I
Where the modern texts come from
Mostly from communities that revived the old worship and had to write an order of service for it. Two of them account for nearly all the modern texts here: the Athenian society LABRYS, whose household service book supplies thirty-two cards, and the Ritus Carmentis, the order of service put together by Nova Roma, which supplies ten. Their books are honest about themselves. What is not honest is the way the texts travel afterwards — copied from one site to the next until the attribution falls off.
It can go further than losing a name. One card here records a real case: the Nova Roma reconstructors took the opening line of an actual Latin poem, put Carmenta in the place of Phoebus, and the result circulates as an ancient prayer. Nothing about the Latin gives it away — it is genuinely ancient Latin. Only the reference does.
This collection keeps such texts rather than discarding them. They are part of how antiquity is used now, and hiding them would only send a reader to look for them somewhere that does not label anything.
II
The mark is on the rite, not always on the words
Here the distinction gets interesting. A card can be marked modern and still carry an ancient text almost intact. The hymn to Hecate in a contemporary household service turns out to be the first Orphic hymn transmitted nearly clause for clause — crossroads, of the night, saffron-robed, keeper of the keys of the world. What is modern is the setting: which hymn is said, when, and in what order.
The reverse case is here too. One card cites a work called Flores Carmina — and no such work exists in any collection of Latin poetry. Whatever was meant, it could not be traced, and the card says so instead of quietly dropping the reference. Neither case can be judged by how old the language sounds. Only the reference settles it.
III
What to look at on a card
Every card in this collection states its provenance — all three hundred and twenty of them. Most also name the edition the original was checked against; where that has not been established the field is simply empty rather than filled with something plausible. And where the original could not be obtained at all, the card says so and says what stands in the way: which volume, which library, which database refused to open.
That last habit is the one worth borrowing when you read elsewhere. A source that never admits a gap has not stopped having gaps; it has stopped telling you about them.
