Re: CHAT: The Pythia (was: hi brethren)

At 06:56 AM 3/25/2000 +0100, Raymond wrote:
> >Apollo submerged a cult at delphi centered around an earth mother (hence
> >the omphalos, priestesses, and oracular sayings).
>
>Possibly - the omphalos is suggestive, tho males have belly-buttons as well
>as females - but oracular sayings can be & have been made by males in other
>cultures and I'm not aware of any direct evidence of priestesses.
I thought I read somewhere a theory that the omphalos was actually a symbol
of the womb; also, the name Delphi itself appears cognate to a Greek word
for 'womb.' Unfortunately I don't remember any of the details about the
alleged misinterpretation of the omphalos.


> >Apollo never was an
> >oracular god, until he took over Delphi.
>
>By what evidence?  Apollo was an ancient god.  His name is not of IE
>origin; he was taken into the eventual Greek pantheon from a non-Greek
>source, presumably one which existed in the Aegean area before the
>pre-Greek IE speakers move there.  What evidence do we have whether this
>god was originally oracular or not?
Don't know anything about the historical facts, but didn't Greek mythology
say that Apollo took over the shrine from Gaea at some point, thus saying
that it had been an earth goddess site?