I'm Obsessed with Orphism!

I have been working very long hours the last few months, and my brain is feeling a little overheated. That may be why I've become obsessed with Orphism! When the spirits come calling they need to be acknowledged, hence this post. Maybe it will help my brain cool down.

Orpheus by Karoly Ferenczy, 1894

Orphism was a strain of Greek religious philosophy supposedly founded by Orpheus, the mythical bard. Orpheus was considered an expert on all things religious because he had descended to the underworld to retrieve his wife Eurydice, and learned the secrets of life, death and the universe while he was down there. After failing to bring Eurydice back to the world of the living Orpheus founded an all male religious movement in Thrace. This outraged the Thracian woman, who wanted their men back, and they tore Orpheus into small pieces. His head continued to sing and prophesy after death, however, until it was finally buried by the Lesbian (and lesbian) poetess Sappho. As if this all doesn't make Orpheus sound queer enough, he also supposedly was the lover of Calais, the winged son of the North Wind.

My recent obsession with Orphism started when I was poking around the Web for information about Hercules. I've been interested in Herc ever since I was a child. He's most familiar to us by his Roman name, but the Greeks called him Herakles or Heracles, and he's appeared in many forms. He's a mortal hero who gained immortality, he's a constellation, he's a god on Mount Olympus, he's a shamanic figure (according to scholar Walter Burkert), he's syncretized with the Phoenician god Melqart, and he's one of the Daktyls, the divine helpers of the great mother goddess Rhea Cybele.

And, according to some Orphic texts described by a writer named Damascius, he was also a primal god who gave birth to the universe. According to these texts, in the beginning of time there existed only water and dirt. These two mingled to produce slime, and from the slime was born unaging Herakles, also known as Time. This version of Herc was a giant snake with three heads, those of a bull, a lion, and a god. Some accounts also give him a pair of wings growing from his shoulders. Nice!

Lou Ferrigno as Hercules, with egg, in one of the 1980s Luigi Cozzi Hercules films.

This primordial Herakles is described as bisexual, or hermaphroditic. He's a big musclebound snake deity, so naturally he makes love to himself. Be honest - wouldn't you do the same it you were the only being in the universe? This act of divine self-love produces a gigantic cosmic egg, which is filled with so much Herculean super-cosmic love power that it explodes into two halves. The upper half becomes the sky, or Ouranos (Uranus to the Romans) and the lower half becomes Gaia, the earth.

The Orphic creation myths then continue in a vein similar to the standard mythic creation described by Hesiod. Ouranos and Gaia make love and give birth to the Titans, including Rhea and Kronos. Kronos eventually castrates Ouranos and declares himself king of the universe. To prevent his children from castrating him, he eats them as soon as his wife Rhea gives birth. Rhea is not too happy about this, and tricks him into eating a stone rather than her last child Zeus, who she raises secretly in a cave. Zeus defeats Kronos and the Titans, and kicks them down into the deep underworld of Tartarus. And then....

Goya, Saturn Devouring His Son, 1823

And then, the Orphic creation myths deviate from the standard Greek myth. In a big way. According to a recently discovered parchment called the Derveni papyrus, Zeus is aware of prophecies that he too will someday be overthrown by a son. But he figures out a way to avoid this fate! The giant severed phallus of Ouranos, "the phallus who had first ejaculated the brilliance of heaven," is still flying around in the atmosphere. Zeus grasps it and swallows it down. By this act of cannibalistic oral sex he absorbs the universe's generative power into himself and becomes the supreme god.You see, Kronos was simply eating his divine offspring, but Zeus actually eats the generative source of all the gods and goddesses. He's not just going to be another player in history - he's going to be history itself.

Well, my brain feels a little cooler after getting some of this down in writing. I think you can see why Orphism is interesting to me as a gay man. It was founded by someone who loved men, and the original lesbian has a role to play as well. A giant, hermaphroditic, serpentine version of one of my favorite deities creates the world through some self-pleasure. And Zeus absorbs the power of the universe through oral sex. It's a fantastically queer view of religion and the universe, and I can understand why it was so popular in the ancient world.

Underneath the somewhat lurid mythology, Orphism also has things to say about the nature of the human soul and how we should all act in the world. Hopefully I'll get to write about those aspects of it soon.

Dancing In A Cave

The ancient Greeks told a story that went something like this:

A long, long time ago, the great goddess Rhea gave birth to Zeus, who was destined to become king of the gods. During her contractions Rhea clawed at the earth in pain. Magically, five beautiful men emerged from the grooves her fingers made in the soil.

It had been foretold that Rhea's brother/husband Kronos would be overthrown by his children, and he had already eaten Zeus's five older siblings to prevent this prophecy from coming true. Rhea was determined that her final child wouldn't be consumed, so she deceived Kronos and presented him a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, claiming it was her newborn son. Greedily, Kronos swallowed it without opening the cloth.

Rhea hid baby Zeus in a cave, and instructed the five beautiful earth-born men to guard him. They were armed with swords and shields, but never used them for violence. Instead, they used them when they danced.

Even though he was a god, Zeus was just a baby and sometimes screamed and cried. To prevent Kronos or other malevolent forces from hearing the divine baby, and to keep him entertained, the men would dance inside the cave, singing, chanting and clashing their swords and shields as they moved in ecstasy.

A Korybant dancing over the infant Zeus.

These dancing demi-gods were known by several names: Korybantes or Kuretes ("the youths"), or the Daktyls ("fingers"). Some Greek writers claimed these were all distinct groups of deities incorrectly being lumped together, while others felt they were all the same deities. Their entry at Theoi.com gives you a good idea of how ancient writers viewed the dancers.

In addition to protecting baby Zeus, the Korybantes also protected the divine infants Dionysos and Zagreus. They helped Minos locate his missing son Glaucus, who had fallen into a giant vat of honey. These divine dancers also taught humankind the arts of dancing, music, metallurgy and magic, much like the fallen angels do in the ancient Jewish Book of Enoch. Some writers also claim that the Korybantes were transformed into lions and pull the chariot of the goddess Cybele. The contemporary scholar Walter Burkert notes that many cities in ancient Greece had societies of sacred male dancers who identified themselves with the Korybantes and enacted their role in rituals.

A few weeks ago I was in Provincetown and went dancing at a late night party in a bar's basement. The ceiling was low, the lighting was dim, and the music was a wordless throb. The room was full of men, some shirtless, some in crazy drag, and almost all of them dancing. I spent the night on the dance floor, dancing with friends and just dancing in the crowd.

Still dancing in the cave?

 I've gone to a lot of gay dance clubs in my life, and every now and then something clicks and I'm transported into a deeper realm. This was one of those nights. Sure, I was really in a seedy room with cheap decorations, but for a few hours we had broke through the wall separating our mundane world from the spiritual one that hides just out of sight.

That night, I was dancing in a cave with other semi-divine beings. We were the ancient earth-born men, working our magic through music and motion.