Melinoe- Greek GodDeity"Saffron-Cloaked"
Also known as: Μελινόη and Melinoë
Description
Half-white, half-dark, she walks the night in a saffron veil, trailing ghosts from the Cocytus into the waking world where her passage drives mortals to madness.
Mythology & Lore
The Saffron Veil
Orphic Hymn 71 is the only surviving text that names Melinoe. It invokes her as a chthonic goddess born to Persephone at the mouth of the Cocytus, the river of lamentation. The hymn says Zeus came to Persephone in the guise of Plouton, so that Melinoe's father is at once the king of the gods and the king of the dead. Her body bears the mark: half-white, half-dark.
The hymn calls her saffron-cloaked. She wanders the earth at night with a retinue of ghosts and phantoms at her back, and where she passes mortals are struck with terror and madness. The hymn's speaker asks her to come gently, which tells you what her usual arrival looked like.
No cult sites, dedications, or images of Melinoe have been found outside the Orphic corpus. She belongs to the Orphic mysteries alone, a goddess initiates propitiated to keep the restless dead from following them home.
Relationships
- Family