My goal towards festival recon is… largely recon, but there’s so little preserved about the what and why (particularly if it’s not from Athens, when we know there was a huge diversity of cultus). So, I try to take the main things we know and extrapolate from there into something cohesive.
No surprise there, “anthos” meaning flowers. I live in a Mediterranean climate and the last week or two there’s been blooms everywhere, with the promise of more. Cherry blossoms. Wild flowers. Snow drops.
There are plenty “first of spring” holidays around this time, but that is much more tied to Persephone and Demeter (though there is some Orphic mystery-cult lore about Dionysos being Persephone’s son, but that’s too esoteric for me). What instead I celebrate is the promise of coming spring. There are blooms, but nothing is really living. It’s gloomy, foggy, cold, and perennial crops (including grape vines) are cold and skeletal.
Wine-making ain’t what it was a couple thousand years ago. Then, last year’s vintage would be ready about now, but wines now typically age for years and there’s no set annual cycle. Beer and spirits can be crafted any time.
This is, to me, the celebration of last year’s plenty, in the trust that new harvest and cultivation will come again.
I’m unsure how to categorize that. The idea that the miasmic dead haunt us in a very Halloween-y way, during Anthesteria. They come to drink, to celebrate with their descendents, and be feasted before returning by Hermes Cthonic to Hades.
Why are the undead stomping around? How can this relate to Dionysos? He’s a divine of all three realms — born of a mortal mother, lifted to Olympos, and descended to Hades. Well… let’s move on a moment.
Heiros Gamos / Divine Marriage
Several Dionysian festivals have a secret rite performed “on behalf” of everyone else, to invite his blessings on the polis and land. In Athens, it was the ritual marriage of the archon’s wife to the god. Why? What blessings of Dionysos are needed?
I would argue that it’s fertility, specifically for the land but also for animals. Demeter is the goddess of agriculture and pastoral lands, but Dionysos a god of tamed wildness and transformation.
It is the marriage of the divine, to the dead earth, via a mortal.
There’s also a lot of versions, for such a short myth. The one I’m using is:
Ariadne helps Theseus navigate the Labyrinth, but is abandoned on Dia for her trouble. Brokenhearted, she drowns herself, and Dionysos raises her from the dead. Giving his consent, Zeus makes Ariadne deathless and she sits as Dionysos’ bride, crowned in the Cronos constellation.
The wine-creation myth, always Dionysos-appropriate
In return for his hospitality and for love of his daughter, Dionysos gifts Erigone’s father with the knowledge of wine. He makes it. All the townspeople think they’ve been poisoned, and they butcher him. Erigone hangs herself in grief. Dionysos unleashes his wrath upon the people of Athens, until they honour Erigone and her father and establish Dionysos’ cult of wine.
Seleme was Zeus’ lover and tricked by her pride to ask to see his true form. She was incinerated, naturally. Once Dionysos reached adulthood, he traveled through Hades to reclaim his mother and bring her back to Olympos, as Thyone, to reign with him and Zeus.
These three myths all have a common theme: death, before divinity. Something terrible happens, which is remedied by Dionysos in a massive personal and communal transformation. They also all happen to be women. Ariadne is the natural focus for a divine marriage, being Dionysos’ wife, if you’re uncomfortable invoking and playing that part.
Traditionally three days, Pithoigia (Jar-Opening), Khoes (Cups), and Chytroi (Pots). Condense into two, one, or celebrate all three.
Traditionally, opening last year’s vintage, drinking, and sharing it with children and family. Like other Dionysos festivals, social order breaks down — slaves celebrate with masters, prisoners released from jail.
While the rest of the populous continues to celebrate (Athens, in particular, celebrated a myth of Orestes and drank in silence), a sect performs the heiros gamos on behalf of the rest. Lots of fertility rites and symbols throughout the polis, including phallus, sex workers, satyrs, orgies, and penis-shaped cakes.
Due to the increasing miasma, cover shrines to hide from it.
After celebrating the ancestors and feeding them with cooked and honeyed grains, entreat Hermes to guide them back to Hades. Dionysos has brought them up, but his journey is one-way.
This is the day to honour Erigone and her father, particularly, but other deaths before transcendence. Tonight, Dionysos has accepted the offered heiros gamos (either by Ariande or a mortal woman), and is the God Who Comes.
I’m actually gonna honour it today, tomorrow, and the next — February 14 to 16. Not least of all because of Valentine’s Day.
I don’t have new wine to open, but I do still have the bottle of champagne that the realtor gave me and my husband when we bought the house. We don’t like champagne, normally, but the symbol is too good. We’ll open it to start drinking tonight.
During the day, I’ll decorate the altar with flowers and drink some in celebration. Also, feasting. That’s a festival thing, I think. We’re going to the same restaurant we went to for our wedding — a Brazillian steak house, so basically all-you-can-eat good steak. I’ll order wine with dinner. We’ll keep celebrating love/fertility/Valentine’s at home, complete with chocolate, alcohol, and sex.
I don’t yet know if I can do heiros gamos sincerely. Probably won’t know until I’m doing it. If I decide I can’t, I’ll tell the story in ritual and leave off with Ariadne, alone and abandoned in Hades, and ask Dionysos to come to her. Might even try to make a penis-shaped cake, or something sexy, but this day and Day 1 are probably going to blend together.
Cover shrines, and honour ancestors and heroes. Honour the half-dead world of contradictions — cold earth, green leaves, pink flowers. I don’t know where I read it, but I love the offering of giving Hermes an energy bar, because the idea is to give food to Hermes and the dead to give them energy on the hard trip back.
Once they leave, meditate on Dionysos returning as a stranger in the night and rising Ariande and Semele from the underworld. Mortal, and dead, and divine. Once he has accepted the marriage, I’ll finish the champagne with him in celebration.
How’re you celebrating Anthesteria this year? What’s your favourite Dionysian festival?
