The Song and the Flame

It’s true, the Interwebz really do know everything. The information about Bloomington’s founding is out there; it’s just that no one making up web pages seems to want to bother with it. However, it is contained in some history books which, conveniently, have been digitized by Google Books. The particular source I wound up taking as sort of the final confirmation includes copies of the legal document I’d been hoping to find verifying the date of the county creation, and though it doesn’t reproduce any official declaration of Bloomington’s existence, the local historical society cites it as a source and that says to me that its information is probably reliable.

The timeline goes like this:

• December 11, 1816: Indiana is declared a state.
• January 14, 1818: Monroe County is created out of Orange County.
• April 10, 1818: The County Commissioners meet for the first time. At this meeting, the location of the county seat is determined and the county seat is named Bloomington.
• October 6, 1818: A treaty is signed in which the Miami Indians officially cede the land including Monroe County to the US. …After Indiana was already established as a state. Wow, we’re colonialist bastards, aren’t we?

Anyway, so. If I want to do something about the establishment of Bloomington as a city, April 10 seems like the appropriate date.

According to HMEPA, we’re just wrapping up (or have just wrapped up; I’ve noticed there seems to be a day-ish variation on exactly when the end of the month occurs) the Panathenaia, the big birthday celebration for Athens. I have been having some difficulty with this one for a couple of reasons. One, well, I’ve never even been to Athens. I connect to the religion of the place, but I’m a little fuzzier on the place itself. Two, unfortunately Life is getting in the way and I don’t turn out to have the private time to celebrate like I thought I might. It’s tempting to just skip it altogether, but this seems like kind of a major holiday. Skipping it doesn’t seem right.

I had read somewhere (Hellenion again?) that the sort of theme for this month was returning to origins, remembering history. That got me thinking — maybe this would be a good time to look up some of my local history. Athenian history is important too, but it’s something that I’m always investigating anyway. It wouldn’t be a bad thing to focus on, but at the same time I don’t really need a holiday to prompt that focus. So, to set the holiday aside from any other day, perhaps it’s time to look into some of the local history that I’ve never really paid much attention to.

Specifically, I thought that if I was having trouble with a birthday celebration for Athens, maybe it would make sense to find out when Bloomington’s “birthday” is and plan my own similar festival down the road. Athena is even still an appropriate deity to honor, given the way the history of Indiana University and the history of Bloomington are intertwined. Higher education, wisdom, knowledge, civilization and society… Seems appropriate. This is where I ran into trouble, though.

Monroe County was officially created by an act of the General Assembly in 1818. That’s as close as I can come. Sometime in 1818. There must have been an actual date when this act was signed or ratified or whatever it is you do with acts of the General Assembly, but I can’t find what it is. Everyone just cites the date 1818 and leaves it at that. (Bloomington was established either in 1816 or 1818, but I never really expected to find an exact date for when someone stopped in the middle of Southern Indiana and said, “You know, this looks like a good place to live.” Although there surely must be an official date of incorporation or something, you’d think.)

The next best thing, I suppose, is the date on which Indiana was admitted into the union as a state. That would be December 11, 1816. I suppose I’ll work with that for now. December is sufficiently far away that I have plenty of time to do some offline research between now and then and adjust as necessary if I find better information about Bloomington or Monroe County specifically before then. Which I should have been doing before now, but… Well, live, learn, and get on with it.

(Cross-posted to all blogs, with apologies for duplication.)

Thanks to Jenny for pointing me toward WPtouch, which allows me to implement a mobile theme. I don’t know whether anyone reading this will particularly care or not, but if you’d like to view this blog on a mobile device, that should now be a lot easier than it has been. The mobile version will continue to change slightly as I fiddle with settings and fill in summaries and whatnot, but the basic functionality is available now.

The mobile site should not affect how the normal theme works in a regular browser. However, I have also just upgraded to WordPress 3.0, and I have no idea what that might do. If you see anything broken, it’s probably a 3.0 issue, and I’d appreciate it if you could let me know in a comment.

It’s been another month already. I never updated to say how Thargelia had gone, and I haven’t said much about my religious life since then. Okay, I haven’t said anything. Life happened. I have, like, three posts lined up to write, but haven’t had the brainspace to deal with them. So, while I’m trying to collect my thoughts there, let’s just have a little general update.

Thargelia

It was actually some time after Thargelia that life got complicated, but I hadn’t posted anything immediately because I simply could not be coherent about it. It was intense. In retrospect, there are things I would change, yes. I completely lost sight of the whole scapegoat aspect of the purification — I purified, rightly enough, but the form could’ve been more authentic. I really do wish I had managed to put the ritual between the two days. That would’ve been exactly the right form, purifying on the first day and celebrating on the second. I did manage to eliminate caffeine and junk food as described, but it would probably have been better done leading up to the purification. If I have this issue of time conflict in future years, I may just have to adjust the date of my observance accordingly rather than trying to stick precisely to the exact dates and smoosh observance into those exact dates as best I can. I suspect that would have been more effective.

Not that this was by any means ineffective. It was very much a powerful experience, and… I had concerns about just using the same ritual outline over and over again for everything, but honestly? It worked just fine. I’ve decided that’s fine and I shouldn’t worry about variety in the ritual structure so much as I should worry about making sure that it’s appropriately customized for each occasion.

Other Stuff

Life got in the way of doing much more research in religious directions. It’s been all I can do to keep up with a regular practice, in some ways, but I’ve done it. Every lunar month it comes a little more naturally. The monthly cycle is going well, and in a month where there’s been so much else on my mind, that’s good enough for me.

This Month

Hellenion lists a few holidays this month, and there are a couple of civic observances as well.

Religiously, the month started out with Noumenia, obviously, which I gladly welcomed as a time to re-center and get back on my spiritual feet. It wasn’t the most elegant or the deepest ritual I’ve ever done, but it was refreshing. I branched out a little this time, adding some improvised libations and prayers for the deities whose spheres of influence seemed to encompass my current situation. And to Zeus, because we were in the midst of a week of storms (in fact, it was storming as I was doing this) and it just seemed appropriate.

Only a couple of days later was Arrephoria, a festival of Athena. The information I had handy was not very clear about it, and I was still incredibly distracted by Life, so it’s on the list of “things to look more closely at next year”, unfortunately.

Then there was Prometheia, coinciding with the Solstice. Total lack of info, and Hellenion alleges it’s modern and mostly celebrated in Greece, so I didn’t worry about it too much.

Skira is on Friday. It looks to me like this is a grain harvest festival. I’m not certain that’s really applicable to my climate at this time of year. The bounty of the Farmer’s Market is just starting to come on, but… that’s not really the same thing. I don’t know that this is one that will really transplant well. Maybe at a different time of year; I’ll have to figure out when the grain harvest actually is…

Coming up on Sunday, there’s Bouphomia and Dipolieia. This looks like a relatively obscure observance, if I’m reading the info correctly. My initial plan was to do exactly what Hellenion suggests, to pour a libation to Zeus and say a hymn and leave it at that. Looking more closely at the information, though, I think it would also be appropriate to spend some time that day thinking about the nature of guilt and good intentions and things like that. Some of that Life stuff makes this exceptionally applicable.

Then there’s the civic calendar. Last Sunday was Father’s Day, and I poured libations to Zeus Pater and such of my male anscestors as choose to accept such attention. On Independence Day, prayers to Zeus are suggested (there’s a lot of Him this month, isn’t there?), but I tend to think of it as a military sort of holiday, so I wonder if Ares wouldn’t also be appropriate. I may need to do a little more research between now and then.

I think that catches me up on the calendar stuff. Now, if I can just get those other entries written.

A while back, I posted about my religious goals for the season. One of those was:

3. Read at least one book that is either primary source material I wasn’t previously familiar with, or a secondary scholarly source. I have a list of stuff to choose from, and it’s about time to stop with the “I’ll get around to it” and actually, you know, get around to it.

Well, I got around to it. Check it out on my reading journal:
Greek Personal Religion: A Reader

Thargelia is this week. This is one of the few festivals I’ve actually made a half-assed attempt at celebrating before, albeit without much success. I feel like I’ve got a decent handle on it, sort of, more or less. I feel like it would be a Bad Idea to miss it, too, with Apollo having taken an interest in me and all. So I’ve got plans.

On the purification end of things, Hellenion’s write-up suggests a fast, and at first I was really on board with that. I like the idea of fasting, I like the concept. But… As I came down off that initial “HEY THAT’S A GREAT IDEA” thing, I realized that it’s not a great idea for me. I mean, not for any really good reason — I might get a bit cranky if I’m not fed on time, but I’m not going to have any serious effects on my health or well-being — but I think it’s just beyond me. And OK, “it’s too haaaaaard” is not really a great reason, but I think there’s a point at which I have to recognize the difference between seriously challenging myself and setting myself up for failure. And me? I’m still working on trying to consolidate my daily food intake into three bigger meals instead of several small ones. If I have trouble making it from breakfast to lunch without eating, I’m never going to make it all day, no matter how badly I want to. So I’m going to do a big ol’ full-on ceremonial sort of ritual purification bath after the sun goes down on Wednesday to start things out, and then until sundown on Thursday I am going to at the very least avoid junk food and soda. Maybe caffeine. I have to decide whether, at this point, that constitutes setting myself up for failure or just a difficult challenge. I suspect it’s just a difficult challenge.

Some plans are still forming. I’ve got the purification part, the driving out the bad stuff, lined out. I haven’t figured out bringing in the good stuff the next day yet, exactly. Somehow, ideas about purification come a lot more easily to me. I still have a couple of days to figure it out.

I suspect that right at the beginning there, immediately following the ritual purification bath, is not the ideal time to hold the actual celebration ritual. Given no other considerations but what I thought was best, I think I’d put it at the end of one or the other of the days (probably the first), and I’d probably move the ritual purification to fall between the days too. This is one place, though, where I have to make concessions to the life I’m living right now, in 2010 in America in a mixed-religion household rather than in Athens in 4-500 BC when everyone else around me was practicing the same religion I am and there were no conflicts of responsibility and committment. Wednesday night is when I can do this, and therefore Wednesday night is when I will do it. I’m trying to look at it as sort of a kick-off for the less-formal observances over the next two days, being as it will done at nearly the earliest moment possible.

Planning out the ritual itself has brought to light a potential issue. It’s always the same ritual, basically. I change a few words here and there to reflect a specific focus, I change who’s getting libations poured to them and what epithets of those deities particularly are being called upon, but that’s about it. That feels off somehow, and yet it also feels right somehow. It feels off in that it seems like there should be more variation especially between the regular observance of Noumenia and the annual festivals, and between individual festivals as well; but it feels right in that it’s repetition, and that’s exactly what will build meaning and habit for me personally. I’m sort of mildly concerned right now, but still willing to stick with it and see what happens for a while.

As I move through the calendar, one thing is becoming more and more evident: This is where I belong. It’s funny to feel that fabled Pagan sense of homecoming when all I’m doing is taking up a more active practice in a path I was already committed to, but that’s pretty much what’s happening. I may be sort of fumbling around trying to find my footing right now, but I know that I’m moving in the right direction.

I have been aware of Hellenion since long before I ever gave any serious thought to Hellenic polytheism or reconstructionism. When I finally did come around, I didn’t want to join because I’m not a big “group” person and wasn’t sure what good I’d really get out of it, and blah blah blah.

Lately, as I’ve been trying to develop a calendar and doing other research, I find myself visiting Hellenion’s site more and more and more. It’s a valuable resource. They’ve been doing this for a lot longer than I have, and they’ve had time to get some really good information all in one place. I’m also trying to develop more of a community, reaching out to become a part (albeit not always the most active part) of groups like Hellenistai and Neokoroi. And that feels good, it feels right. Even if I’m not able to contribute a lot right now, it’s good to interact with coreligionists. (And I love The Cauldron, it’s my online home and I don’t want anyone to think that I’m going anywhere just because I’m talking about branching out, but its overall focus is much broader and attempts at establishing an active Hellenic section there have not met with a great deal of success.)

It’s more community, and there are other resources (like the Adult Education program) that I would have access to as a member, and I’m relying on their public resources enought that it almost feels like I should acknowledge that and join. It’s only $10/year. Maybe I should. There’s a part of me, though, that’s wary of it.

That’s partly just “me” stuff. I know that when I get on a new project (or finally decide to do some serious work on an old one, as in this case), I tend to try to do everything all at once, and that winds up being overwhelming and then most of it winds up getting dropped again for sheer lack of energy. I don’t want to jump into everything at once only to burn out. My energy and brainpower don’t seem to have been at their best lately in general anyway, so it seems like there’s an extra-super danger of overload just now.

But… The other thing is that I really don’t know a lot about the way the organization works right now. I mean, I can read through all the information on the site, and I have done, but that doesn’t tell me much about the way people actually interact day-to-day, the way things actually happen here. And that makes me nervous. I remember hearing that Hellenion had some fairly tangled and messy internal politics going on — but that was years ago. If things are still that way, I don’t really want to get into it. If they aren’t, I dunno, I just want to kind of get a better feel for the actual people in the group. I know some people who are members (as Laurelei pointed out to me at one of our local meetups, Hellenic paganism is a niche and we kind of tend to all populate about the same 10-15 lists on the Net; crossover is inevitable), but that’s not the same as knowing the group dynamics. I’m lurking on Hellenion_Chat, but it doesn’t seem to be very active right now.

At some point I’m going to have to either decide not to take the chance, or say, “It’s only $10 and I don’t have to renew next year if I don’t like it,” and jump in. Right now I think I’m content to remain undecided while I work some other stuff out.

So. Today is the dark of the moon, the last day of the lunar month. Tomorrow it will be Noumenia again. I will have completed my first full cycle on the new calendar.

I finally found Hellenion’s Google calendar feed sometime mid-month, and that has helped immensely with remembering things and prompting me to actually, like, do my research ahead of time. I rely on GCal to keep my schedule organized, and while I could (and have) go through and add everything myself, it’s so much simpler to have a feed to rely upon. In fact, I dug up a number of things from Hellenion in various places this month that have been helpful in finding my bearings. Hellenion itself, though, is a whole different post.

I think the annual festival calendar is really going to take a lot more work and time figuring out than the monthly cycle will. Monthly, it’s pretty simple. There’s Noumenia, and then (per HMEPA) about seven more days with a libation to one or more specific deities on those days, and then Hekate’s Deipnon at the end of the month. I do a simple libation each morning anyway; it’s not really difficult to add recognition of a specific deity or two to that. The challenge is getting into the swing of that, remembering who goes when, but that’s easy enough to deal with. I have a little cheat sheet propped up on my dresser where I’ll see it each morning.

After finding the Hellenion calendar and discovering that it only marks Noumenia and the Agathos Daimon at the beginning of the month (that is, it doesn’t go on to the libations for other deities in the days following), I briefly considered whether it would be more appropriate to just do monthly libations to the deities I have something of a relationship to. And if I were doing anything more elaborate for these monthly observances (which I may feel I need to in the future, I don’t know), I’d probably give that a lot more thought. Since I’m sticking to something fairly simple I think I’ll just keep going as-is, though. If there are no practical obstacles to contend with, and the Gods do not seem displeased, I don’t think it’s something that needs a lot of worrying about.

I was listening to This American Life, as I do. The final act of this particular episode was Dan Savage telling the story of his mother’s death and his potential return to Catholicism. In the progress of this, he says that although some people find the idea of an afterlife comforting in the wake of a loved one’s death, he actually found that the concept made his mother’s passing more painful rather than less. “Which is the opposite of religion’s intended effect, is it not?”

I cannot speak with any authority about intended effects, particularly of Catholicism. I’m hardly an expert. What I do know is that my initial personal reaction was to think, “No, it’s not.”

That’s not to say that religion should be uncomforting, or cruel. I certainly don’t mean to imply that people should not find religion comforting in times of trouble. I don’t, however, think that its purpose is to console us. Not even when the trouble we are dealing with is the tragedy of losing a loved one. It is a purpose religion can serve for some people. It isn’t the point of religion. It’s like… You can use newspaper comics to wrap a birthday present, and it will serve that purpose very well and many people do actually do this. But that wasn’t what the comics were produced for.

So what role should religion play in our lives? I suppose the obvious answer has something to do with serving or interacting with the Gods, but there’s more to it than that. The focus, for me, is on the gods, but I as a human should be getting something out of this too. Otherwise, why am I following this religion? I would say more that religion should be about building a relationship with the gods. That means more than just making friends with deities; it also leads, I think, to personal development on a lot of levels. Spiritual, maybe, or emotional, sometimes social. Probably lots of other areas that I’m not thinking about, too. (Hell, I’d tend to suggest that my religion has even had a hand in my culinary development!)

And here’s the thing. That’s not always going to be comfortable. Sometimes it’s going to be a little awkward, and then sometimes it’s going to hurt like hell. When a difficult issue comes up, like what happens to a loved one after their death and how you deal with grief, religion is not necessarily going to hand you an easy answer that will make you feel all better. It’s not unreasonable to turn to religion to try to cope with what’s happening, certainly. I think it is unreasonable, though, to claim that religion isn’t doing its job if the answers it gives you don’t make you feel better. Even in a time of personal crisis.