One of the primary forms of Dionysos venerated within the Starry Bull tradition is referred to by his epikleseis Eubouleos meaning “He of Good Counsel” and Epikoos “He who Listens.” In Bacchic Orphism Dionysos intercedes on behalf of the initiate, speaking words to soothe the ancient grief of Persephone which must otherwise be atoned for through purgation and punishment:

For from whomsoever Persephone shall accept requital for ancient grief, the souls of these she restores in the ninth year to the upper sun again; from them arise glorious kings and men of splendid might and surpassing wisdom, and for all remaining time men call them sainted heroes. (Pindar, fragment preserved in Plato’s Meno)

The happy life, far from a vagrant existence, that is desired by those who, in Orpheus, are initiated through Dionysos and Kore and told to cease from the circle and enjoy respite from disgrace. (Proklos, Commentary on Plato’s Timaeus 3.296.7)

Dionysos is the cause of release, whence the God is also called Lusios. And Orpheus says: “Men performing rituals will send hekatombs in every season throughout the year and celebrate festivals, seeking release from lawless ancestors. You, having power over them, whomever you wish you will release from harsh toil and the unending goad.” (Damascius, Commentary on the Phaedo 1.11)

Now you have died and now you have been born, thrice blessed one, on this very day. Say to Persephone that Bakchios himself set you free. A bull you rushed to milk. Quickly, you rushed to milk. A ram you fell into milk. You have wine as your fortunate honor. And rites await you beneath the earth, just as the other blessed ones. (Gold tablet from Pelinna)

Likewise he is the one who intervenes when none of the other Gods can break the cycle of violence and recrimination that Hera and Hephaistos find themselves trapped in:

Hera hurled Hephaistos down from heaven, ashamed at her son’s lameness, but he made use of his skill. Having been rescued in the ocean by sea divinities he made many glorious things – some for Eurynome, some for Thetis, by whom he had been saved – but he also built a throne with invisible chains and sent it as a gift to his mother. And she was very delighted with the gift and she sat on it and found herself trapped, and there was no one to release her. A council of the Gods was held to discuss returning Hephaistos to heaven; for as they thought he was the only one who could release her. So while the other Gods remained silent and were at a loss for a solution, Ares undertook to do something, and when he got there, he accomplished nothing, but quit in disgrace when Hephaistos threatened him with blazing torches. Since Hera was in such great distress, Dionysos came with wine and, by making Hephaistos drunk, compelled him to follow through persuasive speech. When he came and released his mother he made Dionysos Hera’s benefactor, and she, rewarding him, convinced the heavenly Gods that Dionysos, to should be one of the heavenly Gods. (Libanios, Progymnasmata Narration 7)

In the mortal realm Dionysos is the one who gives voice to those who suffer and have been deprived of all other outlets, usually resulting in the institution of a festival that makes the community that spurned them reenact their story, as he did with Erigone:

When Ikarios was slain by the relatives of those who, after drinking wine for the first time fell asleep (for as yet they did not know that what had happened was not death but a drunken stupor) the people of Attika suffered from disease, Dionysos thereby (as I think) avenging the first and the most elderly man who cultivated his plants. At any rate the Pythian oracle declared that if they wanted to be restored to health they must offer sacrifice to Ikarios and to Erigone his daughter and to her hound which was celebrated for having in its excessive love for its mistress declined to outlive her. (Aelian, On Animals 7.28)

And the Oinotrophoi:

My lord, most noble hero, you make no mistake. You saw me father of five children, now such is the fickleness of fate you see me almost childless. For what help to me is my son far away on Andros isle where in his father’s stead he reigns? Delius gave him power of prophecy and Liber gave my girls gifts greater than the prayers of their belief. For at my daughters’ touch all things were turned to corn or wine or oil of Minerva’s tree. Rich was that role of theirs! But when it was known to Atrides, plunderer of Troy, with force of arms he stole my girls, protesting, from their father’s arms and bade them victual with that gift divine the fleet of Greece. They fled, each as she could, two to Euboea, two to their brother’s isle, Andros. A force arrived and threatened war, were they not given up. Fear overcame his love and he gave up his kith and kin to punishment. And one could well forgive their frightened brother … Now fetters were made ready to secure the captured sisters’ arms: their arms still free the captives raised to heaven, crying “Help! Help, father Bacchus!” and the God who gave their gift brought help, if help it can be called in some strange way to lose one’s nature. How they lost it, that I never learnt, nor could I tell you now. The bitter end’s well known. With wings and feathers, birds your consort loves, my daughters were transformed to snow-white doves. (Ovid, Metamorphoses 13. 631 ff)

And Charilla:

The Delphians celebrate three festivals one after the other which occur every eight years, the first of which they call Septerion, the second Heroïs, and the third Charilla. The greater part of the Heroïs has a secret import which the Thyiads know; but from the portions of the rites that are performed in public one might conjecture that it represents the evocation of Semele. The story of Charilla which they relate is somewhat as follows: A famine following a drought oppressed the Delphians, and they came to the palace of their king with their wives and children and made supplication. The king gave portions of barley and legumes to the more notable citizens, for there was not enough for all. But when an orphaned girl, who was still but a small child, approached him and importuned him, he struck her with his sandal and cast the sandal in her face. But, although the girl was poverty-stricken and without protectors, she was not ignoble in character; and when she had withdrawn, she took off her girdle and hanged herself. As the famine increased and diseases also were added thereto, the prophetic priestess gave an oracle to the king that he must appease Charilla, the maiden who had slain herself. Accordingly, when they had discovered with some difficulty that this was the name of the child who had been struck, they performed a certain sacrificial rite combined with purification, which even now they continue to perform every eight years. For the king sits in state and gives a portion of barley-meal and legumes to everyone, alien and citizen alike, and a doll-like image of Charilla is brought thither. When, accordingly, all have received a portion, the king strikes the image with his sandal. The leader of the Thyiads picks up the image and bears it to a certain place which is full of chasms; there they tie a rope round the neck of the image and bury it in the place where they buried Charilla after she had hanged herself. (Plutarch, Aetia Graeca 12)

And Kyanê:

To Dionysos alone did Kyanippos, a Syracusan, omit to sacrifice. Then one day in a fit of drunkenness he violated his daughter Kyanê in a dark place. She took off his ring and gave it to her nurse to be a mark of recognition. When the Syracusans were oppressed by a plague, and the Pythian God pronounced that they should sacrifice the impious man to the Averting Deities, the rest had no understanding of the oracle; but Kyanê knew, and seized her father by the hair and dragged him forth; and when she had herself cut her father’s throat, she killed herself upon his body in the same manner. So Dositheüs in the third book of his Sicilian History. (Plutarch, Greek and Roman Parallel Stories 18)

And numerous others.

Indeed, one of the central tenets of tragedy is that μίμησις brings about κάθαρσις, as Aristotle remarks in the Poetics:

Tragedy, then, is an imitation of an action that is serious, complete, and of a certain magnitude; in language embellished with each kind of artistic ornament; in the form of action, not of narrative; through pity and fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions.

For the Greeks language had a potent magical force to it:

Fearful shuddering and tearful pity and sorrowful longing come upon those who hear it, and the soul experiences a peculiar feeling, on account of the words, at the good and bad fortunes of other people’s affairs and bodies. But come, let me proceed from one section to another. By means of words, inspired incantations serve as bringers-on of pleasure and takers-off of pain. For the incantation’s power, communicating with the soul’s opinion, enchants and persuades and changes it, by trickery. Two distinct methods of trickery and magic are to be found: errors of soul, and deceptions of opinion. (Gorgias, Encomium of Helen)

A force that is still being felt millennia later, as Michael Meade’s use of tragic plays to heal wounded soldiers so ably demonstrates:

A soldier returns home from battle but has brought the war with him. He stares off into the distance, unable to take joy in his family or friends, still hyperalert to threats he no longer faces. Unable to heal his invisible wound, he takes his own life. This isn’t a tragic news story about a veteran coming back from Afghanistan with a case of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It’s a summary of the Greek play “Ajax,” which is more than 2,000 years old.

The Greeks didn’t call it PTSD. But they understood that war brought trauma (from the Greek word meaning “wound”), which left some warriors with a thousand-yard stare long after they returned home. Advocates and the military itself have found that ancient myths and stories like “Ajax” can help veterans and active-duty soldiers cope with the overwhelming psychological stress that the country’s longest war has put on its relatively small volunteer force.

[…]

Meade calls himself a “mythologist,” and he uses ancient stories from Ireland, Greece, India and other cultures to prod veterans into unloading their experiences and making sense of them over four-day retreats on the West Coast. Veterans in Meade’s program also sing ancient warrior chants together, take part in a “forgiveness” ceremony, and write and recite poetry. He believes that many ancient cultures did a better job of formally welcoming returning warriors home and helping to collectively shoulder some of their burdens.

“Everyone wants to tell their story,” Meade said. “Even the most wounded people, given the chance, want to tell the story of that wound. A wound is like a mouth.”

May our Lord Dionysos bring his healing and redemptive madness to all those who are in need it:

Madness can provide relief from the greatest plagues of trouble that beset certain families because of their guilt for ancient crimes: it turns up among those who need a way out; it gives prophecies and takes refuge in prayers to the Gods and in worship, discovering mystic rites and purifications that bring the man it touches through to safety for this and all time to come. So it is that the right sort of madness finds relief from present hardships for a man it has possessed. (Plato, Phaedrus 244de)

I was rereading the honey, castration and aischrorrêmosunai portion of my piece on the Priapic mysteries when something about this passage from Plato caught my eye.

Take that which we call ousia (reality, essence); some people call it essia, and still others ôsia. First, then, in connection with the second of these forms, it is reasonable that the essence of things be called Hestia; and moreover, because we ourselves say of that which partakes of reality ‘it is’ (estin), the name Hestia would be correct in this connection also; for apparently we also called ousia (reality) essia in ancient times. And besides, if you consider it in connection with sacrifices, you would come to the conclusion that those who established them understood the name in that way; for those who called the essence of things essia would naturally sacrifice to Hestia first of all the Gods. Those on the other hand, who say ôsia would agree, well enough with Herakleitos that all things move and nothing remains still. So they would say the cause and ruler of things was the pushing power (ôthoun), wherefore it had been rightly named ôsia. (Kratylos 400d – 401b)

Two things, actually. 

Esia is what the Etruscans called Ariadne.

And I’ve bolded the other. 

From Neil Gaiman’s short story The Return of the Thin White Duke:

The Duke contemplated losing his head to this woman, and found the prospect less disturbing than he would have expected.

A wind blew through the garden of dead flowers, and the Duke was put in mind of perfumed ghosts.

“Would you like to know the answer?” she asked.

“Answers,” he said. “Surely.”

“Only one answer, and it is this: the heart,” said the Queen. “The heart is greater than the universe, for it can find pity in it for everything in the universe, and the universe itself can feel no pity. The heart is greater than a King, because a heart can know a King for what he is, and still love him. And once you give your heart, you cannot take it back.”

“I said a kiss,” said the Duke.

“It was not as wrong as the other answers,” she told him. The wind gusted higher and wilder and for a heartbeat the air was filled with dead petals. Then the wind was gone as suddenly as it appeared, and the broken petals fell to the floor.

I wonder how the Bacchus Ladies have been doing under coronavirus. May Phryne and her God Isodaites look after them. 

Here’s a really important post from Dver y’all should read called: The spirits in your neighborhood. Don’t let the government stop you from getting to know them. 

Ennio Morricone was one of the best composers of the 20th century.

Fight me if you disagree.

I’m serious, though. Just listen to the music as music, completely divorced from the films and its cultural accretions. Its rich and robust and deceptively simple. Both epic and earthy – and fundamentally Italian, despite the subject matter.

I’m really stoned.

I really enjoyed tonight’s session, conveying your prayers to Dionysos. It was pretty intense, actually. When I read one of the petitions I got hit with this palpable wave of emotion from him that left me crying for a good ten minutes or so, before I could move on to the next. And that was just the most extreme example – I felt him feel something for each of people on the list. This was a wonderful reminder of what a caring and generous God our Dionysos is. Thank you for letting me serve him and you in this way. I think I’m going to make this a weekly thing. 

It’s funny how reality is bending itself to our festival calendar.

The next one – Agrionia – is all about an eruption of collective insanity caused by being cooped up too long during a city-devastating epidemic. Which, in fairness, is the aition for a bunch of Dionysian festivals. This is the one that features Melampos, the second prophet of our tradition. 

This is Nancy Harris’ painting of a Blackfoot medicine man, not Melampos but I can see how one could make that mistake.

Melampos was a religious specialist who used drugs and dance to effect cures, and created a strain of Bacchic mysteries involving puppets and giant penises whilst visiting Egypt, which he (re)introduced throughout large swaths of archaic Greece upon his return. Like Orpheus he was a king, though he won his dominion through trickery rather than blood. You can learn more about him here.

As I was saying, by the time May 20th rolls around a lot of folks are going to have a newfound sympathy for Jack Torrance. We’ll also be adjusting to life in a post-Constitutional America during a global economic crisis, with earthquakes, hurricanes and intermittent rioting and looting in the streets.

Which will make it the perfect time to honor the God of freedom and wildness, our savage Dionysos.

You see, by embracing his small madness we inoculate ourselves against the great madness that is soon to be sweeping through the land.   

What is this madness of his?

It is life and wholeness, truth and joy surpassing all description.

Products of our culture, conditioning and times this can only seem frighteningly insane to us. A complete inversion that will utterly destroy our carefully crafted illusions, uproot and disorient our tame lives in ways we cannot even conceive.

And it does. It so fucking does.

But it’s worth it. Whatever he asks, however he challenges you.

To feel even the smallest bit of him, for the briefest of moments – it’s worth it.

Dionysos is better than any drug, and I should know as I’ve tried a lot of drugs!

Dancing with him is like facing down a cyclone or riding a bucking bull.

Electrifying.

How are you guys holding up through this?

Need any prayers said?

Share something beautiful you’ve seen this week.

Scholiast on Apollonios Rhodios, Argonautika 3.467
According to the hymns of Orpheus Hekate was a daughter of Deo; according to Bacchylides, a daughter of Nyx; according to Musaeus, a daughter of Zeus and Asteria; and according to Pherecydes, she was a daughter of Aristaios.

Pausanias, Description of Greece 2.30.2
Of the Gods, the Aiginetans worship most Hekate, in whose honour every year they celebrate mystic rites which, they say, Orpheus the Thracian established among them. Within the enclosure is a temple; its wooden image is the work of Myron, and it has one face and one body. It was Alkamenes of Athens, in my opinion, who first made three images of Hekate attached to one another.

Proem of the Orphic Argonautika
When driven by the goad of Kings Bakchos and Apollon, I described their terrible shafts, and likewise I disclosed the cure for feeble mortal bodies and the Great Rites to initiates. Truly, above all I disclosed the stern inevitability of ancient Chaos, and Time, who in his boundless coils, produced Aether, and the twofold, beautiful, and noble Eros, whom the younger men call Phanes, celebrated parent of eternal Night, because he himself first manifested. Then, I sang of the race of powerful Brimo, and the destructive acts of the giants, who spilled their gloomy seed from the sky begetting the men of old, whence came forth mortal stock, which resides throughout the boundless world. And I sang of the service of Zeus, and of the cult of the Mother and how wandering in the Cybelean mountains she conceived the girl Persephone by the unconquerable son of Kronos, and of the renowned tearing of Kasmilos by Herakles, and of the sacred oath of Idaios, and of the immense oak of the Korybantes, and of the wanderings of Demeter, her great sorrow for Persephone, and her lawgiving. And also I sang of the splendid gift of the Kabeiroi, and the silent oracles of Night about Lord Bakchos, and of the sea of Samothrace and of Cyprus, and of the love of Aphrodite for Adonis. And I sang of the rites of Praxidike and the mountain nights of Athela, and of the lamentations of Egypt, and of the holy offerings to Osiris. And also I taught the multitudinous ways prophesying: from the motion of wild birds and from the positions of entrails; how to receive the prophetic dreams that pierce the mind in sleep, and the interpretation of signs and omens and what the motion of the stars means. I taught atonement that brings great happiness for mortals; and how to supplicate the gods and give offerings to the dead. And I described that which I gained by sight and thought when on the dark way of entering Haides via Taenaron, relying on my cithara, through the love of my wife. And I described the sacred test of the Egyptians in Memphis that is used to convey prophesy, and the sacred city of Apis, which is surrounded by the river Nile.

Orphic Argonautika 122 ff
After I came to the enclosures and the sacred place, I dug a three-sided pit in some flat ground. I quickly brought some trunks of juniper, dry cedar, prickly boxthorn and weeping black poplars, and in the pit I made a pyre of them. Skilled Medeia brought to me many drugs, taking them from the innermost part of a chest smelling of incense. At once, I fashioned certain images from barley-meal [the text is corrupt here]. I threw them onto the pyre, and as a sacrifice to honor the dead, I killed three black puppies. I mixed with their blood copper sulfate, soapwort, a sprig of safflower, and in addition odorless fleawort, red alkanet, and bronze-plant. After this, I filled the bellies of the puppies with this mixture and placed them on the wood. Then I mixed the bowels with water and poured the mixture around the pit. Dressed in a black mantle, I sounded bronze cymbals and made my prayer to the Furies. They heard me quickly, and breaking forth from the caverns of the gloomy abyss, Tisiphone, Allecto, and divine Megaira arrived, brandishing the light of death in their dry pine torches. Suddenly the pit blazed up, and the deadly fire crackled, and the unclean flame sent high its smoke. At once, on the far side of the fire, the terrible, fearful, savage goddesses arose. One had a body of iron. The dead call her Pandora. With her came one who takes on various shapes, having three heads, a deadly monster you do not wish to know: Hekate of Tartarus. From her left shoulder leapt a horse with a long mane. On her right should there could be seen a dog with a maddened face. The middle head had the shape of a lion [or snake] of wild form. In her hand she held a well-hilted sword. Pandora and Hekate circled the pit, moving this way and that, and the Furies leapt with them. Suddenly the wooden guardian statue of Artemis dropped its torches from its hands and raised its eyes to heaven. Her canine companions fawned. The bolts of the silver bars were loosened, and the beautiful gates of the thick walls opened; and the sacred grove within came into view. I crossed the threshold.

Orphic Hymn 1. To Hecate
Lovely Hecate of the roads and crossroads I invoke;
In heaven, on earth, and in the sea, saffron-cloaked,
Tomb spirit, reveling in the souls of the dead,
Daughter of Perses, haunting deserted places, delighting in dear,
Nocturnal, dog-loving, monstrous queen,
Devouring wild beasts, ungirt, of repelling countenance.
You, herder of bulls, queen and mistress of the whole world,
Leader, nymph, mountain-roaming nurturer of youth, maiden,
I beseech you to come to these holy rites,
Ever with joyous heart and ever favoring the oxherd.

 

Jessica Blum, Witch’s Song: morality, name-calling and poetic authority in the Argonautica

https://www.academia.edu/4787356/_Witch_s_Song_morality_name-calling_and_poetic_authority_in_the_Argonautica_

Roberto Chiappiniello, The Italian Medeas of Corrado Alvaro and Pier Paolo Pasolini: Transformation of a Myth in Twentieth-century Italy

http://www2.open.ac.uk/ClassicalStudies/GreekPlays/newvoices/Issue8/chiappiniello.pdf

John Duchi, Medea and Deconstructing the Greek Construct of Men and Gods

http://stanford.edu/~jduchi/projects/Medea%20Paper.pdf

Edith Hall, Inventing the Barbarian: Greek Self-Definition through Tragedy

https://www.academia.edu/24984053/Inventing_the_Barbarian_Greek_Self-Definition_through_Tragedy

Marianne Hopman, Revenge and Mythopoiesis in Euripides’ Medea

http://faculty.wcas.northwestern.edu/~mih961/documents/HopmanRevengeandMythopoiesis.pdf

Elly Penman, “Toil and Trouble”: Changes of Imagery to Hekate and Medea in Ovid’s Metamorphoses

https://www.academia.edu/11730220/_Toil_and_Trouble_Changes_of_Imagery_to_Hekate_and_Medea_in_Ovids_Metamorphoses

Peter Toohey, Medea’s Lovesickness: Eros and melancholia 

https://www.press.umich.edu/pdf/047211302X-ch2.pdf

Turkilsen & Blasweiler, Medea, Cytissorus, Hekate, they all came from Aea: Historical and Cultic Evidence from Hellas in the Golden Fleece Myths

https://www.academia.edu/9332057/Medea_Cytissorus_Hekate_they_all_came_from_Aea

Yulia Ustinova, Jason the Shaman

https://www.academia.edu/1223186/Jason_the_Shaman

Marco Antonio Santamaría Álvarez, A Phallus Hard to Swallow: the meaning of αἰδοῖος/-ον in the Derveni Papyrus

https://www.academia.edu/26527990/2016_A_Phallus_Hard_to_Swallow_the_meaning_of_%CE%B1%E1%BC%B0%CE%B4%CE%BF%E1%BF%96%CE%BF%CF%82_-%CE%BF%CE%BD_in_the_Derveni_Papyrus_Classical_Philology_111.2_139-164_Introduction_only_

Simon Collier, An Exploration into the Reception of Orpheus in the Early Christian period and the Christian Middle Ages

https://www.academia.edu/8441065/An_Exploration_into_the_Reception_of_Orpheus_in_the_Early_Christian_period_and_the_Christian_Middle_Ages

Eric Csapo, Star Choruses: Eleusis, Orphism, and New Musical Imagery and Dance

https://www.academia.edu/8199757/Star_Choruses_Eleusis_Orphism_and_New_Musical_Imagery_and_Dance_in_M._Revermann_and_P._Wilson_Performance_Iconography_Reception_Studies_in_Honour_of_Oliver_Taplin_2008

Fátima Díez-Platas, From the Heart and with a Serpent

https://www.academia.edu/2007026/From_the_Heart_and_with_a_Serpent

Radcliffe Edmonds III, The Children of Earth and Starry Heaven: The Meaning and Function of the Formula in the ‘Orphic’ Gold Tablets

https://www.academia.edu/26186368/The_Children_of_Earth_and_Starry_Heaven_The_Meaning_and_Function_of_the_Formula_in_the_Orphic_Gold_Tablets

Radcliffe Edmonds III, A Curious Concoction: Tradition and Innovation in Olympiodorus’ “Orphic” Creation of Mankind

https://www.academia.edu/1529320/A_Curious_Concoction_Tradition_and_Innovation_in_Olympiodorus_Orphic_Creation_of_Mankind

Radcliffe Edmonds III, Dionysos in Egypt? Epaphian Dionysos in the Orphic Hymns

http://repository.brynmawr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1100&context=classics_pubs

Radcliffe Edmonds III, The Ephesia Grammata: Logos Orphaïkos or Apolline Alexima Pharmaka?

https://www.academia.edu/26186362/The_Ephesia_Grammata_Logos_Orpha%C3%AFkos_or_Apolline_Alexima_Pharmaka

Radcliffe Edmonds III, Extra‐Ordinary People: Mystai and Magoi , Magicians and Orphics in the Derveni Papyrus

https://www.academia.edu/1529321/Extra_Ordinary_People_Mystai_and_Magoi_Magicians_and_Orphics_in_the_Derveni_Papyrus

Radcliffe Edmonds III, Recycling Laertes’ Shroud: More on Orphism and Original Sin

http://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/1297

Radcliffe Edmonds III, To Sit in Solemn Silence? Thronosis in Ritual, Myth, and Iconography

https://www.academia.edu/26186339/To_Sit_in_Solemn_Silence_Thronosis_in_Ritual_Myth_and_Iconography

Radcliffe Edmonds III, Tearing Apart the Zagreus Myth: A Few Disparaging Remarks on Orphism and Original Sin

https://www.academia.edu/26186374/Tearing_Apart_the_Zagreus_Myth_A_Few_Disparaging_Remarks_on_Orphism_and_Original_Sin

Radcliffe Edmonds III, Who are you? Mythic Narrative and Identity in the ‘Orphic’ Gold Tablets

https://www.academia.edu/26186369/Who_are_you_Mythic_Narrative_and_Identity_in_the_Orphic_Gold_Tablets

Radcliffe Edmonds III, Who in Hell is Heracles? Dionysos’ Disastrous Disguise in Aristophanes’ Frogs

https://www.academia.edu/26186347/Who_in_Hell_is_Heracles_Dionysos_Disastrous_Disguise_in_Aristophanes_Frogs

Christopher Faraone, Kronos and the Titans as Powerful Ancestors: A Case Study of the Greek Gods in Later Magical Spells

https://www.academia.edu/23681619/_Kronos_and_the_Titans_as_Powerful_Ancestors_A_Case_Study_of_the_Greek_Gods_in_Later_Magical_Spells_in_J._N._Bremmer_and_A._Erskine_eds_The_Gods_of_Ancient_Greece_Edinburgh_2010_388-405

Christopher Faraone, Mystery Cults and Incantations: Evidence for Orphic Charms in Euripides’ Cyclops 646-48?

https://www.academia.edu/23681185/_Mystery_Cults_and_Incantations_Evidence_for_Orphic_Charms_in_Euripides_Cyclops_646-48_Rheinisches_Museum_151_2008_127-142

Christopher Faraone, Orpheus’ Final Performance: Necromancy and a Singing Head on Lesbos

https://www.academia.edu/21235044/_Orpheus_Final_Performance_Necromancy_and_a_Singing_Head_on_Lesbos_Studi_italiani_di_filologia_classica_97_2004_5-27

Christopher Faraone, Rushing and Falling into Milk: New Perspectives on the Orphic Gold Tablets from Thurii and Pelinna

https://www.academia.edu/23681625/_Rushing_and_Falling_into_Milk_New_Perspectives_on_the_Orphic_Gold_Tablets_from_Thurii_and_Pelinna_in_R._G._Edmonds_ed._Further_along_the_Path_Recent_Studies_in_the_Orphic_Gold_Leaves_Cambridge_2010_304-24

Christopher Faraone, A Socratic Leaf-Charm for Headache (Charmides 155b-157c), Orphic Gold Leaves and the Ancient Greek Tradition of Leaf Amulets

https://www.academia.edu/23681486/_A_Socratic_Leaf-Charm_for_Headache_Charmides_155b-157c_Orphic_Gold_Leaves_and_the_Ancient_Greek_Tradition_of_Leaf_Amulets_in_J._Dijkstra_J._Kroesen_and_Y._Kuiper_edd._Myths_Martyrs_and_Modernity._Studies_in_the_History_of_Religions_in_Honour_of_Jan_N._Bremmer_Leiden_2009_145-166

Franco Ferrari, Oral Bricolage and Ritual Context in the Golden Tablets, proofs for “Sacred Words”

https://www.academia.edu/7893629/Oral_Bricolage_and_Ritual_Context_in_the_Golden_Tablets_proofs_for_Sacred_Words_2011_

Franco Ferrari, Orphics at Olbia

https://www.academia.edu/17367870/_Orphics_at_Olbia_2015_bozze

Renaud Gagné, Winds and Ancestors: The Physika of Orpheus

https://www.academia.edu/2349703/Winds_and_Ancestors_The_Physika_of_Orpheus

Emmanouela Grypeou, Talking Skulls: On Some Personal Accounts of Hell and Their Place in Apocalyptic Literature

https://www.academia.edu/22509910/Talking_Skulls_On_Some_Personal_Accounts_of_Hell_and_Their_Place_in_Apocalyptic_Literature

James Horden, Notes on the Orphic Papyrus from Gurôb

http://katabasis.ca/pdf/129131.pdf

Phillip Horky, The Imprint of the Soul: Psychosomatic Affection in Plato, Gorgias, and the “Orphic” Gold Tablets

https://www.academia.edu/202380/The_Imprint_of_the_Soul_Psychosomatic_Affection_in_Plato_Gorgias_and_the_Orphic_Gold_Tablets

Katarzyna Kolakowska, Orphic motives in “Orpheus’ Lithika”

https://www.academia.edu/8314705/Orphic_motives_in_Orpheus_Lithika_

Anna S. Kuznetsova, Shamanism and the Orphic Tradition

http://www.nsu.ru/classics/eng/Anna/Kuznetsova_Shamanism.pdf

Andrei Lebedev, Pharnabazos, the Diviner of Hermes: Two ostraka with curse letters from Olbia

http://www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/ifa/zpe/downloads/1996/112pdf/112268.pdf

Owen Lee, Mystic Orpheus: Another Note on the Three-Figure Reliefs

http://www.ascsa.edu.gr/pdf/uploads/hesperia/147286.pdf

Liz Locke, Orpheus and Orphism: Cosmology and Sacrifice at the Boundary

https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2022/2254/28(2)%203-29.pdf?sequence=1

Patrizia Marzillo, Attempt of a New Etymology for the Orphic divinity Phanes

https://www.academia.edu/3613495/Attempt_of_a_New_Etymology_for_the_Orphic_divinity_Phanes_by_Patrizia_Marzillo

Georgi Mishev, White, red and black: Bulgarian healing ritual

https://www.academia.edu/5841098/White_red_and_black_Bulgarian_healing_ritual

Alexis Pinchard, The Salvific Function of Memory in the Archaic Poetry, in the Orphic Gold Tablets and in Plato: What Continuity, What Break?

https://www.academia.edu/1621447/The_Salvific_Function_of_Memory_in_the_Archaic_Poetry_in_the_Orphic_Gold_Tablets_and_in_Plato_What_Continuity_What_Break

Ana Isabel Jiménez San Cristóbal, Do not drink the water of Forgetfulness

https://www.academia.edu/9880014/2011._Do_not_drink_the_water_of_Forgetfulness_OF_474-477_in_M._Herrero_A._I._Jim%C3%A9nez_San_Crist%C3%B3bal_E._R._Luj%C3%A1n_R._Mart%C3%ADn_M._A._Santamar%C3%ADa_S._Torallas_eds._Tracing_Orpheus._Studies_of_Orphic_Fragments_in_Honour_of_Alberto_Bernab%C3%A9_Berlin_Boston_2011_163-170

Ana Isabel Jiménez San Cristóbal, Thiasoi in the Netherworld

https://www.academia.edu/20308023/2015._Thiasoi_in_the_Netherworld_in_C._Giuffr%C3%A8_Scibona-A._Mastrocinque_ed._Ex_pluribus_unum._Studi_in_onore_di_Giulia_Sfameni_Gasparro_Roma_2015_109-120

Amit Shilo, From Oblivion to Judgment: Afterlives, Politics, and Unbeliefs in Greek Tragedy and Plato

https://www.academia.edu/6370459/From_Oblivion_to_Judgment_Afterlives_Politics_and_Unbeliefs_in_Greek_Tragedy_and_Plato

Stian Torjussen, Metamorphoses of Myth: A Study of the Orphic Gold Tablets and the Derveni Papyrus

https://www.academia.edu/3773025/Metamorphoses_of_Myth._A_Study_of_the_Orphic_Gold_Tablets_and_the_Derveni_Papyrus

Stian Torjussen, Milk as a symbol of immortality in the “Orphic” gold tablets from Thurii and Pelinna

https://www.academia.edu/9679705/Milk_as_a_symbol_of_immortality_in_the_Orphic_gold_tablets_from_Thurii_and_Pelinna

Yulia Ustinova, To Live in Joy and Die with Hope: Experiential Aspects of Ancient Greek Mystery Rites

https://www.academia.edu/5850427/To_Live_in_Joy_and_Die_with_Hope_Experiential_Aspects_of_Ancient_Greek_Mystery_Rites

Algis Uzdavinys, Orphism and the Roots of Platonism

http://themathesontrust.org/publications-files/mtexcerpt-orpheus.pdf

Sarah Burges Watson, Muses of Lesbos or (Aeschylean) Muses of Pieria? Orpheus’ Head on a Fifth-century Hydria

http://grbs.library.duke.edu/article/viewFile/14541/3887

Sarah Burges Watson, Orpheus: A Guide to Select Sources

https://livingpoets.dur.ac.uk/w/Orpheus:_A_Guide_to_Selected_Sources

Alexandra Wheatcroft, On the Topography of the Greek Underworld and the Orphic Gold Tablets

https://www.academia.edu/8507715/On_the_Topography_of_the_Greek_Underworld_and_the_Orphic_Gold_Tablets

 

The founder of our tradition enters the written record in the 6th century before the common era through the Magna Graecian poet Ibykos of Rhegion: Onomaklyton Orphēn, he wrote, “name-famous Orpheus.”

His famous name tells you everything about him; it comes from the PIE root *orbh-, “to put asunder, separate” and is related to orphne, “darkness” and orphanos, “parentless.” This is not a happy name. Noel Cobb finds it semantically connected to goao, “to lament, sing wildly, cast a spell thus uniting his seemingly disparate roles as disappointed lover, transgressive musician and mystery-priest into a single lexical whole.”

The myths that Orpheus sang into being were full of loss and suffering:

When driven by the goad of Kings Bakchos and Apollon, I described their terrible shafts, and likewise I disclosed the cure for feeble mortal bodies and the Great Rites to initiates. Truly, above all I disclosed the stern inevitability of ancient Chaos, and Time, who in his boundless coils, produced Aether, and the twofold, beautiful, and noble Eros, whom the younger men call Phanes, celebrated parent of eternal Night, because he himself first manifested. Then, I sang of the race of powerful Brimo, and the destructive acts of the giants, who spilled their gloomy seed from the sky begetting the men of old, whence came forth mortal stock, which resides throughout the boundless world. And I sang of the service of Zeus, and of the cult of the Mother and how wandering in the Cybelean mountains she conceived the girl Persephone by the unconquerable son of Kronos, and of the renowned tearing of Kasmilos by Herakles, and of the sacred oath of Idaios, and of the immense oak of the Korybantes, and of the wanderings of Demeter, her great sorrow for Persephone, and her lawgiving. And also I sang of the splendid gift of the Kabeiroi, and the silent oracles of Night about Lord Bakchos, and of the sea of Samothrace and of Cyprus, and of the love of Aphrodite for Adonis. And I sang of the rites of Praxidike and the mountain nights of Athela, and of the lamentations of Egypt, and of the holy offerings to Osiris. And also I taught the multitudinous ways prophesying: from the motion of wild birds and from the positions of entrails; how to receive the prophetic dreams that pierce the mind in sleep, and the interpretation of signs and omens and what the motion of the stars means. I taught atonement that brings great happiness for mortals; and how to supplicate the gods and give offerings to the dead. And I described that which I gained by sight and thought when on the dark way of entering Haides via Taenaron, relying on my cithara, through the love of my wife. And I described the sacred test of the Egyptians in Memphis that is used to convey prophesy, and the sacred city of Apis, which is surrounded by the river Nile. (Proem of the Orphic Argonautika)

The universe in which these myths play out is a fundamentally tragic one – even the gods experience vicissitudes, so man has no hope of escaping them. Rather, we must use the strife we will inevitably face to perfect ourselves and ennoble our spirits. We must pass through grief into joy, letting it burn away all that is false and useless within us – you cannot reach the one but through the other. We must find the divine in the monstrous, the profane in the holy, we must be destroyed in order to know the full measure of life – only when we are on the edge, with nothing left to lose and no thought for what we might gain, are we truly free, truly alive. Heroic philosophy is what Orpheus taught the Greeks; how to suffer well and look forward to death.

The Spartan king Leotychidas wished to be initiated into the mysteries until Philip the Orpheotelest came to oversee the rites. The man was gaunt, half-mad eyes red from tears, hair unkempt, smeared with ashes and wearing a simple white linen garment. “Your appearance,” the king said, “makes me wonder if these ceremonies you’re peddling bring any benefit at all.” Philip proceeded to explain the pleasures that awaited initiates on the other side, growing ever more florid and rapturous as he went on. Finally Leotychidas interjected, “You fool! If such abundant riches are yours why don’t you speedily kill yourself instead of prolonging your misery here?” Philip laughed and said, “What would you think of a feast where the host set before you a table containing only olives?” And Leotychidas replied, “Such fare would be too simple even by Spartan standards.” Philip answered him, “I have not yet had my fill of this world’s delicacies.”

This parable, which appears slightly modified in the Apophthegmata Laconica and recurs in several forms at various places in Plutarch’s corpus, reminds me of these passages from The Apocryphon of James:

Then Peter answered: “Lord, three times you have said to us ‘Become full’, but we are full.” The Lord answered and said: “Therefore I say unto you, become full, in order that you may not be diminished. Those who are diminished, however, will not be saved. For fullness is good and diminution is bad.

[…]

Do you not desire, then, to be filled? And is your heart drunk? Be ashamed should you desire to be sober! And now, waking or sleeping, remember that you have seen the Son of Man. Woe to those who have seen the Son of Man! Blessed are those who have not seen the Man, and who have not consorted with him, and who have not spoken with him, and who have not listened to anything from him. Yours is life! Know, therefore, that the Son of Man healed you when you were ill, in order that you might reign. Yours is the Kingdom of God! Therefore I say to you, become full and leave no place within you empty, since the Coming One is able to mock you.

[…]

Do you dare to spare the flesh, you for whom the spirit is an encircling wall? If you contemplate the world, how long it is before you and also how long it is after you, you will find that your life is one single day and your sufferings, one single hour. Scorn death, therefore, and take concern for life. Remember my cross and my death and you will live.

And I answered and said to him: “Lord, do not mention to us the cross and the death, for they are far from you.” The Lord answered and said: “Truly I say to you, none will be saved unless they believe in my cross. But those who have believed in my cross, theirs is the Kingdom of God. Therefore, become seekers for death, just as the dead who seek for life, for that which they seek is revealed to them. And what is there to concern them? When you turn yourselves towards death, it will make known to you election. In truth I say to you, none of those who are afraid of death will be saved. For the Kingdom of God belongs to those who have put themselves to death. Become better than I; make yourselves like the son of the Holy Spirit.”

Then I questioned him: “Lord how may we prophesy to those who ask us to prophesy to them? For there are many who ask us and who look to us to hear an oracle from us.”

The Lord answered and said: “Do you not know that the head of prophecy was cut off?”

And I said: “Lord, it is not possible to remove the head of prophecy, is it?”

The Lord said to me: “When you come to know what ‘head’ is, and that prophecy issues from the head, then understand what is the meaning of ‘Its head was removed’. I first spoke with you in parables, and you did not understand. Now, in turn, I speak with you openly, and you do not perceive. But it is you who were to me a parable in parables.

Or as the Olbian prophets of Orpheus once put it: βίος. θάνατος. βίος. ἀλήθεια. Διόνυσος. Life. Death. Life. Truth [Loss of Forgetfulness]. Dionysos.

There is also a strong parallelism between the gold lamellae and this fragment from the Gospel of Philip:

The Lord has shown me that my soul must say on its ascent to heaven, and how it must answer each of the powers on high. I have recognized myself, it says, and gathered myself from every quarter, and have sown no children for the archon. But I have pulled up his roots, and gathered my scattered members, and I know who you are. For I, it saith, am of those on high. And so, they say, it is set free. 

Medeia may just be the most controversial member of the Bacchic Orphic pantheon – and that’s saying something since Dirke is on the list!

Most people are likely only familiar with Medeia from the masterful play that Euripides wrote about her and so may be a little curious as to what she has to do with Bacchic Orphism.

Well, as it turns out, quite a lot.

For instance, it was she who taught Orpheus the use of drugs (which is significant since entheogens have a prominent role in certain streams of Bacchic Orphism) and initiated him into the mysteries of the Hekate of Zerynthos:

After I came to the enclosures and the sacred place, I dug a three–sided pit in some flat ground. I quickly brought some trunks of juniper, dry cedar, prickly boxthorn and weeping black poplars, and in the pit I made a pyre of them. Skilled Medea brought to me many drugs, taking them from the innermost part of a chest smelling of incense. At once, I fashioned certain images from barley–meal [the text is corrupt here]. I threw them onto the pyre, and as a sacrifice to honor the dead, I killed three black puppies. I mixed with their blood copper sulfate, soapwort, a sprig of safflower, and in addition odorless fleawort, red alkanet, and bronze–plant. After this, I filled the bellies of the puppies with this mixture and placed them on the wood. Then I mixed the bowels with water and poured the mixture around the pit. Dressed in a black mantle, I sounded bronze cymbals and made my prayer to the Furies. They heard me quickly, and breaking forth from the caverns of the gloomy abyss, Tisiphone, Allecto, and divine Megaira arrived, brandishing the light of death in their dry pine torches. Suddenly the pit blazed up, and the deadly fire crackled, and the unclean flame sent high its smoke. At once, on the far side of the fire, the terrible, fearful, savage goddesses arose. One had a body of iron. The dead call her Pandora. With her came one who takes on various shapes, having three heads, a deadly monster you do not wish to know: Hecate of Tartarus. (Orphic Argonautika 122 ff)

However, what really cements her place in the pantheon is the eternal bond of friendship that exists between her and Dionysos:

After Jason led Medea to Greece, he had sex with her as he had promised her marriage. Having seen her clever skills in many things before, eventually he asked her to transform his father Aeson into young manhood. She had not yet put aside the love she had for him. Boiling in a bronze cauldron plants whose power she knew, obtained from diverse regions, she cooked the slain Aeson with warm herbs and restored him to his original vigor. When Father Liber noticed that Aeson’s old age had been expelled by Medea’s medicines, he entreated Medea to change his nurses back to the vigor of youth. Agreeing to his request, she established a pledge of eternal benefit with him by restoring his nurses to the vigor of youth by giving them same medicines that rejuvenated Aeson. But when Jason, spurning her, took in Glauce, the daughter of Creon, Medea gave his mistress a tunic laced with poison and garlic: When she put it on, she began to burn alive by fire. Then Medea, not putting up with the soul of Jason raging against her, did away with her and Jason’s sons and fled on a winged serpent. (The Second Vatican Mythographer 137–38)

Of course, this is not the only time that the arch-witch did him a solid. She also took out the serial rapist Theseus who in addition to violently assaulting Dionysos’ wife Ariadne:

And Theseus, having attempted to ravish Helene, after that carried off Ariadne. Accordingly Ister, in the fourteenth book of his History of the Affairs of Athens, giving a catalogue of those women who became the wives of Theseus, says that some of them became so out of love, and that some were carried off by force, and some were married in legal marriage. Now by force were ravished Helene, Ariadne, Hippolyte, and the daughters of Cercyon and Sinis; and he legally married Meliboea, the mother of Ajax. And Hesiod says that he also married Hippe and Aegle; on account of whom he broke the oaths which he had sworn to Ariadne, as Cercops tells us. And Pherecydes adds Phereboea. And before ravishing Helene, he had also carried off Anaxo from Troezen; and after Hippolyte he also had Phaidra. (Athenaios, Deipnosophistai 557a–b)

Also tried to abduct his mother Persephone:

Theseus and Peirithoos agreed with each other to marry daughters of Zeus, so Theseus with the other’s help kidnapped twelve-year-old Helene from Sparta, and went down to Haides’ realm to court Persephone for Peirithoos . . . Theseus, arriving in Haides’ realm with Peirithoos, was thoroughly deceived, for Haides on the pretense of hospitality had them sit first upon the throne of Lethe. Their bodies grew onto it, and were held down by the serpent’s coils. Now Peirithoos remained fast there for all time, but Herakles led Theseus back up. (Apollodoros, Bibliotheca E1. 23 – 24)

The poison Medeia used to do the deed is rather interesting:

For Theseus’ death Medea mixed her poisoned aconite brought with her long ago from Scythia’s shores. There is a cavern yawning dark and deep, and there a falling track where the hero Hercules of Tiryns dragged struggling, blinking, screwing up his eyes against the sunlight and the blinding day, the hell-hound Cerberus, fast on a chain of adamant. His three throats filled the air with triple barking, barks of frenzied rage, and spattered the green meadows with white spume. This, so men think, congealed and, nourished by the rich rank soil, gained poisonous properties. And since they grow and thrive on hard bare rocks the farm folk call them ‘flintworts’ –aconites. (Ovid, Metamorphoses 7.412)

Since aconite is the herb used by Minerva to transform Arachne into a spider. Why that’s interesting is that Medeia is counted among the alétides:

Aletis: Some say that she is Erigone, the daughter of Ikarios, since she wandered everywhere seeking her father.  Others say she is the daughter of Aigisthos and Klytemnestra. Still others say she is the daughter of Maleotos the Tyrrhenian; others that she is Medea, since, having wandered after the murder of her children, she escaped to Aigeus.  Others say that she is Persephone, wherefore those grinding the wheat offer some cakes to her. (Etymologicum Magnum 62.9)

Most of whom hung themselves like Arachne. It’s also interesting because in a tradition recounted by Diodoros Sikeliotes, it was Hekate who instructed Medeia in the use of aconite – Medeia being in this instance her daughter:

And Perses had a daughter Hecatê, who surpassed her father in boldness and lawlessness; she was also fond of hunting, and when she had no luck she would turn her arrows upon human beings instead of the beasts. Being likewise ingenious in the mixing of deadly poisons she discovered the drug called aconite and tired out the strength of each poison by mixing it in the food given to the strangers. And since she possessed great experience in such matters she first of all poisoned her father and so succeeded to the throne, and then, founding a temple of Artemis and commanding that strangers who landed there should be sacrificed to the goddess, she became known far and wide for her cruelty. After this she married Aeëtes and bore two daughters, Circe and Medea, and a son Aegialeus. […] From her mother and sister she learned all the powers which drugs possess, but her purpose in using them was exactly the opposite. For she made a practice of rescuing from their perils the strangers who came to their shores, sometimes demanding from her father by entreaty and coaxing that the lives be spared of those who were to die, and sometimes herself releasing them from prison and then devising plans for the safety of the unfortunate men. For Aeëtes, parlty because of his own natural cruelty and partly because he was under the influence of his wife Hecatê, had given his approval to the custom of slaying strangers. (Library of History 4.45.2)

Interestingly, the epiklesis Περσεις (meaning “Destroyer”) is one shared by Arachne in Nonnos, though the Panopolitan gives it a different (though no less relevant, as we shall momentarily see) interpretation:  

Staphylos the grapelover attended upon Lyaios, offering him the guest’s gifts as he was hasting for his journey: a two-handled jar of gold with silver cups, from which hitherto he used always to quaff the milk of milch-goats; and he brought embroidered robes, which Persian Arachne beside the waters of Tigris had cleverly made with her fine thread. Then the generous king spoke to Bromios of the earlier war between Zeus and Kronos. (Dionysiaka 18.217)

So Medeia is firmly ensconced in the realm of Dionysos Lusios even before she uses her cauldron to give renewed life to his followers through baptism, just as she had for Aison.

Aison’s brother, by the way, is Amythaon – the father of the Dionysian prophet Melampos who used drugs, incantations, music, erotic dancing and flagellation to cure the daughters of Proitos of their mainadic state. In some traditions he also immersed them in a river:

When the seers bade them propitiate Apollon and Artemis, they sent seven boys and seven maidens as suppliants to the river Sythas. They say that the deities, persuaded by these, came to what was then the citadel, and the place that they reached first is the sanctuary of Persuasion. Conformable with this story is the ceremony they perform at the present day; the children go to the Sythas at the feast of Apollon, and having brought, as they pretend, the deities to the sanctuary of Persuasion, they say that they take them back again to the temple of Apollon. The temple stands in the modern market–place, and was originally, it is said, made by Proitos, because in this place his daughters recovered from their madness. (Pausanias, Description of Greece 2.7.8)

Some Greeks say that Chiron, others that Pylenor, another Centaur, when shot by Heracles fled wounded to this river and washed his hurt in it, and that it was the hydra’s poison which gave the Anigros its nasty smell. Others again attribute the quality of the river to Melampos the son of Amythaon, who threw into it the means he used to purify the daughters of Proitos. (Pausanias, Description Greece 5.5.10)

Above Nonacris are the Aroanian Mountains, in which is a cave. To this cave, legend says, the daughters of Proitos fled when struck with madness; Melampos by secret sacrifices and purifications brought them down to a place called Lusi. Most of the Aroanian mountain belongs to Phenios, but Lusi is on the borders of Kleitor. They say that Lusi was once a city, and Agesilas was proclaimed as a man of Lusi when victor in the horse-race at the eleventh Pythian festival held by the Amphictyons; but when I was there not even ruins of Lusi remained. Well, the daughters of Proitos were brought down by Melampos to Lusi, and healed of their madness in a sanctuary of Artemis. Wherefore this Artemis is called Hemerasia (She who soothes) by the Kleitorians. (Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.18.8–7)

Note the sacrifice in the first passage of seven male and seven female children, just like the sacrifice offered to the Minotaur which was abolished by Theseus …

… at the instigations of Medeia, who was sleeping with his father Aigeus, and wanted her stepson out of the picture:

Now as for Medea, they say, on finding upon her arrival in Thebes that Heracles was possessed of a frenzy of madness and had slain his sons, she restored him to health by means of drugs. But since Eurystheus was pressing Heracles with his commands, she despaired of receiving any aid from him at the moment and sought refuge in Athens with Aegeus, the son of Pandion. Here, as some say, she married Aegeus and gave birth to Medus, who was later king of Media. (Diodoros Sikeliotes, Library of History 4.55.4–4.55.5)

She did that in order to protect the interests of her son Medus, Theseus’ half-brother.

Total random aside here, but did you know that Dionysos transformed himself into a tiger to seduce a maiden and that’s why the river beside which Arachne wove is called Tigris?

But Hermesianax the Cyprian tells the story thus: Dionysos fell in love with the nymph Alphesiboea and unable to persuade her with presents or entreaties turned himself into a tiger. She climbed on his back and rode him across the river and when she was on the other side she discovered that she was with child, a son who was named Medus and when he grew up he named the river Tigris in remembrance of the strange accident of his birth. (Pseudo–Plutarch, De fluviis 24)

Did you catch his name? Yeah, Medus which is related to the Proto-Indo-European *médʰu, the Greek μέθυ (“intoxicating beverage”), the Old Irish mid (“mead”), Old High German metu (“sweet drink; honey”).

Just like the meilia that are poured out for the dead in rites of appeasement and necromancy.

Bringing us back full circle.

I’ve been doing this dance for thousands of years. This is the old dance. This is the old story. You see, those old stories aren’t through with us. No matter how many different names or masks we might wear … they’re just not finished with us yet. I’m talking about recurrences. What you might call eternal recurrences. Running through the generations … like blood. We think our science means we’re different or better than we used to be. We think we’re actually making progress. Every new Drafur reveals just how little we really change. Medea and Agamemnon are still playing at the temple of Dionysus. It’s standing room only. (Peter Milligan, Greek Street Volume I)

 

Orpheus’ connections with Hermes are not as direct as the ones he has with Apollon and Dionysos, but they are strong and persistent. To begin with, there’s the tortoise-shell lyre that the infant Hermes invents shortly after crawling out of his nymph-mother’s cave, which he then trades to Apollon in return for pebble-divination and the Thriai or bee-nymphs of Korykia. This lyre was then given to Orpheus by Apollon, who in some traditions is regarded as his father, having begotten him through the mountain-haunting nymph of prophetic verse Kalliope.

This leads into the next point of contact between them, their use of language to persuade and control:

This name ‘Hermes’ seems to me to have to do with speech; he is an interpreter (hêrmêneus) and a messenger, is wily and deceptive in speech, and is oratorical. All this activity is concerned with the power of speech. Now, as I said before, eirein denotes the use of speech; moreover, Homer often uses the wordemêsato, which means ‘contrive.’ From these two words, then, the lawgiver imposes upon us the name of this god who contrived speech and the use of speech–eirein means ‘speak’–and tells us : ‘Ye human beings, he who contrived speech (eirein emêsato) ought to be called Eiremes by you.’ We, however, have beautified the name, as we imagine, and call him Hermes. Iris also seems to have got her name from eirein, because she is a messenger. (Plato, Kratylos 408a)

The invention of language was also credited to Orpheus by some; others associated his poems with the earliest written form of Greek:

And in the same manner use was made of these Pelasgic letters by Orpheus and Pronapides who was the teacher of Homer and a gifted writer of songs; and also by Thymoetes, the son of Thymoetes, the son of Laomedon, who lived at the same time as Orpheus, wandered over many regions of the inhabited world, and penetrated to the western part of Libya as far as the ocean. He also visited Nysa, where the ancient natives of the city relate that Dionysos was reared there, and, after he had learned from the Nysaeans of the deeds of this god one and all, he composed the “Phrygian poem,” as it is called, wherein he made use of the archaic manner both of speech and of letters. (Diodoros Sikeleiotes, Library of History 3.67.5)

This is important when you consider that literacy came fairly late to the Greeks who had largely been a nomadic and then pastoral people until that point. It likewise precipitated a massive cultural and technological revolution which left a deep ambivalence in the population that remained well into the Classical period, with Sokrates and others expressing concern over the written word’s effect on memory and character. These sorts of objections were specifically lobbed at Orpheus:

People are wrong to think that Orpheus did not compose a hymn that says wholesome and lawful things; for they say that he utters riddles by means of his composition, and it is impossible to state the solution to his words even though they have been spoken. But his composition is strange and riddling for human beings. Orpheus did not wish to say in it disputable riddles, but important things in riddles. For he tells a holy tale even from the first word right through to the last, as he shows even in the well-known verse: for by bidding them ‘put doors on their ears’ he is saying that he is not legislating for the many, (but is addressing) those who are pure in hearing … (Derveni Papyrus col. 7)

Those who knew how to use language well were often seen as tricksters, thieves, con-men and wizards:

Fearful shuddering and tearful pity and sorrowful longing come upon those who hear it, and the soul experiences a peculiar feeling, on account of the words, at the good and bad fortunes of other people’s affairs and bodies. But come, let me proceed from one section to another. By means of words, inspired incantations serve as bringers-on of pleasure and takers-off of pain. For the incantation’s power, communicating with the soul’s opinion, enchants and persuades and changes it, by trickery. Two distinct methods of trickery and magic are to be found: errors of soul, and deceptions of opinion. (Gorgias, Encomium of Helen)

Which is no doubt how Hermes came to become patron of all of these professions, along with commerce, travel and messengers. In some accounts this is precisely what led to the death of Orpheus:

At the base of Olympus is the city of Dium, near which lies the village of Pimpleia. Here lived Orpheus, the Ciconian, it is said — a wizard who at first collected money from his music, together with his soothsaying and his celebration of the orgies connected with the mystic initiatory rites, but soon afterwards thought himself worthy of still greater things and procured for himself a throng of followers and power. Some, of course, received him willingly, but others, since they suspected a plot and violence, combined against him and killed him. And near here, also, is Leibethra. (Strabo, Geography 7.7)

This is almost the story told of Hermes in the Homeric Hymn in miniature, except that Hermes manages to broker a truce with his enemies and integrate himself into the Olympian system instead of getting killed. Nor is this the only instance where Orpheus is called a magician – Orphic rites are frequently compared to those of the magoi, even by evident insiders:

 … prayers and sacrifices appease the souls, and the enchanting song of the magician is able to remove the daimones when they impede. Impeding daimones are revenging souls. This is why the magicians perform the sacrifice as if they were paying a penalty. On the offerings they pour water and milk, from which they make the libations, too. They sacrifice innumerable and many-knobbed cakes, because the souls, too, are innumerable. (Derveni Papyrus col. 6.1-11)

It’s worth noting that the specific domain where magicians and Orpheotelestai intersect is the dead. Although Hermes presided over all forms of magic, as a psychopomp he specialized in necromancy:

Chorus of Evocators: We, the race that lives around the lake, do honor to Hermes our ancestor … Come now, guest-friend, take up your stance on the grassy sacred enclosure of the fearful lake. Slash the gullet of the neck, and let the blood of this sacrificial victim flow into the murky depths of the reeds as a drink offering for the lifeless. Call upon primeval Earth and chthonic Hermes, escort of the dead, and ask chthonic Zeus to send up the swarm of night-wanderers from the mouth of this melancholy river, unfit for washing hands, sent up by Stygian springs. (Aischylos, Psuchahogoi fragment 273)

The ability to travel between worlds and guide the souls up to earth was another trait Hermes and Orpheus shared:

But if I had had the voice and music of Orpheus, so that, by bewitching the daughter of Demeter or her husband by my songs, I could lead you out of Hades, I would have descended, and neither the hound of Pluto, nor Charon at his oar, the transporter of souls, would have stopped me from bringing your life back to the light. (Euripides, Alcestis 357-62)

Indeed, all of the early sources – Phanocles included, who gives the name of Orpheus’ spouse as Agriope (wild-faced) or Argiope (shining-faced) not Eurydike (wide-ruling; a title belonging to Persephone and several Makedonian queens) – seem to indicate that Orpheus was successful in his task. The sudden madness and backwards glance costing him his lady love is found sporadically in the Classical period (Plato makes derisive allusion to it) and only becomes the dominant tradition with the Hellenistic poets, who always try to strike the most tragic chord possible. (One of them, Eratosthenes, is also responsible for introducing a note of tension between Dionysos and Orpheus, likely for political reasons.) In this variant tradition it is Hermes who either leads the forlorn poet out of the underworld once he has failed or imposes the taboo against looking back in the first place.

In one tradition Orpheus is actually responsible for introducing the worship of Hermes into Greece along with founding the mysteries of Dionysos – both of which he discovered during his travels in Egypt, as Diodoros Sikeliotes (Library of History 96.4-9) described:

Orpheus, for instance, brought from Egypt most of his mystic ceremonies, the orgiastic rites that accompanied his wanderings, and his fabulous account of his experiences in Hades. For the rite of Osiris is the same as that of Dionysos and that of Isis very similar to that of Demeter, the names alone having been interchanged; and the punishments in Hades of the unrighteous, the Fields of the Righteous, and the fantastic conceptions, current among the many, which are figments of the imagination — all these were introduced by Orpheus in imitation of the Egyptian funeral customs. Hermes, for instance, the Conductor of Souls, according to the ancient Egyptian custom, brings up the body of the Apis to a certain point and then gives it over to one who wears the mask of Cerberus. And after Orpheus had introduced this notion among the Greeks, Homer followed it when he wrote:

Cyllenian Hermes then did summon forth
The suitors’s souls, holding his wand in hand.
And again a little further on he says:
They passed Okeanos’ streams, the Gleaming Rock,
The Portals of the Sun, the Land of Dreams;
And now they reached the Meadow of Asphodel,
Where dwell the Souls, the shades of men outworn.

Now he calls the river “Okeanos” because in their language the Egyptians speak of the Nile as Okeanos; the “Portals of the Sun” (heliopulai) is his name for the city of Heliopolis; and “Meadows,” the mythical dwelling of the dead, is his term for the place near the lake which is called Acherousia, which is near Memphis, and around it are fairest meadows, of a marsh-land and lotus and reeds. The same explanation also serves for the statement that the dwelling of the dead is in these regions, since the most and the largest tombs of the Egyptians are situated there, the dead being ferried across both the river and Lake Acherousia and their bodies laid in the vaults situated there. The other myths about Hades, current among the Greeks, also agree with the customs which are practised even now in Egypt. For the boat which receives the bodies is called baris, and the passenger’s fee is given to the boatman, who in the Egyptian tongue is called charon. And near these regions, they say, are also the “Shades,” which is a temple of Hekate, and “portals” of Kokytos and Lethe, which are covered at intervals with bands of bronze. There are, moreover, other portals, namely, those of Truth, and near them stands a headless statue of Justice.

Despite this Hermes doesn’t figure much in the standard Orphic cosmogonies – though he does show up in a variant Italian form in the golden lamellae, something a lot of people may not realize.

A: I come from the pure, o Pure Queen of the earthly ones, Eukles, Eubouleos, and You other Immortal Gods! I too claim to be of your blessed race, but Fate and other Immortal Gods conquered me, the star-smiting thunder. And I flew out from the hard and deeply-grievous circle, and stepped onto the crown with my swift feet, and slipped into the bosom of the Mistress, the Queen of the Underworld. And I stepped out from the crown with my swift feet.

B: Happy and blessed one! You shall be a god instead of a mortal.

A: I have fallen as a kid into milk.

The name Euklui Paterei is found in a number of Samnite inscriptions; Hesychius describes him as a cross between Mercury and Dis Pater (Hesychius s.v. Eukolos). It’s interesting that he’s partnered with Eubouleos (the Good Counselor) who is either, in Eleusinian sources, the swineherd that got swallowed up along with his pigs when Aidoneus abducted Kore and was thereafter venerated as a hero or, in Orphic sources, a chthonic Dionysos who mediates between the living, the dead and the underworld powers and brings soothing release to them through his words.

Although the mainstream Hellenic tradition represented Hermes as the elder brother of Dionysos who shelters and safely conducts the infant god to the nymphs and satyrs who raise him on Mount Nysa after his foster-parents Ino and Athamas are driven insane and massacre their children, the private religious association in 1st or 2nd century Anatolia which wrote the corpus of texts we now call the Orphic Hymns knew a different tradition, whereby the chthonic Hermes was the son of Dionysos and Aphrodite:

You dwell in the compelling road of no return by Kokytos.
You guide the souls of mortals to the nether gloom.
Hermes, off-spring of Dionysos who revels in dance,
And Aphrodite, the Paphian maiden of the fluttering eyelids,
You frequent the sacred house of Persephone,
As guide throughout the earth of ill-fated souls,
Which you bring to their haven when their time has come,
Charming them with your sacred wand and giving them sleep,
From which you rouse them again.
To you indeed Persephone gave the office, throughout wide Tartaros,
To lead the way for the eternal souls of men.
But, O blessed one, grant a good end for the initiate’s wok.

This is in distinction to the earlier Hymn to Hermes which gives his traditional parentage:

Hear me, Hermes, messenger of Zeus, son of Maia.
Almighty is your heart, O lord of the deceased and judge of contests.
Gentle and clever, O Argeiphontes, you are a guide whose sandals fly,
And a man-loving prophet to mortals.
You are vigorous and you delight in exercise and in deceit.
Interpreter of all, you are a profiteer who frees us of cares,
And who holds in his hands the blameless tool of peace.
Lord of Korykos, blessed,
helpful and skilled in words, you assist in work,
You are a friend of mortals in need,
And you wield the dreaded and respected weapon of speech.
Hear my prayer and grant a good end to a life of industry,
gracious talk and mindfulness.

A different group of Orphics in Olbia (modern-day Ukraine) honored Hermes and Aphrodite as romantic partners – in fact one of these Orpheotelestai, who seems to have been engaged in a magical duel with a colleague, described himself as a prophet of Hermes and worked out of a joint temple of the two deities. Interestingly we find this same pairing in Lokroi Epizephyrii, whose mysteries of Persephone strongly influenced Orphism in Magna Graecia. (This is not as random as it may seem – the two locales actually had strong trade relations in antiquity.)

Although there are many other points of connection between Hermes and Orpheus I’d be remiss if I did not mention the Golden Chain:

In the subjects belonging to theology the six great theologians join together: the first is Zoroaster, chief of Magi, the second Mercurius Trismegistus, the prince of Egyptian priests. Orpheus was successor to Mercurius; Aglaophamus was introduced into the sanctuaries by Orpheus. Pythagoras followed Aglaophamus in theology; Aglaophamus’ successor was Plato, who, in his works, summarized, improved and illustrated the wisdom of these men. They all veiled divine Mysteries with poetical shadows, so that they should not be communicated to the profane people. But it happened that their successors communicated the mysteries and everybody interpreted them in his own way. (Marcilio Facino, Theologia Platonica 17.1)

In the 12th century Kaiserchronik it is stated concerning divus Julius Caesar:

Rômâre in ungetrûwelîche sluogen / sîn gebaine si ûf ain irmensûl begruoben
The Romans slew him treacherously / and buried his bones on an Irminsul

Fascinating, especially considering what the Irminsul is.

Potential cosmic significance aside, I’m guessing this is a distorted reflection of the cruciform wax effigy that was paraded through Rome on Liberalia a couple days after Caesar’s assassination, to celebrate his miraculous resurrection and apotheosis.

But that’s not why I’m writing. Whilst reading the section of the Kaiserchronik on the Franks, I had a thought:

How great could Charlemagne have been if he didn’t have any followers on Instagram? 

Clearly the lion has just woken from a drunken stupor and wants to know what the fuck is going on, and I think that’s a very good question.

But a more important question is – have you danced today?

I was rereading my Details post and noticed that I failed to provide the etymology for the name of Orpheus’ wife:

In Greek mythology, Eurydice (Greek: Εὐρυδίκη, Eurydikē “wide justice”, derived from ευρυς eurys “wide” and δικη dike “justice”) was the wife of Orpheus, who tried to bring her back from the dead with his enchanting music. The story of Eurydice may be a late addition to the Orpheus myths. In particular, the name Eurudike (“she whose justice extends widely”) recalls cult-titles attached to Persephone. The myth may have been derived from another Orpheus legend in which he travels to Tartarus and charms the goddess Hecate.

When I experienced anagnorisis like a kick in the dick.

They’re so wrong. It’s actually got to be one of the oldest strata of Orpheus’ myth.

You see Eurydike is a Sovereignty Goddess, and without her King Orpheus cannot rule.

Fuck, that … has repercussions.

How have I never seen this before?