{"id":1199,"date":"2013-10-27T11:29:34","date_gmt":"2013-10-27T16:29:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.wordpress.com\/?p=1199"},"modified":"2013-10-27T11:29:34","modified_gmt":"2013-10-27T16:29:34","slug":"on-the-formation-of-divine-pairs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/2013\/10\/27\/on-the-formation-of-divine-pairs\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Formation of Divine Pairs"},"content":{"rendered":"

A while ago, I split my giant altar up into a devotional space and a planetary working space.\u00a0 It was good for the planetary magic, but it actually made devotional work really difficult, as it greatly reduced my space.\u00a0 Offerings were spilled, gods were cramped, and it was pretty much less than ideal.\u00a0 So, shortly after coming back at the beginning of the semester, I started rebuilding again.<\/p>\n

The fact is that planetary work is no longer a large enough portion of my practice to justify each planet getting its own mini-altar.\u00a0 So I\u2019ve replaced that structure with a set of planetary boxes, inspired by Jason Miller\u2019s Jupiterian cash-box, and reincorporated the shelves back into my primary altar, leaving only the end-table as a workbench which I can lift out of its corner and back in as needed.<\/p>\n

As a part of that reconstruction, I finally\u2014as I had been considering doing for some time\u2014added Eros\/Phanes and Aphrodite to the altar.\u00a0 You can see them in the box immediately below Dionysus at the apex.<\/p>\n

\"027\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It\u2019s somewhat amusing, but it actually didn\u2019t occur to me until more than then days later that I had framed the two as a divine pair: like the Witchmother and Kouros at the heart of the altar, like my natal genius and daemon, even like my familiar Tsu and the Cave Canem construct.\u00a0 Like I have considered pairing Hephaestus and Athena as gods ruling craft\u2014or, alternatively, Athena and Hermes as gods of the mind.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s interesting how ideas linger.\u00a0 I have never identified as a Wiccan, never really believed in the duotheistic worldview.\u00a0 But all of my formative literature came from that perspective, and the asymmetrical balance of Wiccan altar construction has always appealed to me.\u00a0 I have consciously employed that aesthetic to various degrees at various times, but this is the first time I can recall having done so unawares.\u00a0 Unlike the Witchmother and Kouros, a fairly traditional set of complementary opposites\u2014specifically set up, in fact, so that I might explore my relationship with those archetypes\u2014they form a unified pair: dual expressions of the primal need<\/em> that moves the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n

When I pour out my libations, I address them as \u201cEros\/Phanes, Aphrotide: source and expression of desire.\u201d\u00a0 So far they have been good to me.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A while ago, I split my giant altar up into a devotional space and a planetary working space.\u00a0 It was good for the planetary magic, but it actually made devotional work really difficult, as it greatly reduced my space.\u00a0 Offerings were spilled, gods were cramped, and it was pretty much less than ideal.\u00a0 So, shortly … Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[11,17,74,197],"class_list":["post-1199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-witchcraft","tag-altar","tag-aphrodite","tag-eros","tag-phanes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8kUcm-jl","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1199\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}