from Roberto Calasso, "The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony," trans. Tim Parks
[tw below for suicide and animal death]
Bursting with youth, his Bacchants buzzing all around him… Dionysus did something no one would ever forget: he had revealed the secret of wine to man. Behind him he was leaving an extraordinary new drink…
and the body of another abandoned girl.
Of all the women who ascended to the heavens, Erigone was the poorest, the one we know least about. They called her Atletis: the wanderer, the roving spirit, the beggar.
Dionysus had turned up in disguise, in the house of an old Attican gardener, lcarius, who lived with his daughter Erigone and loved to plant new types of trees. His house was a poor one. All the same, he welcomed the Stranger…
And in payment, Dionysus revealed to him, "as a reward for his fair-mindedness and devotion," something that no one had ever known before: wine.
And now Erigone was pouring cup after cup of the new drink for her father. Icarius felt good. Then Dionysus explained that this new drink was perhaps even more powerful than the bread Demeter had revealed to other farmers…
because it could both wake a man up and put him to sleep, dissolve the pains that afflicted the heart and make them liquid and fleeting…
Now it was lcarius's job to pass this revelation on to others…
But Icarius was betrayed by his men, who thought that he had poisoned them with the strange new drink. They slaughtered him, and put his body down a well…
The dog, Maera, wanted to take Erigone somewhere. He led her to a well beneath a big tree … where they had thrown Icarius's body.
Erigone buried him.
Then she climbed high into the tree and hanged herself. The dog stayed there to watch over the two bodies and starved himself to death.
Attica was soon in the thrall of an extraordinary epidemic of suicides; in Athens young girls began to hang themselves for no apparent reason.
Apollo's oracle proposed a remedy: they must introduce a ceremony in honor of the peasant's daughter to be found hanging from a branch of the big tree above the well. In the middle of the ceremony was a swing.
Then
dolls and masks were hung on trees, to sway back and forth in the wind.
...
The tree where Erigone's body was to remain hanging is not just large, it is immense : it covers the whole earth, and its branches stretch away among the constellations.
In the sky,
Erigone holds an ear of corn in her hand.
She has rejected a bunch of those grapes
that brought death to her father
and herself. lcarius's last words were
"The sweet [Dionysus] is Erigone's enemy."
That hanged orphan reminds us of the death that is not assimilated back into life, the death that wanders about continually in the air,
with the spirits of the dead,
the dolls and masks hung from a tree.
Calasso writes, The secret of wine had been revealed in Attica by Dionysus, to common people, but that day was to be commemorated only by a ceremony with masks, dolls, and swings. There was something very obscure about the whole business, and the ritual commemoration suggested an aura of playfulness at once childish and sinister.
Today’s Tarot card of the day: Knight of Swords 🗡, reversed
Today’s Tarot brings us a warning about how and why we break with something. Be careful with how you express it—your words may be sharp as knives. Also, beware of the reasons for turning your back on something or someone, since, even if it is inevitable, it is important we do this mindfully, intentionally. Finally, if someone unceremoniously walks out on you, even if you find it impulsive or somewhat thoughtless, let them go. If the reasons are wrong, they will realize it later. If the reasons are right, you will realize it later. Action and conscious thought will flow like lightning and thunder these days, so be wary. Blessed be!
For an abandoned story project, I came up with other titles for this local cultus of Aphrodite, properly known as Venice Reconstituted by the artist Rip Cronk
Today’s playing cards card of the day : 2 of Spades ♠️
Today’s card is about rupture, perhaps loss. Something breaks, and it is up to us to handle the aftermath. The astrological climate surrounding this Virgo Super Snow Moon precisely have the end of a chapter as their theme, and since the Full Moon proper hits at the beginning degrees and of the Sun in Pisces with Mercury entering its shadow in the same sign, logic and communication are not exactly at their peak right now. However, we have something much more arcane and powerful in their stead: intuition and spiritual power. We are walking into a time of grand, intuitive lessons, and the path will clear itself to make it possible. My advice? Embrace it, especially if it makes little sense at the moment. Two swords can clear out thickets of leaves, mark an entrance or exit, and defend us from whatever may stand in our way. That is the point of this break. Ashè!
I do not consider myself a light worker . I belong to the shadows. Particularly, the darkness of the most profound veins under the Earth. Some souls are like rivers; others, like lakes. Some are little more than puddles. My soul is an ocean—and I have become very proficient at deep dives. Often times, light is nice, but just as often it can be uncomfortable and annoying, not to mention violent. I think of fires, both in forests and of war. Many have been slain in the name of the light.
.
My path is gray, but leans far harder toward darkness. I am comforting like a New Moon night with only sparkles of stars to punctuate the penumbra. I am soothing like the shadows under trees on warm, placid days. And I look at monsters in the eye because people’s obsession with light has often turned them into refugees in the realm of Hades. The Dark Father knows me well, at this point, my folds of shadows interwoven with the smells of myrrh, lavender, cinnamon and mint. Come to me as all broken children do when they have a pillow to cry to at night, and I will receive you just as the shadows do—enfolding and hiding you without question
Bronze casters had always looked down on marble as a necessary evil, and only begrudgingly did they accept it be used to copy their small and intricate works in a vulgarisation suited for the masses. Their opinions on the medium changed, however, when techniques came about in the early twenty-first century under the neo-renaissance, aka Hellenism 3.0.
