Paul Draper, currently a professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies at Purdue University, seeks to shine some light on this issue with his Psychological Aether Theory. Draper’s paper begins with a quadrilemma. “It seems that no matter which position one takes on the mind-body problem, one will be forced to reject at least one of four highly plausible claims”, which are as follows:

1. Subjective, experience-rich or “qualia-laden” consciousness (called Robust Consciousness) exists. (Your experience is different from mine in a meaningful way.)

2. All of the fundamental “stuff” which makes up human beings is, ultimately, the same fundamental “stuff” as that which makes up anything else, such as a table or chair, etc. (There is no separate “mind” and “body”, they’re both made of the same thing.)

3. The fundamental “stuff” which makes up ordinary things (tables, chairs) is never inherently conscious itself. (Ordinary things are not robustly conscious, and there is no ‘lower form’ or “proto-consciousness” which they possess.)

4. Robust Consciousness does not arise from a combination of things that are not themselves robustly conscious. (Similar to point 3, consciousness does not “emerge”.)

“The point of the quadrilemma is that, when it comes to the mind-body problem, there is nothing even close to a free lunch.” In a page, Draper explains the faults and varying “silliness” which comes with denying these four points. Most philosophers deny the first point and “choose deflationism”, i.e. the idea that consciousness can be explained away by other processes and is not itself some magical remainder. One could just as easily propose panpsychism (or the idea that everything is, in one way or another, fundamentally conscious), denying the third point.

Orphism rejects both of these viewpoints. It is clear that the ancients did not think consciousness was collapsible to any other natural process. Even Plato’s Tripartite Soul does not suggest that the Soul is made of three separate things, but rather that the Soul’s interaction with the body results in three separate functions. Furthermore, while some ancients may have suggested that the physical world is manipulable, Orphism does not suggest that rocks, for example, have Souls. Thus, in Orphism, points one and three of the quadrilemma hold. So then, as Draper asks, “why not reject the second or fourth [points] in order to avoid [choosing] deflationism and panpsychism?”

“The fourth poisonous option”, that is “emergentism” (the idea that consciousness comes to be from the assembly of things which are not themselves conscious), is “the crazy idea that consciousness is the one phenomenon in all of nature where a higher-level material entity has a characteristic that cannot be accounted for in terms of the characteristics and arrangement and laws governing lower-level material entities”. Because he posits that consciousness arises from an area where there is nothing resembling consciousness, this would be the only instance in nature where something is truly greater than the sum of its parts. Socrates agreed, arguing that the ‘self’ does not arise from the body (or even from the mixture of the body and the Soul) but belongs to the Soul alone. Draper calls Emergentism “an admission that the problem cannot be solved”, saying that this answers the question ‘how?’ by saying ‘it just does’. “What’s a philosopher to do?”

Denying the second point, i.e. “picking dualism… is fine if, like Descartes, you don’t mind deus ex machina solutions to philosophical problems.” This dualism, though, might require the constant intervention of God to pair bodies with Souls, or otherwise how do they get paired? Why is it that our minds remain private from other bodies and vice-versa? Draper’s theory inherits this problem, and it is his workaround that brings the theory towards Orphism. We will see shortly.

“Any of the four positions can plausibly be defended… apparently leaving none worthy of belief.” The solution lies in the fact that this quadrilemma “is in reality a false tetrachotomy”, and Draper presents a fifth position, which he calls Aetherism. While Draper’s Aetherism is more concerned with the nature of consciousness, he admits that it is borrowed from William James, who argued in an 1898 lecture on the Soul’s immortality against the notion that the brain ‘produces’ the mind, i.e. that consciousness arises because of the brain. James “doesn’t deny that thought is a function of the brain, he just denies that the function in question is one of production.” In other words, James argues that consciousness and thoughts exist in the brain, but they do not originate there. James “suggests a corrective answer to the hard problem of consciousness instead of a direct answer. How does the brain produce the mind? It doesn’t. Instead, mentality exists quite independently of the brain.”

Draper likens consciousness to electromagnetic radiation. In quantum physics, electromagnetism, gravity, etc. are ‘fields’ which represent the potential for interaction and are not necessarily equal to the realization of that potential (which is an ‘excitation’ in a particular ‘field’). However, in the case of light, at least locally to us, this field is flooded. Our bodies are constantly immersed in light, and have evolved to use light as a result. Perhaps the same is true of consciousness: there is an abundance of light in our universe, and thus maybe in the same way that eyes evolved to take advantage of the abundance of light, so too perhaps did brains evolve to take advantage of an abundance of consciousness.

“On this view, while all concrete stuff is physical in the sense that it is either space or located in space (so a sort of monism is true), not all of it is material… In addition to [fundamental physical particles], there is an omnipresent mind, a world soul or a mental aether if you will, that can interact with the material world and in particular with the nervous systems of human beings and some other animals.”

Reality is made up of, ultimately, two types of thing: a mental type, and a physical type, and the interaction between the two is as natural as the interaction between a light bulb and an eyeball. The physical type of reality perhaps needs no explanation; it simply is all of the Universe. All that we can see, hear, smell, taste, and feel with our bodies is made up of the physical type of stuff. Our minds, the contents of our thoughts, and our emotions, though, are made up of the mental type of stuff, which ultimately is singular and omnipresent. In a rigid dualism, as explained above, body and Mind are totally separate and perhaps require the constant intervention of God to unite them. In Aetherism, however, God is the “World Soul” or the “Omnipresent Mind” from which arises the individual, private mind of each conscious organism. While Draper’s claims are not this strong, Orphism teaches that instead of God pairing each individual soul to each body, God is the individual soul that occupies each body. Draper elaborates:

“If such a fundamental immaterial entity exists, then it is also plausible to suppose that, while fundamental material reality has a bottom-up structure, fundamental mental reality has a top-down structure. In other words, in the case of material reality the properties of the parts explain the properties of the whole, while in the case of mental reality the properties of the whole explain the properties of the parts.

The mental properties of humans and other animals “result from participation in a mental whole that is, metaphysically speaking, more fundamental than its mental parts.” While Draper only indirectly claims that God is the same as the individual Soul, and it might seem hubristic to say that ‘my Soul is God’, it is not so to say that ‘God is more fundamental than my soul, and I owe it to Him’.

In comparison to the quadrilemma, Draper’s Aetherism holds up well. Consciousness remains robust, so the first point holds. Consciousness is fundamental, but it is something external, which things are ‘immersed in’ and not composed of, so the third and fourth points hold. “While aetherism might have some of the disadvantages of dualism (namely, an interaction problem), it doesn’t have others, and for that reason seems less poisonous.” As we’ve seen, Draper posits that Dualism requires a yet-unknown method of pairing bodies to minds (the interaction problem). While the exact mechanism remains unknown even in Aetherism, Draper at least suggests that this interaction is a natural phenomenon. This point can get confusing, since Draper uses God as an example in both cases, but his distinction is that without the Aether, we must still hypothesize a God actively taking action in spite of the explanation, whereas in Draper’s theory, the Aether itself is God, and this God is a direct result of the explanation and not an uncomfortable remainder. In his own words, “worries about how individual souls get paired with individual bodies do not arise if there is only a single omnipresent world soul.”

To borrow a metaphor, Aetherism posits that the individual Soul (i.e. “my mind”) is akin to a single radio, which then tunes into the station that is the World Soul (i.e. the Cosmic Mind). Moreover, if we visualize Draper’s dual top-down + bottom-up hierarchy, it looks like this:

Using the alchemical symbols for Earth and Air, this diagram illustrates that Draper’s “Material Reality” is collapsible downward to a certain threshold, at which we find a sort of ‘fundamental materiality’, and his “Mental Reality” is collapsible in the opposite direction toward a threshold of the ‘most fundamental Mental Reality’, i.e. the World Soul (or Cosmic Mind). This idea bridges modern Platonic Idealism to ancient Platonism and actually resembles Plato’s “unwritten doctrines”, wherein from a top-down perspective everything comes from The One, but bottom-up everything is only collapsible to the Indefinite Dyad (which is also called the-great-and-the-small or the-one-and-the-many). Plato taught that everything is collapsible to Mind, and yet still dual in its physical expression. If we overlap or ‘collapse’ the separate Material and Mental realities above into one diagram, where the Material and the Mental co-exist in such a way as to keep their ‘fundamentalities’ separate, we are left with another alchemical symbol which is a diagram of the cosmos:

Orphism posits that “God” is the sum total of everything. Everything that exists, exists within God. It is perhaps no small coincidence that, in Orphism, this all-encompassing divinity is called the Aither. Multiple Gods in the Orphic Hymns are called Aitherial or aerial, in reference to their ‘immaterial’ or ‘intangible’ qualities. A few are even said to deliver Souls to mankind. The Derveni Papyrus, the oldest commentary on anything Orphic, explicitly and systematically collapses all of the Gods to a single divinity, which is similarly equated with air. The Rhapsodies and various other Theogonies explain first the emanation of the Cosmos, and then the birth of a natural force of Divinity (and by extension, Souls) within it. Aetherism, then, is not simply a modern philosophy which incorporates an Orphic worldview: Aetherism is a modern philosophy which arrives independently at a position which may be better explained by the Orphic worldview.

Draper wraps up his paper by saying “again, there are no free lunches” and that scientifically, this would add consciousness as another fundamental interaction alongside gravity, electromagnetism, and the nuclear forces. Asking “is that any more absurd” than denying the points of the quadrilemma, he says “it seems not.”

In the final paragraphs, he points to mysticism as “empirical (though not scientific) evidence” for the theory. “Mystics from a variety of religious traditions claim to experience being absorbed into God… or even being identical with God.” He also cautions “keep in mind that many of these mystics have very strong reasons not to blur the distinction between themselves and God because to do so is heretical in the religious traditions to which they belong”. This is true of Orphism as well, and avoiding hubris is a major factor for one’s Soul to escape the cycle of rebirths and ascend back to the Aither as a participant solely in Draper’s “Mental Reality”.

To end the paper, Draper says that perhaps a better name for his theory would be Panpsychentheism (or “all-minds-in-God-ism”), to place it among the usual arguments of classical theism (God-created-everything-ism), pantheism (everything-is-God-ism), and panentheism (everything-is-within-God-ism). It seems, though, in light of its many similarities to Orphism, that perhaps the name ‘Aetherism’ is perfect.

translated into English by
Tiberius Caelius Quadratus
for Orphicaeum © MMXXVI
All Rights Reserved.

to Solar Zeus-Dionysos

Hear, far-traveling whirlpool’s circle with swirling beams,
heavenly spinnings running around forever turning,
splendid Zeus Dionysos, father of the sea, father of the land,
all-begetting all-gleaming golden-beaming sun.1
. . .
Melting aither by means of which, being motionless before,
he revealed for the Gods to see a most beautiful sight,
whom indeed now they call both Phanes and Dionysos
and Lord Eubouleos and very-clear Antauges;
but others of people on earth call something else.
And first into light he came, and he was called Dionysos,
because he whirls (δινεῖται) throughout limitless long Olympos.
But having been changed he held a name, appellations toward each
of all kinds according to opportunity, of changing time.2
. . .
And all these things may one accomplish early having covered in equipment
the body of the God, an imitation of the very-famous sun;
first indeed then flaming like rays
put on a purple peplos resembling fire;
moreover on top fasten a broad all-dappled fawn
skin, a much-spotted beast, along the right shoulder,
an imitation of the skillfully-wrought stars and sacred axis.
And next above the fawnskin put on a golden girdle,
bright-shining, to bear around the chest, a great sign,
when immediately from the limits of the earth springing up Phaethon
strikes with golden rays the stream of Okeanos,
and the light is unspeakable, and up mixed around with dew
it flashes with whirls (δίνηισιν) throughout a circle,
in front of the God; and then the belt beneath his immeasurable chest
appears as the circle of Okeanos, a great wonder to behold.3
. . .
Helios whom they call by the epithet Dionysos.4
. . .
One Zeus, one Haides, one Helios, one Dionysos,
one God in all things. Why do I speak these things to you separately?5
. . .
Having the mind and prudent counsel of a father;6
. . .
Your tears are the much-suffering generation of mankind,
but having smiled you made sprout the sacred generation of Gods.7

to Zeus

Of Zeus the great son, of Zeus the aegis-bearing father.8
. . .
Of Aither and of Haides, of sea and of earth the ruler,
who with thunders you shake the strong house of Olympos;
which daimons shudder at, and the crowd fearing of Gods;
by whom the Moirai are persuaded, although being unyielding;
imperishable, mother-father, by spirit of whom everything is shaken;
who moves the winds, and with clouds covers everything,
by hurricanes cleaving the broad aither; indeed among the stars your
arrangement, by unchangeable commands runs;
and by your fiery throne are present much-toiling
messengers, for whom it is a concern that all things for mortals are fulfilled;
indeed your spring shines new with purple flowers;
your winter approaches with cold clouds;
at times your Bacchic harvests Bromios distributes;
. . .
Imperishable, immortal, spoken only to immortals.
Come, greatest of all the Gods, with powerful necessity,
terrible, unconquerable, great, imperishable, whom aither wreaths.9

to Number

Hear, glorious number, father of the blessed-ones, father of mankind.10
. . .
The seventh, which far-working Lord Apollon loved.11
. . .
. . . And first proceeds the divine number
out of the Monad’s undefiled hiding place, until it might arrive
upon the very-holy Tetrad; which indeed bore the mother of all things,
all-containing, elder, placing a boundary around all,
unchangeable, unwearying; they call it the holy Dekad,
both the immortal Gods and earth-born mankind.12
. . .
And by number too all things are fitting.13

Works Cited

Bernabé, Alberto. Orphicorum et Orphicis Similium Testimonia et Fragmenta: Fasciculus 2. K.G. Saur, 2005.

Footnotes

You can find links to buy/download our full translation of the poem in this post:

Recently on our quest for the Golden Fleece, we saw the Argonauts accidentally kill the friendly hero Kyzikos, atone for that wrong, and then lose Herakles and Hylas when the two set out to catch dinner. The poem continues:

But at dawn we approached gloomy land,
where Amykos over the overbearing Bebrykes was king,
who also Zeus Panomphaios’ law not respecting
a contest for strangers of neighboring men,
whoever to dwellings and unshaken home might come,
he established presumptuous boxing to be tested.
Him indeed then annihilated by force powerful Polydeukes,
having hit unexpectedly the head with hard straps;
and the people in turn of the Bebrykes the Minyans with bronze cut down.1

After losing Herakles and Hylas in the previous section, the Argonauts set sail and reach Amykos’ Bebrykian kingdom at dawn. Amykos is described as ‘not respecting Zeus Panomphaios’ law’. Madeła notes that Zeus’ epithet Panomphaios is usually related to divination, but she suggests a link here to an Iliad scholia which clarifies it as meaning “he who is honored by every voice and tongue”2, which would yield a more strict translation of the epithet as “Of-All-Voices” rather than the usual “All-Voicing”. This is an important distinction, and this rarer definition shifts Amykos from somebody who does not respect divination (which does not stand out as a particularly strange position to take, even in ancient times) to somebody who does not respect the Gods at all.

Amykos, as somebody who does not respect the laws of the widely-honored chief of the Gods, does not care for xenia, the ancient Greek cultural notion of hospitality or guest-friendship we discussed in Part Six. Xenia would normally dictate that the king welcome his guests warmly, treat them to dinner and song, offer them a place to rest, and send them on their way ‘fat and happy’ so to speak.

Amykos, not respecting this custom, is hostile to anyone who approaches. He has established that anyone who arrives to his kingdom shall fight him in a boxing match. Amykos must have been a good boxer, because the poet reminds us that his home at this point is “unshaken”. Polydeukes, however, is famed for his boxing skills. In a few short lines we’re told that he “annihilated [Amykos] by force” with a fatal blow to the head, and then the Bebrykes sought revenge, only to be slain by the Argonauts’ bronze weaponry.

Amykos is the opposite of Kyzikos, the friendly hero slain accidentally in Part Six. By disrespecting xenia and the Gods, Amykos has cut himself off from divine providence, even though his home remains “unshaken” until now. This seemingly-safe period of time before the Argonauts’ arrival, plus the unlikely coincidence that Amykos is a homophone to amicus (Latin for ‘friend’), suggest that the king symbolically represents a spiritual advisor (or other such person) who appears to be truthful and friendly on the surface, but is actually hiding something. Amykos’ boxing contests make him the ultimate gatekeeper, and he beats every newcomer (or new experience, or new question) into submission, leaving his home (and his beliefs) unshaken.

In Part One, we saw that Polydeukes and his twin brother Kastor represent ‘the duality of man’ and the harmony of opposites. Polydeukes, the immortal son of Zeus, cut his own immortality in half simply to share it with his brother. Thus the twins also represent the perfect expression of xenia, which is indistinguishable from brotherly love. This episode chronicling Amykos’ anti-xenia is brought to an end by the rightful restoration of the truest expression of xenia.

The poem continues:

And from there having set out, and under rowing becoming tired,
of Bithynians the great city we beached at the deep shore
hastening at river-mouths and in snow-white woods,
evening-ones* having made camp we prepared supper.
There once grim-married Phineus with overbearing spirit
blinded his two sons by throwing them to rocks, and
to beasts as prey he set them forth because of a woman’s love-charms.
But them both unharmed and seeing again made
the two sons of glorious Boreas; and to Phineus, for him they bestowed ruin
of painful wrath and they took away light’s rays.
But when raging Boreas by whirling gusts
having seized rolled him under dense thickets and forests
of Bistonia, so that destructive doom and destiny he might meet.3

* [evening-ones simply refers poetically to the Argonauts at night.]

From the kingdom of the Bebrykes, the Argonauts depart and land at the city of the Bithynians. In other versions of the myth, this is where the Argonauts meet Phineus. In our version, the Argonauts don’t meet anything, but the poet recalls that here Phineus once blinded his sons and cast them out “to beasts as prey” due to his being overcome by love-charms. Boreas, however, saved the sons and blinded Phineus, eventually tossing him around “under dense thickets and forests” in Bistonia, killing him.

In the more popular versions, Phineus is given a choice between death or blindness, and he chooses blindness, living to help the Argonauts on their journey. Here though, our Orphic poet leaves no room for misinterpretation: Phineus acted unjustly and was punished with the same fate he gave his sons. Plato, in his seventh Letter, says the following:

And we must always firmly believe the sacred and ancient words declaring to us that the soul is immortal, and when it has separated from the body will go before its judges and pay the utmost penalties. Therefore we must count it a lesser evil to suffer great wrongs and injustices than to do them, though this is a saying that the avaricious man, who is poor in goods of the soul, will not give ear to;4

Thus we can see, as Plato elaborates, that the version of the Phineus myth told in Orpheus’ Argonautika is a warning which says essentially “what goes around comes around”. Plato elaborates further in his Laws:

The ‘myth’ or ‘explanation’ (μῦθος ἢ λόγος), or whatever the right word is, has come down to us in unambiguous terms from the lips of priests of long ago.

Justice stands on guard to exact vengeance for the spilling of blood of relatives; She operates through the law we have just mentioned, and Her decree is that a man who has done something of this kind is obliged to suffer precisely what he has inflicted.5

Plato specifies that this idea is called both a myth and a λόγος. The latter is translated here as “explanation”, but it is notable as part of a phrase which is used by Orphics to describe a sacred text or doctrine, ἱερὸς λόγος. A plural version of this phrase is what is translated in the Letter excerpt above as “[the ancient and] sacred words”6. It is safe to say then that Plato is likely speaking in both excerpts of Orphic doctrine, and that this doctrine is what’s being explained in the two passages from Orpheus’ Argonautika.

Thus, in Part Eight of our examination, we have seen that while Kyzikos earlier is shown to be a pious and friendly hero whose death was accidental and atoned for, Amykos and Phineus are presented as cautionary tales, examples of how the initiated reader ought not to conduct oneself.

Moreover, their deaths (which mirror their atrocoties) are presented as deliberate reciprocal justice commanded by the Gods, clearly outlining that it is Cosmic Law that one will be punished or rewarded according to how one lived. While these things may seem easy for critics to dismiss, Plato is sure to clarify that it is only one “who is poor in goods of the Soul” that “will not give ear to” this notion.

Works Cited

Madeła, Alexandra. The Argonautika by Orpheus: Writing Pre-Homeric Poetry in Late Antiquity. Brill, 2025.

Orpheus’ Argonautika translated by Tiberius Caelius Quadratus. Orphicaeum, 2026.

Plato. Complete Works. Edited by John M. Cooper, Hackett Publishing Company, 1997.

Footnotes

You can find links to buy/download our full translation of the poem in this post:

At the end of our previous essay, we had reached the point where the Argonauts set up an altar to Rhea Piesmetie in thanks for her purifying intervention. As soon as “cables were loosed of detained Argo”1, everything was back on track:

But when indeed the sails of the ship the wind filled,
she rushed traversing salt-brine waves of the open sea,
and of Mysia, near passed by the borders of the land.
And quickly Rhyndakos’ mouths she crossed running,
and into the beautiful sandy harbors entered.
And she drove on the beach; and forestays upon casting hand,
sails they furled and around the mast-straps they bound;
and the gangway they lowered onto ground, and out they stepped themselves,
for food and drink yearning. And on both sides the slope
of Arganthon shone down and the high-peaked hills.
And Herakles was rushing through wooded gullies,
bow holding in hands and three-barbed arrows,
so that he might hunt and provide for supper for the companions
either swine or horned calf or wild goat.
And he straightaway having set out, Hylas went out from the ship
secretly following; but he missed the crooked path
having wandered in the wood and came into the cave of the Nymphs
of the Lake; and they having gazed upon him coming,
the youth still unmarried, detained him, so that with them
both deathless he might be and ageless for all days.
But when towards the middle of the dawn swift horses was bearing
Helios, and rushing out of the mountain was blowing a breeze,
and it fell upon silvery sails, and Tiphys shouted
of the ship inside to cross, and from shore the cables to loosen.
And they the steersman’s instructions obeyed;
And the son of Eilatos, up the promontory swiftly Polyphemos was stepping,
so that Herakles swiftly towards the ship he might call,
but he did not meet him: since for him to go not at all was it fated
to Phasis beautiful-streamed, the mighty strength of Herakles.2

Argo’s sails are filled, and they head to the sandy shore at the mouth of Rhyndakos, a river (modern day Mustafakemalpaşa in Türkiye). There, the men realize they are hungry, and Herakles sets out to catch their supper. Hylas, Herakles’ companion, secretly sets out after Him, but is captured and brought into the cave of the Nymphs, who take him to keep forever. When the sun was in the middle of the sky, Tiphys ordered everyone back on board, and Polyphemos called out to Herakles from the shore, but Herakles was not fated to continue on this particular journey.

In Part One, Herakles was identified as symbolic of the Soul’s mastery over the physical world around us. In Part Two, Hylas was identified as ‘hyle’, i.e. “matter”. In case it bears reminding, this entire poem is an allegory for the Initiated Soul’s ascent in union to the Gods. So then, in this scene, we are at the point of our Soul’s journey where it no longer requires its interface for ‘the physical’. Perhaps Hylas’ following Herakles signifies that once one’s Soul lets go of its reliance on physical interaction/mastery, its reliance on matter itself follows close behind. This is intimately connected to other symbolism being layered on this scene, and a keen eye is likely to notice “the cave of the Nymphs” mentioned in line 645.

On the Cave of the Nymphs is the title of a philosophical treatise by Porphyry, who flourished in the 3rd century CE (roughly a hundred years before Orpheus’ Argonautika was written). In this treatise, Porphyry examines eleven lines of Homer’s Odyssey as an allegory for the immortal Soul’s descent into matter and its eventual return to the Gods. The lines he examines are as follows:

and at the head of the harbor is a slender-leaved olive
and near by it a lovely and murky cave
sacred to the nymphs called Naiads.
Within are kraters and amphoras
of stone, where bees lay up stores of honey.
Inside, too, are massive stone looms and there the nymphs
weave sea-purple cloth, a wonder to see.
The water flows unceasingly. The cave has two gates,
the one from the north, a path for men to descend,
while the other, toward the south, is divine. Men do not
enter by this one, but it is rather a path for immortals.

[Od. 13, 102-112]3

Porphyry’s exegesis begins with the cave itself, and he says that this cave isn’t completely a work of fiction, but also that the passage is not perfectly literal. He likens the cave to the cosmos, saying that “earth is a symbol of the matter out of which the cosmos emerged”, and that ancients saw caves likewise, as a symbol of the cosmos generated from matter4. He continues, adding that caves are separate from the earth but surrounded by rock, and that the cosmos similarly has its own separate nature, but one which is inseparable from matter. Porphyry suggests that Homer calls the cave “lovely and murky” to signify that dual-nature: matter is what makes the cosmos “murky”, but specifically that the intermingling of matter and form “and the resultant order (διακόσμησις, whence the name ‘cosmos’ itself)” makes the cosmos “lovely”5. To Porphyry, like a cave, the cosmos is shadowy, rocky, and constrained by our physical limitations, but it is also free from having its own constraints, loved and ordered only by Nature and the Gods into something beautiful.

Porphyry says that “Persians” perform initiations in caves, and he quotes another author as saying that Zoroaster consecrated caves as “an image of the cosmos that Mithras created” and that later “the custom of performing mysteries in caves and grottoes […] caught on among others as well”. This doesn’t refer to actual Persian Zoroastrianism, but rather shows that Porphyry shared the common misconception that Zoroastrianism was the\a precursor to the Mithraic Mysteries. Porphyry here is assuming that then-common underground sanctuaries consecrated to Mithras were also part of an even-more-ancient tradition. In Part Four, we saw a veiled Tauroctony and interpreted Kheiron’s Cave as a Mithraeum, one of these underground sanctuaries. If there was uncertainty before that this link between Mithras and Orpheus’ Argonautika is a stretch, perhaps now it seems more likely.

Porphyry says that caves are sacred to the Nymphs “on account of the waters that pour down into caves and come up out of them”6. He says that these Nymphs are called “Naiads” from the poetic word “they flow” (νάουσι), and that this is likely where the Pythagorean and Platonic idea of the-cosmos-as-a-cave comes from7. He quotes briefly from Plato’s Allegory of the Cave, before making a detour:

Porphyry says that it has been shown that caves are symbolic of the cosmos and of the powers within it, but that this Platonic connection asserts that caves are symbolic of “the noetic substance” (i.e. the ‘immaterial Mind’ and the forms which it contains). He adds that though these both result in the cave as a symbol of the universe, the Platonic idea uses the cave to signify that the forms “are not easily grasped by the senses and at the same time they are essentially solid and enduring”8.

Back on track, Porphyry says that this particular cave is symbolic of the material (rather than the above Platonic noetic) existence because it is described with two entrances, and also “because its ‘water flows incessantly’”9. He continues, saying that these waters and the Naiad Nymphs who rule them are Souls descending into genesis, or ‘becoming’. He quotes Herakleitos saying “it is a delight, not a death, for Souls to become wet” and “we live their deaths while they live our deaths”, elaborating that Souls are drawn into genesis by the delight of this ‘wetness’, which for the Souls of mankind is bodily fluids, in the same way that “the Souls of plants are nourished by water”10. In a previous essay, it was argued that Orphic poetry commonly compares people to plants (of course, without excluding the possibility of this convention in other poetry).

Read more

This is Part Six of an ongoing series in which we examine the Orphic Argonautica. Here are the links for Part One, Part Two, Part Three, Part Four, and Part Five.

You can find links to buy/download our full translation of the poem in this post:

On Atrax

At the end of the previous essay, we saw the Argonauts set up an altar to Tritogeneia, “and there the Nymphs \ by the Atrakian spring beautiful streams gush forth”1. This spring is Atrakian, meaning ‘of Atrakia’ or ‘of Atrax’, a place in Thessaly. However, this is impossible, as we saw the Argonauts pass Troy before bringing Argo ashore to build the altar. How can they be in Anatolia and then be building an altar in Greece?

This geographical oddity suggest that we are not dealing with real-world locations in this passage. However, the etymology of ‘Atrax’ is no help as to its meaning here, since it seems uncertain. The city is named after the hero Atrax, the father of Caeneus, which would include his grandsons among the Argonauts. The hero’s name is also of uncertain origin. To borrow an argument used elsewhere by Socrates, “I think this admits of many explanations, if a little, even very little, change is made”2. Socrates is speaking of the σῶμα - σῆμα problem, claiming that the Orphic poets changed a letter from the word for “sign” or “tomb” (σῆμα) in order to create the word for “body” (σῶμα). A number of verses earlier, just after leaving Kheiron’s Cave, the Argonauts see the tomb (σῆμα) of Dolops3.

Perhaps we are meant to connect all of these things together and suppose that our Orphic poet is doing the same etymological magic here as Socrates suggests. If we do, the uncertainty of Atrax shifts it from a dead-end into a signal to keep searching: the author of Orpheus’ Argonautika, like earlier Orphic poets, took a word with meaning and shaped it into a different word to obscure that meaning. What then could the original word and meaning be? If we examine the context again:

But when on the sands we beached, and indeed among them Tiphys
steersman of the ship and Aison’s splendid son,
and together with them the other Minyans, for gray-eyed Tritogeneia
set up having lifted a heavy stone, and there the Nymphs
by the Atrakian spring beautiful streams gush forth
because for them sailing along the broad Hellespont
fair-weather calm met inside of the bay,
nor toward land did they throw the well-curved anchors,
as when being beaten by waves under wintery gales.4

The Argonauts have just beached the ship after calm, fair-weather sailing. They didn’t even have to anchor the ship: the winds do not beat them today. They are grateful for this, and they recognize that the weather is far outside of their control. Knowing that they don’t influence the weather, but that it is well within their grasp to be thankful for it, they build an altar to Tritogeneia, who by Hera’s commands built and animated Argo for Jason’s voyage.

On Ataraxia

“Ataraxia” is the end-goal of several schools of ancient Greek philosophy, among them Stoicism. The word itself means “undisturbed”, and the state that it is used to describe is one of absolute tranquility and freedom from worry. It is this word, it would seem, that best fits our Orphic swap-game.

Stoicism is a philosophy which teaches that it is best to focus only on what one can influence. Don’t stress out about the weather, you can’t change how people are but only how you react, that kind of thing.

This is exactly what the passage above describes: the Argonauts, aware that things could have gone very bad for them, are grateful to the Gods that this leg of their journey was smooth. In thanks, they build an altar, from which the Nymphs spring beautiful “Atrakian” streams. The following lines go back to describing why the altar was built, but they very clearly use the words “calm” and “beaten” in opposition to each other: the altar was built because they are thankful for receiving the calm and for avoiding being beaten.

The “Atrakian” streams that spring forth are thus ‘Ataraxian’ springs, tranquility that Tritogeneia has bestowed upon the Argonauts. However, this is also a clever signal from the Orphic poet to the ideal reader-initiate. The spring next to the altar signifies the same things that the poem as a whole is about: the Gods will reward one’s eventual achievement of pious Ataraxia with an eternal seat next to Them. This scene is a microcosm of the quest overall, foreshadowing Jason’s eventual Ataraxia and dwelling amongst the Gods.

On Killing Kyzikos

After dedicating the altar, the Argonauts are joined by the hero Kyzikos, who joined them in their celebrations and sacrifices, loving everyone as his peers5. Kyzikos is a mirror-version of Jason: a kind, well-adjusted King who respects his friends. But the important part of this section begins at nightfall:

But when into Okeanos’ stream was plunging the Titan,
and starry-chitoned Mene brought on black-gleaming darkness,
just then came war-hardened men who indeed dwelled
in the Northern mountains, astonished resembling beasts,
and heavy-handed Titans, and also resembling the Giants;
for six hands from each one’s shoulders were springing.
Whom then having looked upon, the irresistible kings
into battle rushing warlike armor donned;
and so some indeed with pines were defending themselves, but others with firs;
and they fell upon the Minyans throughout the dark fog.
Whom indeed rushing forth was slaying Zeus’ brave son,
with his bow shooting; and with them he destroyed Aineus’ child
Kyzikos, not at all intentionally, but constrained by thoughtlessness;
and for him indeed it was fated under Herakles to be subdued.
And immediately the Minyans stepped inside the hollow
of the ship, well-armed, and towards the rowing-bench they each settled.6

Where previously our poet has confused the Titans and Giants, here a distinction is made between them even though they are still being used in comparison. While the Titans are the ones usually said to have dismembered Dionysos, that act is attributed to the Giants earlier in Orpheus’ Argonautika. Here, the poet is making the distinction clear because of the fact that the war-hardened attackers, with their six arms, visually resemble the Giants or ‘Hekatonkheires’ (literally “Hundred-Handed ones”). These war-hardened men are described as “astonished resembling beasts” to convey that they are truly barbarians, cave-men not even capable of complex understanding. They know only violence and survival.

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Last we left the Argonauts, they had just performed a binding oath-ritual symbolizing Mithraic (and by extension, Orphic) initiation, and they then proceeded to Kheiron’s (and Plato’s) cave, the threshold of being. From there, they depart, and they pass a few places before arriving to Samothrace, where we’re told Orpheus initiated them into the local Mysteries. I translate1:

But when onto the shore and into the ship all went,
in the forward benches they were sitting; and in them each one
hands having stretched forth, then the brine they were striking with oars,
having turned away from Pelion, over the great gulf of the sea
foam seething was whitening the sparkling sea.
And were hidden the Tisaian peak and the Sepian shore;
and appeared Skiathos and of Dolops was revealed the tomb
and sea-girt Homole and the sea-mingled stream of Amyros,
who through much earth sends great-roaring water.
And Olympos’ deep-peaked steep promontories
the Minyans looked upon and Athos’ tree-clad slope
and broad Pellene and sacred Samothrace,
where also fearful mysteries of the Gods ineffable for mortals
gladly entered by my suggestions
the heroes: for afterwards it is beneficial for them, for mankind,
to encounter of this sacred-service for all sailors.2

Continuing initiatory themes from the previous essay, the Samothracian initiation is given only a few lines in the poem and hardly any detail. In fact, we are given less detail about this one than we are the previous. We are told only that they entered the Samothracian Mysteries by Orpheus’ suggestions, because those Mysteries are beneficial for everyone who has participated, and especially sailors.

Perhaps not much is known of the Samothracian Mysteries, but what is known shares much in common with what we’ve seen from Orpheus’ Argonautika thus far: they were concerned with the Kabeiroi and Kybele, Hekate (whom we’ll see toward the end of the poem), and Jason / the Dioscuri. Also, as hinted by our poet, initiation into the Samothracian Mysteries granted protection to sailors. This initiation, like the last, is in affirmation of everything so far and anticipation of everything to come.

Now protected, the Argonauts leave, this time toward Lemnos. There, Jason tames Hypsipyle, and Aphrodite rouses desire for the Argonauts in the local women, so much so that if not for Orpheus’ song, they would not have remembered the mission:

And at the Sintian eyebrows we beached the swift ship *
on most-holy Lemnos, where indeed evil deeds had been of concern to
the women: for they had destroyed their husbands
through their own recklessness, and the famous Hypsipyleia
them desiring it ruled over, the best of women in form.
But why to you concerning these things openly tell a long story,
how much desire she roused in the noble Lemnian women,
Kypris feeder-of-love, to mingle with the Minyans in marriage-beds?
With lovely charms Jason tamed Hypsipyle,
and with a different one another was mingled; and they forgot the voyage,
if not by averting shouts and by mind-charming hymn
of ours having been enchanted they went into the black ship,
longing for rowing, and they remembered the toil.3

Briefly before continuing, in Orphus’ Argonautika we are not given any kind of idea how long this episode is. In other versions of the myth, Jason spends years with Hypsipyle and fathers children with her. There is a Platonic notion that pursuit of Love / Beauty / The Good, even when misguided, is never truly a failure. So while they are distracted here, the Argonauts are still ascending higher in their quest for Godhood. By shortening this detour, our poet has Jason avoid this ‘noble trap’.

In both the English and the Greek, Jason tames Hypsipyle but Aphrodite rouses desire in the Lemnians and not the Argonauts. In the Roman Empire (when this was written), what we today might identify as “sexual dominance” or “sexual submission” was not so nuanced. Men were almost always viewed as the dominant or assertive force, and women as the passive or submissive part of intercourse. This viewpoint makes this distinction natural: while Aphrodite brings the lust out of the women, it is still the men who are dominant and thus “taming” the women.

This, however, is still an inversion for these Lemnian women: we’re told they previously destroyed their husbands. Furthermore, it is not a coincidence that Aphrodite roused the desire in the Lemnians and not the Argonauts. The Argonauts are now under the protection of a growing number of Mystery Gods, and since they have seen the truth of Plato’s cave, they can see the strings that control the world. Jason tames Hypsipyle with love-charms, perhaps theurgically co-authoring (with Aphrodite) the arousal of the women.

Lemnos then is a common trap: Jason, like a man with a new tool, sees only opportunities to use it. As they say, “if all you have is a hammer, all that you see are nails”. Jason tames Hypsipyle ‘because he can’, since now he possesses knowledge and protection above and beyond a ‘regular man’ (which the Lemnians would’ve killed).

That is, they’re distracted until Orpheus sees what’s happening. He then uses his music to align our fifty-two Argonauts again into a single, cohesive unit. When his music has them “longing for rowing, and they remembered the toil”, the poet continues:

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This is Part Four of an ongoing series.
Click these links to read Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.
There was also This Post between Part Three and Part Four.
This is a long post, it may not all show in your inbox. Read it in full here.

Orpheus’ Tauroctony

In Part Three, we left off just after our heroes had launched the Argo and elected Jason their leader. In the upcoming lines, as the sun sets and night looms overhead, Jason hatches a plan to have the Argonauts take an oath of loyalty. Jason has Orpheus prepare a sacrifice, and Orpheus sacrifices a bull and removes its heart to place atop the sacrificial pyre. Then, he tells each of the heroes to gather in a circle around the slain bull and to stab it with their weapons and rub their hands in the gory mess. Having done that, Orpheus prepares a kykeon of grain, sea water, and the sacrifical bull’s blood. The Argonauts all share the kykeon, Jason lights the sacrificial pyre, and Orpheus invokes a number of deities important to sailing, plus Dikē and the Erinyes, and the Argonauts all nod in agreement to remain allied to Jason at least until they make it home. I translate1:

And when Helios that boundless aither cleaving
with swift-footed horses was preparing the dark night,
then in his mind planned Aison’s son
a pledge among the heroes and oaths of agreements
to establish, so that firmly keeping all things they might trust.
And then mind you, Mousaios, dear child of Antiophemos,
he ordered me to prepare swiftly sacrifices beautiful.
Then I upon the sandy shores heaped
logs, and those are from a life-bearing oak; and then up on top
peploi I placed for the Gods poured-upon gifts. *
And then indeed the ruler of cattle, a very long bull
I slaughtered, lifting its head into the divine aither
cutting it alive; and blood around the pyre I was pouring here and there.
Then after having drawn its heart on sacrificial cakes I placed it,
having libated liquid oil, and upon that milk of a lamb,
then the heroes I commanded standing in a circle gathered around
to fasten spears and hilted swords,
on both the skin and on the entrails leaning with palms.
And I placed indeed in the middle, of kykeon propping a bowl
earthenware, in which all things very skillfully had been mixed,
indeed first Demeter’s life-giving barley meal,
and upon it the blood of the bull and the sea’s salty water.
And to crown themselves I commanded with lovely circles of olive;
and then a golden phiale with my hands **
having filled with kykeon, in succession I distributed
to taste, each man of the very mighty kings.
And on the pyre I commanded Jason to place a torch
of dry pine; and from under raced the God-sent flame.
Indeed then I, toward the much-roaring stream of the sea
my hands having stretched out, thus from the tongue spoke:
“Rulers of the ocean and of the wave-washed sea,
deep-dwelling blessed ones, and those who sandy shores
with sea-pebbles inhabit and Tethys’ furthest water,
Nereos indeed firstly I call oldest of all,
together with fifty daughters all of them lovely,
and gleaming fish-full infinite Amphitrite,
Proteus and Phorkys and wide-strength Triton,
and swift Winds mixed with Breezes golden-soled,
Stars shining-from-afar and also mist of dark night
and the foreguiding beam of Helios’ swift horses,
Daimons of the sea and mingling themselves with Heroes,
and Coastal Gods and of Rivers’ sea-salty streams,
and himself son of Kronos the Earth-Shaker blue-haired,
from the wave having leapt out to come as helper of oaths;
for the time being then indeed the allies of Jason steadfastly always
let us remain willingly defenders of common struggles,
alive let us come home each one toward his own halls;
but whoever should ever violate the treaty not heeding
the oath by transgression, and to him let them be witnesses against,
the straightener Dikē and the Erinyes givers of dread.”
Thus I spoke; and they immediately with like-mindedness nodded
dreading the oaths, and they signaled by hands.2

Although the above does not describe a particularly unique ancient sacrifice or oath, the passage in lines 313-315, “and then indeed the ruler of cattle, a very long bull / I slaughtered, lifting its head into the divine aither / cutting it alive”, brings to mind the image of the Mithraic Tauroctony. Because the poem was written in the 4th c. CE, the poet must have been aware of the Mithraic cults. “Tauroctony” is a modern word, from a Greek one, meaning “Bull-slaying”3, which describes the various similar scenes found throughout the Roman Empire in Mithraea showing the Mystery-God Mithras doing just that.

This drawing is a reconstruction of a Tauroctony found in France4. They are not all this elaborate, but they do all contain the central image of Mithras, in a Phrygian cap and cloak, pulling a bull’s head skyward in the middle of a sacrificial kill. In those earlier lines from Orpheus’ Argonautika, the Bard describes himself slaughtering a bull by “lifting its head into the divine aither / cutting it alive”, which is exactly what we see here.

Also, Mithras wearing a cloak and especially a Phrygian cap is something that is shared with Roman (and earlier) depictions of Orpheus. For example:

These are not the only symbols shared between the Mithraic and Orphic Mysteries, however; there is also this famous relief of Phanes:

We know that this relief, used by a Mithraic cult to depict Aeon (Aion), was borrowed because the name Euphrosyne, one of the three Graces, is scratched out. Euphrosyne is a female figure, and Mithraic cults were male-only5.

As we saw in Part One, Aion is one of the names given to Herakles in his Orphic Hymn, where he is also called “father of time”, “self-grown” and “firstborn having flashed with scales”6. We also saw that, in the Hieronyman Theogony, Orpheus tells of a serpent God named both Unaging Time and also Herakles that arose as a third first-principle7 from the interaction between the first two first-principles, Water and Mud8. What we left out then was that afterwards, Time mingles with Necessity, also a serpent9, to produce an egg, from which hatches Protogonos Phanes10.

Herakles, as the First-Born (Protogonos), scaley, self-grown father of Time (i.e. Himself) must then also be the one who hatches from the egg, i.e. Phanes. But who else hatches from an egg?

None more relevant than Mithras Himself. (Although, it is important to note, Mithras is also often depicted as emerging from a rock. To that counterargument, say: “What is Earth if not a rocky-egg lain in the Starry Aither?”)

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If you’re a paid member of Orphicaeum, I have added a link to download the PDF after the essay below, as well as in the community Discord server.

The essay below was written mid-way through the translation process to give insight on my motivation for doing this.

I have been writing for the past few months about the Orphic Argonautica. To do so, I was referencing Alexandra Madeła’s recent critical edition. Interestingly, her commentary in that monograph is not about Orphism as much as it is about the poem’s mimicry of earlier poetry and its use of repetition, phrasing, and archaic or archaizing language.

That is interesting to me because her English translation does not match the format of the original even remotely. By that, I mean that the English reads (when it works) like the prose translation it aims to be, but in its worst passages it comes off as an approximation or adaptation. Indeed, there are even instances where names are mistranslated (e.g. Iphitos in the Greek but Iphiklos in her English).

Now, I understand that it is a tall order to ask every scholar to also be a poet. I am also well aware now that the Orphic poet did not make his work too easy to parse. However, I would think if your primary goal is to study the poetic nature of a work, and especially if your goal in doing so is to present your findings, that you would put some of your project’s resources toward representing the poem to your audience as accurately as possible.

I want to stop for a moment and recognize that this kind of work is as mentally taxing as it is tedious. At any rate, what I am about to present is a far cry from the kind of project that Madeła undertook. I cannot even begin to imagine the amount of work that goes into producing a critical edition, and to be frank, I also have zero experience with publishing, the academic system, or likely worst of all, the academic publishing system. It is also quite possible that the English is less important to the goal of her project, or to its intended audience, and that I’m being unreasonable or strange in my demands.

With that out of the way, the issues I have with the available translations of the poem led me to one (maybe crazy) conclusion: I could always just do it myself.

This is an ambitious goal. I am not an expert by any measure, on language or on poetry. However, I am a man with a handful of dictionaries (plus Google when they fail me) and a bottomless bucket of free time. So I did it, I set out to translate the Orphic Argonautica. I didn’t note the exact date that I started, but it was roughly in the middle of writing Part Two of my ‘exegesis’.

So, I have been plugging away at it slowly, like I do with everything. In the middle of Part Three, I stumbled across the “ἴστε καὶ αὐτοί” link between the poem and the Gold Tablets, which to my eye seems to be a very strong signal (among others) that the poem is overtly or outwardly Orphic in a recognizable way (or at least as much as an Orphic would make it).

At that discovery, which I have not yet seen anyone else point out, I shifted gears and focused my efforts on the translation as my new top priority. I am now well past the point that we’d reached by the end of Part Three, so I decided that I will post my translation (up to that point) here and continue translating it (and then other things) in the background. Going forward, starting with Orpheus’ Argonautika, I will favor my own translations of the Orphika.

My rules in translating were to very strictly follow the line breaks of the original Greek, plus (if it is reasonably possible) to keep the same word order. There is also frequently (though maybe more so in the Hymns than here) a sense of rhythm and alliteration in Orphic poetry, which I’ve tried to carry over into English at least in spirit. All of these rules together result in something which, I hope you’ll agree, is very beautiful but also very clearly “old”. Just as our Orphic author wrote his poem to appear old, so too do my self-imposed rules end up giving the appearance of archaic English.

For a particularly perplexing example, in the original Greek, Madeła has

Δεῖπνα δὲ πορσύνοντο πολυξείνοιο τραπέζης
(234) ἥμενοι ἑξείης· πόθεεν δέ τε ἔργον ἕκαστος.
(233) Αὐτὰρ ἐπεὶ σίτοιο ποτοῦ θ’ ἅλις ἔπλετο θυμῷ,
(235) ἀνστάντες δ’ ἅμα πάντες ἀπὸ ψαμάθοιο βαθείης
ἤϊον ἔνθά τ’ ἔμιμνεν ὑπὲρ ψαμάθου ἁλίη νηῦς,
τήν ῥά τοτ’ εἰσορόωντες ἐθάμβεον. […]

Which she translates into English as

They prepared a dinner for a table with many guests and sat down in a row, each of them dying to start their work. Once their appetite for food and drink had been satisfied, (235) they all got up at once from the deep sand and went to where the sea-ship stood on the sands: when they saw it, they gaped at it in wonder.

While there is nothing that stands out as “wrong” to me, I did immediately notice that Madeła chose to rearrange a few lines in the Greek in order to flow better. Having now done the work myself, I can concede that the original Greek (at some parts) is not necessarily what we would consider “great writing”.

However, I think that making a judgement call that one of the scribes messed up, or even worse, that the original poet didn’t know what he was doing, is wrong. Strictly translating the original (unswapped, 233-234-235) line order with my method still preserves a readable-if-clunky verse:

And suppers they prepared for the many-guested table
but when of food and of drink enough was for the heart,
sitting in order, and each man desired the work,
and standing together everyone left the deep sand
and went where remaining upon the sand was the sea-faring ship,
she indeed then they looking at were amazed. […]

So, is it “great writing”? I can’t decide that for you. But is it “wrong”? It seems less-wrong than rearranging the lines and, even then, paraphrasing in places. My goal in doing this is to present a translation that is “better” maybe for studying and for getting a feel for the original, not necessarily one that is “better” for casual reading (which Madeła’s translation still does very well).

Without further delay, here are the first three-hundred-seven (307) lines of the Orphicaeum translation of Orpheus’ Argonautika, using Madeła’s critical edition of the Greek (with 233-235 in the proper order), meant to be as close to the Soul of the original as I could get it. This time next week, we will move forward with the ‘exegesis’ with the rest of our new, more strict edition.

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This is Part Three of an ongoing series. You can read Part One here and Part Two here.

Counting Orpheus and Jason, there are fifty-two men among the Argo’s crew in the Orphic Argonautica. This is not by coincidence: there are also fifty-two weeks in the year (and even though this poem is ancient, it is believed to be younger than the adoption of the seven-day week in the Roman Empire). As previously argued, the Year can be seen as a cycle of purification and also a microcosm of the Soul’s ascent.

Furthermore, in Platonic thought, The One (i.e. the ultimate source of everything) is also called The Good, and equated with the Form of Beauty. Using isopsephy, also widely used at the time the poem was written, we find that fifty-two is the sum of the word καλα, which is a plural word meaning “beautiful things” (sometimes translated as “noble deeds” to avoid the association with physical appearance).

Thus, our Argonauts as a single whole represent the cyclical purifications undergone by the Soul and also the specific beautiful things which it must acquire/refine. Though, as evidenced by the word καλα, they are still plural (i.e. Many) and not yet The One/Good beyond everything else, i.e. “Beauty Itself” (καλον). To achieve that, they must complete their quest for the Golden Fleece.

Dying to Start

Briefly though, between introducing the Heroes and launching the Argo, our poet tells us that these men gathered together at a single, long table to eat a dinner they’d prepared, “each of them dying to start their work”1. In the very next sentence, their hunger is satisfied and they stand up, eager to leave. It is no mistake that this should all take place in a single paragraph that exists to bridge what has come before and what will come next.

Before, we were getting acquainted with the various faculties of the Soul, or the various beautiful things that one’s Soul must cultivate in order to retrieve the reward. This liminal paragraph, though, especially because of that earlier quote, “each of them dying to start”, signifies that everything before this point was preparation: one must die for the Soul’s journey to truly start.

Launching the Argo

With the feast signifying death, and the Argonauts’ hunger sated, the crew heads to the ship. Most of the crew, upon seeing the ship, were awestruck and stood staring. “Argos, however, obeying the commands of his intellect, prepared to heave it up by means of wooden trunks and well-twisted ropes fastened to the stern”2. In Part One, it was said that Argos, as the ship’s architect, represents skill and the capacity to execute ideas. The Argo, as the ship that will carry all of these Heroes, represents the vehicle of the Soul.

In designing and building the ship, Argos was guided by Athena, a Goddess of wisdom and strategy. Here in launching it, he obeys his intellect, which we are told by Proclus “is Dionysian and truly an image of Dionysus”3. Macrobius, who variously quotes Orpheus in his syncretism of Apollo and Dionysus (and others) together as expressions of the Sun, says that “for the physicists Dionysus is ‘the mind of Zeus’ (Διὸς νοῦς)”4 and a few lines later he specifically says that Euboleus (meaning “good counsel”) is an Orphic epithet for the Sun5. These two authors are roughly contemporaneous to the believed date of Orpheus’ Argonautika6, lending further credence that all three were drawing from the same pool of belief.

These teachings may even be traceable to the Derveni Papyrus: its anonymous author is the earliest to quote Orphic poetry and, as such, the first to do so in a broad syncretization of all deities into one (like Macrobius much later), showing that this remained a central piece of Orphism for roughly a thousand years7.

So, more than just a generic capacity to execute skill and ideas, Argos’ skills and ideas are divine in origin, and he alone among the Soul’s faculties remains sure in the immediate wonder that follows one’s death. This, perhaps, is why the philosopher-initiate must spend their whole life in preparation: so that, even in these moments of overwhelming wonder, the Soul’s inner Argos may remain in-tune.

We are told next that Argos “called on everyone and exhorted them to get to work, and they obeyed eagerly”8, removing their armor, tying ropes around their chest to pull the ship, and marching forward toward the sea. The Argo was stuck, however, held fast by dry seaweed and refusing to move. This shows that, no matter how practiced one may be, you cannot “brute force” enlightenment.

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Beginning immediately where we left off:

“Abas’ widely known descendants, whom Pero bore” are introduced next, “the impeccable sons Laodokos, Talaos, and Areios”1. Although they are named here as the sons of Abas, they are more widely known as the sons of a man named Bias. The etymology for our English word “bias” is unrelated, and the ancient Greek name comes from the word for “life” and generally means “force” or “strength”, as in “life force” or “the vitality of life”. By changing the lineage of these brothers, our Orphic poet tries to make it so that they are perhaps assumed into the lineage that eventually produces Theseus. (There is another Abas, from Thrace, but he is mentioned as father of the earlier Kanthos.)

In addition to assuming a lineage sacred to Athenians, the brothers gain, through the name Abas, a further sense of holiness or purity. Abas means “guileless” or “good-hearted”. It may also be linked to the word abaton, made from the prefix ‘a-’ denoting “not” and the word baino, “to step”, essentially meaning “that which is untrodden” or “an inaccessible place”. The word abaton in ancient Greek was used specifically to refer to two types of holy site. Within Greece, an abaton was the part of a temple to Asklepios where patrons suffering an affliction would go to sleep, in the hopes of receiving guidance or healing from the God in their dreams. The word abaton was also used to describe the sites sacred to Osiris in Egypt where it was said that the parts of his dismembered body were buried.

Thus, through changing the lineage of the three brothers, the poet shifts their allegorical descent from one of vitality in the world of generation to one of pure and holy sanctuary. As for the brothers themselves, we shall proceed in order. Laodokos’ name comes from Laos meaning “people”. The usual word for people, though, is demos. Laos implies a shared connection between the people, which is not the same as citizenship (demos) or ethnicity (ethnos). The second half of Laodokos comes from dechomai and means “to recieve” or “to accept”. Talaos comes from a root meaning “to bear” as in “to endure/suffer”. Areios derives either directly from Ares, or perhaps from Areion which means “Martial” or “Warlike” and is the name of a mythical divine horse.

That these three Argonauts are given as brothers, and that they are sons of a man named Abas, tells us that they act as the “temple guardians” within the Soul. Laodokos, as the receiver of people, is that part of the Soul which recognizes and accepts (or internalizes) sacred truths or Mysteries. Talaos, as the one who endures, is the Soul’s capacity to bear the weight of those Mysteries. Talaos may also be suffering in the sense of enduring the Mysteries alone, i.e. observing secrecy among the uninitiated. Areios, because he is Warlike, is the militant defender of the Soul’s abaton, the Mysteries accepted and endured by his brothers.

“Amphidamas, Aleos’ son, came too”2. Amphidamas is a compound word. Amphi means “on both sides”, like an amphibean “lives on both sides” (inside and outside) of the water. It can also mean “around”. Damas means “to tame” or “to conquer”. Together, they suggest that Amphidamas is “tamer of both sides”. In contrast to the Dioscuri, who represent the harmony or meeting of opposites, Amphidamas is “tamer of both sides” in that he is a bottleneck. Amphidamas is that part of the Soul which actively regulates or mediates the downward and upward pulls on the Soul.

“Next came Erginos, who left behind Branchos’ corn-rich fields and the bastions of fortified Miletos”3 to come aboard the Argo. His name comes from the word ergon, meaning “work”. Branchos is not a location, but a mythical figure: he was a legendary seer, and a lover of Apollo, who established an Oracle at Didyma (nearby Miletos). Erginos’ work, then, is to plant and cultivate divine gifts, and store them in the fortifications of the city. Miletos is also notable as the eponymous home of Milesian philosophy and the likely origin of the early Orphic cult at Olbia, suggesting that these fortifications are representative of the integration of the fruits of this work into one’s own philosophical and religious lifestyle. Thus, our poet is telling us that Erginos specifically represents the Soul’s capacity for theurgy or “God-work”.

Then “Neleus’ child Periklymenos arrived”4. Periklymenos is the grandson of Poseidon, and his divine grandfather gave him the ability to shapeshift. Periklymenos comes from root words meaning “Encompassing Fame”. His name, his abilities, and from whom he received those abilities all serve as hints to tell us that Periklymenos in Orpheus’ Argonautica represents the fluid capacity of the Soul to adapt, and like water, it’s ability to expand to fill any given container.

We meet next “Quick Meleager, whom Oineus and rosy-armed Althaia bore”5. To understand Meleager, like many of the Argonauts, we must understand his parents. Oineus comes from the word for “wine”, and Althaia comes from a word meaning “to heal”. Meleager is from Kalydon, where the mythical boar lived, and it was his fate to kill the boar with Atalanta’s help. However, others took issue with this and fought Meleager, and he killed his own uncles. In order to stop him, Althaia placed a piece of wood on the fire that she was told by the Fates would kill Meleager if ever it burned. Meleager, then, is quick because he represents that part of the Soul which tends toward passion.

Then comes our third Iphiklos: “he was Althaia’s brother, who was exceptionally devoted to pretty Meleager, and who taught him splendid deeds”6. Immediately it is obvious that this Iphiklos is paired with Meleager. By saying that Iphiklos is devoted to “pretty” Meleager, the poet is trying to draw an association in our minds between Beauty and “the Good”: in Platonic thought, “the Good” is “the One”, and the nature of each thing’s “Good-ness” manifests itself in that thing’s beauty. By being devoted to pretty Meleager, and by teaching him splendid deeds, Iphiklos must then represent the Soul’s faculty to recognize and cultivate divine potential. That he is Althaia’s brother, perhaps killed by Meleager later, serves as a warning not to be consumed by passion: one must not lose sight of the Good, and of the potential to realize it.

Next is Asterion, “the child of famous Kometes who lived in Peiresia”7 where two rivers join and continue to the sea as one. His name comes from the root aster, which means “star”, and his father’s name shares its root with that of our word “comet”. Peiresia comes from a root meaning “limit”. Asterion, thus, is that fragment of Starry Sky within us all, who lives at the “limit” of one’s consciousness, where the two rivers must meet before continuing.

We are then told that “Eurydamas had travelled from Lake Boibeis, near the Peneios and milk-rich Meliboia”8. His name comes from roots meaning “wide” or “broad” and “tamer”. If the earlier Amphidamas is “tamer of both sides” and a bottleneck, then Eurydamas as the “wide tamer” acts as a fence: rather than a strict leash that chokes when you pull, Eurydamas is that part of the Soul which provides a framework, or a safe area within which to wander. Also, Lake Boibeis and the Peneios are each sacred waters, with Boibeis being associated with Athena and wisdom, and Peneios being the river where Apollo purified himself after slaying the Python. “Milk-rich Meliboia” is also notable, as Meliboia comes from words meaning “honey” and “cattle/ox”. Milk and honey is a common libation in ancient Greece, and it may have played a special role in Orphic initiations. Eurydamas then, as a whole, represents the pastoral faculty of the Soul.

“The next to arrive was Elatos’ child Polyphemos, who had previously distinguished himself among the heroes for his manly deeds”9, not to be confused with the same-named Cyclops in Homer’s Odyssey. His name comes from root words meaning “many” and “speech” or “word”, suggesting that he is “many-voiced”. His father’s name could come from a word meaning “to drive/strike”, or perhaps from another meaning “pine tree”. These things, taken together with his own distinguishment by his own manly deeds, tells us that our Polyphemus is representative of that part of the Soul which is driven to seek out (or stand tall in) the praises of the Many.

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The story of Jason and the Argonauts is one that is often overlooked. The version told by Apollonius of Rhodes is the earliest surviving epic recounting the tale, which dates from the Hellenistic period. This relatively late date is likely why it’s often overlooked. Indeed, an even later and perhaps more-overlooked version is the one we’ll be examining today.

The Orphic Argonautica, also known as the Argonautica by Orpheus, dates from the 4th century CE and, as its title suggests, is an Orphic retelling of the epic, told in the first-person by the great theologian himself. The story is similar in many respects to other versions, like Apollonius of Rhodes or one by Valerius Flaccus, except that in Orpheus’ version, his own role is given more importance. In the Orphic Argonautica, it is also said that the Argo is the first ship ever constructed. This too is different from Apollonius’ more famous version, but it is not a detail fabricated by the Orphic author, as others before him have made the same claim.

Now is the time to say that the Orphic Argonautica is not meant to be “just” an epic, and especially not a cheap imitation of earlier epic poetry as it is often dismissed, nor is it only “Orphic” by coincidence. Rather, the story of the Argonauts and their quest for the Golden Fleece is an allegorical tale, describing the Soul’s quest for immortality in the form of ascension to the Gods. The essay that follows is a systematic interpretation of the Orphic Argonautica1 as such.

Orpheus, the narrator and ‘author’ of the poem, opens by invoking Apollo, reciting an Orphic cosmogony, and listing other things he is known for, all addressed to Musaeus. In doing so, he establishes his authority: he is essentially saying I am the one who has been to Hades and back, I am the one who revealed the Mysteries to humankind, and I have more to tell you, my loyal student.

His addressing the reader as Musaeus serves in place of the usual ‘Orphic seal’: “I will speak to those for whom it is lawful”. In previous essays, it was argued that this seal, and secrecy in general, is used as a tool to assess whether (or ensure that) the reader / interlocutor is in the right state of mind, i.e. one of pious, reverent curiosity and wonder. By addressing the reader as Musaeus, the author skips the seal and assumes already that the reader is a student of Orpheus. This may suggest that the Orphic Argonautica was secret, intended for a small, specific audience, which lends further credence to it being actually Orphic and not just an imitation. Indeed, its late date (relative to Orphism) is actually quite early (relative to its reemergence), further suggesting that it was well-hidden or at least not widely circulated. While the Orphic Argonautica is dated to the 4th c. CE, it was not found and copied until the 15th century, over a thousand years later.

After the invocation, cosmogony, and recounting of Orpheus’ major milestones, the story begins first with relevant backstory and then with Jason arriving to Orpheus’ cave in Thrace, asking him for help on his quest to retrieve the Golden Fleece. Jason has already gathered his crew at this point, but he tells Orpheus that “they have no intention of sailing towards the barbarian tribes if you are not there”. A few lines earlier, Jason asks Orpheus to “show us the paths over the virgin sea and assist the heroes who are waiting for your lyre and divine voice”2.

If the lengthy introduction serves as the Orphic seal, then this conversation is our first revelation. Jason, who has already gathered a crew to sail, represents “us”, the reader-initiate. More specifically, Jason is the “I” that one thinks of when we think of ourselves. He is, to connect another allegory, Plato’s Charioteer, who pilots the vehicle of the soul, fighting his hardest to steer the horses toward the Good. Here, though, Jason’s crew will not set sail without Orpheus. The Argo is the first ship ever built; it is the prototype, or perhaps the archetype. This version of the allegory represents the ideal version. The ideal initiate has such mastery over the vehicle of their own soul that it refuses to wander without divine guidance.

However, Orpheus plays double-duty as the specific Orphic savior figure: he is guiding the Argonauts across the unknown depths, yes, but what he will help them secure on the other side is the Golden Fleece, which will help Jason reclaim his kingdom.

Our Orphic psychopomp leads us not only toward a favorable afterlife, but toward reclaiming our own share of rule. As the Gold tablets say, “You have become a God now instead of a mortal”3. The Golden Fleece represents immortality in the form of the soul’s deification. The ideal initiate, upon death, transcends mortality and reclaims one’s own share of divinity.

Orpheus, in his reply to Jason, almost turns him away. He starts by asking why he should do it, saying that his life has been troubled enough, and that his mother has freed him from troubles to later die of old age at home. This is an inversion of the more famous dilemma which Achilles was presented: will you die young and be remembered forever, or will you live safe at home and die old? The Thracian bard shows us his mortal side, allowing his own Charioteer to loosen his grip for a moment and prefer earthly comforts to incorporeal immortality. However, very quickly, he reminds himself and the reader that “it is impossible to escape what is laid down by destiny”4 and accepts the charge, heading to the crowded beach camp of the Argonauts.

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We are hard at work on projects that are important for Orphicaeum. Rather than divide effort between the projects and the newsletter, it makes more sense to stay buried in the important work and to let the newsletter fall to the side while things settle into place. However, instead of completely foregoing this week’s newsletter or trying to rush something out half-heartedly, here is an excerpt from one of those projects. This post is not paywalled, so feel free to share it. If you’ve come here from somewhere else, please read about Who and What Orphicaeum is.

Orpheus, Famous-in-Name

 The earliest discovered reference to Orpheus is a fragment from the poet Ibycus that only says the following two words: onomaklyton Orphēn, which means “Name-Famed Orpheus” or “Orpheus, Famous-in-Name”. Orpheus was famous indeed, cited by many ancient authors as being the first among the Greeks to learn the names and rites of the Gods.

 Our religion is called “Orphism” because it is said to have been founded by Orpheus himself, and because the sacred texts and teachings are said to have been written by him. So then, it is only natural to begin our journey into Orphism by first becoming familiar with Orpheus.

The Life of Orpheus

 The most common version of Orpheus’ story is that he was son of the Muse Calliope, and fathered by Oeagrus, King of Thrace. Some sources say, however, that his true father was the God Apollo. Orpheus is usually considered Thracian because of his mortal father, but Oeagrus and Calliope were married in Greece: specifically Pimpleia, which is at the foot of Mount Olympus. Pimpleia is where Orpheus was born and lived.

 The Myths say that, while spending time on Parnassus, Orpheus learned to play the lyre from Apollo, and his mother Calliope taught him how to sing poetry to the music. Orpheus became legendary for his ability to tame wild animals with his song. It is even said that boulders and trees joined in procession with the animals and Orpheus as he wandered playing his rhapsodies.

 Orpheus, because of his skills in music and poetry, and his knowledge of the mysteries, was asked by Jason to join the crew of Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece.

 Onboard the Argo, sometimes said to be the first ship ever made, Orpheus’ job was to use his music to set the pace for the rowers, and to keep the crew’s morale high. Their first stop was to the cave of Chiron, where the Centaur fed them and challenged Orpheus to a musical contest, which Orpheus won. Chiron gave him a leopard skin as a prize, and the Argonauts left to continue.

 On Lemnos, the Queen Hypsypyle and the local women seduced Jason and the Argonauts, so much that if Orpheus did not play an enchanting song, they may have forgotten their quest. But Orpheus did play, and the Argonauts continued.

 Later, when they arrived at Colchis and approached the grove sacred to Artemis, where the Golden Fleece was located, the Argonauts relied on Orpheus, his Mysteries, and his music. At first, they were blocked from entering the grove, but Orpheus performed a ritual invoking the Erinyes, Pandora, Hekate, and Artemis. The ritual succeeded, and the Argonauts were allowed entry into the grove, where a large serpent coiled the tree and guarded the Golden Fleece. Orpheus played his lyre and invoked Hypnos (Sleep), who overcame the serpent, allowing Jason to retrieve the Golden Fleece.

 On the return home, there were many struggles, and the Argonauts sought a brief escape on Circe’s isle. Circe would not let Medea enter her palace, though. Circe told the Argonauts that before Medea could enter, Orpheus must purify her on the shores of Maleia.

 As the crew continued onward, the Sirens tried to lure them. Orpheus, though, played his lyre and sang a melody so loud and inspiring that the crew could not be distracted from rowing. After a few more struggles, they made their way to the furthest shore of Maleia, and Orpheus performed sacrifices to purify Jason and Medea.

 With the Argonauts’ quest for the Golden Fleece complete, Orpheus returned to his cave.

 Eventually, Orpheus met and fell in love with Eurydice. On their wedding day, as she was picking flowers to prepare, Eurydice was bitten by a venomous snake and died. Orpheus played his lyre mournfully, and even the trees wept. But no length of time was long enough; Orpheus was not ready to accept that Eurydice was gone forever, and he set out to the Underworld to confront its King & Queen, and to demand that They return Eurydice to him in the daylight above.

 He plucked his lyre and sang a melody that made his pain clear: If Eurydice isn’t coming back to life with Orpheus, then Orpheus might as well just die to be with her. The song was so powerful, his love so evident, that nothing was left unmoved; Sisyphus stopped rolling his rock, Tantalus for a moment forgot his hunger. Even Pluto and Persephone were brought to tears. How could anyone deny the request of love like this?

 Pluto and Persephone granted Orpheus his one wish, with one condition: Eurydice will be allowed to live again, but only if Orpheus leads her out of the Underworld blindly, without ever looking back to assess her progress. This was as good a deal as any, so they made their way toward the surface of the Earth.

 They made it impossibly far; they were steps from the entrance of the cave when Orpheus became suddenly worried again that he might lose Eurydice forever. Anxious to see her again, Orpheus turned around. In that same moment, Eurydice was pulled back to the Underworld so quickly that, even though they had reached for each other, they were unable to touch. Eurydice was only able to let loose one final “Farewell!” as she faded into the darkness.

 Orpheus was stricken again by an intense depression. He begged Charon to take him again, to no avail. He sat at the shore of the Styx for a full week without anything to eat or drink, before eventually giving up and going home.

 Orpheus never gave up on his marriage vows, however: Orpheus refused for the rest of his mortal life to lie with another woman, instead keeping the company of other young men of Thrace.

 However, Orpheus was killed for this. One morning, while Orpheus was playing his lyre, singing a hymn to the Sun for all the rocks and trees and birds and beasts, a group of Ciconian Maenads interrupted him, angry at his vow. They threw stones and spears, but the power of Orpheus’ music was impenetrable and he remained unharmed.

 The Maenads took to making their own music, described as a discordant cacophony of their flutes, horns, tambourines, claps, and yells. Their noisemaking overpowered the voice and lyre of the Argonaut Bard, and their weapons began to damage him.

 Before they turned to the mythic poet, the women destroyed every animal that had gathered to hear. Only when they were alone with corpses and Orpheus did they turn their blood-soaked hands to kill him.

 They had no weapons, but they took branches and clods of dirt and their Thyrsi and began to beat Orpheus. The Maenads noticed workers in fields nearby, and they chased the workers away from their tools. With these plows and rakes, the women murdered Orpheus. Ovid says they did so “while his outstretched hands implored their mercy - the first and only time his voice had no persuasion.”

 The environment mourned the loss of Orpheus: the trees shed their leaves, as if to rip out their hair, and rivers swelled with their own tears. The women dismembered Orpheus and scattered his limbs. His head, on top of his lyre, floated down the Hebrus river to the island of Lesbos, singing and telling oracles along the way.

 The Maenads that had murdered Orpheus were punished by Dionysus, turned to trees in the exact place where they stood. Their toes turned to roots, and the harder they panicked and tried to escape, the quicker their metamorphosis into wood took over.

 There is also an alternative myth, in which Orpheus, instead of being murdered by Maenads, is struck down by the thunderbolt of Zeus for revealing the Mysteries to humanity. Death by lightning strike in myth is a common method of apotheosis, or a mortal becoming a God.

 Orpheus was given funeral rites by the people of Lesbos, and they established a Bacchic oracle there. His limbs were collected by the Muses and buried in Libethra, where Orpheus was given a tomb. There he received honors as if he were a God.

 The Libethrans later received word from a Thracian oracle of Dionysus that a boar would destroy the city when the Sun saw the bones of Orpheus. When the Sun dried up the river, exposing Orpheus’ grave, and then a flood wiped out the city, the tomb of Orpheus was moved nearby to the bigger city of Dion.

 In the afterlife, Orpheus was met with a brief respite from the cycle of grievous toil, which he spent with Eurydice. Eventually, he chose to live a life as a Swan, and he drank from the waters of Lethe.

 To quote Thomas Taylor, “thus much for the life of Orpheus.”

The Orphic Logoi

 The ancient Orphic religion was centered around teachings and texts believed in antiquity to be handed down by the Gods themselves through Orpheus. These texts and teachings were called Hieroi Logoi, which is usually translated into English as “Sacred Discourses”. Almost all of these ancient texts are lost or fragmentary today, and the only surviving whole texts are relatively late, dating from the Common Era.

 That’s not to say that Orphism itself is lost to us; that is far from the truth. What does survive (whether whole, fragmentary, or testimony) is substantial, and certainly sufficient to practice the religion. Surviving texts include the Orphic Hymns, the Bone & Gold Tablets, the Orphic Argonautika, and the Lithika. The Hieroi Logoi in 24 Rhapsodies, a Hellenistic-era recompilation of earlier Orphic poetry, survives in fragments, as does the Derveni Papyrus, which itself does not claim to be written by Orpheus but rather is an anonymous exegesis on an Orphic poem, dating from the 5th or 4th century BCE.

 In ancient times, however, there were many texts said to be written by Orpheus, and they varied greatly in topic. Some were about divination, some were about natural events like earthquakes, some were mythological, etc. While the contents are lost to us, we are fortunate to have various titles. Below is a list of surviving titles of lost works attributed to Orpheus:

• Dodekaeterides - “On the Cycle of Twelve Years”

• Ephemerides - “Journals”

• Peri Seismon - “On Earthquakes”

• Peri Drapeton - “On Escaping”

• Peri Embaseon - “On Embarking”  

• Peri Katarkhon - “On Beginnings”

• Astronomia - “Astronomy” 

• Meteora - “On Those Floating in Mid-Air”

• Georgia - “Georgics” 

• Chresmoi - “Oracles”

• Ammoskopoika / Ammoskopia - “Divination by Sand”

• Oioskopika / Oiothytika - “Divination by Eggs” 

• Lithika - “On Stones” (Likely different from the Lithika that survives today.)  

• Physika - “On Nature”

• Idiophye - “On Peculiar Nature”

• Hierostolika - “On Sacred Vestments”

• Katazostikon - “Girdles”  

• Katharmoi - “Purifications”  

• Kleseis Kosmikai - “Cosmic Calls”  

• Nuktelia - “Nocturnals”  

• Horkoi - “Oaths”  

• Thumpolikon - “Sacrificial”  

• Teletas - “On Mysteries”  

• Thronismous Metrous - “Enthronements of the Mother”  

• Bakkhika - “Bacchic Matters”  

• Epigrammata - “Epigrams”

• Soteria - “Salvations”  

• Onomastikon - “On Naming”  

• Eis Haidou Katabasis - “Descent Into Hades”

• Korubantikon - “Korybantic”  

• Triasmous / Triagmois - “On Triads”

• Eis ton Arithmon Hymnos - “Hymn to the Number”

• Krater - “Mixing Bowl”

• Mikroteros Krater - “Smaller Mixing Bowl”  

• Lyre - “Lyre”  

• Peplon - “Robe”  

• Sphaira - “Sphere”  

• Diktuon - “Net”  

• Nomoi - “Customs” or “Laws”  

• Neoteuktika / Naoteuktika - “On New Constructions” or “On Constructing Temples”

• Chorographia - “Maps”

 Later, we will study individual texts and fragments more in-depth. For now, we will look at a broader question: what were the shared commonalities between these Orphic texts? Obviously, they are all ascribed to Orpheus. Beyond that, though, there emerges a set of core beliefs, and they are as follows:

• The Universe is a single, complex, divine entity, full of Gods.

• Every living thing has a mortal body and an immortal Soul.

• Souls undergo a process of transmigration through many mortal lives.

• The purpose of each mortal life is to purify the Soul.

• Each time a Soul reaches the afterlife, its purity is assessed.

• Pure Souls are freed from the cycle of transmigration.

• Freed Pure Souls ascend in unity to the Gods forever.

 These beliefs act as a foundation which grounds the perspective and the life of an Orphic. The specific path of purification is different for each Soul, but the process remains the same: the Orphikos bios or “Orphic life” consists of asceticism or self-denial. In total respect of the Soul, the Orphic life is a vegetarian one, which in modern terms is closer to veganism: no meat, no eggs, and no leather or wool. Milk is a common libation in ancient Greece, and there is no mention of an Orphic restriction on milk, so it is safe to assume that dairy is okay.

 More than just dietary restrictions and a general avoidance of bloodshed, an Orphic also strives to live in harmony with nature and the world at large. In a paradoxical way, the myths of Orpheus’ death are a warning: Orpheus is someone who, as revealer of the mysteries and also as someone who refused to remarry, did not just “harmonize” but instead challenged norms. In the versions where he is struck by Lightning, his martyrdom serves as punishment for the revelation. In versions where he is torn apart by Maenads, his death is punishment for swearing off Love.

 Thus, the Life, Logoi and enduring Legacy of Orpheus are the perfect entry into the religion of Orphism: they act as a mirror, reflecting the Soul’s isolation by the trials of the mortal world, its purification from them, and its ultimate purpose of reuniting with the Gods.

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The earliest-dated Orphica are the Bone Tablets of Olbia, from the 5th century BCE1. Although these were not found in graves, they will set the stage for our investigation. The Bone Tablets contain Orphic symbolism, and they are often considered precursors to the Gold Tablets, which were more elaborate, more widespread geographically, and came later. The Bone Tablets also contain the earliest written proof of Orphics, with one tablet reading:

Life. Death. Life. Truth. Dio[nysus]. Orphics.2

The city where those tablets were found, Olbia (on the north coast of the Black Sea), is one of the largest and best-known Greek colonies, founded in the 7th century BCE by settlers from Miletus3. The Bone Tablets were all found within the central temenos or sacred precinct, which was approximately forty square meters, with a small building and altar dedicated to Zeus or Athena in the center, and a path leading away to a temple built in the 5th century BCE to Apollo Delphinios (although where specifically the tablets were found within all this is unclear)4. There was also a Western temenos area, which had sanctuaries to Zeus, Hermes, the Dioscuri, Aphrodite, Apollo Iatros, and the Mother of the Gods5.

M.L. West says that the Orphic cult at Olbia was

not an open state cult in which all citizens took part at times fixed by the calendar. Nor was it merely a minor fringe cult. It was a prominent but circumscribed part of the town’s religious life, requiring an act of initiation from would-be participants, but accessible to all who wished to come, even non-Greeks. It attracted a significant following, and the public part of its ceremonies provided a spectacle. Its status is not really unlike that of the Eleusinian cult in Attica. 6

This tells us that Orphism was a recognized part of religious life in Olbia, but treated with a special reverence which implies a (negligible) level of exclusivity. West compares the cult to the Eleusinian Mysteries, which were similarly secret in content and open in participation around the same period of time. Continuing about the Bone Tablets, he says:

The little bone tablets scattered about the town seem to be connected with this cult. We may guess that they were membership tokens - bone chips symbolizing participation in common sacrifices. The graffiti are consistent with this. They tell us that the initiates rejoiced in specially revealed knowledge, ἀλήθεια, connected with the soul and with a life after death, and that they honored the name of the prophet Orpheus.7

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as they say in the mysteries, ‘the thyrsus-bearers are many, but the mystics few’; and these mystics are, I believe, those who have been true philosophers.1

So sayeth Socrates in the Phaedo of Plato. But what does he mean by this? Fortunately for us, a thyrsus is typically associated with the worship of Dionysus, and the word translated here as “mystics” is “Bacchoi”. This tells us that “the mysteries” are Bacchic, and indeed Olympiodorus specifically identifies this as a quote of Orpheus2. Thus, the quote above refers to the Orphic variety of Bacchic mysteries, and the sentiment boils down to something along the lines of “many talk the talk, but few walk the walk”. Socrates clarifies that he considers philosophy to be the mysticism, the “true” form of worship or ‘walking the walk’.

This philosophical interpretation of the mysteries, which prioritizes cultivation of the soul, finds a mythical parallel in the dismemberment of Dionysus. Plutarch, commenting on that myth, expands this viewpoint:

the stories told about the sufferings and dismemberment of Dionysus and the outrageous assaults of the Titans upon him, and their punishment and blasting by thunderbolt after they had tasted his blood - all this is a myth which in its inner meaning has to do with rebirth. For to that faculty in us which is unreasonable and disordered and violent, and does not come from the gods, but from evil spirits, the ancients gave the name Titans, that is to say, those that are punished and subjected to correction. . . .3

Plutarch here is saying that it is necessary to suppress that within oneself which is unreasonable or chaotic, and he relates this to the mythological dismemberment of Dionysus. This implies that, in opposition to our Titanic nature, our Dionysian nature is that which is reasonable, ordered, and non-violent. Proclus further elucidates this position in his commentary on Plato’s Cratylus:

The intellect in us is Dionysian and truly an image of Dionysus. Therefore, anyone that transgresses it and, like the Titans, scatters its undivided nature by fragmented falsehood, this person clearly sins against Dionysus himself, even more than those who transgress against external images of the God, to the extent that the intellect more than other things is akin to the God.4

Proclus even goes so far as to say that the intellect more closely resembles Dionysus than any statue or icon, and to transgress against intellect is therefore worse than transgression against those “external images”. The three of these excerpts in succession suggest that to escape reincarnation, it is paramount to cultivate one’s intellect and at the same time correct one’s chaotic or unreasonable urges.

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Taken together, these things seem to be contradictory: If the religion was revealed, it was revealed to Orpheus. Otherwise, if Orpheus isn’t one historical author, and anyone could write a text that passes under the name of Orpheus, what even makes these things a revelation at all, and not just popular philosophy2? This essay will reconcile this contradiction by arguing that the actual authors of these texts are less important. The fact that these texts do survive attributed to Orpheus, even though other attributions were known, implies a sort of spiritual acceptance of the teachings that is equivalent to revelation, whether or not one believes in an actual particular (or series) of revelation event(s).

To begin, we must look at some of the people named as the “actual authors” of Orphic poems. Herodotus tells us that a man named Onomacritus was kicked out of Athens due to his interpolation of his own forged oracles into copies of Musaeus:

They had come up to Sardis with Onomacritus, an Athenian diviner who had set in order the oracles of Musaeus. They had reconciled their previous hostility with him; Onomacritus had been banished from Athens by Pisistratus' son Hipparchus, when he was caught by Lasus of Hermione in the act of interpolating into the writings of Musaeus an oracle showing that the islands off Lemnos would disappear into the sea.3

Musaeus is often seen as a pupil or son of Orpheus. This, with Herodotus’ tendency to keep reverent silence4 , could mean that his account of Onomacritus might also be read as an accusation of Orphic forgery5. Indeed, we find Onomacritus named by other sources, such as Clement of Alexandria, who also gives a few more names and even titles of works:

And the Oracles ascribed to Musaeus are said to be the production of Onomacritus, and the Crateres of Orpheus the production of Zopyrus of Heraclea, and The Descent to Hades that of Prodicus of Samos. Ion of Chios relates in the Triagmi, that Pythagoras ascribed certain works [of his own] to Orpheus. Epigenes, in his book respecting The Poetry attributed to Orpheus, says that The Descent to Hades and the Sacred Discourse were the production of Cecrops the Pythagorean; and the Peplus and the Physics of Brontinus.6

Clement, as an early Christian thinker, was not met with the same issue that we are. As someone from the outside with no interest, he feels these texts are better identified by the men who lived to write them. To him, they are not divinely inspired at all. For us, this view will not suffice.

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I shall speak to whom it is lawful; put on the doors, you profane!1

It is some variation of this seal that began many of the works of Orpheus2. The seal very clearly communicates an idea: that there are separate categories of reader, and that one is preferable to the other. If we assume that “to whom it is lawful” to speak are the initiated, then logically it follows that the imperative to “put on the doors” is meant for the uninitiated, or those not ‘in-the-know.’ “You profane” is not meant to be an insult to curious outsiders, however; it is instead a warning, that anyone who continues to read onward should be doing so with a pure soul and pious reverence. These texts are to be read carefully and inquisitively, or not at all.

It is natural, having read this seal and been told that it began much of the Orphic corpus, to assume that secrecy was a big part of Orphism. This essay will argue that secrecy was employed selectively to act as a small but necessary barrier to entry. This use allows the secrecy to work in such a way as to strengthen bonds in the community as well as inspire curiosity in non-initiates, while being a ‘barrier to entry’ insofar as it is used to discern between those who have the proper mindset and those who do not. This, as the seal warns, is the real barrier: if “you profane” refers to those with the wrong mindset, whether they are initiated or not, then it must mean that it is lawful to speak to those with the right mindset, whether they are initiated or not.

In Herodotus’ Histories, while writing about Egyptian practices regarding wool, the author comments on Orphism:

They wear linen tunics with fringes hanging about the legs, called “calasiris,” and loose white woolen mantles over these. But nothing woolen is brought into temples, or buried with them: that is impious. They agree in this with practices called Orphic and Bacchic, but in fact Egyptian and Pythagorean: for it is impious, too, for one partaking of these rites to be buried in woolen wrappings. There is a sacred legend (ἱρὸς λόγος) about this.3

The phrase translated here as “sacred legend” is the same one used by Orphics to refer to their myths, to the point where it became the title of a later, Hellenistic-period recompilation of those myths4. Earlier in the same book of Histories, Herodotus invokes ‘pious secrecy’ while discussing a feast of Isis:

There, after the sacrifice, all the men and women lament, in countless numbers; but it is not pious for me to say who it is for whom they lament.5

Later but still in the same book of Histories, Herodotus invokes ‘pious secrecy’ a few times within a few passages:

There is also at Saïs the burial-place of one whose name I think it impious to mention in speaking of such a matter; it is in the temple of Athena, behind and close to the length of the wall of the shrine. Moreover, great stone obelisks stand in the precinct; and there is a lake nearby, adorned with a stone margin and made in a complete circle; it is, as it seemed to me, the size of the lake at Delos which they call the Round Pond.

On this lake they enact by night the story of the god's sufferings, a rite which the Egyptians call the Mysteries. I could say more about this, for I know the truth, but let me preserve a discreet silence. Let me preserve a discreet silence, too, concerning that rite of Demeter which the Greeks call Thesmophoria, except as much of it as I am not forbidden to mention.6

In all of these excerpts of Herodotus, there are two elements to the same common thread, which is spelled out for us in the previous quote: there is Herodotus’ pious silence, and that which he is silent about, i.e. the Mysteries. He makes frequent reference to them, however, including to specify which things that he won’t say about them. This is evidence for the point that secrecy was a tool employed selectively.

The ‘selective employment’ of secrecy by Herodotus is the same in all three excerpts we have seen. In the first excerpt, Herodotus claims that refusing to bring wool into temples or to be buried in wool is in agreement with “Orphic and Bacchic” practices, which are in reality “Egyptian and Pythagorean,” before only mentioning the ἱρὸς λόγος in passing. Herodotus does not feel the need to conceal the practices themselves, and freely announces that these are Orphic and Pythagorean, both of which are groups usually associated with strict secrecy. Radcliffe G. Edmonds III suggests that Herodotus in Histories is equating Osiris with Dionysus:

When discussing the rites of Osiris in Egypt, Herodotus famously refuses to provide details, claiming that it is not licit for him to speak of them, οὔ μοι ὅσιόν ἐστι λέγειν. Since the rites of Osiris in Egypt do not, from the available evidence, seem to have been unspeakable, many have hypothesized that Herodotus is identifying them with Greek rituals that do have such a taboo. Osiris was often identified with Dionysos, and the stories of their dismemberments were easy for mythic narrators to conflate. We need not follow the conjectures of scholars ancient and modern who have postulated that the Greek rituals actually came from Egypt (or vice versa!) to understand Herodotus’ evidence as indicating that he knew of rituals having to do with the dismemberment (and probably rebirth) of Dionysos that he felt merited a degree of ritual silence.7

As Edmonds is quick to say, it is not necessary to argue for the veracity of Herodotus’ claims in order to argue that he believes in the use of ritual silence in reverence of Dionysus, whom he believes to be the same as Osiris.

However, as previously stated, Herodotus is only secret in the first excerpt about the “sacred legend” which would elucidate what he is explaining. He seems not to be hesitant to reveal the practical information that can be learned from it. In the second excerpt, referring to a feast of Isis, Herodotus uses the secrecy again not to hide what is being done but the why behind it. It isn’t an issue to say everyone performs a sacrifice and laments, but it would be an issue to divulge for whom they lament, likely due to another “sacred legend” or ἱρὸς λόγος. Similarly, in the third excerpt, Herodotus uses secrecy to say that he cannot say whose tomb is in the temple at Saïs. He says there is a lake there, and at night by this lake, they reenact the God’s suffering, which he will also keep secret.

If it is Orphic ἱεροὶ λόγοι and his obligation to them that prevents Herodotus from sharing certain information, then it makes sense that he, believing Osiris and Dionysus to be the same, would keep the Egyptian rites secret even if the Egyptians themselves did not. Furthermore, because the Egyptians did not, Herodotus is able to be as selective as he wants with his obligation to secrecy, going so far as to reveal everything except the part most crucial to a complete understanding, which may also be the biggest similarity between the Greek and Egyptian rites: the why.

Just as Herodotus employs this silence, so too does Plutarch in his Quaestiones Convivales, even going so far as to reference the former. In Book 2, Plutarch mentions that he had abstained from eating egg for a long time, and that others, specifically an Epicurean named Alexander, had ridiculed him for it as if he held Orphic or Pythagorean opinions8. Alexander then asks the age-old question “which came first; the bird or the egg?” which Sylla replies is a world-shaking engine in itself. Alexander dismisses this view and says the question is of little import. Firmus, a family member of Plutarch’s, accepts the challenge to answer the question. His answer is philosophical and ontological, using the egg as a symbol. At the end of the argument, Plutarch lets us know that he was proud of his answer, and Firmus invokes the authority of Orpheus:

And with a smile continued he, “I speak to those that are acquainted with the mystical and sacred discourse (ἱερὸν λόγον) of Orpheus9, who not only affirms the egg to be before the bird, but makes it the first being in the whole world. The other parts, because deep mysteries (as Herodotus would say), we shall now pass by; but let us look upon the various kinds of animals, and we shall find almost every one beginning from an egg,—fowls and fishes; land animals, as lizards; amphibious, as crocodiles; some with two legs, as a cock; some without any, as a snake; and some with many, as a locust. And therefore in the solemnly feast of Bacchus it is very well done to dedicate an egg, as the emblem of that which begets and contains every thing in itself.”10

In a paper on Plutarch’s use of silence, Peter Van Nuffelen writes from the viewpoint that Plutarch is skeptical of Orphism:

Firmus, a relative of Plutarch's, apparently adheres to Orphism. This does not really ease Plutarch's earlier concern that his abstinence from eggs would be unjustifiedly seen as Orphic. On the contrary, it would rather reinforce this prejudice. In the second place, Firmus' appeal to the mystical and absolute truth of Orphism did backfire, because Sossius Senecio immediately defends the priority of the hen in a lengthy reply. The authority of Orphism can be challenged and Firmus' attempt to strengthen it with a reference to mystical silence did not succeed. Both instances of irony fit very well into Plutarch's view on Orphism. As we can gather from the myth of Thespesius told in De sera, where it is said that the soul of Orpheus did not reach the highest level, he considered Orphism to contain some seeds of truth, without being entirely truthful.11

Van Nuffelen, assuming Plutarch to hold a negative or skeptical view toward the mysteries, cites Plutarch’s own De sera in justification of this. But if we read the passage in question, it is clear that Plutarch’s polemic against Orpheus is in relation to Plutarch’s own priesthood in the Temple of Apollo at Delphi:

At length, after he had been carried as far another way as when he was transported to the yawning overture, he thought he beheld a prodigious standing goblet, into which several rivers discharged themselves; among which there was one whiter than snow or the foam of the sea, another resembled the purple color of the rainbow. The tinctures of the rest were various; besides that, they had their several lustres at a distance. But when he drew nearer, the ambient air became more subtile and rarefied, and the colors vanished, so the goblet retained no more of its flourishing beauty except the white. At the same time he saw three Daemons sitting together in a triangular aspect, and blending and mixing the rivers together with certain measures. Thus far, said the guide of Thespesius's soul, did Orpheus come, when he sought after the soul of his wife; and not well remembering what he had seen, upon his return he raised a false report in the world, that the oracle at Delphi was in common to Night and Apollo, whereas Apollo never had any thing in common with Night. But, said the spirit, this oracle is in common to Night and to the Moon, no way included within earthly bounds, nor having any fixed or certain seat, but always wandering among men in dreams and visions. For from hence it is that all dreams are dispersed, compounded as they are of truth jumbled with falsehood, and sincerity with the various mixtures of craft and delusion. But as for the oracle of Apollo, said the spirit, you neither do see it, neither can you behold it; for the earthly part of the soul is not capable to release or let itself loose, nor is it permitted to reach sublimity, but it swags downward, as being fastened to the body.12

Plutarch’s disdain for Orpheus (and by extension, Orphics) is His (and thus their) inclusion of Night in the function of the Oracle at Delphi, which is something Plutarch as a priest at that temple would be intimately familiar with. Plutarch is explicit in that Orpheus raised “a false report in the world,” not multiple, and that this one false report is that Apollo shares his Oracle with Night.

With that out of the way, we may now turn to Van Nuffelen’s claim that Plutarch allowed Senecio to best Firmus with a lengthy reply about the priority of the hen over the egg. If we read Senecio’s reply, which is indeed lengthy, his disagreement with Firmus is clear:

To this discourse of Firmus, Senecio replied: Sir, your last similitude contradicts your first, and you have unwittingly opened the world (instead of the door, as the saying is) against yourself. For the world was before all, being the most perfect; and it is rational that the perfect in Nature should be before the imperfect, as the sound before the maimed, and the whole before the part. For it is absurd that there should be a part when there is nothing whose part it is; and therefore nobody says the seed's man or egg's hen, but the man's seed and hen's egg; because those being after these and formed in them, pay as it were a debt to Nature, by bringing forth another. For they are not in themselves perfect, and therefore have a natural appetite to produce such a thing as that out of which they were first formed; and therefore seed is defined as a telling produced that is to be perfected by another production. Now nothing can be perfected by or want that which as yet is not. Everybody sees that eggs have the nature of a concretion or consistence in some animal or other, but want those organs, veins, and muscles which animals enjoy. Therefore no story delivers that ever any egg was formed immediately from earth; and the poets themselves tell us, that the egg out of which came the Tyndaridae fell down from heaven. But even till this time the earth produceth some perfect and organized animals, as mice in Egypt, and snakes, frogs, and grasshoppers almost everywhere, some external and invigorating principle assisting in the production. And in Sicily, where in the servile war much blood was shed, and many carcasses rotted on the ground, whole swarms of locusts were produced, and spoiled the corn over the whole isle. Such spring from and are nourished by the earth; and seed being formed in them, pleasure and titillation provoke them to mix, upon which some lay eggs, and some bring forth their young alive; and this evidently proves that animals first sprang from earth, and afterwards by copulation, after different ways, propagated their several kinds. In short, it is the same thing as if you said the womb was before the woman; for as the womb is to the egg, the egg is to the chick that is formed in it; so that he that inquires how birds should be when there were no eggs, might ask as well how men and women could be before any organs of generation were formed. Parts generally have their subsistence together with the whole; particular powers follow particular members, and operations follow those powers, and effects those operations. Now the effect of the generative power is the seed and egg; so that these must be after the formation of the whole. Therefore consider, as there can be no digestion of food before the animal is formed, so there can be no seed nor egg; for those, it is likely, are made by some digestion and alterations; nor can it be that, before the animal is, the superfluous parts of the food of the animal should have a being. Besides, though seed may perhaps pretend to be a principle, the egg cannot; for it doth not subsist first, nor hath it the nature of a whole, for it is imperfect. Therefore we do not affirm that the animal is produced without a principle of its being; but we call the principle that power which changes, mixes, and tempers the matter, so that a living creature is regularly produced; but the egg is an after-production, as the blood or milk of an animal after the taking in and digestion of the food. For we never see an egg formed immediately of mud, for it is produced in the bodies of animals alone; but a thousand living creatures rise from the mud. What need of many instances? None ever found the spawn or egg of an eel; yet if you empty a pit and take out all the mud, as soon as other water settles in it, eels likewise are presently produced. Now that must exist first which hath no need of any other thing that it may exist, and that after, which cannot be without the concurrence of another thing. And of this priority is our present discourse. Besides, birds build nests before they lay their eggs; and women provide cradles, swaddling-clothes, and the like; yet who says that the nest is before the egg, or the swaddling-clothes before the infant? For the earth (as Plato says) doth not imitate a woman, but a woman, and so likewise all other females, the earth. Moreover it is probable that the first production out of the earth, which was then vigorous and perfect, was self-sufficient and entire, nor stood in need of those secundines, membranes, and vessels, which now Nature forms to help the weakness and supply the defects of breeders.13

Firmus saw the egg as symbolic, on the same level as a seed and the first principle of all generation. Senecio argues that the cosmos contains within itself the seeds for everything else. It is perfect, and therefore couldn’t have come from a seed itself. He argues that an egg only pretends to be a seed and does not actually contain a whole within itself. Because of this, in Senecio’s eyes, even if the world did come from something, it could not have come from an egg.

Firmus revealed just a bit too much for his friend’s improper mindset to handle by saying that Orpheus put the egg as the first being in the world. Senecio, engaging with this idea from an improper mindset, is unable to fully transcend what he knows about physical bird eggs and biological life cycles, and thus unable to view the egg as symbolically as Firmus does. Instead of recognizing the warning present in the Orphic seal, Firmus smiles through it, allowing the improper mindset of Senecio, '“you profane” in the seal, to cloud the argument. It seems, then, that rather than allow Senecio to best Firmus, Plutarch has actually allowed Senecio to give a thoughtful speech that just barely misses the point. Perhaps this is also to illustrate that silence in an argument, however noble, will inevitably cause misunderstanding.

That chapter and discussion ends after Senecio’s reply, so we are left to wonder what may have been said or argued next. This may also be Plutarch employing silence as a tool: by not giving away anything else, Plutarch himself steps fully out of the way and allows “those that are acquainted with the mystical and sacred discourse of Orpheus” to read what is hidden, providing a clear example in Senecio of what kind of thing can come as a result of someone without the proper mindset approaching a Sacred Discourse. Because Plutarch steps fully out of the way, however, he leaves the discussion just as open to ‘profane’ interpretation.

Later, in Book 4 of Quaestiones Convivales, Plutarch again employs silence. This time, guests are discussing the similarities between Adonis, Dionysus, and the Jewish God, when Moiragenes speaks up:

Do not be so fierce upon him, for I who am an Athenian answer you, and tell you, in short, that these two are the very same. And no man is able or fit to hear the chief confirmation of this truth, but those amongst us who are initiated and skilled in the triennial παντέλεια, or great mysteries of the God. But what no religion forbids to speak of among friends, especially over wine, the gift of Bacchus, I am ready at the command of these gentlemen to disclose.14

In the quote above, Moiragenes invokes silence and says that only those initiated are fit to hear the best proof. However, after the quote above, he then continues on to compare Jewish and Bacchic practices before Book 4 cuts off. Thus, because he shares some details but not the “chief confirmation,” Moiragenes’ silence here, just as before, is not to hide conclusions, but certain means to reach them.

In every excerpt we’ve examined today, the truth at the heart of them has been freely offered by the speaker. The silence in each example has been to preserve the knowledge of why these things are done, or why these beliefs are held. In other words, the use of pious or mystical silence in Herodotus and Plutarch has been to protect the knowledge that would help one arrive at a certain conclusion, and not necessarily to protect the conclusion itself.

This distinction being made by ancient authors familiar with (or themselves initiates of) the mysteries of Orpheus means that silence, at least in those mysteries, is not a strict rule to which everyone must adhere perfectly. Instead, silence in Orphism is a tool that can be used by initiates to reveal as much or as little is necessary to foster a pious and reverent curiosity among outsiders. It is meant as a scalable barrier to entry, a sort of filter, to keep those with an improper mindset away. Not necessarily to keep them ‘out’ forever, but to keep them ‘at bay’ until they approach with the proper mindset. It is only as much of a barrier as it needs to be. If everyone were to approach with the proper mindset, there would be no secrets to keep.

Works Cited

Bernabé, Alberto. Poetae Epici Graeci: Testimonia et Fragmenta. Pars 2, Orphicorum et Orphicis Similium Testimonia et Fragmenta. Fasciculus 1. K.G. Saur, 2004.

Edmonds, Radcliffe G. “Recycling Laertes’ Shroud: More on Orphism & Original Sin.” The Center for Hellenic Studies, 11 Feb. 2021, https://chs.harvard.edu/curated-article/radcliffe-g-edmonds-iii-recycling-laertes-shroud-more-on-orphism-original-sin/. Accessed 17 Aug. 2025.

Herodotus. “Histories.” Herodotus, with an English translation by A. D. Godley. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920. https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0126 Accessed 17 Aug. 2025.

Plutarch. “Quaestiones Convivales.” Plutarch's Morals, Translated from the Greek by several hands. Corrected and revised by. William W. Goodwin, PH. D. Boston. Little, Brown, and Company. Cambridge. Press Of John Wilson and son. 1874. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:2008.01.0312. Accessed 19 Aug. 2025.

Van Nuffelen, Peter. “Words of Truth: Mystical Silence as a Philosophical and Rhetorical Tool in Plutarch.” Hermathena, no. 182, 2007, pp. 9–39. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23041716. Accessed 19 Aug. 2025.

Footnotes

In this essay, we will survey the Orphic Hymns1 with a similar goal to guide us: We will be looking for evidence of Gods being equated with each other. If we take Helios, for example, called ‘the eyes of Zeus’ in the Rhapsodic Hymn from part one, we find that, throughout antiquity, He is often equated with Apollo. In the Orphic Hymn to Helios (OH8), we are given the following:

kosmokrator, piper, fire-coursing circler,

Lucifer, vari-showing, life-bearing, fruitful Paian,

ever-blooming, undefiled, time’s father, undying Zeus,

bright-sky, shine-for-all, round-running eye of the cosmos,2

The Orphic Hymns are largely composed of epithets, and that's what these are: various titles, names, or surnames depicting the functions, domains, or qualities of Helios. He is called Paian, which is a major epithet of Apollo, appearing in the first line of Apollo’s own Hymn3. Helios is also called “undying Zeus” and “eye of the cosmos”, which both echo the Rhapsodic Hymn to Zeus. So, Helios is all at once Zeus himself, the eyes of Zeus, and Apollo.

‘Fruitful Paian’ is not only shared by Helios and Apollo, however. In the Hymn to Pan (OH11), the God is called:

all-nature, parent of all, many-named daimon,

kosmokrator, grower, lucifer, fruitful Paian,

cave-haunting, heavy-wrath, true Zeus the horned.4

Here, Pan is equated with Helios and Apollo, with whom he shares the epithet “Paian.” “Kosmokrator” is also shared here between Helios and Pan, and means “Ruler of the Cosmos.” This is a title one would expect to be reserved for Zeus if the pantheon had a strict hierarchy, but it is the unique multifaceted nature of Orphic Zeus that allows His rule to be shared without being diminished. Indeed, Pan is very clearly equated with Zeus, being called “true Zeus.” “All-nature” and “parent of all” echo the first line in the Hymn, which suggests that Pan is the “whole of the cosmos,” also resembling the Rhapsodic Hymn to Zeus.

“Paian” as an epithet appears again later, in the second Hymn to Trieterikos5 (OH52):

earth-burster, fire-blazing, Epaphios, two-mothered youth,

hill-dweller, horned one, fawn-robed, biennial,

gold-speared Paian, in-the-lap, grape-decked,6

Earlier in this same Hymn, Dionysus is called:

nocturnal Eubouleus, turbaned, thrysos-shaker,

unspoken rite, three-natured, Zeus’ hidden shoot,

Protogonos, Erikepaios, father and son of the Gods,7

Along with Paian, this Hymn to Dionysus also gives us the names Protogonos and Erikepaios, which are both epithets already given in this collection with the Hymn to Protogonos (OH6):

Protogonos I call, twin-sexed, great, roaming the ether,

…

bullroarer, birth of the blessed and of mortals,

seed much-minded, of many rites, Erikepaios,

unspoken, hidden rusher, all-radiant shoot;

…

bringing light, bright, pure: whence I call you Phanes8

Phanes is also called “all-radiant shoot” here, which at first glance resembles “Zeus’ hidden shoot” from Hymn 52. Looking closer, however, a distinction is made between Dionysus as ‘hidden’ and Phanes as ‘radiant.’ This is an excellent opportunity to remind ourselves that we are not just looking for similarities, and it is not always as simple as ‘X=Z.’ We are also on the lookout for things like this, and this shows that while the Gods are all One single divine force, They each remain unique and independent from one another. On this, Daniel Malamis says in the introduction to his edition of the Orphic Hymns: “Shared attributes are presented as reflections of common themes, but viewed through the lens of each God’s idiosyncratic and composite nature; phrasal repetition in the hymns is simultaneously a means of highlighting connections between divinities and of individuating them”9.

Cycling back to the first hymn we examined, the Hymn to Helios (OH8); He is called “ever-blooming, undefiled, time’s father, undying Zeus”10. These ideas, and ‘time’s father’ specifically, show up again in the Hymn to Herakles (OH12):

strong-hand, untamed, brimming with mighty labours,

variform, time’s father, eternal and kind,

unspoken, wild-heart, much prayed-to, omnipotent,

almighty heart, great strength, archer, seer,

all-eating, all-parent, all-highest, all’s help,

…

self-grown, untiring, earth’s bravest shoot,

flashing with first-born scales, great-named Aion,

who wears around his head dawn and black night,

snaking through the twelve tasks, from east to the west;

undying, many-trialled, boundless, unshaken.11

In this Hymn, Herakles is called “undying,” “untamed,” “eternal,” “all-parent, all-highest,” “time’s father,” and “earth’s bravest shoot,” all of which call back to things we have already examined. “Earth’s bravest shoot” is interesting. It could be a coincidence that the last few Hymns have all contained reference to the deity as a ‘shoot,’ but perhaps it could be evidence of a specific belief or teaching.

The word translated as ‘shoot’ is βλάστημα, and it literally means ‘sprout’ or ‘bud’ when referring to plants, but it can also mean ‘offspring’ or ‘child’ metaphorically. This dual nature of the word lends itself perfectly to this application; we can read from this line that Herakles is both the bravest person to sprout from the earth, and the bravest divine offspring on the earth. If, as we have repeatedly seen, divinity in Orphism is thought of as a single, permeating ‘force,’ then it would likely have been natural for an ancient Orphic to allegorize that the individual Gods ‘sprout’ from that force, or that divinity is a plant and the Gods are its ‘buds.’

In lines 11 and 12 of Hymn 12, Herakles is also painted as our sun, “who wears around his head dawn and black night, snaking through the twelve tasks, from east to the west”12. Herakles, as the sun, crowns night and day, travels east to west, and snakes through the twelve signs of the zodiac throughout the year. This is more evidence that links Herakles to Apollo, Helios, Dionysus, Phanes, and Zeus.

βλάστημα is used again in the next Hymn, to Kronos (OH13):

Kronos, time’s all-father, Kronos of the varied word,

offshoot of Gaia and starry Ouranos,

birth, growing, waning, Rhea’s spouse, holy Prometheus,

who dwells in all parts of the cosmos, ancestor,13

Kronos is also said to be “time’s all-father,” “who dwells in all parts of the cosmos,” which is similar to Helios, Herakles, Pan, and Phanes. In line 7, Kronos is specifically called Prometheus. This link connects Prometheus, through Kronos, to the rest of these Gods. Prometheus is famous for being the one who brought fire to mankind, and it is interesting that a handful of these Gods are addressed as light-bringing or presented as variations of the sun.

Switching gears, we will now take cue again from the Derveni Papyrus and move to the other ἀρχή14. In the Hymn to Ge (OH26), She is called:

all-nursing, all-giving, fulfiller, destroyer of all,

growth-blooming, fruit-bearing, full of fair seasons,

seat of the undying cosmos, variegate maiden;

…

rain-happy, about whom the richly wrought cosmos of stars

rolls with ever-flowing nature, in terrible streams.15

In the very next Hymn, to the Mother of the Gods (OH27), the Goddess is addressed similarly:

Immortal Gods’ God-honoured mother, nurse of all,

…

who holds the middle throne of the cosmos, and so

holds the earth, providing kind nourishment for mortals;

the races of immortals and mortals are born of you,

the rivers and all seas are ever ruled by you,

Hestia by name: they call you the giver of happiness,

since you grant mortals gifts of all that is good.

…

all-tamer, savior of Phrygia, bed-mate of Kronos,

Sky’s child, elder god, life-rearer, lover of frenzy:16

And again a few hymns later, in the Hymn to Persephone (OH29), She is honored with similar titles as well:

Pluto’s much-honoured wife, noble, life-giving,

who keeps Hades’ gates in the vaults of the earth,

Praxidike, love-locked, pure shoot of Deo,

…

mother of loud-roaring, many-formed Eubouleus,

fellow-weaver of the Hours, light-bearer, bright-form,

holy one, all-ruler, maiden swelling with fruit,

brilliant, horned one, sole longing of mortals;17

It is worth noting that, beginning with Ge as the launch-point for the same inquiry on the other ἀρχή, we are immediately met with these three Hymns. They all are addressed to Goddesses, and they each respectively refer to Her as being the seat of the cosmos, the throne of the cosmos, or in Persephone’s case, “in the vaults of the earth,” which can be inferred from the other two to be in the center of the cosmos.

Perhaps these three Hymns are a clue as to why the Derveni author felt the need to have a dual ἀρχή Mind and Matter system at all. In the geocentric view of the ancients, there were no “other earths.” Our word Planet comes from the Greek for “wandering star,” and this alone is enough insight into how they were perceived. It stands to reason, then, in this viewpoint, that the kind of matter the Earth is made of is exclusive to Earth, and it must be that way either because that is how the divine Mind made things, or because the Matter itself is divine.

In the second of these three Hymns (OH27), the Mother of the Gods is called “Hestia by name,” but also “savior of Phrygia,” referring to Kybele, and “bed-mate of Kronos,” referring to Rhea. Indeed, Rhea is called “bed-mate of Kronos” in her own Hymn (OH14):

all-honoured, bright-form, blessed bed-mate of Kronos,

rejoicing in mountains and shrill ululations of mortals,

all-queen Rhea, of the war-din, strong heart,

deceiver, saviour, releaser, primal-born,

mother of Gods and mother of mortals:

from you come the earth and the wide sky above

and the sea and the breezes; course-loving, air-formed.18

In the Orphic Hymn to Hera a few hymns later (OH16), She is addressed with epithets similar to Rhea:

Seated in folds of blue, air-formed goddess,

Hera all-queen, blessed bed-mate of Zeus,

furnishing mortals with soft, soul-feeding breezes,

mother of rains, nurse of the winds, birth of all:

for without you nothing knows wholly the nature of life;

for you share in all, mingled with the holy air;

for you alone rule and reign over all,

shaking over the stream in rushes of air.

But, blessed Goddess, many-named, all-queen,

come kindly, with countenance joyful and fair.19

Rhea and Hera are both called “all-queen” and “bed-mate” of their respective Spouse. Rhea at the end of Her hymn is called “air-formed,” and this is applied to Hera at the beginning of Her hymn. All of these “Matter” Goddesses so far are called “mother” or “nurse.”

It is important to remember that even in the Derveni author’s dual ἀρχή system, divine Mind and Matter are not separately-but-somehow-both the ἀρχή, but rather the ἀρχή is some sort of mixture of the two. We should not get too bogged-down in trying to separate one from the other, as divinity exists within and works through them both. This last hymn provides evidence of this and acts as a bridge between them. While so far it has been shown that Hera shares similarities to the Goddesses in Derveni’s Matter category, She also shares similarities in Her hymn with Derveni’s Mind; She of course is called “air-formed,” but also it is explicit that She feeds mortal souls with the breeze, and this is a function reserved in the Derveni Papyrus for Zeus-as-air, or the cosmic Mind.

To wrap up Part Two, let us recap thus far: In Part One, we looked at the Orphic Rhapsodic Hymn to Zeus and found that Orphic Zeus isn’t just a God among Gods, but rather He is the whole cosmos. We then combed the Derveni Papyrus for its author’s interpretation of this, and we found that the Derveni author seems to present a pre-Socratic system in which there are two sides of the same ἀρχή; he interprets the Gods of Orphism either as functions of the divine cosmic Mind which shapes Matter, or as divine forms which Matter has been or could be shaped into by Mind. We left Part One on the note that even with this system, it is clear that Mind and Matter are referred to in relation to each other and that this points toward a sort of philosophical monism.

In Part Two, we began looking through the Orphic Hymns with a similar goal: to find commonalities between deities that extend beyond coincidence. The commonalities that we found, even though we only viewed a fraction of the Orphic Hymns, are significant and sufficiently support the ideas presented in Part One. It is especially important to recognize that, while the Derveni author’s dual ἀρχή system is a useful tool, the Orphic Hymns themselves, as we have seen with OH16, present a viewpoint where Mind and Matter are not so easily separated.

Works Cited

Malamis, Daniel. The Orphic Hymns: Poetry and Genre, with a Critical Text and Translation. Brill, 2025.

Footnotes

The central tenets of this ancient religion are as follows:

• The Universe is a single, complex, divine entity, full of Gods.

• Every living thing has a mortal body and an immortal Soul.

• Souls undergo a process of transmigration through many mortal lives.

• The purpose of each mortal life is to purify the Soul.

• Each time a Soul reaches the afterlife, its purity is assessed.

• Pure Souls are freed from the cycle of transmigration.

• Freed Pure Souls ascend in unity to the Gods forever.

My name is Tiberius Caelius Quadratus. To quote Kallímakhos of HellenicGods.org, “I am no-one special”. I, like many before me, went through a rough period in my life, during which I asked myself “Why am I here? What is this all for?”

While this was ongoing, I was rekindling my childhood love of Greek Mythology and my high-school infatuation with Philosophy. Now, as an adult, I am able to engage with the texts on a deeper level, and it is easier for me to more fully grasp the things being presented in them. (That’s not to say that I completely understand everything; no one ever can.)

Maybe this was the perfect storm. Whatever happened, I found purpose in it. I found myself constantly and consistently drawn to one specific thing: Orphism. Since then, I have been unable to step away and study anything else. One of the first things anyone will learn about Orphism is that scholarship is murky and nebulous; some scholars have very clear ideas of what it was, others have very clear ideas of what it never was, but no two scholars agree on the whole thing.

I do not come as a scholar per se, although I try to make my approach a scholarly one. I found Orphism only after seeking to learn about worshipping the Gods of ancient Greece. I don’t have anything to note of my education beyond a high-school diploma. I am self-taught on the scholarship of ancient Orphism. Scholarship, at any rate, seems to frequently neglect the believer’s perspective: for whatever reason, scholars are sometimes quick to raise and dismiss ‘unanswered questions’ or contradictions that, in the eyes of a believer, are easily reconciled or otherwise not unanswered.

I have been blessed with, as Plato would say, “a babble of books”, and a seemingly infinite time to explore them. I know that not everyone has this luxury, and I am eternally grateful for it. I started Orphicaeum with a single goal in mind: to create a sort of Orphic Temple, a form of altar upon which I can place my devotion, and which can act as a beacon for others along the same path.

Here is a selection of essays:

Orpheus, Famous-in-Name; An introduction to the Life, Logoi, and Legacy of Orpheus.

On Long, Snow-clad Olympus; A search for specific epithets of Olympus using Column LII of the Derveni Papyrus as a hermeneutical lens; “Time” is the dwelling-place of the Gods.

On the Many Names of Orphic God, Pt. I; A study of the Derveni Papyrus and what it can tell us about the Orphic perspective on divinity; The universe as a single holistic entity permeated by a multifaceted force of divinity.

On the Many Names of Orphic God, Pt. II; A continuation of the above study, following this thread of a single variform Divinity through some of the Orphic Hymns.

On the Soul and its Σῶμα / Σῆμα; A survey of ancient texts relating to Orphic beliefs regarding the Soul and the afterlife, and the ‘Orphic Life’ that practitioners lead as a result.

Upgrade to a paid subscription to get a PDF copy of my translation of Orpheus’ Argonautika ($7 value), access to the members-only section of the discord, and much more to come!

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Yesterday, I canceled my paid subscription to a newsletter which I had previously enjoyed, whose author I had held before in high regard. (I’m not interested in shaming anyone, so I will not mention which newsletter.) The author of this newsletter very obviously relies on AI to write their content. The publication overall presents a didactic synthesis of a handful of topics I am vaguely familiar with as well as one with which I am intimately familiar. Because of this unique synthesis and this overlap with my interests, I dealt with the blatant and unapologetic use of AI.

In the first-published version of their most recent newsletter (an important distinction, as it has been edited multiple times in the hours since), the author “quoted” a text that I have studied religiously. My problem is that the quote, while close to a few sections of the text, was unmistakable as the kind of made-up half-quote that only AI (or someone deliberately lying) is capable of.

I don't know what I expected from somebody who didn't go to any lengths at all to conceal their use of AI. Reflecting now, how many other times could they have misquoted or completely fabricated quotes due to their reliance on what reads like the free version of your favorite LLM? This, for me, was enough. I cancelled everything, in the way that ends the benefits immediately even though I'd already paid for the upcoming month. I filled out the cancellation survey, and I said my piece and made my peace with the author on that form.

I know that they read every word of what I wrote on that form, because the article was revised very quickly to remove reference to the misquoted text as well as to the parts of that quote inserted by AI. After that update, the quote was more accurate and it was introduced with a more vague but accurate identifier. That is fine, and that is where I would've left it. I then posted the following note:

If nothing else, I pledge this to those who read me: If I misrepresent something, it is because I myself have misunderstood it. I will never quote a passage that I have not read, and I will especially never ask AI to do so on my behalf.1

Maybe this note struck a chord. I waited a while, but curiosity took hold of me, and so I checked the newsletter again. At the time of writing this, the newsletter still has the fixed quote, but also now it is introduced with a parenthetical remark. I'm sure you know the type:

I shouldn't have paraphrased!

I mislabeled it!

I'm just tired!

Woe is me!2

The disservice that you do in your lies is only to yourself. To misunderstand a quote is one thing. To misquote is another. To fabricate quotes, even unknowingly, is in a whole different ball park.

To care so little about what you claim to be teaching that you don't even verify the passages you quote is an insult both to the source material (if you yourself can even call it that), and to the readers, that you manipulate.

From where does a teacher derive their authority? What gives someone the right to explain something to others? It is universally accepted that for a teacher to be worth learning from, they themselves must understand the subject being taught. A misquote in itself is not equal to misunderstanding, but the kind of misquote that I saw (and then saw hidden, and then again saw justified) absolutely is, and so much more.

A teacher’s authority is derived from their ability to demonstrate mastery of a subject. AI has made it so that anyone, with enough prompting, is able to simulate mastery. However, all the prompting in the world could only ever demonstrate the LLM’s mastery of a subject, and not your own. That is, if it could demonstrate mastery! In some cases, like the one I'm writing about, it can't even do that.

Please, Reader, ask yourself: would you want to learn from someone who won't admit when they're wrong? From someone who doubles down with excuses and half-hearted, dismissive non-apologies?

And you, who is at fault, if you've read this, ask yourself: do I believe what I publish? Do I expect anyone else to? How can I right these wrongs?

Finally, to whom it may concern, ask yourself this, frequently and sincerely: what does the author stand to gain from writing this? Understanding the motives of an author can tell you more about their misquotations than their self-corrections ever will.

Thank you for supporting Orphicaeum, and for supporting me. Rest assured that the mastery you find here will never be simulated or artificial. Our regularly-scheduled programming continues a week from today.

Edit3:

It is often argued that Orphism is a henotheism. Merriam-Webster defines ‘henotheism’ as “the worship of one God without denying the existence of other Gods”1. At first glance, this seems to be an okay descriptor of our religion. There are many Gods, but Zeus is chief among them. Let's first look at His famous Rhapsodic Hymn:

Zeus is the first and the last, the lord of lightning.

Zeus is the head and center, for all things are from Zeus.

Zeus is born male; immortal Zeus comes forth a nymph (νύμφη/female).

Zeus is the foundation of earth and starry heaven.

Zeus is sovereign of all for he is the first cause of all things.

In one divine power, emerging one divinity, the commander of the world.

One regal body in which everything revolves:

Fire and Water and Earth and Aether, and both Night and Day,

and Metis, the first-begotten one and lovely Eros.

For these are all in the mighty body of Zeus.

Behold his head and handsome countenance,

the radiant sky. Around his golden hair

are the gleaming stars twinkling beautifully.

And there are great golden bull’s horns on either side of his head,

the rising and setting (sun), the heavenly pathway of the Gods.

His eyes are Helios, reflected in the Moon.

His mind is kingly truth itself, the immortal Aether,

hearing and considering all: nothing which is,

no word nor cry nor noise nor voice,

escapes the ear of the mightiest son of Kronos.

Thus indeed his immortal head and mind,

now then his radiant body, boundless, undisturbed.

His fearless, strong limbs, exceedingly mighty are formed thus:

the shoulders and chest and broad back of the God,

formed of the air all surrounding. He generates wings

whereupon he flies everywhere. His divine belly is

Earth, the mother of all, with her imposing hills and mountain peaks.

The belt about his middle is a wave of the deep-voiced sea

and ocean! His feet, the foundation of earth,

are dank Tartarus and earth's furthermost limit!

Hiding all things yet causing them to newly emerge into delightful light,

he brings them forth again from his heart, acting in divine wonderment!2

As this hymn has already shown, it isn’t quite as cut-and-dry as Orphism being a henotheistic religion. It isn’t quite that Zeus exists, and also the other Gods exist. As the Hymn teases, the other Gods exist within Zeus. “His eyes are Helios, reflected in the Moon.” “His divine belly is Earth, mother of all.” “His feet are dank Tartarus and earth’s furthermost limit.” Zeus is painted poetically from head to toe, and compared to the cosmos, from above the sky to below the earth. This viewpoint posits that Zeus is the totality of being, bringing Zeus closer to Platonic concepts of ‘The One’ than to ‘the ruling God among Gods.’

Although, it’s not that simple, either. Orphic Zeus is not distant. He isn’t Aristotle’s unmoved mover; He didn’t set things in motion once, forever ago, and then never interact again with His creation. It is better to think of Zeus as divinity itself. The author of the Derveni Papyrus explains this concept throughout what survives of his work. The Papyrus, itself fragmentary, systematically examines a now-lost Orphic poem, explaining that the various names and descriptors of deities and their seemingly human interactions are all a veiled allegory for how the force of divinity exists and operates within the cosmos. In Column 9, writing about Zeus taking power from Kronos, he says:

So in the poem [Orpheus] made the power belong to the strongest, just like a son to his father. But those who do not understand the words spoken think that Zeus takes the power and the daimon from his own father. So, knowing that fire, when mixed with the other things, agitates the things-that-are and prevents them from coming together because of the heat, he removes it to such a distance as to render it unable, once removed, to prevent the things-that-are from condensing. For whatever is ignited is subdued, and having been subdued it is mixed with the others. With regard to the phrase “he took in his hands,” he was allegorizing just as in everything else which formerly seemed uncertain but has been most certainly understood. So, allegorizing he said that Zeus took the power and the daimon by force, just as … of the powerful …3

The Derveni author was a pre-Socratic philosopher, and felt the need to connect his clarification of the myths to his scientific inquiry, which is why he often connects the Gods to elements. A famous element (pun fully intended) of pre-Socratic philosophy is the search for an ἀρχή or a single essential ‘thing’ on which the existence of everything else depends. This was usually presented as one or a combination of the four classical elements; air, earth, water, fire. For the Derveni author, this ἀρχή was a combination of air and earth, likely influenced by Orphic notions of the soul4. In the excerpt we’ve already looked at, the author explains that fire, when it mingles with the other elements, dominates them, and that Zeus set fire apart at such a distance so as to allow the other things to come to be. The author elsewhere explicitly equates Zeus with Air:

it existed before it was named. For air both existed before the present things-that-are were set together and will always exist. For it did not come to be but existed. And why it was called air has been made clear earlier in this book. But after it had been named Zeus it was thought that it was born, as if it did not exist before. He also said that it will be “last,” after it was named Zeus and this continues being its name until the present things-that-are were set together into the same state in which they were floating as former things-that-are. And it is made clear that the things-that-are became such because of it and, having come to be, are again in it. He indicates in these words:

“Zeus is the head, Zeus the middle, and from Zeus is everything fashioned.”

Head … he allegorized that the things-that-are … head … beginning of constitution … to have been constituted …5

In the next column, the Derveni author elaborates that Air was also called Moira before it was called Zeus:

and those moving downwards. And by saying “Moira” he makes it clear that this Earth and all else are in the air, being breath. It is this breath that Orpheus called Moira. The other people in their everyday talk say that “Moira has spun for them” and that “it will be as Moira has spun,” speaking correctly but not understanding either what Moira is or spinning is. For Orpheus called thought Moira. This seemed to him to be the most suitable of the names that all people had given. Because, before it was called Zeus, Moira existed, being the thought of God eternally and ubiquitously. But after it had been called Zeus it was thought that it was born, though it existed before too but was not named. This is why he says

“Zeus was born first.”

For first was Moira the thought, later it was held to be sacred being Zeus. But people not understanding the meaning of what is said come to view Zeus as being the first-born God …6

The author elaborates further in Column 19, saying that these two ideas (i.e. Zeus in control, Moira controlling fate) are not contradictory:

since the time when the things-that-are were given names, each after what is dominant in it, all things were called Zeus according to the same principle. For the air dominates all things as much as it wishes. So when they say that “Moira spun,” they are saying that the thought of Zeus ratified in what way what exists and what comes to be and what will come to be must come to be and be and cease. And he likens it to a king – for this among the names in use seemed to be suitable for it – saying thus:

“Zeus the king, Zeus the ruler of all, he of the bright bolt.”

He said that it is king because, though the magistracies are many, one prevails over all and performs all that no other mortal is allowed to perform … And he said that it is ruler of all, because all things are ruled through …7

According to the Derveni author, each thing is given a name after that part of it which is the majority of its composition, and it is for the same reason that everything is called Zeus. If we strip away the pre-Socratic element, the multifaceted nature of divinity is allowed to shine through. We can say that when Zeus exerts control or dominance over something, it happens because He becomes the majority of the composition of that thing. In other words, the divine force present within that thing is activated and takes over.

If we think of divinity itself in this same way, that its name is given based on that which is dominant in it, then it becomes clear intuitively that the names and descriptors of deities are allegory for different courses of action that the force of divinity can take. The Derveni author gives this overall ‘force of divinity’ the name Mind8:

And in support of the fact that the present things-that-are come to be from existent ones, he says:

“Of the First-born king, the reverend one; and upon him all

the immortals grew, blessed gods and goddesses

and rivers and lovely springs and everything else

that had then been born; and he himself became the sole one.”

In these verses he indicates that the things-that-are always existed and that the present things-that-are come to be from the existing ones. As for the phrase “and he himself became the sole one,” by saying this he makes it clear that Mind, being alone, is always worth everything, as if the rest were nothing. For it is not possible for the present things-that-are to exist because of them without mind. Also in the verse after this he said that Mind is worth everything:

“And now he is king of all and will be afterwards.”

It is clear that “Mind” and “king of all” are the same thing. …9

For the Derveni author, Mind is the intelligent part of air, which separates fire from the other elements, and carries the soul into living beings. It is called Zeus, and Moira, but also Harmonia, Peitho, and Aphrodite:

For if the things-that-are did not move so that they could first be separated, hot would not join with hot nor cold with cold. By saying “to jump” he makes it clear that the things-that-are, divided into small particles, moved and jumped in the air and by jumping all and each severally were set together with one another. And they continued jumping until each came to its like. Ouranian Aphrodite, Zeus, aphrodising, jumping, Peitho, and Harmonia are established names for the same God. A man having sexual contact with a woman is said in everyday usage to be “aphrodising.” So, because the things-that-are were brought into contact with each other, the god was called Aphrodite. Persuasion because the things-that-are yielded to each other; “yielding” and “persuading” are the same thing. And Harmonia because the god attached closely many things-that-are to each of the things-that-are. For they existed even before, but the term “being born” was used for them after they had been separated. For “being separated” is clearly … prevails so that they separate … now …10

The Divine Mind is also called by the name of Oceanus, as explained in Column 23:

“And he contrived the great might of wide-flowing Oceanus.”

This verse is composed so as to be misleading; it is unclear to the many, but quite clear to those who have correct understanding, that “Oceanus” is the air and that air is Zeus. Therefore, it was not another Zeus who “contrived” Zeus, but the same one contrived for himself “great might.” But the ignorant ones think that Oceanus is a river, because he added “wide-flowing.” He, however, indicates his own opinion in everyday and conventional words. For those who have great power among men are said to “have flowed big.” The next verse:

“and he placed therein the sinews of silver-eddying Achelous.”

He gives the name Achelous to water in general. And … to place the sinews therein is to push them down therein; because the … each …11

The Derveni author tells us here that Oceanus, commonly thought of as the river encircling the earth due in part to epithets such as ‘wide-flowing,’ is actually air, and that the air is Zeus. Earlier in this essay, it was presented that the ἀρχή for the Derveni author is a combination of air and earth, and that assumption rests partly on his treatment of Oceanus. If water were its own element, Oceanus may not have been necessary to equate with air. However, the assumption also partly rests on Column 22, in which the author equates a handful of Goddesses with each other:

So he named everything in the same way as best he could knowing the nature of men, that not all have the same nature nor all want the same things. When they possess power they say whatever happens to come into the heart of each of them, whatever they happen to desire, never the same things, since they are induced by greed and to some extent by ignorance as well. Ge, Meter, Rhea, and Hera are the same. She was called Ge by convention and Meter because everything comes to be from her; Ge and Gaia according to each man’s dialect. She was named Demeter like Ge-Meter, one name from both; for it was the same. It is also said in the Hymns:

“Demeter, Rhea, Ge, Meter, Hestia, Deio.”

For she is also called Deio because she was ravaged during engendering; it will be made clear that, according to the poems, she had profuse parturitions. Rhea because many and all kinds of living creatures were born having flowed forth from her; Rhea and Rheie according to each man’s dialect. She was named Here because …12

It is significant that these Goddesses are all linked together, but not with Zeus. As we have seen, the Derveni author is not afraid to equate traditionally female divinities with Zeus. The fact that Zeus remains separate could mean that the connection is made in an area of the work that is lost, but I would argue that the separation along with the fact that Gaia is among the Goddesses mentioned here points toward a dual ἀρχή system, where Air is the intelligent force that acts upon Earth. The author’s treatment of Water and Fire seem to imply that they are subservient to air, or that they are opposites present within everything. It is worth noting that this would bear a resemblance to the so-called ‘secret doctrines’ of Plato13. This proposed dual ἀρχή system of the Derveni author complicates the argument at hand, but only slightly.

It allows for two principles of existence; Mind and Matter, both divine, and both multifaceted. When the Divine Mind works to encircle Gaia, it is Oceanus. This hermeneutical process is spelled out elsewhere for the names Kronos and Ouranos:

to spring out of the brightest and hottest one having been separated from itself. So he says that this Kronos was born from Helios to Ge, because it was on account of the Sun that the things-that-are were induced to be struck against each other. For this reason he says:

“who did a great deed.”

And the verse following:

“Ouranos, son of Euphrone, who was the first to become king.”

Because Mind was striking the things-that-are against each other, he named it Kronos (Striking Mind) and says that he did a great deed to Ouranos; for the latter was deprived of the kingship. He gave it the name Kronos after its action and the other names according to the same principle. For when all the things-that-are were not yet being struck, Mind, as determining the creation, received the designation Ouranos (Determining Mind). And he says that it was deprived of its kingship when the things-that-are were being struck …14

When the Divine Mind works in its capacity to determine boundaries, or to strike particles and create new things-that-are, it is called Ouranos or Kronos respectively. As we have seen, it is also called Harmonia, Aphrodite, Peitho, Moira, Oceanus, and many other names we have not yet examined. It is thus very clear that the names of the Gods in Orphism refer either to the Divine Mind which strikes matter, or to the Divine Matter which yields to striking.

So, to conclude Part 1, we will return to its opening: Is Orphism henotheistic? The Derveni Papyrus points us away from this. Instead of having many Gods and one chief among them, Orphism recognizes a single divine nature that permeates everything. Even in the Derveni author’s dual ἀρχή system, Mind and Matter are referred to in relation to each other. All of this points toward a sort of philosophical monism. More to come.

Works Cited

“Henotheism Definition & Meaning.” Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster, http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/henotheism. Accessed 13 July 2025.

Gaiser, Konrad, et al. The Other Plato: The Tübingen Interpretation of Plato’s Inner-Academic Teachings. SUNY Press, 2012.

Kouremenos, Theokritos, et al. The Derveni Papyrus. Leo S. Olschki Editore, 2006.

van Kollenberg, Kallímakhos. “Orphic Rhapsodic Hymn to Zeus.” HellenicGods.Org, http://www.hellenicgods.org/orphic-rhapsodic-hymn-to-zeus. Accessed 15 July 2025.

Footnotes