The Bacchae: How do you imagine the dark?

09/23/21 • 42 min

Myth Matters

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"He is a young god.
Mythologically obscure,
always just arriving

at some new place
to disrupt the status quo,
wearing the start of a smile."

--from Ann Carson' translation "The Bakkhai"

In the northern hemisphere we began our collective descent into winter's darkness, with the fall equinox on Wednesday September 22nd.

This is a good time to meditate on the most famous myth of the god Dionysus, intoxicating god of the night. It's a play written by Euripides in the 5th century BCE called "The Bacchae."

Athenians found the cautionary message of this play subversive. It disturbed their image of Greek reason, democracy, social order, and power. The women don't stay in their place. It ends on a gruesome note.

A few years after the play was performed, Athens fell to Sparta and their empire building was over. Euripides was in self-imposed exile, and perhaps he saw something that his fellow citizens could not...

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Email Catherine at [email protected]
Post a positive review on apple podcasts!
Learn how you can work with Catherine at https://mythicmojo.com
Buy me a coffee. Thank you!

Send Catherine a text Message

"He is a young god.
Mythologically obscure,
always just arriving

at some new place
to disrupt the status quo,
wearing the start of a smile."

--from Ann Carson' translation "The Bakkhai"

In the northern hemisphere we began our collective descent into winter's darkness, with the fall equinox on Wednesday September 22nd.

This is a good time to meditate on the most famous myth of the god Dionysus, intoxicating god of the night. It's a play written by Euripides in the 5th century BCE called "The Bacchae."

Support the show

Email Catherine at [email protected]
Post a positive review on apple podcasts!
Learn how you can work with Catherine at https://mythicmojo.com
Buy me a coffee. Thank you!

Previous Episode

Into the Labyrinth and the myth of Ariadne's Thread

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This episode is devoted to the Greek god Dionysus, whom Walter Otto aptly named “the epiphany god,” and his wife Ariadne.

Dionysus was called “the Loosener” or lysios in Greek, the loosener of limbs and of minds. The Greek word lysios comes from "lysis," which means “setting free" or "unraveling.” I want to pick up this thread to reflect a bit more on the nature of Dionysian loosening and epiphanies, by spending some time with the myth of Ariadne.

Who was Ariadne, to be partner to this god? Ariadne like Dionysus, is likely an older deity than the Olympians, one with much more significance than her place in Greek mythology suggests.

Thanks for listening.

"If the horizon hadn't swallowed you, I'd believe in it still,
let it hold me like a wall..."
---Ioanna-Veronika Warwick from "Ariadne Thanks Theseus for Abandoning Her"

Support the show

Email Catherine at [email protected]
Post a positive review on apple podcasts!
Learn how you can work with Catherine at https://mythicmojo.com
Buy me a coffee. Thank you!

Next Episode

The myth of Arachne and the mysteries of transformation

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Personal transformation.
Do we really want it?
What can inspire that deep change, and how far are we willing to go in courting those powers?

Support the show

Email Catherine at [email protected]
Post a positive review on apple podcasts!
Learn how you can work with Catherine at https://mythicmojo.com
Buy me a coffee. Thank you!

Myth Matters - The Bacchae: How do you imagine the dark?

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to Myth Matters, storytelling and conversation about mythology and why myth matters to your life today. I'm your host and personal mythologist Dr. Catherine Svehla. Wherever you may be in this wide, beautiful, crazy world of ours, you are part of this story circle.

The Fall Equinox took place yesterday, Wednesday September 22nd, in the northern hemisphere. On the Fall and Spring Equinoxs the daylight and night time hours are in balance, so these days are a threshold,