Dionysian Mysteries

Role of wine

Marble table support adorned by a group including Dionysus, Pan and a Satyr; Dionysus holds a rhyton (drinking vessel) in the shape of a panther; traces of red and yellow colour are preserved on the hair of the figures and the branches; from an Asia Minor workshop, 170-180 AD, National Archaeological Museum, Athens, Greece

The original rite of Dionysus (as introduced into Greece) is associated with a wine cult (not unlike the entheogenic cults of ancient Central America), concerned with the grapevine's cultivation and an understanding of its life cycle (believed to have embodied the living god) and the fermentation of wine from its dismembered body (associated with the god's essence in the underworld). Most importantly, however, the intoxicating and disinhibiting effects of wine were regarded as due to possession by the god's spirit (and, later, as causing this possession). 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 (herbal, floral and resinous) 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 (mead). Károly Kerényi postulated that this wine lore superseded (and partly absorbed) earlier Neolithic mead lore involving bee swarms associated by the Greeks with Dionysus.^[2] Mead and beer (with its cereal base) were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 (thought to counteract drunkenness—thus the opposite of the grapevine—and seen as blooming in winter instead of summer); the fig (a purgative of toxins) and the pine (a wine preservative). The bull (from whose horn wine was drunk) and goat (whose flesh provided wineskins, and whose browsing pruned the vines) were also part of the cult, eventually seen as manifestations of Dionysus. Some of these associations had been linked with fertility deities (like Dionysus) 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 (with a rich wine culture via Asia Minor), 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 (although this cult may have been influenced by the Dionysian one). 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 (such as Greece). 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

A Hellenistic Greek mosaic depicting the god Dionysos as a winged daimon riding on a tiger, from the House of Dionysos at Delos (which was once controlled by Athens) in the South Aegean region of Greece, late 2nd century BC, Archaeological Museum of Delos

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 (sometimes both). In this sense Dionysus was the beast-god within, or the unconscious mind of modern psychology.^[3] Such activity has been interpreted as fertilizing, invigorating, cathartic, liberating and transformative, so it is not surprising that many devotees of Dionysus were those on the margins of society: women, slaves, outlaws and "foreigners" (non-citizens, in Greek democracy). 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,^[4] 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 (such as the backward head flick found in all trance-inducing cults) 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 (such as Euripides' The Bacchae). This collection of classical quotes describes rites in the Greek countryside in the mountains, to which processions were made on feast days:

Following the torches as they dipped and swayed in the darkness, they climbed mountain paths with head thrown back and eyes glazed, dancing to the beat of the drum which stirred their blood' [or 'staggered drunkenly with what was known as the Dionysus gait']. 'In this state of ekstasis or enthusiasmos, they abandoned themselves, dancing wildly and shouting 'Euoi!' [the god's name] and at that moment of intense rapture became identified with the god himself. They became filled with his spirit and acquired divine powers.^[5]

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 (if not suppress it altogether). 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 (often absorbing indigenous divinities and their rites, as did Dionysus himself). 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 (drinking horn from a bull), 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 (curved dagger)
• 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

Musk, civet, frankincense, storax, ivy, grapes, pine, fig, wine, honey, apples, Indian hemp, orchis root, thistle, all wild and domestic trees, black diamonds.

Animals sacred to Dionysus

The bull and goat and their "enemies", the panther (or any big cat – after the Greeks colonized part of India, Shiva's tiger sometimes replaced the traditional panther or leopard) and the serpent (probably derived from Sabazius, but also found in North African cults); in addition, the fawn/deer, the fox, the dolphin, the lion, the bat and the bee.