Deity of the month: Dionysus, aka Bacchus, aka Zagreus, aka Professor Shortpants.

Perhaps it’s simply that it’s August and there’s little else going on (except for some damn hubbub in China, which brings us no closer to peace without dinner, or victory without slip-N-slides…and how can anything be claimed as a victory unless some of the spoils involve slip-N-slides, I ask ye?), or perhaps it’s just a simple contemplation of how differently our world might be now had we chosen to throw our bank in with a different ancient deity.  Always so serious we are, Occidental materialists! If it weren’t for the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the Presleyterians I’d find myself spending far too much time watching the remake of the Scatman video featuring World of Warcraft, and none of us truly wants that.  So, to begin what will hopefully be a repeating monthly thing, I present one of my personal favorites from ancient Greece: Dionysus/Bacchus.

Dionysus, like many deities, formed out of strange meldings of different cultures’ worshipping efforts.  Also, as is common amongst such revelry, he was born of some combination of mortal and immortal and popped into existence through some extravagant means.  In this case (according to most sources), Dionysus burst onto the scene when Zeus had a few too many Ouzo shots at the Parthenon and got frisky with a mortal woman by the name of Semele (why do the immortals always have to get the beer goggles for mortals?)  Zeus wakes up with one hell of a case of buyer’s remorse and, discovering Semele is now preggers and threatening to sue him for his entire lightning bolt collection, strikes her down pre-emptively with the lightning bolt version of “Billy Baroo“.  Then, feeling pity of the unborn bastard, he pulls him from the womb and incubates his unborn son within his bulbous thigh muscles (obviously, where else would he stash an embryo?).  Once he delivers his child (through C-section, one can only presume), he naturally pawns him off on some local nymphs (apparently the satyrs were out bowling).

In another similar version, Hera (Zeus’ jealous wife) disguises herself as an old crone or, in some accounts, as a nurse (presumably this was the Greek equivalent of “sexing-up” religion), and convinces Semele to get Zeus to prove that he is a god, which he reluctantly does.  Unfortunately, mortals apparently cannot look directly upon undisguised gods (though apparently they can conceive children with the disguised variety), and something resulted similar to this:

 

Aaaahhhh, Zeus is so sexy is his Superman Under-Rooooooooooooossss!!!

 

 

 

 

In another version, which is far more complicated and involves more immortal and/or immoral players than the average soap opera, Hera lures a young Dionysus (aka Bacchus, aka Zagreus) into Hades (presumably) using toys (type of toys is not specified, but the imagination runs wild into places men fear to tread) and, along with those wonderfully gifted day-care managers, the Titans, they all tear the boy to shreds in one of those endearing stories of a religious tradition with a good wholesome lesson.  They devour the young lad Jeffrey Dahmer-style, leaving only the heart (damn, if I was going to leave a particular body part off the menu I think I’d have to go with rectum, but to each their own), which Zeus then uses to resurrect Zagreus/Dionysus/Bacchus/Cousin It.  Through it all, however, Dionysus seems to maintain his title as “twice born”, which didn’t catch on nearly as well as the “twice bitten, twice shy” mantra used successfully by another Greek deity known as Great White.  Regardless, the twice born association surely can be seen, in some sense, as having ties to reincarnation beliefs.

As Dionysus became a man he learned how to culture grape vines and extract their “precious juices”, but Hera went after him in yet another manner and struck him with “madness” (i.e., made him do wine keg-stands) and he wandered through the countryside aimlessly muttering to himself about the price of sheep’s wool.  Occasionally he would mark his path with urine (you can only really rent “Hera’s madness”) and yell at local peasants about horrible things he’s like to do with their livestock.  Thankfully, all returned to normalcy when Cybele/Rhea returned him to sanity/sobered him up, and taught him a few religious rites/cool card tricks.  He then bumbled off to India for several years, presumably to introduce the locals there to “Hera’s madness” and perhaps a little “Montezuma’s revenge” as an unavoidable side effect.

Upon returning to Greece, Dionysus was opposed by the princes there, so in response he decided to spice up any and all future religious texts with a few completely nonsensical magic acts.  When some sailors attempted to capture him and make him a slave, Dionysus reacted by: 1) turning into a lion, 2) unleashing a bear onboard the ship (it doesn’t say whether the crew had the bear to begin with or whether Dionysus pulled it out of his ass), 3) turning the mast and oars into snakes, 4) filling the vessel with ivy and the sound of flutes so the sailors went mad and jumped into the sea, and finally he 5) turned all sailors jumping off the ship into dolphins.  Surely, the use of only one of these powers would have been sufficient to dispel his captors, but no, when it’s time to turn all types of inanimate objects into dangerous animals, Dionysus doesn’t fuck about.

In the end, Dionysus was the god of wine and the inducer of ritual madness and ecstasy.  Hence, he was naturally very big in the ancient Greek rave scene.  Indeed he is also the patron deity of the theatre (read: laser-light show and glowsticks) and of agriculture (uh…gots to grow grapes, right?).  His godly mission was to use music to end care and worry.  He also was rather “womanish” in appearance (despite the large beard and hairy buttocks) and could mediate communication between the living and the dead (“no, no, hold on, let the dead guy talk…wait for it…”).  Not a bad set of supernatural powers, all in all, and a damn fine mission as well.  Imagine how different the world might be had the cult of Bacchus caught on.  Then again, perhaps the particular deity of worship is unimportant, as the powers that be will always bend the wholesome intentions of mythological super-men, super-women, and super-eunichs, into forms that serve only the basest of human behaviors and intentions.  Hell, even if we worshipped Barney the dinosaur our leaders would still convince us that certain ethnic and religious groups were not meant to be included in the “I love you, you love me” song of the great purple one in the sky.  Worship of Bacchus, in turn, would only lead to the banning of three of my favorite things: wine, madness, and dancing to music until reaching pinnacles of ecstasy (or conversely: taking ecstasy until reaching pinnacles of dancing).  And without these things, my interesting Judeo-Christian friends, we’d be in an even worse boat then we are now.  And I’m fresh out of ivy and flutes.