Consulting the Ancient Oracles

The stones have been there for thousands of years, but their history is not so clear, shrouded by the mists of time. We know for certain there was an oracle at Delphi, but there are conflicting stories about how it came to be.

Giordorus Siculus, writing in the 1st century BC, said there once was a goat herder named Coretas, who was surprised when one of his goats started acting strangely after it fell into a hole in the ground. When he went in to retrieve his goat, he suddenly felt filled with a divine presence. He could see into the future!

Coretas told other villagers about his experience, they visited the site and also experienced inspirational trances. By the late Bronze Age, about 1600 BC, a shrine had been erected at the site for worshipping the gods.

A different story describing the same sacred site was written by Homer about the god Apollo, son of Zeus and Leto, and twin brother of Artemis. Hymn to Apollo describes how the young god encountered and killed a female dragon named Python. To placate her spirit, he founded an oracle at Delphi. At the site would be a female shaman who received messages from the gods and gave answers to mortals. She was given the name of Pythia in honor of Python.

Many ancient sources tell of “mephitic” vapors surrounding the Pythia during her prophetic sessions. Plutarch wrote of the fumes having a fragrant smell “of the sweetest and most expensive perfumes,” and Pliny the Elder referred to an “intoxicating exhalation issuing from the earth” that caused oracle-speaking.

In a 1933 article in the American Journal of Archaeology, Leicester B. Holland suggested that the fumes responsible for the Pythia’s state of ecstacy were stoked by burning hallucinogenic plants such as opium poppies, fly-agaric mushrooms or cannabis.

Whatever may have inspired the oracle’s predictions, she was able to make them most poetically. Herodotus, writing in the fifth century BC, describes the Pythia as speaking in dactylic hexameters, so she couldn’t have been too stoned.

Maybe the most famous prediction she made was in 560 BC when King Croesus of Lydia asked the oracle whether he should wage war on the Persians. She replied that if he did, he would destroy a mighty empire. What she didn’t tell him, however, was that empire was his own.

Delphi did not have a monopoly on oracles. There was another, almost as famous, about 500 miles to the east in Patara, Turkey. And because the Pythia at Delphi only operated for a limited number of days during the winter months, the Patara oracle got plenty of visitors, especially when Delphi was closed for the season.

Patara, Turkey is renowned for more than just its oracle. Saint Nicholas was born there in about 280 AD, and the Bible says the Apostle Paul visited Patara, as did the Evangelist Luke.

Fast forward about two millennia…

Patara is one of the must-see places that bestselling author Kathleen McGowan included in the tour of Turkey she created with Body Mind Spirit Journeys.

Here are more of the sites in Turkey Kathleen’s group will be visiting…

Click Here For Full Details of our Sacred Turkey Tour

P.S. The Trojan War was another monumental event the Oracle at Delphi predicted, and Troy, with its iconic wooden horse, is another place that our  May Tour of Turkey will be visiting.