The visionary and theurgic rites of the Mysteries were of a refined and perfected sensory engagement to the Seeker. To behold these wonders, the myths and theology in visions more vivid than waking reality was the supreme unveiling of the true purpose of existence. Initiates wrote of a profound hope, a deep optimism, of understanding their purpose and true human potential. The Rites reveal the infinite experience of the souls ascending empowerment of the divine process of co-creation and apotheosis.

Careful attention to the correspondences, the diet, the colors, the sounds, the aromas, the indulgences, the ascetic refraining all engage and focus the Mind. The visionary sacraments unfetter the consciousness, the poetic invocations engage the tonal resonance and silences the inner whisperer. The sacred fumes calm and stimulate, their smoke carrying the intoned words like prayers to the Gods.

Such attention to ritual detail, the proper paraphernalia, the proper timing, the proper garb, the proper incense and timing, the fasts and purifications, securing the herbs all are magical acts of intention, of investing, of integrity and resolute action. They are contracts of the self with the self, dedications, deeds that beget deeds done in the singular purpose of unified thought and word and action. The deep purifications must be conducted, the vapors cleansed, the katharis of psyche and body purging malignant residues. The ambience and atmosphere must be saturated in the intent encoded and patterened within the sigils. The air must be perfumed, the taboos and solemn rites strictly observed. This extends to every detail, including every item that is brought within the proximity of these rites.

Especially the ritual texts must be of a certain feel. They must feel organic, without the gloss of being mass produced and with barcodes and such to spoil the aesthetic. We have long collected the old alchemical pamphlets, slim folios, commonbooks and herbals that have the feel of being handmade, the intimacy of a practitioner and disciple of these Arts. Visual cues and invocations to infuse and saturate the consciousness while sacraments pulse throughout the blood and prime one for a true theurgic encounter. Thus the order, the images function as a noetic and theurgic reader, an entheogenic prayer and prompt book to the oldest Mysteries.

We always write we are a Cult of Memory, and these secrets are encoded within the Hymns. The first, for example, is to the Muses, the daughters of Mnemyosne and the key to the Orphic mysteries in being free of the cycles of death and rebirth. The key of immortality is then to Remember, to taste of the springs of Memory, just as the Philosophers remember the Primordial, Original Light. Working through the hymns in the sequence of days over the corresponding alchemical seasons rekindles that Light within, and brings the true Hermetic Silence that allows for Memory and Mind to endure beyond the Abyss.

Our goal is always to produce subtle items of beauty, humble lights on the path that we that we use within our rituals. Magus Publishing’s simple mission began in filling in gaps in occult, esoteric and alchemical subjects for our Research Society. This is to create a heuristic invisible college, a think tank of these related subjects, and a means to render aid, resources and assistance to those seeking a similar path in the Wolf’s Age. This text is simply the pure translation of the Orphic Hymns by our favorite classical translator, with commentary and subsequent essays in the series.

In volume 2 we offer a commentary and outline of the Orphic Mysteries from our worldview as an entheogenic and theurgic cult of Memory. But consider the order of the hymns, the repetition of certain divinities, in different forms, or those that have consecutive invocations, such as the Furies. All of this is patterning, psychic and spiritual driving of these ancestral Narratives using the symbols, forms, icons of multivalent meaning. A true initiatic disclosure will reveal microcosmic knowledge from cosmology, to the structure of reality, to the soul’s journey and life’s essential meaning as expressed in a Mystery that the initiate must work a lifetime to solve.

Though there is guidance, one is ultimately alone, cast into the dark and in such silence and shadows one can behold the Light. Consider then that the Hymn to Aurora comes just after the one for Mnemosyne, and let this guide the climax of the rituals. Let the theurgic lanterns light hold the vigil till dawn, when the darkness comes and behold shadows, the ghosts and visions until the coming of the dawn. Then once again one encounters Justice, and deeper the testing and ordeals that follows with the invocations of sleep, dreams, and death. It is within this eternal gloom, across the threshold of realms where Memory must endure.

60 pages.