Featured Design - Bacchus

Bacchus, also known as Dionysus, is the ancient Greek and Roman god of wine, fertility, and ritual madness. He is often depicted as a young, attractive man with a crown of ivy leaves and carrying a staff called a thyrsus, often adorned with ivy and pinecones.

In Greek mythology, Bacchus was the son of Zeus and Semele, a mortal woman. Nymphs raised him, and he later became the patron god of wine and agriculture. He was also associated with fertility and was believed to be able to bring the dead back to life.

In Roman mythology, Bacchus was known as Dionysus and was associated with the Roman god Liber. Roman art often depicted him as a wild and drunken figure, accompanied by maenads, wild women who were believed to be his followers.

Throughout history, Bacchus has been celebrated in festivals and rituals, particularly in ancient Greece and Rome. The most famous of these was the Bacchanalia, a secret festival celebrated in honor of Bacchus. These festivals were often associated with excessive drinking, dancing, and sexual activity.

Recently, Bacchus has been associated with the wine industry and is often depicted on wine labels and advertisements. He is also still celebrated in some cultures, particularly in Italy, where the festival of Bacchanalia is still celebrated in some towns.

Overall, Bacchus has been an influential figure throughout history, representing the joys of wine, fertility, and ritual madness.

The notion of the soul freed from the body was a cult's core belief devoted to worshiping Dionysus, the Greek god of wine.

"Known as the personification of the sheer exhilaration produced by wine, Dionysus, according to one legend, once briefly assumed the throne of his father, Zeus, the supreme god of the ancient Greeks. After his ascent, he was attacked by jealous Titans...Changing shape to escape his foes, Dionysus took flight in the successive forms of a lion, a horse, and a serpent. When he transformed himself into a bull, however, the god was overcome by his enemies and, like Osiris before him, was brutally dismembered."
- The Search for the Soul

"Early worshippers of Dionysus reenacted this gruesome scene by whipping themselves into a frenzy and tearing a live bull to pieces with their hands and teeth. These grisly rites, accompanied by loud music and the crashing of cymbals, were intended to propel the revelers into a state of ecstasy, a word meaning 'outside the body' to the Greeks. The cultists hoped to transcend their earthly bonds through this ecstasy and temporarily liberate the soul from the body. Only in this way could the soul achieve a condition of enthousiasmos, meaning 'inside the god,' which the worshipers believed was a taste of what they might one day enjoy in eternity.

"They wore wreaths of ivy, oak or fir, and skins of animals, and carried the thyrsus... In ecstasy, they would range through the mountains in dizzying dances, tear some animal apart with bare hands, and eat it raw. This was a communion in the god's body and blood; The inspiration of the god was believed to confer miraculous power. We hear of them caught in a snowstorm so that their clothes were frozen stiff, rescued unharmed, or falling asleep from sheer exhaustion in an enemy village during wartime and being protected for their holiness."
- John Ferguson, An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Mysticism and the Mystery Religions