The Furious Spinner

I'm watching the show High Priestess on the Discovery Channel about the Oracle in Delphi. They're trying to figure out if the Oracle was in an altered state when she made her predictions. It's interesting to see Delphi again. It looks the same as when I visited it twenty-five years ago, although I'm certain it must have changed.

I went to Delphi with my boyfriend of the time. His parents lived in a beautiful hillside home outside Athens while his father worked for an American company with division headquarters in Athens. I was determined to go to Delphi even though I knew little about it. I just had to go. So the boyfriend and I boarded a bus in sunny Athens and headed for the sacred mountains. I had lived nearly my entire life in the Midwest and didn't know much about mountains or terrifying mountainous roads. The road to Delphi was barely wide enough for a bus, let alone a bus and a car coming in the other direction. It was quite a harrowing ride, but we arrived safely in the ancient city a couple of hours later.

I don't remember a great deal about the visit, and I've lost my journal from that time. It was either late December or early January, and we were the only people at the ruins, which we got to after climbing several flights of stairs. What do I remember? It was cold and sunny. The stones of the various ruins were gray, silent in a strange way, a puzzle waiting to be solved. I wished I knew more about the place at the time. The Greeks believed it was the navel of the world. And I was standing on it. I wandered around the ruins, through the Temple of Apollo, the Stadium, the Tholos Temple. I liked the Tholos Temple best. I have a photo of me leaning against one of the tall Doric columns. Now I find out it is a part of the Sanctuary of Athena, so I'm not surprised I felt settled standing there—and unsettled. Whispers all around. Boyfriend anxious to find someplace where he could get a beer. I curled up in an olive tree, my fingers poking through the "eyes" in the "holey" trunk. I have a photo of that moment, too. I look feral, otherworldly, annoyed and afraid. I didn't want to leave.

But we did. We got on a bus headed for Athens. I sat next to a tiny old woman, her babushka tied tightly under her chin. She grabbed my hand and murmured prayers as the bus dove down the mountain. I could only concur. It started snowing. The bus slipped slided around the curves and down the sacred mountains. I wished I knew what the woman was saying; even though I had never really heard of priestesses or holy women or witches (real witches), I knew this woman was our oracle—no, more than that—she was keeping our bus from sliding off the mountain. I was glad for her enchantment. Now I wonder if she passed something to me as she clutched my hand: I've never really been the same since that visit to Greece.

She got off the bus at one of the small towns we went through. We were down off the mountain by that time, safe, but the snow was piling up. The bus stopped for the driver to put chains on the tires—or something. I don't have a clear recollection of it. I only know we were in stop-and-go traffic for nearly four hours, sitting the entire time next to the back door which the driver had to open—for some strange reason—every time he slowed or stopped. I don't think I've ever been that cold for so many hours.

On the Discovery Channel they've figured out the Greeks were correct, and the Oracle probably inhaled some kind of vapors from the Earth before making her predictions. Apparently archaeologists in the early part of the last century had said the Oracle was a hoax, a show, because they hadn't found any evidence of any "vapors" at the site. I don't really see how deciding the Oracle didn't inhale vapors meant she was a fake. In any case, these new scientists have decided there were some kind of gases coming up from the Earth which got the High Priestess high.

The Delphic Oracle—the Dragon Priestess of the Earth—was the "highest religious authority in the world for over 2,000 years" according to Norma Lorre Goodrich in her book Priestesses. Long before Delphi became Apollo's temple and Pythia "his" oracle, Delphi had been an autonomous religious temple and place of learning. Delphi was, to the people of that time, the center—the navel—of the world. It was written that the Pythia priestess always went underground to make her predictions. Perhaps, as Goodrich suggests, Pythia did not go underground to inhale any particular kind of vapor but to take in the breath of Mother Earth and become the literal Oracle of the Earth. While breathing the vapors of the Earth, it was said, the Delphi Oracle heard this: Know thyself. It was the Oracle who gave us this most profound suggestion. Commandment? Know thyself.

Emperor Justinian closed the Delphi schools and banished the Oracle in 529 A.D., essentially ending women's education for many centuries to come. Some historians and scholars believe that was the end of any kind of women's power. Others believe that finality came much later, during the Inquisition when tens of thousands of women were accused of being witches, then tortured, often raped, and murdered. At this time of year especially, I remember the Pythia, the Delphic Oracle, and her descendants: all those women (and men and children) who were accused of being powerful, of conspiring with Nature, who died because of their difference, their religion, their old age, their sex. It is a good time to remember our ancestors, and to listen to their whispers which come on the wind through the old oak tree at the end of the street, through the crack in the window, in the laughter of the children on the playground, and as part of the calls of the birds gathering before migrating south for the winter: Know thyself.
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All photographs and written material copyright © 2003-2008 by Kim Antieau unless otherwise indicated. May not be used without permission.