and (2) Apollon is an Aryan, Dionysos Pyropos a Semitic, study of the sun; they are distinct alike in origin and in line of thought.1 Subsection III.-Dionysos the Demiurge. A very prominent feature of the Orphik Dionysos is that of the Demiourgos, or Maker-of-the-world, in fact, of the entire Kosmos. Thus the Orphik poet, speaking of the sacred dress to be worn in the Bakchik Mysteries, says: To accomplish all these things, clad in a sacred dress The body of God, a representation of the bright-rayed Helios, Let the worshipper first throw around him a crimson robe Like flowing rays resembling fire. Moreover from above the broad all-variegated skin of a wild fawn Thickly spotted should hang down from the right shoulder, And then over the fawn-skin a golden belt should be thrown, Darts his golden rays on the flowing of ocean, The splendour is unspeakable, and mixed with the water Here we have a full-length portrait of the kosmogonic Dionysos. The sacred rites are proceeding; the principal worshipper, who in the symbolism represents the god himself, is in the Thronismos or State-of-enthronement, clad in the mystic dress, and surrounded by the chorus of votaries dancing in a ring. His crimson robe and peplos, with its flaming rays, symbolise the heat and Frag. vii. 1 Vide inf. subsec. iii. fierce beams of the sun, Dionysos Pyropos; and, had the mystic dress consisted of the peplos only, there might have been some foundation for the theory of the absolute unity of Helios and Dionysos. But this is merely the first article of the attire. Next, the all-variegated,' much spotted, faun-skin, typifying the starry vault of heaven, is to hang down from the shoulder.2 Over the faun-skin is thrown a golden belt, typifying the Homerik oceancircle, when gleaming with splendour beneath the rays of Phaethon, the Beaming-sun, who corresponds with Dionysos Antauges, the Sparkler. The ocean-girdle, it will be observed, is placed in the symbolism without the stars, because they in Hellenik idea sink into it; and Okeanos is, like Poseidon Gaieochos, the Earth-encircler, and holds the Kosmos in his all-surrounding arms. Thus, the sacred dress typified sun, starry vault, and ocean, all indeed of matter that exists, except the earth; but this latter is not omitted from the mystery-play, for the worshipper himself is at once the earth and Dionysos, or the kosmogonic spirit of the world; sexless, or of both sexes, for the result is the same, clad in the woman's robe, peplos, and the man's belt, zoster. Hence the close affinity and the connected historic worship of Dionysos and Demeter, the Aryan Earth-mother, anthropomorphic, emerging into human form from the huge and shadowy Gaia. This Orphik Dionysos is truly a colossal concept, and let those who are inclined to condemn the study of Mythology as frivolous and unimportant endeavour to estimate the value and interest of the light which it throws alike upon the mind of man and the general history of the world. The great subject of Pantheism-the higher and the lower its truth and error, truth-that all things are in God; error-that God is in all things, as if Deity were. 3 Frag. vii. 1 Vide inf. VIII. i. Aielomorphos. 2 Cf. Diod. i. 11. E nought but animated and eternal matter, is and ever must be of the highest importance, especially in these days when Agnosticism exults in its ignorance, and a deepening Materialism finds constantly increasing favour with numerous sages. How apparently delicate are many of its distinctions, yet how important their differences! Thus with equal truth and beauty may the Deity, especially when considered anthropomorphically and in His more active operations, be figuratively represented as clad with the immediately surrounding visibility, not with the entire Kosmos, as with a garment,' from which, nevertheless, He must ever be kept distinct and separate in idea. He animates the All, not as soul does body from within, but, being essentially external and distinct in His infinity, He looks upon the whole world, not as His tabernacle, but as a very little thing.' It is not true, as the friend and pupil of Bolingbroke has asserted, that 6 All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body nature is, and God the soul; That changed thro' all, and yet in all the same, Warms in the sun, refreshes in the breeze, Glows in the stars, and blossoms in the trees; 6 that the Creator is but the animated creation, no more than the Platonik Soul of the World,' the Neo-Platonik Hippa. This is not God, but Dionysos. But, The sun, the moon, the stars, the seas, the hills and the plainsAre not these, O Soul, the Vision of Him who reigns? that is, In contemplation of created things not find God indwelling in them. 1 God could have made other worlds.' S. Athanasios. Earth, these solid stars, this weight of body and limb, Not of forming parts of one stupendous whole.' Speak to Him thou, for He hears, and spirit with Spirit can meet Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet. For in Him we live, and move, and have our being;' we in Him the Creator, not He in us His creatures. Worlds without number Lie in His bosom like children. He lies not concealed in them, as a principle of inherent vitality. 'This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all.' (Newton). And this is not Dionysos, but God. Such then is the root-idea of the Kosmogonic Dionysos. But the Orphik poet, while thus pantheistically clothing Dionysos with the visible universe, is no mere crude materialist. He fully admits Mr. Martineau's canon, that 'mind is first and rules for ever,' and so, in another Fragment, he tells how the Demiurge, whom men call both Phanes, and Dionysos, and King Eubouleus the Wisecounselling, and the widely-known Antauges the Sparkler,' and whom others of the men who dwell on the earth call by other names, first came to light;' and how this mysterious power melted down,' i.e. resolved into form and shape, 'the divine ether that before was motionless, and lit it up for the gods to see, most beautiful to behold;' or, in other words, established order out of a pre-existing chaos. This demiurgic force is not external to the matter in and through which it works, and through which it becomes known as Phanes the Apparent, identi2 Cf. sup. sec. ii. 1 Orphik. Frag. vii. fied with Dionysos, and representing the visible creation in its vitality. As the sun is the eye of the universe, the most prominent and remarkable object of the Visible, and as the mind looks out through the human eye, so the demiurgic Dionysos looks down through the great solar eye upon his worshippers and the world; and thus, being peculiarly associated with the sun, naturally appears as Pyropos the Fiery-faced, and Antauges the Sparkler. That all nations, and especially the children of the glowing East, should have solar gods and solar myths is natural and even necessary; but, at the same time, the kosmogonic aspect of the Uasar-Dionysos Myth is even vaster here than the solar, while the relations between Dionysos and Helios are fully explicable by the protagonistic position of the latter in the material universe, and the kosmic concept of the former as its animating essence, and allpervading daemon. Hence the poet, while saying that men call the Sun Dionysos, does not thereby absolutely identify the two; and he clearly distinguishes between them in his account of the enthroned worshipper and his dress. But, as may be readily conceived, the idea of a solar, being simpler than that of a kosmogonic, deity, when Dionysos had become thus connected with the Sun, the light of the solar phase threw the broader conception somewhat into the shade. Dionysos the Demiurge was lost sight of, but his character is so far impressed upon Dionysos Pyropos, that the latter chiefly appears, not in an astral or purely solar phase, as being distinct and distant from the earth, but, as the lord of the changing seasons, whose power affects and alters the visible world on which he looks down. And so the poet tells us : He has surnames for each of his changes, Manifold as the year rolls, and they suit with the change of the seasons. |