Customer Reviews

The Orphic Hymns: Text, Translation and Notes

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A copy of the Athanassakis translation of the Orphic Hymns happened fortuitiously to fall into my possession, and I have found it invaluable for both research and personal spiritual use. There are few translations available and of those that exist the Athanassakis translation is far superior; the Thomas Taylor translation, for instance, uses the Latin names of the Greek deities and insists upon forcing each hymn into rhyming verse. Other translations available are wildly inaccurate. The Athanassakis translation suffers from no such defects, and the hymns retain an evocative air of the arcane without sounding antiquated.

As for the Hymns themselves, they serve to exemplify many of the characteristic trends of late Graeco-Roman paganism. They are in fact theurgical formulae composed for use in highly esoteric Mystery ceremonies, within which the deity's names, mythic associations, and attributes are invoked that the deity may appear and bless the rite being performed, conferring both spiritual and worldly benefits upon the devotee. There are over eighty hymns included in the collection, and all of the prime Greek divinities are featured, plus many lesser ones and certain exotic deities as well (such as the obscure Phrygian Goddess Mise). The overwhelming trend in late antique religious thought, pagan and Christian alike, was toward a sense of divine unity, and the Orphic Hymns, though addressed to a great and diverse polytheist pantheon, seem to reflect this awareness in their vision of Deity - each hymn seems designed call forth a different aspect of the one universal spiritual energy, and the deities appear less as a disparate group of conflicting and oft-egoistic personalities and more as mystic forces united harmoniously in sanctifying and aiding the individual on her/his path toward knowledge of the great ineffable Divine.

I highly recommend this book for serious pagans and students of Graeco-Roman religion.