the dionysian underground

a living myth ... born out of an anarchist nihilism that sees no narrative as exclusively true ... we created our own truth. what proudhon called "a necessary invention" or an "operative fiction" ... it is not a representation of any "reality".

as a disparate group of ever-changing individuals we brought together elements of hereclitian dialectic, taoism, revolutionary psychologies (fromm, jung, marcuse etc) with pagan, goddessing ecologies, magic, and tantra. the most natural description for these interweaving currents seemed to be dionysian.... a term already used not only by nietzscheans but by counterculturists, such as jack kerouac, jim morrison and terence mckenna.... ¹

our roots however go back much further to the mysteries of classical greece and rome, known to have spawned revolutionaries even then. spartacus who led the slave revolt was an initiate. it was always associated with the common people, preserving ancient communal values and "primitive" aspirations. the dionysian current was always on the side of the oppressed, like voodoo in haiti, used during the slaves revolution 200 years ago. it was of course sometimes used for political and hierarchical purposes but remained essentially egalitarian. in its most natural form dionysianism was socially and politically anarchist. it seems likely that it alone kept alive the spiritual currents that danced with the more "communistic, ecological" living patterns of prehistoric peoples going back tens of thousands of years, at least to the upper paleolithic.

but what about today?

we are not trying to revive an ancient religion. rather we see dionysus both as an image/archetype of the loosening, instinctual, passionate, pleasure seeking side of human and non-human nature and as a metaphor for the hidden wisdoms and natural rhythms of that nature. dionysian order is the O in anarchism, the anti-hierarchical, ever-changing, rhythmic order of the universe. the more we tune in to this order, the less we need the rigid reasoning of the capitalist, patriarchal world of western civilisation. we need trust no authority other than the authority of our deepest intuition.

do not imagine that this is some fluffy path of going with the flow, or some excuse to become selfish monsters orgying every night (though occasional seasonal orgies were always part of the dionysian way, and intuitive loving selfishness is very dionysian). tuning in to the rhythms of ourselves, dancing with the tao, feeling when to let go and when to hold on, takes lifetimes of warrior work. there is a natural equalising/balancing process that we can learn to trust as in the tao te ching. people fear anarchy without realizing it is the most trustworthy of all politics. to really trust that hidden order is the essence of being fully human. if basic needs are met, the body has its own wisdom. a person provided with all the food they want is not likely to eat all day and night. they have their natural rhythm. where basic needs are not met as for most of the world's population the dionysian spirit also dies. but so it does within capitalism where distorted needs are constantly created. addictions of any kind prevent full freedom, even addiction to hedonism. all hierarchies and hierarchical thinking prevent the free flow of the spirit, of our instincts, of the nature that we fear to trust.

so what do we do?

we are more about being than doing. mostly we try to bring the dionysian, anarchist revolution into everyday life. we demonstrate but we also spend a lot of time enjoying breathing, dancing and making love. not being too busy, preferring time to money and not driving cars. we fight against any hierarchical oppressions from racism to war. but the revolution doesn't end after the demo. we work with the spiritual, psychological and cultural dimensions of anti-capitalist, anarchist politics.

to help keep the spirit of dionysus alive in its most direct and potent forms, we enact ritez that evoke him and the goddess/gaia (or any other wild gods and goddesses that anyone present wants to evoke). using chants, drums, invocations, dance and poetry we call up the energies of dionysus to help in transforming society and ourselves. examples of ritez enacted so far was a burning of father christmas as a symbol of consumer capitalism, in green park on the winter solstice including wine libations and lots of drinking and dancing. another one on valentines day included many kinds of invocation to the genuine eros and dionysus and destroying examples of the plastic love sold on valentines day. on ginsberg's birthday we invoked the flow of the ancient river goddesses of london to rise against capitalism, reading verses of "howl" (as relevant today as it was in the '50s).

This text, by JC and SA, coding by HC, was first produced as an introductory leaflet for the anarchist bookfair Oct 2000.

¹ Appendix on 'the Dionysian' by SA.

The term Dionysian is indeed an apt one, originally a label for the primeval pagan mysteries of Dionysos (God of wine/intoxication, the grapevine, life-force, the primitive, euphoria and liberation), it was later taken up by nominally 'Christian' poets and artists to refer to any 'wild, ecstatic or riotous' state of being, also called the Dionysiac, and by Renaissance 'occultists' and 'alchemists' to refer to the 'powers of the moon' and 'emerging forces from the underworld'. It was adopted by the 19th cent Romantic Movement in a similar vein designating a current in western culture rooted not just in the Greek cult of Dionysos but in a global (shamanic) tradition going back to the dawn of history. The great philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche turned this picture around, from a 'romantic' idealised paganism to an atheistic, iconoclastic critique of European civilization, equating the term Dionysian with the 'dangerous', though necessary, social expression of primal human instincts (often of an unconscious nature), in cultural forms including wild paganism and political revolutionism. Its opposite was the Apollonian, the cultural principle of control, idealised form and conventionalism which underpinned civilized, but highly oppressive, European society. In works such as The Birth of Tragedy he claimed his ideas were rooted in the 'original meaning' of the Dionysian Mysteries and the 'related' dynamic philosophy of Heraclitus (in many ways similar to Taoism) combined with Science. He rationally called for a flexible balancing of Apollo and Dionysos (though emotionally preferring the latter). Amongst those greatly influenced by Nietzsche's notion of the Dionysian were many talented writers and avant garde artists (particularly the lineage of Decadents-Symbolists-Surrealists), but especially Sigmund Freud (for all his other faults) and the psycho-analysts who followed him. Jung in particular (a lover of mythology) would adopt the term Dionysian and use it interchangeably with terms for 'the forces of the unconscious'. Anarchists of the period were also much influenced by this Nietzschean current taking it to even more Dionysiac extremes (the more familiar political philosopher Hegel had also been inspired by the 'Dionysian' Heraclitus and his ancient dialectical philosophy).

Later those using the term Dionysian, in the sense it had accrued, included the 'Decadent occultist' Aleister Crowley, the Anarcho-Surrealists, and their heirs the Situationists (particularly the 'occult minded' Asger Jorn who had greatly inspired Debord), Beat poets (such as William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac), various Countercultural figures (influenced by much of the above), 'Post-Modern' philosophers (the contemporary heirs of Nietzsche) and the anarchic culmination of all these 'Hakim Bey'. The 'Dionysian' also has several parallels with Marcuse's concept (from Eros and Civilization) of the wild, revolutionary 'Promethean' current in western culture (though Marcuse's pagan rebel is more rational).

In the East the mythos and philosophy of the most ancient cults of Shiva-Shakti (the origins of Tantra, and according to at least one scholar a major influence on Taoism) can also be refered to as essentially Dionysian, as the Alexandrian Greeks of the Indus Valley colonies had instantly equated Shiva with Dionysos, and syncretically combined their cults, as was their practice. Much later on in one of the surviving western most of these cities (traditionally Samarkand, originally the Indo-Greek city Maracanda in Bactria, overrun first by Pro-Buddhist Scythians - themselves once worshippers of the Thracian Dionysos Sabazius - and finally by Islam) the great poet Omar Khayam (of Zoroastrian, Sufic and Tantric influence) would write his Rubayat with its affirmation of wine, life and decadence.

BACK...