One last thing I wanted to say

I realized a while back that there was an inherent tension between a religious community and a mystery tradition and it’s extremely difficult to meet the demands that each necessitates. By trying to force the community to adhere to the standards of the mysteries, I was causing confusion and harm, and damaging the work of others. This is a conclusion I had reached a couple months back, and which was strongly brought to the fore during my observance of Karneia. It’s kind of ironic that the issue that would force me to choose which pole to put my effort into should arise from the next community chat we had, but that’s life with the gods. Although it was this issue, it could have been any number of others and I was already intending to shift my focus with the new year. This just prompted it to happen sooner and with a cleaner break. As I said in a comment to the last post:

I really want to stay in touch with as many folks as possible and there’s no bad blood on my part. (Man, that was a terrible pun.) I genuinely hope that you remain in the thiasos. You guys have really managed to create a wonderful, supportive, nourishing community and you have every right to be there. The reason I’m leaving is because I don’t want to destroy that. I don’t want to go around policing people’s thoughts and kicking them out because they fail to pass some litmus test, because that would be violating the spirit of Dionysos – but on the other hand, with what I know, so would compromising on sacrifice. Just on a practical level, the whole spiritual technology of this tradition is wrapped up in it. I cannot do what I was called to do for my community without it. Therefore I am extricating myself from the thiasos and starting over. My problem was in trying to create both a religious community and a mystery tradition around this stuff – one cannot make something simultaneously broad and narrow. I want you guys to still be there, doing your thing because so much good has come out of that – I’ll just be over here, doing my thing parallel to y’all.

And that’s pretty much all I have to say on the matter. Starting tomorrow I’m going to be spending some time in seclusion to reflect, regroup and refocus as well as performing rites of cleansing and trying to manage the spiritual fall-out as best I can. I feel that this was the best choice for me, personally, to make but every choice sends out ripples. Again, be well and Bacchic blessings to you all.