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Content last updated at the Vernal Equinox, 20 March, 2003 CE.

The Chant of Êlis

M. Isidora Forrest

1 Come on Thy bull's foot, 2 Come on Thy panther's paw, 3 Come on Thy snake's bellly, 4 Dionysos, come! 5 Come, Dithyrambos, 6 Come to us, Bakcheios, 7 Come to us, Lysios, 8 Dionysos, come!

The Orphic Hymn to Dionysos

Translation copyright ©2002 Adam P. Forrest

Dionysou thymiama styraka

1 Kiklêskô Dionyson Eribromon, Euastêra, 2 Prôtogonon, Diphuê, Trigonon, Bakcheion, Anakta, 3 Agrion, Arrêton, Kryphion, Dikerôta, Dimorphon, 4 Kissobryon, Taurôpon, Arêion, Euion, Hagnon, 5 Ômadion, Trietê, Botryêphoron, Ernesipeplon! 6 Euboleus, Polyboulos, Dios kai Persephoneiês 7 Arrêtois lektroisi teknôtheis, Ambrote Daimon! 8 Klythi, Makar, phônês, hêdys d' epipneusoon amemphês 9 Eumenes êtor echôn, syn euzôoisi tithênais.

To Dionysos With storax incense

1 I invoke Dionysos the Loud-Broming, He Who Shouts Euhoi 2 The Firstborn, Two-Natured, Thriceborn Bakchean Lord, 3 The Wild, Ineffable, Secret One of the Two Horns, of the Two Forms, 4 The Ivy-lush, Bull-faced Warrior, He of the Euhoi, the Pure One, 5 the Biennial God of Rawness, the Grape-Bearing, Foliage-Wearing God! 6 O Eubouleus of much Counsel, born of 7 the ineffable bed of Zeus and Persephonê! O Immortal Spirit! 8 Hear, O Blesséd One, my voice, and yet sweetly breathe Thou upon me, with a benevolent 9 and propitious heart, Thou and Thy fair-girt Nurses.

The Words of Dionysos Bromios

through His Maenad, Philentheos

I am the Far-Reacher, I am the Earth-Shaker, I am the Loud-Shouter. I am Dionysos Bromios and I sound My cry to awaken your heart. I am the White Bull of Harmony, I am the White Bull of the Anthesteria. Nymphs, satyrs and beloved maenads follow behind Me. 5 I am strong of flank and delicate of hoof. Where my foot falls, flowers spring forth, plucked by My devoted followers, Fashioned into garlands. Flower garlands twine about My thrusting horns and mighty neck. I am the White Bull of Spring, My nostrils exhale the breath of renewal. 10 My enticing broming calls forth the souls of the dead and for this brief moment They again dance and cry and look toward life renewed. I am the White Bull of Life Who carries strength and vigor on the tips of My horns. I am the piercer of the sack of life, I am the carrier of the sacred nectar. I am the joy and the ecstasy of the hive. 15 I am the great fountain of life and I bid you to drink from Me. I am all this, but I am more. I am the Black Bull of the seed of generations. I am the fullness of the phallus, I plow the earth with My seed as I dance. I am the Charger of Many Forms. 20 With Me you toss your head-in dance, you become the Black Bull I am the great earth shaker, I am the mover of mountains. I am the ripple, the swelling, the great excitement. I am the wild herder, I am the cutter and the sorter. By My ripping horns the mark is put upon those who will begin their death dance 25 And through Me a new seed is generated before death can claim. I am life eternal, I am the frenzy and the madness. I am the berserk lover who casts aside all inhibitions. My broming comes from the very depths of the heart. My wild cry bursts forth from containment to freedom. 30 I am the greening of the vine, the mover of the sap. I am the life force, I am the ultimate release. I am Zoe. I am all this, but I am more. I am the Red Bull of the sacrifice, the blood nourisher of the earth. 35 My seed, deposited in the earth is fed by My sacrifice. I am the heat of the flame, the intense scorcher. At the tip of each horn burns the blue flame of My Divinity. I am the bloodlust, the great trampler. My hooves pound and the ground runs red. 40 I am the Render of Souls, the Tearer of Hearts. I am the Red Bull who illumines the ultimate Lysios. I am the freedom bringer, for I take away all. My awesome broming strikes fear in all who know not that My ear shattering cry is meant to vibrate the soul. 45 I am the Red Bull of the Fiery Blood, know Me in your heart. Through fear, know excitement Through excitement, know passion Through passion, know ecstasy Through ecstasy, know union 50 Through union, know Zoe Through Zoe, know the All Through the All-Nothing I am the Red Bull of the Fiery Heart, know Me. I am all this, but I am more. 55 I am the Far-Reacher, I am the Earth-Shaker, I am the Loud-Shouter I am Dionysos Bromios and I sound My cry to awaken your soul.

How the God...

Lysiodôros (2002)

How the God of freedom and yearning? How the God of enlightenment and insanity? How the God of asceticism and eroticism? How the Giant-slayer and the Titan-slain? 5 How be slain and yet immortal? How be God and yet be Man? Becaue He knows Becaue He knows Becaue He knows 10 with an Olympic certainty allseeing with a Chthonic knowing underlying that we who love Him God love Him will rend ourselves to embrace His extremities will sunder ourselves to encompass His opposites 15 will free ourselves to become His impossibilities Analysis is Lysis says Lysios Solution salvation Dark yeasty Muses sing Pierian chemical charms Meilichios’ sugars learn mysteries in psyche’s cocoon 20 Rending the wineskin veil of the holy of holies butterfly wine spills spiritous into His krater soma haoma ambrosia nektar primitivo mescalito commemorativo transmutatio Synthesis is Apotheosis says Dionysos 25 Coagulation Regeneration Solve et Coagula Lysios kai Bakchos Bacchus and Bacchant Pour and be poured 30 Drink and be drunk Chaire, chaire, chaire 32 Grace, grace, grace

Invocation of the Rider of the Black Serpent

Klea (1996)

Enter in and reveal to me Thyself, Bromios! Bonds Breaker, Bringer of Mystic Vision, for I am Thy Priestess of good offices. 5 Io Evohe, Dionysos! Dancer of Nysa, Who Haunts the Mountain, Disturber of the Sea’s Great Depth, Breather of Freedom Who Whirls Up Out of Darkness. Crowned with dark ivy, 10 come, Dionysos Eribromios, and take me as Thy vehicle for my soul is stretched out to Thee. Io Evohe, Bakcheios, Lord of Forgetfulness! Io Evohe, Lysios, Lord of Freedom! Io Evohe, Dionysos, Walker on the Borders of the Abyss, 15 Rider of the Black Serpent! Come, Gracious One, with Thy bull’s feet, Thy panther’s paws, Thy serpent’s belly. Come Thou, 20 I invite Thee! Thou Who art begotten in every human body, arise and inspire me. Wrap my heart in Thy black and oracular Serpent, and let me ride with Thee. 25 Eleutherios, Liberator, I am Thy mortal Priestess, made of earth and dew and spirit. Dwell with me now, and let me be Divine in Thee, 30 Dionysos!

What It’s Like Right Now

Lysiodôros (2003)

You’re burning through my soul like a forest fire. Not like one of the forest fires that makes the cut for the network news, not some roiling inferno filled with exploding evergreens and sleep-deprived, adrenaline-jagged firefighters dancing with death. No, it’s like the forest fire we saw, the forest fire we smelled. Like that ragged scarlet line Klea and I saw glowing creeping hour-hand slow across the dark flank of the hillside above us seducing our gaze away from the strobing security of the white line, teasing threatening titillating our thoughts away from the paved promise of the blacktop that night when we drove south through the mountains to California. And when we finally stopped at a motel in the pass, all through that night, awake or finally dreaming, we smelled the smoke all around us of that lightning-struck living forest all around us. Burning. This season You’re the Fire. This season I’m not in the forest, the forest is in me. Waking or sleeping, I smell the smoke of your passage through me, and it smells like the Orphic Hymns say—storax, and frankincense, and torches definitely torches—but also like our apartment building burning down in the ’80s, and like ozone, and like a bed after sex, and like the juice and skins we danced in the wine press, and like cork, and like yeast, and like pot, and like a fox’s den, and like odd scraps of memories I thought I’d forgotten, and like the warm wax of candles blown out to let in the dark. Waking or sleeping, I smell the smoke of Your passage, ragged scarlet line glowing creeping rawness through my dreaming sleeping darkness, shredding the snarls devouring the tangles combusting the underbrush. More primeval than Alexander you smile a red smile and eat the Gordian knots, clearing space for the tide of newness always waiting waiting irrevocably waiting to unfurl into any vacated niche. You march in a carnival of fire, opening the lenten way for other passages, Yours, mine, Others’. (I wonder: Do the perceptive ever sniff a subliminal whiff of Your smoke around me, Thyônê’s Son? Would a puzzled psychic suggest I make sure my household extinguishers are charged?) A slow, awesome, irresistible fire in the night. Moving. Rending. Creating. That’s what it’s like right now. Iô, iô, Thystêrie. Iô, iô, Dionyse.

Zoros (Sheer Wine)

Lysiodôros (2002)

Will you love the God as totally, as madly as Semelê, will you say, screw temperance, slay me with Your unmediated Presence, immolate me in Your undiluted Reality. Will you say, fuck moderation, I’m smouldering already, of course I’ll burst into flames, but before I do, last request, toss the last Mask, so the last perfect image printed on the quicksilver-coated photo plate of my third retina, the last ineffable ingredient stirred into the psychic mash of my distilling soul, will be the revealed Face of Love, the naked Face of God. When you get so crazy you start babbling, you sometimes say important things. Like: God, let’s get naked. And in the last nanosecond before before before will you think, Who knows, from my ashes there may rise a Phœnix God? I mean, hell, you’ll be dead, lightning-blasted, Trinity, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, physicists-so-freaked-they-quote-the-freaking-Bhagavad-Gita dead, a decidedly former parrot, but Who knows?

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