Lethe kai Mnemosyne

P. Sufenas Virius Lupus has a lovely post called Everything I Ever Needed To Know About Devotion, I Learned From Watching Hanuman which contains lines like this:

When you tear open your chest, you should find nothing in your heart other than the image of the deity to whom you are devoted.

Which reminded me of Dver’s Not-Doing:

Dionysos is all about ekstasis, and this was in many ways as far outside of myself – and for as long – as I have ever been. It changed me, it changed my religious life, it changed my relationships significantly, it was terrifying and heart-breaking and at times really really boring, and I am so glad I took that leap, because it showed me the core of things. And it is powerful.

Which calls to mind Rhyd’s post honoring Brigid as Lady of the Forge:

Here is something new, made from all that was old. In the heart of the hearth I’ll gather these bit-ends of lights that were, and into it I’ll add what might be. In the heat of her forge what was becomes what can be, what could have been becomes what should be. She does not forge from nothing. All that was becomes what is and will be. We inhabit the past even as we live in the present and create the future. In Her reforging is Her poetry, and in Her poetry is Her love, springing from the earth, falling with in the rain and what is in-between that rain, and She tosses more fuel upon Her hearth, and laughs.

Which created an unforgetting of Aldrin’s account of his observance of the Lênaia and Sinulog festivals:

Naturally, the Santo Niño has had countless forms in the past 400 years. One wonders if the various little lords have absorbed some of the local deities? I wouldn’t be surprised. Nowadays, there’s a Niño for everything: a policeman’s Niño, a fireman’s Niño, a businessman’s Niño, etc. Today, there isn’t a single Catholic-owned business that doesn’t have a red or green-robed Niño with a bag of coins. Very mercurial.