A couple months back I wrote:

Ever since the first of January we have been in the White Season, where Dionysos acts out the role of the Magician come from a strange and distant land, bringing wonders and radical transformation in his wake. He knows the songs and ceremonies to awaken and release, and he is followed by a triumphant procession of Nymphs and Satyrs whose ecstatic revelry chases off barrenness, stagnation and malignant or at least mischievous Spirits from the land and his people.

Come April first we’ll be transitioning into the Gold Season, a time of fruitfulness and abundance when Dionysos wears a Kingly face as he revels with the Fairies and Goblins of his Retinue.

When they first started showing up in ritual it was a little confusing; they felt very different from the Mediterranean and local land-Spirits I was used to dealing with. Conversely much of the traditional Fairy lore (especially from Celtic countries) didn’t seem to apply. I was starting to get really confused until I turned up a bunch of references to them in post-Classical Bacchic literature, some of which I’ve collected here. While this was reassuring since it suggested others had encountered them too, it didn’t do much to clear up the questions I had regarding who they were, why they were so different and how they’d come to be part of Dionysos’ circle.

Of course, the whole Óðr thing suggests some interesting solutions and I’m hoping over this next Season to get a better handle on them through ritual, divination and poetic frenzy. I’d share my preliminary theories (which differ somewhat from the stories I posted here and here) but there’s time enough to get into that during our Golden Months, especially since we only have two festivals during that period on our calendar, Ἀγριώνια in Kantharos and Ἀλέτιδεια in Prosopon.