Bridger of Worlds

The Dance of Eros and Thanatos: A Journey With Dionysus and Shiva

• Ioannis Kokkinos

Share episode

Send us a text

In episode 14 of the Bridger of Worlds Podcast, host Ioannis Kokkinos explores the powerful archetypal energies of Dionysus and Shiva, drawing profound connections between these ancient deities and their roles in the dynamics of Eros (creation) and Thanatos (destruction). Kokkinos emphasizes the importance of bridging these polarities, revealing how they manifest in human experiences of authentic expression, ecstasy, sexual energy, and the creative life force.

Through the lens of personal experience, Kokkinos also ties these archetypes to the Hero's Journey as reflected in the Tarot, specifically correlating the meaning of the World card from the Major Arcana to the energies of Dionysus and Shiva. He explores how these themes guide spiritual transformation, encouraging listeners to embrace the dynamic interplay of creation, destruction, and rebirth as essential aspects of personal and spiritual growth.

Additionally, Kokkinos highlights the transformative power of ecstatic dance and other physical rituals, which serve as effective tools to transcend ego and conditioning, unlocking deeper layers of self-awareness and spiritual evolution. This episode offers listeners a deep dive into the interconnectedness of creation and destruction, urging them to embrace the full spectrum of their human experience for healing and awakening.

Support the show

Hi everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Bridger of Worlds podcast. I'm your host Ioannis Kokkinos. Thank you so much for joining me. I can't believe today is already episode 14. I am having such a blast creating these episodes and, uh, creating this content for you.

So as always, I will be bouncing off of the previous episode. I really enjoyed recording last week's episode, the four Pillars of Manifestation. I brought in Eros to the conversation along with Thanatos. So today. 

Exploring Eros and Thanatos

I want to elaborate on Eros and Thanatos. I want to bring in the archetypal energy symbol deity of Dionysus as well as Shiva.

So Dionysus was, um, I think the English accent calls Dionysus, Dionysus. Bear with me. I mean, I do have a Greek background, so I will be saying it in Greek. Uh, the, but I have heard in English Dionysus, so that's basically the same deity that's what I'm talking about today, as well as Shiva, who is a part of the Hindu tantric teachings.

Now, symbolically speaking, shiva and Dionysus are the same energy. So maybe you've noticed, I mean,  in my content, I've not really, uh, touched upon, an array of deities and symbols. I did talk about like Pluto and Persephone  in my spring Equinox episode.

And I believe that's it. So I have a lot to say when it comes to deities and symbols, and obviously there are so, so many mythologies. By no means am I a mythologist. I do find myth fascinating because it does touch the inner life of human existence. And basically we all are living out our own myth, even if it's like a mundane day-to-day, uh, reality.

But I do want to start bringing more conversation into the episodes around deities, symbols, and archetypes. Because at the end of the day, this just talks about our inner human psychology talks to our inner psyche when we are talking about gods and goddesses. 

 So that was a little tangent. Uh, let's get back to Eros and Thanatos. The energy of Eros is creation, as I talked about in the previous episode, and the energy of Thanatos is the energy of destruction. We cannot have one without the other. Eros and Thanatos are two sides of the same door now within oneness, that everything is one  that unity consciousness pretty much brings everything together. Eros and Thanatos are two polarities.  That split off from this unity just like any other two polarities. And because this podcast is called The Bridger of Worlds, and it is about bridging worlds. It's about bringing different things and different pieces together. Yes, we will be bringing Eros and Thanatos together. I mean, I talked a little bit about the previous episode, but today I want to elaborate upon it really, like what?

What can that look, sound and feel like when we are moving through Eros and Thanatos? And yes, of course we will be talking about sex again because this is our sexual, creative, spiritual energy, our erotic energy, our eros is our sexual, creative, spiritual energy. But with that comes the destructive aspect of life as well, the destructive aspect of this life force.

So. Dionysus very much embodies this energy as does Shiva. 

Dionysus: The God of Ecstasy

So I will start with Dionysus. Dionysus was, uh, the ancient Greek God of ecstasy. When we hear the word ecstasy, we tend to think of the drug and you know, superficial means of gratification and pleasure. Dionysus is one of the deepest and richest symbols as far as ancient Greek mythology is concerned, he is the prominent resurrection and rebirth archetype as far as the ancient Greek deities are concerned. Now, there was a lot of death and rebirth throughout Greek mythology, but actually Dionysus' story, very much centers around rebirth and what that means as part of our human condition.

Now just a little reminder. Yes, I'm talking about deities. I'm talking about gods as far as the stories are concerned, but this is speaking to our own inner psyches. We all have a Dionysus within us. We all have Shiva within us. We all have Pluto within us. We all have Persephone within us, right?

Depending on what we're moving through life, depending on what phase we're in, what we are experiencing. These archetypes speak to us, these archetypes exist through us because they are the original pattern. And the ancients happened to name these patterns with, uh, god names, goddesses names, you know, associated them with the elements, with nature and emotion and action and reaction and so on and so forth.

So Dionysus is the god of ecstasy. But if we break this word down. In Greek, it's two words, EK and Stasi. EK is from exo, which means outside Stasi is stationary. So if we look at the etymological meaning of ecstasy in its most authentic form and expression, it means to go beyond the stationary, beyond the ordinary.

So this is why in ancient Greece, there were a lot of rituals and ceremonies that regarded Dionysus, , that actually involved a lot of dancing, pleasure, love making, and so on and so forth. Because these physical things here in our physical reality are means to go beyond ourselves.

Now, of course, we can become very prone to addictive behaviors when it comes to any type of pleasure, when it comes to sex, when it comes to porn, masturbation, alcohol, hard drugs, right? Like any form of drug. It's not to say that when we are embodying Dionysus, or that when we are moving through ecstasy that we need to become addicts or addicted to something.

Through organic, healthy, and um grounded ways we can and should be experiencing pleasure every single day in our lives because pleasure is a part of our humanity. We are here to enjoy life. So a lot of these rituals and celebrations were very much centered around sexual expression.

So again, we can see the energy of Eros and Thanatos very much alive in these rituals because Eros is creation and Thanatos is destruction. 

But sex and love making are one means to experience this energy. 

Ecstatic Dance and Personal Revelations

Think of ecstatic dance, right? Ecstasy, ecstatic dance. Dancing takes us out of ourselves. Ecstatic dance happens to be one of the most powerful. Slash healing slash cathartic slash grounding and transcendental modalities that exist. And I will say from firsthand experience, 'cause I've done quite a few ecstatic dance sessions, workshops, encounters.

 It is very powerful stuff because to move through ecstatic dance is really to go beyond ourselves, is to go beyond our limitations. We can have very powerful breakthroughs and very cathartic experiences when we like, are properly ecstatic dancing. All of the ecstatic dance gatherings I've attended have been alcohol and substance free because the thing with ecstatic dance is you don't need any of that stuff to like experience oneness and to experience the godliness as far as like the physical experience is concerned 'cause to dance is to use our body. It is very much a visceral, bodily physical experience. To dance, right? We're not sitting down, we're not meditating, we're not with the quiet. , we're not like immersing in  the silent void, right? This is very much what meditation is, but ecstatic dance can be meditative because we use the physical. We use our body, we use the music. We become one with the music, and we move into the spiritual so we can actually apply this exact same symbolism, this exact same process and dynamic to lovemaking to sex because to move through sex. To move through Eros is to go beyond ourselves.

And again, it is about coming home to this life force, to this energy within ourselves. And to use this energy is also being able to use it at a as a means to destroy. To transform our ego. So when I say ego death think, ego transformation. When I say, um, destruction, think transformation through creation.

Like we cannot ever, ever get rid of our ego. I know there are a lot of teachings out there that say like, we need to completely strive to dissolve the ego. That's not my jam, that's not my experience, and that's not the message that I want to share, uh, here on my platform. Because at the end of the day, in order to fully embody and experience our humanity.

And to honor our humanity. That very well includes our ego. But yes, the ego is not to be in the driver's seat. Like I said in some episodes beforehand, the ego is to come along for the ride and we are to experience our higher self, our soul self. That is to be in the driver's seat. So we use this energy for rebirth, right?

Like when we, any time we use the word death, we also need to incorporate the word rebirth into the formula because energy never dies. Energy only ever transforms. The only constant, the only, only, only constant in the entire cosmos is change. So. To work with Dionysus, energies to work with ecstasy and ecstasy is to go beyond the stationary. And we need to do this because doesn't solely speak to like having a really good time and, you know, experiencing oneness with all of creation, to experience ecstasy is to become free of the bounds and the limitations and the, you know, shackles of our programming, of our egoic conditioning because that is what keeps us stuck. That is what keeps us paralyzed in life, is our false programming, is our false conditioning.

These are the chains and the bondage that we must break free from. And sometimes we need to make love, sometimes we need to self-pleasure, sometimes we need to fucking dance, right? Like just dance it out. And it, it can be as simple as that. Like I mentioned. Um. Just like a personal experience. My most recent ecstatic dance, which I experienced in August in Corfu, um, I basically went like I was dancing, right?

Like I was deep into it. Uh, I think I was about halfway through and I basically witnessed my inner child coming through my 12-year-old self who like absolutely loved to dance. But then started to realize he was a boy and he shouldn't be allowed to dance so much. He shouldn't be allowed to dance as much as he was dancing.

And so he started to shut all of that down. And when we shut the inner dance of our life down, we are shutting our creative life force down.  And here I'm going to bring in Shiva because Shiva speaks to Shakti, which is that dance. But let me continue about this story a little bit here.

So it was a meeting in the astral, right? Like in the ether at the astral plane. 'cause there's no time and space there. So I was deep into the dance. Uh. Fully sweating, you know, fully, fully into it, fully using my body, and I had like a very cathartic experience. Just having that revelation of, I've really.

I shut this part of myself down because you know of cultural conditioning and like what boys were allowed to, like what boys were allowed to do when I actually  absolutely used to love dancing so, so much. And you know, I was about to enter high school. So I started shutting all of that down and I paid the price for it after, because that's one of the reasons why I was so drawn to porn addiction, that creative life force is our creative energy. Obviously as children, it's not matured into sexual energy, but it is creative energy nonetheless. So when we start to have creative blocks from young ages, we will have sexual blocks as adults because creative energy is creative energy.

So ecstatic dance is very, healing is very powerful. It is a means to have experiences like that, and I've had quite a few. That's not the only one I've had, but that's my most recent one. 

Shiva and Shakti: The Dance of Creation

And now I want to bring Shiva and Shakti into the conversation. I think this is a good point to bring them in here because Shiva is the male counterpart to creation in Hindu Tantrism and Shakti, Kali Shakti is the female, uh, aspect of creation. Now we cannot have one without the other. 

As far as the Hindu tantric teachings are concerned, Shiva's, he who holds space, he's the absolute, he is the, um, cosmic witness that gives the space, that allows the freedom for Shakti, Kali Shakti to

dance Shakti is  the universal dance of creation. So you see the parallels between Dionysus and Shiva. Now Dionysus doesn't really have a male female expression. Dionysus is actually both. , Dionysus was a male, uh, deity. He was a masculine symbol, but he has a lot of feminine energy undertones  because rebirth and transformation are  the feminine expression. Now in Hindu Tantrism, it is very, very clear. There's a lot of clear cut symbolism as to like what is masculine or what is feminine and how they serve one another. And this is why I fell in love with Hindu Tantrism and this school of thought  as far as healing my, uh porn addiction and all things sexual energy and sex when it came to my healing journey.

So another parallel that Shiva and Dionysus share is that Shiva's the world dancer because of Shakti, because she is the energy, she's the dance that infuses him to hold the space and to offer the container for life to be life.

He is known to be the world dancer. Ecstatic dance, Dionysus, Shiva, creation, death, rebirth, eros and thanatos.  So obviously this is deep into symbolism, deep into metaphors. We're talking about deities, we're talking about archetypes. But again, this is all psychosomatic because all we really need to do to hone all of this in and to like make it practical and to make it something that we can work with, is basically to use our sexual erotic creative energy as a means to experience oneness, not just with our partners, not just with ourselves, but basically with all of life. Everything is communing in eros.

 

The World Card and Symbolism

If we look at the World card in the Tarot by Rider-Waite. So I think you could see it, the World Card in the Tarot. So I've not talked about the Tarot at all so far, but the Tarot holds the Major Arcana, which are 22 cards that signify the Fool's Journey. The Fool's Journey is very much reminiscent of Joseph Campbell's The Hero's Journey, which speaks to an individual getting called to adventure to leave home, experience an ordeal, experience a symbolic death of sorts. Have a transformation. Learn a very important lesson and come home and share that lesson with his familiar and comfortable surroundings. So the World Card, the World Dancer in the Tarot is the last card. It's the end, it's the the completion, and the culmination of the Fool's Journey.

Now, from the Numerology perspective, the World Card is 21, which makes it a three. Number three in the Major Arcana is the Empress, which is Mother Nature, which is fertility, pleasure, joy, festivities, um, intimacy, eros love, community art, right? So. It's remindful of the Empress because to experience Heaven on Earth is to first start through the physical, start with our bodies, start with our physical surroundings, and then we get to basically feel on top of the world to feel a oneness with creation to reach God.

And that is what the World card signifies. Traditionally, it signifies completion, graduation, the end of a journey, the beginning of a new journey, a new chapter, uh, rewards, accolades, right? Like it's probably the best card to get in a reading when you see the World card, because it means you've come to the end of a cycle that's included a lot of hardship, a lot of adversity, you know, ordeal and so on and so forth.

So the world dancer is reminiscent of Shiva, who dances on top of the world as he holds space for Shakti, the dance herself and Dionysus who is the prominent resurrection symbol in ancient Greek mythology that included ceremonies, rituals, and gatherings of dance, of love making, of very much like the physical experience.

And another thing about Dionysus, he was the God of wine making. And again, this is symbolic. It wasn't about just drinking wine for the sake of getting drunk. Yes. This is also a means to take us out of ourselves and to dissolve our ego. So again, we're not chasing any form of pleasure to become addicts or to like lose ourselves through it. because this is obviously the distorted lower vibrational aspect of Dionysus, but to make wine is to crush the grape. We need to crush grapes before we can create wine, before we can create the uh, spirit.. Spirit was a synonym for alcohol in ancient Greece. We still say spirits now for alcohol because alcohol is a means to feel a certain connection to oneness.

Now, I'm not condoning alcohol in any way here. I myself barely drink. Um, but for those of you who have drank. You know, when we get a buzz, when we start to feel that drunkenness, that takes us out of ourselves. But again, everything is to be used with control, with consciousness, and with balance. But we crush the grape because the grape actually needs to die in order to become wine.

So again, we see the rebirth slash resurrection, uh, symbolism through Dionysus in this way.

And bringing it back to Hindu Tantrism. So obviously this life force when we are raising it through our chakras, that is Shakti. It is the creative life force that moves within our bodies, and we are meant to reunite her up in our crown chakra with Shiva, the world dancer. In order for Shiva, basically to feel like he's on top of the world and to dance, we need to raise our sexual energy up through our chakras.

So that Shakti meets Shiva so that he can do what he's supposed to do and basically destroy the aspects of life that need destroying Shiva's known as the destroyer in the trifecta of the Hindu gods.  So we have Brahman the creator. Vishnu the sustainer, and Shiva the destroyer, but it's not destroying like for the sake of destruction. Kali Shakti, in tandem with Shiva is to destroy the aspects of life that have run their course. And this speaks to Thanatos. This is the exact same thing as Thanatos in the ancient Greek tradition. And when we are using this energy within our bodies, when we are moving this energy within ourselves.

This is how we can destroy the aspects of us, the programming, the conditioning that have run their course that are very much expired and we are to let them go through this means. this is why I'm such an ambassador for sexual energy to be used as a modality for healing,  because it is creative, as it is destructive, it is destructive as it is creative.

Vibration is the Dance 

 Another thing that Eros, Dionysus, Shiva. Shakti and sexual energy have in common is vibration. I talked about orgasmic energy. I talked about the vibrational component of sexual energy that infuses basically all of life because everything is vibrating.

So when we are dancing, we are vibrating,  when we are being erotic  with our partners, we are vibrating . When we are working with this energy within ourselves, we are vibrating. So vibration is a dance in itself, and this is what the Hindu tantrics basically called Shakti.

Shakti is the feminine component of creation, but she's also a symbol. So the dance, right? When we're talking about atoms and we're talking about this, um, Hermetic principle. That nothing rests, everything moves, everything vibrates. We can basically say that nothing rests. Everything moves. Everything dances, right?

So we can think of dancing as a synonym for vibrating when we want to move energy within ourselves. And it doesn't necessarily mean we have to dance or self pleasure or make love make eros. We literally could shake our bodies in order to move energy. There are a lot of psychosomatic  practices and modalities  that incorporate the movement and the shaking of our body.

So ecstatic dance is a very emphasized expression of vibration. Dionysus is an expression of a vibration. Shakti in tandem with Shiva is an expression of vibration. Eros is vibration. Thanatos is the death, is the destruction. But ultimately, after thanatos, after death follows, eros, follows creation.

 

Conclusion and Final Thoughts

So I will leave it here. I think that's enough food for thought for today. If you enjoyed this episode, please hit that like subscribe button on YouTube. I so greatly appreciate that. If you're on one of the podcasting platforms, thank you for tuning in. If you feel like someone needs to hear this content, please go ahead and share it.

 If you wanna find me on my socials, they're all posted down below on my YouTube, I'm on Facebook, Bridger of Worlds, and I'm on Instagram, TikTok, and Threads with my full name. Okay, so I will be back next week with another episode.

 I hope you enjoyed this information. And as always, please remember that you are the medicine and I am just the messenger. Thank you very much.