2024 Attic Calendar - January
Currently working on my own version of the adapted Attic calendar! So far I only have January, but February is almost done as well. Fair warning, this goes in depth about what the festivals/celebrations are and how to commemorate, so this post is gigantic.
Attention: This is for the SOUTHERN HEMISPHERE!
⛧ [10/01/24] [Hekatombion 40th] - Hekate Deipnon
WHAT IS IT & WAYS TO CELEBRATE: It takes place at the end of the Lunar month. Hekate means "bringer of light", so at the darkest part of the month, we prepare our homes for the transition to a new month and offer her a meal. Think of it as a mini new year; clean/cleanse your house (especially altars), get rid of things you don't want to bring into next month (physical, spiritual, etc), and leave Hekate an offering at sundown (preferably a meal, but if you can't afford to waste food, just give her something else. Maybe bury or burn it if you can). Here's a list of good offerings (best left outside or at her altar, if you have one for her):
Bread
Cake (especially lit with candles)
Pomegranate
Wine
Honey
Cinnamon
Milk
Chocolate
Roses
Lavender
Poppy seeds
Dandelions
Incense (Frankincense, Lavender, Jasmine, Citrus, Dragons blood, Rosemary, or anything you have at hand)
Keys
Candles
Tea lights
Bones
Fire/Bonfire
Oil lamps
Crow/Raven/Own feathers
Poetry, Literature, Music, Hymns, etc
⛧ [11/01/24] [Metageitnion 1st] - Noumenia
WHAT IS IT & HOW TO CELEBRATE: The Noumenia is the first day of the visible New Moon and is held in honor of the household Gods. The Noumenia is a celebration of the start of a new Hellenic month and seeks blessings for the household. Honestly? You can just kick back and relax if you want or can, to invite calm energies into the upcoming month. But, if you (like me) want to be a little extra, here's some ways to celebrate:
Start a new personal project or hobby, or just pick back on things you've been putting off.
Set intentions for the coming month, and make plans for any of the month’s upcoming festivals, or for any of your personal upcoming plans.
Leave offerings for your deities.
Moon/stargaze, maybe meditate under the Moon.
Do a reading with your preferred divination method with the Theoi, asking what you should focus on in the coming month.
⛧ [12/01/24] [Metageitnion 2nd] - Agathos Daimon
WHAT IS IT & HOW TO CELEBRATE: One of my favorites! Daimons are household spirits that look after you and your family, so this is a day to honor Him! Pour a libation (especially wine, but mine likes milk better to be honest), make an offering, light a candle, maybe even make Him a lil altar! He's heavily associated with snakes, but aside from that you can offer (or put in His altar) anything you correlate with abundance, good luck, protection, etc. These guys are so overlooked and I love them. Here's a more in-depth post about Him and the holiday.
⛧ [13, 14, 16, 17, 18/01/24] [Metageitnion 3th, 4th, 6th, 7th & 8th] - Athena, Aphrodite/Hermes/Eros, Artemis, Apollo, Poseidon
WHAT IS IT & HOW TO CELEBRATE: Not exactly festivals, that's why I compiled them into one section, but these Lunar days are sacred to these deities in that order. Maybe leave them an offering or light them a candle, maybe even just devotional acts! Here's a good list of offerings for each:
ATHENA
Owl feathers/imagery
Pottery
Books
Toy weapons, athames, etc
Roses
Bread
Olive
Honey
Milk
Olive oil
Olive tree branches/leaves (real or not)
Clear crystals
Silver jewelry
Incense (Frankincense, Dragon's Blood, Cedarwood)
APHRODITE
Apples
Chocolate
Honey
Milk
Olive oil
Baked goods
Anything vanilla scented/flavored
Golden jewelry
Flowers (especially roses and anemones)
Sea stuff (sand, seashells, water, etc)
Perfume
Self care products
Rose quartz
Incense (Frankincense, Rose, Myrrh, Jasmine, Cinnamon, Vanilla, Cypress)
HERMES
Currency (real or not) (especially foreign)
Strawberries
Lemons
Dice
Playing cards
Travel tickets
Honey
Milk
Olive oil
Clovers
Cool rocks
Hematite
Incense (Frankincense, Myrrh, Safron, Dragon's Blood)
EROS
Honey cake
Chocolate
Fruit
Sweets (he likes candy a lot)
Milk
Honey
Olive oil
Rose quartz
Feathers
Flowers (real or not)
Heart-shaped objects
Arrows
Jewelry
Incense (Frankincense, Myrrh, Rose)
ARTEMIS
Animal related stuff (Imagery, bones, teeth, etc)
Moon related stuff
Moonstone
Clear quartz
Amethyst
Bows & Arrows
Leaves
Wild flowers
Acorns
Pine cones
Milk
Honey
Olive oil
Water
Silver jewelry
Incense (Frankincense, Cypress, anything woodsy)
APOLLO
Sun related stuff
Arts and crafts
Clear quartz
Citrine
Sunstone
Bows & arrows
Dandelions
Sunflowers
Poetry
Music
Honey
Milk
Olive oil
Water
Honeyed chamomile tea (he loves it)
Golden objects/jewelry
Divination items
Incense (Frankincense, Myrrh, Cypress, Clove, Cinnamon, Bay)
POSEIDON
Saltwater/Seawater
Seashells
Fish
Sand
Toy horses/horse imagery
Photos of the sea
Olive oil
Milk
Honey
Salt
Aquamarine
Sapphire
Incense (Frankincence, Myrrh, Pine)
⛧ [25-27/01/24] [Metageitnion 15-17th] - Eleusinia
WHAT IS IT & HOW TO CELEBRATE: The Eleusinia was a thanksgiving festival held to honor Demeter for the gift of grain. A modern way to celebrate is to have a big dinner (maybe include some breads and baking) and give thanks to Lady Demeter through it! Thank her for grain and the agricultural processes that we benefit from!
⛧ [28/01/24 ?] [Metageitnion 18th ?] - Adonia
WHAT IS IT & HOW TO CELEBRATE: A festival mourning the death of Adonis, one of Aphrodite's human lovers. Traditionally, it was celebrated only by women (as a trans guy, I personally don't give a fuck and celebrate it anyway). Also, there's no source for an exact date, so this is an educated guess at best (most sources just refers to it as taking place "midsummer"). For a way to celebrate, I found this amazing hymn/poem. Remember to honor Aphrodite on this day as well.
⛧ [30/01/24] [Metageitnion 20th] - Hera Telkhinia
WHAT IS IT & HOW TO CELEBRATE: A minor sacrifice for Hera, taking place in the suburbs of Athens. Again, not a lot of info, but if you worship or have a connection to her, maybe read her a hymn, pour a libation honor her on this day! Here's a Orphic hymn to her:
Hera, incense aromatic herbs and spices.
You are seated in a cerulean cavern, having the form of air,
Íra queen of all, happy one who shares the bed of Zefs,
You provide gentle breezes which sustain the soul.
Mother indeed of storms, attendant of the winds, all-begetting.
Apart from you life and generation cannot be found;
Mingled with the majestic air you partake of everything.
You alone hold sovereignty, ruling over all.
You are the stream which flutters down through the rushing winds.
And now you, happy Goddess, many named, queen of all,
Come with a countenance of kindness and joy.
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"Detienne, taking as his key the well-known myth that Adonis' pregnant mother Myrrha or Smyrna (both Greek words for myrrh) was metamorphosed into a myrrh tree, from whose trunk the newborn in due time emerged, sees Adonis as essentially the fruit of an aromatic shrub, a perfume, an anti-agricultural product. His method is to find a counter-phenomenon in Attic society, in response to which the Adonia can take their significance: surely the Thesmophoria, the autumn festival in honor of Demeter at which the women of Athens celebrated the growth of food crops. Detienne finds a further, sociological opposition here: the Thesmophoria were celebrated only by the wives of Athenian citizens; the Adonia were notoriously celebrated by prostitutes. He positions Adonis and the data of his cult within various oppositional codes discernible in Greek culture-each illustrated by a diagram-that parallel one another quite precisely, replicating the same meaning in different terms: aromatically, Adonis stands for heady perfume; botanically, for profitless agriculture; socially, for seduction and extramarital pleasure. The Adonia, Detienne declares, were a celebration of infertility and fruitless sex, a spectacular illustration of the dangers of untrammeled female sexuality, serving to balance and emphasize the autumn celebration of fruitfulness and legitimate connubiality in the service of the polis.
But much evidence slips through Detienne's grid. In several versions of the birth of Adonis myrrh has no place: in our earliest his mother is one Alphesiboea ([Hes.], fr. 139 M-W); in another she is one Metharme ([Apollod.], Bibl. 3.14.3). Philostephanus of Cyrene made him the son of Zeus alone (ap. [Probus] on Verg., Ecl. 10.18).22 As for the carnival of whores, the Adoniac festivities in brothels in Diphilus, fr. 42.38-41 PCG and Alciphron 4.14.8 (based on fourth-century comedy), are to be supplemented by Aristophanes, Lys. 391-96, and Menander, Sam. 35-50, in which wives and daughters of citizens celebrate the Adonia. Most surprisingly, Detienne's theory takes only passing account of the ritual lamentation, which ancient sources make the most conspicuous feature of the festival, and in general ignores what the celebrants themselves thought of what they were doing-unless we are to imagine that the women of Athens climbed onto their roofs once a year deliberately to celebrate their own failings to the community. There was probably another reason, one which feminist studies of the cult have begun to seek.
Another assumption, however, more fundamentally flaws Detienne's interpretation. While proposing to tease an inherent meaning from Athenian cult practice by identifying the inherent correspondences and oppositions within it, Detienne fails to define a perspective more specific than a homogeneous Greco-Roman society. Adonis, for example, must have meant many things to many people at many times (even different things to the same people at different times), but Detienne's formula assumes that he meant essentially the same thing to everybody, no matter how many borders of nation, culture, language, gender, or time he may have crossed-as if any detail of the myth of Adonis tapped into one immanent meaning and could be adduced for the significance of the Athenian cult. Rhetorical motives are undifferentiated: a line of Sappho is treated equally with a line of Philodemus; the testimony of Aristophanes is put on a par with the testimony of St. Cyril. This method is programmatic and derives from Levi-Strauss, who articulates the principle thus vis-A-vis his interpretation of Oedipus: "[W]e define the myth as consisting of all its versions; or to put it otherwise, a myth remains the same as long as it is felt as such." Combining details from diverse myths of Adonis, regardless of date or provenance, Detienne treats the resulting conglomeration as a single sacred tale holding a precious key to the meaning of the ritual. But for whom does it hold meaning? For Detienne alone. Purportedly context-based, his method actually isolates phenomena from their diverse cultural uses and recontextualizes them into an artificial code that transcends the messy inconsistencies of Greek thought."
- The Sexuality of Adonis by Joseph D. Reed
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Here you go:
Delicate Adonis is dying,
In the arms of Beauty crying,
For is there one who would not weep,
Whelmed in miseries so deep?
Gored, derided, cursed, defiled,
She beheld her tender love by Fates reviled
While, where her tears bloodied,
Grew a flower on soil sullied.
Oh Kythereia, Lady of Sorrows,
Arrow-struck heart of a thousand woes,
How can the human heart refrain
From partaking in your pain?
Aphrodite, we ask to you,
To lament with you, what should we do?
"Strike yourselves and tear your garments! Beat your breasts!
Maidens, feel the anguish in your chests!"
Let us share with you this pain,
For Adonis, unfairly slain.
Make us feel as you have felt;
Make our souls to glow and melt
Let us mingle tears with you,
Mourning Him, but loving him with you.
when I say I have goosebumps on my entire body it's not an exaggeration. Whooo my gods, that is hauntingly beautiful.
Thank you for sharing this beautiful creation. If I may, I would love to incorporate this into my Adonia festival 🥺
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