ritual · Greek

Prayer to Hermes

O' Hermes who dwells on Kokytos' necessary path of no return, who guides the souls of mortals to Hades. Child of Dionysos, the Bacchic dancer, and, the Kore from Paphos, Aphrodite of the curving lashes. You who serves in the holy house of Persephone, as a guide to the ill-fated souls of the earth, with whom you descend at the fateful hour. Bearer of the sacred staff of sleep, who brings rest to everything, and again, in turn, awakens those who slumber, for, to you, the goddess Persephone has granted the honour of guiding human souls in their relentless and eternal march into wide Tartarus. O' God, may you guide with your staff the soul of [name of deceased], who is a child of Ouranos and Gaia, guide them to the Elysian Fields, the pure place with wondrous light, and filled with joyful voices and dance, with hushed sacred sounds and holy images.

Commentarius · Commentary

A modern LABRYS text (see greek-agathodaimon-001), and it is again an Orphic hymn — the fifty-seventh, to Chthonic Hermes, which stands separately in this corpus (orphic-hermes-chthonios-001). Cocytus, the path of necessity from which there is no return, the offspring of Dionysus and Aphrodite, the wand that lulls and wakes again — all of it comes from there.

But something different has happened on this card than on the two beside it, and it is worth noting.

The hymn to Demeter was transferred from agriculture to luck (greek-demeter-luck-001); the hymn to Hera was transferred whole, but likewise to an occasion not its own (greek-hera-luck-001). Here the hymn to Chthonic Hermes has been placed in the burial rite — that is, in precisely what it talks about. The Orphic collection was the service book of a community of initiates (orphic-amphietus-001), and burying to this text is presumably what its compilers intended.

The three cases make a scale: one hymn moved elsewhere, one carried over intact, one restored to its own place. A reconstruction can move away from the original and can also move towards it, and distinguishing these motions is more useful than putting a single label on the whole class.

Fons · Source

AuthorLABRYS Polytheistic Community

WorkHellenic Polytheism: Household Worship

SectionBurial Ceremony — Hymn to Hermes Khthonios

Occasionburial ceremony — psychopomp invocation

Classificatio · Taxonomy

CultureGreek

Formritual

DeitiesHermes

FunctionsInvocation · Petition

SphereFamily