Today’s autumnal equinox has us feeling a bit metaphysical, so let’s turn to ancient Greece and the story of the Oracle of Delphi, a collective of women over time whose divine communication with the gods made them among the most powerful women in the ancient world.
From about 1400 BC to the 4th Century AD, the city of Delphi was considered the center of the Grecian world. Mythology has it that the site on Mount Parnassus was chosen by Zeus as the home of Gaea, mother goddess of the earth. She asked her serpent son Python to guard the Delphic temple and the land around it, but Apollo, the god of truth and prophecy (among other things) decided it would be the perfect spot to honor himself. He killed Python and renamed the temple, lending the area a divine presence which attracted worshippers. By the 7th Century BC, the Temple of Apollo at Delphi was considered holy.
The temple housed just one woman, a chosen seer, who according to myth was able to communicate between the real world and the divine. This oracle was chosen from the Pythia, the name given to the women who served the temple, in a nod to Gaea’s slain son. It was the oracle that worshippers of Apollo flocked to Delphi to consult, as it was believed her words — as divined from Apollo himself — foretold everything from the best time to plant crops to which nations should go to war.
While the Pythia served the temple, it was the priests — all men — who acted as the gatekeepers. They were the ones who decided that only a young, honest and chaste virgin could be trusted as the Oracle to receive Apollo’s divine word. They were also the ones who decided which men were allowed to seek her counsel.
The priests required donations of cash and other items of value from every seeker just to be considered for an audience. Once payment was received, seekers were instructed to purify themselves in the temple’s sacred waters and to prepare an animal, usually a goat, as a sacrifice. For the Oracle herself the seeker would leave a pie (probably because chocolate wasn’t invented until millenia later).
Escorted into the temple, a seeker would find the Oracle seated on a three-legged stool above a fissure in the floor, ready for his question. Entering a trance in order to better channel Apollo’s wisdom, the Oracle would issue her response. Some said her remarks came in the form of gibberish, with priests surrounding her to mansplain the answers. Others said she provided thoughts in the form of a riddle that the seeker would then need to interpret for himself. Those edicts were purposefully vague so that all outcomes would fit her answer.
Unfortunately, the priests did not take into account the danger of leaving someone so innocent and desirable in the hands of men seeking her attention. After a few hundred years of the Pythia suffering violations that included assault and rape, the priests chose middle-aged women for the role. Deemed undesirable due to their age (ahem), they were required to dress and present themselves as young virgins, and forced to give up their families, in order to be unshackled to anyone but Apollo.
The trance-like state in which the Oracle appeared is also the subject of debate. Attributed to theories ranging from snake venom to mere showmanship, it’s more likely the trances were caused from inhaling natural gas. Recent archeological excavations have shown the presence of hallucinogenic gasses from the sacred waters nearby embedded in temple rocks. Actual science shows that the airless room where the Oracle sat while issuing her proclamations would have been filled with these gasses.
The Temple of Apollo and the area of Delphi prospered during the time of the Oracle. Delphi became the hub of art and commerce, with monuments to the Oracle erected throughout the region. It was a popular destination until the rise of Christianity, when the Roman Emperor Theodosius ordered the temple razed in 380 AD to eradicate any remnants of the pagan religion.
Today, the ruins at Delphi, which are located approximately 100 miles from Athens, are a UNESCO World Heritage site that is open to visitors.