If you work with the Orphic Hymns (herein shortened to OH) often, at some point you will probably run across the idea that the OH might have been recited in order as an all-night vigil.1 If you have a group of ritual enthusiasts with a tight venn diagram of classics nerds, magical experimentation junkies, and ordeal rite masochists, you might think “YEAH, and let’s do it at the absolute busiest time of the year!”
I have no regrets.
While we’re all still simmering in the afterglow and taking notes of what effects we’re feeling and contemplating how (or if) we might do things next time, I thought I’d share our process and how we went about this, in case others are interested.
We met up about a month beforehand to talk through our ideas and started getting organized. We aimed to start in the evening after dark because some folks would be coming after work, and decided to space out the hymns so we would be reciting the hymn to Eos at our local time of sunrise.
We decided to read the hymns in Attic Greek simultaneously as the hymn was being read in English, mostly for aesthetic vibes and nerdcore euphoria, but also because there’s a kind of magic that happens during dual-voice overlap, especially where one is in a language that is only barely understood, that creates a trance-induction atmosphere and keeps the talking-brain busy and confused enough to let the magic rise. I love it as a ritual technique and have used it to great effect in many rituals.
We also pulled brief phrases from each hymn to use as a responsive line, something like “Come, with hearts full of joy” for the opening instructional hymn, “Send us nourishing rains” for the Clouds, or “Magnify the sacred light” for Dawn. The reader in English would find a few places to pause and raise their hands in a signal, and we would all (except the person concentrating on reading the Greek) respond with the chosen line, so we could all participate more deeply and personally with each hymn. (These responsive lines sort of make a meta-hymn, which now I want to play with…)
One of the most helpful things we did was we built a spreadsheet to organize our plan and divide the hymns into blocks of time so we could go at a steady pace through the night and take turns in different roles: who would be reading the Greek text, who would be reading the English text, who would be managing the incense/offering/libations (and writing the response phrase on a whiteboard), and who would be on kitchen duty keeping the coffee stocked, the soup and snacks bar refreshed, and remind us all to stay hydrated. Also, setting up the incenses and offerings in neatly labelled bowls on the altar kept things tidy (note: put candleholder on a drip tray from the start of the ritual, not after it begins to melt wax into the myrrh).
As we got into our groove, we would do about 6-7 hymns at the top of the hour, then have about a 30-40 minute break for snacks, refills, bathroom, and smoking for those who do so. So even though we did this on the longest night of the year, it could definitely be accomplished even at midsummer — we could probably do it in a 7 hour stretch with fewer and shorter breaks, but this 13.5 hour potluck-with-ritual- every-hour felt just right for a midwinter social event among friends.
Other things we did that I can recommend:
– Mood music was provided by a huge Spotify playlist of ancient Greek and Roman music, only a very few tracks of which devolved into whale songs, dueling trumpets, or experimental early jazz. Blessed be the Skip Song Button.
– Candles, candles, candles, and mood lighting. (We considered the candles to be the substitution for torches called for in the hymn to Nyx.)
– Good ventilation is necessary, because this is a lot of incense.
– Slow Cookers make having hot food at the snack table possible, safe, and easy to manage.
– Purification rites beforehand were encouraged and left up to each individual’s discretion.
– Most people took the day after off work, which seemed wise.
– While we had wine for ritual libations and to partake in, we were careful to practice moderation because we knew it was going to be a long night.
Things we learned or are contemplating changing if we do it again:
– Taking the day before off work to have more time and less stress for preparation and setup might have been a good idea.
– I had my family Yule the night before, which is also an all-night vigil. I can wholeheartedly recommend getting a full night’s sleep before doing this, though that’s pure speculation on my part, because I did not. LFMF.
– Pre-recording the Greek hymns because that’s a lot of time face-planted in a book struggling to sound out a language I don’t know well enough to really understand.
– Actually check how much of each incense you have in your stash before setup. We did have enough frankincense to get through all the OHs, but we did have a moment of “do we need to run to the store or is this going to work”
And we’re going to meet up after New Year’s to compare notes and aftereffects and talk through other ideas… movement? dancing? games? more ritual framework? outdoors? actual torches? doing this at a different time of year? more breaks? fewer? more participation? making a powerpoint instead of using the whiteboard? making it an annual tradition? horsing around with translations (we used Dunn for the nice facing-page format, I love the clean and literal approach to his translation, and we had 3-4 copies among the group). I have a hunch that we’re going to do this again and that it’s going to develop into a new living tradition for our group.
May you new years be merry and bright with the light of all the Gods!
- Fritz Graf, “Serious Singing: The Orphic Hymns as Religious Texts”, Kernos [Online], 22 | 2009, Online since 26 October 2012, connection on 24 December 2021. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/kernos/1784; DOI: https://doi.org/10.4000/kernos.1784