shitpostingwitch - Tumblr blog

[shitpostingwitch]

The "I will only worship the gods if they will do things for me" mentality is not only delusional, but also unhealthy.

If your love and devotion are only for expectations of rewards, then you really need to rethink what love and devotion mean.

Humans don't want conditional love. What makes you think the gods do?

No one, mortal or divine, owes you anything. No one is obligated to do anything for you. And if you only desire a relationship for your own gain, then it's not a relationship; it's a business transaction. And this is something that humans would scorn, much less gods.

We do things for people we love and care about, because that's what we do for those we love and care about, not because we expect things in return. And for those who know how to love, this is naturally reciprocal, and the relationship is a healthy give and take. This is what it means to have kharis with the gods. It is the foundation of relationship building.

The gods don't need your love. They don't need you to worship them. If you're going to treat gods as divine ATMs or vending machines, then you might as well give your money to churches that will let you buy your way into heaven.

[shitpostingwitch]

Haloa festival

The Haloa is yet another of those Winter Solstice festivals. @dionysiandevotee made a post a few days ago about the Brumalia, which is the Roman counterpart of the Greek Haloa. 

Similarly to the Brumalia, the festival focuses on Demeter, Poseidon and Dionysus. However, the timing and deities involved are where the similarities end. 

Quick historical background and purpose of the festival

The festival was celebrated in Athens and then continued on in Eleusis where the first fruits were carried. It is therefore closely linked with Demeter’s mysteries. It was an important festival for women, who were expected to participate. Men, on the other hand, were expected to pay for them and were excluded of the women-only celebrations. The general consensus is that the festival was related to threshing (the process of loosening the edible part of cereal grain after harvest), and that Dionysus was added later on. Very possibly because it is at this time of year that the soil around the vineyards are cut and hoed, and the first fermentation cycle completed.  

Celebrations

The celebration included a procession and sporting events which were open to all citizens. Then, there would be a feast that included genital shaped cakes/baked goods. It is likely that the men honored Poseidon while the women were having their own ritual to Demeter and Dionysus.

Because the festival is sacred to Demeter, some food restrictions apply. Avoid offerings of pomegranates, meat (”flesh” but it’s possible some fish and/or fowl might have served), and it is possible that eggs and apples were also excluded. On the other hand, offerings of cakes (genital shaped if possible) and of fruits were made. The consumption of wine seems to also have been an important component of worship. Sexual symbols in general are a custom of the festival, and the sexual symbolism of the offerings were accompanied by “lustful words” that probably included crude jokes and sexual word play. 

How to celebrate it today? Possible ideas.

The usual would be to read hymns to the three deities involved: Demeter, Dionysus and Poseidon. Offering wise, fruits (no pomegranates or apples!), cereals and wine are especially appropriate. Holding a feast is obviously an extra if possible. 

Baking is also a good devotional activity, and you can make the baked good genital shaped if you are comfortable with it. 

Granted, the Haloa is not the most minor-friendly celebration. If you are an adult and comfortable with sexual imagery, you can dedicate erotic acts and/or consume erotic entertainment, especially jokes and written works. 

Have fun!

[shitpostingwitch]

Dionysos, God of the grape vine, theater, and ecstasy 🍇🎭

[shitpostingwitch]

If you want to be a good Reconstructionist/Revivalist, just reading any book won’t cut it. Read books by poc. Read books by Jews (please do not buy a book from a gentile if you’re wanting to learn about Hellenistic judaism). Read books that tear apart the Eurocentrism in classics, read about racism in classics, etc. Academia is not a white people thing. 

Whiteness, Eurocentrism, and Antisemitism have polluted and appropriated antiquity enough. Don’t you dare let it into your worship either. 

[shitpostingwitch]

Dionysus, this winter god

(Listen to the audio version)

Having been a hellenic polytheist for several years has completely changed my way of considering the year. Because the Attic calendar’s New Year typically falls somewhere in July/August, I naturally consider the first Dionysian event of the year to be the Oschophoria, which I celebrated last month.

I’ve often seen people be surprised by the statement that Dionysus is a winter god. In turn, their surprise surprises me because I honestly can’t imagine it otherwise at this point. Since the season has just started, I thought it would be an ideal moment to explain this a bit further.

Wine season The first logical overlap with the ritual calendar is with the wine cycle. The earliest festival of the year, the Oschophoria, tends to fall around the end of October, thus fitting nicely with the end of the grape harvest and the beginning of the wine making process. And at the end of the cycle, we find the Anthesteria in late February/early March where the new wine is officially opened, mixed and offered. I agree with the theory that City Dionysia placed in spring, and which marks the last festival of the Dionysian year, is meant to be the final act before and coincides with the preparation of the new harvest and the emergence of the vine’s first blossoms. the other festivals in between those two steps line up with different steps of the wine-making process.

I do not think it is a coincidence that all the Dionysian festivals fall at a time where the wine is actively being made and/or undergoing the fermentation process. It would make sense to concentrate devotion at this time to guarantee the quality of the new wine.

Dionysus of Delphi When Apollo departs from Delphi for his yearly travel to the Hyperboreans, it is Dionysus who replaces him at the temple.

A small parenthesis, as I feel like this is one of the things that confuse people a lot, so I just want to give some insight about the whole thing before moving on to Dionysus: Delphi was also an astronomical center. There is recent research linking the departure of Apollo and the arrival of Dionysus in Delphi with the yearly movement of the stars as seen from Delphi. If this theory is right, this would explain how the divinatory timing was organized in Delphi. All in all, Apollo being gone is supposed to impact divination and oracle activity, not personal worship.

End of parenthesis, back to Dionysus. In Delphi more than anywhere else, Dionysus not Apollo’s contrary. They complement eachother nicely. In Delphi, singing the dithyramb would mark the beginning of winter. On a cultic level, Dionysus’ winter presence relates to his birth and reawakening through the biennial rite of the Thyiades. Quite little is known of this celebrations (and the other delphic festivals to Dionysus in general) but we know that once every two years, female worshippers would climb up to the Corycian cave on Mount Parnassus to celebrate the awakening of the Dionysus Liknetes, that is, the child Dionysus asleep in his the liknon (winnowing basket).

All this to say that Dionysus is the winter god par excellence. He thrives during this season and keeps us warm with his many holidays.

Further reading: Anghelina C., The Drunken World of Dionysos, in: Trends in Classics, 2017 Dietrich C. B. , Divine Madness and Conflict at Delphi,in: Kernos, 1992

[shitpostingwitch]

κικλῄσκω, Διονυσον, τον θεόν ταυροκηρον, δίμορφον, διφυῆ, διμητωρ, άγνόν, ὰρήϊον, ἂγριον, Βακχεῖον ἂνακτα˙ μαινολην ελευθερευν, κλῦθί μευ εὐχομένον I call to Dionysus, the bull-horned God, two-shaped, two-formed, twice-born, war-like, pure, wild Bacchic lord; raging liberator, hear my prayer

[shitpostingwitch]

Some people always get super salty when they come asking for help with a “ghost haunting” and the first thing i ask them is “have you checked your living space for carbon monoxide”.

Like maybe you thought coming to a witch you’d get some neat spell or some shit, but a big part of being a (good) witch is also looking at what is in front of you and ruling out some basic things first, and a lot of the things people describe to me when it comes to ghost hauntings also sound a helluva lot like carbon monoxide poisoning. So like sorry for giving a shit over whether or not you’re actually about to die or not I guess *shrug emoji*

Like I know we joke about my house being haunted (and maybe it is) but when the lights flicker in my house I don’t do a cleansing spell, I call an electrician. You gotta do the physical world things first before you jump to the metaphysical. That’s just how it is.

[shitpostingwitch]

White women on tumblr claiming that men cannot be witches because of historical persecution without addressing the ways in which white People have systemically persecuted and destroyed the pagan practices of people of color for centuries proping up their own narrow view of white paganism as the face of modern witchcraft is peak white feminism.

You don’t make the rules. Not this or any other day.

[shitpostingwitch]

I’m sorry but how the fuck is a grown ass nazi being in a fiction-based delusion of grandeur and evil at all comparable to a bunch of young practitioners conjuring spirits of harry potter characters and whatever the fuck else

THATS SORT OF LIKE SAYING “HOW ARE ARMED CHRISTOFASCISTS COMPARABLE AT ALL TO MOMS HANDING OUT CROISSANTS AT A CHURCH BAKE SALE“

THE POINT IS THAT THIS SHIT CAN MAKE YOUR PERCEPTION OF THE WORLD REAL FLEXIBLE, AND IF YOU’RE NOT CAREFUL, VERY EVIL PEOPLE CAN STEP IN AT JUST THE WRONG MOMENT AND BEND IT IN THE WRONG PLACES

THIS SHIT ISNT A GAME, FASCISTS ARE ACTIVELY RECRUITING PEOPLE IN THESE CIRCLES. IF YOU CHOOSE TO PARTICIPATE IN THE OCCULT YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND THAT AT ANY POINT YOU ARE MAYBE ONE OR TWO BAD CHOICES AWAY FROM LITERAL ACTUAL NEO NAZI RECRUITERS.

[shitpostingwitch]

I don’t really know what people generally call this method of sigil making, so I’m just calling it “Letter Shaping” because you’re using the basic shapes from certain letters. This is the most common form of sigil making, and it allows the most creative influence. As you see above the sigils are for nearly the same thing, yet the sigils came out completely different. Not because the purpose was different, but because I approached them both a different creative way, and that’s what I like so much about this method. There’s a lot of freedom and personalization involved.

(UPDATE: Here’s a link to a guide on how to deconstruct letters down to basic shapes)

[shitpostingwitch]

I made some tasteful memes for your viewing pleasure 😌

[shitpostingwitch]

Seeing the Ray-bans invites from abandoned blogs I used to follow is like being in a zombie movie, confronted with the shambling reanimated corpse of a loved one as you load your shotgun whispering, "not like this. Not like this."

[shitpostingwitch]

Girls don't want boys, girls want to revel in the mountains of Thebes in honour of Dionysus

[shitpostingwitch]

Girls don't want boys, girls want to revel in the mountains of Thebes in honour of Dionysus

[shitpostingwitch]

✨These are going to make some Hellenics mad but the visuals are stunning🤩

[shitpostingwitch]

[shitpostingwitch]

“Witch is a political term. It was forged by political forces. It was a word that got you killed if you were called it. If you call yourself a witch you have a duty to stand in solidarity with all those who face oppression today.”- Sarah Lyons (via Twitter)