Dionysian Madness
What is Dionysian madness? It’s a harder question to answer than it sounds, because it’s hard to get across just what Dionysian madness is without having experienced anything close to it yourself. But I’m currently reading The Secret History by Donna Tartt, because Dionysus told me to, and that novel has some stunning descriptions of Dionysian madness. It’s a Bacchae-inspired murder story, in which a group of college students deliberately host a bacchanal and end up killing someone in their frenzy. One of these students, Henry, gives us this splendid description of Dionysian ecstasy:
“It was heart-shaking. Glorious. Torches, dizziness, singing. Wolves howling around us and a bull bellowing in the dark. The river ran white. It was like a film in fast motion, the moon waxing and waning, clouds rushing across the sky. Vines grew from the ground so fast they twined up the trees like snakes; seasons passing in the wink of an eye, entire years for all I know…. I mean we think of phenomenal change as being the very essence of time, when it’s not at all. Time is something which defies spring and winter, birth and decay, the good and the bad, indifferently. Something changeless and joyous and absolutely indestructible. Duality ceases to exist; there is no ego, no “I,” and yet it’s not at all like those horrid comparisons one sometimes hears in Eastern religions, the self being a drop of water swallowed by the ocean of the universe. It’s more as if the universe expands to fill the boundaries of the self.
[…]
“How do you know what Dionysus is?” said Henry, a bit sharply. “What do you think it was we saw? A cartoon? A drawing from the side of a vase?
“I just can’t believe you’re telling me you actually saw — “
“What if you had never seen the sea before? What if the only thing you’d ever seen was a child’s picture — blue crayon, choppy waves? Would you know the real sea if you only knew the picture? Would you be able to recognize the real thing even if you saw it? You don’t know what Dionysus looks like. We’re talking about God here. God is serious business.”
— The Secret History, Donna Tartt (emphasis mine)
This idea of the universe expanding to fill the boundaries of the self is a perfect way of putting it, in my mind. Dionysian ecstasy is not a state of sinking into the universe, but rather, feeling the universe suddenly rage within you. It’s comprehending the entire sublime absurdity of the world all at once, letting it through you, letting it not make sense. It is a communion with the natural world. The only thing this sort of mystical experience is comparable to is orgasm, and, well, let’s just say that’s no accident.
Dionysian madness, to me, is a way of comprehending the universe that allows for things that are irrational and disturbing. All humans have darkness within — all humans can be barbaric and savage, with the buried potential to tear a living thing to bloody pieces. It is healthier to actually engage with that buried, panther-shaped part of our souls that thirsts for blood, and to do so in a safe environment (for example, on a theater stage). It is healthier to acknowledge that no matter how “civilized” we consider ourselves, the natural world cannot fully be tamed, and it is better to ride the wave of life’s insanity than to try to explain, rationalize, or control every single aspect of it.
Madness is what defines Dionysus as a god, more than almost anything else. Dionysus was driven mad by Hera when he was young, and he never really recovered! Madness is Dionysus’ natural state. Whether he is endearingly Mad like the Hatter or violently psychotic like the Joker, Dionysus is mad. Therefore, his worshippers are madwomen who follow him around the mountains, dancing and screaming and eating wild animals raw. There’s multiple stories of people who are drunk or frenzied committing horrible acts of violence in their madness — Dionysus’ worshippers dismember Pentheus at his command, Orpheus is killed in the same way by other Maenads (sometimes at Dionysus’ behest and sometimes not); Ikarios is killed by people to whom he gave the gift of wine, because they were terrified of their mad and drunken state; and Dionysus cursed Lycurgus with madness that would make him hack his own family to pieces, hallucinating that they were grapevines. I would argue that these states of madness are identical — there is no difference between the madness of Dionysus’ Maenads and the madness of Lycurgus or the shepherds who killed Ikarios. The former willingly embrace the madness, while the latter are overcome by it because they don’t have a proper understanding of it.
Dionysus is the god of wine, and therefore embodies the dual nature of wine. Wine can loosen you up, remove your inhibitions, allow you to act more like a child or otherwise break cultural norms in a way that is (mostly) socially acceptable. It’s a fun, liberating, temporary madness. But, if you have too much, you could turn violent and (like the college students in the woods) end up doing something you really regret. It all comes down to knowing your tolerance. This is why I ironically associate Dionysus with the Greek virtue of temperance, because he allows you to playfully experience the savage and sensual without ever exceeding your limits. Through Dionysus’ gift of wine, or through similar methods of ecstatic trance (dance, mask-wearing, swinging, screaming, sex), Dionysians experience spiritual transcendence.
There are multiple reasons why I think Dionysian madness is important. Firstly, life in general does not give us many opportunities to just let go. We are constantly bound by societal expectations and modes of behavior. Only sometimes are these constraints relaxed — Halloween and Carnival Season both allow for the wearing of masks and the relaxation of social norms, amongst other Dionysian things — but that’s kind of it. Add onto that all the constant stressors of life, and we become pent-up and frustrated, in desperate need of release.
“The more cultivated a person is, the more intelligent, the more repressed, then the more he needs some method of channeling the primitive impulses he’s worked so hard to subdue. Otherwise those powerful old forces will mass and strengthen until they are violent enough to break free, more violent for the delay, often strong enough to sweep the will away entirely.”
— Donna Tartt, The Secret History
That definitely does not mean that we should all go crazy in the woods and maybe kill someone, but it does mean that we should all find safe outlets for that primal energy. Dionysus advises “taking your sanity off like a mask” so that you don’t really go crazy trying to keep it all in. Let the madness express itself healthily, so that you can rest easy. Pour it into your art, play some violent video games, play a villainous role, journal about it, dance naked and howl at the moon. Look the beast in the mirror, and tame it.
I interpret Pentheus’ death in The Bacchae as something of a natural consequence of his refusal to accept Dionysus. Yes, it’s presented as a divine smiting for his insolence, but the particular (grisly) manner that Pentheus dies, which is the same way in which Dionysus himself died, implies a spiritual initiation or rebirth. The tearing apart of the old self, the destruction of the repressive and limiting beliefs that hold us back. Pentheus would have gotten swept up in the tide of the frenzy either way. If he joined it, he would have moved along with it. Because he tried to resist it, he ended up being (literally) torn apart by it.
Secondly, it is extremely important to me that Dionysian madness is spiritual in nature. That seems almost oxymoronic — so many other spiritual and mystical traditions emphasize detachment from “the world,” whatever that means. Fast, pray, don’t have sex, don’t drink wine, be emotionally disciplined, keep yourself pure and above temptation and desire. Dionysian spirituality is about surrendering to that desire — to raw emotion, passion, carnality, savagery. And in that, we find the divine! In that, we truly feel that we are part of the universe and not separate from it. Dionysian madness is the madness of nature, the madness that accompanies birth and sex and death. Instead of suppressing everything that makes us uncomfortable or that is dismissed as “decadent,” we can find God in it.
But how glorious to release them in a single burst! To sing, to scream, to dance barefoot in the woods in the dead of night, with no more awareness of mortality than an animal! These are powerful mysteries. The bellowing of bulls. Springs of honey bubbling from the ground. If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn.”
— Donna Tartt, The Secret History
The Romantic notion of the sublime is based in the idea that nature is ultimately something ineffable and unconquerable, not something that humans can ever completely understand with science or control with industry. The Romantic sublime is inherently intertwined with terror, when the magnificence and brutality of nature just hits. And when you see Dionysus (really see him, not just a “child’s picture”), he is downright eldritch. Hiding behind that image of a handsome boy with ribbons in his hair is a Lovecraftian abomination. (Dionysus may even appear in Lovecraft’s universe as the lesser-known entity called Gloon, featured in “The Temple”.) It will alchemically break down your mind and then reconstruct it. It is beautiful and terrible and just looking at it will make you suddenly understand everything, but you have to be somewhat mad already for your brain to take it.
…that, to me, is the terrible seduction of the Dionysiac ritual. Hard for us to imagine. That fire of pure being.”
— Donna Tartt, The Secret History
This is why Dionysian madness is truly spiritual and transcendent. It’s comprehending life and death on a cosmic and a personal scale. It’s recognizing that even things that are considered base have their place in the workings of the universe, and indeed, are often integral to the workings of the universe. There is spirituality and beauty in the darkness, blood, sex, death. Karl Kerenyi describes it as, “…a state in which man’s vital powers are enhanced to the utmost, in which consciousness and the unconscious merge as in a breakthrough.”
The synthesis of dualities is a common occult idea that fully expresses itself here. In addition to the dual nature of wine, Dionysus embodies so many dualities. He is the savagery hiding within civilization, beloved by the Athenians who so valued how civilized they were. He is usually considered male but often looks androgynous, and dresses like a woman (which is even more significant in the very misogynistic environment of Ancient Greece). He shatters cultural taboos, everything from homosexuality to cannibalism, and offers marginalized people like women and LGBTQ+ people a place to be themselves. He is the bridge between human and divine, having had a human mother and literally possessing mortals with wine-induced enthusiasm. He is an Olympian that lives among mortals and wanders the earth, and he can also travel to the Underworld to lead back the shades of the dead. He is loud and frenzied in the summer, quiet and gentle in the winter. He is unusually carnal for a god, and known for being hedonistic, but it is through that sensual debauchery that Dionysians find enlightenment. It is through Dionysian madness that we mortals can become temporarily divine.
This further connects Dionysus with the idea of Temperance, which, in a tarot deck, represents the alchemical synthesis of opposites. To a god, these mutually-exclusive things can coexist as one, at the same time. You’d have to be mad in order to see the same thing as simultaneously black and white, from every dimension. I think that it’s safe to say that, if you can look a god in the face without losing your mind utterly, or contain it within your very soul, you’re “not all there” mentally.
“We’re all mad here. I’m mad, you’re mad.”
“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”— Lewis Carrol
