The Oracle of Delphi

[hoplite14gr]

Diodorus Siculus(16,26) and Pausanias "Phokika" are the main sources
of information on the Delphic ceremonies.
The excavations showed nothing of a chasm in the Temple showed no chasm.
Perhaps they have mixed the GAIA ceremonies with the later Apollonian.
In a description Pythia stays in an altar that X-mass tree branches are burned. The fumes from the raisinous branches make you dizzy.
She chews DAPHNE leaves and she stays in a closed room among fumes of incence and DAPHNE to make th prophecy.
From personal experience I know that DAPHNE leaves fumes can get you stoned. No wonder she was in ecstacy.
Kind regards

[Anonymous]

I'm a Thespian. 700 of us died at Thermopylae, but we don't go on about it, like SOME people... :wink:

[hoplite14gr]

Well, the Thermopulae monument is sounded by 1000 pine trees not just 300.
Kind regards

[Anonymous]

That's good to know, Stefanos. I'd like to see them, one day.

[Anatol Wyss]

Have come across an interesting article that might shed new light to the mystery of the Delphic "spirit" that possessed the Pythia; "A bittersweet story: the true story of the laurel of the oracle of Delphi" written by Haralampos V. Harissis and published 2014 in Perspectives in Biology and Medicine. It can be read in full here;

https://www.academia.edu/7004301/A_bitte..._of_Delphi

Haralampos argues that the supposed Laurel or "Daphne" from which fumes the oracle was believed to inhale, infact was a generic name including several different plants. Relying on ancient sources and toxicology he surmises that the leaves of Oleander is the most likely source of the Pythias possessed spirit… Read and judge for yourselves.

Interestingly Haralampos only briefly mentions theories based on fumes of ethylene leaking out of the fault line that has been shown to run under the temple of Apollo in Delphi and dismisses them as a popular theory with serious flaws.
His reference for this dismissal goes to Foster and Lehoux 2007; Lehoux 2007. When searching the reference I found them in turn dismissed more or less as conservatives stuck in time by Jelle Z. De Boer in a chapter on the Delphic oracle in “Toxicology in Antiquity” (2019 edited by Philip Wexler). It looks by the way like a great book. In his chapter on the Delphic Oracle he thus concludes:

“The ancient belief in intoxicating gaseous emissions at the site of the Delphi oracle is not a myth. An unusual, byt by no means unique, combination of faults, bituminous limestone, and rising groundwater worked together to bring volatile hydrocarbon gases to the adyton. Contemporary geologic research has thus reaffirmed many if not most aspects of the ancient sources.”

https://books.google.se/books?id=-aRBDwA...os&f=false