Once upon a time there were places where rulers, politicians, or any person faced with a difficult decision would go for insight, wisdom, and peace. One such place is Delphi, Greece.
The story of its founding tells us the Greek god Zeus decided to discover the center of the earth. He sent out two eagles to circle the planet in opposite directions, one from the east and one from the west, and they would come together at the earth’s navel. The eagles met on Mount Parnassus in Central Greece, and there Zeus placed an oval stone to mark the world’s center. The stone was sculptured in the shape of a beehive or egg and was covered with mesh or chains. The egg could signify birth and the chains signify the linking together of all humanity.
It was here that a sanctuary and temple was built, first to Gaia, the earth. And later, Apollo, god of light, order, ethics, spring, and prophecy, etc. He resided there in spring and summer. And in winter, Dionysus resided there, god of wine, gladness, indulgence, and transformation, who was linked with Demeter and Persephone, deities of the earth. And the Delphic Oracle, the Pythia, was installed there to answer humankind’s deepest and most troubling questions.
The 12 early Greek city-states would stop their fighting to meet and negotiate in the god’s presence. The texts of Greek laws were inscribed there, so the laws would be validated by the authority of the god. Some of those laws included punishments for rulers who abused their authority. Others protected property rights, order, but also relative equality under the law⎼ for male citizens. And there the people and their leaders would ask their questions. Responding to and interpreting the oracle’s answers was, however, a puzzle in-itself. Scholars conjecture that her pronouncements, if not from her own intuition, were the result of inhaling hallucinogenic vapors found rising from the earth at the site.
In 480 BCE, when the Persian invaders led by Xerxes threatened Athens and the city sent its representatives to consult the oracle, the oracle first told them to flee. Unhappy with that prophecy, they asked for a second. The second prophecy was closer to what they wanted, but interpreting what it meant created controversy. “Though all else be taken, Zeus, the all-seeing, grants that the wooden wall only shall not fail.” What was the wooden wall?
Many argued it meant they needed to build a physical wall around the city. But the Athenian General and politician Themistocles argued that the wall was a fleet of wood ships that could outmaneuver the Persian vessels and protect the city. He succeeded in building the fleet and defeating the Persians.
The Roman Emperor Nero traveled to the oracle in search of answers and was told to “Beware the age 73.” He thought this meant he would live to be 73. What happened was a Roman general age 73 rebelled against him.
Delphi is incredibly beautiful. I visited Greece when I was on sabbatical from teaching secondary school to write a guide to teaching with philosophic questions.
The road we took to Delphi winds between two old forts, through Medieval sized streets, and then up the mountain on a twisting road. The road overlooked the Corinthian Sea in the distance and was surrounded by olive orchards, pine, and cypress trees.
Such beauty can lead us to feel peaceful yet fully alive, each moment a literal inspiration of the pine fragrance, the quiet and the beauty. Maybe this is one way the oracle speaks to us.
We all need a place where we can get quiet, where all the wars end; a place at the center of our world, that gives us refuge, insight, a sense of what is real and what is right. This is where the laws and values that govern our conduct come from⎼ or should come from.
Ancient Greece was a tumultuous, inequitable, war-driven society, yet one enamored with beauty and a yearning for self-development. They searched for ways to find peace in themselves, through exercise, philosophy, art⎼ and meditation or contemplation. Inscribed in the forecourt of the Temple at Delphi was the maxim “know thyself,” something the importance of which Greek philosophers like Plato and Socrates emphasized. In Greek mythology, one of the original three Greek Muses was Melete, which literally means ‘ponder’ or ‘contemplation;’ she was considered the muse of thought and meditation. Several Greek philosophers, like Pythagoras, Empedocles, and Plotinus urged their students to meditate.
The oracle hopefully taught people a lesson about listening. The quality of her answers depended not only on her ability to give voice to wisdom, but the ability of her audience to hear it. Her pronouncements could be likened to things we hear daily but without the ceremony. We talk with our spouse and realize we didn’t understand what they said. We hear the news but don’t know how to take it. We have a dream or read a poem, and a metaphor touches us deeply, but we can’t put its meaning into words.
We face so many things in our lives that we don’t really understand. Because the oracle spoke with the authority of Apollo, the people contextualized what they heard and learned to give it full attention. They let it sit inside them, to feel, contemplate, and question.
Maybe it would be wonderful to have an oracle today to give answers to the threats we now face. But even when there was an oracle, how sure were people of her reliability? The universe of her words was left up to her audience to interpret. The same holds true today. How reliable, really, is much of the information we act on? But if we tuned our ears to listen to the sounds of the world as if listening to an oracle speaking to us, and we learned to study ourselves and our lives with the same attention people once gave to an oracle’s prophecies, that would be a powerful beginning.
—
Shutterstock image