The Orphic Hymns: A New Translation for the Occult Practitioner

By Patrick Dunn

Discover the Powerful Poems & Incantations of Ancient Greece

Use the hymns of the great mystery religions in your practice today

The Orphic hymns are fascinating historical artifacts—87 devotions, invocations, and entreaties to the Greek gods that are as potent today as they were when they were originally developed nearly two thousand years ago. Designed to be used in contemporary spiritual practice and spellcrafting, this premium hardcover edition features spectacular new English translations by Patrick Dunn along with the original Greek on facing pages.

These translations are complete, accurate, and poetic—perfect for integrating into rituals and magical workings for every conceivable purpose, from protection to prosperity and everything in between. Written by a poet and occultist specifically for contemporary practitioners of magic, this must-have book also includes detailed notes to help you understand esoteric passages as well as suggestions for incense selection and the practical use of the hymns.

The Orphic Hymns also includes Thomas Taylor's eighteenth-century translation as an appendix, an index of purposes, and a concordance with a glossary, a pronunciation guide, mythic backgrounds, and cross references of every deity and place named in the hymns.

These new translations of the Orphic hymns are powerful tools for magic and devotion. In addition to the translations of the 87 hymns, you will discover helpful notes and techniques for integrating the hymns into your practice.

• New Translations by Patrick Dunn
• History of the Hymns
• Notes on Religious Devotion
• Spell-crafting with the Hymns
• Working with the Hymns in Written Spells
• Uses of the Hymns in Ceremonial Magic
• The Hymns in Contemplation
• Incorporating Scents
• Pronunciation Guide
• Concordance and Glossary of Gods and Locations
• Thomas Taylor's 18th Century Translation
• An Index of Purposes for the Hymns

Praise:

"The Orphic hymns are among the most vivid and potent legacies of ancient Greek Pagan spirituality. Patrick Dunn's crisp new translation of these classic invocations will be a welcome discovery to anyone interested in polytheist spirituality and ancient magic."—John Michael Greer, author of A World Full of Gods and The Secret of the Temple

• Language: English
• Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide
• Release date: Oct 8, 2018
• ISBN: 9780738755847

Patrick Dunn

Patrick Dunn (Chicago, IL) is a poet, linguist, Pagan, and a university English professor with a PhD in modern literature and language. His understanding of semiotics and the study of symbols arise from his training in linguistics and literary theory. He has practiced magic since childhood. Visit him online at https://pomomagic.wordpress.com.

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About the Author

Patrick Dunn (Chicago, IL) is a poet, linguist, Pagan, and university English professor with a PhD in modern literature and language. His understanding of semiotics and the study of symbols arises from his training in linguistics and literary theory. He has practiced magic since childhood. Visit him online at Pomomagic.nfshost.com.

Llewellyn Publications

Woodbury, Minnesota

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The Orphic Hymns: A New Translation for the Occult Practitioner © 2018 by Patrick Dunn.

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E-book ISBN: 9780738755847

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—Homeric Hymns 25:4–5

This book is dedicated to Richard

Contents

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION TO THE ORPHIC HYMNS

ON TRANSLATION

VOCABULARY

WHAT MAKES AN ORPHIC HYMN ORPHIC?

THE USE OF THE HYMNS

THE HYMNS OF ORPHEUS

ORPHEUS TO MOUSAIOS. Use it fortunately, friend

1. For Hekate

2

2. For Prothyraia

3

3. For Nyx

4

4. For Ouranos

5

5. For Aither

6

6. For Protogonos

7

7. For the Stars

8

8. To Helios

9

9. To Selene

10

10. For Physis

11

11. For Pan

12

12. For Herakles

13

13. For Kronos

14

14. For Rhea

15

15. For Zeus

16

16. For Hera

17

17. For Poseidon

18. To Plouton

19

19. For Zeus the Thunderbolt

20

20. For Zeus, Throwing Lightning

21

21. For the Clouds

22

22. For the Sea

23

23. For Nereus

24

24. For the Nereids

25

25. For Proteus

26

26. For Gaia

27

27. For the Mother of the Gods

28

28. For Hermes

29

29. Hymn for Persephone

30

30. For Dionysos

31

31. Hymn for the Kouretes

32

32. For Athena

33

33. For Nike

34

34. For Apollon

35

35. For Leto

36

36. For Artemis

37

37. For the Titans

38

38. For the Kouretes

39

39. For Korybas

40

40. For Eleusinian Demeter

41

41. For Mother Antaia

42

42. For Mise

43

43. For the Horai

44

44. For Semele

45

45. Hymn to the Triennial Dionysos Bassareus

46

46. For Liknites

47

47. For Perikionios

48

48. For Sabazios

49

49. For Hipta

50. For the Redeeming God of the Wine-Press

51

51. For the Nymphs

52

52. For the God of Triennial Feasts

53

53. For the God of Yearly Feasts

54

54. For Seilenos the Satyr, and the Bakchai

55. To Aphrodite

56

56. For Adonis

57

57. For Chthonic Hermes

58

58. For Eros

59

59. For the Fates

60

60. For the Graces

61. A Hymn of Nemesis

62

62. For Dike

63

63. For Justice

64. A Hymn of Nomos

65

65. For Ares

66

66. For Hephaistos

67

67. For Asklepios

68

68. For Hygeia

69

69. For the Erinyes

70

70. For Eumenides

71

71. For Melinoe

72

72. For Tyche

73

73. For the Daimon

74

74. For Leukothea

75

75. For Palaimon

76

76. For the Mousai

77

77. For Mnemosyne

78

78. For Eos

79

79. For Themis

80

80. For Boreas

81

81. For Zephyros

82

82. For Notos

83

83. For Okeanos

84

84. For Hestia

85

85. For Hypnos

86

86. For Oneiros

87

87. To Thanatos

APPENDIX I. Concordance of Gods and Places

CONCORDANCE AND GLOSSARY

APPENDIX II: Thomas Taylor’s Translation of the Orphic Hymns

APPENDIX III: Index of Purposes of the Hymns

BIBLIOGRAPHY

FOREWORD

There’s something to be said for scholarly objectivity. A scholar who cannot remain objective has a tendency to see what isn’t there, to project and distort. But there’s also something to be said for subjectivity, for examining something from within. Such subjectivity allows a deeper grasp than objective observation. To speak objectively of Bacchic euphoria misses the entire point of the experience, and is nothing like speaking of such frenzy after feeling the presence of Dionysos.

I am not an objective scholar in regard to these hymns. For one thing, I have a weird love for the ancient Greek language, and it’s hard not to take a certain personal glee in feeling a sentence fall into place. But more importantly, I believe in the gods who are the subjects of these hymns.

The exact manner in which I believe in them changes from day to day and moment to moment. Sometimes they are abstract laws with a consciousness of their own existence, not much more personal than gravity. Sometimes they are psychological functions—metaphors and stories that give a life a mythographic shape. And other times they are individuals, as real and singular as anyone I pass in the street: Pan pressing his hooves in the loam; Artemis stalking with her silver bow between the trees; Poseidon in the deep, wreathed in kelp, sporting with dolphins; and always, of course, Zeus on high, stepping from the mountain tops to strike the earth with his bolts.

I suspect the gods are all those things and more, just as I myself am many different people and many different kinds of people. And my felt sense of these hymns, having lived with them for a while now, is that Orpheus had a similar multifarious view of the gods. Sometimes they’re mythological figures, but at the same time, he’s not above praising an abstract concept with no recourse to mythological allusion. Rather than a lack of imagination, I think this displays a keen theological mind, who can see the gods not only as blessed and distant immortals, and not only as statues in temples, and not only as the sky, moon, sun themselves, but as all of these things at once.

I would not have wanted to be an Orphic, or any kind of ascetic for that matter. But their hymns—if indeed these are the hymns of an orthodox ascetic sect of Orphism—speak to me regardless. I hope they speak to you as well and that you find them to be of use in your work, in your devotions, or even just as a satisfaction to your curiosity.

I am in debt to several people for this book’s existence. First, I’m grateful to have the opportunity to thank my Richard, who was supportive of this occasionally obsessive project, and puts up with my ranting and mumbling about particular fine grammatical points in ancient Greek. Second, I thank Monica, who has not only been a gracious hostess while I was working on the revisions of this book, but also provided a place for me to work in peace and quiet away from my other responsibilities, to finalize the finished copy. I also thank Elysia, my long-suffering and understanding editor, who patiently awaited the final version and believed in the project from the beginning.

Finally, I owe a debt of gratitude to Keith Jones, who looked over my translations and compared them to the Greek. His understanding of Greek far exceeds mine, and his comments and suggestions were more helpful than he knows in correcting my errors both small and sometimes quite large. Any errors that remain are my fault. I also thank Kitos Digiovanni for his assistance and encouragement, and his kind gift of a Big Liddell.

I began this project because I wanted to have what you now hold in your hands: a new translation of the hymns I could use in my own devotions and work. I hope that you enjoy it, and an additional dose of gratitude goes to you, the reader.

Evoe!

Patrick Dunn

Santa Barbara, California

8 July 2017

[contents]

INTRODUCTION

TO THE ORPHIC HYMNS

The Orphic Hymns are eighty-eight (or eight-seven, depending on how you count them) devotional hymns written in a dialect of Greek known as Homeric or Epic Greek, in dactylic hexameter. They were probably composed at some point in the first four centuries of the common era near the region of Anatolia, in what is now Turkey. It is widely accepted that they were used as the liturgy of a particular Orphic cult, a mystery religion dedicated to the god Dionysos. The earliest manuscript to return to Europe was probably brought, as many ancient Greek texts were, by Giovanni Aurispa from Constantinople to Venice in 1423. Unfortunately, this manuscript is now lost, but it is usually considered the archetypal manuscript from which all other copies in the West derive. Thirty-six manuscripts, probably copies of the Aurispa archetype, survive, some in fragmentary form.¹ These manuscripts are the sources for the Quandt edition, which is reproduced here with the kind permission of Olms Weidmann Verlag.

The Orphic Hymns are named for Orpheus, mentioned twice in the corpus of the hymns: once in the title of the first introductory hymn, and once in a coda to the hymn to Fate. Orpheus, the son of Apollon and the muse Kalliope (by some accounts, at least), was born in Thrace. He became renowned as a musician whose skill at the lyre could command inanimate objects and beasts. He fell in love with Eurydike, but shortly after the wedding, she died from a venomous snake bite. He followed her into the underworld, the realm of Hades, where he played for Plouton, the god of the dead. He played so well that Plouton wept iron tears and granted Orpheus’s request to have her back for the full span of her life, but on one condition: he must not look at her until they had departed the realm of Hades. She followed him up the steep ascent, but once he stepped out into the light, he could no longer resist and looked behind him. But she was still in the darkness of the underworld, and now he had broken the condition. She was taken from him one last time. In grief he wandered the world until he encountered a group of women maddened in the worship of Dionysos. These Mainades, as they were called, tore him limb from limb. The Mousai gathered up his limbs and buried them; where they laid them, oracles sprang up. His head, by some accounts, washed up on the isle of Lesbos, where it prophesied after death.

The Orphic cult found this myth inspirational for its concept of descent and return from death. Their mystery rites may have contained some element of reenactment of this myth. The central god of Orphism, perhaps surprisingly considering his role in the myth, is Dionysos, god of wine. Stories of women maddened by his worship were common. Called Mainades or Bakchai, these followers of Dionysos were sometimes regarded as a danger, capable of tearing a man apart and consuming his flesh. Euripides’s play The Bakchai, recounts the death of the blaspheming King Pentheus, who is killed by his own mother in a Bacchic frenzy.

There were indeed celebrations of Bakchos that involved dancing, drinking, and frenzied states of enthusiasm, and perhaps even the consuming of raw meat in honor of the god. But much of what we know about these Bacchanalia comes from sources critical of the practice, so it is impossible to know what is and what is not propaganda or slander. It is interesting that many of the criticisms of Bacchic mystery religions involve the same allegations laid, even at the same time, against Christianity: cannibalism, frenzy, madness, drunkenness, sexual license, and so on.

Also feeding into the stream of Orphic religious practices was the probably older mystery religion of Demeter of Eleusis. In this myth, recounted in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, the god of the underworld, Plouton or Hades, kidnaps Demeter’s daughter, called Kore or Persephone. He takes her to the underworld, where he keeps her captive. Demeter is enraged and heartbroken, and she wanders the earth refusing to eat. Since she is the goddess of grain, the earth begins to die until she comes to Eleusis and is employed by Queen Metaneira as a nurse for her infant child. Demeter tries to give immortality to the baby by nursing him on ambrosia and setting him in the fire to burn off his mortality but is caught by Metaneira, who misunderstands this ritual. Demeter reveals her true form, rebukes Metaneira, but then relents and promises to teach the rites of immortality to the people of Eleusis. Eventually, Persephone is returned to the world of the living but only for half of the year, leaving the other half barren and dead while Demeter mourns.

The rites of Eleusis are mentioned in the Orphic hymns, but we do not know