Clarifying something I said in my last post, to the effect
that the Mardi Gras carnival celebrations lack the otherworldly connections of
Halloween (Samhain), I meant that they have fewer vestiges of their pagan roots
as they are currently practiced in the U.S. However, the case can be made that European
carnival traditions grew out of springtime rituals of rebirth that awakened
nature spirits, along with the god Dionysius—who represented the spirit of
green life and fructifying moisture. The
personality of Dionysius has been expressed in many forms, and his cult has had many
permutations, but a major part of his story came from Thrace, (the
Balkans), where he was often pictured as a young man in a mother-son
relationship with the goddess Zemele (aka Mater Zemyna, “The Moist Mother Earth”),
that paralleled the Demeter-Persephone mother-daughter relationship.
Similar to the Persephone legend, there are variants of the
Dionysius myth where he dies and is reborn, and in other legends, he is a son
of Demeter or husband of Persephone. As
the principle of green nature and life-giving moisture, Dionysius is associated
not just with drink, but with ivy and other greenery, fruit trees, and trees in
general. (The forests are described as his flocks.) Another legend credits him with
the gift of honey. His association with
grapes and wine came later, as these were not cultivated in the more northerly
regions where he originated, and are also products of later civilization. Note that the idea of Dionysius as moisture
principle ties in with what I said previously about spring meltwater moving
through the landscape, as well as the sap rising in the trees. Relate Dionysius as a force in nature to the lines
from the Dylan Thomas poem, “The force that through the green fuse drives the
flower …”
Masked processions constituted a very significant part of
the Dionysian worship. As in art, the god
was always accompanied by a throng of nature spirits, so in the cult worship,
his followers dressed up as nature spirits.
In part, his followers did this so they could feel closer to their god,
but the Dionysian mysteries were also aimed at enabling his followers to enjoy
a form of immortality by being reincarnated as nature spirits in the company of
their god of nature. So, there we have a
Spirit-World connection with the modern Mardi Gras seasonal processions, even
though the mystical origins have been forgotten.
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