There can be few people who have not heard of the Eleusinian festivals of Ancient Greece which assured that the burgeoning of spring would follow on as a matter of course, from the barren landscapes of winter. The rituals surrounding the goddess Demeter, and her hapless daughter Persephone, have been the subject of countless books and articles over the years. Less well explored, however, are the observances associated with a deity whose own part in the festivals has been misted by the centuries in between. God of Spring, life-force of vegetation and reproductive animals. The Neoplatonists of a later era christened him 'The Mind of the World'. Nonbelievers who were living at the height of his worship looked less kindly on a dogma which had its beginning in the seduction of Peresphone by her father, the supreme god Zeus.
The child of that union. Dionysus, should have gone on to inherit all of his father's power and glory. Instead he was taken prisoner by the Titans who turned him into a sacred meal —a not unusual fate for anyone captured by their enemies in those uncertain times.
Only the heart of the young god survived. This his half-sister Athena rescued and from it whilst Zeus was revenging himself on the Titans by reducing them to the ashes from which he drew the life force which was to become the human race, she fashioned a philtre to administer to Semele, a princess of Thebes.
The victim drunk deeply of the draught and almost immediately was filled with such an overwhelming passion for Zeus that mere carnal knowledge of him was not enough. She desired to see the god in all his glory and to this end she tricked him, only to be consumed by flames from which her unborn baby was shielded by a thick shoot of ivy, which was to become the sacred symbol of his cult. The reborn Dionysus, child of god and mortal as one who came later was also to be, was brought up by nymphs, muses, satyrs and maenads.
He passed his formative years on Mt Nysa in Thrace, an area which forms part of modern day Bulgaria. Later he travelled to Libya. Arabia and India, bringing with him wherever he went an advanced knowledge of agriculture, arts, crafts and winemaking, as well as the influence of the orgiastic mystery cults into which Cybele had initiated him. His eventual ascent into Heaven with his bride, Ariadne, was a promise to every believer that their faith would earn them a similar reward.
And if that seemed ever to be an eternity in its achievement there was no need for any loss of heart. Compensations aplenty abounded to help while away existence on the mortal plane. Opium, ivy. toadstools, mystic rituals, wine, a state of divine possession which the uninitiated took to be a state of intoxication. It was said by his followers that anyone refusing to believe in Dionysus would be stricken by madness. It was claimed by critics of the cult that the opposite was far more likely to be the case.
Even sacramental communion with the god was a wild and excessive affair. The maenads of mythology were female elementals given to dancing wildly to the clashing of cymbals, wearing snakes in their hair, and performing acts of frenzied barbarism such as tearing the poet and musician Orpheus to pieces for his rejection of their role in the religion he had helped to form.
The latter day maenads of Dionysaism danced themselves into a state of hysterical ecstasy before taking part in Omophagia— a sacred rite in which a bull, or young kid, identified with Dionysus was torn apart, its blood drunk and almost all of its flesh devoured. All, that was, except for the phallus of the sacrificial victim.
Dionysus was god of the cycles of the earth and in a two year cycle of his own, his death and rebirth were celebrated at alternating festivals. The phallus, representing the life principle, was needed to be born again the following year in the young Dionysus, the 'light from the east'.
Little else is known for certain about the rites of the cult. As a generalisation it can be assumed that the path to true knowledge would be via priest or hierophant. in a fashion common to all mystery religions. Preparatory purification, possibly taking the form of a procession to, and ritual washing in. the sea. Instruction in mystic disciplines. Study of certain sacred artefacts. The enactment of a divine story. The crowning and wreathing of the successful initiate. It is to the paintings and reliefs of the period that we must look if more specific information is required.
From these it would appear that the female role in Dionysaism was unex-
pectedly important, considering the general status of women in the ancient world. In nearly every depiction they appear as priestesses, leaders and initiators, whilst male initiates and priests alike are shambling figures, veiled and blinded. Upright phallii in baskets of fruit symbolise the inexhaustible forces of life and fertility. A phallus on the head of an initiate makes of him a living symbol of the male principle. Meanwhile the female initiate unites with a priest in proxy of sacred intercourse with the god and sets off on a wild dance of exultation as she is accepted into the sorority of maenads.
And yet it should not be assumed that such rites were merely the excuse for licentiousness and debauchery, which their critics made them out to be. Raised to a higher plane of awareness by the intoxication of their beliefs, initiate and established believer alike were able to attain an intensity of worship transcending by far anything of which non-initiates were capable.
Nor did the followers of Dionysus find their god only in this way. The mainstream of the cult might remain incorrigible in the established beliefs and practices but there were milder offshoots which found the excesses of their fellows as abhorrent, as did the ordinary citizenry.
The Orphics, as they were known after their inspiration Orpheus, believed that the divine element in an initiate could be strengthened in a number of ways. By observing set rules of purity and abstinence. By wearing only white clothes. By eating only that meat which represented the raw flesh of the suffering and dying god. By avoiding sexual over indulgence and pollution. By living in such a fashion that any evil would be expunged from the soul and the punishment of rebirth after death transmuted instead to a voyage to the Isles of the Blest.
It was a popular concept during the early part of the millennium and yet for all that there seemed to be any number of adherents ever ready to spread theirs was not a religion destined to stand the test of time.
If you want to know more why not read Gardens of the Gods, by Brian Taylor, available as a hardback book from Amazon, or its e-book version, Sacred Plants of the World from Neolithic Times Until the Present Day, available from Amazon Kindle.
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