Podcast episode
February 4, 2018
Episode 22: Severed Heads and Cosmic Eggs: Orpheus and Esotericism
This episode introduces one of the most fascinating and polysemic figures of antiquity – Orpheus. We discuss some of the amazing myth-cycle surrounding Orpheus, concentrating on the story of the katabasis, return, and eventual (rather gruesome) death. We then have a quick look at other ancient texts, this time the poems and hymns attributed to Orpheus as their author, which circulated in antiquity. This episode introduces and gives some basic background for a classical Greek figure who surfaces again and again the history of western esotericism.
Works Discussed in this Episode
Primary:
- Aristophanes Birds (693-702) seems to be a parody of an Orphic creation-story.
- Herodotus II, 81 on the Egyptians, Pythagoreans, and ‘so-called Orphics’.
- Pherecydes’ figure of Chronos DK 7 A 8, B 1.
- Proclus: Homer and Hesiod are descendants of Orpheus. Vitæ Homeri et Hesiodi p. 26, 14 Willamowitz = Hellanicus, fr. 5 Jacoby = Test. 7
Secondary:
- Cocteau, Jean. Check out his ‘Orphic Trilogy’ of films.
- Linforth, I., 1973. The Arts of Orpheus. Arno Press, New York, NY.
- Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. Abbatoir Blues/The Lyre of Orpheus, 2004.
- Parry, M. Adam Parry, (Ed.), 1987. The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry. Oxford University Press, New York, NY/Oxford.
- West, M. (1994). ‘Ab ovo: Orpheus, Sanchuniathon, and the Origins of the Ionian World Model’, Classical Quarterly 44 : 289-308.
Recommended Reading:
The primary texts relevant to ancient Orphika were first edited by Kern (Kern, O. (Ed.), 1963. Orphica Fragmenta. Weidmann, Berlin), but the new edition of Bernabé (Bernabé, A. (Ed.), 2004. Orphicorum et Orphicis similium testimonia et fragmenta. Poetae Epici Graeci. Pars II. Fasc. 1. K.G. Saur, München/Leipzig.), contains much newly-discovered material, and may be considered the new standard edition.
- Bernabé, A. and San Cristobál, A. J., 2008. Instructions for the Netherworld: The Orphic Gold Tablets. Brill, Leiden/Boston.
- Edmonds, R. G. I., 2013. Redefining Ancient Orphism: A Study in Greek Religion. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
- Meisner, Dwayne A. (2018) Orphic Tradition and the Birth of the Gods. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
- Walker, D.P. (1953). ‘Orpheus the Theologian and Renaissance Platonists’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 16 : 100-20.
- West, M., 1983. The Orphic Poems. Clarendon Press, Oxford.
Themes
Katabasis, Orpheus, Otherworld Journeys, Pre-Socratic Philosophy
Alan Lee
June 1, 2020
In Neil Gaiman’s Sandman comic series, Orpheus is a prominent part of the story being the son of (SPOILER ALERT), the titular character who appeared to the Greeks as Oneiros. Another semi-important role played by Orpheus is in the Japanese Role Playing Game, Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3/FES (New Metempsychosis of the Goddess: Persona 3 and its remake with the FES subtitle), in which the silent protagonist accidentally invokes him in a battle against shadows, only for Thanatos to interrupt the battle on his behalf and graphically slay the antagonizing entities. Later, if the silent protagonist can build a certain Social Link with his party (SPOILER ALERT), the Nyx Annihilation Team, the Judgement Arcana will maximize, and through the fusion of the Orpehus Persona and the Thanatos Persona, awaken will the Persona known as Messiah, which originally appears in a similar form to Orpheus.