1. DITHYRAMB III: SABAZIUS RISING

I, I see you
Your face
Your eyes
Madness
Divine

I know you
Laughing
Dancing
Imbibe
The Vine

Consume you
Unite
Possessed
Your touch
Sublime

I am you
The Shoot
The Sap
The Calf
Spring Dawn

I eat you
Young blood
Raw flesh
Deathless
Bull torn

Sacrament
I come
I sing
I am
Twice Born

You are the
Son of the
Moon and the
Sky and the
Blood of the bull torn

I am the
Sun and the
Moon and the
Sky and the
Blood of the new born
Your eyes, restrained before sunrise of new spring
Young child, eternal, the archetypal dawn of life
Countenance beguiled, adrift on the sea of madness
Time below, the signs of a new dawning

Ablaze for all to see, your soul wanders endlessly
Child of death, your song, the life blood of humanity
Foregone eventuality, the sap in the tree
Ambivalent antiquity, hallowed eternal

Spoken:

In Macedonia, in the fourth century BC, the cult of Dionysus was still sufficiently primitive to include such rites as snake handling. However, at Athens, Dionysus had been tamed; but it does not follow that the Dionysiac temper had vanished, and religion of the orgiastic type began to emerge again under other names. Athens was invaded by a multitude of foreign gods: it is at this time that Attic literature begins to be full of references to the eastern and northern mystery gods, Cybele and Bendis, Attis, Adonis and Sabazius. In relation to the Bacchae the last-named is of interest.

He is an oriental counterpart of Dionysus – an unhellenized Dionysus whose cult retained the primitive appeal and much of the primitive ritual which the Attic Dionysus had long since lost. Sabazius still promised his initiates what Dionysus had once promised – identification with deity. And to this end he offered them the old means – an ecstatic nocturnal rite performed to the music of flute and kettledrum.

(The Bacchae, edited by E. R. Dodds. Oxford 1960)

I am, hallowed, divine, dream of death
Insight, unite, the vine, final breath

I am, alive, unveiled, inner core
Chaos, madness, seeps from, every pore

I come, I see, his voice, calling me
He sings, he knows, songs of tragedy

Our lives, our deaths, they are, but a dream
So drink, so drug, so dance, he it seems
Is here…

Hallowed vine, I am divine, insight, unite
Dream of death, the final breath, consume, to survive

Voices come, they speak to me, chaos, unveiled
Madness plays, and we cavort, never, second thought

I am come, and I see, his voice, calls me
For all the sins, you will commit, for love, don’t submit

Drink the drink, and eat the flesh, dare to, say I
Timelessness, and ecstasy, they are, sacrament

Sacrifice, eternity, madness, taken hold
Take your fill, the face of God, prepare, to behold

I’m alive, encapsulate, reborn, bull-torn
I defile, and celebrate, the end, subjugate