Division

Written by thehouseofvines

Originally I was going to write a manual for Orpheotelestai of the Starry Bull tradition. One section was going to be a divination manual; another would contain lore and recipes; another would consist of material on spiritual combat, another hymns for various purposes and occasions, including holidays; and another a collection of sundry prayers. Well, just the collection of prayers has hit 420 pages — so I think what I’ve ended up with is a library instead of a single volume. I’ve also done a lot of thinking about how to organize the tradition and the roles and responsibilities of Akousmatikoi, Boukoloi, Orpheotelestai, and Hymnōdai. This has been a very productive period for me and I can’t wait until I have all of these books finished and can start training folks again. (The prayer book, for instance, is only about 2/3rds of the way done, even at 420 pages.)

14 thoughts on “Division”

    1. In the most wonderful of ways. Once I’m finished with the liturgical books, I hope it holds so that I can complete the remaining volumes in my poetic masterpiece — just three to go with that! (Though possibly four, if I want to do a Starry Ram book, which would be cool. Retellings of Babylonian, Egyptian and Hebrew mythology, with a Dionysian twist.) Ironically enough, I haven’t been able to work on that since I killed off the “Sannion” character.

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      1. Not that you don’t have enough on your plate, but do you think you’d want to put out a Starry Bear book, too? They all sound fascinating, and I’d love to read them all.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. I’ve got a collection of essays that’s about halfway finished, and one of the books of poetry will explore Starry Bear mythology but is only a quarter of the way done. While I have some thoughts for additional books, it’s a coin toss whether those will ever get written.

          Liked by 2 people

  2. Speaking of division, you should probably apologize for your shitty anti-trans comments about Elliot Page who is playing Sinon NOT Akhilles as right-wing media suggested.

    It strikes me as the height of hypocrisy when your wife owes her career as an author to a trans man for you both to make bigoted remarks about trans people. You have held events at Cauldron Farm. You have been given hospitality there. Just incredibly amoral of you both.

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    1. Put down the crack pipe, buddy.

      First off, my wife doesn’t owe her career to Raven. They both came up in Heathenry around the same time. She is a better, more academic writer and it’s disgusting that you would assign credit to Raven for her success.

      Secondly, both Galina and myself have defended Raven and Cauldron Farm on forums where actual anti-trans bigotry was on display. Raven isn’t the only trans person I’ve considered a friend. I even ran a fund-raiser to help an individual in the Hellenic community get surgery.

      Thirdly, my objection to Page had nothing to do with their being trans, but completely ill-suited to the role. (And a shitty actor even before they went through their surgery.) Frankly we all got played, as the studio was hoping to generate interest in its crapfest adaptation by pitting one side against the other and not clarifying who was playing whom. Frankly I had as much of a problem with Matt Damon as Odysseus as I would have with Page as Achilles.

      So now you may resume sucking on that crack pipe.

      Liked by 5 people

    2. I’m not the idiot whisperer, but i’ll take a moment here to respond to this. I have been a priest and spirit worker since 1994, a decade before I met Raven. Respect to him, and Gods know we were colleagues for a long time but neither my work nor my career are dependent upon him. amoral? Amoral is pushing the mutilation of children without just cause. Amoral is attempting to destroy anything approximating functioning culture. And amoral is putting your own bullshit before your gods so go fuck off.

      Liked by 3 people

    3. It was not announced that he was not playing Achilles until last week, and frankly when we all thought he was playing Achilles it just seemed like it was an awful casting choice. Achilles was a half human half God undefeated warrior, which is certainly NOT what Elliot Page looks like. If someone said that he was playing Paris, a scrawny 16 year old kid, I wouldn’t have batted an eyelash, because that’s exactly what a 16 year old boy looks like. It bothers me that we have direct descriptions of Helene in the Iliad, and the director apparently felt that he needed to improve on a 3,000 year old famous work by Homer because… he is Nolan? I’m not saying, follow everything to the letter, but cheez, at least make sense in these casting choices! How do you feel about them using a Viking boat instead of a Mycenaean boat, which was available to them. Do you think they are Mycenaean boat-phobic?

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      1. Yeah, I actually wouldn’t have a problem with Raven playing a Greek warrior, or Buck Angel. But Page doesn’t pull off a convincing squire let alone an archer. (Greeks and Romans both had disdain for archers.)

        ROFLMAO @ your boatphobic comment. If you wanted to stick to accurate casting the Viking longboat should have been on the Trojan side, since Snorri makes Thor and his kin allies of the Trojans.

        Also, why is Sinon in this at all, since it is allegedly an adaptation of the Odyssey. He only shows up in the Aeneid, which was written nearly a thousand years later.

        Liked by 1 person

    5. You know, let me ask you this. Let’s pretend for a moment that Sannion was indeed being anti-trans. Why would you care? You’ve all already ostracized him and his wife. Why do you even care what they think about casting in a movie? Why does it affect you what two bloggers think? What about them is so appealing to you guys that you absolutely must respond? Isn’t it clear to you at this point that their goals only appeal to be people that want what they want and think how they think? What they want and what the average “Neopagan” wants are so drastically different that I really don’t understand why they’re still relevant to you. Is it so you can ape all of their work so if anything sounds like them you can point to where you antagonized them in order to clear your name? Or do you all just like pretending to be big fish in pathetically small ponds? Stop wasting your time.

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      1. Ironically enough, not only have I defended queer folk from being bullied online, I’ve done it in person, outnumbered, and with real skin in the game. Multiple times, in fact. One of those incidents was even at a pagan convention, so there are plenty of people who could corroborate the claim. I’m particularly proud of that one because I didn’t just physically intimidate the -phobes into keeping their traps shut, I reasoned them out of their bigotry, then drank them under the table. Now that is how a Dionysian handles this shit: reason, and a high alcohol tolerance.

        And by the way, here are the only times I’ve referenced Nolan’s abomination:

        https://thehouseofvines.com/2026/06/06/an-odyssey-that-actually-has-greeks-in-it-and-harvey-keitel/

        https://thehouseofvines.com/2026/05/30/thoughts-on-spider-noir/

        https://thehouseofvines.com/2026/06/06/moses-obviously/

        One of those posts was about bringing attention to a little-known Greek adaptation of the Odyssey; one was highlighting examples where characters had been race-swapped but it didn’t matter because the actors did such a superb job they clearly got the part through talent rather than just checking boxes on a diversity quota, and the third was spit-balling a polytheist version of the Exodus narrative. None of them single out Page (I can think of at least 5 roles that were even more poorly cast, including Anne Hathaway as Penelope) mention transgenderism, racism, or any other -isms, and even if they hadn’t catered to the Academy’s stupid new guidelines I still wouldn’t be looking forward to this movie because it’s ugly, stylistically unoriginal and relying on controversy to get butts in seats rather than talent. Thanks, but I’ll stick to the Armand Assante and Vanessa Williams version, or one of the old sword and sandal flicks from the 50s and 60s, or even better yet just read the book and use the power of my imagination. I can’t wait for the next couple weeks to pass so that this thing can stop being talked about and swiftly disappear from our collective memory. My sincerest hope is that the colossal failure of this thing will kill Nolan’s career. He’s only done one movie I’ve genuinely liked, and two that I can admit the technical proficiency of while not particularly enjoying them myself.

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