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.

DARK DRUNKENNESS: THE TALE OF ERIGONE

The reason Khoes is sometimes referred to as the Day of Swings is a story that goes as follows:

When Dionysos first came to Athens to give wine to the people, He was taken in by a kind farmed called Ikarios. In some versions of the tale, Dionysos also fell in love with Ikarios’s daughter Erigone, and many parallels have been drawn between Erigone and Ariadne. In return for their hospitality, Dionysos taught Ikarios to make wine.

Ikarios held a big party, inviting all his friends and neighbors. He bought out the wine which Dionysos had taught him to make, and at first everyone loved the new drink. But when they began to get drunk and started to fall down, they became fearful and suspicious, and thought that Ikarios had poisoned them — so they killed him and stuffed his body in a well. When Erigone found her father’s body, she was so grief-stricken that she hanged herself on a nearby tree.

As punishment, Dionysos cursed Athens and the surrounding land of Attica with barrenness, and struck down the daughters of the people with a madness that caused the young women to hang themselves — just like Erigone, whose death their fathers had caused.

The Athenians sent word to the Temple of Delphi, asking the Oracle for help, to know which God they had wronged. The Pythia told the people of Attica that they needed to make amends for the death of Erigone and her father. Ikarios and Erigone were finally given a proper burial, and a festival, the Aiora, was instituted. The madness was lifted, and the land became fruitful again.

During the Aiora, the young girls of the city would hang ribbons, cups and dolls from trees and let the boys push them on a swing. It can be celebrated on either Khoes or Khutroi, either day works.

——- —- — - The external tragedy of drunkenness.  This is a deep and subtle and complex tale, with many layers and moving parts.  It is the story of paranoia, fear and suspicion.  Of drunken rage and confused impulsive violence.  It tells of those who unfairly fear alcohol and inebriation, as well as those who fall under the darker influences of the same.  It is a story of a death, and of a suicide, and of the ripple effects that suicides can have in a community, like a curse.  And finally, it is the story of how proper reverence, the right attitudes of respect and release, can lift even the heaviest burdens, how merriment and light-heartedness and reverent inebriation can restore the balance and keep dark cycles at bay.

I think of this tale every time someone rails primly against drinking, calls it an evil, blames it for horrible evil things.  For it is not the drinking that creates or causes violence and brutality and dark behavior, any more than an unlocked door causes burglary, or a short skirt causes rape.  All drinking does is to open the doors to rooms in the self that have long been locked — it brings to the surface and the light that which has lain sunken in the dark watery depths for so long.  In one who has no hidden unresolved monsters, drinking brigs out laughter, and love, and daring, and silliness, and relaxation.  The only ones who need fear the liberation of Dionysus are those who have chained their monsters without mastering them.

I think of Erigone’s tragedy when a death or a suicide rends the peace of a community, its savage echoes tearing and ripping the fabric of so many lives outward in extending circles.  When people seem unable to escape the despair and confusion and pain caused by the tragedy and its echoes, and go on dully repeating them ritually, as if condemned.  Holding on.  Locked in to the dull pain of their loss, their fracture, their downward spiral.  No hope of redemption.

But Dionysos is the Liberator.  The savior.  The redeeming one.  He saved the helmsman from the pirates’ fate, raised the shade of his manipulated mother out of Hades and made her a goddess in Olympia, rescued Ariadne from her isolation and misery on Naxos after Theseus had abandoned her.  Dionysos and all He represents, all He brings, can help and heal.  Passion, finding something to care about again.  Ecstasy, getting outside of the self, shedding the layers of self-perception that imprison you.  Devotion, believing in something, valuing something that is greater than your self.  Intoxication, relaxation, sensation, pleasure, opening up, taking chances, feeling alive, again.  Light-hearted playing like a child with others who are doing the same.  Sitting on a swing and swinging, hanging ribbons in the trees, as the scents of spring thaw in the fading shadow of winter.

He is life’s liberating force. He is release of limbs and communion through dance. He is laughter, and music in flutes. He is repose from all cares — he is sleep! When his blood bursts from the grape and flows across tables laid in his honor to fuse with our blood, he gently, gradually, wraps us in shadows of ivy-cool sleep.

— Euripedes, “The Bacchae”

The people sought help from Delphi, and Apollon informed them that they needed to pay respects to Erigone and her father. So they gave them a proper burial and instituted the festival of Aiora in their honor. In return, Dionysos stopped the girls from killing themselves and made the land fruitful once more. At the Aiora young girls would hang ribbons, little cups, and dolls from the branches of trees and let themselves be pushed on a swing.

source: Anthesteria for the lonely soul by Sannion

Arthur Hacker, A Bacchante

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