Fates Orphic Hymns

Boundless Fates,
dear children of dark Night,
hear my prayer,
O many-named
dwellers on the lake of heaven,
where the frozen water is broken
by night’s warmth
in the shady hollow of a sleek cave;
from there you fly to the vast earth,
home of mortals, from there,
clothed in purple, you march
toward men,
whose noble aims
match their vain hopes,
in the realm of the dead,
where glory drives her chariot on
all over the earth
beyond the ends of Justice,
of anxious hope, of primeval law,
of the measureless principle of order.
In life Fate alone watches;
the other immortals
who dwell on the peaks
of snowy Olympos do not,
except for Zeus’ perfect eye.
Fate and Zeus’ mind
know all things
for all time.
I pray to you to come,
gently and kindly,
Atropos, Lakhesis, Klotho,
offspring of noble stock.
Airy, invisible, inexorable,
ever indestructible,
you give all and take all,
being to men the same as necessity.
Fates, hear my prayers,
receive my libations,
come gently to the initiates,
free them from pain.


- The Orphic Hymns, LIX. To the Fates