Orphic Heaven

Written by thehouseofvines

To clarify, the attendees of Dionysos’ symposion in the last image are from left to right: Pythagoras, Friedrich Nietzsche, Georges Bataille, Jim Morrison, Benjamin Franklin, Jane Ellen Harrison, Anaïs Nin, and David Bowie. Tell me you wouldn’t want to sit back with the best wine you could imagine listening to this diverse collection of Dionysian luminaries having a stimulating conversation. According to Plato this was the ideal image of “Orphic heaven” and I can’t really disagree. (Especially since they culminate in orgies.)

7 thoughts on “Orphic Heaven”

  1. Benjamin Franklin as a Dionysian hero? Tell me more. Obviously I know he was a Mason and that he was a guest of the Hellfire Club but what else? And yes, being a Founding Father of America helps too as you have pointed out

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    1. It’s primarily his involvement with the Hellfire Club which had a cave where Dionysian rituals were conducted and some of the pre-revolutionary letters and pamphlets he wrote like the other founding fathers with proper Roman names and allusions. Unlike them he often included Bacchic references, which is sometimes how we recognize the work as his. He frequently showed up to public debates and government functions intoxicated. As a diplomat of our fledgling country to France he fucked his way through all the Parisian whorehouses and a number of noble ladies to boot. While not particularly Dionysian he advocated for the adoption of the turkey as our national bird rather than the eagle, because turkeys are indigenous, form close family networks, demonstrate intelligence, etc. Eagles are aggressive, and associated with violent conquest and imperialism, not just since they were the symbol of the Roman Legions but because every country with aspirations to being the New Rome from Byzantium to the Austro-Hungarian Empire to Albania and Russia have adopted it as their emblem. He envisioned a different path for America, which obviously was out-voted and ignored, to disastrous consequences for both America and the world at large. There’s a couple more Dionysian checks in his ledger, but I can’t recall them at the moment.

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  2. It would likely take divination to be sure about including him, but personally, I would have included Prince.

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    1. I wanted to as well, but the man was a devout Jehovah’s Witness (to the point that it possibly contributed to his demise.) While we’ve overlooked that with other Starry Bull Heroes and Heroines in the past, 40 days after his demise (the standard period of mourning in ancient Greece) we performed divination and got an emphatic “NO.” So while I have no problem discussing the Dionysian traits of his stage persona, I’m not going to violate the man’s personal beliefs and divination and make a declarative statement about his posthumous status I know to be false.

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      1. That is interesting. Most Neo-Pagans don’t ask before elevating certain folks to be their heroes or Gods. They just nominate them for being anti-Trump, or truly Progressive, or truly Feminist, or something else like that.

        Then there are the folks who really do deserve to part of a Pantheon. I am reminded of U.S. Grant, a perfectly ordinary human being, who rose to heights, and then gave it up to be ordinary again. Somehow, he gets lost in the “God” shuffle, while the dazzling ones get the attention.

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        1. I’ve always liked Grant. Brave and competent, but also a gifted strategist and good thinker generally, and with the proper amount of humbleness. He knew what was providence and what was the product of his own skill (and didn’t mind if the credit was given to God and not him.) His retirement reminds me of Cincinnatus.

          But yeah, since they have no concept of what avatars, heroes, saints, living Gods, etc. are, destroying the natural boundaries between them, and the dichotomy between Gods and mortals, smooshing everything all together with their only criteria being, “do I like them” or more accurately “do they share my politics” is it any wonder that their lives are as disordered as their thinking?

          There are plenty of people I admire but do not venerate; and some whom I venerate but do not necessarily like. But in both cases they are what they are, regardless of my personal feelings about them.

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