“Regardless of its merits as an accurate depiction of Jim Morrison, the Oliver Stone movie “The Doors” serves as a useful illustration of the risks and the dangers involved in becoming psychologically identified with a religious archetype—in this case, the ancient pagan deity, Dionysus.” – Paul Bench, a freelance writer
I have been a die or ride devotional consumer of arts in regards to rock n roll and psychedelic rock since the beginning of time. A little background about myself, I actually identify as a Hellenic Pagan, and to be specific, Dionysus, the Greek god of wine, has been my obsession since the beginning of time of my journey(mostly because of all the literature I read and the lore). As a Bachhante(a follower of Dionysus) who’s also obsessed with Dionysian Mysteries and anything in regards to Dionysus, stumbling upon Jim Morrison was something that felt familiarly dionysian to me. However, it didn’t take me long to understand that my recognition of the spirit of Dionysus in the arts of Jim Morrison was a niche, an unpopular opinion, because apparently nobody realized that, and nobody seems to see it through the same lens as I. So what I did was become even more obsessed, and I believe my take on this is as unique and interesting as it is.
When I expressed this initial thought to one of my acquaintances, I was thrown away with a response that indicated that I was a little coo coo and was overcomplicating things due to the biases rooted in my religion. But the more and more I look deeper into Jim’s upbringings or his lyricism and poetry and syncretism, the more and more dionysian it gets in my eyes; Young Jim Morrison appears to have taken an active literary interest in Dionysus and Dionysian phenomena before the doors really got going and It is reported that he read Nietzsche, Blake, Rimbaud, and Joseph Campbell—to name a few of his formative influences—and he learned a thing or two about shamanism.
His band member, Ray Manzarek, describing himself as Apollo to Jim’s Dionysus, the constant allusion to Dionysian Mysteries, ceremonially married to a witch/high priestess(Patricia Kennealy-Morrison), and the fact that he was fully convinced he invoked Native American spirits inside him through a car accident, seem extremely oddly Dionysian to me and perhaps rather esoteric. me and a few niche people have speculated to develop a theory that he was the priest of Dionysus. None of it could be really that interesting if he were open, but since this is coming out of mystery, enigma, and pieces of evidence, I’m more fascinated than ever.
“It’s not much of a dichotomy. Apollo/Dionysus are more like two sides of the same coin (i.e. their tradeoff at Delphi, Macrobius’ analysis of them as two aspects of the Sun). Even Nietzsche argued that they should work together for the sake of artistic mastery.” NyxShadowhawk commented under a post within r/dionysus
And gayhomo47, a Reddit user, even speculated a theory that he was trying to pass trials to become a priest of Dionysus. I personally do not believe he’s an embodiment of a God, but there definitely is something there. Emphasis on something because I do also realize that there definitely is something there.
It doesn’t matter whether this was conscious or subconscious. What matters is that the resonance is there. And the more it hides in mystery, the more compelling it becomes. I know about a lot of things but I haven’t formed quite a thought like this that’s almost too ambiguous, which makes me ineffably hard to articulate despite giving off a sensation of deeply heavy contents of essence. But one thing I dare to speculate for sure is that he was an unconscious vessel to the archetypal Dionysian energy and that conflicted ego to ultimately destroy him physically, and that’s on Paul Bench’s niche thesis. Jim can always and forever keep making music that belongs in Bacchanalia out of nowhere and keep using the same 12 vocabularies(snake, awakening, dance, madness, crazy, limbs, God, death, rebirth, souls, ghost and desire) to keep me spinning right round but I’ll never not care about all this intricate patterns within his art even if it seems like nonsense to me; an accurate word to utter: divine madness.