Hymn-Wreathed Son of Appalachia

Dennis Staffne Circle of Grass II (1995)

Concerning Noumenia in the Mountains

The Noumenia comes not with fanfare, but with quiet.

It is the stillness after the dark moon, when the sky is bare and waiting, and then—just barely—a silver edge begins to grow again, like a fingernail of light scratching across the sky.

The old folks say the first sliver of moon is when you sweep your porch, light a candle, and start again. It is a time for resetting the clock, a time to wipe the slate clean.

Devotions on the New Moon

The first light of the moon belongs to the gods. It’s said they draw near on this night, not with shouts and thundering, but quiet and attention, to see who remembers.

Hestia is honored first—the hearth is swept, the fire relit, a fresh pot put on to warm. She is the one who keeps the home standing, who makes a cabin more than just four walls and a roof.

Hecate Apalákhia is given her due at the liminal hour—the moment when night turns toward dawn, or when the stars grow dim. We leave her offerings at the edge of the yard, by the tree line, at the fork in the trail—where roads cross and things are known without speaking.

Selene rises soft and pale, riding her slow path over the ridges. She is the new light in the dark, the fresh breath after a long silence.

Noumenia Customs in the Hills

A plate is left out overnight—a piece of cornbread, a little milk, a little honey—for the gods who walk unseen, and for the ghosts who have yet to rest.

The dogs are fed well, because they see what we don’t.

Bread is baked, sometimes with the month’s first flour or the final remainders of last seasons’s sourdough starter.

The mason jars are washed, and the clean ones are set by the window.

The ashes are cleared from the hearth, and new kindling is laid for the month ahead.

The front porch is swept west to east, and the dust is flung out the door to make room for blessings.

Letters or names of kin are whispered into the wind, a way of asking the gods to look kindly on them this moon.

A candle is placed in the window facing east, so the moon sees you waiting when she rises.

No harsh words are spoken, and nothing is borrowed—start clean, start quiet, start true.

————

Noumenia in the mountains is the first line of a new story, the breath drawn before a song, the hush before the fiddle plays.

It’s a holy quiet, a clean table, a swept floor, a new light in the sky.

It’s how we begin again.

And the gods, if you listen, begin again with us.

One night when it rained a lot, Yangjaecheon, Gangnam. (source)

Imperialdramon Fighter mode

Luring the Sun into the Woods by Anna Mond

Autumn portraits #28 (Le Procrastinateur, 2015).

"Dying Achilles", 1884 by Ernst Herter (1846–1917) . German sculptor. Corfu, Greece. marble

Barn Owls (Tyto alba), family Tytonidae, order Strigiformes, Carrizo Plain National Monument, CA, USA

photograph by Mitch Waters

The Taking of the Mountain Blossom

Once, in the high hollers and deep valleys of the mountains, there was a girl called Kore, and she was the Spring Maiden—the bright bloom on the dogwood trees, the laughter of water over stone, the first soft green in the forest after a long winter. She was the daughter of the Grain Mother, who ruled over the land’s harvest, the turning of the seasons, the planting and the reaping.

Wherever Kore went, wildflowers sprang up in her footsteps. The bees followed her, the deer watched her from the trees. She was the breath of the warm wind on a May morning, the scent of honeysuckle in the dusk.

But there was another who watched her.

Deep in the belly of the mountains, where the coal veins ran black as night and the tunnels whispered with voices long gone, there was a man called Hades, lord of the Underhollow. The folks in the valleys feared his name, but not because he was cruel. He was a quiet king, a keeper of shadows, the ruler of a land where all must go one day, but from which none returned.

Hades had seen Kore wandering alone in the high meadows, her arms full of black-eyed Susans, her braids woven with Queen Anne’s lace. He saw how she shone like the morning sun through the mountain mist, how the earth itself seemed to love her. And something deep in his soul ached.

And so, he took her.

Not with violence. Not with anger. With longing.

One late-summer afternoon, when the goldenrod stood tall and the cicadas sang their last songs, Kore wandered too far to a place she had never been, where the land was soft and sunken and the roots ran deep beneath her feet.

And then the ground opened up.

The earth did not quake; the sky did not roar. The trees only whispered, and the wind held its breath. The dirt yawned like a mouth, and from its depths rose a rusted rail-cart, its wheels blackened with soot, pulled by four coal-dark horses, their manes flowing like riverwater in the night.

Hades sat at the reins, his coat dark as the shafts in the mines, his eyes like embers, slow-burning and sorrowful.

And before Kore could scream, before she could run, the wind caught her, and the world shifted—and she was gone.

⸻

Simone Zimmerman in Israelism

J Macedo Photography aka Jorge Macedo - Wat Sampran Dragon Temple (วัดวัดสามพรานมังกร), Khlong Mai, Thailand, Photography

Dionysus of the Moonshiners

He is the laughter that rings through the woods at midnight, the glint of firelight off a mason jar, the untamed joy of a fiddle played too fast in a barn gone rowdy. He is the one who keeps the stills hidden and the spirits flowing, the one who walks the mountain roads with a grin on his lips and a bottle in his hand.

They call him Dionysus of the Moonshiners, and he knows the worth of a good drink, the power of a song, the freedom of letting loose when the weight of the world is too much to carry.

They say he was born in the flames of a copper pot, in the first drop of corn liquor that burned like lightning down the throat of the man who made it. They say he rides in the back of trucks loaded with jugs wrapped in burlap, slipping past the law like a ghost in the mist. They say wherever the revelry is loudest, wherever the dancefloor shakes with stomping boots, wherever the drink flows and the music won’t stop, he is there—laughing, watching, drinking deep.

And they say he knows how to keep a secret.

He is not the god of vineyards and fine wines. He is not a lord of marble halls and delicate goblets. He is the god of the backwoods revel, the jug passed between rough hands, the fire that burns in the belly and loosens the tongue.

He is the protector of those who make their own way, who carve a life from the land, who refuse to be told what they can and cannot drink, what they can and cannot celebrate.

He is the freedom of the outlaw, the laughter of the rebel, the wild spirit of those who know that life is too damn short not to take joy where you can find it.

He is Dionysus Apalákhios, the Lord of the Stills, the Fire in the Blood and the Dance That Never Ends.

And when the music plays long past midnight, when the jar is empty but the night is still full—that is when he is closest.