Who and What is Orphicaeum?
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Orphicaeum is dedicated to the preservation and cultivation of the Orphic religion.
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.
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