The Birth of Light

I’ve been thinking about Dionysus a lot lately, the Greek god of wine and agriculture and wild intoxication and dancing and mad fornication with wild women in ecstatic trances, because I’m thinking about putting in a small vineyard in a few years, about a quarter acre, and growing some bunch grapes to be made into red wine. The whole idea of being sustainable, or DIY, is making your own stuff rather than buying it, and my ultimate goal is to produce 150 gallons a year, enough for me and the woman to have a bottle (750ml) of wine a day, year-round, and if we can’t drink it all, we’ll have plenty left over to throw wild parties of drunk naked women dancing in divine madness. I haven’t run that part by the girlfriend yet.

Dionysus was a lot like Christ, in fact, Christ is basically a sequel to Dionysus. When the early Christians were trying to make a religion out of a Jewish socio-political movement, they took the story of this guy Jesus and threw in a couple of popular Dionysian-like elements. For example, both are half men/half gods with a human mother and divine father. Both performed miracles – Christ caught a bunch of fish from a boat, Dionysus grew a vine from a boat. Both were executed and reborn. Both traveled around the countryside and had multitudes following – only Christ preached some Buddhist-like teaching about nonviolence, anti-materialism and compassion to his followers. Dionysus taught people how to grow grapes and make wine, and his followers were wild women called maenads – “Inspired by him to ecstatic frenzy, they accompany him in his wanderings and as his priestesses carry out his orgiastic rites. In their wild frenzy they tear animals apart and devour the raw flesh. They are represented crowned with vine leaves, clothes in fawnskins and carrying the thyrsus [a phallic staff with a pinecone on the end of it], and dancing with the wild abandonment of complete union with primeval nature” and the half-man/half-beast satyrs. That is one hell of a party.

Dionsysians, actual people who lived the myths surrounding Dionysus, would celebrate their religion with orgiastic, drunken festivals around the seasons. The celebration around the winter solstice was called Lenaia, where wild women would get tanked on wine and ingest whatever other drugs were available to ancient Greeks, rip a live bull to shreds and eat its raw flesh – the bull is Dionysus, and is killed so the god can be reborn in human form. Basically, the ancient Greeks harvested their winegrapes in the fall, and the wine fermented for a few months, and around winter it was good enough to drink (I don’t think they bothered with aging it), and the god arrives in the form of wine, and makes you drunk. I hope Santa brings me a few records and a bottle of Jameson, but I’d much rather see a bunch of half naked women blasted out of their skulls devour a live beast.

Matthew 26 [27] And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; [28] For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. [29] But I say unto you, I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom.

Also, the winter solstice is the time of year when the days stop getting shorter and start getting longer again, thus, the Birth of Light, God reborn in Christ, or Zeus reborn in Dionysus, or the birth of the sun god in ancient Sumeria, and countless others. Just as in springtime we celebrate rebirth, when new shoots grow from the vine, and the Easter Bunny lays eggs all over the place, and Christ rises from the grave. This is all Joseph Campbell 101.

Joe said myths, like the ones surrounding the holidays, are basically natural human responses to our surroundings, the climate, death, birth, sex, suffering, joy. We NEED to have holidays, to rest and to party, to eat the roast beast, to yank us out of day to day labor and bring us back to the core, to the rhythm of “primeval nature”. Myth and celebration are at the core of all religions, but unfortunately too often the true meaning gets buried under cathedrals and false prophets and shopping malls and holiday savings.

Well, there shutting down the building now, and I’m gonna go buy some rum and egg nog, get tanked, and devour a live bull.