In about three weeks, we’ll be doing our devotional at Pantheacon! If you want to help get it going, there are a few things we could use help with: We’ll need people to help with the ritual. We have the Priest (me) and one to assist me, and one drummer. Another person or two to […]
Drinking from the Cup of Life
Drinking from the Cup of Life
A Prayer to Cthonic Dionysos
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I wrote this for a friend of mine who was working with Dionysos in the Underworld. With their permission, I’m sharing it here, in case anyone else has a need for it. A prayer for Dionysos in the Underworld I call to Dionysos in the Underworld The Dancer in the Dark Who journeys in the […]
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Thiasos Bakkheios Through the Year
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The ritual year for Thiasos Bakkheios starts with the Winter Solstice. The calendar of Attica (which many Hellenic reconstructionists use to set their ritual year) begins with the first new moon after the Summer Solstice, but I’ve found that scheduling with modern folks works better if the calendar starts closer to the secular new year. […]
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We Need a Sacred Bartender
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Update from Thiasos Bakkheios: We recently had another chanting and drumming and (some) dancing devotional. I’m going to report on it as best I can. Only some of these are my personal recollections; certain gaps in my memory had to be filled in with information supplied by “dude, you were so wasted” stories people told […]
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Indigenous People’s Day
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Thoughts I had on Indigenous People’s Day, yesterday: I was born on land disputed by the Iriquois Confederacy and the Cherokee, land where the Shawnee moved when the whites forced them out of Virginia. I grew up on the land where the Baxoje (Iowa) lived, where once the Dakota and Sauk roamed. I […]
Drinking from the Cup of Life
Mythology is a Finger Pointing at the Moon
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The stories of the gods are not the gods. The descriptions of the gods given in those stories are not the nature of the gods. They are fingers pointing at the moon. To borrow a Buddhist story: The nun Wu Jincang asked the Sixth Patriarch Huineng: “I have studied the Mahaparinirvana sutra for many years, […]
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Half a World?
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There are days, and then there are days, but each day is one. A day can begin with a phone call that frightens you and makes you feel helpless. That day can continue with doing what little one can to comfort a loved one being assaulted by fear, and then go on to comforting another […]
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Gang Aft A-Gley
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The best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft a-gley–and also those of polytheists. For our August devotional, I’d planned for Thiasos Bakkheios to have a high-woo trance journey, so that each member could meet the god in person, and discover which aspect of Dionysos they most resonated with. Well, no. Scheduling problems, on-the-job injuries, […]
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Dionysos is an American God
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Last week, Sannion wrote this piece about America as a Dionysian country. Essentially, he looks to an ideal of (or an idealized imagining of) certain aspects of the land and culture of the United States, and sees a clear pattern of Dionysian spirit in our art, politics, and history. The essay is not unproblematic, and […]
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Field Trip to Cat’s Cradle
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Last week, Thiasos Bakkheios and a friend took a field trip to Cat’s Cradle, a shrine in the redwood forest above the UC Santa Cruz campus. The idea was to get our hands dirty with some practical, physical work for the spirits and powers. Santa Cruz, California, is on the north end ot the Monterey […]