Spirits of Initiation

H. Jeremiah Lewis takes us on a guided tour of the divine nursery--a museum as much as a theatre--where we see as both exhibits on display and actors on stage the Toys of Dionysos. The labyrinthine corridors of their associated imagery and the intoxicating panoply of their legacies in ancient, medieval, and modern literature and philosophy are deftly explored via the marshaling of a great variety of sources. Amongst those contributing to this discussion under Lewis' curation and direction are Homer and Hesiod, Plato and Proklos, Aristophanes and Athenaios, Sophokles and St. Paul. We hear the maddening music of the Tarantists, the sweet strains of the raving Mainades, and the perplexing melodies of the Harlequinade even as we hear the voices of latter-day philosophers and scholars, poets and psychologists contribute to the complex choral dance of the Mystery, the Play, and the Mystery Play that is the Toys of Dionysos. We meet a cast of theological thespians which includes the obvious--Dionysos, Ariadne, and Orpheus--as well as the unexpected and nearly-unknown, who dart on and off stage, lead the chorus or dissolve into it, step forward as fully-fleshed out figures or exit as stock characters entangled in the strings of the deus ex machina, dripping with their own gore. The beating, bloody heart of the Starry Bull tradition and its place in the wider complex of Bacchic Orphic religiosity is on proud and potent display between these covers. Do you want to play?