Orpheus is said to have been a prophet of Dionysos who established the Dionysian mysteries. By at least the fifth century BCE, an array of various theological poems with connections to the cult of Dionysos had become attributed to Orpheus and Mousaios, who, in various traditions, is said to have been Orpheus's son, his disciple, or his teacher. These poems were important texts for a particular strain of Greek religious thought and practice that scholars refer to as "Orphism."

Sadly, only fragments of the Orphic poems have survived to the present day, but some extant works do reveal information about what they contained. For instance, the famous Derveni Papyrus, discovered in 1962 at the site of Derveni in Makedonia, is a manuscript copy dating to around 340 BCE of a work originally written in the late fifth century BCE by an unknown author with Sophistic inclinations as an allegorizing commentary on an Orphic poem about the origins of the cosmos and the deities.

Various other sources reveal additional information about Orphic beliefs and practices. For instance, several gold leaves bearing Orphic funerary inscriptions dating to the fourth century BCE have also been found in grave mounds at the site of Thourioi in southern Italy. These funerary inscriptions and other evidence suggest that the Orphics were especially concerned with matters of the underworld and the hereafter.

Both Dionysos and Orpheus are said to have descended into the underworld and come back out alive. Orpheus, of course, is said to have descended to rescue his wife Eurydike and Dionysos is said to have descended to rescue his mother Semele. Orpheus's attempt to save Eurydike was famously a failure, but Dionysos's rescue of Semele was a success. Naturally, given the Orphics' concern with the underworld, Persephone (and to a lesser extent Hades) figured prominently in Orphism and she is referenced or alluded to in many of the Orphic inscriptions from Thourioi.

Dionysos is very prominent in the myth of the death of Orpheus. The Athenian tragic playwright Aischylos (lived c. 525 – c. 455 BCE) wrote a tragedy titled The Bassarids, which has since been lost, but is known through a much later summary (Aischylos Fragment 82 [Mette] = Eratosthenes, Epitome Catasterismorum). Assuming that this summary can be trusted, the tragedy provides the earliest known attestation for the myth of Orpheus's death, which was probably already known at least in Athens before the tragedy was performed.

According to this myth, despite having originally been a devotee of Dionysos, Orpheus eventually came to spurn the worship of his former patron god, refusing to honor any deity other than the sun, which he equated with Apollon. One day, at sunrise, Orpheus went out to perform a hymn to the sun atop Mount Pelagaion by singing and playing his kithara (i.e., his lyre). Then Dionysos, angered to find that his former devotee was refusing to honor him and honoring Apollon alone instead, sent his female followers, the Mainads, into a frenzy of divine madness, in which they ripped Orpheus limb from limb with their bare hands. Supposedly, his ripped-off head and kithara floated out to sea via the river Hebros to the island of Lesbos, with his head still singing even as it floated.

The Greek word σπαραγμός (sparangmós) refers to the act of ripping a person or animal apart with one's bare hands. This is an act that is closely associated with the mythology of Dionysos. For instance, not only is Dionysos said to have caused the Mainads to kill Orpheus in this manner, but also, in the myth of Pentheus, which is most famously retold in the tragedy The Bacchae by Euripides (lived c. 480 – c. 406 BCE), which was first performed in Athens in 405 BCE, a year after Euripides's death, Dionysos causes the women of Thebes to go insane, mistake Pentheus for a lion, and rip him limb from limb to punish him for having doubted that Dionysos was really the divine son of Zeus. Then, Pentheus's own mother Agave, still believing that her son is a lion, mounts his torn-off head on a thyrsos and shows it to her father Kadmos (i.e., Pentheus's grandfather), boasting about the "lion" she has slain. It is only later that she realizes the horrifying truth.

In one Orphic myth that is attested in a range of different sources, Dionysos himself is actually the victim of σπαραγμός. The myth holds that either the Titans or the Giants (who are often conflated in the ancient sources) ripped Dionysos to pieces as an infant, boiled him, and devoured his flesh. Then Zeus incinerated the Titans to ash with a thunderbolt. Humans, in turn, spawned from these ashes. The Orphics held that the human soul is an immortal fragment of Dionysos trapped within the body, which they viewed as a fleshly prison derived from the ashes of the incinerated Titans.

Four different ancient sources—the Epicurean philosopher Philodemos of Gadara (lived c. 110 – prob. c. 30 BCE) in his On Piety 16.1 Gomp., the historian Diodoros Sikeliotes (lived c. 90 – c. 30 BCE) in his Library of History 3.62.3, the Latin commentator Servius (fl. c. late fourth and early fifth centuries CE) in his commentary on Vergil's Georgics 1.166, and the Neoplatonist philosopher Proklos the Successor (lived c. 412 – 485 CE) in his Hymns 7.11–15—attest a version of this myth in which a goddess (either Rhea/Kybele, Demeter, or Athena) reassembled the various bits and pieces of Dionysos's body that survived and miraculously brought him back to life.