Today I serve not Isis, but Dionysos.
For He is my other Divine love. And here at The Hallows, today is the day we celebrate His harvest.
It is October and the vineyard smells sweet—too sweet—and oh so ripe. Amber and scarlet is just beginning to blaze in the leaves of trees. The decayed-honey scent of fallen foliage is in the air. Sugar-dusted grape clusters dangle from the vines in our grape arbor. At the time when night just outweighs day and the world has entered its slow roll toward the darkness, the empurpled grapes are finally ready for harvest.
All of our Pagan beloved ones—Bacchants for a day—ply their sweet labor among our vines. Oh yes, we shall make wine.
Our Wine Mistress, Priestess of the Hydrometer, fusses. The children giggle as they rip grapes from the stem, toss them into the barrel (and at each other), and run screaming around the yard in a fine, Bacchic frenzy. The adults drink last year’s vintage as they work. They joke and gossip with each other. Then, we begin The Crush. As the grapes are stomped into juice beneath our purified, bare feet, we sing. We invoke Dionysos, the God of the Vine, the Bull-Horned One, the Mad, Honey-Sweet God of Divine Intoxication.
As we crush His purple flesh, our song is as sad and sweet as October itself. Once all have danced upon the grapes, we strain the fresh juice into the “must bucket.” There, the God’s holy blood will ferment into His own Divine wine, making our kitchen smell like grape-y bread for two delicious, heady weeks.
But tonight…tonight, when the grapes have just been picked and crushed and the juice secreted away in the must bucket, we shall dance. We shall dance, entranced—drums thundering—in the sweet thrall of the God, breathing the breath of the Wine Muses and loving, loving, loving the mad, human beauty of every single one of our friends.
