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On the Relaxed "Secrecy" of Orphism

or,

On the Necessity of Barriers to Entry

I shall speak to whom it is lawful; put on the doors, you profane!^[1]

It is some variation of this seal that began many of the works of Orpheus^[2]. The seal very clearly communicates an idea: that there are separate categories of reader, and that one is preferable to the other. If we assume that “to whom it is lawful” to speak are the initiated, then logically it follows that the imperative to “put on the doors” is meant for the uninitiated, or those not ‘in-the-know.’ “You profane” is not meant to be an insult to curious outsiders, however; it is instead a warning, that anyone who continues to read onward should be doing so with a pure soul and pious reverence. These texts are to be read carefully and inquisitively, or not at all.

It is natural, having read this seal and been told that it began much of the Orphic corpus, to assume that secrecy was a big part of Orphism. This essay will argue that secrecy was employed selectively to act as a small but necessary barrier to entry. This use allows the secrecy to work in such a way as to strengthen bonds in the community as well as inspire curiosity in non-initiates, while being a ‘barrier to entry’ insofar as it is used to discern between those who have the proper mindset and those who do not. This, as the seal warns, is the real barrier: if “you profane” refers to those with the wrong mindset, whether they are initiated or not, then it must mean that it is lawful to speak to those with the right mindset, whether they are initiated or not.

In Herodotus’ Histories, while writing about Egyptian practices regarding wool, the author comments on Orphism:

They wear linen tunics with fringes hanging about the legs, called “calasiris,” and loose white woolen mantles over these. But nothing woolen is brought into temples, or buried with them: that is impious. They agree in this with practices called Orphic and Bacchic, but in fact Egyptian and Pythagorean: for it is impious, too, for one partaking of these rites to be buried in woolen wrappings. There is a sacred legend (ἱρὸς λόγος) about this.^[3]

The phrase translated here as “sacred legend” is the same one used by Orphics to refer to their myths, to the point where it became the title of a later, Hellenistic-period recompilation of those myths^[4]. Earlier in the same book of Histories, Herodotus invokes ‘pious secrecy’ while discussing a feast of Isis:

There, after the sacrifice, all the men and women lament, in countless numbers; but it is not pious for me to say who it is for whom they lament.^[5]

Later but still in the same book of Histories, Herodotus invokes ‘pious secrecy’ a few times within a few passages:

There is also at Saïs the burial-place of one whose name I think it impious to mention in speaking of such a matter; it is in the temple of Athena, behind and close to the length of the wall of the shrine. Moreover, great stone obelisks stand in the precinct; and there is a lake nearby, adorned with a stone margin and made in a complete circle; it is, as it seemed to me, the size of the lake at Delos which they call the Round Pond.

On this lake they enact by night the story of the god's sufferings, a rite which the Egyptians call the Mysteries. I could say more about this, for I know the truth, but let me preserve a discreet silence. Let me preserve a discreet silence, too, concerning that rite of Demeter which the Greeks call Thesmophoria, except as much of it as I am not forbidden to mention.^[6]

In all of these excerpts of Herodotus, there are two elements to the same common thread, which is spelled out for us in the previous quote: there is Herodotus’ pious silence, and that which he is silent about, i.e. the Mysteries. He makes frequent reference to them, however, including to specify which things that he won’t say about them. This is evidence for the point that secrecy was a tool employed selectively.

The ‘selective employment’ of secrecy by Herodotus is the same in all three excerpts we have seen. In the first excerpt, Herodotus claims that refusing to bring wool into temples or to be buried in wool is in agreement with “Orphic and Bacchic” practices, which are in reality “Egyptian and Pythagorean,” before only mentioning the ἱρὸς λόγος in passing. Herodotus does not feel the need to conceal the practices themselves, and freely announces that these are Orphic and Pythagorean, both of which are groups usually associated with strict secrecy. Radcliffe G. Edmonds III suggests that Herodotus in Histories is equating Osiris with Dionysus:

When discussing the rites of Osiris in Egypt, Herodotus famously refuses to provide details, claiming that it is not licit for him to speak of them, οὔ μοι ὅσιόν ἐστι λέγειν. Since the rites of Osiris in Egypt do not, from the available evidence, seem to have been unspeakable, many have hypothesized that Herodotus is identifying them with Greek rituals that do have such a taboo. Osiris was often identified with Dionysos, and the stories of their dismemberments were easy for mythic narrators to conflate. We need not follow the conjectures of scholars ancient and modern who have postulated that the Greek rituals actually came from Egypt (or vice versa!) to understand Herodotus’ evidence as indicating that he knew of rituals having to do with the dismemberment (and probably rebirth) of Dionysos that he felt merited a degree of ritual silence.^[7]

As Edmonds is quick to say, it is not necessary to argue for the veracity of Herodotus’ claims in order to argue that he believes in the use of ritual silence in reverence of Dionysus, whom he believes to be the same as Osiris.

However, as previously stated, Herodotus is only secret in the first excerpt about the “sacred legend” which would elucidate what he is explaining. He seems not to be hesitant to reveal the practical information that can be learned from it. In the second excerpt, referring to a feast of Isis, Herodotus uses the secrecy again not to hide what is being done but the why behind it. It isn’t an issue to say everyone performs a sacrifice and laments, but it would be an issue to divulge for whom they lament, likely due to another “sacred legend” or ἱρὸς λόγος. Similarly, in the third excerpt, Herodotus uses secrecy to say that he cannot say whose tomb is in the temple at Saïs. He says there is a lake there, and at night by this lake, they reenact the God’s suffering, which he will also keep secret.

If it is Orphic ἱεροὶ λόγοι and his obligation to them that prevents Herodotus from sharing certain information, then it makes sense that he, believing Osiris and Dionysus to be the same, would keep the Egyptian rites secret even if the Egyptians themselves did not. Furthermore, because the Egyptians did not, Herodotus is able to be as selective as he wants with his obligation to secrecy, going so far as to reveal everything except the part most crucial to a complete understanding, which may also be the biggest similarity between the Greek and Egyptian rites: the why.

Just as Herodotus employs this silence, so too does Plutarch in his Quaestiones Convivales, even going so far as to reference the former. In Book 2, Plutarch mentions that he had abstained from eating egg for a long time, and that others, specifically an Epicurean named Alexander, had ridiculed him for it as if he held Orphic or Pythagorean opinions^[8]. Alexander then asks the age-old question “which came first; the bird or the egg?” which Sylla replies is a world-shaking engine in itself. Alexander dismisses this view and says the question is of little import. Firmus, a family member of Plutarch’s, accepts the challenge to answer the question. His answer is philosophical and ontological, using the egg as a symbol. At the end of the argument, Plutarch lets us know that he was proud of his answer, and Firmus invokes the authority of Orpheus:

And with a smile continued he, “I speak to those that are acquainted with the mystical and sacred discourse (ἱερὸν λόγον) of Orpheus^[9], who not only affirms the egg to be before the bird, but makes it the first being in the whole world. The other parts, because deep mysteries (as Herodotus would say), we shall now pass by; but let us look upon the various kinds of animals, and we shall find almost every one beginning from an egg,—fowls and fishes; land animals, as lizards; amphibious, as crocodiles; some with two legs, as a cock; some without any, as a snake; and some with many, as a locust. And therefore in the solemnly feast of Bacchus it is very well done to dedicate an egg, as the emblem of that which begets and contains every thing in itself.”^[10]

In a paper on Plutarch’s use of silence, Peter Van Nuffelen writes from the viewpoint that Plutarch is skeptical of Orphism:

Firmus, a relative of Plutarch's, apparently adheres to Orphism. This does not really ease Plutarch's earlier concern that his abstinence from eggs would be unjustifiedly seen as Orphic. On the contrary, it would rather reinforce this prejudice. In the second place, Firmus' appeal to the mystical and absolute truth of Orphism did backfire, because Sossius Senecio immediately defends the priority of the hen in a lengthy reply. The authority of Orphism can be challenged and Firmus' attempt to strengthen it with a reference to mystical silence did not succeed. Both instances of irony fit very well into Plutarch's view on Orphism. As we can gather from the myth of Thespesius told in De sera, where it is said that the soul of Orpheus did not reach the highest level, he considered Orphism to contain some seeds of truth, without being entirely truthful.^[11]

Van Nuffelen, assuming Plutarch to hold a negative or skeptical view toward the mysteries, cites Plutarch’s own De sera in justification of this. But if we read the passage in question, it is clear that Plutarch’s polemic against Orpheus is in relation to Plutarch’s own priesthood in the Temple of Apollo at Delphi:

At length, after he had been carried as far another way as when he was transported to the yawning overture, he thought he beheld a prodigious standing goblet, into which several rivers discharged themselves; among which there was one whiter than snow or the foam of the sea, another resembled the purple color of the rainbow. The tinctures of the rest were various; besides that, they had their several lustres at a distance. But when he drew nearer, the ambient air became more subtile and rarefied, and the colors vanished, so the goblet retained no more of its flourishing beauty except the white. At the same time he saw three Daemons sitting together in a triangular aspect, and blending and mixing the rivers together with certain measures. Thus far, said the guide of Thespesius's soul, did Orpheus come, when he sought after the soul of his wife; and not well remembering what he had seen, upon his return he raised a false report in the world, that the oracle at Delphi was in common to Night and Apollo, whereas Apollo never had any thing in common with Night. But, said the spirit, this oracle is in common to Night and to the Moon, no way included within earthly bounds, nor having any fixed or certain seat, but always wandering among men in dreams and visions. For from hence it is that all dreams are dispersed, compounded as they are of truth jumbled with falsehood, and sincerity with the various mixtures of craft and delusion. But as for the oracle of Apollo, said the spirit, you neither do see it, neither can you behold it; for the earthly part of the soul is not capable to release or let itself loose, nor is it permitted to reach sublimity, but it swags downward, as being fastened to the body.^[12]

Plutarch’s disdain for Orpheus (and by extension, Orphics) is His (and thus their) inclusion of Night in the function of the Oracle at Delphi, which is something Plutarch as a priest at that temple would be intimately familiar with. Plutarch is explicit in that Orpheus raised “a false report in the world,” not multiple, and that this one false report is that Apollo shares his Oracle with Night.

With that out of the way, we may now turn to Van Nuffelen’s claim that Plutarch allowed Senecio to best Firmus with a lengthy reply about the priority of the hen over the egg. If we read Senecio’s reply, which is indeed lengthy, his disagreement with Firmus is clear:

To this discourse of Firmus, Senecio replied: Sir, your last similitude contradicts your first, and you have unwittingly opened the world (instead of the door, as the saying is) against yourself. For the world was before all, being the most perfect; and it is rational that the perfect in Nature should be before the imperfect, as the sound before the maimed, and the whole before the part. For it is absurd that there should be a part when there is nothing whose part it is; and therefore nobody says the seed's man or egg's hen, but the man's seed and hen's egg; because those being after these and formed in them, pay as it were a debt to Nature, by bringing forth another. For they are not in themselves perfect, and therefore have a natural appetite to produce such a thing as that out of which they were first formed; and therefore seed is defined as a telling produced that is to be perfected by another production. Now nothing can be perfected by or want that which as yet is not. Everybody sees that eggs have the nature of a concretion or consistence in some animal or other, but want those organs, veins, and muscles which animals enjoy. Therefore no story delivers that ever any egg was formed immediately from earth; and the poets themselves tell us, that the egg out of which came the Tyndaridae fell down from heaven. But even till this time the earth produceth some perfect and organized animals, as mice in Egypt, and snakes, frogs, and grasshoppers almost everywhere, some external and invigorating principle assisting in the production. And in Sicily, where in the servile war much blood was shed, and many carcasses rotted on the ground, whole swarms of locusts were produced, and spoiled the corn over the whole isle. Such spring from and are nourished by the earth; and seed being formed in them, pleasure and titillation provoke them to mix, upon which some lay eggs, and some bring forth their young alive; and this evidently proves that animals first sprang from earth, and afterwards by copulation, after different ways, propagated their several kinds. In short, it is the same thing as if you said the womb was before the woman; for as the womb is to the egg, the egg is to the chick that is formed in it; so that he that inquires how birds should be when there were no eggs, might ask as well how men and women could be before any organs of generation were formed. Parts generally have their subsistence together with the whole; particular powers follow particular members, and operations follow those powers, and effects those operations. Now the effect of the generative power is the seed and egg; so that these must be after the formation of the whole. Therefore consider, as there can be no digestion of food before the animal is formed, so there can be no seed nor egg; for those, it is likely, are made by some digestion and alterations; nor can it be that, before the animal is, the superfluous parts of the food of the animal should have a being. Besides, though seed may perhaps pretend to be a principle, the egg cannot; for it doth not subsist first, nor hath it the nature of a whole, for it is imperfect. Therefore we do not affirm that the animal is produced without a principle of its being; but we call the principle that power which changes, mixes, and tempers the matter, so that a living creature is regularly produced; but the egg is an after-production, as the blood or milk of an animal after the taking in and digestion of the food. For we never see an egg formed immediately of mud, for it is produced in the bodies of animals alone; but a thousand living creatures rise from the mud. What need of many instances? None ever found the spawn or egg of an eel; yet if you empty a pit and take out all the mud, as soon as other water settles in it, eels likewise are presently produced. Now that must exist first which hath no need of any other thing that it may exist, and that after, which cannot be without the concurrence of another thing. And of this priority is our present discourse. Besides, birds build nests before they lay their eggs; and women provide cradles, swaddling-clothes, and the like; yet who says that the nest is before the egg, or the swaddling-clothes before the infant? For the earth (as Plato says) doth not imitate a woman, but a woman, and so likewise all other females, the earth. Moreover it is probable that the first production out of the earth, which was then vigorous and perfect, was self-sufficient and entire, nor stood in need of those secundines, membranes, and vessels, which now Nature forms to help the weakness and supply the defects of breeders.^[13]

Firmus saw the egg as symbolic, on the same level as a seed and the first principle of all generation. Senecio argues that the cosmos contains within itself the seeds for everything else. It is perfect, and therefore couldn’t have come from a seed itself. He argues that an egg only pretends to be a seed and does not actually contain a whole within itself. Because of this, in Senecio’s eyes, even if the world did come from something, it could not have come from an egg.

Firmus revealed just a bit too much for his friend’s improper mindset to handle by saying that Orpheus put the egg as the first being in the world. Senecio, engaging with this idea from an improper mindset, is unable to fully transcend what he knows about physical bird eggs and biological life cycles, and thus unable to view the egg as symbolically as Firmus does. Instead of recognizing the warning present in the Orphic seal, Firmus smiles through it, allowing the improper mindset of Senecio, '“you profane” in the seal, to cloud the argument. It seems, then, that rather than allow Senecio to best Firmus, Plutarch has actually allowed Senecio to give a thoughtful speech that just barely misses the point. Perhaps this is also to illustrate that silence in an argument, however noble, will inevitably cause misunderstanding.

That chapter and discussion ends after Senecio’s reply, so we are left to wonder what may have been said or argued next. This may also be Plutarch employing silence as a tool: by not giving away anything else, Plutarch himself steps fully out of the way and allows “those that are acquainted with the mystical and sacred discourse of Orpheus” to read what is hidden, providing a clear example in Senecio of what kind of thing can come as a result of someone without the proper mindset approaching a Sacred Discourse. Because Plutarch steps fully out of the way, however, he leaves the discussion just as open to ‘profane’ interpretation.

Later, in Book 4 of Quaestiones Convivales, Plutarch again employs silence. This time, guests are discussing the similarities between Adonis, Dionysus, and the Jewish God, when Moiragenes speaks up:

Do not be so fierce upon him, for I who am an Athenian answer you, and tell you, in short, that these two are the very same. And no man is able or fit to hear the chief confirmation of this truth, but those amongst us who are initiated and skilled in the triennial παντέλεια, or great mysteries of the God. But what no religion forbids to speak of among friends, especially over wine, the gift of Bacchus, I am ready at the command of these gentlemen to disclose.^[14]

In the quote above, Moiragenes invokes silence and says that only those initiated are fit to hear the best proof. However, after the quote above, he then continues on to compare Jewish and Bacchic practices before Book 4 cuts off. Thus, because he shares some details but not the “chief confirmation,” Moiragenes’ silence here, just as before, is not to hide conclusions, but certain means to reach them.

In every excerpt we’ve examined today, the truth at the heart of them has been freely offered by the speaker. The silence in each example has been to preserve the knowledge of why these things are done, or why these beliefs are held. In other words, the use of pious or mystical silence in Herodotus and Plutarch has been to protect the knowledge that would help one arrive at a certain conclusion, and not necessarily to protect the conclusion itself.

This distinction being made by ancient authors familiar with (or themselves initiates of) the mysteries of Orpheus means that silence, at least in those mysteries, is not a strict rule to which everyone must adhere perfectly. Instead, silence in Orphism is a tool that can be used by initiates to reveal as much or as little is necessary to foster a pious and reverent curiosity among outsiders. It is meant as a scalable barrier to entry, a sort of filter, to keep those with an improper mindset away. Not necessarily to keep them ‘out’ forever, but to keep them ‘at bay’ until they approach with the proper mindset. It is only as much of a barrier as it needs to be. If everyone were to approach with the proper mindset, there would be no secrets to keep.

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Works Cited

Bernabé, Alberto. Poetae Epici Graeci: Testimonia et Fragmenta. Pars 2, Orphicorum et Orphicis Similium Testimonia et Fragmenta. Fasciculus 1. K.G. Saur, 2004.

Edmonds, Radcliffe G. “Recycling Laertes’ Shroud: More on Orphism & Original Sin.” The Center for Hellenic Studies, 11 Feb. 2021, https://chs.harvard.edu/curated-article/radcliffe-g-edmonds-iii-recycling-laertes-shroud-more-on-orphism-original-sin/. Accessed 17 Aug. 2025.

Herodotus. “Histories.” Herodotus, with an English translation by A. D. Godley. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920. https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.01.0126 Accessed 17 Aug. 2025.

Plutarch. “Quaestiones Convivales.” Plutarch's Morals, Translated from the Greek by several hands. Corrected and revised by. William W. Goodwin, PH. D. Boston. Little, Brown, and Company. Cambridge. Press Of John Wilson and son. 1874. http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:2008.01.0312. Accessed 19 Aug. 2025.

Van Nuffelen, Peter. “Words of Truth: Mystical Silence as a Philosophical and Rhetorical Tool in Plutarch.” Hermathena, no. 182, 2007, pp. 9–39. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23041716. Accessed 19 Aug. 2025.

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Footnotes