Prayer to Demeter

A modern LABRYS text, and on this card the borrowing is stated in the source field itself: "adapted from Orphic". The admission is exact.

What has been borrowed is the fortieth Orphic hymn, to Demeter of Eleusis, which stands in this corpus as a card of its own (orphic-demeter-001). "Mother of all", "giver of wealth", "bestower of everything", "rejoicing in peace", "nurse of many children", "blessed and pure" — all of it comes from there, almost word for word.

More interesting is what has fallen out. In the Orphic hymn Demeter is named by the stages of work: of the seed, of the heap, of the threshing floor, green-fruited; she was the first to yoke the ploughing neck of oxen. None of that is here. What remains is wealth, peace, health and prosperity, and the rite is called one for good fortune.

The goddess of the plough has become a goddess of luck. This is not a corruption of the text but a consequence of relocation: a cult carried to people who do not plough loses what belonged to ploughing and keeps what belongs to a living.

The ancients did the same: a god arriving in another city changed department — Hera among the Orphics became air (orphic-hera-001), Diana in Silius became Hecate (diana-016). A change in a deity's trade is the ordinary way religion survives a change in life.