quotes from dionysus: myth and cult
“The primordial force of life which is revealed in Dionysus belongs to a much more profound level of Being than that of the element of growth in the plants on which man depends. This is precisely why he is a god.” (189)
“The rite of the blood sacrifice is a creation whose greatness we can still experience, even though its significance was, for the most part, already lost in the time when it was still being practiced. Recent theories- regardless of whether they resort to the analogy of the “do ut des” thesis or more complex ways of thought- only prove that the entire conception of this rite could not have sprung from motives which stem from our rational being. If we were in a position to feel once more what it means for a god to be in our immediate presence, only an experience of this imminence could open our eyes. Even to hope for such an experience is presumptuous. But this should not make us incapable of recognizing, in the powerful drama of the animal which sheds its life-blood, the expression of a state of mind, the sublimity of which can be found paralleled only in the great works of art.” (20)
“Are we to call [the way of the Greeks] less religious than others because here faith in God does not reveal laws, penance, and the denial of the world, but the sacredness of Him who is and the great circles of Being in which gods, as eternal form, are active?” (23)
“The creative ones have always known that the act of creation has to be set into motion by smmething which man does not have in his power. The greater their creative power was, the surer their belief in an Existence which has reality and the majesty of the One who set all into motion.” (24-5)
“...the closer we get to the great, the primal, the epoch-making creations, the clearer and more powerful this awareness becomes.” (26)
“the emotions of ecstasy and grace” (27)
“[Cultus] is so closely associated with a compelling awareness of the nearness of the supernatural that man is drawn with his whole being into the creative act of form-making.” (27)
“the manifestation of godhead… is not only not a dellusion but the most real of all realities. For its manifestations include everything we call “real,”...” (30)
“Rudolf Otto also insists upon the objective nature of the revelation of deity. But his idea of the “holy” is an objectiveness which manifests itself only psychologically and can be comprehended only by the methods of psychology. The soul, we are told, reaches a state where the emotions of terror and nothingness combine with those of rapture and adoration to produce a miraculous experience- the experience of an unquestionable reality. But this reality can be perceived only in emotional seizures of this type. Before it can be related to the objects of empirical knowledge, a special kind of mental activity is needed vis-a-vis these objects, like that which Kant considered necessary for “things in themselves.” In itself this reality has no relationship to these objects- in fact, it is not even possible to say anything about it by comparing the two. Rather, it is the “wholly other,” something completely different from anything in our world. As such, it is revealed directly only to the experience of the soul, that is to say, to an entirely mystical experience.” (32)
“That which confronts mankind in epiphanies is not a reality which is completely unrecognizable and imperceptible, affecting only the soul which turns its back on the world, but the world itself as a divine form, as a plenitude of divine configurations.” (33)
“Magic is dependent upon the formless world to be found in the inner recesses of the soul- a realm of the infinite, composed of the most mysterious powers. Myth and cultus, on the other hand, are meant to serve the true reality of the world of the earth and the stars.” (36)
“[Cultus arose from] a revelation of such miraculous force that the community of men made a living monument for it out of themselves, surrendering themselves completely to the holy ecstasy of being, in themselves, an answer to, and an expression of, the transcendent.” (38)
“All of [the women who accompany Dionysus] suffer adversity and persecution and must die, the same as he. And the terrors which afflict them are unmistakably linked to the dreadful action to which their madness incites them.” (43-4)
“Knowledge can come to us only from the reality of the world itself; our chosen leaders must no longer be the petty men of limited vision from whom we have previously taken our orientation, but the greatest intellects who have had the most profound views of the world and have been seized most forcefully by that which is.” (46)
“All of antiquity extolled Dionysus as the god who gave man wine. However, he was known also as the raving god whose presence makes man mad and incites him to savagery and even to lust for blood. He was the confidant and companion of the spirits of the dead. Mysterious dedications called him the Lord of Souls. To his worship belonged the drama which has enriched the world with a miracle of the spirit. The flowers of spring bore witness to him, too. The ivy, the pine, the fig tree were dear to him. Yet far above all of these blessings in the natural world of vegetation stood the gift of the vine, which has been blessed a thousandfold. Dionysus was the god of the most blessed ecstasy and the most enraptured love. But he was also the persecuted god, the suffering and dying god, and all whom he loved, all who attended him, had to share his tragic fate.” (49)
“The most distinguished poets and thinkers sensed in this diversity [of Dionysus’ dual nature] a reality of inexpressible depth. But modern scholars are still completely baffled by it. No matter how often they have attempted to trace the diverse back to the simple, the meaning of the collective whole has always escaped them.” (49)
“An intoxicated god, a mad god! Truly an idea which demands our deepest thought.” (50)
The god of ecstasy and terror, of wildness and of the most blessed deliverance- the mad god whose appearance sends mankind into madness- gives notice already, in his conception and birth [twice-born, of a mortal woman and of the king of the gods], of his mysterious and paradoxical nature.” (65)
“...his appearance is starting, disquieting, violent. And, like everything violent, it arouses opposition and agitation. Right at his birth gods arise as his enemies. Terrible disturbances are engendered in his vicinity. The destruction of his mother is followed by suffering, bitter distress, and violent death for all who interest themselves in the little boy…” (74)
“...even the revelation of the god who has become a man creates wild emotion, anger, and opposition among mankind.” (74)
“...he rips the ones he has affected out of their wifely decency and morality and mates them with the mysteries and madnesses of the chaos of night.” (74)
“The more impetuous his nature is, the more unconditional the demands are which he makes on the souls of mankind, the more stubborn the opposition and resistance must be… This is not to say that the epiphany of Dionysus always had to elicit resistance from man. But the god appeared with such wildness and demanded such unheard-of things, so much that mocked all human order, that he first had to overpower the hearts of men before they could do him homage.” (76)
“...the myth and cult [both] present to view the suffering and dying Dionysus. But this somber form is eclipsed by that of the young victor. Dionysus entered the world as a conqueror.” (77)
“At his conception the earthly was touched by the splendor of divine heaven. But in this union of the heavenly with the earthly, which is expressed in the myth of the double birth, man’s tear-filled lot was not dissolved but preserved, rather, in sharp contrast to superhuman majesty. He who was born in this way is not only the exultant god, the god who brings man joy. He is the suffering and dying god, the god of tragic contrast. And the inner force of this dual reality is so great that he appears among men like a storm, he staggers them, and he tames their opposition with the whip of madness. All tradition, all order must be shattered. Life becomes suddenly an ecstasy- an ecstasy of blessedness, but an ecstasy, no less, of terror.” (78)
“[The cult myths] present him as the god who comes, the god of epiphany, whose appearance is far more urgent, far more compelling than that of any other god.” (79)
“While [the other gods] are shown in profile, he is the only one who turns his terrible face with its large eyes directly at the viewer. This remarkable peculiarity, however, is usually explained by the fact that primitive man and his successors preferred to present Dionysus in the mask. It would be much closer to the truth to say, vice versa, that Dionysus was presented in the mask because he was known as the god of confrontation. It is the god of the most immediate presence who looks at us so penetratingly from the vase painting. Because it is his nature to appear suddenly and with overwhelming might before mankind, the mask serves as his symbol and his incarnation in cult.” (90)
“[The mask’s] eyes, which stare straight ahead, cannot be avoided; its face, with its inexorable immobility, is quite different from other images which seem ready to move, to turn around, to step aside. Here there is nothing but encounter, from which there is no withdrawal- an immovable, spell-binding antipode.” (90)
“Everything that has been locked up is released. The alien and the hostile unite in miraculous harmony. Age-old laws have suddenly lost their power…” (95)
“In the Bacchae of Euripides, the maenads who have been thrown into prison at the king’s command are suddenly free again. The chains dropped from their feet of their own accord, and the locked doors swung open untouched by any hand. ...Still much more miraculous than the freeing of the women is the arrogance with which Dionysus, himself, derides the deluded fool who dared to throw him into chains only to see his captive suddenly before him again without his bonds.” (97)
“...death encroaches upon the realm of the god, who is extolled as “the joyful one,” and the “giver of riches.” ...Dionysus, himself, 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)
“...the tragic destiny of which the myth is aware and to which the ritual gives expression did not occur without warning. It was generated with inexorable necessity out of a mad act of violence. Only because Dionysus, himself, is not merely the enraptured one but also the terrible one, has the terrible demanded him as its victim. That sinister truth which creates madness shows its horrible face in his actions no less than in his sufferings. The most celebrated myth of his destruction has him suffer as Zagreus, the “great hunter,” the same fate inherent in his appalling actions. The “hunter” is himself hunted; the “render of men” is himself rent.” (104-5)
“...the god punishes by revealing the absolute terror of his reality.” (106)
“Thus the same brutality speaks to us out of the cult as out of the myth. We feel its presence clearly; the infinity which the ecstasy of life inhabits threatens with the ecstasy of destruction everyone who approaches it.” (106)
“...the god himself suffers the horror which he commits.” (107)
“Many more victims must bleed to death under [the maenads’, Dionysus’ and the cats devoted to Dionysus’] teeth than would be needed for their sustenance.” (112)
“He, the nurturer and the god of rapture; he, the god who is forever praised as the giver of wine which removes all sorrow and care; he, the deliverer and healer, “the delight of mortals,” “the god of many joys,” the dancer and ecstatic lover, “the bestower of riches,” the “benefactor,”- this god who is the most delightful of all the gods is at the same time the most frightful. No single Greek god even approaches Dionysus in the horror of his epithets, which bear witness to a savagery that is absolutely without mercy. In fact, one must evoke the memory of the monstrous horror of eternal darkness to find anything at all comparable. He is called the “render of men”, “the eater of raw flesh”, “who delights in the sword and bloodshed”. Correspondingly we hear not only of human sacrifice in his cult, but also of the ghastly ritual in which a man is torn to pieces.
Where does this put us? Surely there can be no further doubt that this puts us into death’s sphere. The terrors of destruction, which make all if life tremble, belong also, as horrible desire, to the kingdom of Dionysus. The monster whose supernatural duality speaks to us from the mask has one side of his nature turned toward eternal night." (113)
“His duality has manifested itself to us in the antitheses of ecstasy and horror, infinite vitality and savage destruction; in the pandemonium in which deathly silence is inherent; in the immediate presence which is at the same time absolute remoteness. All of his gifts and attendant phenomena give evidence of the sheer madness of his dual essence: prophecy, music, and finally wine, the flamelike herald of the god, which has in it both bliss and brutality. At the height of ecstasy all of these paradoxes suddenly unmask themselves and reveal their names to be Life and Death.
Dionysus, who holds them together, must be the divine spirit of a gigantic reality, an elemental first principle of being in whose essence lies the reason why he, himself, is called a madman, and why his appearance brings madness with it.” (121)
“The visage of every true god is the visage of a world. There can be a god who is mad only if there is a mad world which reveals itself through him. Where is this world? Can we still find it? Can we appreciate its nature? For this no one can help us but the god himself.” (136)
“We know him as the wild spirit of antithesis and paradox, of immediate presence and complete remoteness, of bliss and horror, of infinite vitality and the cruelest destruction. The element of bliss in his nature, the creative, enraptured, and blessed elements all share, too, in his wildness and his madness. Are they not, then, mad just because they, too, already carry within themselves a duality, because they stand on the threshold where one step beyond leads to dismemberment and darkness? Here we have hit upon a cosmic enigma- the mystery of life which is self-generating, self-creating. The love which races toward the miracle of procreation is touched by madness. So is the mind when it is staggered by the impulse to create.” (136)
“He who begets something which is alive must dive down into the primeval depths in which the forces of life dwell. And when he rises to the surface, there is a gleam of madness in his eyes because in those depths death lives cheek by jowl with life. The primal mystery is itself mad- the matrix of the duality and the unity of disunity.” (136-7)
“Man’s experience tells him that wherever there are signs of life, death is in the offing. The more alive this life becomes, the nearer death draws, until the supreme moment- the enchanted moment when something new is created- when death and life meet in an embrace of mad ecstasy. The rapture and terror of life are so profound because they are intoxicated with death. As often as life engenders itself anew, the wall which separates it from death is momentarily destroyed.” (137)
“But the god himself is not merely touched and seized by the ghostly spirit ofo the abyss. He, himself, is the monstrous creature which lives in the depths. From its mask it looks out at man and sends him reeling with the ambiguity of nearness and remoteness, of life and death in one. Its divine intelligence holds the contradictions together. For it is the spirit of excitation and wildness; and everything alive, which seethes and glows, resolves the schism between itself and its opposite and has already absorbed this spirit in its desire. Thus all earthly powers are united in the god: the generating, nourishing, intoxicating rapture; the life-giving inexhaustibility; and the tearing pain, the deathly pallor, the speechless night of having” (140) “been. He is the mad ecstasy which hovers over every conception and birth and whose wildness is always ready to move on to destruction and death. He is life which, when it overflows, grows mad and in its profoundest passion is intimately associated with death.” (141)
“The fullness of life and the violence of death both are equally terrible in Dionysus. Nothing has been mitigated, but neither has anything been distorted and changed into something fantastic… The Greek endured this reality in its total dimensions and worshipped it as divine.” (141)
“He brought the primeval world along with him. This is the reason why his onslaught stripped mortals of all of their conventions, of everything that made them “civilized,” and hurled them into life which is intoxicated by death at those moments when it glows with its greatest vitality, when it loves, procreates, gives birth, and celebrates the rites of spring. There the most remote is near, the past is present, all ages are mirrored in the moment of the now. All that is lies locked in a close embrace.” (141)
