The Oracle of Delphi, a city in Phocis, was the most famous oracular centre in Greece, and it had established itself on all other oracles since the VII century BC. It was located on the slopes of Mount Parnassus, and had originated from the killing by Apollo of the monstrous snake Python, which had been once placed there to guard a sacred source. According to the myth, Apollo then installed the Phythian sanctuary and ordered that a virgin, the Phythia, uttered prophecies inspired by the divine exalations coming up from a crack in the ground, believed to be the very point where the Universe was born from. The pilgrims were admitted one by one inside the temple of Apollo. First, however, they had to purify themselves with the water from the source Castalia - just as Apollo himself had done after killing the Python - pay a tax and offer a goat as sacrifice to the god. From that moment the pilgrims were ready to meet the Phythia who, in the innermost cell of the temple, hidden from the gaze of men, was sitting on a high three-legged stool, the tripod, placed over the crack from which water from the Cassiotis sprung, along with psychoactive exalations. Originally the Phythia was a young virgin: later, a woman of older age was chosen, and she would live inside the sanctuary and observe rigorous chastity. Like the pilgrims, the Phythia also underwent a ceremony before uttering the response of the god Apollo: she would drink water from the Cassiotis source, chew some laurel leaves and absorbe the vapors that rose from some fissures in the ground and that would put her in a state of trance. The more or less intelligible sounds that came out of her mouth were reformulated by the priests often with ambiguous words: the risk of being contradicted by future events could definitively compromise the prestige of the Phythia. Therefore any wrong responses were attributed to the inability of the priests to understand the oracle, rather than the inability of the Phythia to predict the future. #oracle #oracleofdelphi #meditation #grounding #divination #scrying #oldworldwitchcraft #oldwalnuttree #oldreligion #witch #witchesofinstagram #wildwomanrising #wisewoman #witchywoman (presso Δελφοί (Delphi)) https://www.instagram.com/p/CB_5rtKqGLE/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=
