{"id":449,"date":"2012-04-01T15:32:45","date_gmt":"2012-04-01T20:32:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.wordpress.com\/?p=449"},"modified":"2012-04-01T15:32:45","modified_gmt":"2012-04-01T20:32:45","slug":"urban-dionysia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/2012\/04\/01\/urban-dionysia\/","title":{"rendered":"Urban Dionysia"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Facebook group Prayers to the Gods of Hellas<\/a> informs me that the Urban Dionysia began at sundown last night, and will continue for the next eight days .\u00a0 The Attic title was \u0394\u03b9\u03bf\u03bd\u03cd\u03c3\u03b9\u03b1 \u03c4\u1f70 \u1f10\u03bd \u1f0c\u03c3\u03c4\u03b5\u03b9 (Dionusia ta en Astei<\/em>: lit. \u201cThe In City Dionusia\u201d) or <\/em>\u0394\u03b9\u03bf\u03bd\u03cd\u03c3\u03b9\u03b1 \u03c4\u1f70 \u039c\u03b5\u03b3\u03ac\u03bb\u03b1 (Dionusia ta Megala<\/em>: lit. \u201cDionusia the Big\u201d).\u00a0 The Wikipedia article can be found here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It is both interesting and appropriate that Sannafrid and I (unknowingly) chose to spend last night smoking and drinking, while I read aloud from my copy of the Homeric Hymns.\u00a0 First the Hymns to Aphrodite, as we had been discussing goddesses of fucking, and then the Hymns to Dionysus.\u00a0 As the evening went on, I colored an iconographic image of the god I have been working on off-and-on for some time.\u00a0 This afternoon, shortly before penning this post, I poured a libation of mead before the idol on my altar.<\/p>\n

It is further interesting that, although we are shifting from Greek drama to Roman in my Greek and Roman Drama<\/em> class, I have spent the afternoon reading* Euripides Hippolytus<\/em> in anticipation of reading Phaedra<\/em>, Seneca\u2019s version of the story, next week.\u00a0 Hippolytus was first performed in 428 BCE, and\u2014like all the Attic dramas which have survived\u2014was a winner of the theatre competitions which were a major part of the festival.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, I do not have the liberty to take eight days off in honor of Dionysos\u2014or even to get ploughed for the next seven nights in his name (and \u201csacrifice my liver\u201d, as Sannafrid put it).\u00a0 Besides, the original was a state-sponsored festival which (to a casual but cynical reader, at least) looks like it was intended to duplicate, tame, and profit off of the older, Rural, Dionysia \u2026 and the Cults of the Olympians are not state-sponsored religion anymore.<\/p>\n

What I can do is make a point of taking an hour or two out of each of the next seven days to meditating on the Bacchic One and upon my relationship with him, finishing the one devotional image I have so far, finishing reading Written in Wine<\/a><\/em> (the devotional anthology Aradia gave me so long ago), and working on translating the Homeric hymn I never got to over Spring Break because the Hymn to Phanes<\/a> took me so long.\u00a0 Hopefully, between these various things, I may develop some sense of how I might celebrate this festival (and the Rural, in the winter) within my own cultural frame work and (still infantile) devotional practice.<\/p>\n

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

\n

* I have read Hippolytus before, of course, for last semester\u2019s mythology class.\u00a0 The roles of the goddesses Aphrodite and Artemis are too prominent to pass up.\u00a0 I could write a whole post about that play alone.\u00a0 Possibly several: one tackling the theme of hubris and failure to treat the altars of the gods; one dealing with Euripides treatment of women in general, and another on the misogyny of Hippolytus in particular.\u00a0 But those are rants for another day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Facebook group Prayers to the Gods of Hellas informs me that the Urban Dionysia began at sundown last night, and will continue for the next eight days .\u00a0 The Attic title was \u0394\u03b9\u03bf\u03bd\u03cd\u03c3\u03b9\u03b1 \u03c4\u1f70 \u1f10\u03bd \u1f0c\u03c3\u03c4\u03b5\u03b9 (Dionusia ta en Astei: lit. \u201cThe In City Dionusia\u201d) or \u0394\u03b9\u03bf\u03bd\u03cd\u03c3\u03b9\u03b1 \u03c4\u1f70 \u039c\u03b5\u03b3\u03ac\u03bb\u03b1 (Dionusia ta Megala: lit. \u201cDionusia … 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":[55,63,65,94],"class_list":["post-449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-witchcraft","tag-cultus-2","tag-dionysia","tag-dionysus","tag-gods"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8kUcm-7f","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449","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=449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journeythroughtheobsidiandream.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}