Dionysus: Death, Rebirth, Transformation
Ian and I discuss the Greek-Roman god Dionysus-Bacchus. He reads an Orphic poem and then I gloss various stories put together into a narrative in Edith Hamilton’s Mythology. This is a fascinating discussion of a god with opposing features: of gentleness, compassion, and persuasion, but also of wild revelry, frenzy, and terrible violence. We discuss this divinity of the vine, of natural vitality cultivated on a structure, and of rebirth after dissolution, whose product leads to new “creativity” and destruction. He is a god of death and rebirth, and hence, of transformation, and we talk about…
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