9 definitions
Dionysus (n.) is like a pressure valve bolted onto a temple.
Dionysus (n.) is the god whose worship leaves the most evidence the next morning.
Dionysus (n.) is the god people invoke when they need permission to lose control
Dionysus (n.) is the patron of decisions that felt communal at the time.
Dionysus (n.) is the dismembered god: from his smile arose the Olympian gods, from his tears arose mankind.
Dionysus (n.) is a judge: pronounce his name before Goethe, Beethoven, Shakespeare or Raphael, and at once our best things and moments have been judged.
Dionysus (n.) is the divine name the Greeks gave to the whole scale of happiness, from man feeling himself a deified self-justification of nature down to the joy of healthy peasants and half-human animals.
Dionysus (n.) cut to pieces is a promise of life, eternally reborn from destruction; the god on the cross is a curse on life, a signpost to seek redemption from it.