Orpheus’ legend and works

Contents

Orpheus after HP Blavatsky 2

Orpheus occupied one of four great seats of learning in ancient Egypt. 2

He brought the Indian Mysteries of Initiation to Greece, nine millenia

before Homer and Hesiod. 2
Pythagoras was initiated to the Orphic Mysteries and Plato received
a perfect knowledge of them. 3
How the Orphic Mysteries were disfugured by the exoteric rites of Bacchus. 4
Dionysos is god Dis from Mount Nys in India. Bacchus, crowned with kissos
or ivy, is Krishna. Orpheus is orphnos or a tawny-coloured Hindu. 5
Facts and clues underlying the lives of Initiated Adepts. 5
Why Initiates were persecuted, tortured, exiled, executed, murdered? 6
Enoch-Orpheus is the possessor of the phorminx, the 7-stringed lyre. 7
He is one of seven Primordial Creators, a branch of the Tree of Salvation
grown out of One Seed. 8
He called Nature “resourful mother.” 8

He taught the “god-given” doctrine of the seven “Star-Regents”

of the Unknown to Grecian philosophers. 8
He taught how to affect a whole audience by means of a lodestone. 9
He even imparted the art of oomancy. 9

He is the “Initiator,” the “Great Sacrifice.” Even Initiated Adepts rely on Him. 10
Orpheus after Thomas Taylor 11

Orpheus after GRS Mead 12

The Mythological Orpheus 12

Orpheus, a generic name 13

The derivation of the name 14

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ORPHEUS' LEGEND AND WORKS

Orpheus after HP Blavatsky

Orpheus occupied one of four great seats of learning in ancient Egypt.
Whence the wonderful knowledge of the Egyptian Priests in every department of Sci-
ence, unless they had it from a still more ancient source? The famous “Four,” the
seats of learning in old Egypt, are more historically certain than the beginnings of
modern England. It was in the great Theban sanctuary that Pythagoras upon his ar-
rival from India studied the Science of Occult numbers. It was in Memphis that Or-
pheus popularized his too-abstruse Indian metaphysics for the use of Magna Grecia;
and thence Thales, and ages later Democritus, obtained all they knew. It is to Saïs
that all the honor must be given of the wonderful legislation and the art of ruling
people, imparted by its Priests to Lycurgus and Solon, who will both remain objects
of admiration for generations to come. And had Plato and Eudoxus never gone to
worship at the shrine of Heliopolis, most probably the one would have never aston-
ished future generations with his ethics, nor the other with his wonderful knowledge
1
of mathematics.

He brought the Indian Mysteries of Initiation to Greece, nine millennia

before Homer and Hesiod.
We know through Herodotus that the Mysteries were brought from India by Orpheus
— a hero far anterior to both Homer and Hesiod. Very little is really known of him,
and till very lately Orphic literature, and even the Argonauts, were attributed to On-
omacritus, a contemporary of Pisistratus, Solon and Pythagoras — who was credited
with their compilation in the present form toward the close of the sixth century B.C.
or 800 years after the time of Orpheus. But we are told that in the days of Pausanias
there was a sacerdotal family, who, like the Brahmans with the Vedas, had commit-
ted to memory all the Orphic Hymns, and that they were usually thus transmitted
from one generation to another. By placing Orpheus so far back as 1200 B.C., official
Science — so careful in her chronology to choose in each case as late a period as
possible — admits that the Mysteries, or in other words Occultism dramatized, be-
2
long to a still earlier epoch than the Chaldaean and Egyptians.
3
It has been already stated in Isis Unveiled, that so far back as in the days of Aristo-
tle, the great Mysteries had already lost their primitive grandeur and solemnity. Their
rites had fallen into desuetude, and they had to a great degree degenerated into mere
priestly speculations and had become religious shams. It is useless to state when
they first appeared in Europe and Greece, since recognised history may almost be
said to begin with Aristotle, everything before him appearing to be in an inextricable
chronological confusion. Suffice it to say, that in Egypt the Mysteries had been
known since the days of Menes, and that the Greeks received them only when Or-
pheus introduced them from India. [Continued overleaf.]

1
Blavatsky Collected Writings, (THE ORIGIN OF THE MYSTERIES) XIV p. 254. See Laurens’ Essais Historiques . . .
for further information as to the worldwide, universal knowledge of the Egyptian Priests.
2
Ibid. (TRACES OF THE MYSTERIES) XIV p. 293
3
Op. cit., I, 15.

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4
In an article “Was writing known before Pānini? ” it is stated that the Pāndus had
acquired universal dominion and had taught the “sacrificial” Mysteries to other races
as far back as 3,300 B.C. Indeed, when Orpheus, the son of Apollo or Helios, received
from his father the phorminx — the seven-stringed lyre, symbolical of the sevenfold
mystery of Initiation — these Mysteries were already hoary with age in Central Asia
and India. According to Herodotus it was Orpheus who brought them from India, and
Orpheus is far anterior to Homer and Hesiod. Thus even in the days of Aristotle few
were the true Adepts left in Europe and even in Egypt. The heirs of those who had
been dispersed by the conquering swords of various invaders of old Egypt had been
dispersed in their turn. As 8,000 or 9,000 years earlier the stream of knowledge had
been slowly running down from the tablelands of Central Asia into India and towards
Europe and Northern Africa, so about 500 years B.C. it had begun to flow backward
to its old home and birthplace. During the two thousand subsequent years the
knowledge of the existence of great Adepts nearly died out in Europe. Nevertheless,
in some secret places the Mysteries were still enacted in all their primitive purity.
The “Sun of Righteousness” still blazed high on the midnight sky; and, while dark-
ness was upon the face of the profane world, there was the eternal light in the Adyta
on the nights of Initiation. The true Mysteries were never made public. Eleusinia and
Agrae for the multitudes; the God Ευβουλή, “of the good counsel,” the great Orphic
5
Deity for the neophyte.
6
Wherever Bacchus was worshipped there was a tradition of Nysa, and a cave where
he was reared. Outside Greece, Bacchus was the all-powerful “Zagreus, the highest
7
of Gods,” in whose service was Orpheus, the founder of the Mysteries.

Pythagoras was initiated to the Orphic Mysteries and Plato received a

perfect knowledge of them.
The Neo-Platonic School of Alexandria founded by Ammonius — the prototype pro-
posed for the Theosophical Society — taught Theurgy and Magic, as much as they
were taught in the days of Pythagoras, and by others far earlier than his period. For
Proclus says that the doctrines of Orpheus, who was an Indian and came from India,
were the origin of the systems afterwards promulgated.

What Orpheus delivered in hidden allegories, Pythagoras learned when he was initi-
ated into the Orphic mysteries; and Plato next received a perfect knowledge of them
8
from Orphic and Pythagorean writings.

4
A curious question to start and to deny, when it is well-known even to the Orientalists that, to take but one
case, there is Yaska, who was a predecessor of Pānini and his work still exists; there are seventeen writers of
Nirukta (glossary) known to have preceded Yaska. [For this article see Five Years of Theosophy or B.C.W., Vol. V,
pp. 294-310. — Boris de Zirkoff.]
5
Blavatsky Collected Writings, (THE MYSTERY OF THE “SUN INITIATION”) XIV pp. 269-70; [full text in our Blavat-
sky Speaks Series”]
6
Beth-San or Scythopolis in Palestine had that designation; so had a spot on Mount Parnassus. But Diodorus
declares that Nysa was between Phoenicia and Egypt; Euripides states that Dionysos came to Greece from In-
dia; and Diodorus adds his testimony: “Osiris was brought up in Nysa, in Arabia the Happy; he was the son of
Zeus, and was named from his father (nominative Zeus, genitive Dios) and the place Dio-Nysos” — the Zeus or
Jove of Nysa. This identity of name or title is very significant. In Greece Dionysos was second only to Zeus, and
Pindar says: “So Father Zeus governs all things, and Bacchus he governs also.” [Isis Unveiled, II p. 165.]
7
Blavatsky Collected Writings, (THE MYSTERY OF THE “SUN INITIATION”) XIV p. 73; [full text in our Blavatsky
Speaks Series”]
8
Ibid. (POST-CHRISTIAN SUCCESSORS TO THE MYSTERIES) XIV p. 308; [New Platonism and Alchemy, p. 18, quot-
ing Proclus.]
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How the Orphic Mysteries were disfigured by the exoteric rites of Bac-
chus.
The nazars or prophets, as well as the Nazarenes, were an anti-Bacchus caste, in so
far that, in common with all the initiated prophets, they held to the spirit of the sym-
bolical religions and offered a strong opposition to the idolatrous and exoteric prac-
tices of the dead letter. Hence, the frequent stoning of the prophets by the populace,
under the leadership of those priests who made a profitable living out of the popular
superstitions. Ottfried Müller shows how much the Orphic Mysteries differed from
9
the popular rites of Bacchus, although the Orphikoi are known to have followed the
worship of Bacchus. The system of the purest morality and of a severe asceticism
promulgated in the teachings of Orpheus, and so strictly adhered to by his votaries,
are incompatible with the lasciviousness and gross immorality of the popular rites.
The fable of Aristæus pursuing Eurydice into the woods where a serpent occasions
10
her death, is a very plain allegory, which was in part explained at the earliest
times. Aristæus is brutal power, pursuing Eurydice, the esoteric doctrine, into the
woods where the serpent (emblem of every sun-god, and worshipped under its gross-
er aspect even by the Jews) kills her; i.e., forces truth to become still more esoteric,
and seek shelter in the Underworld, which is not the hell of our theologians. Moreo-
ver, the fate of Orpheus, torn to pieces by the Bacchantes, is another allegory to
show that the gross and popular rites are always more welcome than divine but sim-
ple truth, and proves the great difference that must have existed between the esoteric
and the popular worship. As the poems of both Orpheus and Musæus were said to
have been lost since the earliest ages, so that neither Plato nor Aristotle recognized
anything authentic in the poems extant in their time, it is difficult to say with preci-
sion what constituted their peculiar rites. Still we have the oral tradition, and every
inference to draw therefrom; and this tradition points to Orpheus as having brought
his doctrines from India. As one whose religion was that of the oldest Magians —
hence that to which belonged the initiates of all countries, beginning with Moses, the
“Sons of the Prophets,” and the ascetic nazars (who must not be confounded with
those against whom thundered Hosea and other prophets) [and ending with] the Es-
senes. This latter sect were Pythagoreans before they rather degenerated rather than
perfected in their system by the Buddhist missionaries, who, Pliny tells us, estab-
lished themselves on the shores of the Dead Sea, ages before his time, “per seculorum
11
millia.” But if, on the one hand, these Buddhist monks were the first to establish
monastic communities and inculcate the strict observance of dogmatic conventional
rule, on the other, they were also the first to enforce and popularize those stern vir-
tues so exemplified by Śakyamuni, and which were previously exercised only in iso-
lated cases of well-known philosophers and their followers; virtues preached two or
three centuries later by Jesus, practiced by a few Christian ascetics, gradually aban-
12
doned, and even entirely forgotten by the Christian Church.

9
K.O. Müller, A History of the Literature of Ancient Greece, pp. 230-40
10
[Virgil, Georgica, VI, 282 et seq.]
11
[I.e., for thousands of ages: Pliny, Nat. Hist., V, xv.]
12
Isis Unveiled, II pp. 129-30

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Dionysos is god Dis from Mount Nys in India.

Bacchus, crowned with kissos or ivy, is Krishna.
Orpheus is orphnos or a tawny-coloured Hindu.
Bacchus, as Dionysos, is of Indian origin. Cicero mentions him as a son of Thyōnē
13
and Nisus. Δίονυσος means the god Dis from Mount Nys in India. Bacchus,
crowned with ivy, or kissos, is Krishna, one of whose names was Kissen. Dionysos is
pre-eminently the deity on whom were centred all the hopes for future life; in short,
he was the god who was expected to liberate the souls of men from their prisons of
flesh. Orpheus, the poet-Argonaut, is also said to have come on earth to purify the
religion of its gross, and terrestrial anthropomorphism; he abolished human sacrifice
and instituted a mystic theology based on pure spirituality. Cicero calls Orpheus a
son of Bacchus. It is strange that both seem to have originally come from India. At
least, as Dionysos-Zagreus, Bacchus is of undoubted Hindu origin. Some writers de-
riving a curious analogy between the name of Orpheus and an old Greek term,
ορφνός, dark or tawny-colored, make him Hindu by connecting the term with his
14
dusky Hindu complexion. See Voss, Heyne and Schneider on the Argonauts.
They all descended to Hell and ascended the third day.
The initiatory [post mortem descend into Hell] rite typified a descent into the under-
world. Bacchus, Herakles, Orpheus, and Asklepius all descended into hell and as-
15
cended thence the third day.

Facts and clues underlying the lives of Initiated Adepts.

Take an instance. The legends — for they are all legends for exoteric purposes, what-
ever may be the denials in one case — of the lives of Krishna, Hercules, Pythagoras,
Buddha, Jesus, Apollonius, Chaitanya. On the worldly plane, their biographies, if
written by one outside the circle, would differ greatly from what we read of them in
the narratives that are preserved of their mystic lives. Nevertheless, however much
masked and hidden from profane gaze, the chief features of such lives will all be
found there in common. Each of those characters is represented as a divinely begot-
ten Soter (Savior), a title bestowed on deities, great kings and heroes; everyone of
them, whether at their birth or afterwards, is searched for, and threatened with
death (yet never killed) by an opposing power (the world of Matter and Illusion),
whether it be called a king Kamsa, king Herod, or king Māra (the Evil Power). They
are all tempted, persecuted and finally said to have been murdered at the end of the
rite of Initiation, i.e., in their physical personalities, of which they are supposed to
have been rid for ever after spiritual “resurrection” or “birth.” And having thus come
to an end by this supposed violent death, they all descend to the Nether World, the
Pit or Hell — the Kingdom of Temptation, Lust and Matter, therefore of Darkness,
whence returning, having overcome the “Chrēst-condition,” they are glorified and be-
come “Gods.”

It is not in the course of their everyday life, then, that the great similarity is to be
sought, but in their inner state and in the most important events of their career as

13
[De natura deorum, III, xxiii.]
14
Isis Unveiled, II p. 560 fn.
15
Ibid. II p. 514 fn.

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religious teachers. All this is connected with, and built upon, an astronomical basis,
which serves, at the same time, as a foundation for the representation of the degrees
and trials of Initiation: descent into the Kingdom of Darkness and Matter, for the last
time, to emerge therefrom as “Suns of Righteousness,” is the most important of these
and, therefore, is found in the history of all the Soters — from Orpheus and Hercules,
down to Krishna and Christ. Says Euripides:

Heracles, who has gone out from the chambers of earth

16
Leaving the nether home of Pluto.
And Virgil writes:

At Thee the Stygian lakes trembled; Thee the janitor of Orcus

Feared . . . Thee not even Typhon frightened . . .
17
Hail, true son of Jove, glory added to the Gods.
Orpheus seeks, in the kingdom of Pluto, Eurydice, his lost Soul; Krishna goes down
into the infernal regions and rescues therefrom his six brothers, he being the seventh
Principle; a transparent allegory of his becoming a “perfect Initiate,” the whole of the
six Principles merging into the seventh. Jesus is made to descend into the kingdom
18
of Satan to save the soul of Adam, or the symbol of material physical humanity.

Why Initiates were persecuted, tortured, exiled, executed, murdered?

The second statement of Plato confirms the view that the Mysteries of the Ancients
were identical with the Initiations practised even now among the Buddhist and the
Hindu Adepts. The higher visions, the most truthful, were produced through a regu-
lar discipline of gradual Initiations, and the development of psychical powers. In Eu-
rope and Egypt the Mystae were brought into close union with those whom Proclus
calls “mystical natures,” “resplendent Gods,” because, as Plato says:

[We] were ourselves pure and immaculate, being liberated from this surround-
ing vestment, which we denominate body, and to which we are now bound like
19
an oyster to its shell.
As to the East,

The doctrine of planetary and terrestrial Pitris was revealed entirely in ancient
India, as well as now, only at the last moment of initiation, and to the adepts of
20
superior degrees.
The word Pitris may now be explained and something else added. In India the chela
of the third degree of Initiation has two Gurus: One, the living Adept; the other the
disembodied and glorified Mahātma, who remains the adviser or instructor of even
the high Adepts. Few are the accepted chelas who even see their living Master, their
Guru, till the day and hour of their final and for ever binding vow. It is this that was

16
Euripides, The Madness of Herakles, 806-8
17
Virgil, Aeneid, VIII, 296-301
18
Blavatsky Collected Writings, (FACTS UNDERLYING ADEPT BIOGRAPHIES) XIV pp. 140-42
19
Phaedrus 250c, quoted by Taylor, p. 64
20
Isis Unveiled, II, p. 114

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meant in Isis Unveiled, when it was stated that few of the fakirs (the word chela being
unknown to Europe and America in those days), however

Pure, and honest, and self-devoted, have yet ever seen the astral form of a
purely human pitar (an ancestor or father), otherwise than at the solemn mo-
ment of their first and last initiation. It is in the presence of his instructor, the
Guru, and just before the vatu-fakir [the just initiated chela] is despatched into
the world of the living, with his seven-knotted bamboo wand for all protection,
that he is suddenly placed face to face with the unknown PRESENCE [of his Pitar
or Father, the glorified invisible Master, or disembodied Mahātma] . He sees it,
and falls prostrate at the feet of the evanescent form, but is not entrusted with
the great secret of its evocation, for it is the supreme mystery of the holy sylla-
21
ble.
The Initiate, says Éliphas Lévi, knows; therefore, “he dares all and keeps silent.” Says
the great French Kabalist:

You may see him often sad, never discouraged or desperate; often poor, never
humbled or wretched; often persecuted, never cowed down or vanquished. For
he remembers the widowhood and the murder of Orpheus, the exile and soli-
tary death of Moses, the martyrdom of the prophets, the tortures of Apollonius,
the Cross of the savior. He knows in what forlorn state died Agrippa, whose
memory is slandered to this day; he knows the trials that broke down the great
Paracelsus, and all that Raymond Lully had to suffer before he arrived at a
bloody death. He remembers Swedenborg having to feign insanity, and losing
even his reason before his knowledge was forgiven to him; St. Martin, who had
to hide himself all his life; Cagliostro, who died forsaken in the cells of the In-
22
quisition; Cazotte, who perished on the guillotine. Successor of so many vic-
tims, he dares, nevertheless, but understands the more the necessity to keep
23
silent.

Enoch-Orpheus is the possessor of the phorminx, the 7-stringed lyre.

24
In Greece [Enoch ] was called Orpheus, and thus changed his name with every na-
tion. The number Seven being attached to, and connected with, each of those primi-
25
tive Initiators, as well as the number 365, of the days in the year, astronomically, it
identifies the mission, character, and the sacred office of all those men, but certainly
not their personalities. Enoch is the seventh Patriarch; Orpheus is the possessor of
the phorminx, the 7-stringed lyre, which is the seven-fold mystery of initiation. Thoth,
with the seven-rayed Solar Discus on his head, travels in the Solar boat, the 365 de-

21
Loc. cit.
22
This is false, and the Abbé Constant (Éliphas Lévi) knew it was so. Why did he promulgate the untruth? [See
B.C.W., Vol. XII, pp. 88; 727-30.]
23
Blavatsky Collected Writings, (THE OBJECT OF THE MYSTERIES) XIV pp. 277-78. And quoting Dogme et Rituel
de la haute magie, I pp. 219-20. (Paris, G. Baillière, 1861.) [See p. 90 of English tr. by Waite — Boris de Zirkoff.]
24
[“Enoichion (Gr.). Lit., the ‘inner Eye’; the ‘ Seer,’ a reference to the third inner, or Spiritual Eye, the true
name for Enoch disfigured from Chanoch.” Theosophical Glossary. Also cf. Ενηχος is sounding within, of wind-
instruments; (opp. εγχορδος). Liddell & Scott ]
25
Hanoch, or Enoch means the “Initiator” and “teacher,” as well as the “Son of Man,” Enos (vide Genesis iv,
26), esoterically.

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grees, jumping out every fourth (leap) year for one day. Finally, Thoth-Lunus is the
26
septenary.

He is one of seven Primordial Creators, a branch of the Tree of Salva-

tion grown out of One Seed.
The Poimandrēs of our museums and libraries is an abridgement of one of the Books
of Thoth, by a Platonist of Alexandria. In the Third Century it was remodelled after
old Hebrew and Phoenician MSS. By a Jewish Kabalist, and called the Genesis of
Enoch. But even its disfigured remnants show how closely its text agrees with the Ar-
chaic Doctrine, as is shown in the creation of the Seven Creators and seven primitive
men. As to Enoch, Thoth or Hermes, Orpheus and Kadmos, these are all generic
names, branches and offshoots of the seven primordial sages (incarnated Dhyāni-
Chohans or Devas, in illusive, not mortal bodies) who taught Humanity all it knew,
and whose earliest disciples assumed their master’s names. This custom passed
from the Fourth to the Fifth Race. Hence the sameness of the traditions about Her-
mes (of whom Egyptologists count five) Enoch, etc., they are all inventors of letters;
none of them dies but still lives, and they are the first Initiators into, and Founders
27
of the Mysteries.

He called Nature “resourceful mother.”

“Synesius mentions books of stone which he found in the temple of Memphis, on
[one of] which was engraved the following sentence:

‘One nature delights in another, one nature overcomes another, one nature
overrules another, and the whole of them are one’.

The inherent restlessness of matter is embodied in the saying of Hermes:

‘Action is the life of Ptah’;

and Orpheus calls nature πολυμήχανος μήτηρ,

‘the mother that makes many things,’

28
or the ingenious, the contriving, the inventive mother.”

He taught the “god-given” doctrine of the seven “Star-Regents” of the

Unknown to Grecian philosophers.
All the classical authors and philosophers who have treated the subject [“Star-
Regents” or the informing deities of the seven planets, the Dhyāni-Chohans of Bud-
dhistic Esoteric Philosophy], repeat with Hermes Trismegistus, that the seven Rec-
tors — the planets including the sun — were the associates, or the coworkers, of the
Unknown All represented by the Demiourgos — commissioned to contain the Cosmos
— our planetary world — within seven circles. Plutarch shows them representing
“the circle of the celestial worlds.” Again, Denys of Thracia and the learned Clement
of Alexandria both describe the Rectors as being shown in the Egyptian temples in
the shape of mysterious wheels or spheres always in motion, which made the Initi-

26
Secret Doctrine, II p. 529
27
Ibid. II p. 267 fn.
28
Blavatsky Collected Writings, (THE DANGERS OF PRACTICAL MAGIC) XIV p. 65 fn. [On the Hermetic “Tres Ma-
tres,” being Light, Heat, and Electricity. Isis Unveiled I, p. 257. Cf. Eugenius Abel: Orphica, Lipsiae, 1885.]

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ates affirm that the problem of perpetual motion had been solved by the celestial
29
wheels in the Initiation Adyta. This doctrine of Hermes was that of Pythagoras and
of Orpheus before him. It is called by Proclus “the God-given” doctrine. Iamblichus
speaks of it with the greatest reverence. Philostratus tells his readers that the whole
sidereal court of the Babylonian heaven was represented in the temples

In globes made of sapphires and supporting the golden images of their respec-
30
tive gods.
31
He taught how to affect a whole audience by means of a lodestone.
Pythagoras pays a particular attention to the color and nature of precious stones;
while Apollonius of Tyana imparts to his disciples the secret virtues of each, and
changes his jewelled rings daily, using a particular stone for every day of the month
32
and according to the laws of judicial astrology. The Buddhists assert that the sap-
phire produces peace of mind, equanimity, and chases all evil thoughts by establish-
ing a healthy circulation in man. So does an electric battery, with its well-directed
fluid, say our electricians. “The sapphire,” say the Buddhists, “will open barred doors
and dwellings [for the spirit of man]; it produces a desire for prayer, and brings with
it more peace than any other gem; but he who would wear it must lead a pure and
33
holy life.”

He even imparted the art of oömancy.

Were it otherwise, indeed, why should all the ancient peoples, who were no more
fools than we are, have had such a superstitious dread of killing certain birds? In
Egypt, he who killed an ibis, or the golden hawk — the symbol of the Sun and Osiris
— risked and could hardly escape death. The veneration of some nations for birds
was such that Zoroaster, in his precepts, forbids their slaughter as a heinous crime.
We laugh in our age at every kind of divination. Yet why should so many generations
have believed in divination by birds, and even in oömancy, said by Suidas to have
been imparted by Orpheus, who taught how to perceive in the yoke and white of the
egg, under certain conditions, that which the bird born from it would have seen
34
around it during its short life.

29
In one of Des Mousseaux’s volumes on Demonology (La Magie au xix me Siécle, Paris, 1860 & 64.) the state-
ment of the Abbé Huc is found, and the author testifies to having heard the following story repeatedly from the
Abbé himself. In a lamasery of Tibet, the missionary found the following: “It is a simple canvas without the
slightest mechanical apparatus attached, as the visitor may prove by examining it at his leisure. It represents a
moonlit landscape, but the moon is not at all motionless and dead; quite the reverse, for, according to the Abbé,
one would say that our moon herself, or at least her living double, lighted the picture. Each phase, each aspect,
each movement of our satellite, is repeated in her facsimile, in the movement and progress of the moon in the
sacred picture. ‘You see this planet in the painting ride as a crescent, or full, shine brightly, pass behind the
clouds, peep out or set, in a manner corresponding in the most extraordinary way with the real luminary. It is,
in a word, a most perfect and resplendent reproduction of the pale queen of the night, which received the adora-
tion of so many people in the days of old’.” We know from the most reliable sources and numerous eye-
witnesses, that such “machines” — not canvas paintings — do exist in certain temples of Tibet; as also the “si-
dereal wheels” representing the planets, and kept for the same purposes — astrological and magical. Huc’s
statement was translated in Isis Unveiled [Vol. I, p. 441] from Des Mousseaux’s volume. [Op. cit., 1864 ed., p.
142 fn. to 143 fn.]
30
Blavatsky Collected Writings, (PAGAN SIDEREAL WORSHIP, OR ASTROLOGY) XIV pp. 330-31
31
[Gesnerus, Orpheōs apanta, s.v. Magnes, p. 321.]
32
[Philostratus, Life of Apoll. of Tyana, London, 1809, III, xli.]
33
Isis Unveiled, I p. 265; [& quoting Marbodi liber lapidum, Göttingen, 1799.]
34
Secret Doctrine, I pp. 362-63

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He iis the “In

nitiator,” the
t at Sacrific
“Grea ce.”
Even Initiateed Adepts s rely on Him.
35
The “BEING” . . . which has to rem main name eless, is the
e Tree fromm which, inn subse-
quen nt ages, all the great historically
h known Sag ges and Hierophants,, such as th he Rishi
Kapiila, Hermes s, Enoch, Orpheus,
O eetc., etc., have
h branch hed off. As objective man,
m he
is thhe mysterio ous (to the e profane — the everr invisible) yet ever p present Peersonage
abou ut whom le egends are e rife in th e East, esp pecially ammong the O Occultists and the
stud dents of the Sacred Science.
S It is he who o changes form, yet remains ever e the
same e. And it is
s he again who holds spiritual sway s over the
t initiated
d Adepts thhrough-
out tthe whole world. He is, as said d, the “Nam meless One e” who hass so many names,
and yet whose e names an nd whose very naturre are unk known. Hee is the “In nitiator,”
calleed the “GRE EAT SACRIF FICE. For, s sitting at thhe thresho old of LIGHTT, he lookss into it
fromm within the e circle of Darkness,
D which he will
w not cro oss; nor wiill he quit his
h post
36
till th
he last dayy of this life
e-cycle.

Orpheus retu
urning from th
he shades (1885)
Sir W
William Blake Richmond
R

35
[Th
he “Wondrous Being” or the “Initiator,” wh
ho descended from
f a “high re
egion,” the “Vooice of the Sile
ence.”]
36
Ibid
d. I pp. 207-8

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Orpheus after Thomas Taylor

The following, however, is a summary of what has been transmitted to us by the an-
cients concerning the original Orpheus, and the great men who have at different pe-
riods flourished under this venerable name. The first and genuine Orpheus is said to
have been a Thracian, and according to the opinion of many was a disciple of Li-
37
nus, who flourished at the time when the kingdom of the Athenians was dissolved.
Some assert that he was prior to the Trojan war, and that he lived eleven, or as oth-
ers say nine, generations. But the Greek word γενεα, or generation, signifies, accord-
38
ing to Gyraldus, the space of seven years: for unless this is admitted, how is it
possible that the period of his life can have any foundation in the nature of things? If
this signification therefore of the word is adopted, Orpheus lived either seventy-seven
or sixty-three years, the latter of which, if we may believe astrologers, is a fatal peri-
od, and especially to great men, as it proved to be to Aristotle and Cicero.

Our poet, according to fabulous tradition, was torn in pieces by Ciconian women; on
which account Plutarch affirms the Thracians were accustomed to beat their wives,
in order that they might revenge the death of Orpheus. Hence in the vision of Herus
Pamphilius, in the tenth book of Plato’s Republic,[620a] the soul of Orpheus, being
destined to descend into another body, is said to have chosen that of a swan, rather
than to be born again of a woman; having conceived such a hatred of the sex, on ac-
count of his violent death. The cause of his destruction is variously related by au-
thors. Some report that it arose from his being engaged in puerile loves, after the
death of Eurydice. Others, that he was destroyed by women intoxicated with wine,
because he was the cause of men relinquishing an association with them. Others
again assert, according to Pausanias, that on the death of Eurydice, wandering to
Aornus, a place in Thesprotia, where it was customary to evocate the souls of the
dead, having recalled Eurydice to life, and not being able to detain her, he destroyed
himself; nightingales bringing forth their young on his tomb, whose melody exceeded
every other of this species. Others again, ascribe his laceration to his having cele-
brated every divinity except Bacchus, which is very improbable, as among the follow-
ing hymns there are nine to that deity, under different appellations. Others report
that he was delivered by Venus herself into the hands of the Ciconian women, be-
cause his mother Calliope had not determined justly between Venus and Proserpine
concerning the young Adonis. Many affirm, according to Pausanias, that he was
struck by lightning; and Diogenes confirms this by the following verses, composed,
as he asserts, by the Muses on his death:

Here by the Muses plac’d, with golden lyre,

Great Orpheus rests, destroy’d by heavenly fire.

Again, the sacred mysteries called Threscian derived their appellation from the Thra-
cian bard, because he first introduced sacred rites and religion into Greece; and
hence the authors of initiation into these mysteries were called Orpheotelestas. Be-
sides, according to Lucian, Orpheus brought astrology and the magical arts into

37
Vid. Suid.
38
Syntag. Poet. p. 54

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Greece; and as to his drawing to him trees and wild beasts by the melody of his lyre,
39
Palæphatus accounts for it as follows:
“The mad Bacchanalian Nymphs, having violently taken away cattle and other
necessaries of life, retired for some days into the mountains. But the citizens,
having expected their return for a long time, and fearing the worst for their
wives and daughters, called Orpheus, and entreated him to invent some meth-
od of drawing them from the mountains. Orpheus, in consequence of this, tun-
ing his lyre conformably to the orgies of Bacchus, drew the mad nymphs from
their retreats; who descended from the mountains, bearing at first ferulae, and
branches of every kind of trees. But to the men who were eyewitnesses of these
wonders, they appeared to bring down the very woods, and from hence gave
40 41
rise to the fable. ,

Orpheus after GRS Mead

Mead GRS. Orpheus: The Theosophy of the Greeks. London: Theosophical Publishing
Society, 1896; [typographically enhanced by the Philaletheians.]

The Mythological Orpheus

It would be too tedious to recite here the various glosses of the Orphic legend, or to
enter into a critical examination of its history. On the whole the legend has been pre-
served with sufficient fidelity in the recitals of the poets and the works of mythogra-
phers, and the general outlines of it are sketched as follows by P. Decharme in his
Mythologie de la Grèce Antique.
42
Orpheus was son of Oeagrus, King of Thrace, and Calliope, one of the Muses. He
was the first poet and first inspired singer, and his whole life is the history of the re-
sults of divine harmony, Lord of the seven-stringed lyre, all men flocked to hear him,
and wild beasts lay peacefully at his feet; trees and stones were not unmoved at the
music of his heavenly instrument. The denizens of the unseen world and the princes
of Hades rejoiced at the tones of his harp. Companion of the Argonauts in their fa-
mous expedition, the good ship Argo glides gently over the peaceful sea at the will of
his magic strains; the fearsome moving rocks of the Symplegades, that threatened
Argo with destruction, were held motionless; the dragon Colchis that watched the
golden fleece was plunged in sleep profound.

39
Vid. Opusc. Mythol. p. 45
40
The true meaning of the fable however, in my opinion, is this, that Orpheus by his sacred doctrines tamed
men of rustic and savage dispositions. But the most careless readers must be struck with the similitude of the
latter part of this fable to what took place at the wood of Birnam in Macbeth; and to which the following lines
allude:
“Macbeth shall never vanquished be, until
Great Birnam wood to high Dunsinane hill
Shall come against him.”
This coincidence, however, has not been noticed by any of the commentators of Shakespeare.
41
Taylor T. (Tr. & Annot.). Hymns and Initiations. (Vol. V of “The Thomas Taylor Series”) Frome: The Prome-
theus Trust, 2003 (2nd ed.). Taylor’s Introduction to The Mystical Hymns of Orpheus, pp. 18-19
42
pp. 616 sq.

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His master was Apollo; Apollo taught him the lyre. Rising in the night he would climb
the heights of Pangaeus to be the first to greet the glorious god of day.

But great grief was in store for the singer of Apollo. His beloved wife Eurydice, while
fleeing from the importunities of Aristaeus, was bitten by a serpent hidden in the
grass. In vain the desperate husband strove to assuage the pain of his beloved, and
the hills of Thrace resounded with his tunefull plaints. . . . Eurydice is dead. . . . In
mad distraction he determines to follow her even to Hades, and there so charms the
king of death that Eurydice is permitted to return to earth once more — but on one
condition — Orpheus must not look back. And now they had almost recrossed the
bounds of death, when at the very last step, so great is his anxiety to see whether his
dear wife is still behind him, that he turns to gaze, and Eurydice is instantly reft
43
from his sight:
“ex oculis subito ceu fumus in auras
commixtus tenues, fugit diversa”;

“quick from his eyes she fled in every way,

like smoke in gentle zephyr disappearing.”

The death of Orpheus is variously recounted. Either he died of grief for the second
loss of Eurydice, or was killed by the infuriated Bacchanals, or consumed by the
lightning of Zeus for revealing the sacred mysteries to mortals. After his death the
Muses collected his torn members and buried them. His head and lyre were carried
by the waves to Lesbos.

Orpheus, a generic name

Such is the bare outline of the romantic Orphic Legend. That Orpheus ever existed
as one particular person is highly improbable; that Orpheus was the living symbol
that marked the birth of theology and science and art in Greece, is in keeping with
the general method of mythology, and relieves us from the many absurd hypotheses
that historians have devised to reconcile the irreconcilable.

Orpheus was to the Greeks what Veda Vyāsa was to the Hindus, Enoch to the Ethio-
pians, and Hermes to the Egyptians. He was the great compiler of sacred scriptures:
he invented nothing, he handed on. Orpheus, Veda Vyāsa, Enoch, Hermes and oth-
ers, are generic names. Veda Vyāsa means the “Veda-arranger.” It is said that the
hieroglyphical treatise on the famous Columns of Hermes or Seth, which Joseph af-
44
firms were still existing in his time, was the source of the sacred science of ancient
Khem, and that Orpheus, Hesiod, Pythagoras and Plato took therefrom the elements
of their theology. There was a number of Hermes, the greatest being called Trismegis-
tus, the “thrice greatest,” because he spoke of the “three greatest” powers that “veiled
45 46
the one Divinity.” We also learn from the MS. of Lascaris that there were no less
than six Orpheis known to antiquity.

43
Virgil, Geor., iv.499
44
De Mirville, Pneumatologie, iii.70
45
Chron. Alexand., p. 47
46
Mar. Taurin., Prolegg. in Orph., p. 98

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47
Ficinus traces what the Hindus call the Guruparamparā chain, or succession of
teachers as follows:

“In things pertaining to theology there were in former times six great teachers
expounding similar doctrines. The first was Zoroaster, the chief of the Magi; the
second Hermes Trismegistus, the head of the Egyptian priesthood; Orpheus
succeeded Hermes; Aglaophamus was initiated into the sacred mysteries of Or-
pheus; Pythagoras was initiated into theology by Aglaophamus; and Plato by
Pythagoras. Plato summed up the whole of their wisdom in his Letters.”

The derivation of the name

Although Orpheus is commonly reported to have been a Thracian, there is no cer-
tainty in the matter, and this uncertainty has given licence to the most fantastic der-
ivations of his name, put forward by experienced and amateur philologers to bolster
up their own pet theories. The name Orpheus is derived from the Egyptian, Hebrew,
Phoenician, Assyrian, Arabic, Persian or Sanskrit, according to the taste or inventive
faculty of the philological apologist. Professor Max Müller, in order to support the so-
lar myth theory, derives the name from “Ribhu” or “Arbhu,” of the Rig Veda, an epi-
48
thet of Indra; Indra being said to be one of the names of the Sun. The name is also
traced to the Alp or Elf of Teutonic folklore. Larcher says that Orpheus was an Egyp-
tian; or, or oros standing for Horus, and phe or pho in Coptic signifying “to engen-
49
der.” And no doubt there will be writers who will “prove” that the name Orpheus is
from radicals in Chinese, Esquimaux, Maya, or even Volapük! There is very little that
50
cannot be proved or disproved by such philology.

Note to Students
Those wishing to delve deeper on the legendary life and works of Orpheus should read Thomas Taylor’s “Disser-
tation on the Hymns of Orpheus,” being the Preface from the original 1787 edition of The Mystical Initiations; or,
Hymns of Orpheus, Appendix I, pp. 276-213, in: Taylor T. (Tr. & Annot.). Hymns and Initiations. (Vol. V of “The
Thomas Taylor Series”) Frome: The Prometheus Trust, 2003 (2nd ed.)

Painting overleaf
Thracian girl carrying the head of Orpheus on his lyre (1865) Gustave Moreau, Musée d'Orsay, Paris

47
De Immort. Anim., XVII.i.386
48
Cf. Comparative Mythology
49
Trad. d’Hérod., ii.266, n.
50
Mead G.R.S. Orpheus: The Theosophy of the Greeks. London: Theosophical Publishing Society, 1896; Part II,
Orphic Origins, pp. 14-19

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