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Description of Dionysian/Orphic
Initiation
“Imagine, for instance, a nocturnal ceremony, torchlit. A boy is to be initiated. He sits bravely on the throne. The Kouretes or Korybantes dance round him, round and round, noisily clashing their swords on their shields. A priestess plays endlessly on the raw-toned pipes. After a time the circle is penetrated by the ghastly white-faced figures of the Titans, man’s ancestors. They prowl about the boy, flashing a mirror before his face. He follows it as if hypnotized. The music goes on, becomes wilder, with drumming, and the uncanny braying of bull-roarers. Knives glint over there in the gloom, there are inhuman screams, hacking and wrenching of limbs. They holy casket if carried round, and everyone sees the hot, bloody heart it contains. There are smells of roasting flesh. Presently there will be meat to eat; meanwhile we all bewail the savage murder of that innocent child. By way of consolation an effigy is produced, made of or coated with gypsum. The heart is inserted into its chest. Stark, white and lifeless the thing stands there in the flickering light. Then the miracle. In a moment of blackout – or dazzling light – the place of the effigy is taken by the new initiate, himself now covered with gypsum like his former murders, and he springs up alive and well, ready to enter on his new life.”
From M. L. West, The Orphic Poems, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1983, p. 163.