Prophets, Caves, and Sages
The Making of a Man-God
One of the most famed initiates who ever lived appears to have drunk from the sweet waters of Mnemosyne, the Pool of Memory, since he was able to remember a whole series of previous incarnations. He called this “transmigration” of his soul metempsychosis, and two and a half millennia after this particular incarnation Brewer’s wildly popular Dictionary of Phrase and Fable 63 confidently related that:
He distinctly recollected having occupied other human forms before his birth at Samos: (1) He was Æthalides, son of Mercury [Hermes]; (2) Euphorbos the Phrygian, son of Panthoos, in which form he ran Patroclos through with a lance, leaving Hector to dispatch the hateful friend of Achilles; (3) Hermotimos, the prophet of Clazomenae; and (4) a fisherman. To prove his Phrygian existence he was taken to the temple of Hera, in Argos, and asked to point out the shield of the son of Panthoos, which he did without hesitation.
The man in question is Pythagoras, a name familiar to schoolchildren the world over for hundreds if not thousands of years as the (imagined) father of geometry and mathematics. He is popularly believed to have been a vegetarian; an expert on the soul, ethics, and religion; a musical theorist and astronomer—in short, the ultimate philosopher. Indeed, some say, the first person to call himself such, and the founder of an extraordinarily influential school of philosophy.
Pythagoras is the first of our wizards who we can claim confidently to have been a real historical person. We know without doubt that his ideas had a decisive impact on the development of science and philosophy, although, as the great classical scholar Walter Burkert has noted, “There is not a single detail in the life of Pythagoras that is not contradicted.” 64 Fortunately, as Burkert also notes, “it is possible, from a more or less critical selection of the data, to construct a plausible account.” My plausible account, based principally on the oldest sources, goes like this:
Pythagoras: The Mathemagician
Pythagoras was born around 570 BC on the Aegean island of Samos. His mother was said to have been from an old established Samian family, while his father was a dealer and/or engraver of gems 65 from the Phoenician city of Tyre in modern Lebanon. The Phoenicians seem to have survived the late Bronze Age collapse better than the Greeks, or at least to have bounced back more quickly, and were the greatest seafarers and colonisers in Europe at the time, with city states dotted all around the Mediterranean littoral, including Carthage, which went on to establish a great empire of its own. Tyre was the hub of the Phoenician world and very cosmopolitan, with merchants, travellers, craftsmen, and specialists from all over North Africa, southern Europe, and Asia Minor, including Egypt, Babylon, Sheba, and Ethiopia. Pythagoras would therefore have inherited the broadest cultural horizons from his father, while his mother is said to have come from one of the most aristocratic families on Samos.
As a youth Pythagoras accompanied his father on trading trips and is specifically said to have studied under scholars from Syria while on a visit to Tyre. He was also said to have spent years in Egypt and Babylon, becoming acquainted with all the wisdom of the East, prior to which he was a pupil of such famous Greek sages as Pherekydes, who was believed to have been the first to write philosophically in prose.
Legendary Teachers
Pherekydes is known to this day to have inhabited two caves on the island of Syros, where his summer cave remains a popular tourist attraction. The sole surviving fragments of prose attributed to him constitute a cosmogony,66 which was probably titled Pentemychos (“The Five Recesses”), although some sources claim it was called Heptamychos (“The Seven Recesses”). His pet subject, however, was metempsychosis, as Porphyry, an important third-century Neoplatonist, suggests:
Pherekydes of Syros, speaks of cavities, pits, caves, openings and gates, and through these speaks in riddles of the becoming and goings of souls.67
Pherekydes was believed to be the first Greek to teach of the immortality of souls and to have reached this understanding without a teacher. The latter is possible; the former most unlikely, since the immortality of the soul was a central understanding of the Orphic Mysteries, whose roots are much earlier. And, of course, Pythagoras had demonstrated the reality of metempsychosis in two of his previous incarnations. Maybe Pherekydes was the first to teach it openly, which, if he had discovered it for himself, he would have been free to do, having made no vow of secrecy.
Pythagoras then went on to study under Thales and Anaximander in nearby Miletus. Thales was one of the Seven Sages of Greece and is considered the father of Greek philosophy and, by some, the father of science. He claimed that everything in nature derives from the same prime matter, the nature of which he tried to define. This remains a goal of both alchemy and quantum physics. He was an engineer by trade and the first person to apply deductive reasoning to geometry by deriving four corollaries to his own theorem, making him the earliest person to have a mathematical theorem named after him. As an astronomer, he described the position of the constellation Ursa Minor, suggesting that it might serve as a guide for navigation at sea. He calculated the duration of the year and the timings of the equinoxes and solstices and is attributed with the first observation of the Hyades and with calculating the position of the Pleiades. Remarkably, he is widely credited with predicting the solar eclipse of May 28, 585 BC, that brought the Battle of Halys to a halt, resulting in a lasting peace.
Pythagoras was also taught by Thales’s pupil Anaximander, who was as groundbreaking a polymath as his master. In geometry he introduced the idea of the gnomon 68; in geography he contributed a very useful map of the world; in astronomy, he made an interesting attempt to describe the movements of celestial bodies in relation to the Earth; and his idea of an indefinite principle (apeiron) that preceded the elements as the limitless indefinable source of all things contributed to the development of both theoretical physics and Platonic metaphysics. Anaximander’s apeiron has been resuscitated in quantum mechanics as a name for Werner Heisenberg’s mooted primordial substance.69 Apart from his scientific contributions, Anaximander is credited with predicting an earthquake in Sparta and successfully persuading the inhabitants of Lacedaemon to evacuate their city. The earthquake struck the next day as predicted and devastated the city.
Judging by the reputations of these teachers, Pythagoras clearly received a most impressive education, but we can only speculate at the means by which this education was transmitted. We have a conditioned image of balding, bearded sages clad in off-the-shoulder flowing robes loftily intoning their intellectual insights while obedient pupils dutifully take notes, but it seems unlikely that the transmission was so prosaically academic. Indeed, the founding of Plato’s famous academy in Athens lay nearly two hundred years in the future. The site of the academy, however, already existed as a sacred grove of olive trees dedicated to Athena, the goddess of wisdom. Situated just outside the city walls of Athens, her cult had been honoured there since pre-collapse Bronze Age times. The teaching of wisdom in the days of Pythagoras was a sacred act; the imparting of sacred truths. Those selected to be initiated would have been a chosen few, qualified by social status or recognized as precocious minds ready to receive. The fact that Pherekydes is credited as the first person to have waxed on (what we would now call) philosophical subjects in prose suggests that pupils may have been traditionally addressed, at least in part, in verse. A teacher may have been a bard, a poet who understood the sacred power of words to affect the receptive mind of the neophyte. Sacred truth is, after all, necessarily poetic. Such magical, incantatory instruction would then give way to dialogue between teacher and pupil, the former helping the latter to find his way through asking the right questions in order to reach the understanding or realization of a truth.
Or something like that, perhaps. But what about instruction regarding metempsychosis? At what stage are we to imagine that Pythagoras became aware of his previous incarnations? Was Pherekydes’s teaching on the subject designed to help a person remember such things or simply to help contextualize such memories? We live in a culture that no longer agrees that such a thing as a soul really exists; indeed it is fashionable to agree that the idea of a soul that has an existence independent of the body is a dualist absurdity. This is only true from the perspective of Gilbert Ryle’s “ghost-in-the-machine” argument, which itself depends on the idea of “mind” being directly equated with “soul” and being in some way substantial. From the esoteric perspective (which is not the same as the “Cartesian rationalism” Ryle is wrangling with) the soul falls into that alchemical category of “thing that is not a thing.” 70 As we have already seen, however, the idea of an immortal soul as opposed to a ghostly shade was an equally esoteric idea at the time of Pythagoras.
Porphyry’s association of Pherekyde’s “pits and caves” and caves with “the becomings and deceases of souls” gives us a clue as to how knowledge of the soul could be gained. Pherekydes’s caves were not just allegorical. As we have seen, he was in the habit of living in them, and Pythagoras was to become well known for his affinity with caves, as we will discover after having first considered the rest of his education.
Journeys to the East
Porphyry quotes Antiphon (fifth century BC) from “his book on illustrious Virtuous Men”:
Pythagoras, desiring to become acquainted with the institutions of Egyptian priests, and diligently endeavouring to participate therein, requested the Tyrant Polycrates to write to Amasis, the King of Egypt, his friend and former host, to procure him initiation. Coming to Amasis, he was given letters to the priests; of Heliopolis, who sent him on to those of Memphis, on the pretence that they were the more ancient. On the same pretence, he was sent on from Memphis to Diospolis. From fear of the King the latter priests dared not make excuses; but thinking that he would desist from his purpose as result of great difficulties, enjoined on him very hard precepts, entirely different from the institutions of the Greeks. These he performed so readily that he won their admiration, and they permitted him to sacrifice to the Gods, and to acquaint himself with all their sciences, a favour theretofore never granted to a foreigner.71
All his biographers concur that Pythagoras visited Egypt, and, in addition to Antiphon’s account, other sources say he was afforded deeper and deeper access into the Egyptian mysteries under the high priests Oenuphis and Sechnuphis and the so-called “archprophet” Soches. Iamblichus records that he spent twenty-two years of assiduous study in Egypt before being captured by the invading soldiers of the Persian Emperor Cambyses II and taken in captivity to Babylon.72
Although Cambyses II did successfully invade Egypt in 525 BC (with the help of Polycrates, who had turned against his former allies), and Babylon was in Persian hands following his father Cyrus’s conquest fourteen years earlier, there is no evidence that captives were taken to Babylon in the way the Israelites had been, for example, after the fall of Jerusalem to Nebuchadnezzar some eighty years earlier. Nevertheless, it is quite possible Pythagoras visited the city, which was a famous centre of “oriental wisdom” such as those held by the Magi priests of Zoroastrianism, the legendary Chaldean astrologers,73 and the Jewish mystics. Porphyry tells us that Pythagoras met a certain Zabratas (or Zaratas) there “by whom he was purified from the pollutions of this past life, and taught the things which a virtuous man ought to be free.” 74 In fact, even if Pythagoras hadn’t visited Babylon, his later biographers would have required him to have done so. The Greeks seem to have had a curious relationship with foreign wisdom and magic. They were fascinated by it and suspicious of it in equal measure. Some contemporary commentators complained that Greek cities were teeming with diviners and augurers of every hue—soothsayers, astrologers, fake Magi, and bacchoi—all claiming special powers learned in Egypt or Babylon or somewhere else exotic. The Greeks loved their own folklore, myths, and gods, but since magic is by its very nature exotic, real magic had to be from elsewhere. The prevalence of such “low magic” practitioners inevitably led to the scorning of magic by the more learned and sophisticated Greeks, which itself contributed to the rise in rationalism that characterizes the classical era.
Therefore Pythagoras could not have been as astonishingly knowledgeable, wise, and impressive as he obviously was without having studied in places like Egypt with the highest priests and sages. Or could he? His Greek teachers clearly gave him an impressive start in most of the subjects that he would become such a legendary authority on. Iamblichus tells us that he was initiated into the mysteries by the Orphic priest Aglaophamus at Leibethra, where the Muses are said to have buried the remains of Orpheus. A more substantiated tradition says that he was instructed in “moral doctrines” and “much else” by the Delphic Oracle Themistoclea. Who or what was the Delphic Oracle? Well, this mysterious institution played such an important role in the ancient Mediterranean world that it will be worth exploring it in some detail to add context to the life of Pythagoras, whose birth the oracle is said to have prophesied.75
The Delphic Oracle
The sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi on the slopes of Mount Parnassus in southwest Greece was home for over 1,200 years to the most famous oracle in ancient Europe. The Delphic Oracle exerted considerable influence throughout the Greek world, and was traditionally consulted before such major undertakings as wars, alliances, and the founding of colonies. According to the painstaking scholarship of Joseph Fontenrose, between 535 and 615 of the oracle’s statements are known to have survived since classical times, of which over half are said to be accurate historically.
The Pythia: Python Priestess of Delphi
Traditionally a virgin,76 the oracle was the High Priestess of Apollo, a prophetess who performed the role of a medium, seated upon a tripod in a cave-like recess below the temple, giving answers to those who sought her prophetic advice. She held the title of Pythia, named after the monstrous serpent Python that had originally presided over the oracular cult of the primordial earth goddess, before being slain by the arrows of Apollo, who then established his own cult on the same spot. At least that is the simplest way of telling it. Trying to untangle the origins of Delphi is like wrestling with Python itself, who keeps shape-shifting like a transgender protean chimera, switching names, appearance, allegiance, and attributes. He morphs into a she, from Python to Typhon, to the snake-woman Delphyne77 or Echidna, from dragoness to dragon and even into Dionysus, at least by implication. Dionysus and Apollo all tied up again. At what stage Dionysus became attached to the oracle is not clear, but Leicester Holland, writing in 1933, has some very interesting things to say on the matter:
In modern times the tripod itself has been a matter of much discussion, some believing that there were two at Delphi, one the mantic tripod of the Pythian priestess, the other the funeral tripod of Dionysus. For Clement of Alexandria thus relates a current myth: “The Titans, they who tore him to pieces, place a bowl (lebes) upon a tripod, and casting the limbs of Dionysus into it, boil them down; then piercing them with spits they hold them over Hephaistos … Zeus the Thunderer discomforts the Titans and entrusts the limbs of Dionysus to his son Apollo, for burial. In obedience to Zeus, Apollo carries the mutilated corpse to Parnassus and lays it to rest.” Arnobius repeats the story of the luring away of Dionysus by the Titans, in order to tear him to pieces and cook him in a pot; and of the Titans being cast into Tartarus by the thunderbolts of Zeus. It is quite possible that he copies directly from Clement, but he does not mention the entombment at Delphi. The Etymologicum Magnum says: “The Titans tore apart the limbs of Dionysus, cast them into a lebes and gave them to Apollo. This was set upon the tripod by the brother.” That this savage legend was not purely a Christian concoction is attested by Tzetzes, who gives the following clear and definite statement: “Together with Apollo, Dionysus was also worshipped in the innermost part of the temple at Delphi, as follows: The Titans cast into a lebes and gave to Apollo the limbs of his brother which they had torn apart, and he set it up upon the tripod, as Kallimnachus (c. 256 B.C.) says. And Euphorion (c. 235 B.C.) says they cast the divine Bacchus into fire above a bowl. We can be reasonably certain from this, that at least as far back as the early third century it was believed that the bones of Dionysus lay in a bowl on a tripod in the Temple at Delphi. That this notion was widespread and persistent is shown by the definition of Servius; “Cortina, the place from which the oracle is given, because the heart (cor) of the seer is kept there.” 78
I was more familiar with the idea that it was the remains of Python that were kept in a bowl above the tripod, so Holland’s findings suggest a conflation of Dionysus with the chthonic serpent/dragon. One of the myths relates that Zeus took the form of a serpent when fathering Dionysus and the same animal is one of Dionysus’s many familiars, so on the surface the slaying of Python/Dionysus looks like a classic case of a cult takeover demonising the incumbent, overpowering it, and then using its power. The slaying of the dragon by the radiant hero is echoed in the stories of Perseus and Andromeda, St. Michael versus Satan, and George and the Dragon. Plutarch, however, confirms that Dionysus was as highly regarded at Delphi as Apollo himself and that for three months a year Dionysus presided over the oracle, while Apollo wintered in his original home of Hyperborea.
According to the Homeric Hymn to Pythian Apollo,79 the radiant one had been searching far and wide for just the right location for his oracle, and the sanctuary guarded by Python didn’t just have a great location with streams and groves and a stunning view: it was the centre of the earth. Legend tells that Zeus sent two eagles flying from opposite ends of the earth, and where they crossed in the sky, he dropped a stone, and where the stone landed was the centre of the earth. That stone was called the omphalos (“belly button”) and the same stone still stands in the ruins at Delphi, having once stood in the adyton 80 where the Pythia sat in a cauldron upon a bronze tripod placed above natural rock fissures, from which intoxicating vapours rose up that allowed her to achieve a state of mind in which Apollo, Dionysus, or their daimons 81 could speak through her and answer the questions put to her by those seeking her advice. These visitors include a parade of many of the most famous names in Greek and Roman history, including the (proverbially “as rich as”) Croesus, the Emperor Nero, Alexander the Great, and Pythagoras himself.
The Testimony of Plutarch, Pythian Priest
The highly influential Greek writer Plutarch (c. 46 AD–120 AD),82 who spent the last thirty years of his life as a temple priest at Delphi, has some very interesting things to say about the operations of the Pythia and how the “exhalation” of the intoxicating vapours had become unreliable:
As for my part, I believe the exhalation itself which comes out of the ground is not always of the same kind, being at one time slack, and at another strong and vigorous; and the truth of that experiment which I use to prove it is attested by several strangers, and by all those which serve in the temple. For the room where those do wait who come for answers from the oracle is sometimes—though not often and at certain stated times, but as it were by chance—filled with such a flagrant odor and scent, that no perfumes in the world can exceed it, and this arises, as it were, out of a spring, from the sanctuary of the temple. And this proceeds very likely from its heat or some other power or faculty which is in it; and if peradventure this seems to any body an unlikely thing, such a one will, however, allow that the prophetess Pythia hath that part of the soul unto which this wind and blast of inspiration approacheth moved by variety of passions and affections, sometimes after one sort and sometimes another, and that she is not always in the same mood and temper, like a fixed and immutable harmony which the least alteration or change of such and such proportions destroys. For there are several vexations and passions, which agitate bodies and slide into the soul, that she perceives, but more that she does not, in which case it would be better that she should tarry away and not present herself to this divine inspiration, as not being clean and void of perturbations, like an instrument of music exquisitely made, but at present in disorder and out of tune. For wine does not at all times alike surprise the drunkard, neither does the sound of the flute always affect in the same manner him who dances to it. For the same persons are sometimes more and sometimes less transported beyond themselves, and more or less inebriated, according to the present disposition of their bodies. But especially the imaginative part of the soul is subject to change and sympathize together with the body, as is apparent from dreams; for sometimes we are mightily troubled with many and confused visions in our dreams, and at other times there is a perfect calm, undisturbed by any such images or ideas.
When therefore the imaginative part of the soul and the prophetic blast or exhalation have a sort of harmony and proportion with each other, so as the one, as it were in the nature of a medicament, may operate upon the other, then happens that enthusiasm or divine fury which is discernible in prophets and inspired persons. And, on the contrary, when the proportion is lost, there can be no prophetical inspiration, or only such as is as good as none; for then it is a forced fury, not a natural one, but violent and turbulent, such as we have seen to have happened in the prophetess Pythia who is lately deceased. For certain pilgrims being come for an answer from the oracle, it is said the sacrifice endured the first effusion without stirring or moving a jot, which made the priests, out of an excess of zeal, to continue to pour on more, till the beast was almost drowned with cold water; but what happened hereupon to the prophetess Pythia? She went down into the hole against her will; but at the first words which she uttered, she plainly showed by the hoarseness of her voice that she was not able to bear up against so strong an inspiration (like a ship under sail, oppressed with too much wind), but was possessed with a dumb and evil spirit. Finally, being horribly disordered and running with dreadful screeches towards the door to get out, she threw herself violently on the ground, so that not only the pilgrims fled for fear, but also the high priest Nicander and the other priests and religious which were there present; who entering within a while took her up, being out of her senses; and indeed she lived but few days after. For these reasons it is that Pythia is obliged to keep her body pure and clean from the company of men, there being no stranger permitted to converse with her. And before she goes to the oracle, they are used by certain marks to examine whether she be fit or no, believing that the God certainly knows when her body is disposed and fit to receive, without endangering her person, this enthusiastical inspiration. For the force and virtue of this exhalation does not move all sorts of persons, nor the same persons in like manner, nor as much at one time as at another; but it only gives beginning, and, as it were, kindles those spirits which are prepared and fitted to receive its influence. Now this exhalation is certainly divine and celestial, but yet not incorruptible and immortal, nor proof against the eternity of time, which subdues all things below the moon, as our doctrine teaches—and, as some say, all things above it, which, weary and in despair as regards eternity and infinity, are apt to be suddenly renewed and changed.83
Despite the authority of such a credible witness as Plutarch, later Enlightenment scholars came to suspect that since all forms of divination are impossible and therefore bogus, the whole set up at Delphi must have been a scam; another example of an invented religious tradition designed to fleece the gullible. So it seems you can fool the most significant people all over the eastern Mediterranean world for well over a millennium, but you can’t fool sturdy, sound-minded rationalists. They can only be fooled by themselves.
The Rational Desecration and
Scientific Restoration of the Temple
From 1892, a series of French archaeologists examined the ruined site and found no fissures in the rocks and concluded that there could therefore have been no intoxicating vapours to account for the Pythia’s trances, deliriums, and oracular utterances. In 1904 a French scholar called Oppé concluded that since there were no fissures, and since no natural gas could account for the Pythia’s oracular powers, the testimony of countless writers over the centuries could be dismissed as the reports of hoodwinked fools. His opinion was shared by all reputable scholars thenceforth, and in 1950 the academic Pierre Amandry, who had dedicated his career to investigating Delphi and led many excavations there on behalf of the French School of Athens, further claimed that gaseous emissions were not even possible in a non-volcanic zone such as Delphi.
And that would have been that. Debunked, end of story. Delphi? Load of old nonsense; smoke and mirrors. Then fate intervened when, in the 1980s, a geologist called de Boer, an earth sciences professor at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, started working for the Greek government on the seismicity and tectonic setting of the Corinth Rift zone in order to assess the region’s suitability for building nuclear reactors. His main work was searching out hidden faults and judging the likelihood of tremors and earthquakes.
By chance, heavy tourist traffic had prompted the government to carve in the hills east of Delphi a wide spot in the road where buses could turn around, exposing what de Boer described as “a beautiful fault.” It looked young and active, so he traced it for days on foot, moving east to west over miles of mountainous, thorny terrain. The fault was plainly visible, rising as much as thirty feet. West of Delphi, he found that it linked up to a known fault. In the middle, however, it was hidden by rocky debris. Yet the fault appeared to run right under the temple.
“At that time I took a good look at previous and newly exposed segments of the Delphi fault and discovered another fault intersecting it,” de Boer explained. “Following the fault traces brought me to their covered intersection below the Sanctuary. I had read Plutarch and the Greek stories, and I started thinking, ‘Hey, this could have been the fracture along which these fumes rose.’ ” 84 Not being familiar with the archaeological literature, he assumed that someone else must have made the same observation years earlier and come to the same conclusion. He had no idea that the idea of fumes and fractures had been debunked decades earlier.
A few years later another lucky thing happened. While visiting a Roman ruin in Portugal in 1995, he met Dr. John R. Hale, an archaeologist from the University of Louisville, who was studying the Portuguese site. At sunset, over a bottle of wine, the geologist began telling the archaeologist of the Delphi fault.
“I said, ‘There is no such fault,’” Dr. Hale recalled. But de Boer convinced him otherwise. Hale realised that this opened up many of the possibilities that had previously been debunked. “He told me that the majority of archaeologists did not believe in the ancient descriptions of fissure and rising fumes that influenced the Pythia,” de Boer related. “I challenged him to come with me to Greece and he accepted.”
Within a year, the two men had travelled to Greece to resurvey the fault at Delphi and study the regional maps of Greek geologists. These revealed that the underlying rock stratum was bituminous limestone containing up to 20 percent blackish oils. No volcanic activity was required; simple geological action could heat the bitumen sufficiently to release petrochemicals into the ground water beneath the sanctuary; and various petrochemicals have psychoactive effects. Things were looking promising.
During a second field trip in 1998 they discovered another fault heading north-south that intersected the original east-west one just below the sanctuary and proved to be aligned with a series of ancient dry and modern wet springs, one directly beneath the temple. The dry springs were coated with a mineral called travertine, which de Boer recognized as an intriguing sign. When hot water seeps through limestone, it leaches out calcium carbonate that stays in solution until it rises to the surface and cools quickly. The calcium carbonate can then precipitate to form rocky layers of travertine, which can trap other substances contained in the water.
Increasingly excited, the two men won permission from the Greek authorities to sample the travertine and added Dr. Jeffrey P. Chanton, a geochemist at Florida State University, to the team. In the United States, he analyzed the travertine samples gathered from dry springs near the temple, finding methane and ethane. Each can produce altered mental states. But a better candidate suddenly occurred to de Boer.
“A small light went off in my mind,” he recalled. Perhaps, he speculated, ethylene had been there as well. Ethylene is significantly less stable than ethane and methane, so it was not surprising that none was to be found in the travertine samples. Yet ethylene has more potent psychoactive effects than ethane, methane, or even nitrous oxide.
To find out if ethylene might have been part of the heady vapour mix, Chanton would have to go to Greece and test the waters of the springs that still ran beneath the temple. He went on his own, and the rest of the team waited on tenterhooks for news. After several days, Chanton finally called. He had found ethylene, as well as methane and ethane. To confirm that ethylene could generate the dissociative states of consciousness apparently attained by the Pythia, the team invited toxicologist Dr. Henry A. Spiller, director of the Kentucky Regional Poison Center, to join and help with the pharmacological analysis.
“There’s a fair amount of data on the effects of ethylene,” Dr. Spiller said. “In the first stages, it produces disembodied euphoria, an altered mental status, and a pleasant sensation. It’s what street people would call getting high. The greater the dose, the deeper you go.” Once a person stops breathing ethylene, he added, the effects wear off quickly.
Ethylene has never caught on as a street drug, so the data on its effects is not actually as extensive as Spiller suggests. However, if the effects are similar to its very close cousin ether,85 then, as any reader of Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas may recall, they can be pretty spectacular. In this context it may be instructive to quote the experience of the famous Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes of Harvard Medical School 150 years ago:
I once inhaled a pretty full dose of ether, with the determination to put on record, at the earliest moment of regaining consciousness, the thought I should find uppermost in my mind. The mighty music of the triumphal march into nothingness reverberated through my brain, and filled me with a sense of infinite possibilities, which made me an archangel for a moment. The veil of eternity was lifted. The one great truth which underlies all human experience and is the key to all the mysteries that philosophy has sought in vain to solve, flashed upon me in a sudden revelation. Henceforth all was clear: a few words had lifted my intelligence to the level of the knowledge of a cherubim. As my natural condition returned, I remembered my resolution; and, staggering to my desk, I wrote, in ill-shaped, straggling characters, the all-embracing truth still glimmering in my consciousness. The words were these (children may smile; the wise ponder): “A strong smell of turpentine prevails throughout.” 86
The Pythia’s utterances were not always as prosaic as Holmes’s, but they needed to be more helpful. If the “disembodied euphoria” of ethylene could match such a state of ecstasy it is easy to imagine that with practise, dedication, and perhaps rather profounder levels of sincerity, that an oracle could achieve a state of prophetic awareness, particularly if she was channelling an oracular deity such as Apollo or Dionysus. It seemed as if de Boer and Hall had indeed solved the enigmatic riddle of the Delphic Oracle once and for all.
Their findings were published to wide interest and support amongst the scientific and academic communities, with positive reports in many journals, including Geology, Clinical Toxicology, Nature, National Geographic, and newspapers such as New York Times. There have been a couple of challenges to their findings, but for now the legend enjoys official scientific sanction, and scholarly doubt amongst classicists about the thesis has given way to wide acceptance and praise. It also ties in with Plutarch’s recounting of how the site was originally discovered when a goatherd noticed the effects on his goats of fumes emanating from cracks in the rock, and also tallies with his statement that there was a strong, sweet smell when the vapours were intense—ethylene has a sweet smell. Legend also recounts that after the death of Python, its rotting corpse (the root of python means “to rot”) gave off a strong odour. It may be that in earlier times, other gases, such as sulphur dioxide (classic rotten egg “stink-bomb” smell), were also part of the mix.
It’s not all about brain chemistry though. Psychoactive substances affect brain chemistry, which affects consciousness, but for the mystic, chemistry is not consciousness per se. Even the ethylene theory is unsatisfactorily reductive as an explanation for the Pythia’s prophesying ability. With or without significant quantities of, say, ethylene,87 when the Pythia descended into the adyton, she was preparing herself to be receptive, allowing a suggestible state in which she was open to impressions from behind the veil of what we take to be “normal” reality. In letting the spirit take her, allowing the voices to speak in her head, whether those voices belong to Apollo, Dionysus, or their daimons, she is acting as a psychic, a medium, an intermediary between the worlds. We will come to consider just what mediumship is all about later in the series when dealing with the extraordinarily widespread craze of spiritualism that emerged in the nineteenth century.
The achievement of the success of the ethylene theory is to restore some dignity to the fallen reputation of Delphi in these cynical and materialist times. An idea of just how far respect for both the Pythia and ancient Greek religion had fallen can be gauged from the fact that visitors to Delphi, at least until recently, were frequently told by their guides that the Pythia were poor, helpless women, drugged and exploited by a corrupt and rapacious priesthood,88 an idea grotesquely mirrored in the recent film 300. Such a jaundiced view has never been supported by the evidence and may reflect the decadence of modern thinking more than ancient practice. The balance of power between priesthood and Pythia is bound to have varied over the centuries, according to the personalities and dynamics involved, and no doubt some of the Pythia were better at their job than others; some spoke their prophesies and answers in poetic dactylic hexameters, while others might need interpreting, at least on occasions, by their priestly attendants; but to deny the likelihood that some, if not most, of the Pythia were gifted, charismatic, powerful women is to risk being misogynistic as well as cynical. Moreover, Fontenrose’s exhaustive examination of all the known surviving proclamations of the oracle supports the Reverend James Gardner’s summation of its influence:
Its responses revealed many a tyrant and foretold his fate. Through its means many an unhappy being was saved from destruction and many a perplexed mortal guided in the right way. It encouraged useful institutions, and promoted the progress of useful discoveries. Its moral influence was on the side of virtue, and its political influence in favour of the advancement of civil liberty.89
The fact that Pythagoras is said to have been instructed in “moral doctrines” and “much else” by the Pythia Themistoclea,90 even if untrue, is an indication of Delphi’s high standing in the fourth century BC as well as the third century AD.
The connection between Pythagoras and Delphi is as much circumstantial as historical. His name alone connected him with the oracle, while Iamblichus has a very interesting tale to tell. He says that authorities such as Epimenides (a contemporary, of whom we will soon learn more), Xenocrates, and Eudoxus (both fourth century BC) claim that Apollo physically fathered Pythagoras. Iamblichus is at pains to disagree with them, however, saying that what really happened was that on a visit to Delphi to consult the oracle regarding his commercial ventures, the Pythia told his father that his wife would bear them a wonder-child of surpassing wisdom and beauty, whereupon he changed his wife’s name from Parthenis (“virginal”) to Pythais. When their son was duly born, they named him Pythagoras, meaning “announced by the Pythia.” Iamblichus was insistent that Pythagoras should be considered divine because of his virtues and conduct, not because he was the physical son of Apollo, declaring that his body was not divine, only his soul, which “was sent down to men.” The parallels with the birth of Jesus are impossible to overlook. There is further evidence that Pythagoras was considered at least a demigod by those who came after him, and Aristotle is widely quoted 91 as reporting that, according to his followers, “there are three kinds of rational living creatures; gods, men and beings like Pythagoras.” Pythagoras was to become closely identified with Apollo, but before that came to pass a few more elements had to fall into place.
One of the key moral dictums of Delphi was the famous inscription over the entrance of the Temple of Apollo: “Know Thyself.” This maxim is also attributed to Pythagoras’s teacher Thales, and is perhaps the most important instruction any aspiring initiate could be given. If, as Pythagoras taught his followers, we all have an immortal soul that is ultimately divine in nature, then to know ourselves is to understand everything that connects us with and separates us from the Absolute. To know yourself, therefore, is to know the Truth; to be Truth; to be Divinity. That’s a lot to know, and even a genius like Pythagoras who could remember his previous incarnations would need instruction as to how such knowledge might best be acquired.
63 “Revised and updated” edition, 1894. Latest edition still in print.
64 Burkert, Walter: Weisheit und Wissenschaft: Studien zu Pythagoras, Philolaos und Platon. Nürnberg: Hans Carl, 1962. Author’s translation.
65 Some engraved gems are considered amongst the greatest works of art produced in Bronze Age Europe. The exquisite detail of the so-called Pylos Combat agate sealstone, discovered in 2015, is so fine that it can only be fully appreciated with a microscope.
66 A cosmogony is a theory or story about the origins of life or the universe. Many such creation stories were written during the Archaic and Classical Greek periods.
67 Porphyry, De Antro Nympharum.
68 Initially the upright part of a sundial, used for measuring intervals of time.
69 Modern physics postulates four fundamental forces (gravitational, electromagnetic, strong nuclear, and weak nuclear), which can be equated without too much of a stretch with the four interacting elements of classical Greek thought (Fire, Water, Earth, and Air). Plato named a fifth, indefinite element that infused all things as æther. Medieval alchemists named a similar substance “the Quintessence.” In modern physics this term is being used for a hypothetical form of dark energy; a fifth fundamental force.
70 It may have a subtle sheath, a container of sorts independent of the body, but the soul itself is entirely intangible.
71 Porphyry, Life of Pythagoras, translated by Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, 1920
72 Iamblichus (c. 245–c. 325 AD) was a Syrian philosopher and theurgist; usually described as a “Neoplatonist,” he might, more accurately be called a Neopythagorean. He wrote an important Life of Pythagoras that is generally dismissed as fanciful by scholars, but resonates with me.
73 Some claim he learned much from “Zaratas the Chaldean,” who is sometimes conflated with Zoroaster, which is chronologically impossible.
74 Porphyry, Life of Pythagoras, translated by Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, 1920
75 This will be the first of several long digressions, during which we will learn many remarkable things and encounter many remarkable characters before returning to Pythagoras himself.
76 It is recorded that the oracle was always a virgin until one was raped, whereafter celibate older women were chosen, usually from the local population. Social standing does not appear to have been important.
77 Delphyne is said by Apollonius of Rhodes to have been appointed guardian by her earth goddess mother, Gaia. Her name is derived from Delphys, “womb.” Delphi could also be named after Delphinios, an epithet for Apollo in dolphin form, in which guise the Homeric hymn to Pythian Apollo declares he arrived at Delphi bearing Cretan priests on his back.
78 Leicester Holland: “The Mantic Mechanism at Delphi.” American Journal of Archaeology. 37 (2): 204–214, 1933.
79 Now believed to have been written around the time of the birth of Pythagoras: 580 –570 BC.
80 The adyton was a small cell or recess below the temple where the prophetic process took place.
81 A daimon is a spirit belonging to almost anything—a god, a human, an animal, a planet, a river, or even an elemental force. It is not the thing itself, rather an interactive mode of its being.
82 Plutarch was much quoted by Shakespeare and long accepted as a reliable authority. He is the principal biographical source regarding the lives of many historical persons, including Alexander.
83 Plutarch, Vol. 4, 1878.
84 All quotations regarding this story are taken from Geological Society of America (Geology, 29, 8), as cited in “The Ancients Were Right—Delphi Was a Gas!” ScienceDaily, 7 August 2001.
85 Diethyl ether is produced as a by-product of the vapour-phase hydration of ethylene to make ethanol. If this were to occur naturally then ether may have been part of the gas cocktail inhaled by the Pythia.
86 Oliver Wendell Holmes, Mechanism in Thought and Morals, Phi Beta Kappa address. Cambridge MA: Harvard University, June 29, 1870 (Boston: J.R. Osgood and Company, 1871).
87 Chewing laurel leaves and even snake venom have also been proposed as potential entheogens.
88 A recent visitor reported the following: “Our guide explained that the priests were actually like a giant network of spies, in that they had eyes and ears all around the land; they knew what was going on in the world, and hence could give solid advice. While the drugged Oracle screeched on, the priest could write whatever he wanted. Generally, what they wanted was to give wise advice that would maintain the peace (and thus keep Delphi safe), so the information from espionage was key in creating this.”
See: https://www.aroundtheworldl.com/2012/04/18/scandalous-facts-behind-the-oracle-of-delphi-in-greece/.
89 Gardner, 1858, Vol 1, p. 688. As a Christian priest, the good rev’s words go some small way to right the wrongs of Christian suppression of the sanctuary, which was finally closed down in 381 AD.
90 An assertion of Aristoxenus (fourth century BC) cited by Diogenes Laërtius (third century AD). Porphyry asserts that Pythagoras claimed as much himself.
91 By Iamblichus amongst others.