Dionysus, also commonly known by his Roman name Bacchus, appears to be a god who has two distinct origins. On the one hand, Dionysus was the god of wine, agriculture, and fertility of nature, who is also the patron god of the Greek stage. On the other hand, Dionysus also represents the outstanding features of mystery religions, such as those practiced at Eleusis: ecstasy, personal delivery from the daily world through physical or spiritual intoxication, and initiation into secret rites. Scholars have long suspected that the god known as Dionysus is in fact a fusion of a local Greek nature god, and another more potent god imported rather late in Greek pre-history from Phrygia (the central area of modern day Turkey) or Thrace.
Dionysus (also spelt Dionysos) is the Greek God of ritual dance and sacred mysticism, of death and new life. He can be gentle or provoke the wildness within us all, literally able to drive both his followers and his enemies mad. Euripedes called him 'most gentle and most terrible'. Dionysus is the patron of poetry, the song, and drama, and of course wine and its intoxication effects. He was credited with the invention of wine making and its use on Earth and this became almost his chief attribute in his Roman form - Bacchus. Unlike Pan for instance, Dionysus is counted as one of the twelve major Gods of Mount Olympus.
"Mankind ... possesses two supreme blessings. First of these is the goddess Demeter, or Earth - whichever name you choose to call her by. It was she who gave to man his nourishment of grain. But after her there came the son of Semele [Dionysus] who matched her present by inventing liquid wine as his gift to man."
Euripdes : Bacchae
Dionysus is a pardox however, or a series of paradoxes, like a Chinese box. In ancient art he is the God most often represented. People identified readily with him, born of a human mother, and therefore half human. Like the Christian Mary, he is felt to be able to understand the problems of humanity and to intercede on our behalf with the other Gods. Dionysus symbolizes excess and even the value and significance of excess and the potential of this path for inner transformation.
"The paradoxical combinations that he embodies bespeak an utter strangeness. A god of blissful ecstasy and savage flesh-eating terror; a god described as ‘effeminate’ and yet also the bull-horned and phallic god of male potency; an untamed god of wild mountain rites who brings pandemonium in his wake, yet also a benefactor honored for his gifts of viniculture and theatre, key elements of Greek civilization; he was a fertility god, sometimes considered the life force itself, yet in his myths he was a dark and liminal figure, frequently involved with the spirits and realms of the dead; a subversive god whose myths tell of his incitement to riot and the destruction of kings, yet he was later embraced as a model for rulers as diverse as Alexander the great and the Ptolemaic kings of Egypt."
Denise Durance
"He borders on madness, as opposed to the rationality of Apollo. Wisdom for him is not the slow accumulation, the step by step approach. But the sudden illumination, the rapture of revelation. he is change and transformation."
Edinger
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"I'll keep my money, guns and freedom. You can keep the "Change."