SongWineHoneyBay leafA poem said aloudA string of the lyre
Invocation Approach
Tone
Sorrowful lucid
Address
OrpheusThe SingerSon of the Muse
Relationship
The voice that goes down and comes back changed or not at all
Warning
He looked back and the whole descent was for nothing
Resonance
Musicians the bereaved and those who must not turn round
Symbols
The lyreThe headThe look backThe thracian hill
Mythology Summary
Orpheus is the Thracian singer, son of the Muse Calliope and Oeagrus (Apollonius Rhodius, Argonautica 1.23-34), whose song moved trees and stones and who sailed with the Argonauts. His wife Eurydice died, he went down after her, and he lost her by looking back; Virgil tells it in the Georgics (IV.453-527) and Ovid in the Metamorphoses (X-XI). He was killed by Thracian women, and Pausanias - who doubts the descent and the Muse for a mother - records the tomb at Leibethra under Olympus and the oracle of Dionysus that foretold the city's fall when the sun should see his bones (9.30.4-11).
Modern Practice
Orpheus is worked with for song, for the descent, and for the thing that has to be carried out without being checked. The practice is the long look forward: what is recovered is recovered by trust, and the looking back is the loss. He is also the patron of the mourner who keeps singing, which is why the offering is a song and not a silence.