The Ides of March, Hilaria ... and Bizarre Ballgowns

The Ides of March.  A bunch of small errands sandwiched between being nearly run down by insane motorists.  I’m lucky I got home alive ... !

Today is:  Next to Final Packing Day.  Still about 2 weeks left until the remodeling is done in New Hampshire, so my plan this weekend was to get as much packed as humanly possible today, move a chunk of it to the storage facility in Salisbury tomorrow, and another 2 chunks next weekend.  Then, the rest of it can fall to the moving guys.

Every once in a while I get invited to various celebrations, and every once in a while I attend, although it is rather a distance away – and will still be a distance away, even after I move,  Mainly the issue is the time of day they are held – they begin right at the time I’m passing out and going to sleep.  As a result, I have to make a concerted effort to stay awake for it, and I end up oversleeping for days afterwards.

Nonetheless, I’ve received a few invitations that include, “Wear your finest ritual clothes!” or some such set of instructions – which is something of a problem, since I don’t have any.  Never did.  Makes me feel like an adult dressing up for Halloween or something.  I usually end up wearing a nice shirt with jeans and make sure I have the cimaruta around my neck.  I used to think it might be nice to put on make-up and earrings  - (and an attractive fake mole and feathers sticking out of my head) - for a change, but I’m so allergic to the stuff, I end up suffering, so stopped doing that.  I do have a Venetian mask, though, coincidentally enough.

I was reminded of that today when the Real Witches’ Year brought up the issue of cords.  Have no idea why – this being the Ides of March, I would have thought they’d make mention of that instead:  sacred to Rhea (Greek Goddess of the earth, mother of Zeus), and a day to honor river sprites or nymphs. (Well, I would, if I knew any.)  Not to mention that some of us want to begin preparing for the 2-day festival of Dionysus – stocking up on wine! (gulp, gulp, gulp, *hic*!)

So naturally, The Witch’s Book of Days chirps, “As Hilaria begins, celebrate the goddess-given gifts of wit, theatre and comedy.”

The WHAT?

Ah.  No wonder I didn’t pay any attention to this:  “The modern day equivalent to the Ancient Roman Festival of Hilaria, which occurs once in a year in Britain, is Mother's day. This day is said to be the day when the ancient Greeks paid tribute to their very powerful goddess called Rhea.“
http://www.ask.com/question/occuring-once-a-year-in-britain-what-is-the-modern-day-equivalent-of-the-ancient-roman-festival-of-hilaria

Possibly my least favorite event in the entire year.  Since most mothers in the United States wouldn’t recognize “wit, theatre and comedy” if it jumped up and bit them in their collective a**es, I have no idea what the WBD was chirping about.

Oh, Roman Laughing Day!!!  According to the Brooklyn Public Library, “ the Roman festival of Hilaria or "Roman Laughing Day," ... celebrates the resurrection of the god Attis.” Not quite sure why that event was hilarious, but there you go.
(http://brooklynology.brooklynpubliclibrary.org/post/2012/04/02/All-Fools-Day.aspx)

Witches of the Craft handed out correspondences:  The Hilaria (Roman).  Incense:  Violet.  Color: Coral
Have no idea what violet and coral has to do with anything.  Not fond of either one.
http://witchesofthecraft.com/tag/hilaria/

Meanwhile, Brittanica.com has a different version:

“Hilaria,  in Roman religion, day of merriment and rejoicing in the Cybele-Attis cult and in the Isis-Osiris cult, March 25 and November 3, respectively. It was one of several days in the festival of Cybele that honoured Attis, her son and lover: March 15, his finding by Cybele among the reeds on the bank of the River Gallus; March 22, his self-mutilation; March 24, fasting and mourning at his death; and March 25, the Hilaria, rejoicing at his resurrection. Some of the activities on the Hilaria resembled those associated with April Fools’ Day. November 3, the Hilaria of the Isis-Osiris cult, marked the resurrection of Osiris, husband of Isis.”
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/265677/Hilaria

Self-mutilation, eh?  That “son and lover” thing might explain why the guy mutilated himself (ew!), but does it sound like anything worth celebrating?  Uh ....no.

Furthermore, (*sigh*)  “cult”, eh?  Now you know why I make it a point to de-capitalize christian and call THEM “a cult”, and if any pursed-lip church ladies out there have a problem with it – too bad.  Do unto others, isn’t that one of your rules?

Ultimately:  what a strange day.  Betcha Caesar wasn’t all that fond of it, either.

Megalesia, Cybele, Attis, Piero Barone's Sexy Legs III and New Video, and my new Cimaruta

We are now in the middle of the Megalesia, a Roman festival established in 191 B.C., to honor the Magna Mater 'Great Mother' goddess Cybele. The Megalesia was held from 4-10 April or on April 4 and 10.

A goddess of caverns, mountain tops. wild beasts, bees ...

"Along with her consort, the vegetation god Attis, Cybele was worshipped in wild, emotional, bloody, orgiastic, cathartic ceremonies.

Cybele was the goddess of nature and fertility. Because Cybele presided over mountains and fortresses, her crown was in the form of a city wall. The cult of Cybele was directed by eunuch priests called Corybantes, who led the faithful in orgiastic rites accompanied by wild cries and the frenzied music of flutes, drums, and cymbals. Her annual spring festival celebrated the death and resurrection of her beloved Attis."

Her Greek mythology counterpart was Rhea.

Sexual "morality" is one of the major blind spots to understanding the past. The Western world has become so enmeshed in the Judeo-Christian view of sexuality that it takes a major effort for most to take an unbiased viewpoint of cultures that had a much healthier view of human sexuality. Even today's neo-Pagan, who is taught that all acts of pleasure, that harm none, are forms of Her worship, often still struggle with the "morality" of same-sex relationships and even the existence of transsexuals so it should not be a surprise that much written about ancient sexuality is tainted with unexamined bias. The term "temple prostitute" is an excellent example. The very term is extremely negatively emotionally loaded. To avoid this, I shall refer to those who practiced the institutional sacred sex role as hierodules, a greek term without that loading to the modern reader. http://www.gallae.com/

I agree with her in that the world "temple prostitute" is tainted with judeo-christian-islamic revulsion at the very word "sex". The historians of the time wouldn’t have used the word with the same condemning, condescending, puritanical prissiness being used today. I’m all in favor of creating a new phrase to replace that one.

Our next full moon, the Pink Moon (or the Sprouting Grass Moon, the Egg Moon, and the Fish Moon) isn’t until April 25, so we’re within the time of banishing, diminishing spells up until the new moon on April 10.

Vic-tor-yyyyyy!!!!

Aside from the excitement of the arrival of Game of Thrones, Season 3, I finally found a genuine cimaruta – had to search Italy from Trieste to Agrigento to find it. And here is the One and Only and his beautiful, sexy legs congratulating me on my good fortune! (Yes, that was a bald-faced lie ... the congratulating part, I mean, not the beautiful, sexy legs part. Hey, I can fantasize. So sue me).

According to the One and Only, after performing, recording, and taping two PBS specials in Miami, they’ve flown back home. Not sure WHAT they were recording, but whatever it is, it has to be good. The good news is that their presence in Miami suggested a few hours of relaxation on a beach or beside a pool, in or near the water, wearing delightfully skimpy attire, within visual range of people with cameras. Which – at least in Piero’s case – makes me delightfully happy ... (OMG, am I in love with his legs!) I would have been delightfully happy even without the cimaruta.

But I finally found one! A genuine cimaruta!!! It’s gorgeous. This one is from Firenze (Florence), by the way.

Meanwhile, the cd’s recorded by Christopher Penczak arrived. He really does have a calm voice, but the recording itself threw me for a proverbial loop.

He was (calmly) tossing out affirmations that the listener was supposed to repeat. The problem was: I couldn’t do it. An example of one such affirmation: "I love and forgive myself."

I stopped in my tracks after hearing that affirmation, unwilling to repeat it. Said, "But I don’t," even though I wasn’t certain what I was or wasn’t forgiving myself for, in Penczak’s mind. Maybe I didn’t love or forgive myself, and what difference should it make? My brother’s death was a biggie I couldn’t get past any way I looked at it. I’ve NEVER gotten past that. I don’t know that I ever will. I certainly wasn’t wandering the streets starry eyed with love for myself, either, THAT much I knew. Before I could give my objection some more thought, he went into to another affirmation I couldn’t bring myself to repeat because I knew it wasn’t accurate. Then another. And another. I stopped the CD altogether.

And then sunk into a rage of self-loathing, the likes of which I can’t begin to describe. It felt like a free-fall into a bottomless abyss.

And then, about 3 or 4 days later I had started to doze on the train, and was in that borderland between asleep and awake. A voice said, "That was not an observation or a condemnation; it was a path." I thought at first it was someone sitting near me, and then realized it wasn’t.

This was basically the message: no matter how many people tell you that you have to achieve some sort of mental and emotional purity before anything positive will happen to you, they’re wrong. My Spirit Lover was perfectly willing to work with me, even with my feelings of guilt, and understood perfectly why being partially disabled could very easily lead to self-loathing. Neither of those were "deal-breakers".  It wasn't required of me to repeat affirmations that I was emotionally unable to repeat.  The incident merely served to point out a possible path of development, that was all.

Well, we have another reader passionately devoted to Piero Barone of Il Volo, asking for this video. Out very recently, it knocked me flat when I saw it – it was done for fun by Piero and one of his friends while he was in Naro for the December-January holidays; he's lip-syncing to one of his own live performances of this song in 2012 that someone recorded after their performance at the Beacon Theater.  I know this because the first time we heard the revised version of the line, "that anywhere I go" was in New York.  You can hear the audience scream with delight when he got to "that anywhere I go I'm never lonely" - trust me, a live Piero Barone performance is breathtaking and he knocked the audience out of their seats with that line.

I absolutely loved this video when I saw it – you can tell he had a hoot doing it.  Word of warning though:  this may not last long; other copies of this have been deleted, I fear this may go the same way.  Enjoy while you can.

So to "Lauren", who found her way around the requirement that she had to leave a "URL" – she didn’t. Instead she brilliantly signed her name in the message itself.  Here’s the homemade video she asked for: