Descend, Dionysos in the fury of the storm,
reveal yourself in the thunder that shakes the earth
and sends the heavens spiraling in a fiery wheel;
lash the branches with your rain, and manifest yourself
in the carcass of a lightning-struck calf.
The measured stamp of your danceweaving feet
turns the foundations liquid and looses chaos
and confusion upon the land. There is no snare
that can keep you from fulfilling your will,
no wall you cannot simply leap over.
Behold the man who would oppose you,
the former king who mocked, reviled and mistreated you
– now unmanned and out of his mind,
wandering in the rubble of his ancestors,
an object of shame and reproach, a deep-suffering scapegoat.
All this, my glorious Dionysos, you wrought
and so I shout to the high heavens,
there is nothing the wonder-working son
of black-haired Zeus and dusky Semele
cannot accomplish!

Join this prayerful circle, O Dionysos who loves nights
when the mad-women, the monsters, the magicians,
priestesses of the winepress and initiates in infernal mystery-rites
all roam the streets howling ithyphallic hymns
beneath a sleepless Moon.
You are old,
your countenance is cold,
and you cast a pale radiance
like the cheek of an untouched maiden,
an idol of unpainted marble,
shell of an uncracked egg,
or the horn of an unblemished bull.
You stand in the myrtled prow of your ghostly ship
sailing down the milky river of remembrance,
with bones in your braids and ash covering your face,
O fearless Hunter and Slayer of the rampaging boar,
triumphant Dionysos, long may you be hailed!
Accept our offering of smoke and words,
and in return breathe on us in a spirit of perfect kindness.

May my honeyed speech prove pleasing to you
Dionysos whose counsel is good, wise, and true;
whose winged words are capable of getting through
any defense the heart or mind may contrive.
You know what we would prefer remain secret,
and how to draw it out of us
so it can no longer rend, poison or control us.
You do this so gently
we do not even realize
what it is you’re doing
until you have us fully,
completely under your spell.
The stories you tell
soothe wrath,
heal generational trauma,
mend what is broken,
free from care,
loosen the load,
stir the waters of memory,
make us dream a better world
and believe once more
in impossible things.
Your Hermetic song is a red thread
leading us out
of the Labyrinth’s twists and turns,
and our feet instinctively know your tune;
with every joyful dancing leap we draw closer
to freedom,
to wholeness,
to life,
to you, our great and gracious God Dionysos.

Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.31.4
Polykleitos of Argos made the image; it is like Dionysos in having buskins as footwear and in holding a beaker in one hand and a thyrsos in the other, but an eagle sitting on the thyrsos does not fit in with the received accounts of Dionysos.

A fitting symbol for an American God. 

Thus, the evidence for the cult of Dionysus at Istros does not stem from early times and it is rather unlikely that it was of Milesian origin. Even so, by the Roman period it had become one of the most, if not the most important cult of the city; the cult of Apollo Ietros may have surpassed it in prestige, but none other outshone it in popularity. This is shown not only by the sheer number of attestations, by the multitude of cult associations, but also by the fact that the priests of Dionysus belonged to the elites of the city or were closely connected to them. […] Cult associations in themselves were nothing new in the Western Pontic cities; witness the very active Dionysiac thiasos of Callatis, which in the 3rd century BC built its own temple and which later would emulate the practices of the polis concerning the honouring of its benefactors; or the less visibly active Poseidonian association of Taureastai at Istros. However, the associations discussed above, and other – mostly Dionysiac – were adapting to the new circumstances. Roman influence was active, not so much upon religious life directly, as upon social structures and mentalities, which in their turn influenced religious life. Thus, associations in the Greek East generally and Dionysiac ones in particular had become loyalist, filo-Imperial, trustworthy centers of political fidelity. Given the conservative outlook of such associations, it is not surprising that their members should wish to preserve their social status and prestige in their dealings with outside partners. (Ligia Ruscu, On cult associations at Istros and Tomis)

Clement of Alexandria, Protreptikos pros Ellenas 2
I pass over in silence just now Dionysos Choiropsales. The Sicyonians reverence this deity, whom they have constituted the god of the muliebria — the patron of filthiness — and religiously honour as the author of licentiousness.

Lucian, The Syrian Goddess
16. I approve of the remarks about the temple made by those who in the main accept the theories of the Greeks: according to these the Goddess is Hera, but the work was carried out by Dionysos, the son of Semele: Dionysos visited Syria on his journey to Aethiopia. There are in the temple many tokens that Dionysos was its actual founder: for instance, barbaric raiment, Indian precious stones, and elephants’ tusks brought by Dionysos from the Aethiopians. Further, a pair of phalli of great size are seen standing in the vestibule, bearing the inscription, “I, Dionysos, dedicated these phalli to Hera my stepmother.” This proof satisfies me. And I will describe another curiosity to be found in this temple, a sacred symbol of Dionysos. The Greeks erect phalli in honour of Dionysos, and on these they carry, singular to say, mannikins made of wood, with enormous pudenda; they call these puppets. There is this further curiosity in the temple: as you enter, on the right hand, a small brazen statue meets your eye of a man in a sitting posture, with parts of monstrous size.

28. The place whereon the temple is placed is a hill: it lies nearly in the centre of the city, and is surrounded by a double wall. Of the two walls the one is ancient; the other is not much older than our own times. The entrance to the temple faces the north; its size is about a hundred fathoms. In this entrance those phalli stand which Dionysos erected: they stand thirty fathoms high. Into one of these a man mounts twice every year, and he abides on the summit of the phallus for the space of seven days. The reason of this ascent is given as follows: The people believe that the man who is aloft holds converse with the Gods, and prays for good fortune for the whole of Syria, and that the Gods from their neighbourhood hear his prayers. Others allege that this takes place in memory of the great calamity of Deukalion’s time, when men climbed up to mountain tops and to the highest trees, in terror of the mass of waters. To me all this seems highly improbable, and I think that they observe this custom in honour of Dionysos, and I conjecture this from the following fact, that all those who rear phalli to Dionysos take care to place mannikins of wood on the phalli; the reason of this I cannot say, but it seems to me that the ascent is made in imitation of the wooden mannikin.

29. To proceed, the ascent is made in this way; the man throws round himself and the phallus a small chain; afterwards he climbs up by means of pieces of wood attached to the phallus large enough to admit the end of his foot. As he mounts he jerks the chain up his own length, as a driver his reins. Those who have not seen this process, but who have seen those who have to climb palm trees in Arabia, or in Egypt, or any other place, will understand what I mean. When he has climbed to the top, he lets down a different chain, a long one, and drags up anything that he wants, such as wood, clothing, and vases; he binds these together and sits upon them, as it were, on a nest, and he remains there for the space of time that I have mentioned. Many visitors bring him gold and silver, and some bring brass; then those who have brought these offerings leave them and depart, and each visitor gives his name. A bystander shouts the name up; and he on hearing the name utters a prayer for each donor; between the prayers he raises a sound on a brazen instrument which, on being shaken, gives forth a loud and grating noise. He never sleeps; for if at any time sleep surprises him, a scorpion creeps up and wakes him, and stings him severely; this is the penalty for wrongfully sleeping. This story about the scorpion is a sacred one, and one of the mysteries of religion; whether it is true I cannot say, but, as it seems to me, his wakefulness is in no small degree due to his fear of falling. So much then for the climbers of the phalli. As for the temple, it looks to the rising sun.

 

1100 to 1199
Golias the Bishop, The Apocalypse

When the Abbot and his brethren [of a heretical monastery in Southern France] sit to feast, they quickly pass the cups of wine along. The Abbot lifts the cup above his head and makes the rafters echo with this song:

How lovely is the vessel of the Lord!
Behold the chalice of inebriation!
O Bacchus, be the master of our board!
O Son of the Vine, be always our salvation!

Then lifting up his cup again, he asks:

This chalice I am now about to sup,
can you too drink it?

Quickly all reply:

We can! Just watch us! Bottoms up!

The one thing that can spoil a pious feast is a dispute about who’s had the most. The abbey therefore has a simple rule: the limit is a cup per monk per toast.

A second popular decree is this: a zealous monk never leaves a drop. A third: since God abhors a vacuum, make sure your belly’s stuffed before you stop.

The drunken monks are like demoniacs, and chatter like a flock of noisy birds. Their conversation seldom makes much sense since Bacchus, the stomach’s master, teaches them their words. They chew and chew until their jaws puff out; their huge, distended guts are even worse, and as a final touch, the wine they swill provokes a swelling in the “nether purse.”

1200 to 1299
The Chronicle of Lanercost for the year 1282

About this time, in Easter week, the parish priest of Inverkeithing, named John, revived the profane rites of Priapus, collecting young girls from the villages, and compelling them to dance in circles to the honour of Father Bacchus. When he had these females in a troop, out of sheer wantonness, he led the dance, carrying in front on a pole a representation of the human organs of reproduction, and singing and dancing himself like a mime, he viewed them all and stirred them to lust by filthy language. Those who held respectable matrimony in honour were scandalised by such a shameless performance, although they respected the parson because of the dignity of his rank. If anybody remonstrated kindly with him, the priest became worse than before, violently reviling him.

1300 to 1399
The Goliards were a group of Clerici Vagante or “wandering scholars” in 12th- through 14th-century Europe famed for their riotous behaviour, intemperance, and composition of satirical and ribald Latin verse. They were condemned by the University of Paris for the following:

Priests and clerks dance in the choir dressed as women, and they sing wanton songs. They eat black pudding at the altar itself, while the celebrant is saying Mass. They play dice on the altar. They cense with stinking smoke from the soles of old shoes. They run and leap throughout the church, without a blush of their own shame. Finally they drive about the town and its theatres in shabby carriages and carts, and rouse the laughter of their fellows and the bystanders in infamous performances, with indecent gestures and with scurrilous and unchaste words.

Here is the text of one of their infamous performances, the Missa de Potatoribus or “Drinkers’ Mass”:   

Va. I will go in to the altar of Bacchus. R. To him who rejoices the heart of man.

I confess to the all-drinking culprit Bacchus, and the accursed red wine, and to all his dishes, and to you drinkers, that I have drunk most excessively gluttonously through great sickness of the culprit Bacchus my god with snorting, with greatest speed, through my vat, through my most grievous vat. Therefore I pray the most blessed Bacchus, and all his dishes, and you brother drinkers, that you will drink for me to the lord culprit Bacchus, so that he will pity me. May cup-powerful Bacchus have mercy on you, and permit you to lose all your clothes, and lead you to the great tavern, he who drinks and gulps through all the cups of cups, Strawmen. May cup-powerful Bacchus grant you intoxication and devouring, and the loss of all your clothes, through Decius our lord, Straw-men. Thy god will turn, and bring us rejoicing. And your people shall be drinking in you. Show us, O Lord, your joy. And grant us the loss of our clothes. Fraud be with you. And with your groaning. Let us drink. Oratio.

Take away from us all of our clothes, we implore you, Bacchus, that with naked bodies we may be worthy to enter to the tavern of cups through all the cups of cups, Straw-men. Introitus.

Let us all lament in the die, bewailing the mournful day in honor of the square die, at whose throwing the wretched complain and slander the son of God. V’. Blessed are they who live in thy tavern, Bacchus, and he shall meditate there day and night.

O God, who made the multitude of rustics come to the service of clerics and knights, and between us and them sowed discord, grant us, we pray, to live from their labors, and use their wives, and rejoice in their mortification, through our lord culprit Bacchus, who drinks and quaffs through all the cups without end. Straw-men. tuum apurtatricum?

In spring time, drinkers said to one another, “Let us go over to the tavern, and let us see the word that is said concerning this jar.” And entering the tavern they found the hostess and three dice lying in the dish. And tasting from this pure wine, they understood that it was true what had been spoken to them concerning this cask. And all that were there were inebriated by those things that were told them by the drinkers. But the hostess considered their clothes, pondering them in her heart, if they might be valuable. And the drinkers were stripped, glorifying Bacchus, and cursing the die. Fraud be with you. And with thy groaning. Let us drink. Off. The dishes pour forth the abundance of Bacchus, and nauseate the mouth of the drinkers all the way to the bottom. The Sanctus is not sung, nor the Agnus Dei, but let the kiss of peace be given with swords and cudgels.

Our Father, who art in dishes, hallowed be that wine. May the cup of Bacchus come, may thy storm be done in wine as it is in the tavern, give us this day our bread for the devouring, and forgive us our great cups as we forgive our drinkers, and lead us not into temptation of wine, but deliver us from our clothing.

Co. May the souls of drinkers rejoice, who followed the footsteps of Bacchus, and because they destroyed their clothes for his love, indeed with Bacchus in a jar of wine. Fraud be with you, and with thy groaning. Let us drink. Oratio.

1400 to 1499
Record of the interrogation of the barbes Martino and Pietro, 1492

Asked why the said synagogue is held, he replies that it derives from the fact that they as a custom were in the habit of adoring a certain idol called Bacchus and Baron and also the Sibyl and the Fairies and that Baron and the Fairies were accustomed to holding congregations during which there was no respect between daughter and father, nor with the godmother, as there is, however, outside the said synagogue. And in the synagogue, by night, when the candle was out, they mixed and each took the woman he could have, without recognising her and without speaking while the synagogue lasted; and if a son was begotten, he was the most appropriate and apt to exercise the office of barbe; and he said other things, that his companion had previously said.

1500 to 1599
Edith Helen Sichel, Catherine De’ Medici and the French Reformation

After it had been performed at Court, the poets “honorant son esprit gaillard et bien appris” fêted him joyously at Arceuil. A banquet was spread on a green lawn; the company composed classic verses after the Greek “Bacchanalia”; a buck – le pére du troupeau … des Tragiques “le prix” was lead up to the victorious Jodelle, its head wreathed with flowers:

Le bouquet sur l’orielle, et bien fier se sentait
De quoy telle jeunesse ainsi le présentait.

The Huguenots made capital out of this festivity and proclaimed that the Pléiade had sacrificed the buck to Bacchus.

1600 to 1699
Wikipedia article on Thomas Morton

Morton’s religious beliefs were strongly condemned by the Puritans of the nearby Plymouth Colony as little more than a thinly disguised form of heathenism, and they suspected him of “going native”. Scandalous rumours spread of debauchery at Merrymount, which they claimed included immoral sexual liaisons with native women during what amounted to drunken orgies in honour of Bacchus and Aphrodite, or as the Puritan Governor William Bradford wrote in his History of Plymouth Plantation, “They … set up a May-pole, drinking and dancing about it many days together, inviting the Indian women for their consorts, dancing and frisking together (like so many fairies, or furies rather) and worse practices. As if they had anew revived & celebrated the feasts of ye Roman Goddess Flora, or ye beastly practices of ye mad Bacchanalians.” Morton had transplanted traditional West Country May Day customs to the colony, and combined them with fashionable classical myth, couched according to his own libertine tastes and fueled by the enthusiasm of his newly freed fellow colonists. On a practical level the annual May Day festival was not only a reward for his hardworking colonists but also a joint celebration with the Native Tribes who also marked the day, and a chance for the mostly male colonists to find brides amongst the native population. Puritan ire was no doubt also fueled by the fact that Merrymount was the fastest-growing colony in New England and rapidly becoming the most prosperous, both as an agricultural producer and in the fur trade, in which the Plymouth Colony was trying to build a monopoly. The Puritan account of this was very different, regarding the colony as a decadent nest of good-for-nothings that annually attracted “all the scum of the country” to the area, or as Peter Lamborn Wilson more romantically puts it, “a Comus-crew of disaffected fur traders, antinomians, loose women, Indians and bon-vivants”. The second 1628 Mayday, “Revels of New Canaan”, inspired by “Cupid’s mother” — with its “pagan odes” to Neptune and Triton (as well as Venus and her lustful children, Cupid, Hymen and Priapus), its drinking song, and its erection of a huge 80-foot (24 m) Maypole, topped with deer antlers — that proved too much for the “Princes of Limbo”, as Morton referred to his Puritan neighbours. The Plymouth militia under Myles Standish took the town the following June with little resistance, chopped down the Maypole and arrested Morton for “supplying guns to the Indians”. He was put in stocks in Plymouth, given a trial and finally marooned on the deserted Isles of Shoals, off the coast of New Hampshire, until an “English ship could take him home”, as he was believed too well connected to be imprisoned or executed (as later became the penalty for blasphemy in the colony). He was essentially left to starve on the island, but was supplied with food by friendly natives from the mainland, who were said to be bemused by the events, and he eventually gained enough strength to escape to England under his own volition. The Merrymount community survived without Morton for another year, but was renamed Mount Dagon by the Puritans, after the Semitic sea god, and they pledged to make it a place of woe. During the severe winter famine of 1629 residents of New Salem under John Endecott raided Mount Dagon’s plentiful corn supplies and destroyed what was left of the Maypole, denouncing it as a pagan idol and calling it the “Calf of Horeb”. Morton returned to the colony soon after and, after finding that most of the inhabitants had been scattered, was rearrested, again put on trial and banished from the colonies. The following year the colony of Mount Dagon was burned to the ground and Morton shipped back to England.

1700 to 1799
Thomas Langley, The History of Antiquities of the Hundred of Desborough

The delightful gardens of West Wycombe were opened to the public and a novel exhibition took place in one of the rural walks. A fine portico at the west end of the house has been lately erected (in imitation of a Temple of Bacchus) for the dedication of which a Bacchanalian procession was formed of Bacchanals, Priests, Pans, Fauns, Satyrs, Silenus, etc., all in proper habits and skins wreathed with vine leaves, ivy, oak, etc. On the arrival of the procession in the portico the High Priest addressed the Statue in an Invocation which was succeeded by several hymns, and other pieces of music vocal and instrumental suitable to the occasion, and having finished the sacrifice proceeded through the grove to a Tent pitched among several others at the head of the lake where the Paeans and libations were repeated – then ferrying to a vessel adorned with colours and streamers, again performed various ceremonies with discharges of cannon and bursts of acclamations from the populace. The ceremony was finished by a congratulatory address or ode to the Deity of the place. Several of the company wore masques on this occasion.

1800 to 1899
Peter Muise, New England Folklore

In the year 1820, Ephraim Lyon of Eastford, Connecticut came up with a surprising idea: he decided to found a church dedicated to Bacchus, the god of wine.

The temperance movement was starting to gain influence at this time, so perhaps Ephraim’s religious revelation was in reaction to the movement’s anti-alcohol messages. Whatever the reason, Ephraim took his calling seriously. As the History of Windham County, Connecticut notes, “He named himself as the high priest, saying he must become badly intoxicated several times each year in order that he might hold the office.”

The rest of the church’s membership was composed of those who “used intoxicating liquids to excess.” Members didn’t need to apply, and Ephraim didn’t ask permission before adding someone to the church’s membership list. Instead, he added a new member’s name whenever he learned of someone who had been drinking heavily. Eventually, the Church of Bacchus had more than 1,000 members, both male and female, in its congregation. The only way to be removed from Ephraim’s list was to go on the wagon.

Unfortunately because of the growing temperance movement many of the church’s members didn’t want their names on the list, and asked Ephraim to be removed. He refused. The requests became threats, but still Ephraim refused. Fearing for life and property, Ephraim’s wife finally burned her husband’s list, but he recreated it from memory and hid it someplace secure. It was rumored that he shared the list only with an inner circle of church deacons derived from Windham County’s most zealous drinkers.

Despite threats and being socially ostracized, Ephraim maintained his devotion to the god of wine until his death in 1840. The deacons and other devout Bacchants memorialized his life with plenty of strong liquor and merrymaking. Ephraim claimed that “members who died in full membership were said to go the Bacchanalian revels of their patron god,” so I hope he’s happy somewhere with a big glass of wine in his hand.

Was Ephraim Lyon serious about his church? Did he really believe in Bacchus as the god of wine? I suppose it’s impossible to say. Maybe he was just protesting against the temperance movement, or perhaps it was just all an elaborate joke.

I do wonder, though, if a joker would risk his life and his home the way Ephraim did. And Ephraim’s statements about the afterlife match what the ancient followers of Bacchus believed. Perhaps he did receive a genuine divine revelation, even if it was a drunken one.

1900 to 1999
Ronald Hutton, Triumph of the Moon pages 165-169

A year after founding the Order of Woodcraft Chivalry Ernest Westlake wrote that, ‘from the religious side it is an application of Miss [Jane Ellen] Harrison’s work … her work might have been written for us.’ It was her celebration of the ecstatic and life-affirming in Greek religion which had most seized his imagination, so that he could declare that ‘our movement is a Dionysos movement,’ saving people from ‘the cul de sac of intellectualized religion.’ By 1921 he added that the vital text for woodcraft was Euripides’ ancient drama about the return of Dionysos to rejuvenate Greece, The Bacchae: ‘As the Dionysos worship revived old Hellas, so may the same thing, introduced by the Order of Woodcraft Chivalry, revive the greater Hellas of modern civilization.’ He decided that the English equivalent to Dionysos was the leaf-clad figure in May Day processions, the Jack-in-the-Green, and thought of taking this as his personal title in the order.

The deity of wine and ecstasy was not, however, the only one favored by Westlake. In 1921 he decided that the ‘Trinity of Woodcraft’ consisted of Pan, Artemis and Dionysos, and also suggested that Aphrodite be revered at times, with the reflection that unless alcohol and sexuality were honoured responsibly and treated as sacred, they would manifest themselves in drunkenness and prostitution. The Westlakes had bought an estate at Sandy Balls on the northern edge of the New Forest, and there the order held its first folkmoot ceremony at the beginning of August 1921, the old feast of Lammas. The sacred fire was lit in the centre of a ritual circle, by four people dressed in colours appropriate to the elemental associations of each quarter, bearing greetings from its powers and proceeding in a succession from east round to north. When it was burning, Westlake delivered the invocation (taken from Socrates): ‘Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place, give me beauty in the inward soul and may the outward and inward be at one.’ At some point in these years he composed (but apparently did not place) a newspaper advertisement reading: ‘An ex-Quaker wishes to unite with some heathen church in England worshipping the gods, especially Venus and Bacchus.’ In 1919 he and his family drew up a plan for a forest park stocked with the surviving fauna of the Old Stone Age, including bison (which would be hunted) and deer. Young women, ‘attired like Artemis of old, would follow the deer on foot through the forests, tending and milking them’; this fantastic idea was taken from one of Maurice Hewlett’s novels, The Forest Lovers.

[…]

His place as British Chief of the Order was taken by Aubrey, but the role of principal representative of paganism in it fell to a much more flamboyant and uncompromising character, a slim, dark-haired and tanned young south Londoner with a strong chin and stubborn mouth called Harry Byngham. Byngham had absorbed to the full Ernest Westlake’s belief that the joyous and nature-related aspects of ancient Greek religion could bring benefit to the modern world, but whereas Westlake had been inspired by them, Byngham could be described as intoxicated; he subsequently changed his own first name to Dion, short for Dionysos. Unlike Westlake, he saw nothing in Christianity that deserved saving. Unlike him, also, he espoused another radical cause, that of naturism, being a keen member of the New Gymnosophy Society. Dionysos especially appealed to him as representing the animal part of manhood, and he wrote in the magazine The Healthy Life (which promoted naturism and other libertarian ideas) to extol phallic worship as a veneration of the life-force. In 1923 he acquired a parallel platform in the Order of Woodcraft Chivalry, by launching a periodical for it, Pine Cone, edited by himself.

[…]

It began in July 1923, when the first issue of Pine Cone included a call from Byngham for ‘the realization of Life … Life is adventure, audacity, revolt … Life springs out of the star-tissue womb of Nature as the virile son of the All-Mother.’ Life was, in fact, Dionysos, and Byngham printed an illustration of the thyrsos, the ivy-bound staff of the god, beside the pine cone which was the symbol of the magazine. At the folkmoot in the New Forest that summer, he challenged the singing of Christian hymns and asked instead for readings from Carpenter, Symonds or William Blake. Complaints poured in from members, but the second edition of Pine Cone brazenly carried a cover picture of a nude Dionysos dancing with a pine cone on his thyrsos. The contents were, however, more balanced – the report on the folkmoot was written by a member who spoke of the presence of God in the event – and the third issue contained nothing provocative. The fourth, on the other hand, more than made up for this restraint, containing a photograph of a nude Byngham reclining and playing panpipes while his girlfriend performed ‘The Dawn Dance of Spring’ above him in a short Grecian tunic which left her legs and one breast bare.

2000 to the present
Deo Mercurio, Report-back on two speeches from Olympia 14 August, 2015

This is the second part of my report-back from the Many Gods West conference in Olympia, Washington. In it I’d like to give my reactions to two rituals I attended at the conference: the first of these was the rite for Διόνυσος Βακχεῖος (a name I shall hereafter transcribe in Latin letters as Dionysus Baccheus, with apologies to the Bakcheion—I’m an old fuddy-duddy about such things!). As far as I can recall (there was some drinking involved), the ritual’s structure could hardly have been simpler: a purification of the attendees was followed by some chants, gifts, and prayers, following which we shared in the god’s vinific bounty and danced. And yet I’ve rarely experienced a more satisfying ritual. The music, the dress of the participants, the décor and lighting—all were calculated to evoke a deep sympathy with the god himself, as well as with Ariadne and with Semele, the numinous presence of whom was palpable.

You may mock me, if you will, as a softy and a romantic, but I really love the story of Ariadne and, as warm as my feelings are towards Bacchus, I find Ariadne somehow more inviting or compatible to my sentiments. I felt the same at this ritual. Dionysus Baccheus was the god principally honoured, and yet it was Ariadne whom I felt most keenly there. Euhoe to the both of them! It was wonderful to spend time with them.

[…]

I’d also like to thank the Bakcheion for providing really delicious wine for the occasion. They must have been at some expense to keep the attendees well-plied with the divine nectar, but their outlay was deeply appreciated. I noticed one vintage of the name of Phebus—Bacchus and Phœbus, together at last?

[…]

By the way, these Western conceptions of Dionysus and Bacchus are of interest from the Gaulish perspective for a variety of reasons. While votive inscriptions to Bacchus or Dionysus are comparatively rare in Gaul, Bacchic imagery is all over the place—particularly on funerary monuments. This implies an expectation among many people (at least in the social class wealthy enough to commission funerary sculpture) of a joyous afterlife presided over by Bacchus. Can people have had this expectation without having already established a devotional relationship with the god in life? Possibly. But my suspicion is that Bacchus was on people’s minds, and in their prayers, more often than we have documentary evidence of—he might, of course, have been honoured by libations of wine (and mead and ale?) even where there was no altar inscribed with his name. Bacchic imagery also influences the depictions of wine-related deities in Burgundy whose names are not definitely known, but who in some respects resemble Sucellus and Nantosuelta. And of course there is a small scattering of votive inscriptions to Liber Pater, as well as some Greek-language inscriptions in southern Gaul dedicated to Διόνυσος.

From Roslyn M. Frank’s Origins of ‘Western’ constellations:

More specifically the evidence reflects what appears to be a pre-Indo-European, Pan-European belief that humans descended from bears,a folk belief retained by the Basque people into the twentieth century (Frank 2008,2009). This belief appears to be linked, in turn, to a set of folktales, known collectively as the Bear’s Son which represent one of the most widespread motifs in European folklore. The narratives tell the story of the adventures of a hero, an imposing figure whose superhuman physical strength is often emphasized. He is half human, half bear, a sort of shaman apprentice whose mother is human, while his father is a bear. In other words, the hero is a kind of intermediary being, functioning in a certain sense like the figure of Christ but clearly bringing together and fusing two very different conceptual frames of personal identity (Frank in press). In addition to the narratives themselves, throughout Europe and most especially in the Franco-Cantabrian region (Frank 2008), we find village-wide performances in which a bear actor is symbolically hunted, killed, and resurrected. (Moreover, it should be noted that several of the hero’s animal helpers are also found taking part in European performances known as “Good Luck Visits” which incorporate a mini-drama where a bear actor is hunted, dies, and is resurrected (Frank 2008).) At times,the performances include a reenactment of the first chapter of the Bear’s Son Tale itself. Finally, there is evidence that the narratives and performances – which have survived to the present day – are modern-day versions of much earlier cultural practices and that earlier the storytelling might have had a stellar component: that in the process of recounting the tales, at some point, scenes and characters from the story came to be projected upon groups of stars and integrated into subsequent acts of storytelling. In this way the actions of the characters would have been writ large on the heavens above, on that huge canvas seen by all participants. There they would have functioned to impress the listeners and at the same time convey and reinforce the meanings encoded into the tales themselves. However, it is still unclear exactly which constellations might have played such a role. Keeping in mind the tenets of this older hunter-gatherer ursine cosmology, among the most likely candidates are the following:

• Ursa Major, specifically, the more visible seven stars of this constellation, eternally turning in the sky above, could have been a template upon which aspects of the tales were projected, whether as a bear hunt or as representing the celestial bear ancestor itself. Greek tales told about the origins of this constellation, for example, those related to Callisto and Artemis found in the Catasterismi, the oldest collection of Greek star myths, the Astronomica of Hygenius, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, could be viewed as modern overlays on this much older template (Frank in press; Krupp 1991, pp. 232–234).

• Boötes is viewed as a male figure that follows Ursa Major in the sky and has always been associated with it, as a hunter of the bear or a guardian of the bears.This conceptualization could suggest that it had its origins in a deeper cognitive layer more hunter-gatherer in nature, far older than the associations of Boötes with a herdsman of oxen, a driver of the wagon, or a ploughman with the plough,

And also Bödvar Bjarki:

The famous poem Bjarkamál (of which only a few stanzas are preserved but which Saxo Grammaticus presents in the form of a florid Latin paraphrase) is understood as a dialogue between Bödvar Bjarki and his younger companion Hjalti which begins by Hjalti again and again urging Bödvar to awake from his sleep and fight for King Hrólf in this last battle in which they are doomed to be defeated. As explained in the prose, this rousing was ill-done, as Bjarki was in a trance and his spirit in the form of a monstrous bear was already aiding Hrólf far more than Bjarki could do with only his mannish strength: as Bjarki puts it on awakening, “You have not been so helpful to the king by this action as you think.”

Lately my arcolatry obsession has had me reading up on the Bear’s Son Tale, particularly in its Jean de l’Ours expression.

As the month of Chthonieion draws to a close and we prepare to celebrate the noumenia of Auxiteion I have had much to reflect upon.

There is, for instance, the mystery represented in this sequence of our calendar, with life, wealth, and growth arising from below, out of the shadowy realm of death.

Then, of course, there is the source of our next month’s name:

The founder of Heraia was Heraieus the son of Lykaon, and the city lies on the right of the Alpheios, mostly upon a gentle slope, though a part descends right to the Alpheios. Walks have been made along the river, separated by myrtles and other cultivated trees; the baths are there, as are also two temples to Dionysos. One is to the God named Polites (Citizen), the other to Auxites (the Giver of Increase), and they have a building there where they celebrate orgiastic rites in honor of Dionysos.  (Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.26.1)

Here we find Dionysos with a double aspect, civic and agrarian – and possibly a third, unless the οἴκημά was consecrated under one of these. This is an interesting term, by the way – it can mean anything from a chamber in a temple to a brothel, a storeroom, a prison cell, or even a cage for animals. Makes you wonder what kind of mystic orgies were conducted there, huh?

Especially when we consider that the eponymous founder of Heraia was one of the 50 sons Lykaon, famed baby-killer and werewolf: 

Lykaon brought a human baby to the altar of Zeus Lykaios and sacrificed it, pouring out its blood upon the altar, and according to the legend immediately after the sacrifice he was changed from a man to a wolf […] ever since the time of Lykaon a man has changed into a wolf at the sacrifice to Zeus Lykaios, but the change is not for life; if, when he is a wolf, he abstains from human flesh, after nine years he becomes a man again, but if he tastes human flesh he remains a beast for ever. (Pausanias 8.2.1-6) 

The baby he killed was Arkas, the Starry Bear:

He is said to be the son of Jove and Callisto, whom Lycaon served at a banquet, cut up with other meat, when Jupiter came to him as a guest. For Lycaon wanted to know whether the one who had asked for his hospitality was a God or not. For this deed he was punished by no slight punishment, for Jupiter, quickly overturning the table, burned the house with a thunderbolt, and turned Lycaon himself into a wolf. But the scattered limbs of the boy he put together, and gave Arcas to a certain Aetolian to care for. (Hyginus, Astronomica 2.4)

Arkas the Bear King afterwards became a great hunter, founded many cities, and was remembered for his just rule as much as for teaching his people how to weave and bake bread. 

Why this stands out in particular for me – aside from the Starry Bear reference, natch – is that it brings to mind the Oracle for the month of Auxiteion:

“It is only when a man feels himself face to face with such horrors that he can understand their true import.”

Wanna guess what horrors Dionysos is referring to?

This verse, from the Starry Bear bibliomancy system, was taken from the first chapter of Bram Stoker’s Dracula: 

But just then the moon, sailing through the black clouds, appeared behind the jagged crest of a beetling, pine-clad rock, and by its light I saw around us a ring of wolves, with white teeth and lolling red tongues, with long, sinewy limbs and shaggy hair. They were a hundred times more terrible in the grim silence which held them than even when they howled. For myself, I felt a sort of paralysis of fear. It is only when a man feels himself face to face with such horrors that he can understand their true import.

Oh yeah. Gonna be an interesting month, I wager. 

Horace, Carmina 2.12

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 wilful 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.

Although Liberalia is not part of the official House of Vines festival calendar for the year 2018 e.v. it has always been one of my favorite Bacchic feasts. (I tend to think of it as Beenis Day, as bees and penises are the primary themes of the occasion.)

While preparing the post with the excerpt from Ovid’s Fasti something stood out for me that hadn’t upon previous readings:

He fell headlong, and received a kick from the ass, as he shouted to his friends and called for help. The Satyrs ran up, and laughed at their father’s face, while he limped about on his damaged knee. Bacchus himself laughed and showed him the use of mud: Silenus took his advice, and smeared his face with clay.

No, no. Not the alternative aition for titanos. This bit:

The Kite star turns downwards near the Lycaonian Bear: on this night it’s first visible. If you wish to know who raised that falcon to heaven, it was when Saturn had been dethroned by Jupiter: angered, he stirred the mighty Titans to battle, and sought whatever help the Fates could grant him. There was a bull, a marvellous monster, born of Mother Earth, the hind part of which was of serpent-form: warned by the three Fates, grim Styx had imprisoned him in dark woods, surrounded by triple walls. There was a prophecy that whoever burnt the entrails of the bull in the flames would defeat the Eternal Gods. Briareus sacrificed it with an adamantine axe, and was about to set the innards on the flames: but Jupiter ordered the birds to snatch them: and the Kite brought them, and his service set him among the stars.

And so it begins.

 

Augustine, De Civitate Dei 7.21
Now as to the rites of Liber, whom they have set over liquid seeds, and therefore not only over the liquors of fruits, among which wine holds, so to speak, the primacy, but also over the seeds of animals:— as to these rites, I am unwilling to undertake to show to what excess of turpitude they had reached, because that would entail a lengthened discourse, though I am not unwilling to do so as a demonstration of the proud stupidity of those who practice them. Varro says that certain rites of Liber were celebrated in Italy which were of such unrestrained wickedness that the shameful parts of the male were worshipped at crossroads in his honour. Nor was this abomination transacted in secret that some regard at least might be paid to modesty, but was openly and wantonly displayed. For during the festival of Liber this obscene member, placed on a little trolley, was first exhibited with great honour at the crossroads in the countryside, and then conveyed into the city itself. But in the town of Lavinium a whole month was devoted to Liber alone, during the days of which all the people gave themselves up to the must dissolute conversation, until that member had been carried through the forum and brought to rest in its own place; on which unseemly member it was necessary that the most honorable matron should place a wreath in the presence of all the people. Thus, forsooth, was the god Liber to be appeased in order for the growth of seeds. Thus was enchantment (fascinatio) to be driven away from fields, even by a matron’s being compelled to do in public what not even a harlot ought to be permitted to do in a theatre, if there were matrons among the spectators.

From the third book of Ovid’s Fasti

There’s a popular festival of Bacchus, on the third day after the Ides: Bacchus, favour the poet who sings your feast. I’ll not speak about Semele: you’d have been born defenceless, If it hadn’t been that Jupiter brought her his lightning too. Nor will I tell how the mother’s labour was fulfilled in a father’s body, so you might duly be born their son. It would take long to tell of the conquered Sithonians, and the Scythians, and the races of incense-bearing India. I’ll be silent about you too, Pentheus, sad prey to your own mother, and you Lycurgus, who killed your own son in madness. Lo, I’d like to speak of the monstrous Tyrrhenians, who suddenly became dolphins, but that’s not the task of this verse. The task of this verse is to set out the reasons why a vine-planter sells his cakes to the crowd.

Liber, before your birth the altars were without offerings, and grass appeared on the stone-cold hearths. They tell how you set aside the first fruits for Jupiter, after subduing the Ganges region, and the whole of the East. You were the first to offer up cinnamon and incense from conquered lands, and the roast entrails of triumphal oxen. Libations derive their name from their originator, And cake (liba) since a part is offered on the sacred hearth. Honey-cakes are baked for the God, because he delights in sweet substances, and they say that Bacchus discovered honey.

He was travelling from sandy Hebrus, accompanied by Satyrs, (my tale contains a not-unpleasant jest) and he’d come to Mount Rhodope, and flowering Pangaeus: with the cymbals clashing in his companions’ hands. Behold unknown winged things gather to the jangling, bees, that follow after the echoing bronze. Liber gathered the swarm and shut it in a hollow tree, And was rewarded with the prize of discovering honey. Once the Satyrs, and old bald-headed Silenus, had tasted it, they searched for the yellow combs in every tree. The old fellow heard a swarm humming in a hollow elm, saw the honeycombs, but pretended otherwise: and sitting lazily on his hollow-backed ass, he rode it up to the elm where the trunk was hollow. He stood and leant on the stump of a branch, And greedily reached for the honey hidden inside. But thousands of hornets gathered, thrusting their stings into his bald head, leaving their mark on his snub-nosed face. He fell headlong, and received a kick from the ass, as he shouted to his friends and called for help. The Satyrs ran up, and laughed at their father’s face, while he limped about on his damaged knee. Bacchus himself laughed and showed him the use of mud: Silenus took his advice, and smeared his face with clay.

Father Liber loves honey: its right to offer its discoverer Glittering honey diffused through oven-warm cakes. The reason why a woman presides isn’t obscure: Bacchus stirs crowds of women with his thyrsus. Why an old woman, you ask? That age drinks more, and loves the gifts of the teeming vine. Why is she wreathed with ivy? Ivy’s dearest to Bacchus: and why that’s so doesn’t take long to tell. They say that when Juno his stepmother was searching for the boy, the nymphs of Nysa hid the cradle in ivy leaves.

It remains for me to reveal why the toga virilis, the gown Of manhood, is given to boys on your day, Bacchus: whether it’s because you seem to be ever boy or youth, and your age is somewhere between the two: or because you’re a father, fathers commend their sons, their pledges of love, to your care and divinity: or because you’re Liber, the gown of liberty and a more liberated life are adopted, for you: or is it because, in the days when the ancients tilled the fields more vigorously, and Senators worked their fathers’ land, and ‘rods and axes’ took Consuls from the curving plough, and it wasn’t a crime to have work-worn hands, the farmers came to the City for the games, (though that was an honour paid to the Gods, and not their inclination: and the grape’s discoverer held his games this day, while now he shares that of torch-bearing Ceres.) And the day seemed not unfitting for granting the toga, so that a crowd could celebrate the fresh novice? Father turn your mild head here, and gentle horns, and spread the sails of my art to a favourable breeze.

If I remember rightly, on this, and the preceding day, crowds go to the Argei (their own page will tell who they are). The Kite star turns downwards near the Lycaonian Bear: on this night it’s first visible. If you wish to know who raised that falcon to heaven, it was when Saturn had been dethroned by Jupiter: angered, he stirred the mighty Titans to battle, And sought whatever help the Fates could grant him. There was a bull, a marvellous monster, born of Mother Earth, the hind part of which was of serpent-form: warned by the three Fates, grim Styx had imprisoned him in dark woods, surrounded by triple walls. There was a prophecy that whoever burnt the entrails of the bull, in the flames, would defeat the Eternal Gods. Briareus sacrificed it with an adamantine axe, and was about to set the innards on the flames: but Jupiter ordered the birds to snatch them: and the Kite brought them, and his service set him among the stars.

Plutarch, De Anima fragment preserved in Stobaios Florigelium 120
When the soul comes to the point of death, it suffers something like those who participate in the great initiations (teletai). Therefore the word teleutan closely resembles the word teleisthai just as the act of dying resembles the act of being initiated. At first there are wanderings and toilsome running about in circles and journeys through the dark over uncertain roads and culs de sacs; then, just before the end, there are all kinds of terrors, with shivering, trembling, sweating, and utter amazement. After this, a strange and wonderful light meets the wanderer; he is admitted into clean and verdant meadows, where he discerns gentle voices, and choric dances, and the majesty of holy sounds and sacred visions. Here the now fully initiated is free, and walks at liberty like a crowned and dedicated victim, joining in the revelry.

The mention of Bacchic sister triads in my piece On the Orgia reminded me of another example, albeit with an Apollonian twist:

Later, when the Samians were oppressed with the tyranny of Polycrates, Pythagoras saw that life in such a state was unsuitable for a philosopher, and so planned to travel to Italy. At Delphi he inscribed an elegy on the tomb of Apollon, declaring that Apollon was the son of Silenos, but was slain by Pytho, and buried in the place called Triops, so named from the local mourning for Apollo by the three daughters of Triopas. (Porphyry, Life of Pythagoras 16)

For those who have eyes to see that obscure and oft overlooked passage contains a metric shit ton of significance. (Especially for those familiar with the bull-wolf-dragon and Black Sun mysteries of the Starry Bull tradition.)

Oh, and by the by – Triopas means “he who has three eyes” (from τρι- “three” + -ωπ- “see”) though the ending -ωψ, -οπος suggests a Pre-Greek origin.

You know what that reminds me of? No, not the tricephalous Giant from the Golden Horns of Gallehus, nor the Avestan Tištrya – though I can totally see why one’s mind might go there. I’m thinking about the three sisters from White-Bear King Valemon and the Black Bull of Norroway, which naturally makes one recall Vǫlundr and the Bear in Norse Tradition.

Circles, man. Fucking circles.

Charles Godfrey Leland, Etruscan Roman Remains in Popular Tradition p. 265-66

This is an extremely curious and ancient formula of declaring that whatever one does is not to stop at a certain point. By means of it almost any action is turned into magic. Thus to find and pick up anything, at once converts it into a fetish, or insures that all will go well with it if we say when taking it: “I do not pick up”,–naming the object–“I pick up good luck, which may never abandon me!” It is an incantation of universal application, enabling one to secure a wish out of every chance occurrence.

The spider is also used in divination. I find the following in a popular chapbook:–

Il Ragno Industrioso. In the Book of Dreams, and in the works of the famous cabalists Rutilio Benicosa, Casamia, l’Indovino, Il Palmaverde, Nostradamus, and the ancient Sybils or Haruspices, we often find methods of divining the secret of getting numbers by the lottery. Among the many extraordinary experiments made, the most singular is that by means of the spider.

Take one of these insects-let it be very large-and put it, without hurting it, in a little box,on the bottom of which are many small pieces of paper, numbered from one to ninety. Cover it with a transparent veil, and give the spider time to weave a web.

Naturally the insect in going here and there will turn up certain numbers. These must be noted. Do this three times, and then let the spider go. Many have won lucky numbers in the lottery by means of this experiment.

It may be observed that it is necessary to the success of this sortilege that we let the spider go. So in several of the charms Of MARCELLUS, the animal used in such spells must be dismissed in safety–Ecce dimitto te vivam!

The spider, it may be observed, can also be used for other divination as well as for lucky numbers in the lottery. Thus, if you write “Yes” or “No,” she will turn up for you an affirmative or negative for any question, or select the names of friends or enemies, or pick out lucky days.