King Zeus and Gaia and sacred heavenly flames of Helios; holy light of Mene and all the stars; and You, dark haired Poseidon, earth-shaker; pure Persephone and Demetra of the bountiful fruit; Artemis, the maiden archer and farshooting Phoibos, who dwells in the sacred valley of Delphi, holding the highest honours amongst the Blessed; dancing Dionysos, bold Ares and powerful holy Ephaistos, foam-born goddess, bearer of famous gifts, and You, King of the Underworld, great and venerable God; Hebe and Eileithia and brave Heracles, and the great providence of Dikaiosyne and Eusevia; I also call the splendid Nymphs and Pan, the Great, and Hera, vigorous wife of aegis-bearing Zeus; I invoke the lovely Mnemosyne and the nine sublime Muses and the Kharites and the Horês of the Eniautos, Leto with the beautiful limbs, the modest Theio and Dione, the Kouretes, the armed Koryvantes, and the Kaveires, as well as our great Saviours, the indestructible children of Zeus, the great Idaian gods and the heavenly messenger, Hermes, the communicator, and Themis, the diviner of men, I invite venerable Nyx and brightly glowing Day, Pisti and Dike and the immaculate Lawgiver, Rhea and Kronos and the dark-veiled Tethys, Okeanos, the Great, and his daughters, the Okeanides, Atlas' and Aionos' superior power, and the eternal Time, and the splendid water of Styx, the soothing Gods and the benevolent Pronoia; the all-holy Daimona of the Gods and the malevolent of mortals, all heavenly, air and water Gods, all Gods of the earth, and of the fire, and of the underworld. Semele and the company of Bakkhos; Ino Leukothea and Palaimon, the bliss-giver, Sweet tongued Nike and queen Adrastea, and the great king, giver of tranquillity, Asclepios, Pallas, the fearsome maiden, and all the Winds and the Thunder, the steady foundation of the Kosmos, Mother of the Immortals, Attis and Mena, I call the Goddess Ourania together with her immortal pure Adonis, the Beginning and the End — the greatest of all. Come with benevolence and happy hearts, to this holy ceremony and sacred libation.
Commentarius · Commentary
The pedigree of this card is the most remarkable thing about it, and it has three layers.
At the bottom lies an ancient text: the "Prayer of Musaeus" is the proem to the whole Orphic collection, addressed to Musaeus and naming in order every god to whom a hymn is assigned in it. Zeus, Gaia, the fires of Helios, the light of Mene and the stars, Poseidon, Persephone, Demeter, Artemis, Phoebus, Dionysus, Ares, Hephaestus, the foam-born, the lord of the underworld, Hermes, Hera, Athena, Asclepius. In substance it is the volume's table of contents recast as a prayer: name them all, so that none is passed over.
The middle layer is named in the source field: Plethon. George Gemistos Plethon, a fifteenth-century Byzantine Platonist, composed offices for the Olympian gods and proposed restoring pagan worship; his Laws were burned by the patriarch of Constantinople, and only scraps of them remain.
The top layer is contemporary: an Athenian community has taken this for a new-moon rite.
Three revivals one upon another: an ancient Orphic proem, a fifteenth-century Byzantine attempt, and a book of today. The corpus also contains a card greek-plethon-001, for which no original could be obtained — the Lyon manuscript is absent from the free scans.
