Hey everyone, welcome to another installment of Mythology Explained. In today’s video,
we’re going to be discussing Zagreus, the first incarnation of the god Dionysus,
a god whom Zeus bestowed with the lightning bolt,
intending him to be his heir, a god who was torn to pieces when Hera set the titans on him.
Let’s get into it.
To understand Zagreus’ story, we have to start by unpacking Orphism, which was,
essentially, an offshoot of mainstream ancient Greek religious beliefs.
It was promulgated by travelling priests who preached and initiated based on the songs and
teachings of the hero Orpheus - more on him later. Those who followed the Orphic teachings believed
that humans were constituent of two parts: the spark of the divine, the soul, and mortal flesh.
It was believed that a person’s ultimate task was to liberate their soul from the fetters of flesh,
something that could only be accomplished by living a life consistent with the Orphic
edicts - many of which were abstemious and ascetic, calling for people to refrain from
indulgence, avoiding such pleasures as meat, wine, and sexual intercourse.
Following death was the judgment of the soul. If a person led a righteous life, their soul
would pass on to the paradise of Elysium, but if a person lived a wicked life, then for them,
the plunge of death would herald punishment. After a time, a person’s soul would be reincarnated,
and if a person could lead a life characterized by piety and righteousness three times in a row,
then their soul would be freed from the cycle of reincarnation.
Orpheus was a singularly talented musician. No other mortal was his equal, and it would
have taken the likes of Apollo himself to best him in a contest. When he played,
trees bent towards him to hear better, and rivers stopped flowing, pausing to listen.
He was one of the heroes selected by Jason to accompany him on the quest for the golden fleece,
and he travelled to the underworld itself to bring back his true love to the land of the living.
Incorporated into the Orphic religion was the god Zagreus, who was sired by Zeus when he took
the form of a serpent and impregnated his daughter, the goddess Persephone,
before she became Hades' wife. Apparently, Zeus intended Zagreus to be his heir, a notion conveyed
symbolically by Zeus bestowing the power of the lightning bolt upon his son. But Zagreus
succeeding his father was an event that never came to pass. Hera felt scorned and spurned. Not only
did Zeus produce a son with another goddess, but - adding insult to injury - it was also
his intention to confer upon his bastard son the loftiest of seats, the ruler of all the cosmos.
Hera harnessed the hatred that the titans harbored for Zeus and unleashed them as the servants of her
dark purpose. The titans snuck into Olympus and distracted Zagreus with toys - for he was
still a child at this point. After disarming Zagreus, separating him from his lightning,
the titans swarmed and tore him to pieces. Only the heart, which Athena recovered, survived.
Zeus took the heart, made a potion from it, then gave it to Semele to imbibe, impregnating her
with the god Dionysus. From here the conventional narrative resumes. Semele is tricked by Hera into
asking Zeus to reveal his true form. Zeus under oath, is compelled to do as asked, but this was
tantamount to a death sentence; for Zeus’ divine form had the potency of a thousand raging storms.
Semele burst into flame and was incinerated on the spot. The fetus of Dionysus, though, was unharmed,
so Zeus picked it up and sewed it into his thigh, using the leg muscle as a surrogate womb.
Zagreus’ myth is an alternate version of the creation of humanity and deeply connects with
the orphic conceptualization of what a human was, which was the nucleus of a soul encased in a body.
Zeus, in response to the attack on his son, unbridled his power and struck the
titans with smoking bolt after smoking bolt, the bombardment reducing them
to not but heaps of the finest soot - silt would have seemed coarse by comparison - and from this
emerged the first humans. And this, the image of a divine heart buried in a mound of soot,
was, in the Orphic Mysteries, how human composition was thought of.
Each person had a soul, a shard of something divine - as Zagreus’ heart was divine - trapped
within a sinful - as the remains of the titans were sinful - prison of flesh.
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