How is Deipnon Determined?

Deipnon is the night of the dark moon and the following daylight hours.  The first step to determining when Deipnon will fall in your area is to look up the time and date of the astronomical new moon (which is actually the dark moon) and sunrise.

If the astronomical new moon is before sunrise, you can count that night as Deipnon and the next night as the Noumenia.  If the astronomical new moon is after sunrise, that evening is Deipnon.  There is some room for a judgement call on your part, though, when the times are particularly close.

Let’s use February 2019 in Henan, PR China for our example since that’s the next Deipnon and where I am.  The astronomical new moon is February 5th at 5:03am.  Sunrise is at 7:21am.  In the most technical manner of speaking, we could consider those two hours and 18 minutes to be enough to make Deipnon begin at sundown on February 4th and continue until sundown on February 5th, but I generally prefer a bigger margin, or at least for the dark moon to not happen at a time that I think of as morning.  This, however, would be your call.  I will celebrate Deipnon from sundown on February 5th until sundown on February 6th.  Incidentally, the Chinese, Jewish, and Muslim lunar calendars agree with me on this one, but they don’t always.  Hellenic polytheists cannot reliably count on one of these other large groups with many functioning calendar apps to do the legwork for us.  It’s something that we really need to calculate for ourselves.

I am curious about your take on this judgement call that I’m making.  What would be your preference and why?

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Divination: (Almost) All Systems Go

On my recent trip back to the US, I retrieved most of the divination accoutrement that I didn’t bring with me when I first moved to China, so I am once again available for almost all of the divination services that I offer.  The Delphic Maxim Oracle, however, is still unavailable.  It was simply too heavy for me to bring back this trip.  I may work on creating a new set here at some point rather than retrieving my original one.  I have not yet updated the Divination Services page, but right now the only things to be aware of is that I am on Beijing Time for live readings, and they are not available by phone for American clients.  They are, however, available by audio or video call via WeChat to clients in any country.  Google Hangouts as a method of contact is limited by the effectiveness of my VPN, so WeChat really is the best option.  My availability is limited, and the mostly likely days to be able to get an appointment are Wednesdays and Thursdays.  If I don’t get back to you right away, please be patient as I am living behind the Great Firewall of China.  I will get back to you as soon as my VPN is working and I am able to check my e-mail.

Apollon & Hades

While the lords of light and darkness don’t seem to have much in common, there is a bit. Would any devotees of Hades like to explore this connection for the devotional?

First, there is their involvement in the story of Orpheus.  Orpheus was either the son or student (or both) of Apollon.  His parents were either a Thracian king and queen or Apollon and Calliope, which would give Orpheus his own divine birthright.  On his wedding day, his wife, Eurydice, died after falling into a nest of vipers.  Orpheus played music so mournful that all of the nymphs and gods wept with him in his grief.  He traveled to the underworld, and when he arrived there, his music was even able to move the hearts of Hades and Persephone.  He was given permission to lead Eurydice out from the underworld provided he didn’t turn around to look at her until they arrived in the upper world.  Unfortunately, Orpheus was unable to resist and as soon as he reached the upper world, he turned to look at his wife who had not yet left the underworld.  She vanished before his eyes, and he was unable to retrieve her a second time.

In addition, Apollon and Hades both had lovers who who underwent kataphytosis, or were transformed into plants.  Like Daphne, Hyakinthos, and Kyparissos (Apollon’s loves), Hades loved Minthe, a mountian nymph.  She fancied herself better than Persephone, and either Persephone or her mother, Demeter, trampled her and transformed her into garden mint.  Leuke was another nymph loved by Hades.  He abducted her and took her to the underworld where she was transformed into a white poplar and placed in the fields of Elysium.

Apollon and Hades also share one epithet – Isodotes, which means He Who Binds All Equally, or perhaps Impartial.  For Apollon, it usually refers to his giving of oracles and the binding of the querent to the answer.  For Hades, it refers to the fact that all souls eventually enter his domain.

Finally, there were oracles (of a different sort – these were necromantic) at several temples of Hades.

Family & Ancestral Lines

Living in China over the past year has made conversations about cultural differences much more common in my life.  When I was living in America, my world was filled with people from other countries, but in America, we have (or should have) a certain acceptance and awareness of these differences because there are people of so many different cultural backgrounds, so more detailed conversations on why someone does something differently don’t really happen as much.  In China, this isn’t the case.  I am often the only foreign friend, or only American friend, that my friends have.  One cultural difference that I often run into is that my Chinese friends often cannot understand how I am ok being so far from my family.  They think that I am very brave for coming here alone.  They also don’t understand how I can go more than a month without talking to my younger sister or how my mother and I tend to fight a lot if we have to spend too much time together.  Some of this is because of the Confucian ideal of filial piety, which still persists in China.  However, over the past year of teaching here, I think I have discovered another reason why both adults and teenagers (who in America probably spend the most time in conflict with their parents) seem to have stronger and more positive relationships with their parents than many in America: they aren’t really raised by their parents.  For the most part, parents work long hours, and when their children are not in school (with school days much longer than in America), children are with their grandparents.  Their discipline (or lack of it) comes from their grandparents, not their parents.  As middle and high school students, most students live at school as evening classes often don’t end until 9pm.  Even public schools have dormitories where most students live.  They often spend only one or two nights per week with their parents outside of holidays.  This allows them to have a relationship where they are aware of the work their parents are doing to support them, they don’t fight with their parents because they aren’t home, the time that they spend with their parents is often a celebration, and they have plenty of time to miss their parents.

I don’t have my ancestor shrine with me here in China.  I brought a few tokens, but I gave some of it to my younger sister, and the rest of it is packed up in a bin at my mother’s house.  I was thinking about my shrine earlier and about how my ancestors are divided – by ethnic group rather than into two parts (one for the lines of each parent) or into four parts (one for the lines of each grandparent).  Instead, I had my Jewish ancestors, my Lebanese ancestors, and my Sicilian ancestors.  Culturally, I have always been most tied to my Jewish and Lebanese traditions.  I grew up in a (not particularly religious) Jewish household, and the food that I learned to cook from an early age was all Lebanese food.  However, the ancestors that show up for me are far back in the Sicilian line, which ethnically, go back to the same group as the Lebanese line – the Phoenicians.  I was wondering to myself why this is so when in life I have so little contact with that part of my family.  It was this line that demanded a pilgrimage, and it was only this line that had extra trinkets on my shrine.  The others only had photos and items that had been passed down through those lines.

It came to me today that it is in this line that death is closest to me.  My father is dead, and his father is dead (both either dead or estranged since the time I was five years old) – that is the Sicilian line.  My Jewish mother is still living, and my Lebanese grandmother is still living.  Is it because this line had no living members in proximity to be used to forge a connection that the dead came forward to do the work with me?  Is it also because the other members of this line either died when I was very young or live(d) too far away to forge a relationship that I don’t have the same baggage with them that I might with more recent ancestors if I’d been raised by them?  Is this distance, this removal from family, a positive when it comes to relationships with the dead?

Apollon as Healer

Apollon is the god of a multitude of things, healing amongst them.  This is not just healing of the physical body, but of the mind and heart as well.  His grace is such that darkness simply cannot continue to exist where He is.  However, as He is not ever present, even those of us most devoted to Him must continue to fight our own battles and simply be grateful for the occasional reprieve He offers.  When we are too caught up in darkness, and sometimes this is a darkness caused by neurology, we may not be able to realize that He has come, may not be able to acknowledge what He has done for us, may continue to cry out for Him never realizing that He is here.

Apollon has many epithets related to His healing aspects, and still others that show how He can relate to our pain.  If you are conscious of His aid under one of these guises, I would love to see you explore this for the devotional.

Hyakinthios – Mourning for Hyakinthus – Apollon understands loss.  The all encompassing grief over the death of a lover is not something that any one, any god, can make disappear, nor should it be something we want.  This grief is sometimes all that is left of love.  However, the love of Apollon is a balm for a hurting soul.

Ίατρομάντις (Iatromantis) – the Physician and Prophet; Physician and Seer; Healer-Diviner

Ίατρός (Iatros) – Healer; the Physician; the Surgeon 

Katharsios – the Purifier – Some illness has been believed to have been caused by miasma or some other impurity.  If this is the case, purification is certainly the first step toward recovery.

Kerdoios – the Gift Giver – Good health is certainly a gift.  Being thankful for gifts received should always happen before we ask for another.

Κουροτρόφος (Kourotrophos) – Protecting Youth; Rearer of Boys – If the suffering one is a boy child, we can pray to Apollon to protect the child and to help us find a cure for his suffering.

Libystinos – the Plague Raiser – Apollon both brings plague and has the power to defeat it.

Apollon is also literally the father of medicine.  Most of our healing gods are His descendants.  His son, Asklepios, is our most renknowned healer, and his children all follow in his footsteps.  Akeso is the granddaughter of Apollon, and she is the goddess of the process of curing sickness and healing wounds.  Her sister, Panakeia, is the goddess of the cure itself.  Their sisters, Hygeia and Aigle, are the goddesses of good health, and their other sister, Iaso, is the goddess of cures, remedies, and different healing modalities.  Telesphoros, who is presumably the son of Asklepios, is the god of convalescence and recuperation from injury.

Artemis, twin sister of Apollon is also a goddess of fertility and good health as well as being a protector of girl children.

Kheiron, the famous god of surgeons, is also an uncle of Apollon.  He was also the teacher of Asklepios.

May you be blessed with good health!

Apollon & Pan

Pan, nephew of Apollon, is a god of shepherds, hunters, meadows, forests, and mountain wilds.  Aside from Apollon also being a god of shepherds and hunters, they also have some other things in common, like a fondness for nymphs.  Like Apollon pursued Daphne who was transformed into a laurel tree in an effort to escape, Pan pursued Pitys, who also fled his advances and was transformed into a mountain pine, a tree that then became sacred to Pan.  In another unsuccessful bid for love, he pursued Syrinx, who in her effort to flee was transformed into a clump of reeds – the very reeds from which Pan crafted his pipes.

Pan is closely identified with Apollon’s son, Aristaios, which is also an epithet of Apollon. They are both shepherds.

Pan had his own oracle at Troezene and is said to have instructed Apollon in the art of mantic divination.

In appearance, Apollon and Pan are drastically different in all depictions save one feature – they both have long unshorn hair.  Pan is also sometimes, though not always like Apollon, depicted as a youth.

I would love if a devotee of Pan wanted to write about or create art depicting the relationship between Apollon and Pan for the devotional.

The following epithets are shared by both Apollon and Pan:

Άγρεύς (Agraios/Agreus) – hunter; slayer
Νόμιος (Nómios) – wandering; shepherd; protector of pastures and shepherds; god of pastures

Apollon also has a number of epithets that while not shared by Pan, relate to aspects of Apollon that are shared by Pan.

Hylates – He of the Grove; God of the Woodland; of the Woods
Intonsos – Unshorn; He of Eternal Youth
Kereatas – of Horned Animals
Χρυσμωδός (Khrysmodós) – prophesying; oracular
Μαντίκος (Mantíkos) – prophetic; oracular
Napaeus – Worshipped in Groves
Poimnius – God of Flocks
Προόψιος (Proópsios) – foreseeing

 

Guinea Pigs Wanted

hwa-tu cards

Awhile back, while I was super busy, a friend sent me a gift from her trip to Korea: a set of hwa-tu cards.  Being the k-drama afficionado that I am, she knew I would want them, and she was right.  (In these dramas, we often see characters playing “Go-Stop” with these cards.)  They’re almost the same as hanafuda cards from Japan if you’re familiar with those.  Anyway, I had once seen a drama, I think it was All In, where a fortune teller visited a bunch of gamblers, and well, I knew divination could be done.  They didn’t show what it looked like on the TV show, but I did some research and did find some information.  I would like to try it out.  You can ask a question or get a general reading about the near future.  Since I am just starting out with this type of divination and I’m not sure yet if it works or if it will work for other people or if it will work long distance, please seek confirmation divination if I touch on anything important in the reading.  If you need a referral to a competent diviner, I can provide that for you.  If you’re interested (this is free – you’re helping me by being a guinea pig), please email me at pythioumelissa at gmail dot com.