page_title: Dionysian Mysteries
section_title: Rites
hierarchical_section_title: Dionysian Mysteries / Early Dionysus cult / Rites
caption_attribution_description: mosaic, Archaeological Museum of Delos, Delos: Dionysus &#32;and&#32; tiger Deutsch: Dionysos reitend auf einem Tiger, Fußbodenmosaik aus dem Haus des Dionysos, im Museum von Delos, Kykladen, Griechenland English: A Hellenistic Greek mosaic depicting the god Dionysos as a winged daimon riding on a tiger, from the House of Dionysos at Delos in the South Aegean region of Greece, late 2nd century BC; sources: * Brecoulaki, Hariclia&#32;(2016),&#32;“Greek Interior Decoration: Materials and Technology in the Art of Cosmesis and Display”, in&#32;Irby, Georgia L., editor,&#32;A Companion to Science, Technology, and Medicine in Ancient Greece and Rome&#32;(Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World), volume 1, Oxford&#58; Wiley-Blackwell, ISBN 9781118372678, page 678 * Dunbabin, Katherine, M. D.&#32;(1999)&#32;Mosaics of the Greek and Roman World, Cambridge&#58; Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0521002303, page 32
context_page_description: The Dionysian Mysteries were a ritual of ancient Greece and Rome which sometimes used intoxicants and other trance-inducing techniques to remove inhibitions and social constraints, liberating the individual to return to a natural state. It also provided some liberation for those marginalized by Greek society: women, slaves, outlaws, and non-citizens. In their final phase the Mysteries shifted their emphasis from a chthonic, underworld orientation to a transcendental, mystical one, with Dionysus changing his nature accordingly. By its nature as a mystery religion reserved for the initiated, many aspects of the Dionysian cult remain unknown and were lost with the decline of Greco-Roman polytheism; modern knowledge is derived from descriptions, imagery and cross-cultural studies.
context_section_description: The rites were based on a seasonal death-rebirth theme, common among agricultural cults such as the Eleusinian Mysteries. The Osirian Mysteries paralleled the Dionysian, according to contemporary Greek and Egyptian observers. Spirit possession involved liberation from civilization's rules and constraints. It celebrated that which was outside civilized society and a return to primordial nature—which would later assume mystical overtones. It also involved escape from the socialized personality and ego into an ecstatic, deified state or the primal herd (sometimes both). In this sense Dionysus was the beast-god within, or the unconscious mind of modern psychology. Such activity has been interpreted as fertilizing, invigorating, cathartic, liberating and transformative, and so appealed to those on the margins of society: women, slaves, outlaws and "foreigners" (non-citizens, in Greek democracy). All were equal in a cult that inverted their roles, similar to the Roman Saturnalia. Although the Greek Dionysian rites were associated with women, the cult officers' titles were of both genders—belying the claim that the cult was solely for women.
  The trance induction central to the cult involved not only chemognosis, but an "invocation of spirit" with the bullroarer and communal dancing to drum and pipe. The trances are described in familiar anthropological terms, with characteristic movements (such as the backward head flick found in all trance-inducing cults) found today in Afro-American Vodou and its counterparts. As in Vodou rites, certain rhythms were associated with the trance. Rhythms are also found preserved in Greek prose referring to the Dionysian rites (such as Euripides' The Bacchae). This collection of classical quotes describes rites in the Greek countryside in the mountains, to which processions were made on feast days:
  Following the torches as they dipped and swayed in the darkness, they climbed mountain paths with head thrown back and eyes glazed, dancing to the beat of the drum which stirred their blood' [or 'staggered drunkenly with what was known as the Dionysus gait']. 'In this state of ekstasis or enthusiasmos, they abandoned themselves, dancing wildly and shouting 'Euoi!' [the god's name] and at that moment of intense rapture became identified with the god himself. They became filled with his spirit and acquired divine powers.
  This practice is demonstrated in Greek culture by the Bacchanals of the Maenads, Thyiades and Bacchoi; many Greek rulers considered the cult a threat to civilized society and wished to control it (if not suppress it altogether). The latter failed; the former would succeed in the foundation of a domesticated Dionysianism as a state religion in Athens. This was but one form of Dionysianism—a cult which assumed different forms in different localities (often absorbing indigenous divinities and their rites, as did Dionysus himself). The Greek Bacchoi claimed that, like wine, Dionysus had a different flavour in different regions; reflecting their mythical and cultural soil, he appeared under different names and appearances in different regions.
caption: A Hellenistic Greek mosaic depicting the god Dionysos as a winged daimon riding on a tiger, from the House of Dionysos at Delos (which was once controlled by Athens) in the South Aegean region of Greece, late 2nd century BC, Archaeological Museum of Delos
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