A Trip to Greece and Cyprus: An Exploration of Sacredness, Oracles, and the Power of Drumming with Layne Redmond, May 2005

Published in the Uncategorized

This is a workbook I created for the women drummers traveling to Greece and Cyrpus with Layne Redmond to perform rituals at sites sacred to Aphrodite and Dionysos. I’ve taken out most references to the 91 illustrations in the original workbook.

A Trip to Greece and Cyprus: Exploration of Sacredness, Oracles, and the Power of Drumming with Layne Redmond, May 11-24, 2005

Table of Contents:

Part I: Shamanic Tour of the Oracular Sites of Greece: May 11-18

May 11-13, Athens, Greece

1. A Brief History of Athens, page 5.
2. National Archeological Museum, page 12.
3. The Acropolis and Environs, page 28.
4. Iaonnini, page 45.
5. Dodona, page 48.
6. Delphi, page 51.
7. Epidavros, page 66.
8. Mycenae, page 68.
9. Corinth, page 72.

Part II: Drumming Workshop

May 19-22^nd , Cyprus

1. Larnaca/Nicosia, page 73

Addendum I: The Heavenly Fragrance, page 74.

Addendum II: Women’s Dreams in Ancient Greece, page 75.

Addendum III: Aphrodite and the Bees, page 89.

Addendum IV: A Primer on Greek Religion, page 93.

Addendum V: Notes from Euripides’s “The Bacchae” on Dionysis and Greek religion, page 102.

Addendum VI: A Greek Alphabet Oracle, page 105.

Addendum VII: Lo Diosa del Mar, page 113.

Part I: Shamanic Tour of the Oracular Sites of Greece: May 11-18

May 11-13, Athens, Greece

A. A Brief History of Athens

Prehellenic—or the 1^st wave: 5000 BCE-3000 BCE

thens was first settled by the Pelasgians about 5000 BCE from Thessaly (central Greece). They were an agricultural people who lived in fixed houses and communities, possessing domesticated animals and using implements of stone and bone. Their art consists mostly of pottery and female statues, probably fertility goddesses.

Gods dwelled in high places, such as the Acropolis, where were lots of earth-colored snakes and small hoot owls and olive trees. The oldest shrines on the Acropolis were to Erechtheus (later housed in the present Erechtheion) and the half-human half-snake Cecrops. Cecrops established marriage and the abandonment of blood sacrifice in Athens. Later, Dionysus was considered to be the opposite force, an uncivilizing element needed to be a whole person. Clepsydra Spring and the four caves on the Acropolis were associated with vegetation and fertility worship, and dedicated to Zeus, Apollo, Pan, Eros, and Aphrodite.

The story of the birth of Athens is that Poseidon and Athena had a contest to see who would become the local protector. Poseidon was the god of the sea, and struck a stone on the Acropolis with his trident, producing a saltwater spring. Athena gave Athens the olive tree, and she was declared the winner. Her gift was practical, whereas his was miraculous.

Early Helladic: 2^nd wave: 3000-1900 B

Skilled smiths invaded from Anatolia, who turned Athens into a bronze-working center. The town itself spread as far away as a mile from the Acropolis, to a place known as the Academy, where Plato would later teach, consisting of dozens of sacred olive trees sprung from Athena’s olive on the Acropolis. The height of this civilization was not seen again in Athens for another 500 years.

3^rd wave: 1900-1600 BCE:

Indo-European invaders arrived from beyond the Danube, and brought with them a language that was a precursor to the Greek language. These invaders introduced the chariot, the potter’s wheel, the long sword, and the megaron style of housebuilding—a form of dwelling built on a rock fortress, with an oblong double room and a pitched roof with a fixed hearth in the main hall. These megarons soon became temples, or houses for the Gods. The Acropolis was left to the Gods alone, unless a tyrant or despot claimed the spot. These Indo-Europeans also brought their patriarchal ethics, new burial customs, and bluish Minyan-ware pottery. There rulers were warrior, priest, judge, and king all in one. This Indo-European invasion, cultural relapse, and slow assimilation formed the Hellenic Greeks. The resultant culture was backward and economically depressed—they lost all practical knowledge about boats or the sea, for instance.

4^th wave: Late Helladic, known as Mycenaean. 1600 BCE-1150 BCE

Athens grew in wealth and power, and eventually eclipsed Minoan Crete, which had dominated the Aegean since 1750 BCE. The Greeks were warrior-hunters, the Minoans were mostly a trading community, and eventually fell in 1400 BCE. But as far as Greeks warriors go, Athenians are hardly mentioned in Homer’s Iliad. They became traders, mostly with Cnossos, Phoenicia, and Egypt. At this time, the Acropolis was a place of shrines and altars, tombs, towers, and gates, mostly centered near where the Erechtheum would be built.

The myths say that their first king was Cecrops, in 1581 BCE. His predecessor was Erechtheus (which means earthgod, a link to the vegetation god) who came from Egypt, who at that same time settled on the Peloponnese. These stories may be based on fact because in 1570 BCE the Shepherd Kings and their mercenaries were expelled from Egypt. This could explain the sudden wealth of Mycenae.

Eleusis was Athen’s neighbor and rival. Its host goddess was Demeter, the goddess of grain. In 600 BCE Eleusis was absorbed into Attica. At the time, Athens worshipped mostly fertility gods, including Erectheus, Boutes the Ploughman, the Dew Maidens, and the Arrhephoroi—maidens who lived by the temple of Athena Polias. At this time, Athens established a festival they called the Panathenaea to honor Athena, which was an annual celebration, described in the 2^nd Century AD by Pausanias, a travel writer, as follows: “Having placed on their heads what the priestess of Athena gives them to carry—neither she who gives nor they who carry have any knowledge what it is—the maidens descend by the natural underground passage that goes across to the adjacent precinct within the city of Aphrodite in the Gardens. They leave down below what they carry and receive something else which they bring back covered up.” These rites are supposedly closed related to part of the Eleusisian mysteries.

The next king of note was Theseus, sired by King Aegeus (or possibly Poseidon). Theseus united the 12 separate Greek states, and delivered Athens from an obligation to Minoan Crete. This may be related to a time when Minoa invaded Athens during a time of drought and blight, and the story of Theseus against the Bull of Marathon may represent a successful campaign to free Athens from the Minoans. Every nine years, seven maids and seven young men had to be sent to Crete as tribute. Theseus went, seduced Minos daughter Ariadne, killed the Minotaur with her help, and returned to Athens, dropping Ariadne off on Naxos on the way. Theseus forgot to change his sails from black to white on his return, and his father, Aegeus, thinking this meant that Theseus had failed, jumped off the Acropolis. Minos fell in 1400 BCE.

Around 1300 BCE, Mycenae began to build defenses, and trade fell off, due to sea pirates—the Sea Peoples—and hordes of migrant tribesmen entered Greece from across the Danube. But Athens never surrendered in 100 years of invasion, and remained a haven for aristocracy, and a symbol of civilization, a link between the old world and the new. In 1250 BCE, they created five levels of defense on the Acropolis. By 1225, it had become an impregnable fortress with walls. Its main water source was the Clepsydra Spring outside its walls, but there was also a cleft in the rock, the bottom of which collected water. For one 25-year-period when Athens was besieged, this may have been their sole source of water. The upper section includes the Cave of Aglauros which was used for ritual purposes.

Fifth Wave: 1100 to 750 BCE the Greek Dark Age.

This is the time of the Trojan War, which was probably designed for plunder instead of trade, since they sacked the city and then left. After ten years fighting the Trojans, the Greeks returned to turmoil at home. Weakened, it took only ten years for the Dorians to strike, but it took 100 years for the central Greek government to finally fall, at which time Greece returned to farming in harsh impoverished conditions, except in Athens.

In 1068 BCE there was a large-scale invasion, and the oracle of Delphi promised victory to the invaders if they didn’t kill the Athenian King Codrus. But Codrus went disguised as a woodcutter into the enemy camp and provoked some soldiers into killing him. The Athenians at this time abolished monarchy, believing no one could succeed the noble Codrus. Instead, archons ruled by appointment, until 682 BCE, when they were chosen by an annual election.

By 850 BCE some wealth returned and international trade. During the invasions, wealthy Mycenaeans came to Athens. In the 8^th century BCE Homer collected parts of epic poems from old sources for the Iliad and Odyssey. By 800, there was a common cultural Greek identity, and dialects from a common language, the worship of the same gods and goddesses, but no central government. The country consisted of hamlets, led by independent warlord. In 750 BCE a true alphabet came into being and the beginning of recorded history and written law.

Sixth wave: The Golden Age of Greece 700-400 BCE

In 700 BCE, new traders were locked out of the political process and armed guards formed an organization known as the Hoplites, where equality prevailed—you protected your neighbor. They formed free-fighting groups that were no longer dependent or aligned with tyrannical small-town warlords.

Between 650-550 BCE there appeared tyrannoi—the tyrants who ruled Greece, including Gyges of Lydia. Their support of these tyrannoi is the first time that the Delphic Oracle gives divine endorsement to a political usurpation. These tyrannoi were not unpopular with the masses because Athenians were pretty discontent with things as they were at the mercy of prowling mercenary bands. The tyrannoi instituted economic and agricultural reform, public works, and stimulated overseas trade—everybody benefited.

But this economic development did not affect Athens much, and by 650 BCE agriculture was pretty grim—they could not feed their own people. This famine also negatively affected exports and overseas trade. Everybody suffered, to the point that debt turned people into slaves—whole families were sold overseas for cash. To slaves, and potential slaves, any revolt was attractive. The first attempt at revolution was led by Cylon in 632 BCE. Cylon had married into a tyrannoi’s family and had won the Olympia footrace in 640, so he was well-connected and well-known and well-liked among all classes. Cylon consulted with the Delphic Oracle, who told him to seize the Acropolis at the greatest festival of Zeus. But he must have chosen the wrong festival to Zeus (there were several) because his revolution failed and he was executed. In 620 BCE, Draco’s oppressive Athenian laws were literally written in blood, not ink, and included capital punishment for almost any offense, at the judges’ discretion. Between 620 and 570 BCE, Eleusis came to be part of Athens.

One of the early statesmen was Solon, who was also a poet. One of his first acts was to overturn all debt and imprisonment for debt and slaves. Next, he limited all export of produce except oil so that the Athenians could eat. He encouraged the creation of a trade class. He himself apprenticed in clay and marble, and he especially encouraged pottery. He created a society where every Athenian father must teach his son a trade. He also gave citizenship to any foreign craftsman who would come to Athens. By 550 BCE, Athens’s pottery was the best in the world, overcoming Corinth’s monopoly. In 570 BCE there appeared for the first time an Athenian coinage. In Solon’s poetry we get many references to Pallas Athena as Zeus’ favorite daughter, the warrior-virgin who was also a patroness of the arts, as well as the archaic Athena of the olive. Then Solon went abroad on a retreat for ten years. Pisistratus finally won over the political vacuum after Solon’s departure, and a Golden Age began it Athens, beginning in 561 BCE, and reaching its height in 546, until it came to a close in 527 BCE.

Pisistratus expanded the Greater Panathenaea at the beginning of August (thought to be the time of Athena’s birth). After an all-night torch-lit festival, there would be a procession carrying a new robe strung to the mast of a boat on wheels, which would be borne by Athenian maidens uphill to her shrine on the Acropolis. The frieze on the pediment of the Parthenon illustrated this journey—it included portraits of marshalls, sacrificial victims, musicians, pitcher-bearers, maidens with baskets and sacrificial cakes, old men waving olive branches, and cavalry. A set of Athletic games were also included in an attempt to suggest that Athens was the equal of Olympia and Delphia and their games.

Pisistratus began a series of cultural, religious, and economic reforms, the construction of large public works, such as new fountains. Taxes were raised for large-scale projects such as the improved drainage in the city and improvements in the harbor.

At this time, Athenians were known to have honored gods of the grain and grape, and built the first hall of mysteries at Eleusis, and began a new annual country festival for Dionysus. Folklore has it that Pisistratus paid for the writing down of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. His son Hipparchus decreed that complete recitations of Homer were to be given by professional bards at every Panathenaea festival.

In 534 Pisistratus wrote the first known Greek tragedy. Before that the yearly Dionysian festivals had included short skits of rough mime with recitative and song. Before long one poet—Thespis—added the ability of one member of the chorus to stand forward and dialogue with the chorus.

When Pisistratus died, his sons took over and prosperity continued, but there were two serious challenges. The first was some sparring with Cleisthenes, a politician who first suggested that a vote be given to all free citizens. Then Spartan supporters of Isagoras invaded and tried to dissolve the Council of 400 ruling families, and actually exiled 700 prominent but “unreliable” families before Athens finally won.

In 507 BCE, Athens became a democracy again. They were prosperous enough that a treasury was built to honor the Delphi for the Oracle. In Ionia Athens became known as “the Greek miracle,” because of the suddenness in which scientists and thinkers were making new rational breakthroughs.

Cyrus had united all of the Persian tribes, and by 546 BCE had conquered Croesus of Lydia. Some of the best minds of Lydia fled to Athens, including Pythagoras. In 521, Darius I expanded through Europe with the help of Ionian Greeks, and by 514 he had Thrace and Hellespont conquered. Exiled Athenian politician Hippias (son of Pisistratus) bargained with Darius, as did Athens, for control of Athens. In 500, Darius chose Hippias’ side. The Ionians rebelled (with Athenian help) and in 494 Darius won. But in 498 the revolt continued and Athens and Ionians burned Sardis (in Turkey). In 492, Persians sailed for Athens, but a storm wrecked their armada. In 490, Persians landed in Marathon Bay, 23 miles northeast of Athens, with Hippias. Things looked grim and some Athenians were in discussions with the Persians as they advanced. At marathon, 9000 Athenians under Miltiades fought off the superior force of Persians, then literally ran back to Athens to prevent a seaborne invasion. This was the first victory of the Hoplites over the Persians.

The first Parthenon was begun in 488 to celebrate the victory over the Persians, and it was built along the axis of the sun on August 31^st. In 481, Xerxes invaded. The Delphic Oracle told lesser states to remain neutral and not support Athens or fight the Persians. In 480 the Persians invaded and sacked Athens and burnt down the temples on the Acropolis.

The Peloponnesian army threw the Persians out of Greece, and Athenians took an oath not to rebuild the temples sacked on the Acropolis. In 449 there was official peace with Persia, and Athens began rebuilding. Pericles decided that since they were no longer the strongest military force in the area, they would have to lead culturally, and decided Athens should become hostess to the muses. Return of the Panathenaic festival, the mystical initiations at Eleusinia, the Greater Dionysia, and the beginning of the rebuilding of the Parthenon as the temple of Athena (Parthenon), including the Proylaea, the Odeum (next to Theater of Dionysus), a new Hall of Mysteries at Eleusis, and the Temple of Hephaestus. The Parthenon’s frieze of Centaurs and Lapiths and the battle with the Amazons was designed as symbols of the Athenians victory over the Persians—or Athens as civilization and restraint triumphing over barbarism through its order, self-restraint, and creativity; or the drunken lecherous Centaurs are routed by law-abiding social action and the giants’ primeval chaos and bestial arbitrary power vanquished by Zeus and heroes. The construction itself is the first known use of the swelling of columns and their slight leaning inwardly, and the swelling at the center of the pediment so as to counteract the visual phenomenon that occurs when staring at massive horizontals and verticals (i.e., that the horizontals seemed to sage downward in the middle and verticals seemed to bend outwards in the middle when designed properly). The statue of Athena itself was so ostentatious and expensive and controversial that its artist, Phidias, left Greece among accusations that he had embezzled funds. The Peloponnesian Wars (that Athens would lose) ended construction of the Proplyaea, or the main gate. The war raged for 27 years. Sparta occupied Athens until 403 BCE, when they withdrew their troops.

Seventh Wave: 400 BCE-300BCE

Within five years of Athens glory, the trial of Socrates occurred in 399 BCE. The favorite Athenian deities at this time were Dionysus and Aphrodite—fostering a period of sensuality and alcohol, and preoccupation with death and mystical religion. In a reverse trend, philosophy shifted away from Plato’s ideals, to the rationalism of Aristotle. Popular teachings of the time included Cynicism and Stoicism. Instead of life-embracing, these practices were austerely moral and defensive, even ascetic and life-denying.

Athens was no longer a warring nation, and there was a commercial and international boom, but a decay in the moral structure led to a dog-eat-dog culture, where the rich got richer, the poor were exploited (justified by the “rationalist” philosophers as Nature), and civil suit lawyers got fat. By 394 militarism swept through Athens and a mutual protection deal was signed with Persia. By now, deforestation had turned Athens into a rocky place called a “fleshless skeleton” by Plato. 

In 386 BCE, less than 20 years following Euripides’s death, a sentimental nationalistic feeling grew in Athens about the “good old days,” and a law was passed decreeing that each year must include a performance of one play by Aeschylus, Sophocles, or Euripides (not Aristophanes, the playwright known for satirizing classical Greek hypocrisy).

Meanwhile, the Parthenon began to sprout statues of Athen’s playwrights and philosophers built with civic money, but nothing related to or dedicated to the Gods. Athens became a museum culture.

Alexander conquered Athens 338 BCE, and at the time the Parthenon was so celebrated that one of his first actions was to dedicate a series of shields for it. But by 300 AD the city was 40 acres enclosed within walls. The philosophic schools never closed, but by 400 Synesius wrote it “now depends for renown on its beekeepers.” Athens became so fallen that by 1300 AD locals no longer even knew the history of the Parthenon and thought it was built as a Christian church. In 1978 it was said that more damage had been done to the Parthenon by erosion due to air pollution than in the previous 2400 years.

B. National Archaeological Museum

            Note: Keep your ticket stub, you’ll need it as you move from area to area.

The Museum Itself

“Museum” is, of course, a Greek word. The present National Archaeological Museum in Athens was originally begun on this site in 1874, collecting artifacts from the original National Museum (in the Temple of Hephaistos). The earlier national museums included the Philomouson (Lovers of the Muses) in Athens in 1813, and the National Museum of Aegina (1829), which was at the time the provisional capital of independent Greece. Construction continued until 1889, expanding in 1939.

Highlights of the Museum’s Collection

Room 6: Cycladic (3200-1100 BCE)

Room 4: Mycenaean

Case #1: 992, the Minoan Pantheon, four female figures, surrounded by Minoan religious symbols, double ax, sun and moon, figure-8 shield, poppies.

The Gold Bull with disks and bull rhyton illustrate sacrificial rituals. Note the spiral designs and labyrinth—both symbols of the initiatory rituals of Minoan religion.

Figure 5: Case 3: Mask of Agamemnon, 16th-century BCE. Actually 3 centuries earlier than the Trojan War. Considered the beginning of western portraiture, with recognizable (not idealized or abstracted) human characteristics.

Figure 7: Ring with homage of demons to a goddess, 15th-century BCE, Mycenaean. One of the first known objects with a religious motif. A goddess is seated in an orchard, carrying a rhyton, while four demons—half insect, half animal—approach her with long-necked wine vessels. Thought to be created in response to a drought.

From 1200-900 BCE, the era of the Trojan War, art died as a result of the amount of war casualties, the cost of the war, and subsequent invasions, all of which led to incredible poverty throughout Greece. There was also a general crisis all over the world, and the resultant loss of art. In the 9^th century, after a period when Athens flourished, away from the turbulence along trade routes and the islands, art rebegan, primarily seen in the creation of pottery, such as funerary amphora, which were found at the Dipylon (two entrances) of the necropolis on the Elysian Road, at the gates of Athens.

Figure 9: “The Mourners,” a striped Sema (indicator), 8th-century BCE. There is a musical rhythm in the depiction of the rows of mourners of greater and diminishing width, and a counter-balance of animals and humans. The pattern emphasizes the shape of the vase. These semas were placed over graves, although cremation was no longer practiced.

Figure 10: Compare with vase above. The ratio, or science of rules, that determined the placement of every aspect of a vase.

Figure 11: Striped wine jug, 8th-century BCE. The inscription reads: “The dancer who dances best will receive this vase.”

Figure 13: Detail of Artemis from Figure 12, with 4 winged horses and doe held by antlers.

Figure 14: Corinthian, votive tablet with procession and sacrifice. Sacred grotto of the nymph of Pitsa, near Corinth. Procession of donors approaching a low, bare altar, with garlanded women and youths, wine being poured by the woman leading the group, a lamb by the boy behind her, a pair of musicians, and flowering branches. Wooden plaques like these were hung on the walls of chapel-like structures built over tombs.

Figure 15: Mirror of woman with sphinxes, Corinth, 6th-century BCE. Associated with Aphrodite. Objects like these were found in her temple on the Acropolis, Corinth.

Rooms 7-13 Archaic Sculpture

Figure 16: #3851, The Kouros of Croesus (520 BCE). Although the depiction of an actual youth, idealized, static.

Rooms 14-21 Classical Sculptures

Figure 17: Apollo of Omphalos, 5th-century BCE. Marble copy of a bronze, found near the Omphalos at the Theatre of Dionysus, Athens. The front is more classical, the back and torsion of the torso more naturalistic.

Figure 18: #15161 Bronze Poseidon, 460 BCE. Room 15. Compare individuality, movement to Kouros.

Figure 20: #126: Relief from the Eleusinian Mysteries: Demeter and Persephone (Kore) giving an ear of corn to Triptolemos, mid-5th-century BCE, from Eleusis. Was originally painted. The ears of wheat being handed to him and placed on his head were probably gold. Thought to be by Phidias, the greatest sculptor of Greece. Notice the pleasant arrangement of multiple figures—the boy is framed as if passing through a door, there is no single source of light, and even in such a low bas relief there is a suggestion of multiple planes.

Figure 21: Stele, end of 5th-century BCE, Athens. Highlights include the drapery, the naturalness of the pose, the youthful beaming beauty of her face. The deceased is taking a ring from a jewel case. Because of her dress, the handmaiden is considered to be Aphrodite.

Figure 22: Vase, 440 CE. Note the little wreaths and ritual vases like this one on the steps.

Figure 23: Aura or Nereid on horseback emerging from the sea, 380-370 BCE, Epidavros, from the Doric temple of Asklepios. All of the sculptures from this temple are in the museum, including the east and west pediments—the Battle of the Amazons and the Plunder of Troy.

Figure 29: room 20, Athena Parthenos, 2nd-century BCE Roman copy by Varvakion of 438 BCE Phidias original. This copy is 3-feet tall; the original was 50 feet high. Athena’s skin was made from ivory; she was dressed with more than a ton of gold. On her helmet a sphinx is flanked by two griffins. On her shield is snakes. In her hand is Nike, the symbol of victory. The original was destroyed in 296 BCE.

Goulandris Museum of Cycladic Art

Museum of Popular Musical Instruments

Figure 30: Attic Owl Coin, sacred to Athena, 5^th BCE.

C. The Acropolis and Environs

Acropolis means “high city.” Since 1895, there has been continuous excavation on the site except during WWII. They first excavated down to bedrock, and then rebuilt everything currently present.

The Acropolis in Athens is inaccessible from all sides except the west. To approach the Acropolis the way it was done originally, you would walk up the slope from Dionyssiou Areopagitou and continue across the saddle connecting the hills of the Acropolis and the Areopagus. The current paved walk goes down (to the north) beneath the Acropolis wall, through a gate, where you’ll be within sight of the fence surrounding the Agora excavations. To the right, along the Peripitos, the ancient road runs around the Lower Acropolis, and the remains of the Klepsydra Spring, where traditionally people stopped for purification. Go up the path, turn left, and approach the Propylaia. The path itself was designed to bring clarity and focus to the mind. During this part of the pilgrimage, one was instructed to still the mind, purify the thoughts, and prepare the body for entering a spiritual realm.

Since most people only approached during the Panathenaea (see below), their preparation and focus would be on this journey for months. The buildings themselves were designed to create awe and respect. The original ramp leading to the Propylon was sloped, to accommodate the animals to be used for sacrifices. The steps were created in Roman times.

The Panathenaea

The Panathenaia was a festival celebrating the birth of the city every July, which coincided with the beginning of the Athenian new year. In addition, every fourth year Athens hosted the Greater Panathenaia. The procession began north of the Agora at the Dipylon Gate and traveled past the Klepsydra Spring before ascending to the Acropolis. Then there was a collective banquet in the Agora, featuring meat from the sheep and bull sacrifices (other than that, the Athenians’ diet was mostly vegetarian, with some fish). During the Panathenaea prisoners were set free for its 12 days. The celebrations centered around music and food, as Athena was said to have invented musical instruments, farm implements, and cooking utensils.

Temple of Athena Nike

The first thing seen as you ascend to the Acropolis is the Temple of Athena Nike, which was reconstructed in the late 19^th-century. Your eyes are naturally drawn upwards to it. It appears lighter than stone. Originally, it included a statue of Hecate.

The Propylon

The Propylon at the Acropolis is unusual in that it is in the form of a temple, which caused the common Athenian to approach it with a sense of awe, as this was usually an area reserved for priests. There is a physical sense of rising as you enter the Propylon, the high roof bringing the attention upwards, and then onwards to the Parthenon.

Originally, there were paintings on wood to the left in an arcade known as the Pinakotheke. Contemporary eyewitness accounts mention illustrations from the stories of journeying heroes, including Odysseus, Diomede, and Orestes.

After passing through the Propylon, the procession went to the right, to the eastern entrance of the Parthenon.

The Parthenon, or the Temple of Athena Parthenos (Temple of the Virgin Athena)

The site of the present-day Parthenon was continuously inhabited from the Neolithic times, through the Mycenean, Greek, Byzantine, Frankish, Catalan, Florentine, and Ottoman invasions. From the beginning, the snake and owl were always sacred to this site.

The Parthenon was built in 5^th century BCE to honor Athens’s victory over Persia on the foundation of another shrine to Athena that was destroyed by the Persians. It was designed by Phidias. Justinian turned the temple into a Christian church—the Hagia Sophia (Holy Wisdom), dedicated to the Mother of God. Later it was converted into an Orthodox cathedral, a Latin Cathedral, and a mosque. In 1687 a Turkish powder magazine exploded, shattering the shrine.

The Parthenon was a temple, and originally constructed using the lines of sacred architecture as a symbol of how god reside inside the human body. It was also designed in a way thought to attract a god or goddesss, using sacred geometry and architecture. It was also meant to embody the god or goddess’ spirit so that people could commune directly with her in it.

Athena’s temple is constructed so as to face the rising of the Pleiades on April 16^th, which coincided with the festival of the first harvest. Later in the year, when the Pleiades set, it was the time of the last harvest.

Pericles ordered the building of the temple. Pericles was a student of Anaxagoras. Plutarch writes of Anaxagoras as “the first of the philosophers who did not refer the first ordering of the world to fortune or chance, nor to necessity or compulsion, but to a pure, unadulterated intelligence, which in all other things acts like a principle of discrimination, and of combination of like with like.” In this way, by focusing thousands of Athenians on a single project, and having it dedicated to Athena (wisdom) would heal old wounds, create a new world, and a conscious polis.

Figure 43: A portion of the Parthenon frieze, featuring the three symbols sacred to Athena: The owl, the snake, and the olive tree.

Figure 44: A portion of the frieze of the Acropolis, featuring Poseidon, Apollo, and Artemis. Artemis modestly holds her gown together while he gestures of the two male gods echo each other. These are clearly portrayed as humans in God form or Gods in human form.

Figure 45: The horsemen who lead the procession, from the frieze of the Acropolis.

In 1903, Isadora Duncan came to the Parthenon for a family recitation of “Renan’s Prayer,” led by 25-year-old Isadora. For the next four months she mostly lived near the Parthenon, until she received a revelation about her future as an artist:

Anyone who, arriving at the foot of the Acropolis, has mounted with prayerful feet toward the Parthenon, and at length standing before this monument of the one immortal Beauty, feeling their soul lifting towards this glorious form, realizing that they have gained that secret middle place from which radiate in vast circles all knowledge and all Beauty—and that they have arrived a the core and root of this beauty… lifting their eyes to the rhythmical ….

The Erechtheion

The Erechtheion was built to protect an olive tree, Athena’s original gift to the Athenians (in a contest with Poseidon who offered water flowing from a rock). The olive became a symbol of immortality (in that it is self-sown and it is known to grow even in burned-out ruins). It also included the tomb of Erechtheus (thought to be one of the original kings of Athens), a temple to Poseidon, an ancient shrine to Athena, and altars to Zeus and Hermes. During the Ottoman occupation, the Erechtheum was converted into a harem, and in 305 BCE Demetrius lived there with his favorite courtesans.

The Acropolis Museum

There’s a lot of snakes in Archaic rooms I-IV, including Herakles killing the Hydra. These are thought to be representative of the demonic fertility rites brought under control by the worship of Athena.

Room II:

Figure 50: The Calf-bearer. Check out his ecstatic smile.

Room IV:

Figure 51: The Almond-Eyed Kore: symbolic of spiritual grace in the human body.

Room VI: The Kritios Boy, representative of the break with the archaic style toward a more naturalistic style. Also a break with representations of the spiritual presence, with a new idea of the individual journey, further development of the human soul, and a more interior journey to divinity. Focus on nous (mind) and soul (psyche), representative of Plato’s ideas. The human form is the temple in which God would be found.

Room VIII:

Figure 52: Nike pausing to tie her sandal. How ungodly and human she appears. This frieze is from the Temple of Athena Nike. Her body is suggested underneath her robe, and she appears halfway between divine and human.

The Karyatides: From the Erechtheion. Imagine the weight they had to carry, the slightness of their necks.

The Theater of Dionysus

This site was first a temple and dancing ground, then theater (opened 534 BCE—beginning a new art—drama), then a Roman theater. Final renovations were completed in 338-326 BCE, under Lycurgus, at which point it sat 14,000 people. The marble carvings are from the Roman period, 1^st century AD. In Roman times stones and cement made the orchestra waterproof so there could be sea battles. The frieze is of Dionysus.

Greek Theater

The tragedies were usually about the personal cost to those who sought truth and wisdom and justice. They were traditionally 1500 lines long, two hours long, took place in real time, and consisted of verse of varying meters.

The texts began with the dithyramb, or hymns of praise and invocation to Dionysus, which were performed at religious festivals. Beginning with Aescylus, “cart dramas” (mini-dramas enacted on the bed of traveling platforms) performed in the Forum of Thespia were combined with the dithyrambs of Dionysus, and performed every year between March-April as part of the Greater Dionysia.

John Addington Symonds:

As we rest here in the light of the full moon, which simplifies all outlines and heals with tender touch the wounds of ages, it is easy enough to dream ourselves into the belief that the ghosts of the dead actors may once more glide across the stage. Fiery-hearted Medea, statuesque Antigone, Prometheus silent beneath the hammer-strokes of Force and Strength … emerge like faint grey films against the bluish background…. The night air seems vocal with echoes of old Greek, more felt than heard, like voices wafted to our sense in sleep, the sound whereof we do not seize, though the burden lingers in our memory.

In 1904, Isadora Duncan came to Greece with her mother, her brothers, and sister, and they walked about in tunics and chlamys and peplum and put fillets in their hair.

Isadora Duncan:

One moonlit night, when we were sitting in the Theatre of Dionysus, we heard a shrill boy’s voice soaring into the night, with that pathetic, unearthly quality which only boys’ voices have. Suddenly it was joined by another voice, and another. They were singing some old Greek songs of the country. We sat enraptured. Raymond said, “This must be tone of the boys’ voices of the old Greek chorus.”

They gave coins to the boys and more and more came each night, until they had enough to select a chorus of ten voices that they decided were the most effective singers of the oldest songs. This chorus sang a chorus sung by the daughtes of Danos from Aeschylus’ The Suppliants while Isadora danced.

After one performance she wrote, “I could not sleep, and, at dawn, I went all by myself to the Acropolis. I entered the Theatre of Dionysus and danced. I felt it was for the last time.” She went up to stand in front of the Parthenon and “suddenly it seemed to me as if all our dreams burst like a glorious bubble.” She would always be a modern Scotch-Irish-American and never a Greek. Still, she took the choir with her to Vienna and Berlin, where no one was impressed and the boys were sent home. Duncan went back to Greece in 1915 and 1920, with an idea to train 1000 children to act out the great Dionysian festivals.

The Odeion

Figure 56: The Odeion. This is where musical contests were performed during the Greater Dionysia.

The Temple of Zeus

The Temple of Olympian Zeus emains the largest temple on mainland Greece. It took 646 years to build—it was begun in 515 BCE, but was then abandoned. In 174 BCE the King of Syria worked on it for 10 years, then nothing more until 131 AD, when it was completed by Hadrian. The original was built by Ictinos, the architect of the Parthenon.

The Agora

The Agora contains early temples to the Earth Mother (as Meter), Apollo, and Zeus. The Eleusinian procession began here on September 27^th or 28^th. It is in this Agora that sacrifices to Demeter and Kore (or Persephone) were performed as part of the procession. The Metroon was the Sanctuary of the Great Mother, predating settlement by the Greeks.

Temple of Hephaistus 

Figure 60: The Temple of Hephaistus, the most intact of all remaining Greek temples.

May 13^th-14^th: Iaonnini

D. Iaonnini

There is no place in all Greece more subject to thunderstorms than Ioannina, none more worthy of having been the abode of the Thunderer.—Captain William Martin Leake 

                                               

Archaeological Museum

Oracle of the Dead—the Nekromanteio, by the river Acheron.

Orpheus who went for love, Hercules who went for the three-headed dog, and Odysseus who went for the future to be told.

The Oracle of the Dead employed water and mirror divination techniques. This site known as the Nkromanteio at the river Archeron and was built at the gates of Hades and is the ancient site of the Oracle of the Dead. The temple lies at the crossroads between life and death and acted as a point of departure for those who wished to communicate with departed loved ones. Once the purification of the soul and body of the pilgrim was complete through fasting and prayer, they offered sacrifice to the divine, and walked down a long corridor leading to the central room where the spirits of the dead communicated to the living. In this central chamber are the remnants of an enormous cauldron surrounded by a balustrade. Throughout history metal bowls—or cauldrons with highly polished inner surfaces, were filled with water and used as speculums for mirror gazing.

The Nekyomanteion (Oracle of the Dead) at Acheron

The main part of the sanctuary is a square building, surrounded by a rectangular peribolos in polygonal wall masonry. The interior of the building is divided by two parallel walls into a central hall and two side aisles, each further divided by transverse walls into three rooms. Under the central room lies an underground chamber of the same dimensions, carved in the rock. Fifteen poros arches supported the roof of this underground chamber, which was thought to be the dark palace of Persephone and Hades. This building is dated to the end of the 4th or the beginning of the 3rd century B.C. Later, at the end of the 3rd century B.C., a complex of buildings was added to the west of the initial structure, consisting of a central court around which there were rooms and storerooms.

The Nekyomanteion at Acheron was the most famous of its kind in antiquity. The majority of the finds belong to the period of the flourishing of the sanctuary, in the 3rd and 2nd centuries B.C. but objects dating from the end of the 4th or the beginning of the 3rd century were also uncovered. A polygonal circuit wall, a courtyard and several rooms were added to the building at the end of the 3rd century B.C. The area of the courtyard was inhabited again in the 1st century B.C. The existence of the sanctuary as early as the 8th century B.C. is confirmed by the writings of Herodotus, the eleventh rhapsody of the Odyssey as well as the terracotta statuettes of Persephone found in the remains. The first habitation on the site though, is much earlier, judging from several Mycenaean sherds and a bronze sword of the Mycenaean type, dated to the 13th century B.C. The Hellenistic sanctuary was destroyed by the Romans in 167 B.C.

Excavations on the top of the rocky hill were carried out in two campaigns (1958-64 and 1976-77) by the Archaeological Society of Athens, under the direction of S. Dakaris. The uncovered monuments were restored in 1975-1978.

Remarkable is the tripartite structure of the building, which strongly reminds the idea of the Underworld. The pilgrims were subjected to three stages of physical and spiritual tests during their long-lasting stay in the dark rooms of the oracle. Through isolation, magical rituals, prayers and invocations, wandering in the dark corridors, having the common faith in the apparition of the dead, and being obliged to follow a special diet, they were appropriately prepared to meet the souls of the dead.

May 15^th—Dodona

E. Dodona

Dodona was the first Greek oracular site, sacred to Zeus and Dione, the mother of Aphrodite, and focused on a sacred oak tree known to draw down the force of lightning from Zeus. According to Herodotus, the old tree became an oracle when a black dove, from Egyptian Thebes, settled on it. Priestesses, the three Doves of Dodona, received their oracle by interpreting the rustling of the sacred oak tree’s leaves, the cooing of doves, of water in a spring, and the melody created by brass wind gongs blowing in the tree’s branches. At times they heard the oracle directly from the tree itself by placing their hands on its heart. The priestesses were traditionally barefoot and slept on the earth to enable them to practice their wind scrying rituals. The site also includes a Hellenistic theater, a sanctuary to Zeus (Europe’s oldest), which used to hold the sacred oak tree.

From the Metis website

What is an oracle?

An oracle was a response given to individuals or representatives of a state who came to a special place (a fixed geographical location – they were not portable!) to ask a question of a god or hero (hero defined as former mortal promoted to divine status – such as Heracles). Usually the question had to be submitted by – and the answer interpreted by – a priest or priestess.

Where were they?

The most important in the Classical period were:

       Dodona: Zeus’ oracle was the oldest in Greece (and most consulted by private individuals with personal problems)[http://www.culture.gr/2/21/211/21112a/e211la01.html]. The god spoke either through the rustling of oak leaves in the extensive woods surrounding the site or through the doves that were common there. The client scratched his question on a lead tablet (many survive) and got a simple yes or no answer from the three priestesses (who also called themselves “doves”).

       Delphi: the favorite for corporate consultation was Apollo’s at Delphi. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delphi] Ancient tales of the priestess being in some way intoxicated by vapour from the earth have gained some scientific backing recently.

       Epidaurus : Asclepius, son of Apollo, was most consulted on medical questions. Visitors here expected action, not just advice. The patients were required to sleep in a building near the temple, where they were visited by a dream and woke up cured. Inscriptions testify to the efficacy of this treatment, many skeptics having experienced cures.

Alcetas of Halieis: the blind man saw a dream. It seemed to him that the god came up to him and with his fingers opened his eyes and that he first saw the trees in the sanctuary. At daybreak he walked out sound. Inscription #18

As a result of the plague in the 430s the sanctuary found itself expanding rapidly – with a new temple and the famous theatre, and many other imposing buildings.

Lebadeia: Trophonius. A bizarre and intimidating ritual – involving spending a night in a narrow underground chamber – had a life-changing effect on visitors, according to Pausanias.

       Oropus: Amphiaraus. A myth similar to that of Trophonius: a fleeing hero is swallowed up by the ground. The spot becomes an oracular site. The Amphiaraion lies between Athens and Thebes – in a very beautiful small valley. It functioned very similarly to Asclepius’ oracle at Epidaurus: patients seeking cures slept outside the temple on ram-skins. Amphiaraus visited them while they slept. When they awoke they were cured. (This process is called incubation) It was also consulted more formally in the manner of the Delphic oracle – it was one of the oracles visited by Croesus, when trying to find out if he should attack Persia. (Herodotus 1.46 etc).

       Bura : Heracles. Bura was a town on the southern coast of the gulf of Corinth, now under the sea. Here divination was practised by the drawing or throwing of dice.

       Ammon (in Libya) : Zeus – famously visited by Alexander the Great.

In later times these were joined by:

       Didyma : Apollo in Asia Minor.

       Apamea : Apollo in Syria

Cumae: Italy

May 16-17^th: Delphi

E. Delphi

And they met together and dedicated in the temple of Apollo at Delphi as the first fruits of their wisdom the far-famed inscriptions which are in all men’s mouths, “Know Thyself” and “Nothing Too Much” Plato, Protagoras

When I had come back from India once, I went to Delphi on a shining starlit night and I noticed how with star and moonlight brilliant on tree-like columns, there seems a geometric relationship between stars and temples, as though there were lines drawn between the star illustrating the heavenly signs, as depicted in old globes of heaven. Stephen Spender

Lo, yonder the Sun-god is turning to earthward his splendour-blazing

Chariot of light;
And the stars from the firmament flee from the fiery arrows chasing,
To the sacred night:
And the crests of Parnassus untrodden are flaming and flushed as with yearning
Of welcome to far-flashing wheels with the glory of daylight returning
To mortal sight.
To the roof-ridge of Phoebus the fume of the incense of Araby burning
As a bird taketh flight.
On the tripod most holy is seated the Delphian Maiden
Chanting to children of Hellas the wild cries, laden with doom, from the lips of Apollo that ring. Euripides, Ion

For centuries, Delphi was the spiritual center of the Greek world, ruled by Apollo, the god of harmony in human desires, of the Logos (the word of Zeus and the Spirit of the word) It was a matrix—a place where spirit took form and was heard—and that form was poetry.

Archaic period locals worshipped the Earth Mother, Ge or Gaea. The Korykeion Cave was also a place of worship and home of the oracles for the Earth Mother. The oracles in these times were known as Sibyls, who gathered around sacred rocks and springs. Their messages were unpredictable, not only their meanings but the oracles themselves came only during certain seasons and without warning.

This early earth-based religion was tied to landscape, using the same sensibility that later would be used to found cathedrals, temples, and sites like Stonehenge—holy sites were located at power spots, areas of strong magnetic fields, or on sacred mountains. It was also a powerful remote setting that was not citified, like Eleusis was. To the Greek mind, Delphi was the center of the world, home of the Omphalos. Delphi was also formed at a very important pass, and the locals set up a toll in order to pass.

After the fall of Athens, following the invasions of Philip and Alexander, Delphi lost a lot of its spiritual and political power, but remained a symbol for Neoplatonists of the immortal nature of humans. The Romans plundered Delphi and Sulla sacked the temple complex. Nero took 500 statues, but left over 3000.

Julian the Apostate AD360 tried to revive the oracular tradition at Delphi, and got this message from the oracle: “Tell the king the fair-wrought hall has fallen to the ground. No longer has Phoebus a hut, nor a prophetic laurel, nor a spring that speaks. The water of speech even is quenched.”

The Myth of Apollo and Delphi

The myth of Apollo arrived in 1000 BCE from Dorian Crete or Thessaly, at a time when the important gods were thought to be male instead of female, and the culture became settled instead of nomadic. Rulers made decisions for tribes and claimed to have God on their side. No important decision was made without consulting the oracle.

Apollo was the son of Leto, who was tormented by Hera. He was born on the island of Delos (in the center of the Cycladic islands). He came to Mt. Parnassus to slay Python, and Python fled to Delphi for the protection of the shrine of the Earth Mother. But Apollo killed her on holy ground, polluting the temple. Apollo then went off to Olympus, where he was purified, and then back to Delphi in order to learn the art of prophecy from Pan (in this way the myths of Dionysus and Apollo are mixed, because Pan also taught his arts to Dionysus).

Apollo’s lyre was invented by Hermes, out of a tortoise shell and the antlers of a goat, whereas Pan (and Dionysus) played the double (Pan) flute. The flute was thought to be an instrument of seduction, passion, excess, and forgetfulness. The lyre was thought to be the instrument of calm, peace, spirituality, moderation, and soothed passions. Apollo represented the highest form of music. The flute was thought to be a peasant’s instrument.

Apollo was the God of artists, poets, intellectuals, higher orders of thought, and the triumph of civilization over the nomadic lifestyle and rule based on the passions and emotions. The gods of the common people were Pan, Dionysus, Aphrodite, Artemis, less severe and remote than Apollo. In Delphi, earthquakes and falling rocks would regularly destroy the temple, which was considered the will of Dionysus. But then Apollo would rebuild the temple and the two forces existed in a state of creative tension. For the three months of winter, Apollo went north, and the temple was turned over to Dionysus.

Apollo was also (one of the) god(s) of light. He ruled the building of temples via sacred geometry and architecture. He was the god of order out of chaos. He was also the god of philosophy, where the divine was thought to be understood rationalistically, rather than through divine madness. He was also thought to be a healer, and the father of Asklepios. He was also God of the plague, which was thought to be due to spiritual pollution.

His tools were the bow and arrow, striking from a distance and without warning. Interestingly, he supported the Trojans against the Greeks in Homer, and was always considered somewhat distant from the Greek people.

The Path to the Temple of Apollo

The path to the temple is a labyrinth. It goes through the valley (the way most people would arrive), went through the gate of Athena at Marmaria, and then would stop for a cleansing at the Kastalian Spring (rising up from the underworld), then pass through a collection of heroic statues and visions of human order anR the treasuries, before glimpsing the first site of the mountains, rising straight above the path as it turned to the right, into the blue sky. Then it passed the ancient foundation of the Mother Goddess via the sphinx and the Rock of the Sibyl, the threshing floor, up through close walls shielding the temple from view and up broad steps before arriving at a massive statue of Apollo gazing backwards into the valley through which they’d arrived.

Spring and Sanctuary of Athena Pronaia

This is a site of 3000 continuous years of worship, from archaic Greece to classical Greece to Hellenistic Greece. It was built on the ruins of a Neolithic site.The Sanctuary goes back to 5000 BCE, where it was a site of ritual sacrifice to the Earth Mother. Later the site was assumed by Athena (goddess of wisdom and consciousness). It is in a natural shelter that is more or less like a womblike area, fed by a spring, with rich vegetation, an oasis in the ruggedness of the surrounding area.

The archaic temple to Athena was built in the 7^th century BCE, and is one of the earliest temples in Greece. It was destroyed by earthquake; rebuilt in 5^th century BCE, then destroyed again by earthquake or the Persians. It was rebuilt again in the early 20^th century, then destroyed by a rockfall in 1905.

The Tholos Temple

The Tholos Temple was built in 4^th century BCE on the site of an older temple sacred to the Earth Mother. It is circular and echoes the tholoi, or sacrificial pits, of older Neolithic rites. It is built as a circle to resemble the world, as an entrance to the underworld, and as a symbol of the goddess. This later temple was built to Athena in 370 BCE.

Castalian Springs

Castalian Springs (or Kastalian) are where the priests and priestesses bathed before entering the temple. The bathing site was closer to the road in the Archaic period. In the later Hellenistic period a bathing area was carved into the mountain, including a shrine to Kastalia, the nymph of sacred waters.

Athenean Treasury

Figure 67: The Athenian Treasure (reconstructed). The south wall includes Delphic hymns to Apollo circa 138-128 BCE.

Rock of the Sibyl/The Rock of Leto

The word sibyl comes from “the will of God.” This marks the spot where Leto brought Apollo and taught him how to slay the dragon, Python. This is also where the sphinx, with its eyes closed—sleeping, dreaming—guards the temple. The design is very Egyptian.

The Halos, or Threshing Floor

Every eight years there was a performance here dedicated to Apollo called the Steptaria, which was a purification ritual of the temple, like smudging. A hut was constructed, and inside it was placed a table filled with sacred objects. During the performance, some boys rushed the temple, upset the table, burned the hut, and then fled to the Vale of Tempe (where Apollo as a boy fled to purify) without looking back. They later returned with laurel leaves to symbolize their purification.

The Temple of Apollo

Apollo’s temple in Delphi was constructed as a machine to control prophecy, invoked by human wisdom and vision. The temple also held the Omphalos. Originally, outside the temple was a 50-foot statue of Apollo as Guardian of the Harvest, and a large altar.

The Temple whose ruins remain was actually the 6^th on this site. The temple was built on a fissure in the rock where the underworld spoke to the oracles through vapors. The first oracles were all received through nature sounds—springs, leaves, caves, and crevices. But there is no evidence that a crevice still existed at the time of the construction of the final temple.

The Legend of Apollo’s Temple:

Earth gave the area to Themis as protectress of natural law. Themis gave her share of Delphi to Apollo. Mankind discovered the existence of the oracle when shepherds stumbled on the area. The first temple was constructed of laurel leaves from the Vale of Tempe, obviously connected to the purification rites of Apollo. The second temple was constructed of feathers and beeswax, made by bees sent by Apollo from the north. The bee in Greek myth is sacred, a manifestation of pure spirit. The third was made of bronze, perhaps in Heroic Age when Herophile was oracle. The fourth, built in early Archaic period, around 650 BCE, burned 548 BCE. The fifth, or late Archaic, was expanded, and included the creation of a retaining wall that involved the destruction of an ancient temple to Ge and earlier temple to Apollo. The sixth, or final temple, was built between 373-330 BCE.

The outer temple—including the Naos—was where the sayings of the Seven Wise Ones were written in gold, including sayings from Thales (“All things are full of God”) and Solon: “Know thyself,” and “Nothing to excess.” These sayings were meant to put the pilgrim in the proper mind to appreciate the moment. “Know thyself” meant two things—one is that you are human, and god is god. Second that god is inside you and you can touch her/him via the psyche. The ascension of the sacred way labyrinth was for that reason as well—first the cleansing of the body, then cleansing the mind, then awe, a process of opening the psyche. It was thought that the psyche ruled the mind and that the mind ruled body. Pilgrims first sat in the chamber with a golden statue of Apollo and a hearth or hestia where laurel leaves and barley burned, creating incense and smoke.

The Adyton

From there, steps led down into a pit. The Pythia, or prophetess, dressed in the robes of a young maiden, having bathed in the spring and entered the naos by walking through the smoke is accompanied by priests to her place on the tripod, or seat of prophecy. The tripod was a cauldron in which sacred objects were kept—bones of the slaughtered Python or Dionysus. Next to the tripod was the Omphalos—center of the world and grave of Dionysus. The oracles waved a branch of laurel, spreading the ascending vapors.

The Theater

Delphi’s Pythian Games occurred every four years, where contests were held in the theater, with hymns to Apollo and a musical competition between the precise notes of lyre and the sliding notes of the flutes.

The Stadium

For athletic contests.

The Oracles

Imagine … the Pythian priestess at her job, bathed and purified by the cold Castalian springs, frenzied by the sacred laurel between her teeth, seated on the tripod over the intoxicating air that welled up from the deep till she spoke of what she received from the oracle, sending men to death or conquest, loss or victory, or (often) merely confusing or deceiving them, for Apollo, though usually succeeding in saving his face, was full of wiles.                                                            Rose Macaulay

 Priests controlled access to raw uncontrolled inspiration. The oracles were thought to be possessed by divine madness, and their prophecies were given measure and harmony (in hexameters) by the priests. These hexameters are the earliest form of Greek writing, and writing was associated with Apollo and civilization, education, knowledge, philosophy, refinement, balance, and harmony.

It was accepted among the Greeks that the convergence of divine and human consciousness equalled madness. The oracles were also called belly talkers, because their voices seemed to come from their abdomens. They always spoke in the first person, as they were en theos—with the god. The mixture of Apollo and Dionysus at Delphi was somewhat unusual, and was seen as a combination of the natural force of creative energy and the rational.

From the web:

The Oracle at Delphi

“I know the number of the sands, and the measure of the sea; I understand the dumb and hear him who does not speak.”

The Delphic oracle in Reply to Questioners sent by King Croesus of Lydia

Lying just north of the Gulf of Corinth, which cuts a blue gash out of the most famous oracle in the ancient world and the holiest place in pagan Greece. From its central location and spiritual preeminence, Delphi was thought to be the omphalos, or navel, of the world, a belief supported by the myth of Zeus loosing two eagles from opposite ends of the earth – the spot below where they met, Delphi, was deemed to be the center and was marked by a conical stone.

For about one thousand years until the oracle’s demise in the fourth century AD, people would come from all over Greece and farther abroad on foot, by ship or in chariots to question the oracle of Apollo about their businesses, marriages, farming, colonial enterprises and other concerns. Apollo responded to these petitions through his priestess, the Pythia, a local peasant woman who had to be more than fifty years old and lead a blameless life. In Apollo’s temple, she would go into a trance and utter a stream of apparently incoherent speech. This was then interpreted by a priest, who translated it into verse and conveyed the answer to the questioner.

There were other oracles in ancient Greece, for example, at Dodona in the Northwest. This oracle was associated with Zeus, who was believed to have communicated answers to questions through rustling the leaves of a sacred oak tree. However, Delphi was by far the most famous, counting among its petitioners kings and emperors such as Croesus of Lydia, Alexander the Great, and the notorious Roman emperor Nero.

One reason for its prestige was undoubtedly due to its setting. No other place in Greece can parade such raw elements of natural beauty. The temenos, or holy area, of Apollo, where the oracle was located, was built on a slope cupped by towering 900-foot-high cliffs that are known as the Phaedriades, the Shining Ones, because at dawn and twilight they glow with incandescent light, as if they were the translucent crust of some volcanic furnace. From a deep cleft in the cliffs run the pellucid waters of the Castalian spring, famous since ancient times for inspiring poets. Below the sanctuary, a deep broad gorge filled with the thousand swaying heads of silvery-green olive trees sweeps down to the waters of the gulf.

The whole area, dominated by the craggy peaks of the Mount Parnassus range, is prone to sudden electric storms, when Zeus “hurls his thunderbolts with sparking hand,” as well as earthquakes and landslides. Buzzards and vultures soar upon thermals above the cliff tops, and innumerable birds and cicadas make the landscape buzz and whirr with life.

It is now wonder that before the site became dedicated to Apollo, Delphi was sacred to Ge – also known as Gaea – the earth goddess. According to legend, her oracular shrine, originally called Pytho, was guarded by a giant serpent, the Python, a creature commonly associated with the chthonic, or earthly, power of nature. Apollo, god of light, reason and civilized arts such as music, medicine and archery, came to the shrine, slew the Python and installed there his own priestess, the Pythia.

In historical times, Apollo’s oracle grew in prestige, and by the end of the seventh century BC, this was reflected in the opulence of the buildings of the sanctuary, the remains of which are still very evident. Kings and city states, wishing to honor or show their gratitude to Apollo, as well as demonstrate their wealth, set up a number of statues, monuments and small temple-like “treasuries” that housed precious offerings. King Croesus, for example, sent to Delphi a gold lion, weighing a quarter of a ton, standing on a 117-brick pyramid of white gold.

The statues and treasuries bordered the sacred way that zigzagged up the slope of the temenos, to the grand Doric temple of Apollo, in which the oracles were given. Even today, with the temple shorn of all but a few of its columns, its size and position, sweeping views over the Pleistos Gorge, are awesome.

According to the Greek traveler and writer Pausanias, who visited Delphi in the late second century AD, several temples were built on this site. They had been made, successively, of laurel branches; beeswax and feathers; bronze; and, finally, stone. The stone temple was burned down in 548 BC It was immediately rebuilt but collapsed in an earthquake in 373 BC Its successor is the one whose remains can be seen today.

Above the temple there is a well-preserved theater and, at the top of the site, a stadium. This was used for the Pythian games festival, which, after 582 BC, was held every four years. The entire sacred area, which measures above 200 by 140 paces, must have been a glittering array of marble and bronze. Nero is reported to have stolen more than 500 bronze statues, but still at least another 3,000 remained.

Despite such impressive displays of city wealth, the living pulse of the sanctuary was the oracle. This affected the fate of men and women and the destinies of city states. Pilgrims who came here, already moved by the natural grandeur and dazzled by the material wealth, were likely to be further impressed by the encounter with the Pythia. For when she spoke, it was the god Apollo himself speaking through her.

Such a dramatic spiritual encounter required elaborate preparatory rituals. Although the sources give an inconsistent, patchwork picture of the procedure, it seems that the Pythia, the priests and the questioners all had to purify themselves in the waters of the Castalian spring. Then, to test whether it was propitious for the god to enter the Pythia and give a consultation, a sacrificial goat was sprinkled with cold water. If it shivered, perhaps symbolizing the Pythia’s trance state, then the omen was good for an oracle session.

Questioners had to buy a sacred cake and offer it on the altar outside the temple. Then, one by one, they were taken inside to sacrifice a goat or sheep on the inner hearth within the cella, or main part of the temple. They then proceeded to the adyton, or inner sanctuary, and sat there in expectant silence with the priests.

The Pythia sat on a tripod – a bronze bowl mounted on three legs – hidden from their view, probably by a curtain. By this time, she was already in a trance, possibly helped by chewing laurel leaves and drinking sacred water. One source suggests that her tripod was placed over a fissure in the bedrock from which emanated an intoxicating vapor. One of the priests then conveyed to her the questioner’s inquiry and, after she had uttered the mysterious answer, he gave the reply to the inquirer in verse.

Many of the oracles seem to have been cryptic or equivocal. Croesus, for example, was told that if he attacked the Persians he would destroy a great empire. He did – but it turned out to be his own empire. Nero was warned to fear “three and seventy years,” but did not realize that it referred not to his old age but to his successor Galba. Despite such ambiguities and the potential for the Delphic priests to influence the Pythia’s responses for political ends, the oracle retained its prestige until the first century BC when Greece was under the sway of Rome.

By the first century AD, however, the site was in serious decline. The Greek writer Plutarch (c. AD 46-120), himself once a priest at Delphi, wrote a treatise called On the Failure of Oracles, a phenomenon he attributed to a general decrease in population. When Pausanias visited Delphi in the next century, he found it neglected and deserted.

The last recorded oracle was given in about AD 362 in response to an inquiry by the Roman emperor Julian the Apostate. The oracle stated poignantly: “Tell the king this: the glorious temple has fallen into ruin; Apollo has no roof over his head; the bay leaves are silent, the prophetic springs and fountains are dead.” In 393, the Christian emperor Theodosius officially closed the oracle down: Apollo, the god of light, who had conquered the earth goddess, had now himself succumbed to a new god, of a different, but more powerful, spiritual light.

During the succeeding centuries, the sanctuary fell into ruin and, by the Middle Ages, the village of Castri has grown up over it.

From the Observer:

The oracle was as high as Mount Parnassus, reports Robin McKie.

She advised generals about invasions, told citizens about the fates of their investments and even warned Oedipus about the dangers of murdering his father and marrying his mother.

Yet the oracle at Delphi was not blessed with prophetic vision, scientists have discovered. In fact, she was high on alcoholic vapours.

This is the conclusion of scientists – writing in this month’s Scientific American – who have found that the oracle chamber near Mount Parnassus was built over a geological fault from which seeped ethane and ethylene gases. As a result, the oracle, the temple maiden who uttered Delphi’s prophecies, was probably in a permanent narcotic state. The oracle’s utterings, upon which so much of ancient Greek life depended, were not the words of Apollo, the god of prophecy, but the babblings of a drunk or glue-sniffer.

“The petrochemical-rich layers in the limestone formations most likely produced ethylene, a gas that induces a trance-like state, that could have risen through fissures,” says the team led by Louisville University’s Professor John Hale.

The oracle was typically depicted in Greek art as sitting on a tall, three-legged stool, with a laurel sprig in one hand and a cup of water filled from the spring that bubbled into her chamber. In a trance, she answered questions of supplicants.

Plutarch noted that she sat in a chamber deep in the Delphic temple’s bowels, from which a sweet-smelling gas emanated. He linked this with her trances, though scholars later concluded her behaviour was probably a sham. Research by geologists has shown that the chamber rested above two intersecting fault lines.

“This intersection made the rock more permeable and provided pathways along which both ground water and gases were able to rise,” the team says.

Water analysis from springs around the temple discovered high levels of methane, ethane and ethylene. “Because ethylene has a sweet odour, the presence of this gas supports Plutarch’s description of a gas that smelled like expensive perfume.”

Ethylene fumes produce an effect in test patients in which they experience trances, euphoria, out-of-body sensations and amnesia. Occasionally, they suffer spasms and can even die. Ancient texts record that such fates were also suffered by the oracle. On one or two occasions, maidens serving as the oracle died after convulsions.

“God though he was, Apollo had to speak through the voices of mortals,” say the researchers, “and he had to inspire them with stimuli that were part of the natural world.”                                                         

Archaeological Museum

 Note: Get a guide from the front desk—all labels are in French and Greek only.

Highlights in the museum:

The Omphalos: A matrix—a point of origin and a tomb. There’s also a cauldron and tripod nearby.

A frieze of the Trojan War: Ares, with shield, Aphrodite who is leaning over the back of Artemis, pleading for the Greeks to Apollo, Zeus headless on the right. An illustration of sacred balance—Zeus and Ares are making the same gesture, goddesses of love and lawful order balance them, while Apollo receives their pleas.

Room #6: inscriptions from the Athenian treasury, Greek musical notation of two hymns to Apollo, 128 BCE. One of them:

Listen, pale-skinned daughters of thundering Zeus,

Maidens who dwell on forested Helicon,

Come sing and dance in honor of your kinsman Phoibos,

He who shall come to the twin-peaked cliff of Parnassos

And the rushing waters of Kastalia with the famed

Maidens of Delphi, to visit the oracular hill of Delphi.

Room #11: Dancing maidens—an illustration of the properties of the Earth Goddess: a meeting of the earth (the acanthus leaf column) via the maidens to the human, and then connected through the cauldron on their heads to the spiritual. In this way, feminine beauty is the image of the connection between the spiritual and the human and the earth and the human.

The Charioteer—once led four horses and a chariot. Plato said mastery was to hold four horses in harmony, or control under pressure.

 The immortal Muse
To your calm habitations, to the cave
Corycian … will guide his footsteps.

—Akenside: Hymn to the Naiads

The Corycian Cave:

This cave is on the marked E4 European long distance trail and is about a 4 hours walk from Dhelfi, Delphi or Delfi, now known as Apóllonos. It can also be reached by car as a tarmac road goes near the entrance. The best approach on foot is by track and foot path from the chapel of Ayía Triádha: a map showing local landmarks (labelled in Greek), superimposed on a topographical map, is posted just behind the church. The cave was excavated by some French archaeologists in 1969. Their 30 day investigation produced a tremendous number and range of objects from all periods of antiquity: a rare Neolithic male figurine, Mycenean shards, bone flutes, iron and bronze rings, miniture bronze statutes, 50,000 terra cotta figurines from the classical period and 24,000 astragoloi, or “knucklebones” (used for astragolomancy, or “prophecy by knucklebones”). In the 5th Century, the local people took refuge in the cave from the Persians (Herodotus, 8.36) in more recent times from the Germans in 1943, and during the Greek War of Independence. Famous visitors include King Otto and Queen Amalfia who made a royal tour with 100 torchbearers! Pan’s Cave is steeped in legends. In ancient times is was a place of worship to the god Pan. The name Corycian is from the nymph corycia. In poetry the Muses are sometimes called Corycides or the Corycian Nymphs. It is said that during the winter months the governing gods at Delphi celebrated Orgiastic rite at the cave with the local women acting as nymphs. The cavern itself is enormous, about 60 m long, 26 m wide and 12 m high, so a powerful torch is necessary to explore this gloomy and forbidding place. Just inside the entrance they are some ancient inscriptions and further in there is a rock with a circular hollow. Is this the sacrificial altar of the gods? Large stalagmites at the end of this chamber, separate it from the second chamber. Hidden by large stalagmites is a way through into a third smaller chamber and the end of the cave. It is described as another highly evocative spot for lovers of classical ghosts and it is from here that Menader got the idea as a setting for one of his plays.—Tony Oldham

 Divination in the Corycian Cave

From the web:

The urn on La Ruota della Fortuna is likely a reference to the incense burned during ‘the casting of lots’, and the animal on the wheel’s side may allude to the blood sacrifice offered during this ritual. Older images of The Wheel of Fortune and of the goddess Fortuna were certainly the iconographic sources behind early examples of this trump, but the Dellarocca and Dotti versions included additional layers of symbolism. The wand held aloft by the uppermost figure may refer to the knobbed staff carried by ancient rune casters. The objects pouring from the cornucopia could actually be ‘lots’ or flat pebbles in both versions of this card, although they could be grain as well. The symbolism of the cornucopia itself is connected with legends of ancient oracles, such as that of Delphi. According to Greek myth, Hermes learned the divinatory art of casting lots with dice while inside the Corycian cave, on the slopes of Mount PParnassus. Hermes’ dice, the bones of the demon Typhon, were taken from this cave. The name ‘Corycian’ was probably derived from its shape being that of a corycus: a large leather bag filled with flour, figs and grains.
 

May 18^th—Epidavros

G. Epidavros

At Epidauros, in the stillness, in the great peace that came over me, I heard the heart of the world beat. I know what the cure is: it is to give up, to relinquish, to surrender, so that our little hearts may beat in unison with the great heart of the world.                                 —Henry Miller

Drive to Ag. Nikolaos ferry to Egio, drive to Nafplion

We’ll see three Asklepios sanctuaries—above the Theater of Dionysus in Athens, in Delphi, and here (there’s also one at Corinth).

The landscape at Epidavros is a blend of earth and sky designed to induce stillness of mind by focusing the attention and inspiring reverence, and the confidence necessary to affect a cure. This site is at least as old as Mycenae, with evidence of habitation from 3000 BCE, and cult figurines from 1400 BCE. The sanctuary itself was constructed in 4^th century BCE.

The Ritual: first purification—then sacrifice—then thanks. The “cure” was structured along the lines of balance, incorporating the sanctuary (religion), games of skill and athletics (body), a gymnasium for philosophy and lectures (mind), and a theater for spiritual and emotional health.

Apollo and the Asklepion

Apollo was the father of Asklepios, and was also the god of the soul. Health was considered to be a matter of right thinking, leading to a healthy body. His main health precept was moderation in all things. Illness in psyche was manifested in the body—thus, in order for healing to occur, the mind had to be aligned to the mind of Apollo (via moderation/balance). But the symptoms of disease were treated first (the physical manifestations), and then proper thinking was taught. In this way, drama was considered a healing art.

The Myth of Asklepios

Asklepios was probably also a historical figure, but the Asklepios myth comes from Earth Goddess and the snake as a symbol of rebirth and eternal life. Asklepios’s portrait looks like portraits later drawn of Christ. Like Jesus, Asklepios was born of a mortal virgin and a God, and, although a son of god, his humble beginnings brought him an understanding of human suffering a god could never know.

Apollo falls in love with mortal virgin, Coronis, who falls in love with a mortal while carrying the bright god’s child. To appease Apollo, Artemis kills Coronis, and takes the baby, gives it to Chiron, a centaur (the embodiment of the beast-nature of man without spirit) who teaches him basic medicine. Eventually Asklepios becomes so skilled in the healing arts that he brings a man back to life, and Zeus kills him for assuming the powers of the God. The essence of this myth is understood that earth medicine must be combined with spirit. You have a god within you, but if you fall in love with the human, that god nature will kill you. True spirit is everlasting spirit—not the body. To overstep your boundaries results in death.

Hipokrates (b. 460-377BCE) was born on Cos—an ancient site of the worship of Asklepios, and is most famous for the Hippocratic Oath (still taken by doctors today) and his concept of “humors”—the balance of secretions that results in straight thinking.

The Pilgrim’s Path

Apollo’s sanctuary is on the top of Mt. Kynortion—where pilgrims would make a sacrifice before entering the main sanctuary. We’ll arrive from the south—but the traditional entrance was to the north, across a stream, through the Propylaia. Over the door was written “Pure must be he who enters the fragrant temple; Purity means to think nothing but holy thoughts.” This began a process of turning one’s attention away from the world and its temptations toward a spiritual path, to lawfulness, or to “straight thought.” The symptom of disease was that the mind experienced scattered dreams and irrational fears and needed to be free from pollution in order to bring dreamlife and waking life into alignment. After passing through the Propylaia, one began the Holy Way to a small temple to Aphrodite.

Asklepios’s temple built in the 4^th century BCE on the foundation of a temple to Apollo. From late 5^th century BCE, the site was solely Asklepios’s. There was a large sculpture outside of Asklepios holding in his right hand the staff of life and his left hand over the head of the serpent, as the one who could conquer and control it. There were two paintings inside—one of Bellerophon killing Chimera (unchecked desires) and one of Perseus slaying Medusa (vanity).

The Tholos (circle temple) contained statues of Bacchus and Eros—also a labyrinth of 3 stone circles representing body, mind, and spirit brought into balance—controlled and harmonized. This was also a symptom of how the outward form was a reflection of inner beauty (which was also central to a lot of “secret” Greek religions). In their teaching, spirit sublimates the destructive hidden nature, or upper forces capture and organize the lower forces, which frees the inner spirituality. This system is known as nomos versus physis, or law versus nature. Spirit is meant to preside over mind, and mind over body.

The Abaton: The site of the sleep cures. Natural forces were controlled via purification and sacrifice. During sleep, god entered the body and cured the patient, or gave a dream which gave a cure, or a snake was thought to lick the place of illness. Many of the stones found here contain stories of miracle cures. Blindness is interpreted as having its foundation in spiritual blindness, for instance. A reported 5-year-long pregnancy was interpreted as a refusal to acknowledge god within.

The Theater

[H]ere, in a Greek theatre, everything grows out of the landscape. The first impression is one of intimacy, yet it holds 15,000 people. The second is one of perfect, simple geometry, yet every geometric calculation is slightly altered in the interest of grace and of humanity. Most extraordinary of all is the way the auditorium grows out of the hillside and, as you sit in it, seems to continue into the landscape, making a whole world of which the spectator feels a part. Why did they site it here? Because for the Greeks the landscape was alive, and full of gods who had a positive relationship with man…. A Roman road cuts straight through the landscape, indifferent to its form. A Greek road is sensitive to the landscape, sensitive to its gods. So are their theatres.                                                                                                                         — Sir Peter Hall

G. Mycenae

 The Myth of Perseus

Perseus (son of Zeus and Danae) was the mythological founder of Mycenae. Prophecy said he was to kill his grandfather, and so he was put in an ark and set adrift with Danae. As a young man he conquered Medusa (interpreted as spiritual death or the permanent sleep of the soul). He is guided by Hermes, and advised by Athena, so he sees her reflection in the outer world (interpreted as the reflection of spiritual realities within human desires). His own soul awakens and he marries Andromeda, and with help of the Cyclops constructs the Mycenaen stronghold.

The History of Mycenae

Landscape suggests this was a power spot of the Earth Mother. An early myth of the founding of Mycenae was that Atreus brothers decided who should be king by their knowledge of astronomy (rather than as warriors)—thus being able to most accurately determine rituals and natural cycles. Current walls were built circa 1250 BCE, and were 40-feet high. The Tholos tombs (treasuries) were built from 1550-1200 BCE. Imagine the chanting acoustics inside the tomb.

from Dee Kling:

Regarding the origins of Aphrodite from Paul Friedrich’s The Meaning of Aphrodite page 27:

Probably the most fascinating and significant archeological evidence is the repousee figure of a goddess found in a shaft grave III (dated about 1600-500 BC) at Mycenae. It was unique in being nude. This nudity, together with the attachment of three small birds (doves?) to her head and shoulders led Schlieman, correctly, I think, to conclude that the goddess was Aphrodite. Even the cautious Nilsson admits that “the nudity is…..very remarkable, and after the cessation of the nude idols of the early Minoan and Cycladic age is unparalleled in the Minoan-Mycenaean civilization, except for the enthroned nude Idol from Delphi” (1950:397). Also at Mycenae is a “Dove Shrine,” and other phallic, dove, and poppy goddesses have been found in other parts of Greece, dating from the same period. Given the intense cultural interaction between Mycenaeans and Phoenicians, the possibility cannot be excluded that these particulars reflect the influence of the (semi)nude and dove attended figures of Astarte.

>From a conservative and rather superficial point of view, the evidence I have just adduced for a cult of Aphrodite in Mycenaean religion consists mainly of representations of bees and butterflies.”

I. Corinth

Corinth was considered “wealthy” by Homer; its wealth came from controlling trade through its isthmus. Corinth had an early reputation for luxury, wild living, and prostitution. The prostitutes even had their own temple on the top of their Acropolis. In March and April the landscape is usually full of blooming chrysanthemums. Seven columns from Apollo’s temple remain. Corinth also includes the ruins of an Asklepion.

Drive to Athens airport, fly to Cyprus

Arrive at Larnaca Airport

PART II: Cyprus, Drum Workshop

May 19^th-22^nd: Larnaca

J. Larnaca, Nicosia, Paphos

            Oh, would to Cyprus I might roam,

                        Soft Aphrodite’s isle,

            Where the young loves have their perennial home,

                        That soothe men’s hearts with tender guile

                                                Euripides, “The Bacchae”

Drive to Nicosia

Archaeological Museum of Nicosia

       Drive to Weaving Mill

            Chirokitia (Khirokitia)

            Archeological Museum of Larnaca

            Kition Temple, Phoenician Temple of Astarte

May 23^rd—Paphos

             Sanctuary of Aphrodite

Museum of Paphos

May 24^th—leave for Athens and flights home.

Addendum I: from When The Drummers Were Women, by Layne Redmond

THE HEAVENLY FRAGRANCE

Ritual practices in the ancient world often included the use of incense and perfumes. Scent was a channel to divine experience. Aphrodite’s power resided in the seductive scent of woman — and, by extension, in the evocative smells of flowers, perfumes and incense. She was particularly associated with frankincense, myrrh and the rose.

Frankincense and myrrh were used to preserve and protect skin from aging, heal the lungs and to stabilize the mind in pursuit of higher meditational practices. Myrrh was considered an aphrodisiac; Aphrodite’s lover, Adonis, was said to be born from the myrrh tree. Rose oil was applied to regulate the feminine reproductive system. The rose represented the sacred vulva of Aphrodite, and her priestesses presided over the mysteries of the rose. Among Hindus, roses were also associated with the goddess, and rose oil was thought to open the heart chakra to compassion and love.

According to current scientific research, smell is the most direct pathway to the brain and nervous system of all our sense perceptions. The olfactory nerves activated by the hormones of fragrance directly stimulate the brain and the pituitary gland, which controls the human hormonal system. Because of this, aromatherapists believe specific fragrances can instantaneously change one’s states of consciousness.

Ointments and oils for massaging the body were used in health practices of ancient Mesopotamia, Egypt, Greece and Rome, in particular at the temples of the goddesses. Essential oils were used for healing various physical and emotional disorders. In Egypt, burns were treated with a mixture of rose, sweet flag and vinegar. Rose oil, chicory juice and vinegar was recommended for headache. These treatments were often combined with hydrotherapy — bathing the body in hot or cold water, depending on the patient’s condition. 

Oils, ungunets and incense have also been used since the beginning of recorded history in ritual, purifications, prayers, and meditation practices. Often at the offering of incense and libations of scented oils there was a simultaneous offering of music, particularly the playing of flute and frame drum. Sacred plants were thought to have special powers, and shamans used them to facilitate trance states to enter the other worlds as well as to heal. The ritual practice of anointing someone with oil indicated an initation into a higher level of consciousness. These disciplines for transforming consciousness were transmitted and administered by the bee priestesses of Aphrodite, Cybele, Demeter, Persephone, and the old goddesses of Crete — Rhea and Ariadne.

Addendum II:

Women’s Dreams in Ancient Greece, by Robert Rouselle, “The Journal of Psychohistory V. 26, N. 2, Fall 1998”

Dreams appear frequently in the historical literature of the ancient Greeks, yet most are the dreams of men. The dearth of women’s dreams corresponds to the relative lack of interest most men had in women’s lives. However, just as scholars have been able to reconstruct the basic details of women’s lives in ancient Greece through the exploitation of sundry primary sources, so can some of the variety, cultural context, and function of women’s dreams be recovered from the same sources. It is also possible to glean, however tentative, some glimpses into their underlying emotional concerns.

The subject will be limited to historical dreams from the late Archaic period to the end of the Hellenistic Age, roughly 700 to 30 B.C. Fictional dreams will not generally be considered, except on those occasions when they illuminate the cultural context of a historical dream. This division is not as precise as it seems, since many apparently historical dreams may in fact be literary inventions. Just as the Greek historians invented speeches to delineate the various issues facing their subjects,1 so they invented dreams to reveal hidden motives of the dreamer or to foreshadow future events.

Women’s lives were not static during this period, and there were great differences in their status between contemporary poleis. From relative seclusion in fifth century Athens, living in the innermost rooms of the house, rarely allowed out except during festivals, their own names not publicized outside the family until their death, respectable women’s lives improved during the fourth century to the extent that some received a formal education and could read and write, while others wrote poetry or became artists, philosophers, or physicians.2

Despite their increasing literacy, little besides their names survive from antiquity. Virtually all women’s dreams from ancient Greece were written down by men. We know about Agariste’s pregnancy dream or Olympias’ consummation dream because Herodotus and Plutarch thought them worthy of remembrance.3 The dreams of women which resulted in the dedication of temples or sanctuaries were recorded by the historian or the artisan who inscribed it on stone. Even the narratives of the dream cures at Epidaurus refer to the dreamer in the third person. Whatever the origin of the supplicant to the god, whatever dialect he or she spoke, the inscription records the story in the local Doric dialect, composed by the god’s male attendants.4

It would seem likely that the writer or editor modified or altered the dream’s content in order to illustrate its importance to their theme. Agariste’s pregnancy dream is mentioned by Herodotus not for what it tells us about her, but as a prophecy of the greatness of her son Pericles. Similarly, the consummation dream of Olympias is significant because she was the mother of Alexander the Great. Temples and sanctuaries founded on the basis of women’s dreams are recorded because of the roles they play in the political and military affairs of the time. Even the dream cures of Epidaurus were written down to increase the glory of the god Asclepius.

Personal Dreams

One of the few exceptions is a dream found in a poem of Sappho. It unfortunately comes from a badly damaged papyrus text and the poem, originally of ten lines, survives only in fragments.5 It begins by calling out in the vocative “O Dream,” onoire, noting that it visits, phoitais, whenever sleep comes. The language Sappho uses conforms to the traditional cultural pattern of Greek dreams. Whereas we would say “I had a dream last night,” the ancient Greek would state “I saw a dream last night.” Unlike most moderns, who believe that the dream comes from within, the Greeks considered themselves to be the passive recipient of the dream. The word phoitan, to visit, was one of the words frequently used to describe the appearance of the dream figure, which could be a god, dead friend, father-figure, or a virile woman.6

This cultural pattern is found in the earliest Greek literary work, the Iliad. Early in the poem Zeus decides to send Agamemnon a false dream. While the Greek leader sleeps, Zeus sends Dream to him, and standing beside his head in the form of Agamemnon’s living, highly respected friend Nestor, he gives Agamemnon the false dream.7 Sappho’s poem shows that this dream pattern was not just a literary convention, but accurately reflects how the Greeks dreamed.

Sappho refers in the poem to the “sweet god,” presumably Dream, yet the language conveys anxiety, grief, separation, power, and expresses the hope of avoiding sharing some unknown object with the gods. Though the poem is too fragmentary to make much sense of it,8 it is clear that Sappho’s dream was an intensely personal matter.

In another fragment of one line, perhaps the beginning of a poem, Sappho says “Throughout I spoke to you in a dream, Cyprus-born.”9 Cyprus-born refers to Aphrodite, so called because although she was born at sea from the severed genitals of Kronos, she washed ashore at Cyprus.10 Talking to Aphrodite reveals another type of dream not mentioned in the historical texts, but hinted at and alluded to in medical writings and in the Greek magical papyri: erotic dreams.

Aristotle notes that women have dream emissions, an obvious sign of erotic dreams.11 In Greek, the association of dreams and sex was evident in the verb oneirotto, which refers to an unhealthy physical disturbance while dreaming.12 Beginning in the Hellenistic period and continuing throughout late antiquity there was a market for love charms and dream sending. Though most of their patrons were men, some were women. One of the Greek magical papyri concerns a young man who requests that the god cause a young woman to be attracted to him, “melting with passionate desire at every hour of the day and night, always remembering me while she is eating, drinking, working, conversing, sleeping, dreaming, having an orgasm in her dreams, until she is scourged by you and comes desiring me,” and ends with his fantasies of their lovemaking.13 Though the passion and anguish of every waking moment reflects his own emotional state, he is willing to concede she has an erotic dream life. That most Greek men did not think or write about such things was due to their fear of women’s sexuality.14

The Oneirocritica of Artemidorus contains several women’s sexual dreams. The Oneirocritica was a second century A.D. collection of dreams and their prognostications which Artemidorus collected from a variety of sources, including his own clients, other dream interpreters throughout the Roman empire, and earlier dream books.15 Though outside our period, these dreams are relevant to our discussion as indications of dream types.

Artemidorus asserts that if a young woman dreams she has many eyes, many would-be seducers will pursue her.16 In another passage he indicates that if a women dreams she has many breasts it indicates she will commit adultery.17 The dream interpreter is interested in these dreams for their predictive value, yet for us they are examples of erotic dreams. The phallic significance of the eyes for the ancient Greeks is obvious; one need only recall the blindness of Oedipus or Tiresias.18 The woman was dreaming of being looked at by men’s eyes, a symbol of phallic aggression. The dream of the multiple breasts is less obscure. Both dreams are examples of numerical multiplication of an object in a dream representing temporal repetition of an act.19 Though we know little about either dream, both seem to contain some fantasy of continued erotic pleasure.

Artemidorus also narrates the dream of a woman who dreamt that stalks of wheat sprouted from her breast and bent back into her vagina. She unwittingly had sexual relations with her son and committed suicide. According to Artemidorus, the wheat stalks represented her son, their entering her vagina sexual intercourse.20 What he treats as a prediction, we would treat as a subconscious fantasy, which she acted out.

Though poets, physicians, magical incantations and dream books may allude to women’s dreams that are personal, that are concerned with their own desires and fantasies, the formal writings of Greek historians are much more restricted. They are basically concerned with two types of women’s dreams, those of a religious nature and those of pregnant women. This corresponds exactly to the two activities in which respectable women were allowed to participate, religion and running the oikos, or household, which included giving birth to male citizen heirs. The historians’ interpretation of these dreams, their reason for writing them down, is that these dreams involve men or the sons of men. The women’s own concerns in these dreams are ignored. However, these dreams are usually given in fuller form, enabling us to sometimes comment on what these dreams meant to the dreamer herself.

Religious Dreams

Plato notes that “women of all kinds, the sick, men in danger or distress, or those who have had a stroke of good luck” make dedications to the gods on account of dreams or waking visions.21 Elsewhere he comments that many cults have been founded due to “dreams at night, prophetic voices heard by the healthy or the sick, or deathbed visions.”22 Plato gives little credibility to the divine origin of such dreams. Some men had a different perspective concerning women’s religious inclinations, as expressed by an unknown comic poet: “The gods will be our ruination, especially those of us who are married, for we are always celebrating some festival.” A character called the Misogynist complains “we used to sacrifice five times a day, and seven female attendants would circle around us playing the cymbals, and cry aloud to the gods.”23 Despite the occasional grousing, when a respectable women had a religious dream, men usually listened.

Some of the recorded dreams are clearly mythical, such as the dream of an old Elean woman who told the generals of Elis that her baby boy should lead the troops into battle against the Arcadians. When the battle began the baby became a serpent, routed the Arcadians, and slipped into the ground. The Eleans built a temple to the god Sosipolis, Savior of the City, and to his mother, whom they realized must be Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth.24

Others are legendary. In his guide to Greece, Pausanias relates the story about the foundation of the sanctuary of Thetis in Laconia. During the Second Messenian War, the Spartan King Anaxander invaded Messenia and took several persons prisoner, including Cleo, the priestess of Thetis. Leandris, the king’s wife, had a dream telling her to set up a temple to Thetis in Laconia, with Cleo’s help.25

The entire story is suspect. The Second Messenian War occurred in the seventh century B.C. Though King Anaxander was a historical figure, Leandris is otherwise unknown. There were no contemporary historical sources for this period. Sparta possessed no historian to record its history until Phylarchus in the third century B.C., while Messenian pseudo-history is also the product of the third century when a newly liberated Messenia sought to recreate its earlier history.26

On the other hand, the association between Thetis and Leandris is intriguing. The Spartans were not a seafaring people like the Athenians, and in fact they seemed to have had an aversion to the sea. The introduction of a temple to the Nereid Thetis, a minor sea-goddess, due to a woman’s dream parallels both the association of water as a birth symbol with the king’s wife, and the Spartan man’s aversion to both the sea and women.

There are epigraphical examples of temples founded and dedications made due to a dream. Most date to the Hellenistic or Roman period, and few details are given. Since these are public inscriptions, the actual dreams are not described, although mention is made of the divine figure seen by the dreamer. In this it conforms to the dream type mentioned earlier.27

Sometimes the dream is about a minor matter, as when a priestess of the Leucippides Hilaeira and Phoebe had modernized the face of a statue, but was commanded in a dream not to change the other one.28 Most of the dreams mentioned above concern minor matters, local legends picked up by Pausanias as he toured Greece in the second century A.D. and composed a descriptive guide to the regions he visited.

A more significant dream appears in Plutarch’s biography of Timoleon. Some citizens of Syracuse had requested that Corinth help rid them of their tyrant, Dionysius. As Corinth had founded Syracuse several centuries earlier, the mother city felt obliged to help its former colony and sent Timoleon with a small mercenary army. Shortly before he set sail, the priestesses of the mother-daughter goddesses Demeter and Persephone dreamed they saw the goddesses preparing to accompany Timoleon to Sicily. As a result, the Corinthians prepared a sacred trireme and named it after the goddesses and sent it along with the liberator.29

The reason for the priestesses’ dream was the special mythological relationship between Persephone and Sicily. According to a popular version of the myth, Persephone had been picking flowers in Sicily when she was abducted by Hades, who broke through the earth near Syracuse and caused a spring, later named Kuane, to gush forth.30 The island was subsequently given to Persephone as a wedding present.31 The importance of this dream for the Corinthians was its demonstration of support for the expedition and the prophecy of its eventual success. For the priestesses, this is the closest they could get to participating in the affairs of state and exerting an influence on the polis. For politically powerless women, this was a significant motive, conscious or not.

All these religious dreams share certain characteristics. The divinities in question were all goddesses, and the recipients of the dreams were respectable women, either priestesses or upper class women. Though they had their own motives, indiscernible to us today, for their devotion to the goddess, the men around them had their own reasons for acting on the dreams. In the mythical tale of Sosipolis, as in the historical story of Timoleon, the purpose was to defeat the enemy. The Spartans accepted the dream of Leandris, if there is any truth to the legend, as a technique of gaining the aid of the sea-goddess Thetis. Though a Nereid, a minor deity, she was widely known as the mother of Achilles.

Women did receive dreams from male healing gods, particularly Asclepius. Like most gods, he had temples and cult centers at different locations throughout the Greek world. Some were founded with the aid of women. Though the temple of Asclepius at Oeantheia, in Locri, was built as a thank offering by Phalysius, the agent of his cure was the poetess Anyte. In a dream, Asclepius had brought her a sealed tablet and told her to bring it to Phalysius, after which his poor vision was cured.32 Nicagora was credited with bringing the serpentine image of Asclepius in a carriage from Epidaurus to her native Sicyon. It is noteworthy that in telling this story Pausanias felt compelled to mention the name of Nicagora’s husband and son.33

The most famous temple of Asclepius was at Epidaurus. The sick and infirm would come there and, after a ritual sacrifice and a bath, would spend the night in the Abaton. If the supplicant were fortunate, he or she would receive a dream from the god and leave cured.34 As at other sites of healing cults, the cured left votive offerings.35 When Pausanias visited Epidaurus, he found six stelae standing, though there had been more.36 Four of them were discovered in the late nineteenth century, two in excellent shape, two fragmentary. Each of the surviving stelae contain twenty or more cures, dating to the late fourth century B.C.37 Women are well represented on the stelae, although most are there for problems relating to bearing children.

One of the few exceptions was Ambrosia of Athens, who was blind in one eye. She laughed at the various cures of the lame and blind, yet in her sleep the god came to her and cured her. However, he did direct her to dedicate a silver pig in the temple as a thank-offering and as a memorial of her ignorance. He then cut her eyeball and poured in a drug. In the morning Ambrosia could see.38

The fragmentary third stela contains the account of a speechless girl who took her seat in the Abaton so that she could see the snake return from its tree to the building. She woke up shouting and called for her mother and father and went away healthy.39

Asclepius is usually portrayed as an older, mature man with a beard, similar to Zeus but with a kinder expression. As a physician, Asclepius was the ruler of his patients as Zeus was the ruler over the gods and mankind.40 The Greeks saw in the father the image of the gods, particularly the father of the gods, Zeus.41 As Zeus was held in honor by mankind in general, so was Asclepius when the sick came to him and spent the night in his sanctuary. Asclepius’ major attributes were his staff, the snake, and the dog.42

If we accept that these inscriptions were not priestly forgeries, but accounts, perhaps exaggerated, of actual cures, it seems plausible that both Ambrosia and the speechless girl might have suffered some sort of hysterical conversion that resulted in sensory disturbances. Note that Ambrosia was directed to dedicate a silver pig in the temple as a mark of her ignorance. Though the pig was considered stupid, and Semonides in his misogynous poem calls the pig woman disheveled, filthy, and fat, the pig also had an obscene connotation in Attic comedy. Hus, sow, refers to the depilated genitalia of mature women.43 The sexual root of Ambrosia’s blindness in one eye is seen in the traditional Greek belief that the eyes are the seat of love.44 We have no personal history as to the origin of Ambrosia’s or the speechless girl’s conditions or how long they suffered from them. However, the appearance of the father-figure Asclepius before Ambrosia or his phallic serpentine attribute before the speechless girl might hint at a resolution of some oedipal situation.45

Other ailments for which women came to Epidaurus are of a more mundane nature, including a tumor on the hand. A Cretan inscription tells of a woman with an ulceration on her little finger, for which Asclepius prescribed a topical mixture that cured the condition.46 The patients’ belief in the efficacy of the prescriptions they received from the god in their dreams aided their recovery.

Dreams Concerning Childbirth

Among the most significant dreams for the ancient Greeks were those concerning childbirth, either those of pregnant women or those who wished they were. Artemidorus mentions several types of dreams of pregnant women and what they foretold. He also notes that certain dreams of pregnant women, such as seeing a midwife, merely reflect her concern for her delivery.47 Other dreams, regardless of what he believes they predict, may simply be wish-fulfillment dreams. These include dreams of children, of being pregnant, or dreams in which the dreamer is wrapped in swaddling clothes.48

The historians occasionally contain the mother’s dream of a famous son. Herodotus notes that Agariste “while pregnant had a vision in her sleep, she imagined she gave birth to a lion. After a few days she gave birth to Pericles, son of Xanthippus.”49 This is the only appearance of Pericles in Herodotus’ history, although he was the political leader of Athens at the time Herodotus was composing his work. Herodotus’ oral sources were many and included the Alcmeonids, from whom Pericles was descended on his mother’s side. Pericles was born around 493 B.C.,50 and the historian was composing his history some forty or fifty years later. It would seem doubtful that a dream Pericles’ mother had before his birth would be remembered fifty years later. Rather, the dream of the lion is used as a literary device, as a symbol of royal power to foretell the exceptional prominence Pericles achieved in a democratic polis.

It is, however, a plausible dream type. Artemidorus affirms that dreams of lion cubs indicate the birth of a child.51 According to Plutarch, Philip of Macedon dreamed that he put a seal upon his wife Olympias’ womb. On the seal was the figure of a lion. Though other seers advised Philip to keep a close watch on Olympias to prevent adultery, Aristander of Telmessus stated that Olympias was pregnant. He noted that one does not put a seal on an empty object; rather, the lion meant that their son would be courageous and lion-like.52 The son turned out to be Alexander the Great. This could well be an actual dream of Philip’s since a royal family would be more likely to record the prophetic dreams concerning their children. Aristander later accompanied Alexander on his conquest of Asia and left a collection of dream interpretations, which were still known in the second century A.D.,53 but have subsequently been lost. Perhaps Aristander recorded Philip’s dream in his collection.

The lion dream also has a darker side. Herodotus reports a belief that the lioness produces only one cub once in her life, and when the cub is about to be born it scratches and claws its way out of the womb, destroying it in the process.54 Aristotle argues that the story is incorrect, and was made up to explain the scarcity of lions.55 But the folk-tale of the lion’s birth had its believers, and in the second century A.D. Aelian mentions it.56 Aristotle does claim that after four or five decreasing litter sizes, a lioness will become sterile.57 The lion dream represents the pregnant mother’s anxiety about childbirth, that the baby will claw its way out of her womb when she gives birth.58

Anxiety about the unborn child is also seen in the dream of the mother of the future tyrant, Dionysius I. She dreamed she gave birth to an infant satyr, one of the lascivious, goatish attendants of the god Dionysus. According to the seers, this prophesied a son who would enjoy a long and prosperous career. The source of this story is Philistus,59 who had an excellent reputation in antiquity as an accurate historian in the Thucydidean mold. He was also a confidant and political ally of Dionysius.

It would seem that the dream foretold the birth of a lascivious, uncontrollable half-animal overly fond of sex and wine. In addition, Saturos is the usual Greek word for satyr, but among the Sicilians they were called Tituros. Remove the rho and you have Tituos, or Tityus when Anglicized. Tityus was one of the Titans, imprisoned in Hades for attempting to rape Leto,60 one of Zeus’s mistresses and mother of Apollo and Artemis. According to Homer, Tityus is punished by having two vultures constantly pick at his liver, which for the Greeks represented the seat of desire. In the dream of Dionysius’ mother the symbol of the satyr is over-determined, and reveals the anxiety she had over how her son would turn out.

At times the anticipation of marriage and childbearing could cause powerful dreams. Plutarch says that the night before her marriage to Philip of Macedon was consummated, Olympias dreamed she heard thunder and that a thunderbolt struck her womb, followed by a large conflagration which spread about and was extinguished.61 After the achievements of her son Alexander the Great, this and other stories about his birth were recast as prophecies of his divine origin and world conquests. The later embellishments have caused historians to discredit the dream of Olympias;62 however, an analysis of the dream suggests that it is credible.

While in his mid-twenties, Philip married four women in 358 and 357. One of them was fourteen-year-old Olympias, the orphaned princess of the royal house of Molossia.63 According to the royal genealogies, Philip was a descendant of Heracles, who was the son of Zeus.64 Olympias was a devotee of Dionysus and no doubt aware of the myth surrounding his birth, one version of which had been included in Euripides’ Bacchae composed only fifty years earlier at the Macedonian court.65 According to the myth, Zeus in disguise had impregnated Semele. A jealous Hera, Zeus’s consort, convinced Semele to ask Zeus to reveal himself to her in his natural state. He appeared as a thunderbolt which killed her. Zeus rescued the child she was carrying and sewed it into his thigh until Dionysus was ready to be born.

Rather than a prophecy, the dream reveals the anxiety of a teenage princess about to marry the ruler of a nearby kingdom. Philip’s descent from Zeus as well as his power as king make the thunderbolt a natural symbol. The thunderbolt is also Zeus’s procreative agent and at the same time his weapon of destruction. Olympias’ anxiety on the eve of her wedding is symbolized by the fate of Semele, impregnated by Zeus and killed by his thunderbolt. That such a dream would be recorded and remembered seems plausible, since Aristander is mentioned in connection with Philip’s dream a few months later.

The Epidaurian inscriptions yield several relevant dreams. Four concern women wishing to conceive.66 The first concerns an unnamed women from Troezen, who slept in the Abaton and in her dream was asked by the god whether she wanted a boy or a girl. She answered boy, and within a year a son was born to her.67 This appears to be a highly censored dream when compared with what follows.

Andromache of Epeirus dreamed that a boy in the bloom of youth uncovered her, after which the god touched her with his hand. Afterwards a son was born to her and Arybbas.68 The dream has an erotic component in that the young man is described as oraios, ripe, in the bloom of youth. He uncovers her, presumably rendering her naked, after which Asclepius, probably seen as a mature father figure, places his hand on her. The hand, like the finger, had a phallic significance for the Greeks. One need only recall the dream demand made of Aelius Aristides that he cut off one of his fingers, an obvious symbol for self-castration.69

The other two have a different manifest content, since the miracle is performed by Asclepius’ sacred attribute, the snake. Agameda of Ceos dreamed that a snake lay on her belly while she slept. She bore five children.70 The snake stands for the god to whom it was sacred,71 while the word used for lying down, keisthai, was usually used for lying down in bed and in Greek comedy was used in a sexual sense.72 Furthermore, the present indicative form of the verb is keio, which is spelt exactly as the word meaning cleave or split. The sexual implication of penetration was hidden by the tense of the verb used in the inscription.

The last dream is the most overt. Nicasibula of Messene dreamt that the god approached her with the snake crawling behind him. She had intercourse with the snake and gave birth to two sons within the year.73 The snake is associated with Asclepius in the dream and represents his disembodied phallus. All four dreams appear to be oedipal in content; in the first two Asclepius=father, in the last two snake=Asclepius=father. The snake as detached phallus seems to reflect a fantasy among Greek women that they acquire their lover’s phallus when they produce a child. Artemidorus notes a woman’s dream in which she held her husband’s severed penis in her hand, cared for it, and bore him a son.74 The women at Epidaurus may have believed they were impregnated by the god, although the inscriptions specify that Arybbas fathered Andromache’s child and that the woman from Troezen and Nicasibula had their children within a year, which is to say, after more than nine months.

Two other dreams concern prolonged pregnancies. Cleo had been pregnant for five years. After sleeping in the Abaton, with no dream described, she left and bore a son who was able to wash himself and walk around.75 The other concerns Ithmonice of Pellene who had come to the temple wishing for a child. In her dream she asked that she might get pregnant with a daughter, but neglected to ask that she give birth to it. After three years she returned to Epidaurus and asked the god to help her give birth, after which her daughter was born.76 The Greeks were familiar with a condition they called uterine moles. After intercourse a woman believes she is pregnant because her abdomen increases, the menses stop, her breasts swell and her stomach is upset. However, she never gives birth. Some have this condition for three or four years, some for the rest of their lives.77 Quite obviously Cleo did not give birth to a child able to wash himself and walk, but perhaps their belief in the efficacy of the god enabled women to pass the mole and later bear children.

Five dreams, four from Epidaurus and one from a literary source, report dreams which have been interpreted as anxiety-abortion dreams or quasi-cephalic births.78 The first concerns Arata from Lacedaemon, who had dropsy. She remained at home while her mother went to Epidaurus and slept in the Abaton and had a dream in which the god cut off her daughter’s head and hung the body upside down to drain the fluid. The god then took down the body and reattached the head. When she awoke she returned home to learn that her daughter had the same dream and was cured.79

Aristagora of Troezen had a tapeworm in her belly. She spent the night at Asclepius’ temple in Troezen and in her dream the sons of the god cut off her head but could not reattach it. When the god returned from Epidaurus he reattached the head, cut open her belly, removed the tapeworm and stitched her up.80

A variant found in Aelian tells of a women who went to Epidaurus, but the god was away. In her dream the attendants decapitated her and one of them reached in and pulled out the tapeworm. However, he could not reattach the head, which the god was able to do when he returned.81

Sostrata was pregnant with worms. She did not have a dream while at Epidaurus, but on the way home dreamed that a man, presumably Asclepius, cut open her belly and removed the worms.82

Erasippe of Caphyiae was full of worms. Her stomach was swollen and burning. She dreamed that Asclepius massaged her stomach and kissed her and gave her a drug to drink and commanded her to vomit. When she awoke she was covered in the vile matter she had vomited.83

In all five cases the women perceive themselves as being pregnant. In the case of Sostrata, the text uses the word for pregnant, ekuece, to describe her condition. The word used for the location of the worms in Sostrata and Aristagora, koilia, refers to a body cavity. Usually referring to the belly or abdomen, it is used by Hippocrates for the womb.84 Erasippe’s worms are said to be in her stomach, gastera, but that word is also used to refer to the womb. Dropsy, which Arata suffered, can be related to complications during pregnancy.

Sostrata’s worms are removed by a caesarean; the woman in Aelian’s account and Arata are decapitated. Aristagora is both decapitated and undergoes a caesarean. Devereux has argued that in these dreams decapitation=caesarean.85

According to Artemidorus, dreams about bugs symbolize anxiety, and getting rid of them means that one will get rid of their cares. Tapeworms represent wrongs committed against the dreamer; discharging them through the mouth means the problem will cease.86 More than likely these worms do not refer to internal parasites, but to hysterical symptoms or anxieties conceived of in terms of pregnancy of worms. Ridding oneself of these symptoms is imagined as an abortion. The various methods mentioned in the inscriptions, surgery and drugs, were known to the ancient Greeks. Abortion through the mouth was also a part of ancient folklore.87

It would seem rather that these dreams are open to over-interpretation, that the dream symbols lend themselves to either interpretation. Conceived of as pregnancy, fluids or worms are born or aborted.

In the dreams of pregnant women we finally observe some genuine women’s dreams, although they are still subject to the editing of the historian, priest, or artisan. Note that of all the pregnancy dreams only one concerns the wish for a daughter, reflecting the low value placed on female children. We can also ascertain some of the cultural types of pregnancy dreams, which include dreaming that one is carrying an animal or a mythological creature. The anxiety concerning the fetus and the ambivalence of the mother toward it is remarkable.

We have already discussed the negative interpretation of the lion and satyr dream. Artemidorus mentions other animals he found in the dreams of pregnant women, such as the fish and the eagle. Dreams of bearing a fish reflects the death of the baby.88 Greek biologists noted that although the eagle lays three eggs, usually only one survives.89 In the dreams of the women with worms it can be said that the tapeworm=fetus, since it would be easy to interpret the fetus as a blood sucking parasite.90 The tapeworm also recalls the viper, which according to Greek folklore is born by eating its way through the mother’s womb.91

Even living children were not immune. It was Arata’s mother who spent the night in the Abaton and dreamt that her daughter was decapitated and hung upside down like a piece of meat having its blood drained out. Artemidorus mentions a dream in which a women dreamed that she was drunk and danced in honor of Dionysus. Imitating Agave, she killed her three year old child.92

Artemidorus states that the inner parts of the body can represent children, because they come from within. The word he uses, splagchna, actually refers to the inward parts used for a sacrifice, including the heart, lungs, liver, and kidneys, usually reserved to be eaten by the sacrificer.93 It is also used to refer to that which comes from the womb,94 hence Artemidorus’ interpretation. The association of eating the bloody entrails of a sacrificial victim with the product from the womb reflects the cannibalistic impulses of parents.

The imputation of violent cannibalistic feelings on an unborn fetus also reflects parental teknophagic impulses.95 The Greek woman had to stay home and care for her children alone, with little or no help from her husband. She developed unconscious mechanisms for the release of hostility and rage by participation in religious rituals or by terrorizing her children with stories about cannibalistic maternal demons.96 In their sleep too, particularly when they were pregnant, the hostility of these women found a voice in their dreams. Though edited somewhat in the historical texts, that voice still reaches us today.

footnotes

1. On the function of speeches in ancient Greek and Roman historiography see Charles W. Fornara, The Nature of History in Ancient Greece and Rome (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), pp.142-68.
2. The best discussion of women’s lives in ancient Greece is Sarah B. Pomeroy, Families in Classical and Hellenistic Greece: Representations and Realities (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997). On the fourth century and later see Sarah B. Pomeroy, “Technikai kai Mousakai: The Education of Women in the Fourth Century and in the Hellenistic Period,” American Journal of Ancient History 2 (1977): 51-68.
3. Agariste in Herodotus 6. 131. 2; Olympias in Plutarch Alexander 2. 3.
4. Pausanias 2. 27. 3. Translations of the evidence concerning Asclepius can be found in Emma J. Edelstein and Ludwig Edelstein, Asclepius: Collection and Interpretation of the Testimonies, 2 vols. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1945). Testimonies will be cited in the following format: Pausanias 2. 27. 3=T. 384.
5. F 63 in David Campbell, Greek Lyric, 5 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982-93).
6. E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), pp. 103-5, 109.
7. Homer Iliad 2. 5-37.
8. Those who read the poems of Sappho in translation are usually offered brief, complete poems as if they accurately reflect what has survived. Reading the original, or at least a bilingual edition, is preferable.
9. F 134 Campbell.
10. Hesiod Theogeny 188-206.
11. Aristotle History of Animals 638 a 6-7; Generation of Animals 739 a 21-27. In the second century A. D. Soranus too noted this condition, Gynecology 3. 46.
12. John J. Winkler, “The Constraints of Eros” in Christopher A. Faraone and Dirk Obbink eds., Magika Hiera (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), pp.229-30.
13. PGM XVII a 1-25 in Hans Dieter Betz, ed., The Greek Magical Papyri in Translation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pp. 253-4.
14. Bruce S. Thornton, Eros: The Myth of Ancient Greek Sexuality (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1997), pp. 69-98.
15. There is some controversy concerning Artemidorus’ value. Among psychoanalysts, Freud believed him to be an important precursor (see The Interpretation of Dreams, trans. James Strachey, New York: Avon Books, 1965, pp. 37-8, 130-1). George Devereux suggests that the dreams he reports suffer from secondary elaboration by his clients (Dreams in Greek Tragedy: An Ethno-Psycho-Analytical Study, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976, pp. xxii, xxvi). Though classicists find his work of value, they disagree on how it can be used. See Arthur S. Oakley, “Notes on Artemidorus’ Oneirocritica,” Classical Journal 59 (1963): 65-70; Thomas Africa, “Psychohistory, Ancient History, and Freud: The Descent into Avernus,” Arethusa 12 (1979): 12-13; S. R. F. Price, “The Future of Dreams: From Freud to Artemidorus,” Past and Present 113 (1986): 3-37; John J. Winkler, “Unnatural Acts: Erotic Protocols in Artemidorus’ Dream Analysis” in John J. Winkler, The Constraints of Desire (New York: Routledge, 1990), pp. 17-44; G. W. Bowersock, Fiction as History: Nero to Julian (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), pp. 80-98.
16. Artemidorus 1. 26. Best available for Greekless readers in Robert White, trans., The Interpretation of Dreams: The Oneirocritica of Artemidorus (Park Ridge, New Jersey: Noyes Press, 1975).
17. Artemidorus 1. 41.
18. Freud, p. 433 n. 1.
19. Ibid., p. 407.
20. Artemidorus 5. 63.
21. Plato Laws 909 E-910 A.
22. Plato Epinomis 985 C.
23. Strabo 7. 3. 4.
24. Pausanias 6. 20. 3-6.
25. Pausanias 3. 14. 4.
26. Lionel Pearson, “The Pseudo-History of Messenia and its Authors,” Historia 11 (1962): 397-426.
27. Dodds, p. 108.
28. Pausanias 3. 16. 1.
29. Plutarch Timoleon 8. 8; Diodorus Siculus 16. 66. 4-5.
30. Diodorus Siculus 5. 4. 1-2.
31. Plutarch Timoleon 8. 8.
32. Pausanias 10. 38. 13.
33. Pausanias 2. 10. 3.
34. See my “Healing Cults in Antiquity: The Dream Cures of Asclepius of Epidaurus,” Journal of Psychohistory 12 (1985): 339-52 for detailed discussion.
35. Strabo 8. 6. 15=T 382. Strabo found Asclepian votive offerings at Epidaurus, Cos, and Tricca.
36. Pausanias 2. 27. 3=T 384.
37. IG IV. I2. 121-124=T 423. Edelstein only translates 121 and 122; the other two are too fragmentary.
38. IG IV. I2. 121. 4=T 423. 4.
39. IG IV. I2. 123. 44.
40. Edelstein, vol, 2, pp. 214-21. See the various descriptions of Asclepius’ image in T 628-44.
41. Plato Laws 931 A; Plutarch F 46, 86 in F. H. Sandbach, Plutarch’s Moralia vol. 15 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969).
42. Pausanias 2. 27. 2=T 688, 2. 28. 1=T 692. See T. 688-706 for the ancient descriptions of his attributes.
43. Semonides F 7. 2-6, discussion in the commentary by Hugh Lloyd-Jones, Females of the Species (Park Ridge, New Jersey: Noyes Press, 1975), pp. 64-65. On the symbolism of hus see Jeffrey Henderson, The Maculate Muse (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975), p. 132. Also note my discussion in “Healing Cults,” p. 345. I must note the double parapraxis that occurred in the typesetting of the article: delapidated was printed rather than depilated, and n. 58 prints pus for hus.
44. See for example Aeschylus Prometheus Bound 654; Euripides Hippolytus 525; Devereux, Dreams, p. 33.
45. The snake=phallus equation was commonplace in Ancient Greece. See for example Stesichorus F 219 Campbell, discussed in Devereux, Dreams, pp. 169-79; Aeschylus, Libation Bearers 527-35, discussed in Devereux, Dreams, pp. 181-219; Aeschylus, Suppliant Women 885-897, discussed in Devereux, Dreams, pp. 319-44; Aristophanes, Ecclesiazusae 908; the ancient scholia on Aristophanes Ecc. 908; Aristophanes, Lysistrata 759, discussed in Henderson, p. 127; Strato of Sardis in Anthologia Palatina 11. 22 (11. 21 and 12. 207 use lizards in a similar manner); Artemidorus 1 Prologue, 2. 13, 4. 67.
46. IG IV. I2. 123. 45; T 441.
47. Artemidorus 3. 32.
48. Artemidorus 1, 14, 15, 16.
49. Herodotus 6. 131. 2.
50. W. W. How and J. Wells, A Commentary on Herodotus, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1928), Vol. 2, pp. 119-20.
51. Artemidorus, p. 2. 12.
52. Plutarch Alexander 2. 4-5.
53. His collection is mentioned by the Elder Pliny, Natural History 17. 243; Lucian Patriot 21; Artemidorus 1. 31, 4. 23, 24. This is the same Aristander whom Freud commends for his interpretation of Alexander’s satyr dream during the siege of Tyre, p. 131, n. 2.
54. Herodotus 3. 108. 4.
55. Aristotle History of Animals 579 b.
56. In his Varia Historia he states it as fact, 10. 3, while in his Nature of Animals he calls it a fable, 4. 34. Pausanias narrates a tale from the Second Messenian War about a peasant girl who dreams that wolves brought a declawed lion to her farm. She freed the lion and restored his claws. The next day some Cretans brought the legendary Messenian hero Aristomenes bound, without his weapons, to her farm. The girl realized the prophecy of the dream, got his captors drunk, took one of their daggers and cut Aristomenes’ fetters. The hero then killed his captors and escaped, Pausanias 4. 19. 5-6.
57. Aristotle Generation of Animals 750 a 30-35.
58. See Devereux, Dreams, p. 177.
59. Cicero On Divination 1. 39; Valerius Maximus 1. 7. ex. 7.
60. Homer Odyssey 11. 756-64.
61. Plutarch Alexander 2. 3.
62. For example, Peter Green, Alexander of Macedon 356-323 B. C. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), pp. 35-7.
63. N. G. L. Hammond, The Genius of Alexander the Great (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997), pp. 3-5.
64. Plutarch Alexander 2. 1.
65. On Olympias’ devotion to Dionysus, Plutarch Alexander 2. 7. On the myth, Euripides Bacchae 1-12.
66. See my “Healing Cults'” pp. 341-2.
67. IG IV. I2. 122. 34=T 423. 34.
68. IG IV. I2. 122. 31=T 423. 31.
69. Aristides Oration 48. 27=T 504. The god Asclepius allowed Aristides to remove his ring and dedicate it, after inscribing on its band “Son of Kronos.” Also see Artemidorus 1. 42. For discussion see Dodds, p. 116; Devereux, Dreams, p. 36.
70. IG IV. I2. 122. 39=T 423. 39.
71. Artemidorus 2. 13.
72. Henderson, p. 170.
73. IG IV. I2. 122. 42=T 423. 42.
74. Artemidorus 5. 86; Devereux, Dreams, p. 190.
75. IG IV. I2. 121. 1=T 423. 1.
76. IG IV. I2. 121. 2=T 423. 2.
77. Aristotle History of Animals 638 a 10-18, Generation of Animals 775 b 25-776 a 8; Soranus, Gynecology 3. 36-39.
78. On anxiety-abortion dreams, see my “Healing Cults,” pp. 342-3; on quasi-cephalic births, Devereux, Dreams, p. 174.
79. IG IV. I2. 122. 21=T 423. 21.
80. IG IV. I2. 122. 23=T 423. 23.
81. Aelian Nature of Animals 9. 33=T 422.
82. IG IV. I2. 122. 25=T 423. 25.
83. IG IV. I2. 122. 41=T 423. 41.
84. Hippocrates Mulierum Affectibus 1. 38.
85. Devereux, Dreams, p. 174.
86. Artemidorus 3. 7, 8.
87. Soranus Gynecology 1. 64-65. According to the Elder Pliny, if a pregnant woman steps over a raven’s egg she will abort through the mouth, Natural History 30. 130. See the discussion in A. Preus, “Biomedical Techniques for Influencing Human Reproduction in the Fourth Century B.C.” Arethusa 8 (1975): 237-63 and E. Eyben, “Family Planning in Greco-Roman Antiquity,” Ancient Society 11/12 (1980/81): 5-82.
88. Artemidorus 2. 18, 20.
89. Aristotle History of Animals 563 a 17-23; 619 b 27-34. In the latter passage he notes that the mature eagle is jealous and voracious.
90. Devereux, Dreams, p. 174.
91. Herodotus 3. 109.1-2; Pliny, Natural History 10. 170; Plutarch, Divine Vengeance 567 F; Aelian Nature of Animals 15. 16. See Devereux, Dreams, p. 177-8. Artemidorus 4. 67 lists several examples of pregnant women who dreamt they gave birth to a serpent. Though he cites these as predictive examples, they also document the existence of dreams in which the snake=fetus.
92. Artemidorus 4. 39.
93. Aeschylus Agamemnon 1221; Herodotus 2. 40. 2.
94. Pindar Olympian 6. 43, Nemean 1. 35; Aeschylus Seven Against Thebes 1036; Sophocles Antigone 1066.
95. George Devereux “The Cannibalistic Impulses of Parents” in George Devereux, Basic Problems of Ethno-psychiatry (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), pp.122-37.
96. See my “Lamia and Other Greek Maternal Demons,” Tapestry (forthcoming).

Addendum IV: Aphrodite and the Bees, from Dee Kling:

from The Myth of the Goddess by Baring and Cashford page 356:

One way that the Greeks understood this presentiment of death in the midst of life was through the image of Aphrodite in the guise of a bee, inherited from the bee goddesses dancing on the golden seals of Crete, and linked to the prophesy and knowledge of a hidden destiny as the teachers of Apollo. Golden Aphrodite brings the honey of life to all she touches; she renders the person, the occasion, luminous and incandescent, she gives the blessing of timelessness, but she in not bound to stay:

For her breath is on all that hath life, and she floats in the air
Bee-like, death-like, a wonder. (Euripides, Hippolytus, 555)

Myth of AphroditeFrom Hesoid’s tale: The Father Ouranos (heaven) was married to Gaia (earth) who was once his mother. They were in the sense of married persons, one, but Ouranos would not let his wife nor his children see the Light. Angered by this, Chronos, the son, with a sickle given to him by his mother, cuts off his father’s genitals and throws them into the stormy sea and they are carried on the waves for a long time:
 And their immortal flesh stirred a white foam
 around them, and in it grew a girl. At first
 it floated to the holy Cythera, and from there
 it came to Cyprus, circled by the waves. And there
 came form a goddess, beautiful and feared,
 and grass grew up beneath her delicate feet.
 Her name is Aphrodite among men and gods
 because she grew up in the foam.

In the Myth of the Goddess by Anne Baring and Jules Cashford (p. 353)

Aphrodite is then the daughter of Heaven and Sea – the original mother goddess in many traditions – and the first fruit of the separation of Heaven and Earth, carrying as her birthright, as it were, the memory of their union. By imaging Aphrodite at the beginning of the process of creation when Heaven and Earth are parted…..love is drawn in the greater perspective of humanity’s longing for reunion with the whole….This was the domain of Aphrodite, drawing back together what has been sundered, bringing the eternal memory back into time.

Here is Aeschylus:

 The great and amorous sky curved over the earth,
 and lay upon her as a pure lover.
 The rain, the humid flux descending from heaven
 for both human and animal, for both thick and strong,
 germinated the wheat, swelled the furrows with fecund mud
 and brought forth the buds in the orchards.
 And it is I who empowered these moist espousals,
 I, the great Aphrodite….

Second Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite translated by Jules Cashford

 Hymn to Aphrodite

 Golden crowned, beautiful
 awesome Aphrodite
 is who I shall sing,
 she who possesses the heights
 of all
 sea-wet Cyprus
 where Zephyros swept her
 with his moist breath
 over the waves
 of the roaring sea
 in soft foam.

 In their circles of gold
 the Hours joyously
 received her
 and wrapped
 the ambrosial garments around her.
 On her immortal head
 they laid a crown of gold
 that was wonderfully made
 and in
 the pierced lobes of her ears
 they hung
 flowers of copper
 from the mountains
 and precious gold.

 Round her delicate throat
 and her silvery breasts
 they fastened
 necklaces of gold
 which they,
 the gold-filleted Hours,
 wear themselves
 when they go
 to the lovely dances of the gods
 in their father’s house.

 And when they had arranged
 all the decorations
 on her body
 then they led her
 to the immortal gods
 who saw her
 and welcomed her
 and reached our their hands
 towards her
 longing,
 everyone of them,
 to take her home
 to be his lawful wife,
 so enraptured
 were they all
 with the beauty of the Cytherean
 crowned in violets.

 Farewell
 quick-glancing
 sweet smiling goddess.
 Grant me victory
 in this contest.
 Favour my song
 and in another song also
 I shall remember you.

First Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite translated by Jules Cashford in Harvest 1987

In this poem the birth of Aphrodite is imagined as the act of love – born of the soft sea foam. The Graces who attend her, weaving her robes, plaiting her crown of violets, are called Joyous (Euphrosyne, Brilliance (Aglea) and Flowerings (Thalia) – all that makes for the sweetness in life, When she steps out of the waves on the shore, grass and flowers spring up under her feet. Desire (Himeros) amd Love (Eros) follow her where ever she goes.
Quoting The Goddess in Everywoman by Jean Shinola Bolen (p.233)

“Golden” was the most frequent epithet used by the Greeks to describe Aphrodite—it meant “beautiful” to the Greeks. And according to Paul Fredrich, noted scholar of Aphrodite, gold/honey, gold/speech, gold/semen are linguistically connected, symbolizing Aphrodite’s deeper values of procreation and verbal creation. She was associated with doves, those billing cooing lovebirds, and swans, noted for their beauty and pairing; with flowers, especially roses, traditionally the gift of lovers; with sweet fragrances and fruits, especially golden apples and sensual, passion-red pomegranates (a symbol shared with Persephone).”

Other myths say Aphrodite has no mother or father. That she was born fully grown, arriving on the shore in a sea shell. She therefore had no childhood, was a sexual being when she came, not “losing her virginity” to rape or incest.

She is often reported to be older than a Greek goddess, arriving from the East. Her ties are to Ianna, Ishtar, Astarte, Isis, Bird Goddess, Dove Goddess. In the Roman translation, she is Venus.

Her temples were in the liminal places, that is where the sea meets the land, where the land met the sky, i.e. mountains. This speaks to her transformative nature.

Addendum V: A Primer on Greek Religion

Neolithic

Nomadic tribes begin to form settlements. Their religion is a way for humans to continue communication with the Earth Goddess (which they began to lose contact with as they settle down and stop following the weather and the migrating animals). Early rituals feature orgiastic celebrations including feasting, music, dance, and blood sacrifice to bring themselves closer to the Earth Mother. Eden was already seen as receding into the past, when people existed in harmony with nature. People relied on thinking rather than following their instincts and the “earth signs,” which had distanced them from their gods. So they developed altars to represent the presence of the gods.

Later there appeared warriors who survived by killing and stealing rather than hunting and gathering from the earth. They found it easier to raid settlements rather than work to cultivate food. At the same time, people became dependent on a priest class that had appeared as intermediaries between them and God, controlling the gods and the bringing gifts and messages directly from the gods. Gods were split into Sky Gods and Earth Mother gods. The Greeks ended up with 12 main gods, 6 of each sex. Each represented a different aspect of a full human being (thinking, war, hunting, love, mother and father, etc.).

The first creation story was that the universe began with Chaos, and then Eros, or the lifeforce, came along and organized it on a human scale. Later myths told of how the Titans were slain by their sons, and these sons were more readily identified as humans as opposed to gods. These early myths relate a very complex psychology; e.g., one story tells of how Blame, untended by Reason, grows into Night—a darkness the covers the world—and is then enlarged by Dreams and gives birth to Injustice and Vengeance.

The Pantheon

Zeus—King of the Gods, guide and protector of the stranger and wanderer, enforcer of oaths, whose main weapon was lightning bolts of destruction and illumination. Ideas, flashes of insight, come from Zeus. Zeus brings rain to Earth Mother. In intellectual debate, one would invoke Zeus.

Hera—lawful wife of Zeus, protector of marriage, of a woman’s three stages (virgin, wife, widow). Her marriage to Zeus was celebrated in spring, January-February. Hera was the protector of cows and oxen (was called “ox-eyed Hera” by Homer).

Poseidon: There were three worlds—the underworld belonged to Hades, Zeus owned the heavens, and Poseidon ruled the waters. He was also god of horses. His trident stirs the seas. In stories he strikes rocks with his trident to bring forth water and horses. When a Greek sailor went to sea, he left a trident and a net in a temple to Poseidon. Poseidon created earthquakes, insatiable desires, unlawfulness, as he was seen as disobedient to harmony and Zeus’s lawfulness.

Demeter: The Earth Mother (sister of Zeus)—strong in rural areas, and main goddess of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Goddess of fertility and cultivation.

Apollo: One of three most powerful of Greek gods (along with Athena and Zeus), he was late to Greece. He came from the East, and became the central God of Greece. Apollo was the god of expressive art, moderation, law. He appears as judge in the plays Oresteia and Eumenides. Apollo’s euphemisms include: “Know thyself,” “Everything in moderation,” Curb thy spirit,” “Observe the limit,” “No hubris (arrogance) before the gods,” and, unfortunately, “Keep women under rule.” He founded temples, established sacrifices, and established the rules of rituals of purification, burial of the dead, and any rites for propitiation of the spirits in the other world. He was the god of physical light, and light as spiritual knowledge, and prophecy. His statues are the most beautiful, and he always appears as a young male in his prime.

Artemis—Apollo’s twin sister, goddess of the forest, she ran with the deer and untamed animals. She was goddess of wild places and gorges, as Earth Mother and huntress. She was goddess of the light of the moon and stars and the night. The full moon of April-May was her festival (on the 23^rd, this year, our last night on Cypress). She was the goddess of young girls, and was the most popular goddess. Her rites were established as tree cults. Boys were flogged at her altar every year in Sparta.

Ares—god of war and sexual passion, paired with Aphrodite, the parents of Eros. In Hesiod he is the child of chaos, which joins matter and spirit in harmony. Young dogs were sacrificed at his altar—which is where we get the saying “the dogs of war.”

Aphrodite did not have a normal birth. She was born through the violent dismemberment of Ouranos by Kronos (two Titans)—his seed fell on the ocean, and she was born without a mother. She originated as the Earth Mother from the Phoenician race. She was goddess of love and nature, of the wind and changing sky, of storms within and without, of the sea and seafarer, of irrational behavior. She is always portrayed as smiling and ideally beautiful. She is often seen with her son Eros and the Three Graces (persuasion, longing, and yearning). Her most famous appearance in a myth is in Homer’s “Iliad,” where Paris is given a choice of who of the three goddesses is most beautiful—Athena (spiritual, the highest yearning), Hera (law and respect), or Aphrodite (desire and physical greed).

Hermes—“he of the stone heap”—his spirit was invoked with the cairns that still appear on trails. Hermes was often the god invoked at the beginning of the Sacred Way. He was born in the morning; by noon he had invented the lyre and stolen Apollo’s cattle. Admitted to the Pantheon by nightfall, he became Apollo’s friend and Zeus’s messenger. God of minor prophecies. His Minoan roots appear in rituals performed in caves and mountains. He was a tree god, and an intermediary between humans and gods. An earth spirit, he was the god of sacred geography and paths. His roots involve Nomadic tribes following earth spirits and sacred paths to places filled with game, following the “voice of nature,” the connection of following the call of the wild lost by sedentary people. He was the god of mining and digging for treasure. Herms (shrines to Hermes) were erected outside of houses to protect them. He was conductor of the dead to Hades. Hermes was also god of sleep and dreams, which were seen as another more unpredictable path of spiritual revelation and prophecy. He was god of a good memory, an agile mind, and personal charm. He was seen as closer to mankind than the other eleven.

Athena—a high order of spiritual development. She was Athens’s goddess. Like Aphrodite, she didn’t have a human birth. Pathenos Athena—the virgin manifestation—is the goddess of the Parthenon. She wore the Gorgon on her shield, which turned men into spiritless stone. She was goddess of spinning and weaving, of victory and peace. Her wisdom defeats Ares in battle.

Hephaistos—the lame god, of fire and the arts requiring fire, son of Hera. God of genius and skill of handwork and artisans. He was sent by Zeus to live in a cave under the sea—thus became the god of volcanoes. He was unhappily married to Aphrodite. He was also the god of passion, of fire consciousness and intellect. He was honored by Plato’s Academy, like Prometheus, who stole the fire of consciousness for mankind.

Hestia—goddess of the hearth, home, city-state, family. She never leaves Olympus, is unmarried, and is courted (unsuccessfully) by both Apollo and Poseidon. She was honored before and after ritual sacrifice. Her name is the first mentioned before any god in prayer and supplication. The sacred hearth of Hestia was in Delphi, where the Omphalos was kept.

Dionysus: After Homer but before the end of the 6^th century BCE, Dionysus joined the 12, replacing Hestia. His mother was Semele, an Earth Goddess—Dionysus is born into the light of spirit. Originally his cults were resisted and his followers were expelled, but his worship gradually became a part of the official state religion of Athens, and was especially important in drama.

The Ritual Festivals:

Festivals were popular and were designed to disconnect with worldly concerns for a short period of time in which to seek union with the gods, to honor the earth and the cycle of the year and life, including resurrection.

Their calendar was lunar, largely related to the full moon. Things grew and increased during a waxing moon. The waning moon was a time of decline and decrease. The 12^th day of the lunar month was considered the best for business and festivals.

Month                                                             Festivals

Hecatombaion (July-August)                          The Panathenaia. This was the beginning of the year. The Lesser Panathenaia was held every year, while every fifth year (or third in the case of an Olympiad), they celebrated the Greater Panathenaia. Pericles added music to charioteering and athletics in the festival—winners were given crowns of olive branches, and jars of olive oil. The 28^th day of the month was considered the birthday of the goddess, which was the day of the procession. The Greeks were mostly vegetarians who also ate some fish, but at the festival 100 or more oxen were sacrificed and feasted upon. In feasts one was thought to ingest the god. This differed from the use of blood sacrifice in death rites where the food and blood were offered to the chthonic powers, but never eaten.

                                                                        Kronia

Metageitnon (August-September)                  Metageitnia

Boedromion (September-October)                 Eleusinia

                                                                        Greater Mysteries

Pyanepsion (October-November)                   Thesmophoria

                                                                        Pyanepsia

                                                                        Apaturia

Maimakterion (November-December)            Maimakteria

Poseideon (December-January)                      Poseidea

                                                                        Haloa

Gamelion (January-February)                         Lenaia (winter festival of Dionysus, celebrating production of wine)

                                                                        Gamelia

Anthesterio (February-March)                        Anthesteria (feast of Dionysus, blossoms)

                                                                        Diasia

                                                                        Lesser Mysteries

Elaphebolion (March-April)                            Dionysia

                                                                        Pandia

Munychion (April-May)                                  Munychia

                                                                        Brauronia

 Thargelion (May-June)                                    Thargelia

                                                                        Bendidia

                                                                        Plynteria

Skirophorion (June-July)                                 Dipolieia

                                                                        Skira

                                                                        Bouphonia

The Four Types of Madness Having Spiritual Significance

Prophetic madness: through Apollo

Poetic madness: through Muses

Erotic madness: through Aphrodite and Eros

Ritual madness: through Dionysus

Greek Mystery Religions:

The Greek religion has no bible, no generally accepted code, but is usually based on direct, personal experience of the gods. On the Acropolis, temples and practices coexisted honoring Athena, Nike, and Poseidon in the same sacred space. Mystery religions began with the Minoans, continued with the mystics of ancient Greece, including prophecy in caves of Dikte and Idha, and initiations in the labyrinths. The Minoan rites themselves are unknown.

Dionysian

Dionysian rituals were communal and highly infectious, cathartic, and designed to purge irrational impulses whose repression led to sickness and hysteria. Later these anarchic rituals were transformed into a religious format. Control in the Greek system was thought to be important, but repression of the irrational impulses was considered dangerous. It was taught that the rational mind resists unity with spiritual forces because such unity obliterates personality. The benefits of Dionysian celebrations were immediacy and nowness, and liberation from society and self-consciousness.

Individualism began in Athens, and this communal nature of dancing and music merged the individual back into the group. In Christianity, the desires of the subconscious or preconscious were interpreted as dangerous, as was giving in to earthly desires and pleasures, causing us to do things which we will regret in the morning. But it was seen by the Greeks to be dangerous to identify with the god outside of us, forgetting the one inside of us.

Dionysus was torn apart and spent three years in the underworld. In this, he is the only Greek god with a relationship to all three worlds: earth, heaven, and the underworld. He was a god of fertility, seasonal change, rebirth, life after death. Cyprus was known for its wine and was considered to have a special relationship with Dionysus.

Orphism:

Kalliope, a muse, was Orpheus’s mother. Orpheus was a poet and musician. He sailed with Jason and the Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece, where his spiritual music kept the Sirens at bay. Eurydice was his wife, until she died of a serpent bite. Orpheus charmed Persephone in hell into giving Eurydice back to him, with tragic results. He was later dismembered by Dionysiac Maenads because he had offended their orgies. In the 6^th century BCE, his cult appeared throughout Greece, but particularly in Crete and Athens. Secrecy and an initiation were demanded of members. In Crete these rites may have been a combination of Earth Mother and Dionysian rituals and not secret.

The basics of the Orphism:

1. Knowledge comes in stages (thus the use of theater and allegory).
2. God is one but manifest in many, so polytheism was cool.
3. Man contains an element of divinity.

The basic story taught was that Zeus destroyed the Titan who had eaten Dionysus-Zagreus, and from their ashes made man, so every human possessed a part of the daimon of Zeus, and the individual psyche was immortal. Its initiation ritual is still a mystery, but it involved water and a covering of mud to symbolize man’s birth from ashes. There were Orphic practices as well, still a mystery. Plato was an initiate, and uses the Orphic ritual as an analogy. One text remains, the Petelia tablet. This was often written on thin gold leaf, rolled up, and placed in a cylinder hung around the neck of a dead person as an amulet on their journey in the underworld. It reads as follows:

Thou shalt find out to the left of the House of Hades a Well-spring

And by the side thereof standing a white cypress

To this Well-spring approach not near.

But thou shalt find another by the Lake of Memory,

Cold water flowing forth, and there are Guardians before it.

Say, “I am a child of Earth and of Starry Heaven:

But my race is of Heaven alone. This ye know yourselves.

And lo, I am parched with thirst and I perish. Give me quickly the cold water

flowing forth from the lake of memory.”

And of themselves they will give thee to drink from the holy Well-spring

And thereafter among the other Heroes thou shalt have lordship.

Their Lake of Memory is how we come to remember or true spiritual nature. They obviously believed in transmigration of souls (reincarnation).

From Pindar 472 BCE:

In the presence of Gods high in honor, whoso took delight in keeping oaths has his portion in a life free from tears; while the others endure pain that no eye can look upon, and all they that, for three lives in either world, have been steadfast to keep their soul from all wrong-doing, travel by the high-way of Zeus to the Tower of Kronos, where the Ocean airs breathe about the Islands of the Blest.

Human liberation is to attain our naturally divine status. This is different from the beliefs of most Greeks, who believed they were separated from the gods.

Another belief of Orphism is that Persephone and Hades had a son, Dionysus. Their cry—iakche (ee-ak-ay) was associated with Iakchose, a demigod sometimes identified as Dionysus.

The Pythagorean Mysteries

Pythagoras studied with Ionian philosophers and then the priests of Egypt. He settled in Italy and his community was destroyed in early 5^th century BCE because of democratic reforms. He fled and died in 504 BCE. His students spread throughout the world. They had no myths—all of their teachings were based on numbers. They thought that contemplation and devout practice brought the purity necessary to discover one’s true divine nature. They also believed in the transmigration of souls. For them, the purpose of life was the love of wisdom, and in the light of that love everything can be understood. They had a strict regimen, consisting of spiritual exercises, strict diet, and no meat. At night they would review and remember everything that happened during the day as a memory exercise. Pythagoras discovered that to halve a string, it vibrates twice as fast and produces an exact octave. The relationship between the physical life and the spiritual was taught to reside in geometric relationships, such as 1:2, and 2:1. No words of Pythagoras remain, but a student collected saying and prayers in Golden Verses of Pythagoras,

Begin thy work, first having prayed to the Gods

To accomplish it. Thou, having mastered this,

That essence of Gods and mortal men shalt know

Which all things permeates, which all obey.

And thou shalt know that Law hath stablished

The inner nature of all things alike;

So shalt thou hope not for what may not be,

Nor aught, that may, escape thee. Thou shalt know

Self-chosen are the woes that fall on men—

How wretched, for they see not good so near,

Nor hearken to its voice—few only know

The Pathway of Deliverance from ill.

             And if at length

Leaving behind the body, thou dost come

To the free Upper Air, then thou shalt be

Deathless, divine, a mortal man no more.

The Eleusinian Mysteries

The basis for the Eleusinian practices are 4-5000 years old, and came from the Near East, through Crete and Minoans, and nomadic hunting tribes. For 2000 years, the Eleusinian mysteries were a central religious practice of Athens, beginning in the 14^th century BCE. In 396 AD, the Goths destroyed the sanctuary. Known elements of their ritual include: First purification, then procession through a labyrinth, blood sacrifice, isolation in darkness, and a final epiphany in light. These rituals were meant to represent death and rebirth—personal and seasonal, including the dying of the sun in winter, birth of the Son (via a Virgin Mother), and a final return of light. The ritual was designed not to bring the goddess into the space, but to create an experience in the individual of personal divinity. In this way, the ritual was unknowable but had to be experienced

What we know about the mysteries comes from the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 8^th century BCE, which features Demeter (Earth Mother) and Kore the maiden (the name Persephone was not invoked, thought to be too holy, as in the Jewish religion God’s name is spelled as G-d). Demeter, sister of Zeus, was the goddess of grain and cultivation. Her only daughter by her brother Zeus was Kore. Kore followed the narcissus flowers and the earth opened and Hades grabbed her and dragged her into the underworld. Demeter descended from Mt. Olympus to live on the earth, raised a boy and made him immortal by placing him in the coals, but was then discovered. Insulted, Demeter demanded a temple to be built at this spot. Then she made the earth dead. Because there was now nothing to sacrifice to the gods, Zeus sent Hermes to Hades, and Hades released Kore. But Kore had eaten a pomegranate seed, and so one third of the year she serves the underworld. Demeter then restored the fertility of the earth, taught Triptolemos the arts of cultivation, so they could stay in one area.

The Eleusinian Rites:

The Lesser Rites of Athena took place in Agra on Arditos Hill, in mid-February. Everyone who wished to participate in the Greater Mysteries must be present at these Lesser Rites first. It was a celebration of the marriage between Dionysus and Thyone, a minor goddess. These rituals were largely sexual in nature.

The Greater Rites of Eleusis began on September 22^nd and lasted nine days, to symbolize the wanderings of Demeter for Kore. The Hierophant and the Torchbearer left from Eleusis and walked the Sacred Way to Athens, a distance of 12 miles. Then they went to the Eleusinion in the Agora, where ritual objects were left. The next day was the first official day of the Mysteries. Blood sacrifices were made at the Acropolis.

On the 24^th, each initiate took a pig to the sea and washed it and himself, sacrificed the pig, and buried the pig’s body in a deep pit. This was a symbolic death for the initiate. On the 25-26^th, there were more sacrifices, these to Askeplios.

On the 27^th began the gathering, and the rule of secrecy. The procession began in the Eleusinion in the Agora, with the priests carrying sacred objects on their heads, including a priest at the lead carrying a wooden statue of Iakchos, whose birth would be the culmination of the event. Myrtle leaves were woven into the hair of the marchers and each initiate carried a myrtle bough, sacred to Dionysus—symbolic of death of the old, and the birth of the new. They sang hymns, chanted sacred words and phrases, and insults were hurled at them as they crossed a bridge—something of a hazing, to destroy their pride and self-consciousness. There were stops at temples sacred to Apollo and Aphrodite (Aphrodite’s part is unknown, but in Euripides’ Helen, Aphrodite relieved Demeter’s mourning during Kore’s confinement). They approached the sanctuary after dark, lit by torches. There, in the Well of Beautiful Dances, ritual dancing was performed, symbolic of the arrival of Demeter in Eleusis after her nine days of searching. Then everyone descended into darkness for two days. Everyone had already fasted for several days and then endured a day-long march, so they were pretty stressed out. There were then more purifications and sacrifices at the Cave of Hades. There was an omphalos there, considered to be the door between the world and the underworld. They stood on steps while the story of Demeter’s wrath and Kore’s return were re-enacted. At the crucial moment the high priest shouts out: “The Mistress has given birth to a holy boy; Brimo has given birth to Brimos; that is, the Strong One to the Strong One.” Ringed by torches, a boy represents Demophoon in the Homeric myth and Iakchos in Orphic tradition comes out via birth by fire and purification. (There may have also been cremations performed at this site.) Then there was intercourse between the priest and a priestess, involving sacred and phallic objects, sacrificial cakes, sheaves of grain, and the sacrificing of a ram. To the sound of a huge drum, bright fire bursts forth, and Kore appears in the flame.

Then everyone was led out into darkness with torches, and there was great feasting, dancing, and chanting, and the moon rose.

Greek Religion and Philosophy:

According to Greek philosophy, the first stage of wisdom resides in myth. The second stage was a personal and secular experience of this wisdom (real life). For Socrates, philosophy was a sacred path (the love of wisdom), not based on ritual or religious practices, but on self-knowledge and remembering/recognizing our divine nature. If we can clear away the thoughts and the ideas of others, we will arrive at a still center where truth resides. Socrates taught nothing, and used dialectics (questioning) instead. He taught that we can’t find truth outside of ourselves, but only inside ourselves, and the way we know anything is by remembering (if we have no direct experience, we can’t possibly know anything). In other words, we already know everything we need to know. Plato’s academy lasted until 529 AD. (1000 years). Aristotle was a student of Plato, and started his own school known as the Lyceum.

Addendum V: Notes from Euripides’s “The Bacchae”

Benefits of Dionysian Religion:

1. Rewards in the here and now
2. Frenzied dance/god possession
3. Eating flesh incarnated to partake of divinity

 Basics of Dionysian Religion:

1.  
   1. There is no individuality, the rites were designed to merge into a oneness with nature.
   2. Intoxication
   3. Artistic expression and dance
   4. Constant movement, because movement and touch connects us to the world—a dancing body/vs. a static mind

The females celebrated by dancing in nature; the men by drinking and singing.

Dionysus was seen as being more of an animal instinct, of the wild, not civilized, part of human nature. He was an elusive god, god of wine and exuberance (vitality), ritual madness, of theater, of mysteries promising a happy afterlife. His rituals were phallic (in the play the Bacchantes are chaste, but not in real life) and involved wine and drama (mask wearing). The rituals were designed to tame the instincts. Natural forces instigated by Dionysus are ruthless and insensitive, there is no mercy. The true victory over circumstances is compassion—shared suffering. Acceptance is human, but not godlike. In this, the Gods are not as wise as man. The actions of the Gods are personal, not a natural force (do right, the gods reward; do evil, the gods punish).

Dionysian religion flourished in the wild, potentially dangerous nature of the mountains, not in safer, cultivated areas. It is also one that takes women of all ages away from their homes and responsibilities (they were the main householders in Greece) and confers to them irrational, amazing powers, beyond traditional controls exercised by the male rulers, and brings them into harmony with wild nature (dancing in bare feet). The divisions between humans and animals and different genders and social castes broke down during his festivals. The play stresses the beauty, energy, creativity, and communal joy, as well as the destructive potential latent in these practices.

The political and traditional life of Thebes is seen by Dionysus as hopeless silly, insecure, shallow, built on no confident sense of justice, with no creative energizing faith in itself (so it relies on power). Those who embody ancient traditions (Cadmus and Tiresias) have become self-serving caricatures of what they used to be. The traditional source of political leadership and justice (the king) is uncertain of his identity, inner complexities control his actions, and he has no confident self-assertiveness or sense of responsibility for his community. Pentheus’s own inner desires attract and repel him.

The other side: Honoring Dionysus makes it possible for us to get drunk and not strive to be anything better than we are. In celebration we forget our individual cares, responsibilities, and laws, and give free rein to acting out our inhibitions—undermining what’s most essential to humanity as well our true happiness, and sacrificing the security of a well-governed city and the rational powers of human mind that can make things better (or at least stop them from getting worse). Dionysus represents supreme self-confidence (hubris in humans) as a malevolent destroyer. His gifts are considerable, but incompatible with civilized human achievements. He not only challenges existing traditions, but he completely obliterates those who stand in his way. He does not represent a workable political or communal alternative, but only mass ecstatic frenzy outside traditional community and drunken oblivion within it.

The anti-Dionysus would include Christianity, asecticism, otherworldliness. Pentheus seeks to cope by enclosing everything, including himself, inside metal (chains and armor) and by lashing out with male force (soldiers and commands), trying to impose a sense of external order on something that repels and attracts him, connected to buried feelings of sexuality, obsessively returning to it. He is incapable of uniting his conscious sense of who he is as a king (political leader) with his unconscious repressed awareness of himself as an emotional (and especially a sexual) being, with hidden and unfulfilled desires.

 Similarities between Dionysus and Pentheus: both of them are young men of same the family, having to deal with parts of themself that they don’t recognize as theirs or don’t want to. Dionysus is capable of confident manipulation of Pentheus because he is at home in Pentheus’s psyche, and understands how ineffectual all of the external controls Pentheus is relying on are going to be once Dionysus starts playing on Pentheus’s repressed desires.

Contrast with Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness where European civilization exists only on the surface (with its stress on political power, suppression of nature, urban bureaucratic rationality, ignorance of inner life). African life is lived from the heart (with its passion, dancing, mass movement, cannibalism, prehistoric wilderness of the jungle). Mutual destruction occurs when these two ways of life collide; there is no harmonious reconciliation, either politically or psychologically. The choice is either to stay on the surface or move into the darkness, but whichever way one chooses, the fullness of life is inherently unfulfilled. Marlowe has not reconciled the white and black, but he’s adopted a meditative stance towards the paradoxes of his experience and finds some purpose in sailing back and forth between them and in telling his story.

Wisdom

Sophia (wisdom) is seen as moral, not intellectual, based on experience, knowing one’s nature and place, self-knowledge, and necessity.

The five kinds of Sophia:

1. Wisdom, age, experience
2. Skill, sage
3. Cleverness
4. Animal cunning, hunting
5. Shrewd, calculating, opportunistic, blind to here & now

Ignorance (as opposed to Sophia) was seen as violence, harshness, brutality. In the play cleverness is outmaneuvered by reality. Pentheus refuses to accept this wisdom, and is destroyed.

Classic construction of Greek theater:

1. struggle (agon)
2. suffering (pathos)
3. messenger’s report of pathos (lament)
4. recognition (anagnorisis)
5. epiphany

Drama begins with ritual and religion, but became more complex in performance. It was seen as reality on stage, not a performance—no separation between the illusion and real events.

The components of ritual—from the finale of Eumenides

1. ecstasy (ignorance)—passion
2. worship (wisdom)—no passion
3. sophistry (aged)—no passion
4. denial (ignorance)—passion

Dionysos is:

The God of wine

Of ecstasy in religion

The sender of Panic

Of joy in nature

Of natural purity

Of happiness

Of Beauty

Non-moral

Non-rational

God of music

God of ritual hunting and the eating of animals

God of joy and horror, gaiety and cruelty

God of insight and madness

H is associated with ivy, oak, and fir. The bull (from Bromios, roaring—or thunder from birth), lion, snakes (in hair), the maenad’s fawnskins, and the maenads’ cane of fennel (a plant with a firm stalk). Maenads from the Greek verb mainesthai, “to be mad.” Their cry was Evohe. Dionysus has the powers of illusion, delusion.

Addendum VI:

A Greek Alphabet Oracle * Kata Stoikheion Khrêsmoi Ek Limurôn * In Litteras Digesta Oracula Ex Limyris * © 1995, Apollonius Sophistes

---

Introduction

The following is an authentic Greek alphabet oracle, which is from an inscription in Limyra, a city in ancient Lycia. Although many modern Pagans are familiar with rune-casting and similar systems, the divinatory use of the Greek alphabet is less well known. Each letter of the alphabet has a corresponding oracle, and the first word of the oracle (in Greek) begins with that letter. In the following translation, the Greek word (in its dictionary form) is enclosed in {curly braces} and follows the corresponding English word or phrase. There are at least three methods of consulting the alphabet oracle.

The first is take a box of 24 stones or potsherds, each inscribed with a letter of the alphabet, and to pick one from the box. This method is similar to the use of rune stones (and it’s interesting that most systems of rune casting use 24 runes). Stones used in this way would be called psêphoi in Greek (calculi in Latin); inscribed or painted potsherds are ostraca in Greek testae in Latin).

Second, five astragali (knuckle bones, tali) may be cast (or one astragalus five times). Since each astragalus has four “sides,” traditionally given the values 1, 3, 4 and 6, there are 24 possible total values: 5 to 30, excepting 6 and 29. Heinevetter (p. 36) argues that the highest cast would be associated with Alpha and the lowest with Omega (so Alpha = 30, Beta = 28, Gamma = 27, …, Psi = 7, Omega = 5). The astragalus-values are given in the parentheses following the letter by the number after the hyphen. (See also the photo of astragali.)

Third, five dice (cuboi, tesserae) may be cast, with 26 possible total values, 5 through 30, which are associated in decreasing order (Heinevetter, p. 36) with the Greek letters, including the archaic Digamma (Wau) and Qoppa (so Alpha = 30, Beta = 29, Gamma = 28, …, Psi = 6, Omega = 5). The Limyran table does not give oracles for Digamma and Qoppa, however, and so the corresponding casts (25 and 13) are uninterpretable by it. (The practical solution is to recast.) The dice-values are listed before each hyphen.

Interestingly, both 13 and 25 are uncanny numbers, associated with transgression of cycles or transcendence over them (e.g. 12 months, 24 hours). They are often associated with sacrificed and resurrected Gods (e.g., Dionysos was the Thirteenth Olympian). The wholly negative interpretation of 13 is no older than the middle ages, and 25 has always been accompanied by connotations of perfection (since it is the square of 5). (A. Schimmel, Mys. Num. pp. 203-8, 237)

The third number in the alphabet chart, following the semicolon in the parentheses following the letter, is the traditional numerical value of the Greek letter, which may be used in isopsêphia (Greek gematria); it is included for convenience. For example, by isopsephia, my name, Apollônios, is 1341.

The Limyran Oracle can be compared with the original I Ching, which was just a set of figures and corresponding oracles phrases. Over the centuries this austere divinatory system was extended with the commentary of the Ten Wings. In the same way I have supplemented the original Limyran oracle with interpretive aids. First, since oracles are characteristically ambiguous, the literal translation of the oracle (in quotes) is followed by alternative translations of significant words; a Greek reader would be aware of these, but they are not otherwise apparent from the translation. All the foregoing is reasonably objective, but I have also added my own interpretations of the oracles, which I hope will aid their application in various circumstances. Of course, my commentary should not be considered final or definitive.

The following invocation is adapted from a similar alphabet oracle found on the top of a mountain at Adada in Pisidia (Heinevetter, pp. 33-4):

Apollo, Lord, and Hermes, lead the way!
And thou, who wanders, this to thee we say:
Be still; enjoy the oracle’s excellence,
for Phoebus Apollo has given it to us,
this Art of Divination from our ancestors.

---

References

The Greek text of the Limyran (from Heinevetter) is available as a PNG file. A copy of the inscription of the similar Adadan oracle is also available (PNG) along with a transcription as ordinary Greek text (PNG). This will illustrate what the original oracle looked like.

F. Heinevetter, Würfel- und Buchstabenorakel in Griechenland und Kleinasien, Breslau: 1912, p. 35. The source of the Limyran oracle.

B. F. Cook, Greek Inscriptions (“Reading the Past” series), Berkeley: Univ. California Press, 1987, pp. 8, 12. Source for archaic Greek alphabet and Greek numerals.

W. R. Halliday, Greek Divination: A Study of its Methods and Principles, Chicago: Argonaut, 1967, pp. 215-6. A brief description of Greek alphabet oracles.

H. G. Liddell, R. Scott & H. S. Jones, Greek-English Lexicon, 9th ed., Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968. The source for ancient Greek meanings.

R. Ritsema & S. Karcher (trs.), I Ching: The Classic Chinese Oracle of Change, Rockport: Element, 1994, pp. 11-14. Source for history of the I Ching.

---

The Limyran Oracle with Interpretations

letter (astragali-dice; isopsephia)

• Alpha (30-30; 1)
• Beta (29-28; 2)
• Gamma (28-27; 3)
• Delta (27-26; 4)
• Epsilon (26-25; 5)
• Zeta (24-24; 7)
• Eta (23-23; 8)
• Theta (22-22; 9)
• Iota (21-21; 10)
• Kappa (20-20; 20)
• Lambda (19-19; 30)
• Mu (18-18; 40)
• Nu (17-17; 50)
• Xi (16-16; 60)
• Omicron (15-15; 70)
• Pi (14-14; 80)
• Rho (12-13; 100)
• Sigma (12-12; 200)
• Tau (10-11; 300)
• Upsilon (9-10; 400)
• Phi (8-9; 500)
• Khi (7-8; 600)
• Psi (6-7; 700)
• Omega (5-5; 800)

Alpha (30-30; 1) “The God [Apollo] says you will do everything {Hapanta} successfully.” Do: achieve, bring about, effect, accomplish, make, manage, negotiate, transact, practice, fare; successfully: prosperously, luckily, with good fortune. Your entire project will turn out well and you will meet all your goals. You will have good luck in all your activities, or prosperous business transactions and negotiations.

Beta (29-28; 2) “With the help of Tyche [Fortune], you will have an assistant {Boêthos}, the Pythian [Apollo].” Assistant: helper, auxiliary, one who hastens (theo) to the battle cry or other call for help (boê). You are at a critical point, but if you are fortunate, Apollo the Far-shooter will help you if you call on Him. Even with luck, the God will only assist; ultimate responsibility is yours. “Pythian” refers to Apollo as the God at Delphi (which was in Pytho), one of the most important oracular sites. Therefore the help to be expected might be of a prophetic nature.

Gamma (28-27; 3) “Gaia [the Earth] {Gê} will give you the ripe fruit of your labors.” Ripe: complete, final; fruits: produce, returns, profits, results. You will have a successful harvest, or you will reap all your profits from the Earth. The Mother of All will bring your labors to a fruitful conclusion. Gaia will give you your just deserts.

Delta (27-26; 4) “In customs inopportune strength {Dunamis} is weak.” Customs: rules, laws, allotments; inopportune: ill-timed, unreasonable, importunate, undue, not kairos (fit, in due measure, exact, at the appropriate or critical time, etc.); strength: power, ability, authority. Ill-timed force will be ineffective; act with precision; timing is everything. Knowing where and when to strike is more important than strength; misapplied ability is disability. Blind conformity to customs is spineless; overstrict adherence to rules is self-defeating. Unreasonable or undue force will defeat itself; a tyrant must fall.

Epsilon (26-25; 5) “You desire {Eraô} to see the offspring of righteous marriages.” Desire: love, are in love with; offspring: seed, sowing; righteous: fitting, well-balanced. This is a statement of fact, not a command or prediction. The obvious meaning is that the querent wants children or grandchildren from suitable marriages. However, it can also mean he or she is in love with seeing this, that is, obsessed by the idea. The “rightness” of the marriage admits many interpretations; it could be a terrible marriage if that was fitting and righteous (i.e. deserved). The oracle may also refer to seeds, other than children, sown by the marriage (e.g. family alliances, marrying into wealth or influence). Finally, marriage may be taken metaphorically to refer to any alliance or union.

Zeta (24-24; 7) “Flee the very great storm {Zalê}, lest you be disabled in some way.” Storm: surge, distress; disabled: hindered. Don’t make a sea-voyage in bad weather. It is futile to fight the force of the ocean; likewise, bucking the inevitable will weaken you and hinder your progress. Avoid raging storms of any kind; save your energy for when it can be effective. Sometimes flight is wiser than fight.

Eta (23-23; 8) “Bright Helios [Sun] {Hêlios}, who watches everything, watches you.” The life-giving Sun will care for you. Helios is an enforcer of oaths and promises, and He knows the deceit in your heart.

Theta (22-22; 9) “You have the helping Gods {Theoi} of this path.” Helping: propitious, defending; path: road, course, way. The “way” may be a concrete road, a plan of action, a spiritual path, a way of life, etc. In any case, the Gods who oversee this way will help and defend you, so you may go forward with confidence; you are under divine care because you are following your destiny.

Iota (21-21; 10) “There is sweat {Hidrôs}; it excels more than everything.” Sweat: gum, exudation of trees; excels: is superior to, outlives, remains in hand, is a result, is around. There will always be hard work; work is never done. Hard work is the surest means of success. When you have lost all other possessions, you still have your labor as an asset. The oracle recommends elbow-grease.

Kappa (20-20; 20) “To fight with the waves {Kuma} is difficult; endure, friend.” Waves: swells, floods; difficult: hard to bear, do or deal with, painful, grievous, dangerous; endure: delay. In time, the force of ocean waves can grind down anything; they can be a metaphor for repetitive, unstoppable processes. It is difficult, dangerous and painful to try to resist them; the sensible thing to do is to wait until they abate, or if that is impossible, then to endure the inevitable with courage.

Lambda (19-19; 30) “The one passing on the left {Laios} bodes well for everything.” Passing: going through; bodes: shows, indicates, gives a sign, signifies, declares; well: rightly, happily, fortunately. Since the left is traditionally the sinister side, the oracle may mean that an apparently sinister thing or event may be a blessing in disguise. The left is also associated with the unconscious, lunar mind, and so unconscious processes or intuition may signal a favorable outcome. A promising sign comes from an unpromising quarter.

Mu (18-18; 40) “It is necessary to labor {Mokhtheo}, but the change will be admirable.” Labor: be weary, distressed; change: exchange; admirable: fair, beautiful, good, noble. Through toil and distress a change will be made for the better. Hard work will result in a good return.

Nu (17-17; 50) “The strife-bearing {Neikêphoros} gift fulfils the oracle.” Strife-: quarrel-, abuse-; gift: anything given; fulfils: confirms, perfects, brings to an end. Something will be given (to you, by you, or from one to another) that brings strife with it; this will discharge the force of the oracle. The import seems to be that this gift will be the answer to the question asked of the oracle. So, for example, if the querent asked when something will happen, the gift is the sign that it’s immanent.

Xi (16-16; 60) “There is no fruit to take from a withered {Xêros} shoot.” Fruit: produce, return, profit, result; withered: lean, harsh. There is no good to be gained from an angry young man or woman. The frayed end of a good line. Harshness and stinginess will achieve nothing. You can’t get blood from a turnip; you can’t get water from a stone. Don’t polish a turd.

Omicron (15-15; 70) “There are no {Ou} crops to be reaped that were not sown.” Crops: fruit-trees, corn-fields, crop-lands; reap: mow, cut off; sown: engendered, begotten, scattered. What we spread about, comes back to us. What goes around comes around. You must plan ahead in order to achieve anything.

Pi (14-14; 80) “Completing many {Polus} contests, you will seize the crown.” Contests: struggles, trials, dangers; crown: wreath, garland. If you persist in your struggles, after many trials you will succeed. Perseverance through adversity.

Rho (12-13; 100) “You will go on more easily {Rhaion} if you wait a short time.” Go on: live, continue; easily: willingly, recklessly, thoughtlessly; wait: stand fast, remain, stay. If you will hold your ground for only a short time, you will be able to proceed (more easily or with greater cooperation). You will go faster by waiting than by going now; on the other hand, delaying too long may provoke reckless action. By standing fast you live recklessly. By remaining where you are, you live life thoughtlessly.

Sigma (12-12; 200) “Phoibos [Apollo] speaks plainly {Saphôs}, `Stay, friend.'” Plainly: distinctly, certainly; stay: wait, stand fast, remain. Neither advance nor retreat; wait or hold your ground, as appropriate; the best action is inaction. “Phoibos” refers to Apollo as Bright and Pure, which also characterizes His advice in this oracle.

Tau (10-11; 300) “You will have a parting from the {Tôn} companions now around you.” Parting: release, deliverance; companions: those accompanying. This may be an unwelcome parting from friends or a welcome release from enemies; in either case they are now around you. This may also mean a growing apart or forced separation of a person from his or her family, peers or fellow travelers on the path.

Upsilon (9-10; 400) “The affair holds a noble undertaking {Huposkhesis}.” Affair: deed, act, issue; holds: involves, implies, gives cause for, holds fast, hinders, guides, steers; noble: high-born, high-minded, excellent, notable; undertaking: engagement, promise, profession. There is some issue to be resolved, or some deed is under consideration; it involves high-mindedness, either in commitment, deed, or professional pursuit. The oracle may tell us that the affair is admirable due to this noble element, or that the situation may guide us to seek the appropriate noble undertaking or profession. The hero’s quest. On the other hand, the oracle may mean that the situation hinders this fine undertaking. Thus you should try to understand the situation: does it demand an excellent undertaking or impede it?

Phi (8-9; 500) “Having done something carelessly {Phaulos}, you will thereafter blame the Gods.” Done: caused, accomplished, made, managed, negotiated, transacted, practiced, fared; carelessly: thoughtlessly, indifferently. Take responsibility for your actions (or inactions); don’t blame the Gods (or the universe, or fate, or society, or nature) for your own failings. The Greeks said, “Hermes will help you get your wagon unstuck, but only if you push on it.”

Khi (7-8; 600) “Succeeding, friend, you will fulfil a golden {Khruseos} oracle.” Succeeding: gaining your end, hitting the mark, meeting someone; fulfil: bring to pass, cause, accomplish. “Golden” may be a metaphor for rich, noble, excellent, etc. This admirable oracle will be fulfilled by you attaining your ends, or a mere chance meeting could constitute the golden event.

Psi (6-7; 700) “You have this righteous judgement {Psêphos} from the Gods.” Righteous: just, fitting, meet, fair; judgement: resolve, decree. Literally, a psephos (Lat. calculus) is a stone used for voting, counting and similar purposes, so this oracle refers to collective judgement rather than individual judgement. This implies that the majority of the Gods concur in this judgement, and that this judgement is appropriate, fair and righteous, though there is no implication that the result is that desired by the querent.

Omega (5-5; 800) “You will have a difficult {Ômos} harvest season, not a useful one.” Difficult: cruel, rough, untimely, unripe; harvest season: fruit-time, autumn, summer bloom, bloom of youth; useful: suitable, apt. Concretely, there will be a poor harvest, or autumn will be difficult; the harvest will be too early, before the fruit is ripe. More abstractly, too early grasping of the fruits of your labor (whether voluntary or necessary) will yield a poor return; the rewards will not be suitable for their purpose. Your youth will be rough; you will have to grow up before your time.

---

Keywords and Images

Alpha	Everything {Hapanta}
Beta	Assistant {Boêthos}
Gamma	Gaia [the Earth] {Gê}
Delta	Strength {Dunamis}
Epsilon	Desire {Erôs}
Zeta	Storm {Zalê}
Eta	Helios [Sun] {Hêlios}
Theta	Gods {Theoi}
Iota	Sweat {Hidrôs}
Kappa	Waves {Kuma}
Lambda	Left {Laios}
Mu	Labor {Mokhthos}
Nu	Strife-bearing {Neikêphoros}
Xi	Withered {Xêros}
Omicron	There is Not {Ouk esti}
Pi	Many {Polla}
Rho	Easily {Rhaion}
Sigma	Plainly {Saphôs}
Tau	From the Companions {Tôn Parousôn}
Upsilon	Undertaking {Huposkhesis}
Phi	Carelessly {Phaulos}
Khi	Golden {Khruseos}
Psi	Judgement {Psêphos}
Omega	Difficult {Ômos}

Addendum VII:

La Diosa del Mar
The Sea Goddess

Extranas nubes fragmentos de una gloria.
Strange clouds, fragments of glory

En tu frente lucen estrellas de una historia.
On your forehead glow stars from a story

Reina tu entre las diosas de las aguas.
You are the Queen of the water's goddesses

Con tu reir la tempestad desarmas.
With your laugh you disarm the storm.

A tu palabra de bondad vuelve la calma.
The calm returns with your word of kindness.

La brisa del este engendro tu vida gentil.
The breeze from the east engendered by your gentle life.

Diosa del Mar y de las aguas vivas.
Goddess of the sea and the living waters

Tu mejilla beso la luna bella y tu frente orno de majestad y estrellas.
Your cheek was kissed by the full moon and your forehead was
decorated with majesty and stars

Llevan las olas, las bellas rosas que las espumas van a ocultar.
The waves carry the beautiful roses that the foam will hide.

Son sus aromas las esperanzas del que te aclama Diosa del mar.
Their aromas are the hopes of they who acclaim you Goddess of the Sea.