O Dionysos Pankarpos, joyful guardian and protector,
you who dance in the pulse of all living things,
watch over our children with unwavering attention.
Let their laughter be frequent, their spirits free,
their hearts rooted in tradition, and their minds
open to all the wonders the world holds.
Shield them from harm, Polemokelados,
nurture their growth into adulthood,
and bless them with abundant joy and courage.

O Dionysos Gamēlios,
let the weight of the world fall away,
as wine falls from the cup,
as laughter fills the night air.
Let there be no shame here—
only honesty, only exploration, only desire
rooted like a pine tree,
rising like sacrificial smoke.
May we be unguarded,
may our attention be undivided,
may we be present with each other,
and discover the sacred in touch,
the divine in intimacy.
Dionysos Panchoreios, guide us
not to excess that blinds,
but to ecstasy that awakens—
where body and spirit move as one.

O Dionysos Polyphēmios,
flame of ecstasy and sacred creation,
you who awaken the soul to song and vision,
breathe your wild spark into my mind and heart.
Let inspiration rise like sweet wine within me,
unbound, fearless, and alive.
Guide my voice, my hands, my spirit—
that I may create beautiful things in your honor.

O Bakcheios, we pray, bull-horned God,
Lord of liberation, bringer of ecstasy,
wielder of the flowering branch,
whose dance-loving feet shake the Earth,
toppling walls and setting free the captives within;
be present as we consummate this union
where desire is celebrated in its myriad forms,
fearlessly and without shame, where fantasy
is manifest through our flesh, and every pleasure
opens wider the doors of our mind until we experience
rapture and love’s boundless grace.
May our coupling bring us closer together,
O blessed Blastēma, renewing our bonds,
and strengthening our union.

Hear me, O Dionysos,
twice-born, ivy-crowned, loud-crying Lord,
you who wander the mountains with your frenzied Retinue,
you who bring the vine’s gift and the loosening of care
to the wearied and suffering all over the world.
I kindle this flame in your honor,
bright as the Stars that witness your sacred revels.
May it be pleasing to you,
O Bromios, shaker of the soul,
O Eleutherios, giver of freedom,
O Phanēs, manifester of impossible things.
Come, Blessed One,
and be present in this fire.
Fill this space with your divine breath,
with joy unbound, and truth unveiled,
driving back the darkness with your luminesce.
Where hearts are burdened, bring release;
where minds are closed, bring holy madness;
where spirits falter, pour out your wine of life.
Accept this light, O Lord of the thyrsos,
as offering and remembrance.
Grant me to walk in your mysteries,
to know the dance, the song, the sacred ecstasy.
Rejoice, Dionysos—
and be gracious.

O Dionysos Aglaodōros, your benefactions never fail
and your mercies are new every morning;
I give you thanks for relief from pain,
and for the hope of health renewed.
Pray continue, Akmaios, the good work
you have begun in me; that I,
daily increasing in bodily strength,
and rejoicing in your goodness, Anikētos,
may so order my life and conduct that I may
always think and do those things that please you.
I am sore in need of your generous assistance,
and will fulfil this pledge if you come again
to my assistance, Dionysos Architechnitēs.

O Dionysos Eleutherios,
Lord of wine, of wild joy, of sweet release—
be present in this moment with us.
Let the walls fall away,
let laughter and breath become one rhythm,
let body and spirit move free of all constraints.
Bless this union with warmth and fire,
with tenderness as deep as the vine’s root,
and ecstasy as bright as a torch
carried in nocturnal procession for you.
May we honor each other as votaries of he who frees,
and lose ourselves, only to find something better.
Come, Dionysos, come—
in joy, in freedom, in shared delight.

O Dionysos, loosener of all bonds,
Leader of the choir of fire-breathing Stars,
Lord of the vine, who brings wild, liberating joy,
I light this flame in your honor, my God, my Savior.
As this candle burns, may its glow awaken
the hidden places within me—
the places that long to dance,
to revel, to hunt, to feel abundantly,
to indulge in every kind of excess,
to be free. God of ecstasy and transformation,
you who dissolve boundaries and awaken truth,
bless this moment with your presence, and be with
us as long as this flame dances in your honor.
Let this flame be a spark of your infinite fire—
a reminder that life is meant to be drunk deeply,
felt fully, and lived without fear.
Where there is restraint, bring release.
Where there is heaviness, bring laughter.
Where there is silence, bring the sacred song.
Io evohe!
Io Bakcheios!
Io Lusios!
Io Asterios!
Io io evohe!
Dionysos, companion of the Wild-hearted Ones,
accept this light as an offering.
Walk with me in joy, in mystery, and in truth.

O Dionysos, liberator and understanding guide,
you who loosen chains and reveal truth,
turn my craving into clarity,
my excess into balance,
my pain into wholeness.
Walk beside me in this struggle,
and teach me freedom without destruction.
I honor you in both the good
and bad times of my life—
grant me strength to reclaim myself, Lord.

O firstborn Phanēs who handed the scepter of
rulership over to your daughter Nyx so that you
could explore the world that emerged from the Egg
along with you, hungry for experience and knowledge;
O Ancient of Days, Lord of Manifestations, Starry One,
you reveal yourself to the nations in ways that will be
understandable to them; so in Apulia you took on the
appearance of a bull with golden horns, and in Skythia
you showed yourself as a bear who feasts on honey,
while in Judaea you became a ram who frollicks
on the mountain at mid-day, and in many other places
you have been worshiped in many other guises,
and under many different names: so I ask you Mēdus,
Khoršŭ, Dhū-Šarā, Sabai, Petempamenti, Mekal,
‘Almaqah or however it pleases you to be called,
wise and wandering God, guide my steps
through confusion and change, you who walk
so easily between order and turbulence.
Let me see clearly what is hidden,
and trust the path unfolding before me.
Lead me with your wild wisdom,
toward truth, balance, and becoming,
and each day help me to be
the best version of myself I can.

I was going to liveblog 4/20, but I got too high and had to log off. Another day, my dearies. 

Today I am reading devotional and liturgical writings from a multitude of religions (from Zoroastrianism to Rodnovery) to get in the mood to work on the Prayer section of the Hymnōdai Hieros Logos; currently I am reading a Catholic missal from 1910. The archaic language is charming and inspiring by turns — and then there are the jarring moments.

For instance, there’s a section of brief, fervent declamations, the technical name of which are “ejaculations.”

Then there’s this line from Saint Gerard Majella’s Resolutions:

O my God, my only love, to-day and every day I give myself up to Thy good pleasure. In all temptations and trials I will say always: Thy will be done. All that Thou mayest ordain for me I will embrace with my whole heart, never ceasing to raise my eyes to heaven there to adore the divine hands which cast towards me the precious pearls of Thy most holy will. My supreme resolution is to give myself unreservedly to God. For this reason I will have continually before my eyes this motto: Be thou deaf, blind, and mute. Only one thing do I desire — Thy good pleasure, O my God, and not mine own. I will have all possible veneration for priests, beholding in them Jesus Christ Himself, and striving to be penetrated with the greatness of their dignity.

Oh, you Catholics.

But seriously, Saint Gerard Majella sounds like a godatheow, hieródoulos, or qadeš of Christ.

Odes of Solomon 3:3
For I should not have known how to love the Lord, if he had not continuously loved me.

Sotah 17a:13
What is to be gained by writing the blessings if one cannot infer the curses from them?

Good advice for the Maskil, who is responsible for the well-being of his or her Yaḥad. (Basically the Starry Ram equivalent of an Orpheotelest overseeing a Starry Bull thiasos.)

Also, this is apparently what AI thinks “Jewish Dionysos” looks like. (Which is better than this one, which reminds me of an Israeli hipster barista not Bâkûth, the bull-horned Lord of Bethēl.)

As you guys know, years and years ago, well before any of this Starry Ram stuff started, I got a tattoo of the 21st Hebrew letter שׁ on my shin. Although I do appreciate a good pun, I actually got it because of the symbolic associations the letter possesses, some of which can be found at the Chabad site. It has become more significant to me than I could have anticipated when I initially got the ink, though I am not going to go into that here today. 

I am currently reading an interesting (albeit speculative at times) article which argues that the Hebrew alef-bet is ultimately derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs and that the name of Yahweh predates its revelation to Moses on Mount Sinai/Horeb. Russell Jacquet-Acea has this to say regarding the origin of the letter שׁ:

New kingdom texts tell us that the Egyptian term sa-na-ni was for “archer, warrior”. The ancient Semitic name for the “composite bow” was the tann also written as šann in the syllabic alphabet text from Ugarit which would have sounded like “shananu” or “sananu”. This evolved into the proto-Sinaitic Shīn. LeBlanc also points out that the related Egyptian word for brother and sister was a hieroglyphic double-sided arrow that had the phonetic value of “sn” and voiced as “sen”.

Although I have used the name Sannion for as long as I have been online, there was a brief period when I was practicing Kemetic polytheism and had a second name — Sennefer, after the 18th Dynasty Mayor of Thebes and Overseer of the Granaries and Fields, Gardens and Cattle of Amun (as opposed to one of the other Sennefers, all from the 18th Dynasty too) who was laid to rest in the famed Tomb of the Vines. (Which inspired the naming of this blog.) 

Speaking of שׁ here’s something beautiful from Sotah 17a:15:

Rabbi Akiva taught: If a man [ish] and woman [isha] merit reward through a faithful marriage, the Divine Presence rests between them. The words ish and isha are almost identical; the difference between them is the middle letter yod in ish, and the final letter heh in isha. These two letters can be joined to form the name of God spelled yod, heh. But if due to licentiousness they do not merit reward, the Divine Presence departs, leaving in each word only the letters alef and shin, which spell esh, fire. Therefore, fire consumes them.

And another from Menachot 29b:

Rav Yehuda says that Rav says: When Moses ascended on High, he found the Holy One, Blessed be He, sitting and tying crowns on the letters of the Torah. Moses said before God: Master of the Universe, who is preventing You from giving the Torah without these additions? God said to him: There is a man who is destined to be born after several generations, and Akiva ben Yosef is his name; he is destined to derive from each and every thorn of these crowns mounds upon mounds of halakhot. It is for his sake that the crowns must be added to the letters of the Torah.

Moses said before God: Master of the Universe, show him to me. God said to him: Return behind you. Moses went and sat at the end of the eighth row in Rabbi Akiva’s study hall and did not understand what they were saying. Moses’ strength waned, as he thought his Torah knowledge was deficient. When Rabbi Akiva arrived at the discussion of one matter, his students said to him: My teacher, from where do you derive this? Rabbi Akiva said to them: It is a halakha transmitted to Moses from Sinai. When Moses heard this, his mind was put at ease, as this too was part of the Torah that he was to receive.

Moses returned and came before the Holy One, Blessed be He, and said before Him: Master of the Universe, You have a man as great as this and yet You still choose to give the Torah through me. Why? God said to him: Be silent; this intention arose before Me. Moses said before God: Master of the Universe, You have shown me Rabbi Akiva’s Torah, now show me his reward. God said to him: Return to where you were. Moses went back and saw that they were weighing Rabbi Akiva’s flesh in a butcher shop [bemakkulin], as Rabbi Akiva was tortured to death by the Romans. Moses said before Him: Master of the Universe, this is Torah and this is its reward? God said to him: Be silent; this intention arose before Me.

Rava says: Seven letters require three crowns [ziyyunin], and they are the letters shin, ayin, tet, nun, zayin; gimmel and tzadi.

That is Starry as fuck.

This is the best thing right now. David Bowie, in Latin. (Though my favorite will always remain the German, Helden.)

Thou art the God who manifests joyfully smiling,
and beautiful beyond all imagining, abounding in all graces,
with horns to drive back every kind of misfortune, thy radiance
so powerful that it transforms a New Moon into a Full Moon;
so I praise thee, O Kind and Gentle One who desires thy devotees
to be always drunk and rapturously enjoying life, glorious lover
of the Goddess Peace, crowned with the flowers of a wet and mild
spring that lasts forever, gathered by the moss-haired Nymphs
who smile approvingly at the clever jests of the Satyrs who gambol
through the wooded coverts of Mount Nysa – thee I honor, O Prince
who roused the Granddaughter of the Sun when she was sunk deep
into a depressed slumber, and thou enticed her back to the land of the living
with kisses and visions of what she would become at thy tenderly cruel hands.
Thee I honor, O great God Dionysos, grandson of the Goddess Harmonia,
with fervent prayers and hymns which our forefathers sang,
thee I offer plentiful sacrifices to at all seasons, and thee I petition
for assistance so that I may be able to drive away bitter cowardice
from my head, and crush down the deceitful impulses of my soul.
Restrain also the keen fury of my heart which provokes me
to tread the ways of blood-curdling strife. Rather, O Blessed
and Beatific One, grant me boldness to abide within the harmless laws
of Peace, avoiding strife, and hatred, and the violent fiends of death.
Look with favor, O Lord of the laughter which banishes
quarrelsomeness and dejection, not just upon me, but upon all those
who are dear to me; and as for our enemies, may their brains be poured
on the ground just like this wine, so that they never again trouble us.

Nemo tagged me for the Sunshine thing that’s going around. I don’t normally participate in such endeavors, but I liked the questions he posted so here are my answers. Anyone who wants to participate, consider yourselves tagged. And if you have any questions of your own that you’d like to ask me, comment below. 

• • How does your Spiritual Tradition square with your daily life; do you find peace, conflict or both in integrating them?

What is this “peace” that you speak of? I have definitely never gotten that from my religion (just increasingly difficult challenges, most of which I’ve fucked up a bunch before finally getting right) nor would I wish it otherwise. What Syd Barrett says about love in Legion is pretty much how I think of peace: 

Do you know what love is? It’s a hot bath. What happens to things when you leave them in a bath for too long? Huh? They get soft; fall apart. 

But I also like her follow-up to that: 

Love isn’t gonna save us. It’s what we have to save. Pain makes us strong enough to do it. All our scars, our anger, our despair; it’s armor. Baby, God loves the sinners best because our fire burns bright, bright, bright. Burn with me.

Gods, that was a great show. 

• • Do you supplement your Tradition with auxiliary philosophies, or are you a purist?

I am both a purist, and an eclectic. I am only interested in the Dionysian. As it happens, lots and lots of people from all over the world for the last 4,000 years or so have been too, which gives me a rather large pool of philosophy to swim in. 

I am much more interested in the Friedrich Nietzsche / Georges Bataille / Vyacheslav Ivanovich Ivanov / Jim Morrison strain of Dionysian philosophy than the ridiculous spectacle that is the Hellenic and Dionysian communities on Reddit, to be clear. One side is talking about a God, the other their paraphilias. 

• • What are your favourite foods, and do you have a weakness for any in particular?

I don’t really like food. Living with constant high levels of pain has a funny way of killing most of one’s bodily appetites. 

• • What are your clean guilty pleasures?

I don’t feel guilt. It’s the most useless and wasteful of emotions. To paraphrase Yoda, “Do, or do not. But don’t be a whiny bitch about it.”

• • If the obligations of the current economic order were no longer an order, what would you do with your life?

I would be an itinerant religious specialist. So basically what I am now, just more itinerant. 

• • What does your utopia look like?

Nothing, since it comes from the Greek οὐ (“no/not”) and τόπος (“place”) meaning “somewhere that does not exist” — however, if you change the prefix to εὖ (“good” or “well”) so you end up with eutopia meaning “the good place” it would probably be a misoxenic tribal confederacy with strong warrior and priestly classes, spread throughout present-day Montana, Wyoming and  Alberta. Basically the Blackfeet in their prime, but with Pythagoreanism mixed in.   

• • If you could spend time as an anthropological observer in a specific timeline and place, where, why and for how long?

The ancient Mediterranean in a timeline where M. Antonius does not go to war with Iran, which puts him in a better position with regard to Kleopatra, and ensures that they do not suffer defeat at the hands of that catamite Octavian. How long depends on how successful their descendants are. (Which could really go either way.) At the very least I’d be curious to see how differently they handled tensions in Judaea, and if there was, as in our timeline, a plethora of rabble-rousing messianic pretenders, which was a major factor in the lead up to the Jewish wars. Based on the greater experience Ptolemaic Egypt had in dealing with the population compared to Rome I suspect things would have turned out very differently. Herod would never have been made tetrarch/ethnarch for one, and if Jesus did start causing trouble he and his followers would probably have been exiled rather than executed, ensuring that they never grew beyond a minor Jewish sect into the creepy death cult we all know and love today. In fact, without the destruction of the Jerusalem temple we would have a very different Judaism today, a sacrificial religion rather than one of pietism and study, at least in its mainstream expression. But I don’t believe that the centrality of the Jerusalem temple or their monotheism would have lasted, meaning Judaism would probably resemble Hinduism or Zoroastrianism a lot more. This is predicated on the Egypto-Roman empire surviving for more than a couple generations however. While Kleopatra and her father and later her daughter were notable exceptions to the generally deplorable state of the dynasty by that point, in our timeline the Antonines were capable and wise rulers (for the most part) so I like to think that the grafting would have produced favorable fruit. Also note that the policies behind the political theater of Antony’s “Donations” prefigure the organizational and other reforms that our Rome would adopt a couple centuries later. Given enough time they could create a very different world than the one we currently inhabit — especially if the Mouseion and its famous Library in Alexandria was replicated throughout the empire, ensuring that there was no slide into the European Dark Ages and its barbarisms when the dynasty collapsed or was superseded, as all things must eventually be.  

• • What is your favourite clean dirty joke?

What was the name of the paraplegic in the pool of Bethesda that Jesus healed? Bob. 

• • If you had a kill-switch for “the grid” like Kurt Russel did in Escape from Wherever, would you press #666?

Oh, hell yeah. 

• • Do you believe that life would be much improved by the restoration of the Holmgang in English speaking countries?

I don’t like islands, but otherwise abso-fucking-lutely. 

• • What are your least favourite superstitions?

Modernity. Scientism. Liberalism. 

Wow. Einstürzende Neubauten recently performed their 46th anniversary concert. It’s pretty fucking impressive that Blixa Bargeld is still at it. I’d have assumed that he’d be a victim of debauchery or suicide by now. He’ll probably outlive us all. 

With a cup full of Bacchus’ best wine,
I hail the Giants, and Titans, and Gods,
and Monsters, and Labyrinth-dwellers,
and mighty Heroes and Heroines,
and Spirits of Earth, Water, Fire and Air,
the lusty Satyrs, the sage Sileni,
the wardance-loving Korybants,
the Nymphs who nurse him,
the Nymphs who love him,
the Nymphs who protect him,
the Mad Ones, the Hanged Ones,
the Kings and Artists,
the Blessed Initiates,
the experts in Orphic rites,
and the Dead who belong to him,
all forming an invisible troop
of wild spirits that march unseen
but clearly heard in Dionysos’ processions,
who race through the fields,
and forests, and city streets,
on certain especially dark nights,
in pursuit of victims of the hunt,
delighting in the chase,
driven to frenzy by their God, Zagreus
the far-roaming one, the master pursuer.
Hail, you Furious Host, and may you never thirst!