I decided to attempt to celebrate Hekate’s Deipnon on the 3rd/4th of this month, based on Deipnon described in this post on Patheos (with some alterations, of course).

There are two main components to the Deipnon as laid out in that post — a mundane half and a ritual half, though I don’t think there’s a strong divide between them. The mundane part is the cleaning of the house, the ending of things, the finishing up — the ritual purification of one’s mundane life; the ritual part is the ritual itself, the offerings, the leaving of said offerings at the crossroads. The two are interconnected, of course, but no matter how much intention I put into my cleaning to make it holy, doing it as an offering to any god, it’s still…well, it’s cleaning. I’m still sweaty and gross by the end and everything hurts and I wanna die. (#DisabledPaganLife) So I tend to separate the two in my mind.

Anyway. I ended up not being able to really do anything on the 3rd, as we went to visit the in-laws on that day. So I decided to move it to the 4th — clean during the day and do a ritual at night.

I managed some cleaning, but not enough — mainly, I didn’t manage to clean out the floor in front of my altars and shrines, which has been storing a bunch of stuff for a while. And I was too brain-dead to write any sort of ritual, or do anything.

And then there’s the problem of my really not being able to leave any offerings at any nearby crossroads. Not on a regular basis, which the Deipnon is. (I cannot have neighbours or landlords seeing this happen on a regular basis; while going out at night lessens the chances of this, it does not eliminate them. There’s also the problem of left food offerings attracting wildlife to the suburbs; not sure I want the death of a hungry bear on my conscience. Or any possible wildlife attacks.) I will be trying to find an alternative.

So it was half a Deipnon, and I need to figure something out for next month. I might just do half of it again, and instead of a full ritual light a candle and say a prayer (the floor is cleaner now; I have been busy today). I need to teach myself to slowly build up to these things; every time I try to dive in feet first I either fully do it once and never again, or just…never do it.

Baby steps.

I think Hekate appreciates the effort, anyway.

-Morag

PS: This is just a funny aside. I pronounce “Hekate” “heck-ah-tay”, which is probably wrong, but it’s the way I’ve always done and She hasn’t yelled at me for it. When I was talking to my husband about the Deipnon and my plans for it, he started laughing. “I’m sorry,” he said, “It’s just that every time you say “Hekate” I hear “HECK” and think about those snake memes. GOSH HECKING DARN IT.”

So now I cannot disassociate the snek memes with Hekate and I figured I’d share this with you all. “IT IS DEIPNON. WILL DO A PREPARE.”