Of course with that previous post we should keep in mind that Joker is not a political movie but a psychological one, showing the dangers of group action and the power of group narratives.

Oh, and totally random aside but spiders are perfectly at home in your ear. (I wonder if that includes the theridion grallator.)

One of the most Dionysian artists out there today has to be the Belgian musician Tamino, son of famed Egyptian actor Muharram Fouad.

The first video I saw by him was Persephone. Although he’s clearly meant to be portraying Haides I got strong Dionysos Petempamenti vibes from the performance, especially when he sang of being the light shining from the darkness. What makes the video especially interesting is that it depicts a unique variant tradition from Lebadeia in which Kore is abducted on the banks of a river in contrast to most versions where that happens in a flowery meadow. This suggests a more than casual familiarity with Greek myth (or direct inspiration.)

The next video I saw from him was Tummy, which again screamed Petempamenti to me (or possibly Antinous) especially the crowd scene, him sitting before the mirror removing his makeup and him alone in his bed.

However the cincher was Cigar, where we see Tamino not only as a crazy derelict but  as an usher in an otherworldly theater, and every single one of the Toys puts in a cameo.

His other videos also contain Dionysian allusions and symbolism – plus there’s his striking looks, his feral sensuality and that voice (so full of longing and exquisite suffering) which is a blend of Jeff Buckley and Rufus Wainright with the soul of the Orient.

Absolutely amazing.

Back around 2014 I predicted that a wave of clown-themed mayhem would sweep through the nation. There was a rash of ominous sightings coinciding with the 2016 election, one of the better seasons of American Horror Story, and then not much until February of 2019 when conspiracy theories began circulating that our world had been invaded by spectral clowns bent on reshaping it in their own warped image.

And now, as Jean-Luc Mounier notes in From Beirut to Hong Kong, the face of the Joker is appearing in demonstrations:

From Chile to Lebanon, via Hong Kong and Iraq, a number of people have taken to wearing the recognisable exaggerated smile of the Joker currently portrayed in the cinema by Joaquin Phoenix in the international hit film by Todd Philipps. The face of the Joker, Batman’s ultimate nemesis, has now been seen in masks, face paint and graffiti tags in global demonstrations protesting against governments. […] In the weeks since this film came out in the cinema, this Joker symbol of protest has already been visible on the streets, particularly in Lebanon, where a group of graffiti artists called Ashekm has painted a mural of the grimacing clown holding a Molotov cocktail. Other inscriptions elsewhere also allude to Todd Philipps’ film, such as in the Chilean city of Los Angeles, where someone has written at the foot of a statue “We are all clowns”.

. 

Mervyn Peake’s grandson (who goes by the name of Jack Peñate to honor his dii familiares) has released a new song about how monotheism and modernity came close to murdering the soul of Europe:

I heard the Gods
I heard the Gods were angry
For forgetting
For forgetting where I’m from
Tried to find my way back
Tried to find my way back
But the trail of crumbs have gone
But the trail of crumbs have gone

Good stuff.

And may all people find their way home. 

Theophrastos, as quoted in Porphyry’s On Abstinence from Animal Foods 2.24
There are, moreover, three reasons altogether for sacrificing to the Gods: to honor them, to give thanks, or from need of some thing. We ought to offer the Gods the first-fruits of all we receive, for it is their generosity that makes our living possible. Further we honor the Gods because we want evil to be averted from us and those we love or for an increase of good things, or out of gratitude because they have benefited us in the past or simply to honor their condition of goodness.

Porphyry, On Abstinence from Animal Food 2.16
He thought fit to ask him after what manner he reverenced the Gods. Clearchus answered him that he diligently sacrificed to them at proper times in every month at the new moon, crowning and adorning the statues of Hermes and Hekate, and the other sacred images which were left to us by our ancestors, and that he also honored the Gods with frankincense, and sacred wafers and cakes. He likewise said, that he performed public sacrifices annually, omitting no festive day; and that in these festivals he worshiped the Gods, not by slaying oxen, nor by cutting victims into fragments, but that he sacrificed whatever he might casually meet with, sedulously offering the first-fruits to the Gods of all the vegetable productions of the seasons, and of all the fruits with which he was supplied. He added, that some of these he placed before the statues of the Gods, but that he burnt others on their altars.

Sallustius, On the Gods and the World 16
I think it well to add some remarks about sacrifices. In the first place, since we have received everything from the Gods, and it is right to pay the giver some tithe of his gifts, we pay such a tithe of possessions in votive offering, of bodies in gifts of (hair and) adornment, and of life in sacrifices. Then secondly, prayers without sacrifices are only words, with sacrifices they are live words; the word gives meaning to the life, while the life animates the word. Thirdly, the happiness of every object is its own perfection; and perfection for each is communion with its own cause. For this reason we pray for communion with the Gods. Since, therefore, the first life is the life of the Gods, but human life is also life of a kind, and human life wishes for communion with divine life, a mean term is needed. For things very far apart cannot have communion without a mean term, and the mean term must be like the things joined; therefore the mean term between life and life must be life. That is why men sacrifice animals; only the rich do so now, but in old days everybody did, and that not indiscriminately, but giving the suitable offerings to each God together with a great deal of other worship.

Epicurus, as quoted in Philodemos, On Piety 31
Let us sacrifice to the Gods devoutly and fittingly on the proper days, and let us appropriately perform all the acts of worship as the laws stipulate, in no way disturbing ourselves with opinions on matters concerning the most excellent and august beings. Moreover let us sacrifice justly for we draw closest to Zeus when we most act like Zeus.

Areios Didymos, Epitome of Stoic Ethics 3.604-3.662
The Stoics say that only the wise man can be a priest, while no worthless person can be one. For the priest needs to be experienced in the laws concerning sacrifices, prayers, purifications, foundations, and the like. In addition to this he needs ritual, piety, and experience in the service of the Gods, and to be close to the divine nature. Not one of these things belongs to the worthless; hence, also all the stupid are impious. For impiety as a vice is ignorance of the service of the Gods, while piety is knowledge of that divine service. Likewise they say that the worthless are not holy. For holiness is described as justice with respect to the Gods. The worthless transgress many of the just customs pertaining to the Gods, on account of which they are unholy, impure, unclean, defiled and barred from festive rites. For carrying out festive rites is, they say, the mark of a civilized man, since a festival is a time when one ought to be concerned with the divine for the sake of honor and appropriate celebration. So the person who carries out festive rites needs to have humbly entered with piety into this post.

Porphyry, On Abstinence from Animal Foods 2.37.4-5
There is a multitude of divinities which some call indiscriminately Gods and others more appropriately daimones. People have given some of them names, and they receive from everyone honors equal to the celestial bodies, as well as their own distinct forms of worship. Others have no name at all in most places, but acquire a name and cult inconspicuously from a few people in villages or some cities. There is a widespread conviction about this multitude of daimones, that they can do harm if they are angered by being neglected and fail to receive their accustomed worship, and on the other hand that they can do good to those who make them well-disposed by prayer and supplication and sacrifices and the shedding of blood and all that goes with it.

Lucian, On Sacrifices 2
So nothing, it seems, that the Gods do is done without compensation. They sell men their blessings, and one can buy from them health, it may be, for a calf, wealth for four oxen, a royal throne for a hundred, a safe return from Troy to Pylos for nine bulls, and a fair voyage from Aulis to Troy for a king’s daughter! Hecuba, you know, purchased temporary immunity for Troy from Athena for twelve oxen and a frock. One may imagine, too, that they have many things on sale for the price of a cock or a wreath or nothing more than incense.

Philodemos, On Piety 25-28
Therefore I think it is especially necessary to despise those who transgress or mock the traditional rites. Furthermore it will appear that Epicurus loyally observed all the forms of worship and enjoined upon his friends to observe them, and not just be in accordance with the laws. For as he says to pray is right and natural for man, not because the Gods would be hostile if we did not pray, but the act of doing so helps us gain a better understanding of those who surpass us in their power and excellence, enabling us to fulfill our potential. He also said that every wise man holds pure and holy thoughts about the divine, namely that the nature of divinity is great and august. And it is particularly at festivals that we attain our greatest understanding of things for during a festival all that a man can think about, and all that is upon his lips, are holy matters. He didn’t just advise others to participate in the worship of the Gods – indeed, he was very active in religious matters, sharing in all festivals and sacrifices, and especially the Khoes festival and the mysteries celebrated in his city and elsewhere.

Marcianus, Institutes 3.2-3
Things which are sacred, religious, and holy are not the property of anyone. Sacred things are those which are publicly and not privately consecrated; and hence if anyone should make anything sacred for himself privately, it is not sacred but profane; where, however, a temple has once been made sacred the place still remains so, even after the edifice has been demolished.

Lucian, On Sacrifices 10-13
That is the way the Gods live, and as a result, the practices of men in the matter of divine worship are harmonious and consistent with all that. First they fenced off groves, dedicated mountains, consecrated birds and assigned plants to each God. Then they divided them up, and now worship them by nations and claim them as fellow-countrymen ; the Delphians claim Apollo, and so do the Delians, the Athenians Athena (in fact, she proves her kinship by her name), the Argives Hera, the Mygdonians Rhea, the Paphians Aphrodite. As for the Cretans, they not only say that Zeus was born and brought up among them, but even point out his tomb. We were mis­taken all this while, then, in thinking that thunder and rain and everything else comes from Zeus ; if we had but known it, he has been dead and buried in Crete this long time! Then too they erect temples, in order that the Gods may not be houseless and hearthless, of course; and they fashion images in their likeness, sending for a Praxiteles or a Polycleitus or a Phidias, who have caught sight of them somewhere and represent Zeus as a bearded man, Apollo as a perennial boy, Hermes with his first moustache, Poseidon with sea-blue hair and Athena with green eyes ! In spite of all, those who enter the temple think that what they behold is not now ivory from India nor gold mined in Thrace, but the very son of Cronus and Rhea, transported to earth by Phidias and bidden to be overlord of de­serted Pisa, thinking himself lucky if he gets a sacrifice once in four long years as an incident to the Olympic games. When they have established altars and formulae and lustral rites, they present their sacrifices, the farmer an ox from the plough, the shepherd a lamb, the goatherd a goat, someone else incense or a cake ; the poor man, however, propitiates the God by just kissing his own hand. But those who offer victims (to come back to them) deck the animal with gar­lands, after finding out far in advance whether it is perfect or not, in order that they may not kill some­thing that is of no use to them; then they bring it to the altar and slaughter it under the God’s eyes, while it bellows plaintively—making, we must suppose, auspicious sounds, and fluting low music to accom­pany the sacrifice! Who would not suppose that the Gods like to see all this ? And although the notice says that no one is to be allowed within the holy-water who has not clean hands, the priest himself stands there all bloody, just like the Cyclops of old, cutting up the victim, removing the entrails, plucking out the heart, pouring the blood about the altar, and doing everything possible in the way of piety. To crown it all, he lights a fire and puts upon it the goat, skin and all, and the sheep, wool and all; and the smoke, divine and holy, mounts upward and gradually dissipates into Heaven itself.

Hail Astrágaloi!

I wanted to confirm a detail about the Lion Hunt when I came across this piece at the Daily Mail from April of this year:

Simon Cowell’s most recent real estate investment is said to have come with the soul of a gay Roman. According to former-owner Christian Levett, the London property (which Simon purchased for £15 million to live in with partner Lauren Silverman and their five-year-old son Eric last October) is haunted by Antinous – the lover of Hadrian, the ruler of the Roman Empire from 117 to 138. Levett claims that he himself brought Antinous’ spirit into the home when he purchased a statue of him in 2014, inadvertently unleashing the Bithynian Greek’s spirit onto the property. ‘It was delivered in a crate,’ the hedge-fund billionaire said. ‘When I was locking up, I heard the sound of heavy objects being knocked over from the drawing room where Antinous was still lying in his box. The same happened the next two nights. But there was nobody there.’ A further source has also claimed that Simon, 59, believes this is more than just an urban legend. ‘Simon believes in spirits so he’s been freaked out by this story. I don’t think he was aware when he moved in. He might have to call a ghost-buster,’ they said.

While that does not really answer my question (thankfully I found the information here) it sure is a neat story.

Earlier in the month Petros (a good friend and regular commenter here) contacted me asking if I would be interested in a bust of Dionysos and Ariadne. His son is starting up a 3D-printing business and wanted to test some things out. So of course I said yeah, and the week of my birthday his precious gift arrived.

This turned out to be quite fortuitous, as I am currently in the process of remodeling my temple space. I got the inspiration to set up nine shrines rather than a single central one, each reflecting a different festival and the aspect of the God which presides over it. As the idol consists of Ariadne and Dionysos entwined this is a perfect representation for the Pannychia. 

And here are some remarks Petros sent along with it:

I’m glad that the gift is timely! I offered some pine and cedar incense (I have no storax) and let the smoke flow around it and said the Day 6 prayers to Dionysos and Ariadne since that was the day of its completion. Seemed like the right thing to do.

[…]

It actually was pretty cool to watch its creation. Over 32 hours this intricate lattice work was made like scaffolding. When it was over, my son peeled it off like a hardboiled eggshell and Voila! This was within. It’s around 8 inches tall.

Once I have the nine shrines constructed and their idols properly installed I will share pics of my own.

Thank you Petros and son of Petros.

Emily Frances Pagrabs, Peter the Great and His Changing Identity
The tsar was known throughout Europe for his ability to drink. A contemporary said, “He didn’t miss a single day without getting drunk.” This came as no surprise to contemporaries, as alcohol had long been “the joy of the Russes.” Peter’s father, Alexei, and his boyars used to take pleasure in out-drinking the foreign diplomats. While this drunkenness seems to be a national trait, Peter seems to have been one of the best. Said historian Robert Massie, “When he was young, though, these wild bacchanalia did not leave Peter exhausted and debauched, but actually seemed to refresh him for the next day’s work. He could drink all night with his comrades and then, while they snored in drunken slumber, rise at dawn and leave them to begin work as a carpenter or shipbuilder. Few could match his pace.”

Peter amassed a collection of friends and created, at the age of eighteen, the Drunken Synod. Mocking the hierarchy and order of the church, the friends were organized into a college of cardinals, bishops, priests, and deacons. Peter took care in devising a system of rituals and ceremonies; for example, the first commandment was, “Bacchus be worshipped with strong and honorable drinking and receive his just dues.” Even as the tsar matured and became an emperor, he continued to participate in such games and behaviors, which were worse on holidays and at weddings. The foreigners who visited the tsar found the behavior “vulgar and scandalous,” unsuited to a man who proclaimed to be the emperor of Russia.

You can read the rest here.

Hail Sphaíra!

Here’s a surprisingly good interview on the Villa dei Misteri and the cult of Dionysos in Southern Italy by Gordon of Rune Soup and author and researcher Peter Mark Adams, who just released Mystai: Dancing out the Mysteries of Dionysos through Scarlet Imprint. There are a number of things I’d quibble with, but a lot fewer than normal. Might have to pick this book up after all. 

A couple hours back 42 years ago I came screaming and blood-drenched into this world, and Gods willing that’s how I’ll depart it too.

This has been a fun – and important! – trip down memory lane, but now it’s time to celebrate. Empty a glass or three for Dionysos this day, if you would. 

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)

I’ve had a number of ecstatic and mystical experiences while drunk (anywhere from lightly buzzed to stumbling around puking on myself) or on weed, ‘shrooms and other variously legal substances.

I’ve had a number of ecstatic and mystical experiences brought about by physical exhaustion, fasting, pain and other ordeals as well as meditation, visualization and sex.

I’ve even had a number of ecstatic and mystical experiences where I was completely stone sober and not really doing anything.

And you know what? The differences between them are minimal.

They exist and in their way can be quite profound. For instance, I feel a gradual opening up while on pot and the visions tend to be rather heady – ethereal and intellectual and associative. I find that it strongly heightens my intuition and ability to make astounding logical leaps and it helps my writing to be more free-flowing. Mushrooms (especially amanita muscaria) give the experience a more pronounced physical focus, and not just because you tend to start off by riding waves of nausea. I become very conscious of my body and its processes (at the level of blood, muscle and bone) and this tends to take me deep down, through the corridors of flesh into the psychological and from there to other worlds, both in and outside myself. At the same time it tends to draw stuff up to the surface, especially illness, pollution and unresolved psychological shit which I am then able to purify and release. Salvia is something else entirely – it helps one to see the light and life that flow through all things and opens doors to strange topsy-turvy wonderlands.

But none of the experiences brought about by these plant and fungal allies are any more or less real than what I’ve experienced without them. That’s not to say that everything you experience on drugs is real – believing that will land you in the loony bin or prey to malevolent spirits or worse. Discernment is one of the first faculties you must cultivate if you’re going to be doing any kind of spiritual work – not just being able to tell the difference between real and fake, but to be able to understand the symbolic language of the drug and how to tell what is its influence, what is the influence of your mind, what is the influence of the God or spirit you’re interacting with and all of the other tangled threads. And you don’t just have to do that while on drugs – in fact some of the craziest shit I’ve been through was triggered by chanting and controlled breathing back in my Chan Buddhist days.

I’m not surprised that a lot of folks have got hang-ups about using entheogens – for the last twenty-six centuries Western culture has been waging a war against ecstasy. And note that I put the start of that before the birth of Christ – they’ve just waged it more effectively and ruthlessly than any of their predecessors. In fact one of the things that Christians, and especially the Protestant branch, have done is make people deeply suspicious of spiritual experience that comes mediated through anything external – including the body since they’ve also convinced us to view ourselves as ghosts trapped in fleshy machines. So someone who can think their way to henosis is more advanced than someone who loses themselves in dance and music which is still better than the poor benighted primitive who has to drink a potion to see his God. That kind of thing may be tolerated when brown people do it but whites ought to know better.

The Bacchic Orphic, on the other hand, is an animist who understands that all things possess life, intelligence and power – different from one’s own, to be sure, but no less meaningful. If not, how could the stones and trees and beasts have been charmed by the masterful lyre of the Thracian? How could the thunder have birthed their God, the mountain nursed him, the wild things attend him, the grape contain him? Reject this principle and you close yourself off to the world – it’s just you alone with the God of your imagination. For the Bacchic Orphic the world is one of expansive relationships, ever changing and increasingly complex since the splitting of the egg. Why do you think he drives the mad-women from their homes? To see what’s out there and discover who they are in connection with it.

That’s why when I smoke a bowl I’m not just inhaling the fumes of a weed – that weed has a spirit which I draw into myself so that she will help open my eyes and loosen my mind, a spirit I have long history with. Just as there’s a spirit in the drum and a spirit in these words I’m typing. The experience is going to be different depending on the spirits involved and how certain elements are configured – but even that’s no guarantee since repeating everything from rite to rite may still end in differing results because of something unrelated going on with you or the God you’re worshiping.

In fact, everyone’s experience of the Gods is unique. You can have half a dozen participants and get twenty different accounts of what happened during a rite. Not only may the same God engage with people differently he may want different things of them. That’s why when the animal sacrifice issue came up I spoke only to its central place within the Starry Bull tradition; Dionysos has not asked that of others, therefore their devotions are not lacking for its absence.

So while moderate indulgence may be the most sensible and sustainable way to approach Dionysos, I’m not prepared to take excess (even to the point of self-destructive addiction) off the table. Let’s be perfectly clear – not all the ways that lead to closeness and understanding of Dionysos are pleasant ways. Pentheus and Lykourgos have seen things in Dionysos that the pious will never glimpse and insanity contains more than just manic pixie dream girls. Sometimes it’s filth and fear and not leaving your bed for a week. If your goal isn’t just to make friends with Dionysos but to experience him in his entirety you’re going to go to the extremes and you’re going to get broken. Probably a lot.

Now, you can become too broken. You can stop experiencing anything but the broken parts of Dionysos – or worse, stop experiencing him at all. It can be really difficult to find your way back from that – and plenty never do. The failure rate for Dionysians is extraordinary – some of our best are also our worst, and I would caution against imitating them. But I would caution even more strenuously against assuming that Dionysos wasn’t with them in that moment, no matter how wretched, destructive and out of control they were. He’s an odd God after all.

Also, while I happen to like that passage from Euboulos a couple things need to be kept in mind. To begin with he has Dionysos claim that only the first three kraters belong to him. A krater is a mixing-bowl, not a cup. A decently sized one, such as the Euphronios krater, could hold around 45 liters of wine. I have a superhumanly high tolerance for alcohol and yet even I would find 36 gallons of wine a little hard to swallow, especially if I was using the recommended mixing rates – 3 parts water to 1 wine if you want a convivial symposion; 1:1 for orgies and waterless if you’re a barbaric Thracian. If you exceed the limit imposed by Dionysos intoxication’s the least of your worries – you’re going to be pissing for a week straight!

Secondly, Euboulos isn’t writing as a priest or mantis or from a similar position of authority – that tag was lifted by Athenaios from the play Semele which, judging by its remaining fragments, was a pretty obscene farce. Scholars are divided on whether it represented his fiery premature birth or his descent into the otherworld – I’m inclined to think the latter since at one point Dionysos acts as symposiarch, laying down all the rules to a chorus of rowdy, drunken initiates or satyrs, which means that it could have been a burlesque on the Orphic belief of the eternal banquet of the pious which Plato also mocks. Plus another fragment contains a phallic joke at the expense of Hermes and while he could have been escorting baby Dionysos off to Nysa I think it likelier that he was acting in his psychopomp role. Another notch in favor of this theory is that earlier Aristophanes had presented Dionysos on stage trying to get to the underworld in The Frogs, so clearly this was a scenario that the comic poets exploited. Most people who read The Frogs have a difficult time reconciling Aristophanes’ portrayal with the Dionysos they have encountered. He’s a boorish, lying, cheating coward – at one point he even pisses his chiton.

Now, I’m not suggesting that a jokester is incapable of providing accurate insight into the nature of this God or at least how he was viewed by certain segments of ancient Athenian society – heaven forfend! – but we need to consider our sources before relying too heavily on them. Diodoros didn’t write the same things or for the same reasons that Homer and Orpheus did, something I’ve discussed more fully here. Not every portrayal of the God is meant to carry equal weight.

The gold tablet from Pelinna reads:

Now you have died and now you have been born, thrice blessed one, on this very day. Say to Persephone that Bakchios himself freed you. A bull you rushed to milk. Quickly, you rushed to milk. A ram you fell into milk. You have wine as your fortunate honor. And rites await you beneath the earth, just as the other blessed ones.

The gold tablet from Thurii reads:

Rejoice at the experience! This you have never before experienced. You have become divine instead of mortal. You have fallen as a kid into milk. Hail, hail, as you travel on the right, through the Holy Meadow and Groves of Persephone.

Edward Butler offers a brilliant interpretation of this recurring motif:

The Orphic slogan, “A kid, I fell into milk”: I believe this to be equivalent in a certain respect to part of Crowley’s Oath of the Abyss; namely, the part about “interpreting every phenomenon as a particular dealing of God with my soul.” To say “A kid, I fell into milk” is to say that I was thrown into a world not of my making, but found it was made of meaning. […] It is not just a question, then, of interpreting one’s own life, but that one becomes a “phenomenon” to be interpreted by others. This is what a hero is, I think, a mortal having become such a site of meaning.

Because I’m strange that way, his post reminded me of something Lana Del Rey once said:

I was a singer, not a very popular one, who once had dreams of becoming a beautiful poet- but upon an unfortunate series of events saw those dreams dashed and divided like a million stars in the night sky that I wished on over and over again- sparkling and broken. But I really didn’t mind because I knew that it takes getting everything you ever wanted and then losing it to know what true freedom is. When the people I used to know found out what I had been doing, how I had been living- they asked me why. But there’s no use in talking to people who have a home, they have no idea what its like to seek safety in other people, for home to be wherever you lay your head. I was always an unusual girl, my mother told me that I had a chameleon soul. No moral compass pointing me due north, no fixed personality. Just an inner indecisiveness that was as wide as wavering as the ocean. And if I said that I didn’t plan for it to turn out this way I’d be lying- because I was born to be the other woman. I belonged to no one- who belonged to everyone, who had nothing- who wanted everything with a fire for every experience and an obsession for freedom that terrified me to the point that I couldn’t even talk about- and pushed me to a nomadic point of madness that both dazzled and dizzied me. Every night I used to pray that I’d find my people- and finally I did- on the open road. We have nothing to lose, nothing to gain, nothing we desired anymore- except to make our lives into a work of art.

So there’s a discussion playing out on Tumblr about whether all the gods love all people which was started by someone’s comment that Aphrodite hates asexuals, based on a rather shallow reading of Euripides’ play Hippolytos. Not going to comment on any of that, though in passing someone remarked:

Also I think people forget about Dionysus?? Like he is the God of sex and wine. Although I don’t think he would out right smite them, but I think he’ll try to tempt them.

Which I will address, as it touches on something that I think a lot of people, including really smart and seriously devoted people, tend to overlook when it comes to him.

Dionysos is paradox.

Just about everything one can say about him is true, and it’s complete negation is also true.

This is something the Orphics of Olbia knew well when they wrote:

SEG 28.659:
βίος. θάνατος. βίος. ἀλήθεια. Ζαγρεύς. Διόνυσος

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

SEG 28.660:
εἰρήνη. πόλεμος. ἀλήθεια. ψεῦδος. Διόνυσος

Peace. War. Truth. Lie. Dionysos

SEG 28.661:
Διόνυσος. ἀλήθεια. σῶμα. ψυχή

Dionysos. Truth. Body. Soul.

Dionysos is definitely about the sexy times, as evidenced by the giant imitation cocks people carried in his festivals which often turned into violent drunken orgies. His best friends are lusty satyrs and home-wrecking madwomen. He churns up erotic excitement and a lot of folks, particularly in Southern Italy, looked forward to carnal union with him in the afterlife. His own proclivities run the gamut from pretty boys and genderqueers to fairly straight-laced, heteronormative, monogamy.

That’s not paradox though.

As his son by the goddess Aphrodite was fond of saying, haec cunnum, caput hic praebeat, ille nates for it’s all the same in the dark.

In Euripides’ play The Bakchai Pentheus is obsessed with the idea that the Theban women have been led astray by the perverse stranger and are engaged in all sorts of lewd activities on the mountainside:

They creep off one by one
to lonely spots to have sex with men,
claiming they’re busy maenads worshipping.
But they rank Aphrodite, goddess of sexual desire,
ahead of Bacchus their lord.
People say some stranger has arrived,
some wizard, a conjurer from the land of Lydia—
with sweet-smelling hair in golden ringlets
and Aphrodite’s charms in wine-dark eyes.
He hangs around the young girls day and night,
dangling in front of them his joyful mysteries.
If I catch him in this city, I’ll stop him.
He’ll make no more clatter with his thyrsos,
or wave his hair around. I’ll chop off his head,
slice it right from his body.

To which the aged Tieresias replies:

On women, where Aphrodite is concerned,
Dionysos will not enforce restraint
such modesty you must seek in nature,
where it already dwells. For any woman
whose character is chaste won’t be defiled
by Bacchic revelry.

Once Pentheus has the stranger (who is none other than Dionysos himself) in his possession he presses the point:

Well, stranger, I see this body of yours
is not unsuitable for women’s pleasure—
that’s why you’ve come to Thebes. As for your hair,
it’s long, which suggests that you’re no wrestler.
It flows across your cheeks that are most seductive.
You’ve a white skin, too. You’ve looked after it,
avoiding the sun’s rays by staying in the shade,
while with your beauty you chase Aphrodite.

Their exchange is like a tango, part duel and part dance of desire, with Dionysos cool, calm and collected the whole time as Pentheus becomes increasingly hysterical. At one point they are interrupted by the Messenger whom the king had sent out to spy on the women and what he reports is completely at variance with Pentheus’ lust-fueled delusions:

They were all asleep, bodies quite relaxed,
some leaning back on leafy boughs of pine,
others cradling heads on oak-leaf pillows,
resting on the ground—in all modesty.
They weren’t as you described—all drunk on wine
or on the music of their flutes, hunting
for Aphrodite in the woods alone.
Once she heard my men,
your mother stood up amid those Bacchae,
then called them to stir their limbs from sleep.
They rubbed refreshing sleep out of their eyes,
and stood up straight there—a marvelous sight,
to see such an orderly arrangement,
women young and old and still unmarried girls.
First, they let their hair loose down their shoulders,
tied up the fawn skins (some had untied the knots
to loosen up the chords). Then around those skins
they looped some snakes, who licked the women’s cheeks.
Some held young gazelles or wild wolf cubs
and fed them on their own white milk,
the ones who’d left behind at home a new-born child
whose breasts were still swollen full of milk.
They draped themselves with garlands from oak trees,
ivy and flowering yew. Then one of them,
taking a thyrsos, struck a rock with it,
and water gushed out, fresh as dew. Another,
using her thyrsos, scraped the ground. At once,
the god sent fountains of wine up from the spot.
All those who craved white milk to drink
just scratched the earth with their fingertips—
it came out in streams. From their ivy wands
thick sweet honey dripped. Oh, if you’d been there,
if you’d seen this, you’d come with reverence
to that god whom you criticize so much.

The eros that these women experience is not directed towards other humans, nor even to the god who has driven them frenzied from their homes, husbands and children – it is rather a transpersonal connection to nature and the beasts of the wild, with whom they feel a profound kinship. He has roused them from ordinary existence, lifted them out of the confines of their small and circumscribed identities, blurred the boundaries between them and all of creation, showed them that they are capable of being so much more than they ever dreamed of and given them the power to work miracles. They are filled with a lust for life and take animals, literally life embodied, to their breasts not for pleasure but to share the sustenance of their own life with them. They are imitating the primordial nymphs who had been the nurses and care-givers of the infant god when he was most vulnerable, as Diodoros Sikeliotes explicitly states:

Consequently in many Greek cities every other year Bacchic bands of women gather, and it is lawful for the maidens to carry the thyrsos and to join in the frenzied revelry, crying out ‘Euai!’ and honouring the god; while the matrons, forming in groups, offer sacrifices to the god and celebrate his mysteries and, in general, extol with hymns the presence of Dionysos, in this manner acting the parts of those who of old were the companions and nurses of the god. (Library of History 4.3.2-5)

Nor is this the only instance where we may observe such Dionysian chastity. There are numerous vases and other artistic representations of mainades fending off the unwanted sexual advances of satyrs with their thyrsoi, as well as thiasoi that were restricted to the female sex and sometimes even elderly women who were outside the domain of Aphrodite, such as in Italy:

Then Hispala gave an account of the origin of these rites. At first they were confined to women; no male was admitted, and they had three stated days in the year on which persons were initiated during the daytime, and matrons were chosen to act as priestesses. (Livy, History of Rome 39.13)

And at Athens:

I wish now to call before you the sacred herald who waits upon the wife of the king, when she administers the oath to the Gerarai as they carry their baskets in front of the altar before they touch the victims, in order that you may hear the oath and the words that are pronounced, at least as far as it is permitted you to hear them; and that you may understand how august and holy and ancient the rites are. I live a holy life and am pure and unstained by all else that pollutes and by commerce with man and I will celebrate the feast of the wine god and the Iobacchic feast in honor of Dionysos in accordance with custom and at the appointed times. (Demosthenes, Against Neaira 74-78)

Interestingly, there were also thiasoi that excluded women (I.Kallatis 47) and men who abstained from sex in service to the god:

I, who never in my life experienced Kypris and was an enemy of wickedness, was taken as a companion (hetairos) by Bromios together with the Fates. Bromios has me as a fellow-initiate in his own dances. My name is Julianus, and I lived 18 years. My father was Julianus and my mother was Apphia. Having died, they honored me with the tomb and this inscribed monument. His step-father Asklepiades, his aunt Juliane, his maternal uncle Dionysios, Ammianos, and Stratoneikos honored him. Year 325 of the Sullan era, 12th of the month of Peritios. (TAM 5.477)

And in myth Dionysos helps bring sanity to a raging hermaphroditic deity by castrating hir:

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. (Arnobius of Sicca, Against the Heathen 5.5-6)

A fate which Dionysos, himself, is said to have suffered as Clement of Alexandria’s Exhortation to the Greeks relates:

If you wish to inspect the orgies of the Corybantes, then know that, having killed their third brother, they covered the head of the dead body with a purple cloth, crowned it, and carrying it on the point of a spear, buried it under the roots of Olympus. These mysteries are, in short, murders and funerals. And the priests of these rites, who are called kings of the sacred rites by those whose business it is to name them, give additional strangeness to the tragic occurrence, by forbidding parsley with the roots from being placed on the table, for they think that parsley grew from the Corybantic blood that flowed forth; just as the women, in celebrating the Thesmophoria, abstain from eating the seeds of the pomegranate which have fallen on the ground, from the idea that pomegranates sprang from the drops of the blood of Dionysos. Those Corybantes also they call Cabiric; and the ceremony itself they announce as the Cabiric mystery. For those two identical fratricides, having abstracted the box in which the phallos of Bacchus was deposited, took it to Etruria–dealers in honourable wares truly. They lived there as exiles, employing themselves in communicating the precious teaching of their superstition, and presenting phallic symbols and the box for the Tyrrhenians to worship. And some will have it, not improbably, that for this reason Dionysos was called Attis, because he was mutilated. And what is surprising at the Tyrrhenians, who were barbarians, being thus initiated into these foul indignities, when among the Athenians, and in the whole of Greece–I blush to say it–the shameful legend about Demeter holds its ground?

Delia Morgan explores this side of Dionysos in her powerful piece, The Ivied Rod: Gender and the Phallus in Dionysian Religion:

Nowhere is the paradox of Dionysos more dramatic than in the stark contrast between the god of the phallus and the ‘effeminate’ god of women. Ancient sources make frequent reference to Dionysos as ‘womanly’ or ‘not a real man’ (Evans, 20-21; Jameson, 45); they sometimes dress him in women’s clothing as well. Dionysos himself was never shown with an erection. This iconographic convention, along with the occasional reference to effeminacy or androgyny, has led to various theories seeking to drastically unman the god, as it were; some writers read into these details the idea that perhaps Dionysos himself was asexual (Jameson, 44), or even emasculated through castration (Kerenyi, 275-277, 285). Jameson, for example, in examining some of the mythic fragments dealing with Dionysos, has arrived at the idea of the wine god as weak, cowardly and asexual – all aspects which would support the charge of effeminacy. (Jameson, 50, 59-63). He cites the myth of Lycurgus, who drove the young god into the ocean with an ox-goad. Francois Lissarrague states: “Dionysos as depicted is scarcely sexed; he is never seen in an erect state or manipulating his phallus.” Another factor frequently cited as support for the effeminacy of Dionysos is his feminine appearance. Early iconography of Dionysos shows him as a youthful adult with long hair and a beard, exotically dressed in a long chiton and himation. Dionysos had to be feminine, for the same reason that he had to be foreign and bestial: he was Other, opposed by nature to the dearest values of Greek society. He was wet and wild, emotional and disorderly, a god of madness and shape-shifting. He could not be a ‘real man’ in the eyes of the Greeks because a real man could not be allowed to possess these attributes. He was a strange god, and a god of the periphery – edging on the dark and unknown. The periphery, the uncivilized, was the realm of women and beasts; hence his companions were maenads and satyrs. His dangerous influence further exacerbated the problem with women: possessed by Dionysos, they became even more irrational, passionate and wild. Liberated by the god, they abandoned their chaste behavior and wifely duties and danced madly through the forests, defying all social restraints. By enhancing those qualities that were seen as the dark side of femininity, Dionysos himself could be seen as partaking of a female extreme; his nature was in some threatening ways even more feminine than that of an ordinary woman. The charge of effeminacy was not taken lightly in ancient Greece or Rome; there were social stigmas and sometimes civil penalties attached to the label. In Greece, a man earned a reputation as a ‘kinaidos,’ an effeminate man, through a penchant for taking a passive role in sexuality or through excessive unrestrained lust; he was not to be allowed to take leadership roles or any active public role in government. (Winkler, 176-178, 188-190) Given the seriousness of the accusation when directed against a man, what religious import could be read into the charge of effeminacy when directed against a god? Dionysos was the only major god to be spoken of in this way; he was thought by many to be a dangerous foreign import, although evidence points to his presence in the pantheon from the Mycenean era. He was seen as a subversive influence, who in his myths faced opposition by kings and led entire cities into chaos and revolt. His religion was always regarded with some fear and ambivalence, almost as a necessary evil.

This is something that I have experienced myself and discussed a while back in Chthonic Dionysos and the Saints of the True Vine:

This Dionysos is dark and still and somber, the quiet amid the storm, the masked pillar around which those filled with his frenzy dance and shout in ecstatic celebration. He is not completely immobile – his movements are just slow like the shoots of a plant triumphantly rising up through the soil, like the gradual formation of stalactites in a cave, like the procession of the stars through the heavens. The face of this Dionysos is always concealed in shadows, except for his eyes which are bright with the flames of madness and gaze into the depths of your soul and beyond. His voice echoes across a vast chasm even when he is nearer to you than your next heartbeat. There is an impenetrable denseness to his spirit, a gloom so black and so full of painful memories that even he has difficulty bearing its weight. He is ancient beyond all reckoning and yet remains unwearied by all that he has witnessed and experienced. His heart is fierce with love for the fragile and ephemeral things of this world, rejoicing and suffering along with them. He cannot turn his face away from them – he must witness it all, even if it makes him mad. And though part of him remains forever down in the caverns deep beneath the earth, another part extends upwards into our world, surrounded by an innumerable host. The lusty satyrs, the madwomen, the nymphs who nurse him and the dead who belong to him, an invisible troop of wild spirits that march unseen but clearly heard in his processions, who race through the fields and forests and city streets on certain especially dark nights in pursuit of the victims of the hunt.

Nothing about Dionysos is simple so we would do well to avoid the sort of simplifications one frequently finds in discussions about him on Tumblr.

Margites was famed in antiquity for his foolishness. The man was such a simpleton, in fact, that he didn’t know what sex was or how to do it.

Eustathius tells the following story about him:

He did not fall upon his bride until she, at her mother’s instigation, pretended to have suffered a wound in her lower parts, and said that no remedy would be of any help except for a male member being fitted to the place: so it was that he made love to her, for therapeutic purposes.

According to Hesychius the poor woman claimed to have been bitten between the legs by a scorpion. (Which has interesting parallels with tarantism.)

In another version of this story Margites travels to consult the prophetic head of Orpheus before his wedding and receives the following oracular advice, preserved in Hippolytos’ Refutation of All Heresies and usually assumed to be a reference to the two roads in the underworld, though scholar M. L. West believes it to be an allusion to the vagina:

About these Mysteries, and the road that leads there, which is ‘level and capacious’ and takes the damned to Persephone, the Poet says:

But below it there is a rugged path,
enclosed and slippery like mud,
which is the best way to reach
the delightful grove of much-esteemed Aphrodite.

On these matters, the Saviour has stated explicitly that ‘narrow and tight is the road that leads to life, and few are they that enter upon it, but level and capacious is the road that leads to perdition, and many are they that pass along it.’ (8.41-5)

Which makes me think of the Gold Tablet from Thurii:

A: I come from the pure, o Pure Queen of the earthly ones, Eukles, Eubouleus, and You other Immortal Gods! I too claim to be of your blessed race, but Fate and other Immortal gods conquered me with the star-smiting thunder. And I flew out from the hard and deeply-grievous circle, and stepped into the crown with my swift feet, and slipped into the bosom of the Mistress, the Queen of the Underworld. And I stepped out from the crown with my swift feet.
B: Happy and blessed one! You shall be divine instead of mortal.
A: I have fallen as a kid into milk.

Today is the Feast of the Dionysian Kings, and we had a pretty good discussion on the underlying themes of the festival and some ways to celebrate it last night in the thiasos’ fancy new Skype chat. It also prompted this piece by Galina reappraising the figure of Pentheus, who is pretty universally reviled but considered one of the heroes of the Starry Bull pantheon. Even after reading her piece some people might have a difficult time understanding why he’s included. I sure as hell did when Dionysos started pushing for it.

And yet it makes perfect fucking sense – he’s the god of outsiders, including those outside his circle. His love is too large to be fit into rigid little boxes. A while back I said that you don’t really know Dionysos until you hate him – but you also don’t know him until you really know how big he is. He is big enough to take all of the hate and all of the rage we can muster, just keep taking it and taking it until we have nothing left to pour out of us – and yet he’s still there, still bigger than us, stronger than us and most terrible of all, still loving us.

Now, don’t get the impression that he’s weak or sentimental from that. There comes a point where we’ve made our choice and the consequences come crashing down on us and he won’t stop it, even if he could. If nothing else, Pentheus shows that. But it doesn’t mean he stops loving us, even when those horrible things we’ve brought upon ourselves play out – or after.

And I think that’s why Pentheus is one of our heroes – to remind us of how limitless Dionysos’ love is.

Or maybe it’s a challenge – everything about Dionysos challenges us in one way or another. But this is a challenge to look beyond the surface, to look beyond the commonly accepted truths, to look at things with other than human eyes and human values.

To see the world how Dionysos sees us.

Do you think there’s any part of you he doesn’t know, any thought or desire that remains hidden from him? When you drink that wine or give yourself over to a spontaneous ecstasy you’re inviting him into you and he sloshes about in all your crevices and crannies, slips through all those dusty, boarded up places inside your mind, rushes through your bloodstream, dances through your liver, wears you like meat pyjamas and gets pissed out of you the following morning.

Yeah, sit with that image for a while.

Now, depending on the nature of your relationship, he may never let on that you guys have shared that level of intimacy – but the knowledge still colors his perception of you.

Think about that for a moment too. There’s nowhere to hide and nothing you can hide from him.

All your fears, all your weaknesses, all those countless ways you don’t measure up, all your gross little human bits.

He’s seen them. He knows them. He’s felt them.

Through you and everyone else that’s let him in going back to the beginning of humanity, he’s felt them.

And he loves them. He loves you. As long as you are you – whatever that is, whatever it was, whatever it’s becoming – he loves you. That’s why he asks, “Who are you?”

It’s putting a mirror before your eyes and asking you to see yourself as he does.

As he did when he was a little child gazing into his reflection in a burnished surface in an empty hall, hearing the approach of the horrible chalk-faced monsters come to devour him, and not caring because what he saw was beautiful, too beautiful to look away from.

And what he saw was you – something worth getting torn apart to see.

In a recent discussion I mentioned bricolage:

Though it’s evolved organically the Starry Bull pantheon is tightly-knit with a lot of intersection among its members. Many of them have a habit of showing up when the others are called, especially within specifically thiasos-style rites. This is part of why there’s such a strong insistence that one get to know the entire pantheon during the early stages – we don’t want folks freaking out when headless saints or giant spiders show up during their devotions. Another part is because all of them are involved in the mysteries of our tradition. In fact how and to what degree they are involved determines which mystery a person goes through, bricolage-style.

Bricolage (and there’s a fairly decent entry on it at Wikipedia) was Radcliffe G. Edmonds III’s solution to the problem of varying types of Orphism:

I propose a re-examination of the ancient evidence that takes seriously the model, proposed by Burkert and others, of itinerant religious specialists competing for religious authority among a varying clientele. Rather than looking for a coherent set of sacred texts canonical to people who considered themselves Orphics, texts expressive of doctrines pertaining to sin, salvation, and afterlife, we should look for the products of bricolage, pieced together from widely available traditional material to meet the demand of clients looking for extra-ordinary solutions to their problems. If the texts and rituals are products of bricolage, however, and their creators bricoleurs competing for authority, we cannot expect to find either consistency of texts or doctrines, merely a loose family resemblance between composites of the same traditional elements. A redefinition of ancient Orphism requires a polythetic definition that accommodates the complexities of the ancient contexts rather than the sort of monothetic definition that identifies Orphism by its scriptures and doctrines. Nevertheless, the attempt to force the evidence into this preconceived modern construct has created unnecessary confusions in interpretation, as, e.g., the debate over the Orphic status of the author of the Derveni papyrus shows. (Redefining Ancient Orphism)

There’s a strong parallel between this and a practice pioneered by William S. Burroughs called the cut-up technique:

Also in the 1950s, painter and writer Brion Gysin more fully developed the cut-up method after accidentally re-discovering it. He had placed layers of newspapers as a mat to protect a tabletop from being scratched while he cut papers with a razor blade. Upon cutting through the newspapers, Gysin noticed that the sliced layers offered interesting juxtapositions of text and image. He began deliberately cutting newspaper articles into sections, which he randomly rearranged. The book Minutes to Go resulted from his initial cut-up experiment: unedited and unchanged cut-ups which emerged as coherent and meaningful prose. Gysin introduced Burroughs to the technique at the Beat Hotel. The pair later applied the technique to printed media and audio recordings in an effort to decode the material’s implicit content, hypothesizing that such a technique could be used to discover the true meaning of a given text. Burroughs also suggested cut-ups may be effective as a form of divination saying, “When you cut into the present the future leaks out.”

Interestingly I just came across a reference to this from antiquity, Irenaeus’ Against Heresies 1.9.4:

Then, again, collecting a set of expressions and names scattered here and there in Scripture, they twist them, as we have already said, from a natural to a non-natural sense. In so doing, they act like those who bring forward any kind of hypothesis they fancy, and then endeavour to support them out of the poems of Homer, so that the ignorant imagine that Homer actually composed the verses bearing upon that hypothesis, which has, in fact, been but newly constructed; and many others are led so far by the regularly-formed sequence of the verses, as to doubt whether Homer may not have composed them. Of this kind is the following passage, where one, describing Hercules as having been sent by Eurystheus to the dog in the infernal regions, does so by means of these Homeric verses—for there can be no objection to our citing these by way of illustration, since the same sort of attempt appears in both:—

Thus saying, there sent forth from his house deeply groaning.— Od., x. 76.
The hero Hercules conversant with mighty deeds.— Od., xxi. 26.
Eurystheus, the son of Sthenelus, descended from Perseus.— Il., xix. 123.
That he might bring from Erebus the dog of gloomy Pluto.— Il., viii. 368.
And he advanced like a mountain-bred lion confident of strength.— Od., vi. 130.
Rapidly through the city, while all his friends followed. — Il., xxiv. 327.
Both maidens, and youths, and much-enduring old men.— Od., xi. 38.
Mourning for him bitterly as one going forward to death. — Il., xxiv. 328.
But Mercury and the blue-eyed Minerva conducted him.— Od., xi. 626.
For she knew the mind of her brother, how it laboured with grief.— Il., ii. 409.

Now, what simple-minded man, I ask, would not be led away by such verses as these to think that Homer actually framed them so with reference to the subject indicated? But he who is acquainted with the Homeric writings will recognise the verses indeed, but not the subject to which they are applied, as knowing that some of them were spoken of Ulysses, others of Hercules himself, others still of Priam, and others again of Menelaus and Agamemnon. But if he takes them and restores each of them to its proper position, he at once destroys the narrative in question.

Why must we assume intent to deceive? Who is to say that the bricoleur did not feel himself inspired in the arrangement of these random scraps of text, especially when a new story seemed to emerge almost of its own bidding from the disparate fragments? As Burroughs said, “When you cut into the present the future leaks out.”

At any rate, these methods have deep resonance for me because of Dionysiac sparagmos:

Dionysos, when he saw his image reflected in the mirror, began to pursue it and so was torn to pieces. But Apollon put Dionysos back together and brought him back to life because he was a purifying god and the true savior. (Olympiodoros, Commentary on Plato’s Phaedo 67c)

 

Note: there have been some significant changes since I made this post, but the broader points it makes are important enough that it deserves to be revived. 

I saw some folks discussing my theological beliefs the other day which I found both flattering and confusing. Flattering because with all of the wonderful plentitude of topics to discuss in the world these people had chosen to focus on little old unimportant me, but confusing in that they hadn’t actually bothered to ask me what my views are which is kind of odd since I’m easy to get a hold of and far from shy about such things. Doing so could have saved them some confusion of their own since one of the gentlemen is under the impression that I’m a henotheist, of all things!

I can’t imagine where he came up with the notion that the only deity I venerate is Dionysos since I’ve filled this blog with posts about Hermes, Spider, Ariadne, Erigone, Harlequin, the Nymphai, Aphrodite, Jim Morrison, Mark Antony and the rest of the Dionysian Dead. More recently there’s been a ton of stuff about Persephone, Melinoë, Hekate, Herakles, Orpheus, Medeia and the gods, heroes and spirits of Magna Graecia. And while a lot of that is writings or research notes I do periodically post about the festivals and regular devotions I perform if I can find a way to make them interesting to my readership. (Most of the time I can’t so I don’t; I do this stuff to maintain the relationships I have with my divinities not to impress a bunch of strangers on the internet.) Hell, I have even branched out of the Mediterranean basin to do the occasional rite for Odin, Loki, Mani and some of the other Norse deities who are important to my partner and I have likewise hailed Thracian, Canaanite, Celtic, Egyptian and African divinities with friends though I have no interest or connection to them outside of such circumstances.

So I’m really not sure where the henotheist tag came from. Is Dionysos important to me? Supremely so. Are all of my core pantheon intimately connected to him? Absolutely. And that not only influences who I worship but who I respectfully leave out, since it would not be right for me to come before a lot of the Olympian gods while in the constant state of miasma I’m in as a result of the work I do with purification, healing, ecstasy and the chthonic powers. These rules are in place for a reason and disregarding that is like giving a finger to the one you’re ostensibly honoring. Thus I honor them best by keeping my distance and doing what I can to assist those who are venerating them in a right and reverent manner.

It’s kind of funny, actually. One of the folks discussing my beliefs was concerned that my unhealthy fixation on Dionysos was the cause of my abnormal psychology. I’d say if anything Dionysos has had a healing and stabilizing effect on me. More importantly he has pushed me to examine everything about myself and to completely own my shit. Everything I do or say is a conscious choice on my part, even when that involves things I know aren’t good for me like smoking or reading the Patheos pagan channel. This is the great challenge of Dionysos, the question he asks us continuously as we roam the earth and which will be asked again when we face the sentries below: Who are you? Those who haven’t done the hard, long, painful work of figuring that out are the ones who are prone to dysmania, which is something that his myths make abundantly and eloquently clear.

In Euripides’ Bakchai there are two groups of mainades: the Asian Bacchants who have given up everything to follow the stranger god in his wanderings through the Greek and Near Eastern world and the Theban Bacchants who run about witless and violently raging with the impudent daughters of Kadmos. The one dance and sing and joyously revel on the mountainside with the wild things; the other are tormented with delusion, driven to atrocities by unresolved internal pressures and in the end are shown to be strangers both to themselves and their community – with disastrous results, as the play’s anagnorisis scene so horrifyingly reveals. And note that nowhere does Dionysos actively punish anyone in the Bakchai, even when Pentheus is calling him every dirty name in the book; he merely sets them up, teasing out things they don’t want to face and when they refuse to he steps back, letting them destroy themselves and those dearest to them in the process. How many times before then did he try to intervene, try to talk sense into them but they were too blind and self-deluded to recognize his outstretched helping hand, and so instead reaped the whirlwind of their own devising. That is the terrible message of the play: in the end you have no one to blame for your actions and their consequences but yourself.

It really surprises me that a Jungian of all people fails to perceive this since Carl himself was quite insistent about the need to embrace and integrate rather than suppress or reject the Shadow. But I suppose we are often most resistant to those things we most need to hear and do in our work.

Dionysos: Once you see, once you confront something you don’t expect, then you’ll consider me your dearest friend. (Euripides, Bakchai 938-941)