#honorable mention Hellen Gravely | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

samwisethewitch · 1 year

Text

Pagan Wedding Flowers (and other plants) Cheat Sheet

Flowers have been associated with weddings for almost as long as humans have been getting married. In fact, the use of flowers in ritual may actually be older than humans! Neanderthal graves in Iraq suggest that Neanderthals buried their dead with flowers. There are mentions of flowers in our earliest recorded accounts of weddings, such as in Egypt, Greece, and Rome.

Historically, couples would have used whatever flowers were available to them. While some cultures had flowers they preferred for weddings because of their symbolism, couples would have been limited by what grew in their area and by what was in bloom at the time of their ceremony. To be truly as historically accurate as possible, consider using flowers you grew or foraged yourself. Bonus points for native blooms!

For those who aren't into growing or gathering your own wedding flowers, modern florists and greenhouses allow us to choose from a wide range of flowers, many of which aren't native to our homes. This makes it much easier to choose flowers based on their symbolism, history, or cultural meaning.

Historic Wedding Flowers + Plants

Roses have been the flower of choice for Western weddings pretty much forever, and with good reason. The rose is associated with several ancient goddesses of sex, fertility, and/or romance, such as Inanna, Ishtar, Aphrodite, and Venus. (Later, medieval Christians would also associate this flower with the Virgin Mary.) Including the goddess's flowers in a wedding may have been a way of invoking her blessing on the union. Sappho called rose "Queen of the Flowers."

Roses are held in a high regard in pretty much every culture with access to them. They're strongly associated not only with love, but also with beauty, wholeness, blessings, and even spirituality.

Rose was included in wedding celebrations in Ancient Hellos (Greece) and Rome. It is associated with the planet Venus and the water element.

Wheat was also a popular inclusion in weddings in ancient Greece and Rome. Hellenic brides would carry sheaths of wheat or another grain to invoke fertility and good fortune. Wheat was strongly associated with agrarian goddesses like Demeter, Persephone, Ceres, and Proserpina. Carrying wheat may also have been a way of expressing a wish for the marriage to produce many children. Pliny the Elder explicitly says in his Natural History that wheat was included in weddings to honor Ceres.

In modern occult systems, wheat is associated with fertility, the conception of children, and wealth. It is associated with the planet Venus and the element of earth.

Olive branches also featured in Hellenic weddings. Olive was an important crop in the ancient Mediterranean, and olive branches were a symbol of peace and friendship. Olive was also used in the victors' crowns in the Olympic Games. In Athens, the olive tree was a symbol of Athena. It was also carried by worshipers of Apollo when they visited the Oracle at Delphi. Olive was also important to the Romans, who associated it with Mars in his aspect as a protector of peace.

In modern magic traditions, olive is associated with beauty, healing, stamina, wealth, fertility, protection and of course, peace. It is associated with the sun and the fire element.

Orange blossoms were included in Hellenic weddings as a sign of happiness. These strongly scented white flowers also sometimes appeared in Roman weddings. Thousands of years later, Queen Victoria wore a crown of orange blossoms at her wedding, but for her they were a symbol of chastity.

In modern systems, orange is associated with joy, partnership, sweetness, and good luck. It is associated with the sun and the fire element.

Hawthorn appeared in weddings in ancient Rome. Pliny the Elder said that Roman bridal processions included a hawthorn torch dedicated to the goddess Ceres. In Rome, hawthorn was more generally associated with love and good luck.

In Celtic cultures, especially Ireland, hawthorn was believed to be a fairy tree. For this reason, cutting a hawthorn tree or bringing hawthorn branches inside was considered bad luck.

The blooming of hawthorn trees was used to determine the date of Bealtaine, and hawthorn boughs were often decorated with flowers, ribbons, and egg shells to make a May bush, which was placed by the front door for good luck. In Britain, hawthorn wood was used to carve maypoles. Hawthorn flowers may be especially appropriate for a May wedding or handfasting.

In modern occultism, hawthorn is associated with protection, healing (especially healing the heart), romantic love, fertility, granting wishes, and happiness. It is still strongly associated with weddings and marriage. It is associated with the planet Mars and the fire element.

Lotus may have featured in ancient Kemetic (Egyptian) weddings. The lotus was an important symbol in Kemetic religion, and was associated with the sun, rebirth, and the creation of the world. Lotus flowers featured in festivals to honor Hapi, the androgynous god of the Nile. The lotus is used in art to represent Upper Egypt. An Egyptian poem from 1100 BCE connects the lotus to marriage.

Lotus flowers were also popular in ancient Chinese weddings, and they're still used by some Chinese couples today. In Chinese culture, lotus represents purity, honor, and long life.

In modern traditions, lotus is associated with protection, spirituality, and blessings. It is associated with the moon and the water element.

Yellow flowers were used in pre-Christian Ireland for blessings and protection. The exact flower used for these rituals is not specified, so it seems like the color was what mattered. Modern pagans looking to carry on this tradition have lots of yellow flowers to choose from. Some popular choices include yellow roses (see above), yellow amaryllis (associated with creativity, playfulness, and joy), chrysanthemum (associated with long life, optimism, and protection), marigold (associated with happiness, rebirth, and vitality), and/or daffodils (associated with love, fertility, and luck).

Modern Wedding Flowers

We've gone over some of the flowers that were popular in historic pagan weddings, but it's also easy to pagan-ify the flowers that are most popular in modern weddings. Here's a quick rundown of some popular wedding blooms and their neopagan and occult symbolism:

Peony is associated with purification, healing, prosperity, and success. In ancient Rome, peony was believed to be sacred to Mars. It is associated with the sun and the fire element.

Dahlia is associated with mystery, occult wisdom, and transformation. It is associated with the moon and the water element.

Lilac is associated with balance, peace, romance, protection from evil, and attracting friendly spirits. It is associated with Venus and the water element.

Sweet Pea is associated with comfort, charm, and sweetness. It is associated with Venus and the water element.

Hydrangea is associated with healthy boundaries, breaking negative patterns, hex breaking, and protection. It is associated with water and with both the moon and Neptune.

Tulip is associated with beauty, desire, gratitude, love, prosperity, and simplicity. It is associated with Venus and the earth element.

Orchid is associated with beauty, elegance, sexuality, fertility, and romance. It is associated with Venus and the water element.

Lily is associated with spirituality, beauty, harmony, and protection from the evil eye. It is associated with Venus and the water element.

Carnation is associated with beauty, love, rebirth, strength, and healing. Carnations are associated with same-gender love and especially love between men because of Oscar Wilde's fondness for them. They are associated with the sun and the fire element.

Gardenia is associated with love, peace, healing, and spirituality. It is associated with the moon and the water element.

Resources:

"New Neanderthal remains associated with the ‘flower burial’ at Shanidar Cave," Cambridge University Press

"History of Wedding Flowers" by Benna Crawford

The Roman Wedding by Karen K. Hersch

"The Olive in the Ancient Mediterranean" by Mark Cartwright

"The History, Mythology, and Offerings of Hawthorn" by Meghan Pivarnik

Where the Hawthorn Grows by Morgan Daimler

Temple of the Cosmos by Jeremy Naydler

The Magic of Flowers by Tess Whitehurst

The Magic of Trees by Tess Whitehurst (see my disclaimer about Whitehurst's books, but these are some of her better ones)

Cunningham's Encyclopedia of Magical Herbs by Scott Cunningham

502 notes · View notes

thegodsaremyhome · 1 year

Text

Anthesteria

History

Held annually in Anthesterion, Anthesteria was held in honor of Dionysus to celebrate the coming of spring and the maturing of the wine stored from the previous grape harvest. The festival was held from the 11th - 13th of Anthesteria, roughly the end of February. If you want to learn how to track the Ancient Athenian months, you can see this post I made about the Athenian Calendar! Or you could just see this calendar here, since it’s already being tracked for you.

Anthesterion was a strange holiday, as it was a celebration of the coming spring as well as the dead. Though it’s uncertain whether the month was named after the holiday or vice versa, both derive their names from the Greek word Anthos, meaning flower.

On the first day, casks of wine from the last grape harvest were opened, now that they were finally matured. This day was called Pithoigia (meaning jar opening) after this act. On this day, libations from the wine were poured out for Dionysus. New Spring flowers were used to decorate homes, drinking vessels, and children above the age of three wore them as well.

The second day, Choes (meaning the pouring), as well as the first, were considered unlucky days, as it was believed that souls rose from the underworld on this day to roam the earth. Because of this, on Choes people chewed leaves of hawthorn or buckthorn and smeared their doors with tar to protect themselves and their homes. Some also poured out libations of the graves of loved ones. Despite this, celebrations continued. It was the day for merrymaking, featuring many drinking contests where even slaves and children participated.

The third day, Chytroi (meaning pots) was a day exclusively dedicated to the dead. Pots of bran or seed were offered to the wandering souls, and fruit or cooked pulse(basically dried legumes) was offered to Hermes Chthonios. No one was permitted to taste these offerings. Souls were then asked to return to the underworld. This was most likely the reason why offerings were given to Hermes as well, as he was the one who led souls to the underworld.

Games were also held on the final day and, although no plays were permitted to be held, there was a rehearsal held for an upcoming drama festival.

Modern Practice

As mentioned above, Anthesteria is in large part, a time to celebrate the new batch of freshly matured wine. Thusly, drinking wine is an obvious choice. To stay authentic, or if you simply don’t want to drink very much, the Ancient Greeks drank their wine watered down. You obviously don’t have to do this, though.

What’s most interesting about this festival is it’s combination of both the welcoming of spring, and life, and the inclusion of the dead. Thus, this holiday could be seen as both a spring celebration, like Ostara or a spring Equinox celebration, as well as a sort of Hellenic Halloween/Samhain/etc. Because of this, I also included Persephone in my Anthesteria this year.

Typically on the spring equinox, I pick flowers and offer them to Persephone. I also did this for Dionysus on Anthesteria, so to kill two birds with one stone, I offered them both flowers after asking permission from Dionysus to do so. He seemed happy to share the offering, as did Persephone.

As for other options, you could have a feast or a potluck, recite hymns to Dionysus, Hermes, and Persephone if you chose to include Her, make garlands,and making panspermia* as an offering to the dead and to Hermes, pour libations of wine for Dionysus, do a full cleansing of your home or altar, and honor passed on loved ones or ancestors.

Sources

Anthesteria - Britanica Anthesteria - Wikipedia *Panspermia recipie - Hellenion

(Sorry I wasn’t able to get this out on time, but hopefully it’ll be useful for next year!)

#anthesteria #dionysus deity #hermes deity #hellenic polytheism #hellenic pagan #dionysus #hermes

163 notes · View notes

didanawisgi · 6 years

Text

ARGONAUTICA AND AFRICA

by Jason Colavito

http://www.argonauts-book.com/argonautica-and-africa.html

Egypt

“Legends connecting the Argonauts to Africa are ancient. The first of them derives from the myth itself, when Jason and his crew carry the Argo over Libya (North Africa) and cross the mythical Lake Tritonis. Apollonius, in fact, wrote his Argonautica in the context of Ptolemaic Egypt, and Pindar composed the Fourth Pythian Ode in honor of a North African ruler. In another context, Hecataeus of Heraclea would suggest the Argonauts sailed up the Nile to return to Greece. In the words of Kathryn J. Gutzwiller in A Guide to Hellenistic Literature (Blackwell, 2007), by Hellenistic times, the story of the Argonauts had become a "foundation story" and "mythical precedent" for Greek colonization of Egypt and North Africa (p. 77).

However, there were not the only connections. In The Histories, Herodotus explained that the people of Colchis were in fact Egyptians, remnants of an invading force led by the (mythical) pharaoh Sesostris:

There can be no doubt that the Colchians are an Egyptian race. Before I heard any mention of the fact from others, I had remarked it myself. After the thought had struck me, I made inquiries on the subject both in Colchis and in Egypt, and I found that the Colchians had a more distinct recollection of the Egyptians, than the Egyptians had of them. Still the Egyptians said that they believed the Colchians to be descended from the army of Sesostris. My own conjectures were founded, first, on the fact that they are black-skinned and have woolly hair, which certainly amounts to but little, since several other nations are so too; but further and more especially, on the circumstance that the Colchians, the Egyptians, and the Ethiopians, are the only nations who have practised circumcision from the earliest times

Source: Herodotus, The Histories 2.104 (trans. George Rawlinson)

These ancient connections would lead to innumerable latter-day speculations about African influence on the Argonautica. In his early translation of the Argonautica of Apollonius, Edward Burnaby-Greene (1780) wrote extensive notes detailing his belief that Colchis was an Egyptian colony, with Aeetes "no more than viceroy under the sovereign of Egypt" (p. 120). Among the earliest scholarly speculations seized on the coincidence of language between Jason's Argo and Egyptian and Biblical arks to propose that Jason's mission was modeled on the Egyptian, and therefore that of Noah:

In respect to the Argo, it was the same as the ship of Noah, of which the Baris of Egypt was a representation. It is called by Plutarch the ship of Osiris, who as I have mentioned, was exposed in an ark to avoid the fury of Typhon: “Having therefore privately taken the measure of Osiris’s body, and framed a curious ark, very finely beautified and just of the size of his body, he brought it to a certain banquet.” The vessel in the celestial sphere, which the Grecians call the Argo, is a representation of the ship of Osiris, which out of reverence has been placed in the heavens. The original therefore of it must be looked for in Egypt.

Source: Jacob Bryant, A New System: Or, an Analysis of Ancient Mythology, 3rd ed., vol. 3 (London: 1807).

Now the luniform ark of Osiris, in which he floated on the surface of the waters, was certainly the sacred ship of Osiris; that ship, in which the Egyptians placed the Sun, and in which they depicted their eight great gods sailing together over the ocean. But the ship of Osiris, as we are plainly taught by Plutarch, was that very ship, which the Greeks called Argo, and which they feigned to be the vehicle of Jason and his adventurous companions to Colchis: for he tells us, that the Argo was placed among the constellations in honour of the ship of Osiris. Hence it will follow, that the Argo must be the Ark, and that the whole fable of the Argonautic expedition must be a mere romance founded on the mystic voyage of Osiris, that is to say, on the real voyage of Noah.

Source: George Stanley Faber, The Origin of Pagan Idolatry Ascertained from Historical Testimony and Circumstantial Evidence, vol. 2 (London: F. and C. Rivingtons, 1816), 244.

Later, Afrocentric authors would instead argue that the influence originated in Egypt, the homeland of a black African people, whose superior achievements the Greeks jealously coveted and attempted to steal for themselves. R. A. Jariazbhoy argued that, based solely on the testimony of Herodotus, Jason's quest was to learn from the wisdom of the Egyptians in Colchis, the Golden Fleece being a Greek misinterpretation of the Egyptians' superior sea-going vessels:

The fleece is described as being "watched over by a serpent." Such a golden ram's head overlooked by a serpent occurs nowhere else than on the prow of a ship of Ramses III (and one of his predecessors). The ship was named Userhet, it was 130 cubits long (about 200 feet), and had golden rams on both prow and stern, each with a uraeus serpent overtopping it surmounted with the sun's disk. Below is a grand collar, which could have been mistaken for its fleece.

Source: R. A. Jairazbhoy, “Egyptian Civilization in Colchis on the Black Sea,” in African Presence in Early Asia, eds. Runoko Rashidi and Ivan Van Sertima (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1988), 61.

In Black Athena (1987-1996), a controversial three-volume Afrocentric tome by scholar Martin Bernal, assumed in vol. 2 (1991) that Apollonius' Hellenistic poem accurately reflected Mycenaean geographical knowledge to suggest, after (and mostly because of) Herodotus, that the Greeks followed in the wake of Egyptian ventures to and from Colchis. In the wake of Black Athena, other Afrocentric scholars would cite Hecataeus' claim that the Argonauts sailed up the Nile as proof of the Argonauts' Egyptian influence and return time and again to the alleged racial link (unrecognized by anthropology) between Geogrians and Egyptians. Down to this day, despite repeated debunking, Afrocentrist scholars claim that an indigenous population of black Africans, the remains of Sesostris' army, live in Georgia.

Ethiopia

Earlier still, a previous generation of Afrocentric writers preferred to extol the glories of the undoubtedly black African civilization of Ethiopia, with its myriad wonders and astonishing architecture, over that of the Egypt, which was traditionally viewed as more closely related to the civilization of the Mediterranean than that of sub-Saharan Africa. Drusilla Dunjee Houston, in one of the earliest Afrocentric tomes, suggested that the Argonauts (and much of Greek myth) owed its origins to Ethiopia:

[We will discuss the] "Wonderful Ethiopians," who produced fadeless colors that have held their hues for thousands of years, who drilled through solid rock and were masters of many other lost arts and who many scientists believe must have understood electricity, who made metal figures that could move and speak and may have invented flying machines, for the "flying horse Pegasus" and the "ram of the golden fleece" may not have been mere fairy tales. [...] We seek for the place and the race that could have given the world the art of welding iron. The trail reveals that the land of the "Golden Fleece" and the garden of the "Golden Apples of Hesperides" were but centers of the ancient race, that as Cushite Ethiopians had extended themselves over the world.

Source: Drusilla Dunjee Houston, Wonderful Ethiopians of the Cushite Empire (Oklahoma City: Universal Publishing, 1926), 4-6.

West Africa

A theory even less connected to observable fact sprang from the pen of Robert Temple, an independent scholar, who became convinced that extraterrestrials had visited earth in ancient times and were responsible for imparting the arts of civilization to humanity. In his Sirius Mystery (1976, revised 1998), Temple explains that Jason and the Argonauts are Greek code for an esoteric secret first recorded in the Epic of Gilgamesh wherein amphibious frogs from a planet orbiting Sirius encoded in myth astronomical secrets about the fifty earth years it takes the two stars of the Sirius system (Sirius A and B) to complete an orbital cycle. Thus the fifty oars of the Argo represent the fifty years of Sirius B's orbit. Why space frogs should count time in earth years is not explained. (Read more about Temple's misuse of the Argonaut myth in my free eBook, Golden Fleeced.)

He then goes on to suggest that the Argonauts were real people who, in the course of their portage of the Argo across North Africa, gave rise to the Dogon tribe of West Africa by, essentially, fathering lots of children wheresoever they passed. The Dogon, he believed, were descendants of the Greek descendants of the Argonauts, driven south into the heart of West Africa over the course of centuries of invasions from the north. His evidence for this was that Robert Graves, the poet, had suggested in his faulty Greek Myths (1955) that the Dogon's neighbors were related to the pre-Greek population of Greece once upon a time. Specifically, this is what Graves wrote:

The Akan people result from an ancient southward emigration of Uyo-Berbers—cousins to the pre-Hellenic population of Greece—from the Sahara desert oases and their intermarriage at Timbuctoo with Niger River negroes. In the eleventh century A.D. they moved still farther south to what is now Ghana.

Source: Robert Graves, The Greek Myths (New York: Penguin, 1955), 22.

This does not seem the same as saying that the Dogon claimed to be the children of the Argonauts, but rather that they were neighbors to people related to the people the Greeks pushed out ages ago (which isn't true anyway, according to more recent research).

Temple then ties all this together by agreeing with generations of earlier speculators that the Argo was synonymous with Noah's Ark and that both derived from an Egyptian original (uniquely, he believes this to a linguistic pun referring to the "end of things," the end of Sirius B's fifty-year orbit). He also believes Colchis was an Egyptian colony, and that the Argonaut saga therefore had close ties to Egypt. And, of course, that all of it was the result of information imparted by flying space frogs.”

#ancient greece #ancient egypt #jason and the argonauts #golden fleece #mythology #Greek Mythology #egyptian mythology #ethiopia #egyptology #osiris #typhon #sumerian mythology #egyptian #Greek #Ramses III #Dogon

11 notes · View notes

nehetisingsforhekate · 7 years

Text

Epithets: Athanatos

Immortal, of Immortal Fame. Perpetual. Everlasting. Literally, Without Death. Deathless

Beginning and end are you, and you alone rule all. For all things are from you, and in you do all things, Eternal One, come to their end. - Betz, lines 2836-2839 of PGM IV 2785-2890.

Much of what I can say of the perpetuity of the Gods has already been covered in the entry on Aionos. Indeed, functionally, aionos (eternal), apaustos (never-ending), and athanatos (perpetual) are of the same connotative meaning.

By their very nature are the Gods deathless. It is, from a Hellenic frame of mind, the quintessential difference between the divine and the mortal worlds. All Gods are Athanatoi. As such we can refer to every deity, and all the Titans, by this epithet.

Socrates spoke at length about the concept of immortality as it pertains to the soul, with the assumption that it is immortal in nature. Indeed, his description of the soul as told to us by Plato, ‘soul is most similar to what is divine, immortal, intelligible, uniform, indissoluble, unvarying, and constant in relation to itself; whereas body, in its turn, is most similar to what is human, mortal, multiform, non-intelligible, dissoluble, and never constant in relation to itself.’ (Plato, Phaedo, p.31). He later adds, ‘given that the immortal is also indestructible, wouldn’t soul, if it proves to be immortal, be imperishable as well?’… ‘Then when death attacks a person, the mortal part, it seems, dies; whereas the immortal part gets out of the way of death, departs, and goes away intact and undestroyed.’ The Phaedo establishes a dichotomy of body and soul that heavily contributed to the denigration of the physical realm and the body, which influenced much of the later philosophies and ideas of asceticism in both the Pagan and Christian worlds.

A grave in Phrygia mentions a priest who bore the name Athanatos, whose son also grew up to be a priest honoring Zeus, Hekate and Apollon.

Hekate Athanatos, Your grace spans all realms, You are the Source, And the Soul of All. From you we descend, And unto you we return. And our gratitude is poured upon the wide Earth.

Sources:

Betz, Hans Dieter. The Greek Magical Papyri in translation, including the Demotic Spells, Chicago, 1996. Dmitriev, Sviatoslav. City Government in Hellenistic and Roman Asia Minor, Oxford, 2005. Plato. Phaedo, Oxford, 1996. Ramsay, Sir William Mitchell. The Cities and Bishoprics of Phrygia: Being an Essay of the Local History of Phrygia from the Earliest Times ot the Turkish Conquest, Vol. 2, Clarendon, 1897. Sherman, Daniel. Soul, World, and Idea: An Interpretation of Plato’s ‘Republic’ and ‘Phaedo’, Lexington, 2013.

Images:

Antokolski, Mark. “Death of Socrates,” 1875, marble. Photo attributed to Alex Bakharev. Via wikicommons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:MAntokolski_Death_of_Socrates.JPG Makovsky, Konstantin. “The Death of Petronius,” 1904, oil on canvas. Via wikicommons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Kmakovs_215.jpg

#Hekate #hecate #theoi #athanatos #athanatoi #epithets #socrates #plato #thanatology #soul #pgm

9 notes · View notes