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Orphism (religion)
Orphism (more rarely Orphicism; Ancient Greek: Ὀρφικά, romanized: Orphiká) is the name
given to a set of religious beliefs and practices[1] originating in the ancient Greek and Hellenistic
world,[2] associated with literature ascribed to the mythical poet Orpheus, who descended into
the Greek underworld and returned. This type of journey is called a katabasis and is the basis of
several hero worships and journeys. Orphics revered Dionysus (who once descended into the
Underworld and returned) and Persephone (who annually descended into the Underworld for a
season and then returned). Orphism has been described as a reform of the earlier Dionysian
religion, involving a re-interpretation or re-reading of the myth of Dionysus and a re-ordering of
Hesiod's Theogony, based in part on pre-Socratic philosophy.[3]

Orphic mosaics were found in many late-Roman

villas

The central focus of Orphism is the suffering and death of the god Dionysus at the hands of the
Titans, which forms the basis of Orphism's central myth. According to this myth, the infant
Dionysus is killed, torn apart, and consumed by the Titans. In retribution, Zeus strikes the Titans
with a thunderbolt, turning them to ash. From these ashes, humanity is born. In Orphic belief, this
myth describes humanity as having a dual nature: body (Ancient Greek: σῶμα, romanized: sôma),
inherited from the Titans, and a divine spark or soul (Ancient Greek: ψυχή, romanized: psukhḗ),
inherited from Dionysus.[4] In order to achieve salvation from the Titanic, material existence, one
had to be initiated into the Dionysian mysteries and undergo teletē, a ritual purification and
reliving of the suffering and death of the god.[5] Orphics believed that they would, after death,
spend eternity alongside Orpheus and other heroes. The uninitiated (Ancient Greek: ἀμύητος,
romanized: amúētos), they believed, would be reincarnated indefinitely.[6]

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In order to maintain their purity following initiation and ritual, Orphics attempted to live an
ascetic life free of spiritual contamination, most notably by adhering to a strict vegetarian diet
that also excluded broad beans.

Origins

Orphism is named after the legendary poet-hero Orpheus, who was said to have originated the
Mysteries of Dionysus.[7] However, Orpheus was more closely associated with Apollo than to
Dionysus in the earliest sources and iconography. According to some versions of his mythos, he
was the son of Apollo, and during his last days, he shunned the worship of other gods and
devoted himself to Apollo alone.[8]

Poetry containing distinctly Orphic beliefs has been traced back to the 6th century BC[9] or at
least 5th century BC, and graffiti of the 5th century BC apparently refers to "Orphics".[10] The
Derveni papyrus allows Orphic mythology to be dated to the end of the 5th century BC,[11] and it
is probably even older.[12] Orphic views and practices are attested as by Herodotus, Euripides,
and Plato. Plato refers to "Orpheus-initiators" (Ὀρφεοτελεσταί), and associated rites, although
how far "Orphic" literature in general related to these rites is not certain.[13]

Relationship to Pythagoreanism

Orphic views and practices have parallels to elements of Pythagoreanism, and various traditions
hold that the Pythagoreans or Pythagoras himself authored early Orphic works; alternately, later
philosophers believed that Pythagoras was an initiate of Orphism. The extent to which one
movement may have influenced the other remains controversial.[14] Some scholars maintain that
Orphism and Pythagoreanism began as separate traditions which later became confused and
conflated due to a few similarities. Others argue that the two traditions share a common origin
and can even be considered a single entity, termed "Orphico-Pythagoreanism."[15]

The belief that Pythagoreanism was a subset or direct descendant of Orphic religion existed by
late antiquity, when Neoplatonist philosophers took the Orphic origin of Pythagorean teachings
at face value. Proclus wrote:

all that Orpheus transmitted through secret discourses connected to the mysteries, Pythagoras
learnt thoroughly when he completed the initiation at Libethra in Thrace, and Aglaophamus,
the initiator, revealed to him the wisdom about the gods that Orpheus acquired from his
mother Calliope.[16]

In the fifteenth century, the Neoplatonic Greek scholar Constantine Lascaris (who found the
poem Argonautica Orphica) considered a Pythagorean Orpheus.[17] Bertrand Russell (1947)
noted:

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The Orphics were an ascetic sect; wine, to them, was only a symbol, as, later, in the Christian
sacrament. The intoxication that they sought was that of "enthusiasm," of union with the god.
They believed themselves, in this way, to acquire mystic knowledge not obtainable by ordinary
means. This mystical element entered into Greek philosophy with Pythagoras, who was a
reformer of Orphism as Orpheus was a reformer of the religion of Dionysus. From Pythagoras
Orphic elements entered into the philosophy of Plato, and from Plato into most later
philosophy that was in any degree religious.[18]

Study of early Orphic and Pythagorean sources, however, is more ambiguous concerning their
relationship, and authors writing closer to Pythagoras' own lifetime never mentioned his
supposed initiation into Orphism, and in general regarded Orpheus himself as a mythological
figure.[15] Despite this, even these authors of the 5th and 4th centuries BC noted a strong
similarity between the two doctrines. In fact, some claimed that rather than being an initiate of
Orphism, Pythagoras was actually the original author of the first Orphic texts. Specifically, Ion of
Chios claimed that Pythagoras authored poetry which he attributed to the mythical Orpheus, and
Epigenes, in his On Works Attributed to Orpheus, attributed the authorship of several influential
Orphic poems to notable early Pythagoreans, including Cercops.[15] According to Cicero, Aristotle
also claimed that Orpheus never existed, and that the Pythagoreans ascribed some Orphic
poems to Cercon (see Cercops).[19]

Belief in metempsychosis was common to both currents, although it also seems to contain
differences. Where the Orphics taught about a cycle of grievous embodiments that could be
escaped through their rites, Pythagoras seemed to teach about an eternal, neutral
metempsychosis against which personal actions would be irrelevant.[20]

The Neoplatonists regarded the theology of Orpheus, carried forward through Pythagoreanism,
as the core of the original Greek religious tradition. Proclus, an influentual neoplatonic
philosopher, one of the last major classical philosophers of late antiquity, says

“For all the Grecian theology is the progeny of the mystic tradition of Orpheus; Pythagoras first
of all learning from Aglaophemus the rites of the Gods, but Plato in the second place receiving
an all-perfect science of the divinities from the Pythagoric and Orphic writings.”

(trans. Thomas Taylor, 1816) [21]

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Theogonies

Jacob Bryant's Orphic Egg (1774) with

Ananke

The Orphic theogonies are genealogical works similar to the Theogony of Hesiod, but the details
are different. The theogonies are symbolically similar to Near Eastern models. The main story has
it that Zagreus, Dionysus' previous incarnation, is the son of Zeus and Persephone. Zeus names
the child as his successor, which angers his wife Hera. She instigates the Titans to murder the
child. Zagreus is then tricked with a mirror and children's toys by the Titans, who shred him to
pieces and consume him. Athena saves the heart and tells Zeus of the crime, who in turn hurls a
thunderbolt on the Titans. The resulting soot, from which sinful mankind is born, contains the
bodies of the Titans and Zagreus. The soul of man (the Dionysus part) is therefore divine, but the
body (the Titan part) holds the soul in bondage. Thus, it was declared that the soul returns to a
host ten times, bound to the wheel of rebirth. Following the punishment, the dismembered limbs
of Zagreus were cautiously collected by Apollo who buried them in his sacred land Delphi. In
later centuries, these versions underwent a development where Apollo's act of burying became
responsible for the reincarnation of Dionysus, thus giving Apollo the title Dionysiodotes
(bestower of Dionysus).[22] Apollo plays an important part in the dismemberment myth because
he represents the reverting of Encosmic Soul back towards unification.[23][24]

There are two Orphic stories of the rebirth of Dionysus: in one it is the heart of Dionysus that is
implanted into the thigh of Zeus; in the other Zeus has impregnated the mortal woman Semele,
resulting in Dionysus's literal rebirth. Many of these details differ from accounts in the classical
authors. Damascius says that Apollo "gathers him (Dionysus) together and brings him back up".
The Protogonos, the Eudemian, the Rhapsodic and the Hieronyman theogonies are all
reconstructed, discussed and compared in ML West (1983)'s 'The Orphic Poems[25][26][27]

The main difference seems to be in the primordial succession:[25][26][27]

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In the Eudemian theogony, all starts with the Night, which lays an Egg from which
Phanes/Protogonos arises.

In the Rhapsodic theogony, it starts with Chronos ('Unageing Time', different from Kronos,
Zeus' father) who gives birth to Ether and Chaos, and then lay the egg from which
Phanes/Protogonos arises.

In the Hieronyman theogony, the egg arises from soil (more specifically 'the matter out of
which earth was coagulated') and water, and it is 'Unageing Time' Kronos which arises from it,
and gives birth to Ether, Chaos and Erebus. Then Kronos lay a new egg in Chaos, from which
arises Protogonos.

In the Derveni papyrus, a. k. a. the 'Protogonos' theogony, the Night lays the egg from which
Protogonos arises, he then give birth to Ouranos & Gaia, which give birth to Kronos, himself
father of Zeus who end up swallowing the primordial egg of Protogonos and recreating the
Universe in the process.

But there are other differences, notably in the treatment of Dionysos:[25][26][27]

In the Eudemian and Rhapsodic theogonies, Dionysos is dismembered and cooked by the
Titans before Zeus struck them with lightning (mankind then arises from the soot, and
Dionysos is resurrected from his preserved heart).

The Derveni Papyrus being fragmentary, the story stops without having mentioned him.

The Hieronyman theogony do not mention Dionysos being eaten by the Titans in neither
source it is known from (Damascius and Athenagoras), despite the latter describing the war on
the Titans, which would imply that this story really isn't part of that theogony.

Orphic Egg

In Orphic theogonies, the Orphic Egg is a cosmic egg from which hatched the primordial
hermaphroditic deity Phanes/Protogonus (variously equated also with Zeus, Pan, Metis, Eros,
Erikepaios and Bromius), who in turn created the other gods.[28] The egg is often depicted with
the serpent-like creature, Ananke, wound about it. Phanes is the golden winged primordial being
who was hatched from the shining cosmic egg that was the source of the universe. Called
Protogonos (First-Born) and Eros (Love)—being the seed of gods and men—Phanes means "to
bring light" or "to shine" and is related to the Greek "to shine forth" as well as the Latin "Lucifer".
An ancient Orphic hymn addresses him thus:

Ineffable, hidden, brilliant scion, whose motion is whirring, you scattered the
dark mist that lay before your eyes and, flapping your wings, you whirled about,
and through this world you brought pure light.[29]

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The Hymns

The Orphic Hymns are 87 hexametric poems of a shorter length composed in the late
Hellenistic or early Roman Imperial age.

Afterlife

Gold orphic tablet and case found in Petelia,

southern Italy (British Museum)[30]

Surviving written fragments show a number of beliefs about the afterlife similar to those in the
"Orphic" mythology about Dionysus' death and resurrection. Bone tablets found in Olbia (5th
century BC) carry short and enigmatic inscriptions like: "Life. Death. Life. Truth. Dio(nysus).
Orphics." The function of these bone tablets is unknown.[31]

Gold-leaf tablets found in graves from Thurii, Hipponium, Thessaly and Crete (4th century BC and
after) give instructions to the dead. Although these thin tablets are often highly fragmentary,
collectively they present a shared scenario of the passage into the afterlife. When the deceased
arrives in the underworld, he is expected to confront obstacles. He must take care not to drink of
Lethe ("Forgetfulness"), but of the pool of Mnemosyne ("Memory"). He is provided with
formulaic expressions with which to present himself to the guardians of the afterlife. As said in
the Petelia tablet:

I am a son of Earth and starry sky. I am parched with thirst and am dying; but
quickly grant me cold water from the Lake of Memory to drink.[32]

Other gold leaves offer instructions for addressing the rulers of the underworld:

Now you have died and now you have come into being, O thrice happy one, on
this same day. Tell Persephone that the Bacchic One himself released you.[33]

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References

1. Sexuality in Greek and Roman Culture by Marilyn B. Skinner, 2005, page 135, "[…] of life, there was no
coherent religious movement properly termed 'Orphism' (Dodds 1957: 147–9; West 1983: 2–3). Even if
there were, […]"

2. Three Faces of God by David L. Miller, 2005, Back Matter: "[…] assumed that this was a Christian
trinitarian influence on late Hellenistic Orphism, but it may be that the Old Neoplatonists were closer
[…]"

3. A. Henrichs, “‘Hieroi Logoi’ and ‘Hierai Bibloi’: The (Un) Written Margins of the Sacred in Ancient
Greece,” Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 101 (2003): 213-216.

4. Sandys, John, Pindar. The Odes of Pindar including the Principal Fragments. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd, 1937.

5. Ana Isabel Jiménez San Cristóbal, Rituales órficos (Madrid: Universidad Complutense de Madrid, 2006);

6. Proclus, Commentary on the Republic of Plato, II, 338, 17 Kern 224.

7. Apollodorus (Pseudo Apollodorus), Library and Epitome, 1.3.2 (https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/p

text?lookup=Apollod.+1.3.2) . "Orpheus also invented the mysteries of Dionysus, and having been
torn in pieces by the Maenads he is buried in Pieria."

8. Alberto Bernabé, Miguel Herrero de Jáuregui, Ana Isabel Jiménez San Cristóbal, Raquel Martín
Hernández, Redefining Dionysos

9. Backgrounds of Early Christianity by Everett Ferguson, 2003, page 162, "Orphism began in the sixth
century BCE"

10. W. K. C. Guthrie, The Greeks & Their Gods (Beacon, 1954), p. 322; Kirk, Raven, & Schofield, The
Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge, 1983, 2nd edition), pp. 21, 30–31, 33; Parker, "Early Orphism", pp.
485, 497

11. "The Derveni Papyrus: An Interdisciplinary Research Project" (https://web.archive.org/web/2017073007

3044/https://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/5418) . Harvard University, Center for Hellenic
Studies. 2 November 2020. Archived from the original (http://chs.harvard.edu/CHS/article/display/541
8) on 30 July 2017. Retrieved 24 May 2015.

12. Kirk, Raven, & Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge, 1983, 2nd edition), pp. 30–31

13. Parker, "Early Orphism", pp. 484, 487.

14. Parker, "Early Orphism", p. 501.

15. Betegh, G. (2014). Pythagoreans, Orphism and Greek Religion, in Huffman C. (ed.) A History of
Pythagoreanism, Cambridge, p.274-95.

16. Proclus, Tim. 3.168.8

17. Russo, Attilio (2004). "Costantino Lascaris tra fama e oblio nel Cinquecento messinese", in Archivio
Storico Messinese, pp. 53-54.

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18. Bertrand Russell (1947). History of Western Philosophy (https://archive.org/details/westernphilosoph035

502mbp) . George Allen and Unwin. p. 37 (https://archive.org/details/westernphilosoph035502mbp/p
age/n36) .

19. Aristotle; Ross, W. D. (William David), 1877; Smith, J. A. (John Alexander), 1863-1939 (1908). The works
of Aristotle (https://archive.org/details/worksofaristotle12arisuoft) . p. 80 (https://archive.org/details/
worksofaristotle12arisuoft/page/80) .

20. Leonid Zhmud (2012). Pythagoras and the Early Pythagoreans. OUP Oxford. p. 232-233. ISBN 978-0-19-
928931-8.

21. "Proclus, in Theologian Platonis I.5 (I.25-26, Saffrey-Westerink) = Orph. 507 IV Bernabé - Living Poets"
(https://livingpoets.dur.ac.uk/w/Proclus,_In_Theologian_Platonis_I_5) .

22. Alberto Bernabé, Miguel Herrero de Jáuregui, Ana Isabel Jiménez San Cristóbal, Raquel Martín
Hernández. (2013), Redefining Dionysos

23. Proclus in commentary on Cratylus states that Apollo signifies the cause of unity and that which
reassembles many into one

24. Dwayne A. Meisner, Orphic Tradition and the Birth of the Gods (2018)

25. Richardson, N. J. (1985). "The Orphic Poems". The Classical Review. 35 (1): 87–90.
doi:10.1017/S0009840X00107474 (https://doi.org/10.1017%2FS0009840X00107474) . JSTOR 3063696
(https://www.jstor.org/stable/3063696) . S2CID 162276006 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:
162276006) .

26. "HellenicGods.org - orphiccosmogonyandtheogony" (https://www.hellenicgods.org/orphiccosmogony

andtheogony) . www.hellenicgods.org. Retrieved 7 March 2023.

27. "HellenicGods.org - ORPHIC RHAPSODIC THEOGONY" (https://www.hellenicgods.org/orphic-rhapsodi

es------24) . www.hellenicgods.org. Retrieved 7 March 2023.

28. West, M. L. (1983) The Orphic Poems. Oxford:Oxford University Press. p. 205

29. The Orphic Hymns 5,To Protogonos

30. British Museum Collection (https://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/collection_obje

ct_details.aspx?objectId=464173&partId=1&searchText=orphic+tablet&page=1)

31. Sider, David; Obbink, Dirk (30 October 2013). Doctrine and Doxography (https://books.google.com/boo
ks?id=NCfoBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA160) . p. 160. ISBN 978-3-11-033137-0.

32. Numerous tablets contain this essential formula with minor variations; for the Greek texts and
translations, see Fritz Graf and Sarah Iles Johnston, Ritual Texts for the Afterlife: Orpheus and the
Bacchic Gold Tablets (Routledge, 2007), pp. 4–5 (Hipponion, 400 BC), 6–7 (Petelia, 4th century BC), pp.
16–17 (Entella, possibly 3rd century BC), pp. 20–25 (five tablets from Eleutherna, Crete, 2nd or 1st
century BC), pp. 26–27 (Mylopotamos, 2nd century BC), pp. 28–29 (Rethymnon, 2nd or 1st century BC),
pp. 34–35 (Pharsalos, Thessaly, 350–300 BC), and pp. 40–41 (Thessaly, mid-4th century BC) online. (http
s://books.google.com/books?id=_TmiaW0uvAgC&q=%22I+am+parched%22)

33. Tablet from Pelinna, late 4th century BC, in Graf and Johnston, Ritual Texts for the Afterlife, pp. 36–37.

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Bernabé, Alberto. “Some Thoughts about the ‘New’ Gold Tablet from Pherai.” Zeitschrift für
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Pythagoreans and Orphics?" From Myth to Reason: Studies in the Development of Greek
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Further reading

Bremmer, Jan N. (2013). "Divinities in the Orphic Gold Leaves: Euklês, Eubouleus, Brimo, Kybele,
Kore and Persephone". Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik. 187: 35–48. JSTOR 23850747
(https://www.jstor.org/stable/23850747) .

Fulińska, Agnieszka (1 January 1970). "Dionysos, Orpheus and Argead Macedonia: Overwiev
and Perspectives" (https://doi.org/10.12797%2FCC.17.2014.17.03) . Classica Cracoviensia. 17:
43–67. doi:10.12797/CC.17.2014.17.03 (https://doi.org/10.12797%2FCC.17.2014.17.03) .

Torjussen, Stian (September 2005). "Phanes and Dionysos in the Derveni Theogony". Symbolae
Osloenses. 80 (1): 7–22. doi:10.1080/00397670600684691 (https://doi.org/10.1080%2F0039767
0600684691) . S2CID 170976252 (https://api.semanticscholar.org/CorpusID:170976252) .

External links

Online Text: The Orphic Hymns translated by Thomas Taylor (http://www.theoi.com/Text/Orphi

cHymns1.html)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orphism_(religion)# 11/12
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The Orphic Hymns translated by Thomas Taylor (http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/hoo/hoo00.h

tm) – alternative version

Alexander Fol, Orphica Magica I, Sofia 2004 (http://www.rock-cut.thracians.org/pdf/Alexande

r%20Fol%20-%20Orphica%20Magica%20I.pdf)

Rosicrucian Digest (http://www.rosicrucian.org/publications/digest/digest1_2008/online/table_

of_contents.html) vol. 87 devoted entirely to Orphism

Edmonds, Radcliffe. “Tearing Apart the Zagreus Myth: A Few Disparaging Remarks on Orphism
and Original Sin.” (https://web.archive.org/web/20110414032311/http://www.brynmawr.edu/cl
assics/redmonds/zagreus.pdf) Classical Antiquity 18.1 (1999): 35-73.

A Genealogy of Philosophic Enlightenment in Classical Greece (https://web.archive.org/web/20

091027123337/http://www.geocities.com/easternhistory/orphism.html)

Orphism in the modern world (http://www.hellenicgods.org/)

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