THE  ORACLE  OF  DELPHI
 
 

Hello Carl!

Let us begin to elucidate one of your major questions. For the Love of it, By Jove, I am not an expert on Greek mythology, "oracles", "holy masses". The little which I know, which I have learnt, I will illustrate here, only concentrating on relevant data, and afterwards, I will draw theoretical conclusions in order to answer the question you have asked. This is Part II, two more will follow.

FOCUS:  PART  II

Was the Oracle of Delphi probably the first example of intellectual labour in recorded history?

The Oracle

Now let us first see what an Oracle is all about; what it was particularly in Ancient Greece. Then we will look at Delphi, then at Apollo, Priesthood and Socrates, and then try to illustrate the type of "labour" that was performed in ancient slave-owning Greece.

Firstly, "oracle" does not have a Greek origin; it is derived from the Latin word "oraculum", from "orare", meaning "to speak", "to pray". Essentially it is divine communication delivered to a petitioner's request. Furthermore, the "Oracle" itself was the seat of prophecy.

In Ancient Greece many "oracles" existed, for example, of Zeus at  Dodona, Olympia, or Siwa;  also, there were numerous Oracular Shrines at Thebes, Tegyra, and Ptoon in Boeotia, at Abae in Phocis, at Corope in Thessaly, and on Delos, Apollo's birthplace; also in Anatolia, shrines were built at Patara, Branchidae, Claros, and Grynium.

The methods of divine communication differed; they could be simple, such as the casting of lots or the making of a certain noise of tree leaves; some were more sophisticated, such as taking the form of a direct inquiry of an inspired person who then gave the answer orally. The most common methods would have fascinated Sigmund Freud: One of the most common methods was incubation, in which the inquirer simply had to sleep in a holy precinct and then he or she received an answer in a dream. Even in the Old Testament this method of incubation was rife.

Of course, the most famous "Oracle" was that of Apollo at Delphi, seated on the slopes of Mt. Parnassus above the Corinthian Gulf. As we hinted in another lecture, due to the fierce battle between Mother Gaea and Father Apollo, the oracle was either given to Apollo by forceful means, or in conquest, he simply stole it from Gaea, to which it traditionally belonged. According to legend, the Oracle at Delphi was guarded by Gaea's child Python, the serpent. In typical patriarchal style, Apollo simply killed Python and founded his own oracle there.

Nonetheless, at Delphi, the medium remained a "married" woman over fifty, known as the Pythia, who lived apart from her husband, and she dressed herself in maiden's clothes. Homer knew this oracle, then called Pytho, it was a site of Mycenaean settlement. Only around 700 BC, this oracle gained fame.

It was a time when the Greek slave-owning superstructure generated a polis, a primitive State, an ideology for lawmakers, cults and colonists. All of them went to the Oracle to ask for Pythia's counsel, for Apollo's advice and sanction in matters of political actions or the probable results of war projects.

Apollo's birthday was on the seventh day of the Delphic month, and divine consultations were restricted to this holy day. A special ritual had to be obeyed:  The petitioner needed a sponsor, had to present a ritual cake, a pelanos; and had to sacrifice some animal. Then the Pythia together with her consultant would bathe in the Castilian spring, completely purified, thereafter, only she drank from the sacred spring Cassotis, they then entered together the temple.  She went down into the basement, erected a sacred tripod, and began to chew laurel leaves, plucked from Apollo's sacred tree. She then went into a divine trance; nobody directly recorded her words. It was the intellectual labour of the priests to write them down, and in ambiguous verse they interpreted what they believed she supposedly was revealing. This is exactly where the intellectual labour production of Ancient Greek Ideology had its origin.

Similarly, at the oracle of  Zeus at Dodona the priests transmitted the "Word of God", either from the whispering of the leaves on a sacred oak, or from a sacred spring, or from the striking of a gong. But Zeus "modernized" himself, later he prophesied from his altar at Olympia, and he even captured the holy place of the Egyptian god Amon, in the Oasis of Siwa in present-day Libya.

Of significance to us, oracular revelations delivered by means of incubation did not come from the elevated superstructural heavens, they came from the basement, from the "underworld";  they had an earthly, chthonian origin.

Now, we get down to intellectual labour, to the ancient drug industry. Who was the great medical doctor, the producer of medicine, the divine healer? Not yet Jesus Christ, but the god Asclepius, who had his consulting office and hospital at Epidaurus. The healing process was very simple: invalids simply slept in the great sacred hall, and they received their respective cures via dream-surgery or dream-pills. At the medical oracle of the hero Amphiaraus at Oropus in Attica, where the "lower classes" were treated, conditions were somehow more rough. Consultants slept on skins, while visitors slept in a hole in the ground.

Of course, there also were oracles in the rest of the ancient world. In Italy, Fortuna Primigenia at Praeneste was consulted even by the Caesars; there was a dream oracle of the goddess Albunea at Tibur (present-day Tivoli). In Babylonia  the "Freudian" temple prophetesses interpreted dreams. In Egypt, divination occurred from the motion of images paraded through the streets; the Hebrews performed it from sacred objects and dreams.

Delphi

Now let us look at Delphi. Why was the place suited for the most famous oracle, what do we know about its "history" ?
Delphi, an ancient Greek town, was laying in the region of Phocis,
at the foot of Mount Parnassus, about 10 km from the Gulf of Corinth.
Not only did the ancient Greeks consider Man and the Earth to be the centre of the universe, Delphi itself was the real centre of the world. According to greek mythology, Zeus had released two eagles, one from the west, the other from the east, they met each other in the centre, in Delphi. The site was marked with a stone, called the omphalos.

Delphi itself was first populated in late Mycenaean times (around 15th century BC). Around the 8th century BC, ancient priests from Knossos had brought the Apollo cult there. Two centuries later, around 590 BC, a "Sacred War" opened Delphi for all visitors. Krisa, a nearby town, had taxed the visitors, and so the
Amphictyonic League had to come to the economic rescue of petitioners. Here we see that Crusades,  Sacred Wars or Islamic Leagues have profound divine "historic" roots.

Of course, in those days already, "Bread and Games!" was a favourite slogan of the slave-owning classes. The very same League
organized the panhellenic Pythian Games, which were celebrated in Delphi every four years beginning in 582 BC. Delphi became prestigious, for its "Olympic games", but especially for its Oracle.

It was consulted not only on private matters, on love affairs, on how to liquidate a troublesome enemy, how to become rich,  but also on state affairs. In fact, it was an ideological factory, to serve the political interests of the ruling groups; its statements often swayed public opinion and policy. It was also consulted whenever colonization from Greece Major became necessary, so its fame spread to Ionia, practically to the limits of the Greek-speaking world. Many sacred wars were waged over the oracle, as rival city-states wanted to gain control of it, for their own political and economic interests.

Due to these wars, Delphi was pillaged several times; in the
early 2nd century BC, Rome captured it, and removed over 500
statues from the town; Roman Catholicism, a "Plagiarism of Paganism" became the new state ideology; Christianity spread, and, about AD 385, by decree, Theodosius put the final nail into the coffin of pagan oracular divinations.

Apollo

Now, let us take a glimpse at Apollo, byname Phoebus, at the god of divine distance.  Phoebus means "bright" or "pure," hence Apollo was connected with Light, with Helios, with the Sun, not with Nyx, not with the Night, not with the Feminine, with the Impure.

In fact, we are looking at the Ancient Greek superstructure, at the Intellectual and Rational Labour of Greek "Society"; Apollo is representative of the ruling ideas of that epoch. It was Apollo who sent or threatened from afar; the god who inculcated own guilt into men, and later purified them of it; who ruled over religious law and the political constitutions of cities; who communicated to man through prophets and oracles his "knowledge" of the "future", should read, the ideology of the ruling classes,  and the will of his father, Zeus, should read, the will of the patriarchal ruling slave-owning aristocratic or democratic classes. Even the gods feared this tyrannical "Big Brother", only his father, Zeus, and sometimes his mother, Leto, could bring him to "reason", could endure his horrible presence at all; the wrathful, revengeful Yahweh of the Old Testament had learnt a lot from him, he was not an inch better; or was it the other way around? His symbolic "bow" generated: authoritarian divine distance, death, terror, and awe. The "lyre" indicated the "high life", enjoyed by the wealthy classes, it proclaimed the joy of Holy Communion with Olympus (the home of the gods) through culture, arts, music, poetry, and dance. Well, well, already all these superstructural "niceties", this "ancient MTV", were produced by ruling class Intellectual Labour. We will see later who the "priests" were, and how hard they were "labouring .

Of course, Apollo was also very "democratic"; he was the god of the "lower classes", of those with hearts of "bronze", of the "producers".  In the latter case, as Alexikakos (Averter of Evil), and as Nomios (Herdsman), he figured as the god of agricultural crops and herds; he served mainly as a divine bulwark against wild animals and pestilence. As Lyceius,  he protected the flocks
from wolves (lykoi). Apollo really "worked" hard, no wonder that he had to rest on the seventh day of the Delphic month.

Strange enough, even Apollo was a "plagiarism", he was not of Greek origin, he came from somewhere north of Greece or from Asia. Nonetheless, Apollo and his twin, Artemis, supposedly were born on the isle of Delos. It was from there, in James Bond style, in the guise of a dolphin, that he leaped aboard a Cretan ship, and then forced the crew to serve him, that he went to Pytho (Delphi), where he killed the matriarchal Python. Now we also know why
Pytho was re-baptized as Delphi, it was renamed after the Dolphin (delphis).

Of course, Apollo set the pace for presidential "womanizers", he had many love affairs, and obviously most of them were unfortunate, Daphne, one of his attractions, got bored, and ran away, he caught her and changed her into his sacred bush, the laurel. Coronis, another love, the mother of Asclepius, also got tired of him, and she searched for consolation in other arms; Artemis, his twin brother, had to do the dirty work; he simply shot her. Another favourite was the daughter of the King of Troy, Cassandra, but she rejected his harassment; Apollo got so mad that he doomed her to make real true prophecies, which, as we know, no one believed. Now imagine Apollo as a "love adviser",
speaking with the tongue of Pythia. Poor Lovers!

In Part III, we will deal with the priests and with Socrates, who, according to the Oracle of Delphi, was  pronounced as "the wisest of men".

Well, Carl! Till next time.
Regards,
Franz.

(continued)