{"id":1058,"date":"2008-09-05T20:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-09-05T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1058"},"modified":"2008-09-05T20:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-09-05T20:00:00","slug":"review-written-in-wine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1058","title":{"rendered":"Review: Written in Wine"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dionysos, writes Sannion<\/a> of the Library of Neos Alexandria<\/a>, “is a maddeningly complex god to figure out.” And so he gets an anthology: poetry, fiction, hymns, essays, ritual from a group of Hellenic revivalist Pagans: Written in Wine: A Devotional Anthology for Dionysos<\/a><\/p>\n

I like that approach for several reasons.<\/p>\n

For one, contemporary Pagans must remember that our model of clergy is different from those of the monotheists. We start with service to deity<\/em>, which is not the same as “pastoring” (herding sheep).<\/p>\n

For another, we are drawn (or chosen) by different deities at different times. Sometimes, as Wiccan writer Judy Harrow says of herself, we are “serial henotheists.”<\/p>\n

Harrow herself produced an excellent book in 2003, Devoted To You: Honoring Deity in Wiccan Practice<\/a> \u2014 the title is a slight misnomer, since two of four contributors, Alexei Kondratiev and Maureen Reddington-Wilde, are reconstructionist Pagans.<\/p>\n

I once said that we needed poets, not theologians, and much of the poetry in Written in Wine<\/span> is good stuff. Theokleia’s “Come Dionysus” needs to be chanted by drunken, torch-lit devotees, while the collection also includes new translations of some ancient hymns to Dionysos as well.<\/p>\n

The book includes stories and essays as well: I was impressed by Sarah Kate Istra Winter’s “What It Means to be a Maenad” and, somewhat parallel to it, Tim Ward’s “Dionysos on Skyros” with its questions of how a man moving toward middle age might still manifest the god.

Yesterday<\/a> I mentioned Ginette Paris, known for three excellent works of polytheistic psychology: Wisdom of the Psyche: Depth Psychology after Neuroscience<\/a>, Pagan Meditations: The Worlds of Aphrodite, Artemis, and Hestia<\/a>, and Pagan Grace: Dionysus, Hermes, and Goddess Memory in Daily Life<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Those books can help you see how divine energies penetrate the psyche and also manifest unexpectedly in everyday life, but Written in Wine<\/em> is for the times when you want to call them forth\u2014now!
<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dionysos, writes Sannion of the Library of Neos Alexandria, “is a maddeningly complex god to figure out.” And so he gets an anthology: poetry, fiction, hymns, essays, ritual from a group of Hellenic revivalist Pagans: Written in Wine: A Devotional Anthology for Dionysos I like that approach for several reasons. For one, contemporary Pagans must […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_seo_schema_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[],"tags":[5,40,12],"class_list":["post-1058","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-paganism","tag-polytheism","tag-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-h4","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":13,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13","url_meta":{"origin":1058,"position":0},"title":"Paganism: A Reader","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"May 13, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"What I hope was the last paper work for Graham Harvey's and my new anthology, Paganism: A Reader went into the campus mailbag today on its way to Routledge, the publisher. The book is a collection of mostly primary sources, so in that way it's somewhat different from Graham's earlier\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1068,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1068","url_meta":{"origin":1058,"position":1},"title":"Green Egg Omelette Available for Pre-order","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 8, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Green Egg Omelette: An Anthology of Art and Articles from the Legendary Pagan Journal will be shipping soon and can be pre-ordered from Amazon with the link above or from the publisher.Oberon Zell did the heavy lifting: tracking down long-lost contributors, making editorial decisions, and laying out the pages. I\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Paganism\"","block_context":{"text":"Paganism","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=paganism"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=chascli-20&l=as2&o=1&a=1601630468","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":7,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=7","url_meta":{"origin":1058,"position":2},"title":"Wiccan Books Need ‘Earth Tones’?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"April 2, 2003","format":false,"excerpt":"A couple of months ago, Judy Harrow, author of several worthwhile books on Wicca, mentioned to me that publishers--or at least one of her publishers--have decided that such books' covers require (1) a pre-Raphaelite female and (2) earth tones. Check out the cover of Devoted to You, an anthology on\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"blogging\"","block_context":{"text":"blogging","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=blogging"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1284,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1284","url_meta":{"origin":1058,"position":3},"title":"Too Much Pagan Writing is Too Bland","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 15, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I wish Pagan writers would stop giving advice and writing bland how-to articles. A lot of what makes Pagan magazine publishing is its bias towards advice-giving. That and poor graphic design, in some cases.Look at Circle magazine, for example. Circle reminds me too much of the bland publications of cookie-cutter\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"American religion\"","block_context":{"text":"American religion","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=american-religion"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":558,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=558","url_meta":{"origin":1058,"position":4},"title":"Under Southern Skies","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 13, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Doug Ezzy, sociologist and co-editor of Researching Paganisms also edited an anthology by \"Down Under\" Witches called Practising the Witch's Craft: Real Magic Under a Southern Sky. He writes to say that it is now available from Amazon for the rest of the world. It ranges from Gardnerians to Goddess\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"Australia\"","block_context":{"text":"Australia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=australia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":561,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=561","url_meta":{"origin":1058,"position":5},"title":"Post-AAR book chatABC-Clio is publishing\u2026","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 24, 2005","format":false,"excerpt":"Post-AAR book chatABC-Clio is publishing Michael Strmiska's new anthology on contemporary Paganism. I did a book with them in the early 1990s, and my experience was mostly good, especially with unexpected largesse from foreign-rights sales. Given the transnational nature of his book, maybe we should speak of \"foreign rites\" sales.OK,\u2026","rel":"","context":"Similar post","block_context":{"text":"Similar post","link":""},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1058","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1058"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1058\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1058"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1058"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1058"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}