Kala Diasia!

Diasia is one of my favorite holidays, but mostly for sentimental value. It’s the anniversary of the first Hellenic ritual I ever performed.

I remember standing in my dorm room with a small plate of cooked lamb shanks and some kind of pasta. Back then, I had no copy of the Homeric Hymns, but I had gone to the computer lab to print off some that I had found  on Theoi.com — Daryl Hine’s copy of the Homeric Hymns (and Hesiod’s poetry) would come by me much later, and I would read his verse translation of Hesiod while riding back to Surrey one evening. Doing the ritual made me feel so nervous because I wanted to get everything right, and I knew that something profound was happening in my little dorm room. (A summary of my plans for last Diasia is here.)

Last night, I celebrated Diasia. While I used animal cracker cookies last year, this year I offered peeps (and I’m trying not to think about how many people are going to be offended knowing that), spring water, and frankincense. Now that my psaltery is tuned, I made some improv musical offerings to Zeus while reading one of his Orphic hymns.

In honor of Diasia and the anniversary of my first ritual after conversion, I would also like to dedicate my media enrichment of Sallustius’s On the Gods and the World to Zeus. The segments are out of order because I have not brainstormed how to break up the larger sections, but Parts XV and XVIII are available. All of the images come from the Wikimedia Commons and are credited at the bottom of each entry.