June 2023: Another Year Begins

My 36th year began near mid-month.

A few days before my birthday, I wrote out some adjustments to my daily rituals. In late winter or early spring, I decided that I wouldn’t choose a God to focus on devotionally this year. I have a solid practice, and my goal is to deepen my relationships with deities whom I worship closely and to be solid in my household practice.

One of the things I didn’t expect about worshipping Eir during my 35th year was how seamlessly she’d fit in with my devotion to Apollon. It reminded me a lot of improv, actually. I did drama club in high school, including drama competitions. Improv story-making is nice because you have sketches where you start out with a few knowns, and the imaginative conversation among all participants takes those and builds organically. The best improv happens when everything goes into a state of flow. It felt a lot like that, and over the course of the year, the boundaries between my worship of Apollon and Eir kept blurring, and then I worshipped them even more closely together, buoyed along by improvisational prayers and associations and just the general vibe of the conversation that is sincere prayer.

A big reason for that was a Platonizing interpretation of the healing mountain. Eir comes down from that mountain, and we can symbolize that as a general bestowal of gifts to the battlefield (generation/the physical world we incarnate into) and her medical care as providing embodied spiritual care — which is very close to areas that Apollon is tied to, as he is seen as the harmonizer of all and thus has strong associations with harmonizing-to-unity. So a lot of that conversation was based on following those leads and not being afraid to have this practice be unique. They’re my household Gods, and it’s OK if all of this improv is a praxis familect.

Now, the two of them are next to each other at my shrine, and my morning prayers are still centered around them. I even wrote a prayer for both of them together to say every morning. It focuses on making sure I have what I need in my tank so I can be present and capable.

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I had the day off before my birthday to do things I needed to do before my mom arrived. One totally self-indulgent thing I did was getting a massage. For years, I’ve wanted to get one for my birthday, but it’s always seemed like such an overindulgent thing to do. The massage was very enjoyable and a real treat.

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On my birthday, my mom and I went for a walk on a nearby trail. A deer came down and started eating leaves at the trail’s edge. We were within about five feet of her — she was unafraid of the many people passing by on the trail. It was such an experience to be so close to a wild animal. I didn’t take photos when she was up close to us, but I did as she was going down to the edge to get her nibbles.

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The day after my birthday, I felt very drawn to recite a hymn for Apollon, Aristonoos of Corinth’s poem to Apollon (from Greek Hymns Volume 1: The Texts in Translation, Furley & Bremer). One section was stuck in my head:

Purged in the Vale of Tempe
by the will of Zeus on high,
helped by Pallas on your way
to Pytho, O Apollon,
you talked Gaia, the flower-nurse,
and Themis of the lovely hair,
into giving you the perfumed
seat of power, O Apollon.

So, as gods know gratitude,
you grant Athena pride of place
at the threshold of your holy
temple, O Apollon:
you thank her for her kindness,
the kindness she showed long ago
you remember always: sumptuous
is her honour, O Apollon.

It became stuck in my head when I was putting on an Athene-focused necklace. I started thinking about these lines and the connection between Athene and Apollon in Damascius’ Phaedo commentary:

Like Kore, the soul descends into genesis, like Dionysus she is scattered by generation, like Prometheus and the Titans she is chained to the body. She frees herself by acquiring the strength of Hercules, gathers herself together through the help of Apollo and of Athena the Savior, i.e. by truly purifying philosophy, and she elevates herself to the causes of her being with Demeter.

§130, Damascius’ Commentary on Plato’s Phaedo I, trans. Westerink

It seems meaningful in those verses for Athene to be at the threshold, as the two Gods are closely associated with the “gathering herself together” phase (and who among us does not want to get their sh–t together?). It also evokes the house motif that is common when talking about esotericism. Each God has an Hestia, an inner unmoving place, that is associated with the adytum and what abides. So placing Athene at the threshold of Apollon’s temple at Delphi, home to the world’s navel, seems significant insofar as it’s mapping another deity to a place within the temple/home structure of another God. Really fun and cool, lots to think about here about how Athene and Apollon complement each other.

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Late last month, my landlady sent those of us tenanting in the building (she lives in one of the units) an email saying that we now have access to the patio and planting area in the backyard. I’ve lived in this apartment since early 2018, and this is the first time I’ve had access to any gardening space in an apartment ever. She said “vegetables,” so I interpreted that broadly: Herbs are expensive, so I wanted to plant those. On my birthday weekend, my mom, ex, and I went to a greenhouse. All three of us bought plants. I picked out some Portuguese hot peppers, Swiss chard, sweet basil, cilantro, dill, and rosemary, which I planted on the Monday once I confirmed with my landlady which plot I was allowed to use. I’d wanted Thai basil, but it wasn’t at the greenhouse this year. It has a flavor that I very much prefer.

Before I got to planting, I gave a milk offering to the land and said a brief prayer, encircling the still-in-their-small-trays plants with a circle of white. Planting itself was a very brief experience. I didn’t separate out the vegetables because their roots were entangled and I figured it was a toss-up between damaging them by separation and keeping them together and getting a crowding problem. I left the basil in the pot. It was a good thing, too, because I had to take all of the plants up again and put them in containers. My landlady had been delayed in engaging a landscaping company to resize the plant bed. Still, though: real, live herb plants in full sun.

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The last weekend of the month, I finally did something that has sparked my curiosity for a long time: I went to one of the local yoga studios for a sound bath. It was extremely relaxing. Maybe I fell asleep? Maybe I was just cocooned in sound? It was on Apollon’s day of the month, probably not intentionally. I don’t think I’ve ever been so relaxed.

There were a few things that happened later that evening, though, and the following day, that were very emotionally challenging. I’m very happy that I did have that hour to pause beforehand, though.

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Overall, looking back at the month, this is the end of the second quarter of 2023. The second quarter was a lot. So. Much. Change. I didn’t accomplish as much as I had set out to do. I’m not okay with how much those changes impacted my ability to get things done, so I’m brainstorming what I need to do in order to improve.

However, I’ll take the small win of having made some amount of progress on things I wanted to accomplish. I did successfully improve my social life by focusing on gym classes and going to yoga studio events because neither (usually) revolve around food I can’t eat. And The Village of Strong Branches is available for preordering, and I finally created a writing-related mailing list on Substack.

One of the books I did manage to read this quarter was The Anti-Consumerist Druid, and I wrote a review on Goodreads. It’s definitely worth a read, especially since the author is one of the only anti-consumerists/minimalist-ish people I’ve read who actually sounds real when she’s writing. I think I have seven books left in my Goodreads challenge. I’m behind where I thought I would be.

My plan over the summer is to complete the reading/revision-brainstorm of Ossia, to bang out a draft of Candles in the Forest, and to address some bad habits I have that create productivity and time management barriers.

I just started reading a book called You Are Us by Gareth Gwyn. It drew me due to this description:

Through candid accounts of stereotypically vilified individuals — a jihadist, gang member, and white supremacist — as well as additional interviews with people who have been equally cruel and those who have experienced profound victimization, we learn how rigorous inner work can shift even deeply polarized social issues for the better. Piercing the often unconscious and destructive patterns that arise from a legacy of abuse gives rise to a clear leadership methodology, one that heals individuals across racial, political, social, and cultural divides.

Back-cover book description of You Are Us

… but I don’t know how far I will get, as I need to read Plato’s Ion and Parmenides and a few other things right now.

Have a good July, everyone. Stay cool and hydrated, and may your air be breathable.