xxxvi. What he wished to be; I have no command over god's face and shape.

xxxix. Then Bromius revealed himself. The house shook!

xliv. Good has many faces, I know. Yet, let it always be on my side.

l. The hidden gods may well disguise the creeping foot of lurking time.

lxxx. Turn round my god, and show your face, and smiling, always smiling, throw death on him like a net.

lxxxi. King Bromius! You reveal your greatness!

cxxii. Does it seem the same? Or somehow different?

cxxvii. The gods have many faces. They manifest themselves in manifold ways.

The Symbol of the Mask

The galvanic entrance of the god and his inescapable presence have found their expression in a symbol which is even more expressive than the cult forms we have previously discussed. It is an image out of which the perplexing riddle of his two-fold nature stares - and with it, madness. This is the mask.

From earliest times man has experienced in the face with the penetrating eyes the truest manifestation of anthropomorphic or theriomorphic beings. This manifestation is sustained by the mask, which is that much more effective because it is nothing but surface. Because of this, it acts as the strongest symbol of presence. Its eyes, which stare straight ahead, cannot be avoided; its face, with its inexorable immobility, is quite different from the other images which seem ready to move, to turn around, to step aside. Here this is nothing but encounter, from which there is no withdrawal - an immovable, spell-binding antipode. This must be our point of departure for understanding that the mask, which was always a sacred object, could also be put on over a human face to depict the god or spirit who appears.

And yet this explains the significance of only half of the phenomenon of the mask. The mask is pure confrontation - an antipode, and nothing else. It has no reverse side - "Spirits have no back," the people say. It has nothing which might transcend this mighty moment of confrontation. It has, in other words, no complete existence either. It is the symbol and the manifestation of that which is simultaneously there and not there: that which is excruciatingly near, that which is completely absent - both in one reality.

Thus the mask tells us that the theophany of Dionysus, which is different from that of the other gods because of its stunning assault on the senses and its urgency, is linked with the eternal enigmas of duality and paradox. This theophany thrusts Dionysus violently and unavoidably into the here and now - and sweeps him away at the same time into the inexpressible distance. It excites with a nearness which is at the same time a remoteness. The final secrets of existence and non-existence transfix mankind with monstrous eyes.