Carl Kerenyi, the Romanian historian of religion, introduces his book on Dionysos by saying that his first insight into the god of wine came to him in a vineyard – he was looking at the grapevine itself and what he saw was “the image of indestructible life.” The temples are abandoned, but the vine still grows over the fallen walls. To explain the image, Kerenyi distinguishes between two terms for “life” in Greek, bios and zoe. Bios is limited life, characterized life, life that dies. Zoe is the life that endures; it is the thread that runs through bios-life and is not broken when the particular perishes…Dionysos is a god of zoe-life.
In his earliest Minoan forms, Dionysos is associated with honey and with honey beer or mead. Both honey and grape juice became images of this god because they ferment: “A natural phenomemon inspired a myth of zoe,” writes Kerenyi, “a statement concerning life which shows its indestructibility…even in decay.” When honey ferments, what has rotted not only comes back to life – bubbles up – but its “spirit” survives. Moreover, when the fermented liquid is drunk, the spirit comes to life in a new body. Drinking the mead is the sacrament of reconstituting the god.
excerpt from The Gift, by Lewis Hyde
This is not precisely what the book is about, by the way. I’m just sharing this quote because it is (inadvertently) the clearest explanation of the eucharist I have ever heard. And also because it makes me wonder:
This image we have had of Dionysos/Bacchus over the last several hundred years as a libido- and good-times-driven drunkard – is this an image handed down to us from the ancient Greeks? Or is it the relatively recent creation of Christians who wish to downplay the similarity between Dionysos and Christ?
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