In the ancient world\u2014in the early modern world, as well, in fact, and to this very day in some places\u2014the liturgical calendar was managed by the state.\u00a0 That is, in fact, a large part of why we have the records we do.\u00a0 Although this was not theocracy in any sense, this was not mere public piety, either: in addition to stimulating the economy\u2014food stalls, sacrifices, costume, and the like\u2014state-sponsored religious rituals helped form and maintain community bonds.<\/p>\n
Today, in the United States, we don\u2019t quite<\/em> have state-sponsored religious rituals.\u00a0 We have \u201cbank holidays\u201d which are not formal religious (or even nationalist) observances, though they \u201ccoincidentally\u201d lean strongly in that direction, which are set aside by law so that employees of local, state, and federal governments have a paid day off, and bank employees do as well.\u00a0 Christmas, Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, Labor Day.\u00a0 We also have a number of \u201cunofficial\u201d holidays\u2014that is, days when no one can count on a paid holiday, but which local authorities bend over backwards to facilitate.<\/p>\n The most recent of these is St. Patrick\u2019s day.\u00a0 I\u2019ve heard so many different<\/a> versions<\/a> of the history, I\u2019m not even entirely certain which ones to believe.\u00a0 One thing I am certain of is that the snakes-as-pagans version plays into the historical oppression narrative that we\u2019re a little too fond of\u2014see the Burning Times\u2014and on closer examination, doesn\u2019t fit what I know of Christian myth without being viewed through that lens.\u00a0 Another thing I\u2019m certain of is that, regardless of its roots, its modern manifestation is harmful only in terms of liver damage and drunk driving.\u00a0 Not being a fan of the whole \u201cpinching (or punching) people for failing to wear green\u201d thing, and being somewhat terrified of the amateur drunk drivers who come out of the woodwork on St.P\u2019s and New Years.<\/p>\n My attitude about that sort of thing has changed over the last couple years.\u00a0 For one, I\u2019ve just flat-out loosened up a lot.\u00a0 When I was younger, I found bars to be painfully over-stimulating on a regular Saturday; these days, I enjoy a little hyper-stimulation from time to time.<\/p>\n Then, late Friday night, I learned, about the festival of Liberalia<\/a> through one of the above links.\u00a0 Liber Pater, to the best of my knowledge, is not a god of wine and harvest \u201clike Bacchus\u201d, as the Wikipedia<\/a> asserts, but one of Dionysus\u2019 Roman cult titles.\u00a0 Although the Roman reconstructionist source<\/a> I find emphasize the part where of the festival at which a Roman youth was acknowledged as an adult man, Ovid<\/a> memorializes it as a festival of fertility and protection under the auspices of Bacchus and formless Numina, of whom I previously had not heard and will need to do some research.<\/p>\n Now, as some of you may know, I count Dionysus among my patron divinities.\u00a0 He and his representatives have helped me a few times, first at my initiation and during subsequent explorations of the Underworld.\u00a0 But, other than offering him tastes of every batch of homebrew I make (every time I sample it myself during the racking process), and of most of my bottles of \u201crecreational\u201d wine and mead, we haven\u2019t really worked out a devotional relationship yet.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know what he wants from me \u2026 if anything.<\/p>\n The coincidence of St. Patrick\u2019s day\u2014one of the great US drinking holidays\u2014and a day sacred to Dionysus is too interesting to ignore.\u00a0 And it seems like a good place to start.\u00a0 So I made offerings at midnight when I discovered the fact, in the morning, and upon returning from the bar after my revelries.\u00a0 He seemed to like them, but I (so far) haven\u2019t gotten very \u2026 tactile responses for any of the offerings I make\u2014from the gifts I give to Tsu<\/a>, to the offerings<\/a> I make to my Kouros and Cyclades figures, or to any of the other gods on my altar.<\/p>\n Besides, I need holidays more frequent than every six weeks.\u00a0 Liberalia is now officially on my own personal calendar.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In the ancient world\u2014in the early modern world, as well, in fact, and to this very day in some places\u2014the liturgical calendar was managed by the state.\u00a0 That is, in fact, a large part of why we have the records we do.\u00a0 Although this was not theocracy in any sense, this was not mere public … 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":[4,5],"tags":[65,106,144,229,238],"class_list":["post-414","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-scholarship","category-witchcraft","tag-dionysus","tag-holidays","tag-liberalia","tag-saint-patrick-day","tag-seasons"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8kUcm-6G","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414","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=414"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/414\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=414"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=414"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=414"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}