The Orphic Gold Lamellae of Women Mystics
Athens. The Acropolis Museum. An enigmatic object. Shaped like a half moon of paper-thin gold leaf; inscribed upon it the words:
I am parched with thirst and I perish. But give me to drink . from the everflowing spring on the right, by the cypress.
“Who are you? Where are you from?” . I am the daughter of Earth and starry Heaven.
I shuddered as I realized that this fragile object was an Orphic lamella, an epistomion that sealed the lips of a woman initiate to the Orphic mysteries. Suddenly, I was in my adolescent room in my family home, leafing through a volume of the encyclopedia my father bought me years ago; I was reading an article by the academic Nikolaos Louvaris on Orphism. That during a time of pantheism, they were monotheists, fanatical vegans who would not even touch the honey of bees. They believed in the afterlife, in a cycle of reincarnations that only the grace of a merciful God could bring to an end.
The gold lamellae give specific instructions that the soul of the initiate must follow in the journey to the Afterlife. They describe the topography of Hades, which spring to drink from, what to watch out for, how to answer the questions of guardians, how to address the gods and probably how to answer Persephone’s questions. It is a dangerous journey. Parched with thirst, the soul must resist the urge to drink from the first available spring. This is the spring of Lethe and if she drinks, she will forget the important lessons and her initiation. The soul must seek the ever-flowing spring to the right of the cypress tree, the one with the cold water of Mnemosyne, of Memory. But this spring is guarded, and it is the guards who ask: “Who are you?” “Where are you from?” The soul must give the correct answer, an answer that indicates consciousness of a duality of origins: she is a daughter of the Earth, however, her origin is from the starry Heaven.
What makes this lamella so unique is that of all the lamellae studied so far, this is the only one that declares “I am a daughter of the Earth.” The typical, formulaic expression is “I am a child, or I am a son of Earth…” At that moment I felt that I needed to retrace, to find more about this unknown woman as well as the other women who had been initiated to Orphism. I needed to listen to their voices, their whispers, and bring them back to the light, to give them visual, material form. For the next six months I immersed myself in the world of Orphism and the Bacchic-Orphic mystery cult. In the library of the Archaeological Society in Athens, I studied rare manuscripts dated to 1850, delved into scholarly studies of archaeologists dating a particular lamella from the shape of a single letter. In the Epigraphical Museum in Athens, I touched a garland of ivy leaves dedicated to Chthonian Dionysus.
The number of documented lamellae with incised text is small. Only forty-six have been found so far, dating between the 6th century BC to the 2nd century AD. Gold lamellae have been found in Italy, Macedonia, Thessaly, the Peloponnese and Crete, along the periphery of the Greek civilization. Lamellae are rectangular or resemble the shape of lips or leaves of olive, myrtle or ivy. They are small, measuring 2-8 cm in length and 1-3 cm in height; of paper-thin gold, a material which indicates a belief and desire for eternal life.
My personal focus was on sacred texts of gold lamellae which belonged to women initiates. When I finally emerged from the extensive study, I had in my hands the texts of six women initiates and a string of unusual names:
Euxena, Phylomaga, Philemena, Philoxena, Xenaristi, Hegesiska, Palatha, Philotera, Philiste, Archeboule, Caecilia Secundina
And then there are the lamellae with greetings addressed to Pluto and Persephone—my Persephone, for this is how I feel her presence as she accompanies me in my own journey.