Furious Maenad

Furious Maenad holding a thyrsus in her right hand and a leopard in her left hand. She wears a leopard skin as a cloak and a snake around her head like a diadem. Tondo of an Attic white-ground kylix, 490–480 BC. From Vulci, Italy...

Very beautiful and very interesting...

Maenads were the female followers of Dionysus and the most significant members of the god's retinue. Their name literally translates as "raving ones"...

The oldest festival dedicated to Dionysus, was Rural Donysia, which took place around Winter Solstice. The main part of the festival was the procession. The god’s entourage during the procession consisted of the male satyrs and the female maenads...

I love this depiction of reveling dancers (satyrs???) lead by the piper dressed in leopard skin (Dionysus???)...Why leopard? Well, I talked about this in my post "Leopards and tigers"

Asian leopards are very secretive creatures. Very little is known about their lives. The general belief of the local population in the areas where Leopards are still found today, is that Leopards mate during "midwinter", right at the time of Rural Dionysia...

Is this why Dionysos was associated with leopards? 

Recent studies have however shown that the actual mating starts in January, soon after the Rural Dionysia, and peaks at the beginning of February...At the the end of winter beginning of spring...

It is interesting that in Anatolia, Central Asia, Mesopotamia, leopard was, with ibex goat, associated with rain season. Rain season which covers winter (starts with ibex mating season) and spring (starts with leopard mating season)...

Leopard hunts (follows) ibex...Spring, which starts with leopard mating season, follows winter which starts with ibex mating season...And this "hunt" revives nature and brings fertility to the land...I talked about this in my post "Goat and leopard"...

Rain, which is brought by mating ibexes and leopards, brings fertility...Ibex and leopard semen turns to rain which turns to flowing water...I talked about this in my post "A vessel from Tepe Hissar"...

Wasn't Dionysus associated with goats? Wasn't goat sacrificed to him? Wasn't tragedy, which translates in Greek as "goat-song", originally an improvised hymn sung and danced in praise of Dionysus? Was't Dionysus turned into a baby goat by god of rain, Zeus, his father? Who was in turn suckled by a goat??? I talked about the link between Zeus and a goat in my post "Goat riding thunder god"...

Now I am beginning to believe that Dionysus, the god of resurrection of nature, is associated with leopards because the end of leopard mating season is when "the resurrection of nature" actually happens: the end of winter and beginning of spring...Well in Greece anyway...

I think that this is why Dionysus, the god who dies and gets resurrected, rides on a leopard (arrives during leopard mating season), wears leopard skin (is identified with the end of the leopard mating season)...

And I also believe that this is why this Maenad not only holds a leopard by his hind leg (the end of leopard mating season) but also wears a leopard skin (dead leopard, again the end of leopard mating season)

So kind of cool...

It's actually even cooler...

Maenad's snake diadem. Snake is the animal which symbolises sun's heat, fire. Snakes are in our world when sun is in our world, spring, summer, autumn...And in underworld when sun is there, in winter. I talked about this in my posts "Enemy of the sun", "The chthonic animal",  "Bactrian snakes and dragons" and many others...

Maenad's thyrsus. The stick used by Prometheus to steal fire from the gods and smuggle it into human hearths. Probably also symbolic torch as well as penis...I talked about this in my post "Thyrsus"...

Finally Maenad's fury = internal fire, heat

The three main attributes of the Maenad represent fire, heat...And she is out dancing, for Dionysus, "the polar opposite of Apollo" in the middle of cold, dark, winter...Maenad kills leopard, winter ends, spring begins. Resurrection...

Finally finally, here is a Maenad carrying a thyrsus and a flaming torch...

To read more about ancient animal and plant calendar markers, start here…then check the rest of the blog posts related to animal calendar markers I still didn't add to this page, and finally check my twitter threads I still didn't convert to blog post...I am 9 months behind now...