Orphic

The Orphic Hammer is no ordinary warhammer -- it's legendary.

Unlike the previous compilations in this series, the majority of the material herein has the spark of something unique and truly promising; particularly the Orphic and Prodigy, with a capable rules-developer, could have been 5-star hybrid classes.

Although only scraps of the Orphic narratives survive, they show interesting differences with the Hesiodic tradition.

For example, the first ten verses of the Works and Days may have been borrowed from an Orphic hymn to Zeus (they were recognised as not the work of Hesiod by critics as ancient as Pausanias).

From Pythagoras Orphic elements entered into the philosophy of Plato, and from Plato into most later philosophy that was in any degree religious.

In ancient Orphic sources and in the mystery schools, Tartarus is also the unbounded first-existing entity from which the Light and the cosmos are born.

It would seem then that the Orphic view of the demiurge was integrated into Jewish Gnosticism even before the redaction of the myth contained in the original Apocryphon of John.

One of the Orphic Hymns Khthonios is dedicated to Hermes, indicating that he was also a god of the underworld.

Pythagoras is not believed to have invented the doctrine nor have imported it from Egypt. Instead he made his reputation by bringing the Orphic doctrine from North-Eastern Hellas to Magna Graecia, and creating societies for its diffusion.

Schwabe & Co. p. 29 By contrast, in the Orphic cosmogony the unaging Chronos produced Aether and Chaos and made a silvery egg in divine Aether.

Silenus was described as the oldest, wisest and most drunken of the followers of Dionysus, and was said in Orphic hymns to be the young god's tutor.

The element De- may be connected with Deo, a surname of Demeter Orphic Hymn 40 to Demeter (translated by Thomas Taylor: "O universal mother Deo famed, august, the source of wealth and various names".

There is disagreement among the biographers as to whether Pythagoras forbade all animal food, as Empedocles did afterwards, Aristotle, Rhet. i. 14. § 2; Sextus Empiricus, ix. 127. This was also one of the Orphic precepts, Aristoph.

This is her one active mythic role: once Apollo and Artemis are grown, Leto withdraws, to remain a dim Hesiod, Theogony 406; "dark-veiled Leto" ( Orphic Hymn 35, To Leto and benevolent matronly figure upon Olympus, her part already played.