So let's dedicate a night to Modern-day Eros, get boozed up, and hold a symposium of our own? On February 9th, we'll gather at Witch House with good food, the intoxicants of your choice, and a prepared speech, poem, or other presentation on the nature of love as an offering to Eros.  Wear red."

My presentation, an original hymn for Eros Protogonos, whom the Orphics called Phanes, is below.  If you'd like to hold your own Symposium ritual, you can find complete instructions on my personal blog.  Below, you'll find my personal offering, an original hymn to Primordial Eros.

Hymn for Eros Protogonos

Sara L. Mastros

Hesiod tells us, as only he can

That long before begetting began,

Long before the birth of the Earth,

In the beginning, “Xaos came first”.

In a sinuous spasm of shuddering, shivering,

Shimmering, jiggling, quickening, quivering,

As a voluptuous void of thick viscous mist,

Howling and moaning, Xaos came to exist.

Xir ragged breath shaking in gasps and in grunts,

Xe ejaculates seed from Xir infinite cunts,

Crystalline crumbs of uncut actuality,

Coalescing, condensing, into our reality.

Great Mother Matter whom Hesiod called,

“wide-bosomed Gaia, firm foundation of all.”

Next, we are told, by our Muse-tutored rhapsode,

“Eros shone forth”, from his cosmic abode,

“The fairest of all of the immortal gods,

Who unnerves the limbs and sets minds all at odds,

Eros shuns reason, refusing wise counsel”,

He makes sinners behave, turns saints into scoundrels.

Eros, Sex-Love, third-born from the Dark,

the gravitational force that draws quark close to quark,

His shuddering orgasm was that very Big Bang,

Mathematical symphony the first angels sang,

He gave passionate atoms their nuclear fire.

Eros, the Lucifer, god of Naked Desire,

Lit the spark of the stars and warmed the cold Night,

Giving heat to the universe, he let there be light.

Then Eros awakened the womb of the Earth,

And out flowed the Sky, the very first birth.

Gaia and Ouranos, united in love,

The Earth’s firm foundation, the Heavens above,

Their waters were joined, the primordial soup,

their commingled essence, that amino-laced goop,

The  roiling ocean from which all life springs,

Eros instigator of the Ten Thousand Things.

Evolution went slowly, in those early days,

Until Eros taught Life His creative ways,

Igniting the yearning for recombination,

Eros taught us the arts of sex and flirtation,

Dividing the genders, as woman and man,

beginning begetting from whence you began.