Centrality of Dionysus

When traveling around the sites and museums of Rome, I was struck with how common Dionysus was.  At one point, I actually stopped taking pictures of him!  I kept remarking to Wade and Alexander how Dionysus was everywhere, more so than any of the other gods and goddesses.  Was his cult that popular?

It wasn't until I viewed the mosaic floors kept in the National Museum of Rome near Termini that I had an epiphany.  His popularity did not have to do with his mystery cult, although I imagine that it had a good number of followers.  Who wouldn't want to get drunk and run around the woods with your friends in a wild frenzy?

His popularity in images and statues had to do with the dining room.  If there was a dining room, and it was decorated, Dionysus, the god of wine and inebriation, was there because he owned the party.  He was the god of the dining room, dinner parties, and bashes.  He was the god of a good time.

The Sun Rules in Eight Photos

Another thing that rang loudly for me on this visit to Rome is just how influential the Sun was for the ancient people.  My research over the last five years has made me keenly aware of the importance of astrology to the ancients.  It informed their entire worldview from birth and the casting of the horoscope to death when they met their fates.  The descent of the soul into the body moved through the Zodiac houses, and its ascent to the stellar afterlife too.  And in the midst of it all is the Sun, running its course along the ecliptic through all the houses.  The master of all.

The Sun was deified everywhere, from Aten in Egypt to Apollo in Greece to Mithras in Rome.   Even Jesus took on solar qualities in early Catholicism, and maybe even the virgin Mary too.

The Sun is the creator, the giver of life, without which we cannot live.  The Sun is conceived by the ancients to be sovereign power and judge because he ruled the sky by day, and at night when he sank below the horizon, he ruled the underworld.  Because he is light and light-giver, he is perceived to be the illuminator, the source of wisdom and enlightenment.  Sol Invictus, the Unconquerable Sun, is the ultimate god for the ancients.

In the first photo, Sol Invictus himself is carved into this dedication stone.  Notice the moon and stars and the face of the priest who made the offering in fulfillment of a vow to safeguard the emperors.  This is from the late second century in Rome. 

Second is beautiful Isis, whose crown is the sun disk with crescent moon and horns.  This statue is from the late second century, from Villa Grandi.  It was displayed at the National Museum at Rome by the Diocletian Baths.

The third, one of the few surviving inscriptions from Egypt containing the outlawed name of the solar deity Aten.  It is from Karnak, but housed now in the Egyptian Museum in Turin.

Then fourth, we have Mithras, the Unconquerable Sun, slaying the bull.  This sculpture comes from the fourth century and was displayed at the National Museum at Rome by the Diocletian Baths.

Fifth is a lovely craved sculpture of Mithras the Sun god from Ostia Antica, found in the Mithraeum of Planta Pedis, late second century.

Sixth, notice the crowning of Mary Queen of Heaven.  Behind smiles the Sun.  This was in a special exhibit in Florence at the Academy.  Even in Christianity, the power of the Sun God shines through.

Seventh, what about the Bernini Fountain in front of the Spanish Steps?  Surely this is reminiscent of the solar bark the Egyptian's believed the soul took to ascend through the skies and ride through the underworld!  It is even placed at the bottom of a staircase, like the stairway to heaven.

Finally, Michelangelo's Moses whose radiant face of "rays" (a luminous transformation following his interaction with YHWH) was mistranslated as "horns" in the Vulgate.  Why the mistake?  The Hebrew "keren" can mean either "radiated light" or "grew horns". 

Mellon Seminar Reflection 12: Does our reaction to death make us human?

The seminar investigated ancient initiatory religions this week, trying to sort out the goings-on in Eleusis. I haven't thought hard about Eleusis and the Demeter rites for about twenty-five years, so it was pleasant to study that material in a more substantive manner this week.

I was very aware this time through the material of the attractiveness of the rites. I didn't find myself asking why someone would want to be initiated, a question that engaged me as a young person. Why would anyone want to haul a pig down to the sea, wash it and sacrifice it? Why would anyone want to parade for 12 miles from Athens to Eleusis, bringing the sacred objects with them and be mocked along the way? Why would anyone want to drink an unknown substance, eat BBQ, and then watch a drama of the emergence of Kore from the Underworld in a cave at night? Why would anyone want to tramp around in mud, lead by hand in the dark, only to be blinded by light and then shown a grain of wheat in a basket? And to do this twice?!

Other than the fact that this sounds to me now more like a big party and a haunted house escapade than it did twenty-five years ago, I think my age is catching up with me. Because now I see the death aspect even more prominently. If I were part of a culture that taught that Persephone, the Queen of the Underworld, emerges every year in a cave in Eleusis, and that if I went through the rites, I would visit the Underworld and meet Persephone and Demeter so that when I die I would have a wonderful afterlife, I would have been the first person in line. To think that this journey was performed, so that initiates felt that they had actually experienced the journey through Hades and met the gods, well that is attractive beyond measure. I would have felt like I had faced death and conquered the unknowable, so that my life could be lived even more fully.

An experience like that breaks down human culture into a few startling breaths: to be human is to die; to be human is to live in the face of our death.

Is human culture our response to the knowledge of our mortality? Not just religion, but everything we have produced, everything that makes up human culture as Jan Assmann says in his book

Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt

?

I want to end with three quotes:

"Happy is the one who having seen these rites goes below the hollow earth, for that one knows the end of life and its god-given beginning." Pindar, Fr 137a

"Three-times blessed are those mortals who have seen these rites and thus enter into Hades. For them alone there is life. For the others, all is misery." Sophocles Fr 837

"The Ninetieth Psalm prays, 'Teach us to count our days, that we may gain a wise heart.' 'To count our days' means to hold each day dear, knowing that life is finite. The days derive their value from their end; since we must die, we 'count' our days. Death gives life its value, and wisdom consists in being aware of this value." Jan Assmann,

Death and Salvation in Ancient Egypt

, 8.

This is day 17188 for me.