Dionysus
Bacchus, the god of the vine
Ecstasy, intoxication, and the dissolving of every boundary.
Dionysus: what does it mean in analytical psychology?
Against Apollo, Nietzsche’s Dionysus is the rush of life that breaks the individual form: the god of wine, the mask, and the maenads, torn apart and reborn. Jung, in Psychological Types, read the Dionysian as the libido pouring outward into the world and the body.
In the Zarathustra seminar he saw Nietzsche’s late identification with the god as an archetype taking hold of the man: in the notes Nietzsche sent from Turin in January 1889 he signed himself “Dionysus” and “The Crucified.”
Dionysus: where does it appear in myth and tradition?
Zagreus torn by the Titans; the Bacchae of Euripides and the fate of Pentheus; the vine, the ivy, and the thyrsus; tragedy, born from his festival; the mask.
In the Press’s Books
Ecce Homo ends: “Have I been understood? Dionysus against the Crucified.” Jung’s long reading of this ecstasy runs through his seminar on Thus Spake Zarathustra.
From the Sources
Nietzsche writes of the Dionysian state that now the slave is free and every barrier set up between man and man is broken down.
“Now is the slave a free man, now all the stubborn, hostile barriers, which necessity, caprice, or "shameless fashion" has set up between man and man, are broken down.”
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy or Hellenism and Pessimism, Section 1. Translated by Wm. A. Haussmann, Ph.D.; The Complete Works of Friedrich Nietzsche, edited by Dr Oscar Levy, Volume One; Edinburgh and London: T. N. Foulis, 1910 (Project Gutenberg eBook #51356). The text, read in part
Frazer describes Dionysus as best known as the personification of the vine and of the exhilaration of wine, whose ecstatic worship of wild dances, thrilling music and tipsy excess he believed to have begun among the tribes of Thrace.
“The god Dionysus or Bacchus is best known to us as a personification of the vine and of the exhilaration produced by the juice of the grape. His ecstatic worship, characterised by wild dances, thrilling music, and tipsy excess, appears to have originated among the rude tribes of Thrace”
Sir James George Frazer, The Golden Bough: a study of magic and religion, Chapter XLIII, 'Dionysus'. Abridged edition (preface dated June 1922), Project Gutenberg eBook #3623. The text, read in part
Each passage is quoted from the text named, which the press fetched and read, and was checked word for word against a fresh copy of it; the link opens that copy. Passages are given as printed, without the editors’ footnote numbers, and with words broken across lines joined.
Where to Read
- “The Apollinian and the Dionysian,” in Psychological Types, CW 6
- Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934–1939 (1988)
Jung’s writings are cited by the volume of the Collected Works (CW), Bollingen Series / Princeton, 1953–79.
Related Symbols
In the Glossary: Apollo and dionysus.
Also among Gods and Adversaries
“Learn as much as you can about symbolism; then forget it all when you are analysing a dream.”
Cite This Entry
“Dionysus.” In Symbols of the Psyche, the Symbolarium. The Thinking Press, 2026. https://thethinkingpress.org/symbolarium/psyche/dionysus.
Symbols That Share Its Terms
Nearby in the alphabet: The Devil: The adversary, and the dark fourth. The Dew: Grace falling in silence from above. Distillatio: Rising and falling again, until only the essence is left.