The Grove of Dionysus

Follower of Dionysus Elutherios, the Liberator. May the god keep you wild and free. Asks are open, I do poetry requests, ritual requests, and will tell you anything I can about Dionysus and his cult.

[teafromthemicrowave]

Look whom I found at pride today

[fluffyplushiesworld]

Happy Pride Month Tumblr ✨

[perception-filter]

staring at the dessert menu and twirling my hair and going "should I be baaaaddd" until the autistic girl I'm eating with says "there is nothing bad about eating dessert. it is a morally neutral action"

[dionysiandevotee]

To Dionysus of Summer

(From when I was 17, please cut me some slack)

Oh Dionysus,

As you awaken on American shores,

bring your bright blessings

to young couples cavorting in backseats of cars.

wine flowing weed smoking

dancing trancing ecstatically

in the heat of the summer sun

and the light of the summer moon

[teawiththegods]

The Gods Are Queer!

Happy Pride Month!!🏳️‍🌈🏳️‍⚧️

[storm-of-feathers]

yeah yeah rainbow capitalism is bad and whatever but like. when I was a child, being pro gay was not the popular or lucrative choice. I'm happy that times have changed.

[storm-of-feathers]

I miss rainbow capitalism. I do. I miss when it felt like public opinion was still pro gay. I understand it was always an empty gesture, but it mattered in a sense of knowing how socially acceptable being queer is. If that makes sense.

[carriesthewind]

When I was in high school, I lived in a small progressive city in a spot of red. Our GSA threw everything into observing the Day of Silence, and blanketed the school in big, visible, bracelets for people to wear in support of their silent classmates.

On the bus one spring, on the Day of Silence, I overheard two girls talking about the fact that one of them was wearing a support bracelet. She said, "I don't actually support 'them', but, you know, it's basically socially suicide to say that."

And I was so, so glad. To know that I went to a school, in a place and a time, where people needed to conceal their hate, instead of needing to conceal their love.

[artandbeauty71]

EVERYONE LOOK!!

Baby Hermes w his turtle bestie🥹🥹🥹

[cosmicanger]

Shiraz Pictoral Rug

[longsightmyth]

I bring a real 'actually people who are pregnant do deserve some special consideration because they are effectively at least temporarily disabled if not permanently after some complications' vibe to the party that a lot of people don't seem to like

[wolfythewitch]

My piece for the Sing O Muse zine! Its coming out in July so keep an eye out for the tag :]

[ulises-aithon]

I adore the vividness and how colourful this piece is! Plus, the Homeric siren is such a nice touch for sure.

[tall]

[pagankaeleh]

East Slavic & Ashkenazi Folk Art 🐓

•East Slavic folk art - Russian Gorodets painting.

•Ashkenazi Jewish folk art from Eastern Europe, late 19th century.

–Pagankæ'leh 🌿

[ginandjack]

NE Botanical Gardens

Taken in 2023

[partywithponies]

Strange racists and homophobes on the internet seem to have access to an alternate way cooler version of TV than me. "every white character on TV is in an interracial relationship" "every show has a gay couple in it" "main characters keep having to secretly be bisexual and nonbinary" "every show has gratuitous full frontal nudity" like damn promise?? What channel???

[urlocalpyshcopan]

as a black gay person real like where y'all be finding this stuff pass the name

[brainsforbabyjesus]

for real though, those DO NOT WATCH OR YOU'LL CORRUPT YOUR CHILDREN lists put out by conservative christian family groups is where I find all the stellar tv shows. Like, shit I didn't know half of those existed, thanks for finding them for me, gonna go watch 30 hours of gay tv now!

[infamousbrad]

I think I know how this works.

For personal context, before I went to the '98 Burning Man festival, one of the things I'd read from a couple different journalists was that "everybody" runs around naked. Which, fine by me, I'd already spent a lot of time in clothing-optional spaces, I'm not fanatic about it but it's nice.

So I got there early and set up a public shade structure on one of Black Rock City's main roads and spent most of each afternoon just watching the crowds go by. I don't remember seeing more than one actually naked person the whole week. I think a topless woman passed by my intersection maybe every half an hour, sometimes once an hour. So why in the hell were people, normally pretty smart and observant writers, coming away with the impression that everybody was naked?

Then I remembered an unrelated passage from Joel Garreau's great book about the history of the outer-ring suburbs, Edge City. Mall developers told him flat-out that they tried to keep the crowds in their malls less than 5% black. Not because they themselves were racist, but because they had determined, experimentally, that if more than 5% of the people in the mall are black, the median white shopper will wrongly describe the mall as at least half black, as mostly black. And not a few of them would describe it, at 6% black, as a mall where "only black people go." Why?

Because, emotionally, they were still upset over the last one when the next one came into view.

Same as the journalists describing Black Rock City as all naked. Same as the right-wing religious culture warriors describing television as entirely mixed-race and gender non-conforming. Not because it's even vaguely true, we know that, but because they haven't gotten over their discomfort over the last one by the time the next one comes along. The anger, not the stimulus, is the part that's continuous, so their mind lies to them that it's "all" the thing they can't get over.

[kagedtiger]

Similar effect for the presence/proportion of women in things, by the way: https://health.howstuffworks.com/mental-health/human-nature/perception/how-17-equals-496-the-amazing-multiplying-women.htm

[jayalaw]

What’s the solution then? Or if there’s no solution, should we make things even queerer and more diverse?

[cultureunseen]

BLACK JEWS (…nuff said.)

[margravelucian]

after Nikolai Kalmakov

Dionysus and Elagabalus; gouache and paint marker on scrap paper. I'd like to do a big un of this. Kalmakov's original is a scrap painting as well, so I like the lineage. His depicts Dionysus and a very transy lookin Maenad so obviously, you know,

[thegodwhocums]

hello Lucian I was wondering if you might be up for sharing the kalmakov image you were inspired by? I have not been able to find it and I'd love to see them side by side 👯‍♂️

[winedarkgod]

1. holy shit OP I adore this artwork

2. thegodwhocums, I'm pretty sure this was the original the artist was referencing!

[thegodwhocums]

oh DAMN thank you!! they really are amazing side-by-side

[inkskinned]

Every day I handle more money than I will ever make. Every day.

At the start of my employment, my boss showed me videos of people stealing, and we both had a chuckle about it. How silly they were! There was a camera overhead, and it’s not to watch the shoppers. See, we can’t actually stop shoplifters. They get away with it maybe nine out of ten times. But we, who are watched and tallied and witnessed? We are always caught.

At first it was hard to hold one hundred dollars bills. An amount I had never seen before. An amount that didn’t exist in my household. It’s normal now. Here is something that is not for me.

“What the hell, I’ll take another,” says the man, pondering our 200 dollar watches. What the hell. Total comes to 580 and not even a flinch in his face. I have been working for 11 hours today and made only 110 dollars. It will go to my rent. Today I work for free, it feels. When I get my check, I will have 35 dollars left for food and saving.

The six hundreds he hands me go into the cash register. For a moment, I imagine having money. Then I put it away, counting out his change.

I know for a fact we sell our products for double what they are worth. That I could be making commission. That they could hand me those 580 dollars and change my life and not even mark the difference in their checkbooks. He’s not the only sale they make today, but I am the reason they made it. He’s not the only one spending 600 dollars, but if I hadn’t spent two hours with him telling me about his life, he wouldn’t have spent any. I go home. I don’t own a watch.

I have watched and rewatched a video on how to make salmon four ways. My shopping list is always the same. Pasta. Rice. Tuna. If I can afford butter it was a good week. I dream of the world I will never walk in, where I can throw the best fish fillet in the cart with a shrug. I hold hundreds in my hand and look up at the camera. I put them under the cash drawer.

I go to work. I scrap together my savings. I eat my bowl of rice slowly. My manager takes a paid week off from work just for his birthday. He owns a yacht. 

I’m not worth the cost of a watch.

[inkskinned]

i wrote this while i was working at orlando’s walt disney world parks.

i was part of their college program. i moved to the state for it. they legally owned the building i was living in and still charged me rent. i ostensibly was being charged to work for them. it was a 2 bedroom apartment and they placed 6 adult women in it in forced triples.

as many as one in ten disney employees have experienced homelessness while working for the company. despite huge efforts to unionize, strike, or otherwise demand fair treatment; disney has refused to increase employee quality of life.

disney admits publicly that a good portion of their success is because the employees (“cast members”) are dedicated, passionate, and selfless. this is never reflected in pay. even “face” characters (ie those that are princesses etc) make barely above a minimum wage.

at the time that i worked there, i made $8.50 an hour. at one point i was asked to create a human shield around a bag because a bomb dog had alerted to it. for eight fucking dollars an hour.

i now work a very cushy office job. i have bought the salmon and cooked it all four ways.

i go to the store. i am nice to the person behind the counter. she looks up at the camera while she counts out my change. there is nothing fundamentally different about her and i.

we are both worth more than the watch, anyway.