The Mystical Hymns of Orpheus - Platonic Philosophy

Ericapous, celebrated pow'l;
Ineffable, occult, all-shining flow'r.
'Tis thine from darksome mists to purge the sightl6,
All-spreading splendour, pure and holy light ;
or the demiurgus of the universe, is in the intellectual what
Phanes is in the intelligible order of Gods ; and hence he
is said by Orpheus to have absorbed Phanes prior to his
fabrication of the world ; the theologist indicating by this
his participation of all the primary paradigmatic causes of
things which subsist in Phanes. As Porphyry, therefore, in
his treatise De Antro Nympharum, informs us, "that the
Persian deity Mithra, as well as the hull, is the demiurgus
and lord of generation, the reason is obvious why Protogonus
is called in this hymn bull-~oare~, the roaring signifying
the procession of ideas to the formation of the world.
And this is conformable to what is asserted respecting
ideas in the Chaldzan oracles, viz.
i. e. " The intellect of the father made a crashing noise, un-
derstanding with unwearied counsel omniform ideas." For
the crashing noise indicates the same thing as the roaring
of Protogonus.
l6 This line in the original is,
And Proclus, in the Fifth Book of his MS. Commentary on
the Parmenides of Plato, evidently, as it appears to me,
alludes to this verse. For, speaking of the intelligible
monad, or the summit of the intelligible order, at the ex-
tremity of which Protogonus subsists, he says, "It is by
no means wonderful if this monad comprehends the whole
intellectual pentad, viz. essence, motion, permanency, same-