Most people are familiar with Dionysus as a vegetation god. In fact, that’s how he started life (so to speak) among humans, dying each year at the time of the grape harvest. In the Mediterranean, where Crete is located, that happens most years in late August or early September. So in many ways Dionysus is similar to the other dying-and-reborn vegetation gods we’re familiar with from the Near East, Europe, and other regions.

But as so often happens, cultures change over time, inventing or importing new ideas and layering them onto what’s already there. Something like that happened with Dionysus in ancient Crete.

Before we get to his details, though, let me explain a bit about how the Minoan family of deities works. Instead of having a particular slot in a human-style family tree, the Minoan deities unfold out of each other in a multi-faceted fashion. I've often likened the Minoan pantheon to a carnival fun house full of mirrors. This can make it difficult to tease out exactly which aspects go with which deity name, and to sort out whether two different names belong to two different deities or a single one.

In addition, as Minoan society changed over time, more layers were added onto those already-complicated facets. Like the Egyptians, the Minoans were sort of "spiritual hoarders;" they didn't discard one set of beliefs and practices when another one showed up, even when the new layers were added by the Mycenaeans during their occupation of Minoan Crete.

For centuries, Dionysus was the Vine God, the bringer-of-ecstasy who died each year and was unfailingly reborn with the first new leaves in the vineyard. The wine made from his body brought joy to his people and helped them along in their ecstatic rites, in which they might also be symbolically resurrected like their god. His identity as a dying-and-reborn god was established. But then new ideas came to Crete.

By the final centuries of Minoan civilization, Dionysus was celebrated at the solstices as well as the time of the grape harvest. At Winter Solstice he was born from Rhea and hidden in her cave, safeguarded and nursed by Rhea’s sister/daughter/alter-ego Amalthea.

And at Summer Solstice he emerged from the cave in his full splendor and glory, ready to undertake the sacred marriage with Ariadne.

These special days were commemorated at Knossos by special alignments of the solstice Sun with the Throne Room, so we know the ‘official’ Minoan religion, at least at Knossos, incorporated this set of mythology. The focus of religious practice may have been on different deities in the different Minoan cities, since during Minoan times each city was a separate political and religious entity run by the temple or by a consortium of the temple clergy and the wealthy citizens.

The divine child born at Midwinter in Rhea's sacred cave may originally have been her son, the Young God Tauros Asterion. For reasons that are still unclear, during the Mycenaean occupation, the Mycenaeans latched onto Dionysus as their "favorite" Minoan god and decided he should be at the top of the pantheon. They even called him "Cretan Zeus" to emphasize the fact that they thought he should have the top position in the pantheon. And they decided that he was Rhea's son, even though it's likely he was originally considered the son of Posidaeja, the Minoan sea goddess. So by late Minoan times, we end up with him being born to Rhea in her sacred cave at Midwinter.

Now, for a long time I thought the solstice events meant Dionysus was probably some kind of Sun God. I mean, born at Midwinter and at his height at Midsummer – that’s pretty obvious, right? But we’re fairly sure the Minoans worshiped the Sun as a goddess, not a god.

As I was doing some research, I was reading some academic papers about the astronomical alignments of the temples and peak sanctuaries, and a bunch of bits and pieces suddenly fell into place in my mind.

And then I understood: Dionysus isn’t exactly a Sun God.

He’s not the Sun. He’s the solar year.

He's the year-king that we hear of throughout the mythological cycles of the ancient world, the embodiment of the turning of time and the movement of the seasons on Earth. He's born from Rhea, the Earth Mother Goddess who is the island of Crete itself, at Winter Solstice. He grows to his peak at Summer Solstice, the height of the solar year.

We don’t know whether the big temples celebrated his death at the grape harvest – the time we call the Feast of Grapes in Ariadne's Tribe – but it’s a pretty sure bet the people in the countryside held onto those old traditions, even as the practice grew and changed at Knossos under Mycenaean rule.

In a very broad sense, Rhea is place and Dionysus is time. Rhea is existence and Dionysus is motion. They complement each other.

When he's with Rhea, Dionysus is the sacred son. When he's with Ariadne, who we conceptualize as Rhea's daughter but who may be another aspect of Rhea herself, he's Ariadne's consort. So we can see how he acts as the eternal dying-and-reborn god, like so many other ancient gods from cultures around the world.

I find that these two layers, or aspects, of Dionysus dovetail well with each other: the dying-and-reborn vegetation god and the solar year-king. In both cases he represents the passage of the seasons, the visible movement of time through the living things on the Earth. He reminds us that  everything changes, everything dies, and that’s all right.

And as if this isn't enough, Dionysus has another aspect in the Ariadne's Tribe family of deities. We consider the Minelathos - the deer-god among our Horned Ones - to be one of Dionysus's faces. We call this aspect of him Divono. Deer are the truly wild members of the Horned Ones, in comparison to the fully-domesticated cattle and the domesticated-but-happy-to-go-feral goats.

Whether we see Dionysus as the Vine God, the Year-King, or one of the Horned Ones, he helps us through the shifts and changes that occur throughout life, whether we want them to or not. And he can help us find ways to renew ourselves and start again, as he does every year.