Philinnion

I first heard about this story in Lacey Collison-Morley's Greek and Roman Ghost Stories (1912), which prompted me to verify its origins at Theoi Greek Mythology. Anthesteria is a weird festival filled with the macabre. Orestes celebrated with his own wine-glass, defiled by the blood of his mother. The dead walk the Earth; shrines are covered.

It is the perfect time for vampires. Hellenistai, meet Philinnion.

Philinnion was the daughter of Demostratus and Charito. She had been married to Craterus, Alexander's famous General, but had died six months after her marriage. As we learn that she was desperately in love with Machates, a foreign friend from Pella who had come to see Demostratus, the misery of her position may possibly have caused her death. But her love conquered death itself, and she returned to life again six months after she had died, and lived with Machates, visiting him for several nights.

"One day an old nurse went to the guest-chamber, and as the lamp was burning, she saw a woman sitting by Machates. Scarcely able to contain herself at this extraordinary occurrence, she ran to the girl's mother, calling: 'Charito! Demostratus!' and bade them get up and go with her to their daughter, for by the grace of the gods she had appeared alive, and was with the stranger in the guest-chamber.

"On hearing this extraordinary story, Charito was at first overcome by it and by the nurse's excitement; but she soon recovered herself, and burst into tears at the mention of her daughter, telling the old woman she was out of her senses, and ordering her out of the room. The nurse was indignant at this treatment, and boldly declared that she was not out of her senses, but that Charito was unwilling to see her daughter because she was afraid. At last Charito consented to go to the door of the guest-chamber, but as it was now quite two hours since she had heard the news, she arrived too late, and found them both asleep. The mother bent over the woman's figure, and thought she recognized her daughter's features and clothes. Not feeling sure, as it was dark, she decided to keep quiet for the present, meaning to get up early and catch the woman. If she failed, she would ask Machates for a full explanation, as he would never tell her a lie in a case so important. So she left the room without saying anything.

"But early on the following morning, either because the gods so willed it or because she was moved by some divine impulse, the woman went away without being observed. When she came to him, Charito was angry with the young man in consequence, and clung to his knees, and conjured him to speak the truth and hide nothing from her. At first he was greatly distressed, and could hardly be brought to admit that the girl's name was Philinnion. Then he described her first coming and the violence of her passion, and told how she had said that she was there without her parents' knowledge. The better to establish the truth of his story, he opened a coffer and took out the things she had left behind her--a ring of gold which she had given him, and a belt which she had left on the previous night. When Charito beheld all these convincing proofs, she uttered a piercing cry, and rent her clothes and her cloak, and tore her coif from her head, and began to mourn for her daughter afresh in the midst of her friends. Machates was deeply distressed on seeing what had happened, and how they were all mourning, as if for her second funeral. He begged them to be comforted, and promised them that they should see her if she appeared. Charito yielded, but bade him be careful how he fulfilled his promise.

"When night fell and the hour drew near at which Philinnion usually appeared, they were on the watch for her. She came, as was her custom, and sat down upon the bed. Machates made no pretence, for he was genuinely anxious to sift the matter to the bottom, and secretly sent some slaves to call her parents. He himself could hardly believe that the woman who came to him so regularly at the same hour was really dead, and when she ate and drank with him, he began to suspect what had been suggested to him--namely, that some grave-robbers had violated the tomb and sold the clothes and the gold ornaments to her father.

"Demostratus and Charito hastened to come at once, and when they saw her, they were at first speechless with amazement. Then, with cries of joy, they threw themselves upon their daughter. But Philinnion remained cold. 'Father and mother,' she said, 'cruel indeed have ye been in that ye grudged my living with the stranger for three days in my father's house, for it brought harm to no one. But ye shall pay for your meddling with sorrow. I must return to the place appointed for me, though I came not hither without the will of Heaven.' With these words she fell down dead, and her body lay stretched upon the bed. Her parents threw themselves upon her, and the house was filled with confusion and sorrow, for the blow was heavy indeed; but the event was strange, and soon became known throughout the town, and finally reached my ears.

"During the night I kept back the crowds that gathered round the house, taking care that there should be no disturbance as the news spread. At early dawn the theatre was full. After a long discussion it was decided that we should go and open the tomb, to see whether the body was still on the bier, or whether we should find the place empty, for the woman had hardly been dead six months. When we opened the vault where all her family was buried, the bodies were seen lying on the other biers; but on the one where Philinnion had been placed, we found only the iron ring which had belonged to her lover and the gilt drinking-cup Machates had given her on the first day. In utter amazement, we went straight to Demostratus's house to see whether the body was still there. We beheld it lying on the ground, and then went in a large crowd to the place of assembly, for the whole event was of great importance and absolutely past belief. Great was the confusion, and no one could tell what to do, when Hyllus, who is not only considered the best diviner among us, but is also a great authority on the interpretation of the flight of birds, and is generally well versed in his art, got up and said that the woman must be buried outside the boundaries of the city, for it was unlawful that she should be laid to rest within them; and that Hermes Chthonius and the Eumenides should be propitiated, and that all pollution would thus be removed. He ordered the temples to be re-consecrated and the usual rites to be performed in honour of the gods below. As for the King, in this affair, he privately told me to sacrifice to Hermes, and to Zeus Xenius, and to Ares, and to perform these duties with the utmost care. We have done as he suggested.

"The stranger Machates, who was visited by the ghost, has committed suicide in despair.

"Now, if you think it right that I should give the King an account of all this, let me know, and I will send some of those who gave me the various details."

Wordless Wednesday

Eumenideia Ritual

I have finished working on the Eumenides page at Neokoroi. If you click here, you will find sorted information about the three goddesses. I have also written a ritual for Eumenideia, a ritual for the Eumenides, to take place on 27 Anthesterion. I decided on 27 Anthesterion for two reasons:

• While no date for the festival is given, many sources indicate that it happened near Diasia.
• KHARIS: Hellenic Polytheism Explored says that the last three days of the month are appropriate for Chthonic observances.

Of course, anyone who uses the ritual is free to move it about as they like provided that it stays near Diasia. This year, Diasia takes place on March 9/10 (23 Anthesterion), and I am setting Eumenideia for March 13/14.

Dionysos : Mirror :: Universe : Consciousness

A short while ago, I linked a friend to some web sites relating to the modern UFO religions. This is one of our exchanges that resulted ... it turned into a discussion of consciousness and the universe. As I am uncertain of the mental jumps this created, I am providing it here to solicit further discussion.

Me: I am a firm believer in alien life, mind you.
Eric: *minds*
Me: I just dispute the spiritual fetishization of the other. It is statistically almost certain that some other life-bearing planets exist, and that some species on those planets may be reasonably intelligent.
Eric: The universe would be due for a reasonably intelligent race of beings.
Me: In fact, I think that conscious beings are one of the manifestations of the evolution of the universe. Looking at itself in the mirror, as it were. You know, of course, that observers influence how particles behave in quantum physics. All things evolve through love and strife, so I think that any alien species would have a mixture of qualities. The Ashtar people are victims of their own projections of what they think aliens should be like, but also their desire for a savior who will rescue them from needing to be accountable and active for themselves.
Eric: Oh.
Me: It's one thing to project positive energy and another thing to actually be on the front lines advocating for more sane, humanitarian change in the world.
Eric: You ... spent a lot of time thinking about this, didn't you?
Me: No. This is a live mental process.
Eric: Oh, wow. I like your brain. Can Sarah and I put it in a jar some time?
Me: No. I like it in my head! ^_^ I have actually been censoring a bit. I was utterly shocked when I said that thing about consciousness as the universe looking in the mirror. It's like one of the myths of Dionysos Zagreus. He was enraptured by his reflection in the mirror as a child and butchered/eaten by the Titanes Theoi. It's a symbol of divine sacrifice. Zeus hurled a thunderbolt at the Titans and turned them to ash. People were made from it, so every human being has both the source of the transgression and the innocent victim within them. It's one's own choice which path to go. It's not so much about the creation of humanity as it is about the human mind and consciousness. Anyway, it is almost like the universe is Dionysos and we are the mirror that has enraptured him. It's a nifty thought.
Eric: Neat. You don't really need to censor yourself about me. I'm not particularly judgemental
Me: You don't know a lot of the mythological background.

What Happens When Muses Go On Lunch Breaks: The Lightning Thief (Movie)

Some movie adaptations, like Harry Potter can stand on their own with minimal help. Others, like Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, are so awful that you leave the theater thinking, “Surely they know that there is no way in Hades they can retcon all of that for the sequel.”

Um, excuse me? Waiter? That’s not the quest I ordered ...

No oracle-in-a-box (um ... uh ... attic). No nice mealtime food offerings. No “upstate” New York. Ares didn’t even have a speaking role in this film and he was one of the primary deities involved in the book. And the villain isn’t even the same person. It wouldn’t have bothered me, except that changing the villain completely changed the story to the point at which the movie was no longer believable. I was so distracted that I didn’t even realize that Annabeth looked like Xena, Warrior Princess, until the film had already ended.

I mean, changing a villain is a big deal. It requires shifting the entire rest of the story around to suit the needs of the new villain. The villain of The Lightning Thief was intended to become a Huge Problem later on, or at least that’s how I read it. It’d be like the movie adaptation of Harry Potter substituting Draco Malfoy’s dad for Lord Voldemort.

“It’s hot, he’s a weirdo ...”

My biggest issue with the film was the Receiver of Many, who honest-to-Gods looked almost exactly like the illicit love child of that
monster from “The Satan Pit” in Doctor Who and the balrog from Lord of the Rings:

The entrance to Hades, by the way, looks like something right out of a tourist trap in Salem, MA. Or possibly a haunted house in Niagara Falls, Canada. Take your pick. While I did enjoy that the film had placed the underworld’s entrance in a natural setting instead of the strange building in the book, the interior was a huge letdown.

The characterization of the Receiver of Many was painful, and I thought that Rick Riordan did a much better job. The movie completely mauled his relationship with Persephone, which was difficult to watch because I OTP Plouton/Persephone hard. Furthermore, Persephone is a slight nymphomaniac, and she’s underground when she really shouldn’t be. Of course, they had to maul the mythology because of that slight villain change I mentioned above.

Use the Force, Luke

To make matters worse, Poseidon communicates with Percy using Force telepathy at the points in the story when book-Percy just figured everything out for himself. While a nice way to show that Poseidon did care about his son, it reads way too much like Star Wars. I didn’t come to this movie for Star Wars. I came in the false belief that I would hear Plouton whine about how many new divisions he’s had to put in the underworld because human beings kill each other too much and breed like rabbits.

The Verdict

The Lightning Thief belongs right next to Queen of the Damned on my list of “movies that break under the weight of people with big red pens.” Mythology is flexible, and storytellers have tons of room for innovation within a story. However, the Greeks always fought the Trojans. Theseus always killed the Minotaur. The particulars don’t matter as much as the main stakeholders in a story or the vilification of a deity who isn’t really that bad.

While I know I usually give a breakdown of which aspects of something I find good, it was just too bad. I give it 1.5/5 — but only because the CGI was good.

Proxy Sacrifices and Persecution

A few nights ago, I did some light bedtime reading that had nothing to do with YSEE’s lexicon or the Eumenides. The article, “Sacrifice and Pagan Belief in Fifth- and Sixth-Century Byzantium” by K. W. Harl, was cited in another article about sacrifice that I read a few months ago. I drew some thought-provoking points from this article. (If you don’t have a lot of time, Point #2 is the coolest.)

1.    There are scholars out there who seem to portray the persecutive reality of living as a polytheist after the ascent of Christianity. Finally.

Along with blood sacrifices — long offensive to Christians — such pagan devotions as sprinkling incense on altars, hanging sacred fillets on trees and raising turf altars were classified as acts of high treason punishable by death and confiscation of property. There was no mistaking the intent of Theodosius’ laws: henceforth Nicene Christianity was the official religion of the empire. (Harl, 2) 

This guy later mentions the death penalty for worshipping the Gods. Thank you, scholar who takes religious persecution seriously!

2.    Polytheists in the fifth and sixth centuries decided that they could proxy-pray/sacrifice for an entire community. “The persistence of pagans in sacrificing to the Gods is astonishing and perplexing,” (3). What was it that Sallustius said about prayers without sacrifice being empty? 

In a letter to Eutherius, [the Emperor Julian] noted that a single pious individual could sacrifice as a surrogate for the entire community of “Hellenes,” by which term Julian meant all true believers in the gods. The notion of sacrifice by a pious proxy inevitably gained popularity when pagans faced the choice between sacrificing to the gods in violation of imperial edict or denying the gods true worship. (Harl, 7)

This sentiment was echoed by other polytheists of the time, too.

The ritual innovation in the face of anti-polytheist laws/policy during the 400s and 500s CE is really useful material for modern Hellenists.

The idea that a single polytheist makes sacrifice on behalf of an entire polis of human beings makes some sense to me; it also makes me wonder what people of Abrahamic persuasions would think. On a practical level, it means that we have such potential to work as a coordinated community in honoring the Deathless Ones.

It sounds mystical, but that’s how polytheism rolls.

3.    There is an ideological disconnect between polytheism and monotheism.

There were several reasons for the lack of action to restore the cults on the part of the pagans of the fifth and sixth centuries. By no means the least was the inability of most pagans to comprehend a conflict of religions. (14)

One of the things that modern polytheists struggle with is reconciling our deep response to the centuries of anti-polytheistic genocide and suppression with a tolerant polytheistic world-view. In the past few days, I also read a great essay by a Gnostic Christian published in 2006 that discussed how the trauma of persecution screws with people. While Gnosticism and Hellenism are different, I think that polytheism has a lot of historical trauma to work through before we can bounce back effectively.

Reading about Christianity after it started gaining momentum makes me furious. Christian narratives glorify the extermination of indigenous traditions (the “salvation of souls”) and the acceptance of alien ones. They glorify every moment they interfere with an individual’s religious freedom by outlawing sacrifice or stripping non-Christian sacred sites of their religious images. It makes me too emotional.

The narratives about Christian extermination of traditional Hellenic and Roman religions also make me feel a special kind of despair — the kind that is coupled with an “oh s***” moment.

I have been very venomous about Christianity in the past. While there are hard lines between polytheism and Abrahamic faiths that should be emphasized — and that polytheism in antiquity should have articulated this difference a bit more clearly — I think that too much venom only contributes to the problem. I also think that Christianity just got lucky by gaining access to Imperial Rome at a really important historical bottleneck.

4.    If Christianity were such a great religion, there wouldn’t have been droves of people practicing polytheism in secret. Lots of people were executed by the government for apostasy. This makes polytheism’s tenacity very illogical, but the executions kept happening. I guess our traditional religions must have been doing something right.

Offerings to the Eumenides

Several months ago, I decided to create a shrine to the Eumenides and Kharites. After starting my research on the cult of the Eumenides/Semnai Theai/Erinyes, I decided to hold off on posting anything of substance until I had gotten to a good place in the research. Currently, "good place" means that I have a pretty general idea about days sacred to the Eumenides and offerings. Right now, I am hoping that some sources I have just acquired will provide more information about cult centers.

There is a holiday called the Eumenideia, which does not seem to have a preserved date anywhere in the English-language sources I have found. It takes place near the Diasia (which happens in Anthesterion during the Lesser Mysteries). Because Anthesterion begins in the next few weeks, now seems a good time to compile a portion of the information I have. I have set a tentative date of the Eumenideia during the last three days of Anthesterion barring any new findings. My reasons for doing this should become clear as I post information. Eventually, much of this will go on a Neokoroi-based God page, but I want to make this available to anyone who would like to join me in sacrificing to the Eumenides this Anthesterion.

As far as cultic offerings go, the Eumenides can receive honey-sweet cakes, which is typical for the Chthonic deities and dead. They also like honey mixed with water, but one shouldn't offer them wine. (Incence is all right, though.) One of the most interesting offerings is raw wool. Theoi.com's page on the Erinyes provides the following:

"[On the road to Titane, Sikyonia] on the other side of the Asopos River, is a grove of holm oaks and a temple of the goddesses named by the Athenians Semnai (August), and by the Sikyonians Eumenides (Kindly Ones). On one day in each year they celebrate a festival to them and offer sheep big with young as a burnt offering, and they are accustomed to use a libation of honey and water, and flowers instead of garlands. They practise similar rites at the altar of the Moirai (Fates); it is in an open space in the grove." - Pausanias, Guide to Greece 2.11.4

Offerings to the Eumenides were very connected to the Orphic and Bacchic Mysteries as well. This is personally significant because I observed a modern Orphic ritual this December to Dionysos, and it makes me wonder about my current desire to revive their cultus. Of course, I could just be reading too much into my personal feelings.

The Derveni commentator, who is pre-Platonic in philosophical outlook if not date, is aware of a preliminary sacrifice that the initiates (mystai) offer to the Eumenides "in the same way as the magoi." The magoi offered cakes and libations of water and milk as part of a sacrifice that they perform "as if they were paying a penalty;" the aim of their rite was to placate dead souls that might otherwise "be in the way."

(Ritual Texts for the Afterlife, 149).

Offerings of raw wool are most connected to Demeter Erinys, but wool was also acceptable to the Eumenides.

I'll move on to the Eumenideia and sacred days next time.

In Anticipation of Anthesteria

Dionysos and I have never established an extensive ritual rapport (I am way more of an Apollon groupie), but I had a great time celebrating the Anthesteria last year. As soon as January rolled around, I started thinking about the rituals and what I wanted to do for each one. Last year, the Anthesteria happened from 6 – 9 February; this year, it is from 25 – 28 February. (Thank you, Poseideon II!)

I have reusable fake flowers for Pithoigia, when everything will be decorated with flowers, along with plans to go about six doors down to the local liquor store and buy some cheap ice wine to share with Dionysos. Having tried ice wine at a tasting this summer (wine is an integral part of Upstate NY’s culture), I would like to enjoy it again — but as a warning, it is like drinking grape-flavored sugar. I chose to use fake flowers this year because, at this time of year, Upstate NY is a snow globe.

This year, the Anthesteria will have a particularly raw emotional significance because it has been over one year since my grandfather died. He was in his mid-nineties, and I had just started questioning him about growing up during Prohibition and the Depression, serving in World War II, and everything else. He remembered the Dust Bowl; looking out his New York window, he saw a haze of dust in the west. The death was even more awful because his failure to recuperate from hip surgery was caused by the doctor giving him the wrong kind of anesthesia.

While much of the West now honors the dead during Halloween, Memorial Day, or All Souls’ Day, I have been looking forward to honoring my grandfather and the other dead in my family on Khytroi — especially now that I can make pulse. As I don’t have easy access to my ancestors’ graves, I will make other arrangements with both the pulse on Khytroi and the libations on Khoës. It may also be a good time to read the World War II letters.

Of course, before the Anthesteria, we have the Theogamia (the sacred marriage of Zeus and Hera), the Deipnon, and the basic rituals to the Gods during and after the Noumenia.