Dionysian Mysteries

Last updated October 21, 2024

The Dionysian Mysteries were a ritual of ancient Greece and Rome which sometimes used intoxicants and other trance-inducing techniques (like dance and music) to remove inhibitions. It also provided some liberation for men and women marginalized by Greek society, among which were 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 (perhaps Thracian or Phrygian) 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 (though mead may have been the original sacrament). Beginning as a simple rite, it evolved quickly within Greek culture into a popular mystery religion, which absorbed a variety of similar cults (and their gods) 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 (as an aspect of an ancient Zagreus) 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.^[1]

Role of wine

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 psychoactive ingredient in its sacramental form, supported by iconography showing herbs being mixed with the wine in the kraters, especially preceding ecstatic behavior.^[2] Poppy, from which opium is extracted, is a likely candidate, being sometimes worn as a wreath by the god in art.^[2] Also, 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.^[3] 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.

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 (sometimes both). In this sense Dionysus was the beast-god within, or the unconscious mind of modern psychology.^[4] 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" (non-citizens, in Greek democracy). All were equal in a cult that inverted their roles, similar to the Roman Saturnalia.

The trance induction central to the cult involved not only chemognosis (an altered state caused by drug use), 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^{[ citation needed ]}). 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
Thyrsus, long wand with a pine cone on top, carried by initiates and those possessed by the god
Stave, once cast into the 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.

Animals sacred to Dionysus

Dionysus has numerous sacred animals, such as the leopard or bull.^[6] Other sacred animals include: lions and other big cats, goats, donkeys, and serpents.^[6]

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 dolphin, the lion, and the bee.

Bulls

Dionysus's association with bulls is found in multiple epithets. In The Bacchae , Pentheus, who opposed his worship in the god's origin city of Thebes, saw horns upon Dionysus's head as he started to go mad.^[7]

Dionysus's epithets connected to bulls are as follows:

Taurokephalos/Taurokranos/Taurometôpos Greek: Ταυροφαγος; a surname of Dionysus in the Orphic mysteries. (Orph. Hymn. 51. 2.) It also occurs as a surname of rivers and the ocean, which were symbolically represented as bulls, to indicate their fertilising effect upon countries. (Eurip. Iphig. Aul. 275, Orest. 1378 ; Aelian, V. H. ii. 33; Horat. Carm. iv. 14, 25.)^[8]

Tauros; a bull, occurs as a surname of Dionysus. (Eurip. Bacch. 918 ; Athen. xi. p. 476; Plut. Quaest. Graec. 36 ; Lycoph. Cass. 209.)^[8]

Invocations of Dionysus (from the Orphic hymns)

"I call upon loud-roaring and revelling Dionysus,

primeval, double-natured, thrice-born, Bacchic lord,

wild, ineffable, secretive, two-horned and two-shaped.

Ivy-covered, bull-faced, warlike, howling, pure,

You take raw flesh, you have feasts, wrapt in foliage, decked with grape clusters.

Resourceful Eubouleus, immortal god sired by Zeus

When he mated with Persephone in unspeakable union.

Hearken to my voice, O blessed one,

and with your fair-girdled nymphs breathe on me in a spirit of perfect agape".

"In intoxication, physical or spiritual, the initiate recovers an intensity of feeling which prudence had destroyed; he finds the world full of delight and beauty, and his imagination is suddenly :liberated from the prison of everyday preoccupations. The Bacchic ritual produced what was called 'enthusiasm', which means etymologically having the god enter the worshipper, who believed :that he became one with the god".^[9]

Orphic Hymn XLIV. To Dionysus Bassareus

A Hymn

Come, blessed Dionysius [Dionysos], various nam'd, bull-fac'd, begot from Thunder, Bacchus [Bakkhos] fam'd. Bassarian God, of universal might, whom swords, and blood, and sacred rage delight: In heav'n rejoicing, mad, loud-sounding God, furious inspirer, bearer of the rod: By Gods rever'd, who dwell'st with human kind, propitious come, with much-rejoicing mind.^[10]

Orphic Hymn XLV. To Liknitus Bacchus [Liknitos Dionysus]

The Fumigation from Manna.

Liknitan Bacchus [Liknitos Dionysos], bearer of the vine, thee I invoke to bless these rites divine: Florid and gay, of nymphs the blossom bright, and of fair Venus [Aphrodite], Goddess of delight, 'Tis thine mad footsteps with mad nymphs to beat, dancing thro' groves with lightly leaping feet: From Jove's [Zeus'] high counsels nurst by Proserpine [Persephoneia], and born the dread of all the pow'rs divine: Come, blessed pow'r, regard thy suppliant's voice, propitious come, and in these rites rejoice.^[10]

Orphic Hymn XLVI. To Bacchus Pericionius [ Dionysus Perikionios]

The Fumigation from Aromatics.

Bacchus Pericionius [Dionysos Perikionios], hear my pray'r, who mad'st the house of Cadmus once thy care, With matchless force, his pillars twining round, (when burning thunders shook the solid ground, In flaming, founding torrents borne along), propt by thy grasp indissolubly strong. Come mighty Bacchus to these rites inclin'd, and bless thy suppliants with rejoicing mind.^[10]

Inscription about the mysteries in Plovdiv

An ancient Roman inscription written in Ancient Greek dated to 253–255 AD was discovered in the Great Basilica at the Plovdiv (ancient Philippopolis). The inscription refers to the Dionysian Mysteries and also mentions Roman Emperors Valerian and Gallienus. It has been found on a large stele that was used as construction material during the building of the Great Basilica.^[11]

Related Research Articles

Hades, in the ancient Greek religion and mythology, is the god of the dead and the king of the underworld, with which his name became synonymous. Hades was the eldest son of Cronus and Rhea, although this also made him the last son to be regurgitated by his father. He and his brothers, Zeus and Poseidon, defeated their father's generation of gods, the Titans, and claimed joint rulership over the cosmos. Hades received the underworld, Zeus the sky, and Poseidon the sea, with the solid earth available to all three concurrently. In artistic depictions, Hades is typically portrayed holding a bident and wearing his helm with Cerberus, the three-headed guard-dog of the underworld, standing at his side.

In ancient Greek mythology and religion, Persephone, also called Kore or Cora, is the daughter of Zeus and Demeter. She became the queen of the underworld after her abduction by her uncle Hades, the king of the underworld, who would later also take her into marriage.

Mystery religions, mystery cults, sacred mysteries or simply mysteries, were religious schools of the Greco-Roman world for which participation was reserved to initiates (mystai). The main characteristic of these religious schools was the secrecy associated with the particulars of the initiation and the ritual practice, which may not be revealed to outsiders. The most famous mysteries of Greco-Roman antiquity were the Eleusinian Mysteries, which predated the Greek Dark Ages. The mystery schools flourished in Late Antiquity; Emperor Julian, of the mid-4th century, is believed by some scholars to have been associated with various mystery cults—most notably the mithraists. Due to the secret nature of the schools, and because the mystery religions of Late Antiquity were persecuted by the Christian Roman Empire from the 4th century, the details of these religious practices are derived from descriptions, imagery and cross-cultural studies.

In Greek mythology, Silenus was a companion and tutor to the wine god Dionysus. He is typically older than the satyrs of the Dionysian retinue (thiasos), and sometimes considerably older, in which case he may be referred to as a Papposilenus. Silen and its plural sileni refer to the mythological figure as a type that is sometimes thought to be differentiated from a satyr by having the attributes of a horse rather than a goat, though usage of the two words is not consistent enough to permit a sharp distinction.

The Bacchanali were unofficial, privately funded popular Roman festivals of Bacchus, based on various ecstatic elements of the Greek Dionysia. They were almost certainly associated with Rome's native cult of Liber, and probably arrived in Rome itself around 200 BC. Like all mystery religions of the ancient world, very little is known of their rites. They seem to have been popular and well-organised throughout the central and southern Italian peninsula.

In ancient Greek religion and myth, Dionysus is the god of wine-making, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, festivity, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, and theatre. He was also known as Bacchus by the Greeks for a frenzy he is said to induce called baccheia. As Dionysus Eleutherius, his wine, music, and ecstatic dance free his followers from self-conscious fear and care, and subvert the oppressive restraints of the powerful. His thyrsus, a fennel-stem sceptre, sometimes wound with ivy and dripping with honey, is both a beneficent wand and a weapon used to destroy those who oppose his cult and the freedoms he represents. Those who partake of his mysteries are believed to become possessed and empowered by the god himself.

Semele, or Thyone in Greek mythology, was the youngest daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia, and the mother of Dionysus by Zeus in one of his many origin myths.

In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Zagreus was a god sometimes identified with an Orphic Dionysus, a son of Zeus and Persephone, who was dismembered by the Titans and reborn. In the earliest mention of Zagreus, he is paired with Gaia and called the "highest" god, though perhaps only in reference to the gods of the underworld. Aeschylus, however, links Zagreus with Hades, possibly as Hades' son, or as Hades himself. Noting "Hades' identity as Zeus' katachthonios alter ego", Timothy Gantz postulated that Zagreus, originally the son of Hades and Persephone, later merged with the Orphic Dionysus, the son of Zeus and Persephone.

In Greek mythology, maenads were the female followers of Dionysus and the most significant members of the thiasus, the god's retinue. Their name, which comes from μαίνομαι, literally translates as 'raving ones'. Maenads were known as Bassarids, Bacchae, or Bacchantes in Roman mythology after the penchant of the equivalent Roman god, Bacchus, to wear a bassaris or fox skin.

The Bacchae is an ancient Greek tragedy, written by the Athenian playwright Euripides during his final years in Macedonia, at the court of Archelaus I of Macedon. It premiered posthumously at the Theatre of Dionysus in 405 BC as part of a tetralogy that also included Iphigeneia at Aulis and Alcmaeon in Corinth, and which Euripides' son or nephew is assumed to have directed. It won first prize in the City Dionysia festival competition.

In ancient Greek religion and mythology, Iacchus was a minor deity, of some cultic importance, particularly at Athens and Eleusis in connection with the Eleusinian mysteries, but without any significant mythology. He perhaps originated as the personification of the ritual exclamation Iacche! cried out during the Eleusinian procession from Athens to Eleusis. He was often identified with Dionysus, perhaps because of the resemblance of the names Iacchus and Bacchus, another name for Dionysus. By various accounts he was a son of Demeter, or a son of Persephone, identical with Dionysus Zagreus, or a son of Dionysus.

In Ancient Greece a thyrsus or thyrsos was a wand or staff of giant fennel covered with ivy vines and leaves, sometimes wound with taeniae and topped with a pine cone, artichoke, fennel, or by a bunch of vine-leaves and grapes or ivy-leaves and berries, carried during Hellenic festivals and religious ceremonies. The thyrsus is typically associated with the Greek god Dionysus, and represents a symbol of prosperity, fertility, and hedonism similarly to Dionysus.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sabazios</span> A deity of Phrygian origin also favoured in the Balkans

Sabazios is a deity originating in Asia Minor. He is the horseman and sky father god of the Phrygians and Thracians.

The Lenaia was an annual Athenian festival with a dramatic competition. It was one of the lesser festivals of Athens and Ionia in ancient Greece. The Lenaia took place in Athens in Gamelion, roughly corresponding to January. The festival was in honour of Dionysus Lenaios. There is also evidence the festival also took place in Delphi.

Orphism is the name given to a set of religious beliefs and practices originating in the ancient Greek and Hellenistic world, associated with literature ascribed to the mythical poet Orpheus, who descended into the Greek underworld and returned. This type of journey is called a katabasis and is the basis of several hero worships and journeys. Orphics revered Dionysus and Persephone. Orphism has been described as a reform of the earlier Dionysian religion, involving a re-interpretation or re-reading of the myth of Dionysus and a re-ordering of Hesiod's Theogony, based in part on pre-Socratic philosophy.

Omophagia, or omophagy is the eating of raw flesh. The term is of importance in the context of the cult worship of Dionysus.

Sparagmos is an act of rending, tearing apart, or mangling, usually in a Dionysian context.

The cult of Dionysus was strongly associated with satyrs, centaurs, and sileni, and its characteristic symbols were the bull, the serpent, tigers/leopards, ivy, and wine. The Dionysia and Lenaia festivals in Athens were dedicated to Dionysus, as well as the phallic processions. Initiates worshipped him in the Dionysian Mysteries, which were comparable to and linked with the Orphic Mysteries, and may have influenced Gnosticism. Orpheus was said to have invented the Mysteries of Dionysus. It is possible that water divination was an important aspect of worship within the cult.

In ancient Greek religion, an orgion was an ecstatic form of worship characteristic of some mystery cults. The orgion is in particular a cult ceremony of Dionysos, celebrated widely in Arcadia, featuring "unrestrained" masked dances by torchlight and animal sacrifice by means of random slashing that evoked the god's own rending and suffering at the hands of the Titans. The orgia that explained the role of the Titans in Dionysos's dismemberment were said to have been composed by Onomacritus. Greek art and literature, as well as some patristic texts, indicate that the orgia involved snake handling.

In ancient Greek religion and myth, Eubuleus is a god known primarily from devotional inscriptions for mystery religions. The name appears several times in the corpus of the so-called Orphic gold tablets spelled variously, with forms including Euboulos, Eubouleos and Eubolos. It may be an epithet of the central Orphic god, Dionysus or Zagreus, or of Zeus in an unusual association with the Eleusinian Mysteries. Scholars of the late 20th and early 21st centuries have begun to consider Eubuleus independently as "a major god" of the mysteries, based on his prominence in the inscriptional evidence. His depiction in art as a torchbearer suggests that his role was to lead the way back from the Underworld.

References

↑ Rostovtzeff, M. Rome (translated from the Russian by J. D. Duff). London: Oxford University Press (1960), pp. 93–94.
1 2 González Wagner, Carlos (1984). Psicoactivos, misticismo y religión en el mundo antiguo. Complutense University of Madrid.
↑ Die Religion der Griechen und Römer (The Religion of the Greeks and Romans), (1963).
↑ Aziz, Robert (1990). C.G. Jung's Psychology of Religion and Synchronicity (10 ed.). The State University of New York Press. ISBN 0-7914-0166-9.
↑ Hoyle, Peter, Delphi, London : Cassell, 1967. Cf. p. 76.
1 2 "DIONYSUS : Summary of the Olympian God". www.theoi.com. Retrieved 2020-07-08.
↑ McHardy, Fiona (2019-03-27), "Euripides' Bacchae", Classics, Oxford University Press, doi:10.1093/obo/9780195389661-0333, ISBN 978-0-19-538966-1
1 2 "DIONYSUS TITLES & EPITHETS - Ancient Greek Religion". www.theoi.com. Retrieved 2020-07-08.
↑ Bertrand Russell, A History of Western Philosophy.
1 2 3 "ORPHIC HYMNS 41-86 - Theoi Classical Texts Library". www.theoi.com. Retrieved 2020-07-08.
↑ ""Huge Roman inscription of Dionysus cult secret society after 251 Goth invasion found in early Christian great basilica in Bulgaria's Plovdiv"". Archived from the original on 2019-11-06. Retrieved 2019-12-01.