Anthesteria 2009

Due to the precise nature of this festival (Chthonic aspects, heavy wine involvement) and the contrasts with my academic obligations, I chose to worship in the late evenings. Please be aware as you read this that I live in a dorm room, and there are some things, such as cooking meals to share with deities or offer wholly to the dead, that are beyond the means of someone without a kitchen who refuses to learn how to cook barley in a microwave.

Night One: Pithoigia

Before opening the ritual, I covered my image of Apollon above the altar.

The first night/day of Anthestrion is dedicated to the tasting of newly-opened wine, so I set out some wine (Barefoot White Zinfandel) on the altar with a honey packet from the Campus Center to make a honey-wine-water mixture for myself, but I waited to mix it for Dionysos to receive his undiluted libation. Worship opened by moving my God-Stick of Dionysos into the center. I invited Dionysos with Homeric Hymn #26 from the Daryl Hine translation, which I recommend for its poetic beauty:

I am beginning a song of deep-voiced Dionysus, his forehead
Circled with ivy, Zeus's glorious son and respectable Maia's,
Whom certain elegant nymphs took to nurse from his masterful father,
Welcoming him to their laps, where they sedulously entertained him
There in the crannies of Nysa. He waxed, at the will of his father,
Great in their sweet-smelling cave, being numbered among the immortals.
But when the goddesses had educated this subject of many
Hymns, he began to prefer to frequent the well-forested hollows,
Decked out in laurel and ivy. His nurses the nymphs used to follow
Him as their leader; the uproar filled all the intractable forest.
So it is that I salute you, abundant in grapes, Dionysus.
Grant that we may come again every year to this season rejoicing,
Season by season returning for year after year in the future.

As you can see, the themes of this hymn do fit the festival quite well. I also read from the chorus of Euripides' Bacchae and said an impromptu prayer before giving Dionysos his libation of wine. I used drumming as a meditative tool while thinking about the God and consuming the alcoholic mixture, followed by some silent readings from Kerényi's chapter in The Gods of the Greeks on Dionysos. The narrative provides a lot of context for this Dionysian ritual, which lasts three days. He explains Dionysos's Chthonic connections as the son of Persephone, Queen of the Underworld (yes, he is also the son of Semele). The image of Persephone weaving a robe with a picture of the whole world left quite the impression on me.

Night Two: Khoes

I spent most of Saturday night working on an online Physics I test and most of Sunday finishing the test, attending two meetings, running one meeting, and holding TA hours. Prudence dictated that sobriety needed to prevail to tackle these items.

To give you an idea of what others do for the second day, one source says that it “includes a ribald procession, drinking contests and a 'ηιερος γαμος' [EE ros GAM os] performed by the organizer of the celebration and his wife (representing the god 'Διωνυσος' [Deeo NEE sos] and his wife 'Αριαδνη' [Aree AD nee]).”

Another modern source suggests having a quiet moment and share wine with Orestes and the ancient Athenians, which is something that I did not actually do because of my need to concentrate on physics, but I did remain aware of Aeschylus's Libation Bearers and Eumenides, especially the scenes of ritual pollution and purification. This site also links this day (and the third day) to miasma, so I covered my dorm room worship space. Out of respect for the Gods, I did not participate in the Kyklos Apollon ritual, nor did I pray to Hermes before sleeping.

I decided to incorporate that last part because it reminds me of one of the more interesting parts of Sallustius's “On the Gods and the World,”:

XVIII. Why there are rejections of god, and that god is not injured.

Nor need the fact that rejections of god have taken place in certain parts of the earth and will often take place hereafter, disturb the mind of the wise: both because these things do not affect the Gods, just as we saw that worship did not benefit them; and because the soul, being of middle essence, cannot be always right; and because the whole world cannot enjoy the providence of the Gods equally, but some parts may partake of it eternally, some at certain times, some in the primal manner, some in the secondary. Just as the head enjoys all the senses, but the rest of the body only one.

For this reason, it seems, those who ordained festivals ordained also forbidden days, in which some temples lay idle, some were shut, some had their adornments removed, in expiation of the weakness of our nature.

It is not unlikely, too, that the rejection of god is a kind of punishment: we may well believe that those who knew the Gods and neglected them in one life may in another life be deprived of the knowledge of them altogether. Also those who have worshipped their own kings as gods have deserved as their punishment to lose all knowledge of god.

This is one of several few passages that I like about Sallustius, and the writer was quite influential in my initial conversion. (As a note, I do appreciate a lot of Sallustius's writing, but one should remember that he is a Neoplatonist and read him as such, not as representative of the beliefs of every Hellenic Polytheist at every point of time in history.)

Night Three: Khutroi

The altar remains covered.

Combining whole milk, uncooked barley, honey, and oil, an offering to dead ancestors came together quite readily considering the three liquids' different densities. When prepared to go outside and make the offerings, I asked one of my friends to join in this part of the ritual. We went to the fourth floor bathroom to wash our hands with khernips (in this case melted snow), and the cold of the water shocked her.

We took this concoction for the dead and a bottle of oil for a libation to Hades when we went outside, and we poured these into holes in the deep snow. After completing the offerings, I read the Orphic Hymn to Hermes (#28), which uses his Chthonic associations, and concluded the ritual.

Reactions

All in all, I'm very happy about how these three days went. Important real-world activities such as exams, coursework, and job-work are unavoidable during most Hellenic holidays, and I feel that I performed close to my best with these considerations and my lack of a kitchen. Worshiping the Theoi in a dorm room setting can be difficult at times due to limitations imposed by housing regulations and the cramped space, especially in winter when extended exposure (burning incense offerings require > 20 minutes of time) is not a good idea.

The practice of covering my worship space showed me just how much I take my involvement and worship of the Theoi for granted, and how much I miss it when I do not. Neglecting this space leaves a part of me unsettled and anxious for the holiday's conclusion—a spiritual version of dramatic tension, as it were—as a direct contrast to how much I enjoyed celebrating Anthesteria.