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The astrology apps are fighting
top 5 bread
#1 has to be apple bread. It's very simple, just use pressed apple juice as the liquid component.
#2 is tea loaf, made with dried fruit after soaking overnight in strong black tea. Brilliant for toast.
#3 Jalapeno bread. I've never made it but get it from the bakery. Incredible flavour, doesn't need butter or anything.
#4 my recreation of Bapir. Makes the list mainly for spiritual reasons.
#5 basic brown. Not chorleywood brown crap out of a plastic bag, but the real thing. It's just such a good staple that it has to be here.
@trans-pickles I wouldn't say "any" recipe, but a basic white/brown/wholemeal bread with yeast, yes.
The great thing is that the apple juice is slightly acidic, which yeast loves. You get a great rise. I'd also recommend butter for the shortening just because the flavour works well.
Now, if you were trying for a fortified bread, like brioche, I wouldn't recommend using any acidic liquid. It could complicate matters in a soda bread as well since it would increase the rate of the reaction.
But, yeah. For a basic, yeast leavened bread, just use pressed apple juice instead of water. You can use concentrate if you like but I don't think that's as nice.
Little bit of personal trivia, but fun fact: Despite the fact Loki is my patron, I actually don’t identify as a Lokean. At least, not anymore. I used to back when Loki was the central focus of my practice, but over the years I switched to using “Heathen.”
It’s taken me a long time to really understand why I don’t identify as a Lokean and a Heathen, or even as a “Lokean Heathen,” and now I think I really know why—It’s because my spirituality has always been centered around philosophies, not figures, and I don’t feel comfortable using terms that suggest the latter.
Ngl this is also a big reason why I don’t use it. The word “Lokean” is extremely American. I’ve actually done a lot of research to figure out where it came from. While I still need my tracks to be verified fully, this is the history as I have it so far: In the 1970’s, Odinism arrived in the United States. This is a Nazi-derived Volkish brand of Heathenry, and it was the only form of Heathenry that was circulated in the United States until recently. In those early years, a lot of research was still going into building the religion of Ásatrú, and debates surfaced over what to do with Loki. Eventually, the Volkisch decided to use Loki and his progeny to represent everything they deemed antithetical and oppositional to the “Aryan” identity. However, spewing blatant Nazi rhetoric negatively impacts Volkisch recruitment, so in order to make their stances palatable, Volkish heathens disguise many of their arguments behind “Reconstructionism.” The Asatru stance on Loki is this: “Loki has no place-names in Scandinavia, which tells us he wasn’t worshiped as a god. Therefore, it’s neo-pagan revisionism to worship him now.” This is a very common argument, and it’s used to forbid people from hailing Loki at sumbel or including him in any typical service. This created a lot of discord within American Heathen organizations in the 90’s and 00’s, because—surprise!—they had members who worked with Loki. I’m not sure the specifics behind it, but the term “Lokean” seemed to rise out of this as a way to legitimize Loki-veneration—perhaps even to contrast the term “Odinist.” Lokean authors and bloggers started publishing material on Loki, both online and in print. Now the term ‘Lokean’ is used to describe “someone who venerates Loki,” and at times it can act as its own subdivision of Norse paganism. I wasn’t in the thick of all this madness, but I learned about it secondhand from those who were, and what they went through was pure religious abuse. They treat the term “Lokean” as their solid ground and their way of fighting against the Volkish demonization of their deity. But my background is very different. I’ve never experienced any of this marginalization for myself, nor have I had to answer to Volkisch heathens in any propensity. For this reason, I find it more legitimizing to simply call myself Heathen. Loki is a heathen god to all of Scandinavia, and I prioritize Scandinavia’s authority on Heathenry over anything the Volkisch Heathens have to say.* (I actually received a lot of backlash from Lokeans for this initially. They took this as a betrayal to their cause and erasure of the issues that persist in American Heathenry. There are a lot of other reasons why I don’t use the term ‘Lokean’ for myself, but ignoring the issue is not the reason why.) — *American Lokeans couldn’t do this back in the day because global communication wasn’t really a thing until now. You either had to fly to Europe (inaccessible for the average person), dig up a bunch of Norse history papers that could maybe perhaps give you some kind of clues about Heathen spirituality (also inaccessible to the average person), or learn from the people who were already doing these two things—Volkisch Heathens. If you were an American Heathen and wanted a community, you had to suck up to the Volkisch. So when it came to Loki contentions, people who worked with Loki were left with two choices: Leave, or self-advocate using literally any meager tool at their disposal. This seems to be the motivation behind the published works of Lokean writers, anyway.
that’s excellent summary of american heathenry’s history, I knew most of it in general, but it clears out many details. I’m puting it in bookmarks to link this to people who ask me about this (I’m the only norse heathen in my circle of various-pagan-traditions-inklined friends, I get asked about things a lot).
Glad it helps. I’m always down to explain to Europeans why American Heathenry is the way it is.
Interesting. And then there’s people like me, an Italian-American with a Slavic surname living in Scotland, running a solely Lokean podcast. My introduction to the word “Lokean” came from a bunch of young queer people out in the Midwest of the United States. I think the term is just beginning to stick now, as it travels the world and Loki finally comes out his demonized shadows, for this reason and that.
I don’t currently identify as heathen, but as an eclectic pagan. Lokean is just one facet of who I am at this moment in time. That very well may change as I work through my own forms of religious trauma.
*Nods* that makes sense. I’ve met a lot of Lokeans who are more eclectic and/or don’t like the baggage or implications that come with the word “heathen,” so I definitely see why the word has its uses and its appeal.
(…Also, now that I think about it, the implications behind the word “Lokean” may have also changed in the last 10 years or so. People coming into the community aren’t getting the same experience I had when I joined, and I think that’s for the better.
When I first entered the Lokean scene in 2017, everything was kind of a mess. Lokeans basically only bonded over one of two things: Godspousing, or the trauma they faced at the hands of the Volkisch. Trying to bond over either of those two things took a massive toll on my mental health and it one of those multiple reasons why I don’t self-describe with the word anymore.
You can imagine how excited I was to learn how Scandinavian Heathens see Loki.)
I think the diversity is good too, and I apologize for coming off like I thought otherwise. If I sound sour—and I know I do—it’s not because I think the Lokean label is bad, but because my own personal experiences with using it weren’t good.
However, my experiences aren’t universal, and I’m glad people find connection with the word. It means they’re getting more out of it than what I got.
Reblogging again for the additional useful responses. Thank you, pagan tumblr gang.
Good conversation. As I have only very recently had an experience where Loki entered my life in a big way, this is helping me sort it all out for myself. Thanks y'all.
One of the great things about Heathenry is no central talking head on dogma. As such, as it grows and evolves, I think you’ll see a lot of differences in the groups and schools of Heathenry that speak to people.
I tend to identify in a number of different ways- Lokean Heathen, Rokkatru, Thursatru- but none of those schools are really all that accurate overall (Loki is my patron but the Ymir/Surtr dichotomy is the central figure in my practice). Heathen is what I use because that’s the root of my practice. Unless we’re having an in-depth discussion about specifics saying I’m a heathen a proper amount of information. I will say I never describe myself as Asatru, since the aesir aren’t part of my personal practice at all.
American Heathenry is its own beast with all its own issues-sorta like everything here in the states. And I think from a modern perspective it’s important to try and look to those more progressive countries that are the root of this practice to find a better way forward.

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nobody asked but I think my favorite statue of Dionysos is in Stockholm, it's by Erik Gustaf Göthe, and the only decent photos of it online are from 3D scans or reproductions but I am still in love
I almost screamed when I saw this statue in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Come, enough of this now. We’re both old hands
at the arts of intrigue. Here among mortal men
you’re far the best at tactics, spinning yarns,
and I am famous among the gods for wisdom,
cunning wiles, too.
You know, I've seen manuscript abbreviations that looked like text-speak, but hand-drawing emojis to stand in for the word ceann (head) in a passage about Cú Chulainn being beheaded is taking that all to a new level
(The line from another manuscript: "Is ann sin d'éirgedar datha aille iongantacha do cheann Choingculoinn")
Manuscript is RIA 23 H 10, Oidheadh Con Culainn, written in 1808.
BREAKING NEWS HE DID IT AGAIN
"a cheann do bheith ar an ngad" but obviously when talking about heads on sticks we should just draw a ☹️ instead
He just keeps doing it. Every time somebody gets beheaded in this text, the word "ceann" gets replaced with 😐 And a lot of people get beheaded in this text (thanks Conall), so this happens a lot.
"Do bhain an 😐 de" He struck the head from him
I really thought that first example was a :D before I looked closer and saw it was a little beard
Watched The Love Witch yesterday and fully believed I was watching a niche movie from the 1960s until a character pulled out a cell phone
on this day in 1953 shirley jackson sent this to an unhappy reader

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A while back I posted a little bit about Shirley Jackson's Tarot cards. Back then, I thought that Grimaud's Tarot de Marseille was the most likely deck. According to the publisher's page:
B.P Grimaud of Paris first printed this version of the Tarot de Marseille in 1930 only to be discontinued shortly after due to the start of World War II.
The problem is that, as far as I can tell, that deck never had double-headed court cards (like you see in most playing card decks). Shirley's cards, as you can see in images posted by Ruth Franklin, clearly had double-headed courts, which effects how their meanings would be read. Double-headed cards can never be reversed.
I still wanted to track down what exactly her deck might have been, and eventually I found time to read The Letters of Shirley Jackson. In a letter to Walter Bernstein dated July 20, 1938, she wrote:
i have a new set of fortune telling cards; do you know where or what the occult review is? they put out the tarot pack…
The Occult Review was a magazine that was published in London originally, but made it to the US for a few decades. As it turns out, it's easily readable for free online at The International Association for the Preservation of Spiritualist and Occult Periodicals. I found what I was looking for in the 1925 ads:
There are other decks and books in this advertisement for this publisher:
The same ad includes the books The Key to the Tarot and The Pictorial Key to the Tarot (which are the same book, except one has pictures) by A.E. Waite. As I mentioned in another post, this book is quoted word-for-word in Hangsaman more than once, and of course the main character of that book shares the last name Waite.
I think that this advertisement must have been the source of Shirley's cards. I haven't been able to find any images of this deck, but I've never heard of any other deck of Tarot cards that uses double heads. I've seen playing cards made for games tarocchi, but it's rare to see the two conflated.
Admittedly, the year is off; the advertisement is from 1925 and Shirley's letter is from 1938. I haven't seen any other advertisements for this deck, so it may have had a limited run. Also, she mentions in her letter that she doesn't know "where or what" The Occult Review is, so I doubt that she ordered her deck directly from them. Maybe someone else ordered from the magazine and later gave the cards to Shirley?
You mustn't let the dystopian nightmare bullshit dim your fucking sparkle.
Taurus ♉️
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Types of Trancework & The Mysteries
(Pictured: Kore & Demeter with initiate.) This is going to be a long one.
Being a dance ethnologist, I have focused a lot on the practical techniques for trancework utilized by Mediterranean peoples past and present. If I had come from a classics background first and did not have a solid background in dance history and methodology I think the outcome of my work would be expressed very differently. A lot of the folks who read this blog do have some kind of background in classical Hellenic studies and are also interested in how to utilize this stuff in the context of the Mystery Religions of the ancient Med. If you are one of those people, this post is for you. Happy reading, friends, and feel free to ask questions if you have them. A Quick Overview of the Types of Trancework I break the different types of trancework used in the Med down into 4 categories based on the methods used and the purpose of the trance. This is specifically something you would get from looking at it from a practical perspective--How do we do it? What does it take? What is it for? 1. Basic Trance--For joy, celebration, experimentation, work, sleep, pain management, and things that are not specifically spiritual. 2. Catalyst Trance--Shapeshifting, heroic embodiment, bilocation, and things that might be described as magical workings. A lot of the things this is used for relate directly to archaic folk religion. 3. Spiritwork--Any type of trance that involves interacting with spirits other than your own but are not gods. Death spirits, nature spirits, and wind spirits being the big 3. 4. Euphoric Trance--Deity bridalwork, prophecy, coming into the presence of divinity. Each type of trance builds on the skills and cognitive developments supported by the previous category. I have done a full blog post on some of these categories so if you would like to explore deeper definitions for those, follow the links.
*Also check out: Training for Trancework
(There are a lot of ways to break down trancework--which is helpful if you want to puzzle out the different methods in use and what they are used to do. You could have a completely separate category for every purpose if you wanted to. It really only affects how you think about trancework. I use these 4 to give us some common understanding so we can build from there but if it helps to think of it differently then go for it.)
(Image: Sailor pulling rope. Sea shanties are excellent examples of basic trance in action.)
Understanding Basic Trancework
Just about everyone in the ancient world would have understood and participated in basic trancework from infancy until death. It would have been something they were very familiar with even if they didn't put words to it. This is because trance is and was everywhere in daily life. Lullabies are trance. Work songs that are used to time things and coordinate movements are also trance. Prior to industrialization it was just how things got done. -Sing a song that lasts X length of time while kneading dough to make bread. It is and was a popular method for detemining how long it takes to complete a task. -Songs are used to keep a working rhythm for weaving, especially works that take multiple people like weaving cords of rope. -Threshing and harvesting songs keep people working long hours under hard conditions to reduce exhaustion. -Rope handling and rowing songs are used by sailors to coordinate feats of strength that have periods of muscular rest and tension.
Humans are musical creatures. We have done a lot with those skills. Bluring the lines between secular and sacred in daily life.
(Image: Kallikantzeroi. Boogeties associated with winter mischief. These roles were actually played by people as shapeshifted humans terrorizing anyone who went out at night.)
Understanding Catalyst Trancework
Catalyst trancework involves utilizing a fuel source to power the trance effects. This allows the trance to go on longer without being laced to a type of labor. Without having a job to repeatedly perform and get lost in, entheogens and powerful emotions can be used to keep it going for long periods of time. There is also a fuzziness to the mind that occurs during catalyst trance that does not feel the same as the wandering mind more commonly found in basic trance. You are more likely to have an active imagining mind while engaging in basic trancework and a bit more of an empty head caught in current sensory experiences with a catalyst trance. (More likely but this is not a hard and fast rule--humans come in a lot of varieties so it is hard to generalize about experiences.)
In the context of the Mystery religions, catalyst trancework is not done by everybody. Anybody can get drunk and trance but that is an entirely different thing than the coordinated and specific efforts that go into a mystery tradition. Catalyst trancework is used in Mysteries that involve heroic embodiment--becoming a hero and engaging with a ritual play that involves what some might describe as sympathetic magic. All of the traditions described in my blog post titled, "Ancient Agricultural Rites Hiding in Plain Sight" are examples of heroic embodiment and catalyst trance. Catalyst trancework is strongly tied to heroic carnival traditions like Anthesteria and Quirinalia. Anything that involves an appearance from the entourage/ thiasos.
Regalia for this often involves masks and dressing up as named characters (every region has their own names). And the whole thing is fueled by whatever the local favored alcohol is--and there is a lot of variety. The fact that it is local is important to carnival traditions. It isn't just a matter of opening any ol' bottle of something, it is opening the locally produced something that honors the spirits of the area you are in.
The difference between heroic embodiment and shapeshifting is rather skin deep. Shapeshifting is the embodiment of animals and wild spirits while heroic embodiment involves taking on the mantle of hero, being the hero. Shapeshifters are frequently (but not always) cast as boogeties, monsters, and spirits of death. Heroes are the ones that ritually fight them in dance battles that may or may not involve trading actual blows. Their objective is to battle it out in rituals of sympathetic magic where life triumphs over death.
Catalyst trancework can also describe the act of drunken trancing without any purpose. So, it does not refer strictly to any Mystery religion but it is one technique among many that was and is utilized in some mystery traditions. More on that later.
(Image: A wind spirit. The personification of passion (in the illness sense, not in merely feeling an emotion). These bodiless beings like to take possession of human bodies so that they can experience their preferred physical sensations but the byproduct of that is a troubled mind for the human host--aka the Bride.)
Understanding Spiritwork
This is a category that has the least amount of written material out there about it but it is the one I have studied in living traditions most extensively. Spiritwork can be divided into possession or communication based. To an outside eye, possession and heroic embodiment look very similar. Both involve the use of regalia and can involve the entranced interacting with named spirits. The differences appear on closer examination. For one thing, it is usually done without mind altering substances. No alcohol or emphasis on emotional connection to the music to kick things off. And secondly, possession is thought of as a spirit marriage between a human and their possessing spirit. There can also be more than one possessing spirit at any given time hovering over the Bride. For heroic embodiment and shapeshifting, there is only one role per person at a time. Also a Bridal relationship is permanent while heroic embodiement and shapeshifting are often temporary--usually lasting a period of about 9 years (unless it is a hereditary tradition, this can change from region to region).
Possession is always permanent from a reconstructionist standpoint. Exorcism (as a ritual and thoughtform) did not enter the equation until somewhere around the 1st century CE. So, there are living traditions of exorcism in the Med but they tend to relate to monotheistic concepts about the hierarchy of the spiritworld. Excorcism is being defined here as a removal of a spirit who has attempted to form a Bridal relationship with a human. Spiritwork can encompass rituals of exorcism, I just don't do it because the recitivism rate makes the point nearly moot. (It is ridiculous, something like 97% of exorcisms relapse within the first year.) Ancient peoples knew this and understood it but a lot of people really, really wanted a quick and easy fix to this problem so there was a ripe market for anyone offering exorcism services.
Possession is tied to two categories of spirit--nature/wild spirits & wind spirits. Nature spirits are tied to romance and intimacy while wind spirits are tied to mental health. At their core, these traditions are ancient methods for dealing with anxiety, intrusive thougts, obsessions, addictions, and things that make life difficult. That is what these spirits are and the rituals we do with them are methods of keeping them in check. This is why it is expressed as a marriage. By externalizing these things, they can then be isolated and managed where otherwise living with them would be debilitating. It doesn't affect everyone but the harder a life has been, the better the odds of requiring these kinds of rituals to keep life in balance and allow a person to be more functional while also keeping the onus of the blame somewhere else. Because a person will have a harder time healing if they cannot separate these things from the whole of themselves. It is a kindness.
The other kind of spiritwork relates to what we might think of as mediumship. Essentially communicating with spirits, including the spirits of the dead. This is also not considered voluntary as far as I know. The ability to do this is passed down in families, though not genetically. It can ricochet off your aunt who married into the family and land on you. Usually there is some kind of story or reason for this ability to spontaneously appear, it afflicts widows more than anyone else. And I say affliction because this is not exactly thought of as a purely positive thing. Not everything can be defined as good or bad and this is one of those mixed blessing, grey area, cursed with awesome sort of things.
Spiritwork features prominently in the customs associated with Summer Dionysos as well as the goddess Kybele. Dionysos as a god of madness (there is that mental/emotional health connection) and Kybele as a mother of monsters (winds). More on that later.
(Image: Persephone and Demeter in iconic regalia.)
Understanding Euphoric Trancework
Euphoric trancework is a big deal. It takes the most dedication, the most preparation, and the most formality to successfully pull it off. It utilizes skills acquired from all the other categories of trance as well, which means to my eyes that this is not something to rush into before exploring at least some of the other forms of trance first. However, this seems to be the one that a lot of folks make a beeline towards when starting out. Which can really shoot you in the foot if you actually want to experience everything that it can do.
Trancework has physiological and neurological components to it. It is not something that you can just believe whatever you want about and expect to get the same results as someone who picks and follows a specific known path to get there. All trancework makes you feel funny. If you want to feel a little giddy while dancing around and dedicate that to a deity, that's wonderful but it is not what I am talking about here. Euphoric trancework is something very specific and difficult to do on accident.
I break it down into deity Bridalwork, prophetic Bridalwork, and coming into the presence of divinity--just being in close proximity to a deity. It cannot be treated casually if you want to experience these things in a similar way to how these things were experienced in the ancient Med. Deity Bridalwork and Prophetic Bridalwork are extremely similar to each other but they have different ritual objectives.
Deity Bridalwork is essentially making yourself into a horse for a deity. This is a culturally encoded concept that means "your body gets possessed by a god." Pay close attention whenever a sacred legend talks about a deity or daemon being strongly associated with horses, that is often a pretty big clue that they are frequently associated with these types of rituals. Bride is a gender neutral term in this context.
This is done in ecstatic rituals where the deity is expected to be present and presiding. Non ecstatic rituals where the deity is expected to be present and presiding will involve a statue as a substitute for this. Ecstatic rituals are occasions where miracles take place and people get to interact with an embodied deity in the limited ways that would be appropriate--engaging with their prefered rituals tools, foods, colors, scents, drinks, and anything relevant to the current place in the calendar cycle.
Prophetic Bridalwork involves all of that plus the added bonus of receiving a truthful statement about matters beyond human perception. That phrasing is important. If a prophecy is truthful and useful then it is divine. If it is untruthful or not useful (or just gibberish) then it comes from some other source--most likely a daemon. The ability to do this accurately and to be able to spontaneously compose it in verse on the spot provides proof of state. In other words, the proof is in the prophetic pudding.
Coming into the presence of a deity is done without any kind of embodiment. It is merely a matter of singing the right songs and doing the right kind of dances. These are (usually) stately and highly formal. Most of the gods are dignified in their conduct but there are a few yahoos in the pantheon that prefer a bit more crash and chaos. (Looking at the entourage of Dionysos and Kybele here.) This can be done without a lot of messing around with other forms of trance but you should at least be able to reliably get yourself in and out of a basic trance before giving it a go. The goal of this one is just unity, oneness, feeling close to divinity. It has a positive impact on the mind, body, and spirit of the participant and that is enough of a reason to do it.
How this Applies to the Mysteries
I would love to give an overview of each Mystery Religion and be able to say, "X trance category is used in Y Mystery tradition," but (alas) things are a wee bit more complicated than that. The complicating factor is that in some of the more involved Mysteries, like the Eleusinian Mysteries, there are multiple kinds of trance utilized by different people at different times depending on the role being performed--the initiate experience is going to be very different from that of someone who is embodying a deity or a hero. So, it isn't as simple as saying "X category of trance is used for Y Mystery."
Also, the Mysteries are strongly associated with trancework in popular imagination but they are not the only place where it can be found. Trancework is involved to some degree in just about every avenue of traditional worship. Any religious occasion that features music and dancing will feature trancing as a byproduct. It can be fancy stately well-coordinated trancing in a large circle dance that goes on for a long time. Or it can be goofy drunken reveling that goes on for a long time. Holy is holy. We don't discriminate in this house. Both of those examples are of basic trancework done in a religious context because the goal is just to dance with the community, the trancing is a happy byproduct. The trance produced by it is not used to do anything beyond keep that dance going. Context is everyting.
The other thing to keep in mind is that different types of trance would be used in the same type of mystery in different places. As an example here, in the wider pattern of Grain Mysteries, the fellahin of Letopolis would basically all practice ritual heroic embodiment instead of it being just a limited number. Whereas the Arkadian methods would have called for a separation between the duties of pilgrim first timers and old-hat locals, with limited numbers of people performing heroic embodiment with a whole separate ritual selection for who gets to do it/has to do it.
I try to simplify things and show you what to look for so that you can apply those concepts to whatever Mystery or tradition you happen to be studying. It is easier to take a look at a known ritual occasion and just ask yourself, "What kind of trance experience is being described here?" That being said, I'll get into some of the low hanging fruit to give you some examples to start working from on your own.
Dionysian Trancework
Dionysian cults do it ALL. They do not pick a lane. Each method is utilized for something different in the context of Dionysian trancework. Basic trance is utilized during harvesting and in the process of pressing fruits to make wine. Spiritwork is heavily involved in the trancework done for Dionysos in the summer months (like Tarantella). In the cold months (during carnival season) it is almost entirely about heroic embodiment--which is Catalyst trancework and that makes sense because it is when the new booze becomes available. And then there are the Orphic hymns which, to my eyes, are primarily intended for euphoric trancework.
So, if you want to engage with Dionysian trancework, you really can't go wrong. Any category you want will engage with some aspect of it. But if you are looking at your calendar and trying to plan out what kind of ritual you want to participate in: Harvest = Basic Trance Summer = Spiritwork Winter = Catalyst Trance Whenever = Euphoric Trance
If you read in between the lines here you can also imply that the Orphic hymns are suitable for Euphoric trancework--which can be done at any time or at specific points on the calendar that hold some meaning for you or the tradition that you are engaging with. Shapeshifting rituals are most likely to take place during the colder months. Possession rituals happen in the warm months. It helps to structure and pace things a bit. There is a cycle to it.
Grain Mysteries
The Grain Mysteries are not confined to the rites of Eleusis but those are probably the most well known. The Grain Mysteries rely quite heavily on heroic embodiment. It is a major aspect of the ritual process and one of those neat little details that does not get discussed much in classical texts about it. It is extremely prominent in living traditions and folk religion though, so that is where I am coming from with this. There are 4 dates of importance for those who participate in the heroic embodiment dance battles. In the Christian world, they map onto the four embertides--Ash Wednesday, Pentecost, The Exaltation of the Holy Cross, & St. Lucy's Day. These correspond to 4 Grain Cycle festivals of the ancient world (I'm going to pick on Rome for this since their dates are fixed and easier to chart):
Quirinalia on February 17th Robigalia on April 25th Consualia Aestiva on August 21st Larentalia on December 23rd
(Not everybody has calculated their calendars in the exact same way over the last 3,000 years so be aware that dates will not line up exactly, which is why I generalize it a little bit.) These are the days when those who have been chosen for a role as a hero or as a boogety will get dressed up and beat the stuffing out of each other in dance battles that go bonk. Those are all catalyst trance rituals.
Drinking kykeon as an initiate would not be catalyst trance unless it is done in such a volume (or recipe) as to produce intoxication. Intoxication is not required to produce a trance but a lot of modern folks with no background in trancework sure like to emphasize it. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. I don't know. To my eyes, it sounds like it was used as deiknumena (a hypnotic trigger that produces an expected dromena/responses). In this case, it sounds like the initiate drinks the kykeon and the mere act of drinking a single sip of it is holy enough to induce feelings of euphoria. Given that the purpose here is to come into the presence of a deity, I would categorize it as a type of Euphoric trance that happens to involve a sip of something (alcoholic or not).
Deity Bridalwork could also be involved here with the Lesser Mysteries in Anthesteria (February-ish) and the Greater Mysteries in Bodromion (Sepember-ish). They function like book ends for Death Season.
I'll have to make a Part II to include some of the fun ones like the rites of Mithras and those of Aset/Isis. This should give you plenty to chew on for a while though. As always, let me know if you have questions.
Fascinating work as always, ArlechinaV. Thank you for putting this information together. Have you ever thought about making it into a book? I know I would buy it if you did.
Could you elaborate a little more on the difference between nature spirits and wind spirits? I know you've talked about this before, but I still find it a little confusing. Is the difference in what the possessed person experiences? If it is, what is the experience like?
The natural cycles of myth and their literary correlates (according to Northrop Frye)
Northrop Frye, 'The Archetypes of Literature' (1951)
(jstor link)

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Painting from Carl Jung’s The Red Book, page 135 in the Philemon Series printing
This has been on my mind for a while now: modern Western culture has a contradictory relationship with the imagination. We encourage it in kids, but in adults it’s embarrassing. “You’re imagining things” is always a handy way of dismissing someone’s experiences. We don’t usually recognize that this is only one worldview.
An introduction to this project. Please take a look!
This is a new project I'm starting on Substack and on a secondary blog.
Stunning Frescoes of a Mysterious Dionysian Cult Discovered in Ancient Pompeii
Created more than a century before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 C.E., the wall paintings provide rare insights into secret rituals conducted in the Roman city.
Archaeologists in Pompeii have uncovered a series of nearly life-size frescoes spanning three walls of an ancient banquet hall. Set against a ruby-red backdrop, the wall paintings depict female followers of Dionysus—the Greek god of wine and ecstasy—engaged in secretive cult rituals.
Also known as maenads or bacchantes, the women have swords in their hands and slaughtered animals draped across their bare shoulders. Alongside flute-piping satyrs, they’re engaged in a wild, ritualistic dance, while shellfish, eels, squid and poultry dangle above them. In the center of it all, a clothed woman awaits her initiation into the cult.
Pompeii is full of colorful frescoes, but this one is particularly rare. The only other large wall painting depicting a Dionysian ceremony was unearthed in the so-called Villa of the Mysteries in the ancient city’s suburbs in 1909, according to a statement from the Pompeii Archaeological Park.
Known as a megalography—a Greek term for a large-scale painting—the banquet hall fresco was uncovered at the newly excavated House of Thiasus. It dates to the first century B.C.E., more than 100 years before Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 C.E. and cast pumice and ash down upon Pompeii.
“In 100 years’ time, today will be remembered as historic,” Alessandro Giuli, the Italian culture minister, told reporters at the unveiling of the wall paintings on Wednesday, per Reuters’ Crispian Balmer. “Alongside the Villa of the Mysteries, this fresco forms an unparalleled testament to the lesser-known aspects of ancient Mediterranean life.”
As Giuli suggests, the festivals depicted in the frescoes were thoroughly secretive, even in antiquity.
“These were mystery cults, so what they did remains a mystery, even in the ancient written sources,” Sophie Hay, an archaeologist at Pompeii, tells the London Times’ Philip Willan.
Even so, the frescoes at Pompeii offer valuable insights into what worship of Dionysus, also known as the Roman god Bacchus, entailed.
Wine, of course, was central to these festivities. But researchers think cult members may have also consumed other substances, like opium, to enter “trance-like states,” Live Science’s Kristina Killgrove writes.
The women in the fresco are both hunters and dancers, suggesting that the duality of slaughter and revelry was a central tenet. The clothed, mortal woman who is awaiting initiation is depicted as “oscillating between these two extremes, two forms of the female being at the time,” Gabriel Zuchtriegel, director of the archaeological park, says in the statement.
“For the ancients, the bacchante or maenad expressed the wild, untameable side of women; the woman who abandons her children, the house and the city, who breaks free from male order to dance freely, go hunting and eat raw meat in the mountains and the woods,” he adds. In contrast, Zuchtriegel explains, were the women who emulated the goddess Venus and lived by the dictates of Roman society.
“The question is, what do you want to be in life, the hunter or the prey?” Zuchtriegel told reporters at the unveiling.
The hunting scenes may also stand as analogues for life and death. In the House of Thiasus, one woman eats raw meat. At the Villa of Mysteries, one breastfeeds a young goat.
“It’s the double function of death and rebirth. Dionysus dies and is reborn. Through initiation into the cult, you are born again,” Zuchtriegel says to the London Times.
By 186 B.C.E., these festivals were at risk of dying out, as Roman authorities attempted to crack down on the scandalous ceremonies. But the presence of the paintings in the House of Thiasus and the Villa of Mysteries suggest that the secret rituals survived.
Although archaeological work continues, the frescoes are now on public display.
By Eli Wizevich.