Sparagmos

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Sparagmos refers to an ancient Dionysian ritual in which a living animal, or sometimes even a human being, would be sacrificed by being dismembered, by the tearing apart of limbs from ones body. Sparagmos was frequently followed by omophagia (the eating of the raw flesh of the one dismembered). It is associated with the Maenads or Bacchantes, followers of Dionysus, and the Dionysian Mysteries.

Examples of sparagmos appear in Euripides's play The Bacchae, which concerns Dionysus and the Maenads. At one point guards sent to control the Maenads witness them pulling a live bull to pieces with their hands. Later, Dionysus lures his cousin, king Pentheus, into a forest after he bans worship of the god where he was attacked by Maenads, including his own mother Agave. The reference of his mother tearing apart his limbs is sparagmos.

According to some myths, Orpheus notably met this fate at the hands of the Thracian women. Catherine Maxwell identifies sparagmos as a form of castration, particularly in the case of Orpheus.^[1]

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