:: Dionysos ::

Eleusis    Hecate    Daeira    Demeter    Dionysos    Rhea    Hermes    Persephone    Thea

:: 2011 :: 100cm x 100cm in four 50cm panels :: Acrylics, Inks & Markers on Canvas ::

A key to understanding any Mystery cult, ancient or modern, is that once you pass the threshold where a vow of silence must be maintained, everything starts to shapeshift. Stories take on a different significance, apparently disparate tales merge into one another, gods take off one mask and put on another to both reveal and hide a different truth. So here, we arrive at the first major secret of Eleusis: that Hades, who in the public story kidnapped Persephone, is Dionysos. The clues are there - the kidnap taking place at Nysa, Persephone holding the Narcissos flower (narc - narcotic), Demeter refusing to drink wine at Eleusis - and it must have been widely known, since Heraclitus said as much in his wiriting, without censure.

Here we see then Dionysos Chthonios - of the Underworld - attended by two other Dionysiac avatars closely linked to the Eleusinian mandala. On the left, Zagreus, the Cretan primitive of both Dionysos and Zeus, who was torn apart by his own attendant women. On the right, Iasion, whom Demeter lay with in a thrice-ploughed furrow and the fruit of which union was Plouton... another avatar of Dionysos whose name we shall hear again. At Eleusis, Dionysos the 'archetypal image of indestructible life' becomes the Lord of Death, and the world turns on its head...

Dionysos

 

Copyright (c) 2002-2023 Bruce Rimell : All images, artwork, and words on this site
are copyrighted to Bruce Rimell and may not be reproduced in any form unless stated otherwise.