The Cult of Dionysus: Birth, Death, Resurrection, and Raucousness
The
Cult of Dionysus makes the
Eleusinian Mysteries seem positively sedate. Its members would intoxicate themselves with
wine, and this utter
inebriation was considered to be actual possession by
Dionysus. They would engage in
orgies and the like, and, sometimes,
violence. As if that wasn't enough, "Added excitement was provided by sacramental
communion with the
god in the eating of the
flesh and drinking of the
blood identified with him" (Noss 50). Understandably, this
cult was spectacularly popular: it spread from
Greece, to
Egypt, to
Rome, to
Italy in the course of a couple hundred years (Brown).
There are several myths about
Dionysus' birth, following
death, and subsequent
resurrection. According to the most popular,
Semele was pregnant with
Dionysus by
Zeus.
Zeus promised
Semele that he would do anything she wished of him, and she asked him to show her his true form in all its glory.
Zeus was forced to appear to her in his true form – as a
thunderbolt – and
Semele was promptly struck dead.
Zeus proceeded to pluck
Dionysus from
Semele's
womb and hid the
baby in his side until it was born. When the time was right,
Zeus removed him, and
Dionysus became the only
god of the
pantheon who had one parent who was entirely mortal (Hamilton 54). Every year, upon the arrival of
winter,
Dionysus is shredded apart by
Titans on the orders of
Zeus' jealous wife,
Hera. Every year,
Dionysus arises from death, triumphant.
Like
Demeter,
Dionysus has a strong association with life and death: the "
dying of the
god is basic to his nature. . ." (Otto 191). "
Dionysus. . .is a
suffering,
dying god who must succumb to the
violence of
terrible enemies in the midst of the glory of his youthful greatness" (103). Because of this,
Dionysus has a strong association with
death and the
underworld; he is referred to as the
lord of souls (49), and, furthermore, "
Dionysus. . .is both
life and
death, for his spirit reveals itself out of the immeasurable depths where
life and
death are intertwined (190).
Dionysus offered an even more emphatic suggestion of some kind of
immortality than did the
Eleusinian Mysteries. The ascent and descent of
Persephone, and the subsequent
summer and
winter, were the suggestion of
immortality in the
Eleusinian Mysteries. But because
Persephone was wedded to
Hades, and because there are a few stories out there about
Persephone in the
underworld, she seems like she is quite under the control of the powers of
darkness.
Dionysus, on the other hand, lacks such stories; on the contrary, the only story about him in the
underworld is that of him retrieving his mother,
Semele (Hamilton 62). After the rescue, he brought her up to
Mount Olympus, and the other
gods accepted her even though she was
mortal because she was "the
mother of a god, and therefore fit to dwell with the
immortals" (56).
There are obvious parallels with
Christian rites and
religion.
Dionysus' nature as a
god who is part man and who violently dies only to be
resurrected obviously corresponds to
Jesus' condition. His status as a guardian for man between the worlds of
life and death similarly corresponds.
Semele playing the part of one who bears a
god, suffers, and then ascends clearly echoes the story of the
Virgin Mary in many respects, and the symbolic eating of the god is very much like
Communion. Furthermore, Riley points out that the first miracle of Jesus was to turn
water into wine, a miracle common in
Dionysus' temple in the
Roman world (128). Furthermore, as earlier mentioned, the
Jews of
Palestine would have been heavily exposed to
Dionysus and
Greek Religion, and therefore it does not seem unlikely that such stories would have figured into the creation and development of early
Christianity.
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