The aniconic idol-maker – how’s that for a paradox?

Shortly after moving here I began receiving two conflicting strains of advice from my gods and spirits. On the one hand I was pushed to acquire a bunch of statuary and sacred images, which went against my natural inclination towards anti-materialism. (For the previous eight years I lived in a 300 square foot apartment without a bed, television or other essentials of modern life.) On the other hand I was pushed to adopt an even more radical rootless, vagabond existence by paring down the system of practices, festivals and other devotional tools I’d spent more than two decades developing.

For a while I assumed that the first strain was relevant to the public work I was doing as archiboukolos (maintain a central shrine to all the gods, heroes, spirits, etc. of the Starry Bull pantheon so that I could generate charis on behalf of the thiasos and perform specialized rites for members as needed) while the second strain had to do with my own personal practice. But when it became apparent that it was necessary for me to step down from that role I was faced with a bit of a quandary: why would they encourage me to get all of this stuff when they never intended for me to use it?

So I figured I was supposed to set up some other shrine or sacred space and began working on various iterations – only to be met with a series of increasingly improbable and insurmountable obstacles. Every single time it got past the theoretical stage something would happen to thwart my efforts: a bout of food poisoning, an emergency session with a client which resulted in me getting sprayed by a skunk, unexpected house guests, the fall that busted up my knee, the roof springing a leak right above where I’d decided to move the shrine after the last place didn’t work out, my tooth cracking in half, etc.

I tried to find meaning in these random afflictions while ignoring the obvious, underlying imperative. The tricky thing is, I’m not sure that the conclusions I arrived at were necessarily wrong – they were just little extras tacked on to the recurring message of “stop trying to do shrine work.”

I think part of why I was so resistant to it was a failure of vision on my part. If you take away festivals and shrines and all of their associated devotional activities and routines and don’t have strong ties to place because you get rebuffed every time you go out and attempt to establish a connection with the local land spirits … what’s left?

A lot, actually. And it ends up strongly resembling what the Orpheotelestai did, which I was told at the beginning should be my model for this phase of my work.

I’d get a glimpse of it, see how it all fit together, see what I could do and become … and then everything would vanish and I’d start feeling like it wasn’t enough. It was nothing like the familiar devotional routines I’d developed over two decades of practice. Too flowing and internal: smoke and words and ecstasy that left no sign of their passage. It would be so easy to slip into fantasy and nothingness, especially since I’m already prone to acedia. I didn’t want to be one of those people who mistook blogging for religious practice and talking to the sock puppets in their head for communicating with the gods. I wanted to do something real, something that mattered, something that left a mark. And so I’d latch onto the idea that I needed to set up a shrine and develop a schedule of prayer and offerings, provoking further correction.

Of course my fears were groundless. What I was being nudged towards wasn’t a dissolution of practice, but a different kind with a different focus. There would still be plenty for me to do – indeed more than I had as a shrine-keeper or steward of place. But because that vision hadn’t fully developed in my head I gave space to other concerns.

Like what the hell was I going to do with all of the statuary and sacred images I’d picked up over the last year? Certainly they wouldn’t have pushed me to acquire this stuff if I wasn’t meant to do something with it … right? Or had I been wrong? Were my receptivity and discernment off in those incidences? Had I simply wanted these things and ascribed my desires to the gods and spirits?

The answer came to me a couple weeks back while putting together the Toys of Dionysos course, though full comprehension only dawned a few moments ago, prompting me to make this post.

Unsurprisingly, since I’m a writer and chresmologue, the answer arrived through a text:

At Delos, too, there is a small wooden image of Aphrodite, its right hand defaced by time, and with a square base instead of feet. I am of opinion that Ariadne got this image from Daidalos, and when she followed Theseus, took it with her from home. Bereft of Ariadne, say the Delians, Theseus dedicated the wooden image of the goddess to the Delian Apollo, lest by taking it home he should be dragged into remembering Ariadne, and so find the grief for his love ever renewed. I know of no other works of Daidalos still in existence. For the images dedicated by the Argives in the Heraeum and those brought from Omphace to Gela in Sicily have disappeared in course of time. (Pausanias, Description of Greece 9.40.3-4)

This passage is dense with meaning for me (tons of stuff about image and catharsis and Daidalos as demiourgos and Ariadne presiding over the equally though differently redemptive Lethe and Mnemosyne) but I’m not going to go into all of that here. What I’ll share is the clue (heh) I got about what I’m supposed to do with the idols now that I have them. You see, I was never meant to acquire them for my own use. I found them so that I could pass them on to others. Not, however, in the condition that they came to me in. I’m going to decorate, consecrate, bless and open them up as divine vessels and then do work to receive the appropriate cultus for the idol, including offerings, prescriptions, prohibitions, purifications, rituals, hymns and so forth. And then I’ll sell them for people to use – just like Orpheus and Mousaios did. Of course, I want to make sure these go to a worthy home so I’ll perform divination to determine both price and if the idol wants to be transmitted to that person, but I think this has some pretty huge implications and am really excited about starting this work. A while back I came up with a name for my various projects – Bacchic Orphic Arts – and I think this would be perfectly encompassed by that.

However, before I rush into anything (and inadvertently bring some new calamity upon my head) I am going to amply confirm through divination that this is indeed what I’m supposed to do. I may be a fool, but I ain’t stupid.