The earliest reference to Priapos that has come down to us is a comedy by the 4th century BCE playwright Xenarchos; all we know is its title which was named for the ithyphallic divinity who, following the conventions of the genre, likely appeared as a character on stage. Considering the prevalence of such myths told about him, and the inherent comic potential they possess, it’s likely that the play featured an unsuccessful attempt by Priapos to rape a Goddess or nymph. The poet Ovid mentions that he was unable to assault Lotis (Fasti1.391), Pomona (Metamorphoses 14.534) and Vesta, whose story I’ll quote as emblematic of the others:

Should I omit or recount your shame, red Priapus? It is a very playful, tiny tale. Coroneted Cybele, with her crown of turrets, invites the eternal Gods to her feast. She invites, too, satyrs and nymphs and the spirits of the wild; Silenus is present, uninvited. It’s not allowed and too long to narrate the Gods’ banquet: night was consumed with much wine. Some blindly stroll shadowy Ida’s dells, or lie down and rest their bodies in the soft grass. Others play or are clasped by sleep; or link their arms and thump the green earth in triple quick step. Vesta lies down and takes a quiet, carefree nap, just as she was, her head pillowed by turf. But the red saviour of gardens prowls for nymphs and Goddesses, and wanders back and forth. He spots Vesta. It’s unclear if he thought she was a nymph or knew it was Vesta. He claims ignorance. He conceives a vile hope and tries to steal upon her, walking on tiptoe, as his heart flutters. By chance old Silenus had left the donkey he came on by a gently burbling stream. The long Hellespont’s God was getting started, when it bellowed an untimely bray. The Goddess starts up, frightened by the noise. The whole crowd fly to her; the God flees through hostile hands. Lampsacus slays this beast [the donkey] for Priapus, chanting : `We rightly give flames the informant’s guts.’ You remember, Goddess, and necklace it with bread. Work ceases; the idle mills are silent. (Fasti 6. 319)

As Ovid notes, Lampaskos was an early center of the God’s cult; according to Pausanias the people of Lampsakos revered Priapos more than any other divinity. (Description of Greece 9.31.2) His cult spread from Mysia in Asia Minor (where it was as equally popular with the Greek colonists as it was with the natives) to central Greece and Italy, eventually being taken up by the Romans. Attempts were made to give this strange foreign God a respectable lineage – Dionysos (Strabo, Geography 13.1.12), Hermes (Hyginus, Fabulae 160), Zeus (Suidas, s.v. Priapos), Pan (Macrobius, Saturnalia 6.5) and even Osiris (Diodoros Sikeliotes, Library of History 4.6.1) were claimed to be his father. Usually Aphrodite was his mother.

Aside from being a personification of the phallos, Priapos presides over the fertility of animal and plant life and is a powerful apotropaic force, defending against thieves, burglars and malefic charms and spells. Images of him, often crudely made and emphasizing his enormous member, were placed in gardens and outside homes to protect those within. Indeed it is primarily in this capacity that he appears in the bawdy collection of anonymous Latin verse called the Priapeia. Although most of the pieces involve prostitutes stealthily sneaking into a garden to “make use of his tumescence in their filthy self-abuse” as one blushing Victorian scholar described it, or the God threatening to forcefully sodomize thieves and witches, in a few instances we catch a glimpse of his role in adolescent rites of passage and his power to heal. Interestingly Petronius describes a mystery-cult devoted to Priapos in his novel the Satyricon with precisely those aims. The priestess Quartilla has contracted malaria and hopes that by overseeing the rites (which involves a mock marriage of children and the rape of a man by an individual representing Priapos) she will be cured of it. As encountered in Petronius, these mysteries of Priapos bear a strong resemblance to contemporary Bacchic, Eleusinian and Isiac mysteries – though whether they represent an actual cult or are a literary mish-mash intended to satirize these sacred institutions remains unsettled in scholarly circles. We do know from Diodoros, Strabo and other authors that Priapos was given a role within a variety of mysteries so perhaps that element is authentic.

Considering how frequently he is associated with aggressive sexuality one may naturally wonder why he is incapable in myth of consummating a union with assorted Goddesses and nymphs. Is it all for the laughs – or is there something more behind it?

Both, I suspect.

Diodoros remarked:

And in the sacred rites, not only of Dionysos but of practically all other Gods as well, Priapos received honour to some extent, being introduced in the sacrifices to the accompaniment of laughter and sport. (Library of History 4.6.1)

Ovid’s account of the attempted rape of Lotis likewise takes place during a Dionysian ritual, culminating in this scene:

And now he was poised on the grass right next to her, and still she was filled with a mighty sleep. His joy soars; he draws the cover from her feet and starts the happy road to his desires. Then look, the donkey, Silenus’ mount, brays loudly, and emits untimely blasts from its throat. The terrified Nympha leaps up, fends Priapus off, and awakens the whole grove with her flight. And the God, whose obscene part was far too ready, was ridiculed by all in the moon’s light. (Fasti 1.391)

Laughter, likewise, plays a role in the Priapic mysteries of Petronius’ Satyricon, during Quartilla’s interrogation of Encolpius. Dennis P. Quinn, in Quartilla’s Cure, observes:

Then, Quartilla’s mood suddenly changes from weeping to laughter. She begins to kiss Encolpius and rejoices in the prospect of following what course she pleased (18.3). She then clapped her hands and began to laugh so loud that it frightened our three main characters. The ancilla and virguncula joined in with the farcical laughter (mimico rusu), leaving Encolpius at a loss at how they could have changed their mood so quickly (19.1). There is a commonality to other mystery religions here. For example, the participants in the Isis cult would begin one part of the sacred drama in exaggerated sorrow for the fate of Osiris’ dismembered body, and then, when Isis’ re-assembly of the God was proclaimed, the worshippers would all break out in hysterical laughter. So it is possible that, although the Priapic rite has not yet begun, Petronius is poking fun at the use of emotion in ritual, of which the Priestess Quartilla seems to be experts. But perhaps extreme emotional shifts were actually a part of Priapic ritual. When we examine some of the sources describing the Dionysiac cult, for example, like  Augustine who describes in disgust the anticipatory giggles of an audience about to see the huge prick of a Priapic mime, it becomes clear that laughter was an important element of Priapus’ appeal. He looked so disgusting that he was funny. This is also true for the initiation scene as Petronius constructs, or reconstructs: the actions are so disgusting that they are funny, or at least intended to be so for some. Indeed laughter is often portrayed throughout the initiation scenes.

We get an even stronger sense of laughter’s meaning from Iamblichos’ description of aischrorrêmosunai which he associated with phallic imagery:

To answer your question, the erection of phallic images is a symbol of generative power and we consider that this is directed towards the fecundating of the world; this is the reason, indeed, why most of these images are consecrated in the spring, since this is just when the world as a whole receives from the Gods the power of generating all creation. And as for the aischrorrêmosunai, my view is that they have the role of expressing the absence of beauty in matter and the previous ugliness of those things that are going to be brought to order, which, since they lack ordering, yearn for it in the same degree as they spurn the unseemliness that was previously their lot. So then, once again, one is prompted to seek after the causes of form and beauty when one learns the nature of obscenity from the utterance of obscenities; one rejects the practice of obscenities, while by means of uttering them one makes clear one’s knowledge of them, and thus directs one’s striving towards the opposite. And there is another explanation too. When the power of human emotions in us is everywhere confined, it becomes stronger. But when it is brought to exercise briefly and to a moderate extent, it rejoices moderately and is satisfied. By that means it is purged and ceases by persuasion, and not in response to force. It is by this means that, when we see the emotions of others in comedy and in tragedy, we still our own emotions, and make them more moderate and purge them. And in sacred rites, through the sight and sound of the obscenities, we are freed from harm that comes from actual indulgence in them. So things of this sort are embraced for the therapy of our souls and to moderate the evils which come to us through the generative process, to free us from our chains and give us riddance. (On the Mysteries 37.3-6; 38.13-40)

Aischrorrêmosunai can mean obscene speech, jokes and laughter and served an important function within the mysteries, as Arnobius of Sicca (Adversus Gentes 5.25-26) relates:

In her wanderings on that quest, she reaches the confines of Eleusis as well as other countries — that is the name of a canton in Attica. At that time these parts were inhabited by aborigines named Baubo, Triptolemus, Eubuleus, Eumolpus, Dysaules: Triptolemus, who yoked oxen; Dysaules, a keeper of goats; Eubuleus, of swine; Eumolpus, of sheep, from whom also flows the race of Eumolpidæ, and from whom is derived that name famous among the Athenians, and those who afterwards flourished as caduceatores, hierophants, and criers. So, then, that Baubo who, we have said, dwelt in the canton of Eleusis, receives hospitably Ceres, worn out with ills of many kinds, hangs about her with pleasing attentions, beseeches her not to neglect to refresh her body, brings to quench her thirst wine thickened with spelt, which the Greeks term cyceon. The Goddess in her sorrow turns away from the kindly offered services, and rejects them; nor does her misfortune suffer her to remember what the body always requires. Baubo, on the other hand, begs and exhorts her—as is usual in such calamities—not to despise her humanity; Ceres remains utterly immoveable, and tenaciously maintains an invincible austerity. But when this was done several times, and her fixed purpose could not be worn out by any attentions, Baubo changes her plans, and determines to make merry by strange jests her whom she could not win by earnestness. That part of the body by which women both bear children and obtain the name of mothers, this she frees from longer neglect: she makes it assume a purer appearance, and become smooth like a child, not yet hard and rough with hair. In this wise she returns to the sorrowing Goddess; and while trying the common expedients by which it is usual to break the force of grief, and moderate it, she uncovers herself, and baring her groins, displays all the parts which decency hides; and then the Goddess fixes her eyes upon these, and is pleased with the strange form of consolation. Then becoming more cheerful after laughing, she takes and drinks off the drought spurned before, and the indecency of a shameless action forced that which Baubo’s modest conduct was long unable to win. If any one perchance thinks that we are speaking wicked calumnies, let him take the hooks of the Thracian soothsayer, which you speak of as of divine antiquity; and he will find that we are neither cunningly inventing anything, nor seeking means to bring the holiness of the Gods into ridicule, and doing so: for we shall bring forward the very verses which the son of Calliope uttered in Greek, and published abroad in his songs to the human race throughout all ages:—

With these words she at the same time drew up
her garments from the lowest hem,
and exposed to view formatas inguinibus res,
which Baubo grasping with hollow hand, for
their appearance was infantile, strikes, touches gently.
Then the Goddess, fixing her orbs of august light,
being softened, lays aside for a little the sadness of her mind;
thereafter she takes the cup in her hand, and laughing,
drinks off the whole draught of cyceon with gladness.

A slightly different version of this fragment from an Orphic poem is provided by Clement of Alexandria in the second book of his Exhortation to the Greeks:

This said, she drew aside her robes, and showed a sight of shame; child Iakchos was there and with his hand he, laughing, tossed and jerked it under Baubo’s womb. Then smiled the Goddess, in her heart she smiled, and drank the draught from out the glancing cup.

Laughter has the power to banish sorrow and other ills, connecting it to Priapos’ many apotropaic functions. In his myths he is both the one who drives away through laughter and the one whom laughter drives off – especially in the myth of his attempted rape of Vesta who is synonymous with the hearth and the home itself, according to Cicero:

The name Vesta comes from the Greeks, for she is the Goddess whom they call Hestia. Her power extends over altars and hearths, and therefore all prayers and all sacrifices end with this Goddess, because she is the guardian of the innermost things. (De Natura Deorum 2. 27)

And the author of the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite:

Zeus the Father gave her high honour instead of marriage, and she has her place in the midst of the house and has the richest portion.

Which sets up a polar opposition with Priapos, God of outdoors:

This God is worshipped where goats and sheep pasture or there are swarms of bees. (Pausanias, Description of Greece 9. 31. 2)

Other polarities abound. Hestia is immobile; Priapos leaps up and is constantly on the move. Priapos is the protector; Hestia is what must be preserved from defilement. Priapos is licentious; Hestia chaste.

However, there may be an even more esoteric significance behind Priapos’ attempted rape – his phallic exuberance stirs up the life-force promoting generation in the plants and animals that are under his care. Without him matter would be barren and stagnant.

Hestia, according to that skillful etymologist Plato, is that matter:

Take that which we call ousia (reality, essence); some people call it essia, and still others ôsia. First, then, in connection with the second of these forms, it is reasonable that the essence of things be called Hestia; and moreover, because we ourselves say of that which partakes of reality ‘it is’ (estin), the name Hestia would be correct in this connection also; for apparently we also called ousia (reality) essia in ancient times. And besides, if you consider it in connection with sacrifices, you would come to the conclusion that those who established them understood the name in that way; for those who called the essence of things essia would naturally sacrifice to Hestia first of all the Gods. Those on the other hand, who say ôsia would agree, well enough with Herakleitos that all things move and nothing remains still. So they would say the cause and ruler of things was the pushing power (ôthoun), wherefore it had been rightly named ôsia. (Kratylos 400d – 401b)

If obscenity contributes to the purification of matter, as Iamblichos asserted, then Priapos’ actions towards Hestia take on an entirely different connotation – as do the whole system of mysteries overseen by Quartilla.

But wait, there’s more!

One of the reasons why I offer mead in libation to Dionysos from time to time is because of the extensive discussion of honey in Carl Kerényi’s Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life, which is where I first read the myth of Zeus using mead to drug Kronos during his attempt to seize the cosmic throne.

Porphyry’s On the Cave of the Nymphs credits this myth to Orpheus:

In Orpheus, likewise, Kronos is ensnared by Zeus through honey. For Kronos, being filled with honey, is intoxicated, his senses are darkened, as if from the effects of wine, and he sleeps; just as Porus, in the banquet of Plato, is filled with nectar; for wine, he says, was not yet known. The goddess Night, too, in Orpheus, advises Zeus to make use of honey as an artifice. For she says to him:—

When stretch’d beneath the lofty oaks you view
Kronos, with honey by the bees produc’d
Sunk in ebriety, fast bind the God.

This therefore, takes place, and Kronos being bound is emasculated in the same manner as Ouranos. Kronos receives the powers of Ouranos and Zeus Kronos. Since, therefore, honey is assumed in purgations, and as an antidote to putrefaction, and is indicative of the pleasure which draws souls downward to generation; it is a symbol well adapted to aquatic Nymphs, on account of the unputrescent nature of the waters over which they preside, their purifying power, and their co-operation with generation. For water co-operates in the work of generation. On this account the bees are said, by the poet, to deposit their honey in bowls and amphorae; the bowls being a symbol of fountains, and therefore a bowl is placed near to Mithra, instead of a fountain; but the amphorae are symbols of the vessels with which we draw water from fountains. And fountains and streams are adapted to aquatic Nymphs, and still more so to the Nymphs that are souls, which the ancient peculiarly called bees, as the efficient causes of sweetness. Hence Sophokles does not speak inappropriately when he says of souls:—

In swarms while wandering, from the dead a humming sound is heard.

The priestesses who served the Chthonic Goddesses were called by the ancients bees; and Persephone herself was called the honied. The moon, likewise, who presides over generation, was called by them a bee, and also a bull, for bees are ox-begotten. And this application is also given to souls proceeding into generation. The God, likewise, who is occultly connected with generation, is a stealer of oxen. To which may be added, that honey is considered as a symbol of death, and on this account it is usual to offer libations of honey to the terrestrial Gods; but gall is considered as a symbol of life; signifying obscurely by this that death liberates from molestation, but the present life is laborious and bitter.

Which sounds an awful lot like the Orphic verse discussed by the anonymous commentator of the Derveni papyrus where in order to attain mastery of the cosmos Zeus has to swallow the severed:

phallos of the first-born king, onto which all
the immortals grew (or: clung fast), blessed gods and goddesses
and rivers and lovely springs and everything else
that had been born then; and he himself became solitary.

It also makes an interesting parallel with the story related by Arnobius of Sicca which begins with Zeus trying to rape his mother and prematurely jizzing on a rock:

This the rock received, and with many groanings Acdestis is born in the tenth month, being named from his mother rock. In him there had been resistless might, and a fierceness of disposition beyond control, a lust made furious, and derived from both sexes. He violently plundered and laid waste; he scattered destruction wherever the ferocity of his disposition had led him; he regarded not gods nor men, nor did he think anything more powerful than himself; he contemned earth, heaven, and the stars. Now, when it had been often considered in the councils of the gods, by what means it might be possible either to weaken or to curb his audacity, Liber, the rest hanging back, takes upon himself this task. With the strongest wine he drugs a spring much resorted to by Acdestis where he had been wont to assuage the heat and burning thirst roused in him by sport and hunting. Hither runs Acdestis to drink when he felt the need; he gulps down the draught too greedily into his gaping veins. Overcome by what he is quite unaccustomed to, he is in consequence sent fast asleep. Liber is near the snare which he had set; over his foot he throws one end of a halter formed of hairs, woven together very skilfully; with the other end he lays hold of his privy members. When the fumes of the wine passed off, Acdestis starts up furiously, and his foot dragging the noose, by his own strength he robs himself of his sex; with the tearing asunder of these parts there is an immense flow of blood; both are carried off and swallowed up by the earth; from them there suddenly springs up, covered with fruit, a pomegranate tree. (Against the Heathen 5.5-6)

But even more interesting is the linking of Kronos’ castration with meilia considering that the Meliai were generated from the castration of Ouronos and that Melinoë was produced during the rending of Persephone. Likewise Nymphs and water play an important role in the cult of Persephone at Lokroi. And Vergil’s account of Orpheus is part of a story involving bees sprung from the carcass of an ox.

Speaking of Persephone, Porphyry elaborates on the Orphic myth of her weaving in De Antro – note what plant shoots up from Acdestis’ blood? The same one that sprang up when the Corybantes castrated Dionysos and brought his phallos to Italy, which became famed for its honey. (This adds interesting light on the honey and phalloi themes of the Roman Liberalia.)

Also, did you note that Dionysos uses a noose-shaped web to overcome the monster? I did.

As they said on Crete:

πασι θεοίς μελι
λαβυρινθοιο ποτνιαι μελι

If you’re at a loss for what to do, consider heeding Amanda Artemisia Forrester’s Call to Unite in this Time of Crisis and participate in the group ritual she’s leading for those afflicted by the COVID-19 virus. 

Io Pan!

In an effort to find something other than our present pandemic to talk about I’d like to have a serious conversation about asses. 

No, not those ones. These asses:

Specifically the asses that Dionysos and his Satyr army rode into battle:

When the Gods were marching against the Giants, it is said that Dionysos, Hephaistos and the Satyrs traveled by donkey. When they were near the Giants, who, however, were not yet visible, the donkeys brayed and the Giants, hearing the noise, fled. For this reason the donkeys were honored, being placed on the western side of the Crab. (Eratosthenes, Katasterismoi 11)

This is generally regarded as an attempt by Eratosthenes to take the piss out of the Ptolemies, the patron God of their dynasty and an underpinning ideology of Sacred King as Conqueror and Bestower of Civilization that hearkens back to Alexander the Great and his triumphal processions. At least that’s the argument I made in my article The Politics of Myth – but something I read tonight has me reconsidering that position. 

The Saracori (Greek Saragouri, Syriac Šarağurs) were a fierce nomadic tribe who originated in the Siberian steppes before being pushed down into Crimea and the Caucasus by the Sabir and other Iranian and central Asian populations. Concerning them Claudius Aelianus writes:

The Saracori keep asses, not to carry burdens, nor to grind corn but to ride in war, and mounted on them they brave the dangers of battle, just as the Greeks do on horseback. And any ass of theirs that appears to be more given to braying than others they offer as a sacrifice to the God of War. (De Natura Animalium 12.34) 

Similar remarks were made by Strabo concerning the Karmanioi, a Turkic people who lived near the Zagros mountain range:

Because of scarcity of horses most of the Carmanians use asses, even for war; and they sacrifice an ass to Ares, the only God they worship, and they are a warlike people. No one marries before he has cut off the head of an enemy and brought it to the king; and the king stores the skull in the royal palace; and he then minces the tongue, mixes it with flour, tastes it himself, and gives it to the man who brought it to him, to be eaten by himself and family; and that king is held in the highest repute to whom the most heads have been brought. (Geographika, 2.14.24-33)

At least on the periphery of the Greek world the donkey was not an object of ridicule nor would riding one into battle be considered “mock-heroic” – for the barbarian populations and their neighbors these were fearsome creatures worthy of being sacrificed to the God of War.

Indeed, Herodotos relates that braying donkeys helped the Persians finally defeat the previously indomitable Skythians in a scenario much like the one described by Eratosthenes:

The Skythian horse always routed the Persian horse, and when the Persian cavalry would fall back in flight on their infantry, the infantry would come up to their aid; and the Skythians, once they had driven in the horse, turned back for fear of the infantry. The Skythians attacked in this fashion by night as well as by day.

Very strange to say, what aided the Persians and thwarted the Skythians in their attacks on Darius’ army was the braying of the asses and the appearance of the mules. For, as I have before indicated, Skythia produces no asses or mules; and there is not in most of Skythia an ass or a mule, because of the cold. Therefore the asses frightened the Skythian horses when they brayed loudly; and often, when they were in the act of charging the Persians, the horses would shy in fear if they heard the asses bray or would stand still with ears erect, never having heard a noise like it or seen a like creature. (Histories 4.128-129) 

So this has me not only reconsidering how Eratosthenes’ myth should be interpreted but whether Dionysos’ association with these animals significantly predates the Ptolemies, and possibly is a holdover from his days in the Pontic-Caucasian region, one of the places where I believe his worship originated (along with viticulture, nearly 8,000 years ago.)

Is it too soon to start wearing Mad Max fetish gear and resorting to cannibalism?

I’m, uh, asking for a friend. 

Apparently the next plague had to be cancelled because a pharmaceutical company was dumping chemicals in the water and all the frogs died off. 

Authorities with the Food and Agriculture division of the United Nations are warning that a plague of locusts larger than anything we’ve seen in over 30 years is descending upon Africa and the Middle East just in time for Passover. 

Hannibal Lecter: And what did you see, Clarice? What did you see?
Clarice Starling: Lambs. The lambs were screaming.

In case it’s not clear from the posts I’ve been making this week I firmly believe in the efficacy of prayer. As an Orpheotelest I’m also down with protective charms, the healing properties of plants and stones as well as a host of customs which are not inaccurately classed as superstitions.

But I’m not a stupid man – these things work best in conjunction with pragmatic and proactive measures. “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition,” as it says in the Bible.

Which is why I am frankly baffled by the response of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to our present pandemic, as reported by Kate Linthicum of the Los Angeles Times: 

“Pandemics won’t do anything to us,” he said on Monday while accusing the media and his political opponents of exaggerating the threat of the virus.

He has declined to close his borders or ban travel from particularly afflicted countries and has brazenly ignored recommendations from his own deputy health minister that Mexicans refrain from greeting each other with a customary hug and kiss.

At a large rally over the weekend, Lopez Obrador waded proudly into the crowd, kissing children and embracing supporters. He has made a show of waving off offerings of antibacterial gel. And on Wednesday, before appearing at another large event, he showcased a collection of good-luck charms that he carries with him, including Catholic scapulars and a $2 bill.

“They are my bodyguards,” he said, smiling.

This laissez-faire approach has led to increased tensions with El Salvador and other Latin American countries, with some even speculating that we could soon see armed conflict in the region.

In what is certainly unrelated news, CNN reported that a 5.7-magnitude earthquake ravaged Utah on Wednesday, dislodging the trumpet of the Angel Moroni from the iconic Latter-Day Saints Temple in Salt Lake City.

Strange behavior has also been witnessed among the world’s sea creatures.

Couple of interesting articles to share with you guys today. Here’s one on the cats of Freyja. Here’s one on the Jews of Loki. And here’s one on Apollon, Dionysos, and the Multivalent Birds of Euripides’ Ion. 

My wife shared prayers to the Healing Gods Apollon and Eir, and then offered sets of prayer cards to her readers. To be eligible for the giveaway, however, you must write prayers to the Healers. Do consider contributing – the deadline is March 31st. 

 

Sophokles, Choral Ode from the Antigone
God of the many names, Semele’s golden child,
child of Olympian thunder, all Italy’s Lord.
Lord of Eleusis, where all men come
to mother Demeter’s plain.
Bacchus, who dwell in Thebes,
by Ismenus’ running water,
where wild Bacchic women are at home,
on the soil of the dragon seed.

Seen in the glaring flame, high on the double mount,
with the Nymphs of Parnassus at play on the hill,
seen by Kastalia’s flowing stream.
You come from the ivied heights,
from green Euboea’s shore.
In immortal words we cry
your name, Lord, who watch the ways,
the many ways of Thebes.

This is your city, honored beyond the rest,
the town of your mother’s miracle-death.
Now, as we wrestle our grim disease,
come with healing step from Parnassus’ slope
or over the moaning sea.

Leader in the dance of the fire-pulsing stars
overseer of the voices of night,
child of Zeus, be manifest,
with due companionship of Maenad maids
whose cry is but your name.

Philodamos’ Paian to Dionysos
I. Come here, Lord Dithyrambos, Bakchos, God of jubilation, Bull, with a crown of ivy in your hair, Roarer, oh come in this holy season of spring – euhoi, o io Bakchos, o ie Paian! Once upon a time, in ecstatic Thebes, Thyona bore you to Zeus and became mother of a beautiful son. All immortals started dancing, all mortals rejoicing at your birth, o Bacchic God. – Ie Paian, come o Saviour, and kindly keep this city in happy prosperity.

II. On that day Kadmos’ famous country jumped up in Bacchic revelry, the vale of the Minyans, too, and fertile Euboia – euhoi, o io Bakchos, o ie Paian! Brimful with hymns, the holy and blessed country of Delphi was dancing. And you yourself, you revealed you starry shape, taking position on the crags of Parnassos, accompanied by Delphic maidens. – Ie Paian, come o Saviour, and kindly keep this city in happy prosperity.

III. Swinging your firebrand in your hand – light in the darkness of night – you arrived in your enthusiastic frenzy in the flower-covered vale of Eleusis – euhoi, o io Bakchos, o ie Paian! There the entire Greek nation, surrounding the indigenous witnesses of the holy Mysteries, invokes you as Iakchos: you have opened for mankind a haven, relief from suffering. – Ie Paian, come o Saviour, and kindly keep this city in happy prosperity.

IV…….

V. From that blessed country you came to the cities of Thessaly, to the sacred domain of Olympos and famous Pieria – euhoi, o io Bakchos, o ie Paian! and forthwith did the Muses crown themselves with ivy; they all sang and danced around you, proclaiming you to be ‘Forever immortal and famous Paian’! Apollo had taken the lead in this dance. – Ie Paian, come o Saviour, and kindly keep this city in happy prosperity.

VI….VII….VIII…..

IX. The God commands the Amphiktyons to execute the action with speed, so that he who shoots from afar may restrain his anger – euhoi, o io Bakchos, o ie Paian! – and to present this hymn for his brother to the family of the Gods, on the occasion of the annual feast of hospitality, and to make a public sacrifice on the occasion of the Panhellenic supplications of blessed Hellas. – Ie Paian, come o Saviour, and kindly keep this city in happy prosperity.

X. O blessed and fortunate the generation of those mortals who build for Lord Apollo, a never-decaying, never-to-be-defiled temple – euhoi, o io Bakchos, o ie Paian! – a golden temple with golden sculptures where the Goddesses encircle Paian, his hair shining in ivory, adorned with an indigenous wreath. – Ie Paian, come o Saviour, and kindly keep this city in happy prosperity.

XI. To the organizers of his quadrennial Pythian Festival the God has given the command to establish in honour of Bakchos a sacrifice and a competition of many dithyrambs – euhoi, o io Bakchos, o ie Paian! – and to erect an attractive statue of Bakchos like the bright beams of the rising sun, standing on a chariot drawn by golden lions and to furnish a grotto suitable to the holy God. – Ie Paian, come o Saviour, and kindly keep this city in happy prosperity.

XII. Come on then, and welcome Dionysos, God of the Bakchants, and call upon him in your streets with dances performed by people with ivy in their hair who sing ‘Euhoi, o io Bakchos, o ie Paian!’ All over blessed Hellas…dithyrambs. Hail thou, Lord of Health. – Ie Paian, come o Saviour, and kindly keep this city in happy prosperity.

TurningTides wrote:

Thank you for this prayer to Lord Reshep! May He aid those who wade in front of this pandemic tide–the health care workers, the doctors who must see those already suffering with symptoms and/or fear. For this pandemic is affecting all of us, so may we learn what tools we need to make, so that we come out of this time prepared to live closer on the Gods’ paths for us.

To which I responded: 

Beautifully said. And I think during this we especially need to be praying for the doctors, nurses and EMTs who aren’t just putting their lives at risk to help us all, but their psychological well-being too from witnessing both what this is doing to their patients, and to their colleagues.

May Rešeph, Ešmoun, Nintinugga, Sekhmet, Anāhitā, Kamrušepa, Yahweh, Babalu Aye, Sukunabhikona-no-Kami, Parṇaśabarī, Sheetala Devi, Apollon, Asklepios, Hygeia, Eir, Živena and all of the other Healing Deities great and small be with them and with us during this crisis.

Lucian, How to Write History
There is a story of a curious epidemic at Abdera, just after the accession of King Lysimachus. It began with the whole population’s exhibiting feverish symptoms, strongly marked and consistent from the very first attack. About the seventh day, the fever was relieved, in some cases by a violent flow of blood from the nose, in others by perspiration no less violent. The mental effects, however, were most ridiculous; they were all stage-struck, mouthing blank verse and ranting at the top of their voices. Their favourite recitation was the Andromeda of Euripides; one after another would go through the great speech of Perseus; the whole place was full of pale ghosts, who were our seventh-day tragedians vociferating: ‘O Love, who lord’st it over Gods and men…’ and the rest of it. This continued for some time, till the coming of winter put an end to their madness with a sharp frost. I find the explanation of the form the madness took in this fact: Archelaus was then the great tragic actor, and in the middle of the summer, during some very hot weather, he had played the Andromeda in Abdera; most of them took the fever in the theatre, and convalescence was followed by a relapse – into tragedy, the Andromeda haunting their memories.

Antonin Artaud, The Theatre and its Double
For if theatre is like the plague, this is not just because it acts on large groups and disturbs them in one and the same way. There is both something victorious and vengeful in theatre just as in the plague, for we clearly feel that the spontaneous fire the plague lights as it passes by is nothing but a gigantic liquidation. The plague takes dormant images, latent disorder and suddenly carries them to the point of the most extreme gestures. Theatre also takes gestures and develops them to the limit. Just like the plague, it reforges the links between what does and does not exist, between the virtual nature of the possible and the material nature of existence. It rediscovers the idea of figures and archetypal symbols which act like sudden silences, fermatas, heart stops, adrenaline calls, incendiary images surging into our abruptly woken minds. It restores all our dormant conflicts and their powers, giving these powers names we acknowledge as signs. Here a bitter clash of symbols takes place before us, hurled one against the other in an inconceivable riot. For theatre can only happen the moment the inconceivable really begins, where poetry taking place on stage nourishes and superheats created symbols. These symbols are symbols of full-blown powers held in bondage until that moment and unusable in real life, exploding in the guise of incredible images giving existence and the freedom of the city to acts naturally opposed to social life. A real stage play disturbs our peace of mind, releases our repressed subconscious, drives us to a kind of potential rebellion (since it retains its full value only if it remains potential), calling for a difficult heroic attitude on the part of the assembled groups.

Back on 02/17/2020 Maya Margit reported that archaeologists had unearthed a 3,000 year old temple to the Canaanite God Rešeph:

Led by Prof. Yosef Garfinkel of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Prof. Michael Hasel of Southern Adventist University in Tennessee, the team published their findings in the Levant journal last month following years of excavations.

Located in south-central Israel, Tel Lachish is the site of the biblical Lachish, a major Canaanite city during the Middle and Late Bronze Ages that was later conquered by the Israelites. It was one of the only Canaanite cities to survive into the 12th century BCE.

“We excavated a new temple in the northeast corner of the site that dates to the 12th century BCE,” Garfinkel told The Media Line. “It was extremely rich with objects and also [had] an inscription, which is very, very rare. The last time a Canaanite inscription was found was about 40 years ago.” The aforementioned inscription was found on a pottery shard and features the oldest-known example of the letter “samekh.”

“In general, temples in the ancient Near East were not like churches or synagogues that you could enter,” Weissbein said. “It’s a different type of cultic activity. Only a few elites – priests or maybe kings – entered to do some rituals there because it was a house of gods, not a house of worship in a way… We found two figurines of male deities,” Weissbein stated. “They probably represent Baal, one of the main deities of the Canaanites, like a storm god or a fertility god … and another deity called Resheph, more of a warlike deity.”

Well, not quite Weissbein. Although Rešeph is unquestionably a mighty warrior, he is also the Hurler of Thunder, the Lord of Fire and Destruction and God of Fever, Illness and Pestilence. He was worshiped in Ugarit, Syro-Palestine, Phoenicia, Egypt and the Eastern Mediterranean and has a growing cult among contemporary polytheists from different traditions. Our household maintains a shrine for him, and I have a strong suspicion that there’s history between Rešeph and Dionysos (though I’ll save that for another post.) Needless to say, when I caught the story about the unearthing of Rešeph’s temple on the Wild Hunt, my interest was piqued.

Especially when I read the bit about the Samekh inscription. 

Samekh has a numerical value of 60, and is the 15th letter in the Hebrew, Aramaic and Phoenician alphabets – where in the latter it is called sāmek, and has the following shape 𐤎, thought to represent a tent-peg, a tree or something like the djed-pillar. 

Now I am not going to go into the mysteries of this Phoenician letter as they are not mine to share – but Hebrew gematria is totally up for grabs! 

In discussing the significance of this letter Rabbi Aaron L. Raskin of Chabad.org begins by telling the following anecdote:

Yaakov had been terribly ill for weeks. He finally decided to ask R. Mordechai of Neshchiz for advice. “Rebbe,” he sobbed, “please help me. I am extremely sick. I have gone to every doctor in town, but none of them has a cure for me.”

“It seems that you haven’t gone to the right doctor,” replied R. Mordechai. “Go immediately to Anipoli and talk to the specialist there. Then you will be cured.”

Yaakov thanked the Rebbe for his advice, hired a wagon, and set out for Anipoli. When he arrived there, he rushed over to the first person he saw and asked, “Please, tell me where the great specialist lives. I am very ill and must see him right away.”

The person was puzzled. “You came to Anipoli for a specialist?! This is such a small village, we don’t even have a doctor here.”

[…]

Disappointed and frustrated, Yaakov returned to R. Mordechai of Neshchiz. “Rebbe,” he said, “I don’t understand. You sent me to Anipoli, but the people told me that not only is there no specialist there, there is not even a doctor.”

“Hmm. They don’t even have a doctor?” questioned the Rebbe. “So did you ask the people what they do when someone is sick?”

“I did,” Yaakov replied. “They told me that when someone is sick, they pray to G‑d and rely on Him to cure them.”

“Now do you understand?” R. Mordechai explained. “The people in Anipoli go to the greatest specialist in the world. They pray to G‑d. He is the one Who cures us all.”

And then informs us:

The numerical value of the samech, the fifteenth letter of the alef-beis, is sixty. In the Priestly Blessing recited every morn­ing there are fifteen words and sixty letters. When the kohen blesses the people, he must put his two hands together. According to the Mishnah there are thirty bones in each hand, sixty when the hands are joined. What is unique about the Priestly Blessing? The results of such blessings are swift and without interruption, similar to the strength of a current of mighty water that no dam can stop. The Priestly Blessings embody the concept of the samech: infinite light and power.

Rabbi Raskin goes on to note:

The circular aspect of the samech represents support, like the rings that encircle and hold together all the elements of the lulav. The ring also symbolizes a couple’s commitment to each other. A woman symbolizes her uncompromising support of her husband by circling him seven times under the chuppah. Simi­larly, the man’s commitment is symbolized by the giving of a ring. When you pick up someone who has fallen, you support and encircle him or her. With the wedding ring we are saying in effect, “This ring has no beginning or end, no highs or lows. The characteristic of encircling is constant. So, too, will my commitment to you be constant, encompassing your whole being, regardless of the highs and lows of the relationship.”

So in other words Samekh is about a circular disease – a coronavirus, if you will – which we will only survive by loving and supporting one another as well as priestly prayer to the Healing Gods. 

Got it. 

*clears throat*

Hail Rešeph, may your protection and restoration be upon all those whose lips are sweet from tirelessly praising your precious name! Rešeph! Rešeph! Rešeph!

 

It would seem that the latest casualty of the coronavirus is the U.S. Constitution.

From Florida:

“Late-night revelry simply will not be allowed” in St. Petersburg as long as the COVID-19 coronavirus is a threat, Mayor Rick Kriseman said Monday.

The mayor’s comments came while he was announcing a state of emergency for the city of St. Pete. His order, which goes into effect immediately, means no public events, weddings, sporting events, or any other gatherings that draw more than 50 people will be permitted on public or private property.

From Illinois: 

The mayor of Champaign, Illinois, gave herself the power to ban the sale of guns and alcohol after declaring a citywide emergency to address the coronavirus.

Mayor Deborah Frank Feinen signed the executive order on Thursday declaring a state of emergency for the city. That executive order, which is in line with municipal code, comes with extraordinary powers for the mayor to enact over a short period of time as the city combats the spread of the coronavirus.

Among the powers Feinen gained after signing the executive order was the power to ban the sale of guns, ammunition, alcohol, and gasoline. Feinen could also cut off access to individuals’ gas, water, or electricity. The city also has the ability to “take possession of private property” or order the temporary closing of all bars or liquor stores.

Just two examples from two states, and that’s already half the amendments broken. I could go on, but I’m guessing your Twitter and Facebook feeds have been a constant barrage and you don’t need me adding to it.

But I wonder how long until you’ll be able to watch from your window as tanks and heavily armed National Guard troops march down our deserted streets. Not long, it would seem.

Don’t worry, the government has everything under control – and they are doing this only with the public good in mind.

As fond as I am of Ovid’s treatment of Liberalia in the Fasti, I think Augustine’s description below really takes the cake:

Now as to the rites of Liber, whom they have set over liquid seeds, and therefore not only over the liquors of fruits, among which wine holds, so to speak, the primacy, but also over the seeds of animals:— as to these rites, I am unwilling to undertake to show to what excess of turpitude they had reached, because that would entail a lengthened discourse, though I am not unwilling to do so as a demonstration of the proud stupidity of those who practice them. Varro says that certain rites of Liber were celebrated in Italy which were of such unrestrained wickedness that the shameful parts of the male were worshipped at crossroads in his honour. Nor was this abomination transacted in secret that some regard at least might be paid to modesty, but was openly and wantonly displayed. 

For during the festival of Liber this obscene member, placed on a little wagon, was first exhibited with great honour at the crossroads in the countryside, and then conveyed into the city itself. But in the town of Lavinium a whole month was devoted to Liber alone, during the days of which all the people gave themselves up to the must dissolute conversation, until that member had been carried through the forum and brought to rest in its own place; on which unseemly member it was necessary that the most honorable matron should place a wreath in the presence of all the people. Thus, forsooth, was the God Liber to be appeased in order for the growth of seeds. Thus was enchantment (fascinatio) to be driven away from fields, even by a matron’s being compelled to do in public what not even a harlot ought to be permitted to do in a theatre, if there were matrons among the spectators. (De Civitate Dei 7.21)

And that cake (or liba) is penis-shaped, just like the giant phalloi that were trotted around the city and countryside in their little wagons, imbuing the land with fertility and driving off winter sterility and malignant enchantment.

This naturally reminds one of similar Bacchic rites carried out during Anthesteria and Dionysia, but also of a Vanic ceremony recorded in Chapter 40 of Tacitus’ Germania:

The Langobardi, by contrast, are distinguished by the fewness of their numbers. Ringed round as they are by many mighty peoples, they find safety not in obsequiousness but in battle and its perils. After them come the Reudingi, Aviones, Anglii, Varini, Eudoses, Suarini and Nuitones, behind their ramparts of rivers and woods. There is nothing noteworthy about these peoples individually, but they are distinguished by a common worship of Nerthus, or Mother Earth. They believe that she interests herself in human affairs and rides among their peoples. In an island of the Ocean stands a sacred grove, and in the grove a consecrated cart, draped with cloth, which none but the priest may touch. The priest perceives the presence of the Goddess in this holy of holies and attends her, in deepest reverence, as her cart is drawn by heifers. Then follow days of rejoicing and merry-making in every place that she deigns to visit and be entertained. No one goes to war, no one takes up arms; every object of iron is locked away; then, and only then, are peace and quiet known and loved, until the priest again restores the Goddess to her temple, when she has had her fill of human company. After that the cart, the cloth and, if you care to believe it, the Goddess herself are washed in clean in a secluded lake. 

Then there’s the Völsi, a magically preserved horse’s penis that was used in household cultus. You can read the original account from the Völsa þáttr, as well as some potent analysis here (which goes into some of the herbs that may have been used to preserve the phallos, among other fascinating details) and this page, which also has some pics of the sacred dicks and related ritual implements – which, like the tools in Liber’s ceremony, are primarily handled by respected, pious Matrons. 

Here are 6 Gnossiennes by French composer Erik Satie:

The term is a neologism coined by Satie in the late 19th century for “compositions with a dance-like quality.” Later, to honor his mentor Francis Poulenc also wrote some.

According to Wikipedia:

The word appears to derive from gnosis. Satie was involved in gnostic sects and movements at the time that he began to compose the Gnossiennes. However, some published versions claim that the word derives from Cretan “knossos” or “gnossus”; this interpretation supports the theory linking the Gnossiennes to the myth of Theseus, Ariadne and the Minotaur. Several archeological sites relating to that theme were famously excavated around the time that Satie composed the Gnossiennes.

However, I prefer the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows’ definition:

gnossienne
n. a moment of awareness that someone you’ve known for years still has a private and mysterious inner life, and somewhere in the hallways of their personality is a door locked from the inside, a stairway leading to a wing of the house that you’ve never fully explored—an unfinished attic that will remain maddeningly unknowable to you, because ultimately neither of you has a map, or a master key, or any way of knowing exactly where you stand.

In 1891 Satie published Le Fils des étoiles (The Son of the Stars) for Joséphin Péladan’s Rosicrucian play of the same name, which includes what many consider the 7th Gnossienne despite its different tone and subject matter.