PaganSquare.com - WitchesAndPagans.com

“It's all about gay sex. Everything is always about gay sex. Even straight sex is all about gay sex.”

(Sparky T. Rabbit)

It would have been obvious to any ancient Greek.

Who would have thought that you can't really understand the birth of Dionysos without knowing about gay sex?

You know the story.

Semele is pregnant with Zeus' child, but makes the mistake of asking to see her divine lover as he really is, in the full glory of his divinity. Note to self: bad idea.

Blam!

One lightning-strike later, Zeus implants the still-gestating fetal Dionysos into his own thigh, from which the god is, in due course, born, and hence—in the by-word of the Dionysiac mysteries—known as “Twice-born.”

To judge from the surviving literary and artistic evidence, the most common form of male-male sex in ancient Greece was what Classics professors refer to as “intercrural intercourse": what your average street hustler would call “thigh-f*cking.”

That explains why Dionysos is born from Zeus' thigh.

A man and a woman stand on a misty cliff, the man full of barely suppressed frustration and the woman stoic and self-contained. The man urges her to free herself from a difficult situation. He is met with this reply: 

“If freedom is all you ever live for, you will never be free of yourself.” 

Reader warning: Sexually explicit material

Did you know that masturbation was the gift of a god?

Well, you'd probably already figured that out for yourself. But the Greeks, of course, had a story.

Yes, it was Pan that invented it, along with music. He gave them both as gifts to his votaries the shepherds, to help pass the time up in the pastures.

Music and masturbation, both. Praise be to Pan!

Then there's the dildo; that's also the gift of a god. (The word itself comes from Italian diletto, “delight”; did you know that?) Which god? Well, Dionysos, of course.

Here's the story.

Dionysos needed to descend into the Underworld, but he didn't know how to get there. (I think it was to consult with his dead mother, but that's by the by.) When he asks around, they tell him that the only one who knows where to find the entrance to the Underworld is a certain grizzled old shepherd. (If I were a master-poet, now, I'd know the guy's name, but me, I'm just a two-bit storyteller.) So pretty young Dionysos goes to the old shepherd's bothy.

Sure, I'll tell you how to get there, says the shepherd. But first I want that sweet, dimpled little butt of yours.

I’ve been collecting wicker. Well, garbage-picking it actually. In my neighbourhood it’s gone out of style and so it ends up on the curb. And I can’t resist it: wicker hampers, baskets, bowls…nothing I need but everything I want. There is something enchanting about the weaving and wending, the writhing willow branches held in tension to create an object of beauty and use. I have to have it.

Our giant new television came with high definition. While my husband marvelled at the crispness of the picture and the exciting quality of the sports events, I noticed something else. 

The illusion of reality had disappeared.

One of the aspects of archaeology that continues to amaze me is our ability to dissolve tiny bits of residue out of ancient containers and figure out exactly what those containers held thousands of years ago. With this technique, we’ve been able to determine what the ancient Minoans ate and drank and even what kinds of cosmetics they used.

Most people picture the people of the ancient world drinking wine, and they certainly did that, but the Minoans also drank mead. You might think of this alcoholic beverage, brewed from honey rather than grapes, in connection with the Norse and the fabulous feasts at Valhalla, but mead was actually a popular drink all over the ancient world.

One of the issues we face when reviving ancient spiritual practices is that we often don’t know exactly what the original people called their deities. In the case of the Minoans, we don’t even know what language they spoke, and their deity names have come down to us only through the Greeks.

Today I’m going to toss out some thoughts about some of the deity names from ancient Crete. Maybe, if we put enough ideas into the pot, we can brew up some useful bits for our spiritual practice. Let’s start with Rhea, the Minoan Earth Mother Goddess.