Liv speaks with raver and researcher Chiara Baldini who talks Dionysus, pre-patriarchal goddesses, and ecstatic worship. Read more from Chiara on Academia.edu and find her Advaya courses here. Help keep LTAMB going by subscribing to Liv's Patreon for bonus content!
CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. Given it's fiction, and typically involves gods and/or monsters, I'm not as deferential as I would be were I referencing the real thing.
Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here: mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions.
Hi, Hello, Welcome.
This is Let's talk about myths baby, and I am your host live because who else would it be. Once again I am here with a conversation episode, and once again I am recording the introduction so far in advance that somehow I just feel like, what am I What should I be saying? Other than what the episode is about. I don't even know. It's having a weird We're having weird brain moment. Today's conversation was with Yara Baldini, who, oh my god. We had such an interesting conversation. It is ostensibly about Dionysus, and it is primarily about Dionysus, but we also talked about I don't even know how to put it all into words. We talked about the prehistoric mother Goddess and how Dionysus fits into that. We talked about bronze age crete. It was very well timed, having you know, by the time I'm recording this, it's still only a few weeks after my Bronze Age series. Even if I realized by the time you listen, it'll be a little while. But still we talk about bronze age crete and how that ties in with Dionysus and all of these prehistoric mother goddess concepts as much as I am airing this episode during Pride Month, and the intention was originally to focus mostly on that, the more sort of gender non conforming aspects of Dionysus. We do talk about that, but definitely went a little deeper into the whole connection with the mother goddess, which doesn't not fit into that part of him generally. This is just it's all about Dionysus, but also ancient psychedelics and like the use of psychedelics, Like that's how it begins looking at, you know, ancient drugs and psychedelics, and how that kind of ties in with Dionysus and the main Ads and the Bacchanalias and these kind of wild, wild, free reigning parties that they, you know, held and and that had all of this, these the women's spaces that it came with, and oh my gosh, there's just so much. I'm just gonna let I'm just gonna let the episode speak for itself. Conversations Beyond the Binary the Divine Madness of Dionysus with Kara Baldini, Actually, first, why don't you introduce yourself that, like, tell me a little bit about why you know, why you talk about Dionysus in this way, or whatever you want to share about your work.
Yeah. So my name is Ciarra Baldini and I'm Italian from a little town near Florence. And yeah, my encounter with Dionysus happened through festivals. So I started going to festivals around my mid twenties. And I had a degree in English linguistics, so nothing to do with history or mythology or anthropology, nothing. And I just went to this amazing festival in Portugal called Boomfestival. And after a very intense first night in the dance floor, in the morning, I just I went to my friend and I said, you have to remind me. I have to research how did we get here? Is this something new? Is this a new way of doing something old? Because I could feel the power of this experience of collective altered state of consciousness, and it was something that united people in a way that I had never experienced before. You know, was like a very large dance floor with maybe fifteen thousand people, and the connection, the bond that it created was just out of this world. And so in this search that was very spontaneous and unpredictable. And you know, I didn't put also a goal at the end of my search. I was just I want to go on this quest. And I you know, I remember Dionysus because I remember studying something in school, but very vaguely. So I started from him and I started book after book very spontaneously, and then I learned about mystery religions and I was hooked. And this was twenty years ago to this year is twenty years ago.
I love that. I mean, what a fascinating way to get into this subject. I'm so glad, I asked. But yeah, I mean it's easy to become obsessed with this stuff once you learn just a little bit, especially when you get to mystery religions, Like I absolutely love everything surrounding that. So what a fun Yeah, I mean, what an interesting way of coming to Dynas. It's like, I feel like he would really appreciate that, you know.
Yeah, And I mean festivals also are a way to make it very alive. You know, it's real. It's not something that you read that happened sometime two thousand, five hundred years ago. This is something that can happen still today. You know, that kind of energy that kind of Also, the techniques, you know, dancing over repetitive beats over long period of time, this is what they used to do. They had these frame drums, and we had electronic music that is just an amplified frame drum basically, or I call frame drums portable sound systems. And so dancing over repetitive beats over a long period of time, ingesting psychotropic substances, you know, two techniques by themselves can trigger you know, the the appearance they be if any of Dionysus. Also, I mean in Dionysian rituals, they also use the sexuality apparently, which did not happen in you know, festival dance floor, but maybe not yet.
It might have happened somewhere on that dance floor, you know, I wouldn't really be surprised. Yeah, that's I mean, it is so timeless, right, I mean, that's that's why I love all of Greek mythology, is because as much as so much of it and the ancient religions can feel really separated from us today, like they ultimately at their core, everything is timeless. It's all just these different ways of seeing these very natural things. When it comes to humanity.
Yes, yes, And I also see how you know I had the experience in a festival. It's a Citrance festival. Citrans is a specific kind of electronic music. But you know, people had that experience in the sixties, for example. You know, I connect a lot to the sixties counterculture, which was the first moment in history, after the Wich Hunts that we were not burned alive for you know, practicing certain techniques, as I said, and it just reappeared in a spontaneous way because you know, dancing freely with the body. These also didn't happen for so long. And you know those people in the sixties were and in the fifties also starting and then in the sixties they were the first to restart using the body and daring to move in ways which had been forbidden for a long time. So daring also to trigger certain inside and epiphanies and just states of mind that we're not allowed for a while, especially in this collective setting, you know, with a lot of people around. And so also those experiences in the sixties for me is like a spontaneous resurgence of certain practices that belong to us in such a you know, at the DNA level, because also we talk about Dionysus, but actually Dionysian rituals where the Greek version of something much older, you know, we go back to the palaeolytic probably, and so it's something that is so hardwired inside of us that we just do it, you know, as soon as we can.
Yeah, that's such an interesting way of seeing it. Like I rarely have looked too deep into the psychotropic like nature of these rituals, but I am so fascinated by it. And yeah, just this idea that it is so timeless, and especially when it comes to these like very natural means of achieving that, you know, like these things are from nature and people have just forever found these ways of utilizing them.
Yeah, but also I want to add here, so there's the techniques, and you know, if we're talking about the psychotropic side of it, I can also mention psychedelics. And you know, if we talk about mysteries of aleosis, there is many theories now more and more pointing and even scientifically proving that there was an LSD like compound used in the initiation in a loosis to demeter and persephony. But then you know, similar substances were also used to spy like the wine of Dionysian rituals. But psychedelics and psychotropics in general, they are non specific amplifiers. This is a definition by Stan Growth that was one of the pioneers of psychedelic therapy and holotropic breathwork, et cetera. So if they are non specific amplifiers, this means that the outcome also depend on the spiritual political set and setting of the people or the group of people using them. So I believe that Dionysian the Dionysian rituals are a specific lineage of these practices that are associated with specific values and beliefs. So you know, now if we go to the sixties and the hippies, you know, we used to believe that that psychedelics would turn anyone into a hippie, you know, love and peace for everyone. Actually, according to the definition of Growth, it's not like this. And so if you put psychedelics in the water system of a city, we used to think, yeah, let's do that, and everybody turns into this love and peace, you know nature, love in person. And actually it's not like that. Because shamanic rituals were used by all kinds with all kinds of intentions. You know, now we're bordering with magic. There is also black magic, and there is also you know, ways to use shamanism techniques of ecstasy to reach different kinds of outcomes according to different kinds of intentions and different kinds of value and belief systems.
That's very interesting. Yeah, I mean, as someone who pays too close attention I think to the horrors of humanity that you know, yeah, you know, it's not not always going to result in the same type of effect, definitely.
Yeah. Because also these are spaces where you become very vulnerable, and so you can always find someone that want to take advantage of that vulnerability. And we see this for example now in Ayahuaska ceremonies, where you can find a charlatan that's going to give you the worst experience of your life and maybe even being abused, but actually you can also find amazing people holding space for the ceremony and have the monst transformational and incredible experience of your life. So similarly, also, I see that the Dionysian tradition was connected to specific values, and we can go deeper into that. But at the same time, I don't want to idealize them and also say that you know, human nature is what it is, it's very ambiguous, like Dionysus himself, and so yeah, the outcome really depends on the integrity of the set and setting and the values that you want to enhance in that experience.
Well, I not to like, you know, I'd love if we can connect it back to this, but I also want, you know, to focus on we talked about in our emails. We talked about, you know, looking at Dionysis as this pre patriarchal figure. This you know, I don't want to say prehistoric, but obviously like a lot of it is going to come into a prehistoric period. If not all I would say, but you know, it's it's become my I mean, it's always been my obsession to talk about everything outside of the patriarchy, but recently looking at at these figures where you know, we know that they existed before the particularly patriarchal nature of those who came later, but all of the writing tends to be from that patriarchal period. So we often are lost in terms of like an actual kind of you know, a written history of what happened, and we're working instead with like you know, archaeological discoveries and things. But so I would just generally love love to hear, you know, all about that nature of Dionysus and maybe how it connects to what you've been talking about, and also you know, to look at how Dionysus fits outside of the binary alongside this pre patriarchal like I just have Now, I have so many questions and or I have so many I just want to hear everything basically.
Yeah, but actually this is exactly the point of contact. You know, the fact that he's a pre patriarchal god, so coming from a tradition that goes way back, you know, for from take classical Greece as a point of reference, which is more or less fifth century Busy. So we have to look at what was coming before. And you know, in a way, the myths that we have is like effluorescence of something, you know, like the miss ellium image of something that is underground and that comes up in mushrooms here and there. It's something that was already present in the cultural substratum of people for a long time before it came out and was coded in the myths that we still have. So you know, when I was looking back. Okay, so Dionysus arrives like this, you know, we know about the manners rituals already happening, maybe back to the seventh eighth century busy, but what was behind? Because also Dionysus has so many characteristics, characteristics that make him stand out, you know, culturally, really the fact that he's so ambiguous, that he's not a man or a woman, and that he's divine and childlike at the same time, and an animal and a god and something from nature but also something that helps people to live together in cities and also gave rise to the theater. There's so many contradictions. But actually, when we look at all these characteristics, the fact that he was very loved by women or women wear a big part and a prominent part in the way that initiations were organized. The fact that everyone was allowed to be initiated, whether you were a slave or an emperor or whoever. He was a very democratic god. So and the fact that he's also an anti tyrannical god, like in the Bakeye by Euripides. So he's you know, the the antipodes of Pentheos and challenging this tyrant and challenging the ways and the rules and dos and don'ts of tyranny, you know, when you look at it from the perspective. Okay, but he comes from another culture. He comes from a culture where women had prominent positions. There was probably a much more egalitarian social arrangement, and there were not all these rules about you know, gender entity, sexual orientation. This is all stuff that is very patriarchal, like this creation of the the hierarchization of opposites, you know, men and women, men on top of women, heterosexual, homosexual, heterosexual on top like this, creating these categories where one is superior to the other is a very patriarchal thing. Is what patriarchy does, body and mind, irrational and rational. So in another non patriarchal society, then you understand, you know where Dionaysers come from, where all of these rules don't make sense anymore, and so where you know, also in terms of politics, because I like to go there, I like to look at all. Okay, but so politically how did it work? And I've recently learned about the way that Dionysian people, you know, the people belonging to the Taz that were the associations, private associations that were organizing the initiations. I recently learned how those people participating in those organizations supported and even facilitated the beginning of democracy in Athens. So the fact that they were already taking decisions in a way that everybody had a vote, and that everyone was participating to the organization in a more egalitarian way apparently created in them through the practice. Also, because Dionysian rituals are spaces where these dichotomies and rules of what's okay and what's not kind of like fall down and everybody is on the same level. You know, when you're high, you can do whoever you want, but you're still, you know, high as everybody else. It's really powerful in terms of breaking off the hierarchies. And so these people had this experience in their bones, they had an embodied experience of equality, and so you know, the step was small, was short to then Okay, let's get rid of this oligarchic rule, this rule of the few, the rule of the rich people, and let's imagine and put in practice a radically new system. Of course, it was already a patriarchal situation, so it was mainly a boys club, this aden and democracy. So I also wonder how the women participating in the rituals and you know, being priestesses of Dionysus Dionasis and initiating men in Dionysian rituals. I wonder how it was for them to really realize, Okay, we're really out of this game. And yeah, I think of about how they must have felt. But so this is just an example of something that maybe was coming from another culture, that was coming from before, and this was just what was left and the kind of you know, possibilities that were left in fifth century Athens.
Yeah, well, I mean it's one of the things I talk about most often, you know, on the show, is just how much of all of the mythology that survives for the most part, you know, save some sources, does come from this classical period or later and so often specifically documented in Athens and all these different things, and and kind of you know what that might say about what existed not only beyond Athens, but yeah before, right. I just recently finished a whole month of episodes on the Bronze Age and looking at yeah, all that you know, we know and we don't know because when it comes to the Bronze Age, we're really lacking in textual sources and instead, you know, we're working with a lot of archaeological record and things like that, and we know that Dionysus was part of it, but you know, we don't know too too much, and and it's such an interesting thing to imagine, and well, Dionysis generally is is always been my one of my favorites for you know, every reason you've already said, just this nature of him, how he just doesn't fit into anything, and kind of what that really means, you know, how he is this very ancient god but also this very young god, and how he both comes from the East mythologically but also Thebes, and you know, all the ways that that you can kind of see the mythographers trying to navigate how he doesn't fit right, Like these are all these attempts to explain what remained of this god that was clearly so ancient and still so confusing to them, you know, in this classical period that they really had to kind of bend over backwards to make him fit into these various narratives. And you know what that ultimately says about about like the very concept of Dionysus, and it's just, yeah, there's so many questions and so many interesting things about the character broadly, but.
So maybe we can go because you know, we're circling around it and we haven't mentioned it. So the name Dionysus was found written for the first time in the thirteenth century BC on as part of these tablets written in liner B on the island of Crete, so thirteen century BC. On the island of Crete, there was the Mycenean culture, which arrived more or less in fourteen fifty BC, so it was the beginning of Mycenian culture in Crete when they arrived there. Mycenian culture was already present in the mainland at Mycene and other places. You know, was a very typical Bronze Age culture with warrior aristocrats and being buried with their swords and like the old masks, the gold masks and all of that, like very patriarchal, you know, rule of the power to take life, if you you know, for the people who read Ryann Eisler, the Chalice and the Blade, the domination, the dominator societies or yeah, they worship the power to take life. So this is the time when really it's like full on. The more powerful you you are powerful if you have a lot of power to take life, which is still now how it is because the most powerful nation is the one with the biggest army. The stronger are your weapons, you know, the more political power you have in the world, you know, arena. I always like to bring it back to the present. So this was Mycenian culture in crete. But the Mycenians they found another culture in crete, which were the Minoans or Minoons, which was a more ancient culture that was already there and has been there probably since the sixth millennium BC, and evolved into the Minoans, and they were a very different kind of culture, like the opposite. If you look at the art, you see it because Minoan art is just sublime, the way that nature is represented, the octopus, the shells, the dolphins, like the sensuality that is expressed also in representing the human body, and these priestesses with bare breasts and like god seas that are just so hot, like hot women.
What you can't see is that my desk is littered with like I have a bunch of coasters with various Minoan pieces of art. That I've gotten across Grease and yeah, my arm is tattooed with a great number of Minoan art pieces.
Oh my god.
Yeah, I'm with you on all of that. Absolutely, Yeah, there's I have a real soft spot in my heart for the Minoan culture.
Yeah, but you know, Minoan's is the kind of culture and the kind of iconography that either you know it and you're obsessed, or you don't know it and you're about to get Yes. Yeah, there's no other way around. And so this culture that was there before it has been puzzling researchers for decades because, like Dionysus, it doesn't fit. It's weird, you know, it happened, it flourished in the Bronze Age, but doesn't have the characteristics that make a civilization. You know, in the Bronze Age they are considered the civilization because they had monumental buildings, they had some level of centralized administration, you know, representing some kind of early state. But then nothing else is there. No fortified towns, no iconographical representation of the power of to take life, basically, no representations of war.
So in the you don't think the double axis would be applicable in that just out of curiosity.
Double axes are generally considered ceremonial.
More sacrificial type stuff, yes.
Or symbolic, it was all It could have been a symbol that they just carry, doesn't necessarily you know, need to be used as a tool, or it could have been used also in sacrificial setting, maybe to slaughter animals for sacrifices. But there is like a very conspicuous absence of images of war.
No, that, yeah, that is very true now that I think more about it. It's all dancing and bull jumping.
And yes and celebrating and lots of priestesses together and absence of individualization. So because you know, this is compared to the nearby, to the neighboring civilizations, which which were the Egyptians the heat Tides in Anatolia, and the Sumerians Therians. So if you look at palatial iconography of these civilizations, you always have important kings like who did you know with their deeds or gestures? How do you say, like what they did in life written down? Yeah, and them slaughtering the enemy and like killing the lion because they are stronger than the lion and stomping on top of the enemies. This is how they would enforce their power over the people by showing that they can kill you. When Arthur Evens in nineteen hundred started digging Nasus, that is the biggest and most famous palace in Minoan crete, you know, he found dolphins and flowers and lots of bare breast, the priestesses and even like processions of male dignitaries offering gifts to a female figure that was clearly depicted in an authority position. So there was clear representations of women in you know, positions of authority, and there was not a presentsentation of men in position with that kind of authority. There's many men. There's not that men don't exist. They're very beautiful, curtly dressed. How do is this country.
Clads holding fish sometimes and the ones from Aritia.
Bringing fish, yeah, or bringing gifts, bringing beautiful because the ceramics that these people would make is just unbelievable. Like the spirit of the people you really see from the art. And so you know, the the researchers were their cheologists were like, okay, so we have the first civilization in European territory. We are supposed to you know, also back then at the beginning of the nineteen hundreds even more so it was this colonial attitude that we had to prove the Western superiority, you know, towards like everybody else and how you know, and then they were left with this civilization with all these priestesses and dolphins like. So, you know, Arthurrivens was like, okay, this throne when he found the throne. This throne belonged to King Minus, the legendary King of Crete, which was what we knew from the Homeric Odyssey, from the Odyssey Byomer, which came away after the Nance much so probably Minus was a Mycenean king. Maybe you know, someone like him did exist, but much later, because when we're talking about the flourishing of the Minoan civilization is between seventeen hundreds and fourteen fifty DC, so you know, like one thousand years before classical Greece. It's a long time for a civilization of you know, like to exist because until then they thought that Greece was the first civilization of Europe. So they found the people that inspired the Greek civilization that came later. But it was hard to really give a realistic interpretation of what it was they didn't have the tools, they couldn't understand it. So King Minus was defined as you know, the guy who sat on the throne. But then there were no depictions of this king on the walls that they reconstructed, you know, painstakingly, all these pieces. Again there were only women, and so apparently ar two evens put together. It's the Lily Prince or Prince of Lily's But it was like a Frankensteines corporation of putting different pieces that he found on the floor together. Because this headdress that it has is usually associated with priestesses.
Hmmm.
Also the color of the skin is not really clear because usually white is the color of women and this darker brown is the color of men, and the color of the Lily prince is not clear. And so he said, okay, this is the priest king of the palace, and the palace is the residence of this monarchy that is ruling over the whole of Crete and with this powerful fleet, they're ruling over the whole of the Aegean. See. But you know, because he was British, so he was also trying to recreate a British Oh wow.
Yeah, he was incredibly skewed in his assessments of it.
So then you know, with years more and more we know about the Minoans and we know that. Let's keep in mind, so we're doing this search because crete is the first place where we found the name Dionises written down.
And let's not forget that we don't know what they'd written down in linear A. Yes, because that's its own whole fascinating you know idea, because obviously linear B was introduced by the Mycenians, so it is yeah.
And linar B was an Indo European language. Linear A is a pre Indo or non in not even pre it's a non Indo European language. And so we don't know how non patriarchal people used to talk. We have no idea. We know that the word labyrinth is from linear A, which is very interesting because also libraries is the name of the double axe that is one of the main symbols. And the palacies were like labyrinths. They were not fortified, but they were built in a way that if you don't know your way around, you can only get to specific places that were the more or public spaces like the central court, like this big space in the middle. But then you know, like the throne room even is underground and not easy to access, and other spaces. So these palaces were multifunctional with the religious, political, administrative, but also workshops for the production of different like pottery or weaving, or also storage for wine, oil, cereals. So they and they were not built by slaves. This is the big difference. Also all these other palaces of like the Pyramids or the Zigurads, they are built by slaves.
Well, the Pyramids sports technically built by slaves. They were paid and everything.
Still it was not like the people deciding.
No, no, definitely, you just want to clarify. But that's a long standing you knows miss history.
But also do we really know like if everybody got paid, maybe someone got paid, then someone couldn't get paid because slavery always, you know, not always, but existed a lot of course.
Yeah, yeah, not to say it didn't exist.
I just know that, you know, so apparently, you know, the people built the palaces, and there were palaces in many different centers on crete.
So how do we know that that the people built them.
Because there's no evidence of slavery.
But but that doesn't clarify necessarily just like out of I'm just curious if there was, if there is anything that.
Yeah, the thing is the fact that these are not fortified also make them into spaces for the people, the fact that people would work there and would use them in many different ways, and the fact that there's no proof, there's no proof whatsoever that these were restedancies of the elite. So these question also of the elite is not clear because it's not the kind of elite based on wealth that then translates into political power. So the concept of palace is problematic, and the concept of elite is problematic in Minoan crete, so you have you know, the feminists came later and said, you know, feminist scholars and said, so if there was an elite, maybe there were priestesses. But then again, it's the kind of service that you give to the community. It's not something that you do for your own gain of you know, your own prestige. And that's also probably why there was no representation of individuality, because pristesses were represented as any other priestess that came before and after, because this was like a service that you perform in service of the community, So it's not in service of your own gain like most of elites, but in service of the people. So there is all of these narratives that are still very debated. And you know, also then Maria Gimbuddha's work came into the game, the Lithuanian I don't know if you ever speak about her.
No, I feel like I've heard of her. I need to do more research.
Yeah, because this is like a good point for you know, like imagining a non patriarchal world, because she's the one. She's a Lithuanian archaeologist. So she was educated and became I do you say, like an expert in her field. She was excavating in central eastern Europe, so being from lithuan Also, she died in the nineties, so you know, she grew up in the time of Soviet Union and so imagine being a woman and making your way this in this world in the forties and fifties, and she became a leading expert of Neolithic archaeology. So she was excavating these cultures in eastern Central Europe that she called Old Europe, and she identified this cluster of cultures that happened in between the five thousand and three thousand, five hundred BC. So let's you know, think about it, that'll be five thousand BC's alone. It's Neolithic times. So these are people that were using agriculture as the main form of suspect sustenance, but also were using foraging, and they created these megasites, and now they're given these name Megasites. If you look it up, part of them are even in Ukraine. So where now there is this war that is still raging, there used to be these cultures of peace that managed to live together. They managed to create cities in the Neolithic that were way bigger than any other settlement in those years anywhere in the world, but without any evidence of centralized government. So in Buddha said that this is what she called the civilization of the goddess because also with the hundreds of clay figurines, so everybody's more or less familiar with these goddess figurines, So hundreds and hundreds like that, they were like staples of every house, and they were also with miniature replicas of houses or ovens of like, recreating these social worlds in a way where women had a prominent role. Because in that in neolithics, society is founded on agriculture, It was also kind of intuitive that women had this prominent role because women are the ones that were the experts of plants, of the domestication of plants, of the different uses of plants, and how to transform plants into food. You know, they had a different role than later. And so these Megasites, this culture of the Goddess, this way of organizing themselves peacefully. For eight hundred years, these places existed. They were building houses and burning them on top of each other, so that they created these mounds also that are huge, like three hundred acres or hectors. Now I have to look. There was mixed, but like huge, big, huge, concentrical, so that if you look at them forever, you know, they managed to reconstruct from above. It looks like a tree that has been cut and you see the concentrical rings all, you know, like a bit irregular, very organic. Yeah, and so you know, Kimbuddha said, okay, there was a culture that was coming from Anatolia. So if you go even before that, because agriculture comes from Anatolia, from the Fertile Crescent that is in the Near East. And then chatal Huyuk, this famous Neolithic settlement in Anatolia. So now with the ancient DNA studies, we can't prove that she was right that actually these people were coming from Anatolia, and the same people that were coming from Anatolia created both what she called Old Europe and then they also went to create Anatolian farmers is the name of the DNA. This is non Indo European and this is non patriarchal. And so it doesn't mean that they didn't have conflicts. It doesn't mean that it's like this mega peaceful age. It means that they had ways to deal with conflicts that were not about creating chronic warfare. There is a difference. Yeah, yeah, there's a difference. Yeah, you could have all the conflicts you want and not have chronic warfare.
Yeah, which you know.
To us today, we're supposed to be the you know, the end of this ladder of progress, and we're stuck in chronic warfare. So they survived eight hundred years there without chronic warfare. They had figured out something that we've never figured out afterwards. So Jim buddhas said, these people is the same culture that funded Minoan crete, Neolithic crete and then Minoan cret. So she says that Minoan Crete is the last survive in civilization of the Goddess. So non patriarchal civilization that survived longer just because they were more south. And so when this nomadic step people started coming from the Caspian from these steps on to the north of the Caspian Sea, that where this nomadic pastoral east the patrilinair because the others were matrially in people who brought patriarchy basically to Europe when they came and first they arrived there in Old Europe, and it was not pretty what happened. We also know from the DNA now like the y chromosome of the Neolithic people that were living there, the male chromosome disappears within a few generations, almost disappears. So this means that men were systematically killed. Women were used to create a new lineage because they were pattery linear. So the important thing is who's your father, right, doesn't matter, who's your mother. They would take women from different villages, doesn't matter. So now we know that there was a big shift in culture. We don't know, you know, if it was all like this, and if there were situations where it was more peace full or emerging of cultures or not known. But what I wanted to say is Minoan crete because it was more south. They only around arrived with the Myceinians. And even that now we know with the DNA analysis that Mycenians were a mix of Anatolian DNA and step ancestry DNA. So you know, it's all pieces of the puzzle. And this, you know, from this perspective, Minoans make sense because also they were the only people that turned you know, that they created that had a writing system, paved roads and public sewage systems, like they created some kind of administration. Also that they were using these ring seals who still don't know how because the images are so creative and crazy and how this was part of a bureaucracy. It's like only them, they can be so creative, and they were you know, a different lineage of culture, completely different where women and what women care about, so you know, not having wars that kill your children, this is what in theory women should care about. And also having a kind of like ecstatic you know, religious merging with nature which also is part of men, and iconography and dancing and you know, all these activities that we like, like these yeah, they were the only ones that survived long enough to you know, create also these forms of social political organization that resembles what we call a civilization. Of course, Madia in Buddhas was saying, we should call civilization what they were already doing in the five thousand BC. Yeah, that is a civilization because these people lived peacefully for eight hundred years. Yeah, finding ways to organize themselves and scale up, scale up the settlement as much as you want, and have a minimal footprint on the environment. They were amazing.
Yeah. No, no, I'm just I mean, I'm taking it all in and you know, of course it's unsurprising but ridiculous that, Yeah, what to us defines a quote unquote civilization is something patriarchal, like just we can't fathom the idea that we had that humanity had civilizations before the men took go, before they took control. Like it's just yeah, I mean, it's it's both fascinating and infuriating and mm hmmm, m.
H m.
So how it's like I'd love to I'm fascinated by all of this, but I also want to bring back Dionysus into it. And because I'm just curious, you know how it is that that this kind of most ancient form of him as a character or a concept, you know, fits fas I'm just so curious about the nature of him, you know, in this kind of fluidity, kind of way, gender fluidity.
So wait, before that, I wanted to mention his identity as a vegetation god because this is what connects to the Minoans. Yeah, so the main deity. And some people say we cannot really talk about.
Do you call it a mono monotheism?
Yeah, a menoposal. So I have brain fog moments. Yeah, we can you know, can we talk about monotheism or is some kind of politicism where a goddess is still kind of like this overarching figure. Yeah. But so there was this mountain goddess. She's represented in iconography, and even Arthur Evans had to say, okay, they were worshiping goddess. I have to also, the beginning of the nine teen hundreds or the end of the eighteen hundreds was when it came out these books about primitive matriarchies. Gimbuddhas came much later and her take is different, but already this myth of the Great Mother was already starting. You know, because these goddess figurines were already circulating.
I mean they're everywhere, like it's it's so it's so obvious that there was a prehistoric mother goddess like pretty everywhere.
And also when you look at Greek mythologies, it goes back to the mother of the gods many many times.
Oh yeah, I mean I recently did a whole episode looking at how the theogony also kind of exists as almost a documentation of the fall of the mother goddess, the like slow subjugation of goddesses in favor of their more powerful gods. Like you know, ostensibly it's just this the it's just the theogony, but it's like you can kind of see it as the sort of evidence of what happened in this kind of prehistoric period.
So there's many indications that there was this female figure that was in a way a mother, but in another way also representation that is very raw of nature, because she could give life, she could also take life, and she could regenerate life. So these three aspects also according to Gimbuddhas, are the three aspects of this neolithic goddess figure that is connected to nature, life, giver, death, wielder and regenera tricks, that's the words that they use. So this figure is the one presiding over the so called fertility rituals, which is another buzzword that we heard one thousand times, which is connected to having ritual in specific moments of the year in connection to both the life cycles of plants, but also the cycles of the moon and certain stars. So it was like this connection between life on earth and what happens in the sky very powerful, and with the third world being the underworld. So these rituals, you know, like the mysteries of Aleosis is a very you know, Western example, because also there's other examples in other cultures. But like Demeter is an example of this goddess and persephony going. You know, in the myth she goes in the underworld and then she can come out only for a specific amount of time, and this is connected to these cycles of the life of plants. So apparently also you know, reconnecting to Creede Demeter herself. In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, she's I was kidnapped by the pirates from the shores of Crete against my will and by force. So there is a strong connection between the mysteries of aleosis in terms really of the mythology of this. You know, the archetype that Demetern Persephone represents so as the mother and the daughter as mother nature giving life to plants, and Persephone is also called which means also the sprout. And so these two forms of life, let's say, where one is this goddess that represents existence like Demeter, existence in the way that never was born and will never die. And then there is this other element that is Persephone in the case of Demetern Persephone, that represents life on earth that dies and is reborn eyes and is reborn with the God that's presiding over this reverse and ensuring this reverse. And men would pray that this cycle would go on and on and on, because then they would feel that they're part of these cycles and their soul will reborn and their body also will be reborn, like they would participate in this chain of existence that will happen forever and find comfort in feeling part of these grand cycles of life. So this is the mythological matrix that is also you know, recreated in the myth of Inana and Dumuzi or Ishtadentamuds or Cibilian artists. All the mystery religions also Isis and Osiris. There is this dying and resurrecting god in the case of Persephone, a woman. So Dionysus is the vegetation god and the mother goddess of the Mountain of Crete was his mother, you know, because he's missing. You know, who's this powerful female figure that is, you know, his original mother, not Semily because Semily was also a later version of that, because she's also the name is connected to Earth and so she's an Earth mother.
I'm curious what the mother goddess being his Yeah, this kind of this older mother form, Like so where does that where is that coming from?
So this is also what Gimbutas says that he was originally a vegetation god from Crete. So the fact that he's because also in these kinds of mythologies, like these specific mythological matrics that is reconnected to this dying and resurrecting gods, the celebrations were always ecstatic. So all celebrations of these mother goddess are ecstatic. Dionysus is like someone that misses this mythological counterpart and only you know, when we think about this previous provenance from Mino and crete, we could find this powerful goddess that kind of like instructed him also in his rights. So if we think about the myth of Dionysus, the one where he is born of Semile and Zeus. But then Zeus appears as a god in front of her and she is burnt, and so he takes the baby and put in the tie and then, you know, but what happened later later, so he goes, you know, he's born as a child, he's given to the nymphs. He goes to mountain night nis are nights, I don't know, you say. So what happens afterwards is that Era still jealous, which is also very patriarchal of this jealous wives and being poor betrayed by these guys doing whatever they want is just horrible. So Erra according to this myth that of course was coded later and later and later. Yeah, so she drives him crazy by you know, he gets drunk or she drives him crazy in some way, and he's wandering completely like in this alter state of consciousness that he cannot you know, he's losing his mind, which is also what can happen in a state of alter state, you can also become psychotic. So he's being psychotic until he finally reaches Ria. So he goes to Rea, which represents again one of these iconographic or archetypal figures of the mother of the gods. Andrea takes care of him, gives him the instruments for his rights, like the timpanon and probably the oulos the fluid, and teaches him the rights so that she teaches him a lineage, a kind of practice that would make sure that his alter state is beneficial and is not a psychotic state. So again there is this connection between Dionysus with this powerful female ancient Mother of God's kind of female figure that is an expert of ecstatic rights. So shamanic rituals, we can say something that comes from way back when we were mentioning the paralytic and she is the one kind of like passing the button in this moment. It's very moving for me because it feels like the old pre patriarchal culture kind of saying Okay, now it's you. Now you will become the protagonist of the story. I've been the protagonist for a long time. Now it's you. Whether she likes it or not, and he becomes this vegetation god that is connected to ecstatic rituals and more and more connected also to wine, and then he becomes the god of wine and then Teater and everything else. But I really see it like an Etflix series where the first seasons you have the mother as the protagonist. Yeah, and then at some point it's the sun. Yeah, sounds less lover because also there was this this the call of me, like we never know if it's a son or a lover.
Yeah, that's yeah, that's really really interesting. I it's it's so fascinating to look at, Yeah, the ways in which these stories do transition, and these characters transition, and you know, if the button was going to be passed to any god, yeah, it's it's nice that it was him because he's very kind to all genders. You know, he's not the patriarchy that that everyone else is. At least.
Yeah, it had to be him or you know, he became you know from if you look at him from this perspective, he will always be the son of that goddess and he represents her culture in the patriarchal world. That's the inheritance that she gives him. Okay, now it's you and he's taking it on like, yes, I will represent even as myself a kind of male quote unquote, but will represent your culture. So a culture where women have prominent positions, they are empowered in representing the female side of creation or how to say, maybe we can mention after what happened in Rome and the problems with the prominent role of women in the in the rights of Bacus, but so women had a prominent role in the culture of Dionysus. Everybody was allowed no matter you know, this a girl itarian. The value of equality so important to stress again and again, the fact that everybody can be in the full expression of who they are, no matter what they like in sexuality, what are their tastes if they you know, if they're non binary, because non binary people always existed, even to a certain extent, trans people always existed, and these were the places, you know, like these rituals were the safe spaces for these people. Dionises welcomed everyone, and which was also a problem. And this connection to homosexuality or non aterosexuality, let's say, it is also interesting that I'm starting to find all these references connecting nonaterosexuality to create again if you read probably I don't know if you've read it by a guy called Arthur Evens, But it's not Arthur Evens me no Creed the god of ecstasy, sex, roles, and the Madness of Dionysus. So this was a gay guy that wrote in the eighties in New York, like quite an amazing scholar because he really goes to look into Dionysus as a non non heterosexual god. Sometimes I hesitate to say queer because also is such a modern word.
But notonormative also works, right, yea, because it wasn't just yeah, the heterosexual, just like the general yeah, noormative. Yeah.
So for example, in that book, I found out that Plato commenting on the myth of ganimedis gun I don't know, and Zeus, because they have a love story, they say, ah, this myth must have come from Crete. That's the comment of Plato. So there is all these subtles, and Arthur Evens make other references of non eteronormativity in Crete. So apparently it was known that on that island you could just you know, be more free than they became afterwards. So but what was I saying? So women with prominent roles, egalitarianism, freedom of expression of your nature, whatever it is, fight against tyranny. The political side also very important, which also comes later during the repression of the Bacchanalia in Rome. So all of these are threads coming from the mother. From this, we understand how weird it is, because he would not be weird in a pre patriarchal culture. He would be like you know, everybody else. But then the people that would join his rights would be the ones that have issues in paerarchy, powerful women, people that don't identify with with deteronormativity, people that believe in a more egalitarian and less hierarchical world. This would be the people of Dionysius. Of course. Not only let's not make two huge generalizations, but these people would find in Dionysian rituals a space of of safety and freedom.
Mm hmmmm.
It's so interesting to me that he wasn't I guess limited is the word I want to use. Like, he wasn't you know, as affected by the Greek patriarchy as we might expect. You know, he kind of or and the rights around him, you know, kind of went under the radar in a way that it's just kind of it's interesting that that he was kind of allowed to continue on like this, and I think, you know, them eventually connecting him with with theater and wine was also their way of making him fit into the box a little better than he otherwise would have. But it's just interesting to me that that it was kind of allowed not in not in Rome obviously, but but you know, for for a time he was still kind of allowed to be this god of freedom and egalitarianism to an extent.
Yeah, I mean, in a way, I think because he was recognized as an ancient tradition, so because sometimes he's recognized as a foreigner, but and at the same time as something old I think is in the back he's let me try to remember, or it's Penteus that says something about women. When the wine appears, the women go crazy, and the chorus says, don't you you know, don't you respect the gods like something, and then Tidesa says something about something that has been happening for a long time, it's a law. It turns into something that should always happen, something like this. So there's always a connection to dionisis is something that comes from way back.
Yeah, Yeah, now that exists always, and he is both new and old and yeah and Greek and ford and that that is why is so interesting as compared to so many of the other gods.
Yeah and also respected. Yeah, you know. And this is also maybe we speak about what happened in Rome because now there is all.
Sure, I'm not as familiar with it, so but I know generally what happens.
So more or less in the second century BC. So a bit later we were talking about the beginning of democracy in Athens the fifth century BC, so the second century BC, which is after the Lenistic Age, which is more or less the third century BC, the time of Alexander the Great. After Alexander the Great, the cult of Dionysus is exported to Italy, or is imported by the Romans or some people. It was already present in a way, because you know, south of Italy was a Greek colony, so there was something there already happening. But then also before the Romans, in the place where I am now, in Tascany, there was the Etruscan civilization that also had a vegetation god, that was also connected to wine, which was fullfluence. I don't know if you've you've heard of full fluence. No, such a funny name. Again, fourfluence means sprout. There's again this connection to sprout.
That's so interesting.
Full fluence. And there is a town called Popolonia, and Popolonia is the town of full fluent. So full fluence was the Etruscan Dionysus. So there was already you know, people were already doing parties with wine and and you know, held in a ceremonial way. So when Dionysus was important into Roman culture, he became Baccos and many people know him as Baccus well, and he.
Was Bacchus in Greek too, but Rome like almost got rid of Dionysius. They made him only Bacchus.
Yeah, Baccos. Bacchus also is connected to revel, the verb to revel, and I always say that Bacchus is the ravers, the raver arrived in them, and you know, the cult just spread. You know, people started doing these initiations without formal authorization of the Senate. So Rome was this quite religiously tolerant culture. As long as a foreign cult was accepted by the Senate, it could it was tolerated, like it had happened a few years before with Sibylly, I.
Was gonna say yeah, because they really formally bring her over and they make such a yeah, a real kind of it's very specific. So that's very interesting as a on the other side.
Yeah, but also when they brought Civilly, they didn't realize that all these uh priests, like they brought a lot with her, yes, self carustrated priests. Again, you know, this is all Dionysian, you know in a way.
Well, and it's it's more evidence of these Yeah, these people beyond the binary, these people who do not fit into heteronormativity.
Connected to a goddess that is connected to nature, another mountain from Anatolia. So all of that, and so Baccus spread without authorization, and the rites were called Baccanalia. So the Baccanalia started happening more and more, and apparently what happened is that the Senate at some point got scared because there were so many people that were initiated. And these people, that's the point that we've been saying until now, they believed in a value system which was different than the value system of the kind of society that Roman society was, which was heavily militarized, heavy, like you had to be a soldier.
And the reliance on enslavement in Rome different than Greece. Obviously Greece had it in a heavy way, but yeah, the difference was like the threat that some that that the Baccanalia could cause to Rome was yeah, definitely very heavier than than what it would what it was in Greece.
Yeah, because then also it was a very misogynist society and in the Baccanalia women had you know, they were priestesses, they could initiate men, which was seen as a reverse of what was allowed. So this was like Nogo so militarized orgynist, homophobic, like it had like super patriarchy, patriarchy square. I don't know howmand. So the story that we know is from Titus Livius. That's the only source that we have about this episode known as the Baccanalia Affair or the Repression of the Baccanalia. He's a Roman historian that wrote about three hundred years after the events, and you know, it tells a story where he makes it into like some kind of soap opera with this ex slave woman because slaves were allowed in the initiation, so she was a freed woman and she was about to marry this guy, and she comes to know that someone close to her fiance is going to initiate him into the baccanalia. So she goes to the Senate to speak to the politicians, and she says, I'm going to break the vow of silence that covers what happens in these rituals, because I know what happens, because I've been there as a girl a company in my honor when I was a slave, and I know that what happens is all kinds of crimes that you can possibly imagine, that all of them Keenlyn, perjury, rape, like everything. She says, I don't want my fiance to be initiated. So probably this was an excuse that was made because the threat was actually political.
Yeah. Well, and the idea of like putting it on a woman having done this is like so just over the top too.
Yeah. And also Levy says that, yeah, and these rights were already happening for some time in Italy, and there was this priestess from Campania, which is the region of Naples, which's also an interesting like a campaign priestess that was already changing the rules and making the rituals happening during the night and many times a month, and like all of these new rules created by her. So there was you know, so she was depicted as a dangerous woman because she was able to change rules of rituals or to create her own rules. And so the Senate decides to repress, decides, Okay, we have a great story. We have a great excuse to talk to the people of Rome in a public assembly and explain why we want to repress. Because they knew that this was an ancient tradition coming from Greece. Even so they had they had to show some kind of respect in front of the people. And this is also interesting. So we have the speech of Consul Lucius Posthumius from Titus Livy or live. I don't know how you say it.
We say Olivian, most English, I think.
So we have the speech of Consul Lucius Posthumius, which probably is the most historical document, like part of the story of the whole story. And it's amazing to read the speech because he's really like, okay, guys, I know you've heard them. They're so loud at night. Like some people say, it's some kind of ritual some other people say they're just having fun, you know, and if I tell you how many people they are, you would be seized by extreme terror. And especially if I tell you what kind of people they are. First of all, they are women, and they are the source of this evil thing. It's just amazing to read it.
And then I feel so modern now too, is like yeah, just like all the ways that now fear is used against people who don't fit, just like all yeah, wow wow.
And then there is men. Then there's males scarcely distinguishable from females having lost their mind for lack of sleep, for drink, you know, and can. And then he said something like, so the dancing freaks, these dancing fagots, literally, according to him, do you think they would take the sword to defend the chastity of your wives and children?
Oh my gosh.
You know. So he goes straight into this issue of male pride and the fact that if you dance, you're not a soldier, and the true thing that if you belong to that kind of worldview, if you believe in that worldview and value system, then you don't want to take the sword and kill other people, which in a you know, in that kind of situation. Then it was a big problems if because also the age of men when they were initiated in the baccanalia and starting to you know, the army was the same age. It was like teenage, right, So yeah, do you think that people that took this oath of allegiance would defend the chastity of your wife and children? So there is something about of allegiance towards Dionysus or Bacchus was actually stronger this bond connecting the initiates with Dionysus and his worldview then the bond that connected citizens to the Senate. So this was a big problem. So then he you know, because as I was saying, they know that this is a very ancient and respected tradition, so they don't prohibit the cult completely, but they make very strict rules to perform it, which is the same thing but done in a way that you know, yeah, we still allow you to do it, but to get the authorization, you have to have one hundred senators or you cannot be more than five, and there cannot be any shared money. And they were cut in all of the you know, the independents of these associations. So then he reads the actual the law. So this is part of the law, you know, all these conditions to practice the cult, and that those who've been practice in the cult they need to appear in front of the authorities. They can go to jail or get killed. So the law is called Senatus consultum the baccanalibus, and this the text of the law that we only had in Titus Leave you Aburbcona. That was the name of the book on the history of Rome. Actually in the seventeen hundreds was found a copy in a bronze plaque in southern Italy during the excavation of a villa of this Austrian noble, you know, aristocrat, because southern Italy was under Austria in the seventeen hundreds. So they found like it's like this, big I saw it. It's in the Constance Stories Museum in Vienna. So they found the actual text of the Senatus consultumcanalibus. So this is the proof that the historian's story is true, that the Senate really repressed the Baccanalia.
Yeah.
So the story goes on that he says that the city was seized by so much terror that it resulted in a depopulation, so many people run away trying to escape the authorities. Many people committed suicide, and apparently, you know, we don't know the numbers, but this is the first mass what's the word repression of people practice in alter state of consciousness, which would you know with Christianity would become.
Like yeah, very common. Yeah, that's so there. There was also like a rebranding of Dionysus in Rome too, write because they start calling him libert and he starts he becomes this like very different god.
Right, Yeah, I'm not sure like liber I know that it's another name or so connected to the fact that in his rituals would you would experience some kind of liberation, but I don't know in terms of rituals or different lineage.
Yeah, as far as I understand it, it's that he was kind of rebranded to be less threatening to Rome so they could like continue to acknowledge that he was a god that people wanted to worship, and they give him this word that means like free. So it's like, oh, he's the same. But really, when they're calling him that, he's representing this like stifled version.
This is cool because probably, yeah, they romanized him. They tried to Romanize.
Because they had Bacchus. He could have continued to be Bacchus, but when he was Bacchus, he represented the that Rome wanted to stop, and so they gave him this name of Libert instead. That's my understanding and also it fits. Yeah.
Yeah, so we went told the way from all do you Europe in the five thousand BC? Yes, to two hundred BC, just before you know, just before Christ. Soeah, more or less this is the whole story.
Yeah, well, I mean that fit beautifully into my scheduled time. So I think we're just like, how how wonderfully ideal? Thank you so much for doing this. It was so interesting and so much fun. Do you want to share with my listeners, like where they might learn more from you, or if you want to be followed anywhere?
Yeah? So, because I didn't say actually that, you know, for some years I've been working as curator of the cultural area of the festive where I had that epiphany. Yeah, for thirteen years, and then I moved out of the festival last summer. So now I'm actually this is more and more my job of teaching about dionasis and writing. So I'm on you know. I mean, I'm about to make my website. I still don't have a website, but you can follow me on Instagram. My handle is at I am always Kiara. Great, i am always Kiara. Yeah. At the moment, that's the main place. I'm also a DJ DJ Clandestina. I'm on SoundCloud and so yeah, if you follow me on Instagram, you get connected also to my music. Yeah, that's so cool.
It's so very dinysied.
Few it's the embodied part. Otherwise I'm always with the computer. And but I just gave a course on Advaya. It's an educational platform on dionysis. I will keep on giving courses on that platform at Vaya with a Y dot life is the website. Yeah.
I can link to all these things in the description too, so people can can find them there.
And I have some essays on my profile on Academia dot ed, but they're a bit old. I think. Now I'm in the process of like updating everything and refreshing everything. And I am a PhD candidate at the California Institute of Integral Studies, where you know, all of everything that we talked about is going to turn into my dissertation. So I hope I'm going to be able to publish that, and I co curated an anthology called The Psychedelic Mysteries of the Feminine with different essays on these topics of feminine principle and the altered state of consciousness. There is an essay I wrote on the men, it's the role of women in the culture Dionysus.
Oh that's amazing.
So yeah, that's it.
Yeah, well, that's wonderful, so many things. That's so great. Well, again, thank you so much for doing this. I'm so thrilled to have the episode. It was really fun talking to you and nice to meet you.
Thank you so much, Leve, it was my honor. Thank you for giving space to my voice. And yeah, let's see how it riples.
Yeah no, I'm so happy too. Oh, Nerds, thank you so much for listening. I imagine now you understand how it was so hard for me to kind of conceptualize what this episode was about. It was just so wonder interesting and spanned so many different things, and honestly, it went so many different places I wasn't expecting, but I was absolutely here for It was just so much fun. So thank you so much to Kiara for for coming on this show, reaching out to talk about this. It was absolutely fascinating. You can find some of the things that she mentioned at the end there in the episode's description and God's I mean, I just I could and will talk about Dionysus forever and always as much as humanly possible. So I'm just always here for new conversations on that God who just doesn't fit in every anywhere and yet does fit in everywhere. He's old, and he's young, and he's oh, he's just he's fascinating. I fucking love Dionysus. Let's talk about Miss Baby is written and produced by Me Live Albert MICHAELA. Smith is the Hermes to my Olympians. My assistant producer, Laura Smith is the audio engineer and production assistant. The podcast is part of the iHeart Podcast Network. Listen on Spotify or Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. Help me continue bringing you the world of Greek mythology and the anhe Mediterranean by becoming a patron, where you'll get access to loads of past bonus episodes and ongoing new ones as much as I can manage them. As Patreon dot Com, slash mits Baby and I Am Live and I just I really love this shit.
I'm just