Orphic Hymns

The Orphic Hymns are a collection of short invocations, each addressed to a single god, spirit or personified power and each meant to be sung with an offering of incense. Eighty-seven hymns survive, preceded by a prologue to Musaeus, and together they call on the whole Orphic pantheon, from Night, Heaven and Protogonus to the Olympians, the Dionysiac company, the Furies, the Muses, the winds and Death.

This is the English verse translation by Thomas Taylor, published as The Mystical Initiations; or, Hymns of Orpheus (1787) and reissued as The Hymns of Orpheus (1792). Taylor renders the hymns in rhymed couplets and keeps his own spelling. Each hymn is printed with the title and the fumigation (the offering to be burnt) that Taylor gives it. The Greek text is not yet included.

Numbering: the hymns here carry the standard modern numbers (the prologue is Hymn 0, Hecate Hymn 1, Prothyraea Hymn 2, Night Hymn 3, and so on to Death, Hymn 87). Taylor numbers his hymns I to LXXXVI and prints the hymn To Musaeus ahead of them, with the invocation of Hecate as its closing lines, so that his Hymn I (Prothyraea) is Hymn 2 here, his Hymn II (Night) is Hymn 3, and each of Taylor's hymns is one higher than his own number, up to his LXXXVI (Death), which is Hymn 87. Each hymn is given on its own as one segment, and the segments are grouped into sections of three to six hymns in the order of the collection.