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The Mystical Hymns of Orpheus - Platonic Philosophy

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THE MYSTICAL HYMNS<br />

XLVIII.<br />

THE FUMIGATION FEOM AROMATICS.<br />

HEAR me, illustrious father, demon fam'd,<br />

Great Saturn's <strong>of</strong>fspring, and Sabazius nam'd ;<br />

Inserting Bacchus, bearer <strong>of</strong> the vine,<br />

And sounding God, within thy thigh divine,<br />

That when mature, the Dionysian God<br />

Might burst the bands <strong>of</strong> his conceal'd abode,<br />

And come to sacred Tmolus, his delight,<br />

Where Ippa g5 dwells, all beautiful and bright.<br />

84 "Many (says Plutarch, Symp. 4, 5, p. 671) even now<br />

call the Bacchuses Sabbi, and they utter this word when<br />

they celebrate the orgies <strong>of</strong> the God " [Bacchus]. Zappovs<br />

KaL vvv ETL ~ohhoi TOUS PUKXOUS KUXOVQL, KaL ravrqv a$iam<br />

T ~ Y +WV~V, OT~Y opyia~ou~i ry If~y. "But the power <strong>of</strong><br />

Sabazius (says Iamblichus de Myst. sect. iii. cap. x.) appropriately<br />

pertains to Bacchic inspiration, the purifications <strong>of</strong><br />

souls, and the solutions <strong>of</strong> ancient divine anger." See the<br />

note on this passage in my translation <strong>of</strong> that work.<br />

85 " Ippa (says Proclus in Tim. lib. ii. p. 124), who is the<br />

soul <strong>of</strong> the universe, and is thus called by the theologist<br />

[<strong>Orpheus</strong>], perhaps because her intellectual conceptions are<br />

essentialized in the most vigorous motions, or perhaps on<br />

account <strong>of</strong> the most rapid lation <strong>of</strong> the universe, <strong>of</strong> which<br />

she is the cause,-placing a testaceous vessel on her head,

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