Apollo vs. Dionysus

The epic battle happening in our collective unconscious

Liman Albridge
4 min readJul 29, 2021
19th century drawing of The Temple of Apollo in The Schwetzinger Garden.
The Temple of Apollo in The Schwetzinger Garden. Credit: British Library

There are games happening in the substrate that we cannot easily perceive.

Invisible processes working themselves out in our collective unconscious, like the way a dream helps us consolidate.

Some of these processes have frequencies of days, others have frequencies of thousands of years.

It’s as though all of us, living, dead, and not yet arrived are sharing the same dream.

These patterns are hard to see, but sometimes we catch glimpses of them.

One such pattern I believe in is the battle between the right hand and the left. For millennia, there has been a war between the hemispheres in our minds, expressed in the way that we organize our societies.

You may have heard me refer to this as Apollo vs. Dionysus. Apollo is the sun god. The prototype for a singular sun god. In the light of the sun, everything can be seen and clearly organized. This is the right hand and the left brain.

On the other hand is Dionysus. The left hand and the right brain. They dance by the light of the moon. Dionysus brings chaos, uncertainty, and what we might call magic.

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Liman Albridge

Half Ben Franklin, Half Tyler Durden. Emphasis on half. I get weird over at occultedordinary.com.