The Mystical Hymns of Orpheus - Platonic Philosophy

OF ORPHEUS. 49
Propitious hear my pray'r, give Mameless health,
With peace divine, and necessary wealth.
Strong are his members, with a force endu'd,
Pow'rful to tame, but ne'er to be subdu'd.
Th' extended region of surrounding air
Forms his broad shoulders, back, and bosom fair ;
And thro' the world the ruler of the skies,
Upborne on natal rapid pinions, flies.
His sacred belly earth with fertile plains
And mountains swelling to the clouds contains.
His middle zone's the spreading sea profound,
Whose roaring waves the solid globe surround.
The distant realms of Tartarus obscure,
Within Earth's roots, his holy feet secure ;
For these, Earth's utmost bounds, to Jove belong,
And form his basis permanent and strong.
Thus all things Jove within his breast conceal'd,
And into beauteous light from thence reveal'd.
Jupiter, therefore, or the Demiurgus, is, according to
Orpheus, all things, as containing in the unfathomable
depths of his essence the causes of every thing which the
sensible universe contains, these causes infinitely transcend-
ing the effects which they produce. Hence, by a causal
priority, he is every thing which is contained in the sensible
world. Pherecydes Syrus, also, conformably to this doc-
trine, says of Jupiter, as we learn from Kircher (in mdip.
Egypt. tom. ii. p. 89)'
6 c i. e. Jove is a circle, trigon, and a square,
Centre and line, and all things before all."
Thus too, the ineffable principle of things is said to be all
things prior to all, not as contai~li~lg all things ~lultitudinonsly
in itself, but as that from which all things are
ineffably unfolded into light.