Dionysus, God of Wine

Dionysus, son of Zeus and the mortal Semele, was the god of wine, theatre, ecstasy, and divine madness. His worshippers — the Maenads and Bacchae — danced themselves into trances under the stars, dissolving the boundary between human and divine, civilised and wild. From his cult emerged the entire tradition of Greek tragedy, and with it the dramatic foundations of all Western theatre. He is the god of release, of transformation, and of the wine that has bound civilisations together for three thousand years.