Just as Asterios is unable to transform the Phasis into the Amnisos and instead becomes transformed by drinking the foreign waters, so is it impossible to transport the mysteries of one place to another, argues Epiktetos in Discourses 3.21.12–17:
ἀλλ᾽ ἀπὸ λιμένος μὲν οὐδεὶς ἀνάγεται μὴ θύσας τοῖς θεοῖς καὶ παρακαλέσας αὐτοὺς βοηθοὺς οὐδὲ σπείρουσιν ἄλλως οἱ ἄνθρωποι εἰ μὴ τὴν Δήμητρα ἐπικαλεσάμενοι· τηλικούτου δ᾽ ἔργου ἁψάμενός τις ἄνευ θεῶν ἀσφαλῶς ἅψεται καὶ οἱ τούτῳ προσιόντες εὐτυχῶς προσελεύσονται;
τί ἄλλο ποιεῖς, ἄνθρωπε, ἢ τὰ μυστήρια ἐξορχῇ καὶ λέγεις· οἴκημά ἐστι καὶ ἐν Ἐλευσῖνι, ἰδοὺ καὶ ἐνθάδε. ἐκεῖ ἱεροφάντης· καὶ ἐγὼ ποιήσω ἱεροφάντην. ἐκεῖ κῆρυξ· κἀγὼ κήρυκα καταστήσω. ἐκεῖ δᾳδοῦχος· κἀγὼ δᾳδοῦχον. ἐκεῖ δᾷδες· καὶ ἐνθάδε. αἱ φωναὶ αἱ αὐταί· τὰ γινόμενα τί διαφέρει ταῦτα ἐκείνων;
ἀσεβέστατε ἄνθρωπε, οὐδὲν διαφέρει; καὶ παρὰ τόπον ταῦτα ὠφελεῖ καὶ παρὰ καιρόν; καὶ μετὰ θυσίας δὲ καὶ μετ᾽ εὐχῶν καὶ προηγνευκότα καὶ προδιακείμενον τῇ γνώμῃ, ὅτι ἱεροῖς προσελεύσεται καὶ ἱεροῖς παλαιοῖς. οὕτως ὠφέλιμα γίνεται τὰ μυστήρια,
οὕτως εἰς φαντασίαν ἐρχόμεθα, ὅτι ἐπὶ παιδείᾳ καὶ ἐπανορθώσει τοῦ βίου κατεστάθη πάντα ταῦτα ὑπὸ τῶν παλαιῶν.
σὺ δ᾽ ἐξαγγέλλεις αὐτὰ καὶ ἐξορχῇ παρὰ καιρόν, παρὰ τόπον, ἄνευ θυμάτων, ἄνευ ἁγνείας· οὐκ ἐσθῆτα ἔχεις ἣν δεῖ τὸν ἱεροφάντην, οὐ κόμην, οὐ στρόφιον οἷον δεῖ, οὐ φωνήν, οὐχ ἡλικίαν, οὐχ ἥγνευκας ὡς ἐκεῖνος, ἀλλ᾽ αὐτὰς μόνας τὰς φωνὰς ἀνειληφὼς λέγεις· ἱεραί εἰσιν αἱ φωναὶ αὐταὶ καθ᾽ αὑτάς;
ἄλλον τρόπον δεῖ ἐπὶ ταῦτα ἐλθεῖν· μέγα ἐστὶ τὸ πρᾶγμα, μυστικόν ἐστιν, οὐχ ὡς ἔτυχεν οὐδὲ τῷ τυχόντι δεδομένον.
No one sails out of harbor without first sacrificing to the Gods and calling upon them for aid; nor do people sow without invoking Demeter. And will someone who undertakes so great a work undertake it safely without the Gods? Will those who approach such a man approach him to their benefit?
What else are you doing, man, but dancing out the Mysteries? You say: “There is a sanctuary at Eleusis—look, there is one here too. There is a Hierophant there, and I too shall make a Hierophant. There is a Herald there, and I shall appoint a Herald. There is a Torchbearer there, and I too shall appoint a Torchbearer. There are torches there, and here as well. The utterances are the same. How do the things done here differ from those done there?”
Most impious man! Is there no difference? Are these things beneficial when performed outside their proper place and outside their proper time? They must be accompanied by sacrifices and prayers; one must first have purified oneself and prepared one’s mind beforehand, knowing that one is about to approach sacred things—and sacred things of ancient tradition.
In this way the Mysteries become beneficial. In this way we come to understand that all these things were established by the ancients for the formation and setting-right of life.
But you proclaim them openly and dance them out, outside the proper time, outside the proper place, without sacrifices, without purity. You do not have the garments that the Hierophant ought to have, nor the proper hair, nor the headband, nor the voice, nor the age. You have not purified yourself as he has. Instead, you have merely learned the utterances themselves and say: “Are not the utterances sacred in and of themselves?”
One must approach these matters in another way. The matter is great. It is mystic. It is not something to be undertaken casually, nor is it given to just anyone.
People often translate ἐξορχῇ in this passage as “divulging the Mysteries” from the verb ἐξορχεῖσθαι which more literally means dancing out. LSJ gives the specialized sense of “divulge by dancing”, hence to reveal or profane Mysteries.
So Epiktetos says it twice:
τὰ μυστήρια ἐξορχῇ
“you dance out the Mysteries”
And:
σὺ δ᾽ ἐξαγγέλλεις αὐτὰ καὶ ἐξορχῇ
“you proclaim them openly and dance them out.”
A point that’s relevant for contemporary polytheists, especially those who rely on reconstructionism and similar methodologies, is that a tradition needs living words; Epiktetos says αἱ φωναὶ αἱ αὐταί, “the utterances are the same,” but asks what of it? Then at 16 he repeats φωναί emphatically:
αὐτὰς μόνας τὰς φωνὰς ἀνειληφώς
“having learned only the utterances”
ἱεραί εἰσιν αἱ φωναὶ αὐταὶ καθ᾽ αὑτάς;
“Are the utterances sacred in and of themselves?”
Mere verbal replication does not reproduce the rite.
It’s not even possible.
The old rite is missing, broken, dead.
So we must come up with new rites, new songs, new dances. We need lived religions, rooted in our experiences, engaging with the Gods and spirits of the place where we live. Those can be indigenous or émigré Gods and spirits— they aren’t frozen in amber, aloof and unchanging. They manifest differently in different places— with myriads of faces and myriads of names. And as it says in the New Wine:
Πᾶν θεοῦ ὄνομα θύρα.
Every name of a God is a door.
The Gods and spirits are living beings, and only when a relationship has been forged with them can we hope to be entrusted with Mysteries. Not the ancient Mysteries. Those are gone, lost to the world forever. But real Mysteries, true Mysteries, new Mysteries await manifestation. We just have to make ourselves ready to dance out the Mysteries.
Which reminds me of one of my favorite epithets of Dionysos— Ἀρχέβακχος.
Ἀρχέβακχος hints at an archetypal role: the first one who entered Bacchic ecstasy and thereby opened the path for all who followed. There’s an ambiguity inherent in that— is the one the God or the first human to worship Dionysos that way, to receive his teletē? That’s a remarkably rich image to compress into a single compound. Every living tradition has its Ἀρχέβακχος— not because the founder is perfect, but because someone has to be the first to step onto the dance floor.
It’s a title found in a lot of inscriptions from the Imperial period, which saw a dramatic increase in offices and functions. I’d always understood it as Chief Bacchant, or Person Responsible for training those performing the Bacchic dances. (We’re a world away from the frenzied worshipers depicted in myth and Euripides.) But then I saw it used in a Byzantine anthology of Dionysos, and it became Dionysos acting as the prototype of his votaries. Which is such a beautiful image: the Bacchant from whom all Bacchants take their pattern.
It’s rather like the difference between calling Christ “High Priest” in the sense of holding an office, and understanding him as the archetype from whom every priesthood derives. The office is still there, but now it has an ontological center.
Dionysos as Ἀρχέβακχος means that the Bacchants do not merely imitate him.
They participate in him.
He is the first ecstatic because he is ecstasy itself.
He is the first dancer because every sacred dance is ultimately participation in his dance.
He is the first initiate because every mystery is, in a sense, entry into his own life.
Ritual isn’t theater or historical reenactment. It’s participation. When the initiate recites “I am a child of Earth and Starry Heaven. My name is Starry,” the myth isn’t being remembered from a distance— it is becoming present.
So Ἀρχέβακχος as “Prototype of the Bacchants” feels entirely at home within that framework.
I also have to admit that I love the irony of the historical development. An administrative title that may once have designated the person organizing dances in a local association eventually becomes one of the most theologically evocative names of Dionysos himself. That’s exactly the sort of semantic evolution that makes the history of religion so rewarding to study.
A title that begins as an office ends as a revelation.
And perhaps there’s a quiet lesson in that.
The office says:
“Lead the dance.”
The epithet says:
“He danced first.”
That second statement has a mythic force that the first never quite reaches. The leader is not inventing the dance; he is following the steps of the First Bacchant, even when it is a completely new dance.
