The mystical hymns of Orpheus / Translated from the Greek, and demonstrated to be the invocations which were used in the Eleusinian mysteries, by Thomas Taylor.

Date:
1824
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The mystical hymns of Orpheus / Translated from the Greek, and demonstrated to be the invocations which were used in the Eleusinian mysteries, by Thomas Taylor. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    For an all-perfect intellect is all tilings, and energizes according to all things with invariable sameness; but a partial and participated intellect is indeed all things, but this according to one form, such as a solar, lunar, or mercurial form. This therefore, the peculiarity of which is to be separated from the rest, wine indicates, signifying an intel¬ lect such as and 'particular [at]paivav rov oiov kcu riva vow). Since therefore every partial fabrication is suspended from the Dionysiacal monad, which distributes participated mun¬ dane intellects from total intellect [or the intellect which ranks as a whole], many souls from one soul, and all sensible forms from their proper totalities; on this account theologists call both this God and all his fabrications wine. For all these are the progeny of intellect; and some things participate of the partial distribution of intellect in a more distant, but others in a nearer degree. Wine therefore energizes in things analogously to its subsistence in them; in body, indeed, after the manner of an image, according to a false opinion and imagination; but in intellectual natures according to an intellectual energy and fabrication; since in the laceration of Bacchus by the Titans, the heart of the God [i. e. the indivisible essence of intellect] is said to have alone remained undistributed. Again, theologists especially celebrate two powers of our sovereign mistress Minerva, the defensive and the per¬ fective; the former preserving the order of wholes unde- tiled, and unvanquished by matter, and the latter filling all things with intellectual light, and converting them to their cause. And on this account, Plato also in the Timaeus, analogously celebrates Minerva as philopolemic and philo¬ sophic. But three orders of this Goddess are delivered by theologists; the one fontal and intellectual, according to which she establishes herself in her father Jupiter, and subsists in unproceeding union with him; but the second ranks among the supermundane Gods, according to which she is present with Core, and bounds and converts all the pro¬ gression of that Goddess to herself. And the third is libe¬ rated, according to which she perfects and guards the whole