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The Olympian Dionysus personifies the natural beauty of excess. He exists for the night-sky of euphoria and enlightenment through ecstasy: hedonism is the most primal path to self-discovery, or so his Maenads believe, and only by removing selfish inhibition and the shackles of social constraint can a person be his or her true self. Dionysus revels in these leveling acts of impassioned human destruction: his nature is changeable—enigmatic and wild—which makes him a dangerous deity in his own right, although his followers have long since learned that such danger is a necessary part of a fully ripe life.