In the Orphic cosmogony the origin of all goes back to Chronos, the personification of time, who produces Aether and Chaos.
A large number of writings in the tone of the Orphic religion were ascribed to Orpheus.
It also included a collection of Orphic hymns, liturgic songs, practical treatises, and poems on various subjects.
The Orphic poems also played an important part in the controversies between Christian and pagan writers in the 3rd and 4th centuries after Christ; pagan writers quoted them to show the real meaning of the multitude of gods, while Christians retorted by reference to the obscene and disgraceful fictions by which the former degraded their gods.
Thus the Orphic hymns are careful to specify, in connexion with the several deities celebrated, a great variety of substances appropriate to the service of each; in the case of many of these the selection seems to have been determined not at all by their fragrance but by some occult considerations which it is now difficult to divine.