Orphic Hymn to Melinoë:

Μηλινόην καλέω, νύμφην χθονίαν, κροκόπεπλον,
ἣν παρὰ Κωκυτοῦ προχοαῖς ἐλοχεύσατο σεμνὴ
Φερσεφόνη λέκτροις ἱεροῖς Ζηνὸς Κρονίοιο
ᾗ ψευσθεὶς Πλούτων᾽ἐμίγη δολίαις ἀπάταισι,
θυμῷ Φερσεφόνης δὲ διδώματον ἔσπασε χροιήν,
ἣ θνητοὺς μαίνει φαντάσμασιν ἠερίοισιν,
ἀλλοκότοις ἰδέαις μορφῆς τὐπον έκκπροφανοῦσα,
ἀλλοτε μὲν προφανής, ποτὲ δὲ σκοτόεσσα, νυχαυγής,
ἀνταίαις ἐφόδοισι κατὰ ζοφοειδέα νύκτα.
ἀλλἀ, θεά, λίτομαί σε, καταχθονίων Βασίλεια,
ψυχῆς ἐκπέμπειν οἶστρον ἐπὶ τέρματα γαίης,
εὐμενὲς εὐίερον μύσταις φαίνουσα πρόσωπον.

I call upon Melinoë, saffron-cloaked nymph of the earth,
To whom august Persephone gave birth by the mouth of the Kokytos,
Upon the sacred bed of Kronian Zeus
He lied to Plouton and through treachery mated with Persephone,
Whose skin when she was pregnant he mangled in anger.
She drives mortals to madness with her airy phantoms,
As she appears in weird shapes and forms,
Now plain to the eye, now shadowy, now shining in the darkness,
And all this in hostile encounters in the gloom of night.
But, goddess and queen of those below, I beseech you,
To banish the soul’s frenzy to the ends of the earth,
and show a kindly and holy face to the initiates.

Theoi.com explains her name as Dark Mind (melas noos) or Propitiating Mind (meilia noos) and goes on to say:

Melinoë was a frightful underworld Goddess who presided over the propitiations offered to the ghosts of the dead. She wandered the earth at night with a retinue of ghosts, striking fear into the hearts of mankind. Her limbs were black on one side of her body and white on the other, revealing her dual chthonian and heavenly aspects. The word meilia, which forms the first part of her name, was often used to describe propitiatory offerings made to the ghosts of the dead. Melinoe was probably an Orphic title for the goddess Hekate, who was sometimes named as a daughter of Zeus and Persephone.

Wikipedia goes a little more in depth:

Melinoë is the daughter of Persephone, who was visited by Zeus disguised as her husband Plouton (Pluto). Although the wording of the hymn is unclear at this point, Pluto (or perhaps Zeus) becomes angry upon learning of the pregnancy and rends her flesh. The figure called Zeus Chthonios in the Orphic Hymns is either another name for Pluto, or Zeus in a chthonic aspect. Melinoë is born at the mouth of the Cocytus, one of the rivers of the underworld, where Hermes in his underworld aspect as psychopomp was stationed. In the Orphic tradition, the Cocytus is one of four underworld rivers. Melinoë’s connections to Hecate and Hermes suggest that she exercised her power in the realm of the soul’s passage, and in that function may be compared to the torchbearer Eubouleos in the mysteries. According to the hymn, she brings night terrors to mortals by manifesting in strange forms, “now plain to the eye, now shadowy, now shining in the darkness,” and can drive mortals insane. The purpose of the hymn is to placate her by showing that the Orphic initiate understands and respects her nature, thereby averting the harm she has the capacity for causing.

The translation of Thomas Taylor (1887) has given rise to a conception of Melinoë as half-black, half-white, representing the duality of the heavenly Zeus and the infernal Pluto. This had been the interpretation of Gottfried Hermann in his annotated text of the hymns in 1805. This duality may be implicit, like the explanation offered by Servius for why the poplar leaf has a light and dark side to represent Leuke (“White”), a nymph loved by Pluto. The Orphic text poses interpretational challenges for translators in this passage. Melinoë appears on a bronze tablet for use in the kind of private ritual usually known as “magic”. The style of Greek letters on the tablet, which was discovered at Pergamon, dates it to the first half of the 3rd century AD. The use of bronze was probably intended to drive away malevolent spirits and to protect the practitioner. The construction of the tablet suggests that it was used for divination. It is triangular in shape, with a hole in the center, presumably for suspending it over a surface. The content of the triangular tablet reiterates triplicity. It depicts three crowned goddesses, each with her head pointing into an angle and her feet pointing toward the center. The name of the goddess appears above her head: Dione (ΔΙΟΝΗ), Phoebe (ΦΟΙΒΙΗ), and the obscure Nyche (ΝΥΧΙΗ). Amibousa, a word referring to the phases of the moon, is written under each goddess’s feet. Densely inscribed spells frame each goddess: the inscriptions around Dione and Nyche are voces magicae, incantatory syllables (“magic words”) that are mostly untranslatable. Melinoë appears in a triple invocation that is part of the inscription around Phoebe: O Persephone, O Melinoë, O Leucophryne. Esoteric symbols are inscribed on the edges of the triangle.

Technically Amibousa means She Who Changes.

Last night Dver and I celebrated Skeneia which is a banquet in honor of Persephone and Chthonic Dionysos. It doesn’t normally fall on November 1st but because of some last minute calendrical juggling it ended up doing so this year. Doing so totally changed the feel of the festival but I think that for this year, at least, it worked.

We packed up our fare (consisting of wine, root vegetables and assorted other foods that were black or red) and processed down to one of the parks where we’ve observed Anthesteria in years past. (One year we discovered that the interesting tree we’d hung the dolls from just so happened to be one of the trees said to grow in the underworld.) We found a secluded area with a cool wall we used as an eschara and laid out the feast, which I must say Dver arranged gorgeously. After the ritual was over we hailed Dionysos and his dead and began a wandering procession down a magical alley …

… and many magical things happened.

It would strain your credulity were I to list all of them, but one marvel I will indeed share!

After leading the troop of Bacchic spirits in a rough circle round the heart of downtown, Dver and I stopped to discuss which of two ways to go when the matter was decided for us. A horde of dancing zombies came out of nowhere, encircled us and proceeded to boogie down to Michael Jackson’s Thriller which was blaring from a boombox one of them was carrying. “Time to put on your mask,” Dver said and I slid Harlequin‘s leather face down over mine and we lead a furious host, visible and invisible, to Kesey Square.

I also bought a bottle of Sambuca and I’ll be offering some to Melinoë later tonight, then doing so each month on the 28th. Not sure why, but I’m really feeling like I should take up her cultus. Had a really powerful encounter with her while doing some synched ritual with Galina on Halloween, and it’s continued since. Earlier tonight, for instance, in the middle of dinner I was hit with this strong compulsion to get a pale liqueur for her and the dead and bonus points if it was Italian.

So, yeah. Crazy couple of weeks, let me tell you.

I went to the park earlier to clear my head and possibly do some devotional writing. So I’m sitting there having a cigarette and thinking about how Melinoë fits into my evolving cosmology when a couple of homeless teens approach the nearby pylon and start to graffiti it. At first I thought they were just taggers but later as I passed by it on my way out of the park I saw that they had left a lovely image of a phoenix bird encircled by flame in saffron-hued spray-paint.

A couple hours later I’m doing some reading and come across an interesting passage (4.35-36) from Hippolytos’ Philosophumena:

Nor shall I be silent about their lecanomancy which is an imposture. For, making a closed chamber, and anointing the ceiling with cyanus for present use, they introduce certain vessels of cyanus, and stretch them upwards. The cauldron, however, full of water, is placed in the middle on the ground; and the reflection of the cyanus falling upon it presents the appearance of heaven. They have made a certain opening in the floor and set over this the cauldron which has a glass top and a stone bottom. And underneath there is a secret chamber in which hide the assistants who put on the costumes of whatever god or demon the magician wishes to display. Seeing this, the dupe becomes astonished and subsequently believes whatever the magician tells him to be true.

And this is how the magician produces the burning demon. First he traces on the wall the figure of whoever he wishes to make appear and then secretly anoints it with a drug compounded in this way … with Laconian and Zacynthian bitumen. Then, as if under the influence of prophetic frenzy, he moves the lamp towards the wall and the drug is ignited and burns with considerable splendour.

And this is how he makes a fiery Hekate appear to fly through the air. Concealing a certain accomplice in a place which he wishes, and taking aside his dupes, he persuades them to believe what he is about to show them and further exhorts them to keep their eyes fixed until they see the flame in the air. After having given them these instructions, he, on a moonless night, in verses speaks thus:-

Infernal and earthly and heavenly Bombo, come!
Goddess of waysides, of cross-roads, lightbearer, nightwalker,
hater of the light, lover and companion of the night,
who rejoicest in the baying of hounds and in purple blood;
who dost stalk among corpses and the tombs of the dead
thirsty for blood, who bringest fear to mortals
Gorgo and Mormo and Mene and many-formed one.
Come thou propitious to our libations!

While he is speaking fire is seen borne through the air and the spectators, terrified by the strangeness of the sight, cover their eyes and cast themselves in silence on the earth.

But the success of the artifice is enhanced by the following contrivance. The accomplice whom I have spoken of as being concealed underneath the cauldron, when he hears the appropriate line of the incantation holds up a kite or hawk, sets fire to it and then releases it. The bird, however, frightened by the flame, is borne aloft, and makes a proportionably quicker flight. The deluded persons conceal themselves in fright and throw themselves down to the ground as if they were beholding something divine. The winged creature, however, being whirled round by the fire, is borne whithersoever chance may have it, and burns now the houses, and now the courtyards. Such is the prescience of the magicians.

Not only do I take this to be a pretty clear sign that I’m on the right track (not just with regard to Melinoë but all the stuff I’ve been getting about fire and baptism lately) it reminds me of a section from the Derveni Papyrus I was reading a couple nights back:

… Erinyes … of the Erinyes … they honor … are souls … funeral libations in droplets … bring honor … for each something birdlike … fitted to the music … (Col. 2)

Maiden with dark and light eyes,
mistress of many shapes and many wiles
- you were born from grief
and so know how to guide souls
through the winding maze of pain and madness.
You care for those whom others forget,
those who perished before their time or unjustly,
who were too poor or too unloved
to have the proper burial rites performed,
those whose rage and hunger were stronger than dirt
- these you call to you by name,
though all the world soon forgets they once even existed.
Through nightmare landscapes you lead them, ravening and deranged
until some pious soul sets out a feast,
burns candles and prays soothing words
for the restless dead of Melinoë.

The other night I woke up screaming, drenched in fear sweat.

I had been dreaming that I was at the Hellenic Revival Gathering, hanging out under the shade of a bald cypress tree having a smoke while someone from Elaion in a store-bought “Greek princess” costume was woodenly reading the Thomas Taylor translation of the Orphic Hymn to Melinoë. Then all of a sudden a pack of giant, carnivorous possums emerged from the swamp and began mauling the participants.

Now I am nothing if not a superstitious man, so even before I managed to gather my wits I hopped online and shot Monte a hasty and incoherently rambling e-mail explaining that I was no longer able to attend the event.

I wish him and everyone who’s still planning to go unfettered success and hope that people use this as an opportunity to forge strong friendships and a vital and deeply engaged religious community off the internet.

I … I just can’t be there for it. All of that blood and shrieking – it haunts me still to this day.

The word I couldn’t remember last night was orphninos:

ὄρφνῐνος, “dusky dark”: a color created through the mixture of black, red, and white. Pl.Ti.68c, cf. Duris 31 J.; put by X. between πορφύρεος and φοινίκινος, Cyr.8.3.3:—the form ὄρφνιος occurs in Arist.Col. 792a27, 794b5, Plu.2.565c, but is prob. corrupt.

There’s another instance of this word, not cited in the above, and a fairly significant one indeed – Orphic Argonautika 122ff.

Thankfully Jason Colavito has placed his translation online so I was able to track it down:

After I came to the enclosures and the sacred place, I dug a three-sided pit in some flat ground. I quickly brought some trunks of juniper, dry cedar, prickly boxthorn and weeping black poplars, and in the pit I made a pyre of them. Skilled Medea brought to me many drugs, taking them from the innermost part of a chest smelling of incense. At once, I fashioned certain images from barley-meal [the text is corrupt here]. I threw them onto the pyre, and as a sacrifice to honor the dead, I killed three black puppies. I mixed with their blood copper sulfate, soapwort, a sprig of safflower, and in addition odorless fleawort, red alkanet, and bronze-plant. After this, I filled the bellies of the puppies with this mixture and placed them on the wood. Then I mixed the bowels with water and poured the mixture around the pit. Dressed in a black mantle, I sounded bronze cymbals and made my prayer to the Furies. They heard me quickly, and breaking forth from the caverns of the gloomy abyss, Tisiphone, Allecto, and divine Megaira arrived, brandishing the light of death in their dry pine torches. Suddenly the pit blazed up, and the deadly fire crackled, and the unclean flame sent high its smoke. At once, on the far side of the fire, the terrible, fearful, savage goddesses arose. One had a body of iron. The dead call her Pandora. With her came one who takes on various shapes, having three heads, a deadly monster you do not wish to know: Hecate of Tartarus. From her left shoulder leapt a horse with a long mane. On her right should there could be seen a dog with a maddened face. The middle head had the shape of a lion [or snake] of wild form. In her hand she held a well-hilted sword. Pandora and Hecate circled the pit, moving this way and that, and the Furies leapt with them. Suddenly the wooden guardian statue of Artemis dropped its torches from its hands and raised its eyes to heaven. Her canine companions fawned. The bolts of the silver bars were loosened, and the beautiful gates of the thick walls opened; and the sacred grove within came into view. I crossed the threshold.

WordPress says that this is my 3,000th post so I figured I ought to make it an auspicious one.

Here’s my latest project – a collection of sources on the Bacchic Orphic tradition:

https://smokywords.wordpress.com/

I’ll be fleshing it out over the next couple weeks, but the core of the material is there.

To give expression to this tradition I am founding a cult called the thiasos of the Starry Bull. Who wants to join?

MadGastronomer has composed some absolutely gorgeous cult-hymns for the gods and spirits of the thiasos of the Starry Bull which I highly recommend you check out. She also has the interesting suggestion of including Hekate as part of the pantheon. This is the second time that someone has made this proposal and I think it’s a sound one for the reasons she suggests and several others including Hekate’s extended relationships with Hermes and Melinoë. The only reason I hadn’t initially was because I wanted each deity to receive their own day. However, since she fits right in and there is a clear desire to engage with her in this capacity plus the Nymphai and Satyroi are already partnered up - why not? Henceforth Hekate should officially be considered part of this with her day of honor being Wednesday, alongside Hermes. Additionally I’ve felt that Aphrodite should be included too – particularly in light of her prominence in Locri Epizephyrii, a city in Southern Italy which informs our understanding of Persephone far more than Eleusis does. Aphrodite may be honored alongside Ariadne on Tuesdays.

I call upon Melinoë, saffron-cloaked nymph of the earth,
To whom august Persephone gave birth by the mouth of the Kokytos,
Upon the sacred bed of Kronian Zeus.

He lied to Plouton and through treachery mated with Persephone,
Whose skin when she was pregnant he mangled in anger.

She drives mortals to madness with her airy phantoms,
As she appears in weird shapes and forms.

Now plain to the eye, now shadowy, now shining in the darkness,
And all this in hostile encounters in the gloom of night.

But, goddess and queen of those below, I beseech you,
To banish the soul’s frenzy to the ends of the earth,
and show a kindly and holy face to the initiates.

One of the things that’s most bothered me about what I’ve been reading since the Kenny Klein story broke is how often the sufferers of abuse in our communities have been deprived of their voice. People refused to hear them, told them that they were lying or crazy, told them to keep quiet because it would make their group or paganism at large look bad, told them to forget and get over it.

This really fucking offends my innate sense of justice – but it also troubles me as a devotee of the goddess Melinoë who was conceived when Zeus disguised himself as Haides and violently raped his daughter Persephone, mangling her flesh in the process. The wound grew into rage and that rage became personified as Melinoë who was transformed from a wrathful Fury into a gentle goddess when Dionysos Eubouleos was willing to sit and listen to her tell her story, as he had listened and thereby soothed the vengeful anger of Hephaistos when no one else would. Subsequently Melinoë became a fierce protector of his initiates as well as the rejected and forgotten dead, which is why she is honored among the pantheon of the thiasos of the Starry Bull.

Neither Dionysos nor Melinoë would care for how far too many in our overlapping communities have been treated for far, far too long.

So I was thinking about all of this when Pete Helms, in a very Aresian gesture, approached Galina and I, writing:

I had a thought about Wyrd Ways; I know it’s not your normal thing, but I thought it may be a good idea to do a show about the issues with the sex crimes, etc that are mulling through things. Maybe have a prayer vigil for the victims perhaps? It may seem a little heavier than the normal topics (not that they’re shallow, but usually less in the dark side), but I think it could be good for some folks. Maybe instead of focusing on the predators, you can focus on helping and healing victims. Just a thought.

I knew, even before I finished reading, that we had to make this happen.

Unfortunately we already had a wonderful guest slated for Wednesday’s show, Sarenth Odinsson who:

is a Northern Tradition shaman and priest of Odin and Anubis. He has written as well as edited articles for RendingtheVeil.com, an occult ezine, and has been published in Witches and Pagans magazine. His passions include writing, reading, drawing, martial arts, spirituality, and sustainable living. He holds an Associate’s in Graphic Communication, and is enrolled at Eastern Michigan University for his Bachelor’s in Psychology. He can be contacted through his blog at sarenth.wordpress.com.

So I considered doing it for the next show which would give us two weeks to prepare but then I got a strong sense that NO this had to be done now.

Fuck.

I contacted Sarenth asking if he’d mind getting bumped and explaining what we intended to do for the show on April 2nd and he asked if he could get in on it. As a youth minister and father the news that’s been coming out of the pagan community over the last couple days hit him hard and he wanted to do something to help. He’s writing a series of prayers that will be read at the end of the show asking for Frigga’s blessing on the children, for Tyr and Angrboda to bring justice to all and for Niðogg’s help removing the poison from us and to teach us to take the poison out of our own roots. And for the rest of it we’ll simply provide space for survivors to share their experiences and be heard.

The show starts at 10:00pm EST and will go for an extended hour and a half. You may call in at 347-308-8222 to tell your story directly or you may e-mail it to me at sannion@gmail.com before 9:00pm EST and one of us will read it on the air for you.

And everyone else will listen.

We may not be able to do much more, but we can at least do that.

We’ll have Sarenth back on in the summer as a regular guest. I would like to thank him for doing this with Galina and I and I would also like to thank Pete Helms for listening to the promptings of his heart and contacting us with this beautiful, powerful idea.

Please help get the word out about this. I’d like as many people as possible to know about this before the show on Wednesday so that they can participate if they feel so moved.

I am really enjoying the contributions you guys have made to our communal hymns and so I’ve decided to extend the deadline for another week to see what else materializes. Once they’re finished I’m planning to put them together into a little booklet, along with some hymns of my own composition which I’ll be writing especially for this and won’t publish anywhere else. I’ll also put together a wall calendar with all of the noumenias, festivals and holy days of the thiasos calculated through 2014 and sell them together as a package. To keep the costs down you’ll just be paying the production price and shipping. So anyone who’s interested in this drop me a line at sannion@gmail.com and I’ll put you on the list.

UPDATE: Because of a generous donation the Starry Bull hymnal and wall calendar set is being offered FREE to anyone who wants them. For details click here.

We have our next online chat scheduled for tomorrow at 10:00pm EST and since we had awful technical glitches with Google we’ll be moving to WebEx instead. I’ll post more precise details about how to participate tomorrow. This chat will be more formally structured with the first hour devoted to socializing and the sharing of concerns and our personal practice. For the second hour we’ll begin a series of discussions on the gods and spirits of our pantheon with Melinoë.

We’ll also officially be starting our Starry Bull Book Club with a reading of Euripides’ Bakchai. I’ll post some decent translations, study questions and other resources tomorrow.

Maiden with dark and light eyes,
mistress of many shapes and many wiles
– you were born from grief
and so know how to guide souls
through the winding maze of pain and madness.
You care for those whom others forget,
those who perished before their time or unjustly,
who were too poor or too unloved
to have the proper burial rites performed,
those whose rage and hunger were stronger than dirt
– these you call to you by name,
though all the world soon forgets they once even existed.
Through nightmare landscapes you lead them, ravening and deranged
until some pious soul sets out a feast,
burns candles and prays soothing words
for the restless dead of Melinoë.

And in a pattern that I’m no longer even questioning, an insight about Herakles was accompanied by an insight about Kronos.

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.

Well, last night I was reading through Porphyry’s On the Cave of the Nymphs which 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

There’s been a lot going on behind the scenes with the Polytheist Leadership Conference which has resulted in me having to substantially revise the schedule – including one of our presenters dropping out and a couple others informing me that there’s a distinct possibility they may not be able to attend. Though I was originally just going to help organize this thing I’ve decided to do a presentation myself instead of scrambling to get someone else last minute. I came up with a couple ideas but am having difficulty deciding which to go with and so, dear readers, could really use your input, regardless of whether you’re going to be there or not.

Here are the topics I’m considering:

* More than a decade: a people’s history of the Hellenic polytheist revival (an exhaustive account of the movement from the 1920s on)

* Everything you think you know about Orphism is wrong: an introduction to the thiasos of the Starry Bull (a mix of debunking common misconceptions about the tradition and what I’m trying to do with my cult)

* Polytheism is about more than just honoring the gods (advocating for the veneration of land-spirits, daimones, heroes, ancestors, cosmic powers and other members of our respective pantheons)

* It takes a village: moving beyond a laity and leaders communal model (i.e. everyone has something to contribute – and an obligation to)

* Mantike: on the difference between diviners and oracles and why both are necessary to our communities

* The pen is the mightiest weapon of all: how self-publishing has changed the face of our communities for good

* Reconstructionism without ekstasis is a barren field (arguing for a balanced approach to religion)

* Melinoë the changeable one (an introduction to a little known goddess)

Unfortunately because of this and having to take on some responsibilities I thought I was going to get away with delegating to others I’m not going to be able to manage hosting the off-site ecstatic ritual for Dionysos Eubouleos. I’m a little disappointed as this was going to be the official début of the Starry Bull thiasos but that’ll just have to wait for our gathering in 2015.

However, if folks are interested perhaps we can do a proper Bacchic symposion at the Conference, especially if someone’s willing to volunteer their room for a couple hours.

I’ll also be doing a bunch of in person divination and spiritual work for people so if this is something you’re interested in contact me and we’ll set something up.

So, I was reading Jack Faust’s post These dialogues are riddled with hostility, and generally divisive overall, and specifically this paragraph:

What happens when we ignore the purificatory functions of ecstasy? What happens when we forget that Dionysos is not merely a god of ecstasy, but also of liberation – both temporally during life* – and after death? What happens when we pre-suppose a God associated with the arts, the Muses, and an ecstatic oracular center (the Delphic Oracle) is composed of ‘cool rationality’? What happens when we forget that Apollo had ecstatic cults associated with him, such as the Hirpi Sorani? What happens when you ask inapt questions rather than read, say, the Orphic Hymns or translations of Orphic tablets and gold-leaf inscriptions and try to formulate an idea about the over-arching cosmology in which the cultists themselves felt they lived, and the literary bricollage which inherently aided them in their spiritual tasks?

When it struck me: we need to write a communal prayer to Apollo Soranos!

We invited him into the pantheon and even set aside a day to venerate him as part of the weekly cycle of devotions but unlike everyone else on that list he doesn’t have a communal prayer.

That’s just rude.

And while we’re at it we should come up with one for Melinoë since she was added to Mondays alongside her mother.

And if you want to contribute individual pieces for individual divinities that’s cool too. At the moment the prayer pages are kind of bare.

A while back I suggested that we should come up with a collaborative hymn for Melinoë. Madgastronomer kicked things off with these lines:

I pray to Melinoe
She of the double nature
The light in the darkness and the dark in the light
I pray to Melinoe of the Starry Bull

What will you add?

Maiden with dark and light eyes,
mistress of many shapes and many wiles
– you were born from grief
and so know how to guide souls
through the winding maze of pain and madness.
You care for those whom others forget,
those who perished before their time or unjustly,
who were too poor or too unloved
to have the proper burial rites performed,
those whose rage and hunger were stronger than dirt
– these you call to you by name,
though all the world soon forgets they once even existed.
Through nightmare landscapes you lead them, ravening and deranged
until some pious soul sets out a feast,
burns candles and prays soothing words
for the restless dead of Melinoë.

Now you should go add something to the communal hymn.

Picture by Jessica Laurel Louise Dalva, taken from here.

Hymn taken from Heart of the Labyrinth.

Melinoë could use her hymn completed as well.