Sacred and Profane

In Imaginal Love, Tom Cheetham writes that: "The imagination is a powerful solvent – it keeps things fluid and prevents the world from freezing up. It breaks down walls.”

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In the greek myth of Hephaestus, Dionysus is seen as Lysios, meaning ‘the loosener’. He is of everywhere and nowhere. He is sacred and profane. Both Dionysus and the Hindu god Shiva defy convention. They are merciless protectors of the voiceless, the downtrodden and the vulnerable. They are the ones who give laws and break chains. They refuse politics, ambitions, and limitations of ordinary society. For both of them, nature is their temple, anywhere beyond the boundaries of the cities.

Their followers often found the “sensation of the divine”, through ecstatic dance and pleasure. Indeed, “Shivaism, Dionysism and Sufism, and many [other] mystic sects in general [are] founded on the love of nature and the pursuit of ecstasy.” It is in the “Bacchantes (Dionysian followers) intimidation of love and ecstasy that true wisdom lies.”

Their religion is for everyone, with no need for a gilded temple or a hierarchy of priests. Throughout history, often persecuted and banished, their “mystical and or ecological approach to the liberation of man, and his happiness is opposed to the exploiters and destroyers of the natural world.”

Dionysus inspires simplicity of the heart, and is found in the communion with nature. Those who try and force reason upon nature, or upon him, end up losing their minds. He is the one who remains calm while watching the madness destroy them, their world falling into the fire of their own ignorance. Most curse their life, while others awaken to awareness, and these are the people we call mad. Euripides expresses this in his play the Bacchae: “Knowledge is not wisdom: cleverness is not, not without awareness of our death, not without recalling just how brief our flare is. He who overreaches will, in his overreaching, lose what he possess, betray what he has now. That which is beyond us, which is greater than the human, the un-attainably great, is for the mad, or for those who listen to the mad, and then believe them.”

Dionysus is also known as the 'twice born', a title often given to initiates of the ancient mysteries. As the god of death and rebirth, Dionysus can be seen a reflection of Hades. For, as Hades darkens Dionysus toward his own tragedy, Dionysus softens and rounds out Hades into his own richness.” Balance is found in this dance of duality, the mingling of light and dark, of the masculine and the feminine. It is the seed that germinates in the darkness and from where new life is born.

As Kahlil Gibran once said: "Yesterday we obeyed kings and bent out necks before emperors. but today we kneel only to truth, follow only beauty, and obey only love."

Photograph: Roses by Agnes Lorek