Do Mardi Gras and Carnival Revelers Sense Call of Ancient Deity?
Pastor Dale Morgan
Do Mardi Gras and Carnival Revelers Sense Call of Ancient Deity?*
Feb 18th, 2007 10:36 AM
Do Mardi Gras and Carnival Revelers Sense Call of Ancient Deity?Despite
uncertainty (or maybe because of it) cities around the world are dancing
to the spirit of Mardi Gras.
By Thomas Horn
Raiders News Network Sr. Reporter
RaidersNewsNetwork.com - Reuters reported yesterday that as New Orleans
got ready for the final bead-throwing bacchanalia of Mardi Gras, ugly
reminders of the violence gripping the storm-shattered city continues as
two people were killed and seven others were wounded in two shootings
ahead of the stream of parades scheduled to start Friday night and run
through Fat Tuesday.
This is the second Carnival season since Katrina devastated the city in
2005, killing 1,300 people.
"The city put on a slimmed-down version of Mardi Gras in 2006 in what
officials viewed as a symbol of the city's survival of Katrina," Reuters
said. But "this year's festivities, which began on February 9, are back
to a fuller schedule, and look and feel 'more like an ordinary Mardi
Gras,' added historian Arthur Hardy. 'In this town, ordinary is good
right now."'
The mood is similar across the world in Rio de Janeiro, where Brazil's
raucous Carnival celebrations kicked off on Friday with tens of
thousands dancing and singing in the streets despite a recent surge of
gun violence in the city's slums.
In Australia, the Sydney Gay & Lesbian Mardi Gras is also partying like
there's no tomorrow. The SGLMG has become a global attraction with the
annual street parade now listed among the 10 most spectacular costume
events in the world. Billed as the "biggest queer gathering" on earth,
this year's month-long celebration culminates on March 3 with all the
"glitz, satire and sassiness" that the world famous night-time parade
through the streets of Sydney and the enormous Mardi Gras party has
become known for.
With so much uncertainty in the world, some wonder why people feel the
need to cast off inhibition and party anyway. Is this a deep
psychological compulsion, or something else -- unseen and deadly --
pulling at mankind to "don the mask"?
PUTTING THE MASK IN MASQUERADE
In his book "Mardi Gras!" (Picayune Press), Errol Laborde investigated
the masquerade tradition and wrote that "Roman aristocracy of the time
preferred debauchery and licentiousness to legality and morality. Men
donned women's clothing, the better to abandon themselves to orgy; thus
the masquerade tradition began."
Professor Fred Koening of Tulane University supported Laborde's
conclusions, adding, "Masks are a way of being anonymous, and if you
wear a mask, you take on a different persona. You can be a little
drunker, a little wilder, a little more primitive. Furthermore, at
Carnival people will be more tolerant of you. Normal rules are gone.
Traditional routines are put on hold."
In ancient times, the Greek god Dionysus (Roman Bacchus) represented the
personification of such revelry. Followers of Dionysus imagined him as
the "presence" that is otherwise defined within man as the craving that
longs to "let itself go" and to "give itself over" to outlaw desires.
What puritans might resist as the lustful wants of the carnal man, the
followers of Dionysus embraced as the incarnate power that would, in the
afterlife, liberate the soul from the constraints of the present world
and from customs which sought to define respectability through obedience
to moral law.
Until then, worshippers of Dionysus attempted to bring themselves into
union with the god through ritual casting off of the bonds of sexual
denial and primal constraint by seeking to attain a "higher state of
ecstasy."
The ancient rites were described by Greek writers such as Euripides:
"Following the torches as they dipped and swayed in the darkness, they
climbed mountain paths with head thrown back and eyes glazed, dancing to
the beat of the drum which stirred their blood' [or 'staggered drunkenly
with what was known as the Dionysos gait']. 'In this state of ekstasis
or enthusiasmos, they abandoned themselves, dancing wildly and shouting
'Euoi!' [the god's name] and at that moment of intense rapture became
identified with the god himself. They became filled with his spirit and
acquired divine powers" (Peter Hoyle, Delphi (London: 1967), p. 76.).
The uninhibited rituals of ecstasy (Greek for "outside the body")
employed ecstatic communal dancing to the drums and flute, flicking of
the head backward (as found in most trance inducing cults), and overt
consumption of wine to bring the followers of Dionysus into a
supernatural condition which enabled them to escape the temporary
limitations of the body and mind and to achieve an orgiastic state of
"enthousiasmos", or "outside the body and inside the god."
In this sense, Dionysus represented a dichotomy in the Greek religion,
as the primary maxim of the Greek culture was one of moderation;
"nothing too extreme." Yet Dionysus embodied the absolute extreme in
that he sought to inflame the forbidden passions of human desire.
MARDI GRAS & CARNIVAL CALLED "BACCHANALIAN"
As students of psychology returning from Mardi Gras will intrinsically
understand, the wild abandonment that defined Dionysus-worship actually
gave the god of wine and revelry a stronger allure, not weaker, among
many ancients who otherwise tried in so many ways to suppress and
control the secret lusts of the human heart. Dionysus was the craving
that demands one partake of "the forbidden fruit" and who threatened
madness upon those who denied him free expression. Conversely, persons
giving themselves over to the will of Dionysus were promised unlimited
psychological and physical delights. The Dionystic idea of mental
disease resulting from suppression of secret inner desires, especially
aberrant sexual desires, was later reflected in the teachings of Sigmund
Freud. Thus Freudianism might be called the grandchild of the cult of
Dionysus.
Such mythical systems of mental punishment and physical rewards based on
resistance and/or submission to Dionysus were symbolically and literally
illustrated in the cult rituals of the Bacchae, as the Bacchae women
(married and unmarried Greek women had the legal right to participate in
the mysteries of Dionysus) migrated in frenzied hillside groups, dressed
transvestite in fawn skins and accompanied by Mardi Gras-like
mask-wearing, screaming, music, dancing, and licentious behavior.
When for instance a baby animal was too young and lacking in instinct to
sense the danger and run away from the revelers, it was picked up and
suckled by bare-breasted women who participated in the hillside rituals.
Yet when older animals sought to escape the marauding Bacchae, they were
considered "resistant" to the will of Dionysus and were torn apart and
eaten alive as a part of the fevered ritual.
THE DEVIL AND CARNIVAL
Before the ancient Greek/Roman festival was outlawed in 186 BC by a
decree of the Senate -- the so-called "Senatus consultum de
Bacchanalibus" -- as having become too debauched, human participants
were sometimes subjected to orgiastic cruelty, as the rule of the
Bacchanalia became "anything goes," including torture, bestiality, and
pedophilia. Thus some saw the devil growing in Dionysus, and the tempter
as seeking souls.
The Hebrew people considered Hades -- the Greek god of the underworld --
to be equal with Hell and/or the Devil, and many ancients likewise saw
no difference between Hades (in this sense the Devil) and Dionysus.
Euripedes echoed this sentiment in the Hecuba, and referred to the
followers of Dionysus as the "Bacchants of Hades."
In Syracuse, Dionysus was also known as Dionysus Morychos ("the dark
one") a fiendish creature; roughly equivalent to the biblical Satan, who
wore goatskins and dwelt in the regions of the underworld.
In his scholarly book "Dionysus Myth And Cult", Walter F. Otto connected
Dionysus with the prince of the underworld, saying, "The similarity and
relationship which Dionysus has with the prince of the underworld (and
this is revealed by a large number of comparisons) is not only confirmed
by an authority of the first rank, but he says the two deities are
actually the same. Heraclitus says, 'Hades and Dionysus, for whom they
go mad and rage, are one and the same.'"
Hebrew prophets even believed a devil's "spell" came over the Bacchae
(the female followers of Dionysus) as a result of the fevered rituals,
and that this was evidence of Dionysus' Satanic connection. While most
of these beliefs are no longer available due to Dionysus being a mystery
god and therefore his rituals were revealed to the initiated only, the
prophet Ezekiel described the "magic bands" (kesatot) of the Bacchae,
which were somehow used to capture (magically imprison) the souls of men.
We read: "Therefore, thus says the Lord GOD, "Behold I am against your
magic bands [kesatot] by which you hunt lives [souls] there as birds,
and I will tear them off your arms; and I will let them go, even those
lives [souls] whom you hunt as birds" (Ez. 13:20 NAS).
Acts 17:34 records a soul liberated from the control of Dionysus:
"Howbeit certain men clave unto [Paul], and believed: among the which
was Dionysius the Areopagite..."
To carry the name of Dionysus usually meant that: 1) the parents were
devotees of Dionysus and thus the child was "predestined" to be a
follower of the god; or 2) the individual was under the spell of the
kesatot.
The kesatot was a magic arm band used in connection with a container
called the kiste. Wherever the kiste is inscribed on sarcophagi and on
Bacchic scenes, it is depicted as a sacred vessel (a soul prison?) with
a snake peering through an open lid. How the magic worked and in what
way a soul was imprisoned is a mystery. Pan, the half-man/half-goat god
(later relegated to devildom) is sometimes pictured as kicking the lid
open and letting the snake (soul?) out. Such loose snakes are then
depicted as being enslaved around the limbs, and bound in the hair, of
the Bacchae women.
Pan, the serpents, the imprisoned souls, and the magic Kesatot and Kiste
were apparently understood by Ezekiel as a magical system for
imprisoning minds through trance inducing techniques, such as dance and
music, enchantment, and sensuality, of which the bacchanalian
party-rituals were a part. Of course Pan was also beloved of Dionysus
for his pandemonium ("all the devils") which struck sudden panic and/or
pleasure in the hearts of men and beasts.
The question some may now consider is -- is a mythical god of the
underworld, a spirit historically identified with Satan, entertained
during New Orleans's Mardi Gras, Rio's Carnival, and Sydney's Gay &
Lesbian Mardi Gras? Is a psychological or supernatural "force"
responsible for debauchery associated with modern bacchanalia? Or do
people simply hide behind a mask and give themselves to licentiousness
each year because, with so many uncertainties in the world today, some
feel a deep need to cast off their inhibitions and to party like there's
no tomorrow... because that's what they actually believe.