Edited 6/1/10
Maryann wasn’t a typical bacchante. Her rituals, mythology, and theology identify her as a member of the Mystery Cult of Orpheus. They worshiped Dionysus as the supreme god and believed in reincarnation and transmigration of the soul.
Dionysus wasn’t just the god of wine and theater like he was to most Greeks. According to the Orphists, he was Zagreus, the horned one. (The horns actually refer to bull horns and associate him with the ancient bull worshipping cults.) Zagreus was the child born to the goddess of the Underworld, Persephone and Zeus. As Maryann said, the Titans ripped him apart on Hera’s orders. Only his heart was left intact. Athena recovered it, and Zeus fed it to Semele, his human lover. The infant god regenerated in Semele’s womb and was born as Dionysus, the twice born who called both a goddess and human woman mother.
The followers of Orpheus believed that Zagreus/Dionysus was the reincarnation of the first corporeal god, the hermaphrodite Protogonos (The Progenitor). They thought that all living matter came from him. So where did Protogonos come from? He was hatched from the world egg. His mother was Nyx, the goddess of night and his father Erebus, the god of darkness and shadow. Nyx and Erebus were not corporeal beings, but forces of nature that came out of chaos, the primordial matter.
Orphists believed that the spirit of Dionysus lived inside every living creature and is what animated them. Their worship included spiritually cleansing themselves by bathing in mud or flour and communing with Dionysus/Zagreus/Protogonos by ripping a bull apart with their bare hands (sparagmos) and devouring it raw (omophagia). With this act, they believed they were eating their god, and he would grow in them.
What identifies Maryann as an Orphist?
1. Her belief in reincarnation and transmigration of the soul.
2. The ritual purification in mud and flour which was depicted when the frenziers rolled in the dirt and smeared cake on their faces
3. Recounting of the Orphic version of the origin of Dionysus.
4. Associating Dionysus with the horned god, Zagreus.
How exactly did she intend to marry Dionysus?
By reinacting the Orphic myth with supernatural stand-ins for the original gods and goddesses.
Tara (depticted in Jason’s hallucination as a Greek goddess) and Eggs were to play the roles of Nyx and Eurbus, Night and Darkess, the primodial gods who originated in chaos and, with their sexual energy, created the first corporeal creature god, Protogonos.*
They had to consume the heart of a supernatural creature first because, as Sophie Anne says, supernatual creatures straddle the two wolds. Apparently Maryann thought this was the way to pull Dionysus from the supernatural/spirit world into the natural/material one.
It was only after Tara and Eggs ate Daphne’s heart and had sex that Maryann, a were-bird, started brooding and turned Sookie’s house into her filthy stinking nest. That’s because in Maryann’s recreated myth, Dionysus was to have two mothers just like in the original version.
Tara and Maryann were both to be his mothers. After Maryann was confident that Daphne’s heart would lead to the result that she desired, she produced the egg that was to house the spirit of Dionysus, regenerated from Daphne’s heart by the sexual energy of Nyx (Tara) and Erebus (Eggs), before it was transferred into a living body.
Sam, shifted to the form of a bull, was to provide the vessel for Dionysus. I believe that Maryann originally intended to have sex with him in this form, remove his heart, and have her followers perform sparagmos and omophagia.
Jason’s comments about bestiality to Andy foreshadowed Maryann’s intent, as did Hoyt’s description of chicken fried steak. He told Jessica it was like a cow and a chicken got tother and had a baby. (Recall that Maryann was a were-bird.) The meat tree was a visual representation of the same idea as the bird lady statue enlarged and plastered with beef. That tree was Maryann’s sexual fantasy.
This is also what the bull mask was about. Maryann wore it to make herself attractive to her bull god like Pasiphae, the Queen of Crete, who fell in love with a bull and disguised herself as a cow to attract it. The Minotuar was the product of this union.
This myth links Maryann with the mother of the Minotaur, but she is also associated with Ariadne, his half-sister, the woman who married Dionysus and became immortal. It was also significant that Ariadne was ultimately responsible for the death of the Minotaur by revealing the secret of how to defeat him to Theseus. This ties in to Maryann’s ultimate intention of killing the bull after she mates wtih it.
Recreating this myth would make Maryann the bull god’s mother and wife, and it also links her with the Minotaur’s mother and sister. These incestuous associations are another version of Godric’s reference to father, brother, and son. The maenad and vampire storylines both explore the same taboo laden cannibalistic life cycle: life is food; food is sex; sex is death; death is life.
Updated: Serena pointed out how the meat tree resembles both a bull head and a womb, apparently the two were connected in the ancient world. Tara placed Maryann’s egg, which had been fertilized by Tara and Eggs’s sexual energy, into the giant womb. IMO we will be dealing with the fall out from this ritual for some time.
*I believe that Tara will eventually be revealed to be supernatural and assume that Eggs was, too.
Whoa, I have’t been here in much too long!
Everything you’ve written here makes perfect sense to me, with only one problem: If MA thought it was part of her ‘recipe’ to rip apart and devour the bull before Dionysus could manifest in the natural world, that would mean SAM had to be ripped apart and devoured, and we know he wasn’t. How did Laffy/Eric/Bill whoever fool her into believing such a spectacularly graphic ritual had actually taken place when it had not? MA HAD to believe every part of her ritual was a success before she could be fooled into believing Eric as Dionysus.
Hi Sonya,
You have pinpointed the gray area. I speculated before that Laffy would pretend to pull a spare heart out of the bull’s chest and give it to Maryann to devour. Then Sam would be turned over to her followers. Her attention would either be on the heart, Sookie taking off, or Eric appearing. I think somehow MA has to get away from the house and down that road. If Jason and Andy didn’t go black eyed, they could help Laffy keep everyone at bay and defend Sam since they would be the only ones there that realize who the bull is. (This could be the reason Sam had to reveal his secret.) Anyway, SA did say that MA would have to consume part of her god before he could devour her. That’s the only way I can figure it happening. I know you think Eric will ravish MA, and that is a possibility. Where do you see SA’s comment about MA having to consume part of her god coming in?
Hi Renee
“Anyway, SA did say that MA would have to consume part of her god before he could devour her.”
That’s the thing: SA said MA would have to consume part of her “vessel” not her god:
“Sophie-Ann: I never said he was non-existent, I just said he never comes. She believes if she finds the perfect vessel, sacrifices and devours part of him, or her, while surrounded by the magic of her familiars, then her mad god will appear. At that point, when she willingly surrenders herself to him..
Bill: That’s the only point she can be killed..”
..which means your theory of Laffy procuring an animal heart and fooling MA into thinking it belonged to Sams is perfect and explains why Sam lived and why she believed her ritual had gone well. After MA devours what she ‘believes’ to be the heart of her vessel—”the very thing that gives him (Dionysus) life”— Eric appears, she believes absolutely that he IS Dionysus, which allows—-
“Queen Sophie-Ann: She has to believe she has successfully summoned forth Dionysus, in hopes that he will ravish her, and quite literally devour her until she’s lost into oblivion.”
Perfect! Thanks for looking that up. It does suggest that MA will have sex with Eric instead of the bull, so what was all the bestiality foreshadowing about?
I was watching the scene were MA manifested with a pig in the middle of a road. She was looking windblown and dazed. There could be a parallel to this with Eric (windblown) and Sam. If Eric appears with the bull that MA thought was just devoured, it would reinforce MA’s belief that Eric is her god.
“If Eric appears with the bull that MA thought was just devoured, it would reinforce MA
Great connection with Eric and Godric; I did not see that. From her dazed look, I really think that was the moment MA popped into Bon Temps, naked and in the middle of the road, as Eric will be.
That being said, I certainly wouldn’t put it past her to have sex with a pig. Lesbian pig sex! LOL!
MA shares most of the ancient associations of pigs: ferocity, violence, sloth, gluttony, evil, filth, mud, and vulgarity. The pig’s onmivorous nature marks it as the devouring god in many cultures. Need to do a write up on that.
Daphne was the mytological Calydonian Boar rampaging through the countryside and Merlotte’s and causing havoc wherever she roamed.
I really like this. If we don’t see this come to pass through POV-correction flashbacks, then I can’t help but wonder if the Maenad won’t come back to life and return to Bon Temps for revenge. And this time, the Maenad is killed by Eric exactly as you describe, sparagmos. Just an idea. I know Alan Ball has said the Maenad is dead, but to me that doesn’t mean she won’t come back to life and crawl up out of the ground, pissed off as hell, and looking to kick ass and take names. Is there a way within the mythology, that the Maenad could return?
Well, Orphism is all about reincarnation, and it was alluded to in the show at K-k-k-karl’s death when Maryann said that he hadn’t progressed much in this life.
I just feel like the Maenad was too juicy and meaty for Alan Ball to let her go so easily. Also, it seems like she couldn’t have been permanently killed per the way we say in epi 12 of S1.