DIONYSOS – RITUAL MADNESS (fine art poster)

Dionysus (Ancient Greek: Διόνυσος, Dionysos) was the god of the grape harvest, wine-making and wine, of ritual madness and ecstasy in Greek mythology.
For example he was worshiped in 1500 BC by Mycenaean Greeks: other traces of Dionysian-type cult have been found in ancient Minoan Crete.
He is a god of epiphany, “the god that comes,” and his “foreigness” as an arriving outsider-god may be inherent and essential to his cults. He is a major, popular figure of Greek mythology and religion, and is included in some lists of the twelve Olympians. He was the youngest and the only one to have a mortal mother. His festivals were the driving force behind the development of Greek theater. He is an example of a dying god.

The earliest cult images of Dionysos show a mature male, bearded and robed. Later images show him as a beardless, sensuous, naked or half-naked androgynous youth: the literature describes him as womanly or “man-womanish”. In its fully developed form, his central cult imagery shows his triumphant, disorderly arrival or return, as if from some place beyond the borders of the known and civilized.

His procession is made up of wild female followers (maenads) and bearded satyrs with erect penises. Some are armed with the thyrsus, some dance or play music. The god himself is drawn in a chariot, usually by exotic beasts such as lions or tigers, and is sometimes attended by a bearded, drunken Silenus. This procession is presumed to be the cult model for the human followers of his Dionysian Mysteries. In his Thracian mysteries, he wears the bassaris or fox-skin, symbolizing a new life.
Dionysos is represented by city religions as the protector of those who do not belong to conventional society and thus symbolizes everything which is chaotic, dangerous and unexpected, everything which escapes human reason and which can only be attributed to the unforeseeable action of the gods.

He is also the Liberator (Eleutherios), whose wine, music and ecstatic dance frees his followers from self-conscious fear and care, and subverts the oppressive restraints of the powerful.
His cult is also a “cult of the souls”; his maenads feed the dead through blood-offerings, and he acts as a divine communicant between the living and the dead.
In Greek mythology, he is presented as a son of Zeus and the mortal Semele, thus semi-divine or heroic.

(Text partly from Wikipedia, Article ‘Dionysos’ [Version 20 July 2013] from the english language Wikipedia, CC-by-sa-3.0)

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