The View from Delphi
Rhapsodies on Hellenic Wisdom &
An Ecstatic Appreciation of Western History
by Frank Marrero, Enelysios
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Introduction: The Forms of Delphi
Language is, first of all, the interruption of silence. Even in its most exact and minute detail, every word is fundamentally poetic, leading from where you dwell to the silent truth point.
Language is, in every tongue, only a thread of what is said.
Language is, like every other growing body, a living, breathing process -- and words (every one and all) are vibrantly alive, each echoing a long lineage of sound and reflection. This aural inheritance can be heard in sentence, song, and verse, as we reach back to a distant time of simpler sounds and simpler meanings. Speech may suddenly loom symphonic as a dance of form and feeling -- even carry one away into a time of musing and ancient understanding. While a few words in our language have come to us essentially unchanged through millennia, most words are the product of seasoned transformation and growth -- and all word-sounds communicate, even if unbeknownst to our verbal mind, their deep roots.
"Delphi" is an ancient word in line with delph, or "hollow," and delphys, or "womb." In turn, del- means "manifesting" and phy- connotes light. The womb manifests light. To give light is to give birth -- through an open, hollow place. Delphi poetically describes the religious nature of man and woman.
From this bright fertility, a new understanding and a new age of wisdom was born -- which became "Western" civilization. To the degree that the Hellenes were the foundation of Western culture, Delphi was its pronounced womb and spiritual center. If we want to understand the Hellenic foundations which defined Western civilization -- indeed if we want to understand ourselves -- we must understand her womb, Delphi.
A child changes dramatically from infancy to adulthood, and yet there is a distinctive thread which remains the same even amidst the changes. The child is in the adult just as the adult is in the child. In the same way, Western civilization has both dramatically changed and remained distinctively the same. This rational and logical insistence begat philosophy, schools, musiki, physics, mathematics, harmony, poetry, theatre, rhapsodies, katharis, theology, athletics, skepticism, therapy, history, democracy, logos, kosmos -- in short, the life of culture, mind, and understanding into which westerners were all born.
The Illiad and the Odyssey, the fundamental books of the Hellenes, turn upon the Trojan horse and Odysseus. The 9 year war was at a stalemate. Odysseus strategically proposed using the emblem of the Trojans, the horse, to leverage upon the mythic-mindedness of their foes. Calculating Odysseus became archetype for the advantage that cunning gives over mythic-literalism. But while the more cunning ones achieved victory, wily Odysseus had one hell of time getting home, also revealing the disadvantage that guile carries.
Twenty-four centuries ago, in the Western early morning of this myth-shattering understanding, Anaxagoras proclaimed “The sun is not a god, but a fiery rock, and it’s probably larger than the Peloponnese.” He was, you might have guessed, convicted of impiety to the god Helios, and forced to leave Athens to escape the drink of hemlock. Born from the metaphor of the Trojan horse grew the rise of logos. Thereupon, it understood that there were two ways to comprehend the myths: the “vulgar” believed them while the mature regarded them to be allegorical.
Our logical passage beyond mythic intelligence is not just a historical, cultural moment: it is a process each of us must go through in order to mature. To understand that which had been believed is the beginning of ordinary human maturation. This vaulting of logos beyond mythos describes both Western civilization and a sobriety in each of us.
The story of this leap in the West began in some way at Delphi, where we may again take a stand, and from this origin appreciate the changing drama as well as the distinctive sameness. To fully appreciate ourselves anew, let us look first at the "womb" from which logos and Westerners were born, and then view the growing child that became Western civilization.
Patterns of history can be compared to the unfoldment of a single individual. Let it be observed: to understand history is to understand the spectrum of human potentiality. Without a full-spectrum, penetrating vision of human growth, history is misrepresented, however factual it may pretend to be.
History is not cyclic, as some postulate, except that, like individuals, history goes through cycles in its growth process. Cultures, people and epochs have their spiralling ups and downs, but are always growing and surging forward (while as a whole falling back not quite as far). History surges forward along the spectrum of human potentiality, falls back, and grows again -- just like everyone, every time, every culture. There is a greater person, an oversoul if you will, emerging in every culture, including the new global culture, growing up like any single person; this is her story, history.
The view from Delphi, like her growing child of Western civilization, vaults upwards in kaleidoscopic brilliance. Poised on a terrace in a hollow, half-way to the mountain top of Parnassos, there is the breathtaking beauty of the Sanctuary, overlooking the sea of olive orchards below --- the magnificent cliffs (the "Shining Ones") looming dominantly above and around you, the Temple of Apollo standing luminescently upon the scalloped terrace, and the gushing of the waters of the sacred spring Kastalia&emdash;where grateful pilgrims have quenched their thirst for millennia.
It is that said a thousand cities, "dotting the Mediterranean pond like frogs," began with fire carried by pilgrims from the Delphic hearth and the blessing of the Oracle upon their hearts. At a pivotal time in history, Delphi was the most adorned place on Earth, with all the Mediterranean world gifting it with art and wealth. This sacred ground served as the common hearth and cultural birthplace for all Hellenes and dessiminated their central calendar. The Hellenes honored Delphi as spiritual source, womb, and "our national divinity," explicitly.
How the Sanctuary must have looked walking up the Sacred Way during a celebration! Imagine the holiest of grounds, with thousands of statues or immortal personages; with its treasuries and holy places along the Way, and all the art and statuary adorned in new paints or fresh oils to glisten in the sunlight; with art of gold and jewels and masterfully made gifts, all coming in overwhelming waves of delight until at last one beheld the Temple itself, the Heart of this world, seat of the Oracle and the timeless Omphallos. Like all truly sacred places, its form is expressive of radiant spirit.
To fully understand the sacred nature of Delphi, it is necessary to review the mythological and historical accounts of this holy ground. Then we will be prepared to fully comprehend its logos and spirit -- its metaphysical, meta-magical, meta-mythic, and meta-ordinary communication. That communication is neither childish religious belief nor philosophical abstraction, but rather the ecstasy that is the favor of the gods.
The uniqueness of Delphi was not just in poetic meaning, nor confined to its mythical aura, or even its religious and political power. Combine Delphi's famous oracular prophecies with its sixteen centuries as "the center of the world," and mysteriously Delphi becomes a place that holds a certain transparency to time itself. Famous and revered prophecies -- messages transparent to time -- were ceremoniously and regularly issued by the Sibyl beside the Still Omphallos and Sacred Fire in the Temple of Apollo. And just as the child and the adult are reflected in each other, Westerners can look back upon our infancy at Delphi with a certain timelessness. The View from Delphi is the eyes looking back and forward.
From the healing temple at Epidavros to the Mysteries of divine initiation at Eleusis, from the elegance of Delos to the crucible of Athena's great city, from the prophecies at Delphi to the reverence for the world-wonder Zeus at his Temple at Olympia, our Western forefathers and foremothers ritually and ceremoniously brought the sacred revelation of divine ecstasy to their cultural family. Mythos vaulted to logos twenty-six centuries ago as ecstasy transported belief to a theological understanding that integrated body, emotion, mind, being, and world.
Ecstasy -- from ek-stasis, "to stand out (from oneself)" -- stands not only out of self, but, because it speaks of "immortal happiness," stands also out of time. Stepping beyond the merely mortal vision, another view from Delphi unravels before us. It is an ecstatic appreciation of history. We are freed from the past in ecstasy, and a time-free appreciation of history allows us to more properly locate ourselves in the glorious presence. The cultural forms which were our foundation and reference are outgrown in a balanced, unbound, formless, and mysterious enjoyment where everything is as it is.
The View from Delphi presents itself in five parts: I. A Visual Tour of The Sanctuary Proper II. Mythological and Historical Accounts III. Rhapsodies on the Ancient Sacred Understanding IV. An Ecstatic Appreciation of History V. The Return of the Gods and the Eclipse of the Cultural Ideal
PrefaceAcknowledgments Introduction: The Forms of Delphi
Mythological and Historical Accounts of Delphi, the Center of the World
The Ecstatic Dance of Apollo and Dionysus
Rhapsodies on the Ancient Sacred Understanding: The Oracle at Delphi
The Caduceus, “Temple Sleep,” and the Religious Origins of Western Medicine
Orpheus, The Katha Upanishad, and the Secret Way Beyond Death