Anthesterias First Day: Pithoigia, The Day Of Opening Jars

Anthesteria’s first day: Pithoigia, the Day of Opening Jars

We shall sing Dionysus On the holy days Him who was twelve months absent Now the time has come, now the flowers are here.

It begins with a procession.  They come to the waters, the motley fellows of the propompoi — maenads, satyrs, nymphs, and bacchantes, restless from the restrictions of winter.  There at the edge of the waters they find Him — the Masked Man, awaiting them in the marshes where earth and water meet.  Raising him up, they escort him back into the city once again, with song and dance, the maenads and bacchantes waving their ivy-wreathed thyrsoi, the satyrs hurling merry insults at bystanders.  They take Him to the sanctuary.

Once in the sacred place of Dionysos, the jars are brought out — the pithoi, great clay jars, casks, bottles, all full of wine that was buried over the winter to ferment, sent into the Underworld with Dionysus.  The first libation is poured out to Dionysos Limnaios, he of the marshes, Fair-Flowering, the Reveller, the Stormer.  Then the priestesses of the mystery, wine-stained maenads, mix the wine according to the secret rites, and all may drink.

There is dance, and song, and music, and merriment; even the restless spirits of the city’s faceless dead come to join in the revelry amid the flower petals and the lovely scent of wine.  The Eleusinian Mysteries are performed in secret, sacred places.  The Anthesteria has begun.

This is a Festival of Flowers, though it will also be a Feast of the Dead as it winds its way through three days’ celebration…

Also today we celebrate the divine conception of Dionysus, for this is when Zeus lay with Semele and together they conceived their divine son.

I made a thing ???

Anthesteria’s third and final day: Khutroi, Day of Pots, Festival of Keres

     Thuraze, Keres!      Oukeni Anthesteria!

There is still some remaining celebration of the Aiora rites of swinging on Khutroi.  Girls hanging ribbons and masks from trees, adults drunkenly or at least merrily playing on swings, small rites of purification by air and light-hearted play.  Mostly, these rites have already been done on Khoes, the second day, which is set aside largely for them and is called the Day of Swinging.  But if there are any celebrating Anthesteria who have not yet celebrated the Aiora, then Khutroi is the last day for it.  Likewise, if the Heiros Gamos was not celebrated on Khoes, then it must be done on Khutroi.

But aside from those remnants of swinging and sacred union, the final day of Anthesteria is mostly devoted to the cult of the public dead, those faceless civic ghosts known as Keres — who rose from the Underworld with Dionysus and the pithoi jars as Anthesteria began, and who were honored yesterday on Khoes, the second day.  Until now, the Keres were given the run of the city for Anthesteria; they were stepped aside for, given space, respected, welcomed.  But now is the time to regain our homes, our streets, the places of the living.  While still respecting the ghosts of the public dead, now is the time to resurrect our world from death into life.

And so the final act of honoring the Keres is to set out pots with offerings prepared just for them — vegetables, beans, grains, and seeds, foods that can on this day tempt the city’s dead and draw them out of the homes they wander through.  Homes they once occupied or visited during their lives, places that were once theirs but now belong to the living.  Then with the dead thus drawn and appeased on the doorstep, the homes are warded against the Keres with talismans and small rites.  Celebrants shout, "Out the doors, you Keres! It is no longer Anthesteria!"  And with the banishment of the ghosts, Hermes and Hekate come to guide the Keres back to the Underworld, and the rooms and homes and parks are renewed to the living, refreshed from the dust of dead memories and times past.

Many celebrants feast after this, eating sweet foods made with honey and wine, foods that are not allowed for the dead, foods made separately from the offerings in the Khutroi pots.  The dithyrambs of Dionysus are sung, and songs to Hermes and Hekate as well.  The newly-opened wine is drunk again, still, though perhaps not with as much abandon as the nights before.  The buds are still on the trees, ready to flower.  The ribbons flow in the night breezes.  The vines are being pruned a second time by the Maenads and Bacchantes, continuing the cycle of life and death and change.  The winter is passing, the shadow passing from our hearts, the cold leaving our bones.  We are ready for what comes next.

Savage Temple (2014)

Anthesteria’s second day: Khoes, the Day of Pitchers, Feast of Swinging

First she offered him her cup, and he filled it with his divine wine. Then He returned to Her the crown of His love, and the two ascended together into the heavens where Her crown is still seen among the stars…

Anthesteria started yesterday with a festival of flowers, a procession from the waters to the city, a Masked Man adored by wild women and satyrs and other, stranger folk.  But today… today it starts to get weird.

It could be the drinking, yes.  The pithoi jars have been opened, the wine has been mixed and blessed, there is no shortage.  Rampant and massive public drunkenness rules the streets, wine flows like water.  Drinking contests are set up, men and women celebrate the swinging rites of Aiôra and set up swings to play upon like children, hanging dolls and masks also to swing from the trees like Erigone of old.  

But what really makes the day of Khoes weird… are the ghosts.

Not the beloved personal dead whose faces we know and love or fear, but the public dead are these ghosts, our Keres.  The spirits of those nameless crowds of people whose lives moved here before ours, whose stories played out and ended, whose pasts fill our community with untold tales and unwhispered names.  They move through us every day, but on this day, maybe with the help of the wine, we FEEL them.  We hear the soundless echoes of their footfalls, their shouting, their laughter, their quiet murmuring talk.  We feel full to bursting with all those who lived in our home, our neighborhood, those who walked our streets, those who gathered in the parks we go to.

And to make it just that little bit weirder, along with the ghosts and the dry dusty whispers of death and time, we feel the stirrings of a powerful sexual tide moving through us, individually and communally.  It binds us generally if not specifically — each of us has lusted, hungered, longed for touch and heat and passion and release.  Even the ghosts, now cold and untouchable.  The serpent stirs in us, the hot fluids rise, the erotic awareness of bud and flower and stem and root fill every glance at the sacred flowerbeds.  We have drunk the wine, we have felt the wildness rise in us.  We want to dance, and laugh, and kiss, and caress, and fuck, and explode.

Like a fever, it spreads, then reaches a peak as the evening slides languorously into night.  In the most sacred places, the most innermost of temples, the greatest rite is performed, the sacred marriage between the God and the Basalinna, the Sacred Queen.  A man and a woman writhe together and become one — a priest and priestess — a maenad and a satyr — Dionysus and Ariadne.  And the city shudders in the night with prismatic visions of wine-saturated paradise and release.

Liberation.

Eleleu!  Eleleu!  Iou!  Iou!  Hail and welcome the Reveller.

Young Faun - Franz Von Stuck (1902)