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.