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The beautiful Rhodopi mountains lie in the south of Bulgaria, stretching from the Thracian plain to beyond the Greek border. With spectacular gorges, alpine meadows, underground caves and rich archaeological sites, it's a land steeped in myth and antiquity. For this is the place where Orpheus and the Orphic cult originated.
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The mythology of the legendary singer, musician, magician and healer, Orpheus, dates back 3000 years and probably has much older roots. Much of what we know comes from the writings of the ancient Greeks, but in fact Orpheus was a native Thracian born in the Rhodopi mountains.
Orpheus sang and played the lyre, and his music was so beautiful that he could charm the birds and the beasts. When his bride, the nymph Evredika (Euridice in English), died from a snakebite, Orpheus went to the underworld to plead for her return. His music so captivated Hades and Persephone, the king and queen of the land of the dead, that they agreed to his request on one condition: Orpheus must not look back upon Evredika until they had both reached the upper world. But Orpheus looked back a moment too soon, before the sun had laid its eye upon Evredika. At once she slipped back into the land of darkness and was lost to him forever
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Inconsolable, Orpheus roamed the Rhodopi mountains spurning female company until the women of Thrace (Bacchantes or Maenads - the female followers of Dionysus) tore him apart and flung his dismembered body into the river. His head floated along the river Mesta to Lesbos where it began to prophesy and became famous as an Oracle.
Bulgarian experts believe that beneath the mythology there may have lived a real Orpheus, a priest of Dionysus who introduced a new spiritual movement linked to the sun god Apollo. Archaeologists claim that a tomb recently found in the Eastern Rhodopi could possibly be the grave of Orpheus, but positive proof is likely to be elusive.
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