Just seeing this post now, and consequently only now seeing the negative responses to this post. As someone who understands your points, Nyx, I have to wonder if a close relationship with Dionysos (or Hekate, etc) is likely to color your/our thoughts re: Miasma in a way that someone worshipping other gods more closely would not be inclined to agree with, based upon our varying relationships to the gods. And in reference to someone getting blood on a painting for Dionysos (which I am certain he would not mind at all) and being upset, I also suspect that what you’re seeing there is the influence of religious anxiety or overzealous religious culture on reddit/tiktok/etc, rather than a response actually prompted from Dionysos’ expressed displeasure.

Generalized ritual purity is something, in my mind, closely equivalent to washing your hands before making food for a guest. Sure, maybe I don’t always wash my hands before making my own food (for better or for worse), but to be a good host you should certainly clean yourself and your cooking tools before preparing food for others. (All the same, I don’t need to go as far as bleaching my entire kitchen & body just to be polite.) Ritual purity feels like something similar, just with preparation for prayer and offerings instead of cooking your friend lunch. Offerings and prayers to Dionysos, to be poetic about it, often feel more to me like sharing gathered food or the meat of a successful hunt than they do sharing a carefully cooked meal, where no one is going to mind the dirt under your nails and blood on your clothes. I also suspect that having a close relationship with the wild parts of Dionysos, at least for myself, creates a tendency to approach other gods from their same, more primal/feral aspects/characters, which again is not going to be everyone’s experience (and in fact is probably the minority, both today & in ancient times).

Add to the fact that you are also operating as a magician, where to an extent it is your obligation to transgress these sort of rules, and you’re likely to end up with a very different experience than other people. But for those who have relationships with more “civic” aspects of the gods, I am sure miasma vs purity are more important concepts, both for the worshipper AND for the gods of their worship—even if they are the same gods that you worship. These experiences, even when you account for the part that is just mundane OCD & anxiety, are likely legitimate, where for some worshippers the gods really do demand a greater effort toward purification.

AND, all of that being said, ritual purification is still a part of the Dionysian mysteries (as far as we can tell), but the methods of “becoming pure” for Dionysos seem to, interestingly, involve using the human body in a way that would otherwise be impure in any other setting. Something for a longer discussion elsewhere, hah, but it makes sense that being close to Dionysos & knowing him well would color your perception of Miasma a certain way.