Themis, a study of the social origins of Greek ... - Warburg Institute

n] Dithyramb reflects Initiation-Rites 35
this my male womb. The child is to be born anew, not of his
mother Seraele, but of his father Zeus, and—significant fact—his
Epiphany at Thebes is to be marked by the new name Dithy-
rambos, common to child and Birth-song alike. What does it all
mean ?
Taken at its face value it is of course nonsense. The God
Dithyrambos is born of his mother, well and good.* He was not,
could not be, born again of his father. Birth belongs to the
category of facts that cannot be repeated. How then is the second
birth explained by scholars ? Until quite lately it was left at its
face value : it was nonsense, only it was ' poetical ' nonsense.
Moreover it was a mystery, and into a mystery it was perhaps
as well not to look too closely. By an ancient mystery people
used to understand something enacted in secret, and probably
offensive. To the word mystery we now attach a perfectly definite
meaning. A mystery is a rite, a Spco/xevov enacted with magical
intent. It is secret, not because it is indecent, but because it is
intensely social, decent and entirely sacred.
When the critical spirit awoke, and it was felt that some
definite meaning must be attached to the second birth of the
Dithyramb, the next suggestion was that it embodied a social
shift from matriarchy to patriarchy. This was a step in the right
direction because it was an attempt to see in a religious dogma
the utterance, the projection of a social fact ; but the explanation,
though it has elements of truth, is, I now feel 1
, inadequate. The
shift from matriarchy to patriarchy never crystallized into a rite,
never burst into a ritual hymn.
T he birth from the father cannot be real
it must therefore be
sham, or to speak more elegantly, it must be mimetic. When we
examine later the nature and psychology of a hpwfievov it will be
seen that all rites qua rites are mimetic, but the rite of the
New Birth is in its essence the mimetic rite par excellence.
After our discussion of the Kouretes the gist of this mimetic rite
needs no further elucidation. Th e New Birth of the Dithyramb ,|
lik e the New Birth of the Kouros, reflects a tribal rite of initiation^
and in both cases we have a blend of two sorts of rites, the rites
1 As such I explained it in my Prolegomena, p. 411. The explanation was
I believe first offered by Bachofen in his Mutterrecht.
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