or how, he immediately got a headache, and this was taken as a sign that she was menstruating.

Suidas s.v. Λεύκη
Demosthenes in the speech For Ktesiphon writes, “those crowned with fennel and white-poplar.” Those celebrating the Bacchic rites used to be crowned with white-poplar because the plant is from the nether world and the Dionysos of Persephone, too, is from the nether world. He says that the white-poplar grew by the river Acheron, which is why in Homer it is called acherois.

Sylloge2, 653
Concerning sacred men and sacred women. The scribe of the magistrates is to administer the following oath, then and there, to those who have been designated sacred men, who pour the blood and wine when the [offerings] are kindled, that no one may be remiss: “I swear, by the gods for whom the mysteries are celebrated: I shall be careful that the things pertaining to the initiation are done reverently and in fully lawful manner; I myself shall do nothing shameful or wrong at the conclusion of the mysteries, nor shall I confide in anyone else; rather, I shall obey what is written; and I shall administer the oath to the sacred women and the priest in accordance with the rule. May I, by keeping the oath, experience what is in store for the pious, but may one who breaks the oath experience the opposite.” If someone does not wish to take the oath, he is to pay a fine of one thousand drachmai, and in his place he is to appoint by lot another person from the same clan. The priest and the sacred men are to administer the same oath to the sacred women in the sacred area of Karneios on the day before the mysteries, and they are to administer an additional oath as well: “I also have lived purely and lawfully with my husband.” The sacred men are to fine one who does not wish to take the oath one thousand drachmai and not allow her to celebrate the things pertaining to the sacrifices or participate in the mysteries. Rather, the women who have taken the oath are to celebrate. But in the fifty-fifth year those who have been designated sacred men and sacred women are to take the same oath in the eleventh month before the mysteries.

Regarding transferral. The sacred men are to hand over, to those appointed as successors, the chest and the books that Mnasistratos donated; they also are to hand over whatever else may be furnished for the sake of the mysteries.

Regarding wreaths. The sacred men are to wear wreaths, the sacred women a white felt cap, and the first initiates among the initiated a tiara. But when the sacred men give the order, they are to take off their tiara, and they are all to be wreathed with laurel.

Regarding clothing. The men who are initiated into the mysteries are to stand barefoot and wear white clothing, and the women are to wear clothes that are not transparent, with stripes on their robes not more than half a finger wide. The independent women are to wear a linen tunic and a robe worth not more than one hundred drachmai, the daughters an Egyptian or linen tunic and a robe worth not more than a mina, and the female slaves an Egyptian or linen tunic and a robe worth not more than fifty drachmai. The sacred women: the ladies are to wear an Egyptian tunic or an undergarment without decoration and a robe worth not more than two minas, and the [daughters] an Egyptian tunic or a robe worth not more than one hundred drachmai. In the procession the ladies among the sacred women are to wear an undergarment and a woman’s wool robe, with stripes not more than half a finger wide, and the daughters an Egyptian tunic and a robe that is not transparent. None of the women are to wear gold, or rouge, or white makeup, or a hair band, or braided hair, or shoes made of anything but felt or leather from sacrificial victims. The sacred women are to have curved wicker seats and on them white pillows or a round cushion, without decoration or purple design. The women who must be dressed in the manner of the gods are to wear the clothing that the sacred men specify. But if anyone somehow has clothing contrary to the rule, or anything else of what is prohibited, the supervisor of the women is not to allow it, but the supervisor is to have the authority to inflict punishment, and it is to be devoted to the gods.

Oath of the supervisor of the women. When the sacred men themselves take the oath, they also are to administer the oath to the supervisor of the women, before the same sacred men: “I truly shall be careful concerning the clothing and the rest of the things assigned to me in the rule.

Sylloge 2 566. 2-9
Whoever wishes to visit the temple of the goddess, whether a resident of the city or anyone else, must refrain from intercourse with his wife (or husband) that day, from intercourse with another than his wife (or husband) for the preceding two days, and must complete the required lustrations. The same prohibition applies to contact with the dead and with the delivery of a woman in childbirth. But if he has come from funeral rites or from the burial, he shall purify [sprinkle] himself and enter by the door where the holy water stoups are, and he shall be clean that same day.

Sylloge2, 939, 2-9
It is not permitted to enter the temple of the Lady Goddess with any object of gold on one’s person, unless it is intended for an offering; or to wear purple or bright colored or black garments, or shoes, or a finger ring. But if one enters wearing any forbidden object, it must be dedicated to the temple. Women are not to have their hair bound up, and men must enter with bared heads. No flowers are to be brought in at the mysteries; no pregnant women or nursing mothers are to have any part. If anyone wishes to make an offering, let it be of olive, myrtle, honey, grains of barley clean from weeds, a picture, a white poppy, lamps, incense, myrrh, spice. But if anyone wishes to offer the Lady Goddess sacrificial animals, they must be female and white …

Theophrastos, On The Superstitious Man
It is apparent that superstition would seem to be cowardice with regard to the spiritual realm. The superstitious man is one who will wash his hands and sprinkle himself at the Sacred Fountain, and put a bit of laurel leaf in his mouth, to prepare himself for each day. If a marten should cross his path, he will not continue until someone else has gone by, or he has thrown three stones across the road. And if he should see a snake in his house, he will call up a prayer to Sabazios if it is one of the red ones; if it is one of the sacred variety, he will immediately construct a shrine on the spot. Nor will he go by the smooth stones at a crossroads without anointing them with oil from his flask, and he will not leave without falling on his knees in reverence to them. If a mouse should chew through his bag of grain, he will seek advice on what should be done from the official diviner of omens; but if the answer is, ‘Give it to the shoemaker to have it sewn up,’ he will pay no attention, but rather go away and free himself of the omen through sacrifice. He is also likely to be purifying his house continually, claiming that terrible Hecate has been mysteriously brought into it. And if an owl should hoot while he is outside, he becomes terribly agitated, and will not continue before crying out, ‘O! Mighty Athena!’ Never will he step on a tomb, nor get near a dead body, nor a woman in childbirth: he says he must keep on his guard against being polluted. On the unlucky days of the month– the fourth and seventh– he will order his servants to heat wine. Then he will go out and buy myrtle-wreaths, frankincense, and holy pictures; upon returning home, he spends the entire day arranging the wreaths on statues of the Hermaphrodites. Also, when he has a dream, he will go to the dream interpreters, the fortune-tellers, and the readers of bird-omens, to ask what god or goddess he should pray to. When he is to be initiated into the Orphic mysteries, he visits the priests every month, taking his wife with him; or, if she can’t make it, the nursemaid and children will suffice. It is also apparent that he is one of those people who go to great lengths to sprinkle themselves with sea-water. And if he sees someone eating Hecate’s garlic at the crossroads, he must go home and wash his head; and then he calls upon the priestesses to carry a squill or a puppy around him for purification. If he sees a madman or epileptic, he shudders and spits into his lap.

Someone at Patheos has proposed reviving the Eleusinian mysteries.

I’m just going to come out and say this: the old mysteries are dead and it’s pointless to even attempt what they are proposing.

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 on pretty solid footing, at least when it comes to the overall themes and procedures involved but we’re still missing some pretty important pieces.

The central experience of the initiates eludes us and would even if someone had violated the oath of secrecy and left us a first-hand account of all the things said and done. A mystery isn’t something you can learn or know. By definition it’s something experienced, something that takes place deep in the individual’s soul. Unless you’ve gone through that experience yourself you’re never going to understand it. Without the experience it’s just words and concepts, meaningless gibberish mixed with our preconceived notions. That’s why the initiates vowed never to speak of it. Not because exposing the secret would have damaged the mystery, but because it was pointless to share such things with someone who had not undergone it themselves. It would only confuse them and make it impossible for them to have that authentic experience because it wouldn’t mean the same thing to them any longer.

We lack the proper frame of reference, the cultural identity and cosmology that brought to life the mystery-experience for the ancients. As long as the identity of the gods is shaped for us by the writings of long-dead men and the religion something of the past that we are studying, imitating and trying to reconstruct, the mysteries will remain forever closed off to us. The mysteries were an outgrowth of a living faith, a living culture. They developed over time, through the accumulated shared experiences of a people. They were bound by time and space, by culture and language. That’s why you had to be a fluent speaker of Greek in order to be initiated. It wasn’t that foreigners were inherently inferior – the Greeks actually had a great reverence for the antiquity and wisdom of their neighbors – it’s that the underlying concepts that fed the mystery-experience and brought it to life in the heart and soul of the initiate remained unintelligible to anyone who didn’t properly understand Greek. These mysteries were inseparable from Greekness and once that Greekness passed from the world, so did the mysteries.

That’s why we’ll never have the ancient mysteries back. Even if we gather together all of the fragmented pieces and add our best guesses and inspiration to fill in the blanks, the end product just isn’t going to be the same. The act of reconstruction, as well as our modern additions and above all the lack of a proper cultural context means that we’re going to end up with something else entirely, a hodge-podge worthy of Dr. Victor Frankenstein.

Does that mean that we are doomed to live in a world without mysteries? No! Absolutely, unequivocally not!

The mysteries came from the gods – and they’re not just a divine gift but an experience of them that is direct and incontrovertible. As long as the gods exist – and they’ll still be here long after the last human passes from this world – there will be mysteries.

But the thing we’ve got to get through our heads is that they’re not going to be the ancient mysteries. They can’t be, not if they’re a true mystery. You see, a mystery is rooted in the experiences and understanding, the culture and language of the initiate. We don’t live in 5th century Athens and no matter how much we read or how much we pretend we’ll never understand what it was like back then. It will never be our living culture. And in fact, the more we build up the sanctity of the past, the greater the distance that separates us becomes. So the first thing we’ve got to do is let all of that go, get rid of our veneration of antiquity and the belief that the ancestors knew the gods better than we’ll ever be able to. The gods are alive and a part of the living world. That means that we’ve got to look for them in the here and now, in our own land, in our own lives, in the fabric of our consciousness and culture.

There’s nothing wrong with looking back to the past for inspiration and information, especially in regard to cult practice and the ways that the gods once revealed themselves to man. This is vital information that has changed little over the intervening centuries. But that should never stand in the way of having a direct and personal relationship with those gods who are just as much our gods as they once were their gods. And a big part of acknowledging that they are living gods is accepting that they are capable of change, that we can discover in them things that our ancestors may only have been dimly aware of. More to the point we must be open to what the gods wish to share with us today, in these new lands that we find ourselves in. Maybe it will be the same as what they revealed back then – maybe it’ll be something radically different. But whatever it is we must be open to it and not just what we expect to find.

Mysteries, if they come, will arise out of our collective experiences of the gods today, where we are. When the mysteries come they will be the mysteries of Eugene, the mysteries of Las Vegas, the mysteries of San Francisco, the mysteries of Boston, the mysteries of New York, the mysteries of Miami.

The mysteries of Eleusis could be celebrated nowhere else. Demeter had different cult centers throughout Greece, including places that had their own mysteries just as ancient and esteemed as those at Eleusis. But there was only one Eleusis and one set of rites carried out there.

This is why all attempts at transplanting them to other locations have been doomed to failure.

It was here and only here that she finally settled after her long and painful search (hence the site’s name) ; only here where she was received by the king whom she instructed in gratitude for his kindness; only here where she adopted Triptolemos and sent him out to teach the world agriculture; here where she was reconciled with her daughter and all the rest that formed the backdrop of the mysteries. This happened nowhere else in all the world, so these mysteries could take place nowhere else. In those other places different things had happened such as her transformation into a mare or her seduction of a mortal man. As a result these places had their own unique mysteries. The mysteries that we will celebrate here are likewise going to be shaped by time, place and culture.

A shaft of harvested grain simply cannot mean to us what it once did to our ancestors, not unless we entirely reject the modern world and return to a more primitive agrarian society. Even then it will have different connotations for us for at least the first few generations and probably long after that. How could it not, for won’t it symbolize the turning away from industrial society and those who made the big, brave leap, something our ancestors never had to do? Whole new myths could be spun off of that scenario and that’s what future generations would be responding to. Even without such a monumental break there’s a whole body of myths and symbols that form our current cultural identity and it’s through these that the gods manifest themselves to us. Even when the symbols remain constant their meaning changes for us and we should accept it, embrace it instead of pretending otherwise.

I do not speak of this matter purely in the abstract. I am one of the mystai. I have been initiated into the mysteries of my god Dionysos. In fact I’ve undergone initiation into several of his mysteries, each slightly different from the others and all of them powerful, life-changing experiences.

I recognized many of the details from accounts I had read of the ancient Dionysian mysteries, but there were also differences, things unique to my situation and relationship with him. Had that not been a component I don’t think it would have been as powerfully transformative an experience as it turned out to be. In fact, some of the most idiosyncratic elements were also some of the most traditional, the elements I found running through those past accounts. It’s just that the form these themes took were novel and shaped by my experiences and insights, which is what allowed it to speak to me and thus made it a mystery. It wasn’t at all what I had been expecting, which allowed it to catch me off guard and do the necessary transformative work. Repeatedly while this was happening I found myself going, “Holy shit! This is what was meant by X, this is what it really feels like to have Y happen.” There was an odd sense of overlap, of timelessness, of variations on a central theme running through my life and the lives of those who had stood in this position before me.

I wish that I could be more precise, share more of what happened and what it felt like – but it wouldn’t do any good. You wouldn’t understand until it was your time to stand there and go through it, and even then I couldn’t predict exactly what form that experience would take or what it would mean to you while it was happening and afterwards. But it left me a changed man and closer to my god than I ever could have anticipated and that’s what the mysteries are all about in the end.

But it’s important to remember that initiation isn’t an end unto itself; it’s only the beginning of a process that is continually ongoing. You never leave the telesterion, you just gain deeper and deeper awareness through ever-more nuanced experiences. And though it changes everything about who you are and how you relate to the gods and the world, it doesn’t change your need to seek them and worship them.

That’s the thing that a lot of people don’t seem to get. They think that once you’ve gone through initiation you don’t have to do anything except sit back and bask in the continuous presence of the gods.

Bullshit.

You’re still gonna struggle and still gonna have to work at it. That perfect understanding you get during the mysteries fades back into everyday consciousness. And sometimes – hell, in my experience it’s pretty much all the time – you’ve got to try even harder afterwards because the stuff that worked before doesn’t cut it post-initiation.

Yeah, I’m a mystes now, but I still keep a shrine, go through the regular routine of ritual practice, observe festivals and do all the work that’s necessary to have an active and fulfilling spiritual life. And sometimes it doesn’t get me anywhere. I struggle with doubt, with my own weaknesses and shortcoming, with the distance I sometimes feel from my gods and spirits, with the fear that maybe I’ve gone crazy or I’m just wasting my time with all this stuff.

The fact that I once felt that intensity, that certainty, that powerful and awesome direct connection to my god can make everything a lot harder because it looms over me, reminding me that I no longer have it and making me wonder if there’s something wrong with me because of that. How could I go from that to this?

The only solution I’ve found is to keep going, keep trying, to claw my way through the resistance until I get back there or somewhere like it. It’s long, difficult, unglamorous and many times unrewarding on the surface of it. But I will say this much: having experienced what I’ve experienced, I know what’s possible and can never settle for less. It’s as much an inspiration as it can sometimes be an obstacle. But I wouldn’t have had the beautiful experience without the regular practice that led up to it, nor would I ever find my way back without the practice.

It’s sort of like that old famous Zen saying: before enlightenment: chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment: chop wood, carry water.

If you think initiation into the mysteries is a short-cut you’re deluding yourself and that delusion is going to keep you from ever experiencing the mysteries to begin with.

It’s only possible through a living religious tradition centered on living gods. If you don’t make the path your own you’ll never be able to follow it to them.

There’s another component that I left out of the last post. While it’s true that location is central, something the ancients themselves recognized:

It was not we who originally invented those rites, which is to our credit, but it was a Nikaian who was the first to institute them…let the rites be his, and let them be performed among his people alone…unless we wish to commit sacrilege against Caesar himself, as we should commit sacrilege against Demeter and her Daughter also, if we performed to them here the ritual used there; for they are unwilling to allow any rites of that sort… (P. Oxy. 1612)

What we moderns are also lacking, which no amount of research, experimentation and UPG can rectify, is unbroken lineage.

In fact, this is an obstacle that even the gods themselves cannot overcome.

If Dionysos appeared to me tomorrow and said, “Here Sannion, I’m going to download into your brain the complete teletai of my mysteries, exactly as they were carried out in antiquity! Now go forth and propagate the faith!” The faith that I propagated would still be a new faith. The line of descent of this faith would begin with me since these teletai were not transmitted to me by another human being, but rather by a god.

And that makes this hypothetical tradition* fundamentally different from something like the Eleusinian mysteries where you’ve got continuity stretching all the way from Keleos, Diokles, Eumolpos, Polyxeinos and Triptolemos on down to “the man from Thespiae who held the rank of Father in the mysteries of Mithras” and violated his oaths as hierophant of Eleusis, bringing the institution to a close according to Eunapios. That is thousands of years of one man passing the rites on to another – and not just the rites themselves but everything that comes with them: the knowledge, the experience, the power, the weight of tradition.

Think about it.

That last hierophant was touched by a man who had been touched by a man who had been touched by a man et cetera et cetera who had been touched by Demeter when she rested in her mournful search for her Daughter.

And that’s gone.

No one today, no matter how close they are with the gods, has that.

And think about the spiritual technology that has been lost to us, technology that was only imparted by teacher to student during the training process, never discussed with outsiders, never written down or otherwise preserved …

Without this knowledge, even if you had the rites you wouldn’t know how to use them, at least not the way that they did.

I know that there’s this component just from the public rites I’ve lead. It’s not as simple as people show up and then you do W, X, and Y and end up with result Z. What the audience sees is just a tiny fraction of what goes on behind the curtain or what I’m doing while their attention is diverted. (I suspect it’s because so many ritual leaders neglect this aspect of their art that so much neopagan ritual sucks, but I digress.) Imagine the body of ceremony, lore and techniques the priests and hierophants of Eleusis accumulated over all that time – none of which has come down to us.

So yes, while the mystery is from the gods and they have the power to reveal themselves to us at any time and any way they choose – they cannot create traditions. Only we can. Traditions are transmitted through us, given shape by our experiences and without the human element you simply do not have traditions in the proper sense. Revelations, yes. Traditions, no.

I believe that traditions can be restored, even after the centuries that separate us from our ancient predecessors in these traditions – but only as new, revived traditions. To give these traditions life and vitality they must be rooted in place and the present and open to new expressions – while still remaining faithful to the form, function and spirit of what came before.

And if it becomes too new, too different it must splinter off and become it’s own separate tradition to maintain the health and integrity of the whole.

So no. You will never succeed in reviving the Eleusinian mysteries and as long as you are engaged in that fruitless task you will deprive yourself of the experience of the mysteries that the gods are trying to reveal to us today.

* What I’m doing with the thiasos of the Starry Bull is entirely different; instead of Dionysos communicating a complete system to me I am developing a system based on certain experiences that I’ve had with a group of gods and spirits in the hope that I can replicate those experiences for others. If it works those people will in turn take others through these experiences and thus a new Bacchic Orphic tradition will have been born. And if it doesn’t work I’ll probably spend the rest of my days in prison – but as Orpheus said you don’t create a cosmos without getting cracked eggshell everywhere!

Maenadism is, in a sense, a mimesis or imitation of the mythic past:

And the Boeotians and other Greeks and the Thracians, in memory of the campaign in India, have established sacrifices every other year to Dionysos, and believe that at that time the god reveals himself to human beings. Consequently in many Greek cities every other year Bacchic bands of women gather, and it is lawful for the maidens to carry the thyrsos and to join in the frenzied revelry, crying out ‘Euai!’ and honouring the god; while the matrons, forming in groups, offer sacrifices to the god and celebrate his mysteries and, in general, extol with hymns the presence of Dionysos, in this manner acting the parts of maenads who, as history records, were of old the companions of the god. (Diodoros Sikeliotes, Library of History 4.3.2-5)

Continuity is preserved through lineage, which is why Ptolemy Philopator required that anyone performing Dionysian initiations within his kingdom had to be able to explain where they had received their rites from going back three generations:

By the Order of the King. Those in the country districts who impart initiation into the mysteries of Dionysos are to come down by river to Alexandria, those residing not farther than Naucratis within 10 days after the promulgation of this decree, those beyond Naucratis within 20 days, and register themselves before Aristoboulos at the registry office within 3 days of the day of their arrival, and they shall immediately declare from whom they have received the rites for three generations back and turn in the hieroi logoi sealed, each man writing upon his copy his own name. (BGU 6.121)

The founders of traditions often received cults of their own:

According to the oracle, by way of the oracular messengers, the three maenads, Kosko, Baubo, and Thettale, were brought from Thebes: Kosko gathered together the thiasos of the plane tree, Baubo the thiasos before the city, and Thettale the thiasos of Kataibatai. They died and were buried by the Magnesians: Kosko lies buried in the area called Hillock of Kosko, Baubo in the area called Tabarnis, and Thettale near the theater. (I.Magn. 215a)

Which is not to say that we are averse to innovation:

Then Hispala gave an account of the origin of these rites. At first they were confined to women; no male was admitted, and they had three stated days in the year on which persons were initiated during the daytime, and matrons were chosen to act as priestesses. Paculla Annia, a Campanian, when she was priestess, made a complete change, as though by divine monition, for she was the first to admit men, and she initiated her own sons, Minius Cerinnius and Herennius Cerinnius. At the same time she made the rite a nocturnal one, and instead of three days in the year celebrated it five times a month. When once the mysteries had assumed this promiscuous character, and men were mingled with women with all the licence of nocturnal orgies, there was no crime, no deed of shame, wanting. More uncleanness was wrought by men with men than with women. Whoever would not submit to defilement, or shrank from violating others, was sacrificed as a victim. To regard nothing as impious or criminal was the very sum of their religion. The men, as though seized with madness and with frenzied distortions of their bodies, shrieked out prophecies; the matrons, dressed as Bacchae, their hair dishevelled, rushed down to the Tiber with burning torches, plunged them into the water, and drew them out again, the flame undiminished, as they were made of sulphur mixed with lime. Men were fastened to a machine and hurried off to hidden caves, and they were said to have been rapt away by the gods; these were the men who refused to join their conspiracy or take a part in their crimes or submit to pollution. They formed an immense multitude, almost equal to the population of Rome; amongst them were members of noble families both men and women. It had been made a rule for the last two years that no one more than twenty years old should be initiated; they captured those to be deceived and polluted. (Livy, History of Rome 39.13-16)

Such change simply has to be consistent with our values and the way that we do things. It is that tension between the old and the new that produces all great art.

I snagged the questions for this from Ruadhán McElroy, who has been posting some great responses so far and is also running a fund-raiser to get a cool devotional ring for Eros – check it out!

1. A basic introduction to Dionysos, the Starry Bull

Dionysos is a god of many names and many forms to the point that some scholars have had difficulty discerning an underlying unity behind all of these diverse manifestations. Over the years I’ve experienced quite a few of them and yet I’ve never had that problem. Dionysos is Dionysos whether he’s showing himself as the jubilant reveler, the lord of all fertility, the terrible and overwhelming frenzy or the prince beneath the earth. This is not to deny the profound differences that can come through depending on which mask he wears – indeed I often read people’s accounts of their experiences with him with a touch of wistfulness for I rarely feel that joyous, lusty, liberating ecstasy except through their encounters with him in the rituals I lead. (Which is, to be completely honest, one of the reasons why I am so drawn to communal worship: I miss that face of my god, even as I am immensely grateful for all that he has shown me.)

My Dionysos is one who has suffered things beyond even the capacity of a god to endure – he has tasted every pain, every minute variation of madness and he has been torn apart over and over again until there was seemingly nothing left of him. And yet he remains. Always, he comes back.

He is strong. To go through all of that and not be crushed by it, not become bitter and angry – to still have this deep lust for life and the world and everything in it: that shows tremendous strength. He is strong enough to shoulder whatever burden we bring to him – no matter how hurt and broken and fucked up we are he never turns away from us, never gives up on us. He is patient, generous, compassionate and infinitely understanding. All that he wants for us is to be happy and free and so he brings release to those who are bound up or suffering. In this capacity he is primarily an intercessor, stepping in when situations get out of hand, when people or communities are caught up in unbreakable cycles of oppression and retribution. Through his gentle words and wise counsel he brings understanding, peace and joy to troubled souls.

His concern for us does not stop here – he made a bargain with the Lord of the Underworld so that all of his devotees and those he cares deeply for would have their memory and vitality preserved instead of becoming witless, impotent shades and he prepared a place of eternal feasting for us with him below.

That’s not to suggest that this form of Dionysos is all hugs and smiles – far, far from it. There is a violence and savagery to this form of Dionysos that I don’t really glimpse in most of the accounts I’ve read of other people’s encounters with the god. And after a certain point he is uncompromising in his demands of freedom and authenticity, with little tolerance for weakness or excuses. He doesn’t scold or punish, however. If you want to run with the Hunt he expects you to keep up – and if you don’t you will be left behind. The consequence for letting your internal bullshit get in the way is that you get to wallow in the muck and mire instead of reveling free and wild with him. After a while he’ll even stop reaching out to you. But if you manage to pull yourself up out of it there’s a place at his side waiting for you, and all is forgotten. But he won’t stop reaching out for those who keep trying, no matter how successful they are, for as long as they keep trying and he’ll move heaven and earth to help them. They just have to want his assistance.

For a more precise discussion of his character in this form, click here.

2. How did you first become aware of this form of Dionysos?

After years of working with his more general forms.

3. Symbols and icons of Dionysos

Each of his forms has a specific set of symbols and associations, so I’m just going to give the ones for this form.

The wispy, feathery thyrsos depicted on Apulian vases.
The two-handled kantharos or drinking-cup.
Wine.
Honey.
Pomegranates.
Figs.
Fire.
Water.
Ash.
Grapes.
Ivy.
Marijuana.
Masks.
Horns.
Phalloi.
Stars.
Mirrors.
Keys.
A hunting-net.
While the bull is his primary animal he is also associated with sheep, goats, foxes, spiders and white peacocks.
The numbers nine and thirteen.
The colors red, black and white.

4. A favorite myth of Dionysos

Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Greeks 2.30

Phalloi are consecrated to Dionysos, and this is the origin of those phalloi. Dionysos was anxious to descend into Haides, but did not know the way. Thereupon a certain man, Prosymnos by name, promises to tell him; though not without reward. The reward was not a seemly one, though to Dionysos it was seemly enough. It was a favour of lust, this reward which Dionysos was asked for. The god is willing to grant the request; and so he promises, in the event of his return, to fulfil the wish of Prosymnos, confirming the promise with an oath. Having learnt the way he set out, and came back again. He does not find Prosymnos, for he was dead. In fulfilment of the vow to his lover Dionysos hastens to the tomb and indulges his unnatural lust. Cutting off a branch from a fig-tree which was at hand, he shaped it into the likeness of a phallos, and then made a show of fulfilling his promise to the dead man. As a mystic memorial of this passion phalloi are set up to Dionysos in cities. ‘For if it were not to Dionysos that they held solemn procession and sang the phallic hymn, they would be acting most shamefully,’ says Herakleitos.

5. Members of the family – genealogical connections

Well, let’s see – there’s his father Zeus and his mother Persephone and his other mother Semele; there’s his half-brother Hermes, his adopted father Seilenos, his “aunts” and “uncles” the nymphs and satyrs of Mount Nysa and his wet-nurses the Hyades. Then there’s his wife Ariadne and his numerous mistresses including (but not limited to) Arachne, Erigone and Aphrodite as well as his male lovers Ampelos, Prosymnos and others. Then there’s his various children, including Telete, Thysa, Pasithea, Methe, Lyssa, Deïanira, the Charites, Priapos, Keramos, Phlias, Narkaios, Oenopion, Staphylos, Thoas, Peparethos, Kloster, etc. Then there’s his descendants, especially Alexander the Great, the Ptolemies and Marcus Antonius.

And that’s the family that I care about – through Zeus Dionysos is related to something like 93% of the Hellenic pantheon and I am not going to list all of them!

6. Other related deities and entities associated with Dionysos

I’ve listed them here and since I plan to do some pieces on how they’re all connected I’ll just save that for later.

7. Names and epithets

The epikleseis of this form of Dionysos are Lusios “the Releaser”, Lyaios “the Deliverer”, Eubouleos “of Good Counsel”, Charidotes “Giver of Graces”, Meilichios “the Gentle”, Bromios “the Loud Roarer”, Mainomenos “the Maddener”, Katachthonios “He who is beneath the earth”, Agrios “the Wild One”, Petempamenti “He who is in the West”, Choreutes “Dance-weaver”, Asterios “the Starry One” and Zagreus “the Great Hunter.”

He is also known by the allonym Bakchos or Bakchios which has to do with ecstatic enthousiasmos.

8. Variations on Dionysos

I’m engaged in multiple cults for the same god – there’s the Starry Bull mystery tradition, there’s my standard Dionysian revelry and then there are specific, local-focus practices I’ve picked up, all of which involve different forms of him. The Dionysos I’ve been describing is associated with mystery stuff, the standard form most people are already familiar with and the other is highly idiosyncratic. This Dionysos is associated with volcanoes, old growth forests and the coastline, buffaloes and Jim Morrison, rain and raging rivers – he’s very much an American Dionysos.

9. Common mistakes about Dionysos

That his mildness implies meekness (it doesn’t) and that there’s only one way to be a Dionysian (there isn’t.)

10. Offerings – historical and UPG

Most of the things mentioned under #3 would work as appropriate offerings. He’s extremely fond of dance and music, especially music that we make ourselves. When it comes to meat, the bloodier the better as far as he’s concerned. For incenses he tends to prefer rich, earthy scents as well as the things listed here. And while wine, mead and beer are historically attested drink offerings, Dionysos has never met an alcohol he didn’t like. He’ll even accept water in a pinch.

11. Festivals, days, and times sacred to Dionysos

I’ve discussed the festivals I keep for him here, and of course within the thiasos of the Starry Bull Sundays are sacred to him but I also honor him on the noumenia and the ninth and thirteenth of the lunar month. I feel Dionysos’ presence the strongest during the liminal times of dusk and right before dawn and more diffusely throughout the evening with around 3:00am being another sweet spot. I honor other forms of him, especially those associated with the nymphai, during the day – but this one is definitely a night owl.

12. Places associated with this form of Dionysos and his worship

His holy places are Naxos, Thebes, Lerna, Parnassos and Pangaion in Greece; Tarentum, Cumae, Lokroi Epizephyrii, Sybaris, Neapolis, Pompeii, Thurii, Hipponion, Naxos, Akragas, Syracuse, Aetna and Vesuvius as well as the modern Lecce and Galatina in Southern Italy and Sicily. He also has strong ties to Alexandria in Egypt and Olbia in the Ukraine.

Mind you, these are just the places associated with this form – Dionysos has staked his claim all across Europe, Asia, Africa and the Orient.

13. What modern cultural issues are closest to Dionysos’ heart?

He has a strong concern for the mentally divergent, those suffering from depression, alcoholism and suicidal drives, as well as outcasts and misfits of all stripes. He also cares a great deal about animal rights and environmental issues and even more pronouncedly than with his other forms, he encourages tending the dead, especially the rejected and forgotten dead.

14. Has Dionysos’ worship changed in modern times?

Dionysos’ worship has been continually evolving since the early Minoan period – I’ve traced its continuity and change from the 4th century to the present over at Eternal Bacchus if you’re interested in the specifics of how this happened.

Probably the biggest difference from antiquity is that the majority of Dionysians worship the god today as solitaries whereas he was very much a communal, orgiastic deity back in the day. (And still is – but circumstances are what they are and I think he appreciates our cultus even more because of what we have to go through to offer it to him.)

15. Any mundane practices that are associated with Dionysos?

Once you get to a certain point with him all such arbitrary boundaries dissolve. He has a way of soaking into the totality of one’s life and you know how difficult it is to get wine out.

16. How do you think Dionysos represents the values of his pantheon and cultural origins?

Not very well, since he tends to represent the complete inversion and transgression of those values. Ours too.

Whatever is regarded as Other – that belongs to Dionysos.

17. How does Dionysos relate to other gods and other pantheons?

Dionysos is a world-traveler and a very charming fellow – somehow he’s managed to insinuate himself into the Heathen, Celtic, Levantine, Egyptian, Indian and Christian pantheons. So I’d say he gets along fairly well with other gods.

18. How does Dionysos stand in terms of gender and sexuality?

Are you kidding? Dionysos is queer as a three-dollar bill. (So was Orpheus, by the way.)

19. What quality or qualities of Dionysos do you most admire? What quality or qualities of his do you find the most troubling?

I love everything about Dionysos. Especially the parts of him I find troubling.

20. Art that reminds you of Dionysos

Apulian vases.

21. Music that makes you think of Dionysos

Music is one of the primary ways that I interact with my gods and sprits, Dionysos in particular, so the challenge isn’t to find a piece of music that makes me think of him but rather to limit it to a manageable selection. At the moment I would have to say that these four songs are probably the ones I consider most evocative of him in this form.

DeVotchKa – Twenty-Six Temptations:

SORNE – Shaman of Snakes:

Hexvessel – I Am The Ritual:

Velvet Underground – Venus in Furs:

22. A quote, a poem, and a piece of writing that you think resonates strongly with Dionysos

Aelius Aristides, Orationes

Nothing can be so firmly bound, neither by illness, nor by wrath or fortune, that cannot be released by Dionysos.

Sophokles, Choral Ode from Antigone

Surrounded by the light of torches,
he stands high on the twin summits of Parnassos,
while the Corycian nymphs dance around as Bacchantes,
and the waters of Castalia sound from the depths below.
Up there in the snow and winter darkness Dionysos rules in the long night,
while troops of maenads swarm around him,
himself the choir leader for the dance of the fire-breathing stars
and quick of hearing for every sound of the night.

Philip K. Dick, VALIS pages 165-166

The gentle sounds of the choir singing ‘Amen, amen’ are not to calm the congregation but to pacify the god. When you know this you have penetrated to the innermost core of religion. And the worst part is that the god can thrust himself outward and into the congregation until he becomes them. You worship a god and then he pays you back by taking you over. This is called enthousiasmos in Greek, literally ‘to be possessed by the god.’ Of all the Greek gods the one most likely to do this was Dionysos. And, unfortunately, Dionysos was insane. Put another way – stated backward – if your god takes you over, it is likely that no matter what name he goes by he is actually a form of the mad god Dionysos. He was also the god of intoxication, which may mean, literally, to take in toxins; that is to say, to take a poison. The danger is there. If you sense this, you try to run. But if you run he has you anyhow, for the demigod Pan was the basis of panic which is the uncontrollable urge to flee, and Pan is a subform of Dionysos. So in trying to flee from Dionysos you are taken over anyhow. I write this literally with a heavy hand; I am so weary I am dropping as I sit here. What happened at Jonestown was the mass running of panic, inspired by the mad god – panic leading into death, the logical outcome of the mad god’s thrust. For them no way out existed. You must be taken over by the mad god to understand this, that once it happens there is no way out, because the mad god is everywhere. It is not reasonable for nine hundred people to collude in their own deaths and the deaths of little children, but the mad god is not logical, not as we understand the term. When we reached the Lamptons’ home we found it to be a stately old farm mansion, set in the middle of grape vines; after all, this is wine country. I thought, Dionysos is the god of wine.

23. Your own composition – a piece of writing about or for Dionysos

Here is a little piece I like to call Holiness is always dangerous:

Pity the weary man, the sad clown, my sweet but insufferable cousin Pentheus.
He was a feisty one, let me tell you. Fought hard until the very end.
I do like when the prey has some spirit.
The blood of the bull is so much richer then.
What? Gods get hungry too.
It takes a lot out of you to be this fabulous all the time.
Life feeding on life in an unending chain
like the wandering of the dancing queen
through the hunting ground beneath the earth
where royalty are transformed into flowers and stars and rain,
the fateful fruit of the new wine
consummated in the ox-shed in the swamp
so that the moans and whimpers of the holy, life-giving dithyramb
will mingle with the croaks of otherworldly frogs.
Haides and Dionysos are one,
for whom they rave madly
as they dance the phallos and race through the night in the hunt.
Silly boy. He thought he could get a glimpse of all this
and come away untouched.
Holiness is always dangerous.

And as a bonus, here’s a story about a girl named Mary.

24. A time when Dionysos has helped you

Oh gods. There’s so many. Every day I draw breath is a gift from him. So how about the time he protected me from internet dragons.

25. A time when Dionysos has refused to help

I asked him to guide me to a decent religious community in Las Vegas.

26. How has your relationship with Dionysos changed over time?

I started out very Wiccanesque. In time I got to know him better and he gave me a name. Then he tore me apart, and I became his initiate. I followed him into and out of Egypt. An obsession with severed heads turned me into a Fool for a while. Then one day I took off the mask and became an Orpheoteleste. So, yeah. There have been some changes in my relationship with Dionysos over time.

27. Worst misconception about Dionysos that you have encountered

That Dionysos is Wolverine from the X-Men.

28. Something you wish you knew about this form of Dionysos but don’t currently

What it feels like when he comes through while standing on Italian soil.

29. Any interesting or unusual UPG to share?

No.

30. Any suggestions for others just starting to learn about this form of Dionysos?

Get used to walking around in circles and all the best truths are penis-shaped.