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The Orphic Hymns
the Orphic tradition · Hymn 58, lines 9–10 · Send base impulses away
58.9
The Orphic Hymns 58.9 · Send base impulses away
The prayer: come to the initiates with pure minds, and drive away the wrong kind of desire.
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ἀλλά1
allá
But
, μάκαρ2
mákar
blessed one
, with
καθαραῖς3
katharaîs
pure
γνώμαις4
gnṓmais
minds
συνέρχου5
synérchou
joincome together with
μύστῃσι6
mýstēisi
the initiates
, δʼ7
d’
and
ἀπόπεμπε8
apópempe
send away
ἀπὸ9
apò
from
τῶνδʼ10
tônd’
them
φαύλους11
phaúlous
base
θʼ12
th’
and
ἐκτοπίους13
ektopíous
strangeout of place
ὁρμὰς14
hormàs
impulses
. But, blessed one, with pure minds join the initiates, and send away from them base and strange impulses.
But, blessed one, with pure minds join the initiates, and send away from them base and strange impulses.
Interpretation
But, blessed one, come with pure minds to join the initiates, and send base and outlandish impulses away from them.
The request asks the god of desire for two things at once: come close to the initiates, and keep the wrong kind of desire away. Hormē, "impulse," is a word the philosophers made their own; Marcus Aurelius uses it again and again in the Meditations for the movement of the mind toward a thing. The impulses to be sent off are ektopioi, literally "out of place." The verb that sends them, apopempe, is the one the hymn to Night used for driving away the fears of the dark.
59.1
The Orphic Hymns 59.1 · Children of black Night
A hymn to the Moirai, the Fates, daughters of Night, who live in a cave by a dark lake and fly over the whole earth.
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Of the Fates. Incense: aromatics. Boundless Fates, dear children of black Night, hear me as I pray, many-named, you who, dwelling on the dark lake, where the baneful water breaks forth under the nightly heat in the shadowy recess of a gleaming cave of fair stone, fly over the boundless earth of mortals;