Ivy

As the laurel adorns Apollo and distinguishes him, so the ivy, Dionysus. This is the reason why he is called “the ivy-crowned” … The myth says that the ivy appeared simultaneously with the birth of Dionysus in order to protect the little boy from the flames of lightning which consumed his mother.

Otto establishes ivy as the essential vegetal emblem of Dionysus, tracing its cult presence from tattooing to thyrsus-wrapping and grounding its mythological origin in the protective miracle at the god’s fiery birth.

Otto, Walter F, Dionysus Myth and Cult (1965), 1965thesis

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Ivy lives on when other plants die down. It is the vehicle of the external, undying, totem-soul, the vehicle of Dionysos, god of the perennial new birth. When Ptolemy Philopator converted the Egyptian Jews to the religion of Dionysos he had them branded with the ivy leaf.

Harrison interprets ivy through a totemistic framework as the ‘primitive phytomorph’ of Dionysus, its evergreen vitality making it the living body of the god’s indestructible soul, confirmed by the practice of ritual branding.

Harrison, Jane Ellen, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912thesis

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It is a significant fact that in Greece the wine god never bore the name or epithet ‘Ampelos,’ ‘vine,’ but in Attica was called ‘Kissos,’ ‘ivy.’ Ivy can, moreover, be interpreted as a term both concealing and hinting at the vine, and it bears the poetic epithet ‘Oinops.’

Kerényi argues that ivy functioned as a cryptic substitute-name for the vine itself in the Dionysus cult, the epithet ‘Oinops’ (wine-faced) encoding the plant’s intimate identification with the god of wine.

Kerényi, Carl, Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life, 1976thesis

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The vine and the ivy, the two plants closest to Dionysus … are also classified by modern botany as near relatives … For the worshipper of Dionysus the relationship of the two is based on the dual-formed god whose nature is born out of the earth through them. Light and dark, warmth and cold, the ecstasy of life and the sobering exhalation of death.

Otto reads the botanical kinship of ivy and vine as a natural confirmation of the Dionysiac duality — each plant embodying one pole of the god’s simultaneously life-affirming and death-shadowed nature.

Otto, Walter F, Dionysus Myth and Cult (1965), 1965thesis

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The ivy tendrils which appear on it and form a sort of crown by being heaped above the mask do not make the column into a tree but accompany the epiphany of the god present in the mask — a god whose favorite is the ivy.

Otto distinguishes the ivy’s ritual role from that of tree-cult, arguing that ivy-tendrils on the Dionysiac cult-column signal the god’s living epiphanic presence rather than a mere arboreal symbol.

Otto, Walter F, Dionysus Myth and Cult (1965), 1965supporting

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Honey trickles down from the thyrsus made of the wood of the ivy.

Otto documents the ivy-thyrsus as a miraculous instrument of the Bacchic ecstasy, from which honey flows spontaneously during the maenadic rites described in Euripides’ Bacchae.

Otto, Walter F, Dionysus Myth and Cult (1965), 1965supporting

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KlOOO� [m.] ‘ivy, Hedera helix’ (lA). PG(v) … Att. Klnoc. ETYM Unexplained; perhaps Pre-Greek because of the varying anlaut.

Beekes documents the Greek lexeme for ivy (‘kissos’) as etymologically Pre-Greek, lending philological support to the hypothesis of ivy’s deep, pre-Hellenic religious significance in the Dionysus cult.

Beekes, Robert, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2010supporting

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The women who were possessed by Dionysus pounced on the ivy to tear it to pieces and devour it. One might well believe, he says, that it possesses the power to excite madness and can produce a state of intoxication, much like wine.

Via Plutarch, Otto records the maenadic ingestion of ivy as a psychoactive rite, placing the plant alongside wine as a direct vehicle of Dionysiac possession and ecstatic dissolution of self.

Otto, Walter F, Dionysus Myth and Cult (1965), 1965supporting

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