To the Initiate by Wayne Martin Mellinger, Ph.D.
TO THE INITIATE An autobiographical prose poem Dionysus cries out in the streets. In the squares he raises his voice. At the entrance of the city gate he speaks: “How long, O foolish ones, will you love being foolish? How long will sufferers continue in their suffering and refuse to hear my words of wisdom? Listen to what I have to say. I will make my thoughts known to you.” Secrets will be revealed to you—secrets known, forgotten, rediscovered, and forgotten again by those who have ventured beyond the boundaries of ordinary life. As the old initiates said, and Plato set down in the Phaedo : “For many are the thyrsus-bearers, but few are the bacchoi .” Many carry the staff. Few enter the mysteries. Fewer still return from them. There are forces within us that civilization cannot entirely contain. We construct laws and institutions, prisons and churches, schools and bureaucracies. We learn to discipline our bodies, postpone our pleasures, regulate our desires, and make ourselves useful....