Commentary on Lisa Maurizio Article

I'm going to take the trouble of describing her thesis in some detail, because it's very relevant and the article is not easily accessible to most people.

L. Maurizio, “Anthropology and Spirit Possession: a Reconsideration of the Pythia's Role at Delphi” The Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol 115 (1995)

It's quite common to read that the priests of Apollo interpreted what are called inarticulate or frenzied words of the Pythia. Since the priests were instrumental in the Apollonian takeover of the shrine, it seemed reasonable to consider that they had encroached on the oracle's sphere, though I couldn't tell to what degree, not having access to all their sources. But it can be a mistake to assume that the learned pundits have gotten it right. As it turns out, they don't all agree!

Maurizio, having read the relevant Greek sources on this topic, including the surviving inscriptions at the sanctuary, informs us that “Not one ancient source suggests that anyone other than the Pythia issued oracular responses.” [69] She also criticizes literary men's (Lucan, Aeschylus, and Vergil) depiction of prophetesses and sibyls as being wild like maenads. She notes that Plutarch's description of the Pythia who died in paroxysm is exceptional (and I'd add, the context of this account is ethanol and methane gas poisoning from the underground “exhalations” at the shrine.)

Maurizio says that the Pythia is called mantis (which does imply an altered state), prophetis, and promantis. She tells us that prophetis is derived from a verb stem meaning “say, speak” [just as Fate and fata and faery come from Latin fari; more on that later]. 70

She highlights modern scholars depreciation of the Pythia's speech as “gabble” and “irrational babble,” and goes into how “male fantasies about women” fueled the speculation of both ancient and modern men. These last are guity of dismissing her oracular power, which is “relegated to the margins.” [70]

She then goes on to compare the Delphic oracle to modern African oracles, looking for parallels and the deeper human and spiritual dimension of how they work. Or as she calls them, “the 'generic' characteristics of divinatory rituals.”

She looks at various terms to describe the profoundly unified state of such seers, including ecstasy (outside the body or self) and trance (apparently favored by anthropologists, but its definition as being “sleep-like” doesn't describe it well, as it can be quite clear, and neither does “dissociative state.”) She settles on “spirit possesion,” a choice I can't agree on, with its most unfortunate history not only in the European witch hunts but in the abiding racist negativities toward African and other shamanic cultures.

Women are often described as “posssessed,” or as “spirit medium,” and painted as being somehow passive, when they are in fact active and even in spiritually exalted states. It's clear that Maurizio doesn't believe they are passive, and she even says that cross-culturally “women have often been the agents of possession.” That's an interesting way of turning around the phrase. It's just that the word is not value-neutral, and it looks very different from some of the indigenous words for that state, such as the Tamil/Dravidian word arul, which means “grace.”

Anyway, she goes on to other terms: “mantic wind” (pneuma mantikon), and entheos (deity in the body) or the related enthousia, from which we get “enthusiasm.” Also epipnous, “breathed upon,” which is lovely. In a footnote, she says that “the Greek definition of the word ecstasy is remarkably similar to Crapanzano's and Garrison's definiton of altered state.” [76, n. 51] And the mantic wind is very much in accord with the descriptions of "exhalations" breathing up from within the Earth at Delphi.

She goes on to some interesting pieces from Plato's Dialogues that compare poets with seers and “oracle-chanters.” (There's that chanting again.) Socrates sees these groups as similar because what they do comes from nature and divine communication, but he places higher value on “wisdom,” by which he seems to mean rational knowledge. There's a definite disconnect for the male philosopher in the way he sees these inspired people: “For these say many noble things, but they do not understand what they say.”

Maurizio shows that Socrates saw them “as completely passive and ignorant when they compose their oracles or poems. (But she cites another dialog on love in which Socrates talks about the greatest goods coming to humans through divine madness.) In passing, let's note that Socrates was influenced by Delphic oracles and became famous for the saying, “Know thyself,” even though he didn't originate it but saw it inscribed at the shrine and quoted it. The phrase, like all the oracular speech, came from the mouth of a Pythia.

Next comes an interesting line about the epic poets, “When they begin their harmony and rhythm, they act like Bacchanates and are possessed, just as the Bacchantes, when not in their right mind, draw honey and milk from rivers.” [Plato, Ion. 533e] The Bacchantes are of course maenads, women who follow the god Dionysos (I'll have lots more to say about that in a future chapter). But this line about drawing honey and milk from rivers seems very primal, and reminds me about another theme we'll get into about Greek and later the Roman witches, who are described as "drawing down the moon" and absorbing the lunar essence.

These themes have even broader relevance when we look at Hindu metaphors about divine nectar flowing into devotees, or Taoist mysticism which has similar tropes about the “jade flow” especially connected to the bodies of women and of all spiritual adepts, and to yin, the essence of water, and the moon.

Maurizio brings out another reference to divine inspiration, when the Muses appear to Hesiod on a mountaintop and “breathe song upon him.” Wonderful! and again Plato implicitly compares the poet to the Pythias who sit on a tripod, “Whenever a poet sits on the Muses' tripod, he is not in his senses, he is like a spring which readily allows its water to flow.” [79 n. 67] However, she contrasts the Pythia with the maenad in that she's always shown as “coherent, articulate, fluent and knowledgeable almost beond comprehension” in speaking oracles.

OK, now we come to the divinatory pebbles again. She says it's possible that the Pythia “used cleromancy,” which is to say casting lots, bones, stones, or similar “randomized” forms of divination. (She gives a list which includes termites and chickens!) The randomization factor has been observed in many divinatory systems, and works to remove human control including your mind playing tricks and projecting or intervening in some way. So: the yarrow stalks of I Ching, or the coins, or casting the runes, kola nuts, or cowries.

A very interesting footnote: “Amandry has argued that there were two distinct practices at Delphi, the lot oracle and the more prestigious prophetic oracle.” The lots are not mentioned by any of the usual writers, according to M, but somewhat less than 10% of the recorded oracles use the phrase “take up” (presumably as in “take up the lots”) over a long span of time, which indicate a longstanding practice. She also mentions a couple of vase paintings at Delphi showing the Pythia or in some cases Apoloo holding a phiale [p. 80, n. 70] and seems to be suggesting that lots, possibly the pebbles, were cast from it. All this underlines the story in our reading about Athena inventing the pebbles, and also the fact that her shrine predates that of Apollo at Delphi.

Finally Maurizio describes the male officials at Delphi, the five hosioi (elected for life), the hiereus or priest(s), and the prophetes, a term which only appears in other writings, never in Delphic inscriptions. She thinks the last two may be different names for the same office. And she adds that the evidence about them is late and thus “it is impossible to ascertain whether any of these officials were present at a consultation in archaic times, much less what they did.” [84] She emphasizes that it was the Pythia who “was the conduit of divine knowledge.” (And as we've seen, the Pythia was the only woman with access to the sanctuary in historic times.)

The article refers to the prestige of Greek priestesses, as observed by Herodotus (and we could add, substantiated in detail by Joan Connelly's recent book Portrait of a Priestess: Women and Ritual in Ancient Greece (2008), which I'm about to read and will report back on in the next week or two.)

“Of particular interest is Herodotus' notice about the Dodonaean priestesses from whom he reports that he learned about the theological question whether the gods were born or, as eternal beings, always existed.” [Herodotus, ii, 53]

Further, Strabo and Plutarch rever to versifiers who put the Pythia's words into verse, but these are both late sources. “No ancient source credits [the prophetes or hiereus] with versifying the response.” She thinks that the male attendants at Delphi probably helped the clients to frame their questions for maximum clarity and then to interpret the oracle's words, but she is very clear that the words came from the Pythia alone. [84, 86]

Maurizio refers to Cassandra's prophecies in Aeschylus' Agamemnon, which begin with moans and garbled speech and then resolve into coherent speech in poetic form. She uses animal metaphors to deliver her foretellings, a symbolic language with other cultural parallels.

There's an important chunk in a footnote: “At Dodona and Didyma, there is limited evidence which suggests that the prophetesses, not the prophets, issued oracular responses. At Didyma, Catherine Morgan has questioned the assumption that in archaic times the mantis was male… [I'm going to look up this source.] More compellingly, it a recently discovered inscription from Didyma, a hydrophoros of Pythian Artemis refers to her great-grandmother as prophetis.” (So do two other inscriptions from Didyma, plus accounts from Iamblichus and other writers about female seers.) [85 n. 97] And the reading shows female prophecy at this site.

Finally, Maurizio brings up a stunning fragment from Euripides where Melanippe (a woman whose name means Black Horse) asserts women's superiority to men and bears witness to prophecy as a female sphere of power:

In regard to matters concerning the gods-and I judge these matters to be foremost-we women hold the greatest share. In the houses of Phoibus Apollo, women prophesy the mind of Loxias. Around the pure steps in Dodona by the holy oak, the female race reveals the thoughts of Zeus to those from Greece desiring to know his will. [Dione is already eclipsed here.] Rites in honor of the Moirai and the nameless goddesses are accomplished; these rites are not holy among men, but among women they prosper. All female rites are just in respect to the gods. How is it possible that that female race has an evil reputation?

Pretty incredible statement, put in the mouth of a female character by a male playwright! Maurizio points out that “We may attribute the limited notices and stories about women's activities in ancient Greece to the interests, if not hostility, of the male authors who chose not to record them. We need not, however, mistake this silence for the silence of the women themselves.” Further, she notes that men did not have access to women's ritual practices.

The speech of Melanippe is very significant and brings up the question: what was the culture of the women of Delphi, or any of these shrine communities, from which all Pythias came? The male sources, both ancient and modern, show a complete vacuum, but I consider this completely unlikely. As Maurizio points out, inspired ritual behavior occurs within a cultural context. Melanippe points us toward female rites which modern scholars attempt to reconstruct with limited sources and even more limited success.

At some point women were barred from the sanctuary, but what was the religious culture of the women of Delphi? The cautious academic framings are built entirely on the written words of elite men, the ones who are furthest from the women's rites by all accounts. And the further back in time we go, the less Greek culture resembles anything we have been taught about it. The next group of images I'm about to post, of ceramics from 750-650 BCE, will demonstrate this more dramatically than anything I can say.