Dionysian Mysteries - Mystery and Public Rites

Mystery and Public Rites

The Dionysian Mysteries are believed to have consisted of two sets of rites: the secret rites of initiation and the public rites, or Dionysia. The public rites are believed to be the older of the two. In Athens and classical Attica, the main festivities were held in the month of Elaphebolion (around the time of the spring equinox). The greater (or city) Dionysia had evolved into a dramatic festival; Dionysus was the god of acting, music and poetry for the Athenians, and the festival became an urban carnival (or Komos). Its older precursor was the lesser (or rural) Dionysia, which preserved ancient customs centred on celebrating the first wine. This festival was timed to coincide with the "clearing of the wine" (a final stage in the fermentation process), which occurred during the first cold snap after the winter solstice when Dionysus was said to be reborn.

This was later formalised to January 6 (now Epiphany), a day on which Dionysus changed water into wine. The festivals at this time were wild (as were those of the grape harvest); its carnivalesque ritual processions from the vineyards to the wine press had occurred earlier in the autumn. It was at these times that initiations into the Mysteries were probably held. Dionysus 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 known as the Dance of the Fiery Stars was performed; little is known, but it may have been devoted to the dead and continued in Christian countries as All Souls Day on November 2.

In contrast with the daytime festivities of the Athenian Dionysia were the biennial nocturnal rites of the Tristeria, held on Mount Parnassus in winter. These celebrated the emergence of Dionysus from the underworld, with orgies (orgia) in the mountains. The first day was presided over by the Maenads in their state of Mainomenos (madness), during which animals—and perhaps humans—were hunted, torn apart with bare hands and eaten raw. This was the Sparagmos, once associated with goat sacrifice and marking the harvest (and trampling) of the vine. The second day saw the Bacchic nymphs in their Thyiadic (or raving) state. Although still orgiastic, this was a more sensual and benign bacchanal (assisted by satyrs). Mythographers claim that the Maenads (or wild women) resisted the Bacchic urge and were driven mad, while the Thyiades (or ravers) accepted the Dionysian ecstasy and kept their sanity.

While the Athenians celebrated Dionysus in various one-day festivals (including those during the Eleusinian Mysteries), a far older tradition was the two-year cycle where the death and absence of Dionysus (in his aspect of Dionysus Chthonios, Lord of the Underworld) was mourned for a year. During the second year, his resurrection (as Dionysus Bacchus) was celebrated at the Tristeria and other festivals (including one marked by the rising of Sirius). Why this period was adopted is unknown, although it may have reflected a long fermentation period. All the oldest Dionysian rites reflected stages in the wine-production process; only later did the Athenians (and others) synchronise the Bacchic festivities with agricultural seasons.

The first large-scale religious worship of Dionysus in Greece seems to have begun in Thebes about 1500 BC, around a thousand years before the development of the Athenian Mysteries. Cultic worship of Dionysus (and his mother Semele, a moon goddess) was performed in the earliest Dionysian temples (usually located beyond the city walls, on the edges of swamps and marshes). Its first rituals probably originated in the Mycenaean period, but were probably similar (even in classical times) to rites still held on Greek islands such as Keos and Tenedos. Here the first wine was offered to Dionysus and the now-growing vine; a bull was sacrificed with a double axe, and 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, although this became a symbolic act quite early. The more-economical practise of goat sacrifice was later added to the rites. The goat (like the bull) was regarded as a manifestation of Dionysus. However, it was also seen as the "killer of the vine" by eating it—welcome in times of pruning, less so in times of growth. The death of the goat could thus be interpreted as a combined sacrifice of Dionysus and the sacrificer. The goat was usually torn apart, as the vine had been at harvest. Other archaic rites found on Greek islands include festivals to his consort Ariadne, which include a tree-swinging game (said to date to a time when Ariadne hanged herself from a tree). In Rome the Bacchanalia (a milder form of the Tristeria) were held in secret and originally attended by women only; they were held over three days (around March 16 and 17), in the grove of Simila near the Aventine Hill. Admission to the rites was then opened to men, and celebrations took place five times a month. Initiation could take place at any of these times.

Within the public rituals were the secret rites of initiation, the public festivals largely setting the stage for these private rites:

"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 à rebours—represented post ejaculationem the death-state of Bacchus, the god of pleasure, and his resurrection when it was in forma arrecta. Of such was the sorrow and of such the joy of these Mysteries".

The phallus appears 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 after final initiation). Other possible contents could have been sacred fruit, leaves or loaves (possibly with entheogenic qualities). Some sources suggest that the phallus was made from fig wood (Prosymnus), while even older sources indicate it may have once been the phallus of a sacrificed goat. The contents probably changed over the centuries and in different modes of initiation, the general idea being that the final stage of the initiation involved the revelation of the god in one form or another.