Invocation of Dionysus (from Orphic Hymns)
- "I call upon loud-roaring and revelling Dionysus,
- primeval, double-natured, thrice-born, Bacchic lord,
- wild, ineffable, secretive, two-horned and two-shaped.
- Ivy-covered, bull-faced, warlike, howling, pure,
- You take raw flesh, you have feasts, wrapt in foliage, decked with grape clusters.
- Resourceful Eubouleus, immortal god sired by Zeus
- When he mated with Persephone in unspeakable union.
- Hearken to my voice, O blessed one,
- and with your fair-girdled nymphs breathe on me in a spirit of perfect agape".
"In intoxication, physical or spiritual, the initiate recovers an intensity of feeling which prudence had destroyed; he finds the world full of delight and beauty, and his imagination is suddenly liberated from the prison of everyday preoccupations. The Bacchic ritual produced what was called 'enthusiasm', which means etymologically having the god enter the worshipper, who believed that he became one with the god".
Read more about this topic: Dionysian Mysteries
Famous quotes containing the word dionysus:
“In the west, Apollo and Dionysus strive for victory. Apollo makes the boundary lines that are civilization but that lead to convention, constraint, oppression. Dionysus is energy unbound, mad, callous, destructive, wasteful. Apollo is law, history, tradition, the dignity and safety of custom and form. Dionysus is the new, exhilarating but rude, sweeping all away to begin again. Apollo is a tyrant, Dionysus is a vandal.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)