Dionysus is identified with many other savior-gods. Dionysus was also called Bacchus, Zagreus, Sabazius, Adonis, Antheus, Zalmoxis, Pentheus, Pan, Liber Pater, or "the Liberator." His emblem was the thyrsus, a phallic scepter tipped with a (1.)pine cone. His priestesses were the Maenads, or Baccharites, who celebrated his orgies with drunkenness, nakednesss, and sacramental feasting. The maenads, or bacchantes, were a group of female devotees who left their homes to roam the wilderness in ecstatic devotion to Dionysus. They wore fawn skins and were believed to possess occult powers.
Dionysus (2.)died each winter and was reborn in the spring.
Dionysus later hero-incarnation Orpheus, star of the popular Orphic Mysteries, was the same sacrificial god, torn to pieces by the Maenads. Proclus said, "Orpheus, because he was the principal in the Dionysian rites, is said to have suffered the same fate as the god" (Walker, The Woman's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, p. 237). Dionysus was hailed as "King of Kings and God of Gods." He was also the god-begotten, virgin-born Anointed One (Christos) whose mother seems to have been all three forms of the Triple Goddesss in his sacrificial Dendrites, "Young Man of the Tree." He was also a Horned God, with such forms as bull, goat, stag
Dionysus is often presented as a wine-god.
In the form of a golden shower (sun-worship) Zeus seduced Danae, who bore Perseus; in the form of a bull, he abducted Europa, who bore Minos, Rhadamanthys, and Sarpedon. By various amours and marriages, Zeus became the literal father of the Greek pantheon. And, last of all, Semele, daughter of Cadmus in Thebes, bore him Dionysus, the only child of a mortal ever to be recognized as an immortal god in the Greek pantheon (a godman).
(note- Danae is great grandmother of Dionysis, and is the only link to his being half god)
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