The presence of a mysterious drink, the kykeon, was enough to transform Dionysus into the uncontrollable God of Life, the unique one to give a new life-body to a Soul…
Credence in Dionysus implies the belief in immortality and the reincarnation of the soul – or demon, a fragment of Dionysus trapped in the shell of the body – with all the purification practices that will then be taken up, and lastly rethought by the Neoplatonic philosophy. To Dionysus were also ascribed the Dionysian Mysteries, and he also seemed to play a role in the Orphic ones. Orpheus was also known as “Dionysus’s Prophet”.
The tomb of Dionysus was close to Apollo’s tripod in the sanctuary at Delphi, and his successor Apollo is described as Dionysodotes, a dispenser of Dionysus. One peak of Parnassus was sacred to Apollo, and one to Dionysus. In some cults, Dionysus was associated with the Sun, as we can more commonly think of Apollo.
The cult and myth of Dionysus are very ancient. The plot of his life is somewhat complex and rooted in cultures other than Greek. The figure of the primitive Dionysus is complicated by traits borrowed from other and foreign gods, notably the Cretan god Zagreus, the Phrygian god Sabazius, and the Lydian god Bassareus. Like other Olympian deities, Dionysus is said to be the son of Zeus. However, he seems more like Zeus’ offspring than the other ones. In Thracia and Phrygia, “nusos” does mean son, and his complete name’s meaning might appear as “Son of God”. For this reason, Christ is sometimes identified with Dionysus but with his strange cults.
In later times, Dionysus was traditionally interpreted as the God of ecstasy, but the enraptured experience determined by Dionysian Mysteries is somewhat different from alcoholic inebriety. Alcohol doesn’t produce a mystic identification with divinities. But when discussing Dionysus and the Mysteries he is involved in, are we sure we are before a simple mystic identification with Divinities? Were Eleusinian Mysteries only about contact with Divinities through a psychoactive potion? Or instead, they were about to become a kind of divinity since an intoxicated man/woman is just intoxicated, nothing more.
The Dionysian celebrations of the most archaic age were a sacred “going out of oneself” in later times turned into unbridled delirium to the point of being forbidden, and Dionysus ended up being honored as the “God of loss of control”. But before these deviations, in the ancient rites of immortality in which Dionysus was involved, substances often occurred.
I don’t know if the Eleusinian mysteries were initiated rites while they were celebrated, I mean on the spot. More likely, they were just a parody of more ancient and exclusive knowledge. Thus, the official Kykeon was likely a parody of the real and hidden “Drink of Life,” which, as we will see as we go, probably wasn’t liquid. But perhaps Dionysus’s vicissitudes in Olympus may hint at the real Kykeon composition and, what’s more, what it was for.
The ups and downs of Olympus Gods can be positively seen as our alchemical and hermetic matters vicissitudes ( see Dom Pernety Fables Egyptiennes et Grecques 1758). As I always say, old disciplines inspire newer ones, and the contrary is unlikely. Pernety wrote without paraphrases that Dionysus represents our Mercurius in its dissolving task. Especially considering he is celebrated as the inventor of an extraordinary drink.
In Egyptian mythology, Osiris taught mankind how to produce grain and grapes for nourishment in the form of bread, wine, and beer. In Greek mythology, Demeter was the goddess of grain and bread, while Dionysus was the god of wine. In ancient times, bread and wine were seen as symbols of human evolution, emerging from the neolithic people, since only the developed societies could produce”. Catholics also took grain and grapes as eucharist symbols ( pictures below). Back to Dionysus, he became the god of vegetation and warm moisture, appeared as the god of pleasures and civilization, and finally, according to Orphic conceptions, as a kind of supreme god.
When examining the Eleusinian Mysteries, few researchers treat the Kykeon, or the drink, as necessary in the rite. We know that two hierophant families controlled and kept secret the Kykeon recipe for nearly two millennia. Of particular importance is the fact that the recipe was successfully kept secret for this very long period. Modern researchers state that the reference to the composition of the kykeon in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter is, in their opinion, obviously incomplete, or even false, the recipe given there containing only water, barley, and a type of mint known to be non-psychoactive. Of course, if they are searching for psychoactive drugs, water may seem a nonsensical ingredient.
The wine and the vase were likely of the same matter and texture. Even more likely, the Dionysian wine was not liquid at all. As we have already seen in my previous article on Augurello’s Crysopoeia (8), the “Water” to make gold or to save a Soul (metallic or not) can be defined as flowing but, more than often, not liquid. Suppose we admit Dionysus represented our Universal Dissolvent for metallic and human use. In that case, it is not so lacking the sense to identify these substances as our Secret Fire in their twofold chemical and a more impalpable sidereal form.
In the following figure on the left, we see the goddess Leucothea feeding little Dionysus. The white goddess, this is the etymology of her name, is a divinity of the sea who will save Ulysses, the castaway. It is said that souls are shipwrecked and lost in Poseidon -in the myth, Poseidon persecutes Ulysses-the-soul and hinders his landing in a safe land. We know Leucothea will offer Ulysses a veil to wind around himself, save him, and reach land. We have not said Dionysus’s drink to be white, as our first Mercurius or Laton. In Arcadia, Dionysus’s statues were painted cinnabar red, and God’s hair was flamed. Thus, Dionysus must be our philosophical matter in a well-ripe texture. More red than white. Closer to perfection than our unripe Virgin’s Milk. Since it starts from the last cooking, we have already seen that our Mercurius Philosophorum tends to maintain all the dissolving capacity of earlier stages (10). The Philosophers Stone is a Universal Dissolvent, and Apollo is often identified with it.
When we talk about Mercurius Philosophorum, or its supreme expression, the Philosophers Stone, we cannot fail to mention the “flow”. After all, for the ancient Greeks, the gods were those who “were flowing”. The sea, the ocean, is always implied in mythology, and almost all the Olympic deities had a site dedicated to the “sailors”, with temples on the shores. But what flows and circulates like water? What is this image hiding?
In ancient times, a drink could only be enclosed in a cup, bowl, or libation phiale. And the cups were reserved for the Chthonic world. The libations were poured from cups. But what flows and circulates like water? What is this image hiding? In the ancient world, a drink must be contained in a cup. And the cups were reserved for the chthonic world, the libations. Next to it is the Farnese bowl or phiale.
The ritual flow of liquids in funerary rites employed verses. Carmen accompanied them.
So, could Dionysus’s supernatural Drink be our Universal Dissolvent, an ecstasy liquor in the very sense of dispersing the body to extract the Soul, as the supposed orgiastic rites of Dionysus’s cult might make thinking of? And if dissolving a metal is a figuratively simple operation to imagine and implement, what if it is a matter of extracting the soul of the metal? Did they drink from that cup, or did they sail in that? Or were they enveloped, dare I say, enveloped as in a skin?
See also Pompeii Mysteries Villa: a Gentle Flowing with Mystica Vannus . See also Li Shao Chun & the Spirits of Cauldron and The Dangerous Journey into the Gundestrup Cauldron ; Dampierre Vessels, what Fulcanelli didn’t Say ; Michelangelo & the Mumia Skin in Last Judgement ; Rossetti and the Mystery of Platonic Love, part 1 ;
See also Thesaurus Hermeticum and the Dry Pythagorean River ; Kamala Jnana from Black to White ; Opus Magnum Scheme and Kamala Jnana, Introduction to a Live Secret ;The Pythagorean Thigh in the Northern Sky ; Eros, Psyche and a New Alchemical Body ; Augurello and the Art of Making Gold. First Book ; Dom Pernety, Laton and Putrefaction ; Baro Urbigerus and the Circulatum Tree ; Sun and Moon at the Turn of the First Millennium ; Ripley Scroll: the Soul Drinks only Blood ;