Today will be the first time I participate in Hecate's Deipnon since I joined the religion. It's a huge milestone for me, and I know others out there may have questions, so I decided to make this post more enlightening. (The text quoted below will be a translation of the original text on the Brazilian website "Helenos Br", link at the end of the post)

Hecate's Deipnon (Dinner/Supper) takes place on the darkest night (last day of the lunar month), honoring the "Lightbringer" with a donation of food at the crossroads. It is a time of purification of self and home.

The most common offerings on this day are bread, cheese, figs, olives, meat, eggs, garlic, and leeks. You can also sweep your house, offer things you don't want to carry over into the coming month, clean out the refrigerator, tidy up the pantry, pay off debts, come to terms with your quarrels, and do anything else that helps you "turn the page" before the next Hellenic month.

If you have a Kathiskos in honor of Zeus Ktesios, this is the time to discard its contents and (re)fill it with a new one. Suggested Rite:

Cleanse the altar. This can be done earlier in the day or immediately before the ritual. If desired, gather leftover libations, candle remains, and even dust to throw into the fire—symbolizing the month that has ended. For example, if you libated wine and have some left in that bottle, or if you offered barley and have some left in the pot, these items can be offered to Hecate to cleanse the month entirely, either by burning them or serving them at the deipnon/dinner.

You'll need an offering plate, a libation cup, an incense burner, incense, a candle, libation liquid (preferably wine or honey), an image of Hecate (if you don't have a statue, a printed figure will do), and—of course—Hecate's supper. The supper traditionally consisted of a sweet bread or cake, fish, garlic, eggs, and cheese; but if you don't have all of these, you can offer some of these or even others you feel appropriate. Black olives are often considered a good offering these days. Prepare everything before the rite.

Start by at least washing your hands—ideally, bathing and wearing clean clothes. If you have khernips (lustral water), purify your hands with it. Approach the altar, light the candle, and consecrate it to Hestia. Observe a moment of silence, then read the Orphic Hymn to Hecate and/or the passage from Hesiod's Theogony that speaks of her. There is also a hymn in the Greek Magical Papyri that we can adapt for this ritual. If you have something to burn, place it on the charcoal or fire first. Then place or light the incense. Pour the libation into the cup. And present the supper. You can say something like: "Hecate, I offer you this incense, this wine/honey, this (name the supper items)... Look kindly upon these offerings and accept them with a joyful heart." If you are only performing the deipnon, the rite can end here. If you'd like to begin purification for Noumenia, say a prayer like this: "Hecate, be favorable to your supplicant who brings you offerings this day as on other days in the past. Mighty Hecate, please remove the filth and faults from this place. Cleanse it of all negativity and harmful things." Then fumigate your home with incense, carrying the censer around the house (being careful not to burn yourself). Make a circuit that leads back to the altar. There, say a prayer for Hecate's protection during the new month, like this: "Hekate Propylaia, please grant us your protection and prevent anything harmful from entering our home. By doing this, we will always be grateful."

Here, you can take the opportunity to consult an oracle if you need Hecate's guidance on something.

At the end of the rite, or at the latest the next day, gather up the offerings from the supper and dispose of them, either by leaving them at a crossroads or in the garden, or—if you're throwing them in the trash—put the bag out immediately. If your home has a garbage collection schedule, consider this before removing the offerings from the altar.

And that's basically it. Of course, like me, there are many helpols out there who can't offer food, make libations, or anything like that, so do what you can! Honor Hecate however you can, even if it's not dinner, a candle, incense, or anything like that. The gods know our situation and won't be upset if we don't offer much more than we could. Good Deipnon!

Help us grow in generosity and resourcefulness, that we may be ready to offer hospitality in whatever form is needed, for all those who are in need.

Hestia, you were known in ancient times to protect not just the hearths of individual homes, but the collective hearths of communities.

Illuminate the ties that bind us together across all divisions, all borders, all boundaries that would divide us from one another and diminish our sense of wholeness.

Another one is the verb "perceive" i.e. "don't perceive me" "I am perceiving" "I am being percieved." That's something that feels very specific to tumblr parlance.

There's the thing where people on tumblr have an emotional reaction to something and instead of, or in addition to telling you how they feel about it using emotion words, they will narrate a fictional action in the present progressive tense. "I am gnawing at the bars of my enclosure "I am kissing you on the mouth" "you are going into the soup" "you are getting all of the awards"

I once saw someone use that response format in ... I think it was a restaurant review, or a doordash review, or something like that. It was very unexpected seeing it outside of a tumblr post.

sadly my project is lost due to the website being wiped from the university database after graduation and my then laptop having a major hardware failure. backup your backups people! but the crux of the entire module was that the internet is full of communities using language not only as jargon for specific purpose but also to signal membership in said community. I even wrote a bit about non capitalisation and punctuation useage as a visual cue on tumblr and how including information in the reblog body or the tags indicated different levels of importance or intimacy of thought

Open a bank account or get a credit card without signed permission from her father or hr husband.

Serve on a jury - because it might inconvenience the family not to have the woman at home being her husband’s helpmate.

Obtain any form of birth control without her husband’s permission. You had to be married, and your hub and had to agree to postpone having children.

Get an Ivy League education. Ivy League schools were men’s colleges ntil the 70′s and 80′s. When they opened their doors to women it was agree that women went there for their MRS. Degee.

Experience equality in the workplace: Kennedy’s Commission on the Status of Women produced a report in 1963 that revealed, among other things, that women earned 59 cents for every dollar that men earned and were kept out of the more lucrative professional positions.

Keep her job if she was pregnant.Until the Pregnancy Discrimination Act in 1978, women were regularly fired from their workplace for being pregnant.

Refuse to have sex with her husband.The mid 70s saw most states recognize marital rape and in 1993 it became criminalized in all 50 states. Nevertheless, marital rape is still often treated differently to other forms of rape in some states even today.

Get a divorce with some degree of ease.Before the No Fault Divorce law in 1969, spouses had to show the faults of the other party, such as adultery, and could easily be overturned by recrimination.

Have a legal abortion in most states.The Roe v. Wade case in 1973 protected a woman’s right to abortion until viability.

Take legal action against workplace sexual harassment. According to The Week, the first time a court recognized office sexual harassment as grounds for legal action was in 1977.

Play college sports Title IX of the  Education Amendments of protects people from discrimination  based on sex in education programs or activities that receive Federal financial  assistance It was nt until this statute that colleges had teams for women’s sports

Apply for men’s Jobs   The EEOC rules that sex-segregated help wanted ads in newspapers are illegal.  This ruling is upheld in 1973 by the Supreme Court, opening the way for women to apply for higher-paying jobs hitherto open only to men.

Did you go to a good college? Shame on you, you took a college placement that could have gone to a man who deserves and needs it to support or prepare for his wife & children. But if you really must attend college, well, some men like that, you can still get married if you focus on finding the right man.

Got a job? Why? A man could be doing that job. You should be at home caring for a family. You shouldn’t be taking that job away from a man who needs it (see college, above). You definitely don’t have a career – you’ll be pregnant and raising children soon, so no need to worry about promoting you.

This shit was within living memory.  I’M A MILLENIAL and my mother was in the second class that allowed women at an Ivy League school. Men who are alive today either personally remember shit like this or have parents/family who have raised them into thinking this was the way America functioned back in the blissful Good Old Days. There are literally dudes in the GOP old enough to remember when it was like this and yearn for those days to return.

When I graduated and was going to get married I wanted to go on birth control pills. You needed to be on them for a least one cycle before they were effective. I won’t go into what hoops I had to jump through to get a prescription from my Dr. (a man, natch) but when i went to the drug store to get the prescription filled I ended up having to get my future husband to “accompany” me so the pharmacist “interview” him and see if it was okay with him for me to be on the pill.

Even when we went to get a marriage license I had to get my Father’s signature and we had to go before a Judge because I was not yet 21 (I was 20 and 9 months).

This is what they mean, when they say “Old-fashioned values”

But then I realized I actually do want to add something. This was written nine years ago. In the 9 years that have come to pass the white nationalist Christian fascism ultra right agenda of misogyny has had many victories.

sees some incest mpreg

Hestia, first and last, sacred goddess of hearth and home

I call upon you to protect the domestic worker - those who do the thankless work of caring for children and cleaning homes. May they be honored and rewarded.

O Hestia protect the migrant - those who leave the familiarity of their own homes and loved ones in search of a better life to support their families. May they be honored and rewarded.

Eternal Hestia may you protect those so often overlooked by society - the dishwashers, cooks, landscapers, nannies, maids, construction workers, and all those whose toil is used to build and maintain homes and society without thanks. May they be honored and rewarded.

I liked these tags but I had something to say about it

I already assumed that the dresses were a choice made by the female crew, mostly for my own sanity. They do show (very infrequently) women in tos wearing pants

And they show men wearing dresses in tng, but only ever in the background (unless you count the dress uniforms)

And obviously I like that these were included, but they were clearly a cop out decision.

“Yeah see men can wear dresses, women can wear pants. They just don’t choose to” reads as “of course I’m not sexist, women just like wearing tiny little dresses in the future”

And thinking about it from a late sixties perspective, many women did see more revealing clothes as an empowering choice to make. Men wanted women covered and modest, understated makeup, only exposed or done up for male enjoyment. Some women took that in the opposite direction and chose to wear more extravagant makeup, revealing clothing, and brighter colors. It was a progressive time, and some of the choices made in an attempt to highlight that in the show did not age well.

I think it's worth emphasizing that this very genuinely is the main reason for the "sexist" miniskirts. IRL, women were often not choosing between sexy miniskirts and non-objectifying pants, but long skirts (respectable) and short skirts (rebellious). Deliberately wearing short skirts as rebellion against patriarchal control that mandated long skirts or maaaaybe loose slacks on a good day is still hardly unknown among girls/women leaving conservative communities in the USA, and was only more commonly coded that way at the time.

Sally Kellerman, the actress for Elizabeth Dehner, found the close fit of the supposedly more feminist pants uncomfortable and is often given something to hold in front of her because she was so intensely self-conscious about them. Grace Lee Whitney (Janice Rand) loathed the more "proper" initial look and worked with the (gay) costume designer, William Ware Theiss, to design a different, more daring and cool-looking aesthetic for women of the future that appealed to her personally. That was what resulted in the miniskirt uniform design. No doubt it served the objectifying tastes of various straight men involved, but literally zero of them were responsible for the design of Whitney's and Nichols's uniforms.

Not only did Nichelle Nichols not consider herself suffering from the miniskirt, she admitted later to sometimes deliberately lifting the skirt even higher at Uhura's station to show off more of her legs because she hadn't worked so hard on her body to not show them off. Meanwhile, Jill Ireland, the actress for Leila Kalomi, was nervous that she might have to wear the kinds of revealing costumes so many other TOS actresses did, and Theiss instead designed her the comfortable overalls she wears as Leila in "This Side of Paradise."

The kneejerk backlash against short skirts (in decidedly more reactionary eras of both Star Trek and US culture) led to both the large-scale disappearance of the skirts and the snide commentary on them throughout later iterations of Trek, with zero consideration of the fact that they were designed by a gay man to suit the preferences of the leading actresses at a time when they commonly represented rebellion. The Berman-era Star Trek productions tut-tutting at the old costumes while actually putting actresses in uncomfortable, form-fitting uniforms they disliked is ... uh, something else.

Me: “Well, I would want the legal protections of marriage before I would move to follow a partner.”

Him: “Understandable. I would want to be engaged for a year before getting married”

Me: “Agreed. I would want to live together for six months before getting engaged.”

Him: “Excellent. Should we repeat this conversation in three months to check in before looking at apartments?”

Me: “Perfect. Now let’s get dinner.”