Dionysos Lampteros

Dionysos Lampteros (Torch-bearer/ Shining)

Tarot card drawn: 8 of Swords reversed

Notes:  Lampteros

I think this snake has been stuck
in my throat for ages.
the dark weighs in, with sharp edges
of whispers and steel,
and phantoms in
the hundreds (if I could see)
I’m sure.
I am lost.

The shadows, too, are yours.
(and the madness)

I summon the syllables,
and a memory of another life,
of laughter and lights and
the wild careening of women in the mountains...
my god!
it may as well be myth.

Somehow, my voice the weakest of sounds,
but still, your name

(and the madness)

your name

Suddenly
the flicker of a torch
in strange periphery!

With the barest glimmer, you have
exploded my world outwards,
like a star reborn.
If I have form,
if I have distance...
if

if

                         if
the light beckons
I release my breath like a prayer, and

take off the blindfold.

Dionysos Arsenothelys

Dionysos Arsenothelys (Man-womanly)

I direct you to Sannion’s blog about the “queerness” of the god for a marvelous discussion on this aspect of Dionysos , including his unconventional relationships with men and women and his mercurial personas (both feminine and masculine and in-between).  I particularly like his conclusion that Dionysos shows us that our gender, and especially gender-roles, are simply masks.

From a very young age I have been drawn to men who were feminine or androgynous. Particularly men who are obviously male/have masculine qualities, yet who also have a feminine grace, style and/or prettiness.  I suppose I just see a hell of a lot more strength in a man who can wear makeup than a man who has a lot of muscle.  It’s more complex than that, but I’ll just say, It’s one of the many things that I can point to and say, no wonder I love Dionysos.

I think it’s significant to consider, too, that shamans in many cultures have some aspect of androgyny or gender-bending.

Tarot Card drawn:  The Knight of Cups

Seems appropriate!  Combines the passion and energy of the knight with the sensitivity and creativity of the cups.  

There’s a wide range of different definitions one can find for this card, all basically focused on what constitutes and what it means to be a person who is “emotionally intense”. Usually it’s read as a weakness or a liability. Some will say he’s too passive, a non-commited lover, others say too self-absorbed or too intense, another says he’s obviously an “emo” teenager prone to depression and substance abuse.  But I disagree that being an emotional person automatically means being a weak person.  True, the knights are by definition not as stable or established as the King or Queen, but is there not some power also in being mercurial, being able to shift from one moment to the next?  (Note the winged helmet in the Rider-Waite card.)  In being passionate, in having a cause?  You hear the archetype of the person who “loves too much”, but is there such a thing?   In Rachel Pollack’s 78 Degrees of Wisdom, she paints a pretty harsh picture of this knight, but ends by pointing out his similarity to the Death card, indicating that if his energy is properly directed he can be a very transformative figure.

Dionysos Bromios

Dionysos Bromios (Noisy/Thunderer/Loud-roarer)

He is called “the roarer”, Bromios, a surname which appeared early, all by itself, as the name of the god. [...]  Bellowing, shrill sounding instruments accompany him; we often see them pictured in sculptures. - Otto (Dionysos: Myth & Cult)

The pandemonium in which Dionysos, himself, and his divine entourage make their entry--that pandemonium which the human horde, struck by his spirit, unleashes--is a genuine symbol of religious ecstasy. With the horror which is at the same time bewitchment, with the ecstasy which is like paralysis, overpowering all natural and habitual sense perceptions, The Dreadful suddenly springs into being. And at its greatest intensity, it is as if the insane din were in reality the profoundest of silences. - Otto (Dioysos: Myth & Cult)

Tarot Card Drawn:  2 of Wands

The traditional tarot meaning of this card doesn’t make a lot of sense here, but the symbols do jump out in untraditional, Dionysian ways.  Some sources say that Bromios refers to being born from the thigh of Zeus, who is himself a thunder god.  This is a card of fire and it is a 2, a reminder his mother Semele was burned by Zeus’ divine form, and that Dionysos is twice-born.  Another meaning for the 2 is the duality of din and silence that Otto describes above.

Notes:  My husband and I had a conversation a couple weeks ago about sound--how we take it for granted, but when you think about it, it is a pretty magical ability.  Sound is just vibration, waves of energy that we have organs developed to sense. Those energy waves are an invisible phenomenon that has shaped our language, music, and survival.

And at its greatest intensity, it is as if the insane din were in reality the profoundest of silences.  Otto says this well, and it is certainly true, as well as the opposite -- that real silence can be deafening.  At the end of any extreme, you will find the other.  Or the Other.

He is the god who comes, and if you’re listening you’ll hear him coming!

Wine Whine

During my boisterous traversing of the interwebs, I stumbled across a website for the Dithyramb Winery, located in Colorado.  They have a red blend called Bromios, a Satyr's Blood Rosé, a variety of honey wines/meads, and one of their upcoming wines is called "Maenad's Kiss".  My only question is

WHY OH WHY WON'T THEY SHIP TO ME!?!  

Sigh.

Dionysos Agrios

Dionysos Agrios (The Wild One)

My Notes:  It seems that agrios can refer to wild as it pertains to nature, as in untamed or undomesticated, as well as “raging”.  

There was a festival called the Agrionia (or a variation of), the most precise summary I’ve found of it is here.  Here, again, as seen with Dionysos Melanaigis and in many other of his myths, is the theme of people suffering his wrath after they have denied or explicitly offended him.

Tarot Card Drawn: 7 of Cups

There is an overabundance of cups is this card, filled with different symbols, appearing to overwhelm the figure beholding them.  Traditionally, this is the card of fantasy and daydreams. There are warnings about losing oneself in unrealistic or scattered fantasies or escapism in drugs or alcohol.  This is a card about creativity run wild.  But since the cups (and creativity) are foremost about emotions, I can see this also as emotions run wild.  The power of this state is in its energy and potential.  Not everything in this card is hallucination, at least one of the symbols (cloaked figure) seem to refer to one’s higher self, and another (the snake), to one’s earthly connection.  

This epithet was a little more difficult.  And I’m still pondering the sporadic details available about the Agrionia. But can one wrap one’s head around wildness anyway?  

Coincidentally, 7 cups of wine is probably my limit, if I don’t want to wake up naked in the wild somewhere.  

….Probably.

Dionysos Melanaigis

Dionysos Melanaigis (Dionysos of the black goat-skin)

The cult of Dionysos as Melanaigis was founded by the daughters of Eleuther, whose number is not indicated. Like Semachos and Ikarios, Eleuther was seen as the founding hero of a settlement and a double of the god. In this instance Dionysos comes to the daughters as an apparition, a phasma, dressed in a black goatskin. They do not want the god in that form: they revile him. Thereupon he makes them raving mad. In order to be cured, they are obliged to worship Melanaigis, that is, the dark Dionysos in league with the spirits of the dead. It was in this quality that he was later, in Athens, to delight in tragedy. - Kerenyi, Dionysos

My Notes: Before finding the above passage, I was meditating on this epithet, imagining the god in a black goatskin, and the association with death came to mind - but not only death, but the shadow aspects of nature that we fear (and by extension, the shadow aspects of oneself).  I see that symbolism in the above passages, especially when one considers the meaning of Eleuther, which is "free".  Dionysos Melanaigis is telling us we must embrace those aspects that we revile. Not only because they are a part of us, or say something about us, but because they ARE.  There is reason behind everything in nature. If you would change something about yourself, if indeed it needs changing, you must first understand it.  But, like a god draped in black goatskins standing before you, it cannot just be ignored. At best, we will never be free.  At worst, we will go mad.

Tarot Card drawn:  Queen of Pentacles...  This seemed like a strange card to go with this epithet at first.  The Mythic Tarot, which I was using, shows a woman holding a bunch of grapes.  The Rider-Waite deck shows a woman sitting in a black and grey throne with goat heads on the arms!  Okay, so obviously there is something here...  One of the tarot books I have says that she represents a “love for and unity with the world” more than any other minor card, and is “intensely aware of the magic in nature and the strength she derives from it.”  Another tarot book points out the goats as a symbol of sexuality and adding a “trickster” element to the queen.  Knowledge of natural cycles, death and rebirth, come to mind.  Another key word for this queen is self-awareness.  In considering this card with the epithet, the words “receptivity” and “otherness” also come to mind.

Dionysia in the Desert postponed

The Dionysia in the Desert Festival in Tucson that I blogged about before, which had been planned for December of 2011, appears to have been postponed until May 1st, although the date still seems tentative.  I will definitely try to attend, work schedule permitting!