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thea-in-the-abbey · 6 months

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2023 Rural Dionysia Announcement

Io! The time of the year has come again for the Rural Dionysia!

How to participate

The Rural Dionysia is meant to be a smaller competition than its urban counterpart, as such, we have selected only 3 categories:

Freestyle poetry

Modern hymns

“Complete the fragment”

Freestyle poetry

Your poem can be about any chosen topic (myth, personal experience etc.) in any written format. It doesn't have to be religious in nature.

Modern hymn

An hymn must sing the praises of a deity of your choice. Unlike the "freestyle poetry", your work must be of religious nature to fit in this category.

Complete the Fragment

Each year, we choose a fragment from an Ancient Greek poet to work with. The challenge is that the initial fragment must be included somewhere in your piece in its original order. This means you can fill the gaps however you want, but you can’t switch the order of the words in your piece or remove words from the original fragment.

Here is the fragment selected for this 2023 edition: Paen 16 by Pindar (52q Oxyrhynchus papyrus; late 2nd century AD; trans. William H. Race; Loeb 56)

……………… ] Lord Apollo, .…] for I pray ….] with willing (mind?) to give ….] power suffices and you were judged to be ….] most gentle to mortals.

Here is the Greek text for reference. Note that because the word "mind" is unsure in this translation, it will be acceptable to keep or modify this word.

If in doubt for any of these categories, remember that you can check submissions from the previous years to get an idea of how others have done before.

Submitting your piece

Please submit your piece through submissions on this blog. All entries must be tagged for the category they are being submitted to. but you can only choose 1 category per piece and each person may only submit 1 entry per category each year.

Entries must also be tagged for potentially triggering content and squicks. If your entry needs a trigger warning, kindly add them at the end of your submission and we will take care of adding them in. Check the rules below for further information about submissions.

Calendar of the event

Nov. 10: Official announcement and opening of submissions. Dec. 10: Final submission day. Dec. 11: Vote opening. Dec. 18: Vote closing. Dec. 19-20: Announcement of the winners!

No worries though! We will be posting reminders about each step when the time comes.

General rules

Roleplay and fanfic are not acceptable submissions. This is a religious festival, please respect our faith and do not submit an entry if you are roleplaying or writing fanfiction.

Unlike with the City Dionysia, entries do not necessarily have to be about specific deities or Hellenic polytheism except for the “Modern Hymn” category, which has to be dedicated to one or many gods of your choice.

There are no meter restrictions. This is up to the writer.

All stories, myths, and poems must be entered using the submissions button.

All entries must be tagged for the category they are being submitted to. Entries must also be tagged for potentially triggering content and squicks.

An entry may only be submitted to a single category.

Each person may only submit one entry per category each year.

Winners for each category will be decided by popular vote.

Admins of this blog cannot participate, for obvious reasons. As for now, this includes @thegrapeandthefig @verdantlyviolet

Questions about the rules? Check the blog for past answers, your answer might be in there. And if it's not, simply submit an ask. We'll answer in the best delays possible.

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thea-in-the-abbey · 6 months

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Reblog this if u a hellenic polytheist who LOVES trans/nonbinary folks and queer folks. Reblog this is u a hellenic polytheist or hellenic who believes in ending the gender binary and allowing people to identify as however the fuck they want to, and supporting them. Reblog this if ur a hellenic polytheist who believes our gods both draw strength from and ALSO transcend gender.

Reblog this if u understand or want to understand that just because western/white ideals of gender involve a binary, that this isn’t the only way of looking at gender that historically existed and STILL exists across cultures, and that to enforce one view over others is white supremacy and only feeds patriarchal oppression by reinforcing its ideals of binary and punishment of nonconformity

reblog this if ur a hellenic polytheist who says NO to crusty white cisheteropatriarchy– in which white cis men oppress all those who don’t identify as white heterosexual cisgender men.

reblog this if you realize that we have to work together.

for those who have been fighting this fight in the community long before i got here, I THANK YOU <3

- Signed your local trans gendernonconforming brujx, as a devotional activity for Dionysus and my Indigenous, two-spirit and trans ancestors.

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thea-in-the-abbey · 6 months

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2023 Trans Ancestor Rite

Hi everyone. It's about that time...

Our divination confirms that we are not doing an elevation-style ritual this year. (You may recall that nine-day format with the altar on the floor.) The ancestor ritual will be one day only. We recommend November 20th, as it is already the Trans Day of Remembrance. (Our own ritual may need to be November 21st, due to bio family obligations, but we are still sussing that out.)

We also recommend setting the altar up early even if you don't work it night after night as in previous years. The Rite is still in a transitional, somewhat experimental stage this year - so we will try performing the ritual only once, and then verify what's working through divination after the fact.

We plan to check in over the weekend with the individual ancestors who customarily participate in the ritual, and will post results once we have them. We also plan to post a concise ritual outline with instructions and prayer texts in the next few days.

In the meantime, you could consider where, when, and with whom you might wish to perform the ritual. Is there a local TDOR ceremony you could add a ritual element to? Do you have comrades who might join you in lighting the candle and reading the names? A single ritual is more approachable for many than nine days of consecutive prayers, which opens up possibilities for new contexts and participants.

Please send an ask to let us know your plans and questions! You can also use the submission function to send us photos of your altars, or prayers, as in years past. We will be tracking the tag #troe2023 (even though the E for Elevation in the acronym is no longer quite right).

You may wish to turn on notifications for this blog if you are participating this year, as we post pretty infrequently and will otherwise likely get lost on your dash.

Thank you for joining us in honoring our siblings and cousins and elders who have passed on.

🏳️‍⚧️🕯️🙏🏽

--- Mod Alder

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thea-in-the-abbey · 6 months

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Alejandra Bogue por Joel-Peter Witkin

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thea-in-the-abbey · 6 months

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Dear Diary, First let me say how grateful I am to call New England home- nothing compares. Living in Vermont, though slightly isolating at times, has helped reduce many of the daily stressors I faced in Tennessee. Vermont is unmeasurably beautiful and, in many ways, reminds me of the mountain I was raised on- Brockdell Mountain in Pikeville TN. It was a magical place to live if you were a child, and the world was still new. I miss my mountain dearly. If I could have lived there my entire life, I would have. If not there than let it be Vermont.

The mountain itself was beautiful and it was where my family planted our family tree. The people there were some of the nicest people you could have hoped to meet. However, there was equally as many who would make your blood freeze if you were unlucky enough to meet them on a deserted road on a star lit night. The real reason I moved away when I graduated high school was because I knew I would be murdered if I didn't. Southern sensibility can be very unforgiving when the world realizes your no longer a child. Being burnt alive in your house is a terrifying and very real possibility when you are queer in the south.

I have been assaulted in a public library, harassed in grocery stores, ignored by physicians, and silenced by law enforcement; all in the same year. I have been chased down a curvy road on a rainy night with a baseball bat. To be alive, for me, is nothing to scoff at. Its precious. As Transgender Day of Remembrance (TDOR) approaches, I cannot help but be reminded of that. Especially In the face of blatant disregard. Disregard strikes deep in the vein of indifference. How easy it must be to stack people in coffins when you realize their very worth is measured in their silence.

Tennessee was scary- so I was eager to find a place as liberating as Vermont is. I wish that I would have moved here sooner. It has awakened something so deep in me, that at times it feels as if I am at total peace with the world. Life here in Vermont is magical but it isn't perfect. Vermont is removed from the harsh realities of other states and at times it can be jarring.

For instance, when people speak about the identities of others with a strong sense of detachment, there is little hesitation the recall the fact that being human comes with stipulations. As if being trans makes you something other than human. A notion that stings in the most numbing of ways. If not human, then what? Will you call us demons then act shocked when we act devilish? Thats the point though, isnt it- you hope to call us nothing. You hope to make us undone. See us bound and broken- no not seen at all. Not heard. Without any self-awareness, erased.

That is the only thing that I can think of when you laugh at the names, we have given ourselves. As if asking for respect is absurd or too great a price to pay. To undermine the language and boundaries that people have created to exist- is cruel. Especially, when we have had to carve a place out for ourselves despite adversity. Words matter and so does the identities people have cultivated to understand those identities.

PS- when asking questions, let the first be, "What steps have a taken to understand this concept?" If nothing than take time to research. If you read something and need clarification- proceed.

#transgender #transisbeautiful #words matter #take time to listen

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thea-in-the-abbey · 6 months

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When Darkness Falls, painting by Gloomy Grove

This artist on Instagram

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thea-in-the-abbey · 6 months

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Came to the realization I really want to draw trans figures more often

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thea-in-the-abbey · 8 months

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I call to Cybele, Kourotrophos, Matar Kubileya, Mother of Mayflies, you whose palm holds the mountains and valleys, you whose whisper ignites the volcano, you who hold the aching line of our family in your infinite heart, you who have always held our family. I pray for your might and your compassion in this work, I pray for your sanctuary when the Great Madness threatens us, I pray for the endless oceans of your love, pouring over our people like the hot gore of the Taurobolium, filling our eyes, filling our eyes, filling our mouths, I call to you, Cybele.

I call to Asushunamir, you whose faces are brilliant, you who fell from the shards of the sky god, you who descends through the gates and returns, you who snatched Inanna from the mouth of hell, you who slipped through the fingers of Ereshkigal’s rage, you who carry the torch, you who lead the way. I pray for your guidance through the darkness, I pray for your tender firelight, I pray for the power of your uncontainable genders and your presence with our beloved Dead, I call to you, Asushunamir.

I call to Agdistis, Andisis of the Rock, mad-blooded monster, you who dance the way before us, you who spilt your life before any of us, you who first faced the choice of diminishment or death and spat your filthy defiance into the dirt, you who eat the fear out of us and fill the places where it had been with fire and frenzy. I pray for your wildness, your refusal to be hurt, your presence by our sides, I pray for your support as Tender of the Line, I call to you, Agdistis.

I call to Hermes, three-headed, Hermes Gatekeeper, Hermes Trickster, Hermes of the roads, you who carry the messages, Polytropus, you who keep the crossroads. I pray for your winged heels beside us as we stomp the streets, I pray for your fleetness as the mill churns our devotion, I call to you, Hermes.

I call to ETLE, many-minded Lady of the future, Sandra Shen, Doctor Haends, the Shrander, queer descendant, queer creator, you who can see through time and manipulate its threads, you who can see into the fractal substrate of the universe and shape its patterns with your reverberating touch, you who are sparks, sparks in everything, Mother of the Femme Revolution, you with your eyes like pomegranate halves in the rushing light of the event horizon. I pray for your glitch, the new language, the structure that creates itself gnarled and shaky from the shards of what is destroyed, I pray for your vision woven into the timestream, your vengeful liberation, your generative malfunction, your enormity, I call to you, ETLE.

I call to Persephone, Queen of the Dead, the only living thing in the Underworld, you who are Maiden, you who are Death, you who restores innocence, you who quenches the thirst and sates the hunger of our beloved Dead, you who unbinds them from the chains of trauma, you who smiles upon them as they struggle towards your throne, I pray for your mercy, I pray for your gentleness, I pray for your comfort, I pray for your ease for our beloved Dead, I call to you, Persephone.

I call to the possibility space, the hub, the spidering nerve cell that reaches into every possible future, I call to the uncollapsed quantum waveform, to the uncreated, to the undefined future, to the time outside of time, to the space where all things are possible. I pray for our work to be seeded through time, to scatter amongst the ages of the earth and grow where it lands, I pray for the richness of the possibilities to spread and root and bear up, for all of the futures that could be, I call to the possibility space.

I call to Dionysos, Breaker of Chains, Womanly One, you who unbind, you who topple your children over the edges of the Small Madness and the Great, you of the Frenzy, you who incites us to vengeance, to tear limb from limb, to devour the hearts of our oppressors. I pray for your wildness, for your Sparagmos, I pray for your femme light and your violent succor, I pray for the infection of your Frenzy throughout our line as we fight and build and fight and rebuild and fight and rebuild, I call to you, Dionysos.

I call to the ur-language, the Tower before it falls, the mathematics space where there is no line between thought and manifest, the words so perfect they render permeable the membrane of will and world, the distinction between sound and brick. I pray for clarity of voice and fearlessness of creation, for recombination, for stone piled upon stone until the machine rises and the gears catch, I pray for the dexterity to unweave and reweave the semiotic webs that link voice to idea, I call to the ur-language.

I call to the Ancestors, our Mighty and Beloved Dead, each member of our extended and maximalist and constantly breaking and healing and re-breaking and re-healing family, known and unknown, named and unnamed, you gender variant Ancestors who lived in violence and suffering and died in violence and suffering, you who found and created and nurtured blossoms of joy and beauty within that. I pray for the peace that you have found to be spread across our line, throughout time, I pray for your nourishing love to our living and dead people, I pray for strength and light to flow through the channels that link us all, I call to you, Ancestors.

I call to the Ancestor Helping Spirits who have stepped up to tend the line, Queer Saints, those who have taught us, Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P. Johnson, Comrade Leslie Feinburg, you whose memories are a blessing, you who rest in power, you who run with water overflowing, you with jewels on your lips, you beautiful and unafraid in perpetuity. I pray for the strength in your fingers as they grip the shot glass, I pray for what I need to be an ally to our siblings in life and in death, I pray for your hands reaching through time, the touch of your fingers on ours, I call to you, Ancestor Helping Spirits.

I call to the Elements, Earth, Air, Fire, Water, the four directions, the irreducible bases of the work. I pray to you, Earth, for the mutability and irrepressibility of the avalanche. I pray to you, Air, for the glamour and evra of the mirage. I pray to you, Fire, for the endless sweet shimmer of coals. I pray to you, Water, for the absolution of the tidal wave, cool clear water, unstoppable water. I call to you, Elements.

Path, you are not path, but you are mill.

Footsteps, you are not footsteps, but you are water.

I touch this concrete, this consecrated ground, shuddering with the echoes of a million feet,

I feel them in my flesh, broken glass, broken heels,

Drunken steps, stumbling against each other and laughing as if nothing could ever end,

Fiery steps, stomping the street, every heel-click an attack on a frightening world,

Running steps, desperate and afraid, disappearingly light with the betrayal of the one place that should have been safe. The pavement resonates with each step in each moment on each night, infinitely crisscrossing each other, pounding each other deeper into an Earth thirsty for such vibrant touch.

I call upon this road to shift, to mold to our will. Hear me, stone, metal, Earth, form yourself into a new shape under the hands of our Ancestors, our Saints, our Gods and Goddesses, our Daemons, under our hands.

I call upon the Earth under this road to buckle, to heave, to come alive, I call to Earth to send the creative power of the avalanche to bear up this creation and press it out of the surface of the world, brick by brick, a new Babel, a mill.

I call upon Earth to bear up the marching feet of this legion of love, to take these vibrations into Herself and echo them forward and backward into a song of power that bathes our Ancestors, our Mighty and Beloved Dead, our troubled and restless Dead, our Dead buried by the hands of a world too cruel to hold them, our living family, with fresh and living soil, rich enough to feed each one and let them blossom.

I call upon the spirits of this land, those who have slept and those who have awoken.

I call upon Earth to hold the bones of our fallen, to let them shake, to let them rise and become a part of the structure.

Path, you are not path, but you are mill.

Footsteps, you are not footsteps, but you are water.

I breathe the Air in this holy place, let it fill me, let it change me, the same Air that passed through the lungs of those that have come before, the same Air that will carry the voices of our descendants as they walk this road in safety and liberation.

I call upon Air to hold and surround each of us, to hold and surround the stones of the mill, to caress them and polish them with heat shimmer and gentle breath. I call upon Air to send the vibration of our voices, my voice, every voice, through the mill into the waiting lungs of our Dead.

As I speak, I call upon the Air that carries my words, let them be amplified, let them roar and shake the foundations of this city, let them be carried through time and lay down roots in the past and future, let them twine roots around the stones of the midland hold them strong and alive.

I call upon Air as it washes over the bared skin on these streets, to draw the heat from its expanse and wind it into the structure, bake the bricks in hot wind, let them be lashed by storms and grow stronger for it, I call upon Air to hold fast and carry us up and up.

Path, you are not path, but you are mill.

Footsteps, you are not footsteps, but you are water.

I bring Fire to this road and let holy rage fill me. I call upon Fire to burn without consuming, to flicker on our skin, to bring the brightness around us, to send smoke to open the way between worlds and ease the path of our offerings.

I call upon Fire and smoke to wreathe the stones of the mill. I press embers into the mortar and let the flames lick through each stone as it licks through each heart in the web of devotion that stretches through time.

I call upon Fire to light the path before the feet of our fallen family, to touch their faces with warmth, to wash away their fear and despair, and I call upon smoke to carry the healing and love from the mill through the walls of the worlds.

Path, you are not path, but you are mill.

Footsteps, you are not footsteps, but you are water.

I give the water of my self to this road to prime the pump, to begin the flow. Great Goddess, deities uncountable, Ancestors like ancient trees, hear me, let this trickle be a tributary that opens the sky. I call to the torrential tears of our collective grief to turn these streams into rivers and rivers into oceans that turn the mighty wheel of the mill.

I call upon Water to fill the wheel, to catch it and push it, to bring it out and out to our Mighty and Beloved dead, to our troubled and restless Dead, to churn these thundering steps and howling voices into offerings for them, into love and devotion for them, into honor and veneration for them.

I call upon the might of Water to wash the ash of trauma from the eyes of our Dead, reform their sight into something new, infant, untouched by the harshness of the manifest world. Let the turning of this wheel carry them into submerged absolution and around into warm prismatic light.

I pound my feet into the stones of this road and smash them to let the water rush through, well up between the skyscrapers, flow and flow, swallow our family into brightness.

Path, you are not path, but you are mill.

Footsteps, you are not footsteps, but you are water.

In the embrace of this world I lay stone upon stone, brick upon brick, I work the mortar in, I weave Earth, Air, Fire, Water into the structure, I build this mill.

Hail to the Goddesses who hold the Dead, hail to the Goddesses who hold the living, hail to the nongendered and all-gendered and genderfucked divinities whose multitude of hands buttress this mill, you whose breath turns the wheel, you who stand beside us in this work, you whose voices twine with ours to open time and space and carry what we offer to those who need it.

Hear me, Elements, hear me, Ancients, hear me, Universe, bend to the call of our family, let this mill rise out of Earth, held by Air, hardened by Fire, fueled by Water, let it form into the shape that is needed to carry our offerings through the aether, let it carry everything we send, let it rise, let it rise, let it form, let it form, let it carry, let it carry.

Hear me, let each footstep turn the wheel, let each teardrop fill its channel, let each cry strengthen the flow. Let it turn, let it turn, let it fill, let it fill, let it flow, let it flow.

Path, you are not path, but you are mill.

Footsteps, you are not footsteps, but you are water.

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