The following text comes from a press report of the funeral of the Baron de Palm, a German esotericist who died in New York in 1876. It may be the first Pagan funeral in the history of the United States.

It was also apparently the first occasion on which the Orphic Hymns were used in a modern Pagan context (the writer appears to be unaware that the Orphic Hymns survived to modern times).

The report is from the London Daily News of 22 June 1876.

[ADDENDUM: According to an account by the Theosophical leader Henry Steel Olcott, the Orphic Hymns used for the Baron’s funeral were composed specially for the occasion. They were presumably in some way based on or inspired by the ancient Orphic Hymns, but they were not taken directly from that collection. The text of the hymns appears not to survive.]

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The Baron’s “obsequies were conducted,” we learn by the Theosophical Society of which he was a member. The ancient Egyptian ritual was practised, as far, no doubt, as it could be gathered from the researches of M. Feydeau [Ernest-Aimé Feydeau, a writer on ancient funerary practices] and other Egyptologists of his calibre. The altar was embellished by an incense burner – we are not responsible for the language in which these details are given – and by a brazen cross bearing a serpent, which, on one showing, was engaged in a well-meant but fruitless attempt to bite off his own tail [it was presumably an ouroboros], and, according to another authority, had something or other to do with Nature-worship. The coffin was a real handsome black casket, and the mourners were the President and six fellows of the Theosophical Society. The gentlemen were arrayed in long, heavy, woollen garments; they bore palms in their hands, and were obviously fresh from the study of Zanoni, and of the Last Days of Pompeii [two novels, the first about modern occultism, the second about ancient Roman society]. The service took the form of a catechism, with intervals of music. The questions and answers were from “a regular ancient Egyptian liturgy,” and expressed the views of the Theosophists, though not necessarily those of the Theosophist of the Contemporary Review, on the nature of the Absolute and other topics of general interest. An old gentleman, whose daughter was playing the organ, did not like the nature of the ancient Egyptian dogmas, and withdrew his gifted offspring, after which event there was less music and more talk. Colonel Olcott [Henry Steel Olcott, the President of the Theosophical Society] especially distinguished himself by an address on the filling, satisfactory, and positive merits of “Theosophy.” The body of Baron von Palm, which has been embalmed, is to be burned, if the authorities of New York do not refuse permission.

Though one may feel anxious to know a little more about the Theosoph Catechism, and especially to compare it with the amusing work of M. Comte [Auguste Comte, the founder of the quasi-religious Positivist movement], it is pretty plain on the face of things that Theosophy is a sort of eclecticism. Here a little is and there a little is pilfered from the rites and ceremonies of all sorts of people and all varieties of creeds. For example, it appears that the music which the young lady played is said to have been an Italian mass of the fifteenth century. The “mystic chain of verse” was a real Orphic hymn. How the Theosophs got hold of a real Orphic hymn it is impossible to guess…. Besides Egyptian rites and pre-historic serpents and Orphic hymns and Italian masses, Baron von Palm’s friend, Mrs. Emma Hardinge Britten, the spiritualist whose faith is allied to the Theosophical, made an oration. “Speed home, friend and companion,” said this lady, “thou hast not left us.”…. The handsome casket which contained the Baron’s remains was deposited in the vault of a Lutheran Church, among the simple and common memorials of the universal fate.