hermeticism

I’ve been reading quite a bit about astrology and working with planetary powers and intelligences, such as specific meditations and planetary charity. Many of these ways include reciting the so-called Orphic Hymns, often in the translation of Thomas Taylor from the 1700s, written in a baroque old English language. You can find these translations copied all over the internet, for example on sacred-texts.com or Christopher Warnock’s site. You can even listen to them sung accompanied by guitar.

Roman Orpheus mosaic

But as I was reciting and memorizing these hymns, something caught my attention. Namely, the hymn to Saturn. It says, “O mighty Saturn, various speech is thine: Blossom of earth and of the starry skies, Husband of Rhea, and Prometheus wife.” And there I had to stop. What does “Prometheus wife” mean? Saturn-Chronos definitely wasn’t anyone’s wife. Nor did Prometheus have a wife in the myths. I was really puzzled by this.

Then I continued to read the hymns. I got to the hymn to the Moon, which said: “Queen of the stars, all-wife Diana, hail!” And I had to stop again. Diana, also Artemis, was a protector of childbirth, among other things, but she never was anyone’s wife. She, along with Athena, was a virgin goddess.

And then I had an epiphany. Those Fs were really Ss! Now it made sense! Saturn is “Prometheus-wise” because Prometheus literally means “Foresight.” (Fun fact, Prometheus also had a retarded brother called Epimetheus, whose name means “Hindsight”). Besides "wise" rhymes better with "skies."

Likewise, Diana wasn’t an “all-wife”, an epithet better saved for Venus, but “all-wise,” because the moon sees everything, at least at night. I also found another suspicious F in the hymn to the Sun (Helios). It says: “With various founding, golden lyre, 'tis mine To fill the world with harmony divine.” OK, what’s a “various founding” lyre? Maybe it is a “various-sounding” lyre? That would make more sense.

How did these mistakes end up in the texts you find on the Internet? Your guess is as good as mine. I find it interesting, though, that even though thousands read those hymns, nobody bothered to question the meaning of the words or correct them. (To be fair, after writing this, I checked Christopher Warnock’s site again, and there the hymn to the Moon says “all-wise”).

It reminded me of an old joke:

A new monk arrives at the monastery and is assigned to help the other monks in copying the old texts by hand. However, he notices that they are copying copies, and not the original books.

The new monk goes to the head monk to ask about this. He points out that if there was an error in the first copy, it would be continued in all of the other copies. The head monk acknowledges the point and decides to investigate.

He goes down into the cellar with one of the copies to check it against the original. Hours later, nobody has seen him. So, one of the monks goes downstairs to look for him. He hears sobbing coming from the back of the cellar and finds the old monk leaning over one of the original books, crying. He asks what’s wrong.

“The word is 'Celebrate,' not 'Celibate,'” says the old monk with tears in his eyes.

It is a wonder how quickly the Internet allows us to propagate not just information but mistakes as well. I question, what other mistakes might have been propagated throughout the years in the same way.