The Orphic Blessing

Abstract

Qrpheus is primarily associated with the magic influence of his lyre, whose notes enchanted the wild beasts, the trees and the lifeless rocks. But Orpheus is not merely the greatest of legendary musicians; he was also an inspired theologian' who discovered and revealed the way to Immortality and exhorted men "to escape from death."'2 The music of Orpheus' lyre enchanted even the implacable lord of Hades. The alliance between theology and music is not so surprising as it sounds, for music was closely related to charms and incantations,3 and the Greeks considered music to have a civilising influence, which the merely 'technical' arts did not possess. The historian and statesman, Polybius, asserts that music has a soothing effect upon men; and in seeking to explain the savage nature of the Cynaetheans in Arcadia, he remarks: "I believe the reason was that they were the only people in Arcadia to abandon the practice of music."4 One Orphic book specifically denied that "Souls can ascend (to heaven) without a lyre."5 In the art of the Roman catacombs, where representations of Orpheus charming all nature with his playing are frequent, the magic power of his music becomes a symbol of the Christian Logos that overcomes even a heart of stone.6 The followers of the Orphic cult were the first among the Greeks to formulate (about 6oo B.C.) the solemn doctrine that our destiny in the Beyond is dependent entirely on our earthly conduct. The theory of reincarnation takes shape in various cultures, but it usually assumes the form of an automatic process;7 whereas in Orphism, metampsychosis becomes an integral part of a moral doctrine. During the cycle of rebirths the fallen soul was gradually absolved from its sins by saving faith and sacraments. From Heraclitus to the Neoplatonists, the Greek mind was fascinated by this theory that the destiny of each soul depends on its merits. We find it expressed by Plato, whose use of Orphic speculation on metempsychosis gave it a wide influence.8 Later the musical teacher of the religion of salvation was taken over by the Jews and Christians. In an apocryphal "testament" of Orpheus, forged by a Jew of Alexandria, the "first preceptor"