And the celestial visions that follow the mystical experience are emphasized time and again. In John 9:39, “I am here to give sight to the blind.” In John 1:51, “I tell you for certain that you will see heaven open and God’s angels going up and down.” The strange, hallucinatory effect that Dionysus has on his followers is identical in The Bacchae. “Now you see as you ought to see,” the wine god tells King Pentheus following his conversion to the wine god’s new religion.
