Dionysian Mysteries: Encyclopedia II - Dionysian Mysteries - The Mystery Rites

Dionysian Mysteries - The Mystery Rites

The Dionysian Mysteries are believed to have consisted of two sets of rites, the secret rites of initiation just outlined and the outer public, or Dionysia The public rites are generally held to be the most ancient of the two.

Dionysian Mysteries - The Public Rites

In Athens and the Attica of the Classical period the main festivities were held in the month of Elaphebolion (around the time of the Spring Equinox) where the Greater, or City, Dionysia had evolved into a great drama festival - Dionysos having become the god of acting, music and poetic inspiration for the Athenians - as well as an urban carnival or Komos. Its older precursor had been demoted to the Lesser, or Rural, Dionysia, though preserved more ancient customs centred on a celebration of the first wine. This festival was timed to coincide with the "clearing of the wine", a final stage in the fermentation process occurring in the first cold snap after the Winter Solstice, when it was declared Dionysos was reborn. This was later formalised to January 6th (now Epiphany), a day on which water was also turned to wine by Dionysos in a separate myth. The festivals at this time were much wilder too, as were the festivities of the grape harvest, and it's carnivalesque ritual processions from the vineyards to the wine press, which had occurred earlier in the autumn. It was at these times that initiations into the Mysteries were probably originally held.

Dionysos was also revered at Delphi, where he presided over the oracle for three winter months, beginning in November, marked by the rising of the Pleiades, while Apollo was away "visiting the Hyperboreans". At this time a rite of known as the "Dance of the Fiery Stars" was performed, of which little is known, but appears to have been appropriation of the dead, which was continued in Christian countries as All Souls Day on November 2nd.

In sharp contrast to the daytime festivities of the Athenian Dionysia were the biennial nocturnal rites of the Tristeria, held on Mount Parnassus in the Winter. These celebrated the emergence of Dionysos from the underworld, with wild orgies in the mountains. The first day of which was presided over by the Maenads, in their state of Mainomenos, or madness, in which an extreme atavistic state was achieved, during which animals were hunted - and, in some lurid tales, even human beings - before being torn apart with bare hands and eaten raw. The infamous Sparagmos, said to have been once associated with goat sacrifice, marking the harvesting and trampling of the vine). The second day saw the Bacchic Nymphs in their Thyiadic, or raving, state, a more sensual and benign Bacchanal assisted by satyrs, though still orgiastic. The mythographers would explain this with claims that the Maenads, or wild women, were the resisters of the Bacchic urge, sent mad, while the Thyiades, or ravers, had accepted the Dionysiac ecstasy and kept their sanity. This has some plausibility in terms of psychological repression, though sceptics claim the Maenad stories may have been exaggerations to scare away the curious tourist!

While the Athenians celebrated Dionysos in various day festivals, including those during the Eleusinian Mysteries, a far older tradition was the two year cycle, where for a whole year the death and absence of Dionysos was mourned, in his aspect of Dionysos Chthonios, Lord of the Underworld. Followed by a second year in which his resurrection as Dionysos Bacchos, was celebrated at the Tristeria and other festivities, including one marked by the rising of Sirius). Why this unusual period was adopted is uncertain, though it may have reflected a long fermentation period. All the most ancient Dionysian rites reflected stages in the wine production process. It was only later that the Athenians and others synchronised the Bacchic festivities with the common agricultural seasons.

The first large scale religious worship of Dionysos in Greece seems to have begun in Thebes in around 1500 BC, around a thousand years before the development of the Athenian Mysteries. Here a cult worship of Dionysos, and his mother Semele, a Moon goddess, was performed in the earliest Dionysian temples, usually located in the liminal spaces beyond the walls of the city, on the edges of swamps and marshes. Its first rituals were probably similar to those ancient rites still held on Greek islands, such as Keos and Tenedos, even in Classical times, but which probably originated in the Mycenaean period. Here the first wine was offered to Dionysos, and to the now growing vine, and a bull was sacrificed with a double axe, its blood mixed with the wine. There are indications that at one time the sacrificer of the sacred bull was himself then stoned to death, though this became a mere symbolic act quite early on in most places. The more economical practise of goat sacrifice seems to have been added to the rites later. The goat, like the bull, being regarded as a manifestation of Dionysos, but was also seen as the 'killer of the vine', due to its tendency to consume it, welcome in times of pruning, but unwelcome in times of growth. The death of the goat could thus be interpreted as a combined Dionysos sacrifice and the vengeful slaying of the sacrificer. It was usually torn apart, just as the vine had been at the harvest. Other archaic rites found on the Greek islands include festivals to his consort, Ariadne, which included some form of tree swinging game, said to date to a time when Ariadne hung herself from a tree. Some see a remnant of ritual hanging or partial asphyxiation in these games.

In Rome the Bacchanalia, essentially a milder form of the Tristeria, were held in secret and originally attended by women only, on three days in the year in the grove of Simila near the Aventine Hill, on March 16 and 17. Subsequently, admission to the rites were re-opened to men and celebrations took place five times a month! Initiation could take place at any of these times.

Within these public rituals were hidden the secret rites of initiation, the public festivals largely setting the ambiance for these private rites, as A E Waite evocatively puts it, perhaps getting a little carried away:

"Whatsoever may have remained to represent the original intent of the rites, regarded as Rites of Initiation, the externalities and practice of the Festivals were orgies of wine and sex: there was every kind of drunkenness and every aberration of sex, the one leading up to the other. Over all reigned the Phallus, which - in its symbolism a rebours - represented post ejaculation the death-state of Bacchus, the god of pleasure, and his resurrection when it was in forma errecta. Of such was the sorrow and of such the joy of these Mysteries". (A E Waite, New Encyclopaedia of Freemasonry)

Whatever we make of Waite's interesting interpretation, the phallus does appear to have been a connecting link between the outer and inner rites, not only was it prominent in the Bacchic carnival, in Rome carried by the Phallophoroi at the head of the procession, it also appears to have been the secret object in the Liknon, the sacred basket, or Arc, revealed only to initiates after their final initiation. Other possible contents being sacred fruit or leaves, or alternatively loafs, possibly with entheogenic qualities, with some scholars speculatively combining these possibilities in imaginative ways. Some sources suggest that the phallus used was made from pliable fig wood, while even older sources indicate it may have once been the phallus of the sacrificed goat. Indeed the contents probably changed over the centuries and in different modes of initiation. The general idea is that the final stage of the initiation involves the revelation of the god in one form or another.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "The Mystery Rites", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki