Physis

Orphic · deity · Orphic traditional religion; continuing · deity

Physis is the way things grow and therefore what they are. The Orphic Hymns address her directly, and the theogonic material sets her beside Thesis — creation as an act, and nature as the settled result of it. She is one of the clearest cases of the Orphic habit of giving cult-language to what a philosopher would call a principle: the hymn asks Nature herself to come, in the same form of words used for Demeter or Apollo.

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