Dionysian Mysteries
The Dionysian Mysteries were a ritual of ancient Greece and Rome which sometimes used intoxicants and other trance-inducing techniques to remove inhibitions and social constraints, liberating the individual to return to a natural state. It also provided some liberation for those marginalized by Greek society: women, slaves, outlaws, and non-citizens. In their final phase the Mysteries shifted their emphasis from a chthonic, underworld orientation to a transcendental, mystical one, with Dionysus changing his nature accordingly. By its nature as a mystery religion reserved for the initiated, many aspects of the Dionysian cult remain unknown and were lost with the decline of Greco-Roman polytheism; modern knowledge is derived from descriptions, imagery and cross-cultural studies.
Origins
The Dionysian Mysteries of mainland Greece and the Roman Empire are thought to have evolved from a more primitive initiatory cult of unknown origin which had spread throughout the Mediterranean region by the start of the Classical Greek period. Its spread was associated with the dissemination of wine, a sacrament or entheogen with which it appears always to have been closely associated. Beginning as a simple rite, it evolved quickly within Greek culture into a popular mystery religion, which absorbed a variety of similar cults in a typically Greek synthesis across its territories; one late form was the Orphic Mysteries. However, all stages of this developmental spectrum appear to have continued in parallel throughout the eastern Mediterranean until late in Greek history and forcible Christianization.Early Dionysus cult
The ecstatic cult of Dionysus was originally thought to be a late arrival in Greece from Thrace or Asia Minor, due to its popularity in both locations and Dionysus' non-integration into the Olympian Pantheon. After the deity's name was discovered on Mycenean Linear B tablets, however, this theory was abandoned and the cult is considered indigenous, predating Greek civilization. The absence of an early Olympian Dionysus is today explained by patterns of social exclusion and the cult's marginality, rather than chronology. Whether the cult originated on Minoan Crete or Africa – or in Thrace or Asia, as a proto-Sabazius – is unanswerable, due to lack of evidence. Some scholars believe it was an adopted cult not native to any of these places and may have been an eclectic cult in its earliest history, although it almost certainly obtained many familiar features from Minoan culture.Role of wine
The original rite of Dionysus is associated with a wine cult, concerned with the grapevine's cultivation and an understanding of its life cycle and the fermentation of wine from its dismembered body. Most importantly, however, the intoxicating and disinhibiting effects of wine were regarded as due to possession by the god's spirit. Wine was also poured on the earth and its growing vine, completing the cycle. The cult was not solely concerned with the vine itself, but also with the other components of wine. Wine includes other ingredients adding to its quality, flavour and medicinal properties. Scholars have suggested that, given the low alcoholic content of early wine, its effects may have been due to an additional entheogenic ingredient in its sacramental form. Honey and beeswax were often added to wine, introducing an even older drink. Károly Kerényi postulated that this wine lore superseded earlier Neolithic mead lore involving bee swarms associated by the Greeks with Dionysus. Mead and beer were incorporated into the domain of Dionysus, perhaps through his identification with the Thracian corn deity Sabazius.Other plants believed to be viniculturally significant were also included in wine lore such as ivy ; the fig and the pine. The bull and goat were also part of the cult, eventually seen as manifestations of Dionysus. Some of these associations had been linked with fertility deities and became part of his new role. An understanding of vinicultural lore and its symbolism is key to understanding the cult which emerged from it, assuming a significance other than winemaking that would encompass life, death and rebirth and providing insight into human psychology.
Assuming the Dionysus cult arrived in Greece with the importation of wine, it probably first emerged about 6000 BC in one of two places—the Zagros Mountains and borderlands of Mesopotamia and Persia, or from wild vines on the mountain slopes of Libya and other regions in North Africa. The latter provided wine to ancient Egypt wine from about 2500 BC, and was home to ecstatic rites involving animal possession—notably the goat and panther men of the Aissaoua Sufi cult of Morocco. In any case Minoan Crete was the next link in the chain, importing wine from the Egyptians, Thracians and Phoenicians and exporting it to its colonies. The Mysteries probably took shape in Minoan Crete from about 3000 to 1000 BC, since the name "Dionysus" exists nowhere other than Crete and Greece.
Rites
The rites were based on a seasonal death-rebirth theme, common among agricultural cults such as the Eleusinian Mysteries. The Osirian Mysteries paralleled the Dionysian, according to contemporary Greek and Egyptian observers. Spirit possession involved liberation from civilization's rules and constraints. It celebrated that which was outside civilized society and a return to primordial nature—which would later assume mystical overtones. It also involved escape from the socialized personality and ego into an ecstatic, deified state or the primal herd. In this sense Dionysus was the beast-god within, or the unconscious mind of modern psychology. Such activity has been interpreted as fertilizing, invigorating, cathartic, liberating and transformative, and so appealed to those on the margins of society: women, slaves, outlaws and "foreigners". All were equal in a cult that inverted their roles, similar to the Roman Saturnalia. Although the Greek Dionysian rites were associated with women, the cult officers' titles were of both genders—belying the claim that the cult was solely for women.The trance induction central to the cult involved not only chemognosis, but an "invocation of spirit" with the bullroarer and communal dancing to drum and pipe. The trances are described in familiar anthropological terms, with characteristic movements found today in Afro-American Vodou and its counterparts. As in Vodou rites, certain rhythms were associated with the trance. Rhythms are also found preserved in Greek prose referring to the Dionysian rites. This collection of classical quotes describes rites in the Greek countryside in the mountains, to which processions were made on feast days:
This practice is demonstrated in Greek culture by the Bacchanals of the Maenads, Thyiades and Bacchoi; many Greek rulers considered the cult a threat to civilized society and wished to control it. The latter failed; the former would succeed in the foundation of a domesticated Dionysianism as a state religion in Athens. This was but one form of Dionysianism—a cult which assumed different forms in different localities. The Greek Bacchoi claimed that, like wine, Dionysus had a different flavour in different regions; reflecting their mythical and cultural soil, he appeared under different names and appearances in different regions.
Dionysian paraphernalia
- Kantharos, drinking cup with large handles, originally the rhyton, later a kylix, or wine goblet
- Thyrsos, long wand with pine cone on top, carried by initiates and those possessed by the god
- Stave, once cast into ground to mark ritual space
- Krater, mixing bowl
- Flagellum, a scourge
- Minoan double axe, once used for sacrificial rites, later replaced by the Greek kopis
- Retis, hunter's net
- Laurel crown and cloak, purple robe, or leopard or fawnskin nebix
- Hunting boots
- Persona masks
- Bullroarer
- Salpinx, long, straight trumpet
- Pan flute
- Tympanon, a frame drum
- Liknon, sacred basket with fig
Traditional offerings to Dionysus
Animals sacred to Dionysus
Dionysus has numerous sacred animals, such as the leopard or bull. Other sacred animals include: Lions and other big cats, goats, donkies, and serpents.The bull and goat and their "enemies", the panther and the serpent ; in addition, the dolphin, the lion, and the bee.
Bulls
Dionysus’s association with bulls is found in multiple epithets. In The Bacchae, Penthus, who opposed his worship in the god’s origin city of Thebes, saw horns upon Dionysus’s head as he started to go mad.
Dionysus’s epithets connected to bulls are as follows:
Taurokephalos/Taurokranos/Taurometôpos Greek: Ταυροφαγος; a surname of Dionysus in the Orphic mysteries. It also occurs as a surname of rivers and the ocean, who were symbolically represented as bulls, to indicate their fertilising effect upon countries.
Tauros; a bull, occurs as a surname of Dionysus.