Such identification always indicates a psychic transformation. If the worshippers had not been changed into Dionysos the transference to them of the god’s name would be inexplicable.
This identification at least proves that transformation of the personality originally existed, although it may have disappeared at a higher stage of civilization. In support of this hypothesis we must moreover quote the similarity of conduct between Dionysos and his worshippers. “Like the wild god himself they fell upon the sacrificial beast to devour it raw.” “The horns which they wore recall the horned bullgod himself.”2
Sometimes even the crude idea that the torn and devoured beast was the god peeped through,3 a conception in which union with the god is realized in the most naïf manner and one which might also give rise to the genesis of possession. In other cases the Mænads play the part of nymphs, Pans, Silenus and Satyrs or other beings accompanying the god—such as the originally were themselves.1
To these must be added other data of a positive nature, although partially derived from somewhat later times. Tiresias also speaks in the Bacchœ of a visitation of the god:
… in his fulness when he floods our frame He makes his maddened votaries tell the future.2
In the scholia of Euripides’ Hippolytus, 144, we read:
Those men are called “filled with god” whose reason has been taken away by an apparition and who are possessed by the god who gave the vision and behave according to his will.3
Neither does Rohde doubt that the Bacchantes themselves were under the illusion of living in a strange personality.4 In support of this opinion he adds:
The terrors of the night, the music, especially of those Phrygian flutes to whose sounds the Greeks attributed the power of rendering the hearer “full of the god,” the whirling dance: all these could really create in certain predisposed natures a state of visionary excitement in which the inspired saw as existing independently of themselves all that they thought and imagined.5
In this connection we should observe that visions and possession are not in any way identical. These two phenomena may co-exist, but they are quite distinct and it is not permissible to argue the presence of the one from a demonstration of the other.
Visions are always easier to prove. No doubt is possible as to their reality amongst the Bacchantes.
“It is only during possession that the Bacchantes draw milk and honey from the streams,” says Plato, “and not when they are themselves.”6
“Flowing with milk is the ground, and with wine it is flowing, and flowing
Nectar of bees; and a smoke as of incense of Araby soars,”
says Euripides.7
And later:
One (Bacchante) grasped her thyrsus-staff, and smote the rock,
And forth upleapt a fountain’s showering spray:
One in earth’s bosom planted her reed-wand,
And up therethrough the god a wine-fount sent;
And whoso fain would drink white-foaming draughts
Scarred with their finger-tips the breast of earth,
And milk gushed forth unstinted: dripped the while
Sweet streams of honey from their ivy-staves.1
Lucian relates also:
The Bacchic dance to which they are addicted in Ionia and Pontus, has, although satįyric in nature, gained such a hold upon the people of those countries that at the appointed time they forget everything else and for days together behold Titans, Corybantes, Satyrs and herdsmen.2
The sources are unhappily too scanty to afford us exact knowledge of whether the phenomena of possession and the visions appeared in the same persons, or the first more particularly in some and the second in others. Co-existence of the two kinds of phenomena would have its parallel, for example, in the case of Sœur Jeanne des Anges and Eschenmayer’s C. St. case. As already stated, I have not lingered over the phenomena of vision amongst possessed persons because they are of no importance to the analysis of true possession and I shall here confine myself to remarking that in the cases quoted (which are only a few amongst many), visions were very frequent.
The most recent English commentary on the Bacchce (by G. Norwood) advocates the theory that the personage appearing under the name of Dionysos is not at all the god himself (which interpretation entails certain difficulties although the new theory immediately gives rise to further ones). If this is so the identification of god and man would be accomplished in the play itself.3
It cannot be exactly determined up to what point these states were somnambulistic or lucid. According to Rohde we should believe that they were generally somnambulistic in character. “The ,” says he, “is entirely in the god’s power. The god speaks and acts in him. His own consciousness has entirely left the ” 1 Rohde bases his theory on one single passage of Plato and Philo.2 In Plato’s Meno we read: (meaning ) , i.e., “the god-possessed men speak much truth, but know nothing of what they say.”
The interpretation of these last words in the sense of a loss of personal consciousness is, however, untenable. It is clear from the comparison which Plato makes in this place between the god-possessed and creative politicians that he is not thinking of a loss of personal consciousness; he simply means that what they say under inspiration exceeds their normal spiritual capacity.
The second quotation to which Rohde refers is from Philo. The latter says, speaking of divinely inspired prophets:
For in general the prophet announces nothing personal, rather he merely lends his voice to him who prompts him with all that he says; when he is inspired he becomes unconscious; thought vanishes away and leaves the fortress of the soul; but the divine spirit has entered there and taken up its abode; and this latter makes all the vocal organs resound, so that the man gives clear expression to what the spirit gives him to say.3
For the sake of completeness, let us give another quotation from the same source, to which Rohde makes no reference and which runs:
Moses has said: … But there shall suddenly appear a prophet sent from God and he shall prophesy without saying anything of himself—for he who is really inspired and filled with God cannot comprehend with his intelligence what he says; he only repeats what is suggested to him, as if another prompted him; for the prophets are those who speak on God’s behalf, who use their organs to reveal his will.4
These two messages are designed to testify to a suspension of consciousness and consequently to the somnambulistic nature of the possession. Unfortunately, however, they offer no immediate demonstration of the somnambulistic character of Dionysiac intoxication, relating as they do to prophets and diviners. Nothing but the fact that the ancients were generally accustomed to associate these states authorizes us to generalize from the one to the other, and even this does not fully compensate for the lack of direct evidence.
In the first place, it cannot be said how great a number of those participating in the Dionysiac intoxication-cult fell into a state of true possession; but neither do we know how numerous these participants were. The only thing ascertainable is that the number of adherents was greater than that of the possessed. 1
We will supplement by a quotation from Jamblich’s work on the Mysteries.
There are, therefore, many species of divine possession, and divine inspiration is multifariously excited; thence, also, the signs of it are many and different. For either the gods are different, by whom we are inspired, and thus produce a different inspiration, or the mode of enthusiasms being various, produces a different afflatus. For either divinity possesses us or we give ourselves up wholly to divinity, or we have a common energy with him. And sometimes, indeed, we participate of the last power of divinity, sometimes of his middle, and sometimes of his first power. Sometimes, also, there is a participation only, at other times, communion likewise, and sometimes a union of these divine inspirations. Again, either the soul alone enjoys the inspiration, or the soul receives it in conjunction with the body, or it is also participated by the common animal.
From these thin
gs, therefore, the signs of those that are inspired are multiform. For the inspiration is indicated by the motions of the [whole] body, and of certain parts of it, by the perfect rest of the body, by harmonious orders and dances, and by elegant sounds, or the contraries of these. Either the body, likewise, is seen to be elevated, or increased in bulk, or to be borne along sublimely in the air, or the contraries of these are seen to take place about it. An equability also, of voice, according to magnitude, or a great variety of voice after intervals of silence, may be observed. And again, sometimes the sounds have a musical intension and remission, and sometimes they are strained and relaxed after a different manner.2
But it is necessary to investigate the causes of divine mania. And these are the illuminations proceeding from the gods, the spirits imparted by them, and the all-perfect domination of divinity, which comprehends indeed everything in us, but exterminates entirely our own proper consciousness and motion. This divine possession, also, emits words which are not understood by those that utter them; for they pronounce them, as it is said, with an insane mouth, and are wholly subservient, and entirely yield themselves to the energy of the predominating God.3
Unfortunately this description is so meagre as to be in itself incapable of detailed interpretation. It will be one of the future tasks of a deeper research into Neo-Platonism to arrive at a complete understanding of the passage.
Jamblich, moreover, considers it the general view of his contemporaries that “many, through enthusiasm and divine inspiration, predict future events, and that they are then in so wakeful a state, as even to energize according to sense, and yet they are not conscious of the state they are in, or at least, not so much as they were before.”1
These words, like the preceding ones, are not sufficiently clear to permit of a considered judgement as to whether a true somnambulistic state is meant or merely a marked distraction of the attention.
Very closely related to Dionysiac possession is the so-called Corybantism2 manifested at the festivals of the Phrygian divinities. But the possessing spirits in this case were not Dionysos or his companions, nymphs, satyrs, etc., but Rhea Cybele or her companions, the so-called Corybantes.
“They rage possessed by Rhea and the Corybantes, that is to say, they rage like the Corybantes possessed by the demon. As soon as the divine attribute has taken possession of them they rush in, cry aloud, dance and foretell the future, raging and god-driven,” relates the Phrygian Arrian.3
Graillot’s new work on the worship of Cybele gives no psychological explanation of any importance.4 The phenomena reported are those best known as characteristic of possession in Greece. They are not the only ones; it has also been possible to establish a series of less important cases.
There are few places but have oracles set up, where priests and priestesses, in a mad ravishment, announce what Apollo inspires them to say. The prototype of these oracles is that of Delphi.5
The prophetess of Apollo Deiradiotes at Argos is alleged to have become possessed by drinking the blood of the sacrifices: , as was the priestess of the Earth at Ægira in Achaia.1
Pausanius, moreover, says of the priest of the oracle at Amphikleia in Phocis: .2
At the oracle of Claros, near Colophon in Asia Minor, the priest, descended from a certain local family, went to a cavern, drank of a running stream and gave in verse his reply to the question put, although he was often an uneducated man.3 Similarly it is said of the priestess of the Didymaic oracle near Miletus, that she had drunk of an ecstasy-inducing spring; there is also mention of inhaling vapour arising from the spring.4
In the cases of blood-drinking the autosuggestive nature of the ecstasy is indubitable. Where the water of certain springs is drunk doubt might exist, particularly when the inhalation of vapour is mentioned, but it is nevertheless very noteworthy that springs producing this effect are no longer known to-day.
E. von Lasaulx has collected in a special work5 all the documents on the oracle of Dodona, where exactly as at Delphi priests prophesied in a state of psychic excitement. These include a very important piece of information, nowhere to be found in the literature concerning the Pythoness, namely that those states were somnambulistic in character, the priestesses preserving no memory of them. The rhetor Aristides, who lived under Hadrian, attests that the priestesses “do not know, before being seized by the spirits, what they are going to say, any more than after having recovered their natural senses they remember what they have said, so that everyone knows what they say except themselves.”6
Jamblich says almost the same thing of the priestess of Apollo at the Oracle of Colophon:
But this divine illumination is constantly present, and uses the prophetess as an instrument; she neither being any longer mistress of herself, nor capable of attending to what she says, nor perceiving where she is. Hence, after prediction, she is scarcely able to recover herself.1
It has been possible to establish identification between priests and divinities in a few cases, always in connection with phenomena of possession. Thus Farnell remarks:
The priestess of Artemis Laphria at Patrai appears to have embodied the goddess on a solemn occasion; the priestesses of the brides of the Dioscuri are called Leukippides, the youthful ministrants of the bull-god Poseidon are themselves “bulls”at Ephesos, the girls who dance in honour of the bear-goddess at Brauron are themselves “bears.” But these examples are rare exceptions.2
It should also be noted that the Greeks themselves gave a wider extension to the term “possession.” They understood by it all the phenomena of inspiration, particularly of the poetic kind. In the beginning it must surely have been understood in the literal sense when the poet invoked the Muse at the opening of his work: —Musa, mihi causas memora. Perhaps already the words may have been used from tradition, and therefore symbolically, by Homer as they certainly were by Virgil; they were nevertheless originally meant in good earnest. What meaning had they when literally used? Were they simple prayers to a divinity as a Christian poet prays God to grant him grace? The text itself contradicts this view, since it says that it is the Muse and not the poet who must sing, an expression only explicable if the poet was convinced that he did not create, but that another, the Muse, did so in his place. It is very remarkable that the epics of other peoples contain nothing analogous. Such a conception, existent to an enhanced degree amongst the Greeks and entirely peculiar to that nation, can only be explained by admitting that the voluntary activity of the creative artist was unconnected with his work and that his most perfect productions were obtained as a gift. This manner of envisaging himself in his work shows once more the enormous creative force of the Greek.
Plato makes Socrates say to Ion:
… the Muse communicates through those whom she has first inspired….
… For the authors of those great poems which we admire, do not attain to excellence through the rules of any art, but they utter their beautiful melodies of verse in a state of inspiration, and, as it were, possessed by a spirit not their own. Thus the composers of lyrical poetry create those admired songs of theirs in a state of divine insanity, like the Corybantes, who lose all control over their reason in the enthusiasm of the sacred dance; and, during this supernatural possession, are excited to the rhythm and harmony which they communicate to men. Like the Bacchantes, who, when possessed by the god, draw honey and milk from the rivers, in which, when they come to their senses, they find nothing but simple water. For the souls of the poets, as poets tell us, have this peculiar ministration in the world. They tell us that their souls, flying like bees from flower to flower, and wandering over the gardens and the meadows, and the honey-flowing fountains of the Muses, return to us laden with the sweetness of melody; and arrayed as they are in the plumes of rapid imagination, they speak truth. For a poet is indeed a thing ethereally light, winged and sacred, nor can he compose anything worth calling poetry until he becomes inspired, and, as it were, mad, or whilst any reason remains to him. For whilst a man retains any port
ion of the thing called reason, he is utterly incompetent to produce poetry or to vaticinate. Thus, those who declaim various and beautiful poetry upon any subject, as for instance upon Homer, are not enabled to do so by art or study, but every rhapsodist or poet, whether dithyrambic, encomastic, choral, epic, or iambic, is excellent in proportion to the extent of his participation in the divine influence, and the degree in which the Muse itself has descended on him. In other respects, poets may be sufficiently ignorant and incapable. For they do not compose according to any art which they have acquired, but from the impulse of the divinity within them; for did they know any rules of criticism, according to which they could compose beautiful verses upon one subject, they would be able to exert the same faculty with respect to all or any other. The God seems purposely to have deprived all poets, prophets and soothsayers of every particle of reason and understanding, the better to adapt them to their employment as his ministers and interpreters; and that we, their auditors, may acknowledge that those who write so beautifully are possessed, and address us, inspired by the God.…”1
This theory of Plato’s once more attains full literal acceptation in the philosophy of the Restoration, at the end of classical antiquity. The Emperor Julian2 is imbued with the idea that the poet is filled with the godhead, and he discriminates, as did Plato, between mental derangement and inspiration. He calls the seers 1 and similarly Homer .2
It is very interesting to note that the word in itself already means possession, not merely enthusiasm in our sense of the word—a mere state of psychic excitement without further significance. In this connection the particulars given in Guida’s Lexicon are very instructive. It reads: (not a completely clear definition—we should expect to find as designating one possessed by a god, but as corollary to πεμa it seems strange).
Possession, Demoniacal And Other Page 49