Hear, Goddess queen, diffusing silver light,
Bull-horn'd (16) and wand'ring thro' the gloom of Night.
With stars surrounded, and with circuit wide
Night's torch extending, thro' the heav'ns you ride:
Female and Male (17) with borrow'd rays you shine,
And now full-orb'd, now tending to decline.
Mother of ages, fruit-produci'ng Moon,
Whose amber orb makes Night's reflected noon:
Lover of horses, splendid, queen of Night,
All-seeing pow'r bedeck'd with starry light.
Lover of vigilance, the foe of strife,
In peace rejoicing, and a prudent life:
Fair lamp of Night, its ornament and friend,
Who giv'st to Nature's works their destind end. (18)
Queen of the stars, all-wise Diana hail!
Deck'd with a graceful robe and shining veil;
Come, blessed Goddess, prudent, starry, bright,
Come moony-lamp with chaste and splendid light,
Shine on these sacred rites with prosperous rays,
And pleas'd accept thy suppliant's mystic praise.
15: The Moon is called in this Hymn both selhnh and mhnh: the former of which words signifies the Moon in the language of the Gods; and the latter is the appellation given to her by Men, as the following Orphic fragment evinces.
Mhsato d allhn Gaiah apeiriton, hnte Selhnhn
Aqanatoi klhzousin, epicqonioi de te Mhnhn.
H poll oure ecei, poll astea, polla melaqra.
That is, "But he (Jupiter) fabricated another boundless earth, which the immorals call Selene, but Men, Mene. Which has many mountains, many cities, many houses." Now this difference of names arises, according to the Platonic philosophers, from the difference subsisting between divine and human knowledge. For (say they) as the knowledge of the Gods is different from that of particular souls: so with respect to names some are divine, exhibiting the whole essence of that which is named; but others are human, which only partially unfolds their signification. But a larger account of this curious particular is given by Proclus, in Theol. Plat. p. 69, as follows. There are three kinds of names: the first and most proper, and which are truly divine, subsist in the Gods themselves. But the second which are the resemblances of the first, having an intel-lectual subsistence, must be esteemed of divine condition. And the third kind which emanate from Truth itself, but are formed into words for the purpose of discourse, receiving the last signification of divine con-cerns, are enunciated by skillful men; at one time by a divine afflatus, at another time by energising intellectually, and generating the images of internal spectacles moving in a discursive procession. For as the demiurgic intellect represents about matter the significations of primary forms com-prehended in its essence; temporal signatures of things eternal; divisible representatives of things indivisible, and produces as it were shadowy re-semblances of true beings: after the same manner I think the science we possess, framing an intellectual action, fabricates by discourse both the resemblances of other things, and of the Gods themselves. So that it fashions by composition, that which in the Gods is void of composition: that which is simple by variety; and that which is united by multitude. And by this formation of names it demonstrates in the last place the images of divine concerns. And as the theurgic art provokes by certain signs, supernal illumination into artificial statues, and allures the unenvying goodness of the Gods; in the same manner the intellectual science of divine concerns, signifies the occult essence of the God by the compositions and divisions of sounds.
16: For the mystical reason of this appellation, see note to the third line, of the Hymn to Protogonus. (10)
17: This is not wonderful, since according to the fragment of Ficinus in this Dissertation, all souls and the celestial spheres are endued with a two-fold power, nostic and animating; one of which is male and the other female. And these epithets are perpetually occurring in the Orphic Initiations.
18: In the original it is telesforoV, i.e. bringing to an end. And Proclus in Theol. Plat. p. 483. informs us that Diana (who is the same with the Moon) is so called, because she finishes or perfects the essential perfection of matter.
