![]() ![]() ![]() Wine could ease suffering, bring joy, and inspire divine madness. Wine was a religious focus in the cult of Dionysus and was his earthly incarnation. His attribute of "foreignness" as an arriving outsider-god may be inherent and essential to his cults, as he is a god of epiphany, sometimes called "the god that comes". ![]() Most accounts say he was born in Thrace, traveled abroad, and arrived in Greece as a foreigner. The Eleusinian Mysteries identify him with Iacchus, the son or husband of Demeter. In Orphic religion, he was variously a son of Zeus and Persephone a chthonic or underworld aspect of Zeus or the twice-born son of Zeus and the mortal Semele. His origins are uncertain, and his cults took many forms some are described by ancient sources as Thracian, others as Greek. ![]() Those who partake of his mysteries are believed to become possessed and empowered by the god himself. His thyrsus, a fennel-stem sceptre, sometimes wound with ivy and dripping with honey, is both a beneficent wand and a weapon used to destroy those who oppose his cult and the freedoms he represents. As Dionysus Eleutherios ("the liberator"), his wine, music, and ecstatic dance free his followers from self-conscious fear and care, and subvert the oppressive restraints of the powerful. He was also known as Bacchus ( / ˈ b æ k ə s/ or / ˈ b ɑː k ə s/ Ancient Greek: Βάκχος Bacchos) by the Greeks (a name later adopted by the Romans) for a frenzy he is said to induce called baccheia. ə ˈ n aɪ s ə s/ Ancient Greek: Διόνυσος Dionysos) is the god of wine-making, orchards and fruit, vegetation, fertility, festivity, insanity, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, and theatre. In ancient Greek religion and myth, Dionysus ( / d aɪ. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols. This article contains special characters. ![]()
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