Orpheus: The Orphic Hymns

The Orphic Hymns, all 87 of them, in Thomas Taylor's English translation of 1792: one a day in the book's own order, every one searchable, and each with the incense its header names. For readers of Greek religion and poetry, for anyone who has met a line of these hymns quoted elsewhere, and for people who use them today and want the text without anything added to it.

Everything is in the app. No account, no network for the content, and the question you write before a draw stays on your phone.

THE CYCLE
• From Prothyraia, the goddess of birth, to Thanatos, Death: the order Taylor himself pointed out in his note on the first hymn.
• The address to Musaeus first, then Hekate, then the hymns one by one.
• It opens where you stopped. It counts the days you have read and nothing else: no streak to keep, nothing lost by stopping.

THE CODEX
• All 87 hymns under their Greek numbers, the ones people quote, with Taylor's Roman numeral beside each.
• Search by god, by Taylor's Latin name (Jove, Ceres, Proserpine) or by a word of the verse.
• "What I have": choose frankincense, myrrh, storax, manna or another substance, and see which hymns name it.

THE INCENSE, AS THE HEADERS GIVE IT
• 77 of the hymns carry a fumigation header, shown word for word. Ten carry none, and the app shows none: nothing is filled in from elsewhere.
• No header names an offering, and the app invents none.
• Manna, in these headers, is grains of frankincense. A short article says so.

THREE LEVELS
Every block of text says where it stands. "hymn" is Taylor's verse and the header. "taylor" is his own note, an eighteenth-century reading through Proclus and the Platonists, folded under each hymn. "modern" is a sentence written for the app, and where it states what scholars think it names the book it comes from.

DRAW A HYMN
• A hymn at random, with an optional question, kept in a history you can delete.
• The hymns were sung, not drawn, and the app says so. It shows the hymn and leaves its meaning to you.

READING HELP
• Taylor writes Jove, Proserpine and Dian, and the English of 1792. Underlined words in the verse open a short explanation: 79 names and old words, the names linked to their own hymns.
• Thirteen groups in the codex: the first powers, the sea, Dionysos and his circle, below the earth, justice and order, the winds and more.
• A short text about every god, with the related hymns one tap away.

ALSO
• Thirteen articles: who wrote the hymns (Taylor's own answer was Onomacritus), why Hymn 55 is Taylor's LIV, what the headers say, Orpheus as Taylor tells it, and more.
• The whole address to Musaeus with Taylor's long note on it.
• A home-screen widget with the hymn you are on, and an optional daily reminder.

THE TEXT
Taylor's spelling is kept as he printed it. Only errors of the scan are corrected, such as the long s read as f ("remote from fight" for "sight"), each one listed with its reason. The numbers have been checked against the book: 86 hymns in Taylor, 87 in the Greek editions, 77 fumigation headers.

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