Death and Purification

Thanks to everyone who offered kind words about my grandfather's condition. He passed away last Sunday shortly after I returned to school. My grandfather had requested cremation without a final viewing, so we had the memorial service yesterday.

Death fits in a strange place in Hellenic Polytheism. Human death outside of war carries miasma, or ritual impurity, that separates us from the Gods in part because death is the antithesis of beings who do not die. The exceptions to these are the Chthonic deities and perhaps Hermes Psychopompos, the Olympian god who transcends most limitations of time and place. While some modern polytheists don't pay much attention to miasma, it does carry historical religious significance, so I chose to refrain from making many modifications to this blog until purification.

As most readers know by now, I participate in the weekly Kyklos Apollon ritual, which is held every Saturday night (or in the wee hours of Sunday morning, depending on the time of year) at fixed Delphi dawn. In the Eastern USA, it means that the ritual takes place between 10 PM and 2 AM depending on the time of year. There are many kinds of rituals for Apollon, and the one I decided to perform last night was a purification ritual that someone else had constructed, but I modified it to suit my need and ability.

My modifications consisted in supplementing and replacing passages with stuff I actually have. Instead of the two candles (one for Hestia and one for Apollon), I used one for Hestia and offered Apollon barley in place of the other candle. One of the things I enjoy about Hellenic Polytheistic rituals is their versatility --- like Greek cooking, the components of ritual can be adapted and changed depending on what you have as long as the basic outline remains the same. To me, the candle for Apollon was an offering/sacrifice, and so I personalized the ritual by offering something else. For incense, I used an incense blend that contains no frankincense, but it's Japanese hand-rolled wood-free incense, and he seems to accept it. As I don't want to transport my poster of Apollon until May, I used the God-Stick I made for him as a focal image of the God.

The purification ritual went beautifully. Between the ritual washing and the forty minutes of prayer, sacrifice, and supplication, it really made me feel a lot better about my grandfather's passing and several other concerns. When all elements of a ritual click into place, sometimes it feels as though the God is there, because a presence seems to have come into the room. At some rituals, that happens; at others, it doesn't, yet it always seems to happen when most needed. This was definitely one of those “numinous” occasions.

During the ritual, I supplemented the ritual text with the Homeric Hymns to Apollon, the Orphic Hymn to Apollon, and some of my poetry; had I brought the Iliad with me, I would have read from the scene at the beginning when the Greeks sacrifice to Apollon. Whether during the Kyklos Apollon ritual or one of the God's Athenian festivals, that is a good passage to read. Several lines from the Oresteia are also suited to this type of purification ritual.