(A different approach to carnival mischief)
We enter once again, by the grace of God, into the holy Triodion, the holiest liturgical period of our Church, during which we can realize our spiritual backwardness, experience our saving call to repentance and cleansing, and engage in our personal struggle for our spiritual rebirth. The devotional period of the Triodion is an conceivable stage of spiritual struggle in which every believer is called to run the good race of virtues, to expel every extraneous sinful element from himself, which exists as a deadly virus, poisoning man and leading him slowly but surely to spiritual death. Only in this way will we be worthy to worship the divine Passion of our Redeemer Christ, spiritually pure, and to celebrate with joy His glorious Resurrection.
Our Holy Church has established gradual ways of purification and asceticism for the faithful, beginning with the awareness of the tragic situation that sin has caused in the world. It demonstrates with wonderful accuracy the deviation of man from his God-created nature and his degradation to animal states with the dominance of instinctive impulses. The “natural life” of the ancient pagan world was nothing more than the bestial life of spiritually fallen man. The main concern of our Church is to pull us out of the muddy ditch of sin and the herd state during this period and to restore us to our pre-fall godlike state.
But alas! The world of fall, sin and corruption strongly resists such a change. The devil who moves the threads of evil and sin raises very strong reactions, so that the spiritual restoration and the transformation of people in Christ are thwarted. What holy days of the first weeks of the Triodion, with his earthly organs, he organizes the shameful carnival events, which clearly have the character of an explosion of the most humble human impulses. At the time when our Church calls on human beings to cast off their bestial degradation, the devil attempts to brutalize them even more with the miserable carnival events!
In paganism, sin and every moral deviation were connected with pagan religious faith. In all pagan religions there were “deities” – patrons of human passions, such as revenge, hatred, murder, fraud, lies, theft, dishonor, prostitution, adultery, unbridled erotic lust, sexual perversions, orgies, drunkenness, debauchery, etc. In ancient Greece, almost all of them "gods" represented human passions. But after he "came" to Greece in 8ο BC century the Phrygian agricultural "god" of fertility and orgies Savage, through Thrace, which was renamed Dionysus or Bacchus, included in his person the protection of all human passions! We will not deal with the terrible crimes and violence which touched the limits of genocide, which his worshipers practiced in order to impose his worship on the Greek territory, and of which we get a small taste from the drama of Euripides "Bacchus"Nor will we deal with the extreme mystical movement of "Orphism" which sprang from the Dionysian cult and which plunged Greece into an indescribable state of superstition. We will focus on the Dionysian cult itself, whose basic character and main element were the
unspeakable orgies, vulgar eroticism, all kinds of moral deviations, pathological ecstasy to the point of cannibalism of living animals or even humans. According to experts, the Dionysian spirit came, imposed itself and displaced the Apollonian spirit, that is, moderation and sobriety. It is no coincidence that the Dionysian cult was imposed by totalitarian regimes, such as that of the Peisistratids on the 6thο BC century in Athens, as a turn of the popular masses to hedonism, moral liberties and drunkenness, in order not to protest against political oppression!
The uneducated and superstitious masses participated passionately in these obscene festivals, because the rulers saw fit to grant them unimaginable freedom even to the humblest impulses of the religious. Adulterers, prostitutes, degenerates and every kind of pervert, hidden behind the hideous masks, could satisfy their vile passions. "legally", performing their religious duties! The worst of all is that the women who were confined to the women's quarters were forced to go out on the days of "holidays" in the noisy streets and take part in the ceremonies, succumbing to the foul appetites of every abnormal and obscene male religious man, as a supposed submission to the will of Dionysus! Their sexual abuse was considered a religious act of worship to the "god"»!
The profanity, the obscene gestures, the parades of the phalluses, that is, huge replicas of the male organ, the frantic orgiastic dances, the drinking of wine to the point of death, the hysterical screams, the hideous disguises, the demonic noise and the deafening music of the flutes and drums composed a sickly mystical atmosphere. It was an open, huge magical ritual to exorcise evil demonic forces.
Of course there were worse. Women worshippers of Bacchus, the infamous maenads, They were seized with a terrible rage, fell into an unspeakable ecstasy, fled their homes and wandered through the deserts at night howling like wild beasts. If they happened to find an animal in front of them, they tore it apart and ate its flesh raw. In many cases they slaughtered people and ate them, as happened with the Penthea, king of Thebes, at Kithairona, who was beheaded by his own mother Agave, along with his sisters! In other cases, mothers in their Dionysian daze slaughtered their children and ate them, like the king's daughters Minya in Boeotia, Alkithoe and Arsippa, whom the demon god Dionysus drove mad and tore into pieces, in their ecstasy the infant Horseback riding, and they ate him! Even human sacrifices were performed in honor of the terrible "of God", during the feast of "Agrioniou Dionysus" at Orchomenus of Boeotia, as he himself informs us Plutarch, who saw with his own eyes the terrible priest of "god" Zoilo, to slaughter a young virgin, a descendant of the Minyans, as the villain's demand "god", the one honored by modern carnivalists. These atrocities were demanded by the demonotheists from our unfortunate worshipping ancestors. This was the so-called "brilliant ancient Greek religion"! These were the "gods"", who did nothing different from the crimes committed by the evil demons of our Christian faith and for this reason they are identified with them!
There are many voices of protest from enlightened minds of antiquity against the emetic Dionysian festivals, first of all the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus (570-489), who threatened those who committed such atrocities and ugliness and took part in the terrible "holy orgies" and to the obscene and ridiculous Bacchic celebrations (Herakles, op. 90). The great philosopher expressed the
fire of divine punishment against all "night owls, magicians, bacchantes, lynxes, mystics" (Clement Alexius Protreptius 22:16-24). Without any doubt, "Dionysian mysticism taught the utmost contempt for human reason" (P. Decharme Mythology of Ancient Greece, translated by A. Karalis, vol. 2, p. 533) and for this reason he found the ancient sages as his opponents, in contrast to the vulgar mob whose reason he underestimated and his animal passions he tamed! It is not mentioned anywhere that our wise, educated and serious ancestors took part in the Dionysian orgies (carnivals of the ancients). Only the uneducated and vulgar mob took part, who found the opportunity, in this peculiar cult, to satisfy their most vulgar passions in the name of "of God", with their anonymity hidden under the terrifying masks! In fact, such was the scope of the obscenities, which were accompanied by incredible criminal acts, that in Roman times, the Dionysian orgies of the "Bacchic Groups", with the penalty of death, to those who participated in them illegally, by the pagan Romans!
This was happening in the pre-Christian era. However, even in the post-Christian era, these uglinesses never ceased to exist, as proof that the devil is still present in human history! Nominal Christians continue to
they worship the awful "god" of human passions Bacchus, with carnivals, which are nothing more than modern Dionysian festivals. In many cases, they even tend to surpass the atrocities of antiquity, such as the emetic Tirnavos carnival, where sad women embrace with "devoutness" the huge ones "phallus", shamelessly, in front of the television cameras! The most obscene, shameless, vulgar, tasteless and absurd act, which can not only cause laughter, but also vomiting disgust and a manifestation of uncivilized primitivism!
Take care the devil, as another Bacchus, with his earthly organs performing these shameful events during the Triodion period. This is no coincidence. Through them, he attempts to distract people from the spiritual and sober invitation of the Church for psychosomatic purification. After a revelry of about four weeks, it is difficult to impossible to bring about devotion, calm, contemplation and a disposition for repentance in the souls of those who took part in the Dionysian events. The balance between sin and purification is very delicate and does not allow for experimentation. Sin dangerously corrupts man, imprisons him with passions, so that he cannot free himself from them. Of course, carnivals serve this very purpose.
It is observed that, despite all the warnings of our Church, many lukewarm Christians take part in carnival events. We must make them aware that this is a serious mistake, because as we mentioned above, carnival events are essentially religious worship of the pagan "gods" of passions and ultimately constitute worship of Satan himself, since "all the gods of the nations (is) demons" (Ps.95:5). This means that the position of these people in the Church becomes problematic, because "No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon." (Matt. 6:24). We cannot claim to worship God and at the same time worship demonic gods. Carnival feasts certainly have the character of the eating of idolatrous sacrifices of the ancient pagan religion, which the apostle Paul commands Christians to abstain from entirely. The
characterizes them as demon banks, emphasizing that, "I do not want you to become partakers of demons" (1 Cor. 10:20). Also the 62th The canon of the Sixth Ecumenical Council places outside the Church those who participate in masquerades and orgiastic carnival orgies! In other words: no Christian can participate in the shameful carnival fiestas, which are organized by the Municipalities from their empty coffers and the wild taxation of all of us, in order for these shameful acts to take place!
We are therefore called, as conscious believers of our Church, during this sacred period, to include in our personal struggle and our resistance against the abominations of the neo-Dionysian cult. Let us oppose the ugliness and obscenities of carnival with prayer, purification, seriousness, the cultivation of moral values, and above all, let us proclaim our faith in the only true Triune God.Let us make it known to the whole world that the shameful carnival events are part of the general plan of the dark forces to marginalize the Church of Christ and lead people into a modern monstrous idolatry, which is built on the occult men of "New Age of Aquarius"Let us openly denounce the demonic effort of Lucifer's earthly servants to have their filthy master worshipped as a god, in the person of the "god" of debauchery Bacchus.
Finally, let us have no doubt that Bacchus lives in the person of Lucifer and Lucifer is worshipped in the person of Bacchus, this is the whole essence of the frenzy of the carnival! Let us abstain from stupid carnival events, either as carnivalists or as simple spectators, because any of our participation cannot be interpreted otherwise than as our participation in modern demonic cults, with an absolute magical, irrational and primitive character!
photo W Franz, https://pixabay.com
