Delphi

That night we traveled to delphi, the site of the oracles and apollos temple.  In the morning we climbed through the mist to see the ruins of the oracles. Kings and peasants alike used to travel here to ask the prophetesses their questions. The woman were placed behind a curtain and would answer the questions which were then interpreted and written down by a priest. Excavators discovered natural gas underneath the oracles, meaning that when the women prophesied they were actually high. I wonder if this at all diminishes the significance of the oracles. Somehow I think not. The place itself, high up in the mountains held a certain mystic quality, and I could understand why people would travel here to seek solutions. The idea that it was woman- not men- that were the oracles seems appropriate. Woman throughout the centuries have nearly always been the ones to occupy the truth, which is then taken and transformed into actions by men.

We headed next to a museum, passing on our way down a large oval shaped rock, which was described as the belly button of the world. All the artifacts at the museum had been found at the location of the oracles. There were statues which had been somehow preserved and remnants of gifts of gold that used to be presented there to the gods. Greeks have a policy that they will not reconstruct a historical monument unless the majority of it still exists, so all the things we saw were already mostly intact.the pieces the archeologists had added to give the viewer a better picture of what once was were painted a brighter white so as to be distinguished from the original. In one room loomed a sphyncs, it's wings raised up towards the ceiling. In the next two identical statues of men stood.  Called the twins of Delphi, legend tells that  when their moms carriage broke down on the way to the oracles the brothers harnessed themselves in instead of the oxen. Exaughsted upon arriving, the boys slept in the temple, well their mom elated prayed to the gods and thanked them for the bravery of her sons. The mom asked the gods that they provide her sons with the best gift possible as a reward for their efforts. The gods deemed the best gift to be to remain by the oracles in their realm, and so the boys never woke from their slumber.