Dionysian Cults and Free Parties
as sure as I know how to start the lovely round of singing
Lord Dionysus’ dithyramb when the wine has blitzed my brains in.
- Archilocus, Dionysus’ dithyramb
The phenomenon of free parties is often associated with the Bacchanalia, festivals of Greek origin celebrating Dionysus, which later developed among other populations worshipping similar or related deities, such as the Romans Liber and Bacchus or the Etruscan Fufluns. This romantic and undoubtedly fascinating association might raise the question: "But what does Dionysus have to do with free parties?"
First of all, it should be remembered that dancing to frenetic, unmelodic rhythms and repetitive beats, often intoxicated with plants and/or psychoactive substances, is a millenary practice common among various ethnic groups and cultures. In his research on trance and altered states of consciousness, Lapassade identifies various inducers of altered states, including crowds, music, dance, and psychoactive substances (G. Lapassade, Stati modificati e transe, 1996).
These characteristics can be found in free parties, but also in the celebrations of many cults, including Dionysian ones, and in the shamanic rituals of various populations. Durkheim, for example, analyzing the totemism of Australian Aborigines and some groups of American Indians, focuses on ceremonies called “corroboree,” in which participants gather to sing, dance around the fire, enjoy a sexual freedom normally forbidden, and celebrate the rite until exhaustion sets in. During these events, people are animated by passions and exuberance; they experience the continuous strengthening of emotions. Durkheim defines this state as “collective effervescence,” asserting that the individual under the influence of such effervescence feels he is no longer himself or is, almost literally, being carried away (E. Durkheim cit. in W. Griswold, Sociologia della cultura, 2005).
Totemism is not mentioned by chance: in an interesting article on free parties, Nicholas Medone writes that the wall of speakers is not just a sound system for reproducing music, but “assumes the form and role of a totem of the post-industrial era”.
Plants Linked to Dionysus
Let's return to Dionysus. It can certainly be said that he represents one of the most complex deities in Greek mythology: the god of vegetation, ecstasy, wine, drunkenness, creativity, and madness. A wandering god, born of Zeus and Semele, who embodies vital and irrational forces, he is followed by bizarre characters such as satyrs, maenads, and sileni, who drunkenly dance and sing to the rhythm of the dithyramb, a particular form of choral lyric poetry, often improvised, characterized by an obsessive musical accompaniment of drums and flutes with dark, powerful, tumultuous, and not very melodic sounds.
Dionysus, moreover, is generally associated with alcoholic intoxication, but as several authors have pointed out, the Dionysian experience is characterised by fury, ecstasy, hallucinations in which the divinity manifests itself to the initiates, and a sort of madness that takes possession of the participants in the ritual, who dismember a sacrificial animal with their bare hands and then devour it. It is highly probable, therefore, that Dionysian wine was actually another beverage or wine adulterated with some hallucinogenic substance such as Amanita muscaria, the effects of which, as we will see later, would seem to coincide with those experienced by participants in the rites honoring the god: increased energy and physical strength, intoxication, stimulation, altered perception of sight and hearing, and, at high doses, delirium. It should also be noted that, as Camilla and Samorini write, some vase paintings show images of bunches of grapes that closely resemble mushrooms.
Ivy has also been suggested as a possible psychoactive additive to Dionysian wine. Some classical authors such as Pliny and Plutarch assert that the well-known climbing plant has delirious properties similar to those of henbane (a plant belonging to the Solanaceae family, which also includes datura, belladonna, and mandrake, among others, with which henbane shares alkaloids such as scopolamine, hyoscyamine, and atropine) despite having different active ingredients (G. Samorini, G. Toro, Giusquiamo. La fava di Zeus, 2018). It is said that the Egyptians used to mix ivy and other psychoactive plants with wine to create a drink with somnolent and anesthetic effects (G. Toro, Flora psicoattiva italiana, 2010). Furthermore, ivy is one of the plants linked to Dionysus; in fact, in many representations, Dionysus wears an ivy crown, as do the participants in the mysteries, and several texts mention ivy as the god's plant; it is no coincidence that the thyrsus, the ritual staff wielded by initiates to the Dionysian cult, is depicted wrapped in ivy and vine leaves.
Amanita muscaria as the Possible Entheogen of the Dionysian Mysteries
Because the Dionysian mysteries were secret ceremonies, detailed information about their performance was kept strictly confidential, and the information we have today comes mainly from indirect references and limited sources, including the tragedy The Bacchae.
Indeed, Euripides's work contains numerous details and descriptions of the celebration of the mysteries, suggesting that Euripides may have been an initiate: initiates to the Dionysian mysteries, such as those of the Eleusinian Mysteries or other mystery cults, see what the uninitiated will never see. An interesting detail is the fact that Pentheus, king of Thebes, opposed to the cult in honor of Dionysus – to the point of wanting to ban it with the intervention of the army – desires to see what happens on Mount Cithaeron, where the Bacchae are gathered. Pentheus is captivated by the god's words, dresses as a woman, and begins to hallucinate: he sees two suns and two cities of Thebes. He can see Dionysus in both his human form and his mythical bull form. He is overcome by an unusual euphoria and feels he has enough strength to lift the entire Mount Cithaeron.
As Camilla and Samorini rightly point out, Pentheus's experiences (doubled vision, revelation, increased physical strength) can be traced back to the effects of Amanita muscaria. Another characteristic effect of the fly agaric is the sensation of seeing the mushroom in human form (or at least perceiving its presence) and feeling manipulated by it, and, not by chance, Pentheus is persuaded by Dionysus to dress as a woman to go and spy on the Bacchantes.
Re-Enactment of the Myth During the Celebrations of the Rites
The Dionysian mysteries took place at night, in the mountains, in places isolated from city life. The female presence was essential.
In Greek mythology, in fact, Dionysus was accompanied on his travels by the Maenads, women possessed by the god and seized by ecstatic fury. The mythical Dionysian procession (thiasos) was then made up of satyrs and sileni, creatures of the woods united by drunkenness and lasciviousness. Among these, Silenus stands out, the god of drunkenness preceding Dionysus. Priapus is also often counted among the deities participating in the processions. Those initiated into the Dionysian mysteries recreated the mythical procession by wearing wild animal skins and, as previously mentioned, danced to the rhythm of the dark and frenetic sounds of drums, cymbals, and flutes. De Felice (P. De Felice, Le droghe degli dèi, 1990) writes:
Everyone has drunk the sacred drink; everyone has fallen into divine intoxication [...] To the sound of drums, cymbals, and flutes, the procession proceeds and spreads, leaping and shouting, into the forests that cover the mountain. [...] The flames, moving in all directions, give things and men a fantastic and unreal aspect. The excitement grows hour by hour; the intoxication turns into fury. [...] The period of intense overexcitement that initially characterizes Dionysian intoxication is followed by a no less significant prostration.
Parallels Between Dyonisian Mysteries and Free Parties
We can therefore note how some characteristics of the rituals in honour of Dionysus return in contemporary practices of the free party: the nocturnal gathering, the secrecy of the meetings, the liberating dance, the lights that give "a fantastic and unreal aspect", the frenetic and shattering music with repetitive beats, the crowd, the sense of union, the psychoactive substances to expand the consciousness, live the present, and see from a new perspective. In this regard, Paolo Mantegazza wrote already in 1871 that there is no party without the use of substances and that during these celebrations "it is appropriate that today's consciousness is, as far as possible, different from that of yesterday" (P. Mantegazza, Quadri della natura umana: feste ed ebbrezze, 1871).
Regarding music and a certain modification of the state of consciousness, Nietzsche's words are extremely suggestive: "in the Dionysian dithyramb man is pushed to the pinnacle of all his symbolic abilities: something never experienced before struggles to emerge, and it is the destruction of the veil of Maya, it is the identification with the genius of the species, indeed with nature" (F. Nietzsche, Nascita della tragedia).
No less important are the political aspects: the celebration of freedom, the challenge to imposed social norms, the reclamation of space, time, and entertainment, the rejection of vertical power dynamics in favor of sharing, exchange, and self-management. What is the free party, in fact, if not a Dionysian form of resistance to the logic imposed by the dominant culture, in which different artistic-political movements and diverse cultures and subcultures intertwine and merge to exorcise the ills of our society through age-old practices such as dance and altered states of consciousness? As Lapassade writes: "In every phase of its history, trance is linked to class struggle," adding that "among the Greeks, the opposition between Dionysus and Apollo is the opposition between the dominated and the dominant".
And as often happens even in contemporary times, the dominant culture absorbed what was originally considered a barbaric and savage cult, attempting to tame its darkest and most irrational traits, even instituting collective celebrations (the Dionysia) that lost the mysterious character of the Dionysian cult and transformed into days dedicated to art, music, theater, but also to celebration, given the climate of institutionalized revelry. The measure taken by the Roman Senate in 186 BC to ban bacchanalia was also purely political; the Dionysian cult, in fact, survived in Magna Graecia, in a mysterious form, among the Campanians and Lucanians, later influencing the subsequent bacchanals in honor of Bacchus and Liber Pater, deities equivalent to the Greek Dionysus.
But the spread of increasingly frequent nocturnal gatherings marked by drunkenness and sexual freedom created an enormous scandal, especially because these gatherings involved men and women from various populations and social backgrounds. In particular, Livy refers to the bacchanals introduced and spread by the priestess Paculla Annia, which were held on the slopes of the Aventine Hill, a multiethnic plebeian area that hosted numerous foreign cults. Thus, in 186 BC, the Bacchanalia affair resulted in thousands of imprisonments and executions and a decree, the Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus, which banned gatherings in honor of Bacchus because they threatened state security and were contrary to Roman morality and religion. These could only be authorized by the Senate and allowed a limited number of participants (two men and three women). Despite this, illicit bacchanalia continued for many years.
A contemporary Senatus consultum de Bacchanalibus can be seen in the recent italian article 633-bis (issued after the 2022 Witchtek in Modena, an illegal rave organized for Halloween celebrations), which punishes "Whoever organizes or promotes the arbitrary invasion of other people's land or buildings, public or private, for the purpose of holding a musical gathering or for any other entertainment purpose". Not surprisingly, both decrees focus on public safety.
Final Thoughts
Obviously, there are significant differences between Dionysian ritual and free parties.
The former can be compared to possession trance (Lapassade, Dallo sciamano al raver, 1997), in that participants symbolically agree to feed on the divinity, drinking the Dionysian beverage and devouring the raw flesh of the sacrificial animal (practices conceptually not far removed from receiving the Christian host or the ritual consumption of psilocybin mushrooms by the ancient Aztecs, who, not coincidentally, called the mushroom teonanacatl, or "flesh of the gods"). They feel concretely possessed by Dionysus and live through dance and sex, trance, ecstasy, and an altered state of consciousness as if they were at the mercy of the god. The free party, on the other hand, is characterized by ecstatic trance, and those who participate engage in this type of trance, with or without the use of substances, in a manner that is, in a certain sense, more rational than the ancient Greeks, but still with the intent of escaping from everyday life, experiencing pleasure, experiencing other states, perceiving new realities, and experiencing new sensations. However, it is undeniable that these two phenomena have, as previously mentioned, some fundamental points in common. Take, for example, the concluding lines of the parodos of The Bacchae: “and happy, then, like a filly with her mother grazing/ the bacchante, in the dance, beats her swift foot”.
Now, even without ever having participated in the Dionysian mysteries, many free partygoers could tell you how satisfying it is to stomp your feet hard on the floor with every single kick of a straight drum kit, and how the abstract sounds of free tekno act as a catalyst, often combined with the use of psychedelic or entactogenic substances, for mental excursions and emotions never felt before, like when, with wonder in your eyes, you see the sun rise over that urban tribe dancing in front of a totem-like wall of speakers, moving away, geographically and conceptually, from the suffocating and repetitive city life, to joyfully lose themselves on a Neverland that a few hours earlier appeared in the night, among colored lights, truck headlights, campers, and lines of cars, in the heart of the countryside or in a warehouse in a desolate industrial suburb, and which after a few days will disappear, leaving in the participants, modern tekno-Dionysian initiates, a pleasant sense of fulfillment and gratification, as well as a hint of immediate nostalgia.
“Blessed is he who has the fortune/ of experiencing the divine mysteries”.
Bibliography
Camilla G., Samorini G., Rappresentazioni fungine nell’arte greca, 1995.https://www.samorini.it/doc1/sam/greca.htm
De Felice P., Le droghe degli dei, Genova, ECIG, 1990
Euripide, Le baccanti, (trad. Sanguineti E.), Milano, SE, 2021
Griswold W., Sociologia della cultura, Bologna, Il Mulino, 2005
Lapassade G., Stati modificati e Transe, Roma, Sensibili alle foglie, 1996
Lapassade G., Dallo sciamano al raver: saggio sulla transe, Milano, Apogeo, 2008
Mantegazza P., Quadri della natura umana: feste ed ebbrezze, Milano, Bernardoni G., Brigola, 1871
Medone N., I rave party spiegati a chi vorrebbe eliminarli, La Via Libera, 30 dicembre 2022,
https://lavialibera.it/it-schede-1227-dl_rave_party_spiegati_a_chi_vorrebbe_eliminarli
Nietzsche F., La nascita della tragedia, (a cura di) Vivarelli V., Torino, Einaudi, 200
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Euripide, Le baccanti, (trad. Sanguineti E.), Milano, SE, 2021
Alfredo Squillaro | Community Blogger at Chemical Collective
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