Eternal Return

“My world has just become perfect, midnight is also midday, pain is also joy, a curse is also a blessing, the night is also a sun - be gone, or you will learn: a wise man is also a fool. Did you ever say Yes to all joy? O my friends, then you said Yes to all woe as well. All things are chained and entwined together, all things are in love. O that is how you loved the world, you everlasting men, you loved it eternally and for all time..”

“But this is a different Dionysus from the one Ariadne knew in her childhood. He wasn't called Dionysus then.. he was the Bull: the total Bull, who descends from the heavens like Zeus, rises from the sea like Poseidon, grazes under the plane trees of Gortyn. He encompassed all things: he was in the honey and blood offered to the gods, he was in the slender horns at each side of the altars, in the ox skulls painted along the walls of the palace. Youths with armbands, loincloths, and wavy hair gripped him by the horns at a run. The Bull had always followed Ariadne about, right from the start, always accompanied her, always kept his eye on her.”

O blessed is the man, the fortunate man who knows the rituals of the gods, who leads a pious life, whose spirit merges with these Bacchic celebrations, frenzied dancing in the mountains, our purifying rites— one who reveres these mysteries from Cybele, our great mother, who, waving the thyrsus, forehead crowned with ivy, serves Dionysus.

“Do you really believe that the sciences would ever have originated if the way had not been prepared by magicians, alchemists, astrologers, and witches whose promises and pretensions first had to create a thirst, a hunger, a taste for hidden and forbidden powers?”

“The tragedies shall be the festivals of mankind; in them, freed from every convention, the free, strong and beautiful man will celebrate the raptures and agonies of his love and enact the great love-offering of his death with worthy and sublime solemnity.”