Dionysian Mysteries
Who would have thought that a cult could arise out of a group of women waking up and thinking : “I was so wasted last night…what happened?” The cults of Dionysus, cloaked in mystery due to their secretive nature, and mostly comprised of women members, did just that. Attaching the god of wine to their drunken escapades, the Ancient Greeks formed an astonishingly bizarre set of ritualistic, orgiastic practices to hide their burgeoning alcoholism. Essentially, these Dionysians would drink themself into a stupor (“trance” or “spirit possession”) and proceed to really get wild, engaging in group sex and role playing. They also were initial proponents of metempsychosis, the transmigration of souls from body to body, during their group sessions. The bestial possession of their bodies by the spirit of Dionysus supposedly caused their wanton behaviors. Comprised of secret and public rites, the Dionysians made a religion out of their debauchery (literally–the word derives from the Roman name for Dionysus, Bacchus). A.E. Waite, in the New Encyclopedia of Freemasonry, writes of the alleged rituals of the cult:
“Whatsoever may have remained to represent the original intent of the rites, regarded as Rites of Initiation, the externalities and practice of the Festivals were orgies of wine and sex: there was every kind of drunkenness and every aberration of sex, the one leading up to the other. Over all reigned the Phallus, which – in its symbolism a rebours – represented post ejaculation the death-state of Bacchus, the god of pleasure, and his resurrection when it was in forma errecta. Of such was the sorrow and of such the joy of these Mysteries.”
