User:Madame Sosostris/Sandbox

Thesmophoria
General overview -- about.com

Dionysiac Mysteries and the Thesmophoria -- Tufts student paper

Sources on the Thesmophoria -- Perseus Encyclopedia

Thesmophoria -- Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities (1890)

Thesmophoria -- Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898)

Ritual walkthrough -- Bard College

Suggested reading

Ideas for reenactment
I have some pagan reconstructionist friends who worship the Hellenic deities, and they've had to adapt rituals and festivals for their own situations. Someone suggested using pink pig cookies as the sacrifice that needs to be in the "ditch" (we could hand them out to the class afterward, which always gets bonus points).

The main materials I think we need are the cookies (or some representative of pig), ritual flasks, an icon of some kind, and some wreaths. We could use those cheap leis for the wreaths, except between that and the roast piglet this is starting to turn into a luau, and I'm not sure how I feel about that. Oh -- we also need some anaphrodisiac plants for people to sit on, or at least a reasonable facsimile thereof.

The Wikipedia article isn't as good as it could be -- I'm going to incorporate some of our findings into that.