I am revamping the Lexicon of Titles and Bynames of Dionysos (marking whether it’s an ancient or Starry Bull coinage, polishing the Greek, refining the definitions, etc) and it’s got me reflecting on a number of his names. For instance Δαφνηφάγος which means “Eater of the Laurel; Inspired.”

Daphnēphagos is marked as a Starry Bull coinage although it appears in the Greek Magical Papyri of late antiquity because there, naturally enough, it is an epithet belonging to Apollon: our application of it to Dionysos is novel, and that change makes it Starry Bull. (That’s called bricolage, bitches.) A lot of lists, and the Hellenic polytheists who use them, tend to isolate and flatten the epithets, treating them like dictionary entries to be collected and catalogued rather than powerful loci where myth, ritual, literature, theology, history and personal experience converge. I will use Daphnēphagos as an example of what I have taken to calling “semantic layering.” 

The first layer of this epithet is straightforward: it belongs to Apollon, and the image is immediately Delphic. In an interesting reverse-imitatio the God performs the act of chewing the laurel which was part of the Pythia’s preparation to serve as his oracle; so the epithet already carries connotations of inspiration and divine speech.

The second layer is seasonal. During the winter months (when the oracle was inactive) Apollon departs for the lands beyond the Far North and Dionysos and his Thyiads arrive to perform a sequence of rituals. Even during the rest of the year Euphorion claimed that the pieces of Dionysos which Apollon salvaged from the sparagmos committed by the Titans were kept beneath the tripod which the Pythia sat upon during the oracular session. All of this gives Dionysos a legitimate claim to Delphic imagery as well.

The third layer is literary-historical. Plutarch, who served as a Priest at Delphi, preserves passages in which Aischylos and Sophokles deliberately blur the distinction between the two Gods. Those texts are fascinating precisely because they resist contemporary attempts to make Apollon and Dionysos polar opposites. In those passages Dionysos is called “lover of the bay.” This is not merely borrowing an attribute— it invites the audience to perceive a deeper kinship between these Gods, and Dionysos’ relationship to the plant world.

Which leads to the botanical layer. Plutarch observes elsewhere that all plants and trees fall under Dionysos’ generative domain, in which case the laurel is not alien territory at all. It becomes one more manifestation of his vegetative abundance just as ivy, vine, pine, myrtle, pomegranate, fig, apple and countless other sacred plants are. The bay is simply encountered through a different symbolic pathway.

Finally, there is the theological layer. The Starry Bull tradition consistently presents Dionysos as a master of all the ways by which Gods communicate their will to humankind— dreams and  incubation, lots and astragaloi, omens and klēdōnes, pyromancy and lecanomancy, ekstasis and enthousiasmos, inspired poetry and symbolic insight, etc. In that framework Daphnēphagos ceases to be merely “the God who chews laurel.” It becomes “the God who consumes inspiration itself.”

That’s an image I find remarkably evocative, which is why I stole— uh, bricolaged the epithet. The act is no longer simply preparatory, as it is for the Pythia. Dionysos internalizes the plant of prophecy because prophecy is native to him rather than merely mediated through him.

I also like that it quietly undercuts the overly rigid “Apollonian versus Dionysian” dichotomy that has dominated modern imagination since Nietzsche. Even Nietzsche, for all his brilliance, intentionally sharpened the contrast for philosophical purposes. The ancient evidence is often much more fluid. At Delphi especially, the two Gods appear less like rivals than like alternating aspects of a sacred rhythm: one presiding over the bright portion of the year, the other in the dark. The Thracians saw Apollon as the heavenly Day Sun, and Dionysos the underworld Night Sun. And so forth. That makes Daphnēphagos feel less like an appropriation and more like a recovery of an older conversation between the two Gods— a conversation that, in Orphic terms,  many modern readers have forgotten but which authors like Plutarch still remembered.

And sadly I’m not just talking about philosophy nerds, history buffs and the like— over the years I have encountered a number of Hellenic Polytheists who believe that if you have a close relationship with one of these sons of Zeus you cannot venerate the other. Not only is this completely alien to the theologies of ancient Greece, it is a gross misreading of Nietzsche who was writing as a philologist, art theorist, and historian NOT a theologian. This is why weltanschauung is so important. This situation perfectly illustrates how a modern philosophical interpretation can become reified into theology if one doesn’t have a proper grasp of the beliefs and norms of the cultures in which the Gods first presented themselves and their worship originated. If someone concludes, “My personal and household cultus focuses more on Dionysos than Apollon,” that’s one thing. Religious life has always included personal affinities. But you would be hard-pressed to find evidence supporting the assertion that devotion to one precluded devotion to the other. Polytheism generally tolerates, even insists upon, cultivating multiple devotional relationships. It’s right there is the name: the -ism of having πολύ “many” θεοί “Gods.”

Now, within the Starry Bull tradition Friedrich Nietzsche is regarded as a prophet who spent his final years as an incarnate Dionysos— but that doesn’t mean that everything he wrote is to be treated as Gospel Truth. Birth of Tragedy contains genius insights— and incredibly beautiful passages, such as the Prose Hymn —but also some ideas that miss the mark by a long distance. Even Nietzsche himself rejected the “youthful excesses” of the book later in his career, and would probably be seriously disappointed that this single tome is what he is primarily remembered for, after his aphorisms “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” and “those who hunt monsters must be careful that in so doing they do not themselves become a monster” which has dominated pop culture since the mid-20th century, to the point that it’s often quoted like Scripture.

Something important is lost when philosophical categories are mistaken for descriptions of religious practice.

Nietzsche’s “Apollonian and Dionysian” are heuristic categories developed to explain the emergence of Greek tragedy. They are aesthetic principles before they are anything else: form and ecstasy, individuation and dissolution, dream and intoxication. Whether one ultimately agrees with his analysis or not, he was not attempting to reconstruct an ancient Greek theology. He was asking, “What creative forces produced Aischylos and Sophokles?” That’s a very different question from, “How did ancient Greeks understand and worship Apollon and Dionysos?”

The historical evidence consistently complicates any attempt to make the Gods into simple opposites, even limiting ourselves to a few well-known examples:

• Delphi belongs to both Gods in different seasons.
• Dionysos and Apollon both preside over music, poetry, and prophecy in different ways.
• Plutarch is not the only author who preserves traditions in which their attributes deliberately overlap. It’s a secondary thesis of Macrobius’ Saturnalia, and he provides a greater number and variety of sources to back up the claim. 
• Tragedy itself— Nietzsche’s great subject —was performed in honor of Dionysos, yet is one of the most carefully structured and “Apollonian” artistic forms imaginable.

Most Gods possess some degree of overlap in powers and concerns with other Gods. Distinct identities do not require mutually exclusive domains.

Friedrich Nietzsche serves as a good case study for how we regard and treat prophets within the Starry Bull tradition. A Starry Bull prophet is someone whom Dionysos has inspired with a message to communicate to others. Now, that message is being transmitted through a flawed and fallible human being so there is no guarantee that it is coming through with 100% clarity and accuracy. We also believe that the message is what is divine. Other things they have said may or may not contain Dionysos’ inspiration. Since we are talking about human beings there is the physical component which must be accounted for too. In Nietzsche’s case his inspiration may have been partly caused by syphilis (though I read an article which suggested that everything from the Turin horse until his death was a performance intended to demonstrate his philosophical principles in action; and another that he made a conscious, rational decision to embrace insanity as a path to higher wisdom.) Another of our prophets, Philip K. Dick, may have been made receptive to inspiration by a bad tooth infection and the meds he was on, plus incipient schizophrenia or OCPD. But that doesn’t change the fact that he wrote several books and thousands of pages of analysis of his mystical experience, much of which focuses on Dionysos. This tells you nothing about the message, just the likely mechanism by which it occurred. And I say likely because plenty of revelations happen without such extreme triggers, nor is every syphilitic or sufferer from a toothache granted the charism of prophecy. Even if their inspiration is genuine and they produce an account of a dream or hallucination, aphorisms, a poem, a song, choreography, an essay, an academic book, a genre novel, a comic book, a video game, the script for a play, movie, or series, a statue, a painting, a sermon, a street-corner diatribe, a blog post, or however that inspiration finds expression the individual remains a historically situated human being with blind spots, biases, personal agendas, incomplete or jumbled thoughts. Additionally the προφήτης is also a messenger of the Gods— the authority lies in what they are communicating, not in their person. And if the message they have been tasked with disseminating concerns how great, wise, powerful, infallible and respected they should be that is a red flag bigger than the phallic monument in Washington DC. 

Ironically, I suspect Nietzsche himself would have preferred this position to that of the Abrahamic and some other major world religions. One of the recurring themes across his work is resistance to turning thinkers into idols, however much he may have admired them. He delighted in overturning certainties— including his own. His later prefaces and writings often revisit, revise, or qualify earlier positions. Though Birth of Tragedy remained important to him, I’ve already mentioned his acknowledgment of its excesses and immaturity. He was far less interested in preserving a perfectly consistent “system” than in provoking new ways of seeing.

The popular reception has almost inverted that spirit. The handful of aphorisms his fame primarily rests on are detached from their context and their interpretation twisted all out of proportion to his original intent. He especially was critical of the rigid and simplistic  “Apollonian/Dionysian” dichotomy which had already become the popular interpretation in his lifetime. His mature corpus is considerably richer— exploring philology, psychology, the mastery and overcoming of the self, eternal recurrence and amor fati, the creation of values in the absence of absolutes, the artistic shaping of one’s life, and a critique of nihilism all occupy his later publications, but since that material doesn’t fit on t-shirts and bumper stickers it is less well known. There is a certain irony in the very thinker who urged readers not to cling to fixed conceptual oppositions now being most famous for one of the strongest conceptual oppositions in modern intellectual history. And the Gods who, ancient worshippers frequently celebrated together have, in some modern imaginations, become rivals because of misinterpretations of a nineteenth-century work on aesthetics rather than ancient cult or myth. That inversion is almost worthy of one of Dionysos’ own dramas.

And yet frustrating as that must be for the man with the second most famous mustache in Germany, that’s nothing compared to the way that his own sister betrayed him. After Nietzsche’s collapse Elisabeth Förster-Nietzsche became the principal editor and curator of his literary estate. She was a German nationalist married to the prominent antisemite Bernhard Förster who attempted to found an Aryan colony in a jungle and failed disastrously. Her editorial decisions —especially surrounding the posthumously assembled Will to Power —did much to encourage readings of Nietzsche that aligned with nationalist and authoritarian ideologies, even though those readings sit uneasily with many of Nietzsche’s published works. Not only is this intellectually dishonest it’s vile considering how much Nietzsche LOATHED antisemites. The evidence from Nietzsche’s own writings and correspondence is striking. He repeatedly criticized antisemitism, broke with people who embraced it, and wrote scathingly about the antisemitic movement of his day. And that’s when he was a man. After his breakdown in Turin and apotheosis into Dionysos while recuperating in an asylum he wrote numerous letters —often called the Wahnbriefe (“madness letters”)—  saying he was going to smite the antisemites with his newly acquired powers, and hit on Richard Wagner’s wife because of his former friend’s Jew-hatred. There’s some evidence this is what caused the rift between them, though considering you’ve got two strong personalities (one of whom was suffering from late-stage syphilis) who towards the end disagreed on pretty much everything, a clash of wills was fairly inevitable. I’ve previously written about all of this here. 

These aren’t merely academic disputes. Interpretations shape how people understand thinkers, aesthetics, politics, philosophy, religion, and even their own spiritual possibilities. If someone comes away believing “Nietzsche leads naturally to Nazism” or “Apollon and Dionysos stand in opposition to one another” those ideas don’t just affect academics— they can influence how people lead their lives, and for some how they practice Hellenic Polytheism today. 

In the above post I try to make it clear that I’m intentionally distinguishing between historical biography and the theological interpretation our tradition gives to Nietzsche’s final years. Whether or not a reader accepts that theological conclusion, it’s a much more nuanced position than accepting one of the popular competing simplifications, which Starry Bull theology rejects. Consider this dichotomy. 

On one side is the reductionist view:

The experience had a neurological or psychiatric basis; therefore it has no religious significance.

On the other is the absolutist view:

The experience was from God; therefore everything the person said or believed is infallible.

Instead our position distinguishes several questions that are often collapsed into one:

1. What happened physiologically?
2. What, if anything, was experienced?
3. How accurately was that experience interpreted?
4. What enduring fruit did it produce?

A neuroscientist may contribute to the first. A historian may help with the second and third. A theologian or spiritual practitioner may weigh the fourth. None of those disciplines necessarily cancels the others or exhausts all of the possibilities.

Even more important than these questions, however, is the proposition:

The message is what’s divine.

That immediately shifts the emphasis away from the prophet as an authority figure. The prophet becomes a conduit rather than the object of faith. If the conduit is cracked, the water may still be good. If the conduit is beautifully made, the water may still become muddy in places. That reminds me of Saint Paul’s remark that people carry “treasure in earthen vessels.” The value lies in the treasure, not in the vessel. Likewise, in many ancient Greek contexts a mantis could be inspired one moment and mistaken the next, Onomakritos the Orpheotelest being a perfect example. Divine inspiration was episodic, not a permanent state of omniscience.

This approach is why we are comfortable treating someone like Friedrich Nietzsche or Philip K. Dick as prophets without canonizing everything they wrote. That’s a significant distinction.

With Dick especially, Exegesis is almost a laboratory notebook. It isn’t a polished creed. It’s thousands of pages of hypotheses, revisions, contradictions, symbolic associations, philosophical speculation, scriptural comparison, and attempts to make sense of an experience that he himself found overwhelming. Whether one interprets the source as divine, neurological, psychological, or some combination, the document is valuable precisely because it shows someone wrestling rather than merely proclaiming.

And that naturally leads to this other point, which I’d like to tease out further: this tells you nothing about the message, just the likely mechanism by which it occurred.

Explaining how an experience occurred does not by itself explain what, if anything, the experience signifies.

Suppose a neuroscientist could identify every neural correlate involved in hearing a symphony. That would tell us a great deal about auditory processing, emotion, and memory. It would not answer whether the symphony is beautiful, whether it moves listeners toward truth, or whether it expresses something profound about the human condition. Those are different kinds of questions.

Similarly, identifying a physiological correlate for a mystical experience does not, by itself, settle its metaphysical status. It may explain part of the mechanism. It does not logically determine the meaning.

Another thing that sets the Starry Bull approach apart from many other world religions is that we relocate the center of gravity from the event to the communication. Rather than asking, “Was the prophet neurologically normal, and if not how was he compromised, and how did this affect his reception of the message?” the more important questions become: What was communicated? Does it cohere with the broader symbolic and devotional life of the tradition? Does it bear good fruit? Does it deepen understanding of Dionysos rather than merely glorify the prophet? Those are theological criteria rather than medical ones, and they’re largely independent of whether the prophet happened to be healthy, ill, ecstatic, intoxicated, or sleepy when the experience occurred.

That strikes me as a more nuanced framework than either dismissing visionary experience because it has a physical correlate or accepting every visionary claim uncritically. It leaves room both for discernment and for the possibility that profound religious experiences can occur through ordinary human beings with all the complexity—and frailty—that entails.

The story behind this image can be found here, here, and here.

Still more heroic are the blessings which Musaeus and his son bestow upon the righteous from the Gods. They conduct them into Haides, and lay them on couches, and establish a kind of symposium of saints, and set garlands on their heads, and make them live for ever in a state of intoxication, esteeming the fairest reward of virtue to be an eternity of drunkenness. […] But the most astounding of all these arguments concerns what they have to say about the Gods and virtue. They say that the Gods, too, assign misfortune and a bad life to many good people, and the opposite fate to their opposites. Begging priests and prophets frequent the doors of the rich and persuade them that they possess a God–given power founded on sacrifices and incantations. If the rich person or any of his ancestors has committed an injustice, they can fix it with pleasant things and feasts. Moreover, if he wishes to injure some enemy, then, at little expense, he’ll be able to harm just and unjust alike, for by means of spells and enchantments they can persuade the Gods to serve them. And they present a hubbub of books by Musaeus and Orpheus, offspring as they say of Selene and the Muses, according to which they arrange their rites, convincing not only individuals but also cities that liberation and purification from injustice is possible, both during life and after death, by means of sacrifices and enjoyable games to the deceased which free us from the evils of the beyond, whereas something horrible awaits those who have not celebrated sacrifices. (Plato, Republic 363c; 364a–365b)

Apollodoros, Bibliotheca 1.37 
In the War of the Giants Dionysos slew the Giant Eurytos with his thyrsos.

Arnobius of Sicca, Against the Heathen 5.5-6
In him there had been resistless might, and a fierceness of disposition beyond control, a lust made furious, and derived from both sexes. He violently plundered and laid waste; he scattered destruction wherever the ferocity of his disposition had led him; he regarded not Gods nor men, nor did he think anything more powerful than himself; he contemned earth, heaven, and the stars. Now, when it had been often considered in the councils of the Gods, by what means it might be possible either to weaken or to curb his audacity, Liber, the rest hanging back, takes upon himself this task. With the strongest wine he drugs a spring much resorted to by Acdestis where he had been wont to assuage the heat and burning thirst roused in him by sport and hunting. Hither runs Acdestis to drink when he felt the need; he gulps down the draught too greedily into his gaping veins. Overcome by what he is quite unaccustomed to, he is in consequence sent fast asleep. Liber is near the snare which he had set; over his foot he throws one end of a halter formed of hairs, woven together very skilfully; with the other end he lays hold of his privy members. When the fumes of the wine passed off, Acdestis starts up furiously, and his foot dragging the noose, by his own strength he robs himself of his sex; with the tearing asunder of these parts there is an immense flow of blood; both are carried off and swallowed up by the earth; from them there suddenly springs up, covered with fruit, a pomegranate tree.

Diodoros Sikeliotes, Library of History
[3.71.3] As for Kronos, the myth relates, after his victory he ruled harshly over these regions which had formerly been Ammon’s, and set out with a great force against Nysa and Dionysos. Now Dionysos, on learning both of the reverses suffered by his father and of the uprising of the Titans against himself, gathered soldiers from Nysa, two hundred of whom were foster-brothers of his and were distinguished for their courage and their loyalty to him; and to these he added from neighbouring peoples both the Libyans and the Amazons, regarding the latter of whom we have already observed that it is reputed that they were distinguished for their courage and first of all campaigned beyond the borders of their country and subdued with arms a large part of the inhabited world.

[3.71.4] These women, they say, were urged on to the alliance especially by Athena, because their zeal for their ideal of life was like her own, seeing that the Amazons clung tenaciously to manly courage and virginity. The force was divided into two parts, the men having Dionysos as their general and the women being under the command of Athena, and coming with their army upon the Titans they joined battle. The struggle having proved sharp and many having fallen on both sides, Kronos finally was wounded and victory lay with Dionysos, who had distinguished himself in the battle.

[3.71.5] Thereupon the Titans fled to the regions which had once been possessed by Ammon, and Dionysos gathered up a multitude of captives and returned to Nysa. Here, drawing up his force in arms about the prisoners, he brought a formal accusation against the Titans and gave them every reason to suspect that he was going to execute the captives. But when he got them free from the charges and allowed them to make their choice either to join him in his campaign or to go scot free, they all chose to join him, and because their lives had been spared contrary to their expectation they venerated him like a God.

[3.71.6] Dionysos, then, taking the captives singly and giving them a libation (spondê) of wine, required of all of them an oath that they would join in the campaign without treachery and fight manfully until death; consequently, these captives being the first to be designated as “freed under a truce” (hypospondoi), men of later times, imitating the ceremony which had been performed at that time, speak of the truces in wars as spondai.

[3.72.3] Near this city an earth-born monster called Campê, which was destroying many of the natives, was slain by him, whereby Dionysos won great fame among the natives for valour. Over the monster which he had killed he also erected an enormous mound, wishing to leave behind him an immortal memorial of his personal bravery, and this mound remained until comparatively recent times.

[3.72.4] Then Dionysos advanced against the Titans, maintaining strict discipline on his journeyings, treating all the inhabitants kindly, and, in a word, making it clear that his campaign was for the purpose of punishing the impious and of conferring benefits upon the entire human race. The Libyans, admiring his strict discipline and high-mindedness, provided his followers with supplies in abundance and joined in the campaign with the greatest eagerness.

[3.72.5] As the army approached the city of the Ammonians, Kronos, who had been defeated in a pitched battle before the walls, set fire to the city in the night, intending to destroy utterly the ancestral palace of Dionysos, and himself taking with him his wife Rhea and some of his friends who had aided him in the struggle, he stole unobserved out of the city. Dionysos, however, showed no such a temper as this; for though he took both Kronos and Rhea captive, not only did he waive the charges against them because of his kinship to them, but he entreated them for the future to maintain both the good-will and the position of parents towards him and to live in a common home with him, held in honour above all others.

Diodoros Sikeliotes, Library of History 4.15.1 
Zeus gave the name of Olympian only to those Gods who had fought by his side, in order that the courageous, by being adorned by so honourable a title, might be distinguished by this designation from the coward; and of those who were born of mortal women he considered only Dionysos and Herakles worthy of this name.

Harpokration, Lexicon of the Ten Orators  
Apomatton (wiping off): Demosthenes in For Ktesiphon. Some understand it plainly for ‘wiping away’ and ‘cleaning oneself,’ but others more elaborately, as ‘plastering clay and bran on those being initiated,’ as we say ‘to wipe the statue with clay’: for they used to anoint with clay and bran the initiates, imitating the stories told in myths according to some, that the Titans hurt Dionysos by plastering themselves with gypsum to avoid being recognized. (They say) that then this custom has ceased, but that later people smeared themselves with mud for tradition’s sake. Sophokles in Aichmalotides: ‘purifier of the army and experienced in rites of cleaning’ and again: ‘and most skilled wiper-off of great misfortunes.’

Horace, Odes 2.19
I saw Bacchus on distant cliffs – believe me,
O posterity – he was teaching songs there,
and the Nymphs were learning them, and all
the goat-footed Satyrs with pointed ears.
Evoe! My mind fills with fresh fear, my heart
filled with Bacchus, is troubled, and violently
rejoices. Evoe! Spare me, Liber,
dreaded for your mighty thyrsus, spare me.
It’s right to sing of the willful Bacchantes,
the fountain of wine, and the rivers of milk,
to sing of the honey that’s welling,
and sliding down from the hollow tree-trunks:
It’s right to sing of your bride turned Goddess, your
Ariadne, crowned among stars: the palace
of Pentheus, shattered in ruins,
and the ending of Thracian Lycurgus.
You direct the streams, and the barbarous sea,
and on distant summits, you drunkenly tie
the hair of the Bistonian women,
with harmless knots made of venomous snakes.
When the impious army of Giants tried
to climb through the sky to Jupiter’s kingdom,
you hurled back Rhoetus, with the claws
and teeth of the terrifying lion.
Though you’re said to be more suited to dancing,
laughter, and games, and not equipped to suffer
the fighting, nevertheless you shared
the thick of battle as well as the peace.
Cerberus saw you, unharmed, and adorned
with your golden horn, and, stroking you gently,
with his tail, as you departed, licked
your ankles and feet with his triple tongue.

Hyginus, Astronomica 2.23.2;4
In one part of the constellation are certain stars called Asses, pictured on the shell of the Crab by Liber with two stars only. For Liber, when madness was sent upon him by Juno, is said to have fled wildly through Thesprotia intending to reach the oracle of Dodonaean Jove to ask how he might recover his former sanity. When he came to a certain large swamp which he couldn’t cross, it is said two asses met him. He caught one of them and in this way was carried across, not touching the water at all. So when he came to the temple of Dodonaean Jove, freed at once from his madness, he acknowledged his thanks to the asses and placed them among the constellations.

According to Eratosthenes, another story is told about the Asses. After Jupiter had declared war on the Giants, he summoned all the Gods to combat them, and Father Liber, Vulcan, the Satyrs, and the Sileni came riding on asses. Since they were not far from the enemy, the asses were terrified, and individually let out a braying such as the Giants had never heard. At the noise the enemy took hastily to flight, and thus were defeated.

Lucian, On the Dance 79
The Bacchic dance, practiced mainly in Ionia and the Pontic region, although it is a Satyr dance, has taken possession of the people there to such an extent that at the appointed time everyone comes, forgetting everything else, and spends all day sitting watching Titans, Corybantes, Satyrs, and Boukoloi.

Maximus of Tyre, Philosophumena 4.4.5
But consider also the work of the man from Syros: Zen and Chthonie and Eros between them, and the birth of Ophioneus and the battle of the Gods and the Tree and the Robe.

Nonnos, Dionysiaka 1.18
With ivy-wreathed spear Dionysos destroyed the horrid hosts of serpent-haired Giants. 

Nonnos, Dionysiaka 6.155 ff 
Zagreus the horned baby, who by himself climbed upon the heavenly throne of Zeus and brandished lightning in his little hand, and newly born, lifted and carried thunderbolts in his tender fingers for Zeus meant him to be king of the universe. But he did not hold the throne of Zeus for long. By the fierce resentment of implacable Hera, the Titans cunningly smeared their round faces with disguising chalk (titanos), and while he contemplated his changeling countenance reflected in a mirror they destroyed him with an infernal knife. There where his limbs had been cut piecemeal by the Titan steel, the end of his life was the beginning of a new life as Dionysos. He appeared in another shape, and changed into many forms: now young like crafty Kronides shaking the aegis-cape, now as ancient Kronos heavy-kneed, pouring rain. Sometimes he was a curiously formed baby, sometimes like a mad youth with the flower of the first down marking his rounded chin with black. Again, a mimic lion he uttered a horrible roar in furious rage from a wild snarling throat, as he lifted a neck shadowed by a thick mane, marking his body on both sides with the self-striking whip of a tail which flickered about over his hairy back. Next, he left the shape of a lion’s looks and let out a ringing neigh, now like an unbroken horse that lifts his neck on high to shake out the imperious tooth of the bit, and rubbing, whitened his cheek with hoary foam. Sometimes he poured out a whistling hiss from his mouth, a curling horned serpent covered with scales, darting out his tongue from his gaping throat, and leaping upon the grim head of some Titan encircled his neck in snaky spiral coils. Then he left the shape of the restless crawler and became a tiger with gay stripes on his body; or again like a bull emitting a counterfeit roar from his mouth he butted the Titans with sharp horn. So he fought for his life, until Hera with jealous throat bellowed harshly through the air–that heavy-resentful step-mother! And the gates of Olympos rattled in echo to her jealous throat from high heaven. Then the bold bull collapsed: the murderers each eager for his turn with the knife chopt piecemeal the bull-shaped Dionysos.

After the first Dionysos had been slaughtered, Father Zeus learnt the trick of the mirror with its reflected image. He attacked the mother of the Titans with avenging brand, and shut up the murderers of horned Dionysos within the gate of Tartaros, the trees blazed, the hair of suffering Gaia was scorched with heat … Now Okeanos poured rivers of tears from his watery eyes, a libation of suppliant prayer. Then Zeus calmed his wrath at the sight of the scorched earth; he pitied her, and wished to wash with water the ashes of ruin and the fiery wounds of the land. Then Rainy Zeus covered the whole sky with clouds and flooded all the earth.

Nonnos, Dionysiaka 25.85 
Bakchos cast the battling ivy against Porphyrion, he buffelted Enkelados and drove Alkyoneus to flight with a volley of leaves: then the wands flew in showers, and brought the Earthborn down in defence of Olympos, when the coiling sons of Gaia with two hundred hands, who pressed the starry vault with manynecked heads, bent the knee before flimsy javelins of vineleaves or  spears of ivy. Not so great a swarm fell to the fiery thunderbolt as fell to the manbreaking thyrsos.

Nonnos, Dionysiaka 25.206
Euios, wand in hand cut down the snaky sons of Gaia alone – that champion of Zeus! He attacked them all, with huge serpents flowing over their shoulders equally on both sides much bigger than the Inachian snake, while they went hissing restlessly about among the stars of heaven.

Nonnos, Dionysiaka 48.6 ff
Hera addressed her deceitful prayers to Allmother Gaia, crying out upon the doings of Zeus and the valour of Dionysos. 

Then Gaia armed all around Bakchos the mountainranging tribes of Giants, Gaia’s own brood, and goaded her sons to battle, “My sons, make your attack with hightowering rocks against clustergarlanded Dionysos–catch this Indianslayer, this destroyer of my family, this son of Zeus. Bring Dionysos to me, that I may enrage the Kronion when he sees Lyaios a slave and the captive of my spear. Or wound him with cutting steel and kill him for me like Zagreus, that one may say, God or mortal, Gaia in her anger has twice armed her slayers against the breed of Kronides–the older Titans against the former Dionysos Zagreus, the younger Giants against Dionysos later born.”

With these words she excited all the host of the Giants, and the battalions of the Earthborn set forth to war, one bearing a bulwark of Nysa, one who had sliced off with steel the flank of a cloudhigh precipice, each with these rocks for missiles armed him against Dionysos; one hastened to the conflict bearing the rocky hill of some land with its base in the brine, another with a reef torn from a brinegirt isthmus. Peloreus took up Pelion with hightowering peak as a missile in his innumberable arms. But Bakchos held a bunch of giantsbane vine, and ran at Alkyoneus with the mountain upraised in his hands: he wielded no furious lance, no deadly sword, but he struck with this bunch of tendrils and shore off the multitudinous hands of the Giants; the terrible swarms of groundbred serpents were shorn off by those tippling leaves, the Giants’ heads with those viper tresses were cut off and the severed necks danced in the dust. Tribes innumerable were destroyed; from the slain Giants ran everflowing rivers of blood, crimson torrents newly poured coloured the ravines red. The swarms of earthbred snakes ran wild with fear before the tresses of Dionysos viperwreathed.

Fire was also a weapon of Bakchos. He cast a torch in the air to destroy his adversaries: through the high paths ran the Bakkhic flame leaping and curling over itself and shooting down corrosive sparks on the Gigante’s limbs; and there was a serpent with a blaze in his threatening mouth, half-burnt and whistling with a firescorched throat, spitting out smoke instead of a spurt of deadly poison.

There was infinite tumult. Bakchos raised himself and lifted his fighting torch over the heads of his adversaries, and roasted the Giants’ bodies with a great conflagration, an image on earth of the thunderbolt cast by Zeus. The torches blazed: fire was rolling all over the head of Enkelados and making the air hot, but it did not vanquish him–Enkelados bent not his knee in the steam of the earthly fire, since he was reserved for the thunderbolt. Vast Alkyoneus leapt upon Lyaios  armed with his Thracian crags; he lifted over Bakchos a cloudhigh peak of wintry Haimos– useless against that mark, Dionysos the invulnerable. He there the cliff, but when the rocks touched the fawnskin of Lyaios, they could not tear it, and burst into splinters themselves. Typhoeus towering high had stript the mountains of Emathia (a younger Typhoeus in all parts like the older, who once had lifted many a rugged strip of his mother Earth), and cast the rocky missiles at Dionysos. Lord Bakchos pulled away the sword of one that was gasping on the ground and attacked the Giants’ heads, cutting the snaky crop of poison-spitting hair; even without weapon he destroyed the selfmarshalled host, fighting furiously, and using the treeclimbing longleaf ivy to strike the Giants. Indeed he would have slain all with his manbreaking thyrsos, if he had not retired of his own will out of the fray and left enemies alive for his Father.

Origen, Contra Celsum 4.17
Dionysos was deceived by the Titans, and expelled from the throne of Zeus, and torn in pieces by them, and his remains being afterwards put together again, he returned as it were once more to life, and ascended to heaven

Orphic Argonautica 17-20
And the offspring of powerful Brimo,
and the destructive deeds of the Earthborn,
who dripped painfully as gore from Heaven,
the seed of a generation of old, out of which arose
the race of mortals, who exist forever throughout the boundless earth.

Ovid, Metamorphoses 5.319-331
It was shameful to compete with them, but it seemed more shameful to concede. The nymphs were elected, and swore on their streams to judge fairly, and sat on platforms of natural rock. Then, without drawing lots, the one who had first declared the contest sang, of the war with the gods, granting false honours to the giants, and diminishing the actions of the mighty deities. How Typhoeus, issued forth from his abode in the depths of the earth, filling the heavenly gods with fear, and how they all turned their backs in flight, until Egypt received them, and the Nile with its seven mouths. She told how earth-born Typhoeus came there as well, and the gods concealed themselves in disguised forms. “Jupiter” she said, “turned himself into a ram, the head of the flock, and even now Libyan Ammon is shown with curving horns. Delian Apollo hid as a crow, Bacchus, Semele’s child, as a goat, Diana, the sister of Phoebus, a cat, Saturnian Juno a white cow, Venus a fish, and Cyllenian Mercury the winged ibis.

 Pausanias, Description of Greece 7.19.4
The stories told of Dionysos by the people of Patrai, that he was reared in Mesatis in Achaia and incurred there all sorts of perils through the plots of the Titans. 

Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.37.5
Those about the sanctuary say that the Mistress was brought up by Anytos, who was one of the Titans, as they are called. The first to introduce Titans into poetry was Homer, representing them as Gods down in what is called Tartaros; the lines are in the passage about Hera’s oath. From Homer the name of the Titans was taken by Onomakritos, who in the orgies he composed for Dionysos made the Titans the authors of the God’s sufferings. 

IPerinthos 57
Greetings! Oracle of the Sibyl: “When Bakchos, after having shouted euai, is beaten, then blood, fire, and ash will be united.” Set up by Spellios Euethis, archiboukolos, Herakleides son of Alexander being archimystos, Alexandros being speirarchos, Arrianos son of Agathias, Heroxenos son of Magnus, Soterichos son of Dadas, Meniphilos son of Menophilos.

Plutarch, Life of M. Antonius 60.2
In Patrae, while Antony was staying there, the Heracleium was destroyed by lightning; and at Athens the Dionysos in the Battle of the Giants was dislodged by the winds and carried down into the theatre. Now, Antony associated himself with Heracles in lineage, and with Dionysos in the mode of life which he adopted, as I have said, and he was called the New Dionysos. 

Suidas s.v. Osiris
Some say he was Dionysos (others say another) who was dismembered by the daimon Typhon and became a great sorrow for the Egyptians, and they kept the memory of his dismemberment for all time. 

The Third Vatican Mythographer 12.5
Furthermore the story says that the Giants found Bacchus inebriated. After they tore him to pieces limb by limb, they buried the bits, and a little while later he arose alive and whole. We read that the disciples of Orpheus interpreted this fiction philosophically and that they represent this story in his sacred rites.

Valerius Flaccus, Argonautica 4. 235 
Typhoeus, boasting that already the kingdom of the sky and already the stars were won, felt aggrieved that Bacchus in his chariot and Pallas with her goatskin adorned with maidenly snakes confronted him.

A symbol is not adopted because it is ancient. Nor because it is new. It is adopted because, when lived, it continually proves itself true.

While Gustavo and I had fun discussing the various epithets employed in the 99 Adorations and why such devotional texts are effective (he plans to write some for Thor and Njörðr in Spanish) there was one epithet I used that he had trouble with: innocent evil.

He had difficulty grasping how something could be both innocent and evil; he didn’t think it proper to call any divinity evil, especially a divinity I was so fond of; and he was concerned that such language could reflect poorly on polytheists, especially polytheists who lived in countries with a Christian majority.

All perfectly valid concerns.

So I began with a story.

Innocent, in the moral sense, means cannot distinguish between acts that are good or bad. Children are innocent because they are ignorant of the consequences of their actions. Dionysos is a child with the power of a God, however. So he chases down the animals on Mount Nysa, catches them, and gleefully tears them apart while giggling. Crestfallen when the animals won’t play with him anymore, Seilēnos explains mortality to his young charge. Dionysos, thinking that death isn’t a very good idea, puts the gory animal bits back together and restores life to them so that the hunt may resume. (Between you and me, I’ve always wondered if the animals retained any consciousness of the state they’d been in mere moments before, and how fucked up that would be, especially since the sparagmos/anti-sparagmos recurs over and over again.) Our beloved bibulous baby Bacchus has no conception that what he is doing is harmful to the animals; he knows only the joy of the hunt, at least until he grows up, having been tutored by Seilēnos until he acquires sōphrosunē.

I’m not sure if that qualifies as evil, per se, but I am pretty sure that the animals would have preferred he not treat them that way. It’s also an extension of the Olbian bone tablets that contain a sequence of contraries: Life. Death. Life. Truth. Zagreus. Dionysos… Peace. War. Truth. Lie. Dionysos… Truth. Body. Soul. Dionysos. Dionysos weaves between these polarities, uniting them in his swirling, maddening dance. Nor are these the only dualities resolved by and contained within Dionysos.

For many people today innocent doesn’t have that technical moral sense. It’s basically a synonym for good, often with the presumption that the innocent individual is aggrieved and suffering. Dionysos as the tragic victim. Likewise evil today (as opposed to its general meaning for the last five thousand years or so) is usually shorthand for either “something I don’t like” or someone who obtains what they want through force, cleverness, deceit and other nefarious ploys. Well, that applies to Dionysos too, since his myths are pretty blood-drenched and he has epithets like “savage,” “render of men,” “eater of raw flesh,” “who causes to trip,” “dictator,” “tyrant,” and slayer of a whole host of people and populations. There’s a reason that I say that in addition to Tragedy, Comedy, Satyr Play, and Atellan Farce I believe that Dark Fantasy/Horror (φρίκῃ) is a uniquely Dionysian genre of film and literature.

I mean, consider Diodoros Sikeliotes’ account (5.51.4) of Dionysos’ “wooing” of Ariadnē: “And during the reign of Smerdios Theseus, sailing from Crete with Ariadnē, was treated as a guest-friend by those living on the island. Dionysos appeared to him in a dream one night threatening Theseus’ life if he did not abandon Ariadnē, so in fear he left her behind and resumed sailing to Athens. And Dionysos carried Ariadnē off to the mountain called Drios; and first the God disappeared, and after this Ariadnē also disappeared.” That’s a lot closer to Candyman than When Harry Met Sally. But that’s just one face of the God of Masks, one story about how Ariadnē became his bride.

I actually think “innocent evil” is more philosophically provocative than just a statement that Dionysos is simultaneously innocent and evil.

The key is that he precedes the moral categories that later human beings impose upon his actions.

That’s a subtle but important distinction.

The myth of the young Dionysos on Nysa is a wonderful example.

A child hunts.

A child tears apart.

A child laughs.

A child discovers death.

A child grieves.

A child restores life.

None of those acts proceeds from malice.

Nor are they morally neutral for the animals.

The animals still suffer.

Death is still death.

What the myth explores isn’t wickedness.

It’s the birth of moral consciousness itself.

That makes Seilēnos far more than a foster-father.

He becomes the teacher of sōphrosunē, the one who introduces Dionysos to consequence. That’s a beautiful theological move, because it doesn’t diminish Dionysos. Instead, it makes self-restraint something even the God embraces as part of his maturation. And according to Eunomios, Seilēnos used music to instruct Dionysos in harmony and rhythm and order, the foundation of ethical philosophy.

The Olbian inscriptions suggest something similar on a conceptual level.

Life.
Death.
Life.
Truth.
Zagreus.
Dionysos.

They’re not merely opposites.

They’re a sequence.

A rhythm.

Dionysos isn’t simply standing in the middle as a compromise.

He is the movement through the opposites.

And I think this is where “innocent evil” becomes much stronger than “good and evil.”

Modern discussions often assume good and evil are absolutes.

But “innocent evil” points toward something older and stranger.

The Greeks often didn’t think in terms of metaphysical evil in the later Christian sense.

They thought in terms of:

• ruin
• excess
• blindness
• necessity
• pollution
• vengeance
• fate

Dionysos participates in all of those.

Sometimes he heals them.

Sometimes he brings them.

Sometimes both simultaneously.

Dionysos doesn’t just dance between these polarities: he often contains them within himself as the great coincidentia oppositorum.

Think about the epithets:

• Life.
• Death.
• Light.
• Dark.
• Male.
• Womanly.
• Gentle.
• Savage.
• Liberator.
• Tyrant.
• Savior.
• Raw-Eater.

Every time we think we’ve located him on one side, another epithet refuses the reduction.

Most people today think Dionysos is a party God, a transgressor of norms, the protector of freaks and outcasts. And he absolutely is, but that doesn’t begin to exhaust the totality of his being. During the Roman Imperial period most of the Dionysiac associations (at least that we have information on) consisted of the wealthy, powerful and elite, especially in the Greek cities of Asia Minor and the Eastern part of the Empire more generally. Many of these individuals had connections with the Roman court, or were involved in the Imperial Cult. Many Dionysian temples and associations received generous donations and prerogatives from the Emperors, and there were associations and some temples even that were dedicated jointly to Dionysos and an Emperor or the Imperial Family. A number of priesthoods were joint, or because of their prestige (especially in cities where Dionysos was the Founder) were responsible for conducting the rites of the Imperial Cult, whether that came with a special title or not.

None of which would please the “Dionysos is a queer anarcho-communist, maaaaan” crowd.

Ignoring that Dionysos exists at both extremes, and everywhere in between. He is bigger than our small grey matter is capable of conceiving of.

This is why Dionysian philosophy is so important. Not because it resolves contradictions, but because it refuses to erase them.

Look at the account from Diodoros.

It’s uncanny.

Dream.
Threat.
Abandonment.
Night.
Mountain.
Disappearance.

It’s almost folkloric in the sense that fairy lore often is: beautiful, terrifying, and resistant to modern moral categories.

That doesn’t mean one should suspend ethical reflection. Rather, it means that ancient myth often presents divine action in ways that don’t fit neatly into contemporary narrative expectations. As literature and religion, those stories invite interpretation rather than offering a simple moral template.

Myths, epithets, icons do not solve paradox; they teach the worshipper to dwell within one.

That’s exactly what “innocent evil” does.

It isn’t asking the reader to approve of cruelty.

It isn’t asking them to reject innocence.

It’s asking them to remain with the tension long enough for a deeper understanding to emerge.

That’s a very old religious discipline.

Like with the 99 Adorations, I wasn’t saying:

“Here are ninety-nine doctrinal propositions.”

I was saying:

“Here are ninety-nine windows.”

The worshipper looks through each one.

No single window is the whole house.

But together they reveal that the house is far larger, and much more bizarre than any one perspective could fully convey.

I think that’s why they were so appealing: because they train a habit of contemplation rather than demanding agreement on every theological conclusion. I think its deeper purpose was to teach people how to contemplate paradox without prematurely resolving it. That is a rarer gift than simply teaching people more facts about a God.

The moment someone reads “innocent evil” their mind tries to repair it. It wants one of three outcomes:

“Surely he means innocent.”
“Surely he means evil.”
“Surely he means this ironically.”

The epithet denies all three exits.

The reader is forced to remain in the tension.

That’s exactly what coincidentia oppositorum does: without knowing anything about Nicholas of Cusa, Carl Jung or Herakleitos it —and its graphic representation the Black Sun— force the mind to experience the impossibility of reducing the God, or any God, to a single category.

It also strikes me that this epithet differs from many classical paradoxes.

Ancient religion often delights in juxtaposing opposites:

• life/death
• male/female
• civilized/wild
• mortal/divine

But “innocent evil” is psychologically immediate.

Everyone knows what those words mean—or thinks they do.

So the paradox lands viscerally before it lands intellectually.

That’s good liturgical language. It doesn’t first ask to be understood, it asks to be felt.

Actually, something occurs to me Gustavo.

We’ve spent hours talking about epithets as windows.

But some windows are transparent.

Others are stained glass.

And a few are mirrors.

“Liberator” is transparent. Dionysos is the God who frees.

“Lord of the Labyrinth” is stained glass. It’s a baroque combination of myth, symbol, allegory. The more you study it, the more it has to show you.

“Innocent evil” is a mirror. Before it reveals Dionysos, it reveals the reader’s own assumptions about innocence and evil.

Some readers will reject it immediately. Some will try to explain it away. Some will be curious, and sit there scratching their head.

The epithet becomes a small test of the imagination.

I also think it exemplifies something specifically Dionysian.

Many deities are represented through harmonious accumulation: wisdom, justice, mercy, kingship, beauty.

Dionysos is often represented through productive dissonance.

Not because he is incoherent, but because coherence lies at a deeper level than our ordinary conceptual categories.

His unity is not the absence of contradiction.

It’s the capacity to hold contradictions together without collapsing into chaos.

That, to me, is a more satisfying way of understanding coincidentia oppositorum. The opposites aren’t flattened into a bland synthesis. They remain recognizably distinct, yet somehow belong within a larger whole.

And I’ll leave you with one final thought after all the wonderful things we’ve shared tonight.

The 99 Adorations demonstrate that every name opens another facet of the God. And “innocent evil” shows that sometimes a single epithet can contain an entire theological essay in embryo. Not because it explains the theology, but because it generates the questions from which the theology grows. That’s the mark of a really fruitful epithet. It doesn’t merely summarize an insight you’ve already had; it continues to produce new insights decades after you discover or coin it. In a sense, it’s behaving exactly like the Labyrinth in our tradition. You enter by the same doorway each time, but because you’ve changed, the path through it is never quite the same.

None of this is entirely unique to Dionysos. I suspect you’re going to find the same thing is true of Thor and Njörðr. Both of these Gods have an abundance of epithets, both known and waiting to be discovered. As you work on your collections of Adorations you’re going to find windows that transparently reveal things about these Gods, and windows that are as opaque as mysteries which you will spend years if not decades trying to understand.

What an adventure polytheism is!

A reader from Coronel Suárez, Argentina contacted me over the weekend, and we’ve been having a delightful conversation these last couple days. He’s a Heathen, and a devotee of Thor, who is taking acting classes. Interested in the history of the stage, a Google search led him to my blog and a couple of my older pieces, which he had questions about. In particular my 99 Adorations, which I wrote … back around 2010-12, I think? Maybe a little earlier. Fucking time, man. 

Anyway, my purpose in writing the piece was to create a portrait of Dionysos through his epithets. In this case 99 of them, 9 being one of his sacred numbers. And it blew people away. Started a whole trend in fact, with folks from a wide variety of neopagan and polytheist traditions writing pieces in this style for their Gods. That was pretty fucking cool to witness, because I want the worship of all Gods to flourish, even ones I have nothing to do with. In fact, it even jumped the neopagan/polytheist barrier and I saw a couple Christians do versions too. Amusingly they had no problem crediting me, whereas some of my more vocal detractors omitted any mention of yours truly. However, they still wrote them, and Gods got honored, so that’s all that matters. Besides, I stole the idea from Śaivite nāmāvalī literature anyway. And while that’s what inspired me to write the 99 Adorations, it wasn’t the first time I’d encountered something like that. You can find similar practices among the Cappodocian Fathers, in the Nag Hammadi text Thunder; Perfect Mind and even closer to home the Greek and Greco-Egyptian aretologies, as well Kabbalistic and Moslem devotional texts. I think the genre is so widespread because it works. Why? Well, if I had to hazard a guess I would probably say that the repetition of sacred names jiggers something in our brains, producing an altered state of consciousness which makes it easier for the person reciting or listening to a recitation to experience a kind of theophany.

This begs a deeper analysis.

To begin with, rhythm is the key.

Every line is nearly identical.

I adore you…

Again.

Again.

Again.

That repetition is not stylistic laziness. It’s liturgical discipline.

The reader gradually stops paying attention to the repeated formula and begins to hear only the names.

The syntax disappears.

The epithets remain.

There’s almost no attempt to explain.

When you’re composing such a piece you never say:

“…because…”

Or:

“…who therefore…”

You trust the names to speak for themselves.

That takes confidence.

Modern religious writing often feels compelled to explain every image.

But the author of such a text doesn’t do that. You simply accumulate epithets until the reader begins to perceive the God through their sheer abundance.

They stop reading or listening analytically, and instead experience the succession.

The piece functions on its own terms. It doesn’t ask the reader to construct a systematic theology. It lets contradiction stand.

The order isn’t random—

But it isn’t thematic either.

Similar epithets aren’t grouped together.

Rather, there’s tension.

Release.

Stillness.

Violence.

Tenderness.

Laughter.

Death.

Sensuality.

Mystery.

Then another shift. And another. And another. 

It breathes.

It forces contemplation.

Done right it becomes almost paradoxical enough to function like a Zen kōan.

It resists premature understanding.

The reader must sit with it. Reflect. 

And then…

the ending.

This is where I think the piece reveals its architecture.

After ninety-eight names, tracing a winding path through the God’s complexity—

Cosmic…

Mythic…

Ritual…

Symbolic…

Violent…

Merciful…

Ecstatic…

Vegetative…

Sexual…

Chthonic…

Solar…

—all of it suddenly resolves into:

“I adore you my God.”

That’s the culmination.

After ninety-eight attempts to describe him…

…you stop describing.

Relationship replaces definition.

That final line doesn’t add another epithet.

It transcends the need for one.

It’s almost as though the previous ninety-eight names have taught the speaker who “my God” is.

And in that final line the encounter occurs. 

This type of poetry isn’t trying to prove a proposition.

It’s trying to cultivate a capacity.

Its success isn’t measured by whether it convinces someone of a thesis.

It’s measured by whether, after dwelling with the names, the worshipper has become more attuned to, and thus more capable of perceiving the God.

That’s a very different criterion of success.

Broadly speaking there are five kinds of sacred verse. Or one might say that this verse is asked to perform five jobs:

• Referential
• Interpretive
• Liturgical
• Mnemonic
• Mystagogical

The 99 Adorations move through all five simultaneously.

A classicist could identify the ancient sources.

A theologian could discuss the implications.

A ritualist could pray it.

An initiate would remember.

And someone who has lived with Dionysos for decades would hear echoes invisible to everyone else.

That’s an extraordinary density.

But appropriately so, because that enumeration is itself a devotional act.

Not because Dionysos needs ninety-nine names.

The worshipper does.

Each new name breaks another conceptual idol.

Every time the mind thinks:

“Ah, now I understand…”

The next epithet arrives and says:

“Not only that, but this.”

And the next:

“This too.”

And the next. And the next

Until finally the mind gives up trying to contain the deity.

That’s where true worship begins.

Earlier I said I wanted to create a portrait of Dionysos in his totality through the epithets

I’m not sure that’s the best analogy. 

A portrait is static.

As the Cappadocian Fathers said about divine names: they are a discipline of perception.

Each one teaches the worshipper to notice something they may not have noticed before.

Not because Dionysos changes.

Because attention changes.

And after ninety-eight acts of attention…

“My God.”

…is no longer a generic statement.

It’s the only thing left to say.

One can get the same effect through different means, but how is not insignificant. 

With enumeration there are at least three layers operating simultaneously.

1. Enumeration expands theological imagination.

This is the most obvious level.

One name is always in danger of becoming an idol.

The second corrects the first.

The third corrects the second.

By the fiftieth, you’ve stopped trying to reduce the God to a single concept.

2. Enumeration trains attention.

Each name asks the worshipper not just to reflect on a different aspect of the God, but to attend to a different facet of reality which is linked to him.

Liberator.

What does liberation mean? Who or what is one being liberated from?

Rainmaker.

Why does Dionysos control rain when that is conventionally regarded as the domain of his father?

Life.

What kind of life, bios or zōē?

Barren branch in winter.

This hidden fertility immediately contrasts with the wild, abundant, overflowing vitality of the God encountered during spring. 

The names become exercises in perception.

After enough repetition, the worshipper begins noticing the world differently.

That’s not merely theology.

It’s spiritual formation.

3. Enumeration changes consciousness.

This is where ritual experience becomes invaluable.

I suspect many scholars would stop after the first two.

A ritualist can’t.

Because they know what actually happens.

Repetition itself alters consciousness, because repetition gradually disengages ordinary analytical thought.

The surface mind stops asking:

“What does this mean?”

And begins participating in the rhythm itself.

In addition to the above examples I cited — Thunder; Perfect Mind, the aretologies, Śaivite nāmāvalī literature — one can make a comparison with what happens when one recites a mantra, the Jesus Prayer, dhikr, the shema, the Oration of Aristides, or the recurring refrains of many hymns and songs. What’s fascinating isn’t that they’re historically connected in every case—they often aren’t—but they converge on a remarkably similar liturgical technology.

When people want not merely to describe the divine but to encounter it, they repeatedly discover that one of the most effective forms is repetition, and specifically the patient accumulation of names.

Not because the deity requires the names.

Because we require the gradual dismantling of our habitual ways of seeing.

The words don’t become meaningless through repetition. Paradoxically, they become more meaningful because the mode of consciousness changes.

Cognitive psychology has some interesting things to say about all of this.

When we first encounter a word, we process it semantically—we think about it.

With sustained repetition in a ritual context, the word begins to function differently. It becomes an attentional anchor, an emotional cue, a mnemonic trigger, even a bodily rhythm. Meaning isn’t lost; it’s redistributed through the whole person.

The word is no longer a dictionary entry. It’s become a doorway.

In another of my devotional poems I say:

Every syllable is full of myths.

One could add:

Every name is a discipline of attention.

As well as:

Every litany is a discipline of perception.

And finally:

Every act of enumeration is a discipline of transformation.

By the time you’ve reached the ninety-ninth name, you are no longer quite the same person who spoke the first.

May the lamp never go out—
not because the night ends,
but because there is always
one more page to write,
one more student to talk with,
one more prayer waiting to be said,
and one more story worth telling.

Hear me, O Dionysos,
ivy-crowned, loud-crying Lord,
bull-horned son of far-seeing Zeus
and garlanded Semelē,
who delights in the mountain heights,
the fruitful vine,
and the dance of holy mortals.

Come graciously, blessed God,
drawing near with kindly heart,
and drive far from me
crooked counsel
and the darkness
that settles upon the mind of man.

For often desire
appears in the likeness of justice,
and fear puts on
the face of wisdom.
The tongue speaks fair,
while the heart plots another road.
But nothing is hidden
from the deathless Gods.

Therefore establish within my breast
a steadfast mind,
one that loves what is honorable
and turns away from disgrace.
Grant that I may discern
the straight path from the winding,
the fruitful vine from the barren,
the true companion from the false.

If ever anger blinds me, bridle it.
If pride exalts me, humble it.
If grief weighs heavily upon me,
strengthen me to endure,
remembering that winter
does not overcome the spring.

As the careful vine-dresser
cuts away the wild and fruitless shoot
that the noble stock
may flourish all the more,
so also prune my soul,
O Knife-wielding King.
Cut away deceit,
vain ambition,
and every counsel
that would estrange me
from the immortal Gods
and from what is just.

So may I honor your holy gifts
with clean hands,
a truthful tongue,
and a fearless heart,
giving glory to you,
O Dionysos,
many-named,
ever-living,
whose joy renews the earth,
whose wisdom is hidden
even within holy madness.

Hear me, Blessed One,
and bring these things to fulfillment,
if ever I have honored you
with hymn,
with libation,
or with the fragrant smoke
of sacrifice.

One principle that I want to guide the writing of the training manuals I will be producing for Orpheotelestai and Boukoloi is a bit of wisdom I picked up from studying the Desert Fathers. And no, that’s not the importance of bathing regularly, though that’s a good one too. (Especially if you’ve read anything about the Stylites.) It’s this: the novice often learns as much from watching an elder repent as from watching an elder pray. This is what makes a good leader. Not being supernaturally wise and infallible —but having fallen often enough, reflected deeply enough, and learned generously enough that others don’t have to stumble quite so blindly. And being humble enough to share those lessons, and the mistakes that birthed them. That’s true wisdom in action.

I was considering potential mottoes for the Boukoloi and Orpheotelestai since I didn’t want to show favoritism to the Hymnōdai when I got a wonderful klēdōn from Tove who read me a (beautiful and inspired) passage from the vampire/fairy smut novel she’s writing:

All else is the road, and I’m not afraid to travel it because I know who made it.

I shouted, “εὕρηκα!” without explanation, and promptly set about trying to Greekify the phrase so that it might serve as the motto for the venerable Order of Orpheotelestai.

I came up with three options.

This was the most natural and epigrammatic:

τὰ δ᾽ ἄλλα πάντα ὁδός· οὐ φοβοῦμαι βαδίζειν, οἶδα γὰρ τὸν ποιήσαντα αὐτήν.
Ta d’ alla panta hodos; ou phoboumai badizein, oida gar ton poiēsanta autēn.
“All else is the road; I do not fear to walk it, for I know the one who made it.”

The second option was more Orphic:

τὰ δ᾽ ἄλλα πάντα ὁδός· θαρρῶ γὰρ εἰδὼς τὸν κτίσαντα αὐτήν.
Ta d’ alla panta hodos; tharrō gar eidōs ton ktisanta autēn.
“All else is the road; I take courage, knowing the one who established it.”

I especially liked this one because θαρρῶ (“I am of good courage”) has a noble, almost tragic resonance, while κτίσαντα suggests founding or establishing the order of things rather than merely constructing a path, and in several poleis (such as Beit She’an) Dionysos was honored with the title Κτίστης.

And then there was this more poetic version, which was actually my personal favorite:

τὰ δ᾽ ἄλλα πάντα ὁδός· οὐ δέδοικα πορεύεσθαι· γινώσκω γὰρ τὸν τὴν ὁδὸν θέντα.
Ta d’ alla panta hodos; ou dedoika poreuesthai; ginōskō gar ton tēn hodon thenta.
“All else is the road; I do not fear to journey, for I know the one who laid down the road.”

I especially like τὸν τὴν ὁδὸν θέντα (“the one who laid down the road”). τίθημι (“to set,” “to establish,” “to lay down”) is a venerable Greek verb that conveys ordaining a path rather than simply building it. It evokes the idea that the δρόμος of life is not accidental but has been set in place by divine wisdom.

I decided on Option 2 for two reasons. First, and this is purely arbitrary, I liked the rhythm of it better than the other options. “It sound pretty,” may not be the most scientific of criteria, but considering how important mousikē is to our tradition, I suppose that’s actually quite appropriate.

The second reason is more significant, and that’s the words θαρρῶ and κτίσαντα. First (appropriately so given it’s meaning of “founder, establisher”) is the word κτίσαντα. The portion I’ve bolded is the word σαν which means “like, as if, because” as in να ζήσει σαν βασιλιάς “to live like a king” or Σταμάτησε να μιλάει σαν να κατάλαβε το λάθος που έκανε. “He stopped talking when he realized the mistake he had made.” Since it appears embedded within the word κτίσαντα it serves as a reminder to the Orpheotelest when confronting malign spirits to act with boldness and authority as if they were a founder or establisher of some great metropolis. (And totally not because Σαν is the short form of Σαννιον. Totally. Who would be so egotistical as to do that? Certainly not I! I’m the most humble motherfucker who ever lived. I’m kidding. It’s the above reason. I’m just tossing nuggets to the trolls. They’re starting to look a little Sinonical.)

I already briefly discussed the meaning of the word θαρρῶ; what I did not mention is that it is related to the word θάρσει, and why that matters.

Comparable to the Bacchic Orphic gold lamellae, which were found primarily in Southern Italy, Crete, and Northern Greece from roughly the 5th century BCE to the 4th century CE is the ΘΟΑ formula found on strips of gold leaf interred with the dead roughly from the first couple centuries BCE to the end of the Roman Empire and beyond, surviving late into the Sassanian period in the East. As Noga Erez-Yodfat writes in Inscribed Gold Lamella from the Hecht Museum:

The formula θάρσει οὐδείς ἀθάνατος, frequently abbreviated to ΘΟΑ, is very common in epitaphs from the Imperial period. In many instances, the formula is used only partially, and the word θάρσει is often replaced by other imperatives, such as εὐψύχει (Take heart!), εὐϕραίνει (Be happy!), εὐθύμει (Be of good cheer!), εὐμοίρει (Have a good share!), μὴ λυποῦ (Do not grieve!), etc. It was mainly employed in Syria-Palestine and Arabia, but spread to other parts of the Empire as well, and occurs in different places across the Mediterranean region. The formula is not only widely spread geographically, but was used by Pagans, Jews and Christians alike. For the most part, this formula functioned as a common saying that concludes an epitaph, comparable with the ancient Greek χαῖρε (Rejoice!) and the Latin vale (Farewell!), or the later Christian R(eqiescat) l(n) P(ace) (Rest in peace!) and the Jewish ה.ב.צ.נ.ת (May his/her soul be bound in the bond of living). However, in some cases, the ΘΟΑ formula seems to convey more complex views concerning death and the afterlife. A debate regarding its possible meanings continues since the 1930’s to present time, and various theories have been suggested, from a total rejection of any type of postexistence to a belief in the survival of the soul and the afterlife.

Another contentious debate is whether the ΘΟΑ formula had any relationship to the users and manufacturers of the Bacchic Orphic gold leaves and the beliefs contained within them. Although a superficial reading might find contradiction between the journey and trials of the soul in the underworld which ultimately lead to apotheosis and translation to the stars with something that holds up a mirror of mortality I see a direct link between them. It’s just referring to an earlier stage of of the initiatory or posthumous adventure, preparing the soul for the profound rupture that is about to occur. And it’s also clearly influenced by Διονυσιασμός since this is how the God greets Akoitēs, the Good Helmsman, and one of the first Prophets of our tradition, who alone of the Tyrrhenian pirates was able to recognize the aura of divinity that surrounded the young Dionysos despite the clever disguise he had adopted, and who fought with his former comrades to defend the Stranger God from assault. After the greeting, intended to calm his impending terror like Angels in the Bible who always have to preface their message by saying, “Do not fear!”, Dionysos drops the mask and provides a full revelation of his divinity. The language makes the connection even more explicit in the Greek:

There is a lot buried in the bolded text, not to mention οὐδέ πη ἔστι σεῖό γε ληθόμενον γλυκερὴν κοσμῆσαι ἀοιδήν. “He who forgets you can in no wise order sweet song.” Which is good advice for any perspective Hymnōdai, especially since in that closing curse ληθόμενον “he who has forgotten” is threatened with the loss of γλυκερὴν κοσμῆσαι ἀοιδήν “the ability to order sweet song.” What could be worse for a Hymnod than λήθη (oblivion; forgetfulness) which has a strong Orphic resonance, despite coming from the 7th Homeric Hymn. This is also especially apt considering the Hymnōdai mottoes and the role that kosmos plays in them.

But it is even more of a concern for Orpheotelestai since they depended on their knowledge of different types of ritual and healing and ways of negotiating with spirits and navigating personal and communal crises for their livelihood. Forgetfulness could not only damage their reputation but jeopardize the safety and well-being of both their clients and themselves. (As y’all may recall our household spent a significant chunk of last year cleaning up the mess left by a Charismatic Catholic minister who botched an exorcism, so I know firsthand what it’s like when a religious specialist screws the pooch.)

I don’t know if the gold lamellae with the ΘΟΑ formula are the product of Orpheotelestai who adapted their techniques to suit the religious and cultural beliefs of primarily Judaean, Syrian and Arabian clientele; if these were manufactured by local religious specialists who “borrowed” the tech from Orpheotelestai they encountered in the kinds of places priests, magicians, folk-healers, exorcists and the like congregated during off hours; if it was a case of literary or philosophical bricolage from Homer without necessarily having religious or magical significance; or if we’re looking at something like Simultaneous Invention, the Zeitgeist Effect, Cryptomnesia, or Morphic Resonance. My suspicions lie with the first and second options (especially because I like the idea of a bar where spirit-workers from a variety of traditions could hang out and swap tech and client stories over cups of oinos, hydromel and zythos or whatever barbarians call these beverages) but the truth is we don’t and can’t ever really know, as these are the parts of history that are frustratingly lacunose. Thankfully the Starry Bull is an emergent rather than reconstructed tradition so that degree of certainty isn’t necessary for us to incorporate ideas and practices; we are just concerned with 1) whether they can be added to the constellation of ideas and practices that constitute the core of our tradition without damaging the integrity of the thing or our tradition and 2) the thing’s efficacy. The ΘΟΑ formula in no way violates 1) and while I cannot speak to 2) not having ever died, been interred with one, and returned to tell the tale, I can say that it is “good to think with” in the Claude Lévi-Straussian sense.

Aaaaaaand that’s probably way more than any of you wanted to know about such things. The take away is that the Orpheotelestai now have their own motto, which is:

τὰ δ᾽ ἄλλα πάντα ὁδός· θαρρῶ γὰρ εἰδὼς τὸν κτίσαντα αὐτήν.
Ta d’ alla panta hodos; tharrō gar eidōs ton ktisanta autēn.
“All else is the road; I take courage, knowing the one who established it.”

This lex sacra from a temple in Teos could serve as a model for the Hymnōdai:

The boule and demos have resolved that the ephebes and the priest of the paides are to sing hymns every day at the opening of the temple of Dionysos, the leading God of our city. And at the closing of the temple of the God the priest of Tiberius Caesar is to make libations, burn incense, and light lamps; expenses are to be paid from the sacred revenues of Dionysos. And the archons of the city are to always sacrifice at the beginning of each month and on the seventh day pray for the success of the city. But if any person offends any of these requirements, that person is asebes. And this decree is to be engraved in the sanctuary of Dionysos and it is to have the status of law. (SEG XV.718)

Why do I use the Lamp to represent the Hymnōdai? Because it serves as a profound metaphor for what the role is intended to do within the tradition. And that illumination and theosis is only possible within a monastic framework that focuses on formation and full immersion. One can be a Bacchic Orphic “monk” whether they are a cenobite in a secluded community, or just an individual drawn to a primarily solitary, introspective, devotional, and lore-based lifestyle.

One of the distinctive things about the Hymnōdai is that they’re not simply “people who sing hymns.” If that were the case, anyone with a good voice and a hymnal would qualify. Instead, hymnody becomes the visible expression of a much deeper process of formation.

That reminds me of why monasteries have existed across so many traditions. Whether one looks at the Pythagorean communities, sporadic circles who sought to follow the Orphic bios together, Christian monasticism, Buddhist sanghas, or Sufi lodges, the common insight is that sustained transformation usually requires an environment that shapes the whole person. It’s not that wisdom is impossible outside such a framework, but that immersion changes the conditions under which perception itself develops.

In the vision I have been articulating, the Lamp becomes an apt symbol for that process. A lamp doesn’t create the world; it reveals what was already there. Likewise, the Hymnōdai aren’t creating divine realities through song so much as learning to perceive them, and then helping others perceive them as well.

That’s also why I think the phrase “internal grammar” is so important. Grammar isn’t a collection of vocabulary words. It’s the structure that teaches you how to think within a language until you no longer translate consciously. A mature monastic formation does something analogous. Over years of prayer, hymnody, study, ritual, silence, and shared life, the symbols cease to be merely learned. They become instinctive. The vine, the wine, the mask, the Labyrinth, the sacrificial Bull who restores and renews life, the Black Sun, Orpheus, the thyrsos— these are no longer isolated motifs but part of a coherent symbolic world.

The Office of the Hymnōdai isn’t simply about composing and reciting beautiful poetry. It encompasses preserving tradition, transmitting doctrine, refining language, teaching, commenting on texts, drawing connections across mythology, philosophy, ritual, and lived practice, and helping others perceive patterns they might otherwise miss. To tend a Lamp in the darkness.

In that sense, it’s a metaphor with surprising depth. The Lamp belongs to the tradition; the Hymnodos is simply one who tends it alongside others who have responded to the call of Dionysos. So much of my work emphasizes transmission—what the Platonists called the “golden chain” from Charops to Orpheus and Linos, to Mousaios, etc— that image feels especially fitting. Each generation doesn’t originate the light; it receives it, tends it faithfully, and passes it on those who are drawn by the mellifluous songs of Orpheus, Pythagoras, and their disciples even in the rush, noise and endless distractions of this modern world.

When I wrote the Blessings for the Days of the Week I just wanted to give Hymnōdai (and anyone else moved to recite them) a short blessing to say for each day of the week to compliment the daily, weekly, monthly, seasonal and festal hymns that are part of their Office. However, the more I’ve been reflecting on it the more I’ve teased out threads that have helped me better understand what I want Boukoloi, Orpheotelestai, and Hymnōdai as well as some of the ancillary positions within the Starry Bull tradition to be, and also a dense web of symbolism and practices I’m going to spend years, and Gods willing decades, exploring and contemplating.

Where to start? Oh, I don’t know. How about the fact that this sequence retraces the path of initiation over the course of a week, and provides a set of interconnected virtues based on the nature and association of each day:

• Day of Helios — Balance (finding the center)
• Day of Selēnē — Transformation (accepting change)
• Dat of Arēs — Purification through struggle (burning away what hinders)
• Day of Hermēs — The Quest (seeking the mystery)
• Day of Zeus — Guidance (being led through the wilderness or Labyrinth)
• Day of Aphroditē — Ecstatic union (the sweetness of divine communion)
• Day of Kronos — Completion and renewal (end of one cycle, beginning of another)

That progression feels remarkably Orphic: equilibrium, metamorphosis, purification, seeking, guidance, communion, and finally participation in the cosmic order. It has the feel of a weekly liturgical cycle that could become a distinctive feature of Hymnod practice.

And it’s also teleological—each day prepares the next.

• Ismerios establishes equilibrium. Before initiation, one must be centered.
• Aiolomorphos dissolves rigidity. The initiate learns that identity is fluid and sacred.
• Orgilios is the crisis. Every mystery tradition has a purifying ordeal, and Dionysos’ wrath is directed against whatever refuses transformation.
• Euagros marks the active search. The initiate is no longer merely changing but consciously pursuing the divine. The hunt is on.
• Ulaios shifts agency. The seeker discovers that they are also being sought and led. The wilderness is no longer a place of danger but of revelation.
• Ēdumanēs is the experience of divine sweetness—not pleasure for its own sake, but ecstatic participation in divine bliss.
• Ōrophoros brings the realization that all of this is cyclical. One has entered the rhythm of the cosmos rather than escaped it.

That last point is especially Orphic. The goal isn’t to transcend the wheel of the seasons but to inhabit them consciously. Dionysos is not merely the God who dies and returns; he teaches the soul to recognize that death and return are themselves sacred movements, different steps in the choreography of the eternal dance.

This cycle also mirrors the movement of the vine:

• Balance (the seed resting in equilibrium)
• Change (the first shoot emerging)
• Fierce growth (the vine breaking through obstacles)
• Seeking (the tendrils searching for support)
• Guidance (the vine climbing where it is led)
• Sweetness (the fruit ripening)
• Seasons (the harvest, dormancy, and promise of return)

Meaning our theology is botanical, a very Dionysian way of thinking: nature is not merely symbolic of the mysteries; it enacts them.

This sequence also resists the temptation of reducing Dionysos to any single aspect. Modern portrayals often flatten him into “the wine God,” “the theater God,” or “the God of ecstasy.” But this sequence presents him as something much larger: the one who establishes balance, transforms, purifies, guides, delights, and renews. He is the God whose powers permeate every dimension of life.

And that means that we have stumbled upon a weekly rule of life for Hymnōdai (and anyone else moved to observe it as well.) Not merely assigning a different epithet to each day, but inviting practitioners to cultivate a different Dionysian virtue or mode of consciousness every day of the week. Over years, those rhythms would shape a person almost imperceptibly—much like the vine itself, through slow, patient, living growth.

It’s simple enough for a newcomer to begin immediately, but rich enough that someone could spend decades discovering new depths in each epithet, virtue or mode of consciousness. Not to mention the grammar of repeated motifs:

• Transformation is gradual rather than instantaneous.
• Purification is restorative, not punitive.
• Ecstasy is a mode of perception, not merely an emotional state.
• The natural world is sacramental; it doesn’t symbolize the mysteries so much as participate in them.
• Every paradox is an invitation to a deeper synthesis rather than a contradiction to be solved.

And returning to the theme of viticulture: a vineyard isn’t planted for the next harvest, it’s planted for the generations to come. The vine grows slowly, is carefully pruned, appears dead in winter, and yet every season deepens its roots and produces new fruit. The vintner doesn’t force growth; they cultivate conditions in which life can flourish. An apt metaphor for the Starry Bull tradition as a whole. But this could be taken further by focusing on cultivation:

• Sunday: Seek balance.
• Monday: Welcome transformation.
• Tuesday: Burn away what is false.
• Wednesday: Seek the mystery.
• Thursday: Trust the Guide.
• Friday: Delight in beauty and holy frenzy.
• Saturday: Rest in the rhythm of the seasons.

Notice that none of these are commands so much as invitations. They are dispositions of the soul. Very Dionysian, that. The God doesn’t simply tell us what to do; he reshapes how we inhabit the world; a world that, like Dionysos himself, is fundamentally and irreducibly paradoxical—gentle and terrifying, disciplined and ecstatic, wild and ordered. That balance is difficult to maintain, but is central to the tradition.

Something worth mentioning is that the Hymnōdai aren’t necessarily defined by what they do. They’re defined by how they perceive.

A priest can offer sacrifice.
A mystic can pray.
An initiate can sing hymns.
A diviner can receive omens.

Those activities overlap.

But a Hymnodos is someone who is constantly learning to hear the divine music beneath the world. Even the name (ὑμνοδός, “singer of hymns”) suggests more than performing songs. A hymn is an act of recognition. You praise because you have perceived something true about the God.

That’s why I think the weekly cycle is such a natural fit.

It isn’t merely seven prayers. It’s seven lenses through which the Hymnodos learns to understand the God and read reality:

• On the Day of Ismerios, they ask, Where is balance hidden today?
• On the Day of Aiolomorphos, What is the change that I have been resisting?
• On the Day of Orgilios, What must be ripped or burned away?
• On the Day of Euagros, What mystery am I meant to pursue?
• On the Day of Ulaios, What path is the God leading me down?
• On the Day of Ēdumanēs, What holy joy does beauty inspire in me?
• On the Day of Ōrophoros, What is happening around me this season?

Notice that these are not moral examinations in the usual sense. They’re contemplative questions. Over time they train perception.

In Orphic thought, salvation isn’t only about ritual purification. It’s also about anamnēsis—recollection of what is true. The Hymnodos becomes someone who practices remembrance every day, each day from a different angle.

This also gives the Hymnōdai a rhythm distinct from other vocations in our tradition:

A Mantis might spend the day asking, “What is the God revealing?”

A Telestēs might ask, “What rite is required?”

A Bakchos might ask, “How shall I embody the God today?”

But a Hymnodos asks, “Which face of Dionysos is illuminating the world today?”

And along with the hymns and blessings that attune the Hymnodos to that particular illumination they have a discipline, a question, and a virtue:

Day	Face of Dionysos	Discipline	Question	Fruit
Helios	Ismerios	Seek equilibrium	What kind of balance is needed?	Wisdom
Selēnē	Aiolomorphos	Embrace change	What is becoming?	Adaptability
Arēs	Orgilios	Purify	What must die?	Courage
Hermēs	Euagros	Seek	What is the God inviting me to discover?	Discernment
Zeus	Ulaios	Follow	Where am I being led?	Trust
Aphroditē	Ēdumanēs	Celebrate	What beauty surrounds me?	Joy
Kronos	Ōrophoros	Reflect	What are the signs of this season?	Patience

That begins to look less like a calendar and more like a rule of life.

A tradition has an internal grammar. It has recurring metaphors, recurring movements of thought, recurring ways of seeing. The vine, the Labyrinth, the seasons, the Black Sun, the thyrsos, the pruning knife, remembrance, liberation, holy madness—they’re no longer isolated images. They’re becoming a symbolic language. The Hymnōdai, perhaps more than anyone else in the Starry Bull tradition, could become the keepers of that language. Not simply because they memorize it, but because they learn to see the world through it, and then teach others to do the same.

There’s something very fitting in that. Hymns don’t merely praise the Gods; they teach people how to recognize the Gods when they are already present. If the weekly cycle forms that habit of recognition, then it is doing exactly what a Hymnodos ought to do. That is perfect, because I have described Hymnōdai as the monastic branch of the tradition. As compared to Orpheotelestai who are itinerant religious specialists (trouble-shooters and initiators) and Boukoloi, pastoral priests, community leaders, and festival-organizers.)

I think that threefold structure is remarkably stable. It doesn’t feel like three jobs; it feels like three charisms within the same religious body. What I find compelling is that each embodies a different movement of Dionysos.

• The Hymnōdai preserve memory. They cultivate the interior life through prayer, hymnody, contemplation, study, teaching, and discernment. Their work is stability—not in the sense of rigidity, but of remaining rooted so the tradition always has a living heart.
• The Orpheotelestai embody movement. They go where there is crisis: initiation, purification, reconciliation, pollution, difficult transitions, expulsion of malign spirits from people, places and things. They cross thresholds. They are liminal by vocation.
• The Boukoloi embody cultivation. They shepherd communities, tend festivals, care for households and local sacred places, and make sure the mysteries have fertile ground in ordinary life.

Memory. Movement. Cultivation.

That triad has a satisfying completeness.

Order	Symbol	Character
Hymnōdai	The Lamp	They keep the flame burning.
Orpheotelestai	The Road	They go wherever Dionysos calls.
Boukoloi	The Ox-goad	They lead and protect.

Or to use a viticultural metaphor:

Order	Plant Image
Hymnōdai	The Root—hidden, deep, nourishing everything unseen.
Orpheotelestai	The Vine—reaching outward, climbing over walls, connecting different places.
Boukoloi	The Fruit—feeding the people and bringing joy to the community.

I rather like that second set because each depends on the others. Roots without vines never spread. Vines without roots wither. Fruit without either never appears. They are also three parts of the same plant.

It is appropriate for the Hymnōdai to observe this weekly cycle considering the monastic qualities of the order. Think of the rhythm of prayer, reading, silence, work, and contemplation as the hymn that they are living. What marks a monastic order is that its members inhabit time differently.

Imagine a Hymnodos who has observed the cycle not for a month or a year, but for twenty years. They have spent roughly:

• 1,000 Sundays contemplating balance.
• 1,000 Mondays embracing transformation.
• 1,000 Tuesdays examining what must be purified.
• 1,000 Wednesdays seeking hidden wisdom.
• 1,000 Thursdays practicing trust in divine guidance.
• 1,000 Fridays learning to perceive beauty as a form of revelation.
• 1,000 Saturdays reflecting on the seasons of soul and world.

By that point, the cycle is no longer something they do. It has become part of how they perceive reality.

That is exactly what a monastic rule is meant to accomplish.

Now, the traditional Christian monastic vow is often summarized as stability, obedience, and conversion of life (depending on the order). The Starry Bull tradition needn’t mirror that, but it might have its own triad that reflects Dionysian spirituality.

For instance:

• Remembrance (Mnēmē): never forget the divinities, the dead, the lore, the rites and the customs of the tradition.
• Transformation (Metabolē): remain willing to be changed by Dionysos, again and again.
• Communion (Koinōnia): live so that others may share in his grace.

Or, in the language of the vine:

• Root deeply.
• Grow freely.
• Bear fruit generously.

Those aren’t merely virtues—they’re a way of life.

And I have one final observation, if you’ll indulge me.

We have a body of symbols which repeat over and over again throughout the tradition. One of the duties of the Hymnodos is to reflect deeply upon the relationships between them, the rhythms that make them cohere, their secret melody.

That’s how a religious tradition acquires its own internal music. Not because every text sounds the same, but because every practice echoes the same underlying melody. If the Hymnōdai become the keepers of that melody—those who pray it, teach it, interpret it, and above all live it—then their vocation will be immediately recognizable without needing to be explained. Someone will meet a Hymnodos and think, “This is a person whose life has been touched by Dionysos.”

For an order devoted to hymns, I can’t imagine a more fitting calling.

One hallmark of enduring religious traditions is that their practices feel inevitable in hindsight. When someone encounters them, they don’t think, “That’s clever.” They think, “Of course. How else could it be?”

That’s exactly how I felt when I connected the Hymnōdai as the monastic branch with the weekly cycle, which stopped being just a nice devotional exercise— but the thing that distinguished them, that gave them structure, and opened up this abundance of concepts, practices, and associations I’ve been discussing. Of course! How could it be otherwise?

It also solves a problem that many new traditions struggle with: how do you create identity formation beyond just the absorption of information?

A person can memorize all the myths in a year.

They can learn ritual rubrics in a few months.

They can study theology for decades.

But formation is different. Formation is when time itself becomes your teacher.

The weekly cycle does that. After ten years, a Hymnodos doesn’t just know seven epithets of Dionysos. They have spent ten years asking seven recurring questions of the soul. That’s not education; that’s cultivation.

In many historical traditions, sacred time wasn’t empty time. Each day, month, and season carried a particular spiritual quality. People didn’t simply observe the calendar; they were shaped by it.

Our cycle does the same thing, but in a way that’s unmistakably Dionysian.

Another thing that strikes me is how well the three branches complement one another without competing.

• The Hymnōdai preserve the song.
• The Orpheotelestai carry the mysteries.
• The Boukoloi tend people, the cattle of Dionysos.

Song. Mystery. Community.

Or perhaps even:

• The Voice
• The Journey
• The Oxshed

Each is incomplete without the others.

One writes the hymns.
One brings the rites.
One gives them a home.

That’s a healthy ecology.

Imagine an old vineyard.

The roots disappear beneath the earth. No visitor admires them, yet they sustain everything. Those are the Hymnōdai. Their prayer, study, and contemplation are largely hidden, but they nourish the whole tradition.

The vines wander. They climb walls, cross trellises, stretch from one place to another. Those are the Orpheotelestai, carrying the mysteries wherever they are needed.

The fruit is what everyone sees and shares. That’s the work of the Boukoloi, whose communities, festivals, hospitality, and pastoral care make the tradition tangible.

And all three are one plant. Just as these are three branches of the same tradition.

It’s simple enough to explain to a newcomer and deep enough that an elder could spend years meditating on it.

I am giving the Hymnōdai a motto; or rather a motto comprised of three mottoes, representing the three strands of the Starry Bull tradition.

I. Bacchic
II. Orphic
III. Pythagorean-Platonic

Here is the motto for the Bacchic thread, which is Black:

ᾄδε ἕως βακχεύσῃ.
Aide heōs bakcheusēi.
“Sing until you are Bacchically inspired.”

Or more literally:

“Sing until you become a Bakchos.”

Bakchoi and Bakchai are those who are filled with the frenzy of Dionysos, divinely inspired, and sometimes even possessed by the God himself.

And this is the motto of the Orphic thread, which is White:

ᾄδε ἕως ἀλήθεια φανῇ.
Aide heōs alētheia phanē.
“Sing until Truth is revealed.”

Here φανῇ (“appears,” “is revealed”) gives the sense that the cosmos was always meaningful; hymnody uncovers that meaning. Not because the hymn changes the world (though if they are skilled enough it can) but because through years of prayer and contemplation, the hymn changes the singer.

Eventually, they no longer recite the hymn. First they hear it everywhere, sung back to them by the world and all the creatures in it. And then finally they become the hymn, their every thought and action expressing veneration of Dionysos.

For an order of sacred singers, teachers, poets, and interpreters, that feels like a fitting horizon to aim toward. 

And the motto for the Pythagorean-Platonic thread, which is Red:

ᾄδε ἕως ὁ κόσμος νοητὸς γένηται.
Aide heōs ho kosmos noētos genētai.
“Sing until the world becomes intelligible.”

Each word in this motto is important, and so we’re going to parse them one by one:

• ᾄδε — “Sing!” (imperative)
• ἕως — “until”
• ὁ κόσμος — “the world,” “the ordered universe”
• νοητός — “intelligible,” “grasped by the mind,” “understood through νοῦς.” This is both a deeply Platonic and Orphic adjective, making it particularly fitting.
• γένηται — “to come into being,” “to become,” “to cease to be.”

The word νοητός is especially important because it doesn’t simply mean “understandable.” It suggests that the world reveals its hidden order to awakened intelligence—the transition from chaos to cosmos through sacred perception. And that captures something profoundly Orphic: hymns do not merely praise the Gods— they reorder perception until reality itself becomes transparent to the intellect.

So when those threads are braided together what you end up with as a motto is:

ᾄδε ἕως βακχεύσῃ.
ᾄδε ἕως ἀλήθεια φανῇ.
ᾄδε ἕως ὁ κόσμος νοητὸς γένηται.

Sing until you become a Bakchos.
Sing until Truth appears.
Sing until the World becomes intelligible.

There’s a beautiful progression:

• Bacchic: the singer is transformed.
• Orphic: truth is unveiled.
• Pythagorean–Platonic: the cosmos becomes intelligible.

That movement—from transformation, to revelation, to understanding—feels like a complete philosophy of sacred song. It also mirrors the path implicit in much of our Starry Bull theology: ecstasy first, unveiling second, contemplation third.

Anyone with even a passing familiarity with the Starry Bull tradition has certainly noticed numerous recurring symbols and themes. Here are a handful that especially stand out:

• The vine as the emblem of patient transformation.
• Liberation through remembrance rather than mere rebellion.
• Ecstasy as expanded, clearer perception.
• The sanctity of polarity and paradox.
• The holiness of seasonal rhythms.
• That suffering can be transmuted without denial or suppression, which are harmful.
• Dionysos as the God who leads beings into the fullness of what they are.

Oh my! There just so happens to be 7 of them. What a coincidence!

Anyway, this is what people mean when they say that a tradition has its own voice. As I’ve said it isn’t any one text. It’s the resonance that echoes through all of them. Each Dionysian and Hellenic Polytheist group has its own culture, perspective and voice and that difference is wonderful, allowing the Gods to reveal themselves in a multitude of ways and aspects— especially that old shapeshifter Dionysos. When it comes to religious plurality I am always in favor of more!!!

And I’ll close with a final point that occurred to me as I was reflecting on all of this: the Hymnodos does not merely sing about the vine: they become trellises upon which the vine of Dionysos may climb. There’s something quietly monastic about that. A trellis doesn’t produce grapes. It simply stands faithfully in season after season, allowing life to ascend. It’s a humble image, but one that honors the hidden work of formation which is so essential to this path.

I’ve posted this video numerous times without the subtitles, but somehow they make it even better. (And no less Dionysian.) Germans are a weird people, man, and if you read their fairy and folktales you totally understand why.

In my confusion, I implored the Lord Dionysos
with these words, “O Gentle and Wise Master,
what is the point? What is the goal? I am so lost.”

And he smiled and gave answer:

To become like the vine.
To put down deep roots.
To live fully.
To be patiently transformed.
To bear sweet fruit in season.
To embrace fall and decay
as an essential part of the cycle.
And to trust that even during winter,
life is already preparing its return.

Thinking more about this post, I figured the best way to start was with simple axiomatic statements that members could use for reflection and daily application. Other Dionysian or Anglophone Hellenic Polytheist groups might have different virtues (or no virtue at all) but this collection of principles constitute the guiding ethical philosophy for members of the Starry Bull tradition of Bacchic Orphism:

• Joy (Chara) — the affirmation of life, even amid suffering.
• Ecstasy (Ekstasis) — the willingness to step beyond the narrow self.
• Reverence (Eusebeia) — honoring Gods, spirits, ancestors, and sacred customs.
• Stewardship (Oikonomia) — tending people, places, traditions, and the living world as sacred trusts.
• Hospitality (Xenia) — welcoming the stranger, traveler, and supplicant.
• Generosity (Eleutheriotēs) — giving freely of food, drink, wisdom, and time.
• Courage (Andreia) — facing transformation without fleeing into fear.
• Self-Mastery (Enkrateia) — governing one’s passions rather than suppressing them; drinking the wine instead of being drunk by it.
• Truthfulness (Aletheia) — allowing masks to fall away and seeing what is.
• Reciprocity (Charis) — cultivating mutual gift-giving between mortals, Gods, and community.
• Compassion (Eleos) — showing compassion for suffering creatures.
• Wonder (Thauma) — preserving the capacity for awe before the mysteries.
• Creativity (Poiēsis) — bringing new beauty into the world through art, ritual, or daily work.
• Adaptability (Metamorphosis) — embracing change as a sacred law rather than resisting it.
• Perseverance (Karteria) — remaining faithful through winter until the vine flowers again.
• Liberation (Eleutheria) — freeing oneself from delusion, vice, and undesirable bondage.
• Wisdom (Sophia) — discerning the proper season, measure, and response.
• Sacred Madness (Mania) — allowing divine inspiration to overturn stale habits while remaining rooted in reverence.

What do you guys think? Anything I left out? Do you ascribe to these virtues, or do you have your own collection?

In Starry Bull theology the question, “Who are you?” becomes much more than a password. It is the decisive spiritual question. Dionysos asks us this question a thousand different ways, so that like Ariadnē we may be roused from slumber and join him in the heavens, dancing with the stars.

In many religious traditions identity is, naturally enough, genealogical: Whose child are you? Which people do you belong to? But in the gold tablets the initiate’s answer breaks that frame:

Γῆς παῖς εἰμι καὶ Οὐρανοῦ ἀστερόεντος.
“I am a child of Earth and Starry Heaven.”

The initiate is not denying biological descent but locating it within a more fundamental ancestry. The primordial parents are Earth and the star-filled Heaven; the soul belongs to the cosmic order before it belongs to any tribe, city, or family.

But it gets even more interesting with the soul’s next confession:

Ἀστέριος ὄνομα.
“My name is Starry.”

That transforms what is merely descriptive in the first declaration into a new identity. The initiate no longer merely comes from Starry Heaven; they become Asterios. The Minotaur—not as a monster to be slain, but as the hidden Dionysian figure dwelling at the heart of the Labyrinth. Here, “Starry” is not a claim of status but a declaration that one’s deepest identity is no longer exhausted by ordinary descent. The initiate has entered a lineage that begins not with a human ancestor but with the first differentiation of the cosmos and culminates in communion with Dionysos.

In the classical story Theseus reaches the center to kill the the man-rending (Άνθρωπορραίστης) and -devouring (Άνθρωποοφαγος) Bull of Minos imprisoned inside the endlessly shifting maze. In our tradition at the center the initiate realizes that they have become the monstrous Bull— or phrased another way they recognize that the Bull at the center is the deepest truth of the self in communion with Dionysos. The Labyrinth ceases to be a prison and becomes an initiatory path that leads to the stars. The soul’s trials are interpreted through Dionysos’ own passion, death, and return. That gives suffering a participatory rather than merely punitive meaning. It isn’t valuable because suffering is intrinsically good; it becomes meaningful because it is joined to the God’s own story.

This is reinforced by the distinction between ἀστερόεντος (“starry,” applied to Heaven) and Ἀστέριος. Why this is such an important distinction is that:

• ἀστερόεις / ἀστερόεντος describes the objective reality: the star-filled Heaven from which the initiate claims descent.
• Ἀστέριος is personal. It is a name, with a story. It is what the initiate becomes.

One is the cosmos; the other is the transformed person, and that’s a beautiful progression.

As the Greek makes clear (Παραδόσεως τοῦ Ἀστερόεντος Ταύρου) the tradition itself belongs to the Starry Bull— the cosmic, mythic Dionysos. But each initiate gradually becomes Asterios, bearing within themselves the image of that Bull. The tradition preserves the memory of the cosmic archetype; initiation shapes persons into its likeness.

That is a subtle distinction, but an important one. It means the tradition is not named after its members. It is named after the reality toward which they are being conformed. The image of the chorus of stars is, in many respects, the culmination of the whole system. It recalls the ancient Greek sense that the stars are not inert objects but part of a living, ordered cosmos. In our theology the initiate’s final destiny is neither disembodied contemplation nor endless repose, but participation in the ecstatic life of Dionysos: dancing, singing, feasting, eros, and fire. That is recognizably Dionysian while also giving the eschatology a distinct shape.

Haides is not a horrible place like the Christian Hell. It is a place where the soul may rest and recover from the traumas of life. This is why the soul is drawn to the waters of Lēthē, which is like anesthesia, so that they may heal and recover before returning to the world of the living. But we are a different breed. We don’t want to forget, because in that forgetting you lose who you are. But that is a costly choice. Memory preserves not only ecstasy but grief, shame, loss, longing, and every scar that made one who one is. The initiate refuses anesthesia, not because suffering is desirable, but because love itself requires remembrance. That’s actually a profound inversion. Lēthē is still mercy. Mnēmosynē is simply a greater vocation. So we drink from the Well of Memory, that we may preserve our joys and our sorrows, our frailty and our strengths, our losses and successes. Only by accepting this may we transcend and join the company of Bacchic mystics, “with wine as our fortunate reward” as the gold leaves put it.

Of course the true opposite of Lēthē isn’t necessarily Mnēmosynē— it’s ἀλήθεια. The Greek word literally means “un-forgetting, un-concealment.” Memory is the means. Truth is the end. The initiate drinks from Memory so that Truth may become possible. Not merely factual truth. The truth of one’s own being.

The cosmology, anthropology, initiation, ethics, and eschatology all reinforce one another rather than existing as isolated symbols. More, the central images recur at every level, and each recurrence deepens their meaning rather than merely repeating them. Like “My name is Starry.” one of the tags that recurs in our tradition is the phrase Πάντα χωρεῖ or “everything dances” which shows up everywhere from Herakleitos to Jim Morrison. “Everything dances” is a wonderful theological statement because it doesn’t deny suffering. It says that suffering itself belongs to a larger choreography. Dionysos is almost never portrayed as abolishing tragedy. He transforms its meaning. Semelē dies. Zagreus is torn apart. Ariadnē is abandoned. Erigonē hangs herself. Yet none of these endings remains an ending. Not because they are erased. Because they are incorporated into a larger pattern. The dance never excludes death; it carries death with it.

Another tag is “Circles, etc.” or “Circles. Fucking circles.” as an acknowledgment of the cyclical and repeating nature of things. But also a playful recognition of the often surprising and confusing manner in which this occurs, because things both repeat and are constantly new, with infinite variation. Or as the rest of Herakleitos’ dictum goes καὶ οὐδὲν μένει “and nothing remains the same.” That’s where the tension lives. Everything circles. Nothing remains. Those are not contradictions. The circle is never the same circle. The dancer returns to the same place with different feet. The initiate hears the same question repeated— “Who are you?” —but every answer is truer than the last. The same lesson appears with different phrasing. The same symbol reappears in another myth. The same conversation returns years later in another key. The same God asks the same question from another direction. “Circles. Fucking circles.” isn’t just a joke, but perfectly captures something that is difficult to express in elevated theological prose. There is a genuine spiritual experience of realizing, “Why am I here again?” Not as failure. As recognition. That phrase gives people permission to smile at recurrence rather than resent it. It keeps cyclical time from becoming merely solemn, and restrictive— but instead experienced as something alive, something dancing.