Speaking of Óðr, I’ve encountered some interesting theories about him in my studies recently.

Most scholars tend to view him as a strange double or Vanic counterpart of Óðinn associated with creative and battle frenzy, shapeshifting, shamanic ordeals and otherworldly journeys.

However a number of Neopagan authors apparently regard him as the God of the Summer Sun, and specifically heat, vitality, fertility and rejuvenation, with his absence in Winter prompting Freyja to go in search of him.

Something about that really resonates, although I’m not sure their arguments necessarily hold up to scrutiny. Then again, so little has come down in the lore concerning Óðr that most arguments end up being fairly speculative, mine included. (This is where being an Orpheotelest and mantis really comes in handy.) 

I have always loved this song by Sigur Rós:

The aural world it conjures is just … *shivers* Ah, yeah.

And because of the stunning visuals I included the video on numerous playlists for Dionysos, even before I started tapping into the Black Sun current. (It has obviously taken on added significance since then.) But I don’t think I ever bothered looking up the lyrics – which, as it turns out, are just as relevant.

Brennisteinn

Við skerum á
Augnaráð
Nú stingur í
Ofbirta
Nú bræða óf
Endalok
Svo flæðir inn
Dagsbirta
Nú teygir sig og togar
Og togna út við örmunum [Vonlenska]
Reyna að móttaka [Vonlenska]
Og brestu yfir hrapa stað
Rennur blóð í æðum
Í skinninu
Yðar á
Krækir klónum í
Og klórar í
Nú teygir sig og togar
Og togna út við örmunum [Vonlenska]
Reyna að móttaka [Vonlenska]
Og brestu yfir hrapa stað
Reisum mér búkinn
Hryggjasúlan æðu
Rennur blóð í æðum
Ekki segja neinum frá
Ekki segja neinum frá
Ekki segja neinum frá
Ekki segja neinum frá
Ekki segja neinum frá
Ekki segja neinum frá
Nú teygir sig og togar
Og togna út við örmunum [Vonlenska]
Reyna að móttaka [Vonlenska]
Og brestu yfir hrapa stað
Reisum mér búkinn
Hryggjasúlan æðu
Rennur blóð í æðum

Which, when Englished, becomes:

Sulfur

We plunge in
A glance
Then strikes
A blinding light
Then they melt
The end
And flows in
The daylight
Now it drags and pulls
And tears out every particle
Joints ache
And crack, they are dislocated
Blood runs in the veins
In the skin
Your (skin)
It digs its claws
And lacerates
Now it drags and pulls
And tears out every particle
Joints ache
And crack, they are dislocated
We raise our bowed bodies
The spine we straighten
Blood runs in the veins
Don’t tell anyone
Don’t tell anyone
Don’t tell anyone
Don’t tell anyone
Don’t tell anyone
Don’t tell anyone
Now it drags and pulls
And tears out every particle
Joints ache
And crack, they are dislocated
We raise our bowed bodies
The spine we straighten
Blood runs in the veins

Pure gold, man.

And the word Vonlenska? It means:

Vonlenska (Eng: Hopelandic) is a term coined by the band to refer to the vocalizations that Jónsi sings in lieu of lyrics in Icelandic or English. It takes its name from “Von”, a song on Sigur Rós’s debut album Von where it was first used. However, not all Sigur Rós songs are in Hopelandic; many are sung in Icelandic.

Vonlenska differs from both natural and constructed languages used for human communication. It consists of strings of meaningless syllables containing non-lexical vocables and phonemes. There is no grammatical relation between or among syllables, nor are they accompanied by clearly defined word boundaries. Vonlenska emphasizes the phonological and emotive qualities of human vocalizations, and it uses the melodic and rhythmic elements of singing without the conceptual content of language. In this way, it is similar to the use of scat singing in vocal jazz and puirt à beul in traditional Scottish and Irish folk music. The band’s website describes it as “a form of gibberish vocals that fits to the music”. It is similar in concept to the ethereal vocals used by Cocteau Twins singer Elizabeth Fraser in the 1980s and 1990s. Many of the syllable strings sung by Jónsi are repeated many times throughout each song, and sometimes throughout the whole album.

Óðr’s poetry.

Ονομα Βάκχος
“I am Bakchos.”

893
800 + 90 + 3
8/93

2 = Beta
1 = Alpha
20 = Kappa
600 = Chi
70 = Omicron
200 = Sigma

The Etruscan trembled before the Stranger, saying “Who are you? How are you called?”

And he replied:

Who I am is a mystery, but how I am called is easy enough to discern.

Begin with the bountiful dyad, the union of male and female.
And add another one in the shape of a bull’s head or tripod.
Kindly, then, place ten and ten more rods in the bundle.
CHoicest hekatombs offer six times over, giving back to the givers.
Of gleaming honey-wine seven measures should be poured out, ten times.
See the sacrificial blade, that resembles the number two hundred.

Put these all together and you have 893, the value of my name.

PALACE OF EXILE
by Jim Morrison

For seven years I dwelt in the loose palace of exile
Playing strange games with the girls of the island
Now I have come again to the land of the fair
And the strong, and the wise

Brothers and sisters of the pale forest, children of night
Who among you will run with the hunt?

Now night arrives with her purple legion
Retire now to your tents and to your dreams
Tomorrow we enter the town of my birth
I want to be ready

If a fawn-skin can be so polyvalent, why assume that an earthquake or a viral pandemic can mean just one thing and one thing only?

The stories we share, and what we believe about them, matter.

Be careful, folks. The China virus isn’t the only one circulating.

While I dig the cosmic connotations the Orphics gave the nebris, it can mean many different things to different people.

For instance, it can be a symbol of personal liberation:

Edith and I are Maenads now with a “longing for the hills & ecstasy.” Let Frances expect to see me at the midland station with cone-pointed thyrsos & fawn-skin. Tell him I shall walk to Lindelhurst in this array. He need not think of hiding my originality in a fly! (Katherine Harris Bradley to the family of Frances Brooks in a letter dated 1882)

Of jubilant procession:

That Osiris is identical with Dionysos who could more fittingly know than yourself, Klea? For you lead the Thyiadic dances at Delphi and have been consecrated by your father and mother in the holy rites of Osiris. If, however, for the benefit of others it is needful to adduce proofs of this identity, let us leave undisturbed what may not be told, but the public ceremonies which the priests perform in the burial of the Apis, when they convey his body on an improvised bier, do not in any way come short of a Bacchic procession; for they fasten skins of fawns about themselves, and carry Bacchic wands and indulge in shoutings and movements exactly as do those who are under the spell of the Dionysiac ecstasies. (Plutarch, On Isis and Osiris 35)

Or of destructive transformation:

On the road from Megara there is a spring on the right, and a little farther on a rock. It is called the bed of Aktaion, for it is said that he slept thereon when weary with hunting, and that into this spring he looked while Artemis was bathing with her nymphs. Stesichoros of Himera says that the Goddess cast a deer-skin round Aktaion to make sure that his hounds would kill him, so as to prevent his taking Semele to wife. (Pausanias, Description Greece 9.2.3)

The bit from Stesichoros is interesting, and not just for the crime he ascribes to Pentheus’ cousin Aktaion. (I’ll let that one settle in for a moment.) 

Himera is not far from Syracuse and Tyndaris, which held interesting celebrations for the Huntress, according to the Anonymous Life of Theokritos 1b:

Others says that bucolic poetry was first performed at Tyndaris in Sicily. When Orestes took the image of Artemis away from Tauris in Scythia, he received an oracle, that he should wash himself in seven rivers flowing from one source. Therefore Orestes went to Rhegium in Italy, and washed away the curse in the so-called “separated” rivers. Then he crossed over to Tyndaris in Sicily, where the inhabitants sang their local songs in honour of the Goddess, and this was the origin of the tradition. They say that when the men sang, they prepared a loaf with many images of wild animals on it, a pouch full of all kinds of seeds, and wine in a goatskin, to pour out as an offering for those they met. They wore a garland, with the antlers of a deer on their head, and a staff in their hands. The victor in the contest received the loaf of the man he had vanquished; and the victor remained in the city of Syracuse, while the losers went out to the surrounding villages to collect food for themselves. They sang songs full of fun and laughter, and added the following propitious words:

Receive good fortune,
Receive good health,
Which we bring from the Goddess,
Which she has commanded.

 

Here’s a fun site while you are socially isolating:

https://earthquaketrack.com/

Did you know that there have been:

136 earthquakes in the past 24 hours
1,027 earthquakes in the past 7 days
4,802 earthquakes in the past 30 days
63,829 earthquakes in the past 365 days

Neat!

Last night I went out for a cigarette and there was a deer in our front yard. Its beautiful, stupid eyes met mine for a moment and then it blithely resumed munching leaves until I said, “My, you’d make a lovely nebris.” Then it trotted off, feigning indifference. The street was empty and misty and otherworldly as I watched it head down towards the old oak near the school, site of so many past rituals. I gazed heavenward until I spotted the barest sliver of the Moon, surrounded by a flickering chorus of stars dancing in the dark.

Now I’m listening to Kamienie by Modlitwa and wondering what the month holds in store for us. 

Oppian, Cynergetica 4.354‑424
Leopards are overcome also by the gifts of Dionysos, when crafty hunters pour for them the crafty draught, shunning not the anger of holy Dionysos. Leopards are now a race of wild beasts, but aforetime they were not fierce wild beasts but bright-eyed women, wine-drinking, carriers of the vine branch, celebrators of the triennial festival, flower-crowned, nurses of frenzied Bacchus who rouses the dance.

For Ino, scion of Agenor, reared the infant Bacchus and first gave her breast to the son of Zeus, and Autonoe likewise and Agave joined in nursing him, but not in the baleful halls of Athamas, but on the mountain which at that time men called by the name of the Thigh (Μηρός). For greatly fearing the mighty spouse of Zeus and dreading the tyrant Pentheus, son of Echion, they laid the holy child in a coffer of pine and covered it with fawn-skins and wreathed it with clusters of the vine, in a grotto where round the child they danced the mystic dance and beat drums and clashed cymbals in their hands, to veil the cries of the infant. It was around that hidden ark that they first showed forth their mysteries, and with them the Aonian women secretly took paint rites. And they arrayed a gathering of their faithful companions to journey from that mountain out of the Boeotian land. For now, now was it fated that a land, which before was wild, should cultivate the vine at the instance of Dionysos who delivers from sorrow. Then the holy choir took up secret coffer and wreathed it and set it on the back of an ass.

And they came unto the shores of the Euripus, where they found a seafaring old man with his sons, and all together they besought the fishermen that they might cross the water in their boats. Then the old man had compassion on them and received on board the holy women. And lo! on the benches of his boat flowered the lush bindweed and blooming vine and ivy wreathed the stern. Now would the fishermen, cowering in God-sent terror, have dived into the sea, but ere that the boat came to land. And to Euboea the women came, carrying the God, and to the abode of Aristaeus, who dwelt in a cave on the top of a mountain at Caryae and who instructed the life of country-dwelling men in countless things; he was the first to establish a flock of sheep; he first pressed the fruit of the oily wild olive, first curdled milk with rennet, and brought the gentle bees from the oak and shut them up in hives. He at that time received the infant Dionysos from coffer of Ino and reared him in his cave and nursed him with the help of the Dryads and the Nymphs that have the bees in their keeping and the maidens of Euboea and the Aonian women.

And, when Dionysos was now come to boyhood, he played with the other children; he would cut a fennel stalk and smite the hard rocks, and from their wounds they poured for the God sweet liquor. Otherwhiles he rent rams, skins and all, and clove them piecemeal and cast the dead bodies on the ground; and again with his hands he neatly put the limbs together, and immediately they were alive and browsed on the green pasture. And now he was attended by holy companies, and over all the earth were spread the gifts of Dionysos, son of Thyone, and everywhere he went about showing his excellence to men.

Late and at last he set foot in Thebes, and all the daughters of Cadmus am to meet the son of fire. But rash Pentheus bound the hands of Dionysos that should not be bound and threatened with his own murderous hands to rend the God. He had not regard unto the white hair of Tyrian Cadmus nor to Agave grovelling at his feet, but called to his ill-fated companions to hale away the God — to hale him away and shut him up — and he drave away the choir of women. Now the guards of Pentheus thought to carry away Bromius in bonds of iron, and so thought the other Cadmeans; but the bonds touched not the God. And the heart of the women worshippers was chilled, and they cast on the ground all the garlands for and the holy emblems of their hands, and the cheeks of all the worshippers of Bromius flowed with tears. And straightway they cried: “Io! blessed one, O Dionysos, kindle thou the flaming lightning of thy faith and shake the earth and give us speedy vengeance on the evil tyrant. And, O son of fire, make Pentheus a bull upon the hills, make Pentheus of evil name a bull and make us ravenous wild beasts, armed with deadly claws, that, O Dionysos, we may rend him in our mouths.” So spake they praying and the lord of Nysa speedily hearkened to their prayer. Pentheus he made a bull of deadly eye and arched his neck and made the horns spring from his forehead. But to the women he gave the grey eyes of a wild beast and armed their jaws and on their backs put a spotted hide like that of fawns and made them a savage race. And, by the devising of the God having changed their fair flesh, in the form of Leopards they rent Pentheus among the rocks. Such things let us sing, such things let us believe in our hearts!

According to the Bakcheion calendar today is the Noumenia of the month Νεβρίς (Nebris) which is named after the sacred cape or sash of fur worn by Dionysos and his frenzied devotees. Most often this came from young deer who were hunted during savage nocturnal rites:

He’s welcome in the mountains,
when he sinks down to the ground,
after the running dance,
wrapped in holy deerskin,
hunting the blood of the slain beast,
devouring its raw flesh with joy,
rushing off into the mountains,
in Phrygia, in Lydia,
leading the dance—
Bromios—Evoë!
(Euripides, The Bakchai 172-180)

But we also find them wearing the pelts of goats, leopards, foxes and other animals belonging to the God’s menagerie. The last of these is called a bassaris rather than nebris and it tended to include the head as well as just the skin; those who wore it were called Bassarai, a particular expression of Mainadism originating in Makedonia and Thrake though during the Hellenistic period it spread to Egypt and Asia Minor too.

To put on the nebris is to enter the domain of Dionysos, marking one off as belonging to his Retinue at least for the duration of the revels. Thus we find even divinities like Pan, Kybele, Herakles, Artemis and various Nymphs and River-Gods depicted wearing it when their more Bacchic aspects are being emphasized.

Perhaps the most dramatic representation of how this simple change of clothing can affect an alteration of consciousness is to be found in Euripides’ The Bakchai, where the adversarial Pentheus finally succumbs to the seductive force of Dionysos and allows the God to dress him up in his regalia.

This regalia was given added significance by the Orphics, as Macrobius notes in  Saturnalia 1.18:

In the line, “The sun, which men also call by name Dionysos,” Orpheus manifestly declares that Liber is the Sun. And in riddling verse he also says, “One Zeus, one Hades, one Helios, one Dionysos.” And concerning the ornaments and vestments worn by Liber at the ceremonies performed in his honor, Orpheus says:

Let the worshiper first throw around him a crimson robe,
like flowing rays resembling fire.
Moreover from above the broad all-variegated skin of a wild fawn
thickly spotted should hang down from the right shoulder,
a representation of the wondrously-wrought stars
and of the vault of heaven.
And then over the fawn-skin a golden belt should be thrown,
all-gleaming to wear around the breast a mighty sign
that immediately from the end of the earth
the Beaming-one springing up
darts his golden rays on the flowing of ocean.

Which is appropriate as we shall be entering the Gold Season on April 1st.