Orpheus
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.
Hero, cult founder and the name behind a movement, not an Olympian god. What is attested is a hero-cult with a tomb and an oracle: at Leibethra in Macedonia his bones were kept and an oracle of Dionysus spoke about them (Pausanias 9.30.9-11), and the Thracians said the nightingales nesting on his grave sang sweeter and louder than other nightingales (9.30.6). The Orphic mysteries, the gold tablets and the theogony sung under his name grew from him and are later than the singer. Pausanias himself refuses the katabasis and the story that Calliope was his mother (9.30.4), and the entry records the refusal instead of smoothing it: what Pausanias will allow is that Orpheus excelled in verse and was believed to have found mysteries, purifications and cures. The planetary, elemental, zodiacal, tarot and sabbat values here are modern Western overlays with no ancient basis, and the tradition's own account is primary.
Correspondences
- Planetary Correspondence
- Mercury
Offerings
- Offerings
- SongWineHoneyBay leafA poem said aloudA string of the lyre
Sacred timing
Symbols and forms
- Alternate Names
- Orpheus of ThraceThe SingerSon of the Muse
- Gender Expression
- Masculine
- Titles
- The SingerFounder of the MysteriesThe One Who Went DownRuler of Bistonian Pieria
- Symbols
- The lyreThe headThe look backThe thracian hill
Practice
- Invocation Approach
- ToneSorrowful lucidAddressOrpheusThe SingerSon of the MuseRelationshipThe voice that goes down and comes back changed or not at allWarningHe looked back and the whole descent was for nothingResonanceMusicians the bereaved and those who must not turn round
- 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.
Nature and meaning
- Domain
- SongThe lyreThe descentGriefInitiationThe look backThe voice that moves stone
- 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).
- Related Deities
- ApolloDionysusCalliopeHadesPersephone
Details
- Correspondences
- ColorsWhiteBlueGoldBlackScentsFrankincense boswellia sacraMyrrhBay leafMetalsGoldBronzeAnimalsNightingaleSwanLionSerpent
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