I had never been as ambivalent about any deity as I was about Dionysus (known to Romans as Bacchus). Usually I either like and respect deities, or else simply have no interest in them whatsoever. Dionysus vexed me, though. I found myself studying him with equal parts enticement and revulsion.
Enticement is easy to explain. Dionysus is the god of drama. The theater evolved out of his cult. I revere theater as art the way many Hellenes revere Plato as philosopher: as one of the crown jewels of a civilization noted for many accomplishments. From its origins in Greece to its high point in Shakespearean England and extending through to modern media, I couldn't imagine life without dramatic productions. I have elsewhere written more extensively about Dionysus and the creation of the theater and will not repeat myself here (see "Culture from Counter-Culture: Dionysian Drama and Hellenism").
Revulsion is harder to explain, and here one does not want to tempt blasphemy, but allow me to share my thoughts such as they were. Dionysus in his original incarnation had certain contrary tendencies to normative Hellenic religion: one might call his cult a counter-culture phenomenon. This mentality is well represented in modern incarnations, too. When I first stumbled upon the Hellenic community years ago, Dionysus was among the most popular deities and his self-identified devotees lived up to a certain reputation incorporating what I perceived as bizarre behavior, grandiose mystical claims, and a lifestyle of chemical highs.
Now understand something: I am not an arch conservative and I find large strands of modern Western (and particularly American culture) to be less than inspiring. However, I find subcultural groups and youth movements to be equally unappealing. I never understood defining oneself primarily in terms of one's choice of clothing and music, or pretending that one's choices in these areas represents a kind of moralistic rebellion against normative culture. And then there are drugs. I do not have a high opinion of habitual drug use. So it is with a certain diplomacy I say that, while I think consenting adults should be free to choose their own lifestyles as they see fit, I have no desire to enjoin many of their practices.
But then something great happened. I met real Dionysians. People who thought there was more to spirituality than loud music and acid trips. I am heavily indebted in particular to H. Jeremiah Lewis, aka "Sannion," whose prolific writings on his patron deity helped elucidate the god in all his glorious complexity and ambiguity. His Dionysus was a god of freedom. A deity of penetrating insight who rips apart, sometimes quite forcefully, the shackles placed on you by society, or by yourself. Dionysus in his many forms reveals the stranger inside of you, the one you thought you had lost, the one you didn't know you had. Any sort of tether to your soul - including chemical dependency - was a chain besmirched by the god of drama.
Dionysus is a god of nature, and in particular of the vine. From this manifests his specialty: wine, and by extension all potentially inebriating drinks. From there he became the god of drama, and still later a god of poetry. Finally, as with many deities connected with vegetation, Dionysus became a god of afterlife Mysteries.
The woman who drinks of wine will find a truth in herself, a truth she may or may not like. Inhibitions will recede into oblivion. Long suppressed desires shall wax by and by. And before she knows it, the Freudian id and Jungian shadow arise to the fore. A lifetime's worth of social programming is cast aside. "What society expects of this woman" is no more; "what this particular woman wants here and now" is made manifest! Maybe she will laugh. Maybe she will cry. Maybe she will dance half-naked on a table when she had never danced before. Whatever is lurking deep in her soul will find a sudden voice.
The man who puts on an actor's mask temporarily leaves aside his own sense of self. He is no longer who he was before he entered the stage. He is now the character dictated by the script. His ego had dissolved. Or perhaps he has found himself, for the best actors are those who can deeply identify with their roles. And those watching out in the audience - they too lose their identities even as they find them. They forget their troubles and joys as the moment takes them. The actors' characters parade before them and they are suddenly part of the drama, one with the pageant of tragedy and comedy. The characters' emotions and actions are suddenly theirs played out before a staged microcosm of life. Actor and audience are now conjoined outside space and time.
I am still ambivalent of Dionysus, mind you. Perhaps you should be too. After all, most of us on some level enjoy certain roles in life that have been fostered since childhood. They give us all a certain expectation of how to interact with one another, a rough map for navigating the labyrinth of the social order. We might enjoy tearing them down from time to time and for short durations. And so as the crazed maenad frolicked in the woods for a few days only to then return to her home in her more respectable role as wife and mother, we might get tipsy every Friday night and spend the rest of the week slaving away at our jobs. This temporary release is a blessing of Dionysus and I doubt he begrudges those of us who want nothing more. But to truly tear down all barriers, and live all one's life in that glade of no boundaries is a terrifying thing, a path that will call only to a few among us.
And I am not one of them. But if I am still ambivalent of Dionysus, I respect him and his divine provinces. And you should too, for myth tells how those who stand against him meet with tragic ends.
Don't care for drinking, or romping through the woods as a possessed female? No worries. It is in the theater where we can all meet and respect this deity. It is assembled as eager participants before an array of actors that we can all lose ourselves for a while in the throes of the maddening god.
