wait, did i say tat Trev's right? i meant kell's right! sowie.... *puppy eyes*

heres a lil questionnaire: where did u guys come up w/ yer usernames originally?

mine are my initials.

I have been using my name for over 10 years online. It is from 20k leagues under the sea. I always liked the book and I liked the science fiction and Nemo's view of the world fit well for me as a kid who through the world was unfair and cruel (ahhh... such angst!). Now I keep it because I am known by it and it still holds meaning to me in many ways.

Sabazios was a very early Phyrgican god, or ruler of a pantheon of gods, who was depicted as a sky nomad, riding a horse and wielding a staff of power - generic godly stuff. His various emblems were a snake, a snake with the horns of a bull, and a bull/goat. However, he comes to interest as being aligned with the Greek god Dionysus.

Now the thing about Dionysus is that he is almost impossible to pin down: over time and through different faith systems and localities, he has up to four incarnations. Dionysus was a god of farming and fertility who became the god of wine and intoxication; he was the patron god of theatre and dramatic arts who became associated with the idea of secrecy and artifice, concealing one's true self; he was the figure of a secretive cult who believed in the dissolution of the self through sensual pleasures, orgies, drugs and ritual ecstasy in order to tap into a primal force; and he was a resurrection deity of the Odinic, Osiric and Jesuit tradition, who was killed and then reborn from his father, Zeus. He also had horns and the symbol of the snake or the goat/ram, and was aligned with an early god of light called Lucifer (those who know Latin will recognise the 'lux-lucis' root of the word), and as such may well be a part of the Christian conglomerate being known as the Devil, Satan or Lucifer. The names Sabazios, Sabazius and Lucifer all pop up from time to time in the Satanic Bible and in the writings of Nietzsche and Jung as archetypal figures of primal ecstasy, the dark side of human nature and the idea of self-dissolution through bliss.

So what does that all mean? Well, essentially Dionysus, aka Sabazius, is whatever you want him to be. One of the key images in my interpretation is the snake. Snakes have several conflicting meanings in mythology. The shedding skin and continuously lapping coils, as well as the image of the coiled snake eating it's own tail, signify rebirth or an endless cycle of nature and change. The snake is associated with freedom of will and the darker side of human nature, along with special knowledge or awareness. In the Bible, this is seen as a bad thing, nut in Eastern philosophies the snake often symbolises the need for balance, yin and yang. Entwined double serpents represent a higher level of communication or awareness and the connection and balance of primal forces. In addition, snakes in folklore have been associated with intellectual quickness and wit, tactfulness and perceptivity. The goat symbol is associated with the left hand path of individualism and balance in life between dark and light, as well as power and virility. In addition, both the snake and the goat have connotations of trickery, secrecy or concealment, which link back to the idea of Dionysus as one wearing a mask - the theatrical association.

For me, Sabazius represents the ideal for life and philosophy. Not so much a god, but an aspiration for myself. The figure has many contrasting forces within him. At once there are the ideas of the goat - outright power and force, the unthinking loss of self to a bigger primal force, the dark side of human nature, the devil, the dark side, the ritual, the ecstasy and intoxication, sensuality - and then the snake - subtlety, awareness, the search for knowledge, the balance, flowing and cool, individuality and freedom from intellectual dullness, oppression and dogma. My personal philosophy is that we have to be open to what we are, and that passing judgment on ourselves, our world and each other is pointless. We should seek to know as much as possible, but at the same time we should be aware of our existence in the moment, right now, undefinable and unmediated connection to reality that cannot be labeled. So Sabazius is about that finding the balance between those two forces, the different urges of our lives. There's a whole lot of stuff in there, with a lot of links to very different schools of thought: Nietzsche, Jung, Taoism, Zen, Satanism (as a philosophy of the Left Hand Path, not as a religion), empiricism, individuality, freedom.

In essence, Sabazius is how I define myself and my philosophy.

tl;dr
It's complicated, but its a name for what I believe and how I aim to live.

My name is Chris and 55 was my number in baseball throughout high school

Mine is a name I earned about 8 years ago, I have just used it ever since.