The five points of our faith

Markos posed some really good questions, which I’d like to address:

I understand that the Thiasos is eclectic with a empathise of Chthonic, Dionysian aspects, but I have a question: where do we draw the line to decide who is admitted into the various gods and heroes?

For example: I’ve been researching and writing about Tiresias for the last week. To me, his life and myth merge into the above categories. If not, his aspects are interconnected with other deities and heroes that belong to the pantheon. But he is not in the hero list to my knowledge?

Then if we want to stretch it even further we could start incorporating foreign deities into the pantheon. For example Shiva… There is recognition of Christian saints but the east has had as much influence from the Mediterranean as Christianity in my opinion and you really can’t get any more Dionysian and Chthonic than Shiva.

Anyway, thinking though typing.

First off, Teiresias actually is a member of our pantheon and should be honored during the Feast of the Dionysian Prophets on July 3rd alongside Orpheus, Melampous, Jim Morrison and the rest. In fact, I don’t think it would be inappropriate to also honor him as one of the Dionysian Martyrs on October 7th since he was threatened by Pentheus with torture and death for his evangelistic efforts. The reasons he didn’t make it onto this list is because I was stoned when I put it together and I’ve never really had much in the way of an encounter with him so he didn’t stick in my memory, such as it is. I suppose I should go back at some point and flesh the list out. One of the reasons I haven’t is because it’s merely suggestive, not canonical – I want folks to always remember that they have the freedom to include or omit who they will in their devotions. However our pantheon is collectively shaped so if there’s someone you’d like to see officially admitted you should bring it up to me.

Which brings us to the second point I’d like to discuss – the thiasos of the Starry Bull is an emergent Bacchic Orphic tradition, as I discussed here, but I wouldn’t necessarily classify it as eclectic.

While it’s true that we’re kind of making it up as we go along, that is done within some pretty firm boundaries that help delineate the tradition.

Roughly these are:

* We are Dionysocentric, meaning that everyone in the pantheon and everything in the tradition has to have some connection to Dionysos.

* We are Orphic, meaning that we grant special authority to Orpheus and the body of literature that circulated under his name in antiquity. This is one of the things that gives our tradition its pronounced chthonic and eschatological focus and distinguishes us from other forms of Dionysian religion.

* The thiasos is rooted in Southern Italy, which means that we draw upon the traditions and cult practices that flourished there and give precedence to its localized, variant forms of myth when faced with competing alternatives. This is also what distinguishes us from other forms of Orphism. However not everything Magna Graecian is part of our tradition.

* Though rooted in a specific place and time period our thiasos is also emergent, meaning that we place a strong emphasis on contemporary expressions of this tradition.

* And finally, our thiasos contains a lineaged mystery-tradition which I, at this point in time, am the sole guardian of and the only person with authority to bring others into it. One is not required to seek admittance into the mysteries in order to be a member of the thiasos at either the akousmatikos (listener) or boukolos (tender of the bull) stage, however this exerts a strong influence on the thiasos and the tradition it was founded to express.

Each of these points (and it may help to visualize this as an inverted Pythagorean star) shapes the tradition, meaning that they are a necessary requirement for inclusion, though there is often a lively back-and-forth going on, with some of the strongest tensions being between the rooted and emergent points. For instance Jim Morrison was obviously not hanging out in one of the 5th century BCE Magna Graecian colonies but he is such a strong figure within both contemporary Dionysianism and  the mysteries as I experienced them that this is over-ridden and his place in our tradition firmly established. (Ditto certain elements of folk Catholicism.) I actually had a very interesting and enlightening conversation on the topic of why Morrison is a Starry Bull hero and individuals like Freddie Mercury and David Bowie are not but I need to check in with my interlocutor before sharing that publicly.

Śiva does not meet any of these requirements save being linked to Dionysos, though interestingly there are a lot of parallels between Bacchic Orphism and Saivaism, particularly in its Aghori expression – hence my use of images of sadhus to illustrate various posts in the earliest stages of our group’s formation. But that’s a conversation for another time!