🐚 venus altar 🕯

Dionysos References

Books of Myths, Poetry, Hymns, and Plays Involving Dionysos:

Academic Texts on Dionysos and His Cult:

Books on Ancient Greek Culture:

Devotional Texts:

Miscellaneous:

I might be drooling.

Hiba Schahbaz  -  Dreamers, 2018

Pakistani-American, b. 1981

Tea, watercolour and gouache on paper

Heads up Hellenic friends but Galina Krasskova has a novena to Apollo that just came out called Of Bow, Lyre, and Prophetic Fire. Please don't support her she's gone full alt-right fash trash.

Her husband, Sannion, is a Dionysian who has written a whole bunch of book in the past years. Don't buy his stuff either.

Check the notes for some further criticisms - fuck both of them. I'm glad people are all starting to leave that nazi couple's writings behind

Nikita Gill, Night Songs to Aphrodite

The Bacchae 

Directed by François Rochaix A.R.T. Season. November 21, 1997 to January 24, 1998 With Michael Edo Keane as Dionysos

Photos by Richard Feldman

@oncebittentwiceborn

gorgeous 💕 thank you friend

not to be dramatic but the world is beautiful and too many things stop us from realizing that

missus aphrodite!

Happy Yule, Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, or whatever you’re celebrating. <3

the altar is a bit busy atm but so is my practice. io, Dionysos~

Io Bakcheios

deliberate frenzy is a trust fall

either you let go and let him catch you, or you don’t

if you’re going to do it, you have to abandon self-preservation and commit to taking the fall as far as he decides to let you go, if he decides to catch you at all

and that faith is what is terrifying

on the subject of Dionysos as a god of trans folks

alright listen I don’t mean to be divisive but “patron god of trans people” is not a thing

this seems like a common theme on the blogs of worshippers who are college age or younger and trans, and looking for validation from and connection with divinity

(totally understandable and I am not talking down to anybody in that category)

I am a decade out from college and trans myself, and I work with Dionysos very… intensely

and I think what he actually has is far more powerful than a patronage

a patron god is generally associated with a trade - D is the patron of actors, for example, and winemakers

(being trans feels like a full-time job sometimes but alas, it is not a paid position in late stage capitalism)

in contrast, Dionysos is a deity *of trans experience*

the language for these things is relatively new but Dionysos is a god of alternating femininity and hypermasculinity, raised as a girl, undergoing castration and priestesshood as a mad youth in the cult of the Mother, sent off as a warrior general to lead armies, trading sex with an older man for information, serving as the older man himself in his love affair with Ampelos, loving Ariadne, associated with dicks and flowers and powerful independent mad women

(not to conflate gender and sexuality, just sayin)

like in my interactions, he is a queer god in my interactions, he is a genderqueer god of transfeminine experience who seems to like he and they pronouns best, but (because time is fake) is always also simultaneously that girl-child raised in the mountains by nymphs, that tambourine rattling galla stomping and rubbing her hair in the dirt for the Mother

being a patron deity means overseeing the auspices of something

living that something, *being* that something, really thoroughly and personally understanding that something, is a different situation

it allows for a different relationship than the distant overseeing of a patronage

and I think it’s far more powerful

@oncebittentwiceborn I had to read this several times but you seem to be saying… Dionysus isn’t a “patron of trans people”, he IS trans??? 

I think what OP means to say is… we should aim to avoid trivialising the experiences of Dionysus as a “trans icon” and recognise them as way more than this, because there’s just so much going on for them in terms of their history. Dionysus represents many sides of nature; the male and female fertility of the Earth, along with the different states of consciousness - sobriety, intoxication, masculinity, femininity -  one can be in to appreciate life’s natural beauty. And, like Pan, take in the untamed nature of it all for what it is, without needing to label it as anything other than pleasure and experience itself.

mmm, so I guess this did come out a little undercooked, but I’m trying to do two things here one, I’m trying to push back against the narrative of “THE GOD OF TRANS PEOPLE” or, worse, “THE PATRON GOD OF TRANS PEOPLE” because they suggest that one deity should represent the full experience of trans identity (which isn’t true, lots of deities map onto transgender lives and experiences) and because that’s… not what patron means, even in the neowiccan new age sense, but especially not in a hellenic context (some of this idea seems to come from a Percy Jackson-related mythology book? idk) two, I’m trying to go slightly deeper into the myths than you can get from a simple “god of wine and parties (and being trans)” to show the reasoning behind that assertion, why it’s become the narrative in the first place, and what it actually means gender is… largely a human social construct, but when you get down to the most human manifestations of deities, it can be an important part of their identities and experiences and Dionysos has a mythos rife with gender flexibility and what we understand today to be transgender experience of the world (as well as a more traditional male deity presence, although that doesn’t negate his femininity or, say, his time as a priestess of the Mother) deities are of course gigantic and don’t really map neatly into human terms, much of the time… but then again, Dionysos is half mortal himself I am trying not to be reductive, which is why I’ve used slightly more complicated language - “a genderqueer god of transfeminine experience” - though perhaps genderfluid is the better term but essentially yeah, I guess what I’m saying is that Dionysos *is* trans yeah (side note: I saw this tagged “child prostitution mention” - D is an adult in the myth I mention, just younger than the man giving him directions. just clarifying!)

io katharsios

it was @candeladestructora ’s birthday so we started the bonfire with a celebration. the mystic tended the fire and held the space. we brought out the wine offerings, as well as a bluetooth speaker and s'more supplies, and danced around the hot blaze in flower crowns to batucada drums. I put out a cup to Dionysos, anointed with katharsios oil and filled with red wine, and then invoked him with help from @flamingkorybante . I brought him into me, but not to channel, just to carry.

when the logs burned lower and the energy shifted we began the ritual. the mystic did some kind of planes-shifting that I didn’t fully grasp while bb bruja and rocket called to the ancestors and descendents. I called specifically on the sprits of the land and the space, on the local manifestations of elements and on the animals, plants, mountains, and people of the storied area where we worked. we were ten in number, nine of us transgender.

rocket had pitched the idea of letters to our future selves (possibly conceived of in collaboration with me, I don’t recall for sure) in the context of getting to know not only our descendents but ourselves in the coming decades - to imagine futures where we as marginalized people have stayed alive, where we thrive and are happy and safe. the idea was to find those future selves and then (dramatically simplifying here) use touch, sexual or otherwise, to anchor and manifest them. folks at camp worked on their letters, but rather than joyful and imaginative, the mood was somber, anxious, dread-tinged.

when we formed our circle around the fire to read or improvise our letters, the reality was inappropriate for the celebratory and upbeat tone initially envisioned for the working. so, with Dionysos Katharsios in our midst, we instead engaged in a ritual of katharsis.

there is pain and suffering in every life, but there are kinds of pain and suffering peculiar to trans folks. delving into those as a group also means engaging with the generational trauma of our ancestral line, which brings additional difficulty to the work. there was a lot of introspection, a lot of telling of hard personal truths, a lot of facing of weaknesses and perceived shortcomings, and a lot of crying.

when everyone had shared I called specifically to the queer ancestors lost in the plague, those who should have been there to guide us and whose absence is acute as we in our late 20s through 40s step uncertainly into roles as elders. those troubled dead needed acknowledgement and mourning, and so we gave them. we breathed together, pulling fire energy into and through us to burn out the unnecessary and sending the dregs of our doubts back out into the earth. the ritual ended, and we put out the fire and cleaned up.

later in the evening, back in our rented former boy scout cabins, everyone sat around in a close group, somewhere between circle and pile, sharing snacks and alcohol and jokes, telling stories and laughing and being playful. after the cleansing, after the release, comes the lightening of sprits and enabling of forward movement. I retired earlier than most but the others buoyed one another on the gentle companionship that follows shared vulnerability until late into the wee hours of morning.

hail to the liberator, releaser of cares, breaker of chains. hail to the womanly one, he of flowers and dancing, the night-stalker. into the heat of the bonfire we follow you, Katharsios, to emerge burnt clean of decay and uncertainty. kindle us to be torches for our kindred, gift us with purification and clarity.

may freedom always guide our steps and may the hearth fires of the future light our way home.