Dionysian-light - Dionysian~Light

Anthesteria’s third and final day: Khutroi, Day of Pots, Festival of Keres

     Thuraze, Keres!      Oukeni Anthesteria!

There is still some remaining celebration of the Aiora rites of swinging on Khutroi.  Girls hanging ribbons and masks from trees, adults drunkenly or at least merrily playing on swings, small rites of purification by air and light-hearted play.  Mostly, these rites have already been done on Khoes, the second day, which is set aside largely for them and is called the Day of Swinging.  But if there are any celebrating Anthesteria who have not yet celebrated the Aiora, then Khutroi is the last day for it.  Likewise, if the Heiros Gamos was not celebrated on Khoes, then it must be done on Khutroi.

But aside from those remnants of swinging and sacred union, the final day of Anthesteria is mostly devoted to the cult of the public dead, those faceless civic ghosts known as Keres — who rose from the Underworld with Dionysus and the pithoi jars as Anthesteria began, and who were honored yesterday on Khoes, the second day.  Until now, the Keres were given the run of the city for Anthesteria; they were stepped aside for, given space, respected, welcomed.  But now is the time to regain our homes, our streets, the places of the living.  While still respecting the ghosts of the public dead, now is the time to resurrect our world from death into life.

And so the final act of honoring the Keres is to set out pots with offerings prepared just for them — vegetables, beans, grains, and seeds, foods that can on this day tempt the city’s dead and draw them out of the homes they wander through.  Homes they once occupied or visited during their lives, places that were once theirs but now belong to the living.  Then with the dead thus drawn and appeased on the doorstep, the homes are warded against the Keres with talismans and small rites.  Celebrants shout, "Out the doors, you Keres! It is no longer Anthesteria!"  And with the banishment of the ghosts, Hermes and Hekate come to guide the Keres back to the Underworld, and the rooms and homes and parks are renewed to the living, refreshed from the dust of dead memories and times past.

Many celebrants feast after this, eating sweet foods made with honey and wine, foods that are not allowed for the dead, foods made separately from the offerings in the Khutroi pots.  The dithyrambs of Dionysos are sung, and songs to Hermes and Hekate as well.  The newly-opened wine is drunk again, still, though perhaps not with as much abandon as the nights before.  The buds are still on the trees, ready to flower.  The ribbons flow in the night breezes.  The vines are being pruned a second time by the Maenads and Bacchantes, continuing the cycle of life and death and change.  The winter is passing, the shadow passing from our hearts, the cold leaving our bones.  We are ready for what comes next.

DARK DRUNKENNESS: THE TALE OF ERIGONE

The reason Khoes is sometimes referred to as the Day of Swings is a story that goes as follows:

When Dionysos first came to Athens to give wine to the people, He was taken in by a kind farmed called Ikarios. In some versions of the tale, Dionysos also fell in love with Ikarios’s daughter Erigone, and many parallels have been drawn between Erigone and Ariadne. In return for their hospitality, Dionysos taught Ikarios to make wine.

Ikarios held a big party, inviting all his friends and neighbors. He bought out the wine which Dionysos had taught him to make, and at first everyone loved the new drink. But when they began to get drunk and started to fall down, they became fearful and suspicious, and thought that Ikarios had poisoned them — so they killed him and stuffed his body in a well. When Erigone found her father’s body, she was so grief-stricken that she hanged herself on a nearby tree.

As punishment, Dionysos cursed Athens and the surrounding land of Attica with barrenness, and struck down the daughters of the people with a madness that caused the young women to hang themselves — just like Erigone, whose death their fathers had caused.

The Athenians sent word to the Temple of Delphi, asking the Oracle for help, to know which God they had wronged. The Pythia told the people of Attica that they needed to make amends for the death of Erigone and her father. Ikarios and Erigone were finally given a proper burial, and a festival, the Aiora, was instituted. The madness was lifted, and the land became fruitful again.

During the Aiora, the young girls of the city would hang ribbons, cups and dolls from trees and let the boys push them on a swing. It can be celebrated on either Khoes or Khutroi, either day works.

——- —- — - The external tragedy of drunkenness.  This is a deep and subtle and complex tale, with many layers and moving parts.  It is the story of paranoia, fear and suspicion.  Of drunken rage and confused impulsive violence.  It tells of those who unfairly fear alcohol and inebriation, as well as those who fall under the darker influences of the same.  It is a story of a death, and of a suicide, and of the ripple effects that suicides can have in a community, like a curse.  And finally, it is the story of how proper reverence, the right attitudes of respect and release, can lift even the heaviest burdens, how merriment and light-heartedness and reverent inebriation can restore the balance and keep dark cycles at bay.

I think of this tale every time someone rails primly against drinking, calls it an evil, blames it for horrible evil things.  For it is not the drinking that creates or causes violence and brutality and dark behavior, any more than an unlocked door causes burglary, or a short skirt causes rape.  All drinking does is to open the doors to rooms in the self that have long been locked — it brings to the surface and the light that which has lain sunken in the dark watery depths for so long.  In one who has no hidden unresolved monsters, drinking brigs out laughter, and love, and daring, and silliness, and relaxation.  The only ones who need fear the liberation of Dionysus are those who have chained their monsters without mastering them.

I think of Erigone’s tragedy when a death or a suicide rends the peace of a community, its savage echoes tearing and ripping the fabric of so many lives outward in extending circles.  When people seem unable to escape the despair and confusion and pain caused by the tragedy and its echoes, and go on dully repeating them ritually, as if condemned.  Holding on.  Locked in to the dull pain of their loss, their fracture, their downward spiral.  No hope of redemption.

But Dionysos is the Liberator.  The savior.  The redeeming one.  He saved the helmsman from the pirates’ fate, raised the shade of his manipulated mother out of Hades and made her a goddess in Olympia, rescued Ariadne from her isolation and misery on Naxos after Theseus had abandoned her.  Dionysos and all He represents, all He brings, can help and heal.  Passion, finding something to care about again.  Ecstasy, getting outside of the self, shedding the layers of self-perception that imprison you.  Devotion, believing in something, valuing something that is greater than your self.  Intoxication, relaxation, sensation, pleasure, opening up, taking chances, feeling alive, again.  Light-hearted playing like a child with others who are doing the same.  Sitting on a swing and swinging, hanging ribbons in the trees, as the scents of spring thaw in the fading shadow of winter.

He is life’s liberating force. He is release of limbs and communion through dance. He is laughter, and music in flutes. He is repose from all cares — he is sleep! When his blood bursts from the grape and flows across tables laid in his honor to fuse with our blood, he gently, gradually, wraps us in shadows of ivy-cool sleep.

— Euripedes, “The Bacchae”

A bacchante by the Italian comic book writer and artist Milo Manara

(via Happy Anthesteria by *A-gnosis on deviantART)