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I drove women out of the house in a frenzy. ....(The Bacchae by Euripides)

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Dionysus is the one who loosens all inhibitions and all bonds

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when he arrives, he subverts every constituted order

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that's why the dance is so close to Dionysus

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and that's what the Maenads do, following Dionysus

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during the ceremonies that tradition has told us of orgies

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not what Christian tradition has stigmatized

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to drive away and demonize a world that didn't belong to it anymore

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and risked keeping people away.

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but something very different

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A ceremony called Mystery because only the Mysteries participate in it:

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those who are initiated

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and that they are unable to tell what's going on to  who don't participate

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hence the term mystery that we use to indicate something we don't know about

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in that ceremony the Kithairon mountain is celebrated

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so similar to that Vesuvius

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where even today we still dance to the sound of the drums

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in those ceremonies the god is present

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with his women: the maenads.

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what is really the frenzy that takes women?

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It's not madness, it's ecstasy

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"Ex stasis" means going out of oneself to let a god in

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in perfect communion

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Dionysus prefers those women who are young, married with children

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because he is the subverter of every constituted order

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and marriage is the institution that more than any other

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can symbolize the established order

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the apparatus of laws and values governing urbanized civil society

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that in Athens, at a particular moment in history they would have called polis

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These women at the advent of Dionysus are overturned

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while I'm busy doing chores or taking care of the kids

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suddenly they fly away

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often tear their children to pieces in their cribs

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and taken by a maternal instinct

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with breasts swollen with milk

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hey go through the woods

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they go up in the mountains and nurse the beast puppies

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panthers, lions, tigers

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and then they go on dancing

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in an ecstatic transport that is never lascivious, unbridled, lack of costume

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Tradition has told us of the maenads

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as depraved women who mated with satyrs, with silens

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it wasn't like that

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you'd think that even under the robe they were surrounded by snakes

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to prevent them from being attacked in their sleep

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raped by satyrs and silenes

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they are just taken by a great love of Dionysus

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that to each of them is ecstatically faithful

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always remembering to be Ariadne's only groom