Pythia

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The Pythia was the priestess presiding over the Oracle of Apollo at Delphi, located on the slopes of Mount Parnassus. The Delphic oracle came into prominence in the 8th century BCE and for centuries was the most important oracle in the Greek world. The Pythia was widely credited with giving prophecies inspired by Apollo.

Image:Pythia1.jpg

The historian William Mitford wrote in 1784 that the original name of the place was "Pytho", and this name became attached to the priestess there, hence she was called "Pythia" or "Pythoness". Template:Rf

The scholar Martin Litchfield West writes that the Pythia at Delphi shows many traits of shamanistic practices, likely inherited or influenced from Central Asian practices. He cites her sitting in a cauldron on a tripod, whilst making her prophecies, her being in an ecstatic trance state, like shamans, and her unintelligible utterings. Template:Rf

1 Science and the Pythia
2 Notes
3 References
4 External links

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Science and the Pythia

There have been occasional attempts to find a scientific explanation for the Pythia's behaviour. Most commonly, these refer to Plutarch's observation that the her oracular powers appeared to be linked to vapors from the Castalian Spring that surrounded her, together with the observation that sessions of prophesy would either take place in, or be preceded by a visit to, an enclosed chamber at the base of the temple. It has been suggested that these vapors may have been hallucinogenic gases. In 2001 evidence of the presence of ethylene, a potential hallucinogen, was found in the temple's local geology and nearby springs. Inhalation of ethylene in an enclosed space might well have exposed the Pythia to sufficiently high concentrations of the narcotic gas to induce a euphoric or trance-like state.

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Notes

Template:Ent William Mitford, The History of Greece, 1784. Cf. v.1, Chapter III, p.184, "The place bore the name Pytho, of uncertain origin, but attributed in aftertimes to some adventures of the gods there, which gave it a mystical dignity; and thence the title of Pythoness or Pythia became attached to the prophetess".
Template:Ent Martin Litchfield West, The Orphic Poems, p.147. "The Pythia resembles a shamaness at least to the extent that she communicates with her god while in a state of trance, and conveys as much to those present by uttering unintelligible words. [cf. Spirit Language, Mircea Eliade]. It is particularly striking that she sits on a cauldron supported by a tripod. This eccentric perch can hardly be explained except as a symbolic boiling, and, as such, it looks very much like a reminiscence of the initiatory boiling of the shaman translated from hallucinatory experience into concrete visual terms. It was in this same cauldron, probably, that the Titans boiled Dionysus in the version of the story known to Callimachus and Euphorion, and his remains were interred close by".

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References

Bouché-Leclercq, Auguste, Histoire de la divination dans l'Antiquité, I-IV volumes, Paris, 1879-1882.
Burkert, Walter, Greek Religion 1985.
Farnell, Lewis Richard, The Cults of the Greek States, 1896.
Fontenrose, Joseph Eddy, The Delphic Oracle: Its Responses and Operations, 1978.
Fontenrose, Joseph Eddy, Python; a study of Delphic myth and its origins, 1959.
Goodrich, Norma Lorre, Priestesses, 1990.
Guthrie, William Keith Chambers, The Greeks and their Gods, 1955.
Hall, Manly Palmer, The Secret Teachings of All Ages, 1928. Ch. 14 cf. Greek Oracles,www, PRS
Homeric Hymn to Pythian Apollo
Maass, E., De Sibyllarum Indicibus, Berlin, 1879.
Mitford, William, The History of Greece, 1784. Cf. v.1, Chapter III, Section 2, p.177, Origin and Progress of the Oracles.
Parke, Herbert William, History of the Delphic Oracle, 1939.
Parke, Herbert William, Sibyls and Sibylline Prophecy, 1988.
Pausanias, Description of Greece, (ed. and translated with commentary by Sir James Frazer), 1913 edition. Cf. v.5
Potter, David Stone, Prophecy and history in the crisis of the Roman Empire: a historical commentary on the Thirteenth Sibylline Oracle, 1990. Cf. Chapter 3.
Rohde, Erwin, Psyche, 1925.
West, Martin Litchfield, The Orphic Poems, Oxford, 1983.