Sparagmos refers to an ancient Dionysian ritual

Ritual

A ritual is a set of actions, performed mainly for their symbolic value. It may be prescribed by a religion or by the traditions of a community. The term usually excludes actions which are arbitrarily chosen by the performers....

 in which a living animal, or sometimes even a human being, would be sacrificed

Animal sacrifice

Animal sacrifice is the ritual killing of an animal as part of a religion. It is practised by many religions as a means of appeasing a god or gods or changing the course of nature...

 by being dismembered, by the tearing apart of limbs from the body. Sparagmos was frequently followed by omophagia

Omophagia

Omophagia, or omophagy is the eating of raw flesh. The term is of importance in the context of the cult worship of Dionysus....

 (the eating of the raw flesh of the one dismembered). It is associated with the Maenad

Maenad

In Greek mythology, maenads were the female followers of Dionysus , the most significant members of the Thiasus, the god's retinue. Their name literally translates as "raving ones"...

s or Bacchantes, followers of Dionysus

Dionysus

Dionysus was the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness and ecstasy in Greek mythology. His name in Linear B tablets shows he was worshipped from c. 1500—1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks: other traces of Dionysian-type cult have been found in ancient Minoan Crete...

, and the Dionysian Mysteries

Dionysian Mysteries

The Dionysian Mysteries were a ritual of ancient Greece and Rome which used intoxicants and other trance-inducing techniques to remove inhibitions and social constraints, liberating the individual to return to a natural state. It also provided some liberation for those marginalized by Greek...

.

Examples of sparagmos appear in Euripides

Euripides

Euripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him but according to the Suda it was ninety-two at most...

's play The Bacchae

The Bacchae

The Bacchae is an ancient Greek tragedy by the Athenian playwright Euripides, during his final years in Macedon, at the court of Archelaus I of Macedon. It premiered posthumously at the Theatre of Dionysus in 405 BC as part of a tetralogy that also included Iphigeneia at Aulis, and which...

, which concerns Dionysus and the Maenads. At one point guards sent to control the Maenads witness them pulling a live bull to pieces with their hands. Later, Dionysus lures his cousin, king Pentheus

Pentheus

In Greek mythology, Pentheus was a king of Thebes, son of the strongest of the Spartes, Echion, and of Agave, daughter of Cadmus, the founder of Thebes, and the goddess Harmonia....

, into a forest after he bans worship of the god where he was attacked by Maenads, including his own mother Agave

Agave (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Agave was the daughter of Cadmus, the king and founder of the city of Thebes, Greece, and of the goddess Harmonia. Her sisters were Autonoë, Ino and Semele, and her brother was Polydorus. She married Echion, one of the five Spartoi, and was the mother of Pentheus, a king of...

. The reference of his mother tearing apart his limbs is sparagmos. Similarly, Medea

Medea

Medea is a woman in Greek mythology. She was the daughter of King Aeëtes of Colchis, niece of Circe, granddaughter of the sun god Helios, and later wife to the hero Jason, with whom she had two children, Mermeros and Pheres. In Euripides's play Medea, Jason leaves Medea when Creon, king of...

 is said to have killed and dismembered her brother

Absyrtus

Absyrtus, or Apsyrtus , was in Greek mythology the son of Aeëtes and a brother of Medea and Chalciope. His mother is variously given: Hyginus calls her Ipsia, Hesiod and Apollodorus call her Eidyia, Apollonius calls her Asterodeia, and others Neaera or Eurylyte.When Medea fled with Jason, she took...

 whilst fleeing with Jason

Jason

Jason was a late ancient Greek mythological hero from the late 10th Century BC, famous as the leader of the Argonauts and their quest for the Golden Fleece. He was the son of Aeson, the rightful king of Iolcus...

 and the stolen fleece

Golden Fleece

In Greek mythology, the Golden Fleece is the fleece of the gold-haired winged ram, which can be procured in Colchis. It figures in the tale of Jason and his band of Argonauts, who set out on a quest by order of King Pelias for the fleece in order to place Jason rightfully on the throne of Iolcus...

 in order to delay their pursuers (who would be forced to collect the remains of the prince). The Italian film director Pier Paolo Pasolini

Pier Paolo Pasolini

Pier Paolo Pasolini was an Italian film director, poet, writer, and intellectual. Pasolini distinguished himself as a poet, journalist, philosopher, linguist, novelist, playwright, filmmaker, newspaper and magazine columnist, actor, painter and political figure...

 staged a sparagmos ritual as part of a long sequence near the beginning of his film Medea

Medea (film)

Medea is a film by Pier Paolo Pasolini based on the plot of Euripides' Medea. Filmed in Göreme Open Air Museum's early Christian churches, it stars the famous opera singer Maria Callas in her only film role; however, she does not sing in the movie....

(1969), before dramatising the episode in which Medea kills her brother in a similar way. In Tennessee Williams

Tennessee Williams

Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...

's play Suddenly, Last Summer

Suddenly, Last Summer

Suddenly, Last Summer is a one-act play by Tennessee Williams. It opened off Broadway on January 7, 1958, as part of a double bill with another of Williams's one-acts, Something Unspoken. The presentation of the two plays was given the overall title Garden District, but Suddenly, Last Summer is...

, Sebastian Venable is killed in an episode of sparagmos and omophagia.

According to some myths, Orpheus

Orpheus

Orpheus was a legendary musician, poet, and prophet in ancient Greek religion and myth. The major stories about him are centered on his ability to charm all living things and even stones with his music; his attempt to retrieve his wife from the underworld; and his death at the hands of those who...

 notably met this fate at the hands of the Thracian women. Interpreting the ritual through the lens of the Freudian

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud , born Sigismund Schlomo Freud , was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis...

 Oedipus complex

Oedipus complex

In psychoanalytic theory, the term Oedipus complex denotes the emotions and ideas that the mind keeps in the unconscious, via dynamic repression, that concentrate upon a boy’s desire to sexually possess his mother, and kill his father...

, Catherine Maxwell identifies sparagmos as a form of castration

Castration

Castration is any action, surgical, chemical, or otherwise, by which a male loses the functions of the testicles or a female loses the functions of the ovaries.-Humans:...

, particularly in the case of Orpheus.