Regatta De Mort: The Mad God

By Ranty McRanterson

To do honor to a strange and mad god, any book about him must be strange and mad too. This book is a Dionysian tale, part fact, part fiction. Its purpose is to disorient, to disrupt, to open the mind to radical new possibilities.
Do you want to be visited by strangeness and madness, to have your mind expanded as never before? Then let the insanity begin. Welcome to the Extraordinary World, the sacred space, the space where the most solemn and ineffable quest takes place, where humans at last encounter the gods face to face. Are you brave enough? Are you crazy enough? The sacred is never found in the ordinary, familiar, normal world. Normal people cannot show you it. Only the special ones can enter it. When they return, they are at a higher level. Only then are they qualified to say sacred things, extraordinary things, the things that none of your neighbors could ever tell you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 10, 2018
• ISBN: 9780244080440

Ranty McRanterson

Ranty McRanterson is a polemicist. Everyone needs a good rant, right?

Book preview

Introduction

How do you gain access to the sacred? The sacred is never found in the ordinary, familiar, normal world. Normal people cannot show you it. The sacred has a space of its own. It is a separated, guarded space, unlike anything in the ordinary world. Only the special ones can enter it. When they return, they are at a higher level. They are no longer normal. Only then are they qualified to say sacred things, extraordinary things, the things that none of your neighbors could ever tell you. The enemy of the sacred is the banal, the bland, the conventional, the ordinary, the familiar, the normal.

Normality is a fatal condition. Humanity would not survive if everyone were normal. It would be unable to adapt to changing circumstances. Yet nor can humanity be too abnormal. That would prove fatal too. If everyone were radically unique, completely unlike everyone else, everything would be chaos. So, humanity has to be mostly normal, but with a few abnormal individuals who ascend the highest mountains, or descend into the deepest caves, or walk into the wilderness, or enter the labyrinth, or dive to the bottom of the ocean, or travel to the unknown land, or venture across the uncharted sea, or go to new places in the mind and have thoughts no one else has ever imagined. When they return – if they return – they are different from everyone else. They are now abnormal. When they say they have communed with the gods, their very otherness, their manifest loss and lack of normality, is the proof of their claim. Their minds think differently. Their eyes see different things. They speak in new, thrilling and utterly unusual ways. They have become spellbinding. They have an aura no normal person could ever possess. They radiate with charisma. They are electrifying.

Everyone needs a bit of strange. The more normal you are, the greater your need. Everyone needs the god Dionysus, the perpetual stranger, the embodiment of strangeness, the strange god who brings strangeness wherever he goes. Dionysus delivers strange epiphanies that estrange people from themselves, that take them out of themselves. He makes them ecstatic. Ecstasy means standing outside oneself. It concerns a state of rapture that stupefies the body while freeing the soul to contemplate divine things.

Dionysus can appear anywhere at any time, and always as a stranger. He can beguile you, inspire you, grip you with mania … destroy you. Do not disrespect this brutal god. Don’t turn your back on him. Above all, do not fail to acknowledge his divinity. Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make victims of Dionysus, the trickster god, the maker and conjurer of madness.

Yet Plato said that our greatest blessings come to us through the gift of madness. Therefore, Dionysus, the mad God who brings madness, is humanity’s greatest boon. Where would humanity be without Dionysus’s wine, without its ability to transform our feeble state of consciousness into something glorious and elevated?

While, all around us, the old religions fail and become ever more decrepit, anachronistic, and downright embarrassing, Dionysus remains eternally fresh and relevant. Humanity will never turn its back on wine, on the magic vine. Wine is the most ancient cure for the illness of normality, for altering normal, tedious, trivial, boring, conservative states of consciousness. Even Jesus Christ had the good sense to turn water into wine. It was the only interesting thing he ever did.

To do honor to a strange and mad god, any book about him must be strange and mad too. This book is a Dionysian tale, part fact, part fiction. Its purpose is to disorient, to disrupt, to open the mind to radical new possibilities.

Do you want to be visited by strangeness and madness, to have your mind expanded as never before? Then let the insanity begin.

Welcome to the Extraordinary World, the sacred space, the space where the most solemn and ineffable quest takes place, where humans at last encounter the gods face to face. Are you brave enough? Are you crazy enough?

The Namnite Priestesses

The ancient tribe of Namnites lived near Nantes, situated on the river Loire in France. Some Namnite women were fiercely independent priestesses and prophetesses of Dionysus that presided over orgiastic rituals. They lived on a sacred island in the middle of the river. They could visit men on the mainland once a year, but men were strictly forbidden from ever coming to their island. The penalty for this unforgivable defilement was death.

The island’s temple to Dionysus had to be unroofed once each year, dismantled at sunrise and roofed again before sunset. If any of the women involved in constructing the new roof should drop her tools or building materials, she would be set upon by her sisters, and torn limb from limb. It was made sure this happened each year, i.e. human sacrifice was compulsory. The victim’s mangled remains were then carried around the temple in jubilation. Sacred life had been renewed!

All of the priestesses were given progressively more wine during the day of the roof-making, causing them to become drunker and drunker. The first to become so drunk that she could no longer perform her task was the one to be sacrificed to Dionysus. She was the one most under his spell and influence … a martyr for the cause.

The Divine Appearance

When the mortal Theban princess Semele, daughter of Cadmus (founder of Thebes), was made pregnant by Zeus, Father of the Olympians, she asked the great god to grant her a wish. He took a solemn and binding oath by the sacred waters of the infernal river Styx that he would grant her whatever she wanted.

Semele’s wish was that Zeus should appear to her in all of his divine glory. Zeus was devastated. This was a fatal wish – mortals could not look upon his true being without bursting into lightning-ignited flames. But he could not go back on his sacred oath. With the heaviest of hearts, the god of gods complied. Semele was immediately consumed by a divine electric storm.

Zeus saved Semele’s unborn, fetal baby by sewing it into his thigh, from where it was born safely and healthily a few months later. The god Dionysus was thus called the twice-born ... born once from his mother and once from his father.

Dionysus-Zagreus

Dionysus was sometimes known as Dionysus-Zagreus, or just Zagreus. In this context, Dionysus was said to have had a mother prior to Semele. Zeus mated with Persephone (queen of the underworld), and their son was Zagreus. Hera, wife of Zeus and queen of heaven, despised the bastard child and incited the old gods – the Titans – to dismember the child and eat the pieces. The goddess Athena managed to save the child’s heart and, by the power of Zeus, Dionysus was later born again, via Semele. (So, again, Dionysus was twice-born, this time from two different mothers.)

Two Mothers

Dionysus had two mothers (Persephone, the immortal goddess, and Semele, the mortal princess), and one Father (Zeus, chief of the gods).

The Successor

Zeus planned to make Dionysus his successor as ruler of the cosmos, but Hera, his resentful wife, was determined to thwart her husband’s plan. She refused to be ruled by one of Zeus’s bastards.

Only the old gods – the Titans – were willing to murder an infant. They distracted Dionysus with toys, including a mirror and rattles, then seized young Dionysus and tore him to pieces. The pieces were first boiled, then roasted, then eaten. The goddess Athena, who had chanced upon the scene, managed to save the infant’s tender heart, which she took to Zeus, who later used it to resurrect him. Zeus, in his fury, destroyed the Titans. From their ashes mortals were manufactured.

We humans are not made of clay, or born from dirt. We come from incinerated gods. Well, you have been told you are made of stardust, haven’t you? Were not the stars once considered gods? Are not stars divine furnaces?

The Titanic Feast

The Titans boiled the dismembered limbs of Dionysus in a cauldron, then roasted them on a spit and ate the sacrificial meat, thus ingesting the divine substance of an Olympian god. The uncooked heart, which they had set aside for special treatment, and which was still beating, was rescued by Athena while the Titans were busy eating. Zeus – God the Father – was able to use the heart to recreate the Son of God and bring him back to life. He took Zagreus’s beating heart and ground it up into a potion, which he then gave to Semele to drink, who became pregnant with Dionysus, despite being a virgin.

The cult of the death and resurrection of Dionysus – born of a virgin, with a divine father – long preceded the similar tale of Jesus Christ, which tuned into the same Archetype, hence why so many pagans were receptive to the Christian story and did not see it as an alien Hebrew tale, which they would never have accepted. To the Jews, the Christian Mythos was repulsive, blasphemous and heretical, which is why so few of them became Christians. Pagans, not Jews, embraced Christianity.

Jesus Christ, although in reality nothing but a Jewish rabbi executed by the Romans for leading an insurrection against the Roman garrison in Jerusalem on Passover, was transformed by Saint Paul – a Jew living in pagan Tarsus and steeped in pagan cults, especially Mithraism – into a latter-day pagan God, an avatar of Mithras. Saint Paul went out of his way to ensure that Christians did not have to obey Jewish law, thus ensuring that Christianity was acceptable to non-Jews. Saint Paul, like so many religious leaders, was a psychological genius, and an expert at manipulating the credulous masses.

The Throne of Heaven

Zeus put little Zagreus on the throne of heaven and armed him with his lightning and thunder bolts.

The Titan assassins offered the boy a collection of toys to trick him into setting aside the thunder and lightning with which he could kill them.

Imagine the Abrahamic God as a baby. Doesn’t Jehovah act exactly like a cosmic, squealing baby, or a stroppy adolescent incapable of controlling his emotions? Does the Biblical God give any indication of being a wise, rational being fully in control of himself and the universe he allegedly created? At all times, from Eden onwards, everything seems radically out of control, chaotic, and proceeding according to no plan at all. Time and time again, the Jews – the Chosen People – are destroyed and enslaved by their much more powerful pagan enemies, who have far more interesting and credible gods.

A god such as Apollo is infinitely superior to Jehovah. Humanity has shown an ineradicable tendency to choose the wrong gods, to prefer the worst gods, to worship devils yet call them gods.

Human Nature

According to the Mythos of the ancient mystery religion of Orphism, human beings are endowed with a dual nature. Our physical body of matter is gross and evil because its source is the ash of the murderous Titans, the god-slayers, the bloody assassins of the divine. It belongs to the profane order. However, within the filth are the remains of the god (Dionysus-Zagreus). These traces congregate to form our pure and divine soul, our link to the gods and the sacred order.

We are all part god, and we are all connected to each other via that same god. We need to overcome our low, bestial Titanic nature and get in touch with our high, Olympian nature.

Since the Titans were themselves the old gods then humans are in fact fully divine. We are both Titanic and Olympian. We are both the old gods and the new gods; we are the new gods struggling to rise from the old, and being held back by the old. Look at how the followers of the old, mainstream religions rant and rail against the Coming Race of new gods – the Illuminists.

Orphism

Orphism is the classical religion associated with the mythical poet and musician Orpheus, who descended into Hades – the Underworld – and returned, thereby acquiring the secret knowledge of the world of the dead, which he brought back to the living.

Orphics revered both Persephone (wife of the god of the Underworld) and Dionysus, the god that went to the Underworld and returned with his mortal mother Semele, who was then transformed into a goddess, suggesting that all of us could likewise be made divine.

As a young man, Orpheus invented the formal Mysteries of Dionysus, converting the primitive Dionysian orgies of sex and alcohol into sophisticated rites and rituals providing knowledge of life after death.

Orphism attracted a fanatical following and Orpheus was soon revered as a demi-god by the Orphics. However, he then did something extraordinary, imbued with the highest risk. He drastically reformed Orphism, more or less reinventing it and giving it a radically different meaning. Originally a religion about the Underworld, Orphism was provided with a solar dimension involving the light gods Helios, and, especially, Apollo. It now addressed the heavens and gods and not just the land of the dead.

Many of the original Orphics hated the reformed version of Orphism (just as many Catholics hated the Protestant reformation of Christianity), and they brutally assassinated Orpheus.

The reformist Orphics, those who supported the new version of the religion, then went out of their way to associate Orpheus with Apollo rather than Dionysus, even claiming that Orpheus was the son of Apollo.

Orphism was later regarded as a hybrid of Dionysianism and Apollonianism, with Orpheus serving as the boundary or link between the polar opposite gods Dionysus and Apollo.

The standard tale of Orpheus’s parentage was that he was the son of King Oeagrus, king of Thrace, and Calliope, the Muse of the beautiful voice (the patron of epic poetry). Charops, father of Oeagros, was a leading figure in the cult of Dionysus, which dominated Thrace.

Orpheus first set out on his spiritual path as an enthusiastic disciple of Dionysus, but he was keen to make the cult less physical and more high minded. He introduced the Dionysian Mysteries, involving elaborate rites and rituals, and providing a detailed cosmology and theology. He himself was the author of the inspired, sacred writings of the Orphic cult.

Orphism was built on the old Dionysian cult, but the Orphics systematized the cult and created a practical, organized, highly influential mystery religion that sowed the seeds for future Gnosticism.

Orpheus was endowed with divine musical skills. According to legend, Apollo gave Orpheus his first lyre, the uniquely powerful lyre of Hermes. Orpheus’s singing and playing were so enchanting that animals, and even trees and rocks, were moved to dance.

Orpheus served as a member of the famous crew of the Argonauts (led by the hero Jason), and saved them from the haunting, destructive music of the Sirens by playing his own, even more entrancing music.

On his return from the expedition, Orpheus married the beautiful maiden Eurydice, who was tragically killed on their wedding day by the bite of a deadly snake. Unable to accept her death, Orpheus descended to the land of the dead in a desperate attempt to bring her back to life.

With his divine lyre, Orpheus played a song that captivated Charon, the infernal Ferryman, who agreed to ferry him over the river Styx to the Underworld, even though mortals were forbidden to make this journey. On the far bank, Orpheus played a tune to send to sleep Cerberus, the savage guard dog of Hades that was under strict orders to allow no mortal to pass.

No one in the land of the dead could resist the music of Orpheus. He made his way to the dark, gloomy Court of King Hades where his music and grief so moved Hades that the king of the dead allowed Orpheus to take Eurydice back with him to the upper world of light and life. Hades set one simple condition: both Orpheus and Eurydice were forbidden to look back. However, when Orpheus saw the sun again, he was overwhelmed with joy and, without thinking, turned back to share his delight with Eurydice. She instantly disappeared, never to be seen again.

Orpheus never recovered. He was plunged into the most profound depression, and never experienced happiness again. He could take no pleasure from the ecstatic rites of Dionysus. The only consolation he found was in the quiet contemplation of Apollonian reason.

His Dionysian followers were infuriated by his abandonment of the true god. They hated his reforms to the old religion, his introduction of Apollonian rationalism, which was the opposite of Dionysian unreason. The Maenads of Thrace tore Orpheus to pieces, appalled that their former instructor had defected to the worship of Apollo.

The dismembered limbs of Orpheus were gathered up by the Muses and solemnly buried. Orpheus thus became an echo of dismembered Dionysus-Zagreus.

A central part of the Orphic ritual involved symbolically re-enacting the dismemberment of Dionysus and restoring him to life.

Like the later Christianity, Orphism promised rewards for the virtuous after bodily death, and punishment for the wicked.

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In the highest level of Orphic thought, Apollo and Dionysus were treated as two faces or revelations of the same divinity. At one level, they were the thesis versus the antithesis. At another, they were the synthesis.

The most primitive followers of Dionysus could not understand this higher wisdom. They rejected it and violently rebelled against it.

Orpheus was experimenting with the dialectic, the unification of opposites to create a new order, a dynamic creative process of synthesis, driving everything onwards and upwards. This view was particularly influential with the great philosopher Heraclitus.

The Apollonian-Dionysian dichotomy – resolved in Greek tragedy – was a theme enthusiastically taken up by Nietzsche. Where Orpheus gave Dionysus an Apollonian makeover, Nietzsche gave Apollo a Dionysian makeover.

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Orpheus, son of Apollo, manifested Dionysus. Orpheus was a synthesis of Apollo and Dionysus, the fusion of two seeming opposites, yet reconciling them at a higher level. Some said that Orpheus was an incarnation or avatar of Dionysus born as the son of Apollo, thus bringing the two divine natures together in one person (much as Jesus Christ supposedly brought together a divine and a human nature in one person).

Orphism was a means of bringing together Dionysian shamanism and mysticism on the one hand and classical, measured, ordered, Apollonian rationalism, with its focus on balance and harmony, on the other. It provided a means to shake up the stifling regimentation of the classical approach of conformist, rule-laden religions, weighed down with commandments and moral injunctions, and ruled by the po-faced self-righteous.

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Dionysus represented the mysteries of life, the solutions of which were accessible only to the initiates of his mystery school. Or so it was once thought. Orpheus realized that Apollo, through the inspiration he provided to all artists, poets, philosophers, doctors, and priestesses, provided access to the same knowledge, but through a different channel. And Apollo also conferred the most powerful gift of all to the worthy … the gift of reason, which unlocks all the secrets of the rational cosmos.

Not even the gods could escape the reach and power of Logos. But Logos cost Orpheus his life.

There is no question that Orpheus ultimately perceived Apollo as the highest god. The answer to the mystery of death lay not in the dark Underworld but in the light of the sun, the light of reason.

It was the mathematical and philosophical genius Pythagoras that fashioned Orphism into Illuminism, a full-scale rationalist religion of mathematics, where all things are illuminated by reason and logic. For Pythagoras, the Dionysian element was for play, not for unlocking the secrets of the universe.

The Dionysian route was take up by the irrationalists, the mystics, the believers, the empiricists … all those who rejected reason in favor of their subjective experiences and perceptions, their mystical intuitions, their feelings, those who preferred opinion and belief to knowledge.

It was said that Orpheus was sent to the world by Apollo, raised to prominence by Dionysus, then killed by Dionysus for the crime of preferring Apollo.

Orpheus was the great reformer of the Dionysian rites and mysteries, but many felt he went too far and became too much a disciple of Apollo. Nietzsche made the same accusation against Socrates and Euripides.

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Chthonic: relating to or inhabiting the underworld. Zagreus was the name for a chthonic version of Dionysus, the son of Zeus by Persephone.

Orphism was a hybrid of Apollonian (solar) and Dionysian (chthonic) traditions. The two great opposing gods were reconciled in Orphism.

The Dionysian Mysteries

The initiates of the mystery religions used intoxicants and trance-inducing techniques (such as rhythmic dance, music and poetry) to remove social inhibitions and constraints, and free the individual to return to a natural state, prior to the corruption and artificiality of civilization.

Orphism taught that humans had divine souls and were immortal, yet had fallen from their high state. They were fated to undergo a process of reincarnation (metempsychosis; the transmigration of souls) before they could recover their former glory. Secret initiation rites and rituals, and the secret knowledge associated with them, were supposed to accelerate the soul’s escape from this troubled and painful world and permit communion with the gods. Many of the same themes appeared later in Gnosticism. It is absurd to say that Gnosticism comes from Christianity. In fact, Christianity, like Gnosticism, comes from Orphism.

Popular and simplistic ancient Greek religion, as described by the likes of Homer, did not recognize the divinity and immortality of the soul, did not teach reincarnation, and had no need of mystery rites and initiation rituals. Mainstream Greek religion focused on tales of gods and their adventures. Glory or pleasure in this life was what most people focused on. They did not think too much about the afterlife or complex theology. Modern Jews continue to practice their religion in this ancient way, emphasizing culture rather than philosophy. Most Jews are exceptionally resistant to speculating about the afterlife.

Where popular religion was based on simple stories about gods and heroes, mystery religion was based on sacred writings concerning the origin of gods and human beings, their interaction, and their fate.

Mystery religions were a form of liberation for all those traditionally marginalized by Greek society, namely slaves, women, non-citizens, and even outlaws. Christianity – so traditional today – itself began as a kind of mystery religion, appealing to the same constituency of outsiders, outcasts and the downtrodden. Christianity as an outsider religion – as it was before it was embraced by the Roman emperor Constantine – was a totally different religion from what it then morphed into as an insider, establishment religion, supported by emperors, aristocrats and the rich and powerful (who saw how they could use it to dominate and exploit the simple-minded masses).

Mystery religions were originally chthonic, preoccupied with the underworld. Thanks to Orpheus, they underwent a shift in emphasis and started looking up rather than down, to a transcendent, mystical reality beyond the world.

Dionysus, originally a god of the Underworld, became an Olympian god, associated – thanks to Orphism – with Apollo-Helios, the sun god.

The Virgin Birth

Dionysus was the son of the great god Zeus, and Semele, the mortal daughter of Cadmus, the king and founder of Thebes. Semele was a virgin who had an immortal, kingly child: Dionysus, Son of God (Zeus).

Just as Islam is a plagiarized version of Judaism, Christianity is a plagiarized version of Orphism.

Just as Dionysus belonged to the royal family of Thebes, Jesus Christ belonged to the royal house of David, and was visited by three kings … so much for being a poor baby born in a stable. There was even allegedly a star positioned above the stable!

Christianity always likes to have its cake and eat it. Jesus Christ is presented as both extremely ordinary, and the greatest exception ever. Irrational people are not put off by these brazen contradictions. In fact, they would reject Jesus Christ if he were not presented in such terms. Religion is not worried about cognitive dissonance. It is defined by doublethink. You cannot generate any dissonance at all in any true believer. That’s exactly why they believe. A believer is someone who cannot change his mind. His identity is invested in his beliefs, so to change his beliefs would require him to change his identity. Never going to happen.

The Cauldron and the Mass

The dismembered pieces of Dionysus were boiled in a cauldron then pierced with spits and roasted. Plutarch said that the Titans tasted his blood and ate his flesh, just as Catholics do to Jesus Christ, their Crucified God, at Holy Mass.

Dionysus was the master of resurrection and rebirth long before Jesus H. Christ.

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In some tellings, the cauldron containing the boiled pieces of Dionysus was given to Apollo to be buried. He placed it beside his tripod at Delphi, the sanctuary sacred to both gods.

Sparagmos

"Sparagmos (ancient Greek: ‘tear, rend, pull to pieces’) is an act of rending, tearing apart, or mangling, usually in a Dionysian context.

"In Dionysian rite as represented in myth and literature, a living animal, or sometimes even a human being, is sacrificed by being dismembered. Sparagmos was frequently followed by omophagia (the eating of the raw flesh of the one dismembered). It is associated with the Maenads or Bacchantes, followers of Dionysus, and the Dionysian Mysteries. …

"Examples of sparagmos appear in Euripides’s play The Bacchae, which concerns Dionysus and the Maenads. At one point guards sent to control the Maenads witness them pulling a live bull to pieces with their hands. Later, Dionysus lures his cousin, king Pentheus, into a forest after he bans worship of the god where he was attacked by Maenads, including his own mother Agave. … According to some myths, Orpheus, regarded as a prophet of Orphic or Bacchic religion, died when he was dismembered by raging Thracian women." – Wikipedia

Unleash Hell. Unleash the Maenads. What a spectacle that would be. Would they hunt down every Hollywood producer and sleazy President?

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Sparagmos: tearing to pieces; tearing of flesh; dismemberment.

Omophagia: Eating raw flesh.

Dionysus himself was subject to sparagmos, although he was spared omophagia, his flesh being cooked by the Titans who murdered and dismembered him.

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The dismemberment of Dionysus-Zagreus – the sparagmos – was the foundation myth of Orphism. The dismembered God versus the God on a Cross (Christ). Dionysus against the crucified.

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Zeus, in the form of a serpent, had intercourse with Persephone, producing Dionysus. Did Eve in Eden have intercourse with the serpent, producing Cain? Is Cain a coded version of Dionysus?

Osiris

Dionysus is often identified with the Egyptian god Osiris, god of the dead, underworld and afterlife. Stories of the dismemberment and resurrection of Osiris parallel those of Dionysus-Zagreus.

Hades is the Greek god of the dead, underworld and afterlife, hence there is a strong connection between Dionysus-Zagreus and Hades. According to some commentators, he is Hades, while according to others he is the son of Hades, by Persephone.

Some commentators saw in the myth of the dismemberment of Dionysus an allegory for the production of wine. Dionysus’s dismemberment by the Titans stood for the harvesting and crushing of the grapes. The dismembered pieces were then brought back into a single body – the wine in the barrel.

Orpheus

The Orphics were an ascetic sect; wine, to them, was only a symbol, as, later, in the Christian sacrament. The intoxication that they sought was that of ‘enthusiasm,’ of union with the god. They believed themselves, in this way, to acquire mystic knowledge not obtainable by ordinary means. This mystical element entered into Greek philosophy with Pythagoras, who was a reformer of Orphism as Orpheus was a reformer of the religion of Dionysus. From Pythagoras Orphic elements entered into the philosophy of Plato, and from Plato into most later philosophy that was in any degree religious. – Bertrand Russell

Orpheus, via Pythagoras, is one of the greatest religious figures. He invented the mysteries of Dionysus, then reformed them through the addition of Apollonian rites, thus synthesizing the thesis of Dionysian unreason and the antithesis of Apollonian reason.

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"Orpheus is a legendary Thracian musician, poet, and prophet in ancient Greek religion and myth. The major stories about him are centered on his ability to charm all living things and even stones with his music, his attempt to retrieve his wife, Eurydice, from the underworld, and his death at the hands of those who could not hear his divine music. As an archetype of the inspired singer, Orpheus is one of the most significant figures in the reception of classical mythology in Western culture…

"Orpheus was born as a son of the Muse Kalliope and the Thracian king Oeagrus in a cave between Pimpleia and Leivithra.

"For the Greeks, Orpheus was a founder and prophet of the so-called ‘Orphic’ mysteries. He was credited with the composition of the Orphic Hymns … Shrines containing purported relics of Orpheus were regarded as oracles. ...

"Orpheus was an augur and seer; he practiced magical arts and astrology, founded cults to Apollo and Dionysus and prescribed the mystery rites preserved in Orphic texts. ...

"According to a Late Antique summary of Aeschylus’ lost play Bassarids, Orpheus, towards the end of his life, disdained the worship of all gods except the sun, whom he called Apollo. One early morning he went to the oracle of Dionysus at Mount Pangaion to salute Apollo at dawn, but was ripped to shreds by Thracian Maenads for not honoring his previous patron (Dionysus) and buried in Pieria. Here his death is analogous with that of Pentheus, who was also torn to pieces by Maenads; and it has been speculated that the Orphic mystery cult regarded Orpheus as a parallel figure to or even an incarnation of Dionysus. Both made similar journeys into Hades, and Dionysus-Zagreus suffered an identical death. Pausanias writes that Orpheus was buried in Dion and that he met his death there. He writes that the river Helicon sank underground when the women that killed Orpheus tried to wash off their blood-stained hands in its waters." – Wikipedia

Mithraism had many similarities to Orphism. Such sects were in direct competition with Christianity during late Antiquity, but lost out and were destroyed or forced underground, morphing into secret societies.

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Pythagoras transformed Orphism into Illuminism, giving it a far more rigorous Apollonian (Logos) character, but still retaining Dionysian elements (Mythos).

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Dionysus is a god of mystery religion. Since he can conquer death, he can bring salvation. Dionysus, god of the mysteries, is the ultimate Mystery God, the Strange God, the God of Strangeness. The god of the mystery religion of Orphism was Zagreus, the first Dionysus.

Watch Out

Look beyond the mask.

Dionysus insisted on not being recognized. Then he set the dramatic stage upon which he would make his identity known.

Dionysus is the stranger within. He makes people lose grip on themselves, on their reassuring, normal reality.

Dionysus is the god who causes stumbling. Dionysus, the god of theater, loves changes of set, and donning different masks.

His followers cover themselves in ivy and perform their ceremonies in the dark.

Dismembered

Dismembered Dionysus, dismembered child, dismembered God. Who will make God whole again? Who will put all of the pieces together again? Who will reassemble the divine mirror in which God can then see himself reflected?

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Zagreus: the first Dionysus, the older Dionysus, the ancient Dionysus, the Orphic Dionysus … ill-fated Zagreus, the horned baby. Baby Jesus was visited by three kings. Baby Zagreus was murdered by the old gods.

Liberty

Dionysus Liber – Dionysus the Free, Dionysus the bringer of Freedom. Today’s world needs an overdose of Dionysus.

The Older Zagreus

According to Diodorus, this older Dionysus, was represented in painting and sculpture with horns, because he ‘excelled in sagacity and was the first to attempt the yoking of oxen and by their aid to effect the sowing of the seed.’ – Wikipedia

In some accounts, Zagreus never died as a child, and grew to be a mature, adult god … a horned god of fertility and esoteric wisdom.

Maenads

"In Greek mythology, maenads were the female followers of Dionysus and the most significant members of the Thiasus, the god’s retinue. Their name literally translates as ‘raving ones’. …

Often the maenads were portrayed as inspired by Dionysus into a state of ecstatic frenzy through a combination of dancing and intoxication. During these rites, the maenads would dress in fawn skins and carry a thyrsus, a long stick wrapped in ivy or vine leaves and tipped with a pine cone. They would weave ivy-wreaths around their heads or wear a bull helmet in honor of their god, and often handle or wear snakes. … They went into the mountains at night and practiced strange rites. – Wikipedia

The maenads were the ancestors and prototypes of medieval witches. They worked themselves into a manic frenzy through wine and dance. Like wild animals, they roamed in bands over the hillside, dressed in fawn skins and wearing ivy wreaths on their heads. In honor of their god, each carried a thyrsus, a long stick wrapped in vine leaves.

The maenads let it all hang out, broke every taboo, reveled in the forbidden, and wholly escaped from the rules and straitjacket of patriarchy and paternalism.

Maenads hunted down wild animals then tore them to pieces before eating their raw flesh. The same fate befell any men they chanced upon in their nocturnal ventures, or whom they caught spying on their secret ceremonies, which were expressly forbidden to all men.

Dionysian rites are the most sensational rites, the most spectacular. They are the greatest events. At their core is sex, drugs and music (rock ‘n’ roll). Wild, orgiastic sex is the order of the day, fuelled by limitless wine.

Apollonian rites are calm, rational, measured, harmonious and ordered, the precise opposite of Dionysian rites.

The First Maenad

The first maenad was Semele, mother of Dionysus. Those who touched her pregnant belly went into a Dionysiac trance. Great truths were revealed to them.

Delphi

Delphi was known as the Omphalos, the navel of the world. To locate the Omphalos, the exact center of the world, Zeus released two eagles from opposite ends of the earth – one from the easternmost point and one from the westernmost point – and Delphi was the precise spot where they met.

For nine months of the year, Apollo controlled Delphi. For the three winter months, Delphi was abandoned to Dionysus, while Apollo wintered in the permanently sunny paradise of Hyperborea. For the rest of the year, Dionysus wandered through Greece … the strange, nomadic god who brought strangeness wherever he went.

The Delphic Oracle

The Delphic Oracle was called the Pythia. She sat on a tripod (the Apollonian symbol of prophecy), and, in a state of trance, delivered her oracular pronouncements. Her tripod was situated above a fissure in the floor of the temple, from which strange vapors arose that produced hallucinations. At the same time, she chewed laurel leaves. A high priest stood beside her to interpret her cryptic utterances. If the priestess was the medium or channeler of Apollo, the priest was the god’s translator.

The supplicants who sought the guidance of the god were exclusively men, and were known as Theopropes. Before they could present their question to the god, they were required to purify themselves in a ritual washing ceremony in the Castalian Spring. The Pythia likewise had to purify herself in this manner before she performed her sacred duties.

The petitioner’s question had to be written down rather than spoken, and it was submitted to the priest, who then asked the Pythia for Apollo’s answer.

Interpreting the garbled mutterings of the priestess was a great art, or, as some saw it, a perfect opportunity for charlatanry. Heraclitus observed that the Pythia never gave a straight answer to a straight question.

Every four years, Delphi was host to the Pythian Games, similar to the Olympics, but with many musical events added. Some of the music was Apollonian, some Dionysian. Not Katy Perry versus Taylor Swift.

The Priestess

The story is told that Apollo married the first priestess of Dionysus, and they had a child called Delphos. The sanctuary at Delphi was therefore sacred to Apollo and Dionysus alike.

Apollo and Dionysus were revered at both Delphi and the city of Thebes. Dionysus was born in Thebes while Apollo was born on the island of Delos but became synonymous with Delphi.

Pallas

Why was Athena called Pallas Athena? According to Orphism, Pallas means palpitating and refers to the still-beating heart of Zagreus, rescued by Athena. An alternative etymology associated Pallas with she who brandishes the spear.

The Original

Zagreus was originally regarded as the highest god of the underworld, implying that he was actually Hades himself. Aeschylus associated Zagreus with Hades, or with the son of Hades.

If Zeus is the Lord Above, Hades is Zeus’s alter ego – the Lord Below.

According to some commentators, Zagreus was originally the son of Hades and Persephone. The Orphic Zagreus, by contrast, was the son of Zeus and Persephone.

The first Zagreus was an underworld god, the second an overworld god. Between his two identities, he knew how to conquer death, and rise from the Underworld to Heaven (from Hades to Olympus).

The Killers

In the tale of the Titans and Dionysus-Zagreus, the old gods, the cannibal gods, ate one of the new gods. The divine brain stem and limbic system devoured the divine neocortex.

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"Firmicus Maternus gives a rationalized euphemistic account of the myth whereby Liber (Dionysus) was the bastard son of a Cretan king named Jupiter (Zeus). When Jupiter left his kingdom in the boy’s charge, the king’s jealous wife Juno (Hera) conspired with her servants the Titans to murder the bastard child. Beguiling him with toys, the Titans ambushed and killed the boy. To dispose of the evidence of their crime, the Titans chopped the body into pieces, cooked, and ate them.

"However the boy’s sister Minerva (Athena), who had been part of the murder plot, kept the heart. When her father the king returned, the sister turned informer and gave the boy’s heart to the king.

In his fury the king tortured and killed the Titans, and, in his grief, he had a statue of the boy made, which contained the boy’s heart in its chest, and a temple erected in the boy’s honor. The Cretans, in order to pacify their furious savage and despotic king, established the anniversary of the boy’s death as a holy day. Sacred rites were held, in which the celebrants howling and feigning insanity tore to pieces a live bull with their teeth, and the basket in which boy’s heart had been saved, was paraded to the blaring of flutes and the crashing of cymbals. – Wikipedia

All religions are a blend of fact and fiction, a projection of fantasy and wish fulfillment onto a few real incidents and characters. They are an attempt to understand the world via story logic rather than analytic logic. They are semantic rather than syntactic. Syntax (rational form and structure) is what is wholly lacking from religion, while semantics (meaning) is what is wholly absent from science and mathematics as they are typically practiced in today’s world.

In ontological mathematics, mathematics is