Joan Bugbee

Religion 211A

REVISED December 6, 2001

New Death, New Life:Chasing the Ghosts of Orphism

Orphism is unlike most religious traditions we have studied ---it had no fixed sites, no sanctuaries or temples, no cult statues.It was a mystical Greek religious movement primarily based on sacred writings attributed to Orpheus, the poet-musician of Thrace.My thesis is that Orphics believed that human beings were stained at birth with an inherited impurity that burdened them with a dual nature, part divine, part evil.Only by initiation into the Orphic mysteries and by leading a pure Orphic lifestyle in a succession of lives could they hope to shed the evil part of their nature and attain blessedness in heaven and union with the divine.These were radical new ideas that set Orphics apart, giving them a distinctive religious identity,and that influencedmajor Greek thinkers and writers.

Studying Orphism is like trying to nail a ghost to the wall --- we know very little about its rituals, and scholars disagree about its practices, its importance and even whether Orpheus was real or mythical.Most scholars consider him a myth, the legendary musician who charmed all nature with his song.He descended into the underworld to rescue his wife (hence his association with the afterlife), failed in the attempt, and upon his return to earth was torn apart by jealous women.His head, the legend goes, went on singing (Bulfinch, 192-94).

Orphism arose during the sixth century B.C.E. and eventually spread throughout Greece, Crete and Italy.Its god was Dionysos; Orphism drew heavily from the Bacchic mysteries and its basic myth was a unique theogony, or story about the origin of the gods, based on Dionysos.According to the Orphic myth, Dionysos, son of Zeus and Persephone, was killed, dismembered and eaten by the Titans who were jealous of him because they feared Zeus would make him ruler of the universe.Athena rescued Dionysos’ heart and gave it to Zeus, who swallowed it and gave birth to a new Dionysos.The infuriated Zeus hurled a thunderbolt at the Titans, destroying them, and from their ashes arose the human race with a dual nature: part divine (Dionysos) and part evil (Titan) (Macchioro 29).

These ideas --- rebirth and the dual nature of man--- were alien to Greek tradition.The traditional view stemmed from Hesiod,the eighth century Greek poet, whose theogony contained nothing about Dionysos and the Titans, no rebirth of Dionysus, no notion of good and evil at war or of man’s nature being half-divine and half-evil (Guthrie 84).The logical extension of these new ideas was that the soulmust be liberated from its evil human nature trapped in the body.To do that, Orphics had to be purified, live a pure lifestyle and after death pass through a series of reincarnated lives until finally they were free of evil and able to attain union with the divine in the afterlife (Guthrie 206).

Obviously, if you are an Orphic, you think differently, you act differently; you are a creature set apart, with a new religious identity.That new identity was based on dogmas found in a number of sacred writings attributed to Orpheus, because Orphism basically consists of Orphic literature (Guthrie 10).These writings include small gold tablets called ammellae foundprimarily in Italy and Greece that date to the fourth and fifth centuries B.C.E. and contain instructions for life in the underworld.Price says there is scholarly dispute about their origins; they have variously been called Orphic, Bacchic or Pythagoran (121).In the last few decades, a number of newtablets have been found, including one in a tomb in Hipponum, in Southern Italy that definitely confirms the earlier texts as Dionysian, according to Graf (239).He adds that bone tablets found in Olbia in Southern Russia and dated from the fifth century B.C.E. also confirm the link with Orphism; they“…promised life after death, they also connected this with the name of Orpheus or a group that called itself Orphikoi” (240).In Pelinna in Thessaly, two gold tablets were found on the chest of a female buried in a marble sarcophagus, along with coins dating from the fourth century B.C.E.The inscription reads, in part:“Now you have died and now you have come into being, O thrice happy one, on this same day.Tell Persephone that Bakkhios himself has set you free”(Graf 241).The fact that the burial was in a marble tomb suggests that wealthy women were followers of the Dionysian, or Orphic, traditions, Graf suggests (241).

Other sources of Orphic beliefs are the Orphic Hymns, the Derveni papyrus and poems known as the Rhapsodies.The hymns, probably composed in the third century C.E., seem to have been used by initiates in ceremonies involving prayer, libations and sacrifices to invoke deities and ask for blessings.The deity most often invoked is Dionysos, and traces of Orphism occur throughout; the hymns say nothing about animal sacrifice, which is a major Orphic prohibition, and they include references to the body as a prison for the soul (xi).For example, a poem titled: “To Death” reads: “Your sleep tears the soul free from the body’s hold when you undo nature’s tenacious bonds, Bringing long and eternal slumber to the living…” (109)A poem to Dionysos invokes him thusly: “I call upon loud -roaring and reveling Dionysos, Primeval, two-natured, thrice-born Bacchic lord.…Hearken to my voice, O blessed one…” (43).

The Derveni papyrus, thought to date from the fourth century B.C.E.,was discovered in Thessaloniki in northern Greece and is still being deciphered, but the fragments already translated include acommentary on the origin of the universe that focuses on Dionysos and ascribes it to Orpheus (Price 118)In Masks of Dionysos, Laks and Most comment that scholars were surprised that the documents invoked Orpheus, not Homer, and seemed to describe something religious, perhaps an initiation (4-5).The Derveni text is difficult because it is literally in fragments, and the fragments themselves are obscure, but perhaps this is intentional.One comments on the Orphic poems this way: “The poem is an alien one and riddling for human beings.But Orpheus intended by means of it to say not contentious riddles, but rather great things in riddles” (Laks and Most 12).

The Rhapsodies, probably dating from the late Hellenistic period, recite the Orphic myth and speak of the souls of the dead spending 300 years in the underworld hoping for rebirth.In the poems, it is Dionysos and Persephone that come to their aid, a role that Price says is “..strikingly untraditional” (118).

In terms ofOrphic cult practices, vegetarianism dominated Orphic life, giving adherents a distinctive religious identity, since all animal sacrifice was prohibited.This idea, of course, was totally opposed to the essence of Greek sacrifice.In addition to vegetarianism, the Orphics were supposed to abstain from eating eggs and beans and drinking wine.Price speculates that the prohibition on beans could be merely digestive, or because of their similarity to body parts (121).I would guess that the prohibition on wine could be considered a reform of Dionysian rites since the latter were amply lubricated by wine.

The earliest evidence of Orphic cult practices comes from the historian Herodotus in the fourth century B.C.E.Guthrie notes thatin discussing the fact that Egyptians do not take wool into their temples, Herodotus comments that the practice “agrees with the Orphics or Bakchia” (198).Guthrie believes that Orphics traditionally dressed in white to symbolize purity (199) though what that purity consisted of is a matter of dispute.One of my sources says that Orphism demanded chastity of its adherents (Macchioro 103) though other scholars refer simply to a demand for ritual purity; again, we have no real evidence.It is clear, though, that there existed a regular priesthood, known as the bukoli, who helped enforce these radical cult practices that demanded such a distinctive, highly regulated lifestyle (Guthrie 106).In short, becoming an Orphic was not undertaken lightly; it demanded fundamental change, virtually a personal conversion, on the part of adherents, who were to belong to an exclusive cult, what Price terms a “…religiously sanctioned way of life that was unique…” (122).

The exact rites that Orphics practiced are also unknown, though most sources speculate that they probablyincluded hymns, prayers and perhaps some sort of sacrifice. The Derveni papyrus gives us a glimpse of rites performed by what were probably Orphic initiates.Here is a sample:“…prayers and sacrifices assuage the souls…This is why the magoi perform the sacrifice…And on the offerings they pour water and milk, from which they also make the libations.And they sacrifice innumerable and many-knobbed cakes, because the souls too are innumerable”(Laks and West, 11-12).

Orphic rites probably began with the secret initiation, and here again we can only speculate about what went on.The Greek word for the mysteries is teletai and Orpheus was considered a revealer of the mysteries (Guthrie 203), but what was actually revealed will never be known.One scholar believes that the initiate probably…” enjoyed the privilege of knowing divine things which the average man might attain only in the after-life.This great privilege gave him the feeling of having been endowed somehow with a new essence, of being a sort of superhuman being” (Macchioro 102).However,I think the same could be said of other secret initiatory rites, like that of the cult of Mithras or even the Elusinian mysteries.Macchioro speculates that the Orphic initiates were trying to reenact the god Dionysos’ second death and rebirth so that they could be born again in imitationand that some sort of communion meal was involved, but we have no real evidence of this(77).

I have noted that Orphic cult practices and lifestyle were based on a complex set of dogmas.Among them was theidea of original sin stemming from the Titans’ murder of Dionysos, an offense that might better be called original impurity, since Orphics had no specific idea of sin as we understand it (Guthrie 206).To wipe out that impurity, purification was required and the first purifying step was initiation into the Orphic mysteries Next the initiate must observe an ascetic lifestyle based on the view of the body as a kind of evil cocoon that had to be mortified..Another dogma decreed that one’s deeds on earth were judged after death in the underworld and either punished or rewarded.Still another was that there was an intermediate stage between life and eventual bliss in heaven, since the soul could not be fully purified in life but needed additional lives before that could be accomplished.In effect, the Orphics postulatedan ever-turning wheel of life where the dead person’s soul must go through a series of new stages, being reincarnated, born again into a different body, even an animal body.A pure Orphic life, though, could shorten the process(Guthrie 269).

Again, these beliefs were strange to the ordinary Greek.They viewed the dead as poor, hopeless souls in Hades-- theirs was a pessimistic view of the afterlife that did not involve immortality.The Greeks also didn’t hold with judgment after death and punishment or rewards for one’s deeds.Nor did they have a dogmatic series of instructions preserved in sacred writings or any prescribed lifestyle, particularly not an ascetic lifestyle.Their worship was inclusive and communal.They made their sacrifices to the proper gods in the proper way, shared the meal with them and that was that.

Macchioro calls Orphic ideas on immortality and the possibility of attaining eternal blessedness“one of the most important spiritual upheavals which history has ever witnessed” (165).Guthrie is less sweeping, but he does point out that these ideas were taken up by many philosophers, writers and thinkers, including Plato, Aristophanes, Euripides and Pythagoras, among others. The separation between psyche and soma, mind and body, was a familiar theme for Plato.For example, Guthrie points out that in the Cratylus Plato describes the followers of Orpheus as believingthat the soul is undergoing punishment and actually has a husk around it, like a prison, the husk being the body (157).Plato’s Republic describes the gifts Musaeus, a friend or pupil of Orpheus, grants the just: in Hades they enjoy drunken banquets while the wicked are mired in mud and forced to carry water in sieves (II,363c-e).The Republic later speaks of the “…hosts of books written by Musaeus and Orpheus…according to which they persuade not only individuals but whole cities that expiations and atonements for sin may be made…they redeem us from the pains of hell” (II, 365).In Euripides’ play, Hippolytus, the title character is an Orphic who is upbraidedby his father: “(you) …try to impose on people with your meatless meals, take Orpheus for your lord and join the revel, worshipping the smoke of countless books…”(109).

Plato is also the source of information about Orphic ideas on reincarnation since Orphic writings on this subject have been lost.Plato’sPhaedrus explains that souls initially begin their existencein heaven but some fall short of perfection and descend to earth.They cannot return to heaven until they spend ten thousand years being reincarnated.Thisis accomplishedin ten periods of a thousand years, each period representing an incarnation.After the first period, man can choose his next life and at this point, can enter the soul of a beast, so not just reincarnation but transmigration is involved. (167-68).In Book Ten of the Republic, a character named Er who is in the underworld sees that the soul of Orpheus had chosen a new life as a swan (X 620). Pythagoras, who adopted many Orphic views, believed he had once been a peacock (Reinach 87).Transmigration was easily explained, Guthrie said, by Orphic views that all life is akin so that “… man’s soul could be reborn in a beast and move from beast to man” (196).This also explains the rule about not eating meat, which was equated with cannibalism.

While Orphic ideas found favor with thinkers and writers among the elite, there is some dispute about their acceptance among the masses.Macchioro believes that Orphics inserted their ideas about Hades, including judgment after death, into the 11^th book of the Odyssey.This is important since Greeks in the fifth and sixth centuries B.C.E.considered Homer the source of truth about the gods.He says “…the Homeric conception of the other world was submerged by Orphic ideas, and these spread with the diffusion of the Homeric poems until the Orphic eschatology had traveled all over Greece” (162).That may be, but the acceptance of this eschatology is another matter.In the classic period, as noted, Orphic ideas were alien concepts to the Greeks.Orphism had a distinctive message that was meant for the individual and was universal, ideas not popular in an era when worship was communal and the gods were tied to particular locations and to the various city states (Guthrie 250-51).

But in the Hellenistic era, the new internationalism produced an openness to new ideas and exposure to foreign cults like that of Cybele and Isis.Theacceptance of gods under different names in different places as being essentially the same, plus the growing popular interest in magic and astrology, also led to growing syncretism of religious ideas.These trends were sympathetic to Orphism and to other new cults.Though Orphism shared some elements with other movements like the Elusinian mysteries and the cult of Mithras, notably the focus on the afterlife and the idea of rebirth, it differed from them in many respects, requiring study of complicated dogma and adoption of a rigidly ascetic lifestyle.

One scholar believes that ordinary Greek citizens embraced Orphism because it blended religion and magic, to some degree (Macchioro 187). But there were many choices open in this new era of syncretism and religious change, and there is little evidence pointing to which cult the ordinary citizen might have chosen.Guthrie notes thatOrphism involveda complicated, mystic theology that devotion to Cybele or Isis did not require and suggests that Orphism never became widespread among the Greeks (252).His view is that Orphism was “…too philosophical for the masses, too mythological for the intellectual pride of youthful philosophy”(238).

Absent firm evidence, I have to come to the same conclusion.It seems to me that ordinary Greeks could have found hope for a future afterlife in the Elusinian mysteries, for example, without having to fundamentally change their way of life.In summary, though it gave its adherents a distinctive religious identity that set them apart, and though its ideas influenced leading thinkers, in the end Orphism was submerged by the rising tide of Christianity.Many Christian ideas, like original sin and rewards and punishment after death, are believed by some to have their roots in Orphism, but that is a subject for another paper.

Works Cited

Athanassakis, Apostolos N., trans. The Orphic Hymns.Missoula: The Scholars Press, 1977.

Bulfinch, Thomas. Bulfinch’s Mythology.Atlanta: Communication and Studies, Inc., 1968

Carpenter, Thomas H. and Faraone, Christopher A., eds.Masks of Dionysus.Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993.

Graf, Fritz. The Mask of Dionysos.Carpenter, Thomas H. and Faraone, Christopher A., eds. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993.

Guthrie, W.K.C.Orpheus and Greek Religion: A Study of the Orphic Movement.2^nd ed. London: Methuen & Co., Ltd., 1952.

Jowett, B., trans. Plato’s Republic.New York: Modern Library, 1982.

Laks, Andre’ and Most, Glenn W., eds. Studies on the Derveni Papyrus.Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997.

Macchioro, Vittorio D. From Orpheus to Paul: A History of Orphism.  New York: Henry Holt and Company, 1930.

Price, Simon.Religions of the Ancient Greeks.Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Reinach, Salomon.Orpheus: A History of Religions.New York: Horace Liveright, Inc., 1930