The ethics of mantike (from The House of Vines)

This is an excellent discussion of how a diviner/mantis should properly act (and a few crucial notes for querents as well).

Doing oracular work of various types is the primary way I serve the gods in relation to other humans, and I take it very seriously, and have diligently attempted to follow all of these guidelines in my approach over the years. Sannion is spot on in everything he says here, and while I truly hope to see more people taking up the oracular mantle, as it were, I also hope that such people are ready and willing for this level of commitment, not only to the art, but to the stringent self-examination and discernment that goes along with it, to create a clear conduit. This is extremely holy work and should be treated as such.

Spring begins

Spring equinox has always been a fairly low-key holiday for me, especially in the years I’d been living in Oregon where March wasn’t significantly different than the months before it. But having just come through my first Maine winter in many years, I have a much deeper appreciation for the beginning of spring, even if it’s somewhat symbolic here (I mean, there’s definitely warmer temperatures and melting snowbanks, but at the same time we’re expecting another big storm this weekend).

For whatever reason I’ve been drawn to some Slavic ways of celebrating. Key to this was creating a Marzanna doll and burning winter in effigy. That felt particularly satisfying. In a bit of synchronicity, I discovered that the traditional blini (pancakes/crepes) eaten on Maslenitsa were originally made of buckwheat – as are the traditional French-Acadian ployes commonly eaten in Maine. So that made for a nicely appropriate equinox breakfast, made by my mother. Then we dyed some eggs with natural foodstuffs (turmeric and red cabbage didn’t work very well for us but beets produced some lovely deep reds, especially after a little oiling). We took some with us and went to the beach, which we used to do for the equinox when I was younger. We each wrote a wish for the coming year on an egg with marker and then ate it, and of course left one as an offering.

I brought along seawater and sand I had collected from the Pacific Ocean and poured them out, refilling them with water and sand from the Atlantic – a coastal exchange program of sorts, and a way of acknowledging my move and my love for both. I had also brought along one of the eggshell candles I made for the occasion, only to find my matches had gone missing, so I simply set it afloat in a stream that emptied into the sea, unlit.

Before I left my mother’s house, she noticed two crocuses blossoming in her garden, the very first flowers of the season, which felt auspicious.

Once I got back home (to my much snowier landscape) and burned the Marzanna effigy, my final act of the equinox was a tithe – donating some money to the local land trust that oversees many special places here, including one I find particularly sacred to Nerthus (and I found I was able to designate it “in honor of” someone, so I put in Her name). I have always enjoyed donating to organizations that protect the land I love and consider it a devotional offering.

Coming storms notwithstanding, I’ve seen leaf buds on the beech trees and bits of the swamp are morphing from snow piles back to standing water, so I know it’s only a matter of weeks before I can start playing in the dirt and getting ready to plant things.

(As a side note, the day before the equinox we visited an amazing plant nursery down the coast with wonderful greenhouses, where I happened to find a venus flytrap plant, so I have a new friend in my home now. They were also growing pitcher plants and sundews so I may end up with a carnivorous collection in the future.)

Revisiting the Old Man of the Woods

Now that my limited run of handmade books is long gone (although I still have some wall prints in my shop), I wanted to share my Odin poem “The Old Man of the Woods” in some other way. This just came together today, after I quickly taught myself how to use some free audio and video software. The photograph is from some nearby woods – not the woods I first found Him in, but similar in many ways. I look back now and wonder if the intensive creation of this poem a couple years ago, based on my childhood dreams when I first lived in Maine, was some kind of portent of moving back here. Certainly the Old Man was one of the first gods I connected with on this land.

Past the wall of gray stones, through the trees,
In a house made of spells, full of books,
With a light in his eye and his mind,
There he waits – the Old Man of the Woods.

Though the cupboards are usually bare,
It is knowledge and magic he hoards –
Slakes his thirst at the Well, and then sups
On the power of letters and words.

Will you drift off to sleep in your bed,
Just to find yourself there at his door,
Seeking answers, alone in the night,
To the mysteries down at the core?

Just one page from his books could reveal
All the secrets the world hides within
They are printed on leaves from the Tree;
They are bound in such curious skin.

But he leads you far deeper inside,
With a hint of the wolf in his gait
And a certainty beats in your chest
That you’re following him to your fate.

Up a flight of impossible stairs
Lies an opulent room in the sky,
Where he views all that is and will be
With a canny and avian eye.

Here he offers you water or wine –
Wine will send you back home to your life.
But the water is drawn from the Roots;
It cuts open your mind like a knife.

Only those who survive this ordeal
Will return to this place at the seams,
To be taught to decipher the signs
Of the language of mem’ry and dream.

In a forest familiar yet strange,
Where the crows speak in riddles and rhymes,
And the stars spell out patterns above –
The Old Man of the Woods bides his time.

Anthesteria in a northern land

Last weekend was my first Anthesteria back in Maine, where there are most definitely not flowers emerging (despite the festival falling relatively late this year). I spent my first 7 or so years as a polytheist here, so I remember this problem, but back then I had just started to understand the festivals. I felt then – as I do still – a surety that Anthesteria is one of the few festivals that should not be adjusted for local climate, but I didn’t know how to manage the discrepancies, and my attempts were a little underwhelming. So I am making a fresh start in interpreting the festival for a northern landscape. I expect I will be working on this and similar issues for a few years as I slowly learn the ways of this land and the manifestations of the gods here, particularly on the Hellenic side of things.

I admit I was a little hung up on the flowers issue until I realized that they aren’t necessarily a huge part of it. Sure, the name of the festival evokes flowers, and there’s certainly something to be said for the idea that the dead emerge from the underworld in some kind of synchronicity – metaphorical or metaphysical or both – with the emergence of the first flowers of spring. But of all the varied details of these three days that have come down to us, I don’t know that any of the rites directly involve flowers. Wine, the dead, and eroticism are much more prominent themes. I did buy a pot of miniature daffodils, just as a gift to the god, and I think perhaps next year I will force some bulbs myself in advance so that they bloom at the right time. But I decided to primarily focus on other aspects, and try to root it in my local landscape.

Most significantly, in Athens the festival was held in the sanctuary of Dionysos of the Marshes…and I now live in a swamp. So I created a shrine to the god just a little ways into the trees and held rites on each day there. Because I am keeping all spiritual and magical items relatively unobtrusive there (in deference to the swamp spirits), it was very simple – some colorful cloth ribbons and a few symbolic objects wrapped around a particular tree I had picked out awhile back, surrounded by pine saplings. It felt perfect though.

The only ritual photos I take are pre- or post-, but here you can see some of the things that went into making the shrine, plus the flowers, and a particularly aptly-named local wine (Theron, by Cellar Door Winery)

On Pithoigia I went into town and visited the cemetery that holds most of the founding families – unfortunately it was under too much snow to wander in, so I poured out a bottle of wine at the entrance and hailed the dead. Then I tracked down (with some effort) a bottle of locally produced wine with Maine-grown grapes for that evening’s drinking. I came home and read through What Flowers in the Dark, as I do most years (it always helps remind me of the many threads that make up this occasion). I also went out back and shoveled a bit into the several feet of snow blanketing the swamp to make a pathway for myself to reach the shrine tree. Ritual shoveling! This is my life now.

At dusk I wrapped the tree in decorations and poured out dark red wine in a gory-looking spray across the snow at its base. I blew on my hunting horn and called to the dead. The gibbous moon was shrouded in a hazy glow. It was beautiful.

In my temple room, I returned to a practice I hadn’t done in ages – mixing wine with spring water, as was traditional in antiquity. It feels much more meaningful now because I don’t have to buy bottled water – there is a local spring where the water comes right out of the ground, safe to drink, and it is near a mountain famous for its minerals and feels especially holy. I had gathered some before the snows came to use in ritual this winter, and I keep it in a special place sheltered from miasma. It was really powerful to drink that mixed with the local wine, taking the land into my body in a visceral way. There was music and masks and celebration that night.

On Khoes, I made three hanging maiden dolls from wool yarn. It snowed all day long and there was an oppressive stillness outside – the white sky blending into the white ground. Some years I feel the miasma of this festival most on the second day and sometimes on the third, I’m not sure why. This year it was the second day for sure. That evening I had to dig my way out to the shrine again to hang the dolls from the pine trees – more ritual shoveling! – and I also took some freshly fallen snow from the temenos to melt inside and mix with the wine for this night. Another way of drinking the land and sky.

On the morning of Khutroi I hung buckthorn twigs at the doors (also local, they came from my mother’s backyard tree), before going out to do more (non-ritual) shoveling. As I filled the birdfeeder and scattered peanuts for the squirrels (which I do most days – I consider feeding the wildlife here part of caring for the land), I realized I was in essence giving them a panspermia – traditionally a combination of seeds and legumes. Of course that evening I made a true panspermia, using local beans and oats and honey, with water from my well. I trekked through the snow once more and left the porridge at several points along the border of the swamp, crying out the ritual banishment of the dead.

I have often thought of this as the festival of vessels, since each day is named after one. This year that felt more important than ever, especially with the addition of three special sources of water (spring, snow and well) to mix with the ritual food and drink. Building the sacred precinct in my own swamp worked extremely well, helped root my worship of Dionysos on my land, and also added a layer to the relationship I am building with the spirits there. But it was also nice to retire inside to the temple room to warm myself with wine. Perhaps by next year I will find a nearby swingset to use that is accessible in the snow. As always, this is a work in progress. But I will say that I did not feel that the efficacy of the festival was weakened by the lack of flowers on the ground.

Io Dionysos!

Witches’ Lullaby

Retiring Books

Today is the Noumenia and a good time for fresh starts, so I am announcing that I have decided to retire my books Dwelling on the Threshold and Between the Worlds – the two collections of past posts from this blog. There are a lot of reasons for this and most of them are personal, but sometimes one just needs to close the book (haha) on one phase to start a new one, and that’s where I am right now. I will continue to blog here and share my current thoughts and approaches, but I have deleted almost all the remaining older posts, leaving just a few that I wanted to keep available for one reason or another. It’s been over 10 years since the first of those books was published, and so much has changed both in my own life and the world of modern polytheism. I’m interested to see what the future brings.

For those who might have wanted copies but don’t have them yet, I have four remaining sets of the books left for sale in my Etsy shop here. It also looks like there is one last copy of each available on Amazon, and a few used copies on Abebooks.

It’s a little sad to say goodbye to these books but I feel that the time has come. Thank you to all who read them and have supported me in my work, and I hope to continue sharing worthwhile insights and ideas in various other formats as we move forward.

The Directions and the Center

Unlike many pagans, the cardinal directions have never held a lot of meaning for me. I didn’t go through a “calling the quarters” phase even during my semi-Wiccan years. But things have changed here. One of the first times I sat out on my back porch overlooking the swamp and opened myself up to the spirits here, I received a clear understanding that the features of the landscape could be sorted and understood in this way – the location of my well, the swamp, the road, etc., tied into the various traditional correspondences of the directions. As I became more familiar not only with my land but the surrounding area, I started expanding this approach to include the direction of the lake, the river, important landmarks, special sacred places I’d found. Everything seemed to line up meaningfully.

So I began doing a sort of impromptu ritual invocation, at various times, out on that porch. With candles and incense burning, I hail each direction in turn – moving clockwise, starting with the North – and name all the significant places and entities along that line, starting with the most immediate, and then expanding that outwards, sometimes reaching as far as I can before I hit an ocean (not just the Atlantic either, as eventually west leads back to my previous holy landscape in Oregon). I don’t memorize anything special to say or recite a set prayer, because in this case I feel it’s important to think about it anew each time, to imagine myself traveling out in each direction and encountering all those spirits along the way, and to let the litany vary with each time, reflecting my relationships at that moment. I’m sure it will grow and change more as I continue to explore and build connections with the land here.

It seemed particularly powerful to do this at dusk, when the landscape starts to soften at the edges and the brightest stars begin to appear in the darkening sky. A liminal time. And then one day I realized why…

To pray in this fashion creates two intersecting axes (north-south and east-west). It creates a crossroads. And you are in the center. In this case, the “roads” are basically imaginal ley lines connecting a series of numinous places and things for me. And I then place myself at the heart between them. It is a deceptively simple, powerful ritual that has enabled some intense and productive trance and oracular states for me. (Not surprisingly – once one is in the center of the crossroads, one can “see” in every direction.)

Perhaps this is exactly what is intended by the many ways of honoring the directions in various traditions, I don’t know – as I said, I often skip the basics – but either way it’s been very effective for me here. And of course, each time strengthens my awareness of and connection to the spirits around me.

The unknowable gods

The longer I do this, the less I feel that we can ever truly understand the nature of the gods while we are living this meat world existence (maybe not even after that, who knows). Not that we can’t encounter and engage with Them, and do so meaningfully, but any certainty about exactly what – or why – They are is simply illusory and often gets in the way. We can observe how things appear from our vantage point – and for most practical purposes we must work within that worldview, act on those observations, and that’s just fine, that’s how we build devotional practices and tell stories about the gods and build the foundation that supports and allows for Mysteries (in which we may get a little closer to that unknowable truth). And we can theorize about the theological mechanisms behind what we’re experiencing (say, with something like syncretism, or the difference between a god and a spirit), but we can’t ever really know how it works from a more objective perspective (if such a thing could even be said to exist), or what Their experience is. We can barely fathom our own selves, really (“how can we meet them face to face…”).

Just as much as anyone, I have associations for gods and spirits – ways I tend to conceive of Them, specific attributes or sacred plants and animals, certain forms, certain faces, times of day or year, places They seem to favor. A common form of ancient Greek prayer – seen in the Orphic Hymns – is basically invoking or inviting the gods by a list of epithets, each of which makes reference to a myth, a relationship, a characteristic, a blessing. I love this approach, and I use it both formally and extemporaneously.

But sometimes, lately, I have been finding it especially powerful to drop all the names and descriptors, all the images and preconceptions, and address Their true, ineffable nature:

I know nothing of what you are, but that YOU ARE. That is what I call to.

There is something of a beautiful surrender in it. I acknowledge my inadequacy to the task of understanding, relinquish analyzing or defining or describing, and simply wish be in this Presence I have touched a tiny piece of in the past, that I must name and categorize to fit into my little human brain but which I know is far larger and stranger than I could ever grasp.

Small Things

I have often remarked that I seem to go about things backwards in the development of my spirit-work and devotional life – somehow I am able to jump right into the deep end straight off, and then I spend years figuring out HOW I did that, how to do it more reliably, and learning all the foundational practices and skills that usually come first and are required before getting to the more advanced mystical stuff. So when I hit upon some solid fundamentals, I am never quite sure if they’re worth sharing, or if they’re the things everyone else (including the non-mystics) have been doing since day one. But since I’ve been discussing ritual approaches…

The past year or so has involved a rather constant flow of material-world concerns and tasks (I won’t say mundane here, because most have a strong spiritual component), as well as a major reboot of what I’m doing with my religious life that comes with a lot of uncertainty, as discussed already, and between those two things I have found myself deeply in need of some simple, everyday ways to keep connected to my gods, and to see Them in the world around me. Ecstatic states are wonderful and important to me, as are festivals and formal ritual and magical work and meditation, but I also need to be able to work and do errands and take care of my home and feed myself and relax occasionally, and I don’t want to lose touch with the spiritual during those times.

So I have started to implement more of the type of short, simple ritual acts and prayers that ensure my mind is constantly brought back to the gods, no matter what I’m doing. Some of these are things I came up with ages ago but never really practiced regularly, and others are new and tailored to what my life is now. I am pretty slow to acquire new habits and I find myself forgetting to do these things just as often as I remember, but I know that with time and repetition they will eventually become ingrained in my mind and heart and life (though ideally, not so rote that I do them thoughtlessly either – the whole point for me is to pause and recognize the presence of the gods). Nonetheless even at this early stage I am finding myself more saturated with the holy just due to these small acts.

A few examples follow, in case they spark any ideas for others, and also I’d be very interested in hearing about similar practices any of you have. Sometimes it’s as simple as taking something you are already doing and finding the spiritual angle or connecting it to a deity, and making that more explicit. As above, so below. (A phrase by the way, I have on a sticker on my laptop to remind me that even the work I do on the computer has a spiritual element, in most cases dedicated to Hermes.)

* When I leave my property, I pause at the herm outside my front door and say a few words in Greek along with a simple gesture that essentially asks Hermes to watch over me on my travels. When I return, I do a similar set to say thank you for arriving back intact. I also greet my land by the name I’ve given it.

* My car has been named and given various protective symbols, and I have something I say to it each time we go somewhere together, in addition to periodically talking to it, especially when getting gas, doing any maintenance, etc. In other words, things that remind me to acknowledge its animistic spirit and be grateful for its cooperation.

* I start my day each morning in the temple room – most days I light a candle and incense, and go through certain devotions to Dionysos along with some breathwork, but in addition I also do my morning stretches in here, just the average exercises I need to do to keep my middle aged body relatively functional, but now I deliberately tie that in with my religious life (not only because physicality is an important part of Dionysianism to me but because I recognize that the healthier I am, the easier it is to do my spirit-work).

* I have designed the bathroom to be a place of purification, and I keep my Asklepios oil lamp in there in case I need any healing, as well as several types of herbs, special soaps, etc. Every time I take a shower (usually every other day), I first smudge myself, and I say a quick sort of katharsis spell as I wash.

* Whenever I consume anything mind-altering, even if it’s just smoking a little cannabis to chill out in the evening while watching a movie, I first hail Dionysos as Opener of the Door, and I also acknowledge the sacred plant itself.

* I’m a clean-as-I-go type of person but I make sure to do a more thorough cleaning once a month, which I do on the dark moon and tie into the deipnon for Hekate.

* If I go out to fill the birdfeeder or scatter peanuts for the squirrels and crows, or when I dispose of libations I have previously made at indoor shrines, I acknowledge the spirits of the land. I think I may begin a daily dusk offering to the swamp as well.

* If I take a walk just for exercise, the most practical route for me is to go down to the cemetery about a mile away, so I bring at least one offering for the gate, and I make sure to always visit the grave of the founding family of this area, who gave their name to the road I live on.

* I also often use my prayer beads while walking, or I’ll go through them at some other point – not every single day but I try to do this a few times a week.

* Every night I have a series of small things I do to connect to my dream spirit – something I wear to bed, something I put under my pillow, etc.

* While I’m happy to just pray extemporaneously in many of these cases, I have a ton of short little songs and rhymes I’ve created over the years that I can employ any time it’s appropriate. For instance, I have a song calling to the deer here which I often sing at dusk when they’re likely to appear, I have a rhyme for my dream spirit that is the last thing I say before sleep, and I have a ton of chants for Dionysos to use as I wish before my stretches in the morning.

* Whenever I am reminded of my breath I will stop and do a very brief deliberate breathwork practice and/or even just devote a single exhalation to one of my gods.

Musings on Ritual Work

As is appropriate after making such major life changes as I have recently, especially moving to a new home in a new landscape* with a vastly different climate, I have been reevaluating pretty much everything I am doing religiously, from the smallest devotional acts to festivals to trance and oracular work and more. I have also become, if it’s possible, even more solitary in my life and in my practices. Therefore the only considerations I have to make regarding rituals is what my gods and spirits want, what’s magically effective, how to incorporate the sacred landscape and wights respectfully, and what suits me personally. So I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my evolving ritual style.

On the one hand, for me ritual is very much an art, perhaps in fact my primary art form when it comes down to it. Not just because it incorporates so many aesthetic considerations, but also because it is a communication – though instead of communicating my feelings to other people at a distance with a painting or song, I am communicating to/with the divine in a very direct and immediate way – actually, it is more like a theatrical production in that way, happening “live” as it were…and one that invites “audience participation” at that. I suppose this is particularly apt considering I am a devotee of a god whose ancient rites evolved into theatre in the first place.

And yet, at the same time, my approach has become increasingly pared down over time. The preparation in many ways is far more elaborate and extensive than the actual performance. Like a play has rehearsals, memorizing lines, painting sets, making costumes, finding props, so my rituals involve days, weeks or even months of planning. But not because I’m doing High Ceremony here, but because every single part of it must be rich in symbolism, with spiritually potent words and actions, and aesthetics pleasing to the spirits involved (some of which is very much NOT what you would find on Instagram, I hasten to add).

If there is wine, the image or name on the label must be meaningful. If there is incense, it must be selected with care or even made from scratch for that purpose, using significant woods and resins (I hope in time to personally make even more of my tools and offerings, which allows me to get very specific about the origin of the materials, the process of putting them together, etc.). Songs and prayers must be remembered, practiced, found, or written. The timing, whether by lunar calendar or other reckoning, must be considered carefully. The location of the rite must be chosen with regard to beauty, functionality, privacy, presence and receptiveness of the landwights, type of ecosystem favored by the gods involved, and whether it’s conducive to the work being done (and sometimes this involves a bit of a trek to get there, which also must be planned). All must be a reflection of the relationships both locally and those I bring with me, and of what’s going on in the spiritual currents of the world, the seasons, etc. When in doubt on a detail, there is divination, looking for omens, and (for new things especially) often a lot of research.

This results in rites that are long in preparation but often relatively short in execution. At least for the core part. But it also leaves a lot of room for connection, dialogue, and improvisation. Over time, repetition builds the bones of a ritual, and all the little choices made each time provide a decorative skin, but the heart, to me, is in the moment, the part that changes each time, that very personal level of interaction that happens when the veil is successfully lifted and you feel Them respond, and go from there. Of course, this works well for me because I specialize in trance states and oracular work and so there’s always a strong possibility of such direct two-way communication. But even when that doesn’t happen, I enjoy being in that space created by ritual, and linger there as long as possible.

When I was first starting out, doing almost all my rituals with a small group but also much less frequently, we would put on relatively theatrical productions (easier with many people to take on various roles, of course) and then quickly learned to leave room at the end for possible ecstatic states. Eventually, that latter time grew longer and longer and became the focus of our efforts. In a way, I’m just continuing that pattern now, except the ritual itself has become a sort of deceptively simple shorthand, with the weight of years of practice behind it. Because now when I make an offering it is usually the 10th or possibly 100th time I have done that exact same thing for the exact same reason (or at least, marked the occasion on some similar way), and so nothing I am doing stands alone but instead is accompanied by all the previous instances and variations. Whether I use the same song I’ve been singing on that holy day for 20 years, or whether I start a new tradition this time, I hear the echoes overlaying the present, and I feel that the gods do too.

I will also say that, the more I do this, the more I think that it is equally true that (a) all of these ritual elements and actions and symbolism are incredibly meaningful and important and actually do affect things – not just in our psychology (although that’s an important factor one can’t ignore) but in the reality of how things work on the spiritual plane where it intersects with the material world – and that repetition builds power, and that there are times when you have to exert discipline or make sacrifices to do things the way they should be done even when it’s very difficult but ALSO (b) sometimes you can discard a hell of a lot of that and still do good Work, just as solid and connected as when you have all the right trappings. Like everything, it’s a matter of discernment – when are the times you have to do it a certain way no matter what, and when are the times that the details are more flexible, especially if there are extenuating circumstances. It’s also a matter of accumulating enough skill and mojo that it can carry you through the times when you don’t have everything you’d ideally want in order to do the Work in front of you.

I have nearly passed out doing oracles in a tiny smoke-filled room during a heat wave, fasting and sick and barely coherent, after a day’s worth of devotional and meditative preparation. And I have done equally good sessions (as far as results go) that were pared down to the bare essentials, that were in a different location or at a different time of day, that accommodated some external situation that made it difficult to do the same rituals I usually rely on. That doesn’t mean this can always be done – I have sometimes erred in my assessment of the appropriate response to challenges. Sometimes I pushed myself unnecessarily and even counterproductively. Sometimes I gave myself too much slack and things fizzled. It’s an ongoing learning experience. Another opportunity for discernment. But I think the reality is far more complex than just Do This Thing Always.

Anyway, just some thoughts I’ve been turning over as I work on things. Yesterday was the first day of the new year and I discovered at the last minute that several of my long-standing practices on that day were no longer applicable – I am still grappling, for instance, with how my understanding of and relationship to Hermes has shifted now that I no longer live in an urban environment – and additionally I was given a new directive the night before via divination that involved several hours of devotional altered state work with Dionysos first thing in the morning, which completely changed the course of the day for me. As well as a call I could not ignore to visit a particular holy place nearby. Which of these things will be repeated next New Year, I cannot say yet. It is a little unnerving at times to let go of rituals with so much accumulated emotional resonance for me, but I remind myself that the core of my divine relationships and the Work I do has remained, at some level, constant throughout the decades. I just need to translate the script and update the set design for the new stage I find myself on.

* By the way, note the new header of this blog, which I’ve changed from photos of my environs in Oregon to those here in Maine. All of these were taken within five miles of my home.