As noted in our earlier discussion, like many wisdom traditions before them, “The religion of the ancient Greeks was a ‘danced religion’, much like those of the ‘savages’ European explorers were later to discover around the world,” to which they often reacted with great revulsion, indicating that later Christians (at least those imposing doctrine) did not share the ancient love of celebration and joyful living.
But “the ambivalence and hostility found in ancient written records may tell us more about the conditions under which writing was invented than about any long-standing prior conflict over ecstatic rituals themselves. Writing arises with ‘civilization,’ in particular, with the emergence of social stratification and the rise of elites.”(p.44) “Ecstatic rituals…build group cohesion, but when they build it among subordinates – peasants, slaves, women, colonized people – the elite calls out its troops.”(Ehrenreich, p.251)
As it turns out, “The aspect of ‘civilization’ that is most hostile to festivity is not capitalism or industrialism – both of which are fairly recent innovations – but social hierarchy, which is far more ancient. When one class, or ethnic group or gender, [or religion] rules over a population of subordinates, it comes to fear the empowering rituals of the subordinates as a threat to civil order.”(p.251) “Hierarchy, by its nature, establishes boundaries between people – who can go where, who can approach whom, who is welcome, and who is not. Festivity breaks these boundaries down.”(p.252) “The rise of social hierarchy, anthropologists agree, goes hand in hand with the rise of militarism and war, which are in their own way also usually hostile to the danced rituals of the archaic past.”(p.44)
By contrast, “Dionysus was a lover of peace…and like Jesus, he upheld the poor and rejected the prevailing social hierarchy,”(p.39-60) Whether “Jesus was, or was portrayed by his followers as, a continuation of the quintessentially pagan Dionysus,” there is much evidence that the two had much in common. “Strikingly, both are associated with wine; Dionysus first brought it to humankind; Jesus could make it out of water.”(p.59)
As indicated earlier, “Women, above all, responded to Dionysus’ call”… and (like Jesus) “Dionysus had a special appeal to the women of the Greek city-state, who were ordinarily excluded from much of public life.”(p.34) Both represented “A feminine, or androgynous, spirit of playfulness versus the cold principle of patriarchal authority.”(p.55) So it is no surprise that and why later fathers of the Christian Church could not do enough to disassociate their doctrine with all things ‘pagan’ – which means to many only ‘Greek and all things before’.
“The most notorious feminine form of Dionysian worship, the oreibaia, or winter dance,” “looks to modern eyes like a crude pantomime of feminist revolt.”(p.35) But as Ehrenreich emphasized, “Whether the women’s dances were really lewd or only appeared so” through Christian eyes that wilfully misread them is a matter of some doubt. “The most famous literary account of maenadism, Euripides’ play, The Bacchae, clearly refutes the notion that sex or even drunkenness was involved.”(p.37) “Given the persistent tendency to confuse communal ecstasy and sexual abandon,”(p.71) and the failure to recognize the “Greek understanding that collective ecstasy is not fundamentally sexual in nature,”(p.39) So as we’ve said, this practice is better understood as an attempt to “achieve a state of mind the Greeks called euthousiansmos – literally, having the god within oneself.”(p.35)
Early Christians, taking their cue from the Delphic Oracle, called this “inexpressible love” glossolalia, much the same phenomena that is later called ‘speaking in tongues.’(p.70) As this ‘gift’ carried some prestige and is also all to easily faked (p.69), it was rebuked by Paul as excessively enthusiastic, impossible to verify, and ultimately unintelligible.(p.68-69)
“If we know one thing about Paul, it is that he was greatly concerned about making Christianity respectable to the Romans, and hence as little like the other ‘oriental’ religions – with their disorderly dancing women – as possible.”(p.66) “Clearly, concern over the integrity of Roman manhood was chief among” the worries of orthodox church fathers who would later proclaim as the excuse for forcibly suppressing them (following the Roman historian, Livy), that “women in general ‘are the source of this evil thing,’ meaning the entire Bacchic ‘conspiracy’.”(p.54) Which inverts the comfortable hierarchy of power that serves the powers that be.(p.103)
“[T]he Church was determined to maintain its monopoly over human access to the divine” and would go to great lengths to see to it that “ordinary people [never] get the idea that they could approach the deity on their own (as did, for example, the ancient worshipers of Dionysus).”(p.84)
So dance was treated by the powers that be as a “form of heresy: Nothing is more threatening to a hierarchical religion than the possibility of ordinary lay peoples finding their own way into the presence of the gods.”(p.86)
As we’ve said, “Dionysus…did not ask his followers for their belief or faith; he called on them to apprehend him directly.”(p.256)
As we will see, it wasn’t long before the “Church began to crack down on religious dancing, especially by women.”(p.73) But we moderns can hardly conceive that “These occasions were, in an important sense, what men and women lived for.”(p.92, E.P. Thompson, Customs in Common, p.51) Nor that “Festivity – like bread or freedom – can be a social good worth fighting for.”(p.94) Something “we need much more of on this crowded planet, to acknowledge the miracle of our simultaneous existence with some sort of celebration.”(p.261)
Organized religions (p.77-117) and organized sports (p.225-245) have tried to fill this gap, to little avail. Indeed, as Emile Backtin’s great insight indicates, "carnival is something people create and generate for themselves.”(p.95) Hence, the reason why spontaneous rock concerts and festivals serve this need somewhat better than those that are organized. (p.207-224) “This is how danced rituals and festivities served to bind prehistoric human groups, and this is what still beckons us today.”(p.251)
As mentioned earlier, Emile Durkheim claims it is the ecstasy of dance that “defines the sacred and sets it apart from daily life…”(p.39, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, p.250) “…something we might call meaning or transcendent insight. In ancient Dionysian forms of worship the moment of maximum ‘madness’ and revelry was also the sacred climax of the rite, at which the individual achieved communion with the divinity and a glimpse of personal immortality.”(p.95)
Ehrenreich asks, “why have we forgotten them, if indeed we have?”(p.19) “We can live without it, as most of us do,” Ehrenreich says, “but only at the risk of succumbing to the solitare nightmare of depression.”(p.260)
In their misunderstanding of the practice, “The early Christian patriarchs may not have realized that, in attempting to suppress ecstatic practices, they were throwing out much of Jesus too.”(p.76)
“The ecstatic rituals of non-Western peoples often have healing, as well as religious, functions…and one of the conditions they appear to heal seems to be what we know as depression.”(p.150) And indeed, Jesus is said by many to be “a cure for depression, alienation, loneliness, and even mundane, all-too-common addictions to alcohol and drugs.”(p.256)
“[D]epression is now the fifth leading cause of death and disability in the world.”(p.131) It is “characterized by an inability to experience pleasure – can kill by increasing a person’s vulnerability to serious somatic illnesses such as cancer and heart disease.”(p.132) It is a “disease that strikes the poor more often than the rich, and women more commonly than men.”(p.132)
And yet the “demonization of Dionysus began by Christians centuries ago…thereby [rejecting] one of the most ancient sources of help – the mind-preserving, lifesaving techniques of ecstasy.”(p.153) As it turns out, Ehrenreich argues, what many ages call “madness” may also be a cure for madness, and depression.(p.41)
“[I]f all they found in their religious ritual was a moment of transcendent joy – well, let us give them credit for finding it. To extract pleasure from lives of grinding hardship and oppression is a considerable accomplishment; to achieve ecstasy is a kind of triumph.”(p.178) “A psychic benefit is no small thing.”(p.178)
But “the ambivalence and hostility found in ancient written records may tell us more about the conditions under which writing was invented than about any long-standing prior conflict over ecstatic rituals themselves. Writing arises with ‘civilization,’ in particular, with the emergence of social stratification and the rise of elites.”(p.44) “Ecstatic rituals…build group cohesion, but when they build it among subordinates – peasants, slaves, women, colonized people – the elite calls out its troops.”(Ehrenreich, p.251)
As it turns out, “The aspect of ‘civilization’ that is most hostile to festivity is not capitalism or industrialism – both of which are fairly recent innovations – but social hierarchy, which is far more ancient. When one class, or ethnic group or gender, [or religion] rules over a population of subordinates, it comes to fear the empowering rituals of the subordinates as a threat to civil order.”(p.251) “Hierarchy, by its nature, establishes boundaries between people – who can go where, who can approach whom, who is welcome, and who is not. Festivity breaks these boundaries down.”(p.252) “The rise of social hierarchy, anthropologists agree, goes hand in hand with the rise of militarism and war, which are in their own way also usually hostile to the danced rituals of the archaic past.”(p.44)
By contrast, “Dionysus was a lover of peace…and like Jesus, he upheld the poor and rejected the prevailing social hierarchy,”(p.39-60) Whether “Jesus was, or was portrayed by his followers as, a continuation of the quintessentially pagan Dionysus,” there is much evidence that the two had much in common. “Strikingly, both are associated with wine; Dionysus first brought it to humankind; Jesus could make it out of water.”(p.59)
As indicated earlier, “Women, above all, responded to Dionysus’ call”… and (like Jesus) “Dionysus had a special appeal to the women of the Greek city-state, who were ordinarily excluded from much of public life.”(p.34) Both represented “A feminine, or androgynous, spirit of playfulness versus the cold principle of patriarchal authority.”(p.55) So it is no surprise that and why later fathers of the Christian Church could not do enough to disassociate their doctrine with all things ‘pagan’ – which means to many only ‘Greek and all things before’.
“The most notorious feminine form of Dionysian worship, the oreibaia, or winter dance,” “looks to modern eyes like a crude pantomime of feminist revolt.”(p.35) But as Ehrenreich emphasized, “Whether the women’s dances were really lewd or only appeared so” through Christian eyes that wilfully misread them is a matter of some doubt. “The most famous literary account of maenadism, Euripides’ play, The Bacchae, clearly refutes the notion that sex or even drunkenness was involved.”(p.37) “Given the persistent tendency to confuse communal ecstasy and sexual abandon,”(p.71) and the failure to recognize the “Greek understanding that collective ecstasy is not fundamentally sexual in nature,”(p.39) So as we’ve said, this practice is better understood as an attempt to “achieve a state of mind the Greeks called euthousiansmos – literally, having the god within oneself.”(p.35)
Early Christians, taking their cue from the Delphic Oracle, called this “inexpressible love” glossolalia, much the same phenomena that is later called ‘speaking in tongues.’(p.70) As this ‘gift’ carried some prestige and is also all to easily faked (p.69), it was rebuked by Paul as excessively enthusiastic, impossible to verify, and ultimately unintelligible.(p.68-69)
“If we know one thing about Paul, it is that he was greatly concerned about making Christianity respectable to the Romans, and hence as little like the other ‘oriental’ religions – with their disorderly dancing women – as possible.”(p.66) “Clearly, concern over the integrity of Roman manhood was chief among” the worries of orthodox church fathers who would later proclaim as the excuse for forcibly suppressing them (following the Roman historian, Livy), that “women in general ‘are the source of this evil thing,’ meaning the entire Bacchic ‘conspiracy’.”(p.54) Which inverts the comfortable hierarchy of power that serves the powers that be.(p.103)
“[T]he Church was determined to maintain its monopoly over human access to the divine” and would go to great lengths to see to it that “ordinary people [never] get the idea that they could approach the deity on their own (as did, for example, the ancient worshipers of Dionysus).”(p.84)
So dance was treated by the powers that be as a “form of heresy: Nothing is more threatening to a hierarchical religion than the possibility of ordinary lay peoples finding their own way into the presence of the gods.”(p.86)
As we’ve said, “Dionysus…did not ask his followers for their belief or faith; he called on them to apprehend him directly.”(p.256)
As we will see, it wasn’t long before the “Church began to crack down on religious dancing, especially by women.”(p.73) But we moderns can hardly conceive that “These occasions were, in an important sense, what men and women lived for.”(p.92, E.P. Thompson, Customs in Common, p.51) Nor that “Festivity – like bread or freedom – can be a social good worth fighting for.”(p.94) Something “we need much more of on this crowded planet, to acknowledge the miracle of our simultaneous existence with some sort of celebration.”(p.261)
Organized religions (p.77-117) and organized sports (p.225-245) have tried to fill this gap, to little avail. Indeed, as Emile Backtin’s great insight indicates, "carnival is something people create and generate for themselves.”(p.95) Hence, the reason why spontaneous rock concerts and festivals serve this need somewhat better than those that are organized. (p.207-224) “This is how danced rituals and festivities served to bind prehistoric human groups, and this is what still beckons us today.”(p.251)
As mentioned earlier, Emile Durkheim claims it is the ecstasy of dance that “defines the sacred and sets it apart from daily life…”(p.39, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, p.250) “…something we might call meaning or transcendent insight. In ancient Dionysian forms of worship the moment of maximum ‘madness’ and revelry was also the sacred climax of the rite, at which the individual achieved communion with the divinity and a glimpse of personal immortality.”(p.95)
Ehrenreich asks, “why have we forgotten them, if indeed we have?”(p.19) “We can live without it, as most of us do,” Ehrenreich says, “but only at the risk of succumbing to the solitare nightmare of depression.”(p.260)
In their misunderstanding of the practice, “The early Christian patriarchs may not have realized that, in attempting to suppress ecstatic practices, they were throwing out much of Jesus too.”(p.76)
“The ecstatic rituals of non-Western peoples often have healing, as well as religious, functions…and one of the conditions they appear to heal seems to be what we know as depression.”(p.150) And indeed, Jesus is said by many to be “a cure for depression, alienation, loneliness, and even mundane, all-too-common addictions to alcohol and drugs.”(p.256)
“[D]epression is now the fifth leading cause of death and disability in the world.”(p.131) It is “characterized by an inability to experience pleasure – can kill by increasing a person’s vulnerability to serious somatic illnesses such as cancer and heart disease.”(p.132) It is a “disease that strikes the poor more often than the rich, and women more commonly than men.”(p.132)
And yet the “demonization of Dionysus began by Christians centuries ago…thereby [rejecting] one of the most ancient sources of help – the mind-preserving, lifesaving techniques of ecstasy.”(p.153) As it turns out, Ehrenreich argues, what many ages call “madness” may also be a cure for madness, and depression.(p.41)
“[I]f all they found in their religious ritual was a moment of transcendent joy – well, let us give them credit for finding it. To extract pleasure from lives of grinding hardship and oppression is a considerable accomplishment; to achieve ecstasy is a kind of triumph.”(p.178) “A psychic benefit is no small thing.”(p.178)