A Leak In The Safe

It’s been well documented here on RADIOFREEUBU that I have an abiding interest in the subject of ancient oracles. So when Philipp Vandenberg’s Mysteries of the Oracles: The Last Secrets of Antiquity showed up on the publisher VHPS’s forthcoming list you can bet I ordered it. I love the fact that even after all this time and all the people who were exposed to them the secrets of the oracles have remained veiled to an extent unimaginable in the contemporary world in which everything is so relentlessly exposed. The oracles were a place where human and divine confronted each other directly, again an impossibility today where vast bureaucracies have been erected simply to obscure and defuse the numinous. The sites of the oracles were truly significant locations, and it’s no wonder that the Omphalos, that mysterious egg shaped rock the Greeks considered to be the naval of the world was located at Delphi.

Those are just a few of the reasons that it’s always interesting to read about oracles and Mysteries of the Oracles is no exception. That said, it’s not a terribly profound or original work, and Vandenberg’s attempts to "solve" the secrets of antiquity mostly fall flat. I’m not sure by what circuitous route it came to be published by VHPS, but since it originally appeared in 1982, a lot of the much touted cutting edge archeology has been superceded. I’m also at a loss to understand why in all that time someone couldn’t have cleared up the overabundance of typos. It remains, however, a remarkably broad and readable tour through the ancient oracular world with a lot of interesting anecdotes about divination and classical times in general.

Here’s a few of my favorite passages as well as a killer bit from Virgil that’s included in the book:

While living in caves and swallowing the dry, driven desert sand, I witnessed discoveries that robbed me of sleep at night.

The black lumps of hashish that Dakaris discovered by the sackful leave no doubt that clients of the oracle were drugged into an incubatio, a kind of temple sleep, so they could experience the dreams and revelations that they should while close to the dead and the divine forces.

Knowledge that lies outside the range of understanding can only be gained in a state that also lies outside this range. Ecstasy, madness, frenzy, or whatever this state might be called, was the precondition for the Pythia’s prophecies.

Polycleitus also built the Tholos, a harmonious, round building whose significance is still uncertain today. It was probably used for secret rites, for it is supposed to have been erected over the tomb of the mortal mother of Asclepius. Here the priests bred the light-brown snakes that were sacred to Asclepius.

Some seventy miraculous cures during dreams were recorded. There was a Messian woman who was unable to have a child, so she came to Epidaurus for sleep treatments in the abaton. In a dream Aclepius appeared with a snake which he placed in her bed. Instead of being horrified, however, she played teasing games with it while she slept. That very year she had twins.

– from Mysteries of the Oracles by Philipp Vandenberg

There’s a huge cavern hollowed out

From the flank of Cumae’s hill,

A hundred wide approaches it has,

A hundred mouths from which

The Sibyl’s answers come forth

In a hundred rushing voices.

They had reached the threshold

When the maid cried: The time

Look, the God! The God is here!

And as she spoke these words

Before the threshold her face and

Features were suddenly changed,

Her hair fell in disarray,

She appeared taller and

Spoke in no mortal tones,

For the God was with her and

His breath was close upon her.

– from The Aeneid of Virgil 

Thanks to the indulgence of Comcast internet connectivity has been restored so RadioFreeUBU will now resume regular programming…

Remy de Gourmont (1858 – 1915) was one of those writers who were very influential in their time, but have been largely obscured today, especially in the English speaking world. A semi-recluse for the last half of his life due to a disfiguring case of lupus, Gourmont was a powerful and mysterious figure among the avant garde tastemakers of his day. T. S. Eliot and the American modernists were very influenced by his essays on art and aesthetics, but he also produced novels, decadent in that delicious, sensuous French way. Here’s some passages from the only one I could get my hands on, the brilliant and subtle Dream of a Woman:

Why have we not the right to be gods, to play with sensations at the bottom of the vale, beneath great prehistoric masonry?

As her silhouette grew clearer in the shadow, Adelaide surprised me by her noble attitude and her pure lines.

She was waiting for me like a woman in a picture. Last night was the third of our nights, mute and Babylonian.

And she gave herself to my staring eyes.

I am trying to express in one word the mingling of tones that stream across the flesh – the rosy ivory of the skin enlivened by the blue reflection of the willow, the little violet shadows that roll along the muscles, the wide medallions of golden sunlight falling over the shoulders where they seem to leap up again as from the vermillion water on the arms and knees, and mount again in sparks toward the belly where a somber crescent swallows them; the breasts beneath this path of light appear more alive and more free; changing their form with every movement of the body, they remain every pure: they are like great flowers with purple and amber hearts, like galley prows spotted with the blood of murders!

Mutual attraction moves rapidly when the hour of separation is known.