Orphic hymns

The Orphic hymns are an important part of ancient Greek religious poetry and the mystical orphic tradition. Their exact date is not entirely certain, as hymns are based on earlier oral worship practices that evolved through time.

Most historians and philologists place the composition of the final form of the collection about the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD, i.e. in the late Hellenistic and early Roman period. Despite this «late» of their recording, the content of hymns retains elements of much older religious conceptions associated with orphic cosmology.

The Orphic hymns should not be considered as the work of a single poet. Rather, they are a collective product of the orphic cult tradition, where different generations of priests and poets contributed to the formulation of the text. Their language, style and theological references show influences from classical and postclassical Greek religious thought.

Today, orphic hymns are studied as both literary work and as a source for understanding ancient Greek religion, mystic philosophy and ritualistic practices associated with the invocation of the gods.

the divine

At first there was no form or name.
No land, no heaven, no sea that knows itself.
There was only the Great Silence, alive and infinite,
the womb of all worlds before the thought of light is yet born.

And in Silence was born the First Breath.

It was no wind, no flame, no water.
It was the move before the move,
the sound before the word,
the memory before the birth of the soul.

Then came the night, the ancient queen of dreams.
The stars were her children,
sparks of light locked in the veil of the abyss.

Night spoke to the first travelers of the year:

«Don't be afraid of the dark, because you were born of me.
Your soul first knew the shadow before it knew the light.
When man sleeps, he remembers the beginning of the world».

And then Zey rose from the shapeless ether class,
wearing lightning as a scepter of worldly will.

Zee's lightning was not a weapon,
But it's a reason to go through the sky.
Every thunder was a message that the world remains alive.

«Honor the measure»He said,
«For hybrid is the shadow that feeds on ignorance».

And the Sun was born through the dawn of ether.
It was not only a star, but an eye observing the fate of the figures.

With a chariot burning he crossed the heavenly road,
And his horses were light breathing rhythms.

He told people:

«Live in the light, but remember your root.
The body is dust that remembers the sky».

Gaia opened her depths.

From the earth trees were planted that knew their name.
Their roots were memory,
Their trunk was time,
And their leaves were whispers of first life.

People walked between the mountains and the seas.
Some feared the size of the world,
others heard the voice of nature in the wind.

Demeter, mother of the ash,
He taught mortals the secret of sowing.

«The seed dies to remember life»He said.
«As the soul leaves form to return to light».

And the farmer learned that the work of the earth
It's holy prayer without words.

Apollo, in the midst of harmony,
played a lyre of pure heavenly sound.

His music was not just a melody,
but mathematical heart of the universe.

When the soul suffers,
not only does the body suffer,
but the rhythm of thought forgotten by harmony.

That’s why man should listen to silence
as he hears the music.

Hermes messenger of the boundaries,
He was walking through worlds.

In the hand he held a staff that opened gates of invisible rivers.

When the soul leaves the flesh,
Hermes stands on the bank of the border.

«Don't look back.»He was whispering.
«The memory of light lies ahead».

Poseidon ruled the depth of the sea abyss.
When the sea was angry,
His breath became peace.

The sailors invoked him when the wind spoke the language of the storm.

Artemis walked the mountains at night.
Guard the wolf and the deer alike.

Purity, he said, is not weakness,
but power that doesn't need a voice.

Hera was guarding the bond of souls.
Love without respect is a fire that consumes its carrier.

Mars taught that valor must serve justice.

Hephaestus forged the metal of fate
the anvil of slow time.

Every spark was the thought of the world.

The Focus was guarding the little flame of the house.
Because the man without a focus is a wandering shadow.

Saturn, in the midst of lost time,
He swallowed the seasons and reborn them.

«Learn the patience of change»He told the mortals.

Pan, spirit of the mountains,
He was playing a yard in the canyons.

His sound drove away the fear of loneliness.

And then spoke the Spirit that moves every life:

«I'm in stone and leaf,
in blood and wind,
within the breath of the child born».

«Man is not master of time,
but pilgrim of eternal return».

When the soul is tired of matter,
The road opens to the star that gave birth to her.

The earth will accept the body,
But the soul will remember the sky.

And within the great circle of existence
birth and death are two voices
of the same eternal song.