This is my report of 2011's Aurora Festival in Greece published on Dance Cult.
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@ecstatique-blog
This is my report of 2011's Aurora Festival in Greece published on Dance Cult.
TERENCE MCKENNA ON THE ELEUSIAN MYSTERIES
THE GOD
by Konstantin Bronzit
A "behind the scene" portrait of the dancing Shiva:)
"The Women of Amphissa" (inspired by an historical event)
by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema 1887
Amphissa was the capital of an annual festival in honor of the god Bacchus. In 350 B.C., the territory was invaded by an army from Phocis, stirring fear that the bacchantes would become vulnerable after their celebration to attack by the enemy soldiers. The women of Amphissa consequently stepped in to protect the sleeping bacchantes throughout the night, guarding them from being ravished by the soldiers. Alma-Tadema portrays dawn at the Amphissian marketplace the morning after, its women serving food, standing watch, and caring for the exhausted Bacchantes.
This is a chapter I wrote for the anthology The Local Scenes and Global Culture of Psytrance (Graham St. John Ed.), published by Routledge Studies in Ethnomusicology.
It describes how the events connected to the organisation of a psytrance party can find a parallel in the plot of the Greek theater play "The Bacchae" by Euripides.
The Bacchae, written by Euripides in the 5th century BC, testifies to the spreading in Hellas of the rites of Dionysus and the conflict between the “laws of the city” represented by local authorities and the “laws of nature” represented by the “new” god. Dionysus, personified by a beautiful stranger, arrives in Thebes inspiring the local women to reach the top of Mount Cythereon to perform his sacred rites and dances.
This story surfaced repeatedly with relation to Chianti Summer Solstice, a post-modern version of the ancient ecstatic cult. Highlighting possible consistencies in The Bacchae and a contemporary Italian trance party, the chapter attends to the enthusiastic reaction of the local youth, the re-enactment of the sacred dances on the highest mountain, the turmoil caused by the “beautiful strangers” in town, and the prejudices against the “divine folly” inspired by the consumption of mind-altering substances.
Shiva and Dionysus: Far Away so Close
One of the most popular “icons” in Goa-psytrance culture is the Indian god Shiva, but what kind of divinity is he and which is the philosophy behind his cult? And is the cult of Shiva a strictly oriental creation or can we also find in western culture a similar tradition?
 The reason for the presence of Shiva in trance parties lies in the influence that Shivaite philosophy and way of life exerted on the westerners who went to India and started the phenomenon of Goa-trance. In fact the age-old cult of Shiva, still kept alive nowadays by the sadhus (wandering Shiva sages) consists in living a peaceful life outside the rules of society, with few clothes, little food, dedicated to the ritual consumption of hashish and to the practice of sacred erotic rituals: a conduct which deeply resonated with the new-born hippy lifestyle, providing hippies (and later trancers) with the possibility to understand the “divine” aspect of this way of living. Furthermore it was the sacredness granted by Shivaites to collective trance dancing and use of psychoactive substances that contributed to the concept of trance parties as sacred rituals, as often stated by Goa Gil, who was initiated in a sadhu order himself.
 But this “cult of nature” is not typical of Indian culture only and it is actually considered one of the most ancient and worldwide spread religious traditions, aside from that of the Great Mother to which it is complementary. According to the American mythologist Joseph Campbell, Shiva is just another name given to the same archetype, or godform, whose worship is primary in all cultures, since it teaches respect for the dignity and sanctity of all nature. Examples of this archetype in the various cultures are: the Polynesian Maui, the Hopi Masau’u, the Yoruba Ochosi, the Aztec Xochipilli, etc. In the western tradition the godform most similar to Shiva can be identified with the Greek Dionysus, as evidenced by a “remarkable pattern of correspondences between the two deities, arising from the comparative study of mythology and literature” as noted by Alain Danielou, the French specialist on India's religions and philosophies, in his “Gods of Love and Ecstasy: the Traditions of Shiva and Dionysus”.
 The similarities between the two cults lie in their essence as nature religions, spiritual practices aimed at celebrating the divine aspect of human’s natural instincts and the deep communion shared by the “human animal” with savage life and the entire cosmos. Dionysus and Shiva are gods of vegetation, protectors of animals and trees, dressed with the skins of wild animals, living in forests and mountains. They are both “archetypal images of indestructible life”, personifications of that vital energy, known by the Greeks as Zoe: nature’s constant and endless drive to re-generate and maintain life. This vital energy is conventionally represented by symbols associated to both cults, like the Bull, the Phallus (or Lingam in case of Shiva) and the Snake, which identify both deities as fertility gods, personifications ofthe fertilising male principle. But both Shiva and Dionysus are also androgynous young gods, eternal adolescents with both male and female characteristics, spirits of playful energy, tricksters with creative, destructive and transformative powers, which reveal them as ambivalent gods, shape-shifters,expressing paradox, ambiguity and coincidence of opposites as the ultimate essence of the divine.
 This ambivalence is mirrored also in their identity as liminal gods, masters of the altered state of consciousness, as both cultic practices (consisting mainly in initiation rituals) revolve around the ecstatic experience reached throughcollective trance dancing, ingestion of psychoactive substances and sacred erotic practices. “One must practice collective dancing. Rhythm gives rise to a state of trance which brings humans nearer to Shiva, the Cosmic Dancer”, recites a Shivaite text quoted by Danielou. Shiva is often portrayed holding a percussive instrument (a repetitive beats device!) and he is commonly associated with bhang, a drink made with Indian hemp, and the practice of Tantrism, a tradition of erotico-magic sexuality. On the other side Dionysus is known as the “god of dancing”, “the loud one” and “god of wine” (which was commonly mixed with different herbs to “bring forth the gods and ancestral spirits”). He is celebrated with “rapturous group experiences, featuring dancing, costumes, music, wine and ecstatic release out in nature”, often including a very open approach to sexuality, as evidenced by many “explicit” vase paintings and literary references. This has led to the modern concept of “orgies” as group sex, even if orgazein originally meant “celebrations of Zoe”, that vital energy manifesting as eros, or as the enthusiasmos of the dance, whose appearance during the rituals was invoked (and provoked) as a sign of the presence of the god himself among his followers.
 The practice of these “techniques of ecstasy” often lead Shiva and Dionysus to be accused of teaching the secrets of wisdom to the poor and humble, for they can be practised regardless of the level of knowledge or the social position. Therefore the profound wisdom, which is possible to acquire through the ecstatic experience and consisting of the realisation of the deep interconnectedness of All, is theoretically available to all sorts of people. This is why both Shiva and Dionysus are known as “liberating gods” and “healers”, granting salvation from ignorance and deliverance from angst and fear. A good example of this liberating power is the image of the Dance of Shiva, where the god is portrayed dancing on a dwarf-demon whose name translate as “forgetful and ignorant demon”, symbolising the triumph over unawareness through the dance.
 The followers of Shiva and Dionysus are known in the Indian and Greek cultures as sharing the same characteristics of the two gods: playfulness, joy of living, harmony with nature, but also a certain ambiguous “dark” aspect, as they are referred to as “demonic children” or “heavenly delinquents”. As Danielou informs us, in Shivaite tradition the god’s companions are described as “freakish, adventurous, vagabond, delinquent and wild young people, with unkept hair, shouting in the storm, dancing, singing”. In Greece, the poet Hesiod describes the followers of Dionysus as “joyous vagabonds of heaven, dancers, musicians, acrobats, practical jokers and lazy. They press the grape and get drunk, they are perpetually overexcited, jolly fellows in search of good fortune”.
 From a social point of view, Shiva and Dionysus, are considered protectors of those who do not belong to conventional society, those who do not live a “normal” life and outlaws. Their essence as symbols of the divinity of the laws of nature, in fact, tend to create a strong contrast with the “city religions”, the institutional religious practice aimed at the divinisation of man-made laws, based on civic conformity and the repression of natural instincts. This is the case in both Olympian religion (in the case of Dionysus) and the Aryan-vedic religion (in the case of Shiva), which tend to place these “rebellious gods” outside their official pantheon of gods. Historically, the periods of cultural evolution are those in which these two opposing yet complementary tendencies find a way to co-exist peacefully and respectfully, as in the case of Dionysian worship during the Hellenistic period. But when this balance is not achieved the result is persecution, repression and demonization of nature religions.
 Therefore the reappearance of Shiva and Dionysus-like cults seems to be a characteristic of those periods in which, after a phase of repression, humans realise that they have lost the awareness of their profound interconnection with nature and spontaneously return to those beliefs and practices able to renew this awareness. For the historical moment in which we are living, often identified with the last phase of what the Hindus call Kali Yuga, or the Age of Conflicts, this tendency seems to be confirmed even by the ancient text Linga Purana: “At the end of the Kali Yuga, the god Shiva will appear to re-establish the right path in secret and hidden form” (1.40.12). From this point of view psytrance could be one of these “secret and hidden forms” under which the cult of nature reappears, as a way for modern people to re-establish the link with a very ancient stream of knowledge, a sort of “universal religion” whose teachings potentially constitute “the seed of the Golden Age of the future of humankind”.
 Chiara Baldini 2010
 For more info:
 Alain Danielou: “Gods of Love and Ecstasy: the Traditions of Shiva and Dionysus” and “While the Gods Play: Shiva Oracles and the Predictions on the Cycles of History and the Destiny of Mankind”
Both very interesting books on the cult of nature and the cycles of history, even if Danielou, writing in the 1960s and 70s, still retains some old-fashioned ideas, such as considering racial mixing a “debasement”!
 More on Dionysus:
Karoly Kereny: “Dionysus: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life”
 Euripides: “The Bacchae”
A Greek tragedy with Dionysus as the main character, arriving in Greece to start his cult.
 On comparative mythology:
Joseph Campbell: “The Masks of God” and “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”
 On Goa Gil and his relation to Shivaism:
Michael McAteer: “Redefining the Ancient Tribal Ritual for the 21st century: Goa Gil and the Trance Dance Experience”: http://www.goagil.com/thesis.html
The Trance-Cultural Tribe: a Neo-Hellenistic Hypothesis
In the past decades we have witnessed the birth of the psytrance movement (and of electronic dance music culture in general), which is now a phenomenon involving tens of thousands of people from all over the world. Such a successful emergence is the result of specific characteristics that make this cultural movement particularly “suited” to satisfy the needs of the socio-political context and historical phase in which we are living. But what could these characteristics be? To give an answer it could be useful to look at what happened more than 2000 years ago, when, under the influence of Hellenistic culture, people experienced what is now considered the first example of globalisation.
 The Hellenistic Age started at the end of the “Classical” period of Greek history, with the unification of the formerly separated and autonomous city-states. Starting from the third century BC the newly formed union, led by Alexander the Great, extended its cultural and political influence over an extremely vast territory, covering the whole Mediterranean area and central Asia, all the way to India. Soon Greek became the first international language,giving rise to a new multi-cultural cosmopolitan attitude, which wasshared by a network of very distant city-states, nations and tribes.
 As a consequence, society underwent a tremendous and rapid transformation and many people started posing serious doubts over the belief-systems of the previous period, perceived as unable to interpret the new reality. In Greece the existence of Olympian gods were questioned and were regarded, to use the words of the philosopher Critia, as “the invention of politicians who wish to control their citizens by putting the fear of god into them”. For the first time the culture of origin was not the only reference to define one’s identity and people felt the need to search for new and more satisfying religious experiences able to supply the missing sense of contact with the foundations of life.
 In this newly born cross-cultural environment the practice of Mystery Cults seemed to satisfy fully the needs of the day and became incredibly popular and widespread in the whole area under Hellenistic (and subsequently Roman) influence, until when, in 392 AD, following the proclamation of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire, the Emperor Theodosius I ordered the destruction of all temples and statues related to pagan worship, thus marking the beginning of monotheism in the west.
 These cults, also called Mysteries or Mystery Religions (even if they did not have any official credo, dogmas or central hierarchy), were secret initiation rituals into the profound truths of deities of different origins, like the Egyptian Isis and Osiris, the Anatolian Kybele and Attis, the Cretan Demeter and Persephone celebrated in the Mysteries of Eleusis, and the near-eastern Dionysus. Despite the variety of origins, Mystery Cults were actually very homogeneous. We do not have detailed descriptions of the rituals, since it was strictly prohibited to reveal what happened during the ceremonies, but we know that the mythologies functioning as the “storyboard” of the rituals are all strikingly similar: a mother (Demeter, Isis, Kybele) mourns in profound grief and despair the death or disappearance of her daughter (Persephone) or brother/son/lover (Osiris, Attis), who eventually resurrects or reappears (yet temporarily) to join again with the mother and joyously celebrate this reunion.
 The reason for these curious similarities rests in the very ancient common origins of the Mysteries in the Fertility Rituals of primitive times, celebrating the cyclical reunion of Nature (the Mother) with humans and the whole of creation (the dieing and resurrecting “vegetation gods”), a reunion which was usually celebrated in spring when the seasonal rebirth of life was seen as a miraculous materialisation of the triumph of the vital forces of nature over death. From this point of view the Mystery Cults were none other than a Hellenised version of the primitive Cult of Nature, which had developed with different names in various cultures.
 From a ritualistic point of view, we know that initiations into the Mysteries often consisted of joyful nocturnal dance-festivals (especially for the cults of Dionysus and Kybele), where the loud and compelling rhythms of drums, tambourines and tympanums, the clash of bronze cymbals, together with the “maddening unison” of low toned flutes and the ingestion of wine and other mind-altering substances, excited the worshippers into wild ecstatic dancing, in a state of jubilation and extreme exaltation, which we would now call an “altered state of consciousness”. Such enthousiasmos was held to be a “divine madness”, a “heaven-sent folly”, able to produce a peak of mystical and visionary joy, in which the most predisposed initiates became possessed by the gods, “happy as the gods”, one with those gods who resurrected from death in celebration of the triumphant powers of life.
 Even if we don’t know the exact unfolding of rituals, we can however read the enthusiastic comments on the benefits and blessings received with the initiation. According to the Latin orator Cicero, Mysteries generated laetitia vivendi et spes melior morendi (ability to live with joy and to die with better hopes), while the Greek poet Pindar declares: “Blessed is he who goes under the earth after seeing these things. That person knows the end of life and its god-given beginning”. In other words the Mysteries seem to have granted the concrete possibility to regain the joy of life despite the fatigues of everyday routine, but also to overcome the fear of death, by seeing it as the beginning of a new natural cycle. In fact, when initiates were able, even for the temporary moment of the initiation night, to enjoy to the full, assimilate and identify with the triumphant power of life, they could experience a profound personal transformation and become, as the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus writes, “more just and better in every respect, than they were before”.
 It is not difficult to imagine that sharing such an “extraordinary experience” resulted in what Plato defined “an unusually tight bond among initiates”. The day of initiation was seen as a second birthday, the moment of the integration in a group of like-minded people, forming egalitarian communities of symmistai (fellow worshippers) which were open to men and women, free and slaves, Greek and foreigners of all ages and social conditions, who could celebrate together as brothers and sisters in spirit. The profound familiarity deriving from sharing the initiations, referred to as “syngenia psychon kai somaton” (kinship of bodies and souls), also found expression in the typical way for initiates to refer to each other as adelphos (brother). Also when travelling, it was common to go look for the company of those initiated into the same cults, recognisable by symbola, or signs, like wrist or ankle bands of specific colours, which contributed to extended this sense of fraternity also to strangers.
 On a social level, according to the American researcher on history of religions David Ulansey, the initiations into the Mysteries, as ritualised experiences of death and rebirth, produced a personal transformation, which mirrored, on an individual level, the tremendous and rapid metamorphosis happening at a collective level. In other words it is as if thousands of people unconsciously sought for the most readily available way to die and be reborn on a regular basis, in order to keep up with the cultural shift, which was sweeping away at record-speed all previous belief systems.
 Returning to our contemporary cultural intermingling, this time on a global scale, the resonance between our times and the Hellenistic age is so strong that it triggers what has been defined an “overpowering sense of déjà vu”. If we compare the Mysteries with psytrance parties, as cross-cultural gatherings involving wild ecstatic dances and ingestion of mind-altering substances, we can see that the reasons for their popularity appear extremely similar.
 In fact, in both cases, they seem to satisfy some of the most compelling necessities experienced by people going through the complex and challenging phase of cultural mixing. Not only do they provide a renewed, more personal and direct contact with the sacredness of life and nature,but they also offer the possibility for people of the most diverse origins to share profound life changing experiences. As a result a new trance-cultural global tribe is rising, away from obsolete religious institutions and old belief-systems, through the spontaneous celebration of a space-age version of the Cult of Nature.
 Chiara Baldini 2010
For more info:
 Walter Burkert: “Ancient Mystery Rituals”
Even if Burkert belongs to the “old school” Academia and refuses to admit the use of mind-altering substances in the Mystery rituals, his book remains one of the best sources on this subject.
 Marvin Meyer: “The Ancient Mysteries: a Sourcebook of Sacred Texts”
A complete and inspiring collection of original Latin and Greek texts on the Mysteries.
 David Ulansey: “Cultural Transition and Spiritual Transformation: from Alexander the Great to Cyberspace”
Online at http://www.well.com/~davidu/cultural.html
Extremely interesting essay on the cultural context of the Mystery Religions, their relationship with the origins of Christianity and with our own age.
The Religiosity of Raving
Ecstatic visions of intense bliss, clarifying revelations upon the ultimate meaning of life, deep connection with the Whole, feelings of profound unity with the others and with Nature, a surprising premonition of doing “something sacred”… these are just some of the “mystical experiences” which can quite commonly (and often unexpectedly) originate, with various degrees of intensity, on a good dancefloor. Such experiences create what we might call the "religiosity" of raving. But how can this "religiosity" be interpreted, understood and integrated into this modern and apparently de-sacralised world?
From the study of comparative religions we know that dancing to repetitive beats over a long period of time and use of mind-altering substances have long been included in religious celebrations by many different cultures. For thousands of years in all corners of the planet, men and women realised that through ritual dancing and ingestion of sacred plants, they could have the most mysterious and magic of experiences: they could abandon the profane world of daily routine and journey into an Other reality, which they saw as the world of the mysterious forces governing the whole universe, the realm of the super-human, the Divine.
What we now call ecstatic trance dancing and use of entheogens (a term recently coined to refer to substances able to manifest the “god within”) are in fact two “techniques of ecstasy” able to induce a trance or ecstatic state (from Latin transire: “to go over or across”, and from Greek ek-stasis: “to exit from a certain status”). This temporary change in perception, or altered state of consciousness, has always been considered a sacred moment for it provides the experience of dissolution of one’s usual identity, as if a superhuman entity - a spirit or a god - took possession of the body. This way, the Other reality was lived “from the inside”, by becoming the Other reality.
Such profound moments not only hold life-changing potentials, for they can affect the entire world view of those who experience them, but they are also recognised by anthropologists as the possible beginning of the concept of sacred itself: the moment in which our ancestors became aware of the distinction between the profane world of daily life and the mysterious world of “the sacred”.
As a result, through the millennia, people’s visions and revelations developed into many different belief-systems and mythologies, which provided a meaning for such ineffable and unspeakable experiences and the possibility to integrate them into ordinary life.
For example, for our ancestors of the Palaeolithic Age, to enter in a trance probably resulted in feeling pervaded by pure animal instincts, as it could be the case of the amazing “Dancing shaman”, painted 15.000 years ago in the cave of Le Trois Frères in South of France, depicting a man impersonating many different animals. For him to become the Other might have meant to have a personal experience of the super-human powers of the animals as a way to increase his own hunting skills necessary for his survival.
 Thousands of years later, as humans developed a more articulated spiritual imaginary, the techniques of ecstasy were integrated into a more structured reality, evolving an incredible variety of visions and interpretations of the Other that were re-arranged into more complex belief-systems.
For example, in the many possession rituals of African origin (like the Haitian voodoo, or the Moroccan Gnawa, still performed today) participants could become the “horses” to be ridden by the different spirits populating their imaginary (including, for the Songhay tribe of Niger, the spirits of the white European colonisers, which were invoked as a way to “steal” their secret powers). While in Asia and America the trance state was mainly used by one specific person in the community, the shaman, a healer or “master of spirits” who would use various techniques of ecstasy to journey into the realm of the spirits of nature and put them into contact with the rest of the community.
Also in Europe, we have a very strong tradition of religious use of the techniques of ecstasy. For example we know of the ritual use of various entheogens by the Northern peoples, while in the south, during the Hellenistic period, flourished the so called Mystery Religions. They included the sacred dances in honour of Dionysus, the “God of Wine and Ecstasy”, and the Mystery of Eleusis, which were rituals reputed to involve the ingestion of the same active principle as LSD, as argued by Albert Hoffman. The Mystery Religions were Hellenised versions of more ancient rituals and they became so popular and widespread that their practice was exported and kept alive also by the Roman Empire.
Such beliefs and practices from all over the world are generally referred to as Ecstatic Religions, for thecentrality of the “techniques of ecstasy” in their rituals. But they are not “religions” in the modern, institutional sense of the word, but rather cults that, because of the radicality of the experience they provided, were often pushed to the margins of more official and institutionalised religious practice.
The common trait linking all of these cultic practices is the sacredness granted to the vital and instinctual energies, drawn from the deepest layers of the psyche, which manifest during the altered states. Therefore, as humans developed more complex structures of civilisation and had to learn to keep their instincts under control, the Ecstatic Religions, were true liberation rituals with therapeutic potentials, both at individual and collective levels, providing a ritualised and periodical release of all those impulses that were otherwise un-manifestable during everyday life.
But there was a “problem”: such practices required a social context able to grant a very high degree of religious and spiritual freedom, since the beliefs obtained “from the inside”, the truths coming from the “god within”, hold over the believer a power which represent a challenge to institutional authorities. And this, later on, became a huge problem.
As Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire and the clergy imposed their absolute control over people’s religious beliefs, the techniques of trance and ecstasy of pagan origins began to be regarded as unacceptable forms of freedom and were conveniently identified as encounters with the Devil. This is how the Other eventually became Satan, the techniques of ecstasy were demonised and prohibited, natural instincts were repressed and hundreds of thousands of people devoted to trance dancing and use of entheogens (all ingredients of the famous “Witches’ Sabbath”) were brutally tortured and burnt, in the name of a god who had lost all contacts with the vital forces of nature.
 The resulting trauma was so devastating that the concept of the sacredness of the altered state of consciousness virtually disappeared from the western world.
From this perspective, the phenomenon of the psychedelic movement of the 1960s and its subsequent evolution into Psytrance and Electronic Dance Music Cultures in general, could appear as spontaneous re-enactments of the ancient techniques of ecstasy in a post-modern, cross-cultural context. So this could create the possibility of regaining possession of one of the most powerful tools that humans have to acquire a more fundamental and complete vision of themselves and the universe. In other words we might be witness to the opportunity to re-sacralise life and nature.
But if spirituality is to be judged by its fruits and if Terence McKenna is right in stating that “a planet brings forth an opportunity like this only once in its lifetime”, the successful seizing of such an occasion largely depends on the ability of modern trancers to formulate and act upon a set of shared beliefs and thus become aware of which game they are playing.
 Chiara Baldini 2010
For more info:
Eliade, Mircea: “Shamanism and the techniques of ecstasy”
De Heusch, Luc: “La transe et sous entours”
Durkheim, Emile: “Elementary forms of religious life”
Lapassade, Georges: “Essai sur la transe”
St. John, Graham: “Neotrance and the psychedelic festival”
http://dj.dancecult.net/index.php/journal/article/view/11/3
 St. John, Graham (edited by): “Rave culture and religion”