Dionysos

The myth

Excited by the jealousy of Héra, Sole, girl of the king of Thèbes, wants to contemplate his/her Zeus lover in all his majesty. Bound by an oath, Zeus cannot from it be withdrawn, and Sole, simple mortal, dies struck down. Zeus then car his/her son of the belly of his mother, and notching the thigh, sews the child there, to carry out his gestation in the long term.

It is the origin of the expression “being born of the thigh of Jupiter”. It is also an etymology suggested for Dionysos (“twice born”). Could the thigh being able to be an euphemistic designation for the sexual organs (process running, to see for example French “stomach”), Dionysos be regarded as resulting directly from the Sperme (or of the Urine?) of Zeus.

To withdraw it from the revenge on Héra, he is entrusted to his aunt Ino (sister of Sole) and to her husband, Athamas. But Héra makes them insane and they kill their children. Ino is thrown to the sea with the corpse of one of its sons: they are transformed into marine divinities, Leucothée and Palémon. Dionysos is then entrusted to the nymph S, under the direction of Silène, on the mount Nyséion, in Thrace, i.e., for the Greeks, in Asia. To escape Héra, it is transformed into kid.

It carries out an animated adolescence: according to Iliade , it is initially continued by Lycurgue, then is made prisoner by pirates Tyrrhéniens, from which it escapes only by carrying out alarming wonders ( Homeric Hymnes ). Its worship excites initially the mocking remarks, and it must punish the girls of Éleuthère like Penthée, king de Thèbes, for that. Dionysos is, with Apollon, a god who appears by Epiphany S (appearances): eternal traveller, it emerges by surprise. He is always presented in the form of a foreigner, running the risk not to be recognized.

Eager to go to visit his/her mother with the Hells, Dionysos asks for the assistance of a guide, Prosymnos, which agrees to show the way to him while plunging with him in the lake of Lerne, which communicates with the kingdom of Hadès. This dive is associated with many initiatory rites in old Greece, generally related to the passage of adolescence at the adulthood, and thus also with the loves between elder (éraste) and a junior (eromene). Prosymnos thus agrees to help the young god but requires in exchange that this one, when they would be of return, grant its favors to him. But when Dionysos returns from the Hells, Prosymnos, it, died. The god decides to keep to his commitment despite everything: he cuts a piece of Figuier in form of Phallus and discharges his debt on the tomb of Prosymnos. In the Greek Pantheon, Dionysos is a god with share: it is a wandering god, a god of nowhere and everywhere. At the same time wandering and sedentary, it represents the figure of the other, from what is different, diverting, disconcerting, anomic.

the return of Dionysos at his place to Thèbes, ran up against incomprehension and caused the drama as a long time as the city is remained unable to establish the bond between people of the country and the foreigner, between the autochtones and the travellers, its will to be always the same one, to remain identical to oneself, to refuse to change, and, in addition, the foreigner, the different one, the other. (Jean-Pierre Vernant, “Dionysos with Thèbes”, in the universe, the gods, the men p.190)

It is seldom associated with the Olympian gente. It is satisfied to take share with the Gigantomachie, and negotiates near Héphaïstos the release of Héra taken with the trap by this last.

Whereas Thésée returns from Crete with ARIANE, Dionysos would have fallen in love with it and would have obliged Thésée to give up it on the island of Naxos. There, it appears with ARIANE, takes it along on the Olympe and makes its wife of it. She is sometimes seen like the mother of the Ménades. D' Althée, the queen of Calydon, it has a son, Méléagre, which will be adopted by the husband of Althée, Oéné. Lastly, Aphrodite gives him a son, Priape.

Functions

Dionysos is before a whole god of the arborescent vegetation and all vital juices (sap, urine, Sperme, milk, blood), as testify to it its épiclèse S to Φλοῖος/ Phloĩos (“spirit of the bark”) or of Συκίτης / Sukítês (“protective of the fig trees”). It specializes then in the vine, which it is supposed to have given to the men, like in intoxication and mystical fright. Its attributes include all that touches with fermentation, with the cycles of regeneration. It is wire of Sole, misadventure of the goddess Phrygie nne of the ground, lover of ARIANE, Minoan goddess of the vegetation, and the companion of the nymphs and the Satyre S. It is also frequently associated with the goat and the Taureau, animals considered to be particularly prolific.

He is especially the father of the comedy and the tragedy (of the Greek τράγος / trágos , “goat”). It was at the beginning of the kinds of “illustrations” of the worship, which gave each other to the Greek Théâtre during Dionysies, in the presence of its priests (as the mysteries whom one played Middle Ages on the squares of the Cathédrale S). They had a particular stressed literary form, the Dithyrambe. The songs and dionysiaques musics call upon the percussions and the flutes. They dissonant, are syncopated, cause the surprise and sometimes fear. In this direction, it is the antithesis of Apollo, who sponsors the lyric art and the harmony. Moreover the flutists (aulètes) were perceived like jugglers and not musicians, because the use of the instrument deformed their mouth, which ran up against Greek esthetics and gave place to jokes.

Dionysos, god of intoxication and the extase is that which makes it possible its faithful to exceed death. The wine, as summoned it vedic, is supposed to help to conquer immortality.

Jane Ellen Harrison announces that Dionysos god of the Vin (drink of the easy layers) tardily replaced Dionysos god of beer (drink of the popular layers) or Sabazios , whose animal emblematic at the crétois was the Cheval (or the Centaure). It is that the Athenian beer was a beer of German wheat, trágos in Greek. Thus, the “odes with the German wheat” (tragedies) could be considered tardily, by homonymy, as of the “odes to the goats” (the animal which accompanied the god and associated with the wine at the crétois).

The liturgy and worships

The Greeks regarded Dionysos as a foreign divinity, as the attribute of the Phrygian cap indicates it, than it divides with Mithra. One spoke about an Indian origin and mésopotamienne. Decoding by Evans of the shelves in Linéaire B discovered in the palates mycéniens however revealed that the name of Dionysos appeared in the list of the Greek divinities as of the antiquated time.

It seems that at the time pre-Olympian, its worship is to be brought closer to the agro-lunar worships and chtoniens. Eusèbe de Césarée, Christian author, evoked sacrifices during which one cut up the alive victim (from where the épiclèse of Omadios ) to consume it.

Dionysos is a very widespread and very popular god in all Antiquity. One finds many temples all around the Mediterranean basin, which are neighborly with those of the largest gods.

The center of the dionysiaque worship culminates with the festival of the Anthestéries, winter celebration and All Souls' Day. Dionysos is then the god of the winter, complementary or opposed to the solar Apollon.

Its public worship gave place to the festivals of the “Dionysies”, but there existed also an important secret worship, represented by Mysteries, comprising initiatory ceremonies. It is often accompanied by a group of Satyre S, of Ménades, panthers, goats, asses and of the old man Silène, forming the “dionysiaque procession”.

The private worship took place between initiates, it is a Culte with Mysteries. The regrouping of these initiates bears the name of Thiase. The thiases practiced a hidden and initiatory worship, often in caves and the night, during which the novel members of the thiase were initiated, and who officiated in the esoteric dimension of the resurrection of the god. One misses sources to know what occurred there exactly, but these secret and night ceremonies perduré until under the Roman empire. They comprised sacrifices, but also be delirious due to intoxication or the drug taking vegetable, and of excesses of all kinds, in particular sexual. A resounding scandal made prohibit these worships by a Sénatus-consulte in 186 av. J. - C.

Finally it is necessary to announce the existence of a contemporary resurgence of the worship of Dionysos. There exists thus several thiases in the United States, and some in Europe, but which do not have anything to have with those of Antiquity.

Iconography

There exist innumerable statues of Dionysos, at the time where he was a révéré god. One also finds number of mosaic S with enigma, because it was current for a a little rich initiate to inform it the ground of a public part of its house. Finally scenes evoking its adventures are often present on sarcophagi or low-reliefs, because it had an importance in the perception of died and the rebirth.

When its worship died out, its representations often took again confusion with Bacchus, and it is necessary to await Symbolism to see it reappearing with the thyrse in the painting of a Simeon Solomon.

Épiclèses, attributes & sanctuaries

épiclèse S:

Δενδρίτης / Dendrítês , guard of the trees;
Ὠμάδιος / Omádios , which likes the raw flesh;
Φαλληνός / Phallênós , parking fruitfulness;
Φλοῖος / Phloĩos , spirit of the bark;
Συκίτης / Sukítês , guard of the fig trees;

epithet: “with the noisy procession”
attributes: The major and personal attribute of Dionysos is the thyrse, that it holds with the hand or that one finds with his feet or in his procession. Its principal plants are the pine and the ivy, like their fruits, the pine cone and the bays of ivies, of which it is often crowned. These plants are an apparent exception in nature, because they are always green during the year, and do not seem to lose their sheets, which returns to resurrections of the god. It will be also noted that truths fruits of the pine are hidden in apple, and that the bays of ivy, poisons, used the manufacture of a beer which the ménades consumed, and who contributed to their fright. One finds also the pomegranate and the grenade, the Figuier and the figs (the pomegranate is resulting from the blood of the god, its fruits mature in winter, and Perséphone remains related to the hells to have eaten some; the fig tree is associated with the life hidden in the Mediterranean world, because it pushes spontaneously where it there has subterranean water and reveals the sources).

As it brought the vine and the wine to the men, one also finds the vine and the grape, the cut with drinking. But it is rather about a contamination with Bacchus, his Roman equivalent.

the Phrygian cap points out its Asian origin. One finds also the flute, the cymbals and the tambourines.

animal associated: the goat, the panther, the ass.
major temples: Athens (theater of Dionysos), Éleusis, Smyrna, Éphèse.
festivals in its honor: Dionysies, Anthestéries

Note

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