/lit/ - Literature

>>11043524
Uzdavinys's last words from his last book...

>>10951581
>"Every professional association (hetairia) claimed the patronage of one or more deities, and was made up of the deities' servants. These societies were sometimes called orgeones [hereditary club for orgia], from orgiazo, "to pay ritual service to the gods", and their ritual practices were ta orgia [performance of secret rites]. They usually included a banquet (sumposion) where the members of the hetairia or initiates sat crowned with garlands . . . the ceremonial banquet serves as a means to imitate (or play) the gods and thereby restore (symbolically, at least) perfect heavenly bliss. . . . [initiation] was equivalent to adoption by the presiding deity . . . a legal fiction that permits kin relations to be created artificially, and which provided the model for the discourse of conversion and the practice of initiation in genealogically articulated systems. . . . a rhetorical strategy for structuring social relations in religious and educational contexts." (90-92)

Sexual lavishness as ritual catharsis is, for the most part, a Romantic myth about the cult of Dionysus. Aside from practical secrecy, as the mysteries themselves became inseparable from the Athenian polis and its soteriological pretense, the rites were understood within the framework of restoring the dismembered body of Dionysus as savior and patron. It was likely this inseparable Athenian element that led to defamation of the cult by Roman historians.

Has anyone here read this little book? This was a little boggling to me. How does it stand up in contemporary Platonic scholarship? Was Plato truly a mystical esoterist?

>>10276957
>>10276973
Some good quotes about mystery cults and Dionysius in this book but unfortunately I lent it to a friend and moved since.

Of course, one could interpret it as an Apollo-nizing with its Neoplatonic explanations...