Happy Dionysos Days

As part of an initiative to branch out and try new things, I have made a super special executive decision to observe the Twelve Days of Dionysos, which Kallimachus goes into great detail about on Hellenic Gods. While I do not have an Orphic altar, it seems that using my main shrine is all right as long as I have some kind of divine images. Thanks to the god-sticks and the million printouts of ancient red-figure vase paintings on my shrine (or piled beneath it ...), I am totally covered.

Having just finished the first ritual to Hestia and Hephaistos, I can say that Orphic ritual as portrayed on Kallimachus’s site is a mild departure from the Hellenic structure I know and love. However, it has some good bits. The placement of the hymns in the Orphic style makes a lot of sense when combined with modern bloodless offerings.

Making offerings in honor of the birth of something—Helios, the New Year, Mithras—makes sense on a deep human level at this time of year. The divine child is more than Christian or Gentile, although I must confess that I believe the Gentile versions did not preemptively copycat the story of Jesus. These stories of divine children born among a pantheon provide more holistic and viable images of the world because they take place not in one location, but many;—the narratives exist in the present tense at all times because mythological time is best understood as situational rather than concrete. This is why I can accept the birth of Dionysos or of Mithras, Asklepios or Herakles.

Now, though, I need to get some rest before I piece together which deities must receive honors tomorrow. One ritual down, eleven more opportunities to get things right!

Happy holidays.

Google Alerts and Hanukkah

It is now the holiday season, which means that my inbox is flooded with Greek Gods alerts associated with Hanukkah.

I had little idea before now just how many Jewish bloggers think that Antiochus IV is indicative of what Hellenic Polytheists of any era might feel/have felt about Judaism. Right now, I would like to take the opportunity to provide you with one Hellenic view of the situation: Antiochus IV was a d****e and/or an idiot. Quite frankly, other Greek leaders of the same period confronted the monotheistic religion with much more tolerance, even though monotheism was something many of them did not understand. Antiochus IV was also a d****e to other Hellenes, if it makes any difference.

Please, as you look forward to your sacred festival, remember that not all Hellenists want you to memorize Homer or offer Zeus a hecatomb of white bulls. To close, I would like to provide the following quotation from Julian, the last Emperor of Rome to observe the primary religion* of his ancestors, during his famed essay against Christianity:

I am one of those who avoid keeping their festivals with the Jews; but nevertheless I revere always the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; who being themselves Chaldaeans, of a sacred race, skilled in theurgy, had learned the practice of circumcision while they sojourned as strangers with the Egyptians. And they revered a God who was ever gracious to me and to those who worshipped him as Abraham did, for he is a very great and powerful God, but he has nothing to do with you [Christians]. For you do not imitate Abraham by erecting altars to him, or building altars of sacrifice and worshipping him as Abraham did, with sacrificial offerings. For Abraham used to sacrifice even as we Hellenes do, always and continually. And he used the method of divination from shooting stars. Probably this also is an Hellenic custom. But for higher things he augured from the flight of birds.

Happy Hanukkah.


* “Primary religion” is a term coined by Jan Assmann in Religion and Cultural Memory. It essentially refers to faiths that are based on cult (evolving worship) rather than a specific sacred text. Assmann argues that religions that are book-based generally have a strong rupture with a previous cult-based tradition.

A Shrine for the Charites and Eumenides

A few weeks ago, I made a post about creating a small shrine to the Charites and the Eumenides. This is my first shrine that exists separately from my main one (which is in major need of organization — too many images). I wanted something very simple and clean for this shrine.

I laid a board over the top of a new shelf for the shrine to maximize the amount of space I have — shelf space is very important to me, and I blame the lack of it for most of my organizational problems. (This is actually true. Since acquiring more shelf space, my messiness has cut down about 70%.) The shrine contains images of the Charites from a wall mural and the only image of all three Eumenides that I could find, a painting by Franz von Stuck completed six years before Bram Stoker’s Dracula. I also have an empty wine glass with a very beautiful logo design that contains several fake flowers.

I have prayed at the shrine just once since its creation, but I am taking things slowly because I want to gradually incorporate their worship into my spiritual practice. Right now, it feels more comfortable to offer the Charites and Erinyes traditional things (the Orphic Hymns, for example) than to use modern offerings (i.e., substituting pure maple syrup mixed with water for honey mixed with water because my region produces more maple syrup than honey).

There is no incense burner on this shrine, but I am planning on finding a saucer for offerings. The Eumenides do not often receive incense offerings because they are Chthonic deities according to some sources that I’m working through, but they do receive incense offerings according to the Orphic Hymns as the Eumenides and as the Erinyes. The sources I have read so far indicate that the Eumenides receive no alcoholic libations, but I won’t say more on this now.

So far, I have prayed to the Eumenides and the Charites using the Orphic Hymns. I may incorporate other texts later.

Eros in China

A Chinese news source, Xinhua Net, has reported that the subject of two small statuettes discovered in the 1980s are probably representations of Eros. These two bronze figures feature a boy whose wings lift upward at the tips, a feature rare among images of Chinese gods. The statues date to about 500 C.E.

This wouldn’t be the first incursion of Hellenic gods into the region. Xinhua Net reports that “British archaeologist Aurel Stein proved in 1907 that several winged angels in the mural paintings in a monastery in west China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region were drawings of Eros at around 200 A.D.” [source]

Apparently, tracing the route of the ancient Silk Road from Greece to Ancient  China is commonly done using similar archaeological findings. If the statuettes’ common identity is true, this means that images of the Gods were traveling along the Silk Road well after Christians took control of the Roman Empire and began their persecution of traditional religion.

Of course, the article didn’t come with images of the statuettes or of the mural painting in Western China. After about half an hour of Google-fu, I believe that the previous murals came from the Mogao Grottoes, which Stein helped save from looting in 1907. A tourist’s account of the region (“Jeremy's Silk Road Journey: Episode 11”) describes his surprise:

[In the grottoes] there is a written copy of the Diamond Sutra, believed to be one of the world’s oldest printed books. There are even some depictions of Greek/Roman deities, such as the goddess Athena and the god Eros. [source]

Stein may also have found Silk Road trade items in surrounding areas. If you have located images of any of these deities or know where I can find them, please post something in the comments.