Have you been keeping up with the October movie list?

Noticed anything a little … odd?

Hint: I was very careful in my choice of which titles to include, and the order in which they should be viewed. 

The poems I posted earlier today are from Wine Dark, my Bacchic Orphic riff on Homer’s Odýsseia. 

You know what’s crazy? I wrote it well before I arrived at the conclusion that Freyja is Kírkē and Odysseus Óðr. (Continued here.)

Read it again from that perspective, and everything changes. 

Some light reading for those interested in the Starry Bear side of things.

• Zavaroni Adolfo, Souls across the Labyrinth: Representations of Rebirth in the Bronze/Iron Age in Europe
• Angelo Fossati, Following Arianna’s Thread Symbolic Figures at Female Rock Art Sites at Naquane and In Valle, Valcamonica, Italy
• Joanna M. Lawrence, Phallic Representations in Bronze Age Scandinavian Rock Art: Contexts, Associations, and Interpretations
• Caroline Malim, Mazes, Minotaurs and Maidens: Evidence for the Cult of the Labyrinth and the Cycle of Life
• wonderMondo, Stone labyrinths of Bolshoi Zayatsky Island

The Nymph sat before her golden loom
in a cave the size of a grand cathedral,
with ivy clinging to the damp walls
and a floor bestrewn with rose petals
that never crinkled up
or lost their enticing fragrance.
Her hair was gold as the Sun
which shines most brilliantly
just before the Maidens of the West draw him down
with the chains of their beguiling song.
Her skin was like the polished tusk of a boar,
hanging in some great Lord’s feasting hall,
where warriors chant songs of ancestral glory
and prepare for the hunt.
Keen eyes she had, small and well-placed;
you’d think they were a woman’s eyes
until you realized they reflected no light or double image back,
but hungrily drew all into them,
never blinking.
The man, her husband these last seven years
– or was it five,
or just one?
Time seemed to run at a different pace on this island,
especially when they were together in their wedding bower –
knew every inch of her well,
how cold, how inhuman the heart of her was.
He remembered
when first he woke storm-tossed upon her shore
and she was gazing down upon him, smiling
a predator’s greedy smile.
“Your eyes are open,” she said,
voice like a hand stroking his manhood
as he stirred early in the morn.
“And you see them.”
Unsteadily he raised his head and scanned the horizon
and there were strange shapes scurrying here and there
before disappearing into the twilight gloom once more.
He could tell, even from the sandy shore, that
when he saw them, they were seeing him too.
The man began to shiver
and so she took off her fleecy shawl
and draped it round his rugged shoulders
and frame nearly skeletal from hunger.
A soft, pale, and cold finger
traced the web of scars that covered his body,
and she kissed him and said,
“You shall want for nothing, my husband, my man.”
Now those lips were pursed, her perfect brow creased
as she studied the tapestry which hung from her loom
gleaming yellow in the dark.
She had weaved a man
drawing back a taut bow string
as he aims for the double head of a mighty axe.
She knew not what the scene meant
nor did the man sitting beside her,
trying to hold back tears of wanderlust and remorse,
lest they fall into his ambrosial cup.
“I like not this strange rune,” said Kalypso of the lovely hair.
“I think it means a miserable end for its intended,
and much blood shed.”

They say that Kadmos, dragon-slayer,
when he saw his daughter’s womb swell with divine fruit,
believed her not and locked her away in a tower
with only a loom to pass the hours.
She wove her coiled seduction by the Thunderer
and her Grandmother’s story as well,
Europa who was carried across the ocean
on the back of a beautiful white bull.
And when the eighth month came Semele was visited by
the Theban Lord’s adopted son, Echion,
her brother-in-law. The man
was born of serpent’s teeth and bloodshed,
quick to rage and always ready with venomous remarks.
He was ashamed of her slatternly ways,
and the odium it had brought on the whole family.
And so with Tyrian ire and to regain lost honor
he struck her,
spat on her,
cursed her
and finally kicked her in the belly.
Then, disdainfully, he left her
to a night of agony
as she birthed her son more than a month prematurely.
When her father found her the following morn
she was covered in blood and cradling the crying infant.
“Isn’t he beautiful?” she asked, shivering.
“I’ve named him Dionysos, since he is from Zeus
and will surely limp after what that snake did to him.”
Horrified, Kadmos had his men scoop them up,
dump them in a wooden chest emblazoned with a sonnenrad,
and drop it into the river.
The chest floated out to sea,
and thence to cape Malea,
where it was caught in the nets of some Satyrs.
They dragged it ashore and found the corpse of Semele,
several days gone, and her poor child still alive.
They snatched him up and rushed him
to the buxom Nymphs of Mount Taygetos
who nursed the hornéd babe back to health
like parched earth refreshed by the rain.
Together the two tribes raised him to manhood.
Eventually he grew tired of that idyllic setting
and wandered off to hunt fortune and adventure in foreign lands.
The Satyrs went out in search of him,
and eventually ended up on the Trinacrian beach
and bondsmen of the tyrant Polyphemos
as well as his brothers, the malformed
incestuous get of Poseidon.
Worse than all the lowly, dirty chores
those poor Satyrs were forced to perform
was the fact that the island had no wine;
not a drop throughout all three corners.
But then an Ithakan,
looking like a drowned rat,
floated up, clinging to a an amphora like a raft.
Over a goatskin of wine
– ambrosially sweet from long absence –
the Satyrs spilled the beans,
sharing all they knew of their master and his ways
to the immigrant terrorist.
Then the nobody was off to meet
the trumpeting One-Eyed King.
The Satyrs didn’t care,
because they had wine again.

As he fades in and out of consciousness,
he glances up into her
eyes like pools, frigid and depthless,
her face large, dark, pocked
with crude cut features,
nose like flint daggerhead,
cheeks like the rounded cap
of a mountain skirted by evergreens,
unsmiling lips, flat and thin,
teeth like limestone
and stalactite-like chin.
Her hair hangs down in coiled dreadlocks,
she wears dozens of trinkets on leather thongs
made of bones and bark
and shiny baubles that once adorned trees,
all round her bull-broad neck,
and a gown of motley patches stitched on
in yellow, greens and brown.
Behind her there is a roaring fire
and shadowy men with antlered masks
carrying spears and shields
and dancing warrior dances
to thunderous drums and pipes.
Noticing that he was once more lucid,
she grins a rare grin and whispers,
“You’ve come back to me, little goat.”

When first he came,
there were seabirds circling overhead
and a chorus of frogs in the bushes,
evergreens and fields of flowers.
But it has been a long journey,
deep in the swamp.
Now he is alone,
hurt, exhausted, and thirsty,
with muck up to his knees
and a tenuous grasp on reality.
However far he’s come
he’s that much further to go,
and the whole thing’s hopeless bleak.
He can’t even remember why he began this trek,
what mission he was trying to complete.
Only despair and emptiness are in his heart,
the Godly part of him died long ago.
Only the monster remains,
and this endless, futile wandering
in blind, uncaring and boundless night,
with no way out, not even death.

 

Physkoa sat opposite her God
wearing a gown of pure white linen,
a black belt round her curvy hips
and a red blindfold covering her wide, cowlike eyes.
He cupped a bowl of wine in his hands,
and tenderly held it to her lips. “Drink, my beloved.”
She drank.
Next he put some juicy grapes between her sharp teeth
and whispered, “Eat.”
She ate,
as serpentine Kissokemes stirred within her breast.
He took her by the hand,
and placed it on the sheet before her.
The sheet had been dyed,
swaths of three colors meeting at the center
in the shape of a dancing triskelion.
Upon the sheet were apples of gold,
a goat’s knucklebones, a bronze mirror, a doll,
a bullroarer and other such trinkets.
“Take,” he commanded, less a lover
than a Lord now. “Take, and I shall make
you the first of womankind
to serve me as my priestess.”
And she drew forth the unquiet clackers,
Krotala who purify and heal with sound.
And she wears the spotted fawnskin
and sacred ivy-crown in Dionysos’ honor to this day.

“The cracks are how the light gets through.”

His long fingers stroked the delicate threading,
like a lover or a brother tracing the sharp line of a cheek,
preserving the memory of it for future days.

“Are you saying I’m cracked?”

“Never, my headstrong Arachne,” the dance-loving one laughed,
loving the fire that flashed in her night-dark eyes.
“I wouldn’t dream of saying such a thing!”

“You’d better not!” she scowled, scrunching up her nose,
as she flung some unfinished fleece at him
which he proceeded to tear with his panther-nimble fingers.

Then without warning a sopping, sandy black hound came
trundling through the daughter of Perse’s white door,
murex goo dripping from its great slathering yellow maw,
barking furiously about what had washed up on the beach.

Arachne shot a sudden fearful glance to her red companion
and asked, “Where’s Kloster?”

Dionysos rests his soft hand
on the large black wheel
of the ox-drawn carriage
Ikarios has packed full
of pine-pitch smeared kegs of fresh wine
which miraculously sprang up outside his home.

When the stranger arrived at his door
kindly Ikarios received him graciously.
He invited him to sit in the best seat,
and gave him cow’s milk to drink,
the very best the old oxherd had,
and ordered his daughter to whip up a feast
fit for a King from the East.
He shushed her when she pleaded their poverty;
“This man is no man. Can’t you see?
Give him all we have, and then some more.”

Erigone rolled her eyes, but obeyed her dear father’s order,
for she was a pious and submissive girl
(on the surface at least)
making a porridge of all the seed
and all the grain their bare cupboard contained.
She mixed in honey
and kernels of a pomegranate she’d been saving
for Her who is Below,
which stood out like ruby drops of blood in the mush.

Dionysos’ gaze did not leave her,
all through dinner and after.
Modesty blossomed in her cheeks,
painting them a becoming blush.
This just made Dionysos stare harder,
and then he smiled. He turned to Ikarios and said,
“I have a gift for you, good sir; something I think
this precious fruit of yours will especially enjoy.”

Curious Ikarios rose and went outdoors,
finding by the family’s well a giant grapevine,
snaky tendrils and plump bunches hanging down
all gleaming in the dark.
It was a thing of wonder to behold,
like no tree the man had ever seen before.

He fondled the golden grapes,
then squeezed one between his aged fingers.
Juice splashed him in the eye,
and the thing in the well let loose tittering laughter.

It stretched a spindly arm forth,
flesh moon-pale and hanging wetly from the bone,
as it offered him a cup full of a liquid dark as blood.
“Drink me,” the strange brew whispered to Ikarios,
“for you are parched with thirst, and perishing.”

“Are you sure that you’re ready for this, faithful father?” Dionysos asks
as Ikarios adjusts his foxskin cap so the sun won’t scorch his bald pate red.

“I shall share your gifts far and wide
with all my fellow man, for everyone deserves
to drink the liquor of ecstasy.”

“Teach them moderation, for not all can endure the thunderstrike unscathed.”

But Ikarios is gone already, and does not hear him.

Dionysos turns back and joins dark-eyed and dark-haired Erigone
for the few hours she has left.

Some folks are complaining because I periodically scrub the content from my blog, particularly when I am about to start a new creative project. Contrary to their assertions I am not trying to hide anything, because 1) I am not a coward. Further, I stand by everything I have ever said even if I have completely changed my opinion on the matter. It is what I believed at the time or I would not have said it; this I neither deny nor feel the need to limit myself to, especially when I am constantly engaged in transforming my consciousness through drugs, art, ritual, meditation, austerities and indulgence, intentionally induced temporary insanity, etc. I have been so many people since I woke this morning, why on Earth would you assume I think the same things I did a decade ago? (Let alone remember them.) Nothing stands still. Everything dances, as Herakleitos averred. And 2) one of the cardinal rules of the internet is that anything posted to the internet will forever remain on the internet. My entire blog history is available through either the Wayback Machine or the site’s RSS feed. I am currently looking through some posts circa 2014 to trace back a thread that is only now emerging in my spiritual practice. Then why do I delete content? It is a clever mind-hack I picked up during my Zen Buddhist days. With no past to draw on, you have only this moment and all it contains to express, thus ensuring you produce the most authentic art. But go ahead and attribute malice to every little thing I do; better yet, state you are the reason I do it. That will not make you look vain and stupid, at all. I mean, it is not like I have been doing this over my entire career or anything. And you are, what? The pesky mosquito of the day? I swish you away with my horse hair whip, and go back to my studies. 

Talking with a friend, I said the following:

I saw it Monday, and we had the theater to ourselves. Every part of this movie is perfection – the direction, the cinematography, the music, and especially the acting. It’s a bleak, difficult to watch movie because of its accurate portrayal of mental illness and the general nastiness of humanity, but Joaquin’s performance alone is worth the admission. I’ve never seen so much communicated through so simple a gesture or glance. His pre-Joker clowning draws heavily on Charlie Chaplin, Marcel Marceau, Lindsay Kemp, etc. and when he finally transforms into the Joker it’s creaturey, androgynous and sublime. Don’t believe the hype – this movie fiercely resists being pigeonholed into the service of any ideology or political movement though everyone – inside the movie and out of it – attempts to do so anyway. Its only message is this is what a world without compassion looks like. Treat each other better.

According to WordPress, as of today I’ve been blogging here at the House of Vines for a full decade. (Which means Nysa Press is almost as old.) I was at Livejournal for a number of years before that (until the Russians scared everyone off) and previously maintained websites at Winterscapes, Bravenet, Angelfire and AOL. Before that there were the e-mail lists where I first met and started talking with other Hellenic polytheists, which eventually got absorbed by Yahoo Groups and then were largely killed off by Web 2.0 and social media. Prior to that I’d get out of junior high and hike over to my mom’s school, signing on via dial-up in the empty science lab next door while she taught art and history night classes to a bunch of juvenile delinquents. I spent my time looking up poetry and fanfic archives, which I printed out and later read at home while listening to Moby and Joy Division. Back then my greatest ambition was to finish my novel about a tragic werewolf shaman who was part of a mercenary team called the Riders on the Storm. Later I even dropped out of college to work on it, but it never got past 220 pages, most of which consisted of artsy monologues, extremely graphic sex and battle scenes, and long, random digressions on the political, cultural and religious institutions of the various populations I’d filled my world with. (I even invented a couple languages for them.) Before that Karl Edward Wagner, Robert E. Howard, Chris Claremont and Allen Ginsberg made me dream of one day becoming a writer myself. But it all began with my mother, reading me stories (everything from The Blackboard Bear to Dracula) and creating her own books for me, which she hand-wrote and illustrated, such as The Dragon Energy Powered Farm (about a single mom facing foreclosure until her son finds an egg which turns everything around; it was picked up and published by a small feminist press, though I haven’t been able to track down a copy) and The Monkey Did It (about my imaginary friend, Monkey, whom I blamed all my shenanigans on.)

The Martyrs are the Stars of Ariadne’s Crown. 

Day I. To Ariadne, Sleeping Beauty

Hail to you bull–betrothed Maiden of Knossos,
Ariadne the Sleeping Beauty who was coaxed back to life
when her green Master lifted the noose
from her oddly–angled neck
soft as a dove’s breast,
and filled her limbs with warm, moist, divine breath.
Her eyes opened like stars exploding in the heavens
and she rose to her feet
and danced herself into Thyiadic frenzy;
an ecstatic she roamed the woods at night,
hungry for flesh and for wine—
hail the Queen Bee, the Serpent Mother,
Leader of the Revels of the shaggy Goat Men’s chorus,
Ariadne the Chief Bacchant.

Day II. To Ariadne Frenzystirrer

I sing the praises of the Kore of Knossos,
the bare–breasted Queen who never let the bull go hungry,
whose dancing–ground winds round
like the web of a spider dangling from a tree,
her lips sweet with honey of frenzied bees,
slender hands familiar with the soft flesh of serpents
and the taut hide of a drum pounded in ecstasy
while the flames leap and thunder rumbles
in the distance. Ariadne who went mad on the island,
with only herself to keep her company.
Ariadne whom Dionysos loves above all others,
weird reflection of his wounded heart.

Day III. To Ariadne the Weaver

Hail Ariadne of the Red Thread,
Maiden wise and remorseful,
you who know the ecstasy
of the grape’s seduction
and unbearable grief at the loss
of your homeland and family.
Hail Ariadne of the Black Thread,
you who make your home
beneath the earth with the Dead
and climb the Tree to the high heavens
to speak with the blessed Immortals.
Proud in your sacred craft,
O Ariadne of the White Thread,
teller of the stories of the forgotten and despised,
keeper of the mysteries of holiness,
leader of the dance that brings release,
reader and spinner of the Golden Threads of Fate,
you who carry the Dead on your back
like a sac of eggs, so that they may rise up
and join us in the Feast of Flowers,
receiving their rightful share of the sacrifice
as you mate with the Bull King in the holy Ox-Shed.
Hail Ariadne, Mistress of the weblike Maze,
wearer of many Masks, hail and hail again
our Goddess of Sex, Death and Insanity, Starry Ariadne!

Day IV. To Ariadne the Mistress of the Labyrinth

For the Mistress of the Labyrinth, Honey

Hail to you radiant Ariadne, daughter of proud Minos
who sits in lordly judgment of those beneath the earth;
mad–eyed, serpent–hipped, hair swaying
like the white–capped waves that wash the sandy shores of Naxos
as your agile feet lead the Nymph–ridden Bacchants
in a wild dance through the hunting grounds of the Godly Bull,
fruit of an unspeakable union with a mortal Queen.
You whose fiery crown of ancestral Spirits shines
in the gloom of heaven, bride of freedom’s God,
and always by his side—hail Ariadne!

Day V. To Ariadne the Goddess of the Masque

Raise a glass in honor of the Mistress of the Feast
wine–loving and frenzied Goddess of wet grace
who revels with Nymphs in river–fed grottoes,
whose dancing feet excite the pulse of life in all creation,
who leads the wild beasts as they roam through primordial forests,
who laughs in the darkness and can bring to completion
with just a smile. Heart–render, tomb–haunter, hunger and fire
and the fathomless depths of the sea, maenadic Aphrodite
who wields the scourge of the mysteries, hail to thee Cyprian Ariadne
mortal of far-surpassing beauty who washed ashore a Goddess,
the fiery-crowned wife of Dionysos of Naxos.

Day VI. To Ariadne, Dancing Queen

Call to mind, O all–holy Ariadne,
my prayers and offerings of the past,
as you remembered the way out
of the winding passages of the Labyrinth.
You, crowned with stars and holding the thread of fate in your hand,
a hand that has wielded the ceremonial double axe,
sharp for cutting the throats of bulls so that the fields will be fruitful
and there will be wine and flowers to scatter on the altars of the Gods.
Queen of love and death, Mistress of the swarm
who delights in golden honey
and the Crane Dance and the serpents who know
the way down beneath the earth and how to rise up again.
Hail Ariadne, fulfilled on Naxos and leader of the maniac Hunters,
receive this bounty and cause to prosper
the house that honors you properly.

Day VII. To Ariadne, Granddaughter of the Sun

Ariadne whose tender feet know the dance
of those who desire the ecstatic embrace of the Deliverer
who comes from afar, wearing an unfamiliar face
and bearing unexpected gifts, gifts that tear open the heart
and free the mind of the shackles of past conditioning
so that one can kneel trembling in the presence of the holy Beloved.
Hear my prayers and help me to become a better vessel
for the pouring out of offerings that enrich
the land and the house that receives all
Gods who wander in the guise of suppliants.
As every act of yours was an act of devotion
—even the act of swinging from the Tree for the sins of your line—
never let me falter or lose sight of what and who I am devoted to.

 

Hail Ariadne Antheia!

I suppose you could substitute Greek for the supper, but why would you when Italian is obviously far superior? 

I’m just having fun with some triggered YSEEs on Twitter. Both cuisines are yummy, and truthfully you can offer the Martyrs anything that feels right. The important part is sharing a meal with our honored dead, and reflecting on their lives and sacrifices. Something you can do regardless of your race. 

Gardzienice, Euoi Bakchai
https://youtu.be/KR_SCOxWmas

Ancient Roman Music, Synaulia I
https://youtu.be/uJLXyBzMci0

Ancient Roman Music, Synaulia II
https://youtu.be/13_kRntszO4

Spaccanapoli, Vesuvio
https://youtu.be/zK8JI9wy05E

Music from Southern Italy recorded by Alan Lomax, Ballo del tamburo
https://youtu.be/Z3Qcb81iH_U

Music from Southern Italy recorded by Alan Lomax, La Pampanella
https://youtu.be/DSVnmz0MxSs

Johnny Cash, Redemption
https://youtu.be/4LCBl_IMEEU