Definition of "Orphism"

Thoreau's acquaintance with Orphism dated from at least as early as the summer of 1840, when he read Ralph Cudworth's True Intellectual System of the Universe and took notes on some of Cudworth's references to the Orphic religion.

1974, The Emerson Society Quarterly, Issues 74-81, Emerson Society, page 125

The oracular poems produced by Orphism and attributed to Orpheus himself, similarly reveal neither messiah nor messianic age.

1995, Dan Urman, Paul Virgil McCracken Flesher, Ancient Synagogues: Historical Analysis and Archaeological Discovery, Part 2, E. J. Brill, page 355

The origins of Orphism are obscure, although they seem to date back at least to the sixth century B.C.E. Orphic ideology mainly concerned the mysteries of Dionysos, which many Greeks took very seriously.

2004, Stephanie L. Budin, The Ancient Greeks: New Perspectives, ABC-CLIO, page 307

The apologists' strategies distort the real image of Orphism, but they maintain a certain basis in reality in order to appear plausible.

2010, Miguel Herrero de Jáuregui, Orphism and Christianity in Late Antiquity, De Gruyter, page 295

“Orphism,” he writes wearily, italicizing the word for effect, “and now we speak of Orphism. Or rather, we do not speak of it. All that we've tried to say has only clouded the question.” The same day Goth's article appeared, two separate caricatures of Orphism also showed up in the popular press—one in Le rire (figure 1.26), the other in Le journal amusant […]

2014, Gordon Hughes, quoting Max Goth, Resisting Abstraction: Robert Delaunay and Vision in the Face of Modernism, University of Chicago Press, page 28