Dionysos - God of Life and Nature

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[Carnelian]

I was sitting in on a Classical Mythology lecture at my university, and the most recent lecture was on Dionysos. The instructor described him as a god of "hydra phusis" - Greek for "liquid life" - which I found to be a fascinating way to understand his nature. He is the god of semen, the blood in the veins, the sap in the trees, and of course, the wine that alters one's state of mind and brings a person closer to Dionysos. As a male counterpart to Demeter, he is the god of the life cycle - human, animal and of vegetation/agriculture - embodying fertility and the life force. He was symbolized by the phallus - the erect penis - the male component of life and generation.

The core of Dionysiac religion is the ecstatic connection with nature. In Euripides' play, "The Bacchae", the maenads are portrayed and separate from civilization, suckling animals as if they were human babies and causing milk and wine to sprout from the ground like water. It emphasizes the closeness with nature associated with his worship. The ecstatic, personal, "uncivilized" nature of Dionysiac religion was strongly identified with the East and barbarism in ancient Greece, although his worship was attractive to the ancient Greeks as it offered something that was missing from the cold and distant religion of the traditional Olympians.

He became the "god of wine" in later periods and the archetype of the "party god" of intoxication and having a good time, similar to how Aphrodite became the goddess of love, and the ideal of feminine beauty and grace, when she had origins as a much more complex and wide-ruling deity of the sky, the cycles of death and renewal, sexuality and the forces of the generation of life. His connection with nature is very important, as without it he becomes a narrow ideal of drunkenness and partying. I think that happens with a lot of Greek gods, as many Greek-oriented pagans don't like to be associated with "nature-worship" of mainstream neo-paganism. Hera becomes the archetype of the married female, Demeter the mother, Zeus the father/king, and many of their other functions get lost along the way.

[Waldfrau]

His connection with nature is very important, as without it he becomes a narrow ideal of drunkenness and partying. I think that happens with a lot of Greek gods, as many Greek-oriented pagans don't like to be associated with "nature-worship" of mainstream neo-paganism. Hera becomes the archetype of the married female, Demeter the mother, Zeus the father/king, and many of their other functions get lost along the way.

I'm not a Greek-oriented pagan, but while being quite a treehugging fellow I have talked a lot to hellenic pagans and didn't find this true. Many hellenic pagans, who don't like this term, have a differentiated view of the Greek gods and don't like this term because they find it oversimplifying. Polytheism isn't "nature worship" even though many deities have connections to natural phenomena. You wouldn't call Christianity "sky worship" just because many lay people think of god as residing above. The notion of "nature worship" comes from seeing the hellenic gods as allegories of nature phenomena, but many pagans see them as gods in their own right. That doesn't mean that they deny those connections to nature phenomena, but there's more to the gods than just that.

I quite sympathize with the way some hellenic pagans dismiss the term "nature worship", I'd find that an oversimplifying description of my own religious/spiritual orientation although I'm no hellenic pagan and have a lot of animistic beliefs. I honor deities and spirits, some of them dwelling in 'nature', I'm also sympathetic to ecologism, but that still doesn't make me a "nature worshipper". It's not like I'm seeing "mother nature" as some kind of entity/consciousness and worship her.

[Ali]

I'm not a Greek-oriented pagan, but while being quite a treehugging fellow I have talked a lot to hellenic pagans and didn't find this true. Many hellenic pagans, who don't like this term, have a differentiated view of the Greek gods and don't like this term because they find it oversimplifying. Polytheism isn't "nature worship" even though many deities have connections to natural phenomena. You wouldn't call Christianity "sky worship" just because many lay people think of god as residing above. The notion of "nature worship" comes from seeing the hellenic gods as allegories of nature phenomena, but many pagans see them as gods in their own right. That doesn't mean that they deny those connections to nature phenomena, but there's more to the gods than just that.

I quite sympathize with the way some hellenic pagans dismiss the term "nature worship", I'd find that an oversimplifying description of my own religious/spiritual orientation although I'm no hellenic pagan and have a lot of animistic beliefs. I honor deities and spirits, some of them dwelling in 'nature', I'm also sympathetic to ecologism, but that still doesn't make me a "nature worshipper". It's not like I'm seeing "mother nature" as some kind of entity/consciousness and worship her.

Now this is fascinating! (I tried to figure out what to excerpt from your post, Waldfrau, but the whole thing is interesting!)

To me, it seemed just the reverse - and I do, whole-heartedly, call myself a "nature worshipper." My impression of Pagans/polytheists who rejected the notion of "nature worship" was that they had a narrower focus, that they were focused only on the gods, and not so much on the greater cosmological/ecological context in which gods, like whales, are only perhaps the largest and most impressive (though not necessarily most important) of an entire "ecosystem" of spirit.

I think this goes back to the problem of what we consider "nature" to be, and this is something of a philosophical debate in ecology/ecosophy itself. In some ways, the idea of "nature" itself is a construct, imagined as whatever is separate and untouched by humanity and civilization - so that you have the "natural world" as the world beyond the city limits, out in the forests and fields where "the hand of man has never set foot." If that's how we're viewing "nature," then the idea of "nature worship" would appear limiting, too focused on nature to the exclusion of civilization and culture. In this view, then, the god-centric focus of polytheism makes sense as something more than mere "nature," but also incorporating culture and civilization and all the rest.

But then there's the alternative view, that humanity itself is deeply integrated with and arising from the natural world, and that civilization itself is merely one kind of expression of the sentience and intelligence of "nature." From this perspective (the perspective I personally hold), the polytheist focus puts too much emphasis on the human at the expense of the more-than-human world, or imagines that the more-than-human world is something which gets tacked on to the human world (merely one "aspect" of a god which is "more" than just natural), instead of understanding the natural world as its source and shaper. In my personal understanding, there is an incredibly complex and interwoven "natural world" that incorporates everything and gives rise to humanity and civilization, as well as the gods - and the deeper insight is to understand how these human aspects are expressions of that larger natural world. In this view, it is polytheism that is oversimplifying if it does not understand the context of the gods which are its focus.

But this is the interesting thing about naming! It sounds like each of us is drawn to a particular way of describing an understanding of the world that seems complex and deep to us, and so we describe the alternative - what we are distinguishing ourselves from - in shallower terms than what those who actually choose the name for themselves would really use. As someone who calls myself a "nature worshipper," I can say I definitely disagree that nature worship is somehow oversimplifying, and that it's incorrect to suppose that the gods as I understand them are merely allegories of natural phenomenon - quite the opposite! Those natural phenomenon are beyond the gods, and the gods (like human beings) are immanent expressions or manifestations of nature, within and through nature - though as manifestations they are as different from humans as whales are different from plankton, or star clusters from whales.

--Ali

[Waldfrau]

But this is the interesting thing about naming! It sounds like each of us is drawn to a particular way of describing an understanding of the world that seems complex and deep to us, and so we describe the alternative - what we are distinguishing ourselves from - in shallower terms than what those who actually choose the name for themselves would really use.

This. I think I shouldn't have said or implied that the term "nature worship" was oversimplifying, just that I feel that way when it's applied to myself without my consent and tied to certain connotations.

I certainly see the gods as part of the cosmos and as you say it also depends a lot on how people define nature. I would label myself as nature-religious or -spiritual, but find the label 'polytheism' just more concrete for specifying in what way I'm nature-religious. And of course in some way concreteness can also be limiting if you take away the frame. I'd not be happy if people reduce my sort of polytheism to just 'worshipping gods' without their cosmological frame. That wouldn't be much better than reducing pagans to nothing else than 'nature-worshipping tree-huggers'.

I think with choosing labels it comes down to which misunderstanding personally annoys one the least. Myself, I'm much more pissed when someone reduces me to a vague honoring of 'mother nature' and ecologism than if someone sees me as a crazed or evil polytheist worshipping 'idols'. The first thing makes me feel whitewashed and devoid of character. The second thing makes me at least feel taken halfly serious, although being villified/crazyfied. Both notions are reductions of terms which could be deep and meaningful if filled with the contents the people who chose those labels for themselves feel appropriate.


Haven't we had previous discussions about these issues somewhere on TC? I think there were quite a few.

[Ali]

I think with choosing labels it comes down to which misunderstanding personally annoys one the least. (...)

Haven't we had previous discussions about these issues somewhere on TC? I think there were quite a few.

Yes! Especially the part I bolded above. I think this reflects the way labels or names act not so much as defined conceptual "boxes" with clear, stark boundaries... but more as archetypes towards which the real-life expressions tend with more or less affinity.

For myself, for instance, I am totally down with the archetype/stereotype of being the barefooted hippie out communing with Mama Earth in the woods. I feel a much greater affinity with that aspect of my spirituality, possibly because it's the most deeply-rooted in me and an aspect that was nurtured (particularly through wilderness experiences and nature poetry) most of my life, even in early childhood before I was a Pagan. Whereas a lot of what I associate with being a polytheist seems a bit too similar to some of my creepy relatives with statues of Catholic saints scattered all over the house and in their front yard keeping an eye on which neighbor's dog poops on the lawn.

And I'm sure there've been conversations like this on TC before. I can't think of any specific ones offhand, but they're hard to avoid! This one in particular has ended up being very helpful for me - some things kind of clicked into place for me regarding my own personal polytheology that I've been unable to really articulate clearly before. So thank you! (See - this is why I love TC so much!)

Anyway.... what were we saying about Dionysus? 

--Ali

[Waldfrau]

Anyway.... what were we saying about Dionysus? 

I guess Dionysus doesn't care much about labels as long as it's drinkable...

[LuciaStar]

I guess Dionysus doesn't care much about labels as long as it's drinkable...

That made me giggle. He didn't seem fussy about my wine coolers or berry flavored Vodka, that's for sure. I'm thinking that next time I drink, I might give him some to say "Here is an appropriate thank you for helping me get over what I couldn't get over."
... That might draw his attention a bit but, who cares? I like the guy. He can come back as often as he wants to! Even if it's just to sneak some of my alcohol.

To kind of not derail the thread anymore than I am, for some reason... it makes sense for him to be a God of Life and Nature. I dunno. Kind of a view I had deep down, I suppose. I can't explain it, it just makes sense.

[Carnelian]

I quite sympathize with the way some hellenic pagans dismiss the term "nature worship", I'd find that an oversimplifying description of my own religious/spiritual orientation although I'm no hellenic pagan and have a lot of animistic beliefs. I honor deities and spirits, some of them dwelling in 'nature', I'm also sympathetic to ecologism, but that still doesn't make me a "nature worshipper". It's not like I'm seeing "mother nature" as some kind of entity/consciousness and worship her.

I think "nature worship" is an over-simplification for many pagan religions, not just Hellenic polytheism. Wiccans don't exactly worship nature, they just view nature and a manifestation of the Divine Life of the universe that is embodied by the polarity of the Moon Goddess and Horned God. I think the Greek gods are manifestations of the same Divine Power that animates the natural Cosmos, whether or not worshiping them involves dancing naked in the forest under the full moon.

The ancient Greeks had a different relationship to nature than we do in the modern world. There were no romantic notions about nature, instead it represented the opposite of the over-intellectualized, over-controlled Athenian society. Nature was just a given, as they weren't removed from it the same way modern society is, even if it wasn't always viewed as positive. I think the idea of "nature worship" has been popular in the past few decades as a reaction to modern society, which is isolated from nature in many ways. It may be a simple way of describing indigenous, polytheistic religious traditions, but I think said traditions all usually have origins in the observation of the natural cycles of the Earth and Cosmos.

To me, it seemed just the reverse - and I do, whole-heartedly, call myself a "nature worshipper." My impression of Pagans/polytheists who rejected the notion of "nature worship" was that they had a narrower focus, that they were focused only on the gods, and not so much on the greater cosmological/ecological context in which gods, like whales, are only perhaps the largest and most impressive (though not necessarily most important) of an entire "ecosystem" of spirit.

I agree. For me, it's about nature versus culture, and without the associations with nature, the gods become only associated with culture. Since the cultures they come from are generally no longer in existence, worshiping embodiments of aspects of said cultures seems a little strange. Nature is more constant, so in my opinion, it is better to focus on the cosmological functions of the gods rather than as representations of social customs of dead cultures.

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