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by Marcel Camus
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Interview with Robert Anton Wilson wrote: |
ROBERT ANTON WILSON: I was just
reading Jean Shinoda Bolen's book Gods in Everyman yesterday, and I
found some of myself in Hades, though that's the younger me
back in my adolescence and early twenties. I also see parts of myself
in Hermes, but I see a great deal of
Dionysus. My mystical
feelings and my sexual feelings are so close together that I find it
hard to understand how Western society ever separated them. But that
just goes to show that I'm a
Dionysian type. Our society is run by Zeus types and
Apollo types to whom
the separation is perfectly natural.
RMN: Do you think society is evolving towards a more
Dionysian character?
ROBERT ANTON WILSON: Yeah. We have been since the sixties. Woodstock
was a Dionysian
festival--it was the rebirth of
Dionysus--and right
away the lid came down. My God
Dionysus is loose!
King Pentheus immediately called out the cops. The
Dionysian religion had
entered his kingdom and he tried to crush it, but he was torn apart by
his own mother. That's a warning of what happens when you try to
suppress Dionysus;
it's one of the classic Greek myths. |
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James Hunter wrote: |
Orpheus
Orpheus was the son of Calliope and
either Oeagrus or Apollo. He was the greatest musician and poet
of Greek myth, whose songs could charm wild beasts and coax even rocks
and trees into movement. He was one of the Argonauts, and when the
Argo had to pass the island of the Sirens, it was Orpheus' music which
prevented the crew from being lured to destruction.
When Orpheus' wife, Eurydice, was killed by the bite of a serpent, he
went down to the underworld to bring her back. His songs were so
beautiful that Hades finally agreed to allow Eurydice to return to the
world of the living. However, Orpheus had to meet one condition: he
must not look back as he was conducting her to the surface. Just
before the pair reached the upper world, Orpheus looked back, and
Eurydice slipped back into the netherworld once again.
Orpheus was inconsolable at this second loss of his wife. He spurned
the company of women and kept apart from ordinary human activities.
A group of Ciconian Maenads, female devotees of Dionysus, came upon
him one day as he sat singing beneath a tree. They attacked him,
throwing rocks, branches, and anything else that came to hand.
However, Orpheus' music was so beautiful that it charmed even
inanimate objects, and the missiles refused to strike him. Finally,
the Maenads' attacked him with their own hands, and tore him to
pieces. Orpheus' head floated down the river, still singing, and came
to rest on the isle of Lesbos.
Orpheus was also
reputed to be the founder of the Orphic religious cult.
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