Lydia Venieri

The Thirteenth Month

Nov. 26, 2022

The Thirteenth Month is based on the Luna month of twenty-eight days. Multiplying this by twelve months of the calendar gives three hundred and thirty-six days. Subtracting this from three hundred and sixty-five leaves twenty-nine extra days that belong to the Thirteen Month.

In mythology, the twelve months correspond to the twelve gods and goddesses of the Olympic Pantheon. The missing thirteenth month is the god of celebration, Dionysus. This fallen god was exiled because he symbolized the opposition to the principle of authority. Celebration disrupts order, dissolves fear, and reverses logic through the dimension of intoxication. It breaks down borders, awakening a common consciousness. Dionysus declares Freedom a higher good than any material gain or hierarchy. He paces the Ego at the center of the world with human rights as law, honoring animals and nature. His army mainly comprises women and Kineids, and he has a hermaphrodite nature.

The binary (dio) reference of his name to the dual nature of the god that unites the female with the male and has the duality, a siamese-twin of one god of monotheism with the countering Prometheus the Zeus. In his "Dionysiaca," Nonnos mentions that Dionysos had twins from the nymph Aura. Iacchos, who is Dionysos of the Eleusinian Mysteries.
Zagreus Dionysus was saved by his father from the flaming fire that consumed his mother, Semele. In Euripides' Bacchae, his cousin Pentheus was devoured by his mother, Hecuba. Maia also gave birth to twin Orphic Dionysus, one of whom she swallowed. May is the month that honors this hidden-eaten baby and is named after Maia. The Thirteenth Month was shared and devoured by the twelve remaining months, gods or apostles. This is the meaning of the Last Supper, the sacrifice and impregnation through the Holy Communion.
This common guilt is the acceptance of the secret cult that mourns its dead, that it cannot protect from death and eats them to be reborn.

This cannibalism is an act of love. It is also Eve's original sin, who ate the dead Abel. The repetition of the Resurrection (Anastasis) every year carries the meaning of the Revolution (Epanastasis). With this symbolic ritual, people mourn happily and with ideals, maintaining the instinct of defiance with the universal consciousness. Easter is a floating feast based on the year's first moon cycle, and the number Thirteen is considered the Unlucky number.

Lydia Venieri Maroussi, 2022