Thank you for bringing me back to Jane Harrison and Kerenyi! It's been a very long time... The play is indeed about the irresistible urge for life and all its flowing juices, some more tasty than others. Dionysos is such a powerful, polyvalent, mysterious and sexy divinity. We could write volumes and there would still be so much to uncover. I recently had a couple of posts on him and was surprised how well received they were:
Made another attempt to understand this Sophiology thing, googled a bit, even read something by you. One thing I got is that it is a philosophical theological attempt to reliven the created. A complicated effort to do something that can be easy. A return to the child perspective. Everything around us is alive in its own unique way carrying the impress of the Living God. For me this has been my experience since my rural childhood, especially with trees. My simple argument is that the Living God has made all and a breath of life and awareness is in everything and is expressed in varying ways rock life, plant life, wolf life, a spring of water and can be known by us personally. and has been the common experience of humanity through the ages. No dryads needed for a tree, the tree itself is alive and aware in its treeness. Our modern mind set is an aberration. I think in this area sophiology is overly complex driven by theological/philosophical verbose minds. Understandable because for them that is a default setting that must expressed in deep verbal system making.
I was a little nervous about where you were going with this, but then I had the lightbulb moment of getting your point that they’re all going crazy because they *don’t* believe in him, not because that’s how he wants them to be. That’s quite the reversal of perspective.
Also, an update: I’m gonna get my final edit to John over the weekend, from which point its next stop should be you.
Looking forward to more of this series. This was excellent.
P.S. miss you
Miss you!
Thank you for bringing me back to Jane Harrison and Kerenyi! It's been a very long time... The play is indeed about the irresistible urge for life and all its flowing juices, some more tasty than others. Dionysos is such a powerful, polyvalent, mysterious and sexy divinity. We could write volumes and there would still be so much to uncover. I recently had a couple of posts on him and was surprised how well received they were:
https://mythandmystery.substack.com/p/dionysos-the-wild-god-of-the-mysteries
They're so good! That Kerenyi book is inexhaustible!
Made another attempt to understand this Sophiology thing, googled a bit, even read something by you. One thing I got is that it is a philosophical theological attempt to reliven the created. A complicated effort to do something that can be easy. A return to the child perspective. Everything around us is alive in its own unique way carrying the impress of the Living God. For me this has been my experience since my rural childhood, especially with trees. My simple argument is that the Living God has made all and a breath of life and awareness is in everything and is expressed in varying ways rock life, plant life, wolf life, a spring of water and can be known by us personally. and has been the common experience of humanity through the ages. No dryads needed for a tree, the tree itself is alive and aware in its treeness. Our modern mind set is an aberration. I think in this area sophiology is overly complex driven by theological/philosophical verbose minds. Understandable because for them that is a default setting that must expressed in deep verbal system making.
I was a little nervous about where you were going with this, but then I had the lightbulb moment of getting your point that they’re all going crazy because they *don’t* believe in him, not because that’s how he wants them to be. That’s quite the reversal of perspective.
Also, an update: I’m gonna get my final edit to John over the weekend, from which point its next stop should be you.