Exerpts from "Women and Power"

 The Ancient Oracles:

Dodona

Delphi 3

Samos

Flight of Birds

Oracle at Persia

Ammon Sibyl

Delphi

Sibyl of Cuma

Oracle at Thebes

The echoes of our Earth Mother’s song resound through time. The voice was passed from generation to generation, woman to woman for centuries. Beginning in this presentation are the legendary oracles called Sibyls. There were thirteen associated with place from Thebes (8 Thebes) to Cuma. (9 Cuma).

They often spoke in poetry or riddles and went through ecstatic traces[1] (10 Delphi 2). These ancient women were in Africa [2](11 Ammon), Greece, Italy (12 Samos), Palestine and Persia (13 Persia)). The sybils used a variety of techniques that foretold futures, resolved conflict or warned of impeding events. Some wrote on scrolls ( as in the Cumean Sybilline Books[3]), cast stones, bones, shells inhaled the vap

ors of the earth, went to inner worlds or read the flight of birds ( 14 Flight of Birds).  Dodona was one of the first sites were woman oracles were proclaimed divine (15 Dodona). Greek mythology tells us of Zeus marrying Dione and usurping control of her garden[4].

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[1] Herodotus (490-425 BCE), The Histories, Peguin Books, 1994, p.147

[2] Juvenal (55-140AD), The Sixteen Satires Satire VI, Cambridge Univ Classics, Univ. Sidney, 2014, p.251

[3] Smith, William, “Sibyllini Libri” A Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities, John Murray, London 1875

[4] Plato, (428-348 BCE), The Collected Dialogues, Princeton Univ. Press 1961, p.1620