What a really lovely Lenaia it ended up being, even not ‘really’ celebrating it!

I didn’t do anything on Thursday except wear all wine shades to work, and picked up the custom pomegranate earrings our lovely local silver sorceress made for me.

https://www.etsy.com/shop/MichelleInkdesigns

But Friday was a weirdly warm 70 degree sunny day, horrible from a climate change perspective but so seductive. I stripped Fiona’s stall and then worked on getting all the grapevines (and probably some poison ivy) off a fallen tree that David will need to cut up. All the while I listened to Wendy’s Persephone. I just love Wendy Rule, not only for her weird, powerful, haunting voice, but because she’s my kind of polytheist.

I recently ran into a group, this one dedicated to Ariadne which thrilled me because not many of us worship Her. This lovely group has Mysteries, Ariadne’s but inspired by Eleusis, right up my alley, right?But the description includes something along the lines of ‘But what if the story you’ve heard isn’t how it really went’ and goes on to outline it as a coming-into-your-power romance, with no abduction, rape, abandonment or mourning.

I mean, I get it. That stuff is SO hard. But for me, if you can’t accept that pain, grief, loss and terror are part of what comes with Them, it’s hard to see how deep you can go with Them.

So few people, and no other Demetrians that I know except Wendy and my young priestess friend, accept that the ancient tale even has any validity. It’s been spun as an invention by modern feminists (really!), a patriarchal revision that should be denied by all True Feminists, and historically incorrect as ‘women would never have stood for a story that treated them so terribly.’ (My paraphrase from a popular book about Demeter.)

I love that people see the Two as strong, indomitable, no bullshit and brimming with power. But They are also the Goddesses of the bleakest and most terribly used.

Can you go deep with Ariadne if She was never abandoned? If She waltzed happily from Theseus’s arms into Dio’s? Well, perhaps some can. What do I know?

Anyway. Off my soapbox. I spent the morning with Wendy, the afternoon in the writing studio, and then some glorious time sitting in the sun on the bench of the Demeter shrine.

The house next door is brilliantly lit all round most nights, but last night the back, at least, was dark, so I made my way, with Marley, in the wonderful misty almost-full moonlight, to the Louhi shrine by the back woods, carrying ice cubes and hard egg nog. I pay seasonal cultus to Louhi, from the winter solstice to the spring equinox. I love Her hard. I had hoped sacred Winter would return at the end of the Lenaia, but Louhi has withdrawn Her mantle, and there was no need to ‘Wake the Green’ this year even if I could have. But despite not doing any of the official recon stuff, and staying away from priestess Work, I so enjoyed the Lenaia this year.

Went for a walk wth the husband and Delilah today and we saw a SWAN on the Antietam Creek! I’ve never seen a swan there before.
Io Apollon!

Pretty shitty pic, but I couldn’t get very close.

Well, this was a rambly incoherent blog post, but then, it’s winter and even if it’s unseasonably warm, I’m fuzzy and sleepy most of the time from now until spring.

May the Bullroarer bless you, dears. Despite the awfulness of so much of the modern world, it’s good to have the intrawebs to stay in light touch with other folks who walk the Paths of Weird.

Actual photo of me after latest dive into Poseidon Work.