Our Patron Orpheus

Orpheus was the first psychotherapist in our lands, healed with music and speech, believed in the harmony between words and deeds, professing values ​​that were not his time – humanity, freedom, equality. 

Let’s hear him:

"I am Orpheus.

“In the heart – a fortress, can’t even reach it with a knife,

there only the song can enter!

I am called the Peace-lover, Apostle of Understanding, civilizer, the inventor of the rhyming.

I think that the hostility caused the earth, the water and the sky to divide.

It is argued whether I am a Thracian or a Protohellene, but I actually belong to all the nations. My mother is the muse of the eloquence and the poetry – Calliope, by her I was reared with the inspiration and love for music, poetry and all the arts. My father is Apollo, the God of the Sun, the light and the harmony. From him I took the eternal drive for sophistication and harmony – between the internal and external beauty, between the physical and spiritual health, between the person and the society, between the human and the nature, between the rhythm of the heart and the pulse of the universe. I am searching for the harmony between the speech and the deed.

There can also be something true in the gossip that my father is Oeagrus – the god of the river Hebar, as I have a very strong connection with the rivers, mountains and the nature as a whole. I dwell in the mountain Pentheus, where I welcome the sunrise in the morning. I adore walking in its forests, in its fields, to converse both with the grasses and the flowers, I also understand the language of the birds, the animals and even of the beasts. When I sing and play my Harp, they come around me to listen. And from the Harp originates my name – Orpheus.

Here, I met fascinating nymph, Eurydice, I fell in love and I had the chance to marry her. We were incredibly happy, but unfortunately for too short. One day, while she was walking on a meadow with her friends, picking up herbs, a shepherd desired to have her, ran after her and in her run she accidentally step on a snake. Bitten by the snake, she passed to the kingdom of the shadows. Deeply stricken with grief, in tears and with songs by prayer I obtained the permission of Aid and Persephone to let me go where she was and even to bring her back to the earth. I cannot forgive myself that I didn’t fulfill the condition not to turn back, and in a moment she disappeared. We were just so close to the kingdom of light! How I begged after that, how I craved to obtain again the permission to go down where she was… they didn’t give me a second chance. I have not succeeded to get over her, she remained my one and only beloved forever, I never looked at another. For me, love comes once in the life. Now I have only the harp, the music, the poetry and the opportunity to sing the praise of the immortality of the divine love.

I was included in the march of the Argonauts for the Golden Fleece. During the long and very risky travel I sang to the heroes for the Creation of the world, for love, for the Bravery. By my music I calmed down both the highest waves and the stormy winds, when it was necessary, sometimes I even enchanted and unmanned the enemy troops.

I don’t accept the slavery, I believe that each human is born free and should live free. I also cannot accept the human sacrifices and during my whole life I struggled against this barbarities, but my contemporaries didn’t understand me. I believe that no human has the right to take away the life of another human and that gods don’t want this from us. I cannot stand the rudeness, the fanaticism, the triteness, the greed, the ignorance and illiteracy, the wild customs, the unmannerliness, the unrestrained passions and instincts.

I don’t drink wine, I drink only milk and water, feed on fruits, honey and walnuts. Human’s mind should always remain lucid and clear, so that it can guide the deeds. So that the harmony both among the people and between people and the nature is kept.

I don’t know why, but some women couldn’t forgive me my faithfulness to Eurydice. I guess there is also another reason, I don’t know exactly what it is, but one day, as I was playing the harp and singing in the woods, near the river Hebar, the bacchants of Dionysus attacked my with stones and sticks. The first stones that were approaching me, when they heard my music, fell in my feeds and begged me for forgiveness instead of hitting me. But these drunken women were too many, they didn’t know what they were doing, because of the wine they had been drinking. They pulled the harp out of my hands and threw it in the river. Afterwards, they tore my with their bare hands and threw my head in Hebar, too. But even in the river, my severed head continued singing. And my soul finally found its Eurydice and now we are together again, this time forever.

On the place where my blood flowed, a beautiful flower, Haberlea Rhodopensis grew – it is called “the guitar”, as it sings in the spring. It is also called “The Immortal”, because it keeps its own life and withstands drought and sludge, frost and heat, and even when it seems dead, if it feels light and warmness, it revives and blossoms again”