This will entail the exploration of the relationship between poetry and the evolving role of the individual in Archaic society in order to clarify the context in which Orpheus came to prominence. This essay will examine the emergence of the myths of Orpheus in Archaic Greece with a view to understanding his place in society. Apollo also had northern connections, either coming from Hyper borea (the land beyond the North Wind), or else visiting that far northern land after his birth on theĪlthough absent from early Archaic sources by the sixth century BCE Orpheus the poet had become synonymous with poetry and inspiration. Some say that his father was Apollo, and certainly Orpheus stands under the patronage of that god. His mother was Calliope, the Muse of epic poetry. Orpheus was a prince of Thrace, the land to the north of Greece.
Armed only with his songs, he charmed the denizens of Hades and persuaded Pluto and Persephone to let him take Eurydice back. With the lyre that was a gift from Apollo, Orpheus could move everything in creation, from stones, trees, and beasts, through humans, to daimonic and even divine beings (whom we might call angels and gods). His story is the archetypal myth of the power of music. Most people can recall two things about him: that he was a musician, and that he went down to the Underworld to fetch his wife Eurydice. The distant figure of Hermes Trismegistus seems superhuman, without faults and equally without character, and the same goes for Zoroaster, at least until the late nineteenth century, when Nietzsche humanized and humorized him in Also Sprach Zarathustra. In Chapter 3 of his recent survey of the Western esoteric movement, The Golden Thread, he considers the primal figure of Orpheus and the Mysteries connected with his name and legend. J oscelyn Godwin is one of the leading scholars of esotericism today.
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