Dionysos: Myth and Cult by Walter F. Otto

One aspect of my goals in being more spiritual and devotional this year includes wanting to read more about the gods.  I remember beginning to read this a couple years back and getting bogged down in the first 50 pages which discusses myth and cultus in general.  Which is unfortunate, because I found that section and the whole book extremely rewarding when I actually sat down and gave it the attention it deserved.

I love how Otto blasts certain fallacies and assumptions that are STILL being made today (probably even more so than his time in the 1930's, I'd wager).  Fallacies such as... 1) Deities begin as a simple idea or concept and evolve into a more complex personality.  2) That Dionysos can be boiled down to his role as a "vegetative" deity or that all deities and cult practices can be traced to such. 3) That one can even begin to scratch the surface of a god or cult practices using psychology or a modern mindset.  No, Otto says, to even begin to understand the god or his followers we must first assume the reality of the god himself!

The work and discussion is scholarly, but the tone and approach are reverent and even poetic at times.  (Indeed, how else can one broach topics like ecstasy, madness, and the mysteries of life and death without poetry?)

My timing in reading this book was good for a couple reasons... It discussed some details of  Anthesteria, which is coming up soon.  I had been trying to research online but have found limited information so far.  In particular, it explained reasoning why a spring festival might have connections with the dead which was illuminating for me.  Which leads to another illuminating topic, Dionysos' association with death, and even as a god of death.  It's a connection I felt intuitively insomuch as I think of him as transformative and often destructive, but there is a lot of explicit association with death and for some reason that both surprised and made sense to me.  (It further explained one aspect of an interaction I'd had with him recently, as well.)

Also fascinating was the discussion of the significance of the mask in Dionysos' cult, his association with prophecy as well as with water, Ariadne's association with Aphrodite, comparison of the ivy and vine... Okay, obviously I could go on and on. 

My one complaint... I don't know Greek (damn it), and he sometimes quotes Greek epithets and titles and phrases without translating them.  A minor thing which doesn't take away a whole lot from the reading as a whole, but still left me curious every time.

Here are some favorite quotes:

"Were the phenomenon of artistic creation completely lost to us at some time, we would first have to approach it with wonder before we would dare to penetrate its meaning. So, the phenomenon of cultus, which has, as a matter of fact, been lost to us except for a few ancient remnants, should awaken in us, above all, a deep sense of awe."

"The visage of every true god is the visage of the world. There can be a god who is mad only if there is a mad world which reveals itself through him.  Where is this world? Can we still find it? Can we appreciate its nature? For this no one can help us but the god himself."

"The more alive this life becomes, the nearer death draws, until the supreme moment - the enchanted moment when something new is created - when death and life meet in an embrace of mad ecstasy."

"Wine has in it something of the spirit of infinity which brings the primeval world to life again."

"How could man who had been touched by the Divine remain inert and motionless when all genuine revelation awakens the power of creativity?"

Kerenyi's Dionysos is probably the next logical selection to read.  But I have The God Who Comes: Dionysian Mysteries Revisited by Rosemarie Taylor-Perry on back order from Amazon so I may read that first *if* they ever ship it to me, since I haven't bought Kerenyi's book yet.