Orphic Hymns Research Articles

Four Orphic Hymns: the Poetic Path of Leonida Lari

The four Orphic hymns signed by Leonida Lari rewrite the legend of Orpheus' life in verse. The use of the first person destiny emphasizes the author's empathy with Orpheus' destiny. The poet's sufferings take on mythical proportions, the echo crosses in another pose the conditions of the creative man, which seem the same and, at the same time, different.This cycle is personalized, although it is written after the model of the Orphic hymns, dedicated to several gods. Leonida Lari selects Apollo, the god of the arts, also attributing to him the qualities of Zeus, through the quality of possessing lightning. Leonida Lari restructures the myth of Orpheus in four scores. The first is the paradisiacal memory of the righteous love between Orpheus and Eurydice, the second explains the preparation for the journey into the space of transhumanity. Inner transformation is the condition of recognizing human possibilities to overcome one's condition in the name of love. The third part includes the tragedy of the definitive loss of the beloved. But in this adaptation of the myth in its own shorthand, the death of the beloved begins to be equated with the great despair of losing the song of happiness. The lyrical self exposes itself by recognizing the feelings of the righteous mythical character as a heartbreaking empathy. Finally, there is a testament of happiness addressed to the poets. In the last hymn, the image of Orpheus appears distant, but he is the bearer of the memory of absolute love.

«Другая земля». Орфический мотив небесного путешествия в античной философии

The motif of the journey is characteristic of Orphicism. Orpheus' journey on the Argo and his descending to Hades, the travel of souls to the afterlife and their celestial journey before their subsequent incarnation. These ideas are vividly represented in the Orphic hymns, the Orphic golden tablets and, perhaps most vividly, in Plato's myths in Phaedo, Phaedrus, Gorgias and the State. In trhe paper I consider these myths in the context of ancient philosophical literature, the task of which is to provide a coherent interpretation of the very fluid and not entirely unambiguous pictures that the great Athenian philosopher paints in his imagination. First of all, it concerns such questions as the corporeality or incorporeality of souls, the circumstances of their judgment and the conditions of their subsequent incarnation, details of the topography of the “other earth” and, finally, the discussion about the classes of souls, which were developed in subsequent Platonism.

THE MANY FACES OF DIONYSUS IN THE HEXAMETERS OF THE SINAI PALIMPSEST (SIN. AR. NF 66)

AbstractThe fragments of a hexameter poem about Dionysus recently discovered in a palimpsest (Sin. Ar. NF 66) reveal some different faces of Dionysus, including an Adonis-figure at the heart of a dispute between two goddesses (Persephone and Aphrodite), and a personified wine-god, Oinos, threatened by the machinations of his enemies in the court of Zeus. These palimpsest texts help to illuminate some of the allusions to the early life of the god that have long puzzled scholars, especially in some of the early Christian apologists and the collection of OrphicHymns.

Afrodita todopoderosa: entre el orfismo y la magia

Remarks on Derveni Papyrus, col. XXI, Orphic Hymn 55 (1-14), and PGM IV (2898-2935 and 3207-3252), focused on the features of the goddess emphasized in each text, with a proposal concerning the coincidences.

Un himno órfico fragmentario

Clement of Alexandria quotes in Stromateis 5.14.116.1 and 25.1 two hymnical passages attributed to Orpheus. One, more extensive, was part of a hymn to Zeus very similar in form and content to those of the late collection of Orphic Hymns. The other, a single verse, seems to be the beginning of a Hymn to Kronos, influenced by a myth of the Orphic theogonies. The purpose of the article is to translate and comment on both fragments, and to examine both their formal aspects, and the religious ideology they convey, as samples of a type of literary work characteristic of late Orphism. It also discusses the possibility that they belong to the same hymn.

ОСНОВНІ ВІДОМОСТІ ПРО ДАВНЬОЕЛЛІНСЬКІ ФІМІАТЕРІЇ ТА ЇХ ПРИЗНАЧЕННЯ

The paper looks at the ancient Greek thymiateria and aims at finding data in literary, epigraphic and visual sources that would cast light on the use of thymiateria in private and public rituals of the VIІ th century BC – IVth century AD. Systematic collection of data and its comparative historical analysis were in the core of the methodology. Among the main methods of analysing the collected sources, one should mention empirical, analytical, structural-typological and iconographical methods. A thymiaterion (an incense burner) is firstly mentioned in the Vth century BC in Herodotus’ Historia. In centuries to come, the panhellenic name of thymiaterion would dominate and enter to Roman and Germanic languages. This device was used solely with fire, charcoal or heated pebbles to burn aromatic compounds, incense and aromatic plants and flowers in particular. Thymiateria didn’t have any fixed shapes or sizes. In narrative sources, they were also named bomiskos, libanotis (libanotris), escharis, tripodiskos etc. In this paper, I examine the basic constructive elements of thymiateria. As visual sources and lyric poetry suggest, they were used in the archaic period. The earliest instance of the use of thymiateria in the ritual practice date late to the VIth century BC in the Phanagoria of the Bosporus. The thymiateria is depicted on mostly in mythological scenes on the Athenian red-figure pottery late of the Vth – IVth centuries BC found in Panticapaeum and in the surrounding area. The Greek iconography of mythological scenes on the vases was clear for the locals. The majority of visual, numismatics and epigraphic sources that reveal the use of thymiateria on the Bosporus are dating to the IVth–ІІth centuries BC, when they were spread in Hellenistic Greece and, especially in sanctuaries of Delos. Although aroma was an essential part of thymiateria culture, only Orphic Hymns cast light on the use of particular incenses (in pure form or in compound) for each gods or heroes. One important question persists: which aromas were burnt in thymiateria and from which countries were they brought to Greece? From literary sources, we know that plant-based aromas, namely incense and myrrh were brought from South Arabia and Syria. Thymiateria were used during rituals in sanctuaries and temples, during religious processions, funerals, symposiums and wedding that were accompanied by aromatic smoke. The present essay should be regarded as a starting point for the further in-depth study of thymiateria from the Northern Black sea region and Olbia in particular.

Der orphische Hymnos auf Chthonios Hermes (57): Genealogie, Eros, Ritual

This paper sets out to explore a fairly trivial, yet curiously understudied question related to our understanding of Orphic mythology: its ties with popular mythology of Homeric and Hesiodic provenance. It uses the Orphic Hymn to Chthonios Hermes as a case in point, to the end of assessing the extent to which chthonic Hermes in Orphism owes a lot to its epic peers when transcribing what came to be viewed as traditional attributes of him such as lineage, psychopompic capacity, and presiding over sexual or marital rites of initiation within catabatic settings. I stake out the position that the narrative tradition represented by the Orphic Hymns innovates in the sense that it launches the multi-focal image of a mystagogic Hermes whose traditional traits are made to match the purposes of Orphic theology, given the latter’s over-emphasizing of eschatology and rituals of death and re-birth.

Ritual Texts for the Afterlife: Orpheus and the Bacchic Gold Tablets. By FritzGraf and Sarah IlesJohnston. Pp. xii, 284, Routledge,2013, £22.99/$37.95.The Orphic Hymns: Translation, Introduction, and Notes. By Apostolos N.Athanassakis and Benjamin M.Wolkow. Pp. xxi, 255, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013, £12.00/$22.95.

The Heythrop JournalVolume 57, Issue 1 p. 147-148 BOOK REVIEW Ritual Texts for the Afterlife: Orpheus and the Bacchic Gold Tablets. By Fritz Graf and Sarah Iles Johnston. Pp. xii, 284, Routledge, 2013, £22.99/$37.95. The Orphic Hymns: Translation, Introduction, and Notes. By Apostolos N. Athanassakis and Benjamin M. Wolkow. Pp. xxi, 255, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013, £12.00/$22.95. Robin Waterfield , Robin Waterfield Lakonia , GreeceSearch for more papers by this author Robin Waterfield , Robin Waterfield Lakonia , GreeceSearch for more papers by this author First published: 14 December 2015 https://doi.org/10.1111/heyj.8_12307Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume57, Issue1January 2016Pages 147-148 RelatedInformation

Индоевропейское происхождение поэтического языка «Слова о полку Игореве»: грамматические свидетельства

The aim of the present study is to show that the poetic language of Slovo o polku Igorevě can be traced back to the common Indo-European poetic thesaurus. The study focuses on the hymn-like fragments of the Slovo: Yaroslavna’s lament and Sviatoslav’s golden word. The novelty of the approach is the special attention to the sequences of morphemes in the texts that can be distinguished as reflections of the Indo-European hymn (besides Slovo’s fragments, also Ukrainian folklore texts, Homeric prayers, Homeric hymns, Orphic hymns, and Old Latin charms were analyzed). The grammatical comparison showed that each compositional part of the hymns has its own characteristic morphological features of common Indo-European origin. Furthermore, morphological devices are chained in series that are stable and function as base for the composition of the hymn. The use of morphological formants should have been determined by oral tradition because from the range of semantically close formants of a distinctive language only one is chosen, cognates of which are used in other analyzed traditions. It leads to the conclusion that orality and authenticity of the Slovo’s hymn-like fragments are supported by the common Indo-European morphological chains.

Anthony Welch The Renaissance Epic and the Oral PastThe Renaissance Epic and the Oral Past. Anthony Welch. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012. Pp. v+260.

<i>Anthony Welch</i> The Renaissance Epic and the Oral Past<i>The Renaissance Epic and the Oral Past</i>. Anthony Welch. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012. Pp. v+260.

Serious Singing: The Orphic Hymns as Religious Texts

In the wake of Albrecht Dieterich, in this paper I try to show how the overall arrangement of the hymns in the Orphic hymn book follows the progression of a nocturnal ritual. I insist on the frequency with which the hymns talk about the fear of meeting a divinity or a phasma that would be in an unkind and violent state and could drive the initiates into madness. Thus, the hymns construct the mystery experience as an event that is, at least in part, dangerous and frightening. This concern with madness as a possible negative result of the initiatory experience is just one aspect of the role Bacchic (“Orphic”) initiation played in healing madness sent by evil demons, and it conveys a seriousness to these rites that makes them into something very different from the hobby of some placid burghers. Far from being only the songs that accompanied the tryphé of a Bacchic social event, the hymns point to the emotional complexity and seriousness of Bacchic mystery cults.

The Wrath of Demeter : Story Pattern in the "Hymn to Demeter"

uing, goddess, the wrath of Demeter of the splendid fruit1. So began one of the Orphic Hymns, and the line, modelled as it is on the first line of the Iliad, could well stand at the beginning of the Homeric Hymn to Deme ter, since this version of the Demeter and Persephone myth has much in common with the story of Achilles' wrath. This is because the same story pattern wrath, withdrawal, and return serves as the principal organiza tional device of each poem's narrative. For the Hymn poet, this appears to be a conscious choice. He, or she, suppresses other versions of the myth which emphasize the origin of the seasons, Demeter's gift of agriculture to humankind, or the foundation of the Mysteries in gratitude to the Eleusinians for their assistance in finding out what happened to Perse phone2. In the Hymn, the seasons and agriculture exist prior to the ab duction of Persephone and the Eleusinians appear not to know what has befallen Demeter's daughter. This version examines the grief and wrath of Demeter and their consequences. The focus of this paper, therefore, will be an examination of the wrath, withdrawal and return story pattern in the Hymn, and the ways in which the poet's use of this pattern infl uences the development of the narrative and its principal themes. In par ticular, such an analysis sheds new light on some of the Hymns more problematic passages, such as the Demopho?n episode and the famine. In order to understand the degree to which the story pattern influences our understanding of the Hymn, this will involve a study of other works that are organized around the same story pattern. The principal point of com parison is, of course, the Iliad, which contains not only the story of Achilles' wrath, but also Meleager's. This story pattern's earliest surviv ing exemplar, however, dates back to the second millennium Hittite myth of the disappearing god, Telipinu. In addition, Pausanias preserves an in

Les deux mères de Dionysos, Perséphone et Sémélé, dans les Hymnes orphiques

The two mothers of Dionysos, Persephone and Semele, in the "Orphic Hymns" The "Orphic Hymns" are not narrative, but through a skillful interplay of adjectives, participles and relative clauses they refer to numerous myths. The present study aims to isolate and understand these fleeting allusions, one example of which can illustrate quite how rich they prove to be. The prevailing, Hellenic tradition sees Dionysos as the son of Zeus and Semele, whereas the myths evoked in the Orphic fragments published by Otto Kern show him as the son of Zeus and Persephone. It will be seen that in the "Orphic Hymns" the two traditions are conjoined in strange and subtle ways.

Praise and persuasion in Greek hymns

Largely because the processes of transmission have been unkind, the religious hymns sung by the Greeks during worship of a god on a public or private occasion have received less than their due attention from modern scholars. Our sources frequently mention in passingthathymns were sung on the way to Eleusis, for example, or at the well Kallichoron on arrival at Eleusis, or by the deputations to Delos for the Delia, but they usually fail to record the texts or contents of these hymns. Until the fourth century BC temple authorities did not normally have the texts of cult songs inscribed; and the works themselves were by a diversity of authors, some well-known, some obscure, making the collection of their ‘hymns’ a difficult task for the Alexandrian compilers. Some such hymns were traditional—Olen's at Delos, for example — handed down orally from generation to generation; others were taught to a chorus for a specific occasion and then forgotten. Nor do the surviving corpora of ‘hymns’ — I refer to the Homeric Hymns, Callimachus' six hymns, and the Orphic Hymns—go very far to satisfy our curiosity as to the nature of this ubiquitous hieratic poetry. The Homeric Hymns would seem to have been preludes (προοίμια) to the recitation of epic poetry; they are in the same metre and style as epic, and the singer usually announces that he is about to commence another poem on finishing the hymn. Their content may give us authentic material about a god and his attendant myths, but the context of their performance seems distinct from worship proper. The Homeric Hymns provided the basic model for Callimachus' hymns although it is clear that he adapted the model to permit innovations such as the mimetic mode of hymns 2, 5 and 6, which present an eye-witness account of religious ritual. Some find Callimachus' hymns lacking in true religious feeling; few seriously maintain that they were intended, or could have been used, for performance in cult.

Moistening Our Roots with Music: Creative Power in Denise Levertov's "A Tree Telling of Orpheus"

The sources of power in Denise Levertov's poem A Tree Telling of Orpheus are both ancient and contemporary, obvious and occult. Embodying myth and myth-making, the poem enacts its own genesis. Its and images continually remind us of beginnings: of the world, of language, and of poetry's birth from dance. Creation myths, according to Jungian scholar Marie-Louise Von Franz, have always had a stronger resonance than other mythic patterns: Of a different class from other . . . they convey a mood which implies that what is said will concern the basic things of existence, something more than is contained in other myths. . . . Creation are the deepest and most important of all myths (5). The telling of creation in many traditional societies forms a vital part of teaching the initiatory rituals. Such telling reenacts Creation, allowing the participants to experience renewal. In Levertov's poem, as in oral tradition poetry, language is active, effecting a sense of loss and renewal in the participant/reader. the title promises, this is an Orphic hymn, sung by an initiate, one who celebrates Orpheus's gentle and powerful songs, who retells the Orphic story of death and rebirth. The mythic pattern of going underground, being buried like Persephone, being torn to pieces like the ancient corn god, and being remembered in ritual and song--this pattern is the vital nervous and circulatory system of the poem. To revitalize an ancient myth is no small task. It would be impossible to narrate Orpheus's journey in a short poem, much less to evoke his famed music, or the spirit of his quest. But underlying and propelling the narrative, the sustained of Levertov's long poem permits a bodily and imaginative sense of loss and restoration. In its supple lines and precise rhythms, the poem approximates dance. It asks to be read out loud, and read as scored. In doing so, one has the feeling of inhabiting one's voice and body. There are few poems in contemporary literature which evoke this strong sense of physical and imaginative life on the move and in harmony. Among these are Charles Olson's For Sappho, Back, and passages from his As the Dead Prey Upon Us, as well as George Quasha's Rilke's Third Elegy, Transposed, Robert Duncan's Variations on Two Dicta of William Blake, and William Carlos Williams's Rain. It is no coincidence that Olson and Rilke/Quasha also sing of death, dismemberment or tearing up of roots, and rebirth. This shamanic, initiatory theme has a hold on us, challenging our poets to bring to bear their most skilled use of rhythm. Levertov's sources for poetry are contemporary as well as traditional and mythic. In the 1960s her work was strongly influenced by the theory and practice of projective verse as well as by the work of other innovative contemporary poets. Robert Duncan, who believed in poetry's magical qualities, and who had the most subtle ear for of any contemporary American poet, had a profound impact on Levertov's work. In addition, in her own writing on theory she quotes and assimilates Charles Olson's writings on projective verse. Some of Olson's ideas are particularly helpful in considering A Tree Telling of Orpheus. According to Olson, the contemporary poet works in the open listening for the form that is appropriate to each poem, rather than paying homage to inherited forms. The blank page is a charged field, a source of energy, for the poet who knows how to bring out its rhythmical life, to find the right musical phrase (Ezra Pound's term). Kinetics, dynamism, the poem as energy-discharge--Olson's terms place emphasis on as the primary source of a poem's creative life. Along with Olson's theories, Levertov includes Gerard Manley Hopkins's sprung rhythm and inscape as having influenced her thinking about the dynamic quality and the sense of wholeness she expects from poetry. In harmony with sound and image, the rhythmical structure of each poem will tell its deepest story, inventing itself formally as the story unfolds. …

An Unnoticed ms of Orphic Hymns 76–7

Because of an incomplete description of its contents, it has escaped notice that the fifteenth-century vellum MS Parisinus graecus 2833 contains Orphic Hymns 76 and 77 on folio 91 verso. The Hymns are copied, without indication of title or authorship, after Musaeus' Hero and Leander (lines 1–245), and before the collected (Proclan and other) Prolegomena to Hesiod A a, b, c, BEF a, b Pertusi, which are followed by Hesiod's Works and Days, Shield and Theogony. These are all in the same hand.

Faith And Experience XI Revelation And Human Experience

“No one has ever seen God; but the only-begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, has interpreted him to us” (Jn 1:18). The early Christian theologians who develop the view that man cannot know God truly unless God reveals himself to him are conscious that they are not only following the teaching of scripture, but also echoing and confirming a belief which has deep roots in Greek tradition. Clement of Alexandria can quote several texts from the Greek poets expressing the difficulty or impossibility of any man on earth penetrating very far into the mind of God. An Orphic hymn is cited, which says that God is “utterable only by the immortals”; Pindar is shown echoing the sentiments of Isaiah 40:13: “Why hope for wisdom? One man is not much better than another. It is hard for a mortal mind to search out the counsels of the gods”. Hesiod too says, “There is no seer among men on earth who could know the mind of Zeus”. Solon similarly says, “The mind of the immortals is quite unclear to men”. Even more radically, Xenophanes is quoted by Sextus Empiricus as saying: “As far as anything clear goes, no man has seen anything nor will any man see anything concerning the gods and all the other things I am talking about; even if he should hit the mark with outstanding accuracy and say something quite perfect, he would not know it himself. Everything is subject to opinion”. In Sextus’ view, Xenophanes is one of the philosophers who have rejected outright the idea that there is some “criterion of truth” available to us; he interprets him as meaning: “at least in matters which are not apparent, no man knows what is true and knowable; even if he does happen to hit on it, he still does not know that he has hit on it, he is left simply With a suspicion and an opinion”. Xenophanes ridicules people for generating gods in their own image, and, in anticipation of Rupert Brooke’s delightful poem about fishes’ concept of heaven, says that if cows could draw, they would make their gods look like cows. For himself, he only claims to be saying what seems probable.

Marcus Aurelius 4.23 and Orphic Hymn 10

Marcus Aurelius 4.23 and Orphic Hymn 10

Roger Bacon as Magician

The practice of magic was much in vogue in the Renaissance and even the word had gained a limited respectability. Thus in 1558 when Giambattista della Porta published his collection of curiosities of art and nature he did so under the title Magia naturalis, and even in the next century the far more sober Bishop John Wilkins was to publish a book entitled Mathematicall Magick. Such works indicate essential similarities between magic and science in that each has as part of its aim the application of not readily apparent knowledge to practice. But we should not think that the widespread acceptance of natural magic in the Renaissance meant that the term had become a synonym for what we should now call science, for we still have to bear in mind such pictures as those of Marsilio Ficino chanting his Orphic hymns, of John Dee conversing with spirits through his medium Edward Kelly, and of Tommaso Campaneüa and Pope Urban VIII closeted together and performing secret rites to ward off the plague.

The Eighth Homeric Hymn and Proclus

It is universally recognized that the Hymn to Ares stands apart from all the other poems in the Homeric collection, and that it was composed centuries later than any of those that can be assigned to a particular period with any degree of confidence. Many older scholars classed it or even printed it with the Orphic Hymns, which are transmitted together with the Homeric Hymns as well as with the hymns of Callimachus and Proclus. But the similarity with the Orphic Hymns is only superficial. It merely consists in the stylistic feature of accumulated epithets, a common characteristic of late hymns. There are three reasons for not lumping the Hymn to Ares with the very homogeneous Orphic series. First, the Orphic Hymns are courteous invocations of different gods to come to a ceremony described as τєλєτή or τєλєτταί, while the Hymn to Ares is an intensely personal prayer for the poet's own soul. Secondly, the Orphic collection already contains a hymn to Ares (65), and duplications are avoided. (There are a number of hymns, to Dionysus, but then he bears a different title in each case, Liknites, Trieterikos, etc.) Thirdly, in the Homeric hymn Ares is addressed as a planetary god. In the Orphic hymn to Ares, this aspect is totally absent, and the same is true of the hymns to Hermes, Aphrodite, Zeus, and Kronos.