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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9829486" data-attributes="member: 6790260">The "rebirth" thing comes from what happens to the grapes. First they are alive, as...well, grapes. Then you pluck them and crush them, pretty thoroughly killing them. But then you ferment the juice, infecting it with something alive, and it becomes a conduit to the divine through the altered state of consciousness. Hence, grapes -> must -> wine is a birth -> death -> rebirth cycle. This is (part of) why Dionysus/Bacchus was adopted by the wine cult as its deity representative, at least in Greece: his story is one of being sired (Semele), "killed" (Semele dies), and then "reborn" (Zeus gets supernaturally pregnant with the fetus and supernaturally gives birth to Dionysus). This is part of why Dionysus, in the oldest records we have of him, is something more like a scary death-and-madness deity who brings joy with one hand and wrath with the other.....but the whole "our cult throws the BEST parties" was there all along.Hence, I see this as ascending through the understanding of the mysteries, e.g. the Eleusinian or Dionysian mysteries. Your first initiation is into the parties, hence carousing. Your second initiation is into the madness state, where you take on Dionysus' spirit (or perhaps induce it in others). And then finally you "complete" the mysteries by developing the full, mystical understanding that only the fully initiated can understand, cloaked in symbol and metaphor, a rebirth of the mind, which may (since magic is real in D&D) also mean rebirth of the body.</blockquote>

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