A shrine gives a home to the divine, where we express devotion to the gods and spirits that surround us. Though it seems to me deity is immanent in every rock and mosquito, in a shrine we honor that immanence expressly, using objects that appeal to the senses.
In my spaces for the gods, I like things shiny, sparkly and rich: glass ornaments, silks and velvets, armfuls of flowers, shaded lanterns -- though some deities prefer things of the earth: rocks and stones and branches. I once envisioned a shrine to Hermes propped up by boulders. Sheer gravity and lack of upper body strength -- or a crane -- defeated me, but there's always another chance to show my devotion.
Since 1997, I've been creating shrines to the gods of Spring Mysteries Festival (SMF), a pagan festival held in homage to the ancient Greek Eleusinian Mysteries every spring on the Olympic Peninsula by the Aquarian Tabernacle Church (ATC). Each year, the ATC sets a certain number of 8-by-12-foot huts aside at the festival campsite to be decorated as shrines that stand through SMF weekend. The first year I helped, and a couple thereafter, shrine coordination duties were shared by TerraFire and Nora Cedarwind; TerraFire coordinated with my help in 2000; in 2001 Jessa and I shared duties, and these last couple of years I have done the honors.
Coordination just means that you dig up people to do the work and try to answer questions -- "Where's the fuse box?" "Why can't we have open flames?" "Where will the Athena shrine be this year?" "Do you have thumbtacks?" The work of creating the shrines is done by volunteers, myself only one of workers too numerous to mention and too devoted to imagine. I have known people to stay up half the night working on a space, then get up at dawn to finish. I have known one man who for the past several years has not only bought fire extinguishers for all six weekend shrines at his own expense, but also heated the Aphrodite and Pan huts by propane and put up wire enclosures around the heaters to prevent fires. I have known one woman to hammer in nails all afternoon with a rock, denying modern tools out of devotion to her goddess.
I remember a year, before my involvement, when the love and labor that goes into the festival couldn't reach as far as every shrine. SMF, which regularly attracts 300 or more people, is an immense undertaking, and the first year I attended coincided with a year when the staff was spread too thin to do much for any shrines but the main ones. Myself and my friend Iothalassa, a dedicant of Athena, found the grey-eyed goddess's enclosure completely empty -- Iothalassa rushed away, found pens and a paper plate and gave the Lady an image for her space. That year inspired a number of us to step forward the next.
What draws the shrine-makers together is the desire to be interior decorators for the gods. Sometimes shrine creators work to make beauty (or terror) for deities they have long honored; sometimes they're pressed into service at the last minute for deities who are only passing acquaintances. Generally, the deities honored are those of the mysteries, always including Demeter, Aphrodite, Pan and Hekate. Last year, all-weekend shrines also went up for Zeus, Hera and Hermes; other deities got more temporary spaces. In other years, shrines have been created for Rhea, Hestia, Athena and other gods.
Demeter as the guardian of the mysteries often receives the festival's grandest outpourings of fabric, sheaves of wheat and other markers of devotion. The 2003 shrine by Thea and friends showed Demeter light and dark, spring and fall. TerraFire, for one of her Demeter shrines, created a small incorporated shrine for Tripto-lemus, to whom Demeter demonstrated how to grow grain, and another for Baubo. In the myth of the rape of Kore, Baubo cheers De-meter as, on her search for her daughter, she stops to serve as nurse in the household of King Celeus and Queen Metaneira. Noticing the nurse is glum, Baubo lifts her skirt and makes her laugh with the "hidden smile."
The goddess who most often oversees sexual mysteries at SMF is Aphrodite. Her space is always the largest, and often the best-attended. The Aphrodite and Pan shrines became fixtures at SMF when early festival-goers complained about dormmates making bunk springs squeal to the tune of passion. In these two shrines, adults at the festival can make love.
In the Northwest spring, love wants extra warmth laid on, and until we got the kinks worked out of the system, extra warmth sometimes got out of hand. It was just after sunrise one morning when the festival assistant director shook my shoulder.
"What?" I said, struggling to sit up in my sleeping bag.
"Get up!" she hissed. "There's been a fire in the Aphrodite shrine! We need to clean up before the park ranger sees it!" I awakened my companion, Bestia Mortale, and we trudged to the scene of destruction.
A propane heater with an open flame had caught the edge of a sheet of sheer polyester fabric, and it had gone up instantly. Flames followed the fabric to the ceiling, and flaming bits fell to start new fires. Luckily, the celebrants had the presence of mind to drag a burning mattress and material out to the porch and beat out the flames, one man getting burned for his trouble. The fire was gone by the time we arrived, and the hero of the day had gotten first aid. But the pink and golden shrine, draped with gauzy material and ropes of fabric flowers, was no more. In its place was a blackened, tattered, smoke-smelling ruin, with surface burns on the permanent structure.
As the spring dawn brightened and warmed around us, we set to work.
But as we stripped the walls, piled the smoky trash and scraped burn marks from the porch, half a dozen people came forward spontaneously to help -- some our friends, some people we'd never met before. After the crew cleaned, scrubbed and swept, we took what materials remained to remake the shrine. We had just enough fabric and decorations to cover the walls, put up partitions and put the shrine back in business. We finished well before the ranger came by, and no one official ever mentioned damage to the hut. In looks, the shrine might have been "Aphrodite in Sparta," but its doors stayed open.
We learned something from that episode. Since then, we've always had fire extinguishers handy and set the propane heater behind a wire cage. It wasn't the first time the goddess's shrine had had a brush with flame. I hope it's the last.
But I think Aphrodite was laughing. I could almost hear her whisper to herself, "The sex was so hot the shrine caught fire!"
I have a special fondness for the Pan shrine, because it was my refuge at my first SMF in an hour of need, or rather desire. I'd been tracking a particular boy for a while; at the bonfire, after an exchange of not too many words, we stumbled into the dew-cold night looking for a space to have sex. But the Aphrodite shrine was locked -- a couple had the bad taste to insist on the whole shrine for themselves. We retreated to Pan's shrine, which was empty, and I gave myself up to the love of a satyr.
The shrine is more traditionally a refuge for all-satyr gatherings. I know a boy who consorted with the god Pan himself there, or at least his human avatar. It shook my friend's allegiances and ended in sorrow, but that night I'm surprised the Pan shrine didn't burn.
For the last several years, Rhombus Blackcat has led the decoration of the Pan shrine, with a flair for the wild: branches and stones, dark greens and browns, always a nod to the animal and to nature. With the woods about, it might seem strange to worship Pan indoors, and yet we humans sometimes need shelter to release our animal side.
Trifold Hekate is another deity perhaps best worshipped outdoors, between two torches at the crossroads, with a black dog howling at the moon. Yet I think she has graced her SMF shrines with her presence.
This year's was an amazing shrine, put together by Birch and Crowshadow with other volunteers. Birch painted two panels, focusing on Hekate of the night sea, which stood on either side of a mirror where visitors could face themselves. Two paths went to either side of Hekate's throne, and black and dark colors draped the whole, with crow feathers drifted in spots. Earlier Hekate shrines made use of a black net veil, letting visitors know when they passed it that they were in the presence of the goddess.
The 2002 SMF was Cody's first, and I think the Hekate shrine moved her most. In a pew at Apollo's Theater, she spoke of sensing the goddess in her shrine, in the darkness, a living, breathing manifestation. I too have sat with Hekate in her shrine. To me, she is a comforting presence. She does not bring death but walks all ways, to hell and back. When we need a companion on dark pathways, Hekate will be with us, if we ask her. In her shrine, she gave me this gift.
The other Greek deity of the crossroads, god of traveling and boundaries, is Hermes. At SMF, I have spent more time creating Hermes shrines than any others.
My first two years at SMF, Greg played Hermes as a subtle, fork-tongued deity, a meddler in the world of mortals who like Hekate walks all ways (a performance like the one he gave in 2003). This trickster god inspired my first Hermes shrine, a trickster who shaded into a darker, chthonic Hermes -- Hermes of the herms, the upraised phalli that directed travelers at the crossroads of ancient Greece. Some writers think that the phallus was the beginning of Hermes as a deity in human minds -- a lonely phallus at a crossroads, not fully human, an image of the wilds. So I drew such a phallus for my shrine, repeatedly, on an ochre background, surrounded by vines. Bestia created a Hermes staff for the shrine, not a caduceus but the staff that the early Greek Hermes carries on vases: a long pole surmounted by a symbol like that of the planet Mercury.
In later years, Eric of the long red hair played a lighter, more airy Hermes, still tricky but not so sibylline. A hands-on, crafty guy, Eric started out being more involved in the shrine-making than Greg. The first year Eric and I worked together, we spent a lot of time making Fimo dice, which dedicants received.
I remember consecrating that first shrine we worked on, with help from a few other shriners, at night as always (as if I've ever finished a SMF shrine before dark). Candles burned in glass containers, but the air still felt chill. When the circle went up, it became warm. The working fell into place lightly, like feathers floating to earth. We said, "So mote it be," and the energy jelled. The shrine suddenly belonged to the god.
In 2002, Eric and I created another Hermes shrine, with the help of Ivy Ruby Moon. For this one, a lot of feathers fell to earth. The whole point, though, was that the feathers should rise into the air -- on threads, attached to the ceiling.
That was Eric's idea, of course. By this time, Eric had more responsibilities, so like a good Hermes he darted in, did the shrine decoration he wanted, and darted out again, saying something like, "Great work, girls!" as we slipped feather after feather after feather onto tiny, shining threads. The feathers didn't like being attached to the ceiling -- a staple is simply too gross a thing to expect a feather on a shining thread to anchor itself to. Far too many feathers floated to earth.
Finally, enough was enough. I think enough feathers got threaded to satisfy the god. Right on time, Hermes pranced in and pronounced it all good.
Zeus claimed my friend Orion unexpectedly, though it's not too surprising that the King of the Gods called a Sagittarius man. After all, in his incarnation as Roman Jupiter, Zeus rules Sagittarius.
I asked Orion to create the Zeus shrine in 2002 because I knew Orion would do a splendid job, and because I knew Orion was dedicated to two of Zeus's children, Apollo and Athena. Orion's friend Dave played Zeus that year, so I figured it was a match made in Olympos. Gifted with true interior-decorator-of-the-gods spirit, Orion brought classical simplicity to the shrine of Zeus the Thunderer.
When the King of the Gods called him, Orion was cleaning up the shrine. A posse of would-be dedicants stood awaiting the god's blessing, and Orion was swept up in the moment. Along with all those visiting, he too was dedicated to Zeus.
"In retrospect, it makes sense," Orion said, "but at the time it was rather a surprise." Not only is Orion a Sag, he also has extensive legal training, and Zeus is a ruler of justice. Zeus also has an eye for young Ganymedes, as does Orion. The dedication to Zeus seems to have suited Orion, and he stunningly reprised his shrine in 2003. If the initial blessing came as a lightning bolt, no less could be expected from Zeus.
The most time I ever spent on any one SMF shrine was for Rhea, the mother and grandmother of the Olympian pantheon.
For me, Rhea is my lady of Crete, a goddess I sought a long time before I found her at the Minoan archaeological site of Palaikastro, on the eastern end of the island. Among the dusty olive trees, she broke over me like a wave of sunlight -- spiritual experience as heat stroke. The next spring, serendipitously, SMF required a shrine to Rhea. So Shayla, that year's Rhea, and I made one.
I wanted to paint Rhea a fresco, or the closest thing to it. I cut up a sheet for canvas and painted an acrylic wall-hanging, based on images from the frescoes at Knossos, the major palace of Minoan Crete, and the site Akrotiri on Santorini island. Actually, I meant to make two hangings, but time (sacred to Rhea Chronia) defeated me. That painting, and many dried, dyed leaves and flowers, and small befeathered models of birds and butterflies, made a home for the Mountain Mother.
That shrine we consecrated hard. Once the Lady was present, the space reverberated with her, as it had in Crete under the olive trees. Shayla got to play mother to many ritualists -- the energy drew them like magnetic north to fall in the lap of the Mother of the Gods.
I cannot end without talking about the goddess who for me started it all -- appropriate, as she is a craftswoman herself, a weaver and a goddess of wisdom and the civilizing force. Athena's shrines have been among the many created by Iothalassa, whose hand brings an Attic calm to the spaces she presents.
I spoke of my work on the Rhea shrine, but in work Iothalassa always outdoes me. She has made sheets into marble and found olive branches on the Olympic Peninsula in March. Hers is the perfect postcard, hung at the perfect angle, the punched tin lantern tossing shards of light; it was she who taught me the magick of fabric stores. When that mad glow appears in her eyes, you know anything can happen. About 30 intensive hours later, after back-breaking labor and no use of power tools, she'll have produced wonders. It was she, of course, who I found that afternoon pounding in nails with a rock, shaking off any offer of a hammer -- working on the Athena shrine, first of many, prototype of that god-filled silence.
I wish I could name everyone who's helped with the shrines these past seven years. Certainly I should name Sylvana, who collects our safer sex supplies, always the force behind the Aphrodite shrine; Skya, decorator extraordinaire, and decorative as well; and Jema, who falsely professes she's no use at these things but who has never let me down. I could write a list as long as this article.
But I want to leave you with the shrines themselves: candlelight on silk, beach stones and shells on velvet, peacock feathers, dried poppies shaking in the breeze through the half-open window. The wind falls, and suddenly you know the god is there.