Technically I do not have taboos, I aphosiousthai:
Aphosiousthai (άφοσιουσθαι), verb: to eschew on religious grounds or hold in abomination, to fulfill an obligation, to restore hosia (purity) after a pollution.
Whatever your preferred designation for such prohibitions, I seem to have been collecting ‘em like Pokémon since I made the transition from Holy Fool to Orpheoteleste. I mentioned a while back how getting viciously ill led me to realize that seafood is off the plate, and last week when I was participating in the sacrifice of a rooster during a festival for Hermes I decided that I should probably stick to a vegetarian diet when I’m doing anything death-related. Orphic food restrictions were mostly limited to the performance of initiations, purifications and funerary or ancestor rites before the Pythagoreans transformed them into a full-time way of life, so there’s a certain appropriateness to that. I have to invoke Dionysos as θυρεπανοίκτης any time that I drink or imbibe mind-altering substances or I get absolutely no results whatsoever even when that shouldn’t be physically possible. I’m required to keep my nails painted at all times with the added stipulation that I must leave one hand blank or alternate colors in a checkerboard pattern if I do both in order to signify being in two worlds at once. I must never kill a spider and am obligated to escort them to safety when I’m with other people. And a couple others I’m not going to go into here.
But one that I will discuss is my color restrictions. This started shortly after I published Ecstatic. I’d been having a bitch of a time trying to figure out what to do for the cover when I finally threw up my hands and said, “Dionysos! Since this book’s about you what the fuck do you want on it?” I heard him chuckle and whisper, “Red, black and white.” And that was that.
Except it wasn’t. I kept seeing that color combination over and over again in the weeks that followed. When I came across an article that said these were the original colors of Harlequin (as opposed to the later purple, green and gold) and they signified his role as a chthonic spirit or hellish fiend I figured I’d gotten enough signs and started wearing this color combination (with grey since it’s a blend of black and white) on holy days and festivals. I was surprised by how right it felt to do so. Each time as I was putting on my clothes my mind would flood with associations and it’d instantly put me in proper ritual headspace. Somewhere into the second month I decided to make it permanent and culled all other clothing from my wardrobe. (Not that I had a lot – but I did have to get rid of the greens and browns and purples, including some really nice shirts I only wore for nymph and Dionysos rituals.) And, well, it’s been about eight months or so since I did that and it’s really helped to ward against the mundane in my life. I figured that was the whole point behind it, something to keep me focused and mindful …
… but now I’m starting to have some suspicions.
You see, the other night I was doing some research on Thracian religion to get a better sense of how that interacted with Hellenic and indigenous South Italian traditions in the cultural melting pot of Magna Graecia (with thought for parallels found in the much later cults of Catholic ecstasy such as Tarantism and St. Vitus Disease) when I came across an article by Georgi Mishev called White, red and black: Bulgarian healing ritual.
At this point I’d be quoting an evocative passage from it and providing the link.
https://www.academia.edu/4214897/White_red_and_black_Bulgarian_healing_ritual
And as you can see it’s been taken down.
I know piracy is bad and all, but …
Motherfucker.
I should have printed the thing out when I had the chance.
There was all kinds of stuff about Dionysos, and spinning, and purple cloaks with a funny name that sounded like Orpheus.
Tagged: dionysos, festivals, harlequin, hermes, orpheus, religious practice, spider, spirits
