The Gift of Sight
Picture This:
You and a group of friends are walking through the mall, or maybe at a convention. Your friend notices a kiosk that reads, Five Dollar Tarot Card Readings. Do you get excited? Do you even buy into all that hocus-pocus? Do you think that the woman behind the counter, draped in star-covered tulle and reeking of frankincense, can really see the future? Perhaps for many of us today, this is nothing more than a parlour trick — on the same level as watching horror movies to make ourselves scared or riding a rollercoaster to scream our heads off the whole time. But for ancient peoples, the gift of sight was all too real and often meant the difference between life and death.
The Pythia — Psychic or Psychotropic?
Apollo was the Greek god of music, light, medicine, and (of course) prophecy. He was said to possess many almost superhuman gifts. He could bring disease with anger but could also heal. He could control light and was a badass with a bow and arrow.
But one of Apollo’s more heroic achievements was his victory over the grotesque serpent Python when he was just an infant (he must have been wearing some heavy-duty diapers).
The place Apollo was said to have defeated Python became the city of Delphi. Being the god of prophecy, Apollo established the Oracle of Delphi, who would be able to share insights into the future to those who followed Apollo.
The chosen seers were named The Pythia in remembrance of the monster serpent Python. The oracles were asked to surrender all earthly pleasures and ties — including husbands, family, and children.
Their devotion was to lie with Apollo alone.
On the seventh day of each of the nine hottest days of the year, The Pythia would take questions from people all over Greece willing to make the journey to Delphi.
The oracles would fast, bathe in sacred springs, and drink holy water to prepare. When the time came, The Pythia would sit atop a tripod chair. Here, hovering atop a crack in the floor, she would inhale the natural gases from below (I bet she looked pretty cool).
The oracle would slip into a trance-like state, accessing the other world and pulling divine answers from the gods (high as a kite and ready to give profound wisdom rivalling Cheech and Chong).
After crossing the Halys, Croesus will destroy a great empire.
King Croesus had sought the advice before charging into battle against the Persians. The oracle was spot on, but the king’s arrogance blinded him.
It was not his enemy’s great empire that fell that day — it was his own.
The Severance of Sight and Sanctity
Somewhere along the way, Catholicism, along with other religions, brought the guillotine blade down between them and the occult. The ability to see into the future was no longer a gift but rather dark forces at play.
For this reason, it is worth mentioning Michel de Nostrdame, born in the south of France in 1503.
While not ancient mythology, it is interesting to compare the treatments of oracles like The Pythia and seers like Nostradamus.
Before writing his famous book of prophecies (Les Prophéties, 1555), Nostradamus, like Apollo himself, was a healer.
During his time, the Bubonic plague was in full disturbing force. Unlike common treatments of the time, Nostradamus had a high success rate in treating patients.
His treatments relied on good hygiene (a scarcity at the time) and pills of rosehip — high in vitamin C. He had been dismissed from a university for his affiliation to astrology and for his work as an apothecary. Despite this, Nostradamus travelled around Italy and France, helping those riddled with the plague.
After losing his wife and children to the plague and being charged with heresy in 1538 (apparently for cracking a joke about some hoity-toity statue), he avoided France and went on a journey of self-discovery — somewhere along the way, Nostradamus found the gift of sight.
After returning to France, remarrying, and giving up the medicinal practice (a shame really, cause the man had some sense!) Nostradamus began writing his famous predictions. But not before disguising them from religious persecution through four-line quatrains.
Eventually, he did maintain civility with the church, but many believed he was a fraud or a messenger of the devil.
Either way, this famous French seer had some rather spooky predictions which, are still analyzed today.
Apres les livres bruslez les asiniers, (After the books shall be burnt, the asses,)
Constraints seront changer habits divers; (Shall be compelled several times to change their clothes,)
Les Saturnins bruslez par les musniers, (The Saturnins shall be burnt by millers,)
Hors la plus part qui ne sera musniers. (Except the greater part, that shall not be discovered.)
- Les Prophéties, Century VI, Quatrain 17.
In this prophecy, the Saturnins represent educated people while millers are uneducated. This quatrain, arguably, predicts (rather accurately!) the heinous book burning that took place at the hands of the Nazis in World War II. The millers were the Nazis, who, viewing most texts as against their ideology, publicly burned them.
However, perhaps the last line is of some hope. Many people went out of their way to hide books and protect them for the future — risking their lives in the process.
So, the next time you’re walking along and see a booth advertising tarot readings, or a neon sign in a window flashing PSYCHIC, have a Raven Baxter moment of your own and ponder the question:
Do we really want to know the future?
Tori Edwards
Tori is a professional writing student from Newfoundland, Canada. When not writing or drawing you might find her listening to rock and roll or summoning the stray cats from the neighborhood like a witch.