The tragedy caused by the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in August 79 AD has long rested hidden under a four-meter thick layer of volcanic ash and stones. Life continued relentlessly in the years following the eruption, new settlements grew in the surrounding area, old Roman cities were reconstructed countless times, and Pompeii remained exactly as it was on that fateful morning for seventeen centuries.
The first archaeological excavations in the 18th century revealed unimaginable wealth to the world. Pompeii is a witness to the untamable power of nature, but at the same time, it is also a true open-air museum. While for some, this is a city of death, for others, it is a city of life, that life which stopped in an instant and remained alive in its dramatic death, as a witness of a long-gone time.
Leafing through books about Pompeii, particular attention is drawn to the unusual red wall paintings, incomparable to any others found in the city, depicting twenty-nine figures in life-size. They are a mystery The walls of the room in the villa of a Pompeian patrician, after which this villa was named Villa of Mysteries, are covered in fascinating frescoes. They are shrouded in mystery; they open up a field of countless assumptions, speculations, and attempts at interpretation, but there is no reliable answer.
The interconnected paintings depict the Dionysian mysteries known throughout the Greco-Roman world. These mysteries were not tied to sacred places and temples. Their esoteric teachings were transmitted and developed in individual communities and their “sacred houses” where rituals dedicated to the god Dionysus took place, serving as an invisible inner driving force behind the well-known Dionysian festivities.
The Dionysian mysteries were based on the Greek myth of Dionysus, whom the Titans dismembered and devoured on the orders of Hera. Only his heart was saved by Athena, which Zeus swallowed to ensure Dionysus’ return to life. The supreme god burned the Titans with lightning and scattered their ashes in all directions. From the ashes of Titan arose a new human race. Hence in humans, there is an earthly part that comes from Titan and a divine part inherited from Dionysus, whom the Titans swallowed.
The Dionysian myth is merely an outer shell of mystery, based on which it is difficult to penetrate the essence of what they once contained within themselves. This is the reason for our current lack of understanding of the depicted scenes in the Villa of Mysteries.
Nevertheless, based on scant information from the initiated, who were bound by a vow of silence, we know that the purpose of the mysteries was to uncover human destiny and encourage individuals to overcome their instinctual, titanic part, freeing their soul from the slavery of the body and thus achieving the victory of the Dionysian, divine part within them.