The Mystical Hymns of Orpheus - Platonic Philosophy

78 THE MYSTICAL HYMNS
Beyond the darlmess, starry-ey'd 64, profound,
The stable roots, deepfix'd by thee, are found.
64 The starry-eyed darkness, beyond which Apollo is here
said to fix his roots, is the sphere of the fixed stars, the
region immediately beyond which consists of the etherial
worlds, which according to the Chaldeztns are three. For
they assert that there are seven corporeal worlds, one
empyrean and the first ; after this, three etherial, and then
three material worlds, which last consist of the inerratic
sphere, the seven planetary spheres, and the sublunary
region. But that, according to the Orphic theology, there
is an etherial world beyond the sphere of the fixed stars is
evident from the following mystic particulars respecting the
Oracle of Night, which are transmitted to us by Proclus in
his admirable Commentary on the Tim~us, p. 63 and p. 96.
"The artificer of the universe (says he), prior to his whole
fabrication, is said to have betaken himself to the Oracle of
Night, to have been there filled with divine conceptions, to
have received the principles of fabrication, and, if it be
lawful so to speak, to have solved all his doubts. Night,
too, calls upon the father Jupiter to undertake the fabrication
of the universe ; and Jupiter is said by the theologist
[Orpheus] to have thus addressed Night :
Ma~a 9ewv vrar7, Nut a,u/3por~, TWS rase q5paaeis ;
IIws 6e1. ,u'a3avarwv apxrv tcpa~epoq5pova 9~a9ai ;
IIws 6~ poi EV 71 Ta ~avr' ecai, tcac ~wpis ~~a5ov ;
i. e. 0 Nurse supreme of all the pow'rs divine,
ImmortaI Night ! how with unconquer'd mind
Must I the source of the Immortals fix?
And how will all things but as one subsist,
Yet each its nature separate preserve?
To which interrogations the Goddess thus replies :