Having just finished reading the excellent Dionysian Spirit by Sean Fitton I can confidently predict this book will become one of the definitive texts on the 'Dionysian Current'. The book is a tour de force of everything Dionysian: the Greek Cult of the God Dionysos, his Ethos and Mysteries, their absorption into Western Culture (and parallels across the globe), as well as their revival in Counterculture and Radical Politics. I was also flattered to read my work had been such an inspiration and material source for the writing of the book (I shall be widely recommending it!) But in truth I would say that while this was a fair perspective on Sean's part it is a slightly misleading one. I've enjoyed many a stimulating discussion with Sean and others on all things Dionysian, but have really been little more than a conduit and point of synthesis for the many dialogues and scholarly research carried out within the original London circle, and now international network, known as the Dionysian Underground, the occultural affinity group that first chose to promote the current through research, writing, magick and activism back in the late 90s. True I've perhaps been the primary 'evangelist' for the group's work over the years, and performed a certain amount of its research myself, but I've always 'stood on the shoulders of giants', and now Sean joins me in those lofty heights with one of the best books I've read on the subject for years. A brilliant job has been done here in drawing together the multiple tendrils of the Dionysian vine across history and culture into a coherent, fascinating and accessible read. I thought I knew everything that could possibly be known about this subject, but even I have learnt a few new things about it from Sean's exhaustive study. Do I have any misgivings about it? Yes of course, there is no dogma in the Dionysian, each person who studies and practices it will have their own unique perspective, but my differences and misgivings are minor.



Sean has produced a great history of the Dionysian ethos as it has existed in almost every culture and continues to inform modern counterculture, perhaps it is a little light on quoted sources, but this is the age of Google and it is not some boring academic tome. I might have also liked to have read more on the conscious recognition of their heritage by those he cites. For instance, lacking is that great moment on American TV where Jack Kerouac, pressed to state the connection between the Beat and Hippy Movements, declared, “its all one big movement, it's timeless, it goes back to that guy Dionysius (sic)”, an insight Sean rightly attributes to Burroughs, who was greatly influenced by Nietzsche, via the fascist Oswald Spengler, who had written negatively about the decadent 'Urban Dionysian' in the corrupt Modern age, a stereotype Burroughs would welcome and positively champion, or perhaps even to Allen Ginsberg, who later wrote a fascinating book on the mythology of Dionysos, according to a friend and fellow researcher who met him in India (an attribution confirmed by Robert Anton Wilson in a personal email to me). Similarly mention could have been made of Aleister Crowley's identification of the Horus of his New Aeon with Dionysos, in his description of the Fool trump in his Book of Thoth, his role as the precursor of the 'Horned God' in proto-Wicca, or his centrality to the Hell Fire Clubs (the Earl of Rosse, founder of the Dublin Hell Fire Club, was the author of a book called Dionysos Rising, and allegedly founded a Masonic 'Sacred Sect of Dionysos', while Dashwood himself based a wing of his house on the Roman Temple of Bacchus at Baalbek, launching it with a Bacchanal, and was rumoured to be a devotee of Venus and Bacchus), or more subtly, a reference to Rabelais' spoof Holy Grail, the 'Oracle of the Divine Bottle'. A historical chain of conscious Dionysianism can definitely be traced across time, at least to the god's Rennaissance revival (typified by da Vinci's enigmatic Bacchus) if not to the Mysteries themselves. But perhaps this would have been pushing Dionysos too hard, after all the Dionysian is about more than the historical cult of Dionysos and is really a global cross cultural phenomenon (the Alexandrian Greeks recognized this when they entered India, found Shiva and instantly identified him as the 'Indian Dionysos', and they should know). Perhaps this globalism could have been further explored to take the Dionysos archetype back before Ancient Greece (he is mentioned in a Mycenaean Linear B inscription), and even back to the Neolithic origins of wine production, entheogenics and shamanism that may underlie all the global forms of the Current. Sean does suggest that the true origin of the Dionysian is to be found in the Ancient Goddess Cult, reflecting Bachofen's thesis of the ancient Dionysian Age being a transition between Goddess based Matriarchy and God based Patriarchy, which is a very interesting if today unfashionable idea (though personally I would place the Dionysian at the source prior to any gender based cults, both Dionysos and Shiva transcend socialized gender in their deepest aspects).



However Sean's counter cultural history of the Dionysian is perhaps the best part of the book, and one I would whole heartedly agree with. I might have wanted to hear more about Psychedelics or the Situationists (where both Vaneigem and Jorn specifically used the term Dionysian in their writings, unlike the Surrealists who don't seem to have adopted the term, despite Jung's occasional use of it), but the emphasis on the more general Sixties Revolution can be taken as covering that. But it was the inclusion of the Queer Movement and Polyamory within the Current that I really enjoyed the most, perhaps the most important aspect of Dionysianism today. Personally I do not separate the two in the same way that Sean does, though he is empirically correct in the current political distinction (I would more controversially say the Polyamory Movement, as described here, is the true Queer Movement, if the latter's proponents lived up to the consequences of their thesis and were less conservative). I might also have wanted to say more about the dark side of the Dionysian had I written such a book (an early essay by Gyrus sees not only the origins of a Pagan Christ in Dionysos, via his 'avatar' Orpheus, but also the Devil too, the aspects being split by Christianity), but Sean has always been the Idealist among us in his approach and we all connect to the facets that we identify with the most. All in all despite these healthy, minor differences this is a fantastic book and thoroughly recommended to all libertarian Pagans, true Thelemites and Dionysian hipsters everywhere!