著者

松村 一男

出版者

和光大学表現学部

雑誌

表現学部紀要 (ISSN:13463470)

巻号頁・発行日

no.17, pp.93-105, 2016

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This treatise is divided in two sections: the first part deals with an historical review of previous Dionysian research in relation to my own work. It seems to me that Dionysus was given the role of a stranger god in the Greek pantheon. It was probably an intentional amalgam of antipolis elements (ecstasy, frenzy, savagery, feminine, animal, unconscious) incorporated into the public, official polis religion. In that sense, Dionysian elements are not confined to ancient Greece but could be present in every culture. After reviewing several cultures that employ effeminate priests and shamans, I came to a hypothesis that at the core of these Dionysian elements lies the existence of a similar class of people, i.e. asexual or transsexual priests. By this I mean a class of people who find themselves different from the majority in perception and choose to live as specialists dealing with the otherworld. In my opinion, the Dionysian experience could be grouped in the same category as the androgynous figures found in Gunnestrup Cauldron, Scythian enares, and North American berdache. If these asexual or transsexual religious figures of different areas share common traits, they might come from a genetic particularity, i.e. a GID (gender identity disorder). This surely is a wild and very speculative proposal, but if we do not wish to confine things Dionysian to the domain of Classics, we should also use materials from other branches of the humanities such as archaeology and anthropology. I am not sure if the issue of the possible relationship between a GID and the special kind of religious functionary in areas I discuss in this paper could be connected with the issue of eunuchs in general and gallus (pl. galli), a eunuch priest of the Pyrgian goddess Cybele and her consort Attis in particular. The issue might, however,be worth considering.