The Magic of the Orphic Hymns

Excerpt- Tamara Lucid and Ronnie Pontiac

Orpheus in the Renaissance

In 1462, at twenty-nine years of age, Marsilio Ficino had found his calling. He wished to live the contemplative life, translating Orpheus, Plato, the Hermetica, Plotinus, Iamblichus, Proclus, and Dionysius the Areopagite, exploring for himself, and sharing with others, the wonders and profundities of long forgotten pagan wisdom. But how? To live such a life would require the support of a wealthy patron.

Ficino decided to celebrate an Orphic ritual as a way of asking the universe to help him. While he was performing the Hymn to the Cosmos his father brought him letters from Cosimo de Medici, the ruler of the Republic of Florence. Cosimo wrote: “Yesterday I arrived at my Careggi estate, to cultivate not this place, but my mind. Join us, Marsilio, as soon as you can. Bring Plato’s book on The Highest Good, which I expect you have translated from Greek to Latin as you said you would. What I want with all my heart is to know which way leads most certainly to happiness. Farewell. Join us, and bring your Orphic lyre” (Ungers 2008, 12).

Cosimo had awarded Ficino a villa in Careggi and income from a nearby farm so that he could devote himself to his translations. Ficino wrote back to Cosimo that this serendipity “evoked in me the most immense wonder.” Identifying himself with Orpheus, he displayed his belief that with an understanding of the harmonies underlying all creation, by tuning to the laws of life, a human being could change fate.

Ficino played his lyre, which had Orpheus painted on it, many times for friends, singing the Orphic hymns. His friends nicknamed him Orpheus. With Cosimo, Ficino founded the revived Platonic Academy in Florence, a place where great artists and humanists gathered to inspire one another. Cosimo’s grandson, Lorenzo de’ Medici, known as Lorenzo the Great, ruler of Florence, was part of Ficino’s inner circle.