THE MYTH OF DIONYSUS

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to the Philosopher's Circle. The Philosopher's Circle attempts to
answer the most profound questions we all have in life.
It is your guide to the fundamental nature of existence, society,
and how we think.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
We'll be looking today. At Dionysius, the Greek god, perhaps
best known as the god of grape harvest, wine making
and wine and ritual madness, fertility, religious ecstasy, it doesn't
attempt to divide things up, but put things together. In
a sense, you see, Dionysus is a god of the collective,

(00:39):
not of individuals. In early myth Dionysus was very much
associated with Titans. Those were pushed aside by the Olympians
for a more archetypal style of being. Titanism may be
where we evolve from since the ancient Greeks. Some argue
in mythology Dionysius was torn apart by Titans, he experienced dismemberment,

(01:02):
was ultimately put back together again. So he is also
a god of dismemberment. And this reminds me a lot
sometimes of trauma where people have different selves. Even though
we all have different selves, right, we have different personas
that we project to other individuals. But people with trauma
have what they call what someone would call the normal personality,

(01:22):
the personality they share with the public, the persona that
they have. But they also have other types of personalities
that a lot of times is out of their control
and can lead in negative ways and unfortunately make their
lives very challenging. But when you go and you're able
to confront those issues in your life, you can put

(01:44):
your life back together again like Dionysius did. You can
put back those selves and become that cohesive one, that
whole person, the wholeness that we all strive for, the authenticity,
the authentic individual, because a lot of times times traumas
and it could be all kinds of trauma, from micro
traumas to macro trauma such as child abuse or physical

(02:08):
abuse or things of that nature. Our goal is to
be authentic and whole so we can see the world
more accurately in that capacity, because if not, if we
see our world through our fragmented selves, we don't see
it accurately. Some make interesting archetype of parallels to Dionysius.

(02:36):
It includes an imbalance and inability to do Dionysius collectively.
What I mean by that is that you'll see a
shadow aspect of the dismembering institutions. Remember, the shadow is
that dark part of ourselves that is hidden. We're not
consciously aware of it, but we have to be. We
have to know that it exists. Some have argued that

(03:01):
Dionysius archetype has a powerful positive and negative potentialities, which
we all do. We have the ego and our shadow,
stirring up the most basis of feelings and creating conflicts
within our psyche. As an archetype that is present and
individuals who are mystics and others who are murderers in between.

(03:22):
It is the archetype in men and women who experience
ecstatic moments and intensely contradictory impulses. One of the images
representing Dionysus was out of the Divine Child. The divine
child archetype carries with it a sense of specialness of
person and of destiny and dreams of contemporary people. The
archetype is often represented by a precocious infant who talks

(03:43):
to the dreamer, who in some other way is obviously
not an ordinary child. The personal feeling that my life
has a sacred meaning. Some argue that this is the
right hemisphere of our brain, which is associated with unconscious
memories and implicit and memories and feelings also about being creative.
The aspect of creativity is located in the right side

(04:05):
of our brain, and some argue that our left side
of the brain, as Ian Micgilchris said, is dominating society
more today, and the left side, as logical and analytical,
was also limited because it doesn't strive for creativity. It
doesn't strive for the Hegelian concept of synthesis antithesis or actually,
i'm sorry, thesis and antithesis creating synthesis, which we can

(04:28):
grow and learn from those things. But if you look
at again, if you go back to Dionysius, the personal
feeling that my life has a sacred meaning that there
are both human and divine elements in my psyche occurs
when a person comes in touch with the divine child archetype,
which often signals the beginning of an adult spiritual journey

(04:49):
or path of individuation. This wholeness that I was talking about, however,
due to the instinctual intensity of the Dionysius archetype and ego,
is very susceptible to being overwhelmed by it, just like
our egos are susceptible being overwhelmed by the shadow, and
sometimes the Dionysius can be an aspect of that shadow.
If he identifies with the divine child archetype, he or

(05:11):
she will often find it difficult to adapt to ordinary life.
They will find that expect special treatment or recognition, and
harbor resentments when this is not given. Psychologically speaking, somebody
like this becomes inflated by an overblown and undeserved sett
in some importance. I'm not referring just to a narcissistic

(05:31):
personality disorder, but this can happen to different degrees. Everything's
on a continuum. If the Dionysius archetype is repressed and
with the divine child aspect, other difficulties ensure feeling inauthentic
again as I mentioned, or out of touch with some
vague sense of not heeding something important or leading a
meaningless life. The Dionysus archetype is actively repressed in men

(05:54):
from childhood on. Boys are discouraged from having any other traits,
from being a dreamer, from being sensual, being told they
mustn't touch, to have to repress their feelings, to shut
down the right side of their brain. Dionysus and Hermes
are the two archetypes and most predisposed man to stay
in eternal youth, or as Young called them, the per tunur,

(06:15):
regardless of his age. The Dionysian version of the archetypal
adolescents an intense and emotional person who becomes absorbed in
whatever his or her current passion is, forgetting the obligations
or assignments that they need to do.

Speaker 1 (06:30):
So.

Speaker 2 (06:30):
This is a very powerful archetype that we see a
lot in Dionysus, and of course we have seen the
Apollonian and Dionysian philosophical concept. It's a dichotomy, right, we
see the two differences between these individuals. Apollos the sun
god rational thinking in order, appeals to logic and purity.

(06:52):
This is the left side of the hemisphere, where Dionysus
is the god of wine, dance of rationality and chaos
and appeals to emotions and instincts. But you can see
the negative connotation already in ascribe to this, and this
is where society has fallen more towards Apollo uti left,
because they're highlighting the shadow aspect of Dionysius with both
sides have their shadows. Both sides have. They're good and bad.

(07:15):
So we have to remember that we all have that.
It's our ability to call that bads, be able to
civilize it, that makes us different. It can help us
reach a wholeness. So again this is kind of thoughts
on the world in the myths of Dionysus and Apollo,
and how for centuries mankind has always seen that we

(07:36):
have two sides of us, a good and a bad
that is now