Notes on Dionysus

[erogappa]

God of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness, fertility, theatre and religious ecstasy.

His origins are uncertain, and his cults took many forms; In some cults, he arrives from the east, as an Asiatic foreigner.



He holds a fennel staff, tipped with a pine-cone and known as a thyrsus. Later images show him as a beardless, sensuous, naked or half-naked androgynous youth: the literature describes him as womanly or "man-womanish". In its fully developed form, his central cult imagery shows his triumphant, disorderly arrival or return, as if from some place beyond the borders of the known and civilized. His procession is made up of wild female followers and bearded satyrs with erect penises. Some are armed with the fennel staff, some dance or play music. The god himself is drawn in a chariot, usually by exotic beasts such as lions or tigers (or dragons?)

His thyrsus is sometimes wound with ivy and dripping with honey (jfc). The grapevine and its wild barren alter-ego, the toxic ivy plant, are both sacred to him.

The cult of Dionysus was closely associated with trees, specifically the fig tree.



Dionysus is represented by city religions as the protector of those who do not belong to conventional society and thus symbolizes everything which is chaotic, dangerous and unexpected, everything which escapes human reason and which can only be attributed to the unforeseeable action of the gods.




the only one to have a mortal mother

His mother was a mortal woman and his father was Zeus, the king of the gods. Zeus' wife, Hera, discovered the affair while Semele was pregnant. Appearing as an old crone (in other stories a nurse), Hera befriended Semele, who confided in her that Zeus was the actual father of the baby in her womb. Hera pretended not to believe her, and planted seeds of doubt in Semele's mind. Curious, Semele demanded of Zeus that he reveal himself in all his glory as proof of his godhood.

Though Zeus begged her not to ask this, she persisted and he agreed. Therefore, he came to her wreathed in bolts of lightning; mortals, however, could not look upon an undisguised god without dying, and she perished in the ensuing blaze. Zeus rescued the unborn Dionysus by sewing him into his thigh. A few months later, Dionysus was born. In this version, Dionysus is born by two "mothers" (Semele and Zeus) before his birth, hence the epithet dimētōr (of two mothers) associated with his being "twice-born".




When Dionysus grew up, he discovered the culture of the vine and the mode of extracting its precious juice, but Hera (same goddess who killed his birth mother) struck him with madness, and drove him forth a wanderer through various parts of the earth. The most famous part of his wanderings is his expedition to India, which is said to have lasted several years.




A better-known story is that of his descent to Hades to rescue his mother Semele, whom he placed among the stars. Dionysus feared for his mother, whom he had not seen since birth. He bypassed the god of death and successfully returned Semele to Mount Olympus. Out of the twelve Olympians, he was of the few that could restore the deceased from the underworld back to life. He made the descent from a reputedly bottomless pool (boy could hold his breath a really long time apparently). He was guided by Prosymnus or Polymnus, who requested, as his reward, to be Dionysus' lover. Prosymnus died before Dionysus could honor his pledge, so in order to satisfy Prosymnus' shade, Dionysus fashioned a phallus from an olive branch and sat on it at Prosymnus' tomb.