The Orphic Hymns

by Unknown

  Proto, Eukrante, Amphitrite, and Sao,

  Eudora, Thetis, Galene, and Glauke,

  Kymothoe, Speio, Thoe, and lovely Halia,

  Pasithea, Erato, and Eunike of the rosy arms. (243–46)

  In an entirely literal translation:

  First One, Mingling Gently, Water-Girt, and Savior,

  Of the Good Gifts, Nurturing, Calm, and Grayish-Blue,

  Of the Rushing Waves, Of the Numberless Caves, Swift, and lovely Sea,

  Seen By All, Lovely, and Fair Victory of the rosy arms.

  The first few lines from the hymn to Nereus offers a good example for comparison (hymn 23.1–4):

  The sea’s foundations are your realm,

  the abode of blue-black darkness,

  you exult in the beauty

  of your fifty daughters

  as they dance amid the waves.

  O Nereus, god of great renown,

  O foundation of the sea, O end of the earth.

  Even a casual look at these texts shows that they are religious texts that have one main thing in common: they are strings of nouns or epithets addressed to a divinity. A first approach to them leaves the reader puzzled as to their aesthetic, that is to say their poetic value, as well as to their effectiveness. However, here is a suggestion to readers of the Hesiodic catalogues as well as of the Orphic Hymns. They are asked to raise their voices as they read to a pleasant and imposing pitch as well as a clear and rhythmically punctuated vocalization of the lines. The tone of voice should strive to approximate dignified chant. Examples are to be found in many cultures. If all this is done, the religious character of the catalogues comes alive. They are no longer boring, and their invocational nature becomes entirely clear.

  Every Greek is aware that the Virgin Mary is addressed by various names that have become sacred names. When I [A.N.A.] was working on the Hesiodic and Homeric lists, I decided to find out just how many names were used to address the Virgin Mary in the Hellenic world. I walked into a fine bookshop in Athens, and to my astonishment I discovered four beautiful volumes devoted to an explanation of the nearly five hundred names by which the Virgin Mary is addressed. This rich tradition may indeed ultimately go back even to pre-Hellenic times. The idea suggested here is that the veneration of the Virgin Mary has inherited aspects of the veneration of the sea and its divinities in prehistoric time. Here is just a sample of names which refer to the Virgin Mary: She of the Shoreline, She of the Sea Calm, the Far Heard One, She of the Seas, She of the Lakes, She of the Harbors, She of the Caves, She of the Rivers, She of Good Sailing. It should not be too difficult for anyone to hear in this sample echoes from Hesiod’s catalogues of the Nereids. The astonishing number of epithets to the Virgin Mary in the Hellenic lands should not be regarded as some sort of random religious occurrence. Whether the attributes of a divinity are described by epithets, nouns, or periphrastic expressions makes no substantial difference. Relevant here from the Judaic tradition is Exodus 34:6–7 in which God Himself speaks of his own attributes. Muslims believe in one God whose divine qualities are known to them by ninety-nine (some say more) different names.14 Numbers 12–19 in Siddiqi read as follows: The Rightful / The Fashioner of Forms / The Ever-Forgiving / The All-Compelling Subduer / The Bestower / The Ever-Providing / The Opener / The Victory-Giver / The All-Knowing. However, these sacred names appear throughout the Koran and in this respect they do not resemble the Hesiodic catalogues or the Orphic Hymns. It is not so much the semantic content as the tone and cumulative effect of this religious utterance that opens possibilities of comparison with the Hymns. The emotionally powerful, indeed ecstatic and repetitive, invocation of Allah by the Whirling Dervishes of the Mevlevi Order dominates the performance of their rituals. The ninety-nine names of Allah are recited in their daily prayers and meditations. Such practices cannot be so very different from the concept and practice of unceasing prayer, such as the Jesus Prayer, so central to the monastic life of Mount Athos. The religious life of the Whirling Dervishes owes its origins to Rumi, a Persian poet who was also an Islamic jurist and theologian. His spiritual teachings took root in Konya, Turkey, not too far from ancient Pergamum, the city that may have produced the Orphic Hymns. If we call all this a chain of similar religious phenomena, even a coincidental one, we may come closer to understanding the power of clustering epithets for the creation of an emotional and physical crescendo that might raise our human spirit and help us approach the divine.

  There are lines in the Orphic Hymns that remind one of the Vedic hymns. For example, from one to Soma: “King Soma, be gracious to us for welfare; / we are thy devotees: know that. / There arise might and wrath O Indu: / abandon us not according to the desire of our foe.”15 Is this not in both spirit and formulation similar to the way practically all the hymns of our collection end? Consider also: “So, O Agni, be easy of access to us / as a father to his son; abide with us / for our well-being.”16 Winthrop Sargeant in his translation of the Bhagavad gita has an impressive list of epithets used in this great poetic monument. Here is only a handful from his list: The Bristling-haired One, the Imperishable One, the Immeasurable One, Incomparable Glory, Conqueror of Wealth, the Blameless One.17 Among the Finnic peoples—the Saami—almost throughout the entire sub-Arctic zone the bear is a very sacred animal, rich in lore and ritual. The primordial bear, more often Father Bear, but then also Mother Bear in various creation stories, is of celestial origin. I [A.N.A.] feel very fortunate that in 1999 I became friends with Juha Pentikäinen, a great Finnish scholar who introduced me not only to a new perspective of the Kalevala but also to rare information on the centrality and importance of the bear in the religion and social life of the Finnic peoples. Several years later in 2006, I attended a conference titled “In the Footsteps of the Bear” in Pori, Finland. The proceedings of the conference were published in Pori in 2006 under the title In the Footsteps of the Bear.18 It was in Pori that I learned from Juha and some of his eminent international colleagues that nearly five hundred names are used in the vast sub-Arctic zone to address “the golden king of the forest.” Here are some examples: Forest Gold (or simply Darling), Forest Beauty, Graceful Mistress of the Forest.

  The Orphic Hymns name specific pagan divinities, yet they appeal to universal spiritual powers. Some of them, like the hymns to Dream, Death, and Sleep, are in essence prayers that could be offered to God regardless of specific faith. All this makes excellent sense. The years between 300 and 500 AD were years of transition. It is very naïve to think that the Christian faith simply walked into towns, villages, and hamlets to be triumphantly received. It is much likelier that the new faith made accommodations with places and associations that cultivated the spiritual values. The new faith lacked the language of expressing the new spiritual values. The old faith, especially as expressed in documents like the Hymns, possessed a liturgical language ready to be used. Echoes of the compositional mode of the Hymns, especially of the effect of clustering epithets, can occasionally be heard in the great devotional and, at the same time invocational, Hymns of the Orthodox Church, such as the Akathistos Hymnos: “Spotless, pollutionless, incorruptible, untouched, pure Virgin, Despoina, Bride of God.”

  The Orphic Hymns, as well as similar hymns, have neither plot nor action. They are not at all like the major Homeric hymns in that they do not appeal to any emotion. None of our hymns shows even a trace of humor, rhetorical conceit, or for that matter a desire to delight or shock the initiates. Clearly, elevation of mood and the powerful affirmation of a meaningful and bonding presence are elements that run through the recitation of mighty words and sacred sounds flowing into the eager ears and souls of the faithful. Even the puns serve this purpose. Names chanted or better yet sung or even simply recited in a particular sacred tone have power. Each epithet reverberates into the mind of the celebrant and spins out its own plot and its own action. As one epithet follows another, chains of meaning and sound acquire a power that may exceed that of a highly structured narrative. One name is one thing. Two
names are more than two things. The Orphic Hymns are beautiful poetry of another kind, a transcendental kind, which must be understood in the context of its own conventions.

  THE ORPHIC HYMNS

  Orpheus to Mousaios

  Friend, use it to good fortune.

  Learn now, Mousaios,

  a mystical and most holy rite,

  a prayer which surely

  excels all others.

  Kind Zeus and Earth,

  3

  heavenly and pure flames of Sun,

  sacred light of Moon,

  and of all the Stars;

  Poseidon, too,

  dark-maned holder of the earth,

  pure Persephone,

  6

  Demeter of the splendid fruit,

  Artemis, arrow-pouring maiden,

  kindly Phoibos,

  dwelling on the sacred ground of Delphoi,

  and Dionysos, the dancer,

  whose honors among the blessed gods

  9

  are the highest;

  strong-spirited Ares,

  holy and mighty Hephaistos,

  then the goddess foam-born,

  to whose lot fell sublime gifts,

  and you, divinity excellent,

  12

  king of the underworld.

  I call on Hebe, and Eileithyia,

  and the noble ardor of Herakles,

  I call upon the great blessings

  of Justice and Piety,

  I call upon the glorious Nymphs

  15

  and upon Pan the greatest,

  I call upon Hera,

  buxom wife of aegis-bearing Zeus.

  And I call upon lovely Mnemosyne,

  I call upon the holy Muses,

  all nine, and then I call upon the Graces,

  18

  the Seasons, and the Year,

  upon fair-tressed Leto,

  and upon divine and revered Dione.

  I invoke the armed Kouretes,

  the Korybantes, and the Kabeiroi,

  the great Saviors,

  21

  Zeus’ ageless scions,

  I invoke the Idaian gods, and Hermes,

  messenger and herald.

  Of those in the sky,

  I invoke Themis, diviner of men,

  and then I invoke Night, oldest of all,

  24

  and I do invoke light-bringing Day.

  Faith, Dike, I invoke,

  I invoke blameless Thesmodoteira,

  and Rhea, and Kronos,

  and dark-veiled Tethys,

  the great Okeanos,

  27

  and all of his daughters.

  I invoke the might preeminent

  of Atlas and Aion,

  of Time the ever-flowing,

  and of the splendid water of the Styx.

  I call on all these gentle gods,

  30

  and I call on Pronoia,

  and on the holy Daimon,

  I also call on Daimon baneful to mortals,

  then I invoke divinities dwelling

  in the sky, in the air, in the water,

  on earth, under the earth,

  33

  and in the fiery element.

  Ino, Leukothea,

  Palaimon, giver of bliss,

  sweet-speaking Nike,

  queenly Adrasteia,

  I call upon the great king Asklepios,

  36

  who grants soothing,

  upon the battle-stirring maiden Pallas,

  and upon all the winds,

  I call upon Thunder, and upon the parts

  of the four-pillared cosmos.

  I invoke the Mother of the immortals,

  39

  Attis and Men,

  I invoke the goddess Ourania,

  and the immortal and holy Adonis,

  Beginning and End, too,

  which to all is most important,

  and I ask them to come

  42

  in a spirit of joyous mercy

  to this holy rite,

  to this reverent libation.

  1. To Hekate

  Lovely Hekate of the roads

  and of the crossroads I invoke.

  In heaven, on earth,

  then in the sea, saffron-cloaked,

  tomb spirit reveling

  3

  in the souls of the dead,

  daughter of Perses, haunting deserted places,

  delighting in deer,

  nocturnal, dog-loving,

  monstrous queen,

  devouring wild beasts,

  6

  ungirt and repulsive.

  Herder of bulls,

  queen and mistress of the whole world,

  leader, nymph,

  mountain-roaming nurturer of youths,

  maiden, I beseech you to come

  9

  to these holy rites,

  ever with joyous heart,

  ever favoring the oxherd.

  2. To Prothyraia

  incense—storax

  Hear me, O revered goddess,

  O many-named divinity,

  O sight sweet to women in labor,

  you offer them aid in travail.

  You save women, and you alone

  3

  love children,

  O kindly goddess

  of swift birth, ever helpful to young women,

  O Prothyraia.

  You hold the keys,

  you are accessible to all, O mistress,

  6

  gracious and fond of nurture,

  you have power in every house,

  and you delight in festivities.

  You loosen girdles, and though invisible

  you are seen in every deed,

  you share pain,

  9

  you rejoice in every birth,

  O Eileithyia, you free from pain

  those in terrible distress.