gite (Pseudo-Dionysius), himself a student of the Neoplato-
nist Proclus, who, after Iamblichus, was the weightiest
philosophical advocate of theurgic practice. In Dionysius,
however, the term is employed in the sense required by the
Christian doctrine of grace: theurgy is not the effect of a nat-
ural and universal sympathy between different orders of
being, but the self-communicating work of the divine. For
Dionysius, Jesus is “the Principal [arch ̄e] of all hierarchy, ho-
liness, and divine operation [theourgia].” The priesthood, by
imitating and contemplating the light of the higher beings—
who are, in their turn, assimilated to Christ—comes to be
in the form of light, and its members are thus able to be
“workers of divine works [theourgikoi].” The operative sense
of Dionysius’s use of the term is captured later by Maximus
the Confessor, for whom the (new) verb theourgein means “to
divinize”; he uses it in the passive voice to denote the effect
of divine grace conferred through Christ.
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RICHARD A. NORRIS (1987)
Revised BibliographyTHIASOI is a term in Greek religious cults that designates
the followers or adherents of a deity who, as a more or less
formally organized group, participate in communal and pri-
vate celebrations. While the Sanskrit root-word dhiyaindhas
denotes devout and reverent supplication, the Greek term
thiasos has become most strongly associated with the orgiastic
and ecstatic frenzy of the worshipers of Dionysos, with fea-
tures made famous through Euripides’ The Bacchae, such as
omophagia (tearing animals apart and eating their raw flesh).
The Dionysian thiasoi comprise such groups as the Maenads
and Thyiads, which during the winter months performed
their frenzied dances in trancelike states beyond “civilized”
regions (i.e., cities and temple precincts) in the “wilderness,”
in order to reenact the mythic fate of Dionysos himself (who
was torn apart by Titans) as well as to reawaken the god of
spring and fertility. While the thiasoi may have originated
with the celebrations of any deity of the polis, after the fifth
century BCE they seem to become more privatized, to be di-
vorced at the same time from any specific sanctuary, and to
lose their gender-specific separation of initiation rituals
through which an individual becomes conversant with the
mystery.
Thiasoi could be interpreted as the sometimes more
public, sometimes more esoteric and secret fraternities,
guilds, or clubs that are devoted and dedicated to any deity:
in short, they are cult associations. Most commonly these as-
sociations were segregated by gender and age: as we find fe-
male attendants of Dionysos, we have also male clubs such
as the Corybantes and Curetes for Zeus. The tendency to-
ward dramatic representation and enactment of a deity’s
mythic deeds appears in all such cult associations. All of them
seem to have used such paraphernalia as masks and costumes.9158 THIASOI