Do the PGM actually tell you how to sound? (Mithras Liturgy + Sarapis-oracle vowels) — poke holes, please

[kvzlx]

Something's been nagging me for months and I'd rather have you lot tear into it than keep circling it alone.

The whole "ancient sacred frequency" thing 432, 528, "the tone the old ones used" always bugged me because nobody ever cites a line. So I flipped it around and asked the dull version of the question: do the actual magical texts say anything about how to sound? Turns out a couple do, and they're weirdly specific but about manner, never pitch.

Two I've been living inside (Preisendanz for the Greek, Betz where I could actually see the page):

• The vowel bit in PGM V isn't a floating exercise it's the pronunciation of the vowel-name you call the god with, in the Sarapis oracle. Alpha open and wavelike, omicron with the lips drawn in, epsilon "like a baboon," ypsilon "like a shepherd," drawn out, the iao thrown to earth/air/heaven. Gesture, animal, direction. No note, no Hz that unit didn't even exist yet.
• PGM IV, the "Mithras Liturgy" (Dieterich's 1903 name, and his "real Mithraic rite" idea is mostly dead). The sounds aren't a block, they're strung through the ascent: inhale ×3, silence ×3 with a finger on the mouth, a long hiss then a pop, then the bellowings and the Greek keeps something translations flatten: one bellow "like a horn" (an adverb, i.e. how to push the sound, not "go grab a horn"), straining the flank; the next straining the belly "to stir the five senses" that last phrase is literally in the Greek.

Here's the part I actually want beaten up. I made audio reconstructions of these, but I forced myself to keep three things apart and label them: what the text documents (order, repetitions, the manner-words), what's reconstruction(koine phonology — iotacism, the ypsilon sitting between [y] and in the 4th c., I went ), and what's just my modern call (length, timbre, the human take I used for the bellow). The bellow I tag as a "candidate," and I measure its pitch only to prove I'm not smuggling in a sacred note that F0 is the singer's, not the papyrus's.

Where I'd genuinely love correction:

1. The "pop" (poppysmos). I won't commit it to one concrete click because I can't pin the mechanism lip-smack? bilabial? tongue? Anyone got a real argument?
2. The ypsilon [y]~ call for 4th-c. Egyptian koine am I flattening it?
3. The honest gap: I couldn't find a documented modern practice that actually performs these acoustically (Dieterich, Mead = textual reception, not performance). If you know one primary source ideally I'd love to close that hole.

I'm not dropping a link in here, that's not the point of the post. But I've got the transcriptions, the line-by-line collation against the Heidelberg facsimile and the labelled audio layers sitting somewhere so if any of it's useful to you or you fancy pulling it apart, just say and I'll pass it over.

Mostly I want the corrections. Have at it.

 

[Witch Cat]

Good morning, an invaluable companion to the PGM is Dr. Stephen Skinner's masterpiece 'Techniques in Graeco-Egyptian Magic'; of particular importance is Chapter 4.5, on Spoken Words. I understand the idea behind making noises or sounds that can imitate a specific thing to harmonize with it or the force/sphere behind it, but I found those methods much too jarring for what I was trying to accomplish (so I cannot advise on the barks, clicks, and shouts). I personally use the 4 quarter conjuration using the 7 vowels (I call it, The Adoration of the 7 Vowels), mentioned in detail by Skinner, pp. 70-73, the full ritual PGM XIII 821-870, pp. 191-192. Instead, I have modified this particular ritual following sound theories of Athanasius Kircher (low to high on the pitch of sounding the vowels themselves) and Joscelyn Godwin; I have hand-written notes where I have separated each vowel in the formula groups so that I can sing it specifically yet merging it into the next vowel sound before taking a breath and moving to the next group of sounds. Skinner postulates that the vowels might be combined together to make a new sound, using IAO as an example. To him, instead of sounding it out as EEEE AHHH OHHH, he suggests that perhaps it was originally sounded as YAH-OW, a single sound when spoken or sung. (Off the top of my head, I remember a comment from antiquity where a tourist visiting Egypt described how the priests would sing the vowels as the Sun rose in the morning, and the commentator said that it was so beautiful that it surpassed any musical instrument that he knew of). And after watching a history documentary of Egypt, they visited the Serapeum at Saqqara, and the guide mentioned how sound was augmented within the stone sarcophagi; that plus the acoustic resonance available to caves had me thinking about how words of power should be sung or vibrated, and when in such an environment, you can FEEL the sounds that you are uttering! So my personal technique attempts to utter these words and vowels in a way that I can physically experience, which helps me in turn to harmonize with the power/sphere that I am invoking. This is, of course, my own modernized adaptations of the classical ritual.