The thyrsos is the supreme symbol of Dionysos, carried by all of his devotees. It is a stalk of fennel or other wood, topped by a pine-cone, and wreathed with ivy. It is a powerful tool, through which the God's coursing, vibrant, ecstatic sexuality manifests. "The maenads, followers of Dionysos, pound the ground with the thyrsos, which drips honey and causes milk and wine to gush up from the earth; a phenomenon into which it is not difficult to read sexual symbolism." (Delia Morgan, Ivied Rod: Gender and the Phallus in Dionysian Religion)
The thyrsos, also, is found in possession of Osiris. Before Lucius is initiated into the mysteries of Osiris, the God visits him in a dream, prefaced by an encounter with one of the God's devotees. He was "clad in linen and bearing an ivied thyrsos and other objects, which I may not name." (Apuleius' Metamorphoses, 27)
Plutarch also attests to thyrsoi connected with Osiris. "For they fasten skins of fawns about themselves, and carry thyrsoi, and indulge in shoutings and movements exactly as do those who are under the spell of the Dionysiac ecstacies." (On Isis and Osiris, 35)
And Lewis Spence informs us that, "A pine cone often appears on monuments as an offering presented to Osiris." (Ancient Egyptian Myths and Legends p. 72)
Copyright 2005 Sannion
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