#the myth of dionysos

[mask131]

The myth of Dionysos (5)

Follow-up of the loose translation/recap of the article I began covering here.

II) The Frenzied God

Voluptuousness and cruelty

In The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche associates those two words to define “Dionysism”. Indeed, they are the two faces of drunkenness, and thus the two aspects of the magic of the god. While he is able to create flows of milk, honey and wine for the prosperity of mankind, Dionysos can also cause disaster-and-misfortune-inducing metamorphosis. The daughters of Minyas, that refused to leave their husbands to follow Bacchus, are terrified when milk and wine starts pouring from the ceiling above them.

The women that follow Dionysos become Maenads or Bacchants: under the influence of the “mania” (the divine possession) they become invulnerable, with an enormous strength, and they are plunged in a murderous delirium that forces them to rip into pieces the young beasts they just breastfed – sometimes they even kill their own children. The Bacchic “orgia” (rite, ritual) happens in three steps. First the oribasia, the disheveled race of the women through the mountain ; then the disparagmos, the sacrifice by ripping apart. This is the part of the ritual that is illustrated by Euripides’ Bacchants (405 BCE), with the murder of Pentheus by his mother Agave. “Foaming at the mouth, with rolling eyes, having lost her mind, possessed by Bacchus […] she took with both hands his left arm and, pushing with her foot against the flank of the unfortunate one, she disarticulated and ripped away the shoulder, not just with her sole strength, but with the power the god offered her.” The third time of the ritual is the omophagia, the devouring of the raw, barely dead, meat that was just lacerated.

The Dionysian cult introduces a ritual cruelty. In Arcadia, women are flagellated. In Boeotia, women are chased by the priest of Dionysos, who is armed with a sword ; and as a substitute to a human victim, a young veal wearing cothurnus and symbolizing a child is killed for the god. Through the “mania”, Dionysos imposes upon his followers the cruelty of which he was a victim: he was chased by Lycurgus, he was ripped apart and devoured by the Titans. From this arises the voluptuousness that is tied to the cruelty of the Bacchants, as they can, by satisfying their darkest instincts, life again the suffering of the god that possesses them.

Between life and death: contradictions

The ambiguity of the Dionysian intoxication, bringing joy and fury, life and death, is reflected in the animals that follow the god. On one side, animals of fecundity, such as the goat, the donkey, the bull. On the other side, ferocious and murderous beasts, such as the lion, the lynx or the panther. This contradiction is a symbol of what Nietzsche calls the “deadly-silent clatter”, the Dithyrambes of Dionysos. This god, nicknamed Bromios (the roaring one) is followed by a parade of loud music made by tambourines, flutes and cymbals, loud music that makes the Maenads dance to the point of convulsions. But, the god can also suddenly impose a strong silence, where even the Maenads stay immobile and frozen, as if petrified.

Even the origins of the god are placed in this contradiction, since his birth mixes life and death. Which is probably why the dead have such an important place in both his cult and myth. Horace tells of how Dionysos went into the Underworld to fetch back his mother. In Aristophane’s parody The Frogs (405 BCE), he goes in the realm of Hades to bring back Euripides. The third day of the Anthesteria, is dedicated to the dead, who are supposed to come back to haunt the living. The affinities of Dionysos with dead will even allow Heraclite to identify Dionysos to Hades, saying they both were the “Plouton”, the “giver of riches”. The various versions of Dionysos’ romance with Ariadne also prove this oscillation between life and death: sometimes Dionysos is the one that consoles and comforts Ariadne after Theseus abandonment, other times (such as in Homer’s Odyssey) he is rather a jealous lover who sends death to Ariadne through Artemis. The many contradictions of the Dionysism, and especially its unstoppable cruelty, made it very difficult to locate it within a political system, and it explains as such its subversive role in Greek society.

Disturbing the social and political order

If Dionysos is presented as a foreign god, it is because such an exoticism translates the strangeness of a god with no fixed place, of a cult that disdains temples to rather have a mobile and open worship. The “thiasis”, the very basis of the Dionysian religion, is found outside of all the social norms, since this group gathers without recognizing any distinction between men and women, poor and rich, citizens and slaves. On another hand, Dionysos is composed of a feminine strength and a subversive power that makes the effeminate god a champion of the “dark” or “nocturnal side”, as a counterpart to the diurnal, ordered and masculine power of Apollo. This god, that drags women away from their loom to hunt them down the mountains, can only break down the familial order – and thus, by extension, weaken the political order. The paroxysm of this disturbance is reached within The Bacchants, where the social, then political, dislocation of Thebes is crowned by the destruction of the palace, the very symbol of the royal power.

But even beyond all this, it is the very human values that are disturbed by Dionysos’ very existence: he is a god born from a mortal woman, a deity that stays close to humans and that allows them to be assimilated to him. Unlike the cult of all the other Greek gods, the Dionysian religion destroys the frontier between humanity and divinity.

As such, the cult of Dionysos had a cathartic role in Ancient Greece: it set mankind free (at least for a time) from his civic past and duties, as well as from his cruel desires and instincts. Imported in Rome, the “orgia” degenerated into a licentious feast and will soon be forbidden. Rome will rather honor Bacchus through art, by highlighting his role as a god of wine, and as the joyful musician of the bacchanals, which will be a loved subject of the European classical painting. It is this “weakened” or “watered-down” version of Dionysism that will survive in European culture until the end of the 19th century, when the philosophers and the poets will rediscover the true roots of the god.

[apollomes-supremacy]

Dionysos Anthroporraistos (man-slayer).

This was just an excuse to draw creepy Dionysos, really. Pleeease click it for a better quality 🙏

This took me 12 hours you guys

[whotfletamothhyperfx]

Have my designs of the Olympians (+Hestia and Hades) cause this took me FOREVER

[dionysianivy]

D I O N Y S U S

He is sweet upon the mountains. He drops to the earth from the running packs. He wears the holy fawn-skin. He hunts the wild goat and kills it. He delights in the raw flesh. He runs to the mountains of Phrygia, to the mountains of Lydia he runs! He is Bromius who leads us! Evohil

[thewhisperofzagreus]

The Triumph of Bacchus, 1875 - oil on canvas.

— Gustave Moreau (France, 1826–1898)

[elianzis]

✨

[sydnieminty]

Dionysus, God of Wine, Vegetation, and Madness 🍷🍇🌿

Guess I'm just gonna draw the whole pantheon at this point idfk you guys

I probably should have done Hephaestus next but my idea for Dionysus was clearer

Almost every Dionysus design I've seen has him with purple hair so I was like maybe I'll try green? I think it turned out nicely. It's a dark color that shines green where the light catches, vines and laurels are always sprouting from his head. You can tell this mf does NOT own a hair brush

His skin is a purplish tone because… grapes lol but also in a corpsey way? I think Dionysus' twice-born aspect and ties to the underworld are interesting so I want to lean into that.

Whenever Dionysus is around, things are certainly never dull. He's almost always in some drunken state of mania, the few times he is not is a bit disturbing to those that know him. He has many worshippers and is often found reveling in the gifts they offer. He's a bit of a weirdo, but has an undeniable charm to those around him.

[vdoes]

Ariadne

"She was the darling of the gods and she has her emblem in the sky..."

//print

[queenghostieart]

Bacchic Frenzy

I have NO idea why I never posted this piece. It’s over a year old by now, and I still quite like it! So here’s my favourite guy

[amiti-art]

Dionysus my beloved

I might end up changing the clothes slightly later on. I'm not sure if I like the shape of the purple robe, but I do like the jewelry so it's definitely staying

[mask131]

The myth of Dionysos (4)

The Dictionary of literary myths does not have just one article about Dionysos… But two! And since I translated the first, let’s journey through the second: it is titled “Dionysos: The evolution of the literary myth”, and it was written by Ann-Déborah Lévy-Bertherat.

According to the imagery of the Ancient Greeks, Dionysos is supposed to be a young god – he is often depicted as a teenager, sometimes even as a child. This perhaps explains why his Greek name was thought to be the counterpart of the Phrygian “Dioskouros”, “the boy of Zeus”. However, it seems more plausible to link Dionysos’ name to Nysa, both nurse and homeland of the god. But no matter which of these explanations is right: both highlight and insist on a foreign origin for the god. A foreign origin that we know to be purely mythical rather than historical – indeed, the Mycenaean texts proved that the cult of Dionysos was implanted in Greece since a very, very old time, and was not a “recent importation” as classical Greeks believed. But then, why make Dionysos a “foreign god”? Maybe because, in a symbolic way, it is important for Dionysos to be a god that “comes and goes”, a “god that arrived” – or maybe, it was a much needed element to explain his strange, bizarre and frightening character.

I/ Births and rebirths of Dionysos

Semele, a mortal woman loved by Zeus, died because of Hera’s jealousy: she asked her divine lover to appear before her in all of his glory, but this resulted in her death struck by his lightning. Removing the child she was bearing in her womb, Zeus placed the unborn into his own thigh, where the baby completed his growth. As such, Dionysos knew a double-birth, and his cult was deeply marked by this. One of the Dionysiac rites is the ritual of the liknites (child in crib) – where a child has to disappear and be searched by women in vain, for he will only reappear one year later.

The Passion of Dionysos: The myths of Dionysos’ childhoods and wanderings depict him as a persecuted god. One time he is dismembered, boiled and devoured by the Titans before being resurrected by Demeter. Another time Hera curses with madness Semele’s sister, Ino, first nurse of the god. In a third tale pirates kidnap the child to sell him as a slave. Homer, in the Iliad, retells of how Lycurgus, armed with an axe and a desire to kill, hunted down Dionysos and his nymph-nurses – the child had to throw himself into the sea, where he was saved by Thetis. The true “passion” of Dionysos (in the Christian meaning of the term) always suffering, always dying, but always resurrecting, seems to be a symbol of the vegetal cycle. As a result, it is no coincidence that the four great holidays of Dionysos are all placed between the end of December and the beginning of April – aka, between the winter solstice and the arrival of spring.

Ivy and vine: Legends insist on the ties between Dionysos and other vegetal deities, such as Cybele or Rhea – two incarnations of the great Earth-mother, two deities that shield Dionysos from Hera’s revenge. There are the agrarian nymphs that constantly surround the god; there is his lover, Ariadne, that was originally a Minoan goddess of vegetation; and there is of course Demeter, to which he is tied through the Mysteries of Eleusis (and Pindar even goes as far as making Dionysos and Demeter a couple). Dionysos is also called Bacchus (a named which, according to Euripides, comes from “bacchos”, the “branch” the “bough”) ; he is said to be a “ploutodotes”, a “wealth-giver” ; he was believed to give strength to plants and to help them grow ; and among his numerous attributes, his most prominent ones are the ivy (of which he is crowned) and the grapevine (which he offered to the world). These two plants have always a savior role in his myths. It was said that the child Semele bore was protected from the lightning by ivy ; the pirates were frightened when ivy and vine started growing around their ship’s mast ; a nymph hunted by Lycurgus turned herself into vine to choke the murderous king… And yet, these two plants are such a contrast they can only make the god ambiguous: ivy is coldness and sterility, where the grapevine is warmth and generosity. Dionysos is almost most famed as the god of wine: it is the wine that symbolizes the presence of the gods during festivals; during the Lenaia festival (January-February) the new wine is offered to the god (symbolized as a bough-decorated mask). Dionysos “polygethes” (joyful, happy) is said, according to Euripides, to have the power to “laugh and put to sleep all our problems”.

Fertility and fecundity: This god, friend of the nymphs, who found a home with Thetis at the bottom of the sea, whose statue is ritually plunged in water at Halai, who was said to have entered Athens on a naval chariot, has too many affinities with water and humidity (an universal symbol of fertility) for his power to limit itself just to plants. Indeed, let us take a look at his cohorts and parades: w find in there donkeys, goats and bulls, usually painted in an ithyphallic position; and he is surrounded by Satyrs and Silenes whose lubricity and lust are meant to parallel the chastity of the Maenads. Dionysos himself, during the Anthesteria festival (February-march) knows a physical and sexual union with the Basilinna, and by doing so ensures one year of fecundity for all of Athens. The exaltation of fertility in Dionysos’ cult is most expressed through phallophoria – but the particularity of Dionysos is that he depicts a complete and “full” fecundity, with both its masculine and feminine attributes. Dionysos, in his myth like in his cult, is surrounded by women: Aeschylus calls him “effeminate”, explaining his youthfulness (he hasn’t grown a beard or body hair yet), and his clothes (he usually wore the women’s peplum). Some even depict him as an androgynous figure, and the ambiguity of his sex reminds the one of the hermaphrodite and their “ideal fecundity”. The French poet Baudelaire will even interpret the thyrsus, a long, leafed staff held by the followers of the god, as the union of the masculine symbol (the straight staff) and the feminine one (the curvy boughs wrapped around it). Dionysos is “polygethes” and “ploutodotes” – but reducing Dionysos to this sole role would be removing from him his “dark side”, the eviler part of his power. For Homer calls him “mainomenos”, the “demented one”. He is a god that disturbs, he is a god that break the order.

More about this next time, in “The Frenzied God”!

[superkooku]

It's just so funny how many stories we have of Dionysus DYING.

You'd think an immortal god wouldn't get killed so much.

(Correction from 3/11/2024 : the Perseus and Lycurgus anecdotes are from rarer versions of the myth, not the common one, but it's still interesting to explore it either through an abstract lense or just "Dionysus' defeat")

First, orphism. Where Zagreus is dismembered by the Titans, whom Hera sent. He's then reborn.

Then, Perseus slaying him in their war against each other (right after Ariadne). And Hera's involved both times.

Finally, one version of Lycurgus' myth where the king kills Ambrosia, one of his caregivers and then a young Dionysus is forced to jump in the water. Well, it's not said he died as Thetis saved him and the others from drowning, but still...

And then he comes back to get revenge on Lycurgus and that man is horrified to see him again, because he literally killed him. That alone would make him go insane, and Dionysus just relishes in his victory.

Another detail: it's never stated how and if he comes back to life after Perseus' victory. He's buried at one point, but since he's a god, of course he has to somehow be resurrected.

So i'm just imagining him raising from the dead and terrifying everyone in the process. Just digging himself out of a grave and being like "Oh... I died again? That's starting to get annoying."

I don't think Perseus would be afraid, though. Dionysus' shenanigans never impressed him that much and he has seen many things. He'd probably be aggravated and they'd make up at this moment.

Dionysus, buddy, you rightfully earned your title of "god of death and rebirth".

And I'm not saying Dionysus is weak or anything, he was very young in 2/3 of the stories and Perseus is just that goated (and the city of Argos was sacred to Hera , so it wouldn't be a stretch to imagine her helping Perseus win like Athena with Diomedes.

But he probably just did it on his own, which is an enormous feat !)

And Dionysus has his fair share of victories (in the Gigantomachy, against Pentheus, Lycurgus the revenge, against INDIA as a whole, etc...)

Dionysus' death is just some recurring theme that makes his story even more interesting and ties him to his human origins, with Semele.

[cramenjoyer]

no one is ever talking about how icarus and the minotaur lived in the same house. you don't think icarus was so foolishly carefree once he touched the sky because he knew bondage? he knew that worse than bondage, there was a boy down there who have never once laid eyes on the sun? you don't think the minotaur's last moments were spent wondering if there was some land beyond the infinite dark-- for no one had bothered to tell him except the whimpering, dying children he consumed? did he wonder whether it would have a sun? something more beautiful, he figured, than anything? when icarus reached for the sun and felt his wings melting, he kept going because he knew that other little boy would never get to see it, and if only he could shake a bit of heavenly light loose... but it wasn't meant to be. they were both doomed from the start.

[h0bg0blin-meat]

Hermes: Ah, Hello again. We really need to stop meeting like this.

Dionysus: Maybe we would, if you would sTOP BREAKING INTO MY FUCKING HOUSE!!!

[thewhisperofzagreus]

Come, Eleutherios, and kiss me with your wine-tasting lips.

[elianzis]

Brothers ♥️