The Sad Goddess of Death by Olyushka
Sannion has inspired yet another post, right before I’m about to finish up a longer one on “hearing the gods” and giving it to you either tonight or tomorrow.
There’s been a lot of discussion about “the gods are not what you think they are” (which is true to a level that’ll shatter your bones, if you’d look to it). The gods are not what you think they are. They are not these petty, squabbling beings with more-than-average power that play with our lives because they’re bored, or infatuated, or whatever else. No matter what god you hear of, there is a lot more to them than what we are even capable of seeing without directly experiencing it.
And sure, you can say, “Well Melitta, primary sources say this and this and this…”
Do you know who wrote the primary sources? WE DID. People. Humans. Fallible creatures who interpreted the grand cosmic stories and interpreted them as best as they could. You could explore a myth, even the most arbitrary seeming one, and if you have a sincere connection to the god, you will find a wealth of meaning and beauty in it, as I find every time I examine Persephone’s primary myth. (And there are others I plan to get to.)
But again, it seems like we humans has a singular difficulty in accepting the god for who they are. The sweet and the savage, the whole and the broken…or at least, those are the terms that *we* put to them.
Sannion loves Dionysus as he is.
“Pagans have this pathetic need to sanitize, prettify, make safe and politically correct the gods.
“Gods are dangerous when they manifest themselves clearly.” — Homer, The Iliad 20.131
They can’t admit that there’s anything stronger, wiser, more beautiful and powerful than they are. They is a rugged individualist, a special snowflake.
But there is.
And we call them gods for a reason.
They are the ones the world revolves around, not us.
Even when these people lack such a dangerously inflated ego — there’s still a part of them that bridles at the yoke. They try to make themselves feel morally superior to the gods, then argue that the gods couldn’t possibly have done the horrible things the ancients attributed to them as a way to resolve this inner tension.
God is not a philosophic formula that you can alter with syllogisms.
It’s only when you can look the Devourer in the face without flinching that you are truly free.”
Galina also wrote a great post about it, from the perspective of one who serves Odin.
thelettuceman (who’s blog I see I’m going to have to follow) also puts in some wise words
The incomparable Jack von Faustus has something to say on the matter as well.
And to give Sannion the last word:
“Dionysos is a god.
Even the smallest god is beyond man’s full comprehension — and Dionysos is immense.
You know what that means? Dionysos is more than just some handsome bearded dude with a crown of ivy, come hither eyes and lips wet with wine.
He may show himself to you like that but he’s not limited to just that one mask, that one form. When you can see a dozen such masks, a hundred simultaneously then you’ll get at something of the truth of what Dionysos is.
But you still won’t know him completely. No mortal possibly can. For Dionysos exists beyond what is known. He is a god of mystery, as all true gods are.
And art is man’s imperfect means of expressing the ineffable. Art points the way, it alludes and suggests. It can do no more.
When that is understood about art, art is a profound ally to religion. We are sensual creatures — there is nothing wrong with engaging the senses in worship. This makes for the most powerful kind of worship in fact.
But the object is not the subject.
The gods are more than our conceptions of them.
When you mistake the image for what inspired it, when you accept only the surface reading of a text and go no further — you do a grave disservice to art and to religion.
Yes, the myths are true and what art depicts is real — but don’t stop there. He is more than that, always more than we can imagine. And if you try to box him in you’ll miss the really special stuff about him, the stuff you can only learn by opening yourself up to him completely. And you’ll piss him off. He doesn’t do well in cramped spaces — unless those spaces happen to be bottles.” (1)
Persephone by Stregatto10
I couldn’t have said it better myself, about any god.
You can’t put the gods in a box and expect them to fit the confines of that space, AT ALL. I can’t think of any god that fits the box of human conception. The god is the space in the box, the god is the four walls, the ceiling and the floor that make up the box. The god is all that lies outside of the box, the god is what causes the box to be made and the box to be destroyed. The god is the maker of the concept of boxness and will destroy it when the concept no longer suits it’s purpose.
The gods are cosmic forces, sentient, immense, no words can really do them justice, that have allowed us to know them symbolically through myth, story and revelation. These cosmic forces are personified through the myths and as they appear to us so that we can understand them, so that we have a symbol of some kind to transcend to a higher knowledge of who they are.
Hades raped Persephone! HE’S DEATH. Or if not death, if we’re being literal, he’s the force that rules OVER death, OVER the life-after-death, and that force takes what it wants, when it wants it, period. It is the Universe, self-devouring. Persephone is a victim! SHE’S OURSELVES, in a huge way. She’s the essence of all that lives and dies. According to the Orphics, she’s our spiritual source, the source of not just our lives, but our bodies too. Persephone, equally knowable and unknowable, nature not just as the beauty and splendor of the material world (which is her garment), but nature as in essence, Essence than must share equally, painfully, in life and death. I could go on and on, and probably will for one of my next essays.
And they love us- yes, they do. Accuse me of being a fluff-bunny, special-fucking-snowflake all you want, I’ll just laugh in your face. The gods love us because we are tiny parts of them. We are the gains of sand on their infinite beach, we are the stars that make up the body of their infinite galaxy. If they didn’t love us, they wouldn’t bother with us. If we weren’t a part of them, if they did not desire our elevation, all our offerings, all our prayers and all our work would be in vain. Despite what some ancient (and modern) goetics, magicians and necromancers think, you can’t threaten a god into compliance.
And I love them. I love my gods. I don’t get along with all the gods of the world because I am mortal and I am fallible. And my energy, for lack of a better word, doesn’t mesh well with some of them. Like Ishtar or Inanna. But I love my gods. I most especially love Persephone, with everything that I have. And like Sannion who loves Dionysus because of his savagery and not despite it, who loves Dionysus AS A WHOLE, I love Persephone.
I love her for obscuring what I need to see most. It makes the revelation she gives me that much more amazing.
I love her for her broken heart. I know it is because she is separated from that which she loves most, which lives in us.
I love her for her innocence. It is primal, pure and savage.
I love her for how so many underestimate her. It makes it so much easier to do her work when the rest of you aren’t expecting it to come from her.
I love her for how things rot and decay in her hands. She is my Lady Entropy, my Lady Nigredo, on the smallest and largest of scales.
I love her for how she brings the most beautiful things from out of this rot, how she liberates all that is beautiful and pure out of all the pain in this world, my Queen of Resurrection and Rebirth.
I love her for her victimhood. Because it is the willing sacrifice that she makes for us so that we may follow her along the sacred way, wherever that leads us.
I love her for doing these things to me. I love her for the heartbreak of her mysteries, because sometimes beauty is just so much, so so much, that it wounds you deeply and in a way that will never heal. And this is something to thank the gods for, because that wound is how you are best able to reach and heal others. The light of your inner most being, your burning inner sun, shines from through his wound in you. That which is to give light must endure burning, says Viktor Frankl. The mysteries are painful. Thankfully, the gods are fully able to give you pain as well as giving you pleasure, and both options are more than worth it.
Persephone by In5a
1. http://thehouseofvines.com/2013/03/11/school-is-in-session/
