be found within Hinduism. Though this idea may appear to be original, Nietzsche himself always regarded Dionysus as having emigrated to Greece from ‘Asia’ and was also familiar with many key concepts in the Hindu Tradition. Since Nietzsche’s lifetime, others have also explored this angle, comparing the roles of Dionysus to the god Shiva, notably Alain Daniélou in his work ‘Gods of Love and Ecstasy’. The fact that these two gods share so many features in myth and iconography does lend a great deal of credibility to this theory of them having a conjoint origin. What is more interesting however is that a similar dyad to that of Apollo and Dionysus occurs in Hinduism within the relationships expressed between the gods Shiva and Vishnu. Like Dionysus, Shiva is sometimes depicted as being an hermaphrodite. Can we then conclude, from the works of scholars such as Daniélou and Bachofen, that Dionysus is not a purely masculine emanation, and in fact embodies a disguised representation of feminine consciousness? In terms of sexuality, the answer is no, for both gods depict a certain ambiguity in regards to their sexuality not just Dionysus – Apollo’s iconography also contains an air of sexual ambiguity to it, and out of all the Greek gods, it is Apollo who takes the most male lovers. It can therefore be said that both gods express a bisexual ambiguity in terms of gender, and that it is through this shared set of gender characteristics (as opposed to sexual ones) that the true dichotomy is born, for like all polar opposites, they are in truth not a dyadic opposition, but rather an expression of polar linearity on the same plane; fundamentality they are same thing, but in both cases the essence of the absolute reveals itself through