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Flirting With Dionysus
“Chaos itself is a life force, a time of creative regeneration. It is a descent into the darkness of unknowing and also the prima materia for alchemical change. Only from this primal formless-ness is real change possible, a change that is not conditioned by past structures or ideologies. Chaos images the beauty of what is unpredictable. That is why it is so important not to try to define the future at this time. We have to allow chaos to transform our world, to bring its own quality of wonder into our lives. As in Nietzsche’s famous saying, “You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.”For those who can bear to look, chaos has its own light, its own dance. It is like the in-breath that takes life from form to formlessness, that frees us from patterns that bind. Chaos can strip us bare and so allow a space for new life, new patterns to form. It is both dynamic and ecstatic, even if it can be painful. Mythologically this energy belongs to Dionysus, a nature god of wine and divine madness, whom the Romans also called Liber, free. He is also the one who communicates between the living and the dead. As such he stands at the threshold between the worlds.If we are to become free of the limitations of our rational con-sciousness and its drive to control nature, we need to allow chaos, we need this power of unbinding. Those who have passed over the threshold between their own rational and irrational selves know the…
