Dionysus and the Outsider

Craig Brewer · 16 Dec 2010, 14:09 · from 2010-December.txt.gz

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From: cnbrewer at yahoo.com (Craig Brewer)
Date: Thu, 16 Dec 2010 06:09:31 -0800 (PST)
Subject: (urth) Dionysus and the Outsider
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Is it also possible that this is a nod to the different aspects of the Trinity 
that people have been throwing around? We have two gods whose names are 
forgotten: the Outsider, who might be God the Father. We also have a Son, 
perhaps Christ...but we get that all mixed up with the remnants of Greek myths 
as well because of all the mish-mash that Pas made.

The real point of the passage, though, might not be that we're to divine some 
esoteric relationship between the Greeks and the "real" gods, as has been hashed 
out. Instead, it might just be to suggest that the real gods (i.e., God and 
Christ) have been forgotten -- and not having proper names is primarily a way to 
underline that symbolically.

________________________________
From: Jerry Friedman <jerry_friedman at yahoo.com>
To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
Sent: Thu, December 16, 2010 8:00:17 AM
Subject: (urth) Dionysus and the Outsider

Sorry, I didn't read a lot of the posts about Dionysus, so I may be duplicating 
something someone else said.  But people are saying that the Outsider was the 
son of Thyone, that is, Dionysus.  I read the passage quite differently.  Silk 
says there are two gods whose names are unknown: the son of Thyone and the 
Outsider.  So they're two different gods.  They're mentioned together and have 
anonymity in common, though, so some might draw conclusions from that.

"He [Silk's instructor] also said that Thyone's son was the only god whose name 
we don't know.  It was years before I realized that he'd been wrong.  We speak 
of the Outsider, but it's obvious that 'the  Outsider' can't be his name ? that 
it's an epithet, a nickname ."

http://books.google.com/books?id=-iCIWy8bPccC&pg=PA125#v=onepage&q&f=false

That is, the instructor was wrong because he'd forgotten the /other/ god whose 
name was unknown.

Jerry Friedman

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