#arrephoria

Summer Solstice/Καλοκαίρι/Θέρος/ Litha Blessings to my Northern Hemisphere friends! 🌞

Today also happens to be Arrephoria (Ἀρρηφόρια), a festival in honour of Athena. More on that later in the post!

Some info about the summer-related deities in the graphic:

☀️Auxo (Αὔξω) is one of the Horae (Ὧραι), and the goddess and personification of summer. She is also a protectoress of vegetation, growth, and fertility.

☀️Theros (Θέρος) is another personification of summer and is usually depicted as a winged boy holding an ear of grain in one hand and a sickle in the other. Theros is the word for summer in Ancient Greek.

☀️Athena (Ἀθηνᾶ) is the Olympian goddess of wisdom and warfare. Her main festival is the Panathenaia, which was celebrated during Hekatombaion in midsummer. The solstice also starts off with Arrephoria. Sinoika is yet another celebration during the summertime that honours her.

☀️Apollo (Ἀπόλλων) is the Olympian god of sunlight, healing, music, and poetry.

☀️Helios ( Ἥλιος) is the Titan god and personification of the sun. He is also the god of eyesight and oaths.

What I Did Today

I decorated my altar for the solstice and featured summer deities on the center of it.

I ate a (mostly) Mediterranean meal outside in the sunshine: kalamata olive spread, anaheim peppers, & extra virgin olive oil on gluten-free toast, gigantes beans with feta, and Persian cucumbers sprinkled with Greek oregano and paprika. 😋

I also did a lot of research to put together this post. That honestly took up most of my day. 😆

And now onward to Arrephoria!

Arrephoria (Ἀρρηφόρια) stems from the words "ἀρρητον" (mystery) and "φέρω" (I carry/bring). It is a midsummer fertility festival that honours Athena and takes place on the first day of the Estival Solstice.

In Ancient Athens, two young girls from aristocratic families were elected to reside as arrephoroi (άρρήφοροι: virgin acolytes of Athena Polias) at the Arrephorion on the Acropolis for a year at a time. Their main responsibilities included maintaining Athena's sacred olive tree and with the aid of other women, weaving Athena's new peplos.

On the evening of Arrephoria, the girls donned in white clothing placed what Athena's priestess gave them (a mystery item in closed chests) atop their heads. Then, they both carried the chests down (without looking at the items) to the temenos (τέμενος: holy grove) of Aphrodite via a concealed stairway inside the north wall and proceeded to carry something else (possibly dew from the spring) back up to the Acropolis.

With Hekatombaion (the 1st is the Athenian New Year) around the corner, Arrephoria also served as a "tying up" of the old year, ensuring nothing was carried over into the new one.

What you can do for Arrephoria:

📑finish any unfinished projects

👕declutter (i.e. donate clothing you no longer need)

🧹if you didn't clean your altar(s) for Kallynteria, now is the time to do it

💧pour a libation of dew or water for Athena

🍱have a hearty feast and offer some to Athena

*Kallynteria and Plynteria were two rituals that prepared for Arrhephoria.

The myth the ritual itself is based on:

Kekrops (Κέκροψ), the first mythical king of Athens, had three daughters named Aglauros (Ἄγλαυρος), Erse (Ἕρση), and Pandrosos (Πάνδροσος) - each name referring to dew. One night, Athena gave them a closed basket. While she forbade them to open it, Aglauros' and Herse's curiosity got the better of them, so they took a peek, only to see a baby (Ericthonios, Hephaestus' mysterious son).

Seeing as they broke her trust, Athena punished them by making snakes appear out of the basket, merely to scare them. Startled, the two girls jumped off the Acropolis and met their untimely demise.

Pandrosos didn't partake and was spared. Eventually, a shrine was errected in her name (located next to the sacred olive tree). Therefore, on Arrephoria, Pandrosos (in addition to Athena) were commemorated, and the two arrephoroi fulfilled the unfinished duty of the other two.

Today is the third day of Skirophorion and on this day, we celebrate Arrephoria.

I say 'we' but honestly, I think this could count as a festival for young girls and women to celebrate. This festival follows a myth where young daughters of King Cecrops were to carry a basket and were instructed not to look inside. In the myth, those girls most definitely did look inside and they went insane. The festival focuses on young girls that participate in a procession where they carry a basket, not looking inside, as a means of fulfilling the duty where those mythical girls did not. Supposedly this is in association with young girls transitioning into women. In a way that is meant to be a safe transition from girl to woman as a child to adult.

As such, I don't consider this a festival that I celebrate since it focuses on young girls growing up.

Anyhow, to those who do celebrate this darling festival, I hope you had a wonderful Arrephoria. (AND happy 3rd of Skirophorion.) It is very fitting that this festival takes place on this day since the third of every Attic month is sacred to Athene.

¿ERES RATA O NOBLE? ¿MALO O ESTÚPIDO? ESCOGE…

Imagen: Mountain Magic de Grempz/FLICKR

Viajando a la antigua ciudad de Delfos, Grecia, y adentrándonos en el Templo de Apolo, Dios de la Luz, la Profecía, la Música y la Medicina, podemos leer nuestro precepto Nº 24: Ευγένειαν άσκει… “EJERCITA LA NOBLEZA”. Y tal como lo dice el precepto de hoy, el ser NOBLE es un proceso de ejercitación consciente y sostenido para alcanzar tal virtud; porque…

(3 Skirophorion; 2013-06-11/12) A festival to Athena, during which two young girls dressed in white garments carried “unspoken things” (things about which no one could speak), possibly the peplos for Athena, which had begun to be woven at the feast to Hephaitos months earlier.  They carried these “unspoken things” at night from the top of the Acropolis down to the garden temenos of Aphrodite, located at the base of the Acropolis.  They then carried something else from the temenos of Aphrodite back up to the top of the Acropolis (Parke, p. 141, citing Pausanias, I.27.3).  However, it is also possible that this festival and its timing was confused in Classical and Hellenistic times with another festival, one to Erse, the Goddess of dew, which was likely observed at the time that fields were seeded in late fall (Parke, p. 142-143). 

Burkett also thinks that girls might have carried dew but not to honor just Erse.  He notes the underground passage they traversed when they descended to the garden of Aphrodite passed an ancient spring, from whence they could have carried moisture (p. 229).  He further surmises that the festival commemorated Cecrops' two daughters who fell from the Acropolis, Erse and Pandroso—both named for dew (or tender growth).  In any case, Arrephoia may be a ritual for fertility and likely part of the agricultural cycle.  It is more obviously the beginning of the process that winds up the old year before theNew Year commences, since in Athens nothing was carried over from one year to the next.  This completion of the year entailed a ritual process of festivals and sacrifices to a multitude of divinities, all seemingly related to the city’s first king, Erechtheus, from Mycenaean times (Burkertt, p. 233).

Modern practice: On this day, begin to finish unfinished projects and to clear away debris and what is no longer needed, to make room for the new.

Burkert, Walter, Greek Religion, 1977 Parke, H.W., Festivals of the Athenians, 1977.