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childhood initiation ritual initiation

  • Separation
  • Liminal zone
  • reintegration

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Before we get to Dionysus, I want to emphasize again the distinction between childhood initiation and ritual initiation. Childhood initiation involves these three phases; they are all about transitioning from being a child into adulthood. Ritual initiation, or mystery rites, have to do with empathy, feeling, revelation, secrets about life, death, and rebirth; they would meet secretly, sometimes in grottoes or caves, and mystery rites were revealed which the initiates were required to keep a secret. These rituals contained some sort of promise of a blessed and more pleasant afterlilfe.

Liminal zone is a place of paradox

topsy turvy world

normal rules don’t apply

dietary /humanity rules overturned

allows close connection between men and gods

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You could characterize the liminal zone in a variety of ways (read). Which brings us to Dionysus…

Dionysus and the Irrational

  • Prophetic madness = Apollo
  • Poetic madness = Muses
  • Erotic madness = Aphrodite/Eros
  • Ritual madness = Dionysus

TERMS: Bacchus, Symposium, Kantharos, Satyrs, Maenads, Thyrsus, Semele, Theatre of Dionysus at Athens

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Dionysus represents a specific type of madness, which we’ll get into. We saw prophetic madness with the Pythia, who inhales the gases at Delphi and literally becomes “filled” with Apollo and delivers his responses to pilgrims, which are interpreted by the priest. The Muses make poets “mad…” think back to the beginning of Hesiod’s Theogony when he describes how the Muses on Mt. Helikon literally “breathed” poetic inspiration into him. Aphrodite/Eros cause erotic madness. Dionysus is ritual madness.

None of these things- prophetic, poetic, erotic, or ritual madness, are necessarily bad. They indicate a non-normative human state where you “capture” the essence of a god or even become a god. But each type of madness *can* make you cross a line.

Meet Dionysus, and his Kantharos

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Dionysus is the god of wine and ecstasy. Not really of grapes, but of what grapes DO to you. In this manifestation he can be seen as a god of joy, in that he brings oblivion, sleep, and an end of cares (if you drink enough wine). Because he’s the god of intoxication, he more than the god of wine- he IS the wine. If you are drunk on wine, you are literally possessed by Dionysus.

So how can you ID these images as Dionysos? Look closely. What is he holding? That’s a kantharos- a deep vessel using for holding/drinking wine. It also has high handles. What is strange about Dionysus here? His hair is very long, which we normally associate with youth. But he also has a beard, which we associate with younger men. Dionysos is both young and old, he exists in an in-between phase. He’s also wearing clothes, which is odd for a visual depiction of a Greek god. This means that his clothes are being marked as very important. His ankles are also showing. The dress and his beard here show Dionysus also as a figure who collapses gender binaries. He’s holding a vine, which is also a big clue- and he has a wreath in his hair. Wreaths like this would have been worn at symposia and in sanctuaries. This is interesting because it also shows Dionysus as a participant in his own rites. ® What’s your big clue? He’s wearing a bunch of grapes! Or he “is” the cluster of grapes. He has a wreath. This is a Roman wall painting. Dionysus erodes distinctions: male/female, god/man, god/animal, human/animal, civilization/nature.

Experiencing Dionysus can be potentially dangerous, though, because he can literally drive you insane. This goes beyond ritual madness. [Read quote on 3 kraters from a 4th century comedy]: For sensible people I prepare only three kraters: one for health, which they drink first, another for love and pleasure, and a third for sleep. After draining the third, those said to be wise go to lie down. The fourth I know not. It belongs to insolence. The fifth is full of cries. The sixth brims with insults and jests. The seventh has black eyes. The eighth is the bailiff, the ninth, bile. The tenth is madness. It is the one that causes stumbling.

Symposium, Dionysus and wine

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The madness surrounding Dionysus is not an individual thing; it’s a group experience and is expressed by Dionysus always being surrounded by frenzied worshippers of all genders. In a real-life setting, this is expressed through the symposium, an all-male drinking party. Women sometimes appeared at symoposia (as prostitutes). In the above image you can see a lyre; which we’ve talked about before as a symbol of male identity.

Symoposia took place in a specific room in Greek houses called the “andron.” There would have been a central area and a raised section closer to the walls where couches would have been placed.

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Then the cares that exhaust men flee from their hearts; then, as on an ocean we row together toward an illusory shore

I’m starting to nod off;

that cup I drank has

completely wrecked me,

the sailor, and sent me

to the bottom

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You can say that symposium vases interact with the symoposia themselves. Both images have nautical imagery around the lip of the vase. These would have been full of a wine-water mixture, so that these ships would have appeared to be sailing on the wine, or the “wine-dark sea,” as Greeks called the ocean. Imagery comes to life when these vessels are full- so there is some refinement to symposia.

Maenads defending themselves

from Satyrs with the Thyrsus

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Here we have satyrs chasing maenads. Maenads are the figures holding the thyrsoi (singular thyrsus), the long staff with the pinecone looking-thing at the top. Dionysus is also sometimes pictured holding a thyrsus.

Maenads

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So you have this idea that madness brings us closer to the gods. And both good and bad things can happen as a result of being god-like. Here are two depictions of maenads. (L) What do we have here? What details do you see?Maenads, a fifure w a beard, kantharos, maenads are holding out a bunny..cute, right? WRONG. Look at the image on the right. What is the Maenad doing? She’s tearing the bunny apart. This ritual dismemberment is called sparagmos. Worshippers are often clad in animal skins of holding dismembered animals, holding thyrsoi….

Mystery religions with similar things were documented very badly by early 20th century ethnographers, such as this scholar who describes ritual dismemberment in a mystery religion in Tangiers in 1907 (Tangiers is located in NW Morocco): “A hill tribe descends upon the town in a state of semi-starvation and drugged delirium. After the usual beating of tom-toms, screaming of the pipes and mountain dancing, a sheep is thrown in the middle of the square, upon which all the devotees come to life and tear the animal limb from limb and eat it raw.”

So there is this importance of blood and life force.

Male followers- Bacchus, just like Bacchus himself (another name for Dionysus). A god and his worshippers sharing a name isn’t found anywhere else in Greek religion. The god achieves his epiphany through his worshipper; the worshipper becomes the god for a period of time.

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Ritual enthusiasm

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Maenads are also sometimes pictured dancing with their heads thrown back, as she is here.

Dionysus in Myth

  • Parentage: Zeus and Semele
  • Homeric Hymn to Dionysus

Dionysus’ relationship to Greek Theater

  • Theater, masks, stage
  • The Chorus – choral song and dance

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Parentage: Zeus and Semele (queen of Thebes)

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The story begins, as most Greek myth stories do. Zeus gets his eye on yet another mortal woman

The story takes place in Thebes, where we find many stories about D.

Jupiter/Zeus loves Semele, the daughter of the ruler Kadmos

Juno is jealous as in the stories of Io and Callisto

As in the story of Callisto, an added provocation: Semele is pregnant.

Juno Approaches in disguise of Semele’s childhood nurse:

typical motif: often to test a mortal’s character, sometimes to warn, here to deceive.

“Everyone likes to claim their secret lover is Zeus. Any man could claim to be Zeus just to get into your bed. Make him prove it.”
Semele asks for a favor from Zeus.

Zeus, swept up in the moment, says “anything!” (Classic fairytale mistake-- “anything, up to a half of my kingdom!” everyone regrets that promise… including in Greek myth.)

Semele wants to see his godly form. Zeus obliges… Semele is ash.
Complication…. Semele was pregnant.
Zeus plays surrogate mother again. Plants child in thigh.
Zeus usurping birth function.
Bacchus is a god of civilization, like Athene, to whom Jupiter also gave birth: in fact, he’s her complement.

The difference is marked out by the topography of Jupiter’s body:

Athene is born from the head, Bacchus from the thigh, a much more primal and sexual spot.

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At the end,

Hermes carries the baby off to a far away place where he grows up, only later to come back full of divine power.

D is a god is civilization

Wine, Bacchus’ gift to humanity, marks an increase in civilization, for wine is an agricultural product, and that the Greeks generally believed that agriculture marked the rise of culture.

At the same time, wine distinguished the Greeks from Barbarians, who drank milk or beer.

However, Dionysus while an important god for the Greeks, was often portrayed in myths as an outsider, arriving back into Greek society once fully grown to initiate his cult.

D's ADVENT back into society:

celebrated in cult often with ship processions

we see part of the myth behind this religious ritual in HHymn 7, which we read for today, AND in the Bacchae--the play we are going to read for the next class, Monday.

For this reason, themes of RECOGNITION are important in Dionysus' myths. As a seeming 'late comer' to the Pantheon, Dionysus in myths, especially in the Bacchae, struggles with not being recognized and respectd. Those who fail to recognize are punished harshly.

Linear B tablets

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HOWEVER…. Despite these stories of Dionysus arriving late,

DIONYSUS IS among the oldest GREEK GODS, appears on the Linear B tablets at PYLOS. The stories of Dionysus’ return to society are meant not to suggest that the Greeks adopted this god later than the other gods.

Rather, they give Dionysus some of his characteristic traits. He blurs boundaries. He is both Greek and yet foreign—other, marginal.

Dionysus and his wife,

Ariadne

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Dionysus ties into other myths as well, of course. One of his most interesting tie-ins is with the myth of Theseus and the minotaur.
After Ariadne saves his butt by helping him through the labyrinth, Theseus abandons her on the island Naxos.
Dionysus finds her there, and welcomes her into his celebration. Ariadne becomes his wife. They seem to have a very happy relationship. Dionysus is the one god who has no stories of cheating on his wife.