It is fascinating to discover a book on ‘The Magic of the Orphic Hymns‘ written by American experimental rock musicians, Tamra Lucid and Ronnie Pontiac and published by Inner Traditions (see link below), and one cannot stress enough how fitting it is that they wrote it! There is a striking parallel between their personal lives and the ancient and fertile culture surrounded around Orpheus and his myth. So, it is not surprising that they chose to offer the world a splendid offering streaming from their experience, made from deeply felt life stories rooted in many little deaths and resurrections, wounds and healings, despair and atonement. Coming at the end of successive waves of female college protest and punk groups, known as the riot grrrl scene-famous for being loud and outspoken about issues such as rape, domestic abuse, sexuality, racism, patriarchy, classism, anarchism, and female empowerment-Lucid Nation, their group founded with Debbie Haliday in 1994, is a perfect example of non mainstream music culture, governed by recognizable ethical standards and a strong drive to offer healing through music, poetry and art to a blatantly broken world. ‘There’s a recognition of being open to something outside you that inspires the whole to be greater than its parts, and it’s such a beautiful experience to be part of something so pure that even grizzled old bastard musicians smile when you talk about it.’ (from a Kimberly Nichols interview with Tamra Lucid for 3:AM Magazine in 2002). If this is not an Orphic attitude, what would it be? Also, their meeting, in the early eighties, with Manly P. Hall is also their encounter with ‘gnosis’ and ancient wisdom through their years spent at the Philosophical Research Society where they could acquire the structure and the understanding that was to guide their lives further on. Manly Hall was their ‘Bakchoi’ and their ‘Mystai’, the Good Samaritan whose benevolent influence still shines through them after his departure from this earthly plane: They have been in a creative drive ever since with film production, song and book writing, interviews and conferences!

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In his celebrated study, “Orpheus and the roots of Orphism'(Matheson Trust), Algis Uzdavinys writes: ‘In Greece, Orpheus, Linus, Musaeus and other ‘revealers of mysteries proclaim the program of salvation, presenting Persephone-Kore and Dionysus, for instance, as saviours of mankind. This ‘Greece’ of Orpheus is not the scholarly construct that depicts the eulogised tiny city-state of Athens-incomparable with either the highly bureaucratised state of Late Period Egypt or with the Neo-Assyrian cosmopolis and its Persian imitations. Rather, Orpheus belonged to the world of wandering ‘demiourgoi’-the performers of purifications (katharmoi) and initiations (teletai), the seers, singers and healers able to discover the ‘ancient guilt’ (palaion menima).‘The seers and magicians claimed to be able to restore the imaged ideal state of harmonia, governed by the universal law, as the unifying principle which animates the parts into a single cosmic machine, like the ‘animated chariot of truth’ drawn by a pair of horses-the divine twins.‘ ‘Orpheus, as the archetypal singer, prophet, priest and healer, reconciles the one and the many with his ‘prophetic lyre’ and through the song of harmony (tes harmonias te ode).‘ Alas, professor Algis Uzdavinis was a rare voice in an academia that would ‘deal’ with Orpheus and the Orphic literature as an old academic odd-ball. As an example, Martin Litchfield West writes: ‘…All this offers a temporary escape from ordinary life into a piquant, romantic, voluptuous fantasy-word.‘ And this book is proving otherwise brilliantly!

Why? Because the authors did what Marcilio Ficino did during his time, to use a multi-disciplinary approach, fundamental to understand the Orphic Hymns and to reveal their true nature, a timely answer to the darkness of the period we are now living in: ‘The sacred songs of Orpheus exist in that moment when reverential and even fearful attempts by worshipers to draw the attention of the deity by praising attributes shifted to compelling spirits, angels, or devils to do the bidding of the magus who knows their secret names.’ (Page 118). With a long experience of transforming tribulations and pain into a conscious cathartic path, our starving musicians, one song after another, blazed their way into offering the world beauty and hope when it is most needed, hence linking themselves through their life example with a long line of artists, thinkers, writers including what is  now understood as the many streams of ‘counter-culture’ that have all adopted Orpheus and his ‘underground’ culture as an occultation and passive opposition attitude that originated since the collapse of the Antic world and as a reaction to the centrifugal leveling homogenization process that imperialistic Christianity had imposed-which would become the standard rigid structure of the western world-ignoring it created a clay feet colossus…

‘…change the world now
no I don’t know how
but change the world now
I don’t care what you do
I’ll even leave it up to you
but change’

From Lucid Nation’s song,

”First of a New Breed’

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Once is not custom, I will praise this milestone book starting from the end: ‘Tamra  and I wrote our book with the aim of popularizing Orphic history and the hymns, with an eye to poetic charm and ease of use‘. As this is a book aimed at the main public, the annotated bibliography is a serious delicacy for anyone willing to dwell into the Orphic Hymns and their cultural background and offers great service with their helpful annotations! As for the other chapters introducing the translated hymns, we are struck by the depth of the research and the sound storytelling offering possible clues of applications for anyone willing to dig further. This book is offering the latest status in Orphic research (see content list below)-without the academic dis-connection that often marres similar books-as their humility and honesty is confounding. Many times we are caught by surprise by their expositions and findings with some a-ha moments, notably the whole chapter ‘the Backward Glance’ (Orpheus looking back to Euridice while coming up from the underworld)! This deeply felt and dense offering by Tamra Lucid and Ronnie Pontiac testifies of  years well spent at the Philosophical Research Society and demonstrate the power of creativity and enthusiasm in times of chaos that has guided them since. A Must Read!

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And as a conclusion, let’s listen to Tamra Lucid and Ronnie Pontiac telling us about their translation of the hymns: ‘In the rendition that follows, the formulas have been minimized to make the language as immediate as possible. When hymns seemed especially devoid of the character of the deities addressed. liberties are taken. Details drawn from myth and cult practice enhance the experience for those who have no association for these obscure names of all but forgotten deities, Those who used these hymns would have known such details. Literary faults may have spiritual virtues. Repetition, for example, inspires trance, The abbreviated diction of the hymns-at times they become little more than a list of attributes-is itself an important ancient form of worship, of attaining a deity’s attention, and takes another dimension when subtle aspects of context and metaphorical overtones become known. We have recklessly added stanzas and added new hymns, one to replace a missing hymn called ‘number’. Asteria appears twice, in our version of the hymn to Leto and also in her own hymn, which we wrote. In other words, this is a poetic work, not a scholarly translation, having being created with the intent of providing a text for enjoyment as literature, play, and ritual‘. (pages 116, 117 and 118).

As a gift for the reader to  taste, 3 hymns were selected:

Number 1 and 2 are read by Tamra Lucid, and number 3 sung by Ronnie Pontiac:

1. Hymn to Dionysius in the Cradle

2. Number

3.To Persephone

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Appendix 

Lucid Nation &

the Orphic Experience

-an example through song writing-

A. Introduction by Ronnie Pontiac

‘Nicolas, generally we don’t like to be that blatant about the influences on our songs. One could say that song describes the Orphic urge. That change is necessary. That it begins with not knowing what we want, but knowing what we are not. Leaving it all behind is remembering who and what we really are, ascending to the stars. Letting go is letting go of the titanic nature of the weary wheel of grief. That photo of the band giving the finger to the corporate headquarters downtown that we used for the YouTube of the song, we remember thinking how those buildings were like the Olympian temples of mainstream ancient Greek culture, sacrificing the innocent. We were rebelling toward a more soulful approach to life.

A big influence on our many improvisational experiments in recording, especially for Tamra, is the Bodhisattva leap of faith, which she heard about for the first time from Manly Hall. She approaches recording songs in the moment not as jams, but more like zen circle painting. She doesn’t know what the music will sound like but she has faith that the words will be there for her, and they always have been, sometimes in remarkably serendipitous ways.’ 11/01/2024.

B. Lyrics of ‘First of a New Breed’

‘You’re asking me
how should it be
and I’m telling you
that I just don’t know

can what we want to be
really set us free
haunted by an unwanted destiny

so far away from real
how do we truly feel
souls concealed
it’s our own lives we steal

change the world now
no I don’t know how
but change the world now
I don’t care what you do
I’ll even leave it up to you
so change the world now

what I think I want
I never seem to find
wouldn’t you like
to leave it all behind

crazed by competition
so afraid to lose
stuck in repetition
we forget how to choose

what we try to hide
shines right through our eyes
we can’t disguise
lives twisted by lies

change the world now
no I don’t know how
but change the world now
I don’t care what you do
I’ll even leave it up to you
but change

I don’t know what I want
but I know what I’m not

Just let go
Change

I don’t know what I want
but I know what I’m not

Just let go’.

Tamra Lucid vocals
Ronnie Pontiac: guitar
Danette Lee: guitar
Grit Maldonado: bass
Tia Sprocket: drums

Mixed by Nitebob and Michael Barile
at Unique in NYC,
recorded at Big Scary Tree
Little Tokyo, Los Angeles.

From the Album ‘DNA’

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Another  example of an Orphic attitude is the cover of a song written by Johny Thunders, ‘You Can’t Put Your Arms Around a Memory’, ‘performed in Sep 23, 2020, in memory of our friend, ex-roommate and drummer, Tia Sprocket, who also played with Sexpod, Luscious Jackson, Ministry, and many other bands.’ It is a touching and beautiful orphic mourning of a ‘Riot Grrrl Eurydice’… Ronnie Pontiac writes: ‘When we got into riot grrrl we thought rock was stupid, white guys ripping off black music, and you were a fool to believe anything idealistic about it. Tia absolutely cured me and Tamra of all that. She was an in-carnate high priestess of what rock is supposed to be. Tia wasn’t a white guy; she wasn’t a reactionary asshole, or a sellout. She lived and breathed this way of being. It absolutely revolutionized how I felt about the music, and I know she did that for many people.’

You Can’t Put Your Arms

Around a Memory

[Verse 1]
It doesn’t pay to try
All the smart boys know why
It doesn’t mean I didn’t try
I just never know why
Feel so cold and all alone
‘Cause baby, you’re not at home
And when I’m home
Big deal, I’m still alone.

[Verse 2]
Feel so restless, I am
Beat my head against a pole
Try to knock some sense
Down in my bones
And even though they don’t show
The scars aren’t so old
And when they go
They let you know.

[Chorus]
You can’t put your arms around a memory
You can’t put your arms around a memory
You can’t put your arms around a memory
Don’t try, don’t try.

[Verse 3]
You’re just a bastard kid
And you got no name
Cause you’re living with me
We’re one and the same
And even though they don’t show
The scars aren’t so old
And when they go
They let you know.

[Chorus]
You can’t put your arms around a memory
You can’t put your arms around a memory
You can’t put your arms around a memory
Don’t try, don’t try
You can’t put your arms around a memory
You can’t put your arms around a memory
You can’t put your arms around a memory
Don’t try, don’t try.

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Discover also:

A Review of Ronnie Pontiac’s

‘American Metaphysical Religion’

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