Orphic Tradition Research Articles

ПЕРЕКЛАД ‘‘ДЕРВЕНСЬКОГО ПАПІРУСУ’’ ЯК НАЙДАВНІШОЇ ЄВРОПЕЙСЬКОЇ «КНИГИ»: МІЖ ОРФІКАМИ І СОФІСТИКОЮ

Presented for the first time (from ancient Greek) is the translation into Ukrainian of the "Derveni Papyrus" one of the most crucial surviving texts identified as belonging to the Orphic tradition. It has been discovered that besides the theogonic and ontological worldview, it also traces epistemological and ethico-anthropological issues. The thesis is substantiated that the author of the ancient Greek text considers unbelief and irrationality as synonymous concepts, thereby emphasizing that knowledge is always linked with faith in a broad context.

Aquam, tenebras, abyssum, chaos

The article discusses the meaning of chaos in the series of four elements introduced by Irenaeus in haer. 1, 30, 1 to characterize the system of the so-called “Ophites”. Contrary to the explanation that renders this Gnostic system dualistic, it is argued here that, in reality, the “Ophites” of Irenaeus anticipates what we find in other Gnostic families (Naassenes, On the Origin of the World, The Hypostasis of the Archonts) and continues the Orphic tradition that appeared in the Theogony of Jerome and Hellanicus, in which the eternal chaos had been domesticated with the Jewish monotheism of Genesis, and, according to which, this chaos would come to be something like a “hollow”, not eternal, which precedes the material world, shelters it and then favors the appearance of the corporeal. Its status as a Principle should always be understood in a derivative sense, with no obstacle to monism: the Primordial Light (Lumen primum), the only absolute principle, provokes the appearance of the region of the shadow (chaos), but it does so indirectly through the intermediate veil (Spiritus Sanctus). Nothing justifies speaking, therefore, of the “Ophite” system as an ontologically dualistic system.

Hymn to the Muses: To Greet the Return of the Gods, Part 1 (Lecture 2, Book of Ours)

Abstract This lecture, a tribute to the Muses, was delivered by Norman O. Brown for his class of 1971, “To Greet the Return of the Gods.” It is spoken with the preacher's rhythmic diction and charmed hieratic voice, and is transcribed here to include Brown's intentional pauses, halting rhythms, repetitions, asides, and idiosyncratic quotes. As in the Orphic tradition, the professor becomes what he's professing: Brown teaches us to sing a love song according to the Muses, finding the meaning in the singing and in the etymology of the names of the divine sisters. Brown's nearly liturgical list of names is propelled by devotion to the feminine and to language, above all to Kalliopê, chiefest of Muses. The gift of the Muses to mortals, Brown argues, is a poetical politics essential in the ongoing iron age described by Hesiod. Poetry as prayer—yet the Muses make it new, “so everything can shine again.”

Орфический миф о посмертной судьбе души в философии Платона

This article provides a comparative analysis of the semantic equivalents of Orphic ideas about the afterlife of the soul and Plato’s philosophical views. An overview of the leading research concepts of Orphism is presented; their strengths and weaknesses are analysed in the light of the new archaeological data. As a methodological platform, the maximalist approach was chosen, according to which the cult of Orpheus can be traced historically and its principles and practices can be identified. The basic idea is that mystical cults (including Orphism) are an organized system that is widespread throughout the Mediterranean region. The analysis of written, archaeological, and epigraphic data indicates that Plato’s system of views on the immortality of the soul is a theoretical explication of the “metaphysical” doctrines of the Orphic mysteries. It is proven here that Plato, using Orphic formulae in his dialogues, transmitted Orphic ritual traditions through his philosophical writings. In addition, it is demonstrated that Plato turned to the Orphic myth to explain such phenomenal and noumenal issues as the nature and the afterlife of the soul. A conclusion is made that the doctrine of the Orphic tradition can be reconstructed due to the systematic use of Orphic formulae by Plato, which also indicates the integrity of the Orphic teaching. Plato not only used the language of the mysteries, but also developed his own system of teaching Orphic rites on its basis. It was a kind of scientific methodology explaining the Orphic doctrine with the help of Socrates’ dialectical method. Thus, further research into Plato’s views on the afterlife of the soul will shed some light on the Orphic teaching in particular, and mystical cults in general.

Источники для образа Афродиты у Эмпедокла

Empedocles uses two forces to describe the world process, the emergence and destruction of space - Love and Strife, which work in turn, and in due time, replace each other. It is obvious that love is responsible for unification and creation, and hostility for division and destruction. At first glance it seems quite natural that it is the power of unification that Empedocles calls Aphrodite. However, when you look closely at the fragments of the poem, the image of Aphrodite is not so unambiguous: she acts as a god-craftsman, that is, not just watches from afar as the roots of things are connected to each other, but mixes them with her own hands and is directly involved in the creation of living beings. We meet her involved in such activities as metal casting, pottery, and artwork. This naturally leads to the question from where did she get so many different functions? To answer this question, one should turn to literary sources about Aphrodite both before and after Empedocles’ life (in the context of Homer’s epos and Hesiod’s poem), consider the religious tradition of Cyprus and especially the East, neighboring Greece, from where, in the opinion of some scientists, the goddess could get into the Mediterranean cultural landscape (most important study here is the work by Nano Marinatos), to study archaeological data and findings related to Aphrodite. Taking into account Empedocles’ interest to bloodless sacrifices I will try to tie his views with the later orphic tradition. At the same time, in order to protect myself from losing the way in the forest of such huge massif it is necessary to restrict the area of this study. I will concentrate only on the activities of Aphrodite as she is presented in Empedocles.

Orphic Tradition and the Birth of the Gods by Dwayne A. Meisner

Orphic Tradition and the Birth of the Gods by Dwayne A. Meisner

Katabasis e autossalvação na recriação do orfismo no Banquete de Platão

A temática de salvação da alma no Hades é bastante recorrente na tradição órfica. Platão recria esta imagem órfica, no Banquete, com o intuito de alterar a ideia órfica de salvação/resgate de uma alma (que é dada por uma divindade, nomeadamente Orfeu) em uma imagem que reforça sua teoria da responsabilidade psíquica, com a ideia de que cada psyche só pode salvar-se a si própria. Para tanto, a famosa descida de Orfeu para resgatar sua amada Eurídice da morte no Hades é alterada por Platão por uma imagem de completo fracasso: os deuses do Hades oferecem a Orfeu apenas o fantasma de Eurídice e não sua psyche, como quem paga ilusão com decepção. Ao tentar enganar as instâncias divinas com meros encantamentos superficiais, Orfeu recebe dos deuses o maior dos enganos: uma imagem fantasmagórica de sua amada. Tentaremos, neste trabalho, demonstrar como essa recriação platônica da katabasis e da salvação órficas sustenta a ideia de que nenhum ente teria o poder de salvar um outro ente da obscuridade, pois cada psyche só é capaz de salvar-se a si própria.

Nestinar Feast in the Village of Stomanovo, the Smolyan Region

The nestinar (fire-dancer) rituals, involving dances on embers, were practiced by the ancient Thracians. Today, they have been preserved in several Bulgarian villages in south-eastern Strandzha Mountain, as well as in the village of Stomanovo, the Rhodope Mountains, Southwestern Bulgaria. Such rituals are performed also in several villages in Northern Greece, where they have been carried over by migrants from Strandzha. While in the villages in Strandzha and in Northern Greece, Christian traditions have been overlaid on the ancient pagan ritual - the faith and devotion to Sv. Sv. Konstantin and Elena, for the inhabitants of Stomanovo (whose ritual I will describe in the present exposition), the ritual has not be Christianized - for them, it has remained a pagan Thracian Orphic tradition (well, the legendary Thracian singer and healer, Orpheus, creator of the Orphism belief system, lived in the Rhodope Mountains), an expression of the cult to the Great Goddess-Mother, her son Sabazios (Sun-Fire), Zagrey (the Bull God) and, as the people of Stomanovo described it themselves - a celebration of life, of fertility.

The philosophical origins of vegetarianism. Greek Philosophers and Animal World

Coeval philosophical texts provide no information about the extent to which the Ancient World practiced vegetarianism or about its concrete aspects. However, they offer a rich array of the arguments used to both justify and promote it. The present paper will focus on the four main philosophical arguments in favor of vegetarianism. These arguments were proposed and revised by various authors. The four arguments that will be studied are: the ascetic-religious one, mainly used by the Orphic tradition and then taken up by various authors, especially the Pythagoreans; the one based on the biopsychological affinity of all living beings, and coherently promoted by Theophrastus; the one based on the dignity and value of the animal world, widely developed especially by Plutarch; and finally the one, central to Porphyry’s treatise, that relates abstinence from meat to the need of the soul to elevate itself to the divine and be purified of any element linking it to the body.

Identifying an Archetype: The Hipponion Tablet and Regional Variations in the Orphic Gold Lamellae

Over the past century and a half, about 40 Orphic gold lamellae have been discovered throughout the Mediterranean. These tablets were buried with initiates of the Orphic Mysteries, and served as indicators of the deceased’s elevated status in both this life and the afterlife. Many of the lamellae contained instructions for the deceased, guiding them to the blessed area of the Underworld that was promised to them by becoming initiates of the Orphic tradition. Orphism as a cult had no set structure; rather, the practices seemed to have varied from region to region. The cult did not worship in a temple, but via itinerant priests, who traversed his respective area with holy book in hand, preaching to those who wished to achieve a more blessed state. This marginalized sect was not officially recognized by the state, yet in some regions, it gained some level of respect. By analyzing the individual variances in these itinerant priests’ practices, it is possible to identify individual strands of Orphic worship. One of these strands is the Hipponion tablet, which is the oldest extant example for many of the other lamellae throughout the Mediterranean. Dating to about 400 BCE, it is among the earliest of the gold lamellae in existence. The Hipponion tablet was found at Hipponion, in the region of Magna Graecia in Italy, in an inhumation burial of a female. There are some errors in the text, which indicate that the scribe was working with a damaged or inaccurate model; however, without any earlier texts, we are only able to rely on conjecture at this point in time. What is clear is that this text served as a model for the other extant lamellae, which were found throughout Italy, mainland Greece, and the Greek islands, particularly Crete. This study focuses on the influence of the Hipponion tablet, tracing its trajectory throughout the Mediterranean. It also analyzes other examples found in the lamellae, tracking their respective influences.

Dopo Die Geburt der Tragödie : il mito di Dioniso Zagreo in Italia e in Russia nel primo Novecento

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the orphic quality of Italian and Russian poetry in the early twentieth century, examining the rewritings of the myth of Dionysus Zagreus in Maia (1903) by Gabriele d’Annunzio, Canti Orfici (1914) by Dino Campana, and Cor Ardens (1912) by Vjaceslav Ivanov. The reception of this myth has been clearly influenced by Nietzsche’s Aesthetics. The relevance of Zagreus in Die Geburt der Tragodie contributes to the myth’s renewal; moreover, Nietzsche’s interpretation of the tragic hero encourages the revitalization of the ancient orphic tradition, since the dismemberment of Dionysus is the most important myth of Orphism. The allusions to orphic myths are often cryptic, but the selection of the same motifs facilitates the recognition of the myths lyrically transposed in Russian and Italian texts, which can serve to lighten one other. Ivanov, d’Annunzio, and Campana strive to establish a strong relationship between their works and Orphism, a choice discernible from paratextual references to the orphic tradition. This essay investigates the orphic substratum of their poetry, considering both enigmatic and unequivocal allusions to figures, motifs, and symbols of orphic mythology as the role of Titans, the heart of Zagreus, the mirror. The poetic use of orphic myths and concepts and the quotations of the orphic hymnography reveal that an orphic inspiration joins the different poetics of d’Annunzio, Campana, and Ivanov.

Orphism and Christianity in Late Antiquity (review)

Reviewed by: Orphism and Christianity in Late Antiquity David Konstan Miguel Herrero de Jáuregui . Orphism and Christianity in Late Antiquity. Sozomena, 7. Berlin: de Gruyter, 2010. Pp. xiii, 442. €82.24. ISBN 978-3-11-020633-3. This is a splendid book. Herrero's scholarship is exhaustive, his judgment balanced, the coverage is extensive, and, to top it all off, he writes clearly and elegantly (although the translators of the book, which appeared in Spanish in 2007, are named only in small type in the library catalogue information, I take this opportunity to state that Jennifer Ottman and Daniel Rodríguez have done a magnificent job: the English is perfect, and a pleasure to read). Herrero provides an initial summary of all that is known about Orpheus as a subject of myth and cult, from the Hellenistic period on down. He defends, however provisionally, the use of the label "Orphic," making clear the problems that the blanket term conceals (26). There are, of course, two aspects to Orpheus. On the one hand, he was regarded in antiquity as the author of [End Page 379] cosmogonie poems and eschatological doctrines, which were interpreted by later scholars (e.g., in the Derveni papyrus) and were associated with certain rituals or cultic practices (the number of such writings increased dramatically in the Hellenistic period and thereafter). On the other hand, there were myths about Orpheus, in which he was represented as a singer who could enchant not just human beings but even animals and inanimate nature, and who was famous for having sought to rescue his wife from the underworld and, when he failed to do so and had abandoned all commerce with women, for being torn apart by raving women or Maenads. All this was evidently known in the fifth and fourth centuries BC; Roman poets such as Virgil and Ovid added further details that embellished the core myth. The connection between the literary mythological tradition and the cultic practices is, however, mostly indirect, where it exists at all. Thus, Herrero argues that the cult never really established itself in Rome, where Dionysiac rituals were viewed with suspicion and at times harshly repressed, despite the popularity of Orpheus' story: in a word, "there never was a Roman Orphism" (73). The more mystical aspects of Orphism survived via conflation with Pythagorean doctrines, and the rites were assimilated to the Eleusinian cult, both of which enjoyed a certain popularity at Rome. The literary tradition, however, remained available, and led to constructions of Orphism as one model of pagan religion, both by pagan philosophers, above all the later Platonists (with Porphyry and Iamblichus, "the integration of the Orphic tradition into Neo-Platonist philosophy is total" [91]), and by the Christians, who conceived of paganism as a systematic doctrine analogous to their own which they had to combat by means of theological and other arguments (cf. 103, 127). Herrero meticulously traces the evolution of Christian responses to Orphism, indicating where possible the sources of their polemics (virtually entirely literary), delineating the dependency of later authors on earlier (elaborate stemmata are provided), and evaluating the possibility that some genuine information about Orphic practices or doctrines may have been transmitted. Much of Christian interpretation follows well-worn paths; Herrero remarks that "Lactantius is the only apologist who takes the theogonic material in a different and original direction" (177), by inverting earlier interpretations. After a survey author by author, Herrero analyzes the several strategies employed by the Christian polemicists in dealing with the rival doctrine (e.g., omission, distortion), resulting in what Herrero calls "the Christian recreation of Orphism" (265). It is impossible even to suggest the riches of this fine study, in which the author is equally at home in literary texts, papyrological evidence, and archaeological remains. This is to be expected of a student of Alberto Bernabé (the book originated in a thesis under his direction); but Herrero more than fulfills such expectations, and has written a magisterial work which is essential reading for anyone interested in the evolution of ancient Orphism. David Konstan New York University Copyright © 2011 The Classical Association of the Atlantic States, Inc.