Forwarded from Traditionalism & Metaphysics
...The Greeks also had their fertility rites, performed annually in the spring. But the worship of Dionysos was something more complex. It did not take place annually, nor anywhere near cultivated fields. It was limited to closed groups, or 'thiasoi', and in the early days they seem to have consisted only of women; whereas the fertility rites were attended by all. The ceremonies took place at night. It was not just a sensual orgy, but was attended by discomfort and risk. Plutarch records how, at Delphi, the worshippers set out to climb the 8,000-foot Mount Parnassus, were cut off by a snowstorm, and returned with their clothes frozen stiff as boards.
...That the purpose of the cult was to induce an experience which was felt to be ennobling, and of a religious character, cannot be doubted: the followers of Dionysos were called Bacchae (or Bacchantes) and means to have a religious experience of communion with deity. But it was also something more - a social device for releasing sexual tension. As Dodds says, the social function of the cult was essentially cathartic. Hesiod calls Dionysos a god of joy. At Athens he was known as the healer: Athenians who resisted him were liable to be afflicted with a disease of the genital organs. Euripides says that his function is 'to cause our cares to cease'. Later, when the function of healing by the dance had passed to the Korybantes, Plato says that they cured 'anxiety feelings and phobias arising from some morbid mental condition'.
...It was Nietzsche who started the confusion with his false antithesis between Apollonian and Dionysiac religions. Since then, numerous writers have classified not only theoleptic religions, but periods such as Romanticism, as Dionysiac; and have treated religions and periods of cerebral control (including Classicism) as being Apollonian. But Apollo was the symbol of moderation, the golden mean, the Greek conception of measure. The extremes of patrist Puritanism are not Apollonoian, while, on the other hand, the Romantics never abandoned themselves to group orgies. Apollo did not deny the unconscious, and the Delphic sibyl, who spoke from the unconscious in a state of trance, was under his aegis. Apollo and Dionysos are not opponents but partners.
The fertility ceremonies often called for sexual abstinence immediately prior to the annual rites; the theoleptic religions actually moved in the direction of demanding sexual continence as part of their programme of detaching the mind from earthly matters, but this was left to the conscience of the individual; they prescribed no punishments and set up no system of supervision. Still less did they attempt to intervene in the regulations governing married life and the civil laws governing sexual offences. Since religion was conceived as a special kind of experience, those who failed to prepare themselves suitably might fail to experience the revelation: to enforce an outward conformity without the inward desire to achieve the experience would be pointless.
- Gordon Rattray Taylor, Sex In History
...That the purpose of the cult was to induce an experience which was felt to be ennobling, and of a religious character, cannot be doubted: the followers of Dionysos were called Bacchae (or Bacchantes) and means to have a religious experience of communion with deity. But it was also something more - a social device for releasing sexual tension. As Dodds says, the social function of the cult was essentially cathartic. Hesiod calls Dionysos a god of joy. At Athens he was known as the healer: Athenians who resisted him were liable to be afflicted with a disease of the genital organs. Euripides says that his function is 'to cause our cares to cease'. Later, when the function of healing by the dance had passed to the Korybantes, Plato says that they cured 'anxiety feelings and phobias arising from some morbid mental condition'.
...It was Nietzsche who started the confusion with his false antithesis between Apollonian and Dionysiac religions. Since then, numerous writers have classified not only theoleptic religions, but periods such as Romanticism, as Dionysiac; and have treated religions and periods of cerebral control (including Classicism) as being Apollonian. But Apollo was the symbol of moderation, the golden mean, the Greek conception of measure. The extremes of patrist Puritanism are not Apollonoian, while, on the other hand, the Romantics never abandoned themselves to group orgies. Apollo did not deny the unconscious, and the Delphic sibyl, who spoke from the unconscious in a state of trance, was under his aegis. Apollo and Dionysos are not opponents but partners.
The fertility ceremonies often called for sexual abstinence immediately prior to the annual rites; the theoleptic religions actually moved in the direction of demanding sexual continence as part of their programme of detaching the mind from earthly matters, but this was left to the conscience of the individual; they prescribed no punishments and set up no system of supervision. Still less did they attempt to intervene in the regulations governing married life and the civil laws governing sexual offences. Since religion was conceived as a special kind of experience, those who failed to prepare themselves suitably might fail to experience the revelation: to enforce an outward conformity without the inward desire to achieve the experience would be pointless.
- Gordon Rattray Taylor, Sex In History
Knowing the Hero's Journey and not living it out yourself is at best willful ignorance of your potential, and at worst a denial of Life itself
Our past is never gone, only waiting to be uncovered. Likewise, our future.
The trinitarian model of consciousness conceptualizes consciousness as we know it and live it in Life. Through understanding the nature of our own subjective experiences - perceiving, feeling, thinking, willing - as conscious beings, or as souls, we can begin to understand the nature of God, from whom all our conscious souls are but emanations as sparks of the divine Logos.