It did not escape my notice that Liberalia celebrates Dionysos’ connection with bees and their liquid treasure just before we spring into the Gold Season.

There is another hill not far from Philippi which is called the Hill of Dionysos, in which are gold mines called the Asyla. (Appian, Civil Wars 4.13.106 )

This is when we honor him as the King:

It seems suitable to point out the various discoveries of different persons. Father Liber instituted buying and selling, and also invented the emblem of royalty, the crown, and the triumphal procession. (Pliny the Elder, Natural History 7.191)

And when he is closest to the Fairies and Goblins in his Retinue.

I believe that the creatures called “Goblins” in those sources are a combination of Dökkálfar and Κόβαλοι (with a few other random forest creatures added to the mix over the years), and I told a story about his first meeting with them here. You’ll note that it is essentially a retelling of Walter Map’s tale of King Herla from De Nugis Curiallium, but with a name-change for the Ruler Below:

The old stories tell us that Herla, the king of the very ancient Britons, was led into a compact by another king, seemingly a pigmy in the lowness of his stature, which did not exceed that of an ape. As the story hath it, this dwarf drew near, sitting on a huge goat—just such a man as Pan is pictured, with glowing face, enormous head, and a red beard so long that it touched his breast (which was brightly adorned with a dappled fawn skin), a hairy belly, and thighs which degenerated into goat-feet. Herla spake to him with no one by. Quoth the pigmy: ‘I, the king of many kings and chiefs and of a people numerous beyond all count, come willingly, sent from them to thee, and though I am to thee unknown, yet I glory in the fame which hath raised thee high above other kings, since thou art the best and the nearest to me in place and blood, and art moreover worthy of having me grace with high honour thy wedding as a guest, when the King of the French giveth his daughter to thee—an arrangement concluded with¬out thy knowledge, and Jo, his messengers come this very day. Let there be an abiding compact between us, that I shall attend thy wedding, and thou mine a year later to the day.’ With these words he turned his back with more than a tiger’s swiftness and vanished from the king’s sight.

In my story he is named Adranos after the Sicilian fire-God who lived beneath Aetna with his sons the Palikoi and thousand hunting hounds before being driven out by Hephaistos. But more on them later. 

I believe the Fairies in Dionysos’ Retinue are actually a tribe of Ljósálfar or Light Elves who swore their loyalty to him (whether or not he’s a son of Óðinn and Prince of Álfheimr) and fought under him during the Æsir-Vanir War. When he afterward went into exile they followed, forming one of the oldest strata of the Retinue along with the Satyrs and Titans:

The struggle having proved sharp and many having fallen on both sides, Kronos finally was wounded and victory lay with Dionysos, who had distinguished himself in the battle. Thereupon the Titans fled to the regions which had once been possessed by Ammon, and Dionysos gathered up a multitude of captives and returned to Nysa. Here, drawing up his force in arms about the prisoners, he brought a formal accusation against the Titans and gave them every reason to suspect that he was going to execute the captives. But when he got them free from the charges and allowed them to make their choice either to join him in his campaign or to go scot free, they all chose to join him, and because their lives had been spared contrary to their expectation they venerated him like a God. Dionysos, then, taking the captives singly and giving them a libation of wine, required of all of them an oath that they would join in the campaign without treachery and fight manfully until death. (Diodoros Sikeliotes, Library of History 3.71.4-6)

Over the centuries other Fairies, Elves, Vily and assorted wood Spirits have joined but this tribe remains the core of the Nysan Fey. 

Although Liberalia isn’t part of the official Bakcheion festival calendar, I’ve been thinking about it a lot over the last couple days and am strongly considering celebrating it regardless.

In addition to the traditional features of the festival (which you can read about here, here and here) this was also considered the day when the divine Julius Caesar rose from the underworld after his assassination on the Ides and became a heavenly star. It is fitting that his apotheosis should occur on the feast day of the God, since he was saved by him on another Dionysian festival many years before. In thanks for being spared and granted this decisive military victory which significantly advanced his career, upon returning to Rome Julius Caesar lifted the ban on the Bacchanalia and reintroduced  thiasoi in the city.   

I’ve been reading over my collection of sources on the festival and discovered something rather interesting in Ovid’s Fasti. While I normally get caught on the delightful myth about the bees:

Libations (libamina) derive their name from their author, and so do cakes (liba), because part of them is offered on the hallowed hearths. Cakes are made for the God, because he delights in sweet juices, and they say that honey was discovered by Bacchus. Attended by the Satyrs he was going from sandy Hebrus (my tale includes a pleasant jest), and had come to Rhodope and flowery Pangaeus, when the cymbals in the hands of his companions clashed. Lo, drawn by the tinkle, winged things, as yet unknown, assemble, and the bees follow the sounding brass. Liber collected the stragglers and shut them up in a hollow tree; and he was rewarded by the discovery of honey. Once the Satyrs and the bald-pated ancient had tasted it, they sought for the yellow combs in every grove. In a hollow elm the old fellow heard the humming of a swarm; he spied the combs and kept his counsel. And sitting lazily on the back of an ass, and leaning upon a branch stump he greedily reached at the honey stored in the bole. Thousands of hornets gathered, and thrust their stings into his bald pate, and left their mark on his snub-nosed face. Headlong he fell, and the ass kicked him, while he called to his comrades and implored their help. The Satyrs ran to the spot and laughed at their parent’s swollen face: he limped on his hurt knee. Bacchus himself laughed and taught him to smear mud on his wounds; Silenus took the hint and smudged his face with mire. The Father God enjoys honey, and it is right that we should give to its discoverer golden honey infused in hot cakes. (3.735-762)

This time I pressed on, and discovered:

On this day, if I remember aright, and on the preceding day, there is a procession to the Argei. What the Argei are, will be told in the proper place. The star of the Kite slopes downwards towards the Lycaonian Bear: on that night it becomes visible. If you would know what raised the bird to heaven, it was this: Saturn had been dethroned by Jupiter. In his wrath he stirred up the strong Titans to take arms and sought the help the Fates allowed him. There was a bull born of its mother Earth, a wondrous monster, the hinder part whereof was a serpent: him, at the warning of the three Fates, grim Styx had shut up in gloomy woods enclosed by a triple wall. There was an oracle that he who should burn the innards of the bull in the flames would be able to conquer the eternal Gods. Briareus sacrificed him with an axe made of adamant, and was just about to put the entrails on the fire: Jupiter commanded the birds to snatch them away; the kite brought them to him and was promoted to the stars for his services.

Not only does the Bear put in an appearance, but we get an alternate explanation for why the Bull was placed in the Labyrinth. A Bull, mind you, that is also a Serpent:

After the tenth month she bears a daughter, of beautiful form, whom later ages have called now Libera, now Proserpine; whom when Jupiter Verveceus saw to be strong, plump, and blooming, forgetting what evils and what wickedness, and how great recklessness, he had a little before fallen into, he returns to his former practices; and because it seemed too wicked that a father openly be joined as in marriage with his daughter, he passes into the terrible form of a dragon: he winds his huge coils round the terrified maiden, and under a fierce appearance sports and caresses her in softest embraces. She, too, is in consequence filled with the seed of the most powerful Jupiter, but not as her mother was, for she bore a daughter like herself; but from the maiden was born something like a bull, to testify to her seduction by Jupiter. If any one asks who narrates this, then we shall quote the well-known senarian verse of a Tarentine poet which antiquity sings, saying “Taurus draconem genuit, et taurum draco” [“The bull begot a dragon, and the dragon a bull.”] Lastly, the sacred rites themselves, and the ceremony of initiation even, named Sebadia, might attest the truth; for in them a golden snake is let down into the bosom of the initiated, and taken away again from the lower parts. (Arnobius of Sicca, Adversus Nationes 5.20)

Dionysos, you cared about me, Dion, when I was alive; both when I danced with the boys and carried the nectar of Bromios at the symposia. But now I set you up beside my tomb, so that even when I am dead and in my future existence, even then I might see you. (SEG:Ecit. 34.1266)

These articles are relevant to one of the theories I mentioned earlier. 

• Midwinter dog sacrifices and warrior initiations in the Late Bronze Age at the site of Krasnosamarskoe, Russia by Dorcas R Brown
• Óðinn’s Berserks in Myth and Human Berserks in Reality by Anatoly Liberman
• The lycophoric names of the 6th to 7th century Blekinge rune stonesand the problem of their ideological background by Olle Sundqvist and Anders Hultgård
• The Horse Lords of Campochiaro by Anthony Gasparini
• Lycanthropy in Sarmatian Warrior Societies: The Kobyakovo Torque by Yulia Ustinova
• The Iranian Männerbund Revisited by Touraj Daryaee
• Shape of the Beast: The Theriomorphic and Therianthropic Deities and Demons of Ancient Italy by Wayne L. Rupp
• My Search for the Wild Hunt by Lezlie Kinyon

Each night I set aside some time to just sit and reflect on my Gods and Spirits. I push all other thoughts and concerns out of my mind to give them space in my head to do with as they please. It’s not prayer or meditation or an attempt to connect and communicate with them, though it can sometimes lead to those things. Most often I’m just thinking about them. How they have appeared to me in the past, the symbols and other things associated with them, myths and scholarly theories, songs and mantras and memorable bits of literature and poetry concerning them; all this I go over and get lost in. This is usually when I make my random connections and intuitive leaps which I later blog about. It’s just one of the devotional practices I have in my arsenal, and doesn’t take the place of the others – but it is something I can do to sustain my connection to them even through the fog of pain and illness when offerings, formal prayers and my ecstatic practices are a little harder to manage.

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. 

Speaking of vaginas, I just read something utterly horrifying.

According to Strabo “the Egyptians were noted for raising all their children and for circumcising the males and for performing excision (ektemein) on the females, as is the custom among the Jews” (Geographika 17.2.5)

That’s not the horrifying part. The Christian physician Aëtius (Sixteen Books on Medicine 16.115) gives a vivid description of a clitoridectomy:

The so-called “bride” (kleitoris) is like a muscular or fleshy structure located near the upper closure of the lips of the vagina, in the place where the urethra is located. In some women it becomes enlarged, increasing the female organs in size, and causes inappropriate behavior and disgrace. Also when it is rubbed continuously beneath the clothes it arouses the woman, and encourages her to engage in sexual intercourse. Accordingly, the Egyptians thought it best to remove it completely, at the time when young women were about to be married.

The surgery is accomplished as follows. Let the young woman be seated on a stool. Have a strong young man stand behind her and place his hands on her thighs, so that he can control her legs and her whole body. Have the surgeon stand opposite and let him draw out the clitoris with his left hand by grasping it with a wide-mouthed forceps; have him cut the clitoris off with his right hand at the tip of the forceps. It is appropriate to retain a portion of the cut-off organ, so that only the excess is removed. I have said that the excision takes place at the tip of the forceps, because the clitoris is fleshy at that point and can be stretched as far as possible, and so that a hemorrhage will not occur, as in the case of the more extensive excision used to remove a tumor.

After the surgery one should use wine or cold water to stop the wound from bleeding, and wipe the wound off with a sponge and sprinkle powder on it, and moisten a compress with vinegar and apply it, and put a sponge moistened with vinegar on top of it. After the seventh day sprinkle the lightest camomile on it, along with rose petals, or genital medicine dried with pumice stone {?}. And this also is good: burn the stones of date palms and grind them and sprinkle on the dust, and do this also for wounds in the genitals.

After providing the above translation, Mary R. Lefkowitz includes an interview with Aisha Abdel Majid, a Sudanese teacher who recounts her own operation at age 6, to help put things in perspective. 

Is there anything better than reading a bunch of scholars arguing about whether the word ψυχή, generally translated “soul” – actually means vagina?

Possibly, but that’s still pretty high up there on the list.

Or maybe I’m just easily entertained.

For those who may not be familiar here’s a pretty decent overview of what’s known of Tarvos Trigaranos, which draws parallels with Óðinn and Mithras (who happen to be compared in this article by Olof Sundqvist.)

It’s been a bad pain day for me, so I’m sitting here in my office listening to some good tunes, smoking some passable weed, communing with Dionysos and pondering the dream I had about Tarvos Trigaranos a fortnight or so back, which I alluded to in both the Herakles-play and that spate of posts on Saint Boniface. Specifically this good tune:

As a general policy I try to avoid the comments sections of posts and videos, especially if I happen to like the material, but for some reason I found myself scrolling down until I saw this:

Russ B – 4 weeks ago: Her voice generates an inter-dimensional rift that Jim Morrison frequently takes advantage of to keep tabs on us.

Well, alrighty then.

Sounds like I got an answer – I’m just not sure what the question was. 

So many people requested my list of surreal and otherworldly movies for Dionysia 2020 e.v. that I decided to do something else instead. I put together the following game. Over the course of three days, watch the following sets of movies and vote on your favorites. You can choose as many sets as you can handle each day, though I probably wouldn’t recommend more than three sets a day. Once you have finished watching and voting, feel free to share the results in the comments below. They should probably be watched in the order listed, though that’s up to you. 

I. Harold and Maude
II. The Beaver
III. Upstream Color

I. I Kill Giants
II. The Fisher King
III. Tideland

I.  Santa Sangre
II. Orion
III. Mandy

I. Dave Made A Maze
II. The Number 23
III. The Cell

I. Bull Dance
II. A Streetcar Named Desire
III. Antichrist

I. The Fall
II. Holy Mountain
III. Baraka

I. Taxidermia
II. Little Otik
III. Blood Tea + Red String

This Scorpio-Orion-Herakles-Sandas thread will eventually loop back to Óðr and the Norse Gods – and in a way that seems both stunning and perfectly natural. It just requires a little patience. 

And I don’t mean the thread linking Herakles, Euthymos and Empedokles – though that is indeed relevant. 

I recently shared some material on thunderstrikes as part of the coded language of the mysteries; the other part of that code has to do with scorpions and the constellation Orion.

(In case you haven’t noticed, star-lore – particularly having to do with the Hyades, Boötes, Freyja’s Distaff, the Waggon, the Dippers and the Big and Little Bears – is pretty big in our tradition. See here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, for a sampling of stuff I’ve posted over just the last couple months.)

The scorpion is one of the rarer animals in the Bacchic menagerie and almost never makes it onto such lists – but it’s there, particularly in its connections with Strobilos (one of the Toys) and the prominent position it has within Tarantism (particularly its Sardinian and Spanish iterations.) Indeed, this confluence can be observed even in the Bible.

Compare Jesus’ vision of Satan:

Then he said to them I saw the Adversary, Satan falling as lightning (astraphe) from heaven. Behold, I give you the authority to trample upon serpents and scorpions and upon the whole of the hostile enemy’s power. And absolutely nothing will harm you. (Luke 10:18-19)

To Saul of Tarsos’ encounter with Jesus on the road:

It happened. I was traveling and approaching Damascus, around noon, then suddenly nearby a burst of lightning (periastraphai) from heaven, an intense light all about me. (Acts 22:6)

According to this piece called Lightning Scorpion Prophecy (which argues Paul was duped by Satan) that is far from accidental:

Additionally, Jesus gave His disciples the express “authority to trample upon serpents and scorpions” in the context of confronting Satan’s power. While a serpent makes sense due to its spiritual associations, why did Jesus add “scorpions”? Would Jesus say this to help us later notice Paul was afflicted by a stinger-equivalent of a scorpion by Satan, by Paul’s own admission? Paul claimed that his pride was held in check by Satan because: “I was given a sharp pointed prod (skolops – such as a scorpion’s stinger) in the flesh, a messenger Satan in order that he would strike and torment me in order that I not become overly conceited.” (2 Corinthians 12:6-7) Paul asked the person He assumed was the Lord to take it away, but this Lord refused. “Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.” (2 Cor. 12:8-9.) Why is this an important passage to consider? How does it undermine Paul? Had Paul meant thorn, the precise word is “Skolos,” which means “thorn or prickle.” (Quattrocchi, id., at 2436.) Skolops, by contrast means “anything pointed.” Id., at 2436. Another word for “thorn” which Paul could have used, if thorn were truly intended, was the word akantha which is the term used by other New Testament writers when referring to thorns. And stauros meant a stake of wood, large or small. So we should not necessarily indulge that Paul meant a ‘thorn’ or anything woodlike. What also points at the view that Paul likely meant it was a ‘stinger,’ or ‘scorpion’s stinger’ was Paul says it was sent as a “Messenger of Satan” as a chastisement to keep Paul humble. For scorpion’s stingers were used for chastisement in Solomon’s time. In III Kings 3:11 (Septuagint chaptering), the advice given by young men to Solomon on how to deal with backsliders was to tell them “I will chastise you with scorpions” — in Greek, skorpios. And given Paul says this skolops is from Satan to chastise him, it appears Paul was alluding to that function of a scorpion’s sting. The book of Revelation also mentions scorpion’s stingers as a form of “tormenting” someone, which Paul said was Satan’s purpose in giving him the “SKOLOPS.” See Rev. 9:10 (locusts of the pit “had tails and stings like scorpions, and in their tails they had power to torment people for five months.”)

The taranta is the spiritual agent responsible for the symptoms of tarantismo, described by De Martino as:

… falling to the ground, a feeling of prostration, anguish, a state of psychomotor agitation with a beclouding of the sensory apparatus, difficulty in remaining standing, stomach ache, nausea and vomiting, various paraesthesia and muscular pains, a heightening of sexual desire.

I have tended to focus on the spider form of taranta (for obvious reasons) but as often as not they could appear as that other arachnid, the scorpion. De Martino even quoted a bawdy song which invoked the good Saint in this scorpion form:

Santu Paulu meu de le tarante
che pizzichi le caruse ‘nmezz’all’anche
Santu Paulu meu de li scorzoni
che pizzichi li carusi int’i balloni
Deu ti muzzicau la tarantella?
Sotto la pudìa de la vannella.

[My Saint Paul of the tarante, who stings the girls between their hips
My Saint Paul of the scorzoni who stings the boys in their pants.
Where did the little taranta bite you?
Under the hem of my skirt.]

Which naturally makes one think of the great hunter Orion:

Orion–Hesiod says that he was the son of Euryale, the daughter of Minos, and of Poseidon, and that there was given him as a gift the power of walking upon the waves as though upon land. When he was come to Chios, he outraged Merope, the daughter of Oinopion, being drunken; but Oinopion when he learned of it was greatly vexed at the outrage and blinded him and cast him out of the country. Then he came to Lemnos as a beggar and there met Hephaistos who took pity on him and gave him Kedalion, his own servant, to guide him. So Orion took Kedalion upon his shoulders and used to carry him about while he pointed out the roads. Then he came to the east and appears to have met Helios (the Sun) and to have been healed, and so returned back again to Oinopion to punish him; but Oinopion was hidden away by his people underground. Being disappointed, then, in his search for the king, Orion went away to Crete and spent his time hunting in company with Artemis and Leto. It seems that he threatened to kill every beast there was on earth; whereupon, in her anger, Gaea sent up against him a Scorpion of very great size by which he was stung and so perished. After this Zeus, at the prayer of Artemis and Leto, put him among the stars, because of his manliness, and the Scorpion also as a memorial of him and of what had occurred. (Pseudo-Eratosthenes, Catasterismi Frag 32)

According to Parthenius Dionysos’ grand-daughter was Aëro rather than Merope:

Aëro, so the story runs, was the daughter of Oenopion and the nymph Helice. Orion, the son of Hyrieus, fell in love with her, and asked her father for her hand; for her sake he rendered the island where they lived habitable (it was formerly full of wild beasts), and he also gathered together much booty from the folk who lived there and brought it as a bridal-gift for her. Oenopion however constantly kept putting off the time of the wedding, for he hated the idea of having such a man as his daughter’s husband. Then Orion, maddened by strong drink, broke in the doors of the chamber where the girl was lying asleep, and as he was offering violence to her Oenopion attacked him and put out his eyes with a burning brand. (Erotica Pathemata 22)

It is also interesting to note that Orion’s trusted hound was placed among the stars too:

That star Seirios which comes on in the autumn and whose conspicuous brightness far outshines the stars that are numbered in the night’s darkening, the star they give the name of Orion’s Dog, which is brightest among the stars, and yet is wrought as a sign of evil and brings on the great fever for unfortunate mortals. (Homer, Iliad 22.26)

However, Orion is not the only figure associated with the constellation that bears his name. There is also the Cilician God Sandas/Sandon who could be syncretized with Dionysos or Zeus, but was most often viewed as a local form of the deity Herakles. He carried a double-axe like the labrys, with the scorpion serving as his heraldic animal. (He was also the legendary founder of Tarsos, which makes the Pauline conversion account even more interesting.) You can read more about him at Ian Rutherford’s Sandas in Translation and The Cilician God Sandas and the Greek Chimaera by Attilio Mastrocinque.

I have more to say about scorpions and Orion (= Herakles/Sandas) but for that to make sense I need to tease out another thread first.

From Vice: Physicists Are Studying Mysterious ‘Bubbles of Nothing’ That Eat Spacetime:

The universe might be on track to eat itself from the inside out.

Luckily for us, physicists studying the phenomenon, called “spacetime decay”, believe this is very unlikely. Still, the possibility is interesting enough to explore in mind-boggling detail, covering “bubbles of nothing” in spacetime, hidden extra dimensions, and a hypothetical observer hitching a ride on the outer surface of our universe.

The idea that in specific scenarios the universe would be entirely destroyed by an expanding bubble of nothing has been around since 1982, when theoretical physicist Edward Witten introduced the possibility of the universe eating itself in a paper in Nuclear Physics B journal. He wrote: “A hole spontaneously forms in space and rapidly expands to infinity, pushing to infinity anything it may meet.”

Given that a bubble of nothing has not in fact destroyed the universe, neither in the 13 billion years before Witten published his paper nor in the 38 years since, it would be reasonable for physicists to push it down the research priority list. But three physicists at the University of Oviedo in Spain and the University of Uppsala in Sweden argue that we can learn important lessons from an all-consuming, universe-destroying bubble in a wonderfully titled paper, “Nothing Really Matters”, submitted to the Journal of High-Energy Physics this month.

Sounds like someone is smoking too much dope while watching too many 80s Fantasy movies – and for once it isn’t me.

Atreyu: But why is Fantasia dying, then?

G’mork: Because people have begun to lose their hopes and forget their dreams. So the Nothing grows stronger.

Atreyu: What is the Nothing?

G’mork: It’s the emptiness that’s left. It is like a despair, destroying this world. And I have been trying to help it.

Atreyu: But why?!

G’mork: Because people who have no hopes are easy to control. And whoever has the control has the Power. 

[A large crash shakes the ground. Atreyu briefly loses his balance, but regains it and turns towards G’mork with a cold look]

Atreyu: Who are you really?

G’mork: I am the servant of the Power behind the Nothing. I was sent to kill the only one who could have stopped the Nothing. I lost him in the Swamps of Sadness. His name was Atreyu. 

[The ground shakes again and Atreyu falls. He grabs a sharp piece of stone and stands up]

Atreyu: If we’re about to die anyway, I’d rather die fighting! Come for me, G’mork – I AM ATREYU! 

 

Here is the Herakles-play I wrote for Dionysia 2020 e.v. per the Readers Poll we held back in February. 

***

Dramatis personae

• Aphrodite
• Herakles
• Chorus of Giant Corpses
• Satyr

Scene: Our location is a small cave in the territory between what will one day become the cities of Phanagóreia and Pantikápaion on the eastern shore of the Cimmerian Bosporos. The interior is dark except for parallel lines of beeswax candles leading to a bed of lush vegetation on which Herakles and Aphrodite are lying, their naked bodies still entwined after what was clearly a vigorous lovemaking session. One can see various corpses strewn about outside the cave. 

Aphrodite: I really appreciate you coming over and helping out with this Giant problem of mine. 

Herakles shrugs. 

Herakles: It’s what I do. 

Aphrodite: How are the wife and kids? 

Herakles grows uncomfortably silent. 

Aphrodite: Did I say something … ? Oh … oh …  sorry. I forgot.

Herakles: You forgot?

Aphrodite: Look, I’ve been busy. I know Hermes mentioned something about it, but then … well … that swift-tongued devil distracted me, and I’ve had a lot going on out here in the borderlands. Even I can’t be stretched as wide as heaven. 

Herakles: I don’t know why I bother. 

Herakles sits up. Aphrodite rests a hand on his muscled thigh. 

Aphrodite: We had some good times.  

Herakles: So why did you leave the Sun-kissed Meditteranean for these frigid and barbaric wastes?

Aphrodite: Too much history. I wanted something new, fresh. A land with only a future. 

Herakles: And so you end up with a bunch of hairy brutes who want to use and abuse you, knocking at your door. 

Aphrodite: And you. 

Herakles: What makes you think I’m any different?

Herakles roughly grabs Aphrodite’s wrist, causing her to bite her lip – in pain, or anticipation or both, it is impossible to say. 

Aphrodite: You had the venom of the gadfly coursing through your veins when it happened. It wasn’t your fault. 

Herakles lets go.

Herakles: I thought you were ignorant of the fate of Megara and my children. 

Aphrodite: I was just starting conversation. 

Aphrodite places her hand back on his thigh. 

Aphrodite: I know you wouldn’t have done it if you were in your right mind. I know what kind of man you are, Alkides. 

Herakles: But I still did it. 

Aphrodite: And more than atoned for it. 

Herakles: How could I ever atone for that foul sin? I loved them. 

Aphrodite: And that I know well. You loved them twelve times what a normal heart could possibly bear. If there’s one thing I know it’s hearts. 

Herakles: I should have … 

Aphrodite puts her finger to his lips and shushes him. 

Aphrodite: Should is an abyss. 

Aphrodite pulls him down onto her, embraces him tightly and lets his tears dampen her shoulder. 

She holds him that way until his arousal returns, and their lovemaking commences. 

Outside the Giant corpses begin to sing Paul Anka’s “Put Your Head On My Shoulder.”

When they finish Herakles sputters awake. 

Herakles: I am so sorry. I … I didn’t mean to do that. 

Aphrodite: You needed it. And I’m used to it by now. 

Herakles: I had a dream. 

Aphrodite: Don’t all great men?

Herakles: I saw a man. There was a dog at his feet. He was chopping down a tree with an axe, and in the branches of the tree was a bull with three cranes perched on his back. What do you think it means?

Aphrodite: Do I look Egyptian to you?

Herakles: No. More Syro-Phoenician. 

Aphrodite: What do you think it means?

Herakles: The man with the dog and axe is about to have a really bad day. There was a lot of rage in that bull. 

Aphrodite: Well, for both their sakes I hope it was just a dream. 

Herakles: How many more times are we going to do this?

Aphrodite: As many more as you’re up for, my lion-hearted man. 

Herakles: I meant it. Assuming it’s not an infinite amount —

Aphrodite: Why assume anything?

Herakles: It can’t be infinite. Doing anything else takes away from the potential number of times we could have done it, and without interruption we just have one. So whatever way you cut it there are only a finite number more times we will do this. 

Aphrodite: Anyone ever tell you you think too much?

Herakles: Yes, your husband. 

Aphrodite: Which one?

Herakles: Dionysos. 

Herakles smiles fondly, sinking into memory. 

Outside the Giant corpses begin to sing Frank Sinatra’s “Summer Wind.”

Aphrodite: And I stand at the window, watching, waiting for the brave young soldier to return to me, but the Revolution has already made my Sasha a hero. When I woke I found myself crying – for this man I haven’t even met yet. 

Herakles: I dislike dreaming. And sleeping.  

Aphrodite: Why?

Herakles: Well, to begin with it’s not something I expected to still be doing once I’d become a God. And secondly, it reminds me of them out there. 

Aphrodite: Trees?

Herakles: Lifeless bodies. Where does the soul travel when the body slumbers? 

Aphrodite: Wherever it wants, I suppose. 

Herakles: Do we have one? 

Aphrodite: No.

Herakles: Gods don’t have souls? 

Aphrodite: Singular souls, no. Even animals have multi-part souls. But technically you’re correct: we Gods don’t have psychai either, as those are only created at the moment of death, and our kind are deathless. Well, most of us are. But like humans, parts of our souls can come loose and wander about during slumber. Other fragments can implant themselves in mortal creatures, so we can live out their lives through them, absorbing the sensations and experiences. Have you tried that yet?

Herakles: I’ve only been a God for a couple decades now. 

Aphrodite: You have so much to learn.

A Giant stuffs its grotesque face through the opening of the cave and Herakles jumps to his feet. He grabs a gore-dripping spear propped against the cave wall and charges naked at the startled Son of the Earth. Two quick thrusts in either eye renders it blind and then he slashes open its stomach so its guts spill out, flooding the entrance of the cave. 

Herakles whistles and a man dressed as a Satyr rushes up to him.  

Herakles: Another mess to clean up, Xanthias. 

Herakles then stalks back to his mistress, chest covered in red splatter, and props the spear against the wall once more. 

Herakles: Enough talking. 

Aphrodite: Yes, Sir. 

The candles gutter out and all fades to black. 

Are you a good person?

Is this real?

Something For Your M.I.N.D

Dance Battle Scene

David Fights The Shadow King

From Middle English theater, from Old French theatre, from Latin theatrum, from Ancient Greek θέατρον (théatron, “a place for viewing”), from θεάομαι (theáomai, “to see”, “to watch”, “to observe.”) [Definition from the Wiktionary.]

Alright, here are two more – but then that’s it: Evil Wealth of Raiment: Deadly Πέπλοι in Greek Tragedy by Mireille M Lee and James R. Hamilton’s Philosophy of Theater. 

Now go watch some movies for Dionysos – or better yet, see a play!

Oh, and here is “A Fullness of Living Forces”: Viacheslav Ivanov’s Poetics of Theurgy by Jeffrey Riggs. I think you’ll dig it.