Sacrifice in Ritual

As a follow-up to my recent post about the difference between altars and shrines (and altars as places of sacrifice), I thought I would post a link to Greek Sacrifice Ritual, a 2001 resource put out by Bard Classics.

Originally, I found this site on one of the Hellenic Polytheism Yahoo! Groups link sections, but it linked to a defunct version of the site. The current link is courtesy of Google.

Greek Sacrifice Ritual, on the page that has not survived the link transition (but still exists on Archive.org), states that the web site aims “to clarify the process of Greek sacrifice ritual and [demystify] the ideology surrounding it.” You can read the full statement of intent here, but do not try to go to the illustrated guides because the images only work on the updated link.

Wait, did I say illustrated guides? Yes. Greek Sacrifice Ritual contains four illustrated guides to rituals ("Burkert's interpretation of animal sacrifice," "Sacrifice in the Iliad," "The Thesmophoria," and "Sacrifice from the Hagia Triada Sarcophagus."). Some illustrations are modern cartoonish drawings, while others come from Greek and Cretan sources.

Most of the site focuses on blood sacrifice, and I do not believe that an equivalent resource illustrates the bloodless version. Enjoy.

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Roughing it in the Dorm: My Shrine and a Meditation on Terminology

Unless the weather outside is amazing, I worship the Gods in my dorm room. As a college student, I don't have the room to make a shrine for each deity I worship the most in addition to a basic one for rituals, so this is a compromise. Each of the sticks pictured has the name of a God (or groups of Gods, in the case of the Muses). I may sound like a broken record by now, but Mikalson states in Ancient Greek Religion during his example of sacred center construction:

We are obliged to carve Poseidon's name on [the altar], so that both the god and visitors know it is his. Each altar is so designated with the god's name or with the name of a specific group of gods because there were no "common" altars to serve all the gods. (Mikalson, 6)

You will first notice that Mikalson contradicts my current practice of worshiping all of the non-Chthonic Gods in the same space. The Ancient Greeks never had the predicament of a college student living in a poorly-lit dormitory. That won't convince some of you to believe that I am not committing a breach of religious etiquette, so let me cite something. A map of the agora in Athens during Plato and Socrates's lifetimes indicates that an altar to the Twelve existed, so Mikalson's statement on the early Hellenic worship center is not temporally universal. As long as I have representations of all of the gods in question, worshiping them at my altar is fine.

My dormitory shrine is divided into two parts. I have an image of Apollon (currently unframed because using nails is against the housing policy) and a list of the Delphic Maxims on the wall, which comprises my sub-shrine to Apollon. The second half is where I make libations, offering, and sacrifice (the shelf with the cloth on it). I keep supplies and religious texts in the shelves immediately below it.



If you want any explanations about the above images, go to the non-embedded slide show and click "Options." Check "Always show title and description." This will tell you more about the items.

In Hellenic practice, temples and altars are usually inside the temenos, or sacred precinct. The temple is not necessary to worship, as Mikalson also states over the course of his amazing book; the altar, the place where sacrifice is made, is essential. In my modern shrine, altar space is replaced by the receiving vessel for libations and the offering bowl.

Finally, I would like to offer some clarification on the difference between an altar and a shrine. It is my understanding that in Wicca and Wicca-derived traditions, an altar is the primary focal point for worship in the sacred circle. These altars usually contain images or representations of the God and Goddess, along with candles and sacred supplies. They look much like Catholic altars, which contain scriptural texts and images, and the practice was probably appropriated.

Historically, the altar is a place of sacrifice, usually made of stone (or, in the case of Zeus's altar on Olympus, ash), where offerings are burned. In Hellenic Polytheism, domestic shrines contain images of the god(s), their names, and/or representations of them to assist in worship, and they perform similar functions to permanent Wiccan altars to specific deities. Due to the changing meanings of the words shrine and altar, many Hellenic Polytheists call their household shrines altars. Most people generally know what you mean, but the real meanings matter when reading scholarly works . . . like Mikalson. On real altars, you make fire.

Notes on vocabulary (from the Oxford English Dictionary):

shrine - A place where worship is offered or devotions are paid to a saint or deity; a temple, church. A receptacle containing an object of religious veneration; occas. a niche for sacred images.
altar - A block, pile, table, stand, or other raised structure, with a plane top, on which to place or sacrifice offerings to a deity.

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Plans for Diasia

Diasia, the festival for Zeus Meilikhios, begins Wednesday night at sundown. (If memory serves, the first time I honored the Gods according to Hellenic ritual conventions was on a Diasia, so it holds a special place in my heart.)

Theoi.com does a great job of explaining what Zeus's epithet Meilikhios/Meilichios means:

the god that can be propitiated, or the gracious, is used as a surname of several divinities. 1. Of Zeus, as the protector of those who honoured him with propitiatory sacrifices. At Athens cakes were offered to him every year at the festival of the Diasia. (Thuc. i. 126; Xenoph. Anab. vii. 7. § 4.) Altars were erected to Zeus Meilichius on the Cephissus (Paus. i. 37. § 3),at Sicyon (ii.9. § 6), and at Argos (ii. 20. § 1; Plut. De cohib. Ir. 9). 2. Of Dionysus in the island of Naxos. (Athen. iii. p. 78.) 3. Of Tyche or Fortune. (Orph. Hymn. 71. 2.)

My Diasia ritual will have some kind of cracker (animal crackers sound like a great idea) or small cake for the sacrifice, and I will go downtown for wine to mix with water and honey when I make preparations on Wednesday. Kyrene Ariadne gives an outline of a proper Hellenic ritual, and this is my adaptation:

1. Wash hands and face in purified water. (I do not use bottled water because I see it as a waste of natural resources.)
2. Speak a hymn to Hestia and pretend that her God-Stick is actually a real flame. Perhaps I will even snap my lighter on while I speak her hymn.
3. Declaration of ritual purity.
4. Offerings to Hestia, Hera, and Demeter.
5. Invocation of Zeus Meilikhios. Hymns to Zeus, followed by a reading from the section of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter in which Zeus agrees to let Persephone have Demeter for part of the year (go female power!).
6. Sacrifice of crackers/cakes to Zeus Meilikhios.
7. Libations of wine to Zeus Meilikhios.
8. Conclusion.

Other individuals have created diverse versions of this ritual. A version on Hellenion's site (but not linked via the Hymnodia portal?) presents a very straightforward, Zeus-only ritual. Another version from the Northern California Hellenes focuses on Zeus and Demeter. [Edit: The group from Northern California is doing two festivals, Diasia and Chloaia. This explains why Zeus and Demeter receive equal precedence.] Both of these rituals, of course, include Hestia. The Hellenic Temple of Apollon, Zeus, and Pan links the festival to Pompaia and discusses the holiday's meaning. They do not incorporate Demeter. If a complete Hellenic ritual for Zeus seems daunting to you, consider a simple libation and hymn.

I like the sense that the Hellenic Temple of Apollon, Zeus, and Pan gives of completeness. For this reason, I have incorporated a small offering to Demeter as a part of the ritual and the aforementioned reading during Zeus's worship [because it details the conditions of Persephone's removal to the Underworld, and Zeus did decide her ultimate fate]. I also decided that the animal crackers idea was worth appropriating.

Maybe I should start citing sources as a part of all of my ritual closings.

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A Review of Thorn Magazine

Online media can only go so far when reaching out to the polytheistic/pagan communities in the English-speaking world. While many print publications on pagan/polytheistic topics folded after the Internet's popularity increased, this service is still important. Other faiths, such as Christianity (Christianity Today) and Buddhism (Tricycle), can maintain general magazines of decent quality in addition to the hundreds of English-language blogs and large number of Internet forums. Like those faith groups, general Western paganisms should be able to work together to produce at least one good magazine in addition to the various smaller publications produced by individual pagan/polytheistic groups, such as the Hellenic He Epistole (Neokoroi).

With this void in mind comes the new Thorn Magazine: Paganism in the Silicon Age, a publication aimed at the general pagan/polytheistic community. When I say “general,” I mean it: the December 2008 issue includes an article about “orgone energy” by a Discordian, three articles about modern initiation practices in Reconstructionist religions (Kemetic, Hellenic, and Norse perspectives), an atheist's perspective on Neo-Witchcraft, and several reviews.

Thorn looks like a very promising magazine, and Volume 1:1 did a decent job. Content I listed above makes it clear that it gives a voice to minority polytheistic faiths in addition to the concerns of Neo-Wiccans, but that also depends on the types of submissions the magazine acquires. I really liked the set topic idea for the recon faith articles because I think comparing how they do things is good for any outsiders who might read these articles. Thorn's formatting usually hits the mark: I approved of the editorial staff's header and footer designs, and they succeeded in attractively formatting titles' text. The advertisements were unobtrusive, yet noticeable, and very appropriate.

Someone at a Smith leadership conference once said that their organization considers "positives" and "deltas" when evaluating their performance because "delta," unlike "negative," signifies that the org has an opportunity to learn and grow. Thorn definitely has some deltas. Sometimes single lines carry over columns, which gets distracting when they are left alone. The white void in “Creation Myth: Intelligent Designs from the Descendants of the Sun Gods” on page 5 was distracting. Some of the articles may have looked better in two columns (the magazine used three as a standard) because short paragraphs look less choppy that way. Line spacing varied from a cramped ~1.0 in “The Wild Hunt: A news summary for modern Pagans” to a spacing of 1.3-1.5 “Creation Myth.” (Note: the spacing in “'Story' is Only Part of 'History'” has perhaps the best line spacing solution.) As you can tell from the volume classification of 1:1, December 2008 is their first issue, so I'm confident that they'll settle on a formatting standard soon.

Thorn's success ultimately depends on the quality and varieties of articles/editorials submitted by members of the pagan communities, along with the readership demands of the demographic it eventually settles into. While I can't say that every single article gripped me, Thorn's first issue definitely had some very engaging sections and deserves further attention. I will probably subscribe to Thorn in the near future, but I hesitate to give a n/5 rating to a magazine only in its first issue. (Thinking in letter grade mode, I would give Issue #1 a B.) I encourage you to look at Thorn for yourself and give them feedback on what you think. They even have a survey on their web site.

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Proposed Comic on the Gods

In Graphic Novel Land, actor Michael Chiklis (who played Ben Grimm in Fantastic Four) has decided to do a comic on the Olympians. This is what Variety has to say about the proposed comic in their article:

Based on an idea by Anny Simon Beck, [the] series will tell the story of ancient Greek gods who return to a ravaged, chaotic present-day Earth where they battle for the future of mankind against the Titans.

You can read the rest of their article here. I wonder how much mythological vocabulary Chiklis will use in the comic's creation, or if it will turn into another one of those excuses to show a lot of ripped-out men and scantily-clad women fighting. (I mean, he could even decide to do a prequel to Keat's unfinished Hyperion. If only, right?) Here's hoping it's good.

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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.

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