Thread by @KrisAtLarge

I owe @KaylinEvergreen and Dionysos, one of my absolute _favorite_ Hellenic deities, a bit of attention. so here it is!

Dionysos, or "Bacchus" as he's been called in Greece and Rome, is an unusual addition to the Hellenic pantheon—a late addition, thought to be imported.

(1/x)

his own mythology seems to reflect the likelihood that the worship of Dionysos came in from the East: the general story is that he was born in Thrace, had a long period of wandering abroad, then returned to Greece—triumphantly drunk off his arse.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dionysus

(2/x)

for Dionysos was a god of drunken revels and *ecstasy*.

that's how I first learned about him from Euripedes's stark play "The Bacchae", which describes how the king of Thebes, Pentheus, falls foul of Dionysos by attempting to forbid his worship.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bacch…

(3/x)

Dionysos dupes Pentheus into dressing up as a girl (the scene was...let's just say that it turned out to be *relevant* to my own life as a trans person, and I took special note of it) and infiltrating a Bacchic revel, whence Pentheus's own mother tears him to shreds.

(4/x)

and she doesn't avoid punishment for the crime, either—that's the nature of Greek tragedy. one crime doesn't somehow *erase* another. a murder can be _just_ in the pages of Greek tragedy, and yet still a murder.

I suppose that's why I'm such a staunch moralist...

(5/x)

...Sophocles and Euripides were my moral instructors. I didn't end up a mere Christian barbarian like @ThisIsKyleR or @LarryTaunton or @MattWalshBlog, from my own moral perspective, these people have no certain morality. I wouldn't trust any of these people for a moment.

(6/x)

but I digress. back to Dionysos and "The Bacchae", which impressed me so much.

it didn't scare me away from Dionysos to learn that it was dangerous to trifle with him; one shouldn't expect a god of drunken ecstasy to be tame_. ecstasy can be glorious, but never *safe*.

(7/x)

the business with Dionysos encouraging Pentheus to disguise himself as a woman (and Pentheus gets really *into it*, too) hints at one of the chief traits of the deity: Bacchus is genderqueer. he's both masculine and feminine. he dances on either side of the M/F line.

(8/x)

he's both girlish and pretty, and an emphatically masculine bearded dad figure—that's one of Dionysos's most fascinating qualities, the fact that he's got such starkly different aspects in terms of gender presentation. Dionysos would break the @elonmusk / @mtaibbi brain.

(9/x)

that's *gods* for you! they can look like whoever they want, at different times, and Dionysos is quite a bit more variable than most.

strangely...he's in #CSLewis's #Narnia, in "Prince Caspian". which, uh...was probably a bad mistake, on Jack Lewis's part. a funny one.

(10/x)

the presence of Dionysos in "Prince Caspian" is much like the appearance of Father Christmas in "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe": it shows how clumsy and shoddy the workmanship of #Narnia was. Narnia has little integrity, as a "subcreation". it's a thing of bits.

(11/x)

it's supposed to be its own world, separate from Earth, with its own creation and its own demise—and yet Earth things keep turning up in #Narnia, because #CSLewis was not a very good writer and he needed to prop up his fictional creation with whatever he could think of.

(12/x)

and Lewis had a bad habit of writing *allegorically*—that is to say, he wished to write things that were merely thinly disguised versions of his own Christian beliefs. Jack Lewis wanted to believe that Christianity somehow *superseded* classical paganism and now owned it.

(13/x)

he's not the only one who wants to believe this, of course! if you want an amusing taste of what Christians want to believe about the appearance of Dionysos in "Prince Caspian", here's Joshua McNall of @OKWUniv, writing a highly optimistic essay:

archive.is/YUSkQ

(14/x)

"How C.S. Lewis redeemed the pagan god of wine and wild parties."

somehow Mr. McNall thought Lewis had *tamed Dionysos* by putting him in an inept Christian allegory for children. the mind reels.

Aslan, #CSLewis's thinly disguised Jesus, was not stronger than Dionysos.

(15/x)

it's especially funny because Dionysos's appearance in "Prince Caspian" is actually quite *striking*. he's got his Maenads and Silenus is with him and they're having a grand time, and they destroy a bridge with vines, and it's wonderful! maybe the best thing in the book.

(16/x)

because it's *Dionysos*. Lewis borrowed Dionysos Eleutherios, the _Liberator_, to put in a book intended to shackle children to Christianity.

it was a mistake, Jack. a BAD mistake. I wonder if @PastorMark or @Franklin_Graham might pass along the word.

~Chara of Pnictogen

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