Saja Boys & the Cult of Dionysus

The Saja Boys really took “let me be your idol” to a new level. Topping every single chart in the world, the fictional Kpop demon boy group from Kpop Demon Hunters did something that I never thought would be possible in a million years…dethrone BTS. Kpop Demon Hunters spread its craze so quickly that it could be compared to a global pandemic. Despite being the antagonists and having only a minor fraction of screentime, Saja Boys somehow rose to the #1 spot on the US Spotify charts, not only knocking out BTS’s previously unchallengeable record with Dynamite but breaking all my social media feeds with an excessive number of edits. At this rate, you’d think they were actually stealing the global population’s souls or something, but who would fall for that? Evidently and historically, a lot of people do.

As a Kpop fan myself, the Korean entertainment industry often seems cultish. Joining a Kpop fandom feels like an induction. Fans give themselves names and citizenships, buy glowing lightsticks of their favorite groups, and ritualistically collect photocards as though they were some form of sacred memorabilia. I know a few people who have gone to lengths to set up shrines in their rooms. Some communities online are so protective of their biases that they will verbally desecrate anyone who talks badly about them. Others entitle themselves to their idols’ personal lives and form parasocial bonds with them. Idols are constantly stereotyped, sexualized, and forced to maintain a persona for the fanbases who have devoted their money to them. Since Kpop had really only turned mainstream in the past decade, you’d expect these kinds of fanatic circles to be relatively modern, but the Ancient World totally pioneered the craze.

Cults were no stranger to the classical world. Worshipping a polytheistic pantheon meant less limitations and strict regulations to follow, and having no organized religion, unlike Christianity or Islam, left room for many smaller devoted communities to create worship places and rituals celebrating gods who they believed were particularly significant to their local culture. For instance, Athens was Athena’s, Delphi Apollo’s, and Cyprus Aphrodite’s. The public beliefs and practices of Ancient Greece were open to everyone, but underneath their surfaces, Mystery cults thrived. 

Mystery cults didn’t operate all that differently from the general religion, besides being “secret.” They promised their followers “truths” to the philosophical questions of the afterlife and what would happen to their souls after death. With these theories, they were able to draw in a massive following. To enter a cult, a Greek would have to go through the initiation rites and swear themselves to complete secrecy, for if even one private matter in the cult got out to the public, they could be killed. Quite mysterious, right?

There were hundreds and maybe even thousands of Mystery cults operating in Ancient Greece. One of the largest cults was the Cult of Eleusis, which believed in a cycle of reincarnation alluded to in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter. There was also the Cult of Pythagoras, who not only taught middle schoolers to calculate triangles but also formed his own religion based on vegetarianism and abstinence. Orphism was another lesser known religion originating from the teachings of Orpheus (the Orphics worshipped a god called Zagreus, who I talk about in my Hades post). The most notorious Mystery cult, though, was the Cult of Dionysus.

Unlike other cults, the Cult of Dionysus was depicted by poets and orators as the pinnacle of decadence. Rather than seek salvation of the soul, Dionysian worshippers sought wine, ecstasy, and freedom from social constraint—in the fashion of their idol. They put themselves into trances through alcohol and orgies and danced in ecstatic frenzies while stripped down into the nude, transgressing the very bounds of human society and attempting to return their spirits to their most ‘natural,’ beastlike states. Because of that, the majority of the cult’s members were women, seeking an escape from the burdensome patriarchal systems weighing them down into their domestic expectations.

Dionysus’s followers, the Maenads, quickly earned a name for themselves for being drunk, crazy, promiscuous, and unbelievably violent. Rumors circulated that they offered their god human blood (a major taboo) and performed cannibalism on each other. The cult’s worship spaces, adorned with uncensored phallic statues and sexually licentious paintings, hosted parties so wild and ecstatic that the average male citizen would shudder at the thought. In the eyes of the general public, the Maenads were a group of mad savages who had lost their minds in their pursuit of Dionysus’s favor, much like how a rabid fan is so consumed by the thought of their idol they “lose” their souls. Yet, simultaneously, their actions are more than self-indulgent fantasies. The cult gives them the power to unabashedly transgress against the very binaries of society that strictly subsidize their authenticity—as long as those desires remain in this small, secret place, of course.