Dionysus

"Hail and take pleasure, child of Semele with beautiful looks. There is no way I could have my mind disconnect from you as I put together the beautiful cosmic order of my song."

Dionysus Triumphs in India

Dionysus is perhaps the most mysterious and misunderstood Greek deity. He is the deity most focused on in Greek mystery religion, but is less present in public religion. Many people misunderstand Dionysus as being simply the god of wine, and even worse, characterize him as a “hedonistic” deity. This is potentially blasphemous, to characterize an undying god as “hedonistic”. In reality, Dionysus is much more significant.

There is a particular reason that Dionysus does not have his own planet, in the way the Olympians do. It is actually quite similar to Lorkhan in the Elder Scrolls — Dionysus is the god of this world. He is the sub-lunar demiurge, the son of Zeus (the cosmic demiurge) with a mortal woman. He is sometimes even associated with hades, who is the god of the underworld. For example, Dionysus is sometimes considered as the “sun of the underworld” in the same way Apollo is associated the sun from our perspective, and Helios is associated with the sun in-itself. Understandably, Dionysus fulfills this role in something of an Odinic way, as a wanderer. For example, in a classic Homeric hymn, a wandering Dionysus is captured and imprisoned by Etruscan pirates. He then demonstrates his godly powers by breaking his binds and turning the pirates into dolphins. There are other similarities between Dionysus and Odin. Both are strongly associated with secret mysteries, sometimes even ones which would be considered transgressive to the uninitiated. Both are associated with the sacred mead as well — or in the case of Dionysus, the unmixed wine. Both are viewed as sources of inspiration. This is where we can perhaps understand the true root of the Apollonian and Dionysian divide, although perhaps it could be considered more of a Zeusian-Dionysian divide. The priest versus the sorcerer. The lord of hosts versus the warlord. The sunlight, and the starlight. The Sectionalism Archive, and the Deep iSubStack. Both characters, just as they are present within the ideal king, are aspects of the god Odin, and in the deity Georges Dumezil calls Mitra-Varuna. This is derived from the two deities of the Rig Veda, Mitra and Varuna, who are usually mentioned as the dyad Mitra-Varuna, which may suggest that they were once the dame deity. This is also a function of the Roman deity Janus.

So, this is the first true dichotomy between Apollo and Dionysus. Apollo is the god of the public games, Dionysus is god of the mystery, the unspoken word. Speaking of the Dionysian Mysteries, let’s talk about those for a second, because they are regularly slandered. The Dionysian Orgy was not, in fact, an orgy. There is absolutely zero reliable evidence that there was ever a sexual element to it. The ritual was, if anything, closer to Shamanic rituals or even the Germanic shield dance.

It revolved around two things primarily — the consumption of raw meat, and the consumption of unmixed wine (Greeks always watered down their wine, and added other ingredients like spices and honey). This was done in order to achieve a state of frenzy or ritual madness, a madness which could be a source of inspiration or clarity. Also, there is absolutely zero evidence that they used some sort of psychedelic. I don’t even believe the Eleusinian Mysteries used a psychedelic, which I talk about in my post on drugs. It is perhaps somewhat similar to certain rituals in Vajrayana Buddhism, which is itself heavily influenced by Tibetan and Mongolian Shamanism, but I would say the Dionysian ritual is not quite as vulgar. In both cases there is a strong focus on loosening inhibitions and returning to a state of pure intuition, but in the case of Vajrayana there are some unwholesome elements meant to actively break righteous social taboos for the sake of it. Of course, these Buddhist esoterics are still recognizing that what they are doing is something only the initiated can do without destroying themselves. Sort of like how Mace Windu can use a little bit of the Dark Side and still be a Jedi. You also see this sort of anti-ascetic moment in Dionysian mystery unlike the later Orphic mystery, which is somewhat ascetic although still mostly based on rite. The “apollonian” religious groups were often somewhat ascetic, ex: Pythagoras and Plutarch being vegetarians. This focus away from asceticism is also reflected in some of these shamanic or tantric groups, who believe that it is best to engage in things which could cause attachment in order to know you are devoid of attachment (from my understanding).

So, orgies do not involve hedonism or sex. The orgy is clearly more a thing of the thymos, not the appetite. Dionysus to the Orphics was a dying god, he is actually the divine spark within humanity. The Orphics believed that humans were created through the ashes of the Titans and Dionysus mixing, as the latter was killed and eaten by the titans who were then thunderbolted by Zeus. In this myth we arrive at the second function of Dionysus — the suffering god. As his domain is this world we live in, he is the god of both pleasure and pain, but being an immortal god is capable of transcending such things. I think this is what Nietzsche gets on about with Dionysus, that he is representative of the amor fati of the Greeks. I am not a Nietzschean guy though, so I might be mischaracterizing Nietzsche here.

All of that being said, Dionysus still serves a significant sovereign function just like many of the other gods. Because his realm is in the world, he is credited with historical events such as a mythical conquest of India (one of Dionysus’s epithets is literally Indoletes, meaning slayer of Indians. Dionysus is also regarded as founding many cities in his time on earth. I can’t help but wonder if this myth is a distant memory from long ago, when the Greeks still resided on the Pontic-Caspian steppe and their cousins went down into the Subcontinent. Probably not, but it’s an interesting idea. The fact that Dionysus is associated with various head deities of foreign religions like Sabazios and Jehovah is further evidence that he was certainly not a subversive god.

During the Roman period, like many things, the image of the Dionysian religious scene was changed based on Interpretatio romana. Dionysus, who to the Greeks was “Mystes” (of the Mysteries), was associated with the Plebeian god Liber Pater. Combined with certain negative stereotypes of the Greeks in Italy, Bacchus fixation became associated with subversion. There’s no doubt that in Greece as well, there were rural attributes of the god which were perhaps more of the creative liberties of the country viticulturalists, but don’t be fooled into thinking Dionysus was simply retconned into being mysterious. Again, many of the characteristics of Dionysus are present in other Indo-European deities, and despite his reputation even during his time as foreign we now know that he was already worshipped in Mycenaean Greece. Given that Orpheus, who lived before the Trojan War, is credited with the creation of the Dionysian Mysteries.