Australian author Gede Parma was touring the United States in 2012 to promote a new book, and had written me ahead of time to offer himself as a model, since his publisher and editor are based in the Twin Cities area (Paganistan). We portrayed him as Dionysus or Dionysos, the God of theatre and the Mysteries, of intoxication and ritual ecstasy, seen in quiet moments posed in a park area near the Mississippi river in Minneapolis.
As it happens, I have “aspected” Dionysus myself in rituals past and had already a costume to hand: a chiton, ivy wreath and a thyrsus— an ivy-wreathed staff tipped with a pine cone, one of the god’s most important attributes. It is a phallic symbol, a wand, a stand-in for the idea of a tree, and more: its meaning changes depending on how the God holds it.
