The
Dionysus
Society
What Is The Dionysus Society?
The Dionysus Society is a social club, religious organisation, and mutual support network all rolled into one. As a social club, we organise and host events within our communities ranging from bonfires to bar crawls to brunches, and many things in between, to provide a semi-structured safe space for people to come together, make friends, meet new people, and have a good time. As a religious organisation, we are a bit unusual both because we are a group in honour of Dionysus, and because we DO NOT require any belief nor faith in Dionysus to join and participate, we welcome atheists, followers of other gods, and the uncertain as gladly as dionysians as long as everyone can be kind and respectful to each other. And as a mutual support network, we encourage each other to seek help from qualified professionals for our problems while providing a community that can help us all give voice to our problems and help us manage in the interim as best we can together.
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The Dionysus Society was originally founded in Peterborough, Ontario, in Autumn of 2020, but due to the pandemic did not hold any events or encourage potential members to meet in person until Autumn of 2021. At that point, the Dionysus Society used the name "the Cult of Dionysus" to reflect its nature as a religiously focused social group devoted to a specific deity. The name was changed in Autumn, 2022, due to fears of discrimination and prejudice towards members in their professional or personal lives.
Summary of Doctrines
It is important to note that individual members of the Dionysus Society are welcome to their own beliefs on any individual component of these core doctrinal points, but the official doctrines of the Dionysus Society as a religious organisation can be briefly summarised as follows
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Be Free, Love Yourself, and Have Fun.
The surface level meanings of these seven words, which amount to an exhortation or command, is relatively simple and fairly trite, but they have deeper meanings and those depth are worth exploring just as the surface meanings are still valuable, trite as they are.
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Uncertainty of Afterlife and Irrelevance of Death
Death, to a degree, defines mortals. Our mortality, the certainty of our deaths, is a constant that many of us dread and worry over our whole lives once we comprehend it. Likewise, promises of life eternal or threats of damnation have been used widely to control people by religions through history and today. This doctrine states, in brief, that (since mortals, gods, and spirits can all lie or be incorrect) we cannot be sure there even is an afterlife or what form it takes or what affects it if it does exist, and as death is truly inevitable, worrying over it only serves to detract from the enjoyment of this ephemeral moment that is being alive. An afterlife is uncertain and death is not worth stressing out about.
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The Importance of Community
Community necessarily stands in opposition to unfettered freedom of the individual, even as humans fundamentally are a social species. To live within a social context, a community, is to abide by the limits of its social norms and rules of good conduct regardless of the individual's inner desires and urges. This creates a tension between self expression and personal freedom to do as one pleases, and the need for community, social interaction, the protection and strength that humans can only find when we come together. As a consequence, a group devoted to a god of freedom, liberation, and the wild within and without, needs a doctrine explicitly acknowledging the importance of community.