DID YOU KNOW: THE GLASS OF WINE
Wine, such an exquisite invention, or should we say a divine gift. It is said, that among all the Gods, two of them were the most venerated by the Greeks as they ensured the survival of the human race. The first, Demeter, goddess of agriculture, fertility, and the harvest, without whom the world would suffer the worst “Famine” and starve to death, the other deity is a younger one, loved by the people for his gift of wine, as Dionysus taught to humans the art of cultivating grapes and eventually making wine. A beverage made by a Supreme, intoxicating, enchanting, and mischievous that could either fill your heart with optimum joy or drown you in the absolute opposite.
And who’s better to show us its double side, than its creator, Dionysus, the enchanter but also the wild, the furious, the beauty that, if tempted, reveals the real beast residing within him?
As the story goes the birth of Dionysus, is quietly dramatic and out of nature. While pregnant, the God’s mother Semele, asked Zeus to reveal himself in his true divine form, but in sight of his splendor, the mortal was so overwhelmed that she burned by Zeus’s light. In her final moments, Zeus rescued the unborn child from her womb and sewed him into his thigh until he was born. Born from fire like that golden ray of sunshine, Dionysus had it in him, the fever needed to be the God of wine, festivity, joy, and celebration. The high euphoria that his liquid brought made him the God that offered the humans “liberation and ecstasy”.
But be aware, such kindness is never that innocent, as a divine gift can always be maleficent. When reading about the different stories where Dionysus took the lead, it appears that our elegant prince had a bad temper too. Like the time when he encountered a group of pirates who did not recognize him as a God and decided to capture him, to be immediately transformed by the God into dolphins, doomed to spend the rest of their lives as sea creatures. Or when he decided to return to his birthplace “Thebes” to establish his worship and spread his cult, a request denied by the King Pentheus who by refusing to acknowledge his divinity, was savagely killed by his people among them his mother who under Dionysus’s influence thought that her son Penthues was a wild beast, a lion that should be hunted and killed.
Dionysus was the bringer of life and happiness but he was also a tormenter as he had the power to spread madness among the mortals leading them to do the unspeakable, to accomplish the worst and that’s exactly why he was portrayed as a handsome God leading his chariot full of wine along with various creatures such as “panthers” known for their savage, animal and fierce side.
And once again, as I read these stories, I bow to the human spirit, to its limitless power of crafting stories that can beautifully shape and resume life’s complexity. Dionysus God of wine, both heartwarming and heartbreaking, forces that should never be badly used or abused. As wine may give you the mere allusion of being a God having all the power, it can easily trick you into a cruel path where only regrets are left at hand.
Meryem !