During the Persian War the great Athenian hero Themistokles made a special offering to his God Dionysos:

Themistokles was sacrificing alongside the admiral’s trireme and three prisoners of war were brought to him, of visage most beautiful to behold, conspicuously adorned with raiment and with gold. They were said to be the sons of Sandauké, the king’s sister, and Artaÿktos. When Euphrantides the seer caught sight of them, since at one and the same moment a great and glaring flame shot up from the sacrificial victims and a sneeze gave forth its good omen on the right, he clasped Themistokles by the hand and bade him consecrate the youths, and sacrifice them all to Dionysos Omestes (Carnivorous), with prayers of supplication; for on this wise would the Hellenes have a saving victory. Themistokles was terrified, feeling that the word of the seer was monstrous and shocking; but the multitude, who, as is wont to be the case in great struggles and severe crises, looked for safety rather from unreasonable than from reasonable measures, invoked the God with one voice, dragged the prisoners to the altar, and compelled the fulfilment of the sacrifice, as the seer commanded. At any rate, this is what Phanias the Lesbian says, and he was a philosopher, and well acquainted with historical literature. (Plutarch, Life of Themistokles 13.2-3)

It’s been a while since pious polytheists could emulate him in this. However a reader brought to my attention an unique opportunity that’s presented itself thanks to the genocidal conflict Putin and his cronies are waging in the Ukraine – signmyrocket.com. This is a site run by Ukrainians who are willing to write whatever message you want on munitions that’ll be launched at the marauding Russian forces – such as, “I consecrate these deaths to Dionysos and his Retinue” for instance. You can choose from a range of weapons, including everything from bullets and grenades on up to Howitzers and more. (And if you just want to support the Ukrainian forces who are nobly defending their homeland there are a bunch of non-lethal options too – but either way the money raised will be going to help wounded veterans.)

According to my reader you need to carefully follow instructions or this could get flagged. First make your selection on the site and click “way to pay” and “fire.” Then, and this is very important, take down your donation number and email support@signmyrocket.com inquiring how to pay via PayPal, and you’ll get a response in a day or so providing instructions. Follow them to the letter. Send your PayPal donation to the address provided marked as “friends and family” and when it’s ready you’ll get a picture and possibly a video of your sacrifice in action.

Not only will this act help feed our hungry Gods (and the deaths can be consecrated to divinities other than Dionysos should you be so inclined) but you’ll be helping the Ukrainians take out some of the baby-raping and grandma-murdering Russian swine, which benefits everybody.

Just a friendly reminder that I’ll be doing the initial test run with The Mysteries tomorrow (September 1st) so if you’d like to reserve your slot you’d better act fast.

Sometimes it is unclear where the myth ends and the allegory begins, and this is because to the Neoplatonists there is no distinction: it is not that Zeus represents the Demiurge, but that Zeus is the Demiurge. In this way, the Neoplatonic worldview is quite different from that of modern scholars who tend to separate myth from interpretation, ritual from philosophy; but the fact that the ancients do not separate these is the very key to understanding the Neoplatonic universe. (Dwayne Meisner, Zeus the Head Zeus the Middle- Studies in the Orphic Theogonies)

In a comment left on my previous post, Galina remarked:

I also think it’s great that you’re talking about female orpheotelestai. I suspect people forget that was a thing.

Sadly, I encounter that all the time. But thankfully women are highly regarded within the Starry Bull tradition – and not just because we’re Bacchic Orphics. You find this same attitude in Egypt and Magna Graecia, two cultures that have strongly influenced us, especially in the shaping of our values.

I just came across an interesting anecdote by Diogenes Laertius:

We hear that Bion, to whom the Scythian land of Borysthenes gave birth, denied that the Gods really exist. Had he persisted in holding this opinion, it would have been right to say, “He thinks as he pleases: wrongly, to be sure, but still he does think so.” But in fact, when he fell ill of a lingering disease and feared death, he who denied the existence of the Gods, and would not even look at a temple, who often mocked at mortals for sacrificing to deities, not only over hearth and high altars and table, with sweet savour and fat and incense did he gladden the nostrils of the Gods; nor was he content to say “I have sinned, forgive the past,” but he cheerfully allowed an old woman to put a charm round his neck, and in full faith bound his arms with leather and placed the rhamnus and the laurel-branch over the door, being ready to submit to anything sooner than die. Fool for wishing that the divine favour might be purchased at a certain price, as if the Gods existed just when Bion chose to recognize them! It was then with vain wisdom that, when the driveller was all ashes, he stretched out his hand and said “Hail, Pluto, hail!” (Lives of the Eminent Philosophers 4.55-57)

That anonymous old woman sure sounds an awful lot like an Orpheotelest, though I don’t recall seeing her mentioned in discussions of Orphism. It wouldn’t be surprising, however, since a lot of women were Orpheotelestai or otherwise participated in Orphic rites and beliefs.

Rhamnus, by the way, is buckthorn which was chewed and smeared on the lintel to banish the keres or wandering dead during Anthesteria. 

Image by Jim Lyngvild. 

Dionysos by Franz Stassen, 1901

Tonight’s poetry comes from the book End to End.

Ariadne sat on a rock in the cave,
watching as the sea washed past her feet
in silvery rivulets, and outside she heard
invisible maidens splashing in the surf.
She was all alone and going mad from grief
and oh how her heart longed for death.
In death she would meet her beloved
Theseus, slayer of the bull, who had set her free.
Death had claimed him, dragged him beneath the waves
while she was sleeping. That was the only explanation.
Her mind could not conceive of any other reason
why she’d been left all alone in this dark and desolate place.
Her Theseus had gone ahead to light her way into the land of shades.
And soon, she would see the torchlight and the baying of the black hounds,
as Hermes, death’s herald, came to collect her too.
But soon was not now, and the moments inched along,
each an insufferable agony, as if stones were being piled atop her,
one by one, making it impossible for her to move
or to breathe,
as she sank deeper and deeper into despair.
She had stripped herself nearly bare,
to await dread Kyllenios who would guide her beyond the land of dream,
and the castle of the Sun, to the house of Haides,
where her husband was waiting for her.
Only a white undergarment she wore as funereal wrappings,
wet and clinging to the soft curves of her dancer’s tiny frame;
the rest she’d discarded about the cave.
There were her purple robes, and there her crown with horns of the moon,
there her golden girdle and the ball of red twine she’d used to lead
gallant Theseus out of the labyrinth, and there, half submerged in the water
was a well-worked bronze mirror, upon its back
the first flowers of spring graved with wondrous realism by Daidalos.
Though she was too lost in grief to see it,
a hand was pressed against the mirror’s reflective surface
the young god desperately trying to reach through to soothe her anguish,
even as dark shapes with white faces crept slowly up behind him.

do not weep
all this is passing
a procession of mad and glorious images
slipping away like water through fingers
but you cannot stop the show
to hold and stroke a cherished memory
for when you stop dancing you die
so stand firm and drink in what’s before you
for tomorrow it will be gone
and so will you

“I don’t feel anything, dude.” Tim whispered though we were alone,
words slurring, hand out waving slowly back and forth,
back and forth, back and forth. “I think these mushrooms are …”
I waited for him to finish but he was busy staring through his hand, grinning like an idiot.
I took another drag of my cigarette, cherry glowing like a star in the dark desert night,
sweet clove smoke billowing around me like fragrant incense before an ancient idol.
Sweat trickled down my neck, and my flesh was chill as corpse flesh,
despite the waves of heat still radiating off the red rocks.
I could feel the bones beneath my skin, and my heart thudding in my chest.
Hear my pulse, and the pulse of the earth beating in synch with each other.
“Wait.”
I waited some more.
“Maybe I’m tripping. Am I tripping?”
“Naw, this is just the way the world is. ‘If the doors of perception were cleansed
everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite. For man has closed himself up,
till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.’”
Tim nodded sagely, almost toppled over. “That’s beautiful, dude. Did you just come up with that?”
“Sure,” I chuckled, stabbed out my cigarette and immediately lit another.
“Now shut up and enjoy the ride.”
He was about to say something indignant, but his ridiculously wide-pupiled eyes caught motion off to his side and he
got lost watching an invisible lizard or mouse scurry away.
I melted back into oceanic euphoria as milky stars danced a Cretan crane-dance overhead
and the silent music of the spheres swelled around me.
My eyes fluttered closed and I took in a deep breath of desert air, held it for several heartbeats,
and then several more, feeling it circulating through my whole body, exhaled and then sucked in another.
Lights swam and flickered behind my eyelids, throbbing sexually, as I slipped outside of time and space.
When I opened them again I sensed the eyes of Dionysos staring back at me.
I smiled and waved, though I could not see him. He was there, on the other side of the mirror, watching.
Not a man, with olive skin and black beard streaked with brown,
and wavy hair that spilled down to his broad shoulders, clad in fawnskin
and head crowned with clusters of reddish grapes and vine tendrils that coiled like green serpents.
He didn’t have massive horns and flared nostrils and tawny fur and a broad, flat tongue
and bulk that made the earth thunder.
He wasn’t lean and spotted and baring sharp teeth,
tensed to pounce on prey with swift precise grace.
But he was there. In the soil and the scrub and the stars,
in the lingering heat and the all-encompassing dark
and the slow, persistent thrum of life in this seemingly barren place.
And I breathed him into me and felt him dance all around,
felt the world dance under his spell
and all the things in the world danced

and I, too, was dancing
though I lay there gazing up into the vast heavens
and Tim giggled insanely and said, “Woa dude. Like, everything is so 3-D.”

He smiled at her,
and did not look away.
Strange.
It had been so long,
so very long since she had been seen,
that the old woman had forgotten how to respond.
Most found themselves suddenly busy as they approached,
eyes like frantic butterflies,
landing on her filthy, shapeless clothes
(too many for the summer heat, too few for frigid winter)
or her shopping cart spilling over with scavenged treasures,
before quickly moving on,
their ears deaf as stone, especially if she asked for change
or something to eat.
Many crossed the street to avoid her,
or stared down at the cracked sidewalk as they hurried by.
But he stopped.
His eyes saw beneath the grime
the years and the years of pain.
Saw the loss that had scored her flesh like sun-parched earth,
turned her eyes milky-white and made her frail limbs tremble
even when she was still.
He saw past all that, to the maiden she once had been
in the garden with the tree and the great white serpent.
She began to cry.
It had been so long, she’d forgotten his name.
“Here,” the man reached inside his long leather coat
and dug out a small golden ball. He placed it in her hands and said,
“I was given this as a child, but it is yours.”
It wasn’t a ball but an apple.
Remembering Ladon who had watched over her and her sisters
for the first time in centuries, she smiled.
Lovely ox-eyed Hesperethousa looked up to thank the man
but he was gone.

My hair is slick with mud,
my beard forming stalactites,
my face unrecognizable in its pale coating.
Flesh of earth I wear,
cracks forming as I turn my head this way
and that, and grin, something other than me grinning back.
I show my teeth, sharp and gleaming white,
good for tearing loose chunks of goat’s flesh.
I take a swig from the bottle, let its black streams
carve channels in clay, a red mouth engulfing my own
and don’t wipe it away, preferring the stain.
I watch my own eyes,
note how cold and hollow they seem,
a lizard’s eyes, or a panther’s.
A killer’s eyes.
Eyes that stare back at me, stare through me.
Eyes that challenge and seduce,
eyes that laugh in the dark
that dance in the storm clouds
and the rumbling of the earth.
I am not I.
I am the grapes that are crushed,
I am the bull whose horns are twined with ivy,
I am the lava that surges within the mountain,
I am the stars that dance in the dark heaven,
I am the mask hung from the pillar,
I am the heat and the loosening and the unfolding,
I am the great dragon that begets sons of stone,
I am the man of suffering born to atone for the crimes of lawless ancestors.
I am not I. I am him.
And the show must go on.

i touched you, oh untouchable ariadne,
while the faces of long-dead heroes watched
from the wall of ivy, and the moon bled
and time stood still around us
and the lamps bathed us in gold
and music none other could hear swelled
and crashed
and everything danced
and fell apart
and reshaped itself anew
we were there for the birth of worlds
and are there still
fingers laced
across the aeons
as the grand procession passes by
fiery crosses and black spirals and shapes with more dimensions
than man has yet learned to count
flashes of white and red
and a curtain of stars
and i glanced your way and saw you had no face
and wear many faces
faces of all those i have loved and lost and not met and never will meet
and it’s okay because you’re here beside me
all of you
and at one point i crawled inside you
followed the flow of your blood
as it raced through the labyrinth
of veins and muscle and bone
and found your innermost emptiness
blacker than blackest night
and wept for you held nothing from me
and i did not have to pretend to be something i’m not
i too could just be
empty
and full of limitless possibility
and the waves washed against the rocks
as we lay on the beach dreaming
and sometimes you would stir
and look at me as if you had returned from a long journey
from a lifetime of being someone else
and did not yet recognize me

and i knew the question you would ask
before it left your lips
for i asked it of you
at the center of the maze
and when i found you in that other place
after cutting you down from the tree
and when i held you and tried to stop your wrists from bleeding
looking down at myself in the shard of broken mirror you used
except when you asked it there was confusion
as you stared past this man mask
at the great bull horns that rise from my head
and the shadows they cast upon the sooty and graffitied alley wall behind us

The hands of my god are dark and rough,
calloused and imperfect.
Fingers too long, with slight tremors
straining to maintain their man shape.
Nails lacquered black, chipped and chewed,
and everywhere smudged with ash and resin.
These hands have dug in dirt,
clawed at the walls as he howled to get out of his head;
these hands know the way to unlock doors,
how to shatter mirrors, what it is to stroke an enemy’s throat
– feel of pulse throb beneath paper-thin skin –
touch delicate as a lover’s caress, as he smiles and whispers,
“You don’t know yourself, but I do.”
His hands hold high the fennel shaft, with its streamers of ivy
and pine fruit swollen and glorious.
His hands weave spirals as he dances, caught up in ecstasy’s whirlwind,
hips swaying serpentwise, hunting boots slapping out the rhythm
the drummers follow, frenzying the forest brides
and the priestesses of the winepress.
His hands are wet with spray of the beast,
red that seems black in the half-light spilling through the leaves,
flecks of flesh and fur sticking to them.
These hands are firm when you shake, and will never let go.

Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris 364f
They call Dionysos up out of the water by the sound of trumpets, at the same time casting into the depths a lamb as an offering to the Keeper of the Gate.

Hyginus, Astronomica 2.5
Those who wrote the Argolica give the following reason for the constellation Corona. When Liber received permission from his father to bring back his mother Semele from the Lower World, and in seeking a place of descent had come to the land of the Argives, a certain Hyplipnus met him, a man worthy of that generation, who was to show the entrance to Liber in answer to his request. However, when Hypolipnus saw him, a mere boy in years, excelling all others in remarkable beauty of form, he asked from him the reward that could be given without loss. Liber, however, eager for his mother, swore that if he brought her back, he would do as he wished, on terms, though, that a god could swear to a shameless man. At this, Hypolipnus showed the entrance. So then, when Liber came to that place and was about to descend, he left the crown, which he had received as a gift from Venus, at that place which in consequence is called Stephanos, for he was unwilling to take it with him for fear the immortal gift of the gods would be contaminated by contact with the dead. When he brought his mother back unharmed, he is said to have placed the crown in the stars as an everlasting memorial.

Pausanias, Description of Greece 2.37.1-3; 2.37.5-6
At this mountain begins the grove which consists chiefly of plane trees, and reaches down to the sea. Its boundaries are, on the one side the river Pantinos, on the other side another river, called Amymane, after the daughter of Danaus. Within the grove are images of Demeter Prosymne and of Dionysos. Of Demeter there is a seated image of no great size. Both are of stone, but in another temple is a seated wooden image of Dionysos Saotes (Savior), while by the sea is a stone image of Aphrodite. They say that the daughters of Danaus dedicated it, while Danaus himself made the sanctuary of Athena by the Pontinos. The mysteries of the Lernaeans were established, they say, by Philammon. Now the words which accompany the ritual are evidently of no antiquity and the inscription also, which I have heard is written on the heart made of orichalcum, was shown not to be Philammon’s by Arriphon. I saw also what is called the Spring of Amphiaraus and the Alcyonian Lake, through which the Argives say Dionysos went down to Hell to bring up Semele, adding that the descent here was shown him by Palymnos. There is no limit to the depth of the Alcyonian Lake, and I know of nobody who by any contrivance has been able to reach the bottom of it since not even Nero, who had ropes made several stades long and fastened them together, tying lead to them, and omitting nothing that might help his experiment, was able to discover any limit to its depth. This, too, I heard. The water of the lake is, to all appearance, calm and quiet but, although it is such to look at, every swimmer who ventures to cross it is dragged down, sucked into the depths, and swept away. The circumference of the lake is not great, being about one-third of a stade. Upon its banks grow grass and rushes. The nocturnal rites performed every year in honor of Dionysos I must not divulge to the world at large.

Clement of Alexandria, Exhortation to the Greeks 2.30
Dionysos was anxious to descend into Haides, but did not know the way. Thereupon a certain man, Prosymnos by name, promises to tell him; though not without reward. It was a favour of lust, this reward which Dionysos was asked for. The god is willing to grant the request; and so he promises, in the event of his return, to fulfil the wish of Prosymnos, confirming the promise with an oath. Having learnt the way he set out, and came back again. He does not find Prosymnos, for he was dead. In fulfilment of the vow to his lover Dionysos hastens to the tomb and indulges his unnatural lust. Cutting off a branch from a fig-tree which was at hand, he shaped it into the likeness of a phallos, and then made a show of fulfilling his promise to the dead man. As a mystic memorial of this passion phalloi are set up to Dionysos in cities. ‘For if it were not to Dionysos that hey held solemn procession and sang the phallic hymn, they would be acting most shamefully,’ says Herakleitos.

You are a child playing with your friends on a hot summer day. Bored with your usual games you decide to go explore in the woods, a dark and scary place well away from the prying eyes of parents. After wandering through the green maze of the Nymphs for hours you come upon a tree with a corpse hanging from it. Once you get passed the terror and the urge to flee back home you children become fascinated by him. You’ve never been this close to death before. You stand there, holding your breath, staring up at him, fearful that he might suddenly move, but also kind of hoping that he does.

Eventually one of you decides that it’s not right to just leave him hanging there. He climbs the tree, draws out his knife, grabs the rope with a trembling hand and begins sawing through it.

Without warning the last strand snaps and the body falls to the earth and bursts open, releasing putrid stenches into the air. You hardly notice; everybody is staring intently at the knife still held up by the boy. You revere it like a proper object of worship for it certainly has power after coming into contact with the body like that.

It’s getting late and you grudgingly decide to go back before the adults come looking for you. The whole group swears a vow to tell no one of what they’ve seen. The dead man will be your secret so that no one will take him away from you.

Days pass, but he remains all you can think about. Everything about him is a mystery. Who was he? What was his name? Where did he come from? Why was he here? How long had he hung before you found him? Was he murdered or did he die by his own hand? You can’t stand not knowing, so you start to tell stories between chores and late at night, when the children are by themselves, out of earshot of the others. The stories swell with each telling, becoming more elaborate and fanciful and thus more entertaining to contemplate afterwards. Rival traditions emerge among the children, become more solidified through conflict, until the different sides can’t even stand to be in the presence of each other.

You dream one night after a bitter screaming match with your sister that was broken up by your confused and angry mother who beat you and sent you to bed without any supper. (But what does it matter what either of them think? They don’t know anything about the dead man so their opinion is worthless.) You dreamed that you were back in the woods and the body was just like you left it that time only now it was covered in worms and centipedes and spiders and there is a buzzing of flies so loud you fear it’s going to make you deaf. You wake screaming. The dead man is mad at you for how you and your friends have behaved!

The following day you gather everybody together and lead them back into the woods to make amends. What you didn’t notice is that you were being followed. The adults had observed the strange transformation in their children’s behavior, how withdrawn, moody and contentious they’d become of late, and it concerned them. Their worst fears were confirmed and then some when they tracked you to that old ash tree and the fruit it bore.

Horrified, they destroyed the body and brought in mendicant religious experts to perform the ceremonies of purification and ghost-laying that Orpheus invented. They interrogated you, tortured you, tried to get you to deny and forget all that you had seen. They lock you away, forbidding you to have anything to do with your friends until you learn to mimic the behaviors they expect of you. Play nice. Eat all your dinner. Smile. Smile. Smile. And never, ever bring up the dead body again, even to your friends once they let you play together after all of you have been properly re-educated.

Inwardly things were different. You nurtured the memory of that day, secretly but reverently stroking the blade that the boy had been forced to discard and you were able to retrieve from the trash heap. Time passes, but you never forget. And when you are old enough you go to a different village to tell the people there about the dead man, somewhere far away since a prophet is never believed in his own home. You’ve got so many stories to tell about the dead man; you’ve worked out this whole mythic chronology for him and it’s even more real to you than your own history.

Βάκχος ἄναξ δάκρυσε, βροτῶν ἵνα δάκρυα λύσῃ.
“Lord Bakchos has wept tears, that he may wipe away man’s tears!”
(Nonnos, Dionysiaka 12.171)

I originally came up with The Mysteries as a meditation tool and writing prompt – but I just realized that it has another function, namely that it can be used as a divination system comparable to the Leaves of Dionysos. (Which can be found in Hunting Wisdom.) But this will be a system accessible only to mystai of the Starry Bull tradition since I’m not going to provide any explanations. You have to have a deep, intuitive understanding of what each symbolon means within the context of our tradition in order to use it effectively, meaning that it can also serve as a method for determining whether one qualifies for initiation.

I’ve ordered some wood slices and will be making myself a set, after which I’ll be offering readings. Since this initial batch will be a test run I’m reducing the price to $13.25. There are only ten five slots available, so if you’re interested reserve yours today by writing me at sannion@gmail.com. Readings will be done on September 1st.