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For devout wine lovers, the god who should be worshipped the most is none other than Dionysus. Who is Dionysus? How many Dionysians are there in the world? Where did they all come from? Let's dig through the cocoon and look through the evolutionary history of Dionysus.
Text/Maya
One day, I drank with my drinkers, talked about religious beliefs and worship, and talked about the omnipotent human beings who created gods that met their various needs by imagination, such as the god of wealth in the tea restaurant downstairs, cupid and the old man on Valentine's Day, the door god pasted on the door, and so on.
<h2>1 The Light of Civilization in the Age of Chaos
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It all starts with primitive people in ancient times. Ancestors who were still in the gathering era inadvertently discovered that fermented fruits can bring magical liquor. But when I drank it, I didn't think about God's problem yet.
With the beginning of agricultural life, a high degree of civilization gradually established in West Asia. People began to have a basic concept of wine as an alcoholic beverage, and the Sumerians first had a "Dionysus" - Geshtinanna. However, this goddess is not prominent in Sumerian mythology, good at interpreting dreams and composing poetry, in order to save the unfortunate brother Dumuzi suffered in hell for half a year, and became a goddess of wine and autumn and winter after his death.
The Sumerians had a soft spot for beer, not only inventing it, but also creating the famous "goddess of beer", Ninkasi. She is also the goddess of "sparkling water/to satisfy desires", preparing wine every day, and his husband Siris is the "patron saint of alcoholic beverages" with her.
<h2>2 The two-sided sword of the good god and the evil god
The ancient Egyptians and Hebrews developed new techniques to filter cloudy wines into a transparent form. They are also acutely aware that wine has a happy side and a frightening side. In order to rationally explain this two-sidedness, people associated it with the grace of the good god and the curse of the evil god, giving rise to the dionysus god belonging to this era.
The first is the Egyptian Osiris, a great pharaoh who was very good at leading people to cultivate and make wine, but was hated by his brother and thrown into the Nile in a coffin. Osiris' wife found his body and helped him come back to life, but was found by Osiris' brother, who cut him into 14 pieces and threw him in various corners of Egypt. Osiris' wife tried to retrieve 13 of them, but the penis was eaten by a fish... So Osiris eventually became the god of Hades, the god of harvest and dionysus, and from time to time dominated the flooding of the Nile...
The dionysus mentioned below should be the most famous and authoritative- the Greek god of dionysus Dionysus. The story of dionysus' birth is legendary, and according to the myth of Orpheus, Dionysus was first born as the daughter of Zeus and his daughter Persephone.
Persephone, mother of Dionysus
Favored by Zeus, Dionysus was hated by Zeus's wife Hera. Zeus, in order to protect Dionysus, turned her into a sheep for a while, and turned her into a cow the next... However, he was still discovered by Hera and cut into beef pieces to prepare for cooking, but the goddess Athena arrived in time to rescue a piece of the heart in the pot and return it to Zeus.
But by this time Zeus had gotten along with Semele, the mortal daughter, and Zeus gave semele the heart of his beloved daughter, causing her to become pregnant. But the omnipotent Hera discovers the secret again, and Hera seduces Semele and asks zeus to reveal her true identity. But mortals could not resist the thunder and lightning held by Zeus's real body, so when Zeus appeared in his real body, Semele was burned to death at once, and At the same time, Dionysus was born in the flames.
Zeus had to sew the premature Dionysus into his thighs until the full moon. This was Dionysus' second birth. Growing up, Dionysus bravely and courageously went on an expedition to India, leading people to cultivate, make wine, and usher in a good harvest, but at the same time he also had a cruel and ruthless other side, such as ruthlessly abandoning his lover, Princess Ariadne, and gouting out the eyes of King Lycurgus, because he accused "Dionysus", cut off King Pentneus's head, turned women who did not participate in his festival into bats, and so on.
Dionysus often shows himself in a variety of faces, sometimes a young man with cold features, sometimes a kind grandfather, sometimes a wild uncle, sometimes a melancholy man.
In early Roman mythology, there was also a Saturn who was regarded as the god of wine. He was zeus's father, not originally Dionysus, but a great wicked man. He seized the throne by killing his father, fearing that his son would follow suit, and driven by paranoia, he swallowed every newborn son alive. Zeus's mother used a stone wrapped in clothes to impersonate a baby and handed it to Saturn to escape the disaster.
Growing up, Zeus staged a coup d'état and took the throne. Saturn fled to Italy and became a man again. He began to teach agricultural knowledge, spread good deeds, and eventually became a god respected by the people. Despite being regarded as a dionysus, Saturn was very restrained with alcoholic beverages, including wine, and hardly drank wine, perhaps because of the realization that wine had a terrible side.
Prepare to eat Saturn for small children
<h2>3 Dionysus of the "New Wine Age"
After the heyday of Rome, the Romans, who inherited the wine heritage of the Greeks, gradually had their own new Dionysus, the "reincarnation" of Dionysus, Bacchus Bacchus (in fact, the same person as Dionysus). At this time, wine gradually entered its heyday, and the Roman people who loved to drink gradually diluted the once frightening side of Dionysus and were more willing to show the beautiful and happy side of wine. Because of this, the image of Bacchus, the god of dionysus, was always pleasant and happy, and his figure began to round up, confirming the Roman view of "pleasure and praise".
Bacchus, the dionysian god of "Geyo Lie"
Of course, the Great Dionysian Festival of the Greek period was also passed down. Since Bacchus was also the "god of revelry and indulgence" of the Romans, the Feast of Dionysus was celebrated for three days and three nights, during which people stopped all their work, wine filled the streets and alleys, and all the people danced and were intoxicated, and all day long in addition to drinking or drinking, it seemed both indulgent and beautiful.
Drink too much together "Ge You Lie"
<h2>4 In the East there is Dionysus
Du Kang is the "ancestor of winemaking" in Chinese history, and is also known as the "Chinese Dionysus". Du Kang's story is far less bizarre than the above, but his identity is confusing, and there are many versions of his life and the age spanned far beyond the foreign Dionysus. Some people say that he was the minister in charge of grain of the Yellow Emperor, hid the uneaten grain in the dead tree, and accidentally discovered the secret of grain brewing; and some history books say that he was Zhongkang's grandson Shaokang (later the xia dynasty monarch), who was exiled to the Yu clan as a petty official in charge of meals when he was young, because he hung the lunch box on the tree, often forgot to eat, unintentionally fermented wine, after repeated research, became the founder of China's winemaking industry.
Some people also say that Du Kang is a descendant of Du Bo of Eastern Zhou, and the wine he brewed was appreciated by King Zhou Ping and was enshrined as the imperial wine in the palace..... The legend of the Zhi Han Dynasty mentions that Du Kang silently brewed a peerless wine with a clear spring in an unknown town "Baishui County"... In summary, the Chinese god of wine seems to be quite reliable, a diligent winemaker.
Japanese sake brewers revere the "God of Matsuo" as the god of wine. It is said that the descendants of the Qin people of Qin Shi Huang fled to Dongying in order to avoid disasters, and brought with them the technology of rice koji winemaking. They eventually settled in Matsuo Hills, Kyoto, and worshipped the local mountain god Matsuo Sanshin as the "First Dionysus". Today, at the Matsuo Shrine in Jingdong, kamezumi, the clear spring of brewing, is still preserved, and many sake bottles are enshrined.
We believe that the world is big and strange, there must be more curious dionysia in the world, if there are any we have not mentioned, don't forget to share with us at the first time!
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