reileen: (spirituality - temple/Artemis)
Things Reileen Learned While Observing Kharisteria:

It is impossible to set fire to fresh Hawaiian bread with just a small plastic candle lighter.

Yeah. My offerings to Artemis this time around were a small slice of Hawaiian sweet bread and 7-Up. I'm learning how to do things, I swear!

(She seemed all right with it, as far as I could tell, although I think She started laughing at me when I couldn't set the bread on fire. I'll probably pour out the pop later in the backyard, and leave the bread outside for wildlife as well.)

Now, I think this is about the time I freak out about going back to school. I start on Wednesday, and my only class of the day is Japanese. I am going to die in there...

-Reileen
rose, rose, rose red, will I ever see thee wed?
reileen: (spirituality - temple/Artemis)
This article about doing temp work is probably going to be me in a couple of years: working odd boring office jobs that leave me enough brainpower and net me enough money to do my more useless work (that is, my art/writing/music) on the side and hoping I can make it big there.

***

From picking up Dancing in Moonlight: Understanding Artemis Through Celebration on a random whim from my bookshelf and flipping through it, I found out that there's a festival for Artemis, Kharisteria (roughly translating to "thanksgiving"), coming up on September 6. *glances at calendar* Well, I have little less than a week to figure out something to do within my space and money limits. :Db!

I'd really like to burn something as a sacrifice, since the origins of this festival dealt with the Athenians sacrificing goats to Artemis in thanks for the victory She granted them at the battle of Marathon. I'm not sure of how much I can burn before I set off the smoke detectors in my house, though. I think things might be okay if I leave my fan running on turbo (two fans, even!) and facing the open windows.

It is a fact of nature that some animals eat other animals. Some people may argue that with our intelligence as a species we ought to move outside that pattern and cease preying on other creatures. While I can understand that ideology, in my mind plants are just as alive as animals, only they have no mouths with which to cry out when they are cut down, no faces to express their sorrow, no hooves or claws with which to fight back, and so we can too easily forget that even vegetarians and vegans must kill living things and eat them in order to survive. Death feeds life.

This concept is at the heart of the modern Kharisteria. Nothing in this universe can be gained without some kind of sacrifice. Those things that we pay for the most dearly are, by definition, the most valuable. That which we suffer to learn we will never forget. As Burkert says, "Artemis is and remains a Mistress of sacrifices," and at the Kharisteria we honor Her as such. At this festival we thank Her for everything that has come at a heavy price or that has been difficult to obtain, and we ask Her for help in all our future struggles.

-Thista Minai, Dancing in Moonlight: Understanding Artemis Through Celebration, pp. 61-62

"Nothing in this universe can be gained without some kind of sacrifice"? Law of equivalent exchange, right there! [/alchemy geek]

EDIT: [livejournal.com profile] lysis_to_kill, are you using that one empty room near the kitchen in your apartment for anything in particular? If not, would it be all right if I occasionally utilized it for my own purposes? I wouldn't do anything too messy (no sacrificing virgins or anything like that), and I'd clean up and be mostly quiet. It's okay to say no if you're not comfortable with that sort of thing.

-Reileen
dear Ophelia, you know I'm hurt

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Reileen van Kaile

April 2010

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