Orphic Persephone.

Though the Orphic tradition may have begin sometime during 600 B.C it took until the late Hellenistic period (300/200 BC) and early Roman (C1st to C2nd AD) era before it became a recognised religion.


There is a theory that the Orphic religion or philosophy comes directly from a Zoroastrian (Persian) influence on the Ionian Greeks of the sixth century BCE.

Rather than creating a new cosmology it leads to a  mystical interpretation of a pre-existent Greek mythology.

In Orphic thought, the gods are no longer powerful versions of us. In the Homeric tradition gods make mistakes and have ill thought out wishes and desires. In the Orphic tradition gods are other.

They seem to represent forces, and are closer to the idea of emanations.

Understanding of the gods is experiential, the Mysteries are, from an Orphic point of view, attempts to enable an understanding beyond understanding.

Basically the experience of the Mysteries enable the student to progress towards enlightenment.

Another influence on what was to become Orphic tradition, came from Crete hidden in the word Zagreus.  The Ionian Greek word zagre signifies a hunter, and a zagre was a "pit for the capture of live animals".

From this derivation the name Zagreus adds a cthonic, underworld dimension to which ever deity it is given- in Orphic myth we have- Dionysos Zagreus.

Dionysos who captures or ensnares.
The metaphor is hard to untangle...Dionysos ensnares and transforms the animal aspects of the soul perhaps?

Nietzsche interpreted Dionysos Zagreus as Dionysos the hunted, not the hunter. The heroic tearing apart -either literal or psychological-as an integral aspect of the cult of Dionysos.

According to W.K.C Guthrie- Orpheus And Greek Religion there are two main sources for the Orphic Persephone myth, Clement of Alexandria  (AD 150-.211), and the alter of Hyakinthos at Amyklai.

Clement wrote several religious essays called: The Exhortation to the Greeks. In book one you can read that Zeus, Persephone's father organises the abduction of his daughter and then, in the form of a serpent creeps down into the underworld to have intercourse with her:

Zeus becomes the ravisher as well as father of the maiden, meeting her under the form of a serpent, his true nature being thus revealed. At any rate, in the Sabazian mysteries the sign given to those who are initiated is "the god over the breast"; this is a serpent drawn over the breast of the votaries, a proof of the licentiousness of Zeus. Persephone also bears a child, which has the form of a bull. To be sure, we are told by a certain mythological poet that

The bull begets a snake, the snake a bull; on hills the herdsman bears his mystic goad,

the herdman’s goad being, I think, a name for the wand which the Bacchants wreathe.

Would you have me also tell you the story of Persephone gathering flowers, of her basket, and how she was seized by Hades, of the chasm that opened in the earth, and of the swine of Eubouleus that were swallowed up along with the two deities, which is the reason given from the custom of casting swine into the sacred caverns at the festival of the Thesmophoria? This is the tale which the women celebrate at their various feasts in the city, Themophoria, Scirophoria, Arretophoria, where in different ways they work up into tragedy the rape of Persephone.
Reference.
http://www.theoi.com/Text/ClementExhortation1.html

Zagreus became Sabazios  because both words sound similar. Sabazios was originally a Phrygian deity portrayed as a nomadic horseman god, wielding a staff of power. Much latter the C10. A.D Byzantine Greek encyclopedia, Sudas, explains:

"Sabazios... is the same as Dionysos. He acquired this form of address from the rite pertaining to him; for the barbarians call the bacchic cry 'sabazein'. Hence some of the Greeks too follow suit and call the cry 'sabasmos'; thereby Dionysos [becomes] Sabazios. They also used to call 'saboi' those places that had been dedicated to him and his Bacchantes... Demosthenes [in the speech] 'On Behalf of Ktesiphon' [mentions them]. Some say that Saboi is the term for those who are dedicated to Sabazios, that is to Dionysos, just as those [dedicated] to Bakkhos [are] Bakkhoi. They say that Sabazios and Dionysos are the same. Thus some also say that the Greeks call the Bakkhoi Saboi

I can't find any images of the alter of Hyakinthos.

W.K.C Guthrie also says that Euripides play, Helena (the one in which the real Helen of Troy is spirited away to Egypt and Paris abducts an illusion) is another source of the Orphic idea that Zeus father's Dionysus with his own daughter.

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The Orphic version of Persephone's story begins with the abduction, but this time from Eleusis.

It is the sun that tells Demeter that Hades has taken her daughter.

Demeter is entertained by Baubo (of the lewd jokes) in the house of Dysaules (ill-housed); their sons are Eubuleus, Eumolpus and Triptolemos who also tell Demeter of the abduction;  they say that they saw Persephone taken as they were out, tending their herds.

Clement of Alexandria says it is Eumolpus (who begins the Eleusinian mysteries).

Zeus creeps down into the underworld in the form of a snake and seduces Persephone. The child is Zagreus, the first-born Dionysus.

The child had horns and came into the world wearing a crown of snakes.

Nonnus, Dionysiaca 6. 155 ff
Ah, maiden Persephoneia! You could not find how to escape your mating! No, a drakon (dragon) was your mate, when Zeus changed his face and came, rolling in many a loving coil through the dark to the corner of the maiden's chamber, and shaking his hairy chaps he lulled to sleep as he crept the eyes of those creatures of his own shape who guarded the door. He licked the girl's form gently with wooing lips. By this marriage with the heavenly drakon, the womb of Persephone swelled with living fruit, and she bore Zagreus the horned baby, who by himself climbed upon the heavenly throne of Zeus and brandished lightning in his little hand, and newly born, lifted and carried thunderbolts in his tender fingers

Zeus's wife, Hera hates the child and so she allowed the Titans into the room where the baby Dionysus was playing. The Titans had smeared their faces with white clay to make them look round, they gave him a thyrsus (a fennel stalk) in place of his sceptre.and they fascinated the child by showing him his own reflection in a mirror....until they could get close enough to tear him to pieces (the original bull sacrifice embedded in the image of the worshippers of Dionysus ripping live animals apart).

When Zeus discovered the crime he blasted the remains of his child and the Titans with thunderbolts and locked the Titans into the deepest dungeon of the underworld. Then he took the heart of Dionysus and gave it to Semele in a drink, thus she became pregnant with Dionysus.

Meanwhile humans were formed from the ash of Titan and God which accounts for our need for rituals of purification and our time of punishment in this world- by living an Orphic life and avoiding bloodshed and murder, humans may pay the penalty for the ancient grief the Titans caused Persephone, and achieve freedom.

The baby Dionysus now safe in Semele's womb cannot remain hidden from Hera who once more intervenes and tricks Semele into causing Zeus to appear to her in his real, god-form. She is blasted by the heat and light and killed instantly.

Zeus took the unborn baby and sowed him into his thigh.

So it is that Dionysus is twice born.