Each grape is separate yet part of a cluster, just as we are unique and separate yet part of the human race. The process of turning grapes into wine represents the mystery of transformation as the crushed fruit becomes an intoxicating new substance. The crushing of each grape represents the letting go of our ego’s rigid individuality and the transformation of our consciousness into something fluid, connected, unified, ecstatic, vast. As the Sufi mystic Hazrat Inayat Khan said “Wine is symbolic of the soul's evolution. Wine comes from the annihilation of grapes; immortality comes from the annihilation of self (ego).”

In Western terms the mystery of the source, the inner cosmos which is the essential core of every human being is known as God, to the Sufi mystics this is the Beloved. Psychologically we can look at the religious functioning of God as a projection of this mystery into an external form or image. 

Dionysius is a particular God image from the Greek tradition that carries the qualities of transcendence and divine madness. The Greek Bacchoi claimed that like wine, Dionysius had a different flavor in different regions, reflecting their mythical and cultural soil, their “terroir”.

Dionysian rituals were a celebration of all that was outside civilized society and a return to the source of being. They also involved an escape from the socialized personality and ego either into an ecstatic state or into a primal herd, often both.

In the Wine & Psyche evening Yahya moved and expressed the Dionysian ritual in her body poetry taken from the Sufi mystic Jelaluddin Rumi, The Wine Vat’s Lid:

I go to the one who can cure me and say, 

I have a hundred things wrong.

Can you combine them to one? ........

He begins to treat my illness.

If I am angry and aggressive, he gives me wine.

I quit fighting. I take off my clothes. I lie down.

I sing in the circle of singers.

I roar and break cups, even big jars.

Some people worship golden calves.

I am the mangy calf who worships love.

Rod Raphael Birney  5/19/11