On the Many Names of Orphic God, Pt. II

or, On the Multifaceted Nature of Divinity in the Orphic Hymns

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In our previous essay, we examined the Derveni Papyrus and what it could tell us about the nature of divinity from an Orphic perspective. We learned that while Orphism is a religion of many Gods, it is best to think of Them as different ‘masks worn’ or ‘tasks performed’ by the single, all-encompassing and ever-present divine force which permeates all of existence. To the Derveni author, who was a pre-Socratic philosopher, existence itself was composed of relationships between two primary elements, both divine: Mind and Matter.

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: