The Postmodern Apocalypse and Dionysian Rebirth
How many times has the human race killed God? In the course syllabus, two particular historical moments are recalled:
In the late nineteenth century Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God. Two thousand years earlier Plutarch reported in similar fashion that “Great Pan is dead.” (Slater, Class Syllabus)
From a larger, telescopic perspective(1) , God lives whether or not humans kill him/her/it. God does not die, in the literal sense. Rather, like Christ, Dionysus and Osiris, a god image is killed, dismembered, and then remembered and resurrected. This particular mythic pattern may be superimposed upon many times, places and things. The fertility of the Nile, the awakening of spring out of winter and the renewal of the spirit through baptism, all follow the pattern of birth, death and rebirth. This myth is uroboric and signifies a continual, cyclical transformation of psychic and physical reality.
On the other hand, each particular time in history has its own microscopic perspective of God and its own way of killing him/her/it off. For the present time, and in the American culture, the prevailing mythos has a Christian apocalyptic flavor. I am using the word “flavor” because I cannot say that the American modern mythos is Christian; the early Christian movement itself sprung out of a Jewish and Gnostic matrix, and at that time emphasized newness, new life, rebirth.
In class, James Hillman discussed the “curse of newness” in relation to the notion of a new myth. Part of Hillman’s thinking is that Nietzsche’s “God is dead” proclamation has not permeated the culture. We have not cleared away the old god image to make room for the new one to arise; the dead, dismembered carcass of the old god image needs to be buried and laid to rest. Although, Hillman’s idea is potent and intriguing, I would like to add that this dead god image is waiting to be resurrected, not buried.
Within apocalyptic thinking and discourse there is a “link between the end of the world and its renewal” (Kumar 202); this renewed world has been referred to as Utopia or the New Jerusalem. The end times are signaled by catastrophic events which are followed by an idealized vision of peace, beauty and unity on earth. In Christian fundamentalism, the end times will be heralded by the Rapture, the time when certain Christian individuals will be “beamed up” (BBC Online 2005) by Jesus into heaven, along with their bodies. After this event, there will be great wars and destruction of the natural world, called the Great Tribulation, for anyone “left behind.” The powerful imagery in the scenario of the Rapture is that the body is taken up to heaven, along with the spirit, paralleling closely to the myth of Dionysus.
In a world that disregards the body and the earth itself, it is no surprise that the Destructor and the Savior comes in the form of Christ for modern fundamentalist Christians, and Dionysus for some who are more psychologically and polytheistically inclined; both Christ and Dionysus represent God incarnate. In Christian theology, Christ rises from his grave and is taken up to heaven in corporeal form. Dionysus is dismembered and killed by the Titans and later remembered and brought back to life as fully divine by Zeus.
Another myth of Dionysus features his journey into the lower realm, Hades, to bring his mother, Semele up to Mount Olympus. The drama begins with Dionysus’ traumatic birth. Hera tricked Semele into requesting Zeus to show himself to her in all of his glory, and of course, Semele’s mortal frame turns to ash when the radiance, the heat emanating from her God-Lover, hits her body. Semele “possesses some of her son’s qualities–such as the tendency to annihilate individual boundaries (including her own) and merge with the void” (Strong 2001).
Dionysus is associated with the initiation rites of birth and death, and is a god that is paradoxical in so many ways. He is the postmodern poster-child of the gods, so to speak, because he is “twice born”: “so beneath the lightning flashes of Dionysus grew the certainty that the enigmatic god, the spirit of a dual nature and of paradox, had a human mother and, therefore, was already by his birth a native of two realms” (Otto 73).
A postmodern apocalypse does not emphasize a final vision of the new world, just an endless, solipsistic collapsing upon itself. Hillman’s desire to cleanse away the old, dead god may be a release from an endless ending: “the postmodern apocalypse comes not with a bang but a whimper. It is a version of the apocalypse that dwells obsessively on the end, without any expectation of a new beginning. It is, Jacques Derrida has said approvingly, ‘ an apocalypse without vision’, without redemptive hope; it is ‘an end without an end’” (Kumar 207).
In spite of the postmodern vision of the end of the world, a new myth of god is being reborn, and I can feel the labor pangs in the emerging imagery that makes my heart shudder and pulse quicken, both in fear and ecstasy.
In Dionysian anthropology the heart muscle is like an internal maenad in the body of the possessed, constantly leaping within. (Detienne 59)
The throbbing, beating heart muscle is the receptacle of the soul, and if the new god image is related to Dionysus, then this is the location from whence comes all living, breathing images. The heart is also, according to Hillman in The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World, the eyes through which humanity sees beauty. “Beauty is that great category which specifically refers to the Deus revelatus, “the supreme theophany, divine self-revelation” (Hillman 43).
The Dionysian quality of rebirth is epiphanic; it is the sudden unveiling of revelation after the apocalyptic event. Friederich Nietzsche describes the unity and harmony of a New World, so longed for by humanity, in his Dionysian/Apollonic analysis, “The Birth of Tragedy.”
Now that the gospel of universal harmony is sounded, each individual becomes not only reconciled to his fellow but actually at one with him–as though the veil of Maya had been torn apart and there remained only shreds floating before the vision of mystical Oneness. (Nietzsche 23)
One vision of the apocalypse, which is inclusive of the new god image, is highlighted in the HBO program, “Carnivàle,” in which the struggle between good and evil, Christ and the Antichrist is dramatized over the backdrop of pre-World War II (and the dropping of the nuclear bomb), depression America.
The main character is a beaten-down young vagrant named Ben Hawkins, who works and travels in a carnival. He is a hands-on healer; however, in order to give life, he must also take it. It is the paradox of life and death that Hawkins holds in his hands, and relates him to Dionysus and the Messiah. Hawkins and the carnival move from town to town, searching for clues about who the Antichrist is and how to kill him. It becomes increasingly clear that the Antichrist is connected to a great weapon, "A false sun wrought by the hands of men" (Carnivàle Official Website 2005). Hawkins is told that something is going to happen at Trinity–the first test site of the nuclear weapon. Again, the show pulls in Christian symbolism and theology to create the pre-Apocalyptic world, just before the Great Tribulation, which will be signaled by the use of nuclear weapons.
The Antichrist is a powerful, fundamentalist preacher named Brother Justin Crowe. Crowe, like Hawkins, has supernatural powers. He is not a healer, but has apocalyptic visions and the power to take over a person’s will. In one episode, he carves a giant tree into his chest that he sees in a recurring dream. The tree is an important symbol for The Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden. Crowe builds his mighty church and congregation under the shadow of this dream-tree and calls the place, the New Eden and New Jerusalem.
Through this power Crowe becomes connected to local, powerful government officials, in a way associating him with Cronos and Titanism–Crowe has now fully stepped into his inflated power and starts to seek out the One who is meaning to kill him, Hawkins.
The plot also features symbolism of the Templars and Masons. One of the most powerful Templars in the show is Hawkin’s father Henry Scudder, who is murdered by Crowe as a way to absorb his powers. Another main character, Sophie, who becomes Hawkins’ lover, and later turns out to be Crowe’s own daughter, is said to be “the Omega,” and Hawkins is “the Alpha.” The name Sophie itself is connected to Sophia, goddess of wisdom. Notably, in alchemical and Cabalistic sacred text, Sophia is the divine consort and feminine counterpart of God.
In “Carnivàle,” the eclectic use of symbols and images from many myths, paint a dreamlike image of Apocalyptic events. In the god image of Dionysus/Christ, is “pathos, the Greek root of our word “suffering,” originally meant “something that happens,” “experiences,” a being moved and the capacity to be moved” (Mogenson 26, quoting Hillman). A god image cannot take hold of our hearts, or take possession of our souls, unless it moves us. The sublimity of a god image is traumatizing because experiencing the sublime, or experiencing the numinous, can be both beautiful and terrifying.
The boundary between humans and the god image is slowly being taken down, perhaps bringing us closer to a symbolic apocalyptic annihilation, as opposed to a literal one. This is a transgression, and as such, it makes sense that people first need a sense of safety in order to resuscitate and resurrect God. Dionysus obliterates boundaries, while at the same time liberating both spirit and matter from the confines of a dull, Titanic materialism. The sacrifice to the God that will bring him/her/it back to life, is our willingness to withstand chaos, staggering ambiguity and wild imperfection.
(1) “Through microscope we see details of culture, through telescope we see unifying themes.” Doniger, Wendy. The Implied Spider: Politics and Theology in Myth, page 10.
Works Cited
“About the Show.” Carnivàle Official Show Website. 25 March 2005.
Detienne, Marcel. Dionysos At Large. Trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge:
Harvard U P, 1989 .
Hillman, James. The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World. Dallas:
Spring Publications, 1993.
Mogenson, Greg. God is a Trauma: Vicarious Religion and Soul-Making. Dallas: Spring
Publications, Inc., 1989.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy & The Genealogy of Morals. Trans.
Francis Golffing. New York: Doubleday, 1956.
Otto, Walter F. Dionysus: Myth and Cult. Trans. Robert B. Palmer.
Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana U P, 1965.
Strong, Adrian. “The Semele Complex: Some Implications for Addiction to Armed
Aggression.” HeadlineMuse.com (2001). 3 March 2004.
In the late nineteenth century Nietzsche proclaimed the death of God. Two thousand years earlier Plutarch reported in similar fashion that “Great Pan is dead.” (Slater, Class Syllabus)
From a larger, telescopic perspective(1) , God lives whether or not humans kill him/her/it. God does not die, in the literal sense. Rather, like Christ, Dionysus and Osiris, a god image is killed, dismembered, and then remembered and resurrected. This particular mythic pattern may be superimposed upon many times, places and things. The fertility of the Nile, the awakening of spring out of winter and the renewal of the spirit through baptism, all follow the pattern of birth, death and rebirth. This myth is uroboric and signifies a continual, cyclical transformation of psychic and physical reality.
On the other hand, each particular time in history has its own microscopic perspective of God and its own way of killing him/her/it off. For the present time, and in the American culture, the prevailing mythos has a Christian apocalyptic flavor. I am using the word “flavor” because I cannot say that the American modern mythos is Christian; the early Christian movement itself sprung out of a Jewish and Gnostic matrix, and at that time emphasized newness, new life, rebirth.
In class, James Hillman discussed the “curse of newness” in relation to the notion of a new myth. Part of Hillman’s thinking is that Nietzsche’s “God is dead” proclamation has not permeated the culture. We have not cleared away the old god image to make room for the new one to arise; the dead, dismembered carcass of the old god image needs to be buried and laid to rest. Although, Hillman’s idea is potent and intriguing, I would like to add that this dead god image is waiting to be resurrected, not buried.
Within apocalyptic thinking and discourse there is a “link between the end of the world and its renewal” (Kumar 202); this renewed world has been referred to as Utopia or the New Jerusalem. The end times are signaled by catastrophic events which are followed by an idealized vision of peace, beauty and unity on earth. In Christian fundamentalism, the end times will be heralded by the Rapture, the time when certain Christian individuals will be “beamed up” (BBC Online 2005) by Jesus into heaven, along with their bodies. After this event, there will be great wars and destruction of the natural world, called the Great Tribulation, for anyone “left behind.” The powerful imagery in the scenario of the Rapture is that the body is taken up to heaven, along with the spirit, paralleling closely to the myth of Dionysus.
In a world that disregards the body and the earth itself, it is no surprise that the Destructor and the Savior comes in the form of Christ for modern fundamentalist Christians, and Dionysus for some who are more psychologically and polytheistically inclined; both Christ and Dionysus represent God incarnate. In Christian theology, Christ rises from his grave and is taken up to heaven in corporeal form. Dionysus is dismembered and killed by the Titans and later remembered and brought back to life as fully divine by Zeus.
Another myth of Dionysus features his journey into the lower realm, Hades, to bring his mother, Semele up to Mount Olympus. The drama begins with Dionysus’ traumatic birth. Hera tricked Semele into requesting Zeus to show himself to her in all of his glory, and of course, Semele’s mortal frame turns to ash when the radiance, the heat emanating from her God-Lover, hits her body. Semele “possesses some of her son’s qualities–such as the tendency to annihilate individual boundaries (including her own) and merge with the void” (Strong 2001).
Dionysus is associated with the initiation rites of birth and death, and is a god that is paradoxical in so many ways. He is the postmodern poster-child of the gods, so to speak, because he is “twice born”: “so beneath the lightning flashes of Dionysus grew the certainty that the enigmatic god, the spirit of a dual nature and of paradox, had a human mother and, therefore, was already by his birth a native of two realms” (Otto 73).
A postmodern apocalypse does not emphasize a final vision of the new world, just an endless, solipsistic collapsing upon itself. Hillman’s desire to cleanse away the old, dead god may be a release from an endless ending: “the postmodern apocalypse comes not with a bang but a whimper. It is a version of the apocalypse that dwells obsessively on the end, without any expectation of a new beginning. It is, Jacques Derrida has said approvingly, ‘ an apocalypse without vision’, without redemptive hope; it is ‘an end without an end’” (Kumar 207).
In spite of the postmodern vision of the end of the world, a new myth of god is being reborn, and I can feel the labor pangs in the emerging imagery that makes my heart shudder and pulse quicken, both in fear and ecstasy.
In Dionysian anthropology the heart muscle is like an internal maenad in the body of the possessed, constantly leaping within. (Detienne 59)
The throbbing, beating heart muscle is the receptacle of the soul, and if the new god image is related to Dionysus, then this is the location from whence comes all living, breathing images. The heart is also, according to Hillman in The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World, the eyes through which humanity sees beauty. “Beauty is that great category which specifically refers to the Deus revelatus, “the supreme theophany, divine self-revelation” (Hillman 43).
The Dionysian quality of rebirth is epiphanic; it is the sudden unveiling of revelation after the apocalyptic event. Friederich Nietzsche describes the unity and harmony of a New World, so longed for by humanity, in his Dionysian/Apollonic analysis, “The Birth of Tragedy.”
Now that the gospel of universal harmony is sounded, each individual becomes not only reconciled to his fellow but actually at one with him–as though the veil of Maya had been torn apart and there remained only shreds floating before the vision of mystical Oneness. (Nietzsche 23)
One vision of the apocalypse, which is inclusive of the new god image, is highlighted in the HBO program, “Carnivàle,” in which the struggle between good and evil, Christ and the Antichrist is dramatized over the backdrop of pre-World War II (and the dropping of the nuclear bomb), depression America.
The main character is a beaten-down young vagrant named Ben Hawkins, who works and travels in a carnival. He is a hands-on healer; however, in order to give life, he must also take it. It is the paradox of life and death that Hawkins holds in his hands, and relates him to Dionysus and the Messiah. Hawkins and the carnival move from town to town, searching for clues about who the Antichrist is and how to kill him. It becomes increasingly clear that the Antichrist is connected to a great weapon, "A false sun wrought by the hands of men" (Carnivàle Official Website 2005). Hawkins is told that something is going to happen at Trinity–the first test site of the nuclear weapon. Again, the show pulls in Christian symbolism and theology to create the pre-Apocalyptic world, just before the Great Tribulation, which will be signaled by the use of nuclear weapons.
The Antichrist is a powerful, fundamentalist preacher named Brother Justin Crowe. Crowe, like Hawkins, has supernatural powers. He is not a healer, but has apocalyptic visions and the power to take over a person’s will. In one episode, he carves a giant tree into his chest that he sees in a recurring dream. The tree is an important symbol for The Tree of Life in the Garden of Eden. Crowe builds his mighty church and congregation under the shadow of this dream-tree and calls the place, the New Eden and New Jerusalem.
Through this power Crowe becomes connected to local, powerful government officials, in a way associating him with Cronos and Titanism–Crowe has now fully stepped into his inflated power and starts to seek out the One who is meaning to kill him, Hawkins.
The plot also features symbolism of the Templars and Masons. One of the most powerful Templars in the show is Hawkin’s father Henry Scudder, who is murdered by Crowe as a way to absorb his powers. Another main character, Sophie, who becomes Hawkins’ lover, and later turns out to be Crowe’s own daughter, is said to be “the Omega,” and Hawkins is “the Alpha.” The name Sophie itself is connected to Sophia, goddess of wisdom. Notably, in alchemical and Cabalistic sacred text, Sophia is the divine consort and feminine counterpart of God.
In “Carnivàle,” the eclectic use of symbols and images from many myths, paint a dreamlike image of Apocalyptic events. In the god image of Dionysus/Christ, is “pathos, the Greek root of our word “suffering,” originally meant “something that happens,” “experiences,” a being moved and the capacity to be moved” (Mogenson 26, quoting Hillman). A god image cannot take hold of our hearts, or take possession of our souls, unless it moves us. The sublimity of a god image is traumatizing because experiencing the sublime, or experiencing the numinous, can be both beautiful and terrifying.
The boundary between humans and the god image is slowly being taken down, perhaps bringing us closer to a symbolic apocalyptic annihilation, as opposed to a literal one. This is a transgression, and as such, it makes sense that people first need a sense of safety in order to resuscitate and resurrect God. Dionysus obliterates boundaries, while at the same time liberating both spirit and matter from the confines of a dull, Titanic materialism. The sacrifice to the God that will bring him/her/it back to life, is our willingness to withstand chaos, staggering ambiguity and wild imperfection.
(1) “Through microscope we see details of culture, through telescope we see unifying themes.” Doniger, Wendy. The Implied Spider: Politics and Theology in Myth, page 10.
Works Cited
“About the Show.” Carnivàle Official Show Website. 25 March 2005.
Detienne, Marcel. Dionysos At Large. Trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Cambridge:
Harvard U P, 1989 .
Hillman, James. The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World. Dallas:
Spring Publications, 1993.
Mogenson, Greg. God is a Trauma: Vicarious Religion and Soul-Making. Dallas: Spring
Publications, Inc., 1989.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. The Birth of Tragedy & The Genealogy of Morals. Trans.
Francis Golffing. New York: Doubleday, 1956.
Otto, Walter F. Dionysus: Myth and Cult. Trans. Robert B. Palmer.
Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana U P, 1965.
Strong, Adrian. “The Semele Complex: Some Implications for Addiction to Armed
Aggression.” HeadlineMuse.com (2001). 3 March 2004.
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