"First paperback printing, in the Mythos series"--Title page verso

Originally published: Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, ©1976

"A bibliography of C. Kerényi": pages 447-474

Includes bibliographical references (pages 393-420)

Minoan Visions : The Spirit of Minoan Art ; The Minoan Gesture ; Visionary Crete ; Transcendence in Nature ; Artificially Induced Transcendence -- Light and Honey : Flaming New Year ; The Preparation of Mead ; The Awakening of the Bees ; The Birth of Orion ; Mythology of the Leather Sack -- The Cretan Core of the Dionysos Myth : Bull, Snake, Ivy, and Wine ; Dionysian Names ; Iakar and Iakchos ; Zagreus ; Ariadne -- The Myths of Arrival ; From the History of Science ; The Forms of Arrival ; Arrivals in Attica ; The Arrival in Athens ; Myth of Arrival and Ancient Rite outside of Attica: Thebes and Delphi -- Dionysos Trieterikos, God of the Two-Year Period : Age and Continuity of the Trieteric Cult ; The Dialectic of the Two-Year Period ; Dionysos in Delphi ; The Mystical Sacrificial Rite ; The Enthronement -- The Dionysos of the Athenians and of His Worshipers in the Greek Mysteries : The Thigh Birth and the Idol with the Mask ; The Dionysian Festivals of the Athenians ; The Beginnings of Tragedy in Attica ; The Birth and Transformation of Comedy in Athens ; The Greek Dionysian Religion of Late Antiquity

"No other god of the Greeks is as widely present in the monuments and nature of Greece and Italy, in the sensuous tradition of antiquity, as Dionysos. In myth and image, in visionary experience and ritual representation, the Greeks possessed a complete expression of indestructible life, the essence of Dionysos. In this work the noted mythologist and historian of religion Carl Kerenyi presents an historical account of the religion of Dionysos from its beginnings in the Minoan culture down to its transition to a cosmic and cosmopolitan religion of late antiquity under the Roman Empire." "From the wealth of Greek literary, epigraphic, and monumental traditions, Kerenyi constructs a picture of Dionysian worship, always underlining the constitutive element of myth. Included in this study are the secret cult scenes of the women's mysteries both within and beyond Attica, the mystic sacrificial rite at Delphi, and the great public Dionysian festivals at Athens. The way in which the Athenian people received and assimilated tragedy in its immanent connection with Dionysos is seen as the greatest miracle in all cultural history. Tragedy and New Comedy are seen as high spiritual forms of the Dionysian religion, and the Dionysian element itself is seen as a chapter in the religious history of Europe."--Jacket