Fall festivities

Hi Everyone!

Today we celebrated the Fthinokhoria, or literally Fall Festival. Interestingly enough ancient Greece did not have a “Fall” as we recognize it today. They would only have three seasons: winter, spring, and summer. The addition of a fall festival in our calendar is a modern development which reflects the growing culture changes as our expression of Hellenic religion adapts to new times and geographical regions.

In addition the concept of an overall seasonal festival might have been foreign to our ancient counterparts as well, as they used a festival cycle that was theocentric and thus generally unconcerned with the time of year so much as focused on the Deity or Deities being recognized. That is not to say that festivals were divorced from everyday life, in fact quite the opposite, festivals were so entwined with everyday life that such distinctions were redundant. Modern life however does need such foci and we use these seasonal festivals to incorporate those that would be seasonally appropriate but unable to be represented independently within our calendar cycle.

This year we took pieces from the Punepsia and Oskophoria, celebrations which acknowledge Apollo and Dionysus for their roles in the harvest, with Dionysus for the grape harvest, and Apollo for keeping away vermin and rot from the freshly stored crops.  We also celebrated today a modern recognition of Hades and Persephone in their coronation as King and queen of the underworld. At this time as well Apollo was said to leave Delphi for Hyperborea, and Dionysus was said to take up the oracle’s seat in his stead. Today we made erisione’s as wards against such vermin and rot in our own lives. Some of this was physically if we had branches to decorate, but we also tried something new to make the event accessible online. We used Jamboard to create a digital erisioni!

During the ceremony, Athena was also invoked as well as Thesius, as his mythology is very much intertwined in the Oskhophoria and Puanepsia. Here is the image of our altar today:

Happy Fall everyone!