The myth of Orpheus, served as a storehouse of mythological data, the hymns and Orphic poetry  containing a wide range of mythological thinking which was recited in mystery-rites and purification rituals. There is little know about the original Thracian "Orphic Mysteries", rituals but through history Orpheus is a god of love and death whose adherents valued esoteric knowledge and an ascetic life as a path for their soul to achieve a higher level in the next life. Orpheus, although known as a priest of both Apollo and Dionysus, was not particularly popular with the Greeks, whose  preference for the Dionysian carnavals of rebirth and wine to the stories of afterlife and remonstrations against sin is aptly demonstrated by the abundance of art stilling surviving more than a great age later. The Greek initiations, [Elysian,  which featured a guided path into the archetypal world of the collective conscious we

The cult of Dionysus was more simple, primitive, elemental, spontaneous, and emotional. That of Orpheus was more elaborate, developed, controlled, and intellectualistic. Still, when all is said, the two systems had much in common. Both centered in the same god, Dionysus. Both aimed at the same goal, immortality through divinity. Both sought to attain that goal by prescribed rites and ceremonies. Both made a strictly individualistic appeal and were highly developed along the lines of personal experience. But Orphism fostered an ascetic rule of life that was the exact opposite of Dionysian license, and developed an elaborate theology of a highly speculative character. In brief, Orphism represented a reformed Dionysianism.

The name Orpheus does not occur in Homer or Hesiod, but he was known in the time of Ibycus (c. 530 BC). Pindar (522—442 BC) speaks of him as “the father of songs”. Aristophanes, Euripides, Plato, and Pindar, make up the  bulk of classical writing the Orphic mysteries There are also  references to Orphism from later pagan writers, Strabo, Pausanias, and Plutarch. Orphism was in active competition with Christianity during much of the time of the Roman Empire. 

According to a Late Antique summary of Aeschylus's lost play Bassarids, Orpheus at the end of his life disdained the worship of all gods save the sun, whom he called Apollo. One early morning he ascended Mount Pangaion (where Dionysus had an oracle) to salute his god at dawn, but was torn to death by Thracian Maenads for not honoring his previous patron, Dionysus. Here his death is analogous with the death of Dionysus, to whom therefore he functioned as both priest and avatar.
 

The Orphic first, and the Pythagorean later, believed in the transmigration of souls from body to body. On leaving the corpse at death, the soul was normally doomed to inhabit the bodies of other men or of animals even, passing on through a chain of physical existences until finally purified. An Orphic fragment preserved by Proclus reads: "Therefore the soul of man changing in the cycles of time enters into various creatures; now it enters a horse, again it becomes a sheep . . . . or as one of the tribe of chill serpents creeps on the sacred ground." Reincarnation, like dualism, was an important item in Orphic theology.

Only those who "thrice had been courageous in keeping their souls pure from all deeds of wrong" could pass by the highway of Zeus into the tower of Cronus where the ocean breezes blow around the Islands of the Blest." In Plato the series of three incarnations was magnified to three periods of a thousand years each, during which the process of purgation might be completed

The technical Orphic expression for the transmigration of souls and their reappearance in human bodies was "rebirth" (palingenesia). These physical rebirths, however, were what the Orphic least desired, and to escape this weary round of reincarnation was the goal of all his endeavor. According to Proclus, the salvation offered by this system was the freeing of the spirit from the wheel of physical rebirths. In his commentary on Plato's Timaeus, he said, "This is what those who are initiated by Orpheus to Dionysus and Kore pray that they may attain:

The persistent representation of Orpheus in antiquity was that of a reformer of Dionysiac rites. Diodorus affirmed that "Orpheus being a man highly gifted by nature and highly trained above all others, made many modifications in the orgiastic rites; hence they call Orphic those rites that took their rise from Dionysus."

 "Purification is by means of cleansings, and baths and aspersions. A man must also keep himself from funerals and marriages and every kind of physical pollution, and abstain from all food that is dead or has been killed, and from mullet, and from the fish melanurus, and from eggs, and from animals that lay eggs, and from beans, and from the other things that are forbidden for those who accomplish the holy rites of initiation."

The Orphic, like the Pythagorean, lived a life of ceremonial cleanliness and holiness. By washing and aspersions, at once symbolic and sacramental in character, he sought to purge away the taint of his bodily nature, the "ancient woe" inherited from the Titans. In life the Orphic wore garments of pure white.

It is  difficult to trace the influence of Orphism as a distinct religious movement during the Hellenistic and later periods of Greek influence. One theory was his cult was rejuvenated following the introduction into Roman thought by Ovid's acclaimed publication of Metamorphoses, which may have been used as a school text. In Italy, the Pythagorean brotherhood, had flourished in the south since the beginning of the 6th century which would have made the Orphic creeds familiar among the learned. 

LINKS

sacred-texts.com/cla/pr/pr06.htm sacredspiral.com/Database /rome/pagregen.pdf wiki/Orpheus wiki/Balkans wiki/Stara_Planina [Balkan Mountain Range]an extension of the Carpathian mountain range, separated from it by the Danube River. This range runs 560km from eastern Serbia eastward through central Bulgaria to Cape Emine on the Black Sea. Sometimes included in term Balkan, but not Stara Planina, are the Rila and Pirin ranges in South-Western Bulgaria. wiki/Rhodope_Mountains

The Balkans: The identity of the Balkans owes as much to its fragmented and often violent common history as to its mountainous geography. The region was perennially on the edge of great empires, its history dominated by wars, rebellions, invasions and clashes between empires, from the times of the Roman Empire to the latter-day Yugoslav wars. The area is also known as the Balkan peninsula as they are surrounded by the Adriatic, Ionian, Aegean, Marmara and Black seas from the southwest, south and southeast. The Balkan region was the first area of Europe to experience the arrival of farming cultures in the Neolithic era. The practices of growing grain and raising livestock arrived in the Balkans from the Fertile Crescent by way of Anatolia, and spread west and north into Pannonia and Central Europe. Today the region's principal nationalities include Greeks (11.5 million, with about 11 millions of them being in Greece), Turks (9.2 million in the European part of Turkey), Serbs (8.5 million), Bulgarians (7 million), Albanians (6 million, with about 3.3 millions of them being in Albania), Croats (4.5 million), Bosniaks (2.4 million), Macedonian Slavs (1.4 million) and Montenegrins (0.265 million). If Romania and Slovenia are included, then also Romanians (26 million) and Slovenians (2 million). Practically all Balkan countries have a smaller or larger Roma (Gypsy) minority.

The musical abilities of the Thracian and Dacian tribes were noted in ancient Greek texts, and may be continued in the strong music and dance traditions of Bulgaria, Romania and Macedonia. Orpheus' music became integrated into ancient Greek culture and so into east Mediterranean culture.

The Rhodope Mountains : Birthplace of Orpheus

Orpheus is said to have come from the Rhodopes, a mountain range primarily in Bulgaria, is considered  one of the cradles of European civilization.  A place of extraordinary beauty,  the Rhodopes are one of the few mountain ranges in Europe where the brown bear and wolf still breeds. Old-growth forests are home to deer, elk, fox, wild goat, and other rare European species. In early spring you can see the pink petals of Silivriak (Heberlea rhodopaensis), the symbol of the Rhodopes, which has the unique quality of being able to spring back to life even after being pressed for years. Legend has it that the flower bloomed out of the blood of Orpheus after he was dismembered.[more at carnaval.com/bulgaria ]

Perperikon: For more than a century, archaeologists searched for the famous temple where Dionysus had an oracle in the Holy Rhodope mountains.   Visit the Bulgarian City of Perperikoh to experience 6,000 years of history and art The ancient Greek historian Herodotus gives an account of the march of Xerxes' immense army on Greece in 480 BC. As the huge invasion force was slowly making its way along the Aegean coast, many Thracian tribes sent envoys to pledge their allegiance to Xerxes. Only the Satrians [ aka Bessians], who inhabited the Rhodope, chose to ignore him: According to Herodotus "The Satrians however never yet became obedient to any man, so far as we know, but they remain up to my time still free, alone of all the Thracians. [...] These are they who possess the Oracle of Dionysus; which Oracle is on their most lofty mountains. Of the Satrians those who act as prophets of the temple are the Bessians." Marcus Licinius Crassus, a Roman General in Augustus' service, in 29-28 BC, when he captured the famous Temple from the Bessians (Bessoi) and gave it to the Odrysae, a rival Thracian tribe. In 11 BC, a fierce war for the Temple broke out between the two tribes, in which the Bessians were led by the Oracle's High Priest Only the highest ridge of the southern Rhodope can be seen from the Aegean coast. Beyond it, are the low, habitable middle and eastern ranges of the mountain which abound in archaeological remains from various ages. Among them, the holy city of Perperikon, the biggest megalith in Europe, is both a geographical and a historical landmark. Here also is the likely ruins of a great temple complex which Perperikon and many archeologists believe is this temple of great magnitude .