Honoring the Vow to Prosymnos by Frater Guaiferius
I
n ancient times there was a mystery cult based on an episode from the life of Dionysus, the Greek god of ecstasy. A few details of the public rituals have been recovered, but the associated private devotions have always been discreetly veiled. The fragmentary texts hint at some kind of “obscenity”, which suggests we could be dealing with a solitary spiritual practice that continues largely unexplained to this day. In fact, some readers will already have tried it at home, without necessarily realising it’s so ancient that no one really knows how it began. What we do know is that the Greeks had a story about it; and we can speculate that the tale had an esoteric interpretation. The legend concerns a vow that was made in life but fulfilled across the boundary that separates life from death. The corresponding mysteries are not as extensively researched as their Eleusinian and Orphic counterparts, so they are even more difficult to reconstruct with any certainty. Consequently, the following account of the “Prosymian Mysteries”, as we might call them, can only be a very speculative elaboration of the snippets and scraps that have survived to the present. Dionysus is one of those few mythical figures (like Odysseus, Orpheus, Aeneas, and Dante) who found a way to visit Hades and then return to the world of the living. Their various motives for making the trip are mostly well known, but Dionysus is the exception. The few surviving accounts tell us he wanted to rescue his dead mother, Semele, who had conceived Dionysus by Zeus. The back-story, where the human Semele is burnt to a crisp by the god Zeus, involves a startling twist: Zeus manages to rescue Dionysus from her womb, then gestate the foetus in his own thigh. It’s worth mentioning also the godly need for fidelity to a vow. Zeus had promised to grant Semele any request, and she had rashly asked to see his
“Dionysus at Lake Lerna,” image by the author.
divine form. But there are older versions of this motif, in which Semele (or someone very much like her) is already immortal, and rules as Queen of the Underworld. The episode that concerns us here takes place at Lake Lerna, in the narrow strip of land between the Gulf of Argolis and the Lerna Range, in the Peloponnese. The springs that fed the lake, once famed as inexhaustible, no longer exist; but before they silted up, they provided an entrance to the underworld. This portal was reputed to be guarded by the many-headed serpent called the Hydra. The
limestone mountain range is today topped by a tiny church called Prophitis Ilias (“Prophet Elijah”); but in ancient times it was probably associated with Dionysus, who was also known as Oreiórkhas – “dancer of the mountains.” On the isthmus between the lake and the sea lived a mage called Prosymnos. His name suggests he was the prototype of the Imaginary Friend (or, if you prefer: spirit familiar; daemon; guardian angel); for symnos means “companion”, and pro-, in Greek as in English, can mean “instead of ”, or “as a substitute for”. Prosymnos, being a practitioner of the mysteries, knew how to access the entrance to Hades, located in the middle of Lake Lerna. One of RFD 180 Winter 2019 55
