Orphic Hymn to Liknitus Bacchus

Liknitan Bacchus, bearer of the vine,

Thee I invoke to bless these rites divine:

Florid and gay, of nymphs the blossom bright,

And of fair Venus, Goddess of delight,

'Tis thine mad footsteps with mad nymphs to beat,

Dancing thro' groves with lightly leaping feet:

From Jove's high counsels nurst by Proserpine,

And born the dread of all the pow'rs divine:

Come, blessed pow'r, regard thy suppliant's voice,

Propitious come, and in these rites rejoice.

From Euripides' The Bacchae...

Dionysus: "It's a wise man's part to practise a smooth-tempered self-control."

Dionysus: "Your [Pentheus'] name points to calamity. It fits you well." (The name "Pentheus" derives from πένθος, pénthos, grief)

Messenger: "Dionysus' powers are manifold; he gave to men the vine to cure their sorrows."

Dionysus: "Can you, a mortal, measure your strength against a god?"

Orphic Hymn to Pan

I call strong Pan, the substance of the whole,

Etherial, marine, earthly, general soul,

Immortal fire; for all the world is thine,

And all are parts of thee, O pow'r divine.

Come, blessed Pan, whom rural haunts delight,

Come, leaping, agile, wand'ring, starry light;

The Hours and Seasons, wait thy high command,

And round thy throne in graceful order stand.

Goat-footed, horned, Bacchanalian Pan,

Fanatic pow'r, from whom the world began,

Whose various parts by thee inspir'd, combine

In endless dance and melody divine.

In thee a refuge from our fears we find,

Those fears peculiar to the human kind.

Thee shepherds, streams of water, goats rejoice,

Thou. lov'st the chace, and Echo's secret voice:

The sportive nymphs, thy ev'ry step attend,

And all thy works fulfill their destin'd end.

O all-producing pow'r, much-fam'd, divine,

The world's great ruler, rich increase is thine.

All-fertile Pæan, heav'nly splendor pure,

In fruits rejoicing, and in caves obscure.

True serpent-horned Jove, whose dreadful rage

When rous'd, 'tis hard for mortals to asswage.

By thee the earth wide-bosom'd deep and long,

Stands on a basis permanent and strong.

Th' unwearied waters of the rolling sea,

Profoundly spreading, yield to thy decree.

Old Ocean too reveres thy high command,

Whose liquid arms begirt the solid land.

The spacious air, whose nutrimental fire,

And vivid blasts, the heat of life inspire

The lighter frame of fire, whose sparkling eye

Shines on the summit of the azure sky,

Submit alike to thee, whole general sway

All parts of matter, various form'd obey.

All nature's change thro' thy protecting care,

And all mankind thy lib'ral bounties share:

For these where'er dispers'd thro' boundless space,

Still find thy providence support their race.

Come, Bacchanalian, blessed power draw near,

Fanatic Pan, thy humble suppliant hear,

Propitious to these holy rites attend,

And grant my life may meet a prosp'rous end;

Drive panic Fury too, wherever found,

From human kind, to earth's remotest bound.

Orphic Hymn to Helios

Hear golden titan, whose eternal eye
With broad survey, illumines all the sky.
Self-born, unwearied in diffusing light,
And to all eyes the mirror of delight:
Lord of the seasons, with your fiery car
And leaping coursers, beaming light from far:
With your right hand the source of morning light,  
And with your left the father of the night.
Agile and vigorous, venerable sun,
Fiery and bright around the heavens you run.
Foe to the wicked, but the good man's guide,
Over all his steps propitious you preside:
With various founding, golden lyre, it is mine
To fill the world with harmony divine.

Father of ages, guide of prosperous deeds,
The world's commander, borne by lucid steeds,
Immortal Zeus, all-searching, bearing light,  
Source of existence, pure and fiery bright
Bearer of fruit, almighty lord of years,
Agile and warm, whom every power reveres.
Great eye of nature and the starry skies,
Doomed with immortal flames to set and rise
Dispensing justice, lover of the stream,
The world's great despot, and over all supreme.
Faithful defender, and the eye of right,
Of steeds the ruler, and of life the light:
With founding whip four fiery steeds you guide,
When in the car of day you glorious ride.
Propitious on these mystic labours shine,
And bless your suppliants with a life divine.

ΕΥΟΙ! Ιαχή λατρευτικής έκστασης της Ιερής Βακχείας...

Hymn to Nut

O Nut, thou hast extended thyself over thy son the Osiris Pepi,

Thou hast snatched him out of the hand of Set; join him to thyself, Nut.

Thou comest, snatch thy son; behold, thou comest, form this great one like unto thyself.

O Nut, cast thyself upon thy son the Osiris Pepi.

O Nut, cast thyself upon thy son the Osiris Pepi.

Form thou him, O Great Fashioner; this great one is among thy children.

Form thou him, O Great Fashioner; this great one is among thy children.

Keb was to Nut. Thou didst become a spirit.

Thou wast a mighty goddess in the womb of thy mother Tefnut when thou wast not born.

Form thou Pepi with life and well-being; he shall not die.

Strong was thy heart, thou didst leap in the womb of thy mother in thy name of "Nut."

O perfect daughter, mighty one in thy mother, who art crowned like a king of the North,

Make this Pepi a spirit-soul in thee, let him not die.

O Great Lady, who didst come into being in the sky, who art mighty.

Who dost make happy, and dost fill every place, with thy beauty,

The whole earth is under thee, thou hast taken possession of it.

Thou hast encompassed the earth, everything is in thy two hands,

Grant thou that this Pepi may be in thee like an imperishable star.

Thou hast associated with Keb in thy name of "Pet".

Thou hast united the earth in every place.

O mistress over the earth, thou art above thy father Shu, thou hast the mastery over him.

He hath loved thee so much that he setteth himself under thee in everything.

Thou hast taken possession of every god for thyself with his boat.

Thou hast made them shine like lamps, assuredly they shall not cease from thee like the stars.

Let not this Pepi depart from thee in thy name of Hert.

Come to me Agathos Daimon

Come to me, you from the four winds, ruler of all, who breathed spirit into men for life. Whose is the hidden and unspeakable name – it cannot be uttered by human mouth. At whose name even the daimons, when hearing, are terrified, whose is the Sun, and the Moon. They are unwearied eyes shining in the pupils of men’s eyes. Of whom the heavens are head, aither body, earth feet, and the environment water, the agathos daimon.

Platon and the Mysteries

And I conceive that the founders of the mysteries had a real meaning and were not mere triflers, but that he who arrives there after initiation and purification will dwell with the gods. For 'many,' as they say in the mysteries, 'are the thyrsus bearers, but few are the mystics', meaning, as I interpret the words, the true philosophers.

Platon

Before the Bomos I stand

And before the Bomos you shall stand, in all you glory and might, and you shall cry into the wilderness the barbarous names of power. The Earth upon which you stand shall be swallowed by the watery abyss and the celestial fires of the heavens shall flame violently above you. Selene, in all her splendour shall reflect Helios in all his majesty and from the palace of daimons within that misty sub-lunar realm shall echo the word ΨΙΑΑΧΑΦΑΘ!

Iamblikhos and Theurgic Union

It is not thought that links the theurgist to the gods; else what should hinder the theoretical philosopher from enjoying theurgic union with them? The case is not so. Theurgic union is attained only by the perfective operation of unspeakable acts correctly performed, acts which are beyond all understanding, and by power of the unutterable symbols intelligible only to the gods.

Iamblikhos

ΙΑΩ

And unto the ages you shall chant ΙΑΩ. For Ι is the Sun athanatos, Α the echo of the voice of genesis in the beginning and Ω the echo of the voice of henosis in the end.

Wolftribes before the Moongate

Wolftribes before the Moongate howling her barbarous names. And you shall see her in all her primordial beauty tearing asunder the veil between the worlds.

Extracted from the Papuroi of Iakkhos

The Causal Essence of Aion

For Aion is neither beginning nor end, but both; for all the spheres or being which it energises, end where they begin, and begin where they end. They dance in eternal revolution, for their everlasting revelling-place is in the vortex of the ceaseless leitourgia, or service, of the elements. For Aion is the cause of the cause of the mighty whirlpool.


Extracted from the Papyroi of Iakkhos

Orphic Hymn to Bakkhos Perikionios

"Bakkhos Perikionios, hear my prayer,

Who maddest the house of Kadmos once your care,

With matchless force, his pillars twining round,

When burning thunders shook the solid ground,

In flaming, founding torrents borne along,

Propt by your grasp indissolubly strong.

Come mighty Bakkhos to these rites inclined,

And bless thy suppliants with rejoicing mind."


Extracted from the Hymns of Orpheus

Orphic Hymn to the Daimon

"You, mighty-ruling, daimon dread, I call,

Mild Zeus, life-giving, and the source of all:

Great Zeus, much-wandering, terrible and strong,

To whom revenge and tortures dire belong.

Mankind from you, in plenteous wealth abound,

When in their dwellings joyful you are found;

Or pass through life afflicted and distressed,

The needful means of bliss by you suppressed.

It is yours alone endued with boundless might,

To keep the keys of sorrow and delight.

O holy, blessed father, hear my prayer,

Disperse the seeds of life-consuming care;

With favouring mind the sacred rites attend,

And grant my days a glorious, blessed end."

Extracted from the Hymns of Orpheus

The Primordial Mother

"Here is the head upon which all the ends of the world are come and the eyelids are a little weary. All the thoughts and experience of the world have etched and moulded there. The animalism of Greece, the lust of Rome, the mysticism of the Middle Ages with its spiritual ambition and imaginative loves, the return of the pagan world, the sins of Borgias. She is older than the rocks among which she sits; like the vampire, she has been dead many times, and learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas, and keeps their fallen day about her. And all this has been to her but as the sound of lyres and flutes, and lives only in the delicacy with which it has moulded the changing lineaments, and tinged the eyelids and the hands."

Walter Pater, from his famous description of La Gioconda

Some Principles regarding the Hermetic Body

For Man and Woman can become like unto a creeping earthworm or like unto a God. This is so because Man and Woman are indeed a reflection of the quintessential totality of the Absolute.The Body of Man and Woman is the perfect reflection of the essence of the Cosmos. From contemplating the body to which the soul is for a time wedded to for the purpose of revelation, Man and Woman shall be able to know the Mysteries of Nature, for the Microcosm reflects the Macrocosm. As above, so below! In the same fashion, Man and Woman, being destined with a soul emancipating from the those realms beyond, and from beyond the Wandering Spheres and the Constellations, can come to know the aitherial realms beyond the Earth by coming to know his or her soul. Having been revealed, it can now become the object of inquiry of the magical imagination and will of Man and Woman.

The Occult Significance of Excessive Physical Exercise

The magos aims at making his or her physical body a vehicle of power that will allow him or her to endure the hardships of his or her magical training. This refinement through purification and consecration, which are the results of excessive physical exercise, are necessary for one who endeavours to embody that holy fire from above within the self below, for as above, so below. How can one expand towards the heavens when one has not mastered Earth? How can one descend into the hells when one has not conquered the Earth? Elemental equilibrium is not just immaterial alchemy,  it is an act and fulfilment of the body too. Strength and vigour are prerequisites for one who faces the exceptional energeies of the pure forces of the cosmos, for one must endure or else he or she will wither away and dissolve. The Magos is, by virtue of his or her training, capable of great physical endurance and exceedingly tenacious of life, as is witnessed by the extraordinary happenings in connection with the murder of the infamous Rasputin, who resisted cyanide of potassium and bullets through the heart and brain, and had finally to be literally hacked to pieces before life was extinct.

The Ten Hermetic Principles

For the Ten Hermetic Principles are eclecticism; diversity; pragmatism; worldliness; individualism; natural dualism resolved through emanations; immanence of the divine beyond, around and within; successive revelation, both natural and personal; spiritual, emotional and intellectual fervour; and absence of dogmatism in favour of meta-mythology as reality.


Extracted from The Papyroi of Iakkhos

The Dionysian Dance

 

Following the torches as they dipped and swayed in the darkness, they climbed mountain paths with head thrown back and eyes glazed, dancing to the beat of the drum which stirred their blood' or staggered drunkenly with what was known as the 'Dionysos gait'. In this state of ekstasis or enthusiasmos, they abandoned themselves, dancing wildly and shouting ΕΥΟΙ! and at that moment of intense rapture became identified with the god himself. They became filled with his spirit and acquired divine powers.

Extracted from The Papyroi of Iakkhos