Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun A
nocturnal ceremony ofBacchic women in Ancient Greece.
Etymologies
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Greek ορειβασια, literally ‘mountain-treading’.
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chained_bear commented on the word oreibasia
"The most notorious feminine form of Dionysian worship, the oreibasia, or winter dance, looks to modern eyes like a crude pantomime of feminist revolt. In mythical accounts, women 'called' by the god to participate drop their spinning and abandon their children to run outdoors and into the mountains, where they dress in fawn skins and engage in a 'frenzied dance.' These maenads, as Dionysus's female cult members were called, run through the woods calling out the name of the god, or uttering the characteristic bacchic cry 'euoi,' they toss their hair and brandish their thyrsos—sticks to which pinecones have been attached. Finally, they achieve a state of mind the Greeks called enthousiasmos—literally, having the god within oneself—or what many cultures in our own time would call a 'possession trance.'"
—Barbara Ehrenreich, Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2006), 34–35
March 12, 2009